I just have to know if any other moms feel the same insta-reaction that I do sometimes. A couple of days ago, Delaney was sitting on the counter ‘helping’ me. Unbeknownst to me, she had wormed her little toe between a lower cabinet and the dishwasher.  Soooo, when I opened the cabinet, it smashed her toe. She screamed her fool head off. (Seriously, she could do movie screams.)

Yes, I hugged her and asked if she was ok.  I rocked her and soothed her. But inside, I was thinking, “You idiot! What the hell were you doing with your toe there in the first place?”

Sometimes I am faced with the worst reflection of myself…

I’ve discovered something in the “yucky” category that I can’t handle about motherhood. I’ve changed diapers, wiped snot with my bare hand, cleaned poop off a wall and have been peed on.  But this… this I can’t handle.

Loose teeth. Delaney lost her second one today. Actually, she yanked it out of her jaw bone with her bare hands. And me?  I asked her to please do it in another room and let me know when it was all over.

She’s been wiggling that thing for weeks and I even enjoyed wiggling it with my fingertips, but when it really started leaning right out of its hole, I simply got the heebie jeebies!

For some reason, she decided today was the day and stood next to me pulling and pulling on it. I really could not look! It was this gut reaction, like a reflex turned my head despite my motherhood instinct to be present to this big moment in Delaney’s life.  Finally, I had to ask her to leave the room!

Do I have to resolve myself to missing out on every ‘tooth falling out’ moment with my girls? Or is this something I let them experience all on their own?

All I can say is… Bleh.

Delaney, my first, my oldest, is turning seven tomorrow. I’m boggled. Seven! I tell you, it truly feels like yesterday I was potty training her, stuck at home for naps, guiding her every step so that she didn’t bonk into sharp corners… And tomorrow, she’s seven.

She really has become a little lady. Actually, Delaney cultivates that change. She wants so badly to grow up. She watches teenagers, agog, star-struck by their worldliness and independence. And I think that is the reason she pushes and pulls me so much. I have come to call this phase, “Come here come here come here! Go away go away go away!” She wants me, and she wants to be free of me.

Delaney expresses herself with her clothing choices, loves curling her hair, and generally enjoys being a girl! Honestly, I am baffled often by her. But I try to honor it.

So, as she steps into this new age, I find myself grieving a bit for the little girl who used to be only “Come here!” and I try to enjoy the times when she is “Go away!”

But I do find myself soaking up and delighting in the little signs that my baby is still ‘in there.’ Yesterday, I hollered to have her come to the table and do homework. I waited as I heard jumping jumping jumping coming from her room and then Delaney emerged around the corner, hopping all the way from her room because… well, because it’s fun! It’s those moments that remind me that she is still my baby. She still hops.

Am I the only doting parent out there who thinks that reading with a new reader is akin to waterboarding?

I know I’m not the most patient person on the planet, but when it takes my 5-year-old a full minute to sound out the word, “can,” I nearly burst!

Sitting there on the couch with her, we are the picture of ‘darling girl and helpful mom.’ Inside, I’m truly SCREAMING, “CAN! CAN! THE FREAKING WORD IS CAN! FORGODSSAKE JUST SPIT IT OUT AND MOVE ON!”

But I refrain and keep the peace…
She looks up at me with those huge blue eyes, so proud, and continues making a “k” sound, which is correct, but venturing to that “a” just takes so long. Then she says,  “k”… “a”… “k”… “a”…And all I can think is, “N! IT’S AN N! THE LAST EVER-LOVING SOUND IS N!”

Finally, she takes the great leap to  “k”… “a”… “k”… “a”…”N!” She looks up at me expectantly as if I should be doing a dance like when she pooped on the potty the first time but we’re not done yet!

“OK, honey, put all those sounds together and you get…?”

“k”… “a”… “k”… “a”…”N!”… “Can?”

‘YES! YES! YES! CAN! IT’S CAN! IT’S CAN!  Oh, honey, Mommy is so proud of you! Now, what’s the next word?’

“Rrrrrrr”…. “Rrrrrr”… “Rrrrr”….

