liar liar

Well, here's a new one for my memoirs...we had plans to go to friends for dinner Saturday night with the girls, so before we left I asked them all to get their soccer gear out and ready to go for the following morning, knowing we would likely be home late and that Sunday morning would come way too early and I would be stuck dealing with three kids running around wailing "where are my cleats? where is my jersey?" and we would once again be late getting to the field. Anyway, the girls did as I asked, and when Sunday morning arrived I got up feeling pretty confident that we were organized and on target to get to the games on time. Until I heard Elizabeth say "what the heck??? I know I put both my shin pads here yesterday, and now one of them is gone!" Fabulous. I looked her in the eye, and asked "tell me the truth. Are you sure you put them both here?" and when she answered a definite yes, I could tell she was for real. Elizabeth is a child who can do a great many things, but one thing she can't do well is tell a lie. So we started hunting, thinking maybe one of them had been accidentally kicked off to the side, but after searching every corner of their dressing room, we widened our search path. While a small part of my brain was still hoping at this point that the dog had picked it up and raced off with it in his mouth to greet someone at the door, the rest of my brain was becoming deeply certain that someone else in our household was the guilty party. Call it mother's intuition or whatever. After searching in all the obvious spaces that the dog might have dropped a shin pad, like the entry, the living room, and basically every other room in the house, I cornered my husband in the kitchen and furtively whispered my suspicions to him. He was very reluctant to go along with me however, and just said, well, you'd better be right. At this point he went outside to start looking around on the off chance that the dog had been the one to take it and perhaps had carried it outside when he greeted us the night before when we got home. I didn't think the dog had gone outside when we got home, but whatever. I returned to the dressing room where the girls were continuing to don their gear, and said "okay, if there is someone in this house who knows where the other shin pad is, you need to tell me now. IF you tell me now, I will not be angry with you. However, if you do NOT tell me now, I will be very upset, and you will be punished." No dice. So I start going through the dresser drawers, opening boxes, really digging through their stuff. Emily says, what are you doing Mom? And I reply, I don't think the shin pad is lost, I think the shin pad has been HIDDEN.
As the girls finish getting ready (minus one shin pad for Elizabeth) and sit down to eat, I continue to tear the house apart. I am now 99% sure I am right, and if I'm not, I will apologize on the spot. But I have no luck. By now Kate is in tears and is insisting that she doesn't know where the shin pad is, I PROMISE I didn't do it, she says, over and over, which is not a good sign, as this is her standard response after whacking one of her sisters in the head during a sibling battle. I am not even asking her if she did, after my initial comment to the girls about 'fessing up to the crime. I smell guilty all over her, but what can I do? I need proof. Finally time runs out, we have no choice but to leave if we are to make it in time. As the girls grab their water bottles and head to the door, Kate makes a detour into the dressing room, and Elizabeth is right on her heels. And sure enough, Kate walks straight over to a Disney Princess suitcase in the corner of the room, unzips it, pulls out the shin pad and says "oh look what I found..."
Honestly, how am I supposed to deal with this one? Since the clock was ticking, I just told Elizabeth to put it on, and everyone else to get in the car. I was feeling both vindicated and totally poleaxed at the same time. What the hell??? Crap. If there was a magic parenting genie that I could call on right now, I would, believe me. But since there isn't that I know of, we head to soccer, and I spend the morning biting my tongue, and basically not speaking to Kate at all. I guess I am a mommy monster, but it's like MY mom always told me, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
Several hours later soccer is over, and we are all home, and I get Mike and Kate alone in my room, lock the door and proceed to ask her how she knew where to find the shin pad. And that's about as far as we get, because she goes into melt down mode and just shrieks I didn't do it, over and over. So we calmly say to her that we know that she did do it, and we want to know why, and we want her to know that if she continues to lie to us about doing that she will be punished. We tell her this is her last chance to come clean and tell us the truth. Which she doesn't do, so our hand is forced and we tell her that she will not be allowed to have any play dates or attend any birthday parties for the rest of the school year - one month basically. Still she refuses to confess. So we carry on with our day, while Kate cries, and wails, and yells at everyone, and tries everything she can think of to get us to back down. And finally, finally, finally, after another hour of this, she asks me to come to the living room and sit with her for a minute. When I do she tells me, okay, yesterday Elizabeth hit me and I was mad so I hid her shin pad.
Well. I took a deep breath, and then thanked her for telling me the truth. Then I tried to have a short simple and calm discussion about how that's not a good way to cope with being mad, and that I had given her plenty of chances to come to me with the truth today. And I explained that while I was glad she had finally told me the truth, that she would still be punished for lying to me all morning.
I was bracing myself for another display of hysterics at this point, but she actually took it pretty well, and thankfully we moved on with our day without any further issues. I think by then she was just relieved to have it all off her chest. But what a gong show in the meantime. I swear, I feel like I am constantly being held hostage in my home by a small terrorist. And you know what they say, we don't negotiate with terrorists, right? Right. All I can say now is, Mommy needs a margarita....

