Momma Moments
May. 31st, 2006 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saffronhareMaybe it's hormonal, but my kids are twisting at my heart the last few days.
Princess !Kaboom started her new gymnastics schedule yesterday. I was grateful, really, since a whole week off had her literally climbing the walls at home. Take her, please, tire her out. We were able to arrange for me to bring her, and it was great sappy fun for me. She's in the "Mighty Mites" group, which means the summer will be filled with conditioning and learning routines (two-hour practices, twice a week). Come fall, if she's doing okay with that ramping up of the experience, she'll actually compete in a few local meets. It'll be very sparkly, I'm sure.
Watching them all line up last night, I thought I'd die of teh cyoot. She was about a head shorter than the next shortest girl in the group, and quite a bit smaller than most of them. Some of them had even been through Mighty Mites last year and were repeating. I was terrified that she'd struggle to keep up. Silly Mommy. Not so. I mean, they all had their moments of spaz, but she didn't have any more than anyone else. And she was filled with bounce and wave and high-five and general chattiness. She took corrections and listened to instructions and didn't seem to flag toward the end of class. In the car, she vascillated between being very pleased with herself and being unimpressed with the difficulty of conditioning. She even managed a dozen chin-ups, with the first three completely unassisted! I realized all over again that she's grown into her Little Person proportions now. Aside from changes in height, this is probably how she's going to be proportioned until the Boobs arrive. If nothing else, the girl's gonna be ripped by the end of the summer. She is also already tanning, which is very strange for me to behold. She must get it from her dad.
Princess Boredom's sixth-grade breakfast was this morning. I thoroughly underestimated the significance of this event. I figured, hey, breakfast with my girl, that'll be cool. But no. Blammo! It was the whole graduation certificates and photo slide show with soundtrack experience. They'd gathered photos of these kids from Kindergarten on, and showed them all growing up over the years, etc. There were tissues on the tables, and most of the parents scoffed at them, but there wasn't an unopened box of tissues by the end. I was doing okay until Here Comes the Sun played. And then, it was either stop breathing altogether or just give in to the tears. See, we used to sing that to her on the way up to bed when she was little. (Don't ask me why that was a bedtime song, it just was, okay?)
I had an odd moment in the line for breakfast-which-didn't-suck. There was a mom behind me, talking to another mom behind me, about how they have lots to do to get so-and-so ready for seventh grade over the summer. I sort of nodded to myself, agreeing, and her next comment sort of made my brain hurt. She said, I'll have to take her out to get some make-up. ?!?!??!?! What the hell does that have to do with being ready for seventh grade. ::facepalm:: I mean, I bet she'll have some disastrous experiments with make-up starting with seventh grade, for which we'll have to throttle her, but day-um.
Aside from that moment, I had a great time at the gathering. It was great to look around and see such diversity and friendliness. All kinds of ethnic and economic and social diversity. Very different from our experience with the first school she was in, when we first moved to KS. That school was very new and beige and manicured, and all the moms had the same haircut, and there was tremendous pressure to spend a lot of money in many ways. Crestview isn't like that. I'm glad PK will be starting there next year.
This was an incredibly smart group of kids, too. The principal was talking about how, since third grade on, these kids had state reading and math assessement and ITBS scores that broke Crestview records every year. (Crestview celebrated 50 years last year, so that's some legacy.) And they were all so goofy and giggly and unselfconscious up there. You could see how some of them were beginning to take on teenaged mindsets and there were some moments of shining maturity, but mostly they were just good-natured aliens that were somehow our children, if that makes sense. They'll get out early today and be done, but before that there's an observance of a Crestview tradition: all the kids from all the classrooms line the halls, and the sixth-graders take a last walk through. This is a Big Deal -- the principal was choking up just talking about it. PB even made her grandparents choose a different day to depart for Europe so she wouldn't miss out on it.
And on Friday, she flies away to Tampa and then overseas in a few days. I won't see her until June 25th, unless we elect to return her to her Real Parents in Norway by then. No doubt, she will have grown another eight inches. I have a feeling this is going to be a big summer for her, and not just because of the traveling. Am I a little freaked out? Why do you ask?
Princess Sticky is on the verge of something. She's been holding so very tightly to the idea of being a baby over the last several months, but now she's starting to refer to herself as a Big Girl. Maybe it's the presence of the Space Marine (child o'![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iron_clad and breathofgold in the household. Who knows? She's talking about going to school in the fall, and wanting to do things on her own. And, for the first time, she's not grumping at me when I comment that she needs to be able to pee and poop on the potty or she can't go to school. She sort of considers it instead. There are a lot of somethings going on in her head, I think. Her Hand of Entropy grows stronger. Perhaps unrelated, her Lego constructions look nah-thing like anything her sisters ever built.
She's also increasingly Alpha, quite often tackling PK just to sit on her, or roll around on her. I don't scream at her or spank her, but I've been correcting her like a mama wolf would correct the young alpha in the litter. Growling eye contact, or a very dominant stance indicating that I am displeased with her behavior, or a comment that she can't do certain things to people, you know? Weird. It doesn't make her cry (I know, crying isn't really all that bad, but it tends to cut off the conversation), and it's been much more effective than anything else I've ever tried with her. Still trying to figure out what I think about that, but I sure hope this means she doesn't have to kill me in the hunt in order to cross over into adulthood. You know how there's this molecular theory that talks about cells becoming most agitated just before they divide and grow? (Or something like that...I just can't put my finger on it. RAW mentions it somewhere too.) That's what life is like with her lately. Big changes on the way. Could be a big summer for her.
