One Cobble at a Time

I’ve made several mentions of the fact that Gleek is sick. She has been sick since last Saturday morning and has spent most of the week lying on the couch in her “sick spot” watching movies. Yesterday she looked like she was on the mend. Then around bedtime the sound of her cough changed and she spiked a fever. The last time Gleek lay listlessly with a high fever and shallow breaths she was two years old and I ended up staying with her over night in the hospital. She slept in my bed for a good portion of last night. She did no sleep well. I did not sleep well. When I did sleep all my dreams had to do with packing for an overnight hospital stay and being perpetually late for the doctor’s appointment.

This morning I packed up a bag just in case the doctor sent us straight to the hospital. I had all the plans made. I was taking Patches with me and if we were sent to the hospital I had a list of people that I could call to come and get him. I dressed in comfortable clothes just in case I ended up sleeping in them. I had clear ideas about who I could call to pick up Link and Kiki from school. This minute planning is how I occupied my brain lying awake at 3 am, listening to Gleek breathe, and waiting for morning. When morning came I put all the pieces into place. It was only when it was all done and I found myself pacing in the kitchen with 30 minutes before the doctor’s appointment that I realized my flurry of planning was a very effective tactic for not fretting.

Fortunately all my plans were unnecessary for anything other than fretting prevention. Gleek has bronchitis. “Bronchitis” is doctor speak for “Well lookit that, this virus settled into the upper respiratory tract.” We came home with some prescriptions to ease the congestion and instructions to take care of her until she gets better. She’s back in her sick spot watching movies. Hopefully we’ll all get some sleep before the day is over.

I’m very glad to not be in the hospital. I’m even gladder that the medications are helping Gleek feel better. I’m also glad that while Gleek continues to need loving care, her illness is not a serious one. I’m glad that my sister is willing to babysit sick kids so that I still get to go out to dinner tonight to meet John Ringo.

Now I’m off to curl up with a book while the kids aren’t looking.

Valentine’s Day has never been my favorite holiday. It may have once held meaning, but these days all it contains is rampant commercialism. Besides, pink has never been my favorite color, particularly when it is paired with red. While I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s day, I am a big fan of showing love and appreciation for those around us. I just don’t think that a purchase of candy or flowers or cheesy cartoon cards is adequate to the task of expressing affection. Love and appreciation are best when they’re used regularly. I’ve decided to celebrate love by examining the different ways that the people in my family show their love to each other.

Of all my kids, Kiki is the one who is most aware of the tightened finances. She responded to this by volunteering to work in the lunchroom at school. She enjoys working there, but even more, she knows that being a lunchroom worker means that she gets a free lunch. For her this is a small, measurable way that she can contribute to the family finances. No one asked her to do this. She figured it out on her own. I only learned about it from a casual comment she once made during a conversation on a very different topic. Kiki also loves to give gifts and make people happy. She was in the store with me a couple of days ago and begged for me to buy balloons for Gleek and Patches because they were sick and she wanted them to be happy. Kiki draws pictures and gives them away. When the time comes for her to sort through her stuff and get rid of some of it, she is happiest when she can give the things to someone. Usually Gleek is the recipient of the stuff, which doesn’t get it out of my house, but makes both girls happy.

Link shows love by snuggling. Many nine year old boys no longer want to hug their mothers, but Link loves it. He loves it to the point that I sometimes have trouble detaching him in order to make him go to bed or get dressed. Link frequently reads bedtime stories to Patches. They both really enjoy that. Whenever Link gets a treat at cubscouts he asks to have three extras so that he can bring them home for his siblings. He loves being able to share.

Gleek shows love by playing with people. She and Patches will play together happily for hours. When they inevitably fight over something, Gleek will at first be gleeful in her triumph. Then she will be concerned that Patches is sad. She almost always gives him exactly what they were fighting over then clowns around by falling down until Patches is laughing instead of crying. She frequently cheers Patches up by bringing him her stuffed animals and making them do tricks. Gleek is very respectful of Kiki’s property and defends it against the depredations of friends.

