Posted by Kimberly on December 21st, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
I know that there are different schools of thought on the subject, but I’m going to go on the record here and say that at our house, we are firmly Pro-Santa. I wouldn’t say that we’re all about the Claus–we are Catholic, after all–but the jolly old elf does play a significant role in our holiday celebrations.
In our house, for example, all presents come from Santa. I give each of The Ladies a new pair of jammies on Christmas Eve, but that’s it. Every single thing under the tree on Christmas morning–and other than those jammies and The Ladies’ gifts to each other, our tree remains bare until the 25th–is from Santa. Sometimes it sucks, like when your daughter’s most compelling argument for the existence of Santa Claus is the fact that her mother would never buy her all that stuff, but for the most part, I love the fact that magic is such a big part of our Christmas and I work hard to keep it that way.
As Diva Girl gets older I keep worrying that this will be it. As more and more of her friends join the ranks of unbelievers, I keep thinking that this will be the year when she’s no longer able to suspend her disbelief and embrace the wholly improbable idea that some fat guy in a red suit holes up in the tundra all year with a bunch of elves who magically create the exact same stuff you can buy at WalMart and then bends the laws of time and space to sneak into kids’ houses to leave it under the tree and sneak a few cookies along the way. It hasn’t happened yet, but I keep waiting.
She’s clinging pretty hard to those beliefs, though. So hard that sometimes, I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t start dropping some hints (and not just because it would be nice to get some credit for all that great stuff under the tree rather than dismissed as the person who gives her pajamas). Listening to her plan her show and tell last night was one of those time. Diva Girl, you see, plans to base her show and tell on “Why I Know There Is A Santa Claus.”
Her evidence, such as it is, is pretty compelling. The Squeaky Baby Santa returned to her after she lost it at the mall nearly a year before (not as easy as it sounds; that particular doll had been discontinued years before and it was only a fluke that I came across it in a thrift store a couple of weeks before Christmas.). The jingle bells Santa “forgot” when he stopped for a cookie break. The copy of The Polar Express Santa personally dedicated to her after she did such a good job taking care of the bells last time this happened (that Santa is a forgetful guy!), the magic Key Santa uses to get into our apartment. And of course, her letter from Santa (not one of the grinchy ones). It’s actually adorable to watch her assemble her arguments, and I feel no small amount of pride that I’ve been able to cast this magical spell for her, but I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea to allow her to go to school and start laying out her case to a bunch of cynical fourth graders.
So, what’s a mama to do? How do you join the message of “yes, there is a Santa Claus” with the idea of “maybe it’s not a good idea to talk about this with all your friends” without the jig being up? Do I let her go to school with all her paraphrenalia, ready to convince all those doubters in the existence of the Big Guy in Red, only to come home devastated that they teased her? Do I sit her down and have a chat about “The Spirit of Santa Claus”? How do I preserve the magic and her self-esteem in a situation where the two ideas seem to be mutually exclusive?
Update: Sometimes Diva Girl’s teachers actually come through. Hard as I tried, I could not dissuade her from her show and tell plan. Short of “Everyone will laugh at you and call you a baby,” there was no convincing her that this was a bad plan. So, I let her go, hoping that the other kids wouldn’t be too cruel, and that she wouldn’t come home too crushed. I know at least some of them still want to believe, so I was hoping they’d provide some support and cushion the blow.
None of that proved necessary, however. Diva Girl’s teacher handled this beautifully–exactly the way I would have, actually. Her approach was simple, no fuss, no muss, and avoided the mockery, the teasing, and the possibility of a full scale Santa war on the last day before Christmas vacation. What was her brilliant solution? She simply didn’t manage to find time today for show and tell. Diva Girl is of course bitter that she missed her chance in the spotlight, but I’m going with small price to pay.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 18th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Heathers
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Posted by Kimberly on December 17th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
You know, I’m not averse to the concept of a snow day;it can be an exciting experience–all of the joy of a day playing hooky with none of the nasty consequences of getting caught.
However….A snow day on the heels of a sleepunder that was preceded by a day of Birthday Hooky seems to be a bit much for a Mom to get excited about, if you ask me.
