Category: Kids Page 2 of 4

Sad Little Good Memories

On July 22, 2010

Today we got a new refrigerator to replace a refrigerator and separate freezer in our bonus room that are old energy hogs.

I don’t go out to the bonus room much anymore. It’s my daughter’s lair. I swoop in with a vacuum on occasion, so I only look at the carpet. Today as I was rearranging the space for the new refrigerator, I started noticing things that I hadn’t “seen” in a long, long time.

I noticed my son’s snowboard and remembered how my son, daughter, and I used to go up to Skibowl on Fridays when they had cheap night skiing so we could learn to ski. My husband is a good skier, but I learned at the same time my kids did. My daughter was only five years old and had a neon pink one-piece ski suit. Both kids were fearless and zoomed down the hill with me trying to catch up between my constant falls. They looked like cartoons of speeding streaks while I had skis and poles flying through the air. We’d ski until 11:00 at night under sparkling stars, freezing on the excruciatingly slow lifts but having too much fun to go inside.

I saw the skateboard and remembered getting up at 4 am and going to the skate park hauling my son and six of his friends in our old Ford Taurus station wagon. That early, they had the whole place to themselves. My daughter and I would roam around the adjacent pastures with the dog and then fetch French toast sticks at Burger King for everyone. That was before I quit eating there because of their tacky commercials.

I saw my son’s lacrosse stick and remembered tossing that forty pound ball with him, worried that it would miss the tiny little net in my stick and knock me out cold.

I saw the boogie boards and remembered going camping at the beach and playing with the kids in the ice-cold Pacific ocean. We would go in an inch at a time and let that part of us get numb before going a little further. The legs weren’t so bad, but when the water got to my waistline it was SO cold on my back. I didn’t want to go any further but they’d splash me until I was wet enough I might as well dive under the waves.

I looked at my son’s drum set and guitar and remembered the garage band practices and how the walls in the house literally shook from the loud vibrations. I saw the wooden blocks that they used to build roadways and ramps. I noticed the two big bins of Legos and remembered the castles and spaceships they worked hours building, and stepping on those tiny pieces barefoot in the night, silently cursing that Legos were always everywhere.

I saw an old blanket and remembered how they’d would gather every blanket in the house and build elaborate multi-roomed forts, and how they’d make me crawl on the floor and go inside.

Holy crap, it was a tidal wave of memories that knocked me down and left little streams of tears rolling down my cheeks.

What happened to those fun little people? They used to always be right by my side. We had new adventures every day – building obstacle courses, doing cartwheels in the back yard, playing hide and seek. They disappeared and left their memories to collect dust in the bonus room as thick as the dust under the old refrigerator.

If you are still with me through this soulful trip down memory lane, I can only say that this one little day of boo-hooing is a very small price to pay for years and years of great memories. My kids may not give me the time of day now, but not so long ago they were like little planets orbiting around me, and I was the light of their lives.

Excuse me, it’s midnight and I hear a car door slam. Let me drop EVERYTHING and greet my baby girl who’s all grown up now.

sigh….

Where’s Your Paradise?

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 20, 2010

In Home Life, Kids, Relationships, Vacations, Weather

I’m thinking the key to life is loving where you are. Where I am, or soon will be, is in the kitchen getting a fistful of chocolate cherry trail mix. Be right back.

It’s gone! I searched everywhere – in the cabinets, on the nightstand, in the bonus room, but it’s disappeared. Doggone it! Thank goodness I found a Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate bar the size of a greeting card that hit the spot. No, I didn’t eat it all, I left a couple of squares to the previous owner so they’d know they hadn’t imagined putting it in the cupboard. After all, I’m a considerate person.

Back to paradise. We were visiting friends over in Central Oregon and the sun was shining the whole time with nary a cloud in the sky. It’s hard to complain about warm sunshine after living in Portland during the incredibly cool summer we’re having (to find out why – SHAMELESS PLUG – get the global warming book I helped write called, Footprint, a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Extinction).

One morning we came out of the dark bedroom to be greeted by glowing sunlight through every window, and our host said, “Another day in paradise!”

Didn’t Jimmy Buffet sing a song about that? Somebody did. Anyway, I got to thinking about it and I concluded **** PROFOUND SAYING ALERT***** that:

PARADISE IS WHERE THE HEART IS

This might sound a whole lot like another saying, “Home is where the heart is,” but that one isn’t centered on the page and in all capital letters. I wonder if I can copyright this saying and get royalties when the world starts using it? Because, you know, paradise is sometimes where the money is, too.

