Kirstin Odegaard
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School Mournings

10/10/2018

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Ugh. That morning school rush. We always arrive at the school gates at the same time, somewhere around rushed-but-can-still-make-it-o’clock. This year, I also have to get our baby ready to go in the morning. It seems like we’d never make it with those added responsibilities, but we do—and we get there at the same Almost Late time as last year. How is that possible? It makes me think that last year, I should have had enough free time to train for a 10K and draw up a plan to end world hunger. Instead, I emptied the dishwasher.

The goal every morning is to leave at 8:05. So far we have hit 8:13 every day. Why is there an 8 minute lag?  I’m using every minute to work toward the goal of leaving on time, but I begin to suspect I’m the only person working towards this goal.

Here’s what this morning looked like:

Ten minutes until it’s time to leave. Colin is ready early! He believes school is a vacuum that sucks away his time and soul, so he rejoices at his extra minutes and goes to play in his room. He promises that he will come out immediately and be ready to go when I call him.

Baby Carson is almost done slurping milk, and I need to brush my teeth. Annabelle just needs to put her shoes on. This one is in the bag.

Annabelle is excited about a long-lost possum backpack that she has discovered in the dark netherworld of her closet. We have already discussed where Possum came from (her aunt), when he arrived (Christmas one year), and who he was given to (probably Colin, but I pretend not to remember, as Colin is listening a little too attentively, and there is no time for a fight over possum ownership).

“Annabelle, go put your shoes on,” I say because I think we’re done with Possum’s origin story.

But Annabelle is not done. “Sometimes Possum didn’t get enough air in the closet!  So do you know what he did? Whenever someone opened the door, he breathed real hard to get more air.” (Demonstration of Possum breathing hard to prevent his demise.)

“Oh, good thinking, Possum. Go put your shoes on, Annabelle.”

“Do you know what Possum did when he got cold? He put on a jacket! Because there are lots of jackets in there!”

“Well done, clever Possum! Go put your shoes on, Annabelle.”

“He also packed some food for himself for when he got hungry. And he packed just enough for the days he was left in the closet. It’s all gone now, but I took him out, so it’s okay.”

“Well, he better not have made a mess in there.” Like I need another thing to clean up. “Put your shoes on, Annabelle.”

“Guess what’s in Possum’s bag?” she asks because Backpack Possum is carrying his own little pack. He’s like a little fractal possum.

“Food!” I guess. “Or maybe his babies? Or, I know! School supplies.”

“No. It’s stuffed with fuzz.” (The “Duh, Mom” is implied.)

“Put your shoes on.”

“OK!”

She said OK! Oh, sweet success, this is what you feel like.

Annabelle walks to the kitchen.

“Wait, where are you going? Your shoes are not in the kitchen.”

“Oh! Ha ha!” Annabelle goes to the shoe rack. As Etta James would say, “At Last.”

Before I brush my teeth, I call out, “Time to get your shoes on, Colin!”

“OK!  I just have to clean up real quick.”

Colin commences putting away his 57 Lego minifigures that he has somehow managed to scatter everywhere during his five minutes of free time.

When I come out from brushing my teeth, Possum is telling Colin about his closet experience. No one has their shoes on.

I check on Baby Carson, who cannot find his blue fluffy blanket that he likes to be wrapped in for the morning school run. He blames Daddy. I do not disagree with him.
​

Our ten minutes are up, and what have we accomplished? I’ve fed and burped the baby, brushed my teeth, gotten the baby in his car seat (sans blanket), gathered my purse, the baby carrier, and pacifier, and made sure the children have their backpacks stuffed with lunches, water bottles, and jackets. Annabelle has helped Possum outline and pitch his memoir. Colin has fought and won several Lego battles.  Carson has spit up all the milk I just fed him and lost his blanket. We leave at 8:13 again.
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Logging Lies

9/21/2018

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On the second day of school, Colin’s homework was to read for twenty minutes and fill out a reading log. Colin reads a lot, so this log would be no problem. But of course the day the reading log came home, there was no time to read. Normally, I’d say, eh, you’ll make up the minutes later in the week.  But this was the first homework assignment! It didn’t feel right to put it off. Still, the day was packed, and bedtime came too soon.

The next morning before school, the blank reading log is still haunting us. What to do?

“I know!” I say. “You read Monday! That was a school day. Just list those minutes.”

Colin is reluctant. The reading log had been passed out Tuesday. So listing Monday minutes is Not Right.

