Jenyfer Matthews

Babies are cute and it can be amazing to watch a toddler explore their expanding world, but I love talking to my children now that they are older. Their perspective can be so different and more creative than my own. And sometimes they are just flat out funny, especially when they don’t intend to be.

I had to take my son to the doctor for a second time when he was since last month (where did January go, by the way??) We went to an urgent care facility because it was a weekend and ended up sitting in the waiting room for about an hour before we got in to see the doctor. Many other people were also waiting, including a young couple with a toddler. The toddler was not pleased by the waiting and was alternately running around and wailing. My son was watching the toddler and getting irritated by the crying. He made a few comments about the child and what he thought the parents ought to do, none of which were helpful or practical. Then he asked me “Where do babies come from anyway? I mean, do you just like get them randomly?”

I paused for a moment before I answered and in that short moment thought oh my god he wants to talk about that now and I want to tell him myself so he has good information and not whatever nonsense his friends might tell him but honestly I didn’t want to start that conversation at that time and place because I was sure that it would lead to more questions and possibly some strange faces. So, I calmly said, “I don’t really want to have that conversation here, in this waiting room.” He nodded, without protest, and then asked, “What’s your favorite food?” All that private panic because the boy was bored! (I haven’t heard a word about babies since.)

Over this weekend we had a family movie night and watched Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan (before she went nuts). The movie was cute and the kids enjoyed it. Afterwards, my daughter looked at me and said, “It would be easy being you – all I’d have to do is clean!” Um… I guess she hasn’t looked in that room full of boxes lately! If “all” I had to do was clean, that room wouldn’t look like that!

(I on the other hand wouldn’t go back to 6th grade for any amount of money – the girl drama this week has been insane and heart-wrenching to watch.)

Last night I made a stir fry for dinner and decided to try and entice my son into eating it (not his favorite dinner) by including fortune cookies at the end. We all chose our cookies and read our fortunes out loud. My daughter’s fortune was “You will soon discover your hidden talent.” My son looked at her and said, “You have a hidden talent?!?” The tone of his voice was so indignant, like she’d been keeping secrets from him.

In other news, the children have been such slobs in their “kid zone” downstairs, openly disregarding my absolutely no food downstairs rule that I took drastic action. After I had threatened to cancel the cable TV downstairs and then spent two hours cleaning up their space and still found food wrappers and bottles under the furniture and in the corners, I decided I could be sneaky too. I found their floor, organized all their things so they could actually find and use them, and then unplugged the cable wire and told them I’d cancelled service. They were fairly contrite and resigned when they came home from school and discovered the TV no longer worked. Their only question was for how long.

Frankly, they don’t seem to miss it much and I’m enjoying the silence. I might just cancel it for real. Having no TV has very effectively put a stop to the food smuggling too.

They say bad things happen in threes. All of mine came in pairs this week.

I’ve had two children home sick from school all week. For once, I followed my instincts and took them to the doctor sooner than later and it was a good thing I did because they both had strep throat. They are both on antibiotics now and have a four day weekend over which to fully recover (and catch up on all their homework).

I myself have spent most of the week washing my hands, washing clothes, fetching snacks and drinks for my patients, and continuing to unpack boxes. I can finally see some progress! In spite of the poor condition of many of the boxes, most of the contents made it just fine – with a few notable exceptions. I found a second pottery piece that broke in transit, this time the lovely mask I made. (Right along the hairline, where a crack had developed in the glaze firing) I found a loose handful of change wrapped up in a wad of paper the size of a softball, but the mask only rated a couple of sheets of paper. Sigh.

However, in the spirit of opening myself to the wisdom and power of the Universe, I’ve decided to look for the positive sides of these situations. With regard to the sick children, at least they were both sick at the same time which (I hope) means they will return to school simultaneously as well. And having them both get sick (a fairly rare occurrence) prompted me to finally find a family doctor who was accepting new patients – not that I was able to get in to see him this time, but I’ll be ready for next time.

As for my pottery, I was whining about mentioned it on Facebook, and a friend of mine from Cairo wrote me a message: his MIL lives in a city about 20 minutes away from me and not only is she a garage sale / thrift store fiend (like me!) but she is also a potter. He gave me her email and said she might be able to help me repair my broken pieces. How is that for the Universe providing a solution to a problem?

