Lesson Eight: Not Everything Needs To Be A Message

We have spent an extremely lazy few days after the holidays. We have all slept in, stayed in our pajamas for way too long, read and watched endless movies.
The girls must have received at least a dozen  new movies for Christmas so they are perfectly content to sit and watch them for hours. I don't always join them (I can only watch so much teen angst), but did decide to sit down with them when they watched the Pixar movie "UP". I had seen the previews for this movie of course, but we had never seen it in the theatres and I sat down with the expectation that it would be a cute but brainless animated movie.

To my surprise, I found it to be a heartbreaking movie about a man who promises his wife adventure and through the course of their life, never gets to do that "big" adventure. As he looks back on his life, he feels like he failed by letting his opportunities pass him by.

Along comes a little boy scout into his life who needs to help the elderly to earn a patch. I thought this little boy was so sweet because they ended up teaching each other that it isn't necessarily the big adventures in life that count, sometimes it is the small adventures.

I am of course in tears by the end of the movie and ask my girls what they thought of it and what they thought the message was.  "What message?" is the reply I get.

What message?  Are you kidding me?  You know, the message about enjoying every minute and taking every opportunity to have adventures whether they are big or small?  How about the message about not taking for granted the moments that you get to be with your family or friends doing every day things?  Or maybe the message about learning from other people when you think you have nothing to learn from them?  Maybe something about doing things while you can before it's too late??

"Huh.  We didn't get any of that."

Sigh.  I guess there doesn't have to be a message in everything does there?

Lesson Eight:  Not everything needs to be a message

Lesson Seven: Individuality is Over-Rated

Our holidays were wonderful and the girls are very happy with all of their gifts.  They have worn all of their new clothes and tried out all of their new gadgets and games and taken time to read their new books and watch their new movies. 

Of course it isn't good enough to enjoy all of your new goods with just your sister, so at the first opportunity they asked if they could have a sleepover with friends.  My girls happen to be friends with two sisters who are the same age as my girls so the 4 of them are great friends.  They asked if the two friends could come to our house to spend the night and we said they could.

I shouldn't have been surprised when the friends arrived but I was.  There are my two girls with their highly coveted North Face Oso jackets, fuzzy boots and their new purple T-Mobile phones awaiting the arrival of their friends.  In walk the two friends wearing what exactly??  North Face Oso jackets, fuzzy boots and carrying their purple phones.  I had no idea that the things my girls were asking for were what everyone else was asking for!

As the friends walked in, I asked them all if it bothered them that they were all the same.  They each giggled and told me resolutely NO!  They were perfectly happy to all look the same.  I guess at this age, girls are much more concerned about being just like everyone else than they are about having some individuality.  I sincerely hope that the individuality comes later.

Lesson Seven:  Individuality is over-rated.

Lesson Six: The Best Traditions Have Room to Grow

I love traditions and this time of year is of course filled with family traditions.  When we had kids, my husband and I looked forward to creating our own traditions with our children.  What we didn't know is how important they would become to the girls.

Every year our holiday season begins on the day after Thanksgiving when I turn on my favorite Christmas CD's, break out paint and paint a holiday scene on our front windows.  This is something that came from my childhood as my dad did it every year.  I have done it every year since my kids were very little.  They both love this tradition and watch eagerly as the pictures come to life each year.  This year, the girls asked if they could paint windows as well.  I gave them their own paint, paintbrushes and some lines for perspective and told them they could have free reign on the back windows.  So this year, we have snowmen on the front windows that I painted, and wreaths and Santa hats on the back windows that the girls painted.

Because we have a hard time getting our entire extended family together on an actual holiday, we started having an open house for my extended family the week before Christmas.  I originally did it for convenience, but it has become tradition and we have been hosting this event for about 10 years now.  Because I have been doing it for so long, we have it down to a science.  We have it on the same day every year (the Sunday before Christmas), we have food catered from the same place each year (I gave up trying to do all of my own cooking), we invite the same people.  The girls look forward to it every year because it is the only time they get to see all of their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins at one time.