But I make a good case for it, and he relents. Then I suggest that he puts Tuesday’s date for the Monday minutes because, really, what’s the difference?

Colin reacts as if I’m suggesting reading log blasphemy. He thinks, sure, we could be comfortable with fudging the date—if we are also comfortable with murder.

Fine. He keeps the Monday date and then lists the book title. It’s almost time to leave for school, but he’s close now, and I think he can make it. He needs to list the exact times he started and finished reading, so I pretend to remember them. Colin’s skeptical, but then I say with great authority that he started reading at 3:17 pm, and we move on. Filling out this reading log is a long, slow slide into the den of iniquity.

Now Colin needs to know the page numbers he read. We see from a previous entry he made in school that he must have left off on page 12. “You probably started on page 5,” I say. “Just put that.”

But no. He thumbs through the book to find the correct number. “Page 6,” he says after more precious Time to Leave for School minutes have ticked by. Whew. Good thing he didn’t listen to me and put page 5.

Suddenly I have another thought. Colin also read Monday night! He can list those minutes too!

Colin isn’t sure. “Am I really allowed to list two separate entries for the same day?”

“You are,” I assure him.

He agrees, probably because he sees that the integrity of this reading log has been crushed like a snail under a tire. Now he has to remember what he read that night.

“Car and Driver magazine,” I say, glancing again at my watch.

He gives a slow shake of his head. “No.  I think it was…Motor Trend. But what pages? I’ll have to go look.”

“No!  Just skip that for now.”

Colin sighs. Skipping is Not Right, but he agrees. “What were my start and end times?” he asks.

That’s a hard one since it was two nights ago, but fortunately Mommy remembers that it was exactly 8:33 pm -8:53 pm.

Whew! We made it. Reading log done before school.

“Wait!” Colin cries. “It wasn’t Motor Trend I read. It was a Lego book. I’ll have to go to my room to check which one.”

“No!” Now it is really Time to Go, and we are not going to be late over this reading log, which I begin to suspect is an assignment designed to slowly drive both of us mad. “Just keep it Motor Trend for now, and you can change it after school.”
​

Oh, poor Colin. Now I’m forcing him to go to school with his first assignment of the year filled with lies. And I do feel for him. I would have been the same way as a kid, wanting everything to be just right, and here I am, his mother, encouraging flippancy and fabrication. He hates this. Am I really okay with that?But then I look again the clock and find that, yeah, I’m good.
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To Keep or Not to Keep

2/8/2017

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We have an issue with throwing things away in our family. Mostly, that we don’t want to.

Andy believes everything is useful. From empty butter tubs to pencils that are too short, he has uses for everything. He’s not a hoarder. He really does have a purpose for all of these items that the world sees as trash, and there are moments when I’m a little awed by a man who can find the beauty in an empty butter tub.

Andy says that he has to store things everywhere because we may need them in the future, and I hate to admit it, but he’s right! Over and over, we’ll be out and needing something, and Andy will have it—in his pocket, in the car, in his wallet—he’ll pull it out of somewhere along with a smug grin. How can I argue against these magician-like moments when he saves the day? Other families may have more space in their homes, but if someone ever comes to the door holding a mound of butter with no place to put it, those people are going to feel very silly.

Colin also sees beauty in the seemingly useless. When we were cleaning up Christmas (a very emotional event for both children), I asked the kids to clean the decorations out of their rooms. Colin came back with a decoration that he’d hidden in his room since last Christmas.

“You told me to clean up last year, and I just couldn’t let this go,” he said. “So I hid it.”

For a whole year he hid this thing! And what was it? An empty paper box with tissue paper in it. Yeah. I threw it away this year.

I’m lying. I put it in the Christmas box. I had to! He kept it for a year!

I can’t criticize. I’m just as bad as Andy and Colin. I hoard baby toys and clothes because what if we have another child? I could have a boy or a girl so I have to keep, well, everything. “Be prepared,” the Boy Scouts say.

I talked to a woman recently who said she never keeps baby clothes. “It’s better to share with other people,” she said. “I’ll just buy new ones.”

She’s right, obviously, and a much better candidate for sainthood than I am. But sainthood won’t keep my nonexistent baby warm in the winter.

Annabelle is an example to all of us. When we’re cleaning out her room, if she doesn’t play with something, she chucks it into the donation pile without a second thought. During our last purge, she tossed in her My Little Ponies that she used to love. That was hard for me.

