Susan and I went homecoming dress shopping last week. (For her, not me.) As I drove to pick her up from her mom’s house, I began to have flashbacks to the dress shopping nightmare we experienced a little over a year ago.

When Rick and I got married last year, I made the mistake of telling the girls that they could wear a dress of their choice: any style, any color, any fabric, any length. I had some breezy, cotton floral sundresses in mind. The girls had other ideas.

(I had forgotten what it is like to be a young teenager. I had forgotten how desperately you want to look grown up and … dare I say… sexy.)

We visited the first, more budget friendly store and whipped through a total of 53 dresses between the three of them. Fabric was flying everywhere… from one dressing room to the next. All of them were about the same size so they each grabbed eight or nine dresses and then traded. I was there to hold the overflow and to keep the traffic moving.

No … no … no … no … no … no… too tight, too short, too flimsy, too long, too young, too old, too … too … too … too…

I realized after about an hour that I was going to have to break down and take them to a more expensive store if I expected to get a “look” that appealed to their sense of fashion and to my sense of quality.

The next store we walked into filled the bill in terms of being more expensive and appealing to the girls’ sense of fashion. But the dresses there were not exactly what you would consider to be appropriate for a late summer mid-afternoon garden wedding. They were more along the late-night-dance-club line.

Unfortunately, being new to the step-parenting gig and wanting desperately to make everyone happy, I allowed the girls to start trying on dresses. I thought, “What can it hurt… it’s just for fun… we’re not actually going to BUY anything here…these are WAY too old for these girls.”

And, sure enough, Susan found “the one.”

It was a slinky strapless hot pink mini dress with no back … and she looked spectacular in it … well, if she was 24… but she was FOURTEEN at the time… and the dress was supposed to be for a wedding …. her DAD’s wedding. Not to mention the fact that it cost about a zillion and a half more dollars than I was intending to spend.

But she had her heart set on that dress. And, after that, she wouldn’t even look at anything else because she had found the one and only dress for her.

Again, trying to be the great fun mommy, I listened to her rationale. I started to think, “Well, she COULD wear it to the homecoming in addition to wearing it to the wedding. That way, it would actually SAVE me money.”

“It’s too sexy for a fourteen year old for her dad’s wedding, but it might pass for a homecoming dress… and what do I care as long as she’s happy.”

(I truly hate to shop… I really just wanted to be finished.)

So I bought the dress. She was ecstatic.

That was in June. The wedding was in mid-August.

Three days before the wedding, I had the girls go put on their dresses just to be sure that we had everything together.

I waited and waited for them to come down the stairs. Eventually Caryn and Grace appeared, doing pirouettes for Rick and me in their fancy satin dresses and high heels. No Susan.

Finally, she peeked around the door frame and came into view.

Somehow the dress seemed much shorter, tighter and lower cut than I remembered it being.

Unbeknownst to any of us, Susan had grown quite a bit over the summer… taller … and…well…other ways too

The dress that had been on the edge of inappropriate two months ago was now way over the top.

And I mean… over the top… Susan was spilling out everywhere.

She still thought that the dress was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Her dad thought that I had lost my mind and left this one up to me to handle.

I was frantic.

Not only did I have to find a semi-formal dress in three days (like I didn’t have anything else to do that week), I also had to delicately explain to a sensitive adolescent how there is a fine line between a dress that is sophisticated and sexy and one that is (let’s just say) less-than-classy.

I waited a day and then chose my words carefully… something about how I look back and cringe at the fashion faux pas that I made when I was younger and how it is my job as a mom to help her not make the same ones.

Her face crumpled when I told her, but she’s a pretty down-to-earth girl and, realizing that I was probably right, she recovered quickly.

We went shopping … just the two of us … and found a lovely dress that doubled nicely as a homecoming dress a few weeks later.

Last week, we steered clear of certain stores and managed to
set a dress finding speed record in one hour, two stores, 6 try-ons, two internet purchases and just one return. I can’t wait until next year when I will be outfitting all THREE of them for Homecoming! Maybe I’ll send them with Rick.