Dave, honey?  Can you get me a glass of wine?

Delaney turns 7 on October 1 and only now, four weeks away from the date, have I started to realize that I just didn’t ‘get’ six.

From birth through age 5, it seems like there are so many obvious benchmarks for a mom to monitor and nurture and master. Nursing, teething, solids, walking, terrible twos, potty training, preschool and then, at age 5, kindergarten.

But six! What is six? It’s a no-mom’s-land of unknowns.When Delaney was younger, I was plugged into other moms with kids at the same stages as mine and we could talk strategy: such as, Did you give stickers or treats for pooping in the potty? But at six, it seems my daughter’s life is so much more internal than external and I have, I think, sort of coasted through this age, thinking it was easy!

But now, reflecting back, I wonder if I’ve missed some opportunities to understand Delaney and to meet her where SHE is. The ‘benchmarks’ aren’t so obvious; you know when that first step happens but how do you figure out that your daughter has new emotional needs and how to meet them? Delaney now seeks quiet time to herself. She journals. She struggles with emotions that surprise her (and everyone around her).

I recently reached out to a friend for help; her daughters are just a few years older than mine so she is my trail-blazer. She was a HUGE source of help… but I do sort of find myself yearning for the younger ages and easily identifiable stages. I suppose hindsight is 20/20 and I know now how to handle tantrums and potty training, yet at the time I was muddled.

Was I as muddled as I am now?

I am trying to understand my girls, to meet them where they are, to support them, but I do find these waters a bit muddier.

I’m done. Summer has officially kicked my butt. I CRAVE the routine of school! I’m DYING to have more than a 10-minute window in which to get my work done! I NEED some time to myself!

We’ve had an amazing summer: Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Ouray, my 165-mile bike ride in the mountains with girlfriends, I turned 40!… So, I’ve had an incredible summer, but now, I need my routine back. Dammit.

The last couple of days have felt like those first few months when I decided to stay home and freelance, when Delaney was 4 months old. The days when she was in daycare, I had structure and focus. The days “off,” however, were completely formless and shapeless blobs. By 2pm, I’d be sitting on the back deck with her sorting through the rocks under our water faucet, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

Welp, now she’s 6 and Allie is 5 and I’ve come to realize that summer can take on a blob-ish form of its own. I do not want to pack it full of camps; they only had two half-day camps this summer. I LOVE having them around. I like taking off on spontaneous hikes and turning on the sprinkler on hot afternoons.

But then August rolls around and it’s like 2pm when Delaney was a baby. Now what? What? WHAT? WHAT!? What can I do with them NOW!? I’m simply not creative enough to come up with a freaking art project whenever they feel like it. I don’t read those mom magazines and stock up on art supplies. (Aren’t crayons and construction paper enough?)

So, I’m back to the questions I asked myself way back on those lonely afternoons when Delaney was a baby… When’s Dave getting home? When is it respectable to have a glass of wine? Where’s my chocolate? When’s Dave getting home?

So, I’m ready for school. I think the girls are, too. We’ve had a BLAST (we took off for lunch in Morrison today and then went hiking) but now it is time for life to revolve around school again.

(For a good laugh, check out my blog post from February 19 when I missed my kids when they were at school. Motherhood = constant transition.)

Phew! We did it! We camped seven days and we hit Bryce Canyon, The Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Ouray, CO. We were on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for my 40th birthday, which was truly divine. I had never been there before and I actually started crying when I first laid eyes on it. I had seen myriad pictures of the place, as we all have, but standing there on the edge, hands and feet tingling and head slightly buzzing from a strong human response to the height and the expanse, I was overtaken. Your body actually responds to The Grand Canyon!

On a pure enjoyment level, I must admit that I enjoyed Bryce Canyon more than the Grand one. You can actually tackle Bryce and get to know it a bit in a day or two (though I would have loved more!). At the Grand Canyon, even though we hiked (and the girls did marvelously with our 1,500-foot elevation drop and then gain) I got the feeling that I could spend weeks there and still be an outsider, an interloper.

