Why I shop at Macey's

Today Duncan went to the store with me. While we were over in the dairy section, he found a box cutter lying in one of those open chest refrigerator things (yes, I am very articulate, thank you). He picked it up and asked me if he could take it to the front of the store and hand it in. An employee just happened to be stocking stuff down the aisle in front of us, so I told Duncan to go give it to him. Duncan went over and gave it to the guy, I put some yogurt in my cart, and we moved on. A few minutes later, when we were at the other end of the meat section, the employee came up to us with a handful of Smarties and asked me if it was okay if he gave them to Duncan (of course I said yes). He praised Duncan for bringing the box cutter to him and said it could have been really dangerous if a younger kid had found it instead.

Now, this wasn't some earth-shattering thing. Duncan didn't stop a bomb from going off, or hand in a wallet with a million dollars in it, and a handful of Smarties isn't going to pay his way through college (though if they lived up to their name, I would totally force-feed them to my kids every day). However, I really, really appreciate that Duncan did get recognition for doing the right thing, especially when it came from a source other than his mom. Parents are the bottom line when it comes to raising kids, but that doesn't mean the village shouldn't pitch in too. Quite frankly, when Duncan found the box cutter and wanted to hand it in, I didn't think much of it. I certainly thought he should, don't get me wrong, but after that employee came over and talked to him, there was definitely a glow about my boy. He was still glowing when he had me tell his dad about it later. I think there's a good chance he'll remember this for a long time. Definitely longer than me saying, "Go give it to that guy."

This isn't the only time something like this has happened at Macey's either. Several years ago there was a woman in the check out line in front of us who didn't speak English. She was having a hard time getting the cashier to understand what she needed, so Matthew stepped up and translated for her. Again, we didn't think much of it, but as we were leaving the store, one of the managers came up to us and gave us a thing of ice cream. It wasn't anything super fancy, but it was nice. Without getting too over the top serious, I think the world could use a little more recognition for the good things people do, not because people do the good things to get the recognition, but...why not? Who knows when a handful of Smarties is going to put somebody on the path of doing good deeds all the time? We could have an epidemic, all fueled by Smarties.

One last thing, in case you missed it earlier. I am so proud of my Duncan. Actually, maybe this is another one of those possitive side effects of a handful of Smarties. I said before that I didn't think too much about Duncan handing in the box cutter. I knew it was sharp, I knew it could be dangerous, and I was happy Duncan found it and wanted to hand it in (I can only too easily imagine finding out about it when I emptied out his pockets later). But when that employee came up with the handful of Smarties, Duncan wasn't the only one glowing. That's my boy, and he is wonderful, and sometimes it takes a complete stranger to point it out to me and remind me again that I am a lucky, lucky mom.

A few random thoughts

Do not sneeze in your sleep. Though you may have a muddled half-second warning about what's to come, you're husband won't, and it's very disconcerting for everyone when he wakes up suddenly thinking you're under attack. "Protect wife and kids" mode can become dangerous for said wife when there's nothing else there to protect against.

Do not take a mildly-trained dog, a hyper puppy and a spastic six-year-old on a walk together (alone). Especially if you only have ten minutes to get to the school only five minutes away.

Harry talks. I am not kidding, exaggerating or making this up. He is possibly the most vocal dog I have ever met, and I'm not talking yappy, barking-all-the-time dogs. He talks. It's not English, so I can't really relay it to you here, but it is decidedly not barking, and he does it when he wants my attention. It is a cross between a wolf's howl and a hound's bay. Again, I am not kidding.

I was teasing Kaes the other day. I said, "I love you." She said, "I love you too." Trying to see if she would catch on and play the game, I said, "I love you three." She did not. This morning in bed I muddled my way through this conversation (yes, I am generally muddled when I'm still in bed)-
Kaes: I love you.
Me: I love you too.
Kaes: (Some six-year-old explanation of love, ending with) Because 'I love you three' doesn't last forever.

Now you know.

More stories out of school...

Duncan told us that his beloved teacher, Miss Klauzar, was cranky today. Apparently the class was very rowdy. We asked Duncan if he was part of the rowdiness too (remember those three Think Times in the last two weeks...). His answer? "Actually, I was surprisingly well-behaved. For me."

What exactly does that mean? I'm thinking it's bad news for Miss Klauzar.

Jonathon doesn't often get mentioned in these blogs, not because he doesn't say witty things, but because his wit is so dry it's hard for me to express it on paper (as it were). Or maybe I'm just afraid that he's old enough that if he were ever to read my blog (or be approached by somebody else who had read it) he would be embarrassed. I don't usually try to embarrass my children, but tonight the boy is not sleeping under my protective benevolence.

Tonight as the kids were getting ready for bed an hour later than they should have been (one of their parents is a sucker for letting them watch Star Wars cartoons) Jonathon came in to get his reading log signed (due tomorrow--he hadn't filled it out yet because he lost track of time after five hours. His teacher only requires 2 1/2 hours, and doesn't give extra credit if they read more--that last bit added with a definite tone of annoyance in Jonathon's voice). He was also holding a math paper. We asked him what it was and he said it was homework that was due tomorrow. We looked at each other then looked at him and asked him why it wasn't already done. "I was bored, so I got distracted, and I forgot. I'll do it now." He finished it in less than three minutes.

