Oct

7

Small update, and Sundry Buzz

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Middle school is going okay, so far, for both boys. I think? It’s so hard to know what’s really going on, from the bits and pieces they’re willing to divulge combined with what I can observe. I feel like I’m always trying to put together a puzzle with all sorts of missing pieces and some days it seems like the picture that’s barely coming into view looks pretty good and other days it seems worrisome. Sometimes things just don’t add up at all, like when I met with Dylan’s math teacher after a particularly grueling and despair-filled homework experience and she was like, “Oh, Dylan’s doing just fine! He’s got a great head for math,” and I was like, uhhhhh … kid about yay high, blonde, lots of freckles? That kid? So I don’t know, I guess all I really DO know is that kids often present different versions of themselves at school as opposed to home and honestly how’s a parent supposed to correctly decipher ANY of this hormonal mess?

Not to mention my own hormones. I don’t think this was well thought out at all, this business of being in my mid-forties when the kids are young teenagers. I should just buy a Costco-sized tub of Stridex and padlock the doors. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL SELF-CONFIDENCE IS SLIGHTLY LESS CORRODED BY SOCIETAL AND CRUSHING INTERNAL PRESSURES, the sign will say.

In other news, I have a new website! I have been wanting a place that’s specifically for product recommendations, and now I have one. It’s basically Sundry Buzz 2.0, for longtime readers, and there’s not a ton there yet but I’m plugging away at it. My top picks at the moment are this candle and this stupidly-named but highly useful face razor (when you are 45, you will have whiskers). You can get updates via Instagram, if you like.

Sep

20

Goodbye tiny cowboy

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We were talking about Halloween recently and when I asked the kids what they were thinking of dressing up as this year Riley gave me one of his patented Looks and was like, “Uh, I’m not trick-or-treating, Mom. I mean … c’mon.”

It’s true that he’s crossed the size threshold from adorable to, I don’t know, maybe menacing, depending on the costume. Plus his voice is so deep now (when it’s not cracking like that one Simpsons character) that alone might seem weird. Honey, there’s a large man at the door demanding candy, but he says no Milk Duds because they’ll get stuck in his braces.

I suppose he might change his mind or find some friends who still want to dress up, but in all likelihood last year was it for him. No more knights going door to door. Or cowboys. Or pirates. Or mummies.

You know that saying, “This too shall pass”? I feel like I used to hear that a lot when the kids were really small, and it would always chafe a little: like yes I get it sunrise sunset etc but this shrieking toddler is rabbit-kicking me in my C-section scar right now.

Pretty much everything does pass, of course, but what really gets me is that I never know when something is the last thing until it’s already beginning to fade in the rearview. At some point you realize you haven’t wiped a butt in so long you can’t remember and barring any unfortunate life events there will be no more butt-wipes, and okay that one isn’t much of a heartbreaker but how about being able to cradle your child in your arms, or carry him down the hall to bed, or run your hand over a pillowy dimpled elbow instead of that sharp pokey business.

It’s so hard to find balance between appreciating what is and what was and what is still to be, I feel like the older I get the more I focus on how things get lost and there’s no point to that — after all, no matter how hard you try to hold on, time just keeps pouring through your fingers. Pint-sized cowboys grow up and can use their own bank accounts to buy their own candy and that’s how this all works.

Oh, but it’s hard. I know you know, you with your own kids, your own life rushing along. It can be so hard to say goodbye to what was, even when what’s here is so good.

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