We did not give the girls a ride home from their cross country meet on Saturday.

The mud was not the only reason. The smiles in the picture are hiding a lot of what is going on behind the eyes those drenched little girls.

Once again, the Grace and Caryn had to endure head-to-head competition and we have to deal with the fall-out.

This is an ongoing saga at our house… the perpetual competition between Caryn and Grace, our two over-achievers. Wouldn’t you know they would be the same age?

Grace and Caryn are 13 and in the eighth grade at two different middle schools within the same school district. They are both 4.0 students. They are both basketball cheerleaders. And they both run cross country and track.

As you can imagine, the competition at our house is fierce.

Although it’s inconvenient for us, it’s probably a good thing that they go to different schools. Otherwise, we would have to compare every homework grade, every quiz point and every test score, in addition to the constant race-time scrutiny and who-has-the-best-cheerleaders contest.

(Heaven help us when they start vying for the attention of the same boy.)

It wasn’t always like this.

Grace and Caryn met in kindergarten and were quickly the best of friends. I remember driving Gracie home at 11:30 each morning and listening to her tales of recess-boy-chasing with a little girl named Caryn. (At the time, I wondered if this was a sign of times to come.)

They did everything together.

Soccer…

Dance class…

Breakfast…

Fun times out….

The beach…

Parades through the neighborhood with a plunger as a baton. (Use your imagination; I couldn’t find the picture.)

Of course, that was before they became sisters and started sharing a room.

Even then, they still managed to have some fun together.

Soccer was still good because they were on the same team.

Swim team was ok because they usually weren’t in the same event.

And this summer, they had a ball together whitewater rafting!

But the rivalry hits high gear during cross country and track seasons when they are neck and neck in the same events over and over again.

The girls will face each other five times this fall in cross country races. Saturday was the second time. The score for now is Caryn one – Grace one.

Rick and I walk a thin line, cheering them on as they run by with a “Go Girls!” Anything else would be taken as favoritism.

I wish I could convince them to cross the finish line at the same time like Rick and I did in our race on Friday night, but that’s not about to happen. They are more inclined to throw the other one under a bus if one was going by.

I’ve also tried unsuccessfully to convince them to concentrate LESS on beating one another and MORE on beating the other girls in the race. But somehow, they end up finishing with almost identical times at every meet.

As the years go by, I think that it will matter less and less who is taller, who is faster, whose eyes are blue and whose are brown, and who has an A+ and who has an A-. I’m hoping that they will appreciate their friendly competition and manage to find joy in each other’s successes.

In the meantime, the good news is that … even during cross country season… they have a common enemy in their younger brother. (He took this picture.)

This afternoon, for the third time in as many weeks, I made a speedy and tearful exit from a shoe store.

This time, I had endured the smirk of a sales clerk as he said, “We have this really cute shoe in your size,” as he held up something like this:

Thanks, Smart Aleck!

At the risk of alienating any readership that I might have accumulated, I have to admit that I detest shopping… and even more than I detest shopping, I detest shoe shopping.

Some might say that I should be excommunicated from the female gender as there is clearly something wrong with me. What woman doesn’t love shoes?! And what woman doesn’t love to shoe shop?!

Isn’t that the message that we get in all the how-to-be-a-girl magazines and the chick flicks that we love so much?!

– I, for one, did not “get” how Carrie Bradshaw could POSSIBLY have forgotten that she left some fancy pair of new shoes in the apartment that Big bought for her. (If you haven’t seen the movie “Sex and the City,” you should. The shoe part is very minor.) –

But seriously, if I had a zillion dollar pair of shoes that actually fit me, I’d wear them every day! I think I’d wear them in my sleep.

I have special needs feet … not to diminish REAL special needs … but I do.

I realized this when I was in the throes of pre-teen insecurity and heightened vanity. As every girl does at that age, I had started to compare every single one of my features to the women in the above mentioned magazines.