Clear skies and warm sunshine might certainly be part of the formula for paradise, but I’ve had a taste of paradise when I’ve been on the side of Mt. Bachelor in the freezing cold and hit a bump on my skies that should have sent me flailing end over end but I miraculously recovered and flew weightless through the air without breaking a leg. It’s exhilarating.

Something else to ponder: Isn’t the world confusing enough without spelling skies and skies the same way?

I’ve also been in paradise when my teenage daughter asks me to go to a movie with her. OMG I will drop anything to spend time with either of my kids because they are scattered like my Uncle Vance’s ashes in the trunk of my cousin Nancy’s car. That’s a funny story I’ll try to remember to tell one day.

My kids rarely light near me any longer than it takes them to say, “Mom, you already asked me that.” I’m not so sure I DID ask, and I certainly don’t remember what they said. They make stuff up to drive me crazy. Even so, I love when they’ll forsake their friends and hang out with me, even when I know it’s because none of their friends can do anything right that minute and also I’ll pay for their movie ticket. Still, to me it’s more of a “paradise” to hang out with them than being in the tropics sipping POG and vodka while swinging in a hammock on the beach. I think.

The point is that paradise is in our heads. If it weren’t, then everyone in warm places would be happy, and everyone else would be miserable. That may pan out in some cases, but I have witnessed many, many cranky shop clerks in those little beach stores in Lahaina. In fact, there are few things crankier than a middle-aged Hawaiian woman in a t-shirt shop packed with tourists unfolding the merchandise during the heat of the Maui summer. I’ve heard them mumble, “I got your paradise RIGHT HERE!” and though I’m not sure what that means, they didn’t sound happy.

So, gentle readers, you probably don’t need to look any further than your own back yard for your little patch of paradise. And if you find some money out there, send me some!

Heroics to Stop a Crying Baby

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 12, 2010

In Kids

Let me tell you about the extremes I used to go to to quiet my colicky baby. But first notice that I used to and to right beside each other in the last sentence. Amazing, huh?

My son started crying at one month and didn’t stop until seven months. Maybe I should clarify that. At one month his default mode was crying unless I came up with ways to get him to stop.

If I stood up and did this little “mommy” step (instinctive to all mothers except the one in church yesterday), he’d stop crying. If, however, I sat down and continued the same exact motion with my upper body, he’d cry. How could he tell the difference? I would stand and gently bounce him until my legs ached, then I’d sit and he’d immediately commence crying like someone had flicked a switch. Stand up – stop. Sit down – cry.

I used to sit in the back seat with him while my husband drove us to wherever we were going. He DID NOT want to be in that car seat, but of course it was the law. When your inside a giant metal box such as an SUV, crying is irritation times two. It’s like having an amplifier – like someone recorded a baby having a screaming fit and cranked the volume all the way up to 32.

It was weird being chauffeured, but I made the best of it. I’d snap my fingers and say, “Drive on, James.” My husband’s name isn’t James, and he never thought it was funny. He’d give me dirty looks in the rear view mirror. When I wasn’t playing rich society lady, I’d attend to my duties as the “keeper of the crying at bay.” I would hold a Binkie in my son’s mouth – not by force or anything. He’d just work it out every five seconds, which was a reason for him to start squalling. I’d fish it out of the valley between him and the car seat and put it back in his mouth, which made him happy until he’d do whatever he did that caused it to fall out. If I simply held it in place – no pressure – I’d let my hand hover over the Binkie, it wouldn’t fall out and we’d have peace and quiet for a few minutes.

If we were going on a road trip, eventually he’d fall asleep in the car. Sometimes the baby would also fall asleep. Ha Ha – a little joke to show how exhausted my husband and I were. When the crying stopped and that sweet peace descended on the vehicle, nobody moved. If we had to go to the bathroom, we held it. There was NO WAY we were going to cut the quiet short by stopping the car. If we were lucky, we’d get up to two hours without noise.

At home I had all kinds of tricks to have cryless interludes. One was to run water. I put my son in the little baby carrier on the kitchen counter and turned on the tap water. He could be twisted and contorted in the awfulest misery – eyes squeezed shut, fists in tight balls, legs kicking – and when the water started, he’d stop cold. He’d get this look of calm wonderment, like “ooo, what IS that marvelous sound? I LOVE IT!” Meantime I’m freaking about the water running, but I figured it was a small price to pay. After about five minutes, the calm would disappear and the crying would start again.