Mesa Verde was interesting but I doubt I’d go back again. Definitely worth a first visit.

But the drive from MV to Ouray blew me away! The San Juans are spectacular! Poor Dave had to drive the narrow, two-lane road pulling a camper and I think he white-knuckled a lot of it. There was some construction with lots of signs that said, “Shoulder Drops Ahead.” gulp. In Ouray, we visited Box Canyon Falls, which were nearly as terrifyingly powerful as the Grand Canyon!

So, now, we are essentially moving back IN to our house, complete with enough laundry to make me cry.

Here’s a fun pic of me and the girls at Bryce! (I think it will enlarge if you click it.)

Because Leap Pad told me so!

Delaney was playing with her “Human Body” book on Leap Pad. She yelled, “Mom, come here!”

So, I walked into her room and she said, “Listen!”

She used that green wand to push on the face of a lady in the book who was wearing frumpy clothes, had an ‘easy’ haircut such as a bob, and even looked, well, old. The cheery Leap Pad voice piped up and said, “Between the ages of 40 and 50, people are considered Middle Age. They get gray hair, their metabolism slows down, and they tend to put on weight.”

Delaney looked up at me and said, “You’re going to be 40!”

Then she proceeded to click on the woman’s hair and the damn Leap Pad informed us that gray hair occurs when the body produces less pigment. Again, my darling daughter looked at me and said, “Now we know why!”

Took Delaney to the doc today and ended up heading to a hospital for X-RAYS! She fell this week and has been limping ever since. The doc really thought she fractured something in her knee, but she didn’t. phew.

She DID, however, have a sinus infection. I’m so friggin clueless.

Doc: “How long has she been coughing like that?”

Me: “Two weeks?”

Doc: (eye roll)

Let’s talk about volunteering, shall we?

I remember, when my girls were really young, I read a book called “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” (or something like that). It was a witty, fictional book by a British author about a mom who does it ALL! Crazy career demands, marriage maintenance, friendships and, of course, motherhood. There was one scene when she was up until 3am making something for her daughter’s kinder class; something involving potatoes, food coloring, and lots of mess. The kid, of course, was sleeping and the mom had all kinds of rants running through her head.

I remember reading that, thinking, “Well, she just needs to make different choices. I’ll never get sucked into something that ridiculous.”

Fast-forward five years and my kids are in SCHOOL. A school where, to be honest, the moms are all Type-A. I love this school and the parents because everyone is so involved and cares tremendously. But everyone is so involved and cares tremendously. That means they come up with about a gillion ways for fellow parents to give of their time and money. Since we’re lacking in the second category compared to many of the others, I give of my time.

This last weekend, we had the annual auction for the school - an event that takes nine months to plan, requires meetings every two weeks throughout the school year, forces people to cooperate in rather stressful situations, and taps a tremendous amount of energy from everyone involved. But I was involved… there was a time in February when I got the shingles virus in my MOUTH because I got so stressed (it’s my nature. no one was pushing me more than anyone else) and I realized… I HAD BECOME HER! The woman who stayed up until 3am making potato class projects!

The big event was this past Saturday and it was MARVELOUS! I was so proud to have been part of it, and I really played a very small part… but I played the part that I could. I learned a lot from it, too. Such as:

• I don’t HAVE to do everything I’m asked to do. Because people just keep asking!
• I can set my own deadlines. I should not continuously ask others “when do you need it?” I should say, “Here’s when you’ll get it.”
• If I end up working with someone unpleasant, I can opt out. I don’t have to suffer for the greater good! There are better ways to spend my time… like with my kids!
• Finally, I AM proud of my role and I will be part of the event next year. I just wish that people who weren’t as involved as I was would take a minute to complement our endeavors before letting us know how it could have been better. My lesson: I will never offer criticism to a volunteer who has pulled off a giant feat. Rather, I will be grateful that she/he did something I was unable/unwilling to do!

OK, that’s a bit of a rant! It’s where I’m at this morning. Here’s a pic of me and my girls taken by the sitter just before I left for the event. It was a Kentucky Derby theme, so we donned our hats!

Onward!