trouble on a pink princess bike

Let's pretend my life is normal, even quaint.  Picture it: fresh baked cookies on the cooling rack, a child neatly pressed heading off to an afternoon Birthday party with a gift and the cake, the adults off for a little browsing at the library, a cup of coffee, and a slow Sunday drive...all of that is true, well okay Beach wasn't neatly pressed but she was wearing clean-ish clothing.  

Anyway we came home after a nice hour out, like I said at the library & on a drive.  We pull in & there is that pink princess bike.  Which as Beach's parent's is a really strange thing to find in our driveway.  It was a mystery for about 17 seconds.  That is about how long it took me to walk through the front door and find this little girl inside my house. 

I found out her name is Nina and she likes chocolate chip cookies and her dad said she could come to Beach's and he said she could play with Beach's gold glitter even after I said we shouldn't.  So we let her stay and eat cookies since she seemed very comfortable at our house.  And there is a good reason she felt so at ease, when her brother showed up he explained she had been missing for an hour!  I had to chase her around the yard to catch her to make her go home with her brother.  She really wanted to stay here.  It was a little awkward considering I really have no true idea who she is but since she was going to be 'so grounded' I gave her one more cookie, put her on her bike, and waved good-bye.

Really?!?!?! 

And yesterday we were watching Holes when the Police knocked on the door to tell us there was situation with one of the neighbors (Crazy Jim) & gun shots (which were really fire works) and we needed to get to a secure location on the south side of our house until the gun issue was handled.  I would like to point out the Police were the only ones with actual guns and had one of them not been so good looking I would have been very scared watching the Cops, weapons drawn, sneaking around the place.  I might have not face booked the incident and unloaded the dishwasher... Wait, where was I going with this? Oh-yeah, nothing in our 5 years here on the little farm in the hood has ever made me think twice about locking our doors until I came home to find a home owner's worse nightmare, an unattended three year old girl standing in my kitchen petting my dogs.

       

it feels like...

 beautiful

mischief in the night

I remember moving my family West. 

I remember the sound of the train tracks crossing under the tires. 

I remember my not yet three-year-old running in the big back field as if she always belonged to this old cinder block house resting on the valley floor. 

I remember the question & doubts of others. 

 Is it safe?

Will the east side kids adjust to life on the west side of SLC?

Will the kids be able to make friends?

Will we thrive here?

Will this place become our home?

Will we trust the night sky from the edge of the river?

We are here. 

And here we are.

when you bust your child with a bag of grass...

(Oh the misguided google hits this will bring our way!)

No really GRASS!!!

You tell her to throw it out!

getting it right

In my other space over at dust fairies & darwin I had pondered the stress level on the child.  On fb yesterday a little word or two about a crying child dropped at the gym.  We had been late because she couldn't get her hair right...yes, see the issue hair is never the issue over here.     

  I flagged the coach down and warned her of the flow teacup mood. 

The coach approached her, "You feeling better?" 

"I just want to do gymnastics, it is the only thing I want to be doing." 

 It was the only thing she wanted to be doing. 

And she did have a great practice.  I returned 3 hrs later to a happy child. 

But why stop a happy when you can special order in 2 best friends?

 They jumped, they eat, we drank, they played, we all laughed,

and the hot tub got hot and we all got in.

 

There was watermelon, homemade pizza, tons of salad and vegetables, cookies & ice cream.

 See that smile, it is getting bigger!

 There was a show.

 And an audience.

 Dangerous maneuvers and stunts.

And a big finish!

 

Strawberries too?!?! Oh no she might explode from happiness. To the water then...

 

 There it is, the look 10 degrees past happy.

Good-bye March, hello April!



little steam pot

I had something a little alarming happen the other day with Beach.  We were driving.  That's when kids talk.  Beach told me she thought she was mean because when she was playing with 'her friends' (referring to a handful of neighborhood kids) she sometimes wanted to scream "I hate you!".

And you might think 'oh, that is a mean kid', but even the idea of her being a  Hater is not the real issue here.  What is underneath it is the issue.  I explained to her thinking and doing are 2 totally different things.  It is normal to get sick of someone, even of someones you like.  Normal to be grumpy from time to time.  I told her she wasn't mean.  I suggested we spend more time with people who didn't make her feel that way and we changed subjects.

What troubles me are feelings below the mean thoughts.  The feeling she needs to conform to make others happy and how it boils down deep in her heart.  She's a little pressure cooker.  My best friend Tara and I have discussed it.  My best friend BJ and I have discussed it.  Both of those friends have kids (each has a boy & a girl) who Beach is her real-self around.  I had the chance to talk to one of her gym coaches about it too and got back a pretty funny story about Beach sharing a being nice story: "I had a friend over and then 2 other friends came over so I sent the one friend home to make 2 people happy instead of just 1. I didn't want to play with that one friend anyway."   Her coach feels Beach, who is wildly popular in the gym, sort of rock star status there, has developed socially over the last year and a half.  She used to glare when kids talked to her in line (oddly enough even w/ serious glare she has always been well liked) and now, every so often the coach has to cover a smile when she says, "Beach, stop talking."

I will admit sometimes she is a mean-ish, kind of blunt and hardheaded but without evil intent.  More I am a crazy scientist socially limping rude or in a smaller mouthfull: descended from New Hampshire stock.

And the longer way around this is we had a bump in the road over here that nearly threw a few of us under the bus.  There was adult thinking about life and love.  There was a moment where I nearly forgot whose behavior I can control: mine, just mine.  So just me with my behavior decided to not give shit for a few and guess what? It was magnificent.  I felt as if the giant hand of obligation & expectations (I don't know why but I picture it wearing a gardening glove, strange) had been lifted from my back.  I wasn't afraid to make decisions, to move things, to fix things, to be me.....and she is my child.  She molds the best she can to make others happy.  It's not a complete masquerade more like auto-correct adjusting the hues of your already existing personality to fit the light around you.  It is actually a skill used by those who seek to serve and care-take.  It is also very exhausting and lonely (does anyone really like me?).  I've talked to her about it but I know that won't change it.  The complex question I am asking is: do I attempt to remove or limit her exposure to situations where she feels most compelled to morph or is that just life and the real issue is not her conformity (in the neg sense not the +) but the pressure underneath it? 

I know for myself, the pressure builds until it breaks something.  I take a few days mumbling and cleaning and working in the wood pile and then (bruised & bleeding) I return to life promising not to let it build again but it always does.  You know suddenly this is all sounding very normal to me...and it is reminding me why I run and maybe now I understand why she does gymnastics.       

family game night gone to the dogs

No amount of logic or sweet talk can convince Beach rolling the dice is all about luck. 

She is baffled by the idea there are some things out there that skill plays no part in.

Beach is a very good sport most of the time, and there was no crying but she wasn't her usually happy (&winning) self.  Oh, this is why we don't play Yahtzee very often.

Playing Yahtzee with Beach involves more voodoo & hi-jinx than actual dice rolling. 

~yes Scout, my thoughts exactly: hide all games involving simple luck~