When I don’t blog for a long time, I’m usually having a great time and too busy to post or I’m having a rough time and I just can’t bring myself to write about it. This past week’s been a little of both.
I had fun running our Elementary School Fundraiser all last week, in the school 4 of the 5 days last week and then had family in town over the weekend.
Then the past few days I’ve been having a rough time. I’ve written about it [over at parenting.]
Does your house smell fresh as a Daisy? Do you have a little boy living there? You can hear about mine over at Parenting.com.
Laylee’s a recovering perfectionist. She works at not needing everything to be perfect but feels a moral imperitive that some things must be.
And although she’s very imaginative, she’s also quite a realist for a 6-year-old. Imaginary play is one thing but she knows what’s real and what’s not. She’s happy to tell you if you’ve got a minute or 30.
For the longest time when you asked for her favorite color, she’d say “pink” but then she started feeling bad about all the other great colors she was leaving out so she’d just sort of rotate through them when asked. “Hmmm… My favorite color today is pink… and yellow… and orange.”
Then she got sick of the whole favorite color construct. Who really actually has a favorite color anyway and isn’t the choice sort of arbitrary and riddled with indecision? Laylee’s solved these problems by creating what she calls a Favorite Color Chart.
She picked buttons that include all of her favorite colors and rotates through it every day. “Now I don’t have to choose what my favorite color is every day. I just look at the chart. Sooo… my favorite color the first day of the chart was yellow. That means today it’s purple. See? Easy.”
Now I’ve always thought I was pretty advanced in my organizational geekishness, carrying a Franklin Planner from the time I was 16. Laylee’s gonna need a pocket PC by next year sometime.
This weekend Laylee and Magoo were playing with the hose in the back yard. They called it swimming because a largish sort of plastic dish was near them and water was being employed but basically they were just having fun soaking things and each other while standing on dry land.
At one point Laylee had control of the hose for about 5 minutes. She was standing a few feet from Magoo and whipping him in the face with the water stream repeatedly. I listened and periodically watched from the kitchen window. THWACK! AAAHHH LAYLEE STOP! THWACK! NOOOOO LAYLEE! THWACK! LAYLEEEEE NOOOOOOO!!!
Magoo stood there facing her, taking the beating again and again. He wasn’t so much yelling at Laylee as he was yelling her name at me, willing me to come out, throttle her and save him. I kept thinking, “Back up a couple of feet. Remove yourself from danger. You’re four now. Stand up and be a man.” But their repetitive little game of Torture and Victim continued until eventually I popped my head out the porch door.
She looked up guiltily as she saw my face, lowering the hose to waist level.
“Laylee. Do you think you could be kind to your brother?”
“Okay,” she said sweetly.
Magoo smiled as the water ran down his face for hopefully the last time. “Laylee, could you please fill my bucket up with water?”
“Sure Buddy,” she chirped, lowering the hose into his bucket and crouching down to smile at him.
Magoo only glanced at me for a split second with a toothy grin and raised eyebrows before standing and using his upward force to splurch Laylee in the face mercilessly with the bucket water.
As I closed the door I could hear her siren of misery being raised to the sky as she stood, mouth agape and eyes squeezed shut, the water cascading down her face and dripping from her hair.
Let the summer fun begin.
The kids didn’t die on the Titanic but you couldn’t tell that to look at them on Sunday during church. Both of them fell asleep during the first hour of the meeting. Magoo was sitting bolt upright between my parents in his little bowtie, snoring with abandon.
Laylee had flung her body face-down across my lap with the statement, “It doesn’t hurt me when you rub my back.” I took that as an invitation and began rubbing back and forth in what was apparently a 
sleep-inducing rhythm because when the meeting was almost over, I pulled her upright and she flopped over coma-like into Grammy’s arms.
It’s been months since Magoo last fell asleep in church and years for Laylee. My parents joked that they must be the most boring grandparents on earth to cause both kids to conk out like that. I think it had more to do with over-stimulation, days of constant attention, gifts and activity and late nights spent staying up until it was dark enough for Papa’s glowing spinning psychedelic plastic flashlights to have maximum mind-bending effect.
I was practicing doing Laylee’s hair for her ballet recital and Magoo was wearing a bowtie in anticipation of his aunt’s upcoming wedding. They both kind of look like they passed out after the mini-prom. At any rate I was grateful for a camera with a silent shutter. Wouldn’t want to disturb their slumber… or you know… annoy the other church goers who were still able to pay attention over the sound of Magoo’s snores.
I’m planning a low-stress summer of fun and joy for me and the kids. Come over to Parenting and share your ideas.