I reassured myself that those were models in magazines and it shouldn’t get to me so much.

But then, I looked at my feet next to the other girls’ feet during swimming lessons. Theirs were cute. Mine looked like the appendages of an alien.

I stopped taking swimming lessons. And for the next 10 years, I didn’t go to the pool. And when I did, I remember standing there with one foot covering the other…like that would help hide them somehow.

Not only are my feet large in general, they are also abnormally wide. I have callouses on my big toes, my second toe is much longer than my big toe, my little toe is all the way curled under and I have giant bunions on the sides. Sexy!

As the self-possession of adolescence wore off, I learned to live with my feet and accept them for what they are, my means of transportation.

I can’t wear flip flops (thus my aversion for them) nor can I wear strappy sandals nor the sleek, sexy pointy toed shoes that were in style a few years back.

But I’ve managed to find some relatively attractive boots and shoes that I can squeeze my feet into with minimal discomfort.

Unfortunately, lately, it seems that running has had some unpleasant side effects for my feet. One, I’ve had some injuries so wearing comfortable shoes is more important than ever. But to make matters worse, my feet are getting wider so finding comfortable shoes has become nearly impossible.

In the last three weeks, I know I have tried on 20 pairs of black boots and have yet to find a pair that doesn’t make me wince when I put them on.

As I left yesterday to take Susan homecoming shopping, Rick looked at my feet and suggested that I change into my tennis shoes since I was wearing what he calls the “cruel shoes.” (Steve Martin bit.)

He’s a man! He’s obviously never had a sales clerk look down her nose at him for shopping in jeans and tennis shoes.

I kept the cruel shoes on. I need all the respect I can get when I’m shopping.

We didn’t find any shoes for me, but Susan was delighted to get these for her perfect size 7 ½ feet.

Maybe I’m a fuddy, duddy… or maybe I’m just jealous… but I don’t think I would wear them even if I could. But they made Susan happy and who am I to take away someone else’s foot joy. Goodness knows, I’m not getting any of my own.

Rick and I are going to Oktoberfest this weekend and normally I’d be worried about what on earth I was going to wear that didn’t make me look like a grandma. (not that there’s anything wrong with being a grandma)

Lucky for me, the Oktoberfest folks have organized a four mile run. I would WAY rather run four miles than torture myself with the cruel shoes. So I’m going to get away with wearing my beloved Nikes and I’ll even get beer and a crème puff at the finish line.

Lauren was nicknamed “Lala” long before my time. I’m sure it had something to do with one of her sisters (older or younger) not being able to say her name. But since I entered the picture when they were all speaking quite clearly (well… all except Lauren), I don’t know when or why the nickname took root. And, darn it, you just can’t expect dads to remember that kind of stuff.

Lauren’s official diagnosis is ectodermal dysplasia. According to Google health and a zillion other sources, that means “a group of conditions in which there is abnormal development of the skin, hair, nails, teeth, or sweat glands.” To us, it’s just a convenient phrase to label her “problems” for strangers. That classification really doesn’t say anything about life with Lauren.

The real deal is this: Lauren is handicapped, physically and mentally. She will never be independent. She is perpetually at the 4 year old to 8 year old intellectual level. In terms of motor skills, large and small, I would say she is around 4.

Lauren is like any four or five year old… oh, except for the fact that she’s twenty-two. If we lay out her clothes, she manages to dress herself correctly nine times out of ten. But that tenth time she has the shirt on backwards or inside out and would never notice unless we caught her. She’s able to get her socks on and can slip into her shoes.

She brushes her teeth about like any preschooler. (We let her “brush” them and then we go back and do it for real.) She can feed herself and usually holds her silverware correctly… although those skills slip without constant reminders.

She can read simple books and (kind of) tell time.

The difference between Lauren and her pre-schooler counterparts is that this is where the development has stopped.

She will never ride a bike or drive a car. She will never be able to cook a meal or go to college or live in an apartment on her own.

