growing up Archives - Sluiter Nation

Reasons Being A Grown-up Stinks

October 14, 2016 By Katie

I have been adding to this list for awhile now. It’s not that I don’t really love my life, but sometimes? Being a grown-up stinks. Bad.

Paying bills
Paying for insurance
In general paying for things that are boring
Not being able to respond to your child like you would if you were a child. Example: “Your FACE looks like a disgusting dinner.”
facial hair
body parts that just hurt because you’re getting older, not because you injured it doing some daring stunt like crowd surfing.
Cleaning the bathroom that other people make gross. I’m looking at you, Charlie. AIM YOUR PEE.
Doing other people’s laundry. Again, Charlie, I’m looking at you. WIPE YOUR BOOTY BETTER.
Dusting.
Wiping other people’s booties.
Worrying about how long the grass is.
Adult acne
Being exhausted…by just being awake.
Starting to sound like my parents. “I am not yelling; I am speaking sternly. You will know when I am yelling.”
Realizing that behavior that you find incredibly annoying is exactly how you used to act when “you were that age.”
Kidz Bop being part of my life.
Paying over $100 every 6-8 weeks to cover grey hair and remove other hair.
Cracking joints.
Needing glasses.
Understanding why Garfield hates Mondays.
Slowed metabolism.
Being in charge…all the dang time.
the practice of herding cats…all day, every day.
The lack of nap time.
Being the bearer of bad news.
Realizing everyone else is getting older too…
people you love start dying.
Having to explain hard stuff to innocent people.
realizing that you have an unhealthy one-way relationship with coffee
Having to let your kids win at games once in awhile.
Watching the news.
Being responsible.
Being punctual.
Picking up after other people.
Making decisions.
Caring about things that with letters and numbers as their names: 401K, 403b, LMNOP3 (ok that last one is not real, but whatever).
Having to talk about budgets.
Math.
Spending all that money-you-don’t-have-but-wish-you-did-so-you-could-spend-on-fun-things on fixing a 30+ year old lawn mower’s steering.
Knowing there is no quick fix, silver bullet, and maybe not even a happy ending.
Saying the same thing over an over and feeling like you are talking to a wall. “Quit bothering your brother. Quit bothering your brother. QUIT BOTHERING YOUR BROTHER!”
Having to follow through with consequences that leave you without fun.
Seeing your childhood through “adult eyes.” That thing that was so big and amazing? It’s really just normal…and kind of run down.
Being able to relate to Cathy and her reaction of “ACK!” to everything.
mortgages.
voting.
Having to do social stuff when you don’t want to do social stuff, but it’s sort of required social stuff, so you do it anyway.
bad beer.
pregnancy scares…especially when you have been, um, fixed. And you’re of “advanced maternal age.”
Getting AARP mailings…when you’re not even forty.

being a grown-up

I realize not everyone has the same experience as I do. Some people never have kids and are still jumping out of airplanes at ninety years old. That is not the life I chose for myself. This list is not meant to be a big fat downer on my life, either. I really do love my husband and kids and life, but seriously. Sometimes things stink. So I made a list. What would you add? Let’s vent, shall we?

Filed Under: Katie Tagged With: adulting, being a grownup, growing up

Her First is My Last

August 18, 2015 By Katie

Just this week Alice got a tooth.

Ok, it’s not all the way through yet, but the little ridged top is. When she laughs, I can see it. Her first tooth.

She rolls like a mad-woman these days too. If I lay her down on her back, she rolls onto her tummy and kicks. Last night, she planted her feet and pushed. Cortney called it “snow plowing.” She was clearly trying to move from one end of her play mat to the other to reach a toy. She pushed her face to the floor and shoved herself with her feet and knees! I was shocked!

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Lately we find her not at all in the same place we laid her in her crib. At night we place her on her back in the middle. In the morning, she wakes up on her tummy all the way to one end. This morning she was reaching her arms through the slats.

As with the boys, all these firsts are bittersweet. It’s so exciting to watch kids grow and change and learn, and yet our momma hearts mourn the loss of the baby things too.

