Education

Me and My Dinosaur

May 24, 2017 by Kathryn

As we were preparing for the elementary school musical last night, Wanda said, “I want to have my hair down for the show.”

This is code for, “It would be my greatest pleasure to look like my mom forgot to comb my hair tonight. She is bad at hygiene.”

“You’re supposed to look like an animal. How about if I put it in two little buns that look like ears?!”

“No.”

Somehow, I convinced her to let me try it and see if she liked it. Messy buns. She loves messy buns because they make her look like a high school volleyball player. She doesn’t know that’s why. But, that’s pretty much why.

Not this time. This time, the messy buns made her sob.

“Please, Mom, please. Don’t make me wear my hair like this!”

“But it’s the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life.”

“I KNOW!! I LOOK LIKE A TODDLEEEERRRRRRR! WAAAHHHH!”

We compromised with a Rey-From-Star-Wars-Style mohawk, like a mane… to go with her bat costume. And then this morning I wore my hair in two cute buns to the bus stop. I guess I showed her… something.

Our amazing school music teacher puts on about a million musical productions at the end of each school year. She. Works. HORD.

So hard, in fact, that the kids get confused by it.

Tonight at dinner, Wanda said, “Our music teacher lives at the school, like actually lives there. She eats her meals there. She sleeps there. It’s her home.”

While Laylee and Magoo tried to convince her there was no way this was true, I preferred to ask for details.

“Really? That is so interesting. Do all your teachers live at the school?”

She looked at me in disbelief. “No, mom! Just the music teacher.”

“Who told you this?”

“Pretty much Mrs. Q.” (the first-grade teacher)

So I asked Mrs Q about it at the performance tonight. She laughed and said we need to teach Wanda what an “idiom” is. When we say, “The music teacher lives at the school, it is not, necessarily, literal.” Maybe some teachers do. But ours doesn’t. Some men live in airports. Their names are Tom Hanks.

Anyway, the show tonight is one that’s been recycled every few years and it turns out to be the same one Laylee performed in her early days of elementary school. It also turns out that both girls had a solo in the same song. It is our family legacy.

Laylee:

And 7 years later, Wanda:

The force is strong with these two.

I will point out a few of things.

1. Laylee’s costume is better because parents weren’t in charge of finding costumes that year.
2. Wanda’s costume was made for three-year-old Magoo and it’s riding mighty high on her, but she refuses to relinquish it. She treasures it greatly
3. Wanda was robbed of a dramatic exit when the music teacher told her to stay at the mic until the end of the song and I feel that most keenly. The exit was really where Laylee got the chance to establish herself as a consummate performer on the elementary stage. Wanda, alas, may never get that chance.

My Responsibility – Teachers over Moms

October 6, 2016 by Kathryn

Wanda was doing her homework on Monday which was, and I kid you not, telling her stuffed animals about her classroom job. The school is experimenting with moving toward a “no homework” model by giving them little tasks. These are tasks that in the past would have been undertaken without assignment by any normal human child back in the days before they all became tablet-slurping cyborgs.

So now we get lists of things she can do to act like a kid and communicate with “her stuffed animals” (Translation: parents) about what’s happening in the classroom.

With the tasks, comes a worksheet and on that worksheet is a line to write the student’s name.

Wanda looked at the sheet.

“Oh,” she said, “We’re supposed to put our name at the top.”

I smiled and nodded and kept working on digging through my email.

She held her hand out to me, palm-forward.

“No,” she said in a lofty tone, “I need to do it. It’s my responsibility.”

Ummm…okay. No one’s stopping you. I looked after her as she lifted her shoulders into her best possible posture, tossed her hair, and marched off to get a pencil.

I kept on with my email.

“You see, mom? I have a new trait. It’s called responsibility. We’re studying it at school.”

“That is awesome. Good for you.”

All day, she was focused on her responsibility.

I helped her find her missing shoes.

“Thanks for helping mom. But next time I should probably do it myself because it’s my responsibility.”

Laylee reached for one of Wanda’s dishes after dinner.

“NO!! That’s my responsibility.”

