A Month of Gratitude, Day 7

Thirteen years ago I became a mother.  And now this little cutie:

Has turned into this beautiful young woman:

Vicki came into this world friendly, optimistic, and cheerful, and nothing has changed.  She is always finding the positive in things, and her sense of humor is fantastic.  I'm so proud to be her mother, and I'm happy to be her friend.

I'm thankful for all my girls, but today, on the day she becomes a teenager, I'm especially thankful for Vicki.

What are you thankful for today?

Twelve

I'm proud to say that I voted in yesterday's election.

I'm also proud to say that I didn't vote in the 2000 election.

You see, I was a little busy:

It was before everyone had digital cameras, so I had
to resort to taking a picture of the scrapbook page

And now, that 6lb 9oz baby girl, the one who became the most determined baby and toddler in the world, the one who grew into the most self-confident little girl I've ever met, that little baby is now a smart, cheerful, funny, beautiful, twelve-year-old young woman.

...who can make a perfect paper airplane!

And I'm not just blessed to be her mother.

I'm privileged to be her friend.

Happy 12th birthday, Vicki!  Thanks for making me a mother.

She's Not Me After All

I think parents are always looking for a little bit of themselves in their children.  "She has my eyes!" "He looks just like me when I was that age." "She's her father's daughter." "His hair is just like mine, poor kid."  I do it with my girls all the time.  Ellie has my bone structure, Lexi my sensitivity.  And Vicki...well, Vicki is the most like me.  I see myself in every part of her.  She has my hair, my eyes, my love for music, my sense of humor, my optimism, my voracious devouring of books.  Apparently we also share the same awkward run.

Yesterday, though, she told me about something that happened in school that made me glad she's not just a mini-me after all.

Apparently this generation's New Kids on the Block is a band called One Direction.  I only know who they are because I happen to be friends with a great number of middle-schoolers on Facebook.  In our house, we listen to what the girls sometimes call "old people music".  Some of it is, but not everything.  Our kids are exposed to a multitude of music genres, old and new, but contemporary pop is definitely not one of them.

I guess yesterday in Vicki's band class, a girl was wearing a One Direction t-shirt.  Although my daughter can identify all four Beatles at a glance and tell you which musical any given song is from, she had no idea who was on this girl's shirt.  Now, if it had been me in band class that day, I would have just kept my mouth shut, but Vicki innocently said, "Who's on your shirt?"  After feigning shock, the girl told her. At this point, if it had been me, I would have laughed like an idiot and said something super intelligent like, "Oh, right, duh!  I totally love them!  I...just...didn't recognize them...'cause your shirt was wrinkled...and...yeah."  Vicki, on the other hand, said, "Oh.  I don't know any of their songs." At which point every girl in the room went into heart failure and then expressed their deepest sympathies to Vicki, who I'm sure they now all assume must clearly be repressed.

I would have died of humiliation on the spot.

Vicki thought it was absolutely hilarious and will probably now ask the same question to every other One Direction shirt-wearer in the school.

She is not like me, because she doesn't care at all what other people think of her.  She is proud, strong, and confident in who she is, and she doesn't let anyone take that away from her.  I wish I could have been like that at her age.  Dang, I wish I was like that now.  I don't know where she got that confidence from, but I'm so thankful she has it.

I love this kid so much, and I'm glad she's her and not me.

From a Sparrow to a Star

Vicki's school participates in Sparrow Clubs.  Each year they sponsor a youth with a medical need, and for each hour of community service a student performs, $10 is donated to the youth's family.  It's a great way to help middle schoolers learn to see beyond themselves, and to understand the benefits of service.  Vicki and her friends have been very excited about sponsoring their Sparrow, a local high school senior named Felicia.

Most of the kids have never even met Felicia, but, after having been invested in her cause for the better part of a school year, they have grown to love her.  Which is why it was devastating for them to learn that this past weekend she was brought home from the hospital and placed under Hospice care.  And even more devastating to learn that early Thursday morning her battle with cancer finally came to an end.

It was a sad day for our entire community.  Her family is well known and loved, and so many people have come to know and love Felicia herself.  When Vicki arrived home from school with a heavy heart, I shared with her the tributes that people were posting on Facebook, including this one:

"When you look up at the night sky and see the newest, brightest, most sparkling star, you'll know it's Felicia."

At about 9:30 last night Vicki knocked on my bedroom door, asking me if I could come outside with her for a minute.  I couldn't imagine why a kid who should already be asleep in bed already would want to go outside on a chilly, rainy night until she quietly said, "Mom, I want to look at the stars."