I knew Alice’s firsts would be harder on me because, even though I am 100% cool with our decision to be done, each of her firsts marks the end of something.

I know, that sounds morbid. And I promise I am not walking around depressed all the time because she can roll over. I really love watching her figure things out and become her own person.

And yet…

Once that little tooth pushed through, our days of gummy baby grins was swept into the past.

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It seems like every day there is a new change, she’s just a little bigger, she can do one more thing.

I notice that when I set her in her car seat or bounce seat, she tries to lean forward…to bend at the waist…as if she wants to sit up. While she still technically fits in her rock n play, swing, and bounce seat, I can tell the days are numbered. She humors me though, and actually plays with the toys on her swing (the boys couldn’t have cared less about the swing, let along those toys), bounces herself in her bounce seat, and snoozes in her rock n play during the day.

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Why can’t they be babies just a little longer?

Why does it have to go so fast?

Sometimes when I think about her getting bigger, I have to literally catch my breath.

With each child, I have loved the baby phase more. I am not sure if it’s because she’s third, a girl, or just Alice that this time around has been the sweetest.

Last night I made her giggle so hard she did that silent laugh thing and ended up with the hiccups. I laid down next to her and she turned her face to mine. I put my nose against hers so I could smell her baby-ness and I whispered, “let’s always love each other like this, ok?”

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We have two weeks left to snuggle on each other as much as possible. For me to try not to miss any minutes of her growing and changing and smiling.

Because these are also my last two weeks of a summer with a baby in tow.

Filed Under: Alice, Sluiters Tagged With: alice, baby, growing up, milestones

One Month

April 10, 2015 By Katie

Dear Alice,

Oh sweet girl, we made it through the first month of your life. Can you believe it? Nope. We can’t either.

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It’s been a whirlwind of activity. It’s definitely true that by your third child, things just move quicker and there is no time for blinking or you’ll miss something.

Our first week was pretty laid back–you slept or ate or pooped. That was really it. So I slept a lot too since part of the time we were in the hospital and part we were home with daddy. You and I spent about 10 days just recuperating from your moving day from womb to outside world.

Then it got real, as they say.

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At your appointment five days after birth, you had already gained back to your birth weight (you left the hospital a dainty 7lbs 10oz) plus a couple ounces. By your two week appointment you were rocking over nine and a half pounds. Still our tiniest baby, even at a month, you are still in newborn size for jammies and some pants. You’ve pretty much grown too long for newborn onsies, though and are graduating to 3-month size.

You are eating like a champ; already averaging almost 4 oz per feeding. Daddy just bumped you to the #2 nipples so you would stop falling asleep after an ounce in the middle of the night. He likes to go back to bed, you know.

So I have already packed some things away as DONE: newborn onsies and #1 nipples. The door has closed on those things.

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Your sleeping/eating patterns are starting to become, well, patterns. Your last feeding for each night is between 10pm and 11:30pm and then you will go about four hours, but that seems to be increasing too. Then you sleep for about three hours before your first morning feeding. I can usually get one or two good “naps” out of you where you sleep by yourself in your bed. The rest of the time you prefer to snooze on me.

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Which brings me to your sleep preferences. You took a turn that made me give you side-eye, my dear. For about a week and a half you suddenly would ONLY sleep on me or daddy. That gave me a nervous twitch because Eddie did that for about a YEAR or more. It was awful.

Daddy thought maybe you got cold in the night and we were also reminded that Charlie always liked to be tightly swaddled, so we busted out a fleece baby wrap and tried it out. It was, as they say, a GAME CHANGER. You are now a lovely sleeper…in your own bed.

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In your first month you have also had your baptism and celebrated both Charlie and my birthdays. You’ve already been to daycare for a few hours while I took Eddie to a movie this week. You also celebrated your first Easter. Well, you didn’t do a lot of celebrating; you really just were there. But it sure was fun to dress you up in a pretty dress.

Ok, enough stat talk.

Alice, my love, you have changed my life.

Before you, my life revolved around raising good, kind men. I was a boy mom and I took great responsibility in that. I am still a boy mom, and my job with Eddie and Charlie is still very important, but now I am also a girl mom.