we've got talent

Okay, apparently we do have talent in the family! Elizabeth finally got the news yesterday that she made the final cut to get into the talent show. My normally composed child actually ran up and threw her arms around me after school yesterday when I went to pick up the kids, she was that thrilled. Other than knowing she has a scheduled rehearsal on Monday, she still doesn't know when the show will be. I asked her if everyone got in, or if any of the kids were cut, and she seemed to think that only 17 of the 28 original groups who tried out were selected, but then another child told me that she thought that everyone got in, so it's still all a bit of a mystery. However the kids were told to let us parents know that there will some kind of specifics in the school newsletter next week, so I will wait and see. Anyway, after we got home, Elizabeth asked if she could borrow the karaoke machine (which technically belongs to the kids anyway, but I figured that since they couldn't read when it was given to them that we adults would just take care of it for a while) and shortly afterwards the basement was filled with the sounds of her practicing her song for the show. The twins tried to accompany her on the piano for a while, but eventually either got bored or were asked to leave because they both wandered upstairs looking somewhat dejected and in need of something else to do. Who knows? While this could just be a passing phase, inspired by watching American Idol all season to it's finale this week, maybe we are witnessing the birth of a future star....or not. Either way, she's a star to me. Once again I find myself in awe of her confidence in herself. Does she get the things she wants in life because she is confident that she will? Or is sure of herself because she gets the things she wants? Probably a bit of both I guess. So far her complete belief in herself has worked out for her pretty well. As her mom I admit I sometimes worry a little about how she will handle disappointment when it happens. I mean, you can't always win, right? Although she takes the occasional loss in soccer pretty much in stride, I think she still mostly judges a game by her own performance, and if she's happy with that, then the final score doesn't seem to concern her too much. Anyway, I am fascinated by her, and am thoroughly enjoying witnessing her journey through life. If I can help her out along the way, even better. If she'll let me that is!

still auditioning

Hmmmm, this talent show is shaping up to be quite the contest. Unbeknownst to Elizabeth (or perhaps beknownst but forgotten) she had to audition yet again on Tuesday for the impending talent show. Apparently several groups were called back to re-audition. I asked her what the judges told them and she said that they said they did "much better than last time", which is interesting since I'm pretty sure she told me they said "thank you, that's good." Maybe as in okay, we've heard enough! Anyway, I honestly didn't expect this to be such a serious event. I am starting to feel badly for these kids, I mean come on, they have the gumption to get up and give performing a shot, and these teachers are shooting them down, telling them they are not "polished" enough? I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I am starting to wonder what they are actually expecting. Perhaps they have been watching too many episodes of American Idol, or Dancing With The Stars. We're talking about kids in grade 3 to grade 7 here, who feel they have a talent worthy of sharing with the rest of us. Unless they are performing something that's inappropriate for the general rated G viewing audience, it seems to me they should be allowed to enter. Isn't that how talent shows work? You enter, and then we the audience get to decide who we think is the winner? Oh, I forgot, these days EVERYONE'S a winner, there are no losers. At least that's how it works on Fun day, known to those of my generation as Sports Day. No wonder the kids are getting confused over this talent show business. The rules have been switched on them before they even get a chance to start the race!
Anyway, I think most parents would be pleased to have the opportunity to go and watch their kids perform, no matter how great or awful they actually are. It's about the willingness to get up there and TRY that we care about, and for most of us, that's all that matters. That's what I'm proud of Elizabeth for at any rate. Not to mention that I suspect that anything the kids choose to attempt will be highly entertaining in some way or another, whether it's in the way they intend for it to entertain us or not.
So I really really hope that in the end they all get their chance to try. I think I am more anxious now about the whole thing than Elizabeth is. At any rate, I will continue to keep you posted!!