He had this wind up swing someone gave me for a baby shower gift. I’d turn the crank several times – it sounded like rusty gears grinding against each other, then the swing would start. He’d go forward – click – and then back – click – and forward – click – and back – click. It was like a giant windup grandfather clock. With the motion and the steady clicks, he’d soon be asleep. I’d put the swing in front of the bathroom with the door open and dash in there to take the fastest shower on earth. I’d dry off, wiggle into whatever fat clothes I had that were clean, and dash back, just in time for the swing to wind down. If I was lucky, I could wind it back up for another fifteen minute reprieve, but usually all the racket from winding woke him up and he didn’t like it, not one bit. Oh he’d cry!

Another thing I did was put him in his carrier and rest him on top of the dryer. That was good for loading the dishwasher and wiping down the kitchen counters – if I moved at warp speed.

If we were out in public and I forgot his Binkie, I learned an emergency move from his pediatrician, Dr. Ferre. I’d put the tip of my little finger in his mouth and he’d latch onto it like an octopus. Really, I don’t know how something so small could Hooverize a fingertip like that. Sometimes I worried he’d suck a hickey on my finger.

I’m remembering how TIRED I was from all that baby pacifying I used to do. If that baby fell asleep I’d curl up right next to him and try to make up for the ZZZZ’s I lost walking him in the night so my husband could get some sleep.

Luckily, around six or seven months the crying tapered off, just like the pediatrician said it would, thank goodness!

Crying Naked Babies in Church

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 11, 2010

In Kids, Religion

Today we went to church and there were six babies that needed to be baptized.
We are used to a lot of crying on baptismal Sundays, mostly from parishioners because the service lasts so much longer, but this morning there was one very distraught 7 or 8 month-old baby with a high, raspy cry that had all the kids cupping their hands over their ears.

This baby would not stop crying. Most mothers would have the good sense to get up and take the child out of there, but for some reason his mother just kept trying frantically to make him stop by bouncing him harder or shifting him from one arm to another.

Any mother of a crier can tell you this will not work. A crier wants you to GET UP… NOW!!! A crier wants a boob, and if that’s not handy, a Binkie…and MAKE IT SNAPPY! A crier wants to be entertained – he wants to be facing forward so he can see the world and he wants you to spend every second telling him how exciting it is. “Ooo, ooo, see the pretty statue! Oooo, ooo, see the little girl in the pink dress, isn’t she pretty? Oooo, ooo, see the drool stain on mommy’s shirt? I wonder where that drool stain came from – did you make that drool stain? I think you did. Yes you did. I’m going to GET you. I’m going to tickle you right behind the knee for making that drool stain, yes I am,” and so forth. These are the tools mothers of criers turn to when their babies are annoying the public. It may require 100% of your attention, but at least everybody won’t be staring at you and wondering why you are pinching that baby or shouldn’t you be rushing him to the emergency room.

The whole congregation was staring at this mother who (1) did not have a Binkie, (2) kept turning the child toward her even when it was twisting around to see something besides the same old one foot square of her shirt, and (3) was not whispering and distracting the child from his crying fit. I wanted to go knock the woman down and yank the baby up and soothe him, but that seemed un-Christian.

Even the priest stopped talking and made a joke. He had just started his sermon and he must have realized no one was paying any attention to him even though he was practically shouting into the microphone trying to be heard. About two minutes into the sermon he tried to make a joke, “Well, I see somebody’s trying to tell me this sermon has gone on long enough.” We all laughed but the woman didn’t get the hint. Then he stopped again a couple of minutes later, and said, “I should have made this sermon short enough to post on Twitter.” Again we laughed, and the mom finally got up, which made the baby happy and the church got quiet enough so that I could notice the ringing in my ears. Between the bellowing baby and the shouting priest, it was worse than being at a rock concert.

I knew the quiet was temporary. My son had colic, and colicky, crying babies need continuous, entertaining distraction if you want to keep them quiet. This woman didn’t know anything about any of that.

Sure enough, the bellowing started again, and didn’t stop when they called the parents up for the baptisms midway through the service. A video guy positioned his camera on a ladder over to the side so that everyone in the packed church could see the babies on the big screen above the altar while they were getting dunked into the baptismal font.

The first parents handed their naked infant to the priest so he could lower the baby into the water in the baptismal font. I’ve never liked this naked baby thing, especially when they could be wearing those little swim diapers. A naked baby is just a loaded water pistol ready to be fired, not to mention that nudity seems incongruous in a church, even if it’s a baby. Call me a prude, this is how I feel.

The cameraman zoomed in on the babies, and from his angle, the babies’ privates were at the forefront of the picture, with their faces receding in the background. Every parent of a baby boy knows that for some reason their privates are way out of proportion to the child’s size. If the baby boy weighs 15 pounds, 10 of that is his privates. From the camera angle, and on the big screen, they looked even bigger.

