Wednesday, May 17, 2017

There Goes My Baby



And just like that, she went and turned 12.






We had a (relatively) quiet birthday at home this year. Kentucky Fried Chicken, (her choice for dinner), a couple of good friends, grandma and grandpa, family, cake presents and ice cream. 


I always feel a slight pang of guilt when a birthday passes without a huge blowout of a party that exhausts me, destroys my house, deflates my budget and overwhelms my child. Quiet family birthdays leave me feeling like an under-performing parent. I have to keep the pep talk going in my head- my kids have had a LOT of big birthday parties- way more than I ever had- and their childhood will not be ruined by a few quiet birthdays at home without Disney princesses and chocolate fountains. But the struggle is real, and I quietly fight with myself all day about it.

Enough about that. On to what really matters, which is that my baby  is 12, soon to be a Primary graduate and Sand Springs Elementary graduate. We are moving on to Young Womens, Jr. High, mascara and shaved legs. Zoinks.

She sure is a good kid though. She is kind, hard working, funny, thoughtful, loyal, loving, artistic and introspective. Some days I am sure that she is the one to finally finish off my sanity, but most days, she is also the one to restore it.   Parenting a daughter is not for the faint of heart, but my oh my it is an adventure.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Pretzels and Lemonade

Well, our second screenless Saturday has come and gone. When Olivia found out that this was going to be an every week occurrence, I thought she might just melt into a little puddle of despair and rage right there on the floor of her bedroom. She thought it was only going to be a one week deal.   After a few moments of turmoil, she pulled it together though. Today we did a little yard work, ( I fixed the lawn mower all by myself) planted the larkspur seeds I got at Mt. Vernon last year, wrote letters to Will and made pretzels. The pretzels were a huge success. Even Duncan got in on the making and rolling and shaping of them, and we all had a good time. We even boiled them in a baking soda bath before baking them, and they turned out really good.  Next Saturday, I'm thinking bagels.

This week, Duncan acquired the skill of making lemonade. He is quite proud of his lemonade, and gets miffed if  you drink some without complimenting him on how good it is. We make it with water, lemon juice and sugar, none of the artificial powdered crap for us health nuts. Maybe having nice cold lemonade around will help me conquer my diet coke habit, IF I ever decide I want to conquer it. Because I totally could. If I wanted to. Which I don't.

Audrey. Oh Audrey. She needs a job. She needs 300 bucks by the end of the month. If I wasn't going to Paris, I could help her out a little, but since I am taking her to Paris with me, I am fresh out of extra 300 dollars. She took the AP test on Friday though, so maybe now that she doesn't have to study as much,  she can find a job. Maybe she can sell Duncan's lemonade. Maybe she can sell pretzels.  I hate money. I just really hate money. I hate never having any of it.

Olivia and I have taken up running together, have I mentioned that yet? And by "taken up running", I mean we have been running twice, for a grand total of 16 minutes. Hey, we gotta start somewhere right? I am going to get that girl in shape for 7th grade gym if it kills me. Or her. I am certain that if one of us dies in training, it will be me. It almost happened tonight. She decided on the spur of the moment to just suddenly stop running and then to step right in front of me. I was still running, and crashed into her, narrowly missing splaying my old body all over the road and breaking both ankles.  First rule of running learned: Keep running, and if you stop, move away from the person behind you who is still running.  She does make me run faster though, which will be good for me. I bet with her, I can finally break that 15 minute mile mark. Hey, I'm old. My goals are simple.

 And when I got home tonight after our 8 minute run, I had a nice cold glass of delicious lemonade, for which I expressed my profound gratitude to Duncan.