Monthly Archives: April 2014

April Fools (Me Every Time)

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I got a pedicure on Saturday. I sorted out the kids’ summer clothes and found out what still fits and what can go to some lucky slightly smaller people. I swapped the winter duvets on all our beds for the summer ones.

So of course, temperatures are going to drop into the 20s tonight. (That’s below freezing.) I would bring back the duvets, but B enthusiastically put them into vacuum bags and sucked all the air out and was delighted with himself, so I think it’ll be extra blankets all round.

You would think I would know by now, not to go casting clouts until April, at least, is out. But no, I am a rash and impetuous creature, governed by whims and flights of fancy and susceptible to the warm spring breezes. Aren’t we all, after that long, long winter? I should just be happy that all we got today was a lot of rain, not like the s-n-o-w they had further north.

Baseball-ready, 2014

Baseball-ready, 2014

Baseball season has started again, so Dash is happy. He ran the nursery school’s fundraiser 1k fun run on Saturday and won it for the second year in a row. Next year he’s going to have to just run the 5k and leave the 1 for the younger children or it’ll start to look like he’s hogging it.

Rounding the last bend, well ahead of the competition

Rounding the last bend, well ahead of the competition

It’s spring break and so far we’ve had a playdate, done the grocery shopping, and gone to the thrift store, where they had the amazing find of a green lightsaber. “I’ve missed having a green lightsaber,” said Dash, for whom two blue ones and a red double-blade are not enough, apparently.

His birthday is coming up – AGAIN – and he wants a Star Wars party – AGAIN – for he is a creature of habit. And I’m trying to think how we can disguise a Star Wars party as something subtly different so his friends don’t all die of boredom and think they’re stuck in a time warp. So I’ll be in the corner with my notebook chewing the end of my pen and writing lists, which is how I think best, for a while.

As always, you can find me waxing hilarious (be charitable) and/or sensible over on Parent.ie if you’re missing the more regular updates here.

Ode to suburbia

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This is the time of year when I really love where I live. The streets are lined with trees drooping heavy with pink and white blossoms, like big fat balls of cotton wool, raining their petals down at the bump of a branch. The weather is my absolute favourite type: jeans-and-sandals temperature. Not too hot, but definitely warm. The sky is blazing blue, I can hear a woodpecker somewhere in the trees, and we’re digging out the shorts and wondering if last summer’s Keens might possibly still fit.

This neighbourhood is an oasis of small-town life in deepest suburbia. Once you venture beyond its bounds, you’re on the big anonymous roads with ugly strip malls and chain stores – Target, Safeway, Giant, Payless Shoes… nothing fancy, just the basics. They’re pretty soulless and indistinguishable from any other Targets, Giants, Safeways, Paylesses. But inside the bounds, it’s a village. We have a selection of one-of-a-kind establishments: a (really) greasy spoon, a takeout pizza joint, a barber’s, a shop that sells Keno tickets and hats, a Lebanese cafe that’s a live music venue too – and a co-op supermarket that’s not part of a chain. The first time I stepped inside it, I was transported back to supermarkets in the west of Ireland, the sort you went to when you were on your summer holidays, where they sold things with funny-looking labels and there was a distinctive smell and if you were lucky they had soft-serve ice cream.

Our local Co-op doesn’t have soft serve (at least, I don’t think it does) but it has that same distinctive smell, and exactly the same ladies at the cash registers – except instead of soft Galway accents they have Maryland ones. I don’t get that same spine-tingling thrill of nostalgia every time I walk through the doors any more, because I’m there at least twice a week; but I do still appreciate how special it is to be in a supermarket that’s not a chain, that’s different from everywhere else, that has wine and beer (not the norm in this state), and where I’ll usually see someone to say hi to around at least one turn of an aisle.

My mother stopped shopping at her local supermarket because she didn’t want to meet people she knew. Not that she’s anti-social; I think more because she’d stand there chatting for half an hour and the whole morning would be gone. I think I’ve already heard my children announce, in a deprecating tone that sounds oddly familiar, “…and then Mom met someone.”

But that’s what I love about it. I love that on any weekday morning I’ll drive the girl to school and pass at least two cars whose drivers I can wave hi to. I love that I’ll bump into a mom I know in the supermarket (to whom I can chat at length, or just say hi). I love that I know the fruit guy in Safeway and that the meat-counter lady asks where my baby is – followed by a laughing acknowledgment that she’s not a baby any more.

Much as I miss where I used to belong, I love that we belong here, because that makes it a home.

Blossoms

Spring in the suburbs

Non-native

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My poor American children do suffer somewhat from having parents who don’t quite speak the vernacular.

It’s rare that I encounter a word these days that I really just can’t find the American equivalent for, but I was pulled up short this afternoon when I found Mabel denuding the toilet roll of its paper in the bathroom halfway through a playdate.

“Stop messing,” I told her, exasperated.
“Is she making a mess?” her little friend asked me.
“No, she’s just … messing.”

I really couldn’t come up with the right word for what Irish people call messing. Messing about? Being mischievous? Up to no good? Cruisin’ for a bruisin’? No, I’m back to Dublinese there. In any given class at school there are the messers – everyone knows who they are and what it means. They’re not bad (or “bold”, for that matter); they’re just … exuberant.

“You speak English with an accident,” her friend told me.

That about covers it.

 

Surprises

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Sometimes your children surprise you.

Fine, we all know that. The “I thought you were past the biting phase” surprise, the “Hasn’t unrolling the toilet paper lost its thrill yet?” surprise, the “I swear you know to look both ways” surprise.

But sometimes, I mean, they surprise you in a good way.

The other night Dash lingered over his homework, as usual, choosing to watch TV before dinner and not get down to working till after dinner, as usual, and was angry when it was 7.30 by the time he was finished and I said there was no time for playing outside. All the other kids had gone in and it was getting dark. He went out anyway, followed, of course, by his sister.

He had put on his helmet, because he’s very responsible, and was riding his scooter. As he hadn’t had any outdoor time at all, and the weather was nice, and we’re still getting used to this daylight after dinnertime concept, and – crucially – I was doing bedtime alone, I let it go and said they could have five minutes.

Five stretched to fifteen and it was definitely getting dark. I tried shouting a bit, but nobody ever hears my shouts. Apparently I have a very soft voice. It doesn’t help lend me any sort of air of authority. After a few minutes Mabel agreed to call it a day, but Dash was still whizzing by me infuriatingly. I took Mabel inside, calculating that one out of two was a win and he’d probably come in soon.

He did. I tried to impress upon him, again, as usual, that while I want him to have outside time and I want him to play and I like when he gets fresh air, he also has to do his homework and has to do his reading, and the time for playing needs to come out of TV time rather than work time.

The surprising thing was that he listened. I could see him thinking about it. He came back to me a little later and got me to clarify what I’d said to make sure he understood it. Then he announced that he was going to get dressed early in the morning so he could play outside before school, and that he was going to do his homework as soon as he gets home instead of watching TV so he could play after that, when the other kids are out and before it gets dark.

For the last two days, that’s what he’s done.

I’m under no illusions that this will last forever. But it was a quicker turnaround of disobedience > talk > understanding > good action than I’ve ever seen before. It’s as if it’s a sign of maturity or something.