One baby was a spreader, and if I’d been a doctor I could have done a visual colonoscopy. Baby cheeks might be cute, but a gaping baby poo-poo on the big screen is another story.

I started thinking of the family all gathered around years later, watching this video with the grandparents and little brothers and sisters and maybe even the guy’s girlfriend, who insists she wants to see what he looked like as a baby. Then he’s up there on a 60” HD 3D TV with those giant testicles filling the whole screen, and his girlfriend shouts out, “Oh my gosh, what HAPPENED to you? You were bigger as a baby than you are now!” Everyone will hear her because they’ve got the sound turned down due to the screamer. It will cause a scandal. Grammy and Grampy will know the teenagers are sleeping together, which could be all it takes to give one or both of them a stroke. The poor kid with melons for testicles will be marred for life because he’ll forever have his girlfriend’s voice in his head reminding him what a shrimp he’s become in his manhood department. It may be THE defining moment in his entire life. All because of some silly tradition at our church that says babies need to be baptized in the buff.

Back to the story. After they were baptized, the babies were dressed in their cute little white baptismal gowns and were presented to the church, which takes a lot of praying and blessings and welcoming from the congregation. Through it all, the crier never let up. The dad tried to stop him, the mother tried, the Godparents tried, but handing him around did nothing. Finally his grandmother ran up on the altar and snatched the child from his mother. He shut up immediately. She gave him a hair barrett, which he immediately put in his mouth to gnaw on, and that was all the entertainment he needed. The grandmother never turned him loose, even when they all went back to the pew. After communion I noticed he’d fallen asleep in her arms.

Well, this story has taken a lot of time, but it needed to be told in the hopes that if you’re a mother of a screamer, you’ll take that child outside and stop tormenting us. Better still, learn the tricks of dealing with criers. And always keep a grandmother close by in case of emergency.

Oh, and do your child a favor – destroy those naked baby baptismal videos. Oooo, ooo, I just got a great idea. Hold on to them and use them to blackmail your child. I bet you could get him to clean his room, mow the grass, AND get all A’s if you threaten to show it to his girlfriend. Doggone it – why didn’t I think of that?

Askar Addendum

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 13, 2010

In inspiration, Kids

If you read my last two blogs, you might get the impression that I’m a nice person. This is not true. I only did a little for Askar. I could have picked him up in the morning and taken him to school. I also could have given him money, grocery shopped for him, bought him clothes and any number of other things. I really did the minimum; so do NOT be hanging a Mother Teresa sign on me.

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about giving handouts. In contrast to Askar, I know a kid who is working at Blockbuster, a video rental chain losing its links to bankruptcy (get it – losing its “links,” like links in a chain, because it’s a “chain” store). You know a joke isn’t good if you have to put something in parentheses after it.

This kid is down to working about 8 hours a week, and his store is closing in a couple of weeks. Rather than looking for a new minimum wage, no-skill job (which are available because of high turnover), he is getting unemployment. He’s an able-bodied high school graduate who could easily sling hash, pump gas, or collect trash. Instead, with the help of your and my taxes, he can sit home all day and play video games.

I don’t know how the government decides who is deserving of a handout and who isn’t, but I can assure you that this kid is not deserving. At 21, it appears to me that he could be an expensive investment for our tax dollars without any return if this continues throughout his life. Giving him a job makes way more sense than giving him money. Couldn’t that money be put toward temporarily employing him to pick up garbage beside the highway of weeding our national cemetery for a few hours a day?

By now you must be asking, “What is her point, and how come it isn’t funny?” The answer goes back to Askar. I felt guilty not doing more for him, especially when I saw how tired he was, but in the end, if I had done more, would he have accomplished all he did on his own? Would he have had his picture in the yearbook or in the graduation handout or gotten the Mr. Perseverance award? Would the principal talked about him overcoming his struggles on his own and never giving in? She might have been talking about ME, for crying out loud.

There’s an old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” I believe I was put in Askar’s path and given just enough guilt to offer him the exact amount of help so that he would not lose sight of where he aimed to go.

If I had done more, would he have done less? I’ll never know, but one thing is for sure, I will always feel guilty about not doing more – if you’ve seen “The Blind Side” you’ll know what I’m talking about. Still, I will always feel proud that I did something, and that it turned out right.

