The Queen's Rambles

We met Erik’s teacher today, and I think everything may be ok. Of course, I thought that last year too and we know how that turned out.

Maybe the principal really did take my notes into consideration. I asked that Erik be placed with someone who understands wiggly boys. His new teacher has two sons, ages 6 & 9. No guarantees, of course, but I’m guessing she will have a broader picture of boys than last year’s teacher, who only had a toddler daughter.

I posted the teacher’s name on FB and got two encouraging replies from moms who have had boys in this teacher’s class. I know one of the boys pretty well (he’s our closest neighbor), so am feeling much more confident about this year.

So the teacher can handle boys, but can she handle bright children? That is the other piece of the puzzle. Erik taught himself division yesterday. He’s no expert yet, but most first graders are still using their fingers to add single digit numbers. How is she going to handle it when she’s trying to teach them the basics of subtraction (their big push at the beginning of the year, I think) and he is begging for something more advanced? Time will tell, I suppose.

Guess I better go to bed and stop posting. Mike is giving me the sigh. I have to get up early tomorrow and go to a Campfire training all day. I really hope Erik enjoys Campfire more this year and I am not wasting my time. At least we have a much better idea of what we are doing so we should be able to do a better job of mapping out the year and getting the kids out in nature. I kind of wish I didn’t have strong moral convictions and could just send him to Boy Scouts, but I have never been one to compromise on things that are important to me so I just can’t do it.

This week has been zooming by. On Tuesday I managed to fit in five separate activities. FIVE! That’s way too much, even for me. They were all enjoyable, and most of them were things I really wanted to do (except the stuffing of envelopes), but still. Hectic is my middle name sometimes

I walked in to our envelope stuffing session and was handed a pen. I was very, very confused.

Me: Where’s the labels?
Her: I thought it would be just as easy to hand address 100 envelopes!
Me: Ummmmmmm. . . I’ll be the paper folder.

I’ve been extremely busy with volunteer work. Our MOMS Club took over the local preschool fair and we are trying to make it a success. In the past they had it in middle of the week for an hour between senior tai chi and lunch at the community center. They had very little publicity and only asked preschools to donate $5 to cover costs. Most of the schools didn’t pay a dime.

We are totally changing it up based on feedback from parents and schools. It’s going to be in the evening for three hours at a completely different location. We want to buy some ads and see if we can stir up some interest with the local paper and radio (tie it in to a service project, most likely) The kicker is, we are charging $25/table to cover our costs. Will the preschools actually pay for this or will we fail dismally?

I said I’d do the publications side of things, including the website. Originally they had this huge list of things they wanted on the website and I knew it was completely out of my skill set. I told them I would look into hiring a professional web developer if they really wanted to have online registration and all that. Thanks Kisha, for being my go-to web Jedi!

When I came back with the price they turned green and decided my tiny skill set was good enough. Sorry Kisha, for not bringing you the money. I kind of suspected that would happen, though.

I think I have most of my work done now, so at least that little project should calm down. I want to thank those of you who gave me input on FB last night. I desperately needed a good editor to look things over, but the rest of the committee does not specialize in nit-picky grammar problems. They are great at encouragement “Great job! Looks AWESOME! Don’t change a thing!” which is nice for my ego, but not so nice for a website that needs to look professional. Website is here for the curious.

One big publication down, several to go! I have two newsletters to put together and a PTA directory to plan. I know how to bog myself down, don’t I?

We get to meet Erik’s teacher tomorrow afternoon and then on Monday Erik starts first grade! Summer has flown by, but this past week has lasted forever. Strange how that works. I would love summer if it wasn’t for all the kid-fighting in my basement.

We only made it to the splash park once this year, though we did do a few pool dates with friends. Glad I didn’t invest in the season pass package. We went to a new-to-us water park yesterday, so that was fun if a bit chilly (only 85, so the kids were all shivering!). A friend bought a Groupon to this park, but was unable to use it so passed it along to me, otherwise I never would have tried out this place. It ended up being great for Elsa, not so great for Erik.

