Tag Archives: daughter

Hobbits, anyone?

Posted on March 2, 2015 | 1 comment

Good morning Everyone!

As we drove to the store yesterday, to the complete and utter mystification of everyone in the car, Kayla announced,”I need a hobbit!”   To aid her obviously befuddled parents, she added helpfully, “You  know, like soccer or knitting or something.”

Knitting Needles, knitting

Knitting, anyone?

When we explained to her that she meant the word “hobby,” her eyes widened and she said, “No wonder my teachers looked at me so strangely when I told them.”

 

My suggestion that she take up the hobby of studying more for school was not met with enthusiasm.

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Lost in Translation

Posted on February 19, 2015 | 2 comments

Good morning Everyone!

I was writing  yesterday’s morning post with my habitual glass of Diet Coke beside me when Kayla approached with a straw in her hand.  Being the prescient parent that I am, I knew what she wanted, so immediately said,” Do not drink my drink.  There is an unopened can in the kitchen.”  (It’s not that I mind giving my daughter drinks, but I loathe the thought of her drinking from a drink I’m drinking; all I can think about are all the germs she encounters during the day at school and I at work and how I don’t want to share either with her.  And it’s a territorial thing, too.)

Since she’s not deaf, I know she heard me.   Did she turn on her heel and go forth to the kitchen?  Of course not.

Looking straight at me, she leaned down to put her straw in my drink.

I try hard not to get mad with Kayla in the morning, doing my best to be sure she starts her day off well.  A good friend gave me that advice, although she also warned me there would be mornings when I would be biting my tongue in half if I tried it.  It is a good idea and I have tried my best, but when Kayla ignored me yesterday I lost it.

I slammed my hand down on the sofa’s arm and shouted through gritted teeth, “Stop!  Quit ignoring me!” (What I really wanted to do was clutch my drink to my chest and shout “Mine!  Mine!  Mine!”)

Shocked, she wailed, “I just wanted some of your drink!”

I snarled,” And I told you  no, go get some from the can in the kitchen.”

The child had the nerve to answer, “Well, you don’t need to get all mad; I didn’t understand you!”

In keeping with the whole “bite-my-tongue” thing, I did not suggest that then perhaps she should attend English as a second language classes but let the moment pass so she could finish getting ready for her day.

It is a matter of record that she did not try to drink from my drink the rest of the morning.

Have a great day!

Nancy

 

 

 

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Time Lapse

Posted on February 10, 2015 | 1 comment

Good morning Everyone!

2004, Age 3

Kayla, right after she came to live with us
Kayla, right after she came to live with us

2015, Age 13

Kayla, 2015

Kayla, 2015

Enough said.

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Telephone

Posted on February 9, 2015 | 1 comment

Good morning Everyone!

Antique Telephone

How many of you remember the game “telephone”?  Somewhere between 2nd and 6th grade, a teacher, troop leader or other adult in charge of a group of children (because we kids would never have done something like this on our own – we had better games to play!) would have us all either stand or sit in a line.  Then the leader would whisper something to the first child in the line, and that something was whispered all the way down the line to the last child, where the final result was announced.  Usually the message had changed drastically by the time it reached the last person in line.

We had the Middle School version of telephone here the other day.  Kayla called me after school to announce proudly “We were on soft lock down today!”  Apparently, a soft lock down permits the activities of the normal school day to continue with some added locked doors and things.  I asked her if it had been a drill, and she was pleased to tell me that no, the lock down was for real.  She said that at one point, helicopters flying over head shook her school room.

An astute parent such as myself would realize that at this point, Kayla was eager to tell me more, so I made her day by asking about it.  The version at the Middle School was that three men had escaped from prison (and she informed me that escaped prisoners were much worse than men who escaped from jail), and had been seen in one of the lower-income neighborhoods around the school.  However, one of the men had only one leg and he had been captured.

Later on that evening, to help her feel better, I conducted a web search to find out the whole story.  One man had escaped from the Crenshaw County jail on January 2, and someone thought they had seen him in our town walking down a road at 5 a.m. the day of the lock down.  The Middle School got one thing right:  he did have only one leg; the other was a prosthetic.  Three prisoners had escaped from some other jail in Alabama on December 24, but all three of them had been captured quickly.

