Month: August 2008

But please, God, I need a vacation from my vacation. Calgon?

More excellent parenting feedback today.

At the beach, Whit was unhappy when I kept “redirecting” him from knocking down Grace’s sandcastles. Finally, in exasperation, he yelled at the top of his lungs: “You are a BAD MUMMY!” I know, I know, he was just using his power to manipulate and twisting the knife that he knows how to expertly insert for maximum pain. Still, it worked: I burst into tears in front of the assembled masses (thankfully not a huge crowd) on Silvershell Beach.

Then at dinner I told Grace we were going to buy ice cream to have at home vs. go to the Oxford Creamery for cones (since we needed a ton of time at home to do another lice-comb session). She burst into tears and said, trembling lips and brimming eyes and all, “You have broken my heart, Mummy.” She has, perhaps, inherited my gift for melodrama; still, it didn’t make me feel too hot after what has felt like a long and difficult day.

Yes. I know. I’ve failed at something else. Thank you all.

Wow.
From the New York Times:

Ms. Palin praised the achievements of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost a long and bitter primary race against Senator Obama, saying that she had left “18 million cracks” in the highest glass ceiling in the land.

Then, making an explicit appeal to Ms. Clinton’s disappointed supporters, she said, “It turns out that the women in America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling.”

Them’s some bold words. I can’t feel but feel a small thrill about them, but then I remember she’s a pro-life, lifetime-NRA-member evangelical Christian. Sarah Palin and I don’t, ultimately, have much in common beyond having had children and our gender.

The fact remains that on Whit’s 4th birthday something historic is going to happen. We will swear into office our first African-American president or our first female vice president. I devoutly hope it’s the former. But, either way (as someone very dear to me says), we live in interesting times.

Yep. After two episodes of l-i-c-e at CES and one at BB&N last year, and then one at BB&N camp, we fell prey to it. Now, don’t know if anyone knows Grace’s hair well, but she has my hair – which is to say, a ton of it. A TON. To the point where anyone who cuts her hair remarks on it, and when she slept over at James’s Elizabeth reported it took 3 adults to comb it out (perhaps because I never do so, so onerous is the task).
Needless to say, this isn’t the best kind of hair to face with the fine-toothed metal comb. Grace was a very good sport and sat and watched an hour of TV as I worked my way through her hair in tiny sections. It was slippery and slimy and so were my hands. It was kind of gross. Hopefully it’s now all gone.
Then I took Grace to get her hair cut, and it’s up by her chin now. Super short. Also am doing my sixth load of laundry out of about 12 to get all of her sheets, animals, clothes, and towels washed.
Just another day in paradise.

Children totally fried from four hours of running around in the sunshine at the Providence party. Whit sleeps for 45 minutes on the way home and then cries for 30 upon getting home. I finally get ravioli into both of them (under duress and Curious George they acquiesced and ate) and went upstairs to run the tub.
I guess I ran it slightly too hot.
Whit puts his toe in and screams, as though he’s been scalded alive.

“Mummy! You do everything wrong!!!”

Fantastic. Is it next week yet?