Slow Down You Move Too Fast

This week we had another reminder of how fast life moves. Or rather, I should say, how fast our children grow up.

One afternoon as we were having some relative quiet time while my son napped, and a bit out of the blue the doorbell rang.

My oldest daughter and I went to the door to see who it was and we were greeted with empty space. Instead of a person at the door, we found a note under a rock on our door mat.

The first thing I noticed was pink writing, so I figured it was a note from one of her friends. Upon closer look I saw the word "love" written over and over on one side. And then a part of me had a flashback to childhood days, recognizing that there may be something related to puppy love involved with the scene. We have had some ding-dong-ditching here and there, courtesy of a neighborhood boy in my daughter's class, and I smelled a connection.

Sure enough, as my daughter picked it up and read it she seemed to get a little embarrassed. I had already walked back into the kitchen, and when I saw her enter, cheeks a little blushed, she was ripping the note up into pieces with a little smirk on her face.

The little girl in me got a little giddy and said "what are you doing?" while giggling and trying to get her to give me the pieces so I could read it. Then my motherly senses kicked in and I backed off and asked her about it.

She just said it was a note from a boy (the one in our neighborhood) but that it said it was from another boy in their class. However she knows that this other boy doesn't live close by and that our little neighborhood boy doesn't really like this other boy. So she surmised that our neighbor must have written the note to play a joke on his "frenemy". That's my term, not hers.

I asked what it said and she told me it said this other boy liked her.

And that was it. Off she went to throw the paper shreds away. I stopped her part way to the garbage can and had her put the pieces in the recycling, since it seems I'm always thinking green. And truth be told, I was thinking that I might want to get those pieces back later.

Later on that night I couldn't take it anymore. I went to get the pieces out of the paper recycling bin in the kitchen. But my husband had emptied it into the larger bin in the garage.

So off I went to the garage, my mother bear senses kicking into high gear while my desire to find out what this note said turned into an outright need.

I finally fished out as many pieces as I could find and brought them into the family room and put them on the coffee table.

"What's that?" my husband asks.

"A love note that was anonymously dropped off for our daughter," I tell him.

"Seriously?" he inquires.

"Yup."

Together we put together as much as we could to decipher the note, even though a couple pieces were missing. Truth be told, my hubby didn't help much. I was the one that cared the most, at least until we read what the note said.

I was finally able to read most of the note, much of which said "love" over and over. But the first line said "Dear {oldest daughter}, I love you so much I want to kiss you with tongue twist. Love {other boy}"

Whaaaaat?!?

Since when do 8 year olds talk about kissing? And kissing with tongue? I mean, that shouldn't come on the scene for another few years at least.

"I'm gonna go kick his ass," my husband said. And he had a bit of a chuckle in his voice, but let me tell you, there was no chuckle in his eyes or on his face.

I try to offer a little defense for this boy, telling my husband that I think he's had a crush on our daughter all year. I mean he ordered 2 boxes of girl scout cookies from my daughter even though his mother was standing there telling him that they already had enough. He insisted on getting them and paying for them himself. And when those said cookies were delivered, about a week later he had an urge for more, and asked my daughter during class to come by later and deliver more.

I also reasoned with him that this boy has an older brother and sister, one of whom I was pretty sure was in high school.

And then I said "But really, that's just so in appropriate."

But what do 8 year olds know from appropriate? My husband asked if we should go talk to his mother.

I thought it over and just said we should let things lie for now. It was just kids being kids. Even if they are more mature for their age than they should be.

But really, our oldest daughter is perfectly happy with headphones on, plugged into an iPod, listening to Taylor Swift and trying to learn all the words to songs that sing about feelings she won't have for many, many years.

It is what it is. Life moving too fast.

I decided I'd go up and tuck our daughter in and just put it out there that I'm available to talk if she has any questions. I asked her again about the note and asked how she felt about it all. She shrugged and said she was fine and just figured it was the neighbor being a goof.

Apparently any concerns she had went into the recycling with the shreds of pink inked paper.

And while I hope she takes a bit of flattery from it, I'm not sure if she even knows what that is yet. But I certainly know that it didn't go to her head too much, as she wasn't prancing around or tucking the note under her pillow.

And the next day she was outside playing with the neighborhood kids again, as if nothing had happened. Not sure what this boy was thinking at the time. Probably that he got away with a good joke.

I think perhaps I'll leave a note at his doorstep next week that reads "slow down you move too fast".

Sweet Dreams

As you may remember, we have had some difficulties and challenges in getting our youngest child to comply with our bedtime routines.

After we finally resorted to locking him in his room at bedtime last summer we had several months of good sleep. No, it's not inhumane. It helps him learn how to exercise self control. And it helps us not get furious.

