Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Wanda

The Best Chore Excuse

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Wanda sleeps on the floor now. I blame Marie Kondo.

I started Marie Kondo-ing the kids’ laundry a couple of weeks ago. I told them they could fold their existing clothes that way too if they wanted to be able to see them more easily in the drawer.

Wanda was excited to do this and dumped out all of her clothes immediately, folded two shirts, and got bored with it. Apparently she’s nine.

When I told her to vacuum her room last week, she needed to move all the clothes somewhere.

So, when I found her sleeping on the floor, she told me it was because there was no room for her in the bed. And we don’t have a manger. So…

For three days her only chore has been to fold the rest of the clothes. One day I forgot to check if she’d done her chore. One day she somehow convinced me to trade it for another chore. Then today, she raised procrastination and childhood chore excuses to a new level.

I needed to take Laylee to the driver’s ed school to take her written license exam. Before I left, I told Wanda she absolutely had to finish folding those clothes and putting them away. Thumbs up. She was on it.

After spending an hour reading a book on a couch in the furniture department of Fred Meyer, I brought my little driver home and found Wanda on the couch playing Mario. (not Kondo)

Me: Hey Wanda! Did you do your chores while I was gone?

Her: Yep!

Me: You folded all those clothes in your room?

Her: Yeah! But I didn’t fold ALL of them.

Me: ?

Her: The thing is, it got to be really fun for me. And I started thinking, I want to have fun tomorrow too. So I saved one stack so I could still have some of the fun tomorrow!

She grinned, totally sincere.

See, that’s why I didn’t do the dishes today, Dan. Doing them was just so much fun and it felt wrong to have all that fun at once, like eating an entire Costco cheesecake in one sitting. I wanted to savor the dishes, so I left half of them to get crusty so I could have EXTRA fun tomorrow.

Speaking of fun, Snowpocalypse 2019 has calmed. Our cul-de-sac is still a one-lane road with ice cliffs of insanity on either side and there are no longer lawns or sidewalks in our town, but we can get most anywhere we want. We hear they may even start delivering mail and picking up garbage sometime next week. It’s gonna be so modern and urban up in here.

Also, today I gave approval for the final manuscript of the ice cream book to be printed. I didn’t save any of the fun for tomorrow.

My co-author Barbara signed off too so it looks like I’m gonna be the mom to a new book, coming out in July!

It’s such a long and collaborative process and there’s something really magical about seeing your words turned into something beautiful.

Snow Problem At All

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My kids and I are Canadians real bad and we crave the snow. We’re not Canadians enough to, you know, actually live in Canada or even to have watched a complete hockey game in the past six months. But we are Canadian enough to eat poutine, to wear toques, and to think we know how to drive in the snow.

Except for Wanda.

She is nine and her snow-driving skills are sub-par.

But we live in the Pacific Northwest, where our closeness to salty water and mountains strands us in a sea of grey almost-snow all winter long. Some years we get nary a flake. And we mourn so hard.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac predicted a wet and mild winter and we made peace with our snowlessness. But then the weather channel app started messing with us.

10% chance of frozen joy sprinkles.

30% chance.

JK rain.

And then:

100% CHANCE OF SNOW!!!

But we didn’t believe it. They’ve burned us before. When it finally fell, we were so excited.

We expected an inch or two and that was enough to make us crazy with joy.

 We got snow. We got more snow. We got freezing temperatures.

Over TWO FEET of snow fell in about a week in a place where school will be canceled if a rumor circulates that half an inch of snow sent Seattle a spam email once.

School was canceled.

We didn’t get in any driving practice for Laylee’s impending driver’s test. She didn’t feel up to practicing her parallel parking.

We played a Catan mega game and no one even cried.

We drank hot chocolate by the gallon and made cinnamon rolls and did puzzles and burned half an Ent in our fireplace.

The kids made snow men and snow poffs.

Our power went out Monday night and Dan and I got up at 4am to start the generator. And restore heat and refrigerator power. When he went to pull the cord, this happened.

