Wednesday, September 21, 2011

You are soooo last season . . .

Ahh, music to any mother’s ears.  The Superego (my 4th grader) informed me today that we needed to go to Tom’s for shoes and Abercrombie for clothes, because all the kids have those.  At what point should I tell my 4th grader that not only am I last season, I’m still wearing items from 1996 (a fact that my sister loves to point out, and that I am strangely comfortable with).  Or, I could tell my child that Abercrombie was cool when I was in high school.  Will that keep her from asking for expensive items?  Between that and her request for a “gmail account”, I’m realizing just how fleeting these “little kid” moments are.
And speaking of . . . she received her first call from a boy today and I thought I was going to throw up.  Now, this boy was calling her for homework help and I really like his mom, and he’s a great kid; but the thought of a boy calling my child actually made me get butterflies.  How in the world am I going to deal with these girls dating?!
In order to reassure myself that I still have some control, here’s what I learned when family fun involved emptying the dishwasher, making lunches and making dinner:
1)      It is possible to get your children to unload a dishwasher in 1 minute 44 seconds if there is a promise of 10 M & M’s on the line.  I challenged the children to see who could unload it fastest and whoever did would get 10 M & M’s.  Of course, this was a completely unfair challenge considering the Middle child had about 3 times the dishes to unload.  So, when they all finished (and were done rubbing each other’s noses in the fact that The Superego won, the baby came in second and the Ego came in third), I informed them that those were the “times to beat” and next time they would have to beat those times, but this time they all “won”.  I know full well this will last for only two dishwasher unloadings before they’re on to me, but I guess I’ll just have to keep upping the ante.  Maybe next time I’ll pull out the snow cones as reward!

2)      When you play “freeze dance lunches”, make sure you can anticipate the pose that your child might stop in.  Otherwise, you might end up with a child who says “I look like I’m pee’ing like a dog” when she freezes with her leg up in the air.  Honestly, I need to send these kids to Emily Post charm school or something.  What the hell did I do wrong?!  Oh, wait, I mean . . .


You can't tell, but they're "frozen".  I'm not sure what the baby is so pissed
about, but she's rockin' that face pretty good!  :-)

3)      When you agree to let your children have a “bar” to serve their drinks for dinner, you may find out just how much they are listening to you.  I’m not admitting anything, I’m just saying that one of them may say “would you like a bloody mary?  Where’s the Tabasco?”  Yep, daddy’s away on a business trip again, and I’m so glad the children know how to take such good care of me (and themselves, apparently). 

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