Then just before the holidays last year he starting 'popping' again. Not at bedtime, since we were still keeping his door closed when he was putting himself to sleep. But this was now happening in the middle of the night. When we check on him before we go to bed we unlock his door and leave it cracked open. Which apparently became an invitation to come visit us at 2am. Or 3am. Or 5am. Or all of them.

Somehow we put up with this behavior for way too long. The holidays were busy...we didn't want to deal with middle of the night battles...we figured he'd outgrow it eventually. We had a lot of excuses.

Finally my husband took a trip out of town in February and I saw an opening. Since he was the one always getting up in the middle of the night to put our son back to bed, I decided this was an opportunity ripe for change.

And bribery.

So I busted out my party treasure chest full of two cent toys and told my child that he could pick a toy in the morning if he stayed in bed all night. And it worked. Well by the third night it was working.

And then we went back to square one after my husband got back. Not that it was his fault. But I had really been talking up the treasure chest when I was putting him down at night, and when my husband got back and put him to bed, which he often does, he wasn't building up the expectations quite so much. We were back to our nighttime visitor for a couple nights.

So I upped the ante. I wrapped up a bunch of little toys, some of them matchbox cars and others just junk toys, and I put them in a gift bag. I showed it to my son and told him he gets to pick a present out in the morning if he stays in bed all night. And I also set an alarm in his room and told him that he had to stay in bed until the music was playing. This last part didn't stick quite as well as the all night part. But not being woken up - at all - until 6:20am has it's benefits.

Voila. We were back to our peaceful nights.

Ah, what bliss. A full night of sleep.

And a pat on the back.

Although truth be told it took me another week before I could sleep past 5:30am which had become one of his more popular visiting hours.

The funny thing was that he didn't even like the presents after he picked them out in the morning. He'd open one up and whine about it. So then I let him pick one that was a car and he was a little happier. For a few mornings he picked out two toys, one a car and the other a trinket. And he'd complain every time. Even about the car. But we'd stick to the one he got and bring it with us downstairs. After his morning chocolate milk fix he'd warm up to it.

We only had to do this for about 4 or 5 days until he started forgetting about it. We brought the grab bag downstairs because I thought perhaps it was too dark in our room to see what he got and that's why he was complaining.

I was clearly giving him too much credit.

But moving things downstairs was the first step down in the process. Eventually we'd forget to pick one out and he wouldn't remind us.

Another pat on the back for us.

We were so proud of ourselves that we started to take on another challenge. I started leaving the door open a bit at bedtime. We did this when he was sharing a room with his cousin in Colorado and he did really well. So I transferred it home and it continued to go well.

Until this past week. He started his repetitive 'popping' again so we went to the 3 strikes rule. After 3 pop outs we would close the door and lock it. Most nights the threat was enough to keep him to only 2 tries.

Of course when I told this to our new 15 year old babysitter on her first night putting him to bed a week ago, she seemed okay with the process. But when push comes to shove she wasn't ready to be the bad guy. We came home at 10pm to find him still up, having challenged her for 2 hours of popping out of bed. And when we found him, he had a special surprise in store as he had each hand full of gumballs, as well as one in his mouth, and a blue smudged face. And no diaper. Which is still required for night time.

No, we didn't fire the babysitter. But we did offer a lot of education. The next babysitter bedtime went much more smoothly.

And then we hit daylight savings and we even have him sleeping past 7am in the morning.

Woo hoo!!!

And another pat on our backs.

Except just when we think we have all of our bases covered, our son has decided to level the playing field.

What's the one thing he can control when we've taken away all his other options?

That damned diaper.

Even though my husband and I have decided we aren't ready to take on the challenge of bedtime without diapers yet, our son doesn't feel the same way.

I thought it was strange that the sitter didn't put a diaper on him that night last week. When actually he had taken it off himself during all of his little shenanigans. And for the past few nights, he's decided that he's going to get up at some point and let us know that he wants it off. Last night he just took it off himself at 3am and then came in to tell us that he took it off.

You might think this is a great step forward toward getting rid of it all together. But we don't.

At 3am we really don't want to hear about the diaper. We just want it to be on his ass and we want said ass to be in his bed.

And we certainly do not want to be up at night taking him to the potty or changing sheets.

Now tonight I was back to offering him a present - to which he requested a car - if he slept in bed all night, and didn't take off his diaper.

I'm off to go find all those cars he's collected and strewn about the house. I need to wrap a few of them up for a morning "surprise".

What? He's just going to complain about them anyway.

If he's going to find a work-around, then I will too.