Patches tries to please people by following rules. We’re still struggling with potty training because he doesn’t yet have sufficient body awareness, but he always tries very hard. When he suceeds, he needs as many potty prizes as there are children in the house so that he can hand out prizes to everyone. Patches shows love to his daddy by snuggling and teasing. In fact Patches is very good at hugs and frequently says “I love you.”

Howard shows love by feeding people. He enjoys cooking and every time he does, he wants to share what he has made. Howard brings home food for me and for the kids. He cooks eggs on demand for the kids. Howard shows love to me by rearranging his schedule to make my life easier. He checks on the kids every night before going to sleep. He snuggles and tickles and teases them daily.

I think that my primary way of showing love is “tasks done.” I’ll fold laundry for kids so that they don’t have to. I’ll quietly put away papers or toys so that they don’t get destroyed. I make beds and pick up shoes and fix meals and do dishes and grocery shop and acquire clothes. I also read stories and give snuggles and say I love you.

All of us do all of these things regularly. Love flourishes best when it is fed daily.

We have advanced through the stages of illness. Gleek is no longer lying limply on the couch watching movie after movie. Now she is wandering listlessly through the house saying “I’m booooored!” Alternately, she curls up into a little ball of sadness and sniffles “I really want to go to a friend’s house.” At least today actually included food consumption by both Gleek and Patches. Patches is still in the lying on the couch and sleeping lots phase of this illness. Gleek won’t be going back to school tomorrow. This means she’ll be missing the valentine’s day kindergarten hoopla. I’m not too worried about it though because her teacher assures me that they’ll collect all her valentines and send them home with a neighbor child. So tomorrow we’ll have boredom mixed with a sugar high. Won’t that be fun?

Fortunately this particular bout with illness was greatly relieved by the arrival by mail of a dvd full of Zobomafoo episodes. Many thanks to the kind Schlock fan who sent that to us. The kids have already watched them all. Three times each. Zobomafoo can make lying on the couch with a fever bearable.

Another wonderful thing which arrived yesterday were some concept sketches for the children’s book that I wrote. They are beautiful. I know that the final pictures will look somewhat different from these sketches, but the sketches are so perfect, so true to the spirit of the story, that they make me cry. The words by themselves accomplished what I needed them to, they told a story that Gleek needed to hear. But with these pictures the book is going to be amazing and better than I could have hoped. I’m so grateful that this artist is willing to devote so much time and effort to the project. Waiting three months for all the pictures to be done is going to be hard. I want to see them all now.

At least Nancy and I have hammered out a probable schedule for LTUE which allows both of us to be at the panels we want to attend while never leaving kids unattended. I’m looking forward to getting out of the house after being cooped up with a pair of sick children for 4 days. Thus far no one else seems to be catching it. Hopefully things will stay that way.

Patches has joined Gleek in lying feverishly and listlessly on the couch. Why is it that my family always has new and exciting illnesses to share every time we get together with my relatives? This effectively foils my plans to take my sister thrift shopping. It also foils the plans where Patches and his same age cousin were going to play in the back yard and do preschoolish stuff together. Instead Gleek and Patches are watching lots of dvds. The feature of the moment is Looney Tunes. Road Runner can make them laugh even though they haven’t the energy to stand up or eat. Yay roadrunner!

Also in the news today, Kiki is home from school frantically finishing up her Science Fair display which was due an hour ago. This display was assigned in December. Part of me feels awful for forgetting to make her do it over the weekend. But then I remembered that I spent Saturday morning cleaning house, Saturday afternoon visiting with my sister, Saturday evening attending a wedding and writing a speech to give at church, Sunday morning finishing up the speech, Sunday noonish at church, Sunday afternoon at a meeting and tending to sick Gleek. I further remember that the display is not my assignment, it is Kiki’s. She is the one who should remember it and do it. She spent large portions of the weekend playing video games. Not. My. Fault. The good news is that Kiki isn’t even trying to blame me. I’m trying to blame me and stopping myself.

