Monthly Archives: April 2011

Trying the weekly thing:

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This week at Chez Space:

LCE or THE REALLY BIG THING: I haven’t decided if I should call this the "LCE" (Life Changing Event) or the "RBT" (Really Big Thing). I think I like RBT better. There are changes coming to our lives. Nothing bad, nothing that involves babies (seriously folks, 2 is more than enough), but changes are coming. I hope this will make a lot of things in our lives smoother and easier. I can’t put the details out. I don’t know how long this will take, but it is something we’ve been talking about for a few years and now is the time to deal with it. Once things get moving and firm up, I will write about it more, but I may need to write about it a little, hence the RBT.

Hit the Ice: So, Luna has an ice skating competition on Sunday. Dr. Jay took her to the rink this morning to practice. She’s doing much better with small wobbles. I have promised her a new skate bag (she wants THIS(but not this color) and new skates for her next skating session. Her current skates are getting tight and I HOPE we can just reuse the blades, but I am not sure (yes, blades and skates are separate). Dr. Jay was helping her perfect her crossovers and she showed him that she can sort-of do a Waltz-jump. She fell the first time, but she nailed the second. Wow.

Hit the Ice II: Yes, Soleil made a hockey team. She’s doing a skills clinic for the next 8 weeks, so hopefully this will help her skating. In the fall/summer we need to get her goalie pads of her own. I want to wait because she’s going to have a growth spurt soon. At least I hope she does because so many kids are taller in 4th and 5th grade. They just TOWER over the 3rd graders.

Fiddlin’ Around: Soleil’s first concert was earlier this month. She was the only 3rd grader in the 4th grade string orchestra. Cool.

Woof: I have been going around the net looking for a dog. Yes, the SpaceFamily will soon have a dog. The girls have been begging and I agreed when they were 5&7. Um, they turn 7&9 this summer. Woops! Eh, I think this is better! We have an insane May, but I promised them that we would start looking in June and I promised Dr. Jay that I wouldn’t fill any paperwork until after our meeting in May (AAS meeting, Boston). We’re looking at a beagle, but, I saw this little guy today. She’s missing a leg, but she is so cute… I hope she is adopted by the time we are ready. I would hate to think of her waiting that long.

Fractional: Can I just ask why the hell we are teaching 3rd graders fractions? They haven’t covered long division, but we expect them to know fractions? WTF, Massachusetts, WTF?

A week away in bullets

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  • I am starting to wonder if I should be like Mimi SmartyPants and only update once a week. This might make my postings more even. I can update during the week and then, BOOM! A quick posting.
  • We spent the week in Cleveland with family. It was a good, but crazy visit.
  • Luna out grew her bathing suits. While buying new ones at Sears, Soleil found one for Luna that was the right size, but had underwire and padding. Do we really need this on a size 7 bathing suit? Get real.
  • Soleil is pushing her limits and boundaries. grrrrr
  • I’ve decided I really need to have some sort of meeting with Luna’s teacher again. At our last meeting, she suggested that Luna had "gaps" in her knowledge and that she had "too much pride" to admit she didn’t know something. I am wondering if Luna is bored and the gaps aren’t real, but more of "I’m not paying attention". She was asked for an "L blend word" and replied with "butter". That sounds like a kid who was daydreaming, not a kid who is clueless.
  • I’ve been fighting insomnia again. Damn it.
  • Still doing T-Tapp. While I am not seeing rapid inch loss, I am seeing muscles firm up and outlines of some muscles where there weren’t any before.
  • Big news coming, but not yet.

The Picture Perfect Kid

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She doesn’t exist. That Picture Perfect Kid. I’ve never seen her. I’ve hoped and looked, but the damn truth is, all of our kids have flaws. And we all have flaws and the world has flaws.

This weekend, Soleil found an old drawing from a once friend. It showed that her friend had a broken heart and Soleil was angry and her friend said "I love you even if you hate me. Guess Who?". It was drawn 2 years ago. Her friend is also a gifted child. She falls into the twice exceptional category which means she is gifted, and has ADHD (gifted with a learning disability).  This makes it hard for Soleil. She wants to be friends with this girl, but the girl is emotionally younger than Soleil. She is as quirky as Soleil is, but in different ways.

I’ll put the honest truth out here. It’s raw and painful. Soleil has been downright mean to this girl. Soleil finally acknowledged this Sunday night when I returned from my trip. She cried for almost a half hour. We talked and discussed and the truths came out. The girl doesn’t always give Soleil the space she needs, but Soleil sometimes doesn’t want to hang with her because she’s afraid this will lower her social standing.

THIS IS 3rd GRADE FOLKS! IN 3RD FUCKING GRADE, they already care about being the popular one. Dr. Jay and I were on the "everybody knows us, but only a few want to be friends" groups in school. We also were guilty of not wanting to hang with friends that made us look "uncool". We wanted to be with the popular ones, but we’ve grown up.

While I snuggled my really getting big 8.5 year old, Dr. Jay drew a bell curve. We talked about what is happiness, what is friendship and what makes a person successful. We marked where Soleil was on that graph in terms of social standing, where Dr. Jay and I were and where her friend was. We looked at the populations that she can draw friends from. I laid it out for her that "You will NEVER be the most popular kid in school. You will be known by everybody. You will have friends. But NEVER expect to be the popular one because THAT IS NOT WHO YOU ARE." It hurt to say that, but it is true. Soleil will have her group of friends, she will be in the geek group, but she won’t be in the queen bee group.

Then the ugly part came. I am making her apologize to her former(?) friend. I talked to the mom today and explained what we were doing. I explained how I don’t want to have a mean girl. How the apology was for both girls, to help Soleil get it off her chest and to let the other girl know that what Soleil did was not okay. From here, Soleil has to make a choice: Does she want to be friends or not with this girl. If yes, they have to work it slowly. If no, she still needs to be kind.

I hate parenting. I want it to be easy. I want my kids to be healthy, happy and have the lots of friends. I’d like a million dollars while I’m at it and a chef and a maid. But that doesn’t happen. So the next best thing I can do is help my girls understand the social pecking order, where they fit in and when to stop and say "NO. This is NOT okay to do." Especially if they are the ones doing the mean girl tricks.