Looking into your eyes as I feed you does something to my heart. The way you stare into my eyes looking for comfort and love with your nourishment fills my heart with a determination to be a better woman. To be someone you can look up to with pride. To be a good role model for you.

And to get Starbucks and pedicures with you.

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One minute I will be getting all teary-eyed at how much I love you and how I will live up to be being the best mom possible for you, the next you are tooting in my hand and giving me side-eye.

You SO fit into this family, my Alice Beans.

Let’s keep up the fun!

I love you,

Momma

************

Don’t forget that Charlie has a giveaway going on right now! Go enter!

Filed Under: Alice, Sluiters Tagged With: growing up, letter to my daughter, milestones, one month

Blissfully Ignorant

January 13, 2015 By Katie

“I think I’m afraid of her already,” I told my therapist.

“What do you mean by ‘afraid’?”

“I don’t even know, I’m not sure ‘afraid’ is the right word at all. But I feel something foreboding. Something that is like fear.”

I’d been trying to find a word to name the feeling that keeps coming up whenever people ask me if I am just so excited to have a daughter. I mean, I don’t want to say “no” because that’s not true. But “excited” seems not right either. Or maybe it is.

I do get excited as I sort onsies by size and decide which of the boys’ jammies (the ones that don’t say “mommy’s little man”) Alice will be able to wear. Each pair of shoes or dress that someone gifts her makes me smile in a way I never did over all those little man clothes I so love. It’s almost a smooshy, ridiculous smile. The kind you get when you’re twelve and you fall hard for that one boy in class you will never talk to…a dreamy smile.

Imagining headbands and white mary janes makes me turn all goofy in a way I never have before. So I guess I can’t say I’m NOT excited, because those seem like pretty clear indications of excitement on my part.

But there is something else pulling at me.

Something unsure.

“You know what I think it is,” I tell my therapist, “it’s that I remember too much.” I was pretty pleased with myself for this breakthrough, but it was clear she didn’t get what I was talking about, but it was becoming clearer in my mind.

I remember way too much of my childhood…of what was rough as a girl growing up. I remember how tough middle school was. I remember the choices in front of me in high school and college. I know what adolescent icky feels like for a girl. I remember all the uncomfortable firsts that felt not just “uncomfortable” but horrible.

With the boys, I don’t have these memories. I was never a little boy, or an adolescent boy, or a teenage boy, or a college boy. I knew many of these boys. I married one, but I was blissfully ignorant to their first-person experiences. I didn’t have to go through it, so as a mom, I could be the facts and support when my boys went through it, but I would never be “re-living” it.

I have never had a desire to have a daughter until I knew there was one in my tummy. The thought of re-living my girlhood is the last thing I ever want to do. In fact, I hate that I can remember so much of those painfully lonely and embarrassed moments so vividly.

It had nothing to do with my upbringing either. My parents were wonderful and loving. No, it had everything to do with just “girl stuff”.

Girl stuff that I has, up until very recently, been shoved to the back regions of my memory never to be brought out unless a Boys II Men song comes on and inadvertently triggers it.

Now I will go through all those stages again via my daughter, and just like the first time, I won’t be able to “fix” any of the loneliness that goes with it. I won’t be able to prevent the embarrassment over non-embarrassing things. I won’t be able to stop that boy (or girl) who Alice likes so much from saying that mean thing that she never forgets.

So I guess I’m not afraid of Alice. I’m afraid for her.

I am sitting here, feeling her turn and kick and hiccup, and I can’t do a damn thing about what is coming down the road that “happens to us all” and I hate that.

The best I can do is love her.

I hope that is enough.

I hope that love with be what leads me to the right words when she feels ugly or ashamed or lonely. I hope that love closes my mouth when necessary and opens my ears and arms.

I hope the good outweighs the scary.

