Huh?

“What did you say?”  She said it again.  I picked up my jaw off the floor and flashed back to the first time I said a …um…chosen word in my mom's presence.  Before I continue, you’ve got to understand that my mom was “old school,”  in fact, she’d be 84 on her next birthday.  Hers was the generation where you didn’t sit down and do mini-psychotherapy to find out why your 6-year-old just cussed like a sailor.  You simply spanked her little bottom, and she never said the word again – even if she didn’t know why saying the word was wrong in the first place.  Which is what happened with me.  But I knew I wanted to do things differently with GG.

“Who have you heard say that word?”  Heaven knows that Jamie and I aren’t halo-heads or anything, but strong language is something that just doesn’t happen around our house.  In fact, I was 30 years old before I ever heard my own dad swear.   Anyway, back to GG the Sailor.  “I heard it from my Surf’s Up movie.”  Great.  Not only did I take her to see that movie, but bought her the DVD too…So we had yet another “talk.”   We talked about how she may hear people saying words like that, but it doesn’t mean that she should use them; how she’s got so many words in her vocabulary that she doesn’t have to come up with dirty words to explain herself; how saying dirty words can get her in trouble at school or even cause her to lose friends.  And whole bunch of other stuff that took about 10 minutes to go through, as well as a “time out” and an apology to me.

Really…didn’t I just have “the talk” about alcohol with her the other day?  Great…and now we’ve moved onto swearing.  Guess I better buy a book about the “Birds & the Bees”…that’ll probably be the topic of tomorrow’s “talk” at the rate we’re going.

Anybody have suggestions for some "cover the gray" hair coloring?

I think I'm gonna need it.

“Now….are you crying because it’s that time of the month, or uh…..”  That was my Beloved's response to me crying over a working-mother dilemma I was facing. 

Bottom line is this: there was a last-minute work thing that got scheduled smack-dab in the middle of GG’s first big-kid speaking role at school.  “She’ll be fine.  You know she’s got it memorized, she’ll do great.  I’ll be there.  I’ll videotape it."  That was my husband's very logical reasoning. Jamie’s not clueless – far from it.  My job’s been cranking up lately and he’s really been Dad AND Mom lately, so I should have been thankful.  But instead, I was ripped up in shreds.  So no – the tears weren’t because of “that time of the month,” these were bona fide Working-Mom Tears.  He looked at me helplessly as I forced out an "Okay."  Realizing his logical logic was useless to his teary wife, he said “You need to talk to Amy about this.”  He meant BFF Amy.  We’ve been friends since we were five and he knew she’d talk some sense into me.

But he forgot BFF Amy is also a mom…with THREE kids.  BFF Amy and I talked about it…and like a Mom, she advised…”Yeah, that’s hard… she’ll have other stuff, but she’s only going to have her first time doing something like this once...and you can't get that back.”  Later, I talked to BFF Becky – she’s my sister-in-law and GG’s Godmother.  Back when her 20-something-year-old was GG’s age, she was a working mom too.  After a lot of tears on my part and lots of hugs on BFF Becky’s part, she offered “Maybe you just have to stand up and tell ‘em that your daughter comes first.”  But at the same time, she also understood the work obligation “But if you have to be at work, you tell me – and I’ll be there.  I know it won't be like you being there, but I’m her Godmother. That’s what I’m here for, honey.”  Makes me tear up now just writing about it.

Anyway, that’s what I love about my Mom-BFFs…they get it.  They put up with every conversation being about the crisis at hand, even if it means having a week-long conversation about the same thing.  They get the push-pull of working and mothering, and they’ve got the common sense to say when it’s time to push back.  They put up with Working-Mom Tears….and they never, EVER ask if the tears are there because it’s “that time of the month.”

Thanks to the Journal Sentinel series Wasted in Wisconsin, I think a lot of necessary attention is being turned to drunk driving.

I’m highly aware of alcohol issues because I work for IMPACT.  We assess convicted drunk drivers to determine if they have major alcohol problems; and if they do, we connect them with treatment.  If they don’t – which surprisingly, is about 50% of the people convicted of DUI – we connect them to education with the hopes of preventing future offenses.  We do similar assessments and referrals that are free for people who think they might have a problem, or know someone who has a problem with drinking or drugs.  We also run a substance abuse prevention program for elementary through high school kids.

All that to say, that in the nine years I've been working for IMPACT, my awareness about drinking has grown by leaps and bounds; and it really should have, since I write grant requests for a lot of what we do.

Leave it to GG to show me how little I know: 60 Minutes aired a story about a movement to bring the drinking age BACK DOWN TO 18.  Hmmmm.  They highlighted the sad story of a college student who, along with his fraternity brothers were binge drinking.  He passed out and his friends couldn’t wake him up, so they moved him to the library steps where he was found unresponsive.  He was never revived.  It was heartbreaking -- and it is heartbreaking, because stories like this are all too common.