We spent over an hour repairing the pull cord multiple times (it kept breaking) and trying again and again to start the generator. Then we said a prayer. And tried again. And it worked on the first pull!

So we had heat and refrigeration and Minecraft. We were hooked up! And the snow kept falling, even as the temperatures warmed up.

At one point our two-story vaulted metal roof got melty enough that it roof-alanched all of its snow in one massive 5-foot-tall hard-packed mound at the side of the house.

So, of course, they sculpted a sled ramp that ran from the side of the house all the way down and through the forest owned by our neighbor.

There are benefits that come from allowing your fence to be reclaimed by the moss and slugs of the pacific northwest. Those benefits include turning your yard into a deer highway and having easy access to sled-trespass on your neighbor’s property during Snowmageddon.

A couple other Snowpocalypse highlights were:

Dan working from home

hauling wood for the fire using the kids’ sleds in the middle of the night

watching Dan zoom out of our driveway to go help a friend and leave an 11-inch-deep tire tread in the snow

eating “snow” cones at our awesome neighbor’s house next to a driveway campfire

using my thermal cooker when the power was out

reading by the fire as a family

There will be consequences for this week. The kids have already missed five days of school and had one late start and they’re still home until more of the snow melts. Those days will have to be made up at the end of the year. This is going to wreak havoc with summer plans and youth conference schedules.

The trampoline looks unnaturally stretched and the back deck is suffering under the weight of several inches of unmelted snow.

These are just the consequences for our family and they’re pretty minor. I know other people have suffered much more being stuck and cold and injured on the roads and hungry. I feel terrible for them and we’ve prayed every night that people would be safe and we’ve offered to help where we could.

But, there is nothing our being stressed or anxious or mad will do to change the snow or keep people safe or make the school year any shorter. It will just make us miserable.

So, we choose to celebrate it. It’s been a fat party for a week and a half and we have made amazing memories. Thank you, Mother Elsa. We have LOVED the freeze!

The Snitch of Softball

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Remember last year when I coached softball based on things I learned off of YouTube? It was awesome. Because the girls were young and I was not a horrible person. It’s easy to be a great coach to little people if you don’t hate children and you have access to the internets for instruction.

That’s also how I became an amateur electrician and learned how to redo the pipes under my sink.

Well, this year I’m not coaching softball but I’m there, cheering and providing snacks and other non-food-related support.

“RUN SO BAD!” “DO MORE OF THE BIG GOOD HITTINGS!!” Things like that.

I’ve discovered over the years that baseball and softball are a lot like quidditch. I’ll tell you how.

This team of 7 and 8 year olds plays hard. They swing the bat so hard. They run so hard. Sometimes they get out. Both teams get runs and everyone has a good time.

However, it doesn’t matter how many outs, hits, or runs you get. At the end of the game, it all comes down to the relay race. After the game is played, the girls line up. One team stands at home plate. Another team stands at second. And they race in a relay around the field, their arms pumping, their faces flushed.

And whichever team wins the relay goes away from the game victorious. It can be 27-1, but if we win the relay, we are champions.

It’s similar in quidditch. There’s all kinds of gameplay that happens during a quidditch match. People get beat in the head. Balls get thrown through hoops. There’s drama and scoring and crazy witches and wizards flying on broomsticks. Sometimes things get lit on fire. But none of that matters.

When someone catches the snitch, it’s game over. That team wins.

The relay at the end is the snitch of softball.

On certain windier, rainier games, a less loving parent might just think, “Let’s skip to the snitch.”

I would never.

But someone might.

I’m Sorry, Tired Baby Mamas, I Forgot

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I woke up this morning feeling twice as tired as I’d felt when I went to sleep. My eyes were blurry. My head felt stuffed with cheese. I wasn’t thinking clearly. In fact, the only clear thought in my head was a strong urge to never leave my bed again.

I had been up in the night with a sick kid.

And I don’t really do that anymore. Maybe three times a year. Usually, they tell me in the morning, “Mom, I felt sick last night.”