“Are you sure you want to donate these?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, totally unconcerned.

That was when Colin pawed through her donation pile. The poor kid was appalled. “You can’t give away this! Or this!” It didn’t take him long to convince her she really wanted those My Little Ponies. But she’s also started playing with them again. So that was a confusing lesson for all of us.

Then there are those times (rare! Very rare!) when the kids are looking for an item that I already purged.

“I think you got rid of that,” I told Colin when it happened recently.

“I don’t think I wanted to get rid of it,” he said.
​

I walked away quietly then because, um, that was probably true. I might have helped him get rid of it. But we wouldn’t donate anything if it were up to that kid, or my husband, or me. Thank goodness for Annabelle, who tries to keep the house in order. We should definitely always listen to her—unless she tries to donate her My Little Ponies that she hasn’t played with for a year. Obviously that kind of crazy has to be reined in.
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Say Yes to the Dress...and Yes and Yes and Yes

9/19/2016

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My three-year-old daughter is currently in love with Rapunzel.

She has a Rapunzel dress that she wears every day. Seriously—every day. Bonus: it’s full of glitter, so yay! Our house is always sparkly! The dress is too fragile to be washed, and I thought it would bother me that she wears the same unwashed outfit every day—but it really cuts down on the laundry. Plus, gone are my morning stress attacks about her taking forever to choose an outfit before it’s time to rush Colin off to school. She gets up, we throw on the dress, and she’s ready to begin pollinating the couch and floors with glitter. Perfect.

Andy, trying to encourage a different outfit selection, recently said, “You can’t wear the same thing every day! Does Rapunzel wear the same dress every day?” It was quiet then. Because, in the movie, Rapunzel does appear to the wear the same dress every day. So that argument ended with a win for Annabelle.

There has been great debate in our house over what Rapunzel wears to bed, as this information isn’t divulged in the movie. I contend she puts on her comfortable Paw Patrol pajamas, but Annabelle thinks she continues to wear her dress. I say that’s ridiculous, but given that Rapunzel wears the same outfit every day, the evidence appears to stack up on Annabelle’s side.

Annabelle doesn’t like it when ignorant people, seeing her in a princess outfit, call her a princess. She does not want to be a princess…but Rapunzel is a princess. Annabelle struggles with this. I wish I could protect her, but life is about accepting these hard truths.

Annabelle loved the Rapunzel books, so even though the ending of the movie is scary, we decided to let her watch Disney’s Tangled. In the last scene, the villain stabs Flynn, the male lead, and drags a sobbing Rapunzel away in chains. Flynn, bleeding and dying, manages to save Rapunzel by chopping off her magical, blond hair, causing it to turn brown and un-magical—and I love it that the self-esteem damaging symbolism is obvious enough for a three-year-old to grasp. Then the villain shrieks as she painfully shrivels and vanishes. Next up are several minutes of Flynn gasping for breath as he slips closer to death.

When the ending played, Annabelle started whimpering and crying, and we felt terrible for showing it. “Don’t worry! The villain’s gone now,” we told her. “And Flynn’s okay! Look! Rapunzel saves him.”

Annabelle only sobbed harder. “I don’t want her hair to be brown!” she cried.

Seriously. That’s the part she thought was scary.

Annabelle has requested we call her Rapunzel and recently asked me why I did not name her that. (Answer: because I am sane.) We do all try to call her Rapunzel, though we have stopped short of filing the legal paperwork.

Because Rapunzel never wears shoes, Annabelle also wants to be barefoot at all times, but she did acquiesce to wearing shoes when she leaves the house. This is because I explained that Rapunzel’s feet are hardened and calloused from running around in the forest without proper footwear, as was probably depicted in a deleted scene.

To complete her Rapunzel transformation, Annabelle wants to continue growing her hair (not a problem) and to dye it yellow (problem). I’m taking this way too seriously, but it seems like young girls constantly struggle with wanting to change something about their appearance, and my baby already wants different hair at age three? I hate that. And I kind of hate Rapunzel for causing it. And I don’t know how to break it to Annabelle that yellow isn’t a real hair color.

“But your hair is so beautiful!” I tell her, and she ignores me.

“You should be happy with what you have!” I say, and she ignores me.

“No one wants hair that’s so long that people use it to climb up and down towers. Don’t you think that would hurt?” I ask, and she listens.