She can, however, beat every single one of us in a game of wii bowling and I swear the girl has “Bionic Woman” hearing.

I can’t begin to imagine the pain that Lauren’s mom and Rick endured when they were told that their precious baby would never be “normal.” I can’t begin to imagine the years of diaper changing and seizures and surgeries. I can’t begin to imagine the carefully designed mainstreaming that they poured into making her the beautiful young lady that she is today. They did a great job.

The fact remains that the work will never end. And, now, I’m part of that equation.

I thought that I was prepared to be a step-mother to a special needs child/adult. I went into this with eyes wide open… and I think I do an adequate job… but I’m telling you, this is not an easy task. This isn’t like any other challenges that I’ve ever faced because this is not something that I can control.

Accepting Lauren’s limitations and, at the same time, knowing the proper amount of “pushing” to do is an ongoing challenge for me.

Lauren is like any other pre-schooler who has learned to work the system. If something is a little difficult… which many things are for her… she will smile coyly and get someone else to do it for her.

Take, for example, buttoning her pants. Lauren far prefers elastic pants. If I try to put her in a pair of regular jeans, she will stand there sticking her belly out at me, her hands turned awkwardly out at her sides with the “poor pitiful me” look on her face.

As parents, we know that it is WAY easier to just do it for them and avoid the hassle. As parents, we also know that is not the way that lessons are learned.

This is where Lala and I butt heads. I’m nearly as stubborn as she is and I think that if she has the fine motor skills to manipulate the television remote control, she has the fine motor skills to button her pants.

This has been an ongoing battle for the last year and a half. I’ve begged and pleaded and tried to show her how. I’ve promised all sorts of fancy treats if she would learn, including a pair of $100 “sexy” jeans from Buckle. But nothing has seemed to work.

So last Saturday I decided once and for all that it was high time that Lauren learned to button her own pants.

After I buttoned her pants for her, I sat down beside her on her bed and had her drape another pair of jeans over her lap. I went through the step by step instructions on how to button a pair of pants. (Try verbalizing something that you’ve known how to do instinctively since you were in the first grade…It’s harder than you might think.) And I made her practice over and over and over again.

Ok, I only made her practice for 5 minutes or so… certainly not as torturous as the 25 minutes of math facts that I make Jack do daily.

And YES! The next morning, she got up and got dressed… her shirt right side out, socks and shoes on, and pants BUTTONED! I guess I owe her a pair of “sexy” jeans. Yea Lala!

Last week, I arrived at Jack’s football game a few minutes late. As I approached the sideline, I saw that Shaquille O’Neal had switched sports and decided to start in the junior leagues. Even better… he was lined up against Jack.

Now, Jack is no small boy. He’s always been one of the biggest kids in his class, but this kid was a giant! According to Jack’s dad, he was 6’4” and 250 pounds. (That’s a dad talking; he was actually 5’11” and 205.) Regardless, that’s a big ten-year-old.

Even from thirty feet away, I could see the fear in Jack’s eyes and that started to put the tears in my own. By no means am I an overprotective, indulgent kind of parent. But watching my “baby” get clobbered by a boy that is nearly a foot taller and 80 pounds heavier than him pulled at my heartstrings.

You can just barely see Jack crumpled in front of number 95…the Mammoth’s hand on his back.

But I bit my lower lip and watched as Jack (and the rest of his team, for that matter) got shoved around the field. At the end of one play, the big guy pushed Jack down about 20 yards away from the action on the field. Since that wasn’t enough humiliation, he also “pancaked” him. (Ya gotta love the mentality of football players.) Thankfully, Jack’s coach let him come off the field for a few minutes.

That’s the first time I’ve seen Jack cry during a football game. I wanted to go give that Sasquatch and his 300 pound dad on the other sideline a piece of my mind. Of course, I didn’t. I patted Jack on the shoulder pads and told him to suck it up. (What a nice mommy am I!)