And I, fresh and chipper as a non-morning-person can be say, “Oh man. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help you now, today, in the beautiful light of actual morning?”

All is as it should be.

But last night, my 7-year-old was up with a bad cough. And, after I’d had 4 hours of sleep (which I realize is a long stretch to most moms of young babies) she came to the side of my bed, coughed wetly into my face and said, “Moooom. I feel awful. Can I sleep with you?”

Sure. Why not? Awful is my favorite kind.

She then proceeded to sniff loudly every single time she breathed in and cough explosively every fourth time she breathed out. She shifted around and asked for water… with ice… and begged me to take her temperature. She hugged me and pushed me away and smushed up against my back.

Now there’s something cute in all this. There’s something fun about being needed. But, a few hours later, when my alarm went off and I felt like dead trampled dog meat, nothing was cute.

She sat up cheerfully and hopped from the bed.

“Get back here,” I said, “I can’t justify staying in bed and not helping the middle schoolers get ready if you are no longer sleeping. And I am incapable of moving because my brains are missing. We will sleep for two more hours.”

She sighed and climbed back next to me.

**SNIFF**SNIFF**SNIFF**COUGH!!

Right now it’s noon and I’m still in my pajamas.

The breakfast dishes are undone and I can’t quite wrap my head around showering.

And I think of you, moms of babies. And I realize that I forgot. Many things.

I remembered the cuteness and the squishy thighs. I remembered the closeness of nursing a sweet little baby in the peace of the dark night. I remembered everything wonderful about my little sweet snuggle lumps.

But I forgot the brain fog. I forgot the intense, all-consuming desire for sleep and the way your days are ¼ as long because you are not mentally aware enough for the hours to count as “waking”. I forgot what it’s like to sit and wonder whether your eyes are all the way open because everything is such a blur.

I just forgot.

And I salute you. Whenever you get dressed. Or show up on time for your older kids’ music class. Or make something for dinner that’s not cooked in the microwave. You are rock stars. And don’t let the fact that no one else remembers what it’s like make you feel bad.

I’ve often thought it would be cool to go back and write a time management book for new moms, now that I’ve got things figured out a bit more.

This morning I realized that the book would have to read something like this:

How to Get Your Crap Together as a New Mom

1. Wait 6 months until you can get more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2. Take a shower.
3. Resume normal activities.

As for today, I will accomplish… Octonauts.

Me and My Dinosaur

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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.

Happy Valentims

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After child one and child two comes child three. In some ways child three is spoiled because she has two parents AND two older siblings. In other ways, she is not spoiled because people forget that Valentine’s Day is still a thing in first grade.

Last night I had an “Oh CRAP!” moment when I remembered that, “Oh, she probably wants to hand out Valentines at her class party tomorrow.” It’s not like I’d thought of nothing. Laylee and Magoo had been making chocolate lollipops to sell to earn money for a school trip. And whenever one looked slightly weird, we’d save it for Wanda to hand out to her friends.

The plan was to give them each one of the bargain basement lollipops… attached to a Valentine’s card. I hadn’t planned to be super creative, or even Pinteresty. I had planned to buy some NKOTB or Smurf cards at the grocery store, as I was raised to do, and call it good. But I forgot.

So, I came to Wanda. “Oh man. I totally forgot about Valentine’s cards for your class.”

“Oh. It’s fine. I made these!”

She proceeded to pull out 25 lined 3×5 notecards on which she had written the names of every student in her class. She was in the process of writing a note to each one, most of which said, “You are an awsome freind. Happy valentims day. Love, Wanda.”

And she was  fiercely proud of her Valentines.

“Do you want to look at the list your teacher sent home with the names of kids in your class?” I asked.

“Mom!” she looked affronted, “I’ve been in the same class with these kids for MONTHS! I know their names.”

“Just in case you forget someone?”

“MOM!”

“Well maybe look at it to make sure you spelled all their names correctly.”

“MOM! I’ve been looking at their names for MONTHS!”