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Why I Enjoy Being the Mother of a Seventh Grade Girl

Posted on August 28, 2014 | 2 comments

Good morning Everyone!

Here is my list of some of the reasons I enjoy being the mother of a seventh grade girl.

1)  I am no longer the most absent-minded person in the house – seventh graders apparently can hold only one thought in their head at a time for a maximum of 20 seconds.

2)  I live with 10 children for the price of only  one – happy girl, tired girl, sad girl, mad girl….

3)  In the person she is today, I catch glimpses of the wonderful woman she will be and the child she used to be – often in only a five-minute span of time!

4)  I can beam with pride when she does something extraordinarily thoughtful, like the sweet note she wrote and delivered to her dentist and her staff yesterday right before they pulled four of her teeth…..

5) While wondering at the same time exactly what information she missed in what class that day while writing said note.

6) I have her convinced I’m psychic.  When she’s mad at me but can’t say anything, I tell her to stop thinking what she’s thinking and am spot on.  She hasn’t yet realized that I remember myself at that age.

7)  The social world of the seventh grade girl and her friends is even more exciting than General Hospital when I was in college – without the murders, of course.

8)  The list of chores she is capable of doing has expanded from individual tasks to whole rooms.

9)  We’ve started a family pool betting on the exact date on which she will be taller than me – and I am on the inside track to win said pool!

10)  She still will hold my hand and sit on my lap sometimes – and I really love that!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Kayla’s Kitchen Kaper

Posted on August 20, 2014 | 1 comment

Good morning Everyone!

Last night, Kayla asked me if she could fix the  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese we were having at supper and deciding it was time to loosen up on my Mac N’ Cheese obsession, I said yes.

I suggested to her that she might want to get the ingredients out before the noodles were done.   She told me that there weren’t any extra ingredients to the mac n’ cheese besides the packet from the box!  I told her she needed butter and to call me when she was ready to mix so I could give her the other instructions.

12 year old brain in training

That was my mistake – I gave a 12-year-old two tasks in one sentence.  Apparently, their brains can’t handle it.

Mark announced that the pork chops were almost ready.  I waited for Kayla to let me know she was ready to mix the stuff up.  Instead, this colloquy occurred.

Mark:  Did you drain that before you mixed it up?

Kayla:  Nobody told me too!

Me (from the den):  I told you to ask me when you were ready to fix it!

Kayla:  No you didn’t!

Mark:  Well, actually, yes she did.

Kayla (to me):  You could have told me that I had to drain it first!

Mark:  How many times have you watched Mom make mac n’ cheese?  Let’s see if we can save it.  Go ahead and get the colander out.

Silence, then Kayla to Mark:  It’s not funny!

Mark and I:  Well, actually, yes, yes it is.

I’ll omit the stories of parent’s pasts, which include attempts by Mark and one of his friends to make mashed potatoes without boiling them (his sister was removing random pieces of potato from the ceiling the remaining six years they lived in that particular house) and the absent-mindedness that caused me twice (years apart) to place my palm directly on a piping hot stove burner seconds after I had just removed the pan and should have known better.

It’s nice to know that Kayla is carrying on the family tradition!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Growing Up

Posted on July 18, 2014 | 2 comments

Good morning Everyone!

growing up cartoon

Photo Credit: http://www.clickartonline.com; hand colored by me

My beautiful Kayla is steadily growing up on me – she is already taller than my mom and my aunt, is probably taller than one of my sisters and I fully expect her to end up being an inch or 2 taller than me or my other sister when all the growing is over with.

Growing up is fun (when you’re a kid, at least), but it does have some negative consequences.  A series of those happened this week – for the last three nights, Kayla has come back out of the bedroom crying after she went to bed.

Last night, as she was wiping her eyes, she looked up at me and asked, “Mom, am I going to cry this way every night until I’m over with puberty?”

Exactly how do you answer that?

Have a great weekend!