Filed Under: pregnancy Tagged With: girl stuff, growing up, having a daughter, previously known as boy mom

Super Four

June 25, 2013 By Katie

PicMonkey Collage

Dear Eddie,

You turned FOUR on Sunday.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around how you can already be four. Four years old. Every time I thought about it this weekend, my mind went racing back to the operating room where we first met. Me all splayed out on a table, strapped down as if in my exhaustion I cared enough to flail about, and you all chubby and slimy and mad and cold. Good times, Ed. Good times.

Your birthday this year has been especially exciting. It’s the first year you understand upcoming events and could count down and look forward to your big day. Ever since daddy had his birthday in December, you have been asking if you were next. You had to wait through Charlie’s party, my birthday, Kingston & Kyrie’s party, Joe’s party, Trisha’s day, Addie & Lexi’s party, Aunt Sarah’s day, and finally…FINALLY…you were next.

We talked a lot about what you wanted for your birthday: a new bike, superhero stuff, Legos, the baby doll at Target that actually drinks her bottle, that pancake making pan that you saw on an infomercial. Every time you saw something you loved you announced, “mom! put that on my birthday list!”f

We asked you what kind of party you wanted for your birthday and you said, “um, maybe a pool party with my little pool and my cousin Jack and my friends.” So we planned it. We sent out invitations. We bought a new inflatable pool that could accommodate more kids. We bought a slip n slide. We bought a “baby” pool. You wanted “hot dog on a bun” for the party, so we went to Gordon’s and bought a case of dogs and a ton of buns and fixin’s. You helped me pick two HUGE watermelons.

Your birthday party was on Saturday. The day before your birthday.

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On Friday, we had some unexpected guest cancellations.

I often wonder what your first memory will be, Eddie. Most people have their first memories around your age. I really hope you don’t remember the Friday before your party. I was disappointed to the point of heaving tears. I spent almost 30 minutes on the phone with Grandma while you and Charlie played.

But I know you heard me. I saw you climb to the top of your clubhouse and stare at the field behind the house. You don’t miss much, Eddie. After I got off the phone, you came and sat next to me and said, “I don’t have any friends, Mom? Is that what you told Grandma?” The tears got hot in my eyes all over again.

“No, buddy. That is not it at all! You have SO many friends who love you LOTS! It’s just that some can’t come to your party anymore. Big stuff came up and they have to take care of their big stuff. But they are so sad they can’t come.”

“But Jack is coming?”

“No, buddy. Uncle Chris just let me know that they are going camping. No Jack.”

He looked down at the ground. “It’s Ok, mom. We will have fun. It’s my party!”

The next day it was indeed your party. Our neighborhood friends, Kelsey, Bentley, and Harry came at the last minute and you and Bentley had an absolute ball splashing and chasing each other. Uncle Mike and Uncle Cody both brought their swimsuits in case you needed some fun…but they didn’t even have to bust them out. You have have an awesome family who loves you so much. Aunt Kenzie even showed up though she had originally thought she would miss it.

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Unprompted you thanked everyone for coming to your party, and you thanked daddy and me about a hundred times for your party and for hot dogs. You made us so proud, Eddie. So proud.

On your birthday you woke daddy up with your new Batman Mask on. It was hilarious. Then we had cinnamon rolls followed by a treasure hunt to your gift from us.

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When you saw it, instead of jumping on, you rushed over to me and threw your arms around my waist. “OH THANK YOU MOM AND DAD! FOR MY BIG BIKE!”

Then you did that excited little dance you do where your arms get flappy, and you jumped on in your jammies. Daddy took video, but since we are all in our jammies, we will keep that gem off the blog.

That afternoon, Daddy “swam” with you in the pool and showed you how to use the slip n slide. After your brother’s nap we went to Red Robin (yummmmm!) because that is your favorite and immediate choice when we ask where you want to go.

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You got the corndog (because three hot dogs on a bun over the course of two days was not enough hot dog for you, I guess) and polished it off claiming LOTS of room for ice cream. Last year you shared your ice cream. Not this year.

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When we got home, you announced you were STARVING for some birthday cake…and what do you know, I happened to make you the lemon cake you requested!

We lit the candles, sang happy birthday to our four-year old, and you blew them out.