a long weekend

It was the May long weekend here these past four days...yes, four days. The kids had Friday off school as well as Monday. It started off in fine fashion my birthday Friday. The weather was perfect, nothing but sunshine and blue skies, so the girls treated me to a tea party in the garden - they got beautiful little porcelain tea sets from my parents for their birthdays earlier this year, "real tea sets" as the girls call them - and we had a lovely morning out there. I took them for Slurpees later on that afternoon, first really hot day of the year definitely required Slurpees I figured, and apparently so did everyone else in the neighborhood! Usually I have to give them a hand with the Slurpee machine, but I took a chance and sent them over on their own, since I could see quite a few of their friends already over there. They managed quite well of course, although they did put them in the Big Gulp cups instead of the slurpee cups, which caused the cashier to give me the evil eye as she tried to figure out what to charge me, oh well! Then home to lounge on our deck, with some intermittent jump rope action now and then. My mother in law called with exciting news - she and my father in law were on their way to pick up the kids and take them for a sleep over so that Mike and I could go out for dinner, so I sent the girls off to pack up some clothes and before long, I had the house to myself. Now it was time for the ultimate birthday treat...a cold beer and a good book on the deck in the sunshine, ahhhhh. I am really pretty easy to please! In fact, I was so comfortable by the time Mike got home that I suggested we do take out sushi and stay home and watch the hockey game instead of going out. He's pretty easy to please too, so that was the just right end to my just right day.
Woke up the next day to rain. Since we were planning to have our traditional May long weekend barbecue the following day, we went into battle mode, and took advantage of the kids being otherwise occupied at Grammy's house. Made the shopping rounds for our supplies - we were expecting about 12 kids in addition to all their parents, and the forecast called for more rain, so we hit the dollar store and stocked up on a wild variety of crafts and deadly toys made in China - and then worked on getting the house organized. The kids arrived home, and for once didn't go into total post Grammy and Grampa sleepover meltdown, but instead maintained their composure and played fairly decently with each other while Mike and I spent the evening doing really important things to prep for the party, like set up the outdoor canopy, arrange lawn furniture, and test out the new karaoke CD on the machine, you know, to make sure it worked properly...
Anyway, up early for soccer Sunday. The twins were up first. Em was in her usual aggressive form, hit the post twice and the goalie in the face once, but didn't actually score. Kate tripped and fell early on in the game, immediately jumped back up and started to cry, and so we spent the rest of the game telling her she was fine and to go go go! She carried on, just barely. I have a feeling winter soccer is not going to be on her to do list, sigh. Elizabeth was next. She had a great game - the rest of her team was a bit sleepy the first half, but not E, and the second half they all perked up and did well. She didn't score, but seemed happy enough with her performance afterwards. Then it was onto phase 2, the hockey game!
Yes, home to watch the Canucks win another game, a good omen for the rest of the day for sure. And the sun came out! Yes! So by mid afternoon once the game was done the party guests began arriving, and soon we had a yard full of kids gone wild. All the parents either lounged on the deck above, played bocce ball out front, or rocked it out with the karaoke machine in the living room. It was a perfect party with no drama from the kids, other than when one of the boys cracked open his glow in the dark baton, causing it to leak glow in the dark fluid all over his hands which he promptly rubbed in his eyes. By chance I happened to be standing right there, so I grabbed him and hung him upside down in the sink with his face under the tap until his dad came and relieved me. Other than being wet he was fine, phew. Unfortunately after witnessing the incident half the girls were somewhat traumatized and wouldn't go near their glowy batons after that. Probably for the best...!
After being up till nearly midnight, I figured the girls would be disastrous the next day. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe it was the all day Sweet Life of Zach and Cody on Family channel marathon, but they held it together pretty well. Mike and I actually got to sit on the deck and read for a couple hours that afternoon, with minimal interruptions. When they got antsy after dinner I sent them outside with tin foil pie plates to make "pies" which we got to down and "buy" sometime later on. Other than Emily, who was covered in mud right down to her toes the other two were pretty clean, but it was a good excuse to force showers upon them all and get ready for bed.
It felt like we'd been away for a week when I took them all to school this morning. The twins face the first day with a new teacher, and Elizabeth is supposed to find out whether she is going to be in the talent show, so I will most certainly have some good writing fodder by this evening!

audition update...

