The boyfriends

For most of this school year, E has been talking about her boyfriend, a sweet classmate who, just in case he becomes a long-term character in this here story, we'll just call N. He's a great boy, kind, cute, funny. He's smart: they're in the highest reading group together and the skip morning meeting together to go to advanced math. Sometimes they hold hands, her teacher tells me. They have a secret hand-tapping code to communicate with each other across the classroom. I never fell in love with a boy as a seven-year-old and I have a hard time understanding exactly how deep her feelings can run, but she's sincere in her expressions. And he seems to reciprocate them.

We've been hearing about N since November or so and after all this time, L has internalized some of her sister's language. We didn't know that, though.

When L and I had our mama-daughter day a few weeks ago, we concluded with lunch at a restaurant she enjoys. We were there later than the lunch crowd but too early for dinner and the place was nearly empty. L was spinning on the swivel stools and generally being extra adorable, and she charmed the shift manager. They shared some repartee and he left to sweep the floor. He returned with a large cookie in his hand and made a great show of offering it to her. But I don't like that kind! she yelled with brazen honesty. He laughed. "What kind do you like, sweetheart?" And that is how L scored a chocolate chip cookie the size of her face.

They exchanged names. He complimented her eyes. She complimented his silver hair and gold tooth. They high-fived and eventually, we left.

As we replayed our day in conversation, L marveled that out of the kindness of his heart, Melvin had given her the biggest cookie of her life. It just made her so happy. All the experiences of that day paled. The cookie was the keystone. Her gratitude and wonder and amazement at his generosity filled her heart and disposition. Sounds like love, right? By the time we reached the end of the day, she'd decided that Melvin is her boyfriend.

And now whenever E talks about N, L brings up Melvin. When can we see Melvin again? And what if we go there and Melvin isn't working that day? And where does Melvin go when he isn't at work? We have a lot of conversations about the man who bought her heart with chocolate. And there isn't any easy way to tell her that a 50-something man is probably not the best match for her first great love, nor that we might really never see him again, nor that he might not remember her name if we ever do see him again, and especially not that he's not likely to repeat the free cookie trick. She'll hear none of it, though. She's in love.

What we know about N: his favorite color is red. He loves soccer and basketball and went skiing with his family in Idaho over winter break. He has an older brother and lovely, accomplished, attentive parents. What we know about Melvin: he's bold enough to give away the confections. And he is (based on looks) old enough to be L's grandpa.

E has just a few weeks of school and we wonder: will N's charms extend across summer vacation and into the next school year? But L has bigger challenges to confront: her man works over in another county, and her mama might not find reason to feed her there again any time soon.

This is what we know. Young love may turn out to be an anecdote and nothing more, or an epic love story. E was drawn to a boy of great intellect and character. And L: her love can be bought with sugar.

(But we already knew that.)

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Electronic mail

 image via Wiertz Sebastien

We were reading a book** together in which third grader best friends are torn apart when one of the friends has to move away because of a parent's job reassignment. As the boy who leaves rides away in his parents' car, he calls his friend: "Hey, Piper. What's your email address?"

Get off the bus! yelled my E, because that's what Piper always says in excitement. I knew kids could have email!  

I didn't know it was a fact to be disproven but her enthusiam was darling. The best part about spending time with children is observing their delight at observing all those things to which we've grown so accustomed that we forget to acknowledge their wonder. It didn't take her more than a minute to ask for an email account, but it did take her much more than that to contain her surprise when I said yes.

We reviewed some rules. I disabled almost all the features. She knows I have her password and not to open any attachments or forward any mass messages. She knows that her mail is auto-forwarded to my account. There are no generations of internet-savvy parenting tricks to rely on, so we're approaching this slowly and unjadedly. But my girl: she doesn't know about predators and identity theft and sexting. She's just excited to email her friends (or their parents) for play dates.  One day we'll have to relax her restrictions, but first she'll have years of transparently supervised access to this fine world wide web we know and love.