So my daughter and I went outside and looked up at the sky for a few minutes to honor this beautiful brave girl who neither of us had even met, but who had deeply touched both our lives.

Through the clouds, only one star was visible, and it was sparkling brightly.

Things to be Thankful For

While going through my file of old emails to our Utah family, I found an account of our first Thanksgiving here in Oregon, back in 2005.  In previous years, we had always had Thanksgiving with one or the other extended family, so this was the first year I'd had the experience of cooking a turkey.  It was definitely an educational process:

The girls watched me get the turkey ready. They were fascinated by the whole thing, until I got the wrapping off. Then I pulled it out of the bag and the "juices" came dripping out and Vicki started screaming, "It's bleeding! It's bleeding!" (She refused to eat any of it at dinner, so I think if I do a turkey again next year I won't let her watch the prep part so she doesn't get scarred for life.)

She asked where its head was, and I explained to her that they cut off its head and neck, and they put the neck inside, and that when I pulled it out she could see.

I was, and I realize now that this was probably not the best idea, referring to the turkey as "he", and just as I said, "they cut off his head and put it inside him", Lexi walked into the kitchen and asked in an extremely concerned voice, "Whose head? Dad's?"

There's probably a really good reason that I don't ever remember watching my mom get the turkey ready on Thanksgiving morning.

Mother of the Year

It was Vicki's 11th birthday a few weeks ago, and her grandparents sent her clothes.

The problem with buying clothes for a kid who lives 800 miles away is that they aren't always the same size they were the last time you saw them.

Thankfully, Grandma included a gift receipt, so Vicki and I headed off to the nearest JC Penney (which, unfortunately, is still about 20 mins. away from our house.)  We immediately found the same clothes in a bigger size, and made the exchange.  Vicki stopped off in the bathroom while I waited on a bench outside, and then we stopped in Claire's to look at jewelry before heading home.

It took a good 15 minutes to get out of the parking lot and back on the freeway (FYI, local people, 6pm on a Saturday is not a good time to leave Clackamas Town Center.)  About halfway home, a thought occurred to me, and I turned to Vicki and said, "Do you have the JC Penney bag?"

And she said, "No, you had it."

And she was right.

I had had it.  But I didn't anymore.

So we turned around, drove back to the mall, went back to the bathroom bench where I'd set the bag next to me while I waited, and where I'm 100% sure I left it when we went to Claire's.  It had been nearly an hour and it wasn't there anymore.

We checked with the nearest cashier, who called the lost & found.  Nothing.

We retraced our steps through the mall, on the off chance that I'd set it down in Claire's.  Nothing.

We check the lost & found ourselves.  Yep, nothing.

Long story short: two days and a 45-minute drive from Clackamas to Vancouver (because the missing shirt was the last one in her size) later, I replaced the missing birthday present.

Definitely not one of my finer moments.  The upside is that my daughter is an eternal optimist and not yet a teenager, so she didn't hate me, even though it was my fault.  But, you know, disappointing someone like that is almost worse.

Tell me I'm not the only one who's ever done anything like this.  Please?

Klowning Around

My brother Robbie was a film major in college and now makes commercials for a firm called VitalSmarts.  Even when he was in high school, he and a bunch of his friends used to make movies just for fun.  A few years ago, he put a bunch of his movies from high school and college onto DVDs and handed them out to family members.  My children love watching Uncle Robbie's movies.

One of these movies is a little gem called "Apokalypse Klown", starring my brother's friend Brad as a really freaky clown who lives in the basement and, as clowns are wont to do, kills people.  The girls like watching it, but they find the clown freaky all the same.

Today we went to church with my parents.  It just so happens that Brad of the Klown fame also goes to my parents' church.  When I saw him after Sacrament Meeting, I pointed him out to Vicki and Lexi.  "See that guy over there talking to Uncle Robbie?  He's the clown from 'Apokalypse Klown'!"

Blink, blink.  "Really?"

"Yep!  Do you want to go meet him?"

Both of them shuddered, and neither one paused for even a second before answering "NO!!!" in voices much too loud for church.

Apokalypse Klown, your legacy lives on.  And I'm really glad we don't have a basement.

She Still Wants to Hold My Hand

My oldest.

Volunteer.

Swimmer.

Reader.

Fearless.

6th grader.

Growing up way too fast.

When we're walking someplace, though, I often find her at my side.

She may be growing up, but she still wants to hold her mom's hand.

I love it.

Moments Like This...

