No Crying Over Spilled Milk

I got an e-mail from Skadi’s teacher yesterday.

 

My daughter is opposite my son – she is a food snob and wants nothing to do with the school lunches. “Their cheese pizza is gross mommy, it doesn’t taste anything like what pizza should.” So every day I pack her a lunch. She is also a milk fiend. We have been out of milk boxes and I have been a slacker about going and buying more (plus, they are freaky expensive) and so lately I have been sticking her milk in a sealed cup of some sort – a Sigg, a Camelback mug, something of that nature.

 

Well I won’t be doing that anymore!

 

Her teacher e-mailed me letting me know that her milk spilled in her lunchbox, which was in her backpack. She “instructed me” to wash her bag tonight and told me that she wouldn’t send home her library book or folders or any work until the backpack was washed since there was an odor.

 

Nearly all my communications with her teacher are via e-mail and I have to say that the first third of the year went by with me bristling every time I got an e-mail from her. Her written communications aren’t the best. Then I had Skadi’s parent teacher conference and my opinion of her changed – she was warm and friendly and actually seemed to like and appreciate my daughter and her strange sense of fashion and wow, she really is a VERY, VERY smart little girl (too bad she doesn’t choose to show it very often)! Then I got the choppy e-mail from her regarding the milk incident and I tried hard not to bristle again.

 

I responded that the bag would get washed tonight and I was sorry to hear about the spilled milk and left it at that.

 

Then Skadi got home.

 

“Mom, my library book got ruined and Mrs. W said that we have to PAY for it!” she tells me.

 

At this point I am confused – there was no mention of the ruined library book in the e-mail. But Skadi is adamant that she needs to pay for it. So I send back a quick e-mail – “Skadi tells me her library book was ruined by the milk. Obviously we will pay for this, please tell me who I should contact to send a check to or to plan for a replacement book.” And she replied quickly with a name – and yes, the library book was ruined.

 

Ok, so all that is dealt with despite my being a little irksome that the ruined book wasn’t mentioned the first time around, we are moving on. Then there is bedtime.

 

I went in and Skadi had all her change piled onto her bed and proceeded into a conversation I would NEVER have with my money-grubbing son.

 

“What is this for?” I ask her.

 

“I am getting all my money together to take to school to pay for the library book,” she tells me.

 

“No honey, mommy will pay for the library book,” I tell her, grabbing the change to put it away.

 

“No. Mrs W says that I will have to pay for it and I AM going to!” she grabs the money back.

 

“Honey, mommy will pay for the book, when Mrs. W says that you will have to pay, she means ‘your family’”, (or at least she dang well better mean that).

 

“No mommy, I have my money, I will pay,” she insists again.

 

“Skadi no,” I tell her. “You are my daughter, I am responsible. You save your money.”

 

“But mommy, I don’t want to waste your money,” she cries.

 

“You aren’t wasting it honey!” I tell her, “I was the one who packed the milk in the leaky cup.”

 

“Yes, you are right, you did do that, it wasn’t me,” she said.

 

The conversation went on a bit longer as I finally got her to accept that *I* would pay for the book and that she wouldn’t.

 

I left impressed with my daughter’s determination to pay for the ruined book, something we are pushing with our kids "take responsibility", but at the same time dismayed at her teacher. Why does she tell Skadi she needs to pay for a book, but didn’t convey that to me in the e-mail? She is 5 years old, the spilled milk was an accident, but it made a strong impact on her day. Why, oh why, could she not have dealt directly with me on something that was ruined and needed replaced?

 

I think I am back to bristling at my interactions with her – starting to think the conference meeting was a good show put on for my benefit.

The Red Man

Skadi has a set of favorite bath toys. She likes to switch from the Master bath, to the Master shower to the bathtub in her bathroom pretty regularly. But one thing is constant - her toys.

The mermaids come as no surprise. These little girls follow her everywhere.

The weird one though, is "the red man".

That would be Mork.

No matter what, the red man must be there with these girls.

I don't know if he is a bodyguard, father figure, boyfriend?

I tell her his name is "Mork" and she tells me that's a funny name. I told her that he says "Nanoo Nanoo" and she thinks I am even weirder. And when I told her he is actually from Planet Ork and not Earth she thinks I am completely full of it.