About three weekends ago I forgot to pick Askar up after work at 11:30 on a Saturday night. I was home writing my blog and just completely spaced it. I remembered around 1:30 and sent him a text to apologize. He replied that he was on the bus heading home and not to worry about it. I continued to send one apology after another. I felt really bad. He finally replied, “Do not be sorry. You saved my life. I am so thankful for all you do.” Perhaps he was just trying to make me stop texting, but his message soothed my stupidity that night and has helped to ease my guilt at not doing more.

So please do not put a hero sticker on me, because I did just the measliest minimum to help a kid graduate from high school. As it turns out, that was enough, but I’m certainly no saint in so many ways, it’s not even funny.

Speaking of funny, thanks for indulging me while I told a remarkable young man’s story. I was just so proud of him that I got carried away and lost sight of where I aimed to go, which is to give you, oh faithful reader, a little dab of humor every day. I pledge to return to humor on my next blog, and I’ll try really hard to actually be funny.

Suzanne’s Law

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 27, 2010

In Kids

Do you remember Murphy’s Law? It went something like, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I have invented my own law, called Suzanne’s law. This is a law of the universe that says, anytime you want someone to do something, they will either: not do it, do it but not do it well, or do it but not when you want them to.

This law is proved by my daughter on a regular basis. Here’s an example. I asked her for weeks to get the oil changed in her car. When she finally did, she brought the receipt in the house to show me all the add-on things they talked her into adding on. After I looked it over and heard her explanations (this was her very first oil change), I said, “Put that oil receipt in you glove box to show you’ve been maintaining the car.”

“I will mom.”

“Today?”

“Yes, I just don’t want to walk out there right now.”

If you apply Suzanne’s Law, you know that the oil receipt is still laying in the bonus room floor days later, and will continue to stay there unless ants carry it off or I plant myself in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips, tapping my toe, and watch her pick it up and take it out to her car, at which time she’ll come back into the house scowling and go straight to her room, slamming the bedroom door to let me know how unreasonable I’m being.

My dog has Suzanne’s Law down to a science. If she does something really cute, like cock her head to one side and look up with the whites of her little black eyes showing, and it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life so you want to share it with someone, it’s guaranteed that she’ll cease doing it the second the other person looks at her, no matter how fast they turn their head.

Another version of this same thing is when she sits or rolls over on demand all day long, but if someone says, “Does your dog do tricks?” and you say, “Yes, watch this,” and then say, “Roll over,” she will just look at your like she’s deaf and not even acknowledge that you are speaking to her. If you say it again and again, she waits patiently, looking at you and maybe cocking her head as if to say, “What up, dog?”

Now that I’ve discovered this new law, which is akin to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in its scope and application, I see it happening all the time. We had a leak in our roof and the roofing contractor was supposed to call this morning by 7:30 to say when he was coming. I called him at 8:00. He said he was coming at 9:30. I called him at 9:45. He got there eventually, but not when he was supposed to – again proving Suzanne’s Law.

Curiously, now that I’ve coined this law, I feel more forgiving toward my daughter. She’s only following a pre-ordained, scientific model of teenage behavior patterns that are consistent with 99.9% of the teenage population.

I feel so much better. I’m going to get a lot of use out of that law until she goes to college. Feel free to use it as well. It may save you from pulling all your hair out.

An Amusing First Communion

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 17, 2010

In Kids, Religion, Uncategorized

It was First Communion at church, and all the girls were dressed in these darling white dresses (symbols of purity) with little veils. The veils are a carry over from when all Catholic women wore hats or veils. Cradle Catholics of a certain age (ancient) will remember this.

When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to go into church without something on our heads – and there was no exception. At a minimum, we had to have this little doily-like thing on our head. A doily is a round piece of lacey stuff about 6 inches across that old-timey people used for coasters, or, heaven forbid, decoration You still see these things in nursing homes. I never much cared for them, but that’s just me. Older women wore those long lacy things called matilda’s. Except I just googled it and they are actually called mantillas. All my life I thought they were matilda’s!!

The little bit of doily-like headgear we students wore was called a “chapel veil.” We went to Mass before school every morning except Wednesday, and if you ever showed up without your chapel veil, then your nun, who was as tall as the Eiffel Tower and wore a long black dress and massive headgear so you didn’t know what might be hiding under there, would bobby pin a piece of tissue to your head as she gave you a scowl that told you you had better not let it happen again.

Nuns back then were strict. They weren’t trying to be our friends, they kept us on the straight and narrow – they wanted us to be quiet and sit still while we learned and that’s what we did. We seemed to have a lot of fun, though, especially during the one-hour recess. But I’ve strayed off topic, which was the First Communion service I just witnessed.