Elsa is my little water baby and spent two hours going down a water slide. I was so impressed with the other kids–even though she kept cutting in front of them they never seemed to mind and were very patient with her. The only problem came along when a couple of 10 year old girls showed up and decided to dictate the line. They weren’t letting anyone go down and were just generally imposing chaos on little kid order. I was glad when they gave up the fight and left. Suddenly things improved significantly.

Erik, on the other hand, was not happy. They don’t allow floaties in the deep end of the pool or on the big kid slide. He refused to even attempt to doggie paddle. Screaming in my ear was much more fun, you know? I think he will have to take swimming lessons again next summer, even if he hates every second of it.

We witnessed a dramatic water rescue, which was kind of exciting (since no one was actually hurt). All of a sudden there was a loud spur of whistling and a lifeguard was running down the steps and diving into the pool. Suddenly there was a swarm of lifeguards from all over the place, all diving in and helping out. I could see a young teen who was clearly struggling and an older girl trying to help him. As you probably know, helping a drowning person without proper equipment or knowledge only ends up with two drowned people. He was panicked and pushing her down, so they were both in trouble. The lifeguard saved them and everyone was happy again.

Subject change:

I have most of the pieces purchased for Erik’s Halloween costume. I bought Elsa a monkey costume last week since she is obsessed with Curious George. Erik wants to be the Man in the Yellow Hat, which surprised me a lot–no complaints, though. I was able to find most of the pieces pretty cheaply online. The tie and shirt came from a school uniform company. I ordered a yellow bucket sunhat from a discount hat place. It doesn’t have that silly tall aspect of TMwtYH’s hat, but I think it will work just fine. I am just waiting on an eBay auction for the yellow pants. If I don’t win that, I think he will just have to wear yellow sweat pants.

I like it when a plan comes together! He is completely stoked about this idea, and I’m pretty excited myself. It’s fun to have a theme.

And you know what else is awesome? Elsa is finally fitting into her 3T clothes! She was so barrel chested that she needed 4T shirts for awhile, which are not at all proportional for a two year old. She is really thinning out and we were able to go backwards into the 3T stuff. Now she gets to wear clothes that have the armholes and hems in the proper place! Makes my mommy heart happy because I like my kids to be well dressed. That ship has sailed with Erik, but I might have a few more months of dressing Elsa like a little fashionista before she goes the way of T-shirts or god-awful sequins and rainbows.

Next time I volunteer to do something, will someone please drag me from the room, tie my hands up, duct tape my mouth and take me shopping?

I am so good at thinking “Hey! I can do that!” And you know what? Generally I can do that, whatever that may be. But why do I have to do everything. Isn’t there some other person on this earth who could do a little something?

I’m getting just a weeeeeeeeee bit burnt out on all my volunteer work.

Why do I keep adding things to the mix? GRRRRRRR.

There’s a non-profit company that offers after school science classes to area schools. I know tons of kids in this program and everyone keeps asking me why Erik doesn’t take these classes. Simple: our school does not offer them.

My friend just became the coordinator of the program at her school, so of course we started talking about it. The company provides the teacher and everything, they just need a coordinator to set up the times and keep track of the kids.

My friend sent me a link so I sent in a request for information. I was really hoping they would say that I could pick Erik up from school and take him over to this other school for the program.

Instead, the person I e-mailed told me I was the new coordinator and she’d be sending me a packet of information via the PTA mailbox.

When I let her know that it was just a request for information and I had no authority to establish this program in our school, though I was willing to be coordinator she told me to “just inform the principal and PTA president that you are the new coordinator and you need to know what days work best for our program.”

I don’t know about you, but I am certainly not informing the principal of any such thing.

I asked the PTA president about it and never heard back, so then I sent an e-mail to both her and the principal asking about it. That got her attention. She e-mailed me back with a list of reasons why this was a bad idea, so I guess it won’t happen. After school programs have to pay rent to the school district for use of the classrooms and the PTA isn’t going to pay for this program. Maybe next year.

You know what I really hate about our school district? It is not an independent entity. It is run by the county government, which really sucks on a lot of different levels. I’ve never heard of a principal being unable to assign classroom space for programs that help enhance student learning. Of course all schools do offer space for rent to outside agencies, but they don’t usually charge for this type of program (as far as I know). Apparently the PTA even has to pay to rent space for PTA meetings and special events for students. I find that completely ridiculous. It is more than just a nominal fee to pay for the custodian and electricity, from what I can tell.