The team went down in a painful defeat (as they had all season), but they escaped the game with nothing more than some bruises to their egos. Fortunately, they’re ten; they’re resilient. They got some snacks and a “go-get-‘em-next-week” talk from their coach and all was well.

I, on the other hand, was starting to have flashbacks to Jack’s first year of football. That year his team, the Vikings, went the whole season without a touchdown until the very last game. I’m not certain that they even had a first down until that last game. It was heartbreaking to watch a bunch of eight and nine year olds trudge off the field with their heads hanging low week after week.

So yesterday, we were all back at the playing field… same group of rowdy ten year old boys… same dedicated coach (who deserves a medal for the amount of time that he gives), and same weary but cautiously optimistic parents.

It was a dreary rainy day but we went all-out anyway. Lauren and I each wore one of Jack’s jerseys from previous years. Susan, Caryn and Grace had volunteered to do the run-through sign this week, so they were excited to show off their artwork.

The Vikings were bound to win if the sign was any indicator.

The boys were back on the football field hoping to redeem themselves from last week’s flogging (much like Ohio State this week). And I was on the sideline hoping that there is only one Hercules in the league.

I should have been taking lessons from the ten-year-olds.

On the way to the game, Jack told Rick that he had a feeling about this one. After last week, he wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He had faced the worst of it and made it through intact. He had even managed to get around that behemoth a few times, proving that David really can beat Goliath.

The whole team must have learned that last week because they came through with a resounding win.

To the Eagles’ parents… please forgive us if we were overly exultant on our sideline, but it felt like we had won the Super Bowl…and I mean the NFL Super Bowl!

Hopefully, the Vikings’ new-found confidence will carry them through the rest of the season and into the playoffs when they play Goliath again. In the meantime, just to be on the safe side, we are going to have the girls do the sign every week!

Last night, Rick graciously volunteered to drive all of the kids home from Caryn’s cross country meet so I could go on home and get a head start on dinner before the rest of the evening circus began. I happily accepted the 10 minutes of peace that he was offering.

At home, I rushed in the door and tossed my keys and purse on the kitchen table. Strategically positioned where I normally throw them was the Health Section of Tuesday’s New York Times, folded open neatly to an article entitled, “When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’.”

Rick often tells me about articles that he has read, but he usually doesn’t leave them out for me so deliberately. So I picked up the paper and started to read.

By the end of the fourth paragraph, I had already texted him: “Did you leave me this ridiculous, infuriating parenting article or did one of the kids?”

The article was by Alfie Kohn, author of “Unconditional Parenting and “Punished by Rewards.” (I would have known that his opinions would set me off if I had read the titles of his books BEFORE I bothered to read his op-ed piece.)

Reading between the lines, though, Mr. Kohn’s basic assertion is that discipline of children equals conditional love. According to him, a reward / penalty system in child-rearing is damaging to your child’s self-worth and may well cause long-term psychological harm.

This is not limited to the penalty part of the reward and penalty system. According to Mr. Kohn, praising your children will cause them to resent and dislike you and instills in them “strong internal pressure.” Praise is just another method of control, analogous to punishment.

Hmmm…

It’s obvious to me that Mr. Kohn has some unresolved teenage angst that has yet to be addressed in therapy. He also must have had a sibling who got a lot more parental praise than he did as a child.

(As for his “studies” that back up his assertions, I’m sure that there are also “studies” that back up that the moon is made of swiss cheese.)

What? I can’t say “Great job!” when one of the girls brings home straight As? And what about when one of them brings home failing grades? That’s supposed to be met with the same vanilla response?

Rewards and penalties are just part of society. I don’t know of any career paths that aren’t based on that system. I pity Mr. Kohn’s children. I wonder how they will adapt to the real world when their father lets them out of their cocoon.

The love that we have for our children isn’t determined by their behavior or their grades or whether or not they won their cross country race this week. Love is unconditional.

Privileges, however, ARE conditional.