The boys had on sports coats, slacks, and ties and the girls wore their white tea-length dresses with white, chunky-heeled shoes and ribbons and curls in their hair. They were paraded in front of the congregation as much as possible, which was delightful because they were really cute. So they came up to do the readings. They stood on a little platform, and put their mouths way too close to the microphone.

Which reminds me. I have to say one thing about the priest. After opening prayers, the priest, who was a substitute, asked us to spend a couple of minutes of silence to reflect on the topic of the day. We obliged by bowing our heads and the church got very quiet. At this precise moment, loud scritch, scritch, scritching came over the loud speaker. I finally lifted my eyes just enough to see what was going on. The priest had a determined look on his face as he fiddled with the microphone clipped to his collar. His fingers moving over its speaker was causing the noise, and surely he heard it too, especially when it got louder. Other heads lifted. By the time the “moments of silence” were over, he’d gotten it just the way he wanted. The only thing I had spent time reflecting on was what an id…. well, never mind.

So the first child, a girl, started reading and did an impressive job. She read such words as “Theophilus” as if it were Smith or Jones. A boy was next up, and he sounded like he had a mouth full of Corn Flakes. You couldn’t understand a word he mumbled. The third was also a sharp looking boy and he started off great but after a few words he paused, flinched, and then proceeded. This happened again, then again, and I realized he had the hiccups. The rest of the congregation caught on too, and we all chuckled softly each time he hiccupped. He’d swallow after each hiccup, which became more amusing as it went along. We were waiting for it, waiting and wondering if they had gone away, or if we’d imagined it, and then – pause – flinch – swallow. Don’t know why that was so funny, but there’s not much else happening in church so we, the congregation, would have been rolling in the aisles if not for decorum and sympathy for the little trouper and his parents. We kept our mouths shut to mute our laughs, and I saw several people with their hands over their mouths trying to hide their mirth. I almost applauded when he got done it had been such an entertaining show.

A couple of other things happened that I would share except I’ve run too long and there’s nothing above I’m willing to cut. Suffice it to say, the congregation en masse enjoyed this Mass.

Prom Night

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 8, 2010

In Kids, Uncategorized

The subject of today’s blog is also the reason I didn’t do this blog yesterday. It was Prom Day, and my daughter had requested dinner for her entourage at our house. So I had to slave, yes literally slave, over a hot stove AND clean my house for the six sets of parents who would be coming over to take pictures. I’d like to spend this entire blog whining about how tired my legs were but I know, as a writer, that you will not read any further if that’s all you have to look forward to, so I’ll talk about interesting things, starting with the make-up artist fiasco.

Actually, I’ll start a little earlier because those of you who read about the problems we had finding a dress will be pleased to learn that the alterations turned out beautifully – the dress fit like it had been tailored and made my already gorgeous daughter (people say she looks like me) into a veritable beauty queen. Too bad about what happened to it.

The girls all skipped school because they had to get pedicures, updos, and makeup done. I wasn’t too keen on that but my daughter pointed out that, “Everyone else skips school all the time and I haven’t missed a day all year. Katie misses class so much and she’s stoned most of the time and Celina….” They wear you down.

She got a purple pedicure, “it matches my green dress,” and she got curls in her hair. The next thing was makeup. At an auction, Jenna’s mother bid on the services of a makeup artist who would come to the home and do a small group for a special occasion. That was scheduled for 3:00. At about 2:00 the artist called and said she couldn’t make it because her husband was called unexpectedly into work and she didn’t have a ride. “We can come to your house,” Jenna said, to which to artist replied, “Oh, and there are child care issues, too.” “We can babysit.” “That won’t work, look I’ll call you Monday and we can reschedule.”

We live in Oregon, and it normally rains from November to July. On rare occasion, we get a sunny day. Ever rarer is a sunny day AND a warmer temperature. Yesterday it was sunny with a high of 71 degrees – downright Hawaiian for Portland. This may or may not have had a bearing on the artist’s sudden decision to break the hearts of these sweet girls just hours before their prom.

Of course this change in their perfect day was the end of the world. They all decided to call their dates and cancel the whole thing. Well, the thought crossed their minds, but then they rallied and stuffed their own makeup into duffle bags and came to my house to put it on. They crammed themselves into one small bathroom and stayed in there for about an hour with the iPod blaring so loud it drowned out all but the loudest squeals. At one point my daughter came in and said, “Sam put fake eyelashes on me, does this one look crooked?” I’m not a fan of fake eyelashes, mostly because I’ve never successfully gotten them unstuck from my fingers to transfer them to my eyelid. “They look beautiful,” I said.