This year having been personally impacted by the economy and seeing more and more friends affected by the economy as well, we decided that we would make one small change to our open house and asked everyone to bring a food donation that we could take to our local food bank.  My family came through with flying colors.  There were bags and boxes and stacks of food on our doorstep by the end of the evening.

About halfway through the open house, my oldest daughter snuck out the door to meet up with some friends from the neighborhood and they came knocking on the front door and started singing Christmas carols.  There were about a half a dozen of them and their voices were sweet and pure in the night and my entire family came to the door to watch.  When they finished, they asked if they could take the food donations and add them to donations they had been collecting all week to take to the food bank.

How nice that something that was our tradition (the open house) had enough room to grow into something that will help others (the food donations) and could be enjoyed by so many (the caroling and the painting).

I look forward to expanding other traditions into something that we all enjoy and are proud of.

Lesson Six:  The best traditions have room to grow. 

Lesson Five: Take Quality Time Where You Can Get It

Of course the holidays are coming and everyone is busy, busy, busy.  We are no exception.  We have parties, and programs and get-togethers, wrapping and decorating and shopping to do.  So of course the worst possible thing that could happen is that we get sick.  Both my youngest daughter and I fell like a couple of logs when the flu came skulking around this week. 

She went down first on Monday night and I followed, falling hard on Tuesday.  We have spent the last 3 days alternatively hanging over a toilet, or laying immobile in bed.  This left my wonderful husband and my oldest daughter to not only take care of themselves, but take care of us and every other holiday emergency that couldn't wait.

My oldest daughter is abnormally afraid of throwing up.  I don't know why, but she cannot stand being near it and is deathly afraid of doing it herself.  This meant that she has stayed well away from her sister and I for the better part of 3 days, only coming in to see one of us if she first took a big breath and then held her breath the entire time.

The only good thing that came from this is that my oldest daughter got to spend 3 days with her dad.  They got to eat every meal together, watch TV, work on homework and projects and take care of their family.  Though my husband is very involved with the kids, it is rare that he gets this kind of opportunity to spend uninterupted time with the girls.  I think my daughter was secretly happy to have her dad all to herself for just a couple of days.

Me, on the other hand....I cannot say I enjoyed my time hanging over the toilet and there is no way that I would wish it on either one of my daughters.  However, when my husband had to go back to work yesterday and my oldest daughter went to school, it was just me and my little girl all alone.  We picked out the entire Harry Potter series of movies, lots of pillows and crackers and settled in.  We got to spend the entire day watching movies and comiserating about being sick.  We got through 5 movies and made the best of our day alone together. 

I realize that in a few years, our children aren't going to be nearly as enamored about spending time with their parents, so for now, I'll take it where I can get it.

Lesson Five:  Take quality time where you can get it.

Lesson Four: Courage is Not Defined by Age

My husband and I had the chance to go to the Guy Fieri Roadshow this weekend.  If you don't know who Guy Fieri is, he is the rock star, rebel chef of the Food Network.  He is a tattoo covered, spiky haired, rock and roll, beer guzzling, larger than life personality.  The audience that this show brought in was not your typical cooking show audience.  There were more tattoos and bling and dark sunglasses than I have seen in a long time.  They were loud and slightly crude but clearly appreciated what Guy Fieri was doing for cooking.

As part of the show, Guy asked for volunteers to come up and sing.  He wasn't providing music, he just wanted some volunteers who could come up and sing accapella.  There were about 5 adults in varying stages of inebriation who volunteered and then there was a 12 year old girl.  They all got up there and sang, some well, some not so well and do you know who won?  The 12 year old.  Not because she was 12 but because she was good.  Not only was she good, but she totally held her own with a personality powerhouse.  Can you imagine the courage it takes to get up on stage when you are 12 years old in front of a beer-swilling, tattoo covered audience of adults?  She is braver than I would have been.

I always think that kids are braver than we give them credit for.  My kids were 10 and 11 when I was diagnosed with cancer and I thought the bravest thing I had ever seen was having my daughters watch me have my head shaved in preparation for chemo.  They were understanding and brave and I could not have been prouder of their reactions.  They were in fact much braver than I was.  I was terrified, but they handled it with grace and courage.