Rick and I have been discussing our own reward and penalty system lately… debating what works and what doesn’t. He’s a bit of a soft touch, but, even for him, this whole concept was on the radical end.

When he walked in the door and I shoved the paper at him, asking what this was all about, he assured me that he was not the one that left it there. Turns out, it WAS one of the girls. She denied that it had been left purposefully. Smart girl…must have heard me complaining about it.

I guess Mr. Kohn is right. I do want control. What mother doesn’t want to control her toddler’s tantrum at the grocery store? What parent doesn’t want to “control” their three year old so he doesn’t write on the wall with a permanent marker?! And what parent doesn’t want to “control” their teenager and keep him or her from doing drugs?

Darn right, I want control. And if it means that I cause them “unhealthy feelings of internal compulsion,” well … so be it. They’ll get over it. And if they don’t, they will make some psychologist very wealthy someday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15mind.html

It seems that dinnertime at the Snide household just keeps getting later and later.

So this week I decided to change all of that. I thought that with better planning on my part, I would miraculously change the fact that we have 5 kids and full time jobs that keep us busy until at least 9 every night.

On Saturday, I carefully drafted the menu for the week based upon each evening’s activities. Then Rick and I did all of the grocery shopping and on Sunday I actually started cooking. (I’ve never cooked anything ahead of time in my life.)

You see where this is going.

So this was last night:

4 pm Left work early to try to get to Grace’s cross country meet in Mount Vernon.

4:45 pm Discovered that meet was not at the middle school, but at a nearby park.

5:00 pm Learned that meet was to start at 5:30 instead of 5. Hurry up and wait.

5:30 pm Rick stuck in traffic on wrong side of town on his way to get Jack to football practice.

5:59 pm Rick arrives; Jack not ready. He was sitting on the front porch (no football uniform in sight) waiting for one of us to call him. Of course, he doesn’t have a cell phone and the home phone was not with him, so I’m not sure how he was going to answer.

6:15 pm Jack late to football.

7 pm Rick off to the third curriculum night … informs me that it lasts until 9, not 8.

7:15 pm Home from cross country meet… put dinner in oven, 15 minutes behind schedule.

7:55 pm Back to football practice to get Jack… no place to park. Another curriculum night, a soccer game and football practice make for a full parking lot. I made do.

8:20 pm Home again (fortunately without a ticket or a tow bill) to find house filling with smoke.

8:21 pm Discovered source of smoke: billowing out of stove. I guess 3 pounds of ground beef in a loaf pan is just too much. Grease was pouring over the sides of the pan and the cookie sheet that I had put it on (just in case it spewed over).

8:22 pm Attempted to remove cookie sheet and loaf pan without pouring grease into bottom of oven.

8:23 pm Did not succeed.

8:24 pm Turned oven off.

8:25 pm Opened all windows on first floor.

8:30 pm Slightly less than patient with Lauren when she helpfully pointed out that dinner was burned.

8:32 pm Fed Lauren leftover lasagna.

8:50 pm Sent Lauren to bed.

9:00 pm Rick home. Good. He cleaned up the grease.

9:05 pm Discovered that dinner was, in fact, NOT burned. Dinner was NOT done.

9:06 pm Put meatloaf back in oven.

10:00 pm Sat down to dinner with other four kids and Rick.

10:01 pm Got to hear how all of Caryn’s friends eat at 6:30.

10:21 pm Noticed that Susan, Caryn and Grace had not touched their meat loaf.

10:22 pm Sent Susan, Caryn and Grace to bed with Lauren.

That’s what I get for planning ahead. At least they ate their cheesy potatoes.

Cheesy Potatoes
1 stick butter, melted
2 cups crushed corn flakes
1 bag of shredded hash browns
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 small onion, diced
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 cups of sour cream
½ tsp. pepper
1 tsp. salt

Mix ½ of butter with corn flakes. Mix remaining ingredients. Put in greased 9″x13″ pan. Sprinkle corn flake crumb mixture over top. Bake 40 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees, uncovered.

