“Mom, I think I need a haircut!”
“Really, Piper? How come? I thought you wanted to grow it out like Rapunzel.”
“This morning when I was sitting on the toilet I leaned by head way back and I could touch the water with my hair. I could also do that when I leaned way forward.”
“You really shouldn’t do that, P. It’s toilet water.”
“Yeah. I figured you were going to say that.”
A Piper likes a snack. According to her, snacking is one of her favorite hobbies. She takes a snack to school every day. She looks forward to snack time all day. She keeps a spare snack in the car. She’s never without. So we made up a little shelf in the kitchen so Piper could pack her own snack. It’s on a low shelf just for Piper. Her selection looks pretty healthy, doesn’t?
Tamari almonds. Trail mix. Peanut butter pretzels. Carob cashews. Seaweed.
Piper would be quite the health nut except…she really just likes to lick all the tamari and salt off of those almonds and peel off the sugar peanut butter parts from the pretzels. Trail mix? Piper prefers to pick out the chocolate bits. Sometimes a raisin gets in her mouth by accident.
The seaweed? She devours it. She can’t get enough. Piper doesn’t care what the other kids say at snack time and they say plenty about her love of seaweed. Her snack loves her and that’s enough for Piper.
At breakfast this morning Piper told us she was going to knock the socks of her swim teacher.
“Really? How are you going to impress them?” I asked.
“Backstroke? Forward crawl?” Sissy suggested.
“Nope. I’m going to show them my special move,” Piper said. “I call it the dolphin sparkle. I invented it on my own. They’ve never seen it before. No one has. They probably won’t even recognize it.”
Parenting happens gradually. So does independence. At least I think so. It feels like yesterday Piper was nursing, attached to my body. Last week she told me she could walk home alone from school. Detached. I walked ten feet behind her, of course, but she wanted to be out of my sight.
She’s becoming more independent. Sometimes I don’t even realize it until I turn around and find her fully dressed and almost ready to walk out the door. Who undressed her? Who picked out her clothes? Who helped her pull that shirt on? Piper. How did that happen? Sometimes it doesn’t.
Independence seems to be two steps forward, one step back. And just because Piper can doesn’t mean she will. And then sometimes she wants to and can’t. She’s still Piper.
This is how our chore chart has changed over the last year of blogging:
The best part? Dad and I are no longer on it. Believe me, we still have plenty of chores. We’re not lazing about on the couch eating grapes while Cinderella and her sister do our bidding, although that would be nice, too.
Sissy and Piper have simply taken on more. Sissy does a couple loads of laundry a week (sort, wash, fold) and then gets to boss Piper around putting it away. They set the dinner table and I don’t have to show them how anymore. They mostly remember their snacks and water bottles on their own. Sometimes I have to remind them but I don’t have to pack them. They clean up their dishes and put them in the dishwasher. They unpack their lunchboxes and wash them. They clean their rooms, reluctantly but independently. I’m not saying they do any of their chores perfectly, but they do them and that’s probably more important than my standards.
My standards have evolved gradually, too. Parenting, as hard as it is, makes me better, too. Who knew that was going to happen? Certainly not me. Whew.
This morning while packing lunch boxes, making waffles, and overseeing a fairy game under my feet, I listened to a report on NPR about sleep deprivation in children. It’s no surprise, really. Our 24-7 world isn’t good for us. Shocker. Kids need sleep. Parents do, too. The problem is our scheduling. Or, more specifically, our overscheduling.
Like most things in parenting, it’s a tough balance between ‘will Piper be ready for Harvard?’ and ‘has Piper licked up enough dirt in the backyard today?’ I want both. But I have to prioritize. I worry all the time if I’m choosing wisely. I protect our down time fiercely. Two afternoons a week Piper and Sissy have activities. They choose. Mad Science, ballet, piano. Two afternoons a week they don’t. I choose. Board games, books, library, walks. Fridays are always, always for play dates and fun. Saturdays are a mad catch up day. Sometimes I blow off a whole day of scheduled events for a day of nothing. Sometimes we spend all day at a museum downtown. I don’t know if these are the best solutions. I just know what my gut and my kids feel.
Every day I receive another announcement in the mail about the awesome summer camps and summer opportunities in our community. I’ve lived in plenty of places without any such offerings. I would have driven an obscene amount of miles in rural Illinois for a real Math Camp. Now I have six in my backyard. It doesn’t make the decision any easier. What I do notice is how many excuses I find for NOT putting Piper in back-to-back-to-back camps over the summer. It’s too expensive. She doesn’t want to go. We’re traveling. I don’t want to battle DC traffic. Some of my excuses are more valid than others. My goals are always the same. I want to slow things down. I want some balance among the fray. I want Piper and Sissy to not feel as wedded to the clock as I do.
This morning at breakfast Piper analyzed the equal or not so equal distribution of Nutella among the squares in her homemade waffle. It mattered. The perfect bite is not so perfect if it doesn’t have the correct amount of chocolate hazelnut spread. Then we discussed the rationale behind my insistence that she use either a paper napkin or a brown towel (not the new white towels!) to clean the Nutella smears from her face. It was a lesson in logic and consequences. Piper had 42 questions. Sissy answered 41 of them. I waited for my espresso to kick in. And I wondered out loud if making a homemade whole wheat waffle countered the processed sugar spread? I still don’t know, but Piper and Sissy seemed content with the choice.
piperism 