The principal never got back to me.

I am trying to stay cool, calm and collected in regards to this school year. I am not going to try to talk to the teacher until about three weeks in. This was suggested by a teacher and I think it sounds good. Teachers are really busy the first few weeks of school, so we’ll wait and see what happens and if I need to have a come to Jesus talk with the teacher or not.

I can’t homeschool. I proved that today.

Last month I bought a subscription to the Magic School Bus science club. We get a new set of science experiements each month. Today we tried to do our August experiments and it was a miserable fail. Elsa was very interested in ruining everything we were doing. Erik was not interested in following directions or listening to the reasoning behind everything. He was interested in beating down Elsa when she would steal his pipette. I was interested in everyone just sitting still, being quiet and listening for once in their lives.

Failure all around! Elsa was the only happy person in this equation.

Ok, guess I better go make our nightly smoothies and then try to work on this stupid website that I am supposed to be setting up. I hate website building in this day and age. It took me a lot of cursing just to set up the domain name servers because godaddy is completely counter-intuitive. Then when I got to my dreamhost web panel it became apparent that there was a fucking pirate taking control of my accounts so I still have to clean up one of my sites. No telling what horrible virus they’ve planted. I am ready for the death penalty to extend to hackers.

I realize that made zero sense to 85% of you. Sorry! I am frustrated.

Thanks, everyone, for trying to talk me down. I really need to keep in mind that a new teacher will make all the difference. Erik had a completely awful year with his regular teacher, but the second his long term sub showed up life was ok. She had his number in about 5 seconds and he completely loved her. Our home life was much better for those nine weeks.

I need to chill out.

But then I worry that I under react and don’t fight when I need to fight. Sure, I might talk smack here, but I am much to compliant when I come face to face with The Teacher.

I’m really hoping he gets the male teacher. Maybe that would be an awful choice for him, since I don’t actually know the guy, but my gut is telling me that having a male authority figure would be beneficial. Of course, this guy might be a total jackass and I would hate him. But do total jackasses usually want to teach first grade? Don’t they usually go for middle school PE? Sorry, total stereotype. I don’t really mean it. I watched the first episode of Wonder Years yesterday for funsies.

We were invited to fill out a form to help the principal match child and teacher, and we were also invited to e-mail our private concerns. You can bet your sweet bippy I made use of both. I hope the principal took me seriously.

I went to a PTA planning meeting on Tuesday night and the principal was there. He is very much in summer mode and from what I picked up from him I don’t think it would be helpful to meet with him just yet. He would say whatever I wanted to hear and completely brush me off unless I could come in with an actual concrete problem.

Thank you all so much for listening to me and helping me work out what I need to do. I thought I was over this and ready to move forward, so it was a big shock to my system when I started crying. And once the tears started, they don’t seem to be able to stop. Erik thinks I have an eye infection and is ready to administer eye drops.

Anyway, guess I better get started on my day. Elsa has her class, Erik has a camp directly after, I have to create registration forms for the preschool fair that we are hosting. I swear I am a work-a-holic without a job. I need to give myself a break from all my volunteer work.

I surprised myself yesterday and had a complete breakdown.

The trigger? An Ask Moxie post about fears for the school year.

Turns out I have a few. More than a few, actually. In some ways I feel like I completely failed Erik last year by not being more demanding. Why didn’t I become the squeaky wheel and make his teacher pay more attention to his needs? Especially when it became abundantly clear that she just didn’t like him as a person.

He has already informed me that he is not going back to school, that he hates school, that it’s a useless waste of his time.

No rising first grader should feel that way. I suppose it is not really a failure on my part. I could not control the teacher. I gave her plenty of ideas on ways to make Erik enjoy class more and she refused them all.

I dread another awful year. Every time I think about it I start crying. I want to have a conference with his new teacher right away and make a game plan for the year, but then I fear that I will be labelled as the crazy parent and he will be labelled a difficult kid and the year will be worse than ever. What is too much and what is too little? My normal meter is broken. In my family we were taught to shut up and take it because obviously we knew nothing and the people in authority knew everything. It is very hard to overcome that mentality.