You’d think I had never once or ten THOUSAND times told Wanda to clear her own place at the table. No. This was new news. Her teacher had given her a new trait. For October. And that trait, my fellow Americans, is a little thing we like to call RE-SPON-SI-BILITY!

Maybe if I had a teaching degree I would be qualified to give her traits. Maybe.

The older kids, of course, found this hilarious and sweet. When Laylee taught our Family Night lesson about keeping journals, she made sure to look at Wanda with a grave expression and say, “We need to write in our journals. It’s our… responsibility.”

Wanda perked right up and nodded solemnly. She is now on the journal train.

So I started praising every good thing Wanda did as evidence of how responsible she was. I even noticed Laylee do something good and I called her out.

“Look how responsible Laylee is being! Nice job!”

Wanda looked perplexed.

“Wait,” she said, “Laylee has traits too?!”

Yes. Yes she does. But she’s not in Mrs. Boogaloo’s first grade class! I wonder where she got them!?

Maybe it Wasn’t ADD

September 9, 2016 by Kathryn

It happened.

After 13 years of parenting little people, I no longer have a lunch buddy, a grocery buddy, or a pound on the door while I go to the bathroom buddy. For 6 hours. Every. Single. Weekday.

Starting this week, my kids are all in school fulltime.

I’ve had wild emotional mood swings about this.

Last year when I chose to only put Wanda in half-day kindergarten, it had a little to do with money, but mostly it was about – I wasn’t ready yet. She was ready. SO SO ready. But I couldn’t bear to let go of my last little friend for that many hours each day.

I knew I’d miss her, miss my role as a fulltime stay-at-home mom.

Motherhood is my favorite thing. Gratitude is not a strong enough word to describe how I feel about being a mom.

But it is brutal sometimes. And it is not cessant. Even a little bit.

Halfway through the school year last year, I started to get excited. Wanda was overripe for full day school at that point and I found myself daydreaming about all the things I’d accomplish when I had more uninterrupted time.

I could write a novel worth publishing. I could go back to school and become a doctor or an astronaut. I could even find out what it feels like to finish a thought before being interrupted.

I’ve been a casual on-again/off-again writer and blogger for ten years, periodically taking on too much freelance work. Then I would scale way back when I realized I was incapable of being a great working mom of young kids.

My blog has gone through periods of large readership, but things are quiet around here these days. I just haven’t had the time and focus to give it.

As I contemplated my new free time and all the ways I could fill it, I started to get really excited. I was ready. I could do this. I was simply moving into a new chapter of my life and I might love it.

Then a couple of weeks ago I went online to pay school fees.

And there was a box by Wanda’s name.

For lunch money.

I was overcome with sadness. It was sadness that she would be eating lunch with someone other than me. Sadness that a hugely important phase of my life was ending. My identity for the past 13 years was gone. I grieved.

So I didn’t know what to expect this week as the kids headed off to school.

Would I be sad? Would I be lonely? Would I be bored?

I doubted I’d be bored. I’d spent the entire summer (whenever I wasn’t having emergency surgery) making a business plan for all the writing and marketing I was going to do this year. But maybe I’d be depressed or lacking in motivation to follow through. That scared me.

The morning of the first day of school, Wanda was eating breakfast while I read. She called my name.

I looked up to see a concerned expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, Wanda?”

She eyed me with pity.

“When I leave for school today, the only one you’ll have to talk to is Cortana.”

(We’re a Windows Phone family. Cortana is my personal digital assistant. Like Siri’s big sister.)

To her, that was a horrible prospect. Me, sitting alone at a table, my head in my hands, repeatedly saying, “Cortona, tell me a joke.”

I walked her to school. I had a nice walk home. I showered in silence.

Then I got in the car to run an errand and this feeling welled up inside my chest, a feeling I hadn’t been expecting.

Total, pure, bubbling JOY.

I can do this. In my worry and sadness about turning in my full time stay-at-home mom badge, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be getting another badge back. KATHRYN. I was overcome with this feeling of reclaiming a part of myself that I willingly surrendered many years ago.

I am autonomous.

I am free.

I am simply Kathryn for six whole hours each day.