“Okay.”

Now, to be honest, some of the name spellings on her cards look pretty funky. I didn’t check them against the list but it is totally possible that some of the parents just chose to spell their kids names funny. If you do this, I want to know why. Seriously, answers are in order. For her entire life, your kid will have to say, “No. I spell Lucy L-O-O-X-I-E.” What is the net positive there?

I asked Wanda, “Do you want me to print some Valentiney things off the internet so you can glue them onto the backs of the cards?”

She did. But they couldn’t say anything about kissing. RE: Gross.

And she worked on them all night, with the help of her siblings during the assembly phase, in what Dan referred to as a “Valentims Sweatshop.”

And they’re kind of perfect.

If those kids ever need to cram for a test about how awsome of a freind they are, they are totally set with flash cards.

My Responsibility – Teachers over Moms

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birthday-interview4

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.”

wanda-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!?

A Prayer For My Ancestors

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My kids have a hard time with prayers. Because they’re kids. And God is invisible to them. I think they believe. But they sure can’t see him. So when they pray, at least out loud, they just say the stuff they think they’re supposed to say. I don’t get the impression they’re really talking to anyone.

The younger they are, the more this is the case. They sort of mumble and repeat themselves and repeat me and their dad. Sometimes it’s mortifying to hear myself echoed and I think, “Wow. I’ve just been phoning it in recently.”

A few common phrases:

“Thank thee for this day” – My kids ALWAYS never don’t thank Heavenly Father for the day. It is the number one thing they are thankful for. I guess it makes sense. One more day on earth. It’s worth a shout out. But every day? Some days straight up eat rocks. On those days, I prefer to thank him for making tomorrow a new day, Scarlet O’Hara-style.

“Thank thee we had a great day today and thank thee that we’ll have a great day tomorrow” – I love this. On first hearing, you might think my kids could see the future, like they already KNOW tomorrow is gonna be great. Or you might think they were optimists, like they just have a feeling it’s gonna be great.

Personally, I think they are coercing the Man Upstairs, as in, “If I say it’s gonna be great, then he has to make it great because he’s already been thanked. He has no choice at this point.” It’s like saying, “Mom, thanks for putting gummy worms in my lunch box tomorrow. I’m going to really enjoy eating those.”

“We’re grateful for all our many blessings” – this one’s definitely a cop-out. I can’t think of a single specific thing I’m thankful for so I’ll just say this and it will cover everything. It’s like writing a thank you note at Christmas that says, “Thanks for the presents. Presents are my favorite.” Really? Which presents. Is this even a human person writing this note?

Well, we asked Wanda to give the prayer in primary on Sunday. That’s our church children’s meeting and I’m in charge of said meeting. So I’m always nervous when she gives a prayer. I never know what she’ll say, besides the above-mentioned phrases.

She stepped up to the microphone. It was a pretty normal prayer, and impressive really, because she added a few extra things that made it seem like she was actually thinking about what she said and trying to talk to God. My favorite was the last line though, “Please help all our ancestors who are sick to feel better.”

Now, I’ve never heard her say the word “ancestors” before and I’m not 100% sure she knows what it means. Her grandma’s been sick this week but I’d count her more a “relative” than an “ancestor.”

No, if Wanda’s ancestors are sick, I’m pretty sure there’s not a lot of hope for recovery at this point.

Sorry, great grandma Matilda!

Straight Up!

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80s

Leading up to my sister’s totally rad 80s dance 40th birthday party, I’d been playing a ton of my favorite 80s and early 90s music.

Each song had a story.

Good Vibrations – This is sung by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch when he was still just a singing pile of abs and before he won an Academy Award after dropping the “y” and one of the “Mark”s from his name.

Escapade – Janet Jackson was the soundtrack of many sassy 6th-grade dance parties for me. We could never quite decide whether we liked her or Paula Abdul better.

She Drives Me Crazy – Yes they really are called the Fine Young Cannibals, although the coolest among us refer to them as FYC. No, I do not know any of the lyrics to the verses. Only dogs can hear that.