I have one suggestion that I really want the teacher to hear, understand and act upon. Just one. I think it would make a world of difference in Erik’s attitude towards school. I don’t know how to make it happen and I am afraid that if I have a meeting and I’m met with resistance I will start sobbing or yelling and stomp out while screeching that I’m going to become a homeschooler and they’ll never see Erik again. That’s the kind of place I’m at with the whole school thing and you KNOW I do not want to be a homeschooler. I do not have the patience for it and in general I don’t think it would be the best course for Erik.

What I want? Something so simple I don’t understand why it can’t be implemented. Yet his kindergarten teacher refused to even consider the idea, so maybe I am way off base.

Generally when students finish their work they are asked to sit quietly and read a book. He HATES reading a book. He’ll do it, but he feels like it is a punishment. Mike and I are huge readers so this is very hurtful, but it is what it is.

I would like them to let him sit and do word problems. It’s still reading, but it has a math component and he is in seventh heaven when he gets to do story problems. He’s completed a few word problem books this summer and would love to do more.

I am happy to provide them. Obviously I would prefer if the school provided them since they have more resources, but I will buy as many damn story problem books as they want if they will just let this happen.

Up until last year I would always try to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt any time I heard a story like this. I would always point out the good things about public education. I’ve been a public school teacher. It’s no secret they are seriously overworked, underpaid and have a lot of rules to follow and roles to fill that take away from actual teaching.

I’m starting to hate public education. How is my child ever going to reach his potential, when he spends the vast majority of his school time waiting for his teacher to catch a few slower kids up to an acceptable standard? Great teachers can handle the various levels in the class and make learning meaningful for everyone, but how many great teachers are there?

Children who are ahead of the game were completely ignored in Erik’s class last year. I know people have been saying this for years, but I guess it didn’t hit me until I saw it happening to my own child. I kept thinking that everyone was exaggerating and trying to seek out more than their own special snowflake deserved, but no. Erik was lucky if he got to go to reading group once a week. Other kids were in reading group every day. So what was he doing while his teacher worked with small groups? Probably staring in the mirror (that’s all he did the day I was in for observation).

Anyway, I have to quit typing now. I have to quit thinking so negatively. I don’t know how to stop, though. A good teacher will make all the difference, but I won’t have any idea if he has a good teacher until much to late to do anything about it. I know nothing about any of the teachers, and even if I did we don’t find out class assignments until the Friday night before school starts.

I really wanted to like the new show, Bunheads. For those not in the know, it’s the newest creation from the creator of Gilmore Girls. I loved Gilmore Girls (most of the time), so I was excited that there might be another magical girly show with fast wit and quirky charcters! And really? This is almost a Gilmore Girls Redux. One main character comes straight from the cast of Gilmore Girls. The other main character could be a Lorelei clone in both looks and personality.

So I’ve been watching and trying to convince myself that it’s fun.

But it’s not.

It’s full of fat hate.

I could understand a lot of body issues with the girls. They are ballerinas after all. Ballerinas are supposed to look a certain way, so body image angst would be natural there. And believe me, there is angst. They are always picking on one girl for being fat. They dress her in high waisted pleated jeans! WTF??? There is some good–the dance teacher tries to encourage her. But the whole thing is very uncomfortable for me, even if it is understandable.

But the rest of the body hate? It’s just gross. There’s a fat mom who is always trying to give her daughter really unhealthy food. The mom is portrayed as supportive and fun, if scatter brained. As a fat woman myself, I’ve got to say that I would NEVER push unhealthy food on my children if they didn’t want it. I don’t want them to be fat! I will love them if they are fat, but it is a terrible way to live (until you finally reach acceptance, if you ever do) and I do everything in my power to get them to eat healthy food in correct portions.

The latest episode has a fat lady who is totally rude for no apparent reason. Then they spend quite a bit of time talking about how fat and rude she is. I think that did it for me. There was no point to the whole sequence other than pure fat hate.

The acting is bad, the plot is thin. I am not going to subject myself to fat hate just to hope to recapture some of the fun of a show I used to like. This is no Gilmore Girls.

