06.12.09
by

One day at a time

Friday: Mom’s day off for the IHM Conference. Hooray!

This week has been baseball, baseball and will-we-or-won’t-we-baseball due to the weather. Game tonight. Maybe a game tomorrow. Then, done. I love baseball, until the last week, and then I hate baseball. I will love baseball again next week when my boys aren’t playing it.

I have also been sorting books and putting together my shopping list for the conference. If you’re friends with me on Goodreads, you may have noticed sudden activity as I have finally decided to inventory my books – well, the school books. We probably have 400 or 500 children’s books that are not for school. Only perhaps 50 would be worth inventorying, if I thought they could last longer than a few years (I have owned at least four different copies of Goodnight, Moon because the book gets read and chewed and abused…out of love, I’m sure).

So, it’s been a busy week. And over it all is this black cloud of impending deployment. Bill and I went out to dinner last night and discussed the various options of getting him where he needed to be and when, which involved him leaving one or two days earlier than planned. After a few minutes, there was a pause and we both agreed we needed to change the subject.

What’s funny is that I have been reading The Temperament God Gave You (thanks, Becky), which says that a choleric (that’s me) does not like to express his deepest, innermost feelings. Spot on. Most of the time, I am pretty even-keeled and my deepest, innermost feelings are relatively benign. Right now, my deepest, innermost feelings are not benign, and it’s a definite struggle to repress them. Repression is good, and don’t let any psychologist tell you otherwise. I mean, what is there to say? The love of my life, my rock, my best friend, my sounding board, my sanity, is leaving me. It’s not hard to imagine how I feel, so why express it?

But today is the IHM Conference, and I am focusing on the positive. Today will be a good day.

06.10.09
by

End of the school year survey

What is your favorite subject and why?

Fritz: History because all you have to do is read.

Jenny: Math sticker book

Katie: Art – you get to make stuff.

Billy: History because you get to read all these great stories about the people who started our country.

Fritz: Oh, that too.

What is your least favorite subject and why?

Jenny: I don’t know.

Katie: Math – it’s hard.

Billy: Math – it’s hard.

Fritz: Math – it’s hard.

What is Mom’s favorite subject?

Peter: Running on the treadmill.

Jenny: I don’t know.

Katie: Math.

Billy: Math.

Fritz: History.

Mom: Poetry (but I love history and math, too).

What is Mom’s least favorite subject?

Jenny: disobedient children.

Katie: Religion.

Billy: I don’t know.

Fritz: None of them.

Mom: Latin – it’s hard.

06.05.09
by

miscommunication

You know you are under stress when you and your husband get snippy when discussing plans for picking him up from the airport after the deployment for which he has not even yet departed.

When he comes home he will report to the station which cleared him for deployment. From there, he will fly home. He just learned yesterday that his time at that station could be nine hours…or nine days. A military family’s motto is Semper Gumbi!

When he called last night, instead of saying that, he said something about calling me from the airport to tell me he’s ready to be picked up. Or maybe he said he’d call me and tell me that he was getting on a plane and would arrive in a few hours. But all I really heard was “airport” and “home” and “zero warning” (my personal translation).

Now, first of all, I am still upset about his last surprise return. I do not ever want a repeat of that. Not funny. Plus, I imagine him returning to a less than clean home and my hair is in curlers and I’ve got avocado on my face and I’m watching a chick flick that is making me cry so my eyes are puffy and red and my head hurts.

Secondly, I have my own vision of what his return will be like. I am already planning it, even though he hasn’t left yet. It’s a comforting daydream. It involves bathed children dressed in nice clothes. It has me looking gorgeous with hair I actually blowed dry and I have make up on and I’m wearing that attractive black suit that has hung unneeded in the back of my closet all these months. It has a nice meal waiting for us (at home or a restaurant, I haven’t worked out those details yet). No curlers or avocado or chick flicks in sight. The house is clean.

But instead of saying all that, I said something about “what if we have plans” and “what if I’m not home when you call” and stuff like that.