The remainder of today will be spent tending to Gleek and Patches and popping vitamin C every hour in the hope that I can manage to not catch whatever it is that they’ve got. I don’t want to be sick during this week. I don’t want to miss any of the things that I have been looking forward to for so long.

My sister Nancy has arrived at my house. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years, ever since that German fellow she married hauled her off home to his country and kept her there. This time she brought him back with her, so I get to visit with Nancy, her husband, and their two kids. It has already been lots of fun. They brought with them a pile of Baby Einstein dvds. Since Gleek has spent their entire visit languishing on the couch with a fever, they pulled out the dvds to share. Gleek loves them. The other kids like them too. In fact only an hour ago Link requested to watch one, only he couldn’t remember quite what it was called, so he asked to watch “those baby idiot movies.” I think that the entire series has been permanently renamed for our family.

Life The Universe and Everything the Sci Fi/ Fantasy symposium at BYU is this week. Both Howard and Nancy are going to be on panels there. It runs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I won’t be going at all on Thursday. I hope to be able to hit a few panels on Friday. I plan to go for the whole day on Saturday. Mostly I’m going for the people that I’ll get to talk to. I may also get to speak up in a couple of the panels that Howard is on. I thought about trying to get on panels this year, but nothing grabbed my eye and I wasn’t sure how easy it would be for me to break free of child care. This way I get to just go and kibitz on the panels of my friends and relatives.

The other thing that is really exciting this week, is that Howard and I get to go out to dinner with John Ringo. Yes, that John Ringo, the Baen author. Howard and John were at a convention together years ago and they really hit it off. John reads Schlock. We read John’s books. John even wrote the intro for the first Schlock book. This will be the first chance that I’ve had to meet him. I’m looking forward to it.

So this next week looks to be a good one as long as we can keep anyone else from catching the bug that has laid Gleek flat for two days.

For the second time this week I arrived to pick up Gleek at Kindergarten only to be told that she was down in the office. On Wednesday she ran away from her teacher and threw a kicking/screaming tantrum when she was caught. Today she threw crayons at a classmate and hit the pregnant mom helper in the stomach. In both cases, Gleek had a pretty good day at school right until the end of class when she lost it over a minor issue. I had a longish talk with her teacher in which I was informed that compared to half of the afternoon kindergarten class, Gleek is a complete angel. Apparently Gleek isn’t even the worst in her class. Mostly she has trouble getting started on an assignment and then switching tasks when the class does.

I know that Gleek is an angel. I watch her as she tries so hard to control herself. When she can’t keep herself under control, she relies on me to rein her back in. I love her dearly, which is why I’m willing to keep working with her. My biggest school fear for her is that the people at school will get tired of dealing with her. So far that hasn’t happened. It concerns me to hear that there are so many kids with behavioral issues in the same grade as she is. I worry that she’ll end up in a class full of outrageous behavioral problems and won’t get the attention she needs. But all of those concerns are borrowing trouble. For today I needed to figure out how to address the current behavior and make sure that she knows it is unacceptable to treat teachers, helpers, and classmates this way.

Howard gave her a very serious talking-to, complete with Daddy Scowl. She didn’t like that. Then I sat down and required her to write “I’m sorry” notes to all the people affected by her behavior. This time around I let her dictate the notes and sign them, but I think in the future I’ll require her to do the writing as well. Hopefully creating the notes and delivering the notes will help her have a clearer picture of just how many people she affects when she misbehaves. And if knowing that she’ll have to write sorry notes helps her curb her own behavior, then so much the better.

The LDS (Mormon) church to which I belong does not employ clergy. All of the leadership positions in the congregation and auxiliaries are filled by volunteers. Because people tend not to jump up and down shouting “pick me” for the hard jobs, the volunteers are usually called in and asked to take on the responsibilities rather than waiting for someone to step forward of themselves. There is mild social pressure to say yes to one of these assignments, but there are no consequences for rejecting an assignment.