1) Erik wants a bowling birthday party! Whoo-hoo! I am going to book that sucker on Monday and call it good. For the longest time he wanted an Angry Birds party with real angry birds. I am not a party planner extraordinaire. I had no idea how to pull that off. I can’t have a party at my house due to space limitations and because I just plain ol’ don’t want to deal with that many people at my house or deal with hosting duties. It is well worth the money to pay someone else to set-up, clean up and entertain a bunch of children for a couple hours.

2) Mike hung up my new jewelry display thing and I LOVE it.

Unfortunately the colors are completely wrong in this picture. The flash is evil, I guess. If you’ve known me long, you know I am obsessed with the turquoise colored things. When I custom ordered it from Etsy I wasn’t thinking and said “ohhhhh! Turquoise! Gimme!” While I was waiting for it to arrive I suddenly realized that hanging a turquoise colored jewelry display on a turquoise wall (dark turquoise, even! Unlike the picture!) might be an awful idea. Happily, it looks just fine. It might have really popped in black or white, but I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

3) I can wear titanium earrings! I ordered some from Etsy and they don’t kill my ears. Only problem: my darling daughter wants to rip them straight from my lobes. Incredibly painful. You know what they should do to torture prisoners? Tie up the bad guys, then let a bunch of toddlers in the room. Give them books, drums, dolls. . . soon enough the bad guys will be so bruised and battered they’ll tell you anything. Toddlers know no limits.

Anyway! I can wear titanium earrings and my best friend just happens to be a jewelry maker who specializes in metal work. She says she will convert all my earrings to titanium for me! I went through everything and I only have a couple of pair that I really want converted. I am going to do a little earring shopping to bulk up my collection. I love earrings and have really missed wearing them these past 20 years.

4) I finally know what a budgie is! Not that this was a problem I knew I had, and obviously it could have been solved by a google search at any time in my long, illustrious internet career. I bet a dictionary would have helped pre-1997.

I’ve heard about these creatures for years in British and Australian literature. I thought maybe they were hedgehogs or a type of small dog. I had no idea they were parakeets. I posted a picture of my kids in a bird display with a caption that said they were feeding canaries. One of my Australian friends pointed out that they were budgies. My grandma had a couple of them when I was a kid and I enjoyed them, but I hated cleaning their cage. They hated my mother and raised a huge fuss whenever she would enter the room.

5) I put Mike in charge of buying Erik a robot building kit. Now the boy will not try to get me to help him build a robot out of an old fan, an old computer, my mismatched earrings and a couple of batteries. I think he needs to learn the basics before he goes McGyver on us. I even told Erik that we would contribute half if he had enough allowance to buy one. He had $20 so I think that should be plenty to get a starter kit, at least from looking at online stores. They are going to Radio Shack, so I hope they can find something in person and we don’t have to wait for shipping.

6) This past week I’ve stopped doing balls-to-the-walls cardio and started maintaining a heart rate of 120. Very difficult to do! Buuuuuut. . . this actually does make a difference as far as weight loss goes. The times I’ve lost weight have been the times that I’ve been walking a lot. I need to walk again, but it’s too damn hot and humid, so I’m going to try this method. One of my long time blog friends, Buzz a Roni was told to keep her heart rate at 120 for weight loss. Ding ding ding! I am going to do the same and hopefully that will help.

I just found some pics from the end of my college career. I’d been living in an apartment with a friend and we went out walking for an hour or two every night (sometimes in middle of the city at midnight, which was soooooooo stupid). We were also really poor and couldn’t afford many snacks or eating out, so I’m sure that helped. We basically ate a lot of chicken and ramen. The funny thing is, I thought I was the fattest person in the universe and hated myself. If I would have had hair the proper color (not brassy bottle blonde, ugh) and worn proper undergarments I wouldn’t have been half bad!

7) This isn’t a solved problem. This is a problem I need to solve. I desperately need new pajama pants and I can’t find any that suit me, not even online. Bah! I have very few requirements: a) not too ugly b) not fleece or flannel c) plus sized

You’d think I was asking for the moon. Maybe I’ll check Old Navy. The last pair of jammies that I really loved came from there, even though I generally hate ON. Too bad the whole butt ripped out of them in less than a year.