And he hears: “Previously arranged playdates and other appointments are more important than you.”

Which is not at all what I meant. And he knows it.

After a few deep breaths, we started over. He explained the uncertainty of the length of his redeployment, and I assured him of his preeminence in my life and my understanding of the flexibility that was required of us.

(sigh)

We will get through this. But first we have to get through this month, which will be harder than the deployment itself, I think.

06.04.09
by

Faking It

I had to go to the public school yesterday. Another time I’ll blog about the details of why and the “horrors” of the whole experience, but for now, I just want to comfort every parent who has ever spotted a “perfect” family and felt inferior: maybe it’s all a farce.

Knowing that I had to make this little trip with all six kids in tow, I made sure that everybody was dressed decently: not Sunday best, but nothing was dirty, stained, ripped or mismatched (and that is quite a feat for an early Wednesday morning).

I brushed the girls’ hair (a really big deal).

I had my three oldest get the books they were reading for history. I had my three youngest select picture books of choice. Naturally, one child had to pick a coloring book and then wanted to lug the big bucket of pens, pencils, and crayons along. I told her to select 5 crayons; she picked 5 colored pencils. Whatever.

I sat the girls down and talked to them, and then a bit later called the boys to attention (they love drill and ceremony and know I’m serious when I call them to attention and deliver “marching orders”). I explained that public schools do not tolerate barbarians. I laid out my expectations in the sternest terms: speak only when spoken to, no yelling, no running, no arguing (with each other or me).

I told them they were to sit quietly and read their books the entire time we were there. This generated arguing on the part of one child (unnamed) who felt that this was tyrannical. (S)he felt that reading for a bit and then doing some other activity should suffice and that (s)he was perfectly capable of good behavior without a specific task to keep her/him occupied. This is the exact reason I explained my expectations clearly, in advance. Said child was sternly reminded of her/his call to obedience and told that this was absolutely not a situation where any flexibility regarding the terms of behavior would be granted.

And then we went, and they sat, and they read, and they spoke when spoken to and not otherwise, and they were, in all ways, perfect. Model children. Beautiful.

Even the baby was perfect: she kept walking out the office to stand in the hall and had to be brought back in; she had a temper tantrum in the conference room because she was bored and upset that she had to stay with me and not her siblings; and she emptied my purse and got really, and loudly, mad when I took all the coins away from her. This is perfect because she behaved just exactly right for her age which proved that my children were normal and not robots or extraordinarily passive-submissive types.

I was beyond proud of my kids.

And then, immediately upon leaving the building, they started fussing with each other, jostling over who would get in the car first, whining about being hungry and thirsty, complaining about my proposed snack upon our return home, arguing over the need to do schoolwork after snack, and crying because somebody in the back row kicked the seat in their row and it “hurt.”

Grace period: over.

So, the next time you see immaculately dressed children sitting perfectly still and behaving in such an exemplary manner that you are tempted to judge yourself an inadequate parent, consider the possibility that it is all a show. And although I can’t speak for the Smiths or the Joneses, I will say that if the last name is Reitemeyer, we’re just faking it.

06.03.09
by

Why I need a new camera

Mary broke the automatic lens cover on the camera. It is now completely off, so the camera is usable, but the lens is unprotected.

Somebody managed to take some interesting shots with the broken cover.
A slice of baby.
A self-portrait, I believe (Katie).
Let’s call it: I’M WATCHING YOU.
Blinders? But in a good way, of course.

06.01.09
by

It’s okay, the baby wasn’t letting me sleep anyway

I have learned that there is something more obnoxious on a Monday morning than my husband’s alarm going off at 5 am to get him up for work.

It is my husband’s alarm going off at 5 am to get him up for work when he’s not here to turn it off.

On the plus side, I didn’t have to listen to snoozed alarms for a half hour (he’s down to one clock with 2 alarms, but it takes longer to get up).

Side note: he’s only gone for a few days, for now.