Nancy

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Mid-Move

Posted on July 8, 2014 | 2 comments

Good morning Everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten you; over the past two weeks, we have been moving from our rental house to our old house that never sold – and we are VERY happy to have been doing so!  As soon as we get settled ( and we’re getting close to that now) and I get my new schedule ironed out, I will be back posting regularly.

refrigerator

The refrigerator in the rental house

In the meantime, I have at least one funny story to share from the move.  One of Kayla’s jobs before the movers came was to clean out the rental house’s refrigerator and freezer.  When she was given the task, she disappeared and then reappeared in about five minutes, informing us that she was done.  Both Mark and I knew that there was no way she could have cleaned the fridge and freezer that quickly, so we sent her back to do the job right, much to her chagrin.

In doing so, I specifically asked her if she had gotten the ice cream out of the fridge – someone had put softened ice cream back in the freezer at some point, and it had dripped onto the freezer bottom.  She admitted she hadn’t.

When we kicked her back into play the second time, she was gone for a little while longer, but again returned, announcing she was done.  We went on to the next task.  By the end of the day, we had accumulated several garbage bags worth of trash, so Mark and I put them into the dumpster.  I noticed that two of the bags were very heavy.

When I opened the refrigerator and freezer that night, I was stunned – not one shelf had been wiped off, and the ice cream drip was still on the freezer floor.  However, there was not one single item left in either the refrigerator or freezer – besides the residues that needed to be wiped off, the fridge and freezer were empty!

After Mark and I called Kayla back into the kitchen for the third time to clean the fridge and freezer, we retired into another room where we could laugh without seeing us.  She certainly had cleaned OUT the fridge and freezer, but not in the way we meant!  The good news is that nothing in my fridge and freezer now is out of date.

Have a great day!

Nancy

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The Bear Comes Out of Hibernation

Posted on June 18, 2014 | Leave a comment

Good morning Everyone!

We are back from what was a delightful trip to Destin, and two days out Mom is here to pick up Kayla and take her to Washington D.C. to visit a family member.   They need to be on the road by 8.

I woke Kayla up and she was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes when I walked out of the room.  About ten minutes later, an indistinct roar/moan/groan has emanated from the hallway – proving that Kayla’s nickname, Bear, still remains apt!

For those keeping score, I had Mom’s coffee ready before she got up, so she is in much better shape than Kayla is!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Mysterious Malady of the 12-Year-Old Mind

Posted on May 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

Good morning Everyone!

Do any of you know exactly what happens to children around age 12 that leads them to suffer excessive brain damage?  Just to give you an example of the malady, let me tell you about Kayla’s locker.

As the end of school approaches, Kayla needs to clean out her locker.  So this morning, I asked, “What about your locker?”

She answered, absently, “I’ll start cleaning it out today.”

Since I had reason to think she wasn’t as focused on the locker issue as I was, I asked ,” What about the key?”

Let’s book mark that question and back track several months, to the time when Kayla, frustrated with her combination lock, wanted a locker lock with a key.  Being gifted with the normal amount of second sight accorded to mothers, I asked her what would happen if she lost the key.  She assured me that she would wear it on a chain around her neck and not lose it.  Still, to be certain, I bought a lock with two keys – one of which I kept and placed strictly off-limits.

All right, let’s flip back to the present day.  When asked about the key, Kayla answered, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to need the key.”  She couldn’t tell me what had happened to her key, nor even when it had disappeared.

Restraining myself from saying the obvious, “I told you so,” (mental comments don’t count!), I told her to go get the key from the M & M jar where we keep spare keys.  She couldn’t find it, and the bus was almost there, so I told her to double-check the type of lock we were dealing with at school today so I could help look for the key tonight.

M & M cotntainer

Our M & M Jar

With a kiss goodbye, I sent her off on the bus, then wandered into the kitchen to pour my morning diet coke – only to discover that, for reasons unknown probably even to herself, Kayla had NOT looked in the M&M jar for the key, but in my purse.

So what special combination of circumstances leads to brain damage that 1) loses things you were specifically told not to lose and 2) translates the words “M&M jar” to “Mom’s purse”?  More importantly, how do you fix it?  Does it ever get better?  Fellow parents out there, give me hope!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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