80s music has become sort of a background to our lives, any time we’re not listening to Hamilton.

80s2

So, the other day, Wanda came up to me and said, “I can’t wait to start first grade in September. I just can’t wait!”

“It will be so fun.”

“Yeah because I can’t wait to see ‘Gomer’.”

“Gomer” is one of the boys she kissed on the mouth last year before I informed her that kissing was for older people. Then he became her boyfriend before I informed her that having boyfriends was for older people. So she asked him to wait for her and be her boyfriend in high school. He said yes, but apparently she’s been doubting his sincerity.

She continued, “The thing is, when I see him, I’m just gonna go up to him and say, ‘Straight up, now. Tell me do your really wanna love me forever?”

“Oh yeah?”

She looked sheepish.

“Yeah, because, you know, like, I really just want to know, okay?”

“I think that is a great idea. Just get it all out on the table.”

I mean, I don’t want her caught in a hit and run or something.

WP_20160419_12_28_20_Rich

Post-Op Grocery Shop

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The worst day for me after my surgery came when I went for my check-up a week later and the doctor gave me a clean bill of health. My blood count was up a bit. My incisions were healing nicely and he said the dreaded words, “You can resume normal activities as you feel able.”

This sounds like good news, but to me it was horrible because it turned on my guilt faucet. When I was on bedrest, I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t. Doctor’s orders. But as soon as he said I could listen to my body and decide, I found myself feeling guilty for not being 100%. I was still dizzy when I stood up. My incisions were still painful when I sat upright for more than a few minutes at a time and even walking for short distances left me weak and out of breath.

But I felt bad because I wasn’t up and doing everything. It’s amazing how hard we are on ourselves, right? The heck?!

I told myself it was fine, to listen to my body and take it easy, but it was a real struggle.

Hello. My name is Kathryn. And I have a hard time being nice to myself consistently without conscious effort. I’ve gotten better over the years, especially the last few, but it’s still a struggle and I still have to be mindful about it.
groceries2

So it turned out we needed groceries (re: kids eat food all the days) but I was worried about walking around the grocery store. I’d had several friends offer to pick things up for me at the store, but I thought of a better idea.

The kids could do it!

Isn’t that a good solution to most problems in life?

Newly free of the narcotics, I drove the kids to the store. We had a pep-talk where I told them about looking for brands and sizes with the best price. I took them down the cereal aisle and showed them how to look at the price per ounce and see if a bigger box might be a better value even if the price tag was bigger.

I refreshed their memory on how to pick produce.

I told them that vacation as coming so the budget was tight and I asked them to stick to the list unless they saw something they thought we actually needed for a good price. If that happened, they were to come and ask me.

On the list, I indicated that they could choose one treat that they all agreed on.

If they got along and showed good grocery manners, they could have a free bakery cookie at the end.

Then I planted myself in a reclined position in one of the comfy chairs in the pharmacy waiting room and read a great western novel for book club.

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My 13, 11, and 6-year-old navigated the grocery store beautifully and had a great time doing it.

They came and found me with questions like, “You wrote down red bell peppers but the green ones are so much cheaper. Is there a reason you really need red?” and “We want to get a box of Cheez-Its for our treat but there’s a deal where they are way cheaper if you buy three boxes. Can we please buy three?”

They made hard choices and proudly told me about how they refused to buy the salad dressing brand I specified because it was way too expensive and there was a store-brand alternative that looked just as good.

Seeing the pride on their faces, even though one of them wouldn’t admit she’d had a good time, I wondered why I hadn’t done something like this before.

And when we got to the long lines at the end, I asked the kids to pay for the groceries. They balked. Using my credit card was taking things a bit too far for them. I told them I could really use their help and asked them to try it because I didn’t think I could stand up in line that long.

Then a sweet lady overheard us and asked if we would like to take our massive load of groceries and cut in front of her in line. Drops of Awesome for kind strangers. I meet them all time!