So why did I pop awake at 3am this morning, the one morning this week when school is closed and I knew I didn’t have to get up? You could say that the Universe was trying to gift me with some quiet time to get a bit of writing done before the usual distractions of the day begin. Or you could just assume the Universe has a sense of humor…

I’m even posting a day early!

I’m still working on unpacking boxes and so far so good for the most part. It’s amazing how much trash you can manage to stash away in the corners and closets of your home just in case. Having just spent several thousand dollars to ship empty appliance boxes, plastic grocery bags, rag clothes, and expired medications ask me how I know.

I have been working my way through things, box by box. Some things I need to unwrap just to see if they made it okay and am just as quickly putting them back in their boxes for now. Most things made it just fine, however the couple of things I have found that broke so far were very wrenching. One was a large ceramic plate that goes with a beautiful Vietnamese tea set that I bought in the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The other casualty was the large pottery lizard I made myself in Cairo. Why on earth they thought it would be okay to stand it on end on its tail – the most vulnerable part of the entire piece – is a mystery to me. Ironically, another large plate that matched the dishes which were part of our furnished apartment made it just fine, though in fact it ought to have stayed behind. Oh well.

I’ve also had two sick children home this week. When my son told me he didn’t feel well on Monday morning, I was skeptical. He’d been just fine all weekend when it came to birthday parties and a sleepover so it seemed a little convenient that he’d be sick just in time for school. As it turned out, he wasn’t faking. After he had a fever for the second day running and his throat became so sore he found it painful to speak, I took them both to the doctor. The doctor suspects strep throat. I’m hoping that I can nip it in the bud in my daughter’s case, but it looks as if they will be home for the remainder of the week.

While I was at the store waiting for their prescriptions to be filled, I took a spin around and found some raspberries on the discount rack. I love raspberries. I decided to buy these to make a raspberry sauce. Since we still have a few carrot cup-cakes in the freezer from my birthday last week (with frosting in the fridge) I was thinking of sticking the raspberry sauce in the freezer and keeping it for Valentine’s Day when I could make a shortcake to go with it. Having taken a look in my stuffed-to-the-gills freezer I think I’ve gotten way far ahead of myself! Perhaps I should just make some waffles instead.

Anything to get away from boxes for a while…

I’ve been wondering lately why it is that we as a society pretty much systematically teach people not to take pride in their accomplishments?

It doesn’t really make any sense. On the one hand, we worry about building up our children’s self esteem, and yet if someone expresses pride in something that they have achieved, often that person is admonished for being full of themselves or conceited. A small child can show someone a picture they’ve drawn and be pretty sure that they will get positive feedback no matter what the quality of their art. When exactly does that change?

I’m proud of the fact that I taught myself to quilt and to cook and am pretty good at both now, and I’m proud of the fact that I learned to drive a stick shift at my advanced age and in a time of already high anxiety, but if I said these things out loud to anyone they’d probably immediately think negatively of me. You’re supposed to wait for other people to compliment you, not do it yourself.

I’m not suggesting we create a society of obnoxious, arrogant, blowhard jerks, but let’s think this through. If we could somehow foster a feeling of pride in accomplishments and a high sense of self-value in our children, we wouldn’t need to worry so much about their self-esteem or what affect advertising is having on their body image. Maybe girls wouldn’t fall into bad choices trying to please others if they only valued themselves more. Maybe boys wouldn’t engage in high risk behaviors trying to impress others if they were already proud of themselves.

There are no easy answers to this, but it is definitely something I’ll be thinking of with regard to my own children…

In spite of the fact that I didn’t bake anything except a pumpkin pie (our neighbors stopped by on Christmas Eve and brought some cookies which we set out for Santa), and in spite of the fact that I bought a duplicate DVD for my daughter which I realized in the nick of time and replaced with another and a video game for the wrong gaming system which I didn’t, I declare this Christmas a success. Everyone seemed pleased by their presents and there was good cheer all around. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Both the kids profess to still believe in Santa, though I think that time is running short – at least for my daughter. She’s asked me point blank about the Tooth Fairy (I evaded the question) but has not asked about Santa. One reason that I think that Santa survives scrutiny is because he is so much nicer than me.

