dynamic elf

Remember that time I followed through on something crazy because it seemed like a good idea at the time? YEAH ME TOO. And sometimes it is a good idea and sometimes it isn't, but really, I rarely regret followthrough.

Flipping back through my LJ, I notice that I somehow completely failed to post about this thing that happened to me in May. So I had a bunch of friends converging in San Francisco one weekend; I'd hoped to go, but the Fairies of Extreme Brokeness had been having their wicked way with me and it just didn't come together. Well, that Friday, I was feeling a little peaked, so I stayed home from work. I woke up around noon to a flurry of text messages and IMs exchanged with aroraborealis^[1] and redheadedmuse^[2], who conspired and took up a collection and played Bad Idea Chicken with me and two hours later I was on a direct flight to California.

It was phenomenal. dilletante's magnificent birthday present to me was being solo dad all weekend so I could cavort in the sunshine. ( I didn't take many pictures, but I did take a few. ) But anyway, this isn't about me. It's not news to anyone that I love ridiculous and improbable ideas and adventures. As usual, it's about my kid.

Last week, we spent an idyllic five days together at my camp (a cabin on a lake) outside Bangor, Maine. We brought redheadedmuse and cazador and their three kids and ate amazing food and picked raspberries and paddled in the canoe and stayed up late watching Dr. Who and playing cards. The whole deal. Natalie ate it up. There was just one major glaring flaw in this plan: Sophia's birthday party fell right smack in the middle of it.

I hemmed and hawed over this for a while; if it were just ME, I would go to Maine, drive down for the party if it was important to me, and then drive back and spend the rest of my time there. But it's a 4+ hour drive even WITHOUT kid pit stops, and how do you explain that to someone who's three years old? But I decided that what we'd do would be to go to Maine, come back for the party, and then I'd give Natalie the option of returning to Maine with me or staying in Boston with dilletante. Because there was NO way she was missing Sophia's birthday. This kid worships birthdays.

I think redheadedmuse was surprised when I was actually packing up to make the drive to Boston, the day of the party, but there I was doing it.

"I can't believe I'm driving nine hours today for a birthday party."
"I can't either, actually."
"You think I'm crazy?"
"I don't think you're crazy. I think you have one kid and you don't get it, yet, but you're not crazy."

No, I'm a little crazy. But I'd explained it to N, the day before, and she indicated that she really understood the plan, she really wanted to drive to the party, and she REALLY wanted to come BACK. All right, kid; you earned a bit of crazy. So we did it. We made the 5-hours-with-traffic drive down there with no trouble. She tried watching a movie on my computer but got bored, so she asked me to open up a text editor so she could type a while. She drew, and we sang songs, and talked about the world, and she was a complete peach the whole trip.^[3] We picked up D, attended the party -- which was originally intended to be quite small but one family had cancelled so there was only Sophia and one other kid, age not-yet-2, and so I am SO happy we showed up. After that, we headed home and I took a nap for a bit while N played with her dad, and then we bundled back in the car and had a five-minute meltdown which was alleviated by eating chicken and listening to Paul Simon covers. This was apparently HILARIOUS, and put N right to sleep, where she stayed for the rest of the drive to Maine.

OK, I admit, I'm extremely proud of her for the way she behaved on this trip. I explained that she had to make her own choice and I could describe the options but not make the choice for her, and it was her responsibility to be grown up enough to make that choice well. And for once OMG SHE DID. Not only did she, but she chose the side of wild loving irresponsibility and I could not be happier.




[1,2] Happy birthday! I love you! You are awesome!
[3]I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT EXPECT THAT. Ask me in person some time about our flight to Amsterdam with veek, the obligatory Extremely Difficult Prelude to an intensely awesome trip.

Reasons I feel like a good parent:

• N's preschool teachers keep asking things like "...did she just go to Amsterdam?" and "did you guys eat chocolate noses yesterday?" and I get to say "Oh, yup! That really happened."
  
• Today I got asked by a green knight, "Mommy, if I wanted to find a squire, where should I look?" When I suggested the home of the stuffed animals in the living room, she replied, "Oh, THANK you, Squire Mommy!"
  
• She can pick words out of songs in French, all of a sudden: "Mommy, what's this song about?" "Hmm, I don't remember. Let's listen." "She just said oiseau and I think that's how we say 'bird' in French. I think it's a song about birds."
  