And I love it.

I have gotten so much done in the past three days. I can’t even believe it.

Lately I’ve been talking to my doctor about the possibility that I might have ADD. My thoughts have been so scattered and I’ve had such a hard time finishing tasks and following through.

My kids just started school fulltime and I realized – maybe I don’t have ADD. Maybe I just have children.

I think my explosion of productivity can be explained this way – In the past, when I’ve had an hour to work on a blog post, what I’ve really had is:

5 minutes to work on a blog post

6 minutes to have my hair styled like a princess

3 minutes to work on a blog post

5 minutes to notice the pirate booty on the floor and pick it up before it got ground into the carpet

10 minutes to work on a blog post

15 minutes to kiss the invisible owie and find the band-aids because IT JUST FEELS LIKE BLOOOOD

3 minutes to work on a blog post

And then 13 minutes to figure out how the Octonauts were possibly going to rescue the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a

Now, when I have an hour to work on a blog post, I have AN HOUR TO WORK ON A BLOG POST.

And I miss my kids. But that just makes it more fun to see when they get home each afternoon. Missing them is not the worst thing in the world. I’m genuinely delighted to see them when they come home.

Enjoying this phase of life doesn’t take away from how much I adored being home and raising my kids full time. Some of my most precious memories were made during those times and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Today as I drove home from volunteering at the school, I saw a mother with her toddler, standing by the construction site. They were holding hands and engrossed in the digger truck action. I felt a twinge in my chest and thought, “I don’t do that anymore.”

But I like this time too. I’m coming to believe that there are seasons enough in our lives for all the good things we want to do. We just need to look for the beauty in the one we’re in and be present so we can make the most of it.

Sunburnt

May 22, 2016 by Kathryn

**Originally posted on Deseret Book’s Time Out For Women Blog January 2013**

Sunbeams are warm and lovely, vibrant and life-giving. But if you get too close, they will incinerate you.

This was my line of thinking as I drove away from church last Sunday after my first week teaching a room full of Sunbeams with my husband Dan. Our new calling is to teach the three-year-olds at church, including my sweet, occasionally potty-trained daughter “Wanda”.

We taught them that they were children of God. We also taught them to sit in their chairs for the lesson and for sharing time, that dresses should be used to cover our bodies, not our heads, and OH-FOR-THE-LOVE-if-two-of-you-sit-still-at-the-same-time-for-30-seconds-I-will-buy-you-all-a-pony.

That’s what we taught them.

What they learned was – Sister and Brother Thompson love us, sharing time is long, and moving up to big kid primary is a lot like getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. One week you’re playing with cars and trucks and snacking it up in luxury, and the next you get to follow up sacrament meeting with an hour sitting in hard chairs in a huge room full of big people, followed by another hour orbiting hard chairs in a prison cell with two crazy dancing grownups waving pictures from the gospel art picture kit. HUZZAH! By the sweat of their brows, indeed. Big kid primary is hard work. For everyone.

And it’s a big change from the Young Women organization, where I’ve been serving for the past six years. I like to think of it as mini Relief Society, only better. You get to teach them the gospel and they actually learn it. There’s something amazing about being part of their lives right at the time that they’re deciding who they are and what they really believe. Also, in the Mia Maid class, the girls are loving and sweet and they notice everything about you.

“Sister Thompson! Did you do something different with your hair? I love it! That is the cutest dress. Where did you get it? OhMyGoshYourEarringsAreSoFUN!”

In primary they notice things about you too.

Halfway through sharing time I noticed one little boy staring up at me intently. He was stroking the hair on my arm.

“Sister Thompson?” he asked.

“Yes, honey?”

“Why do you have so much hair on your arms?”

“It keeps me warm, I guess.” He looked unconvinced, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

“No. I think it’s because you’re gonna grow up to be a daddy.” He then reached down and plucked one of the hairs from my arm. And then another. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even tear up.

With the Young Women, I’m a fashion maven. In sunbeams, I’m a Yeti with man arms. Oh, how far we fall.

The class pretty much ate us for lunch. There was crying, yelling, jungle-gyming it all over the chairs, kids lying on the floor moaning, refusing to participate. It was amazing.