Found them at Old Navy! I’m on a roll today.

Thanks, everyone, for your stories about allowance. It’s really interesting to see the different perspectives. I totally agree that each family/child is unique and has to do what works for them. I really like the idea of doing chores because you are a part of the family and I also really like the idea of getting an allowance because you are a part of the family. I want that to work for us, but Erik is totally motivated by money so I’ve “found his currency” as they say–and it happens to be actual currency.

I try not to talk about parenting choices with a couple of my real life friends. They are both very insecure and defensive. They are compelled to explain in a very stringent manner why they don’t do things they way I do them, which ends up feeling like an attack. When really? I don’t care one bit about the way they do things as long as everyone is happy.

And well behaved, of course.

Not that my children are well behaved.

Elsa’s behavior is that of a normal two year old. She runs around like crazy and doesn’t listen very well. She doesn’t hit as often anymore. Instead she runs out in middle of the road. I was freaking out with Erik at this stage, but it is so much easier with the second one. I know the stage will pass sooner rather than later.

Erik, on the other hand. I don’t know. I think we need to go to family counseling or something. He is moody and unhappy and I don’t know how to fix him. Not that he is constantly moody and unhappy. He has times of great happiness, but you never know what will set him off.

We went on a tour of a dam owned and operated by our water company with MOMS Club yesterday. He was excited to go. He was happy in the car. As soon as we walked into the building he turned into a grump monster. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even his best friend and his “fiancee.” He wouldn’t participate in the group story. He rolled himself into a little ball in the back corner and gave everyone incredibly dirty looks. I think I may have a bald spot from the death ray lasers. It hurt my heart as his mother to see him so unhappy and it was also embarrassing for my friends to see my child act in such an unbecoming manner. Thankfully no one made a big deal of it or asked who let the badger out of the cage.

The presentation was so engaging that eventually he crawled closer and closer to the story teller and by the end he was participating and answering a lot of questions. He was fine by the time we started our hike and had fun eating a picnic lunch and playing tag.

When questioned about the problem he couldn’t explain himself at all. “I just felt grumpy.”

Tonight we decided to watch the Olympics as a family instead of letting the kids watch cartoons and he flipped out. FLIPPED. He closed the basement door and wouldn’t let us get by. I bodily picked him up and moved him without saying a word. He started screaming and howling at the top of his lungs. This went on forever (ok, maybe an hour), but Mike kept checking on him and telling him he was welcome to join us as soon as he stopped crying. Mike knew that if I checked on him I would make it worse. I am not good at comforting a sobbing six year old who is being completely ridiculous for more than two minutes.

Finally Erik came down and told me that we made him sad because we all hate him and don’t want him to be a part of the family and we’re going to make him find a new place to live but it’s raining and all his clothes will get wet and he doesn’t know where he is going to go out in the dark.

I held him on my lap for a long time and cried with him because it was so sad. How can my little baby have thoughts like that? I make a point to tell both my children how much I love them, why they are special to me, that I am so glad they are a part of my family every single day, several times a day. Maybe it means nothing because I say it so often?

I just wish I could make him a happy, content human being. I don’t know how to accomplish that. He has so much–food, shelter, loving family, happy home, basically everything he asks for (except a dog and a DS).

A part of it is probably from outside the home. He is having a lot of social trouble in the neighborhood, which is unusual. I’m used to him being the most popular kid around, but his moodiness and bossiness is catching up with him. There are other alpha males in the neighborhood now, and they completely clash. That old saying that boys just need to fight it out, then they are fine? So not true. Erik can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.

One of the boys from the low income drug house has been picking on him. That boy doesn’t know what trouble he has caused for himself. I’ll still give his sister and little brother snacks and allow them in my home, but he is cut off. He’s only 8 years old and I hate to think of a hungry child, but there are limits to my compassion and generosity. You mess with my kid, you get a mean ol’ mama bear, even if you are just repeating the behaviors that you’ve learned from your environment. I’m not a social worker. I can’t save everyone.