Five hours at the mall for clothes shopping… back to school haircuts for everyone…a painful trip to Kohl’s dragging Jack back and forth between the clothes rack and the dressing room… dentist’s appointments for everyone… physicals completed for sports eligibility… a trip to the office supply store… school walk-thrus (1, 2, 3, and 4)… meet the teacher day… two more trips to the office supply store (because we couldn’t possibly get one comprehensive list before classes begin)… and just when I think I’ve fulfilled all of my back to school parental responsibilities, along comes curriculum night.

For those with no children or for those with kids younger than five, curriculum night is aptly named: the evening that comes about 3 weeks after school begins when you meet the teacher (again) and hear what your child is going to be doing this year at school.

For curriculum night virgins, I suppose this might be a fun time. You get to see where your child sits, read the cute little note that he or she left you, and rub elbows with the summer-rejuvenated teachers and other first timers.

As for me… I just attended my 23rd curriculum night! I think I could probably conduct a curriculum night in my sleep for just about any grade level.

But every year, I make my way to the kids’ schools, I sit in a tiny little chair with my knees squished under a tiny little desk, and listen attentively as yet another teacher tells me the same things that I have heard 22 other times.

Why do I still go? Well, because I want the kids’ teachers and the other parents to think that I am a good mom. Why else?

Ok, ok… I really do want to know what is going on in the kids’ classrooms… and if the teacher can do it year after year, then I can go and be supportive for them.

So I go and I shake the teacher’s hand and tell them my name and my child’s name. (This is a very important part of the evening. You don’t get the proper parent brownie points if the teacher doesn’t know you are there.)

Then, I write a little note back to my child telling them how great they are and how excited I am for them this school year… blah blah blah. (They really do like that.)

I take meticulous notes about the math fact tests, the lunch schedule, the rewards/penalties system, and all of the projects that I will be doing at 11 pm the night before they are due this year. I do this fully intending to share all of this new information with the kids’ dad and fully intending to discuss it in detail with my children.

(Of course, what really happens is the notes get tossed on the dining room table where they collect dust …and other school papers… until sometime in November when I have to shove all of them into a box to clear the table for Thanksgiving dinner guests.)

But mostly, I sit there and worry about if I’m going to make it out of there in time to pick up one kid from soccer practice and drop off another at guitar lessons and whether Rick has started dinner at home already.

So when the teacher asks if there are any questions, I am already packing my stuff to rush out the door. I wait…holding my breath…praying that the “parenter-than-thous” have kids in the other class and not this one.

But, sure enough, there is one in every crowd. There is always one parent that has a list of questions that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the class as a whole.

“My Scottie…who is only, as you know, in the second grade… has been reading at the 5th grade level. Is it ok if I allow him to read those higher level books?”

“My little Jessica just loves coming to school, but I’m worried that she is not challenged enough. What do you do with such advanced children like her to keep them interested?”

I don’t even think that these parents listen to the answers to their questions. They just really want to hear themselves talk and prove to the other parents how brilliant they are … or how brilliant their kid is.

The teachers, I believe, are in the same boat as the other parents. Most of them have a “let’s-make-this-quick-and-get-home” attitude. So, as the whole room stifles a moan, the teacher tries to delicately explain that those are the kinds of questions to be covered at conference time. But of course another parent raises their hand and asks another similarly silly question.

Well, the good news is that school is back in full-swing, I only have 7 more years of curriculum nights left and Rick is going to take care of the TWO remaining ones this week. He’ll be off to the big kids’ schools where the chairs are a little bigger and I’ll start dinner and see if I can find the notes that I took last week.

Tuesday evening Rick sent a text to all three girls reminding them of the cell phone rules: “Hello Darlings. Just a friendly reminder…cell phones are to be powered off during school and after 10:30 on school nights.”

He got three different responses.
“Gotcha”
“K”
“Fine”

I won’t say what response belonged to which girl, but I will say that those one word answers spoke volumes about the acquiescence (or lack thereof) to our ridiculous rules.