The observation that I'm dying to make to him, but I know he won't undestand, is that this afternoon, when the boredom was at its height (Jonathon and Duncan were watching TV from the couch in the living room upstairs, while the TV is against the opposite side of the house in the family room downstairs) he might not have been so bored if he had actually been doing his homework. (I have to say here that if it was Duncan and math homework, the child would have been bored to tears. But this is Jonathon, and he loves math, and really only gets bored with it when it's too easy. Show off.)

In the good old days, you didn't get to be bored until AFTER all your work was done.

Time out

They have a thing at Duncan's school called Think Time. When one of the kids gets into (enough) trouble, they have to go to another classroom and, apparently, fill out a form about why they are in trouble and what they need to do to fix it. Duncan had two trips to Think Time last week for talking. I knew about these, though I never saw the forms. This morning as I was putting his lunch in his backpack I found a form from yesterday. This makes three Think Times in two weeks, when he's never had a Think Time the entire rest of the year (as far as I know). I think spring is having a detrimental influence on my son. We'll be talking about resisting that influence later today. However, this form is quite interesting. He had to write down what he had done wrong and which school rule it broke (respectful, responsible or ready), then how he plans to solve the problem.

The 'problem' he had was running. The 'rule' he broke was 'ready', as in "I was not READY to sit down."

I find that both hilarious and fascinating, and I can't help but wonder if most, if not all, rules we break fall under 'ready.'

"I was not ready to drive the speed limit." "I was not ready to pay for the car." "I was not ready to tell the truth." "I was not ready not to punch him in the face."

The possibilities are endless.

I have a theory...

I started reading Junie B. Jones to Jonathon and Duncan while I was pregnant with Kaes. Jonathon was going to be starting kindergarten and the books were about a little girl starting kindergarten and I thought they might be good books to help him know what to expect once he started school. I could not have been more wrong. Those books are not written for children at all. They are written for the parents. Matthew and I laughed our fool heads off, while the boys just listened with blank faces.

Then I had Kaes, and everything changed (in so many ways). Kaes is now in kindergarten and I am reading Junie B. Jones to her. Kaes loves them, though she still doesn't laugh nearly as much as I do. However, she is not as oblivious as her brothers were, either. Yesterday during our reading we came across this paragraph.

(Junie B. has gotten up while it is still dark outside because she is so excited to go to an Easter egg hunt later that day. She goes into her parents' room and her mom tells her to go back to bed.) "Yeah, only I don't think that's actually possible," I said."On account of my brain is already activated."

Kaes laughed heartily, thinking it was hilarious that Junie B. said her brain was activated. I realized that 'activated' is the perfect term for my daughter. Once she is activated (i.e. opens her eyes in the morning) there is no shutting her down.

Later, Junie B. is consulting with her elephant what she should wear that day. She tells her elephant, "Plus, good egg-hunting clothes should not be a dress, either. On account of sometimes-when I am beating people to an egg-I will have to tackle them and get in a scuffle."

Kaes, who was sitting on my lap, looked at me and said, "You can tackle in a dress."

She was not joking.

So here's my theory. I think Kaes was listening and taking notes while I was reading Junie B. Jones to her brothers seven years ago. I think she has channeled the essence of Junie B. Jones. And then I think she took it up a notch, where Barbara Park (the author) with all of her incredible imagination, never expected a six-year-old little girl to go.

Loving my girl

Today I spent about fifteen minutes in Lowe's with my daughter. I swear I grew at least one gray hair a minute. The girl cannot have both feet on the ground at the same time. She cannot not touch things. Even when things are out of reach, she's reaching for them. She alternately flits off like a hummingbird and disappears, or sweetly holds my hand and jerks me all over the place as she proceeds to chase after everything she would be going after if she wasn't holding my hand. She often doesn't have either foot on the ground, and every automatic door we came to (there are many inside Lowe's) she karate-chopped open. As we were leaving through another karate-chopped door with my arm once again almost yanked out of its socket, I commented on the fact that I wish she could just calm down. She looked at me, and with complete sincerity said, "But Mama, you want me to be who I am."

Yes, my girl, I do.

PS This morning I found her in the garage in nothing but her shirt and panties, holding the puppy. The door to the backyard was open and it was snowing outside.

Between drinking out of the dog's water bowl (she did that last fall before I started blogging) and toying with hypothermia (neither of which seemed to have any affect on her at all), she's going to have a seriously beefed-up immune system.

spring?

Driving Duncan to school this morning (in the snow).

"That's not snow. That's little fluffy rain balls."

Whatever you gotta believe to get you through the day.

Mama's helper

A couple of weeks ago the girl decided to help with the housework. When I say help, I mean vacuum. When I say vacuum, I mean if you are standing in her way, you had better hope your toes don't get sucked up.

