Making allowances

I deluded myself that this date was coming anytime soon. I bragged on Facebook that *my* son hadn’t asked for allowance yet.

I should really learn that this type of thing never results in anything good and only ensures that my days are numbered.

Last night as he was getting ready for bed Leif said he wanted to earn some money.

“Maybe,” he suggested, “we could make a chart of things I can do and when I do them, I can earn money?”

See sticker charts and the like have never gone over well in our house. When Leif was little we tried sticker charts for behavior. He just didn’t get them. He didn’t want to put a beloved sticker on a piece of paper, nor by any means, in a box! My friends reminded me, “well it doesn’t *have* to go in the box… you could just count stickers”.

Nope, didn’t work. He didn’t want to put the sticker not only in the box, but on a random piece of paper. He would rather hoard it somewhere unknown, for some future use. (I get it, I have this problem too, it is why my Halloween candy used to go uneaten, why I have bars of great smelling soaps in my linen closet… I save things.)

Then Skadi came along and we decided to try the sticker charts again.

It went moderately better with Skadi, but the biggest issue became that I sucked at making sticker charts. I didn’t have time to sit there with a piece of pretty paper and a ruler. Fine, I resorted to Excel. I printed up a few, but then would get busy and forget to print up more. And invariably the titles of tasks changed. And she couldn’t read anyways. I sucked.

We ended up with a piece of paper covered with stickers – every inch, of that piece of paper covered with stickers.

Finally I read a post from a friend on Facebook that talked about using marbles and jars. The kids earn marbles for random things. If I see a good act of kindness from one of them I often announce, “very nice, you may go get a marble for your jar”. If they are fighting and generally being mean I threaten to remove a marble, and then very often, I actually do remove a marble and then live with the crying and screaming and flailing that happens after a marble loss.

And funny thing – this has been ongoing for months now. Leif is saving his marbles for a trip to Chuckee Cheese. (Oh joy.) Skadi hasn’t really honed in on anything. Collecting the marbles is enough for her at this point.

So when Leif suggested we do a chart, I balked a little. I am organized at work and love my charts and lists. At home? My organization sucks. Why would I come home and make charts when I do them at work all the time?

I pulled AB into Leif’s bedroom and we all agreed that we don’t pay for things that he needs to do on a regular basis. Clearing his plate, brushing his teeth, doing our Wednesday night pick up? Those things don’t get marbles and we won’t pay for them either.

Now things like cleaning the cat box? Folding his clothes? Taking out the trash (I think he is getting big enough to flip open the dumpster lid and throw the bag in…)? Sure thing. We will pay for those.

Or that is the plan.

I found a quick template in Excel for a chore chart and modified it for our purposes and printed it up.

Nope, I don’t have high hopes.

But I, for now, have one motivated to earn money little boy.

Window up or down?

On the way home this evening it was gorgeous. Warm, sunny and the car felt vaguely hot and stuffy. I rolled the windows down.

Leif: "Roll my window up, I don't like it down!"

Skadi: "DRIVE FASTER MOMMY!"

As a parent, every once in awhile you get a very clear glimpse into your child’s future and it is one of the most amazing things to see. And then you wonder if it is real. Will they REALLY be like this? Will I be hobbling around saying, “I KNEW you would be an engineer?” or "I knew you were a wild thing from day one!"

Leif is a pretty open book. My reading of his crystal ball says he will be an engineer. He says he wants to be a scientist, but I am pushing engineer. He also says he wants to come back and work with me after he goes to college. That would be really cool and all but at age 5.5 I am also guessing he is envisioning living with us… which I will someday put the kibosh on because I don’t want him to be one of “those” guys. But I am saving that discussion for later.

The non-mom part of me hopes he finds his way somewhere else because the world is so wide open with possibilities. But the mom part of me would love to have him nearby and he would fit in well here. Right now, this is what he aspires to do. Leif doesn’t like major deviations from his routine and while he seems to enjoy traveling, he enjoys more being at home in familiar surroundings. He likes his windows rolled up.

Skadi, on the other hand, is going to be my jetsetter. She recently requested that we go to the Cayman Islands. She enjoys flipping through catalogs and magazines and sometimes gets bent out of shape if I throw away a catalog before she has had the opportunity to flip through it. “Why is this in here mommy?” she squeals when she finds a catalog in the trash. She snatched the "Pottery Barn Kids" catalog out of my hands this evening before the mail could even land on the countertop.

The other day she found the new “Food and Wine” magazine and flipped it open to the ad inside showing a family of four standing in a beautiful blue crystal clear lagoon petting rays.

Skadi: “Where is this mommy? Is this Seattle?”

Me: “Nope, it says it is the Cayman Islands. You have to get on a plane to go there.”

Skadi: “I want to go to the Cayman Islands.”