In the insult to injury category, if Diva Girl still walked to school, she’d be in her desk right now in her new, inappropriately sloganed shirt, eagerly absorbing knowledge rather than parked in front of the Olsen Twin’s Christmas classic “To Grandmother’s House We Go” in her swimsuit, decorating the Christmas tree box. This is all the school bus’ fault. Magic, my ass.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 16th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
We don’t traditionally celebrate Diva Girl’s birthday at this time of year–I mean, we do the family thing and the traditional pilgrimage to be ripped off by see Santa, but we don’t generally do the big birthday party extravaganza right now. After a couple of disasterous attempts I decided that between the snow and the holiday stress, Christmas birthday parties just aren’t a good idea and talked Diva Girl into the Unbirthday concept in which we hold off on her party until June. It’s a system that’s worked out pretty well the past couple of birthdays, but this year Diva Girl wanted to go back to having her birthday ON her birthday.
Specifically, she wanted a birthday sleepover. Now, I have to confess, one of the things I like most about the Unbirthday parties she’s had in the past is that they haven’t involved having a horde of little girls in my house for a seemingly unlimited length of time. The idea of forgoing the expense of a Popcorn Party or a trip to the water park in favour of inviting a group of girls to trash my livingroom didn’t really hold a lot of appeal for me, but it was important to her and i really do want to promote her friendships at this school (even if it means that I have to put up with a group of 9 year old girls dancing around to the High School Musical soundtrack at top volume in my livingroom as I’m trying to write a blog post), so I thought about what I could live with and then told her she could invite no more than three friends to sleepover this weekend. I figured three was a good, safe number because it would create an even, balanced group of girls and cut down on the possibility of the nasty sidetaking, exclusionary behaviour kids can degenerate into when you put them in a group of three. Plus, the idea of more than a group of four made my eye start to twitch.
Aside from a slight bobble during the as yet unblogged drama, Diva Girl has been eagerly anticipating her social debut. The Webkinz, Build A Bears, and Little Pet Shops have been lovingly arranged all week (super fun with a little sister just itching to play with the toys), the DVDs have been stacked at the ready, and the goody bags have been packed all week (Rubik’s Cube, Bead kit, Skittles Lipsmaker and homemade CD featuring the musical stylings of Hannah Montana). And I’ve been quietly dreading it. I didn’t like groups of nine year old girls when I was one, and nothing I’ve seen in the years since has convinced me that my original perceptions were too far off the mark. Plus, it’s a really long time since I’ve been a nine year old girl and I was stressed about what exactly I was going to do with them for roughly twenty-four hours. Add on to that the fact that, what with the school change I don’t actually know the girls she’d invited other than by name, and it was shaping up to be more of a stress over than a sleep over.
In the end, it was a sleepunder–of the two girls who accepted the invitation, one wasn’t allowed to sleepover, and the other one burst into tears wanting her mommy around 11 o’clock*. Which, if it had to happen, was probably the best time for it–far better than the 2 am phone call I could have been making. Plus, it saved me the hassle of the sleep deprivation and the ever escalating “go. to. sleep.!” threats. So, is it terrible that even though Diva Girl was devastated, I was actually relieved that we wouldn’t be running that particular part of the gauntlet?
It was also more successful than I could have hoped for. No, they didn’t want to play the Twister game I’d set up for them, and they never got around to the HSM marathon we’d planned, but they devoured the snacks, played nicely with the Zen Baby and included her in their games, amused themselves and over all required very little supervision or cruise directing over the eight hours or so they were here. In fact, aside from the fact that there were presents, it felt more like a really long (in a good way, not in the “I would gnaw off my own limb to escape this hell” kind of way) playdate than a party.
The best part was that I got to see Diva Girl in action with actual friends, and I found that I liked what I saw. They enjoyed each other’s company. They played. They compromised. There was no drama, no whining, no competition. Just three little girls running through the apartment enjoying each other’s company. Watching them over the course of the day–staying out of their way when I could and stepping in on the few occasions when they needed a adult to control the activity–was a treat rather than a torture for me. I liked them, I really liked them, and it makes me happy to think that maybe, just maybe, after all this time Diva Girl might finally have a wee group of genuine friends of her very own.