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Later that night, I put you to bed. It was my night, but if it hadn’t been, I would have asked daddy if I could do it. I need the snuggle and talk time with you.

We used daddy’s tablet to read Oh The Places You’ll Go and Happy Birthday To You both by Dr. Seuss. You were almost asleep by the end of the second book, so when we turned it off and you rolled over, I quietly whispered, “Happy Birthday, Eddie.”

Barely audible, you whispered back, “thanks, mommy.”

“I love you,” I added.

“I love you better than the wide world,” you managed.

“Oh. I love YOU better than the wide world too.”

And then you fell into the steady breathing of a boy who had loads of excitement and sugar. Of a little boy who just turned four and feels so big.

I lay there even though I knew I could get up. I replayed your birth day in my head. I let the tears wet the pillow under my face. I apologized to you again for being so sick your first year of life.

And I thanked you for being the little buddy I never knew I needed. For being so smart and funny and silly and witty. For being strong-willed and bossy and whiney and emotional. For being so much like me.

I don’t know if you will remember any of these events, but my heart will remember them always. And my prayer is that even though the actual events may fade from your mind, they feeling of being so loved by so many will always be there with you.

Because so many people love you, but I? I love you most of all.

More than the wide world.

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Love,

Mommy

Filed Under: Eddie Tagged With: birthdays, Boy Mom, fourth birthday, growing up, letter to Eddie, letter to my boys

Love Bird

June 10, 2013 By Katie

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I was mistaken when I thought Eddie was a cuddly child.

He doesn’t really like to cuddle. He likes closeness. He doesn’t like to be alone.

As a baby he liked be rocked (every night), but what he wanted was someone there with him, even just sitting in the rocker while he fell asleep in his bed. At almost four-years-old he is still this way. After we read books, he just wants one of us to lay by him. It’s how he feels safe.

I only realized the difference between needing closeness and being a cuddler because of Charlie.

Charlie has never been needy like Eddie. I don’t mean needy in a bad way, but Eddie does need us–to lay by him, to sit by him, to go downstairs with him, to color with him–more than Charlie does. Eddie will play by himself…as long as someone is in the room with him.

Charlie does his own thing. He will play by himself, sit in a totally different room by himself, and when it’s bedtime all I have to say is “nigh nigh?” and he grabs his glow worm under his arm and trucks down to his nursery. No fuss. Hugs and kisses and down he goes.

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I missed out on a lot of the first year of Eddie’s life. I was emotionally distant and, after I went back to work when he was 3 months old, physically distant. I was sick and don’t remember much of his first year. Charlie’s first year made that even more painfully obvious to me because I just couldn’t remember what Eddie was like at that age.

One thing I know is that while I rocked Eddie to sleep almost every single night, he didn’t really spend all that much time in my arms. He and I cried together often and fell asleep in a pile in the chair out of sheer exhaustion, but not because we just couldn’t stop cuddling.

Charlie and I were inseparable during his first 6 months. I had 3 months of maternity leave followed by 3 months of summer break. He slept easily and I wasn’t fiending to put him down. I let myself heal and relax. And because my anxiety was under control, I was Ok to take him out in public with me.

I wore Charlie wherever we went. If we weren’t at home with him sleeping next to me or on me, we were out and about with him sleeping in the Moby.

And now? Eddie needs us to be there and Charlie does not.

Except…

Charlie is our Love Bird.

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He gives kisses. Seriously, they are so sweet I die a little bit. He leans in and says “mmmmmmmuah!” and lays an open-mouth wet one on your mouth, nose, chin, eye…wherever that sloppy mouth lands.

Eddie never did that. He is just starting to give us kisses now. I think it’s because Charlie does it. I’m not kidding.

Charlie gives random hugs. He will barrel over and just fling his arms around us and then truck off like it ain’t no thang.

Charlie wants to sit on a lap. All the time. If you are on the floor, your lap is his seat. He just sort of comes over, turns around, and backs up until his behind is on you. If you don’t make room for him, he will wiggle around on you until you do.

He will crawl up on the couch or chair and mountain goat his way all over me until he can get himself nuzzled in and then lean back like I’m his recliner.