Me: “Yeah, I do too Skadi.”

Skadi: (Yelling to Hans as he walked in the door) “DADDY WE ARE GOING TO THE CAYMAN ISLANDS!”

And for a solid week we have heard about the merits of going to the Cayman Islands.

Skadi usually starts the day by telling me where she would like to go that day. Up to this point it has mostly been going back to places she has already been – Seattle, grandma’s house, the zoo in Denver. But Saturday it was a zoo anywhere, “it doesn’t have to be Denver zoo mommy, there are lots of zoos!” (Just like she has heard that phrase before.)

For the first time I get that she is understanding the possibilities of going new places, places to “explore”, places with new things to see.

Skadi is a mover and shaker and I see her traveling the world. I don't know what she plans to do for work... but her window is down whipping her hair around her face.

A few weeks ago a number of the children in her class went to China and she was ready to hit the road with them. (It also cracked me up that while these kids were in China they were blamed for EVERYTHING. Me: “Skadi who drew on the Wii remote?” Skadi: “Alex drew on the Wii remote.” Me: “Isn’t Alex in China?” Skadi: “Yes, Alex is in China AND he wrote on the Wii remote, can we go to China?”)

There has been enough talk of the Cayman Islands lately that she has AB and I craving a beach and sand too… someday.

Boys will be boys?

Otherwise titled "Am I raising a mama's boy?"

Hans and I don't really battle over anything. We are pretty easy going people and easy going parents. But one thing we aren't seeing eye to eye on all the time is how to raise a boy.

Me, being the know it all mom, who always knows what's best for her boy, and apparently has loads of experience to draw on given that the last boy born on the side of the family I am close to was 50 years ago - my Uncle Robert. Yes, my tongue is stuck well in my cheek. (He is no model for effective parenting as a son or a parent.)

So why I don't defer all matters of "boyness" to my husband I don't know.

AB, one of three brothers and himself being male. Might have an idea. I know.

There is a boy in our neighborhood who goes to Leif's school and conveniently lives on one of the parks we frequent weekly within 3 blocks of our house.

Great, right?

Wrong. The kid is awful! He has a horrible potty mouth, he is a brute, he is a whiner (yeah, I know *my* son has *never* whined...) and he is mean.

And his dad is so excited we are nearby and always sends him out to play when we go to the park in addition to giving us his phone number a few times now so we can call in advance when we are coming over.

And I keep losing the phone number.

And AB keeps looking for it and kicking himself for not calling before going.

My tongue was bloody from all the biting I did on Sunday when he and Leif and another boy from the sister room played. AB claims it is all "boy stuff". Leif doesn't take it seriously, he tells me. It's just boy macho crap.

But I do. I despise hearing the things this boy says to my son.

I admit, Leif loves his mama lots and has promised that even when he is 13 he is going to snuggle and love me even more than infinity plus 51 (the Leif to mommy love meter last night). He IS going to remain the sweet little boy that he is and that I am enjoying right now.

I fear what comes next.

Example: Leif had to go and break my heart and decide he wants his hair cut. Like all the other boys in the class. And like daddy's. Short. And so it sticks up in the front.

Just rip my heart out right now!

He did agree to "think about it" until this weekend and if he still wants it buzzed this weekend we can do it.

Correction, AB can do it.

Because I don't think I can.

You grew up where?

I often wonder what my kids will think about or remember about the area they grew up in. For now, and we expect for at least the next five years, we have no plans to leave the area.

When I was their age I lived in Casper, Wyoming. I was born in Casper, Wyoming and lived there until I was about 13. I loved Wyoming and truth be told, I still think back fondly on Wyoming and find it interesting that it is now becoming a destination. I loved the mountains, the open plains, the antelope and deer everywhere, the quiet, the ease to get away to places like Thermopolis, Jackson Hole, Sheridan and Cody and Yellowstone National Park.

Wyoming shaped me as being an outdoor, nature loving person. Our vacations as a kid were usually to outdoor destinations like camping at Alcova and Pathfinder with occasional shopping and zoo trips down to Denver – a long 6 hour car ride and my sister would usually puke on the car ride there. I was on cross country skis doing treks with my parents at age five and was finally allowed to downhill ski at Hogadon when I was 12. We fished and my dad hunted on occasion. I lived about 2 miles from my grandmother’s house where I spent a lot of time with her and Pa, we went to the fair and rodeo every summer. I played t-ball and hung out at my local YMCA where my mom worked when I was about 10.

We floated the North Platte in canoes and for fun played “whack a mole” with the paddles and the giant carp in the shallow sections, we caught frogs while on breaks to have lunch on the bank and grasshoppers to use while fishing. My dad once tipped the canoe with my mom, sister and I in it… my mom used to accuse him of not paddling as she paddled in the front and this time it was true – he had my sister standing up so he could retrieve a beer from the cooler she was sitting on when suddenly we were all dumped into the water.