I am not looking forward to the challenges of first grade. I don’t know if the teacher will be kind to Erik and give him the type of academic work he needs. I don’t know if she will just be annoyed because Erik doesn’t listen and wiggles too much. I don’t know if the kids will be kind to each other or if there will be a ton of social problems. Well. . . I guess I do know that. It is the very, very rare class that doesn’t have lots of social issues.

I just want to wrap my arms around my son and protect him from the world, but at the same time I want to flip a switch in his head to make him better able to protect himself. He is ultimately in charge of his own happiness and he so often chooses anger and frustration instead.

I don’t know what’s up with my internet, but it is super slow today. You’d almost think I was on dial-up.

Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I don’t think dial-up would even be possible with today’s websites. You’d be waiting for ten years just to load the ads.

It won’t load any of my pictures to flickr, which is driving me mad. Mad, I tell you! You need to see pictures of my children frolicking in the ocean and squishing each other. How can you live without seeing their darling vacation faces? They are super special snowflakes, gosh darn it. And cute, to boot.

Here’s the question of the hour.
What’s the allowance situation in your home?

We just started giving Erik an allowance about three months ago. We went with general internet wisdom and did $1/years old. Since Erik is so impressed with his half year, he gets $6.50/week. I have to admit it feels like it is kind of a lot, but then I look at the benefits and think it is fine. Erik has told a few of my friends about his allowance and they all have a horrible gasping intake of breath and tell me it is way too much.

I don’t know. Is it way too much? We can afford it, so that’s not an issue.

Here is my defense. I need to vent it to you because I am not good at articulating my thoughts in person. Not that I need to defend myself to YOU or anyone else, but I need to mentally defend myself to someone so you, lovely internet friends, are it.

*I’m not organized with chores. I don’t really have things that I need done on a weekly or daily basis. I need things done when I need them done. Saying “yo, child, do this thing now if you want your allowance” works for me.

*One mom suggested I pay as we go. I find it difficult to come up with a list and assign a value to each chore, then pay for each chore as it happens. We tried it, it failed. He did not see the value in getting a quarter for bringing in the trash can and would say he didn’t need/want to do chores because the money wasn’t worth it. He didn’t really get that it all added up.

*Having enough money to buy something of value rather quickly is very motivating and makes our daily live much easier. If I paid him $2/week as one friend suggested he would never do his chores. We’d be fighting constantly over it. He wants video games and Beyblades. Saving up for two or three weeks is doable. Saving up for weeks for one thing is not something he has the attention span to handle. I want him to actually DO HIS CHORES. I don’t want to be deducting money and fighting over his allowance. Currently when I say “chore time”, he may complain a little but he does it and usually does it with alacrity.

*A big part of having an allowance is learning to manage money. Having enough money to manage makes it easier to learn this lesson.

*I rarely buy him treats, toys and extras. It is so wonderful to be able to tell him “if you want it, buy it” when he starts begging me for a candy bar, ice cream cone, new video game, etc. He often changes his mind very quickly when I make him responsible for the purchase. One of the friends who criticized me the most harshly for his allowance regularly buys her child $50 toys “just because.” Which is totally fine. You want to treat your kid, do it! But don’t go judgey-pants on me because my kid’s “treat” comes in a different form.

Whew! It felt good to get that out! I am very happy with our current system. It gives Erik a feeling of pride to feel like he is working and getting paid. Thus far I have been able to get him to do just about anything I ask. He regularly does vacuuming, he folds wash clothes, he puts away all his own clothes, brings in the trash can, helps pick up around the house, cleans his room, dusts the floorboards and wainscoting, etc. Just having him doing the floorboards is more than worth it!

We had a wonderful, relaxing, spectacular vacation. It’s funny how much I loved it, considering how little planning I did for it. Basically I decided to go to Boston and then realized Boston was near Rhode Island. RI sounds magical to me, so I wanted to stop by and see it, but then I discovered that there’s really nothing there. Mystic, CT, home of a great LJ friend (not sure if you want your name here if I say the name of the town!) was right there as well, so I kind of planned around that. Silly way to plan a vacation, but doesn’t the name “Mystic” sound like a place you must go if you get a chance?