Rocky Mountain High

It's time for a much overdo post about our trip out to Colorado a couple weeks ago. Too bad you can't read minds, because this has actually been written for about that length of time, I just never got it to my fingertips.

Around this time last year, all of our friends and kids of friends seemed to go on a trip for what this area calls their "ski week". The week of President's Day has become a sort of holiday week for the bay area. I guess they figured so many kids were out of school because they were up in the mountains skiing that they'd just build it into our district schedule. Officially it's called "Mid Winter Break" but word on the street is "ski week". So, since last year everyone had up and left for snow, or sun, I decided we wouldn't be left behind this year. And alas, the time came and we up and went to Denver to visit my sister and her husband and kids.

It was well worth the advance planning.

First and foremost, it needs to be noted that my little family of five is now plane-worthy. Our last airplane trip together was last summer, and it was notably a bit easier at that time. This time was like a little slice of heaven. My husband and I found ourselves looking at each other and shrugging quite a bit. The now-what-do-we-do-to-keep-ourselves-entertained shrug. You see, neither of us had planned on having "free time" on the plane. Which, for any adults travelling without young kids, is all you have when you fly. But for us, family flying has always been filled with how-do-we-keep-the-little-one-entertained moments.

I'm proud to say we've passed a bit of a threshold in our family. It held true on both flights. All the kids were entertained and my husband and I were digging through the seat back pockets and reading the airline magazine and catalogue. We obviously weren't prepared for this phenomenon. The details are such that we barely even noticed our 8 year old was along for the ride, she was so self sufficient with her own bag of goodies. I think her favorite part was plugging in her headphones to the airplane stereo and watching Cake Boss on the airplane TV. Now you know you've passed some sort of barrier when your oldest likes to watch the same shows as you. And our younger daughter was happy with her puzzle books or the DVD player.

And then there was our son. The one we banked on to take up all our time.

Not so. He was fabulous. In fact, on the way home he was perfectly happy to sit and watch Dora on my phone for almost an hour stretch at one point. He occasionally wanted to get up and walk around a bit, so we happily obliged him. And other than that, he was content playing with his cars or watching a show in his seat.

Hence the magazine time for mom and dad. It was a thing of beauty.

Now, on to the real beauty. The Rocky Mountains. We didn't know it at the time, but we hit perfect weather. It snowed the whole time we were there.

Some people might think perfect weather is clear and sunny skies. But we Californians get that quite a bit. What my kids wanted to see, and me too for that matter, was the white stuff. The 'stuff' that always amazes me how much room it can take up and how beautiful it can make things look. And all it is is frozen water.

After our meet and greet in Denver with my sister and family, we all packed up the cars and went to the mountains for 3 nights. We had a great place to stay, thanks to my husband's friend, with a sledding hill behind the house and the ski mountain a 20 minute drive away. And the shopping outlets only 5 minutes away, which truth be told, my sister and I hit on our last morning there.

My girls went through a roller coaster of emotions with regards to the actual skiing. Want to, don't want to, hot, cold, had a blast, too tired. You name it, they spewed forth it all. But in the end, we all had an incredible time.

My husband and I got the girls out there for two days of skiing. We decided this year that we'd go with them ourselves and see if their skills could further along a bit faster than a group lesson, where they spend a lot of time waiting in line. We had a lot of fun spending real quality time with each of them.

We heard the squeal with excitement as they started to go faster. We listened and attended to their concerns. We got them over some humps of anxiety.

And our legs will never be the same.

Their reward during the day was frequent stops in the lodge for candy. And our reward at night was a hot tub with a cold beer.

We also frequently explored the hill behind the house with tubing and sledding, chasing each other down the hill. And we built a little snow man. And to boot, I didn't have to coordinate dinner. I was just the helper. Thank you sis.

It's fun to just be a kid for a while.

After our exhausted broods went to sleep, the four of us adults hung out chatting and playing cards. Truth be told, if the TV wasn't in the room that two kids were sleeping in, we would have been vegging out in front of the Olympics. But instead, we had the pleasure of enjoying each other's company. Another unexpected surprise.

The trip had a lot of favorite moments.

Watching my kids catch snowflakes on their tongues.

Hearing "that was awesome!" after getting off a chairlift with my daughter.

Watching my kids have a blast playing with their cousins.

Enjoying the scenic beauty of the Rockies right out our window.

Getting 22 points in one hand of cribbage. If you have to ask, assume it's good.

Hearing "that was awesome!" after my younger daughter went down the hill on her own tube.

Getting in a little shopping with my sister.

Watching the beauty of snow falling. Something I haven't seen a lot in the last 7 years.

All in all, I'd have to agree with my daughters' sentiments.

That was awesome.