But I refuse to give in. Dan and I brought our four man-arms home, rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We have a plan. We have activities. We have stories. We have cheddar bunnies, and scarves that can be used for dancing or tying people to chairs. We spent this Saturday night preparing and packing the bag and then repreparing and then repacking the bag. We were almost ready.

And then I remembered that I’d planned on printing out pictures we’d taken of each of the kids to use in our lesson tomorrow. So, I pulled them up in Photoshop and…

Look at their FACES! Look again. For realz. I cannot stand the cuteness. It cannot be stood for.

Yes. I have the best calling. Ever. Sunday may be total chaos and the only thing they learn might be that we love them. But that’s okay. We will sing and play and look into those little faces and know that we’re doing a good work. And we will wear long sleeves. And carry hand sanitizer.

Sad, Mean, and Sort of Enjoyable

May 2, 2016 by Kathryn

I love the way Wanda’s mind works. I’m sure I still love the way Laylee and Magoo’s minds work too, but unlike with Wanda, I’m not privy to a constant stream in voice and writing of every thought that has ever passed through their brains. I have an open internet connection to Wanda’s thoughts. The older kids send me text messages.

WP_20160419_12_28_20_Rich

On the walk to school yesterday, Wanda asked, “Do you know what a patteroller is?”

“Nope.”

“It’s that thing where the cops carry a big stick around and if you don’t go to school or do something else bad, they hit you with it.”

“I was not aware of this.”

“Yeah. We learned about it in music class. There’s a song that says, ‘Run children run. The patteroller catch you.’ I just like to think about that.”

“Well, I have two things to say to you. One. Did you know there’s an even more polite way of referring to a ‘cop’? I like to call them, ‘police officers.’ Two. I don’t think police officers chase kids with sticks anymore for skipping school. I think that song was written a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “It’s from… like… 288 or something.”

Yes. It’s a song written about local law enforcement when Diocletian was emperor of Rome. Those were serious times.

She spends a lot of time thinking and overthinking everything and then telling me about it. Take this simple homework sheet for example.

The teacher read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then asked the kids what they thought about it.

Check yes or no. Was it good or bad?

mean-and-sad2

Sort of.

Why, sort of?

Wanda responds.

mean and sad

And it makes sense. It IS sort of a sad and mean kind of story. Chick breaks into a family residence, uses or destroys all their stuff while they’re out battling the obesity epidemic with some family exercise. When she’s caught, she books it. What kind of a story is that?

Sad, mean, and sort of enjoyable.

Concert Despair

November 20, 2015 by Kathryn

Do you ever feel sad, angry, or bored when forced to sit through a middle school band concert? When the music starts, do you instantly feel thirsty or need a restroom break? Do your counting skills become weak when faced with the overwhelming task of counting down songs on a musical program, causing you to ask your mom over and over again, “Just one more, right?” only to have her respond that there are still seven songs left, as she told you at the beginning of this song and please stop talking because we’re at a concert?

This is called Concert Despair and it can happen to anyone. Usually more pronounced in young children, CD can also be experienced by teens and even adults. Adults whose uterine-fruit are not currently performing are especially vulnerable, as is frequently the case with parents of eighth graders while the sixth grade band is performing or the parents of non-jazz-band members when the jazz band plays and gives ten-measure solos to Every. Single. Child. in the band.

Symptoms include hunger, thirst, loud whining, bad posture, limp noodle disorder, numb bum, insatiable desire to use electronic devices, inability to count down from ten, and sudden brain flashes to all the things remaining on your to-do list.

If you or someone you love is experiencing Concert Despair, there is hope. From the creators of The Universe and Your Body, comes the cure for CD. It’s called Time.

Time is a fast acting (depending on your perspective), proven pain reliever. In fact, 100% of CD sufferers experienced elimination of all symptoms with Time. Time is available to everyone, usually found in one minute doses. With just sixty minutes of Time, you can conquer your Concert Despair.

Common side effects of Time include aging, changes in perspective, and weight gain. Do not take Time if the building is on fire or if you really REALLY need to pee.