When she finished with her voluntary helping she said, "Mama, those boys did not help me at all." How to explain that her volunteering did not make volunteers of her brothers? I'm thinking when they get married their wives will worship their sister-in-law. I expect by that time they will understand that when they see a woman doing work, they had better get up off their butts and do work too.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Nobody has vacuumed since. When I say nobody has vacuumed, I mean nobody has been able to vacuum.

Matthew and I just spent an hour replacing the vacuum belt, which broke while she was vacuuming the living room. After that we removed the bag and I had to cut it open and dig through the contents because her brothers were certain she had vacuumed up some of their legos (we all heard the terrible sound as she was vacuuming the family room). The only plastic I found belonged to some kind of toy, though not a lego, and not something that registered immediately. I also found a ballerina slipper. At least we know she isn't just targeting legos. As we were getting ready to replace the bag, the head of an orange and blue dinosaur fell out the bottom of the vacuum. That is what the mysterious piece of plastic belonged to, and probably what broke the belt. We put it all back together and I started to finally vacuum the family room, but the vacuum didn't sound right. We took it apart and checked the hose, but couldn't detect any blockage. Put it back together and tried again. Again it didn't quite work right. This time Matthew removed the hose completely and stuck a hanger down it. At last. The body of the orange dinosaur. But wait, that wasn't all. There was also a 1"x3" piece of wood in there. That must have been the horrible sound in the family room. Not a lego after all.

I think I'm going to ask the girl to give us a good thirty minute warning when she wants to help the next time. The boys might actually be motivated to pick up their stuff, since I am NOT sifting through a vacuum cleaner bag again. And I will be investing in lots of vacuum belts.

Samurai princess

Over the weekend a bunch of families got together to play games. (The adults played games, the kids just played.) At one point I found out that my pink-wearing princess (age six) kicked our hosts' eight-year-old son in the...well, she kicked him. This was witnessed by our hostess, who then saw her son push my daughter to the floor. The boy got in trouble for pushing a girl, and the girl was mildly advised not to kick boys. Especially there. I was going to go reprimand my daughter less mildly, and I probably should have, but I must admit there was a part of me that was rather proud of her. And then there's the fact that in this day and age it kind of sticks in my throat to tell my daughter to 'be nice to boys.' I am perfectly fine with her feeling capable of kicking a boy...anywhere, if he deserves it. The problem with this weekend is that they were fighting over which of the many rooms available to them they were going to play in. He didn't deserve it, and she needs to know that, but I don't want to quash at the age of six her reflex to fight back when she feels threatened. I also don't wish to go into detail on the various ways she could wind up feeling threatened some day. So I left her with the mild reproach she got from my friend and hoped that the instinct would remain intact, tempered by an understanding of when it's okay to kick and when it's better to just go play in another room.

I am happy to report that the fighting instinct hasn't gone anywhere in the last forty-eight hours. This evening we met with the same family at the track of the junior high by their house. The idea was to walk around the track and get exercise. That idea was lost on the children. They were too busy playing in sand for the long jump, sitting in the grass, and, towards the end, jumping on the pads for the high jump. There were two other boys at the pads, apparently brothers, who were giving the kids a hard time. The older of the two told them he was going to call 911 because they were not supposed to play on the pads and they were trespassing (despite the fact that his brother was actually lying under the top pad and making it impossible for our kids to jump without landing on him). We told the two boys to leave the kids alone, that no one was going to call the police and basically told everyone to leave everyone else alone. By the time we were down at the other end of the track, though, it was obvious they were back at it. Our kids were jumping on the pads, the two brothers were on their bikes, apparently telling them to get off. And then, from down the field, I see my six-year-old hop down off the pads and march up to the twelve/thirteen-year-old. She stopped right in front of him, and even from that distance, it was clear she was having an in-your-face moment. She wasn't yelling or anything, but her stance said nothing of compliance or backing down.

Later, I found out from my son that her comment at that moment was, "I'll take care of him."

He's lucky he was sitting on a bike.

sarcasm

Matthew and I are perpetually late. Anyone who knows us knows this. I apologize to everyone I have been late to in the past, and all those I will still be late to in the future, because trust me, it will happen again. Having said that, I have a thirteen-year-old who hates to be late. He really is a mellow young man, but there are a few things that set him off, and being late (especially to things that are important to him) is one of those things. I think it is further proof that God has a sense of humor. He sent a punctual child (not that he had ANY inclination to be punctual on his way down thirteen years ago) to chronically tardy parents. We have the car keys and the power to MAKE him late all the time. It really is amusing.

Tonight at dinner we were doing highlights and lowlights. First off, let me say that we live less than a block away from our church and my son goes early on his own (he doesn't need us with the car keys to get there). When it was my turn for hightlights I said that one of my highlights was getting to church before the opening prayer. The so-n-so of a teenager said, "You did?" then clapped and gave me a thumbs up. I blame this on his father, who is often sarcastic on top of being late, and who was also laughing his fool head off.