• I have a kid who will ask for a birthday with "pretend noses", perhaps in part because she knows I will try to give them to her. And -- I did.
  
• Recently I went up to snuggle N in her bed one evening when it sounded like she was having a bad dream. She wrapped an arm around my neck and mumbled, "we'll be friends forever and ever." Granted, it was a quote from a book, but some days half the stuff out of her mouth is quotes from books, so I think I still get to count it as sweet.
  
• She couldn't have been more excited to go to the Somerville Library today and get a library card. (Previously, we'd only gotten out library books from the French library.)
  
• I'm pretty sure that I usually talk to her like a real person who thinks real thoughts. When she gives me a choice, such as "would you like to read books to me on the bed, or on my Dora couch?", I try to give the options real consideration and thoughtfully choose an answer, since, really, it was nice of her to give me a choice in the matter. :)
  
• Here was her Halloween costume: ( mini-astronaut! )

Reasons I feel like a bad parent:

• I'm messy and forgetful. Like, SUPER-messy and SUPER-forgetful. It's often hard for me to remember that she wants a glass of milk long enough to get her a glass of milk, especially if there is anything else going on. (I do, at least, manage to pick her up from preschool every day without being late; this genuinely feels like a miracle to me.)
  
• I know that she needs warnings about what's going to happen and when -- even the most adventurous spirit needs to know what the plan is, before changing it. And yet I often fail to listen, or take her feelings into account when I know the plan is going to be unusual. She reacts accordingly. Even when she reacts very gracefully for a three-year-old (which is not uncommon!), I sometimes get frustrated with her hurt feelings. Later, when I've had half a moment to reflect, this makes me feel like crap.
  
• Sometimes I really want nothing more than to take overnight me-time away from her.
  
• (I feel extremely guilty about taking overnight me-time away from her.)
  
• I sort of overcompensate for feeling like a basically boring at-home caretaker by super-filling our time together with ADVENTURES! and WILD THINGS! when I secretly suspect that really she just wants to have a nice dinner at a normal table with a regular mommy who's eating the same thing she does, then take a bath, and then have books in bed.
  
• Today, I don't actually remember the last time she ate something green. I made baked mac and cheese for dinner, and she ate that, some yogurt, a bit of colby jack, and a glass of milk. (I kid you not.) At least it wasn't her desired meal: leftover cake, which was actually also her breakfast. Luckily, there's only one piece left.
  
• When she woke up on her birthday morning, I was NOT IN THE HOUSE. Later, when she saw me and we read a book together for her naptime, she said to me, "I'm really glad you could see me today."
  
• Sometimes she yells at wee S. that she NEEDS SPACE!!! when S. is just coming down to say hello and it breaks my heart to see S's face. Apparently, no amount of talking about how that kind of yelling hurts S's feelings and couldn't we find a nicer way to talk about being alone? will actually sink in. I'm sure it will eventually but for now I'm just sad about it.
  
• Even though she potty-trained herself quickly, at ~25 months, in a bizarrely dream-like week where apparently she just up and decided she should pee and poop on the toilet all the time and was suddenly dry at night by the end of it, I admit: even though I should thank the heavens for how easy that was, in reality I'm kind of annoyed that I still have to wipe her butt clean. Seriously! It's been almost a year, can't she do it by herself yet?
  
• She likes her preschool well enough, but I often wonder if I should be seeking out the most precisely tailor-engineered learning environment to help her bloom and grow into the perfect wonderful adult human she really wants to be, rather than just sending her to the one at the end of our block.

It's an eternal and unforgiving balancing act between things that make me feel great and things that make me feel like crap. I'm not sure, but I'm beginning to suspect that it will always be like that: the things themselves will change, but the balancing part won't.

Here we are, though: three years in as of yesterday and I just can't believe how articulate, fun, and thoughtful this kid is. She tells me jokes that make me genuinely laugh. She's silly and goofy and polite to strangers. She sings herself to sleep and likes to turn the light on and stay up reading, stealthily. When I pick her up at the end of the day, she often drops whatever she's doing and yells, "MOMMY!" and run-tackle-hugs me like going home is the best thing she could imagine. I think -- today, I think, that despite the mess, that means I'm doing okay.

Happy third birthday, kid. I love you like fire on fire.

Happy anniversary, my sweet goofy wonderful dilletante.