I didn’t know that GG was paying any attention because all the while she was drawing on her doodle board; but a few minutes into the story, she showed me a picture that she had drawn about the student, saying that he shouldn’t have had “all those cups of beer.”  I knew this was a “teachable moment,” but I wasn’t sure what to say.  I mean, really, her dad and I have a beer or glass or wine here and there, so I didn’t tell her that drinking is altogether wrong; instead we talked about choices…and how having too much of anything is never healthy or safe.  Then I told her to think about the choices that the student and his friends should have made, and to draw a picture about those choices.  She didn’t let me down: one scene was of the boy smiling with his friends because they called 9-1-1 to help him, and another scene was about him at the party having fun because he didn't drink “too many cups of beer.”

TALK BACK:  Do you talk to your kids about alcohol and/or drugs?  What are some of the things that you tell them?  Do you think the drinking age should be rolled back to 18?

I was never a whiz at math.  I mean, really – I once asked our algebra teacher why we had to solve an equation if we already knew that 6x = 18.  My poor mom – she put in countless hours trying to tutor me on the FOIL method alone.  By the time I’d finally get a concept, our class was moving on to a new unit and then she’d have to start the whole process all over again.  One time my rock-headedness tried her patience to the point that she ended up in tears.

GG’s different, though.  This kid’s been a whiz at everything she’s put her hand to in her short six years on this earth.  Reading?  No problem.  Writing & Art?  I’ve got a ton of her love notes and masterpieces on my nightstand.  Socially, she’s the most well-adjusted kid that I’ve seen.  In fact, I was the one crying on her first day of daycare – not her.

GG started ice skating lessons at the Pettit Center two weeks ago, and I figured that she’d take to it like everything else she’s done.  Not so much.  Her knees seemed to be glued together, and her feet barely left the ice.  My darling, outgoing, smart and graceful baby looked like a big pink penguin.  And I could tell it was bugging her too as she watched some of the other kids whiz past. 

As we watched during her first lesson, GG's usual smile had been exchanged for a look of pure grit and determination.  My motherly instinct wanted to scoop her up and tell her that she didn’t have to do it anymore, but it dawned on me:  this is the first thing that she’s had to work for; and it’s good for her.  She and I skated after class, and I was giving her what I think were helpful hints.  She began to make progress and was slowly morphing from a penguin into a little skater; and you could see the look of pride on her face when things started to “click.”

This whole experience is good for both of us – GG’s learning that some things will take hard work, and that there's personal satisfaction in achievement after you work hard for something.  I’m learning that I can’t just swoop in and always make it “all better” for her; and I know that down the road, sometimes, she’ll even have to make her own mistakes.

But I’ll always be there right alongside ready to help when the time is right…..as long as it doesn’t involve math.

Good comedy's all about timing; and if you were at Red Arrow Park's Slice of Ice this past Friday around 2:00ish, you probably got some great comedy from the adults there skating badly.  VERY badly.

Like this one woman  -- she oozed cockiness as she came out of the skate rental place with her daughter (who was obviously a little pensive about skating in the first place) and her husband -- who was there with the camera ready for the photo ops.  Nose in the air, she told her little one, "Let Mommy warm up first, and then we'll skate together" and took off.  Only she didn't.  She wobbled like a newborn calf and joked "Wow, this ice is really slippery!" with the Sideline Moms who couldn't help but look at the spectacle.  They only looked at her like the fool she was.  I'll give the woman credit though, she kept her brave face while stumbling awkwardly and began to glide....glide out of control, that is.  That's when she came crashing down with a BANG-ker-Slide (about 4 feet, if anyone was measuring) on the ice.  The beaten-down woman looked at the Sideline Moms and mumbled something like "What the heck happened?" and the moms just tried to politely ignore her as best they could.  I swear, the ruckus this clumsy woman created even caused her husband and child to back away (far, far away) from this crazy-newborn-calf-nonskating person they came to the park with.

That would have been hilarious...if it hadn't been me.

Once upon a time, I had been a very graceful skater.  I regularly skated at Mayfair Mall's ice skating rink, zipping round and round for hours on end.  And even last year -- and the year before that -- even the year before that, I had been good!  DARN good!  But for some reason this past Friday, I remember stepping out onto the ice and knowing that something didn't feel quite right.  I figured that the unusal slippery-ness was just me getting older (heck, I'm gonna be forty this year), but it wasn't anything I couldn't overcome, hence the trivial commentary with the Sideline Moms.  Then the initial fall happened.  Stubbornly refusing to believe that getting older could turn me into a wreck on the rink, I got up.  Big Mistake:  That's when the final SPA-LATT happened.  I was ready to throw in the towel or at least use one for my backside that was by that time covered in slushy ice.  Even Jamie and GG had backed away and started looking at me like I was from the Twilight Zone or something.  Then thankfully...finally, some wonderful man whose name I shall never know, but to whom I'll always be grateful said "Hey!  You've got your blade guards on!"