::wandering off for more coffee now, and trying to avoid Hallmark commercials::
Princess !Kaboom started her new gymnastics schedule yesterday. I was grateful, really, since a whole week off had her literally climbing the walls at home. Take her, please, tire her out. We were able to arrange for me to bring her, and it was great sappy fun for me. She's in the "Mighty Mites" group, which means the summer will be filled with conditioning and learning routines (two-hour practices, twice a week). Come fall, if she's doing okay with that ramping up of the experience, she'll actually compete in a few local meets. It'll be very sparkly, I'm sure.
Watching them all line up last night, I thought I'd die of teh cyoot. She was about a head shorter than the next shortest girl in the group, and quite a bit smaller than most of them. Some of them had even been through Mighty Mites last year and were repeating. I was terrified that she'd struggle to keep up. Silly Mommy. Not so. I mean, they all had their moments of spaz, but she didn't have any more than anyone else. And she was filled with bounce and wave and high-five and general chattiness. She took corrections and listened to instructions and didn't seem to flag toward the end of class. In the car, she vascillated between being very pleased with herself and being unimpressed with the difficulty of conditioning. She even managed a dozen chin-ups, with the first three completely unassisted! I realized all over again that she's grown into her Little Person proportions now. Aside from changes in height, this is probably how she's going to be proportioned until the Boobs arrive. If nothing else, the girl's gonna be ripped by the end of the summer. She is also already tanning, which is very strange for me to behold. She must get it from her dad.
Princess Boredom's sixth-grade breakfast was this morning. I thoroughly underestimated the significance of this event. I figured, hey, breakfast with my girl, that'll be cool. But no. Blammo! It was the whole graduation certificates and photo slide show with soundtrack experience. They'd gathered photos of these kids from Kindergarten on, and showed them all growing up over the years, etc. There were tissues on the tables, and most of the parents scoffed at them, but there wasn't an unopened box of tissues by the end. I was doing okay until Here Comes the Sun played. And then, it was either stop breathing altogether or just give in to the tears. See, we used to sing that to her on the way up to bed when she was little. (Don't ask me why that was a bedtime song, it just was, okay?)
I had an odd moment in the line for breakfast-which-didn't-suck. There was a mom behind me, talking to another mom behind me, about how they have lots to do to get so-and-so ready for seventh grade over the summer. I sort of nodded to myself, agreeing, and her next comment sort of made my brain hurt. She said, I'll have to take her out to get some make-up. ?!?!??!?! What the hell does that have to do with being ready for seventh grade. ::facepalm:: I mean, I bet she'll have some disastrous experiments with make-up starting with seventh grade, for which we'll have to throttle her, but day-um.
Aside from that moment, I had a great time at the gathering. It was great to look around and see such diversity and friendliness. All kinds of ethnic and economic and social diversity. Very different from our experience with the first school she was in, when we first moved to KS. That school was very new and beige and manicured, and all the moms had the same haircut, and there was tremendous pressure to spend a lot of money in many ways. Crestview isn't like that. I'm glad PK will be starting there next year.
This was an incredibly smart group of kids, too. The principal was talking about how, since third grade on, these kids had state reading and math assessement and ITBS scores that broke Crestview records every year. (Crestview celebrated 50 years last year, so that's some legacy.) And they were all so goofy and giggly and unselfconscious up there. You could see how some of them were beginning to take on teenaged mindsets and there were some moments of shining maturity, but mostly they were just good-natured aliens that were somehow our children, if that makes sense. They'll get out early today and be done, but before that there's an observance of a Crestview tradition: all the kids from all the classrooms line the halls, and the sixth-graders take a last walk through. This is a Big Deal -- the principal was choking up just talking about it. PB even made her grandparents choose a different day to depart for Europe so she wouldn't miss out on it.
And on Friday, she flies away to Tampa and then overseas in a few days. I won't see her until June 25th, unless we elect to return her to her Real Parents in Norway by then. No doubt, she will have grown another eight inches. I have a feeling this is going to be a big summer for her, and not just because of the traveling. Am I a little freaked out? Why do you ask?
Princess Sticky is on the verge of something. She's been holding so very tightly to the idea of being a baby over the last several months, but now she's starting to refer to herself as a Big Girl. Maybe it's the presence of the Space Marine (child o'
iron_clad and breathofgold in the household. Who knows? She's talking about going to school in the fall, and wanting to do things on her own. And, for the first time, she's not grumping at me when I comment that she needs to be able to pee and poop on the potty or she can't go to school. She sort of considers it instead. There are a lot of somethings going on in her head, I think. Her Hand of Entropy grows stronger. Perhaps unrelated, her Lego constructions look nah-thing like anything her sisters ever built. She's also increasingly Alpha, quite often tackling PK just to sit on her, or roll around on her. I don't scream at her or spank her, but I've been correcting her like a mama wolf would correct the young alpha in the litter. Growling eye contact, or a very dominant stance indicating that I am displeased with her behavior, or a comment that she can't do certain things to people, you know? Weird. It doesn't make her cry (I know, crying isn't really all that bad, but it tends to cut off the conversation), and it's been much more effective than anything else I've ever tried with her. Still trying to figure out what I think about that, but I sure hope this means she doesn't have to kill me in the hunt in order to cross over into adulthood. You know how there's this molecular theory that talks about cells becoming most agitated just before they divide and grow? (Or something like that...I just can't put my finger on it. RAW mentions it somewhere too.) That's what life is like with her lately. Big changes on the way. Could be a big summer for her.
::wandering off for more coffee now, and trying to avoid Hallmark commercials::
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 10:55 pm (UTC)