When the girls emerged in their tank tops and shorts, they were knockouts. I don’t think a selfish, unreliable, flaky makeup/con artist could have done any better. At 5:30 – fifteen minutes before the boys and parents were to arrive, they raced out the door to go to Jenna’s house to get a memory stick for her camera. Good grief! Luckily they were back in 7.38 minutes and dressed in 2.4, so they milled around in their gorgeous dresses, looking for something to spill on them. My daughter succeeded. She rubbed up against something oily, Lord knows where, and had spots on the front AND back of her dress. All that shopping, altering, the tears, the fights, and finally finding the perfect dress (that cost a small fortune) only to have her get it dirty within minutes of putting it on. Kids – you gotta love ‘em or you’d strangle ‘em.

All the parents arrived on time (5:45) and we took pictures of the girls, but where were the boys? Everyone knows that girls are supposed to be late. It’s almost a requirement. But there were strange forces at work – a sunny day in May, false eyelashes that looked real, I hadn’t burnt the chicken – and now late boys. And I don’t mean fashionably late. They didn’t arrive for 45 minutes. They’d all gotten ready together, which means that instead of pulling up their pants, buttoning their shirts, clipping on their ties and tying their shoes at their own homes, they were at a friend’s doing it all at one time. How could they have been 45 minutes late? They blamed it on Luke’s mom. “She kept making us pose for more pictures.” They were awfully cute in their purple and green ties and black shoes so pointed they could have used them for arrows.

We took every combination of pictures you could imagine – serious, funny, girls only, boys only, moms and kids, dads and kids, couples only, couples only on stairs, group on stairs, group funny, couples funny, my daughter holding the dog. Finally, exhausted, the parents packed up and left an hour and a half after they came, and we served the first course – Caesar salad.

My husband was the dapper waiter – carrying plates out of the kitchen and refreshing their sparkling apple-pomegranate cider. Then I dished up their plates with chicken with lemon sauce, herbed rice, marinated green beans and garnishes of snow peas, radishes, petite pear tomatoes, baby corn and tiny radishes. It was pretty, though I knew most of them wouldn’t touch the garnishes. Then we cleared their dinner plates and served a lovely cake on a pedestal that Sharon brought, plus strawberries with whipped cream. A feast!

My kids won’t stay at a dinner table more than ten minutes unless forced, but this bunch wouldn’t leave. My legs were throbbing. Every now and then one of them would say, “Shouldn’t we leave?” and I bit my tongue before saying “YES!” out loud. Then someone else would say, “I’m having such a good time sitting here enjoying everyone’s company.” I don’t know who said that, but I wanted to slap them. My husband and I were just hovering in the kitchen, trying to give them space and overhear any dirt we could but these guys weren’t ever interesting. They didn’t cuss. They didn’t talk about sex. They didn’t talk about other people except to tell funny stories about them. SO LEAVE! I was saying over and over in my head to send the vibe. Typical teenagers – they didn’t pay any attention to me, much less my vibes.

Finally about 8:20 (the prom started at 8) they got up and the guys put on their coats while the girls rushed back into that small bathroom and stayed ten minutes. Then they loaded up into two cars and I took a couple more pictures and went back in the house. I looked out the kitchen window and they had all climbed out of the cars, so I went out to see what was wrong. They were spraying, “Just Prommed” on the car windows. Then my daughter sprayed directly on the car and had to run in and get paper towels because it was someone’s borrowed nice parent car and it might eat the paint off. Finally they loaded back up and I got to go back in the house and spend another hour on my feet cleaning up.

When they came back around 11:30 to rummage through the refrigerator and get the two other cars they left parked here, I didn’t even get up out of the Lazy Boy. “It was SO MUCH FUN,” they all said and took off. The girls were going to end up at Jessica’s house for a sleepover, and hopefully the guys weren’t with them.

And that is why I didn’t do my blog yesterday. Oh, and the dog ate my paper.

User Manual for Babies

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 2, 2010

In Kids, Uncategorized

I wish someone would write a complete user’s manual for babies. There’s no way to know what they’re thinking. They can be laughing one minute and then crying the next and you are helpless to know what to do for them. Then they get these weird physical things to have to worry about.

When my daughter was a baby she was the sweetest thing on earth, she slept well at night and smiled a lot – just a model good baby – but she had a temper if something riled her up. One thing she hated was having her diaper changed. I don’t know why. I was the only one who changed her diaper and I always did it the same way, but at about four months old she decided she didn’t like it and she was going to pitch a screaming fit from the second I started to the time I was done.