I don’t buy my children things constantly – I’m pretty much a birthday / Christmas kind of mom. I’ll get supplies they need for school or sports, but other stuff? Special occasion or allowance. Santa ends up bringing all the things they children have been begging for all year that I have said ‘no’ to – like the Pillow Pets I have denied the all year. He also WOWS them with gifts that they didn’t know they wanted – this year he brought them a portable ping-pong table. How can mom compete with that?

Not only that, Santa fills their stockings with candy and goodies that Mom has to try and put the brakes on – after all, Santa isn’t here to pay their dental bills. Santa is a great guy, isn’t he? I kind of wish he still brought me things!

At any rate, we have all survived another Christmas, even if there wasn’t any snow. Bring on the new year…

Apparently my standards of clean with regard to my home are fairly high, judging only on the last several homes I’ve moved into. If my mother were alive, she’d shake her head in amazement because I’m sure she despaired of me when I was a teen living in her house. I never left dishes sitting around, but my room was pretty cluttered to say the least. (My own turnaround gives me some small hope for my own children’s habits!)

When I first move into a house, I have to give it a thorough cleaning. However it may degenerate after that initial cleaning is beside the point because at least by then it is my dirt (I’m sure all the former tenants of my homes have felt the same, ha ha). I know that I’m totally settled in and comfortable in a new place when I’m willing to walk around barefoot.

Not that I actually go barefoot that often, but it’s the idea of it. When we lived in Cairo, I made everyone take their shoes off at the door to try and keep from tracking so much dirt and muck off the streets into the house. People are constantly spitting and sometimes worse out in the open, so it just pays not to wear your shoes in the house. I typically would switch my outside shoes for flip-flops in the house. I don’t like walking on grit and the floors seemed always to be covered in sand.

When we moved into our house in Michigan, I wore flip-flops around because the house wasn’t clean. I washed the walls, had the carpets professionally cleaned, and was just about approaching the point when I might have gone barefoot when the weather turned cold and I switched to slippers. After yesterday, I not only don’t wish to go barefoot, but I don’t even want to take a shower. I may in fact switch to wearing workboots.

I saw a mouse in my kitchen.

It was early in the morning and I had just gotten up to make the children’s lunches for school. All the lights in the kitchen were out so I flipped them on and made my tea and booted up my computer. I had completed packing lunches and was sitting and looking at my email when I thought I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. I turned to look and saw nothing so returned to my email. A few moments later I heard an odd noise. I looked up and saw the mouse sitting on the back burner of my stove eating something.

Never have I wished more for a remote control gas stove so I could have fried his little furry butt!

I saw the mouse clearly from across the room. I couldn’t see its body because it was behind a lunch bag, but its head seemed pretty big and it didn’t seem particularly worried about my presence as I stood up and walked around to the stairwell to call my husband upstairs. I opened the front door, somehow thinking that I would shoo it out of the kitchen and that maybe it would be scared enough to just run outside.

My husband came upstairs and he looked in the kitchen to see the mouse licking a smudge of peanut butter off a piece of paper I had just pulled off a fresh jar in the process of making lunches. When the mouse noticed my husband, he dove behind the stove. My husband pulled the stove out at my direction, me still hoping to scare it out. Not even banging the stove with a broom handle produced results so the mouse was either hunkered down or gone. I did the only thing that I could do and went straight to the store and bought some “mouse chow”, aka rodentcide on my receipt. I put some behind the stove and under the sink, but concentrated mostly on the garage which is probably where the furry beast got in.

What am I, the Pied Piper? The mechanic just pulled a second wad of mouse nest out of the AC vents in my car, which I had chosen to believe was a leftover from the country mouse I spotted in my engine as I was leaving Minnesota this summer. I’m really hoping that it is the cold weather that brought the mouse inside because I haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever of gnawing or droppings. Maybe my banging on the stove with the broom will have given it the message that it isn’t welcome!?

There’s no way I’m going barefoot now – though it’s not as if I plan to step on a mouse either!!!

Week before last, my daughter’s homeroom teacher sent home a note asking permission for the children to participate in an optional Secret Santa activity. The kids would need to draw a name and then bring in one small gift each day this week, the cost for all five gifts totaling no more than $10 for everything.