Two Random Thoughts Thursday posts ago, I alluded to a phone call that chased away any lingering doubts about starting Vicki in school when we did.  Today I get to talk about why.

Vicki has always been bright.  She has always been eager to learn, and determined to succeed at whatever she put her mind to.  Crawling wasn't getting her to where she wanted to go quickly enough, so she started walking at 9 months old.  Speaking one word at a time didn't communicate her thoughts clearly enough, so she started speaking in complete sentences long before anyone expected her to.  She learned the basics of reading pretty quickly, but once she really figured out that if she put it all together the doors to new worlds would open, she started really reading in the space of almost literally a weekend.  One night we were reading chapter books to her, and the next, it seemed, she was reading them to us.

At this point we had just moved to Oregon, and suddenly we found ourselves faced with the fact that we had a four-and-a-half year old who was, as far as we could tell, ready for kindergarten.  We talked it over with the school, took her in for the kindergarten assessments, and spent some time on a conference call with the wonderful principal, who took us through the pros and cons of starting kindergarten early, made his recommendation based on her assessments (which was to go ahead and start her), and left the final decision up to us.

And we've never truly regretted sending this little baby:

with the backpack that's almost bigger than her


off to kindergarten.

She was pretty much the tiniest kid in the school, but boy did she love it.  From day one, school was very clearly her thing.

Over the years since then, Chris and I have talked about that decision we made for her, and whether or not we still thought it was the right decision.  And we've always felt good about it, and pretty sure it truly was the right decision.

Fast forward to a week and a half ago.  I got a phone call from the principal, the same one who helped us make the decision to start her early nearly six years ago.  He said Vicki had been chosen by the 4/5th grade teachers as the outstanding student of the year, an award that is presented annually by the local Masonic Lodge for one boy and one girl from each of the elementary schools in our district.

the sign in front of the school (the boy's name is on the other side)


In that moment, I knew, without a doubt, that we were absolutely 100% right in sending her to school when we did.  Not only did she hold up in all academic areas, but socially as well.  She may be the youngest 5th grader in the school (she's actually younger than a few 4th graders), but she carries herself with a maturity that more than makes up for the age difference.

with her teacher Mrs. T and our amazing principal Mr. L


It's moments like this that make parenting feel so worth the effort.  I don't believe that Chris or I did anything out of the ordinary to help Vicki achieve this award - it was all her hard work and dedication, but our award was getting to listen to her teacher's speech about why she was chosen for it.

And that, my friends, is a beautiful reward.

Woes of an Almost-Middle-Schooler's Mother

Vicki will be starting middle school in ohmyword five short months.

I'm not ready for this.

She is, though.  Ready and bouncing up and down with excitement.  The girl who has never cared about clothes in her life is planning her wardrobe for the time when she no longer has to wear a uniform (darn it.)

Last week, all the 5th graders at her school got to go over to the middle school for a tour.  And I wanted desperately to go along, but I managed to convince myself that it would be better for all of us if I just stayed home.  Moving into the world of middle-schoolers is not something that needs to be done with Mom holding your hand.  And, quite possibly, sobbing uncontrollably.  Yes, better for everyone.

That evening at dinner she gave us all the scoop.  The middle school is BIG, but awesome.  Lockers are so cool.  If you don't play in the band as a 6th grader, you can't do it as a 7th or 8th grader, so please, please, please can she get a flute?  She learned an exciting new word: electives.  And she threw it around like she'd been saying it forever.  She was suddenly a world ahead of her former lowly elementary-school self.

I miss my baby.

Heaven help us all when she actually starts middle school in the fall.
Oh, and the school supply she's convinced she needs more than anything else?

A cell phone.

Of course.

Can't I just freeze time right now?  Please?

I'm not ready for this.  Not one little bit.

Some-Kind-of-Colored Small Fantasy Creature

Update: I think I was tired when I posted this last night.  "...asked what Daddy fun things was going to do..." makes no sense whatsoever!  I fixed it so I am no longer being publicly humiliated, but I left the phrase here so I can laugh at myself anyway.

Last night at dinner we were discussing the girls' and my upcoming trip to Utah.  We're going for a girls' week with Grandma and Grandpa E. (he's an honorary girl for the week...or something.)  And Chris is staying here alone.

We were talking about all the fun things we want to do while we're in St. George, and someone asked what fun things Daddy was going to do while we're gone.

Vicki said, "Oh, he's just going to eat junk food and watch junk shows."

Chris said, "Junk shows?" (probably thinking, rather accurately, that I'm the one who watches junk shows; Glee, anyone?)