Lesson Four:  Courage is Not Defined by Age.

Lesson Three: Perfection is in the eye of the beholder

Raising two tween girls, I am abundantly aware that girls sometimes have body image issues.  I might be biased of course, but I think my girls are beautiful and perfect.  The bodies that they have are the ones they came by honestly through the DNA that we gave them. 

Both girls have had the occasional question about their bodies.  My younger daughter is small for her age just like I was when I was younger.  She is shorter than most of her friends but perfectly proportioned as far as weight goes.  She gets frustrated because people mistake her for someone who is younger than she is.  She yearns for height.  I tell her that I was short until high school and then I grew.  (I am now 5'6-a perfectly respectable height for a woman).  My entire family is short but my husband is tall so I anticipate some height for her at some point.

My older daughter is tall like her dad, but extremely thin like both her dad and I were when we were young.  She has thin little legs and tiny little arms.  She has never been higher than the 10th percentile in weight since she was born.  We tease her all the time that she should still be in a booster seat based on her weight.  When she gets sick and loses weight, we definitely worry about her because she doesn't have much in the way of reserves.  Other than those times though, she eats just fine, she is athletic and healthy but she's very thin.

Yesterday my husband took her to a doctor appointment.  This was a new doctor who we had not seen before as we are in the process of changing our health care providers.  This new doctor looked at my oldest daughter and asked my husband if she should be freaked out about how thin my daughter was.  My husband calmly told her that she has always been this thin and that this is normal for her.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to be at the appointment to tell this woman what I thought of her comment.  How dare she say something like "freak out" to my daughter indicating that there is something wrong with her appearance.  Does she not have any concept of how sensitive tween and teen girls are about their appearance?  This is a family practice doctor who presumably deals with children all the time.  She will not be dealing with my children anymore.  Today I will file a complaint about her words to my daughter.

Both my husband and I sat and talked with my daughter last night at home and told her in no uncertain terms that she is perfect just the way she is and that despite what this woman said to her, her body is nothing to "freak out" about.  She is absolutely perfect just the way she is....as is her sister. 

Lesson Three:  Perfection is in the eye of the beholder

Lesson Two: Parents Aren't Always As Dumb As They Look

I remember the days when I thought my parents were dumber than a box of rocks.  I thought they didn't know anything at all about being a kid and I'm well aware that the day would come when my daughters

would do the same.  Well, we're there.

Today is a crisp winter day and we started the morning at a chilly 27 degrees.  My daughters, who typically wear the standard tween uniform of skinny jeans, layered t-shirts and converse came down for breakfast in the exact same outfit that they would have worn had it been 67 degrees instead of 27. As they started to head out the door, I suggested to them that maybe they might want to wear a coat.

Enter the eye-rolling, big sigh and hands on hips attitude of an 11 and 12 year old.  "Why would we wear a coat, we'll never wear it, it will just end up in our locker anyway".  Note that both girls have very nice winter jackets that were plenty "cool" when they begged us for them last winter.

After much arguing and eye-rolling from all sides, the girls both left with a lightweight zip up sweatshirt.  They left in a huff, grumbling the entire time about how unfair it was and how I didn't know anything.

At last they were gone and I settled into a nice, quiet house, free from attitude.  By 9:15am (15 minutes after the start of school) I receive a phone call from my daughter.  "Mom, I'm really sorry about this morning".  Uh-huh, I can see already that there is more to this conversation than a bad case of guilt, but I thank her for the apology anyway reminding her that it is my job to make sure my children are safe and happy and healthy at all times.  Then I wait.  I know there is more, but am I going to help her out with this conversation?  Not a chance.

"I was wondering if you were doing anything right now."  Hmmm, getting closer to the real reason for the call...."I was wondering if you would bring me a sweatshirt because the classrooms are all really cold."

Well, what do you know?  Sometimes parents actually know what they are talking about!

Lesson Two:  Parents aren't always as dumb as they look.