I’m even going to overlook that they both gave her Bratz dolls. After all, nobody’s perfect, but these are perfectly nice friends for my daughter even if their moms and I do have some fundamental differences in our idea of what makes an appropriate toy for our daughters.
*Hooray for creative parents! When A decided that she just couldn’t do the sleepover thing, it looked like it was all over. Sabrina was in tears because her party was ruined! There would be no fun to be had on Sunday! A was in tears because even though she hated disappointing Sabrina and she wanted to have fun on Sunday, she wanted her mommy even more. It could have ended very, very badly. Until A’s parents and I hit on the idea of the sleepover split. Dad came to pick A up at 11:30 so that she could sleep in her own bed, and then Mom drove her back over at 9 so that the girls could resume their fun. All they really missed was me yelling at them to shut up and go to sleep, and nobody really wanted that anyway, so it was a total win-win!
To top it off, A’s mom not only braved a blizzard and an unplowed parking lot this morning to make this happen, she also brought me Timmies. It’s official, Diva Girl is not allowed to have any other friends; I’m in love with these ones
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Posted by Kimberly on December 12th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, The Agony and The Entropy
There’s a post coming. A big one. I just have to decide f I’m going to make use of Wordpress’ nifty password protect feature or not before I publish it. And I can’t really think about that until I get the damn cupcakes ready for tomorrow.
Yep, it’s that time of year again when I dust off my mixing bowl (literally) and track down the muffin tins–the drawer thingy under the stove seems such an organic place, I can’t believe I didn’t think of looking there before I tore my entire kitchen apart–and preheat my oven.
Between tonight’s school Christmas concert, the sisyphean task of readying the house for Diva Girl’s birthday sleepover party, and the aforementioned but as yet unposted drama, I was less inclined than usual to do the ritual baking (and I think we all know that I’m never inclined to bake). But bake we did; as I write this 48 mini chocolate cupcakes all iced and decorated with not one but two Smarties a piece are sitting amid the debris on my kitchen counter just waiting for me to figure out exactly how they’re going to travel on the school bus without becoming one giant smooshy mess.
Much though I dread this annual event and grumble about it, it’s comforting I suppose, to have the rituals. Even the ritual complaining. Sometimes, when this motherhood thing leaves you feeling like you’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or maybe already in the soup, the rituals are all we have to cling to. Those moments of stability inside the swirling chaos.
I know that while I don’t remember every brutal moment of my own growing up, I do remember that I had cupcakes to take to school for every birthday. I’m hoping that when all is said and done, Diva Girl has that same experience. That along with the battles both big and small that we waged on the way to her adulthood, that in spite of the myriad ways I let her down over the years, that no matter how hard it got, that one of the things that stands out for her is that there were always cupcakes, even when I didn’t feel like baking them.
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Posted by Kimberly on November 24th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, NaBloPoMo
Diva Girl doesn’t do well with the concept of “ish.” She’s an all or nothing kind of kid–there are no shades of grey in her world. Specificity and routine are the keys to a happy Diva Girl, something that I know all too well and should have remembered today. I don’t know what I was thinking when I told her her friend’s mom would pick her up at noon for her sleepover today–especially considering that said mom is working on “newborn” time at the moment–but I suspect it had more to do with how I would fill all those glorious childfree hours than with the hours I would have to spend with said child leading up to the big event.
Needless to say, twelve o’clock came and the little timer in Sabrina’s head went “ding.” There was no reasoning with her using vagaries like “about” or “ish.” It was noon, and that meant that it was time for them to be here, period.
And thus began over two hours of utter hell. Not even Dante could have devised the pure torture that is Diva Girl, forced to wait for an unspecified amount of time. Imagine an unending game of “Are we there yet?” without the fun of an actual trip or any idea of exactly how long it’s going to be. This? Made that look fun.
My lack of patience with her impatience didn’t exactly help matters, either. I could have handled it so much better, been the supermom and done a craft or played a game or read a book to help pass the time. But I didn’t. I’d have been far better equipped to handle the grey period if I didn’t need this break as much as she did, but the truth is, I’ve been feeling pretty burnt out lately. I find myself being snappish when I don’t mean to be, and less fun than I want to be. It’s been a while since I had a chance to recharge my mom batteries, so instead of just rolling with it I was crabby, feeling the knots all down my spine pull a little tighter each time she asked when they would be here or if they were here yet. I wanted to miss her, I was looking forward to missing her, but the fact that she continued to just be there, chattering in my ear, whining and speculating about the delay, well, I wasn’t missing her.
