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I remember myself ten years ago, when Kiki was little. Parenting was still new to me then, but I had some very clear ideas about how it should happen. I look at myself now and I am doing some of the things that I believed I would never do.

I thought I would never push my kids into extra curricular activities. I currently have Link in gymnastics classes, not because it is something he loves, but as a form of physical therapy. I did not understand back then the things I know now about practice. I did not realize that preteens start needing something more than enjoyment, that they need purpose and a goal to strive for. Link finds energy and satisfaction from gymnastics even if a particular lesson is frustrating or embarrassing. Sometimes he’ll walk out of a lesson angry and frustrated, but what he says to me is not “I want to quit” but “I need to practice.” And so I scramble to help him practice so that the next week can go better.

I thought that kids should not be over scheduled. I still believe this, but my definitions have altered to include the fact that some kids need more structured activity than others. Gleek enjoys her free play time, but she also gets bored if there is too much of it. She needs things to do. If I don’t put her into activities, then the burden falls upon me to find constructive activities for her. So Gleek has both Gymnastics and Piano as well as a twice monthly church activity group. This leaves her plenty of play time, but gives her things to practice when she is bored. It is a good balance for now. But it will not surprise me if she needs even more schedule when she starts hitting the pre-teen years. On the other hand, Patch does well with long stretches of self-directed play. So does Kiki.

We were far less immersed in electronic entertainments when Kiki was little. In fact I had a ban on battery operated toys of any kind. Mostly I found that the batteries were simply there to provide additional noise or lights without significantly adding to the play value of the toy. I lifted the ban when I realized that I was making gift giving extremely difficult for my technology loving father. So now we run things on batteries and we play quite a lot of video games. I’m not always sure this particular shift is a good thing. We’d all benefit from playing outdoors more. At least we continue to not bring commercial laden television into the house. We still watch shows that we love, but it is all via DVD or online sources. This way we can pay for the content we love and avoid supporting idiotic commercials that we don’t.

I think the biggest shift is that when Kiki was little, I could not have pictured myself as a working mother. I was completely immersed in parenting and house maintenance. If you had asked me, I probably would have admitted that once the kids were all in school, I would pick up some sort of a job. I would not have been able to tell you what the job would be. I thought the switch over would be an event. Instead work slipped into existence piece by piece before I knew it was happening. What would my younger self think of my life now, I wonder. She would probably worry about the harried pace I keep. I know that I look back at her and wonder what she did with her time. But then I think and remember what it was like to have my days chopped into tiny slices by the needs of infants and toddlers. I remember what it was like to sleepwalk through the day because baby wouldn’t sleep. I remember the endless thing after thing. My days were full then too, they were just full in a different way.

So much of my life now is different than what I could have predicted. My choices have altered because of those differences. I wonder what thing I will find myself doing in the future that I would not consider now. It would be a scary thought, except that I am still guided by the same principles that drove my parenting in the past. The difference in choices is driven by differences in information, not fundamental changes in what I believe. So my future choices will be different, but they do not frighten me because I will still be me, just a more informed and experienced version of myself.

For the past week or more Kiki has harbored a longing to watch The Lion King. Today the longing got strong enough for her to go asking around the neighbors to see if she could borrow the movie. She succeeded and all four kids settled in to watch. I did not watch, but I could hear the sound from my office. I realized that I still have all of the dialog from this film memorized. The Lion King was one of about four movies that we owned when Kiki was a preschooler. (I can also recite Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, and Hercules.) We watched it a lot. But at some point the tape was either damaged or broken. I asked Kiki and she does not even remember us owning it. But I do. I remember curling up on the couch in our unfinished basement next to Kiki and her bowl of cheerios. She would watch and I would nap, because I was pregnant with Link and frequently tired. I still remember Kiki commenting with satisfaction at the end of the film. “And they all have Rars together.” Indeed they do. Today when the ‘Rar’ part came, I reached over and hugged Kiki. She is not so little anymore. I told her the story and she grinned. “So that’s why I like this movie so much!”

We also watched Get Smart today. I had not seen it yet, and Howard had only seen it once, so we all gathered on the couch. Patch snuggled up to me. Gleek snuggled up to Howard. Kiki sighed with contentment. “Finally a family movie time!” It was fun to snuggle up for a movie that everyone enjoyed together. Our tastes are sufficiently diverse that it is hard to find a movie that pleases us all. The movie was a good pick. There was enough physical comedy to delight the kids. There was enough subtle humor to amuse Howard, Kiki, and I. It was good for all of us to be together with no stress and no squabbles. Yay for fun movies.

Last night Patch had a hard time settling for bed. This has been typical lately. He’s always getting back out because he is “hungry.” With a load of work out of my hair, I was more relaxed at bedtime than I have been lately. So I tucked him into bed and talked with him for awhile. After I left to manage Gleek, Patch got back out of bed. I scolded him and he dissolved into a puddle of tears. He wanted more talking time. And then I remembered that when Patch is getting out of bed declaring hunger, it usually means that what he really needs is attention. All the kids could use more mom attention. I’m not sure when they last got real focused attention from me. So today I set about doing all the stuff that the kids have been wanting me to do, but I’ve not had time for. I worked hard while they were at school, but once they were home, I did their stuff. I played games with Patch. I ran a couple of errands for treasured items (a mood ring and a giant jawbreaker.) I looked at the kids and really saw them. I asked them stuff about their lives. It was good. And then I was sucked into a book. I didn’t really mean for that to happen. It is a book that I have read before. but I think it was a rebellion of sorts from the quiet voice in my head that says I should sometimes get to do things I want to do even though they don’t benefit anyone but me.