My pride hopes that your timing was off on Friday so you would have missed the five minute disaster that was me that day.  But if it was on and you caught my impromptu slip-sliding-away show, I hope you got a chuckle out of it.

This time of year known as the Holiday Season to everyone else is known as Year End to those of us in the non-profit world.  Now's when we make our last push to get those extra donations in to meet our budgets and fundraising goals, so we send out letters, double-check with funders that we've approached about pending grants, and start preparing for the annual audit.  In a word, it's just been busy, and I've definitely been on that crazy treadmill too.  And lately, the running theme in my mind has been "All I want for Christmas is my sense of humor back...or at least my sense of fun back" because I find it really hard to disconnect from the busyness of work and reconnect with the not only the true meaning of Christmas, but also the funny, silly things that GG does.

Anyway, today started the first day of an entire week off.  I spent the morning -- probably like a gazillion other people -- trying to get the last minute things done that I should've have done weeks ago, and of course GG was with me -- partially so she could see Santa, and mostly so we could reconnect.  GG calls it a "Mom and GG Day."  We got up early, headed to the mall in the blowing snow and made it there before the crowds hit.  She picked out a present for her uncle, and then we headed off to see Santa.  I love Mayfair's Santa because he looks like the genuine article.  Each year, he says "My you've grown"  and that always makes me feel like "maybe, just maybe he does exist."  But today was the capper of all cappers -- he says "Well, you're on the good list.....BUT you've got to work on your listening.  Especially when you're shopping with your mom."  That was the very thing we've been talking about over the last few days!  How did he know?!

Call me naive, but all of the sudden, I was 7 years old again, wondering along with GG how he could've possibly known that she's got "listening issues."  I couldn't have asked for a better present than that.  And GG had renewed motivation to work on her listening.

Think I'm officially off the treadmill now.  Merry Christmas everyone.

4 days until D-Day – or shall I say the B-Day (although, technically, GG’s birthday is indeed D-Day/Pearl Harbor).  Anyway, she’s turning 6 on Sunday, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.  I don’t know if has to do with hormonal stuff that women go through when they reach a certain age, or just the fact that (sniff, sniff): my baby’s not a baby anymore.

I’ve realized this melancholy/nostalgic/introspective thing happens to me every year about seven days before her birthday.  GG, on the other hand, seems to exert her independence/will/individuality – sometimes exhibited by uncharacteristic (and it pains me to say it) brattiness seven days before her special day. 

And so I end up on this weird emotional seesaw where I’m on her (it seems like constantly) for doing things she wouldn’t normally do (e.g. sassing one of her favorite aunts) and wondering where I went wrong and realizing how woefully unprepared I was for this parenting gig in the first place.  Then the seesaw goes up (or down depending on the day) and I see how she’s got her own little circle of friends at school.  Or I call home from work to see how her day went and she tells me that she’s “a little busy right now.”  Or she comes up with ideas about helping “people who are poor” and “people who are sad.” 

All of it gets me misty because I realize that GG really is a big kid now….and maybe, just maybe – in between all the ups and downs - some of what we’re trying to impart is getting through.

Guess I’m looking forward to D-Day/B-Day after all, even though I’ll see it through the misty eyes of a woefully unprepared mom.

Happy Birthday, GG.  Mom and Dad love you more than anything.

GG two months after THE Birth Day

GG at last year's birthday party.

Sniff. Sniff.

My BFF Amy emailed me the following message:

So Holly comes to my bedside this morning, wakes me up, and asks me why the tooth fairy didn't come last night. There goes my Mother Of The Year award....geez.

She's got three kids, ages 10, 9 and 7, so Amy gets a pass.  The Tooth Fairy's visited our house four times already; and we only have one child; so I can see where things might get a little tricky with three.....and expensive.  When GG lost her first tooth, I had no idea how much the Tooth Fairy should leave, but I thought 2 shiny new quarters would be cool.  Then I found out that the Tooth Fairy was being cheap, so we started leaving a dollar per tooth after that.

Which brings me back to my forgetful BFF Amy.  Read on...

So I remember the tooth the next night after Holly told me she didn't come. Feeling a bit guilty, I put $3 under her pillow thinking she'd be so wowed. Her reply was "Why did Molly get $10 for her tooth a few weeks ago?"

TEN DOLLARS? Is that the standard going rate for baby teeth these days?  Heck, we've been hoping that GG will save every Tooth Fairy dollar to help pay for braces when her permanent teeth come in.  And now I'm really confused:  On Monday, we found Charley's tiny little canine tooth on the carpet.  Apparently, puppies lose their baby teeth too; and it is rare for an owner to find them.  Lucky us.  I just wonder what the Tooth Fairy is supposed to do for puppies.

So fill Amy and me in -- how much does the Tooth Fairy leave your little one?  How much money is too much?  What did the Tooth Fairy leave for you when you were a kid?