Sitting here, seven hours after she finally got picked up, at least sixteen hours before I expect her home, I miss her. Funny how that goes, eh?
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Posted by Kimberly on November 19th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, NaBloPoMo
Let’s just say I’m feeling landismom’s pain tonight.
Diva Girl’s always been a wee bit prone to the dramatic side of life, but I swear, the terrible twos had nothing on the awful eights. A three hour, wide ranging tantrum that started with her math homework and ended with me physically carrying her up the ladder to her loft bed.
Or not.
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Posted by Kimberly on November 14th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple, No Pudding Until You Finish Your Meat, NaBloPoMo
There are few homework assignments that inspire as much excitement in kids as The Collage. After all, what’s not to love about ripping up magazines and then gluing the resulting scraps of paper to something? That’s not homework; around here, that’s a rainy Saturday afternoon! So it’s no wonder that Diva Girl bounced off the bus this afternoon, filled with enthusiasm for her project.
At first, it seemed like a pretty straightforward affair: Create a monochromatic collage. I was even charmed by the colour Diva Girl had chosen to work with: Orange. Sure, it probably wasn’t the most common or popular colour palette in the magazines lying around the house, but I was sure we’d come up with enough pictures to fill the 8.5X11 piece of cardboard she’d been given.
Then came the catch. There’s always a catch. The pictures in the collage needed to represent “natural sources and stuff.” So, given her colour scheme, Diva Girl was essentially planning an homage to orange juice. Possibly with a nod to the carrot, and maybe even the pumpkin, if I happened to have any fall magazines lying around. Not that she realized that, of course. Wrapped up in the excitement that comes from actually being allowed to rip up the magazines, she attacked the project with abandon. Given that most of her supply were out of date fashion magazines (heaven forbid she sacrifice her beloved Chickadees to the project), she was actually doing pretty well. If you ignored that pesky “natural source and stuff” stipulation, that is.
Somehow I don’t think jumpsuits and swoopy capeythingies really fit the teacher’s definition of “natural source.” Although I suppose you could make the argument that cotton and wool would reasonably fall into that category. Which I actually did when it came to a pair of panties with a giant orange flower on the front. Flowers are epitome of nature, after all. And the leather purse totally falls into the category of “and stuff,” right? Using my rather loose definition of the assignment criteria–aided and abetted by my fourth grader’s fuzzy memory and failure to bring home an instruction sheet–we finally ended up with a fairly respectable pile of orange bits to glue to her sheet.
This is where the assignment got tough for me. I could see all of the pieces we’d assembled, how in helping her look for pictures I’d carefully guided her to a mix of different hues and textures within her required colour and how, with a little effort I could create a distinctive and visually stimulating masterpiece from these bits of glossy paper. It’s so easy to hover over a project like this. To, despite your best intentions, focus on the end product and take over the entire process in order to make sure it ends up being “perfect.”
So, maybe Diva Girl’s collage does look a bit better than it would have had I not been the one wielding the glue stick, but I don’t think it looks too much better. For the most part I managed to restrain myself and stick to sticking things where she told me to. And in doing so, I got a rather pleasant surprise: While the gluestick mastery required to meet her vision definitely was definitely beyond Diva Girl’s skill, she did, in fact, have a vision. I’d been expecting random bits of paper glued all over the page, and instead was presented with a fairly sophisticated collage along with a lecture about focal points and the importance of overlapping. Given her obvious understanding of the concepts in play and how frustrating I was finding it to stick those little bits down exactly right, I feel absolutely no remorse over doing this part for her. I just wasn’t up for that kind of meltdown tonight and if the price of avoiding it was gluey fingers and the stifling of my own creative vision, it was one I was willing to pay, especially since I got to learn something important in the process: My kid really doesn’t need me to get that “A” for her; she can manage it just fine all on her own.
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Posted by Kimberly on November 12th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, NaBloPoMo
It’s amazing the changes a night away from home can work on a child.