And Vicki said, "Yeah, you know, like 'Blue Elf'."

Silence.

Blue Elf?

"The one you were watching that one day?  Where it was kind of like deja vu?  And they're on a spaceship, with a guy with an H on his head?"

And Chris almost fell out of his chair laughing.

She was talking about Red Dwarf.

You Should Move to Portland

The main reason we chose Portland when Chris was looking for jobs is its close proximity to EVERYTHING.

Not only is it a big city, but it's just two hours from both the ocean and the mountains.  Today I want to sell you on the mountains.

Some of our best family friends invited us to join them in a President's Day snow hike around Trillium Lake.  Given the choice between spending a day on Mt. Hood and spending a day folding laundry, I had no problem choosing Mt. Hood.

If you move to Portland, neither will you.

You could go on a snow hike around Trillium Lake, and enjoy scenery that is breathtaking in all seasons.

Mt. Hood is back there, but it's too cloudy to see.



You'd probably have to stop a few times for snacks. (Girl Scout cookies are excellent incentives when it comes to hiking up a steep, snow-covered hill.  Just FYI.)  Maybe you'd even find an igloo to eat them in.

You could have a snowball fight.

I think I have at least one snowball fight picture of these two from just
about every year that they've known each other - it's what they do.



Watch out, he's going to throw a 'nowball at you!

Or make snow angels.

If you move to Portland, and go on a snow hike, you'll discover lots of fun places to explore.

Look how deep the snow is!
Also, Ellie thinks she can fly.

Or to just roll around.

If you're under six, you'll probably get to ride some of the way.

This is the life.

And this is a good thing, because there's an awful lot of walking involved.  4.5 miles' worth, in fact.  Although if you're like us you may not discover this until the end of your hike.

The stick seemed to help when she was forced out of the sled.

You should definitely move to Portland, because if you did, you'd probably make wonderful friends, like these:

Johnny, Ellie, Anna, Lexi, Vicki, Daniel, and Noah (in the sled)

And if you moved to Portland, not only would you get to see a beautiful place like this in the winter:

But you'd be here to see that in the summer, it looks like this:

Yes, you should move to Portland.

My Funny Valentine

Our Valentine's Day was unprecedentedly low-key this year.

Girl Scout cookies came in on Saturday, and with the stress surrounding that I just didn't have it in me to plan anything for today.  Chris bought each of us girls a bouquet of cake pops that the youth at church were selling, and he quickly folded printer paper in half and made us each a card to go with them.  Fortunately, not knowing he was buying us the pops, I bought some, too, so that's what he got from me.

We're pathetic, I know.

After reading all the blog posts and Facebook statuses talking about their Valentine's Days, I was starting to get a little depressed about our lack of celebration, and my lack of initiative to even fake one.

Then Vicki asked me to check her homework.

Here's what I read when she handed me her notebook:

Dear Mom,

I appritate you becuse you are nice.  You are kind and caring.  You have a positive and good attitude.  You alwas bake dinner and help with homework.  You are loveing and I love you.  You help me with evrey thing and remind me to do: homework, piano, bathe, and put on deoderent.  You help evreyone.  So I love you.

Lllllooooovvvvveeeee,
Vicki

My day is suddenly much, much brighter.

Happy Valentine's Day :)

This Post is Alarming

We have a lot of alarm clocks in our house.

This is Chris's alarm clock:

Ooooh, "dream machine".  That means it's extra fancy.

It goes off every morning at 5:23am.  Why 5:23?  Because then he can hit snooze and go back to sleep until it goes off again at 5:30.  And 5:37.  And sometimes 5:44.  Most of the time I sleep through all this, but not always.

It used to be my alarm clock.  I got it right before I left for college, and it was the awesomest alarm clock ever for two reasons: 1) it had two alarms, so I didn't have to change it on the mornings my first class was at 10:00, vs. the mornings my first class was at 8:00, and 2) I could set it to wake me up by playing a tape, instead of the annoying beeps or the radio.  How cool is that?  But after we got married, Chris took it over, and it's his clock now.

This is mine:

It goes off every morning at 6:15am.  And also 6:23.  And then usually I get up.  Either then, or at 6:31.

I like it because it's little and easily portable.  I got it sometime before Chris and I got married, and after he took over the big clock, it became my permanent alarm clock.  I think it might be dying a slow and painful death, because sometimes it doesn't actually go off at 6:15, even though I checked and double-checked it the night before.  Although, now that I think about it, this problem hasn't recurred since I discovered that it was actually set for 6:15pm, so maybe it's okay after all.