So Monday came and there were too many acts to get through in one day, so Elizabeth's groups audition has been pushed back to Thursday this week. She has been following the results from the rest of the auditions, and it sounds like they have their work cut out for them! I was kind of thinking that unless someone showed up with something really goofy that all the kids would make the cut for the talent show, but apparently I am quite wrong. Elizabeth has reported that on the first day all the acts that tried out were sent packing, and none of them made it in, due to a lack of "polish". Now I am actually a little concerned for her, one wrong giggle and they might just blow it! However, she seems totally undaunted, just a little bit nervous now she says. So tomorrow is the big day, I am dying to find out how they do! I will keep you posted...

auditions

So a couple of weeks ago my oldest daughter Elizabeth - aged 8 going on 19, I mean 9 - announces that there is going to be a talent show at school and auditions are in two weeks. I casually ask if she plans to try out and she immediately answers "yes". So I say, oh that's nice, good for you, what are you planning to do? And she looks at me like I'm definitely somewhat dense and says, I'm going to sing, Mom. Right, of course. So I say supportively, great, what will you be singing? And she answers right back, oh you know that song we learned in choir, hey soul sister? Definitely that one. And off she goes, singing away to herself, leaving me in something of a state of wonder. I mean, where does she get such matter of fact confidence like that? So sure of herself, absolutely no question that she would try out for the show in her mind. I am feeling dazed and amazed. I did my share - okay, more than my fair share - of performing in school, but I'm not sure I ever had that sense of confidence that she exudes. And not even in a cocky way, just very matter of fact. Anyway. She comes home a couple days later and tells me that she has decided to sing the song with two of her friends, also from choir, and is wondering if they can have some practices here at our house before the auditions? Because the teachers in charge have issued a notice to all those interested in participating that the acts must be POLISHED. So I consult the calendar (the one that contains everything from my life that I must remember and would otherwise forget if I didn't keep it posted on the wall right in front of me at all times) and tell her sure, and together we figure out a couple days when her friends can come over to rehearse.
So I find myself in a house with seven kids that week, as the girls came on days when I also had my nieces over. The older girls shut themselves in the bedroom, much to the great disappointment of the younger kids, especially the twins, who are not used to having Elizabeth pull that big sister card on them yet, and practice began. Amidst a lot of giggling they did manage to get out at least a few earnest renditions of the song. Okay, I know this because yes, I was totally evesdropping, but come on! They were so cute. Did I mention that one of the cutest things is that the three of them could not look less alike - E with her blonde hair and blue eyes, and then her friends, one is Asian, and the other is from India? And they are singing a song to each other called Soul Sister?
Anyway, I don't know how seriously the other girls are taking the whole thing - they seemed more interested in playing the fort and climbing in the trees out back - but I know Elizabeth is dead keen. Because the other morning I discovered a post it note beside her bed, with the words "Talent show aditshuns Monday May 16"  written on it. And that would be tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes! I tell myself, they are just in grade 3 after all, and apparently they are the only singing act that has signed up to try out. Which leaves me wondering what on earth all the other kids will be doing....