I got my first email address in my first year of college, I told her. And the computer showed words on a black screen with green letters. And I had to walk to a pay phone and drop in a token to make a phone call. Communication was an entirely different phenomenon. She listened, slack jawed, and couldn't even imagine what that was like. This new world moves so fast and of course she wants to be a part of it. And so we give her access, carefully, because truly it's her birthright. 

 

**If you have a Piper Reed fan in your house, you should know that by looking up book 5 in Amazon to provide that link, I learned that book 6 comes out at the end of this month. Get off the bus!

 

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The Girls

This is a story of adult pragmatism vs. child-heart desire:

The girls have been asking for American Girl dolls for forever and a day and it must be said that our kids don't seem to be deprived for playthings, and if you know anything about American Girl dolls, it is that they are pricey. They are also, though, rather wonderful: more detailed than most dolls, with extensive back stories, many of which are based on historical vignettes. They have a lot going for them if you can overlook the price tag and the cult-like following (and that the brand was sold to Mattel a decade ago and American Girl dolls are all now made in China. But I digress.).

For an unusually expensive request, I wanted to ensure that its fulfillment would be recognized as rare and wonderful, and we told the girls that they could get them at the end of the school year if they still wanted them. It's okay to have to wait for something you want. And anticipation can be a wonderful emotion.

And then, because if we're going to do something, let's do something, I planned to take the girls to the flagship American Girl store in New York City. We would use some of the lovely husband's constantly-accruing hotel points (the ones I used to trade in for locales like Puerto Rico) and go overnight to New York and make an event. And we could go see a Broadway show. And everything would be magical.

The girls were so excited but I couldn't book the trip because we were waiting on some business travel plans of said lovely husband to be finalized. By the time we knew we could go, the Broadway show we wanted to see and our favorite points-redeeming Times Square hotel were both sold out. We could go another time but camp was starting and maybe we'd just go in August...?

The girls didn't know that there is an American Girl doll store at a mall a half-hour from us in Northern Virginia. They were content enough to wait.

Then E received a birthday invitation from one of her very favorite friends, and it was for...take a guess...a child+doll brunch at the American Girl doll store. E burst into tears. Each of the other half-dozen invitees has one or even two American Girl dolls already. She could tell me without thinking who had McKenna and who had Emily and who had Rebecca. She didn't want to go to the party.

Then her friend got upset, because she didn't want to have the party without E. And both girls were crying about a party that should be celebratory, and then we didn't know if we'd even be able to go up to New York in August because the lovely husband has this huge symposium and there are only 10 days between the end of camp and the beginning of school and we've already planned to be at the beach for six of those days and

on Sunday, I took the two girls to the mall in Virginia. The best laid plans, and all, but this was money I had already been willing to spend on them and it was becoming silly to continue holding out on spending it.

Meet Molly and Ruthie. Never have two dolls been ever more beloved in the history of girlhood. They have been more loved than any other toy I've seen cross our threshold, and all my skepticism was entirely unwarranted, and now E can give you a dissertation on the Great Depression and L is an expert on World War II. It is completely amazing to me how much the girls, who have always had dolls, are playing so much with their Girls. Despite all my hesitation, this was a good decision, and it needn't have been so much of a big deal in my head.

E and Ruthie are headed to that birthday party next week. L is planning out our Victory Garden (remember that Molly doesn't like turnips and I don't, either!). And it turns out that the stars have aligned and there is exactly one night in August when calendar, Broadway tickets, and hotel availability are all willing to collaborate for a grand noteverstill girls' and Girls' overnight to NYC. We don't need to buy the dolls, now, of course, but every Girl likes to buy a new frock or two once in a while.


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Get off the couch

I type to you from the couch, you know. It's my home office.