Then my mom was supposed to go with us, so I discovered it is cheaper to get a beach house than two hotel rooms, only they didn’t have any opening in Mystic so we ended up staying in a little house in Niantic, CT. I don’t recommend Niantic as a tourist destination, but it was beyond wonderful to have our own house during this trip. As soon as we’d get home from the beach we could hose off and throw everything into the washing machine. We could cook as many meals as we liked, put the kids in bed and enjoy our evening, sit out on a private deck, drive down to the HOA private beach that hardly had any people using it. It was beyond fabulous. Even if it did smell like a stinky old lady.

The house itself was spacious, but it was obviously owned by an old grandma who died and the heirs decided to turn it into a beach home on the cheap. It needed a serious dusting and the smell needed to be cleaned up. I think it was caused by a mattress in the kid’s room. The first night I was very hesitant and ready to leave, but by the end I was sold on the vacation experience even if it was not a luxury home. I don’t think I am ever going to want to stay in a hotel again when I’m traveling with kids.

We wanted to break up the trip a little, so spent a day at Sesame Place. We all had a good time, but I sure am glad we were there on a weekday. It must be a complete madhouse on a weekend. We never saw Elmo, but did get a picture with Cookie Monster. Erik kept saying he loved the vampire best, and I kept telling him that Sesame Street doesn’t have vampires. Doh! The Count! I even let him buy a Count plush that he will never look at again. It was a decent souvenir, I suppose.

I was pretty nervous about visiting the beach because Elsa is a water baby and I am terrified of the ocean (so why take a beach vacation? I love the beach, just not the water). I was very relieved when I realized that our private HOA beach was extremely shallow. Erik could walk out to the ropes and only be up to his waist. The kids wore floaties and Mike went with them. They were never in any danger, though I was having some panic-attacky feelings when I saw my whole family out in the ocean.

When we weren’t at the beach, we were driving over to Mystic to do some touristy things. We tried to do touristy things in Niantic, but there was just nothing there but a few expensive shops. Children and expensive tourist shops don’t mix.

We went to the Mystic Aquarium. Shocker! I really enjoyed it. They had all the fish indoors, so you didn’t have to see them if you didn’t want to look. I had to stand against the wall and try not to have a freakin’ heart attack while the kids were in there. I had to tell myself that the tanks weren’t all going to break and the fish weren’t going to swarm to me. Thankfully the kids weren’t that into the fish.

There were lots of other cool things, though. They had beluga whales, a sea lion show, penguins, a sting ray petting pool and a 4D Sponge Bob movie. We also saw a Titanic exhibit that the kids rushed through (I probably could have spent a significant portion of the day in it) and a big canary house where you could feed the birds. The kids loved that one. I think the belugas were my favorites of the day.

We also visited Mystic Seaport. I had no idea what it was and we almost didn’t go, but my friend’s husband works there so I wanted to check it out. I’m so glad we did! It was a little historic seaport with all kinds of hand-on activities. It had a very full schedule. In fact, there were so many things to do we couldn’t do everything. We were going to go back the next day (tickets are good for two days) but ran out of time.

They had a small troop of actors who went around doing little plays. They needed volunteers for two of the plays, so you know Erik was all up in there, thinking he was the star of the show. He’s a born actor.

We had a chance to meet up with my LJ friend and eat at Mystic Pizza. I know I saw the movie when I was a teen, but I don’t remember it at all. The pizza was really good and the company was even better. It was so fun to meet my friend and her family. Our boys are just a couple of months apart and very similiar in so many ways. They took to each other right away and now Erik has a plot to have them move into our neighborhood. There’s a house for sale, after all!

Her daughter reminded her so much of me. Very serious, and very tired of her younger sibling. Ha! She was smitten with Elsa, but Elsa was having none of it. People she didn’t know looking at her? The horrors!

Mike enjoyed getting to know her husband, or maybe he just enjoyed speaking Swedish with another love immigrant.

I was hoping to add some pics to this post, but Flickr is not letting me upload so that will have to wait for tomorrow. If you’re on my FB, you’ve probably already seen them anyway.

Guess I better get to bed. Back to reality tomorrow. Camp is over, so we’re going to have three long weeks of Erik claiming boredom.