When Diva Girl left on Saturday it was only because my extreme patience and indulgence allowed her to pack up her brand new satin jammies inside her princess sleeping bag and head off into the great unknown. After a particularly tweenerific week week of obnoxious behaviour, she was lucky I let her out of her room at all, let alone to go to a party. Normally I wouldn’t have; I would have yanked that privilege faster than she could make a snotty remark. But I really didn’t want to do that this time, and not just because in doing so I would have been punishing myself at least as much as I was punishing her.
It may be making excuses for her, but I think a lot of last week’s drama and bad behaviour were brought about by nerves. She really, really wanted to go on this sleepover, but I think she was also really, really nervous about the idea of sleeping away from home with a bunch of people she didn’t really know. And, because she’s eight years old and Diva Girl, that ambivalence came through as attitude. So, in spite of her behaviour unbecoming of a sleepover (or really anything other than bread and water), I let her go.
By about the third phonecall home I was pretty confident that I’d been right on all counts. She did want to be there and she was having a blast, but she was also utterly overwhelmed by this new experience. Each time she called I tried to walk that line between understanding and encouragement. I didn’t want her to catch hold of my anxiety and feel like there was something she should be nervous about, but I didn’t want to dismiss her own anxiety, either. It was a tightrope walk made all the more complicated by the fact that, without a car, we were doing it without a net.
If she’d really needed me to I’d have brought her home, but quite honestly, there are few things I can think of that would be more inconvenient. I mean, I’m sure that that particular call sucks under any circumstances but when the midnight rescue involves getting the whole family dressed and into a cab, it’s just a whole new layer of suck. In the end, she probably slept better than I did, which is reassuring.
It was also reassuring when The Mom informed me that Diva Girl was quite possibly the best behaved girl there–the one who crashed out at 10 pm, oblivious to the threats and giggles that kept the other girls up well into the wee hours of the night. It’s always nice when you send your kid out into the world, hoping that they will be the person you know they can be, rather than the person you fear they will be, and they deliver on that promise. When I picked her up on Sunday morning, the nightmare Diva Girl of Saturday had been replaced by the charming, likeable Sabrina, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
The spontaneous bear hug she greeted me with was repeated several times throughout the day, and there were also quite a few unprompted declarations of “you’re the best mommy ever!” and “I love you, Mommy!” It can’t last, of course, but I’ll admit that I’m enjoying it while it does. And wondering how soon I can send her on another sleepover, if this is what happens.
Oh, and on a related note, my evil plan seems to be working. The birthday girl received 3 Webkinz in addition to the one the one Diva Girl gave her. Bwa ha ha ha!
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Posted by Kimberly on November 7th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, NaBloPoMo
Some days I really, really understand why some species eat their young; it must be because their young are just a jumbled mass of prepubescent hormones, ready to go off at the slightest provocation. Or none at all, as the case may be.
Diva Girl is living up to her name today. Nothing pleases her. Everything is wrong, or unacceptable, or unfair. The world, it is out to get her, and it is all my fault. Because I just don’t want her to be happy.
The evidence?
I gave her the wrong socks to wear this morning.
I didn’t send her a lunch. Because it was pizza day. And she was getting pizza.
I bought a cool magnetic family calendar and hung it in the hallway instead of in her room.
I won’t buy her a new Webkinz (she has 10).
I bought her friend a Webkinz for her birthday party. Which was actually ok. But I bought the Googles, which apparently wasn’t. Even though last time I bought a Webkinz for a gift she got mad because I didn’t buy the Googles.
There were other offenses as well, up to and including being responsible for global warming, the Hollywood writers strike, and the plight of baby harp seals in the arctic, I’m sure. I don’t quite know. Somewhere around the Webkinz tirade I stopped listening. Partly due to the fact that her voice had ceased to be comprehensible to the human ear, but mostly because if I listened to much more, I might have slathered her with apple butter and served her for dinner instead of the lovely pork tenderloin she refused to eat.
Sometimes, bedtime can’t come soon enough. Of course, those are inevitably the times when you realize that daylight savings time has just ended and you’ve got another hour of this crap to deal with. And then you start fantasizing about dipping her in chocolate and serving her for dessert.
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