I lived here until I was about 12.

I mourned Wyoming when we left for Colorado when I was 13.

Colorado was a different place. Something you notice when you cross the border from Wyoming to Colorado is the sudden green out the window. A transition from brown dusty plains to green fields. In Colorado my life was different. I didn’t ski so much because the drive to ski areas was long, and my mom and stepdad did not downhill ski. We spent a lot of time outside within the city of Fort Collins, which was a fabulous place to grow up.

Fort Collins, when I was there had the largest number of restaurants and breweries per capita. I passed my driver’s test there (after three attempts) and ran around town in my little 1979 Mazda RX-7. I remember saying I would never leave Colorado. When I did leave everyone expected I would come back, but Colorado hasn’t been my home in 14 years. I have found since leaving that when I tell people I grew up in Colorado many people tend to ask, “why would you leave?” or they tell me they are jealous, or the like. But things happen and life leads us down paths we don’t expect and it was my career that brought us to SE Washington state.

My region now is actually a lot like Casper geographically. Brown, dry and windy. I have noticed that since leaving life at altitude that my rice turns out well and my cakes rise differently. My kids know this area as home and it is rare that we go somewhere in town and don’t run into someone we know. While I wouldn’t say we love it here, we are awfully fond of it.

I think both AB and I get cases of wanderlust pretty regularly because we continue to bring up the topic of whether we will stay or leave between the two of us. Obviously we aren’t diehard Tri-Citians who never want to leave. We do enjoy our community and feel that we are a part of it and have things to offer back to our community. I hope that our children grow up and leave the region for college – my hope is that they will follow in AB’s and my, their Uncle Scott, Aunt Angie and Grandpa John’s footsteps and will attend the University of Colorado at Boulder. And then I hope that they will see the world at their toes with opportunities abound.

Of course I say this as a mom of a 5.5 and nearly 3 year old where the prospect of them striking out to discover the world on their own is more than a decade away. That’s forever!

AB and I are lucky that we can pretty effectively combat our boredom with the area and our wanderlust needs with weekend getaways. Weekend trips to Seattle satisfy (for now) our shopping, dining and culture needs (whereby we can usually expect Skadi to puke on the car ride, just like my sister only now I have a lot more compassion as her mommy). We are trying to make more habits out of getting to the mountains on the weekends and possibly justify a mountain land purchase in the next year or two with plans to build a cabin eventually. And we have identified our favorite family getaway. Then there are our trips to Colorado and Alaska fairly regularly that usually pre-empt any “big vacations”. But like I said before, we emanate from destination cities, so going to our roots for vacations isn’t always a bad deal.

I wonder what my children will look back remembering as they grow up in Southeast Washington? What do you remember about where you grew up?

Not like it's rocket science...

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, a teacher or a doctor. I think that is pretty on par with kids who grew up in the 70's and 80's. AB wanted to be a lumberjack as a child. That might be more on par with a little boy growing up in Alaska, though I am not sure about that.

It has recently come to Leif's attention that he can choose what he wants to be when he grows up. For a month or so he was stuck on being a policeman. This didn't come as a huge surprise to me because Leif is all about following the rules. I am trying to remember why he changed his mind. I do remember it being a sudden change and a dawning on him that policemen may occasionally find themselves in danger. AB and I weren't disappointed when he changed his mind - not that there is anything wrong with being a policeman - it probably just wasn't what we envisioned.

One day a few months ago in the car he announced to AB and I that when he grows up he wants to drive submarines. AB? Not so thrilled with this. We are supporters of the military, I have projects that support and forward the mission of the military. But knowing where we are in today's world it is hard hearing that your child wants to go into the military.

Ok, so that is our view as adults. From Leif's view, he wants to drive a submarine and it has nothing whatsoever to do with going into the military or fighting in a war (though that last part likely would only make him more eager, being the typical invincible little boy).

"I don't think that you want to do that," AB told him.

"Yes, I do want to drive a submarine," Leif said.

"Why do you want to drive a sub?" I asked him.

"Because I can work with you mommy!" he announced and I remembered that he thinks I spend my days driving submarines up and down the Columbia River.

"How about you become and engineer and you can work on submarines," I suggested, "mommy has got connections there."

Leif agreed that was fine.

The other day Leif announced that he changed his mind, he doesn't want to drive submarines anymore.

"Do you work with rocket scientists?" Leif asked.

I thought for a minute. I know a rocket scientist - AB's best friend's sister is a rocket scientist. But nope, I don't work with any rocket scientists.

"Well I have decided I want to be a rocket scientist," Leif said. "Maybe we can work together after I am a rocket scientist, okay?"

"That works Leif," I told him.