Since I am quite fluent in female vernacular, I can tell you without any reservation that “fine” means anything but “fine” to any woman that I have ever known. And “K” really isn’t resounding acceptance. I shared my expert assessment with Rick. Being a dad to four girls, he is an expert in his own right.

Oh, the joys of parenting teens with cell phones!

Our girls are not texting or calling out during school or late at night, but someone IS texting in.

So, what I want to know is… who are the parents that are letting their kids text at 2 am on a school night? And who are the parents that are not noticing that their kids text all day long AT SCHOOL?!

The last time I checked, cell phones aren’t supposed to be on at all during the school day. But it seems that rule is conveniently ignored. (Much like the dress code… which is another blog entirely.)

So it all boils down to Rick and I being the big bad, overly strict ogres about something that really shouldn’t be an issue at all if other parents were doing the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE texting! It is a great way to communicate small pieces of information to all three of my girls at once.

A friend of mine who is also a mother to two teenage daughters likes to communicate touchy subjects via text messages. She chooses to remove the “fi-eeeen” from “fine” and just is happy to know that the message was communicated. I think she has the right idea.

And, even I think it is nice that the kids can keep in touch with their friends that way. (Much better than the one kitchen phone with the stretched out cord that I grew up with.)

But, with the good, comes the bad. It seems we are raising a society of children who think it is acceptable to constantly have phone in hand, thumbs racing away over the keyboard, having multiple conversations with multiple friends, while they are supposed to be … well … you name it … at dinner, at school, at work, at church, riding their bikes, and in the middle of the night while they are supposed to be sleeping.

I’ve seriously considered eliminating our $30/month unlimited family texting plan. But if I did that, I would have to actually HEAR the disgust in the “gotcha,” “K,” and “fine.”

Besides, how would I tell Rick that it is time to bring me my coffee in the morning without getting out of bed.

I think I was probably around 11 years old when I vowed to leave the farm the minute that I got the chance. That proclamation is not unlike every other rural adolescent’s dream of the bright lights and the big city.

To me, Columbus was the big city and that’s where I’ve settled. Well, I’m actually in a suburb… which is much more like living in a small town than living in the city.

But I didn’t grow up in a small town; I grew up on the farm…removed from the small town of 13,000…removed from the village of 700…and, frankly, I thought that I had accidentally been delivered to the wrong family. Surely, I was supposed to have been born in some place … any place … other than the middle of nowhere, Ohio.

(Subsequently, I have visited the middle of nowhere. And it is not in Ohio. It is along those roads in South Dakota where there is no cell phone signal for 100 miles and the ranches are 10 miles off of the road.)

One consequence of my decision to leave my roots in the dust (pun intended) is that I have raised a bunch of city kids.

Not that there’s anything WRONG with being a city kid… but I just never thought that I would have them. I must have thought that somehow my knowledge of how to saddle a horse, clean a stall and castrate a pig would be genetically transferred to my offspring.

It wasn’t. In fact, I think they’re a little dismayed by the idea that I know how to do those things. Not to mention the fact that I think my husband is a little dismayed that I know how to do those things.

We visited my parents on the farm this weekend and I witnessed the joy that city kids get from a little taste of the country life.

Only a city kid would think that the grain bins were this cool.

I remember “running away” into this cornfield sitting in the middle of a row just like this.

Jack still shocks himself every time we visit Mom and Dad. I think he does it on purpose now.

My parents have 4 horses and 2 mules which they use for trail riding. So the big event of the day (besides a yummy steak dinner) was riding.

Grandpa gave instructions to the younger cousins on how to groom while my kids sat nearby under a shade tree… texting.

This is actually pretty fun.

Susan really got the hang of it.

It took three of us but we managed to get Lauren onto the horse which made her day.

Farm lot angels? Do you know that dirt is not just dirt? City kids!

By the end of the day, I had almost forgotten all the reasons that I had left the farm.