My daughter was very enthusiastic and started shopping with her own money at a craft fair we attended last week, where she got a tube of red and green M&Ms and a bottle cap necklace. We got the rest at the grocery store: a pack of gum, a chocolate Santa, and a small ornament.

All together, the presents may have cost $8. Tops.

Monday, my daughter stayed home from school sick, but asked me to take the card and M&Ms to the school so her Secret Santa giftee would not be disappointed in not getting anything. Tuesday the school was closed due to a gas leak. Wednesday school resumed and my daughter brought two presents to school for her giftee, and was naturally looking forward to collecting her three goodies.

She came home pretty disappointed. What did she get? A crumpled up notebook paper containing an old eraser, a used pencil, and one dice.

Are you kidding me? This was an *optional* activity. You don’t sign up if you can’t do better than the trash you find lurking at the bottom of your backpack. It does not take a lot of imagination to buy a candy bar or a pack of gum (and I guarantee my daughter the candy hound would have been thrilled with either). I can only assume that the boy (yes, it was a boy, how did you guess??) did not have support from home, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t have enough spare change to treat himself to something from the vending machine.

I’d like to think that if she found out about this, his mother would be embarrassed. Even if the kids forged the note and did it on his own, with gift giving skills such as these I feel very sorry for his future wife!

My initial reaction, aside from Mama Bear Fury, was to try to make it up to my daughter in some way, perhaps by bringing her little presents after school myself. One of the hardest things that I have faced as a mother is dealing with my children’s disappointment when people / life lets them down. In the end I decided that it wasn’t my job or in her best interest to smooth it over. There is a lot to be learned by disappointment. For one thing, it surely does make you appreciate the good things in life more, right?

Instead, I wrote her teacher an email to express my daughter’s disappointment and ask that she try to emphasize the expectations of this activity a bit better in future. Then I talked to my daughter about the point of the holiday, which is giving. She is getting great pleasure from seeing how pleased her giftee is with what she has been given and that will have to be enough.

Doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t still bleeding or my blood boiling.

It’s not easy being a mom…

Though I love to collect kitchen items – measuring cups and spoons, good pans, dishes – and I enjoy eating good food, I do not necessarily love to cook. (Who wouldn’t have a personal chef if one were available??) I do however derive a certain amount of satisfaction from making tasty and well-balanced meals for my family – a task that takes both time, forethought, and some skill – which is why I don’t appreciate it when my children make faces when I serve something for dinner they don’t care for.

There were things my own mother cooked that I liked better than other things and a few things that I didn’t like at all but I ate whatever she cooked. It just never occurred to me to complain about dinner (at least not to her face and until I’d moved out!)

I don’t think it is too much to ask of my own children that they extend the same courtesy to me. I don’t make them eat things that they have tried and genuinely given a fair chance but don’t like. Not everyone is going to like everything. (My mother did not make me eat acorn squash for instance) If I choose to make something for dinner that I know ahead of time is going to be more pleasing to the adults in the house than the children, I will make an alternate selection for them (doesn’t happen much!) But if I make something that the children have eaten 100 times before without complaint and they just aren’t in the mood for it? Tough. Have a bowl of cereal or go to bed hungry. I’m not a short-order cook.

I made it pretty clear a few years ago that I wasn’t going to make macaroni and cheese every night and that I wasn’t interested in hearing negative commentary either. My daughter got the message and rarely if ever says anything negative about dinner. She is a good eater and the way to judge her enthusiasm is whether or not she takes a second helping.

My son on the other hand can be a real pain. If it were up to him, we would only ever eat macaroni and cheese, pizza, and bean burritos. He has no problem making faces or pouting at the table, particularly if I serve chili. He too is a good eater (quantity) but lately his range of acceptable choices seems to be shrinking. Last week he made a big fuss about a meal I have served many, many times before and that he has always liked. I was fed up so I sent him to his room with nothing. He was mad and stubborn enough that he decided to stay there even after I told him he could return if he liked. Eventually he came back to the table, after the rest of us had finished eating, and ended up eating two big platefuls.

When I remarked upon it he said, “It’s good. I forgot that I liked it.”