Two weeks ago I was asked to become the den leader for our congregation’s Webelos boy scout den. This is a group of boys aged 10. Right now there are only three, but by September when Link turns 10 there will be eight boys. I said yes to the assignment because I could see that this would be a good thing for me and for Link. I will get to spend time with my boy doing cool stuff. I’ll get to know most of the boys in our neighborhood who are his age. I’ll have a chance to build relationships with all of these boys. In addition, I believe that I am blessed every time I stretch myself to undertake one of these church assignments. The volunteer work enriches my life in ways that I don’t always expect. Saying yes was obviously the right answer. So I said yes even though I didn’t want the assignment.

It took me more than a week to sort out why logic and emotion were speaking to me so differently about this particular assignment. Everything logical told me it was good. I acted on the logic and took steps to acquire my materials and get oriented by the former leader. But in the back of my brain, emotion was jumping up and down while stamping her feet and shouting “I don’t wanna!”

At first I thought my emotional defiance was because of problems I have with the Boy Scouts of America, like their insistence on uniforms. I don’t mind if other people want to wear uniforms, but I hate to wear them myself. I’m going to have to wear an ugly shirt with patches all over it. This does not excite me. I also worried about the focus on earning badges. I’ve seen parents turn themselves inside out to make sure that their boy earns his badges. But the badges are supposed to represent an achievement by the boy, not piles of work done by the parents. Some of these concerns sorted themselves out as I thought about them. I realized that the badges provide a framework to motivate parents to spend time with their boys. So long as the parents don’t turn earning badges into a stress-fest, the boy will gain from the time and attention. The core point of boy scouts is for responsible adults to spend time with young boys, imparting values and building relationships. Everything else is window dressing. As a den leader I’ll have power to make sure that the emphasis is in the right place. It was another logical reason to accept the assignment, but didn’t solve the emotional issues.

I finally realized that the core of my emotional defiance was that in order to do “Webelos Den Leader” really right, I’m going to have to commit to 3-5 hours per week of work and I’m going to have to care about these boys. Both my time and my emotional resources are limited. I did not want to give up any of them. Taking the Den Leader position probably means less writing and a messier house, because I can’t afford to cut back on the business stuff and I won’t short change my kids.

My emotional turn-around came when I thought about how often I depend on the help of others to meet my kids’ needs. I depend on school teachers, and youth leaders, and Sunday school teachers, and friends’ parents to help me teach my kids the lessons they need; to keep them safe. For the safety net to be strong, the dependence can not flow all one way. The unspoken contract is that I must be willing to extend the same help and nurturing to the children of others. How many of the mothers of these boys are sitting at home praying that their boy gets a really good Den Leader? How can I not answer that prayer when the opportunity is handed to me? And so I will dive into this assignment. I will wear the ugly shirt. I will help boys and parents earn badges. I will spend the 3-5 hours per week. And I will grow to love these boys. I will do it all in the hope that somehow something I do will make a difference for one of them; that something I teach will stay with them and answer a future need. I will do it because I hope that others are out there doing the same thing for my kids when they are away from me.

…And tonight I didn’t get the parenting right. I used up all of my energy getting stuff done in the first half of the day. Then I recharged a little in the afternoon. Then came dinner and homework and toy pick up. Then I was all used up. I wanted nothing more than all my kids to just leave me alone so I could vegetate in front of a show. But Gleek was afraid of monsters under the bed and Link was hungry and Patches always fights bedtime. And it got to be 10 pm and none of them were asleep yet. They may still be awake, but at least they’re in beds behind closed doors and not needing things from me.

“Snapped” is such a good description of the exerience. I’m like a rubberband. I stretch to manage all the things that need done. Then something new gets added and I think “well it’s only a little bit more. I can do it.” so I stretch just a little bit more. Sometimes I’m aware that I’m near my limit, sometimes I’m not. But I’m always stingingly aware when I’ve gone beyond the limit and I’m over reacting to minor issues. Some days I have more stretch than others.

The good news is that a good night’s rest restores my elasticity.