The Wait is Over Little Afghan Girl

September 18, 2015 by Kathryn

Last year I took this picture at one particularly bleak, rainy, underwater baseball game. It’s a typical picture. Wanda. Watching people do cool stuff she’s not old enough for yet.

When I showed it to Dan, he pointed out the unintentional similarity to the famous National Geographic cover of the Afghan Girl.

She was a refugee.

Wanda feels like that sometimes, lost, displaced, denied basic rights like eating donuts for every meal.

She sits. And she waits.

When you’re the youngest, you do a lot of waiting.

Waiting for your turn to play soccer.

Waiting for your turn to learn piano.

Waiting to ride the school bus.

Waiting to learn to read.

Wanda has always been my portable child. She was practically born on the soccer field. I was pregnant for the first half of the season, waddling to Laylee and Magoo’s games and practices four times a week. I gave birth and then brought her to games for the second half of the season. And every season since.

And basketball. And dance. And volleyball. And baseball. And math competition. And piano recitals. And band concerts. And science fairs. The list goes on.

Sometimes she gets antsy and people might think she’s impatient. I think she just used up a lifetime of patience in five years. She is done waiting.

This year it’s her turn.

She started kindergarten with a bang, running off the bus so fast when it arrived at the first day of school that she didn’t even see me standing there with the camera.

And she plays soccer like her mom. What she doesn’t have in skill, she makes up for in charismatic brutishness. And she’s having the time of her life.

Yesterday Laylee and Magoo were whining about having to watch her soccer game in the rain, her soccer parents while I attended a meeting at the middle school. I laughed and told them it was the circle of life. It’s Wanda’s turn now.

Red Wagons and Knuckerholes

September 16, 2015 by Kathryn

I’d been planning all my life for the first day of school, or at least all month. I often say, “DOWN WITH PERFECTIONISM!” But then there’s this small part of me that really really wants to just be perfect. Because that would make life easier and then I wouldn’t have to be obsessed with perfection anymore because I would have already achieved it. It’s like when you can’t stop playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii until you beat the game and then you never think about it again. That’s how I see my life being when I achieve perfection, total Zen.

We had planned the heck out of the first day of school, family meetings, calendar items, to-do lists, backpacks packed and clothes laid out two days early.

But when the day actually came, we ended up forgetting things, losing lunch boxes, running over little red wagons with the van, showing up late to kindergarten assessments because we were so busy trying to do all the morning routines perfectly, praying that the kindergarten teachers were not assessing personal hygiene because we forgot to brush our new kindie’s hair.

When the day ended, I popped on Facebook and saw all my friends post pictures of their kids on the first day. And they weren’t just pictures. They were pictures with props.

Framed art that said what grade they were starting.

Actual, flippin’ ART. In frames. That said what grade they were starting.

Why is this a thing? Why?

Anyway. I took a picture of the wagon I ran over. So that’s something. And I learned a new fake swear, thanks to our friends at Dragon Tales. So that’s something else.

When I signed out of the school, Wanda discovered this book in a basket in the office.

She asked me to read it. I really really needed to find out what a knuckerhole was so I sat down and read it to her.

It turns out that a knuckerhole is a magical tube you can jump though that basically takes you to nowheresville where you sit and think about how you should have done a better job cleaning your bedroom until a dragon saves you and takes you to the fireworks show.

I prefer to think of it as an awesome new slang term for pretty much whatever.

Ex. Why did Zack take such a cheap shot and punch Wheezy in the knuckerhole?

Shut your knuckerhole!

Maybe

Why in the knuckerhole did someone put the red wagon behind my car wheel?

Stop being such a knuckerhole and load your lunch dishes in the dishwasher.

So, we decided to send that day down the knuckerhole and started over. And the school year is actually off to a pretty decent start at this point. I still haven’t taken first day of school pictures for all three kids because I’m not done crocheting doilies that say which grades each of them are starting. But I am at peace with that.

Certifiable

June 7, 2015 by Kathryn

I didn’t know Laylee was certifiable but she has a card that says otherwise. I took her to Seattle Children’s Hospital for a CPR course for babysitters yesterday, handed her over to some strangers for five hours and she came out of it with this card and the ability to save your life, especially if you are pediatric in nature.