A few months ago, a dear friend told me that her son had told her that he wants to run in his school's end-of-year 5k race, and he wants her to run with him. "Sure!" she said, as mamas do, and then realized she needed to become runnerly enough to complete a 5k. What a good mama, I said, nodding encouragingly. Her plan was to train through the winter and spring and then sign up for her own 5k so that she'd be ready to run with her son. Isn't she fantastic? Yes, you're nodding. Because she is! And then she asked me to run that spring 5k with her and also train for it, so we could motivate each other.

Record scratch, right there. I didn't own a running bra. And winter is cold and I really hate being outside in the cold. I'm a delicate flower.

Hmm. Spring came quickly, as it does, and I surprised nobody more than myself when I began running regularly. We're following the Couch to 5K training program. We're running a 5k together in the middle of June, she and I, and I'll be ready. This is how serious it is: the lovely husband is in Atlanta but today's a scheduled running day for me, so I worked from home just so that I could run at lunchtime. Crazy, right? Who am I?

I'm a runner, maybe.

I have tried off and on in the past seven years to make parenthood and career and fitness all fit together, with poor results. But I've never had a youngest child three-year-old before, and it's possible that life is getting just a tiny bit logistically easier. Or even if that's not true at all, it is true that I get to sleep through the night with fewer interruptions. (Good sleep definitely helps with running!) The hard part, as always, isn't ever the very top priorities, it's the everything else. It is a truth that I have very little free time. First I cheated on you here by taking up sewing. And now I'm stepping out on you to go running, too. I know I've been around this space a little less than usual, and now you know why.

The last time I ran a 5k was in high school. In 1993. Now I'm running one on June 16th. You'll cheer me on, right?

Consider the bull

On Tuesday I took most of the day off from work to take my sweet L to a parent+child blogging event. She's the perfect age for such an outing: young enough that I don't have to pull her out of school; old enough that I don't worry about disrupting her nap schedule. And of the three kids, she's by far the most easygoing and outgoing. I can take her into a crowd of strangers and leave her to play with other kids while I go hear the presentation for the parents and she'll be happy. 

Plus, sometimes it's nice to have a little one-on-one time with each of my funny monkeys. And that girl L, she is wildly funny.

We began the day as any other, driving to my work so we could drop her brother off at daycare, and then we continued on and drove through DC into Virginia (the event was put on by PBS and was at their headquarters). We had so much fun and my girl was taking every advantage of being alone with me, and I let her. She never stopped talking, except to eat cookies and raspberries. She asked a million gazbillion questions. And she wanted control over the rest of the day.

Before we go back, can we go out to lunch? Yes.

Can we sit at the counter? Yes.

And then can we get ice cream?  Yes.

When we go back, can we park in the satellite lot and walk through the woods? Yes.

Can we go see the bull now?

L has been attending the daycare in my building at work since she was four months old, which means that just this week she passed her five-year anniversary. So twice a weekday, every weekday, for five years, that girl has been in the backseat observing the path of our commute. At the last intersection before we get to work and school, we pass a crumbling, decrepit shopping plaza. It's pretty rundown but has its merits: the 7-11 has a Redbox machine, and the Hispanic-oriented grocery store has an amazing array of both piñatas and spices.

It also has this seedy, sticky, scary restaurant called The Golden Bull. I've eaten there once. It was all unwashed men playing compulsive Keno, stale nicotene cloud cover, and soggy grilled cheese. Don't disrespect the grilled cheese, please. That was eight years ago and I haven't been back.

But The Golden Bull has an enormous golden bull on its roof and for years, L has been asking to go to the place with the bull. When I told her it was so yucky and she'd never want to eat there, she explained she just wanted to see the bull, not the restaurant. And it's been a standing request, but the thing about commuting is you're always trying to get somewhere, and we've never taken the time for my daydreamiest child to contemplate a rooftop fiberglass farm animal.

So we went on Tuesday, and naturally it was the capstone of the day. Untoppable and unbeatable. Childhood: won.

She was so happy.

Consider the bull. What's the thing right in front of you that would make you so happy that you're not doing? I've thought of two,
and I'm going to do one of them this weekend. You can learn a lot from five-year-olds when you look at things from their perspectives.












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