This is Vicki's alarm clock:

Lego Hagrid, yay!

And this is Lexi's:

(Yes, I know they're the same, but it didn't feel fair to show a picture of one and not the other.)

Santa must've known I was tired of the grouchies every morning when I went in to wake them up, because he left these in their stockings.  They're simple little clocks.  They run off a single AA battery.  All they do is beep, with increasing loudness and frequency, for an entire minute or until they get turned off, whichever comes first.

Lexi has decided to just wake up at 6:30 every morning, without the help of an alarm clock.  Often she gets dressed and eats breakfast and is pretty much ready to go to school before I'm even out of the shower.

As for Vicki...well, Vicki's alarm goes off at 7:00.  Each and every morning.

And this is what I find at 7:15.  Each and every morning:

Dead to the world

Clearly, sharing a room with your little sisters for pretty much your entire life is great training for being able to sleep through anything life throws at you.

This does not bode well for middle school mornings.

Apparently They Do Listen to Me

This was a morning that made me feel like I've been doing something right as a parent.

Maybe not everything, but something.

I was up all night with Ellie when she was sick, and I didn't really get any sleep during the day yesterday, because she was holding me to a very strict schedule: a teeny-tiny spoonful of frozen Pedialyte ("juice slushies") and ice chips every 15 minutes.  That's what the advice nurse said to do, and since I wouldn't let her have anything else, those incremental treats were incredibly important to her.  At the most, I had maybe five 5-minute catnaps all day long.

25 (broken) minutes of sleep in a 36-hour time period does not a happy mommy make.

I collapsed into bed at 9:00 last night.  It would have been sooner, but Chris had an unavoidable church meeting, so I still had to get the kids in bed and the house in a state I didn't mind waking up to before I could crash.

This morning right before Chris left for work he mentioned that it looked like it hadn't warmed up quite as predicted.  Apparently he knew this because the tree in front of our house was awfully shiny.  Also, the car was covered in ice.  I asked (it might have been more of a command, really) him to bring me my phone, and there was a text message saying school was canceled, so I just rolled over and went right back to sleep.  This was at about 6:30am.

I vaguely remember hearing the girls' alarms go off at 7:00, but since I knew there wasn't any school, I didn't worry about getting up to force them to help them get moving.

At 8:00 Vicki knocked on the door, fully dressed, and told me she and Lexi just wanted to let me know that they had gotten themselves breakfast and were all ready for school and just waiting for their ride to come pick them up.

And I dissolved into a puddle of mushy happy mommy right there on the bed.

We're always talking to them about responsibility and self-reliance, but they don't often have the opportunity to demonstrate those skills in such a major way.

They were a little bummed when they found out that they didn't actually have school today.  Well, okay, Vicki was bummed.  She said, "You mean I got all dressed and ready for nothing?"  Lexi just said, "Woohoo!" followed quickly by, "Can I play the Wii?"

The rest of our morning hasn't been quite so perfect and parentally blissful (at least one child may have been banned from the Wii for the rest of the day, and someone might have been sent to their room at one point to gain control of their emotions), but at least I know that my kids really do listen (at least sometimes) and take what we teach them to heart.

Knowing that, I can handle all the rest.

Ten Years of Vicki

Ten years ago today my life changed forever.

Ten years ago today, Vicki was born and I became a mother.

While the rest of the nation was trying to figure out who would be the next President, Chris and I were instead trying to figure out how on earth we were supposed to be responsible for this tiny, helpless little creature that was suddenly a part of our family.

And now, even though it doesn't feel possible that it's been that long, she's not so tiny or helpless, and she's ten years old.

A whole decade.

Amazing.

You've come a long way, baby! (We didn't get a digital camera until 2003, and our scanner broke about 4 years ago, so it was slim pickings for the first couple of years, but I made do with what I had.  Besides, she's cute no matter what.)

Blessing day, Dec. 31, 2000

In the comfy chair, 2001

Hiking in Snow Canyon, St. George, Utah, 2002

2 years old, 2003

Camping with Dad (and Dizzy Bear!) 2004

Indian Beach, Oregon, 2005

She did her own hair, and was so proud to show it off at school! 2006

Gap-tooth grin, 2007

Hiking in Forest Park, Downtown Portland, 2008

True Vicki style, 2009

Birthday girl! 2010
(She would like me to note that the crown was not her
idea.  Ellie insisted.)

Vicki's natural cheerfulness and self-assuredness make her such a joy to be around.  I'm so proud to be her mother, and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years brings for this amazing girl!