She is prepared to crack your ribs if necessary. She told me this. And, although it would be awkward, she is willing to remove any clothing that gets in the way. Because. And she was very clear on this. Your life is at stake and that’s more important than worrying about awkward nudity. I wipe away a silent tear of parental pride.

I spent the five hours sitting in a lobby at the hospital working on my manuscript for the next Drops of Awesome project due out from Familius in 2016. It’s a gift book about ways to be Awesome and it’s taking an awful lot of time and thought for so short and cute of a book. I hope you love it. You probably will. Re: you are awesome.

Later in 2016, we’re planning to release a third Drops of Awesome book, tentatively titled Autobiography of Awesome, a much more in-depth guided journal that gives you prompts to help you write the history of your beautiful life. I’m working on that right now too and it may be my favorite book yet. I’m so excited to use it!

To celebrate, we drove a mile to the U District and stopped at Full Tilt Ice Cream, where I proceeded to buy bigger-than-your-head waffle cones for everyone I could find who was a) my daughter and b) had just finished a CPR course. They were all super grateful.

I sampled the wares as well, just to be sure they weren’t poison and because my budding life saver refused to order chocolate-covered bacon as a topping on her cone. Something needed to be done with regards to that travesty.

One of us ended up with melted ice cream between our toes. Not naming names. Follow my eyes.

And we came home to a sweet and tired family who had spent the day at our small town’s yearly festival, a magical place where tractors,

unmarked wooden carts full of townspeople,

tanks,

time machines,

fruit people

and dancing Mexican horses

delight the crowds and show off our rich cultural sub-rural Washington heritage.

I was pretty sad to miss the fun, but, hey. If Laylee is willing to crack your ribs and rip your clothes off to save your life, I guess I’m willing to miss a parade with a tin man bee keeper riding in a flatbed truck. You’re welcome.

An Open Letter to Teacher Kira

April 12, 2015 by Kathryn

Dear Teacher Kira,

You don’t make the weather. The kids do that. I’ve seen them. You don’t even make snacks. That’s the moms. You’re really only responsible for one thing of importance as a preschool teacher and it’s making and distributing months.

You started the year with “Subtember” and that wasn’t bad. It rolls off the tongue nicely, Sub-tem-ber. There were those in your class who thought Subtember might just be the only month we’d have all year and they were okay with that, but after around thirty days things changed.

Wanda came home with an announcement. “Teacher Kira gave us a new month today! It’s called OCTOBER!”

Oh, that Teacher Kira. She’s so creative. And the hits kept coming. November. December.

Sure, things got a little boring when we got to the fourth BER month in a row. Yeah it was winter. BERRR. Cold. We got it. So I was glad when you changed things up in the new year and put a little more effort in, stepping it up to four syllable months.

January. February. Wait. We’re not getting in another rut here, are we?

Wanda was excited. “Mom,” she said, “Teacher Kira is going to give us another new month next week. I wonder what it will be!”

“March,” I said because I can see the future.

“What?”

“The new month will be called March.”

Her eyes got really big. “How do you know?”

“I just have a feeling. The new month will be called March.”

She laughed, marching in place, “Ha! March? That’s hilarious!”

It’s a verb. It’s a command. It is, in short, epic month creation.

Teacher Kira. You outdid yourself with March. What next? A five syllable adverb? The next month will be known as Undeniably? You amaze me.

But just when I thought you couldn’t possibly up your game, you proved me right. You knew you couldn’t top March so you gave up and hit us with April.

April? Really? Two syllables. It doesn’t even have an action that goes with it. April. There are still eight weeks of school this year and already you’re phoning it in.

What next? An ambivalent month that can’t even make up its mind?

Might?

Could?

Possibly?

May?

I sure hope not.

You’ve got three weeks left to come up with something amazing. Don’t let us down.

Sincerely,
The Thompsons

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Education

It happened.

Then a couple of weeks ago I went online to pay school fees.

Total, pure, bubbling JOY.