“Yeah!” she says. “And wouldn’t her hair get dirty dragging on the floor all the time?”

“So dirty!”
​

Like your dress. And your bare feet. And the house, on account of all the glitter. But yes! Dirt! Gross!
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The Adventures of Lambie

3/1/2016

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Picture

My two-year-old’s favorite toy is a stuffed, green lamb.Wherever Annabelle goes, Lambie goes too.

Even after he’s been washed, Lambie always has a gray tint to him. He spends a lot of his time face down on the ground. He’s probably responsible for half the infections that swirl through our house. It’s a scary thing when Annabelle insists we kiss E. coli Lambie.

I washed Lambie last week (though no one would be able to tell), but the very day he emerged from the washing machine, he acquired a red stain on his face. This is because he insisted on taking a ketchup laden bite. I told him not to, but Lambie can really dig his hooves in when he wants something.

When Annabelle was younger, Lambie bath days were traumatic. I counted it a triumph when I successfully snuck him into the machine. I was so naïve. When Annabelle discovered the theft, she knelt at the machine, screaming and wailing as she watched her lovie tumble in suds. You’d expect a happy reunion when Lambie finally emerged, but no. He was wet and deemed uncuddlable. Annabelle threw him down, cried, tried to cuddle him, threw him down, and screamed some more. It was easier to skip the wash and let the bacteria fester.

Lambie assumes a prominent position in the household. He attends all meals (as evidenced by the condiments on his face). Whenever there is a lull in dinnertime conversation—ha! That’s a joke. There’s never a lull in conversation when her five-year-old brother is present—but when Annabelle is able to shove a comment into the melee that is dinner, she often says, “I want you to talk about Lambie.”

We try. We really do. But after the fiftieth time this request is made, the conversational well runs dry.

Lambie is a useful motivator, though. When Annabelle refuses to eat her vegetables, Lambie promises to clap after each bite. It’s amazing how much easier the broccoli goes down when applauding livestock are present.

Whenever we leave the house, Annabelle says, “Lambie will come too.” And he does. But Annabelle is a fair weather friend. When she sees something more interesting, Lambie, that love of her life, is tossed on the ground. How many times have we been on the freeway, minutes from home, when Annabelle’s small cry of “Where’s Lambie?” fills the car.

Once we searched the library for him until Annabelle finally remembered she’d buried him in the box with the other stuffed animals. I would never have found him there. Another time Lambie spent the night at the Granite Store. Andy assured me Annabelle was too young to care or miss him. But the next morning when I said we were going to the Granite Store, Annabelle ran to the window, pressed her little hands to the glass, and cried out, “Lambie!” She stationed herself there until we left to retrieve her marooned friend.

More recently, Lambie stayed three days and nights at a friend’s house. I searched the house several times for him before we left and enlisted Annabelle’s help, but Annabelle was too busy playing to be concerned. After we left, Lambie was discovered hiding in the closet. Apparently, he’d been playing hide and seek, waiting for Annabelle and her friend to find him. Maybe this experience will teach Lambie not to run and hide right before it’s time to leave.

Lambie likes to wear dresses and put bows in his ears, but Annabelle refers to him as a “he.” This frustrates Colin, who sees this as Not Right. When asked his gender, Lambie sometimes says he’s a boy, sometimes a girl, and sometimes just Lambie. Perturbed, Colin attacked the question from a different angle: Is Lambie a Mr. or a Mrs.? This resulted in an angry tirade from Annabelle, with both the answer and source of the anger remaining unclear. Slowly, Colin has come to accept these ambiguous answers, so Lambie has done his part for teaching acceptance of gender differences. It almost makes up for him being a travelling petri dish. Almost.

Lambie isn’t always an angel. Once the kids were yelling in the house, and when Andy told them to be quiet, Annabelle explained, “That was Lambie.” Colin corroborated this story. Lambie was promptly sent to time out, but that by no means cured him.

Annabelle has hugged Lambie with such vehemence that he no longer has any stuffing in his neck. Sometimes when I say, “I love you, Annabelle,” she responds, “I love Lambie!” And I think she does. Lambie fulfills a need that somehow the rest of us can’t. She loves him with a fierce love that cannot be destroyed. Unless he’s hiding and there are other toys to play with. Or if we’re in the Granite Store and she notices a particularly stunning cut.

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    Write Away

    I've been writing for my local paper for the last ten years.  Here are a couple of articles I've published.

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