All that drama because he forgot he liked it? Oy-vey! He’s only 9 years old. If this is going to be a battle of wills, then I’m probably going to be entirely gray by the time he is old enough to move out. I sure hope that he learns his lesson or it might one day his wife be sending him from the table hungry!

Here it is, already November and nearly the end of the first marking period for the children’s schools.

My little man seems to be settled in nicely. He’s been happy and comfortable pretty much since day one actually. In the past he’s always given me a hard time about going to school and has had frequent, vague “stomach aches” in the mornings. Those are a thing of the past. He still enjoys the weekends more, mostly because he has a couple of school buddies who live in our neighborhood and a patch of woods off the back of the house to explore. What more could a nine-year-old boy ask for?

My daughter has had a rougher transition. For one thing, she started sixth grade: the dreaded middle school. Not only did she have to learn to use a combination locker (I still have nightmares about forgetting my combination!) but she had to figure out her schedule and switching classrooms / teachers. That made her nervous but at least that change in system was new to every sixth grader. The transition has actually been much harder socially.

Sixth grade is a rough year and can be a nasty age. Whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone is so insecure about themselves and their position in the social pecking order that they will do just about anything to anyone to make themselves feel more powerful and “seem cool”. Not a fun age at all. You couldn’t pay me to go back to sixth grade.

My daughter is new to public schools and is a real marshmallow inside. She’s also used to being fairly popular and is having a tough time figuring out how to fit into this new, much larger school with its unfamiliar social currents. She’s a girl who is a superb athlete and has a tom-boy’s fashion sense which sets her way apart from the majority of the girls in her school (according to her anyway). She’s starting to grow her hair out and is demanding braces.

But more pressing, she’s not fluent in US-speak.

She came home very down one afternoon this week, feeling stupid because there are so many things she doesn’t know. Like what a 7-11 is – or a “slushie.” Someone offered her a “pixie stick” and they were astonished when she asked what it was. It is all so minor that I find it kind of amusing, but she. does. not.

I tried to comfort her by pointing out that none of her classmates knew how to call someone a donkey in Arabic, had taken a school field trip that required a flight and a passport, had gone snorkeling in the Red Sea, or had been inside a pyramid. She smiled when I reminded her of all the things that she had already experienced in her short life and also pointed out that all of this is relative – none of this will matter in a few years.

But it’s tough when all you want is to blend into the crowd and you stand out so much.

Also funny for me to think that she did pretty much blend into the crowd in Cairo because her school required uniforms and her friends were doing all the things she was doing and more… and on that thought I guess it isn’t surprising that the girls on her soccer team who she liked best are the ones whose parents are immigrants…

Any (good) mom will tell you that one of our main job descriptions is being a kill-joy. I’m particularly good at it – just ask my children and their friends.

I love Halloween as much as my children – probably because I remember enjoying it so much as a child – but as a mom? It’s all a bit more conflicted. I love to see how excited my children are by the decorations and the month-long anticipation of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. It was especially fun this year because it was their first proper, American Halloween. I did what I could to make the holiday fun for them while living abroad – we went to their school fair and we trick-or-treated at all the participating apartments in our immediate area (usually no more than a dozen), but it wasn’t the same.

Living in a very family oriented town, in a child-dense neighborhood, the children had an incredible time. They dressed up like zombies and their dad took them out for two solid hours of trick-or-treating. They came home with no less than approximately SIX POUNDS of candy. EACH.

Here’s where the conflict comes in.

As a child, they want nothing more than free access to this unheard of bonanza of candy. I of course 1) don’t want them to eat until they vomit or 2) spend $$$ at the dentist. I let them admire their loot, supervised some trading, and then put their candy sacks away – only to be accessed under supervision.

(Do you want to clean up the puke?)

And yes, there will be dental rinse every night after brushing until this candy is gone.

The fact that I am both the person who makes the holiday fun happen in my various alter egos (Easter Bunny, Santa, etc) and also the one who puts on the brakes on candy gorging is ironic. It’s probably also the biggest reason that my children still believe in those mythical beings – because how on earth could I be both the giver and taker-awayer of candy and fun?

It would be easier to let them gorge themselves and be done with it, but I’ve never been one to take the easy way out…