I am so close to being done. The Baen edits are finished, I just need to do some image processing to make the files smaller. Tomorrow is also the poster shipping day. Saturday and Sunday I’ve got birthday parties to run. Then I’ll be into the week when I can just focus on house and family rather than a dozen urgent business things.

Scrapyard is gone. I can now rejoice …Until Tuesday or Wednesday when the printer will give me a list of problems which I will then have to fix. I can hope that this time we got everything right, but that has never happened before, so I don’t expect it this time around either. The good news is that the printer is double checking our work and making sure everything looks marvelous. I’ve grown to depend on that. At least now I know not to panic when the list of fixes arrives. They’re all minor instead of “Your project is irrevocably broken.”

But I can’t quite kick back and take the rest of the week off. I still have formatting and uploading to do for Baen. Oh, and the posters arrived, so I have orders to fill. That has to fit in somewhere.

Tomorrow I burn files to DVD and ship them off to the printer. Scrapyard is all but done. The rest of the week will be spent preparing files for electronic distribution through Baen. That should be done by Friday. Then I shall clean my house. It will be nice to have a clean house again. It will be even nicer to have a clean house once Nancy and her family arrive to stay for the week. It shall be a week of vacation for me including a party and a trip to Idaho. Then I will get back to work. Resident Mad Scientist awaits.

So far today I have been a mother, a chauffeur, an office administrator, a customer service representative, a distribution processor, an inventory clerk, a contract negotiator, a chief financial officer, an accountant, a cook, a janitor, a layout editor, a merchandising coordinator, a laundress, and something akin to a zombie. That last is on the list because of everything that went before. I think I used every part of my brain that it was possible to use until the whole thing shorted out and I had to take a break.

So instead of writing an insightful post I will instead direct you to my friend Stacy Whitman who is running a seminar on writing science fiction and fantasy for children. She is an experienced and intelligent editor, so she’ll have loads of useful information.
Provo Library
Provo, Utah
Rm. 308 (Young-Card room)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
1-4 pm
Many more details can be found on Stacy’s site.

Sometime in the last six months I stopped putting things off until I’m not so busy. This is because as I peer ahead into the next few months and years, I can’t see a time when I won’t be busy. In the far off future there may be a patch of “Not Busy”, but I suspect it is a mirage. For the next while I just need to consider “Busy” and “Insanely Busy” as normal states for my life and plan accordingly. Fortunately all those years of caring for babies and toddlers taught me how to get things done in small slivers of time. It is an invaluable skill that I still use every day.

Truth be told, I’m not in a hurry to reach “Not Busy Anymore”. We are in a golden time both professionally and as a family. These are the times we will look back at and say “Remember when we were still shipping books out of the basement?” “Remember when Kiki watched the kids all day because we were at LTUE?” “Remember when all the kids had to get ready for school and out the door by 8 AM?” “Remember when we had shipping parties to get books mailed out?” “Remember when we had that cat for two weeks?” “Remember all those times that the dirty laundry pile was so huge that kids could hide in it?” I am not in a hurry to get to the “Not Busy” place, because I love all of the things that keep me busy. And honestly, I suspect I will always be busy because as these things wane, other things will take their place.

“I think that’s Callie.” Said Link’s friend as he petted the cat in Gleek’s lap. This small recognition led to the doorbell ringing an hour later. An 11 year old girl was at the door. I knew her and her family. She was in my creative writing class over a year ago. Her mother is Kiki’s youth group leader. They live around a couple of corners and down the block. The girl was here to see if our Keeka, that we found just over two weeks ago, was her cat Callie, who went missing last November. I led her to the back where Link was playing with Keeka. As we walked, a small piece of me hoped that she would be disappointed, so that my children would not have to be. I thought of the hours that Gleek and Kiki had spent just sitting outside and petting Keeka. We would never have deliberately gone out to acquire a cat, but a beautiful and friendly one had come to us unasked.

“Callie!” the girl gasped with delight. For a moment Gleek was delighted to swap cat stories. Gleek chattered about how we had found Keeka under our deck and rescued her. But then realization began to set in. Suddenly this cat was no longer our Keeka. She was someone else’s Callie. Gleek crumpled into sobs. I quickly realized that I could not just let the girl carry away our cat. Instead we walked with her, so that Gleek could see the home where Keeka lived. Patch came too, but Kiki and Link elected to stay home. Callie was greeted with delight by the rest of the family. They had all missed her and mourned her. It was a sight that Gleek needed to see. We came inside to talk about how the cat was lost and then found. Gleek got to see Callie curl up in her favorite chair and start purring. She also got to play with two tiny poodle dogs. Then I gathered my kids and we bid farewell.

All of my kids have a standing invitation to go and visit Callie any time they want. When we acquired the cat, this is actually the outcome I hoped for most, that she could go back to a home where she could be allowed indoors, but where my kids could visit. It is good, and yet tomorrow morning will be sad when there is no cat meowing at the back door to remind us that her bowl is empty. Tomorrow afternoon will be sad when she is not sitting on the doorstep waiting for the kids to arrive and pet her. We will go visit, but it will not be quite the same as when she was ours. But then I think of the joy on my friends’ faces. If I am a little bit sad, they were much more sad and now they are not. And neither is Callie. She was glad to be home.