I coped by changing her as quickly as possible. I used cloth diapers because I was an earth momma, so I’d get a new one ready along with everything else so I could whip that sucker off of there, do cleanup, then have another one on in seconds flat.

One day I had her on the changing table and, as usual, she was screaming so hard her whole body was red. Her fists were balled up, every muscle in her body was tense, she was pushing against the changing table, her stomach arched toward the sky – her normal changing table demeanor. Anyone who could read body language knew she hated every second and wanted to make that loud and absolutely clear.

I worked as quickly as I could because I couldn’t stand crying. It broke my heart. I had gotten the dry diaper under her and was pinning the first side when she thrust her stomach up and at that instant her belly button popped out. It went from an inny to an outy in one second.

Oh my gosh. I freaked out. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” I screeched in a panic. I don’t know what I thought. That her innards were going to pop out? It just scared the crap out of me. She knew it, too. She stopped crying immediately, watching my reaction. “Oh honey, oh baby, what’s happened? Oh my gosh.”

I rushed to the phone and pressed the speed dial to the pediatrician. “My baby’s belly button just popped out,” I babbled. “What am I going to do?”

The advice nurse, as always, was very calm. She was used to my calls. “It’s okay, tell me what happened.” When I explained she said, “Well, we’ve seen this before and it will go back on it’s own over time. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Shouldn’t we come in?”

“No, really it’s quite common. You can press on it and it will go back in, but it will probably pop back out.”

Well, I pressed on it and it was creepy. You know how a balloon looks when it loses some of its air? It has that little stem you blow into? That’s what this outy looked like. It was a little creamy white cylinder full of air sticking about ¾ inch out of her belly. I pressed it back in, but when I let go it popped out like a Jack in the box.

After that she didn’t cry during diaper changes. She probably didn’t want to see me freaking out. It took several years for the outy to go back in. In fact I’d forgotten about it until I heard her telling one of her friends about it a few days ago.

“”When did that thing go back in?” I asked.

“Like seven or eight years ago. It just started going away.”

This is the kind of stuff they don’t prepare you for in the baby books. Someone should have said, “If your child has an explosive temper and pitches an intense fit, be sure to check his or her belly button periodically to see if it has popped out like a timer on a turkey. If so, don’t be alarmed. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it but if you insist, you can call the advice nurse who will tell you the exact same thing.” This would have reassured me at that hour of need. The user manuals for children are certainly lacking, if you want my opinion.

Why Children Never Learn

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 2, 2010

In Kids, Uncategorized

My son is working for a department store. He was telling me that people come in late and he has to stick around waiting for them to relieve him. “I mentioned it to my supervisor and she said, ‘Oh yeah, Rick runs about ten minutes late.’ Mom, if I did that in my old job they’d fire me. But this is a union and you’d practically have to kill the manager to get fired.”

That got me to thinking about work ethics, which made me think about something my dad used to say: “You can’t get by doing a half assed job. Get in there and do it right.”

When I try to pass that wisdom on to my kids, they say things like, “Stop being so anal, mom.” How come when my dad gave me advice it was wisdom, and when I give the same advice to my kids, I’m obsessing?

I guess I didn’t listen too much to what my parents told me once I hit the teenage years either. I thought they got pretty stupid about then. They didn’t understand what I was going through, my motivations, the pressures I had. Now when I talk to my kids the way they used to talk to me, I see them getting that glazed over look and I know exactly what they’re thinking.

“Here she goes again. Oh my gosh I hope this is a short one. She doesn’t know anything. How can I get out of sitting here? I could tell her I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Maybe she’ll forget by the time I get back. She is ADD. Yak, yak, yak. Doesn’t she have anything better to do? She’s always complaining about how overworked or tired she is or how there aren’t enough hours in the day. She could get about six extra hours every day if she’d just stop with these lectures. Oh crap, did she just ask a question? If she thinks I’m not paying attention she’ll start all over again.”

I know this is what they’re thinking because it’s what I was thinking. I thought my parents didn’t know anything, and so it was almost to my detriment to listen to them. I’d sit there while they tried to tell me stuff and think, first, how stupid it was that I had to be put through it – again – then my mind would wander to some guy I had a crush on McDonald’s French fries – anything but what they were saying. My dad used to tell me, “One of these days you’ll understand.

Now, with my own kids, I try to help them avoid the pitfalls in life, and the more I do that the more they are determined to do the exact opposite of my advice. Because they feel like I’m stupid and it would be to their detriment to do anything I suggested.

What’s that Justin Timberlake song – what goes around comes around? True that!