Weddings, soccer, and Mothers day

Again, I know it's been a while since I last wrote. Life seems to have been extra busy lately. I will make an effort to catch up a bit this morning!
This past weekend is a fine example of how hectic it's been around here. We warmed up for our weekend by having a girls night doing our nails, eating popcorn and watching The Wedding Planner, to get us all in the mood for my friend's wedding that the whole family was attending the next day. We stayed up too late, and the next morning the girls woke up too early - of course. Or so I thought. Why is it that I will think we are totally on schedule, and have plenty of time to get everyone organized for an event, and then suddenly I will realize that we have time warped into the future and we find ourselves rushing like crazy people to get out the door? That was the case Saturday morning. Despite all my pre-planning over Thursday and Friday, there I was shrieking at Mike when he accidentally shot shaving cream all over and into my make up bag, while I was attempting to dry/curl/straighten my three daughters hair as well as tame my own, help Mike with his shirt collar which was too tight and appeared to be slowly choking him, and keep the girls from killing each other before we left. Somehow we managed to get it together and remember all the items we needed to bring, and make it there right on time. Well, apparently we did forget one thing, or rather Emily did, which my mother in law discovered at the end of the day when we had dropped the kids off at their house after the wedding was over for a night with Grammy and Grampa. Turns out that Em attended the wedding commando, sans underpants. Which probably explains why she complained that she was so chilly during the ceremony....Anyway, we survived otherwise intact, had a lovely time. As we drove off to deliver the girls to their grandparents for the evening, Kate announced from the back seat that she was in fact, ready for bed - and it was only 4:30 in the afternoon.
After the kids spent a quiet night at my inlaws, and Mike and I spent a rowdy night watching hockey and celebrating Cinco de Mayo with friends - or should I say Pablo and I spent a rowdy night together, since Mike went in a  mariachi outfit, complete with tight shiny black pants, sombrero, guitar and a wig...let's just say the morning arrived a little early for me. But as I lay in bed, I remembered that it was Mother's Day, and I knew I just couldn't miss Elizabeth's early soccer game! The kids had spent the night with Mike's parents, and we knew Grampa was taking E to her game, but we rallied and after a pit stop at Tim Horton's we made it to the game, moments after E scored a Mother's Day goal for me, yay! My mother in law and Em and Kate arrived shortly after, although their game wasn't due to start for over an hour, but they wanted to watch their sister. We all made a brief coffee/bathroom stop at Grammy's house between games, then back to watch the twins play. It had been quite warm out while Elizabeth played, but it had clouded over and the wind had picked up, making the day suddenly much colder than before. Em compensated by racing up and down the field chasing the ball with total abandon, except for when she was subbed out, where she danced around singing a song and watching the clouds race by. Kate was in goal for the second half. She looked very small and lonely at the far end of the field as she waited (I'm sure anxiously) for the action to come her way. Grampa and Elizabeth repositioned themselves over to the side of her for extra support, while we all watched from the other end, waving two thumbs up at her now and then. I was hoping she would remember that she could use her hands, as so many of the kids forget at this age and try to kick the ball away. I need not have worried, I mean, duh, if Kate could read the entire rule book before each game she would. We are talking about an overly prepared child. It is vitally important to her that she do things RIGHT. So when the other team managed to break away with the ball towards her, she didn't hesitate to dash out to meet them, hands out to snatch the ball away. Her form was excellent but unnecessary as it turned out, since the ball actually ended up taking a hard bounce off her thighs and veered off to the side, but a save it was nonetheless. We all cheered madly for her, and she survived the rest of her term in goal unscathed, un-scored upon. Meanwhile our team had run away with the game after a slow start - the other team's first half goalie had stopped everything that came her way, but the poor kid in the second half became completely overwhelmed and just got out of the way every time our team came near her. Their coach finally made a change, and as Em put it afterwards, she ALMOST scored 2 goals! Which seemed to please her about as much as if she had actually scored.
So. We retired home for lunch, and I had the great pleasure of opening the girls mother's day gifts that they had all made for me - the very best kind of course. Handmade clay bird sculptures from the twins, and a pot of parsley from Elizabeth, that she had apparently been hiding in all manner of different hiding spots in the house since bringing it home from school - under her bed, behind her dresser, under the window in the bedroom. She said she had to keep moving it so I wouldn't find it. Like I'm that good of a housekeeper...!Fortunately she had remembered to keep watering it from time to time. We headed over to my inlaws house again for an early dinner of Chinese food and finally made it home for the night just in time for bed. I was so glad to see Monday arrive that was I totally unstressed this morning when Kate pitched a fit as we were leaving, screaming that her shoelaces were double tied wrong - I just gathered her up with her school stuff and packed her into the van with everyone else and drove off to school humming along with the radio. Even she seemed to realize it had been a pretty weak attempt at sabotaging our morning, and smiled and kissed me goodbye when we got there. And now to play catch up with the rest of my life, aka laundry, groceries, and giving the dog some much needed attention. Happy Mother's Day everyone!