For awhile Leif decided he was going to latch on to Mork to drive the airplane that he likes to play with in the bathtub. True that he fits. And might be true that he was the only male action figure around that fit in there. But the fit my daughter threw about not getting the "red man" was legendary.

I suppose I should be a good mom and not cave to her wills. But there is that park of me that found it all so humerous... that I couldn't resist telling Leif that "no the red man is Skadi's special bath toy" and found him an action figure that would fit in the plane.

I have been wondering if I can find an old "Mork and Mindy" episode around anywhere...

Goulash Post - everything mixed into one

It has been a crazy end of summer and start to the school year. I have a list of blog topics, but know that I am either not going to get to them, or that they are old now and out of date.

 

I will try to hit the high points and not be too spastic:

 

Skadi and Babies:

 

Skadi has an ongoing fascination with babies. If we are at a store and she sees a baby bucket carrier she is over peering into it. I have been trying to catch her as I recall what those early days were like with a new infant and having a potentially germy, sticky kid you don’t know walk up and start peering into the carrier. Ick. Not that my daughter is germy or routinely sticky, but I don’t want her to weird parents out.

 

She came with a theory this summer about how babies get into their mommy’s tummys: “God picks you and says, ‘you there, you are going in a tummy’ and the baby gets to pick if they want to go to that mommy or not. And as soon as she says yes than God puts her in a bag with a parachute and tosses her off the cloud where she falls and falls and falls into the mommy’s tummy! And that’s how babies get into tummies! That’s how I got in your’s mommy, God pointed to you and I said “yes” and he flung me out of the cloud. It is good you were standing still at the time so I could get into your tummy instead of land on the ground.”

 

Skadi also has an innate belief in reincarnation – she believes that her grandma, who died when she was three years old, went to heaven and is in the waiting line to be tossed off a cloud and into someone else’s tummy. And who knows, maybe she is already a little girl somewhere!

 

Sometimes it is hard not to believe every word she says when she recites these stories and beliefs. I am positive she has “lawyer” in her future.

 

Twohead:

 

This remains my favorite Skadi-ism and one that I honestly hope she never loses. Though I am sure it is just a matter of time. Yes, Skadi still calls foreheads, “twoheads”. Unless you are big like daddy, then you have a “forehead”.

 

Camping:

 

We have had a busy summer of camping. We aimed to get our trailer out every other weekend. We only missed a few of those.

 

 

We had one interesting camping trip this summer with a few oddities. Actually it was a pretty miserable camping trip because of all the mosquitos, and I couldn’t wait to get home. But during the trip we encountered a few new things. First off while we were traveling about 10 miles from White Pass – this is major mountain area, not a field, not flatlands, but windy, hairpin road with steep mountain valleys and hills on each side – about 20 miles to Mt. Rainier entrance – we came around a hairpin turn in our Sequoia towing the trailer and nearly hit a calf. As in a baby cow. No idea where in the world it came from or belonged.

 

Anyways, we got to where we were going after a bit of a scare slamming on our breaks for this lone calf in the road. We happened to be camping on a small, shallow river that had an island and a few little spits of land into the river that were super for the kids (except for the bugs). They immediately started playing in the river as AB and I fished.

 

AB and I caught nothing. Leif on the other hand managed to catch, with HIS BARE HANDS, two sucker type fish in the shallow areas. He was terribly proud of himself and hugely popular among the children at the shore. And not very happy with us when I told him that he could, in no way, keep the fish and we would not be eating them. “Sucker fish aren’t good to eat,” we told him. Well he suggested, he could just keep them in a fish tank? We made him throw them back. Mean parents we are.

 

Kindergarten:

 

I can’t believe it, I have a 2^nd grader and a kindergartener!

 

This year we decided to change things up. We pulled Skadi from her private Montessori preschool/kindergarten/1^st-2^nd grade school and stuck her into public school! We took her from the mouth of privilege and snobbery and put her with the rest of the world in public kindergarten and the onsite before school care (since she is in PM kindergarten) with germy, sticky toys.

 

And you know what? The child loves it.

 

It is a different world for her. It is a different world for me – one where instead of talking to her teacher daily, I have heard from her 3 times by e-mail throughout the year. She has a whole new cadre of friends. She brings home library books – waving them in the air from the moment she gets off the bus. She recites her addition tables and identifies words. She is completely pleased with her new school and chatters incessantly about her day.

 

Orlando:

 

Way back when, we told the kids “if mommy’s team wins this big award, we will go to DisneyWorld!”

 

And then it happened. I got the news we won and Leif and I jumped up and down in the kitchen squealing about DISNEYWORLD!

 

We went to Disneyworld almost 2 years ago and had a pretty good time. It could have been better, but we weren’t prepared like we will be now!!

 

So after months of wrangling for permission to even go to the awards and then further wrangling about using 3 days of vacation time while on travel (and taking a hit on what work will pay for because of this - aka manager discretion) we have tickets (airline and park), hotel rooms, dinner reservations, I have a formal dress, AB needs a tux and I need to confirm the babysitter for the night of the awards.

 

On our list:

Day 1: Epcot (girl’s breakfast with the princesses while the boys ride rides), dinner at Chefs de France

Day 2: Hollywood Studios (family breakfast with Disney Jr characters), Fantasmic in the evening.

Day 3: TBD, dinner at a Cuban restaurant

Day 4: Magic Kingdom, breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and friends, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party

Day 5: TBD (beach maybe), switch to SeaWorld hotel for awards.

Day 6: SeaWorld, Mommy’s award ceremony.

Day 7: Universal Studios

Day 8: Fly Home

 

Cannot wait.

 

 

The Nugget

 

Have you made it this far? Stuck with me? Well then you are awarded with a nugget.

 

Head on over here and check it out.

 

Carman Baby #3 to arrive in April 2013! Officially will be announced at some point in the coming few weeks on Facebook.

What she gets from me

Recently I posted a picture of Skadi on Facebook. I don't even remember which one it was. But a number of my elementary school friends piped up raving about how much she looks like me at that age.

"Really?" was  my surprised response. She looks nothing like me I thought. Strawberry blonde hair is about it.

Still I thought more about this and even pulled out pictures to compare. No way.

Well maybe...

See when I see my daughter her personality shines through so strongly and brightly that her outward appearance falls to the background. When you ask me about my daughter I will answer, "boistrous, adventure loving, physical, she'll take you down when you aren't looking, outspoken, strongly opinionated, will run over the top of you, but will stop if you show signs of pain"... and I could go on and on.

Not my personality. I was always described as "shy, quiet, spoke only when spoken too, embarrassed easily, will cry if you look at her wrong..." You get the idea. A wall flower.

Skadi and I are 100% different... except for that rail thin little body and strawberry blonde hair. And she is lucky - she has these beautiful hazel eyes that get loads of compliments, lips that actually exist and her eyelashes aren't red, they are black.

But one area she did inherit from me is her eclectic music tastes. Her brother desires to only ever listen to one thing - Les Miserable. And sing along. He can recite nearly the entire musical and dreams of playing the role of Gavroche before he grows up. Skadi always one to out do her brother begs not to listen to Les Mis anymore but tells him, "I plan to play Cosette and she has a bigger role."

Anyways. Skadi, she has my musical tastes.

I admit it, the other day she told me one of her favorite songs was the one I play about "doing crafts".

Give up?

Yeah, not one of my finer parenting moments...

Also among her favorites are "I Want Candy" and "Follow Me".

When I was a kid my favorite song was "Cat Scratch Fever"...

The other day Skadi asked me to play "the bell song".

"The bell song?" I asked her.

"Yep, the one about the girl," Skadi replied.

"OH! The Belle song!" I said. No problem. I can do this. We recently went and saw Beauty and the Beast the musical, I will just download the album from iTunes!

So I did.

And then we painstakingly went through every single dang song on that album.

"NO MOM! The BELLE song, you know!" she kept saying. (Though she did latch on again to Gaston...)

I gave up. I surrendered.

Then one day when I was driving her into school I turned up a song that popped up on my existing playlist.

"YAY MOMMY! The BELLE song!" she exclaimed.

Yay me!

Skadi Well Child

She is healthy, happy and got a good lecture about her refusal to eat most fruits and vegetables. We are now four days later though and despite the lecture, there is no improvement in the child's fruit and vegie comsumption.

She is holding steady on the 50th percentile line where she has been solidly for the last three years.

At 5 years:
your child is 39.5 pounds, and that is
at the 48th percentile for weight.
your child is 42.5 inches, and that is
at the 49th percentile for height.