He will find the one little cranny in Cort’s arms and wiggle his way in and just chill.

He will hold my hand just to hold it.

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And he will press his face to my face or his head to my nose…like he knows I love to take in the sweet smell of lavender in his hair.

He will softly repeat “ma ma ma ma” while he lays his face on my shoulder.

Both of my boys are love bugs, but Charlie is our cuddle monster.

It never ceases to amaze me how they can be so similar and so different at the same time both in big and small ways.

Most people would say that both of my boys are cuddlers, but Cort and I know there is a difference ever so slight. While Eddie drifts to sleep to the slow breathing of a parent next to him, Charlie thrives on morning hugs and kisses. While Eddie feels safe with a parent in the room, Charlie recharges on lap-sitting and Eskimo kisses.

It’s even hard to describe here.

Both of my boys have their hearts on their sleeves: they both love to give and get love from us and from each other. Their love languages are just a bit different.

Each perfectly theirs.

Filed Under: Charlie Tagged With: baby Bird, Boy Mom, Charlie, family, growing up, memories of my boys, our love, toddler stuff

Do You Want to Play Basketball?

May 1, 2013 By Katie

“You guys wanna play basketball with me?”

He stood on the very edge of our lawn in his shorts and hoodie holding a small basketball.

The other bigger kids continued to chase each other and play. One kid lingered on the edge of their lawn near to where Eddie was standing.

“Hey! Do you guys want to play basketball with me?!?” He asked louder.

Even though the one kid was hanging near, he still managed to effectively ignore my little guy.

Eddie looked down at his Little Tikes basketball. I couldn’t see his face from my place by the kitchen window, but I could guess at the questions going through his mind. Why won’t they answer me? Why wouldn’t they want to play with me?

“HEY! WANT TO PLAY BASKETBALL WITH ME?!?!”

I called Cort to see. Eddie was obeying the rules and staying in our yard. He even kept checking his feet to make sure they were not over the line. I could tell he was antsy to go run and play tag.

Earlier that day we had heard him yelling outside in the front yard, when we peeked out the window, he was yelling down the street, “HEY! GUYS! COME HERE! I WANNA TALK TO YOU!” to the kids playing down the road.

We live on a dead end where the neighbor kids like to spend time digging holes for no other reason than to dig holes. Eddie likes to watch them. They also cut into the woods from the dead end and trek back to the field behind our house. There’s a creek back there and they like to catch crayfish and frogs. This particular afternoon, Digger Boy (the boy who digs the holes, and yes, this is the name Eddie refers to him as) and his brothers had a bucket of fish and frogs and they came into our yard to show Eddie and Cort. Eddie thought it was just wonderful.

So for the rest of the day, when he saw neighbor kids, he wanted so badly to play with them.

They are all at least five years older than Eddie is, and have no interest in playing with a three-year-old.

But Eddie doesn’t understand this, and so he stands on the edge of the yard, doing his best to make friends without breaking the rules of leaving the yard.

“I’m going to put on shorts and go play basketball with him for a bit,” Cort tells me as he rubs my back. I have been watching him with tears in my eyes for a couple minutes.

“Thank you,” I tell him before I call out the window to Eddie asking him if Daddy can play with him.

“Daddy? He wants to play basketball? Yay! I want to play too!”

As I got Charlie’s jammies on I heard lots of giggling and chasing going on around the house before Cort and Eddie burst in all smiles and exhaustion.

Eddie is so bold and makes friends so easily. He is so much braver than I was at that age. I am so proud when I see him feeling comfortable talking to other kids, but I feel those old fears of rejection that I clung too tightly to as a child.

Luckily for me, Cort reads my worry and nerves and jumps in before Eddie’s feelings can be hurt.

Besides, I think Eddie prefers to hang with his Dad rather than some dumb neighbor kids any day.

Cort and Eddie build a fence.

Filed Under: Eddie Tagged With: growing up, making friends, raising boys, stuff Eddie says

a bit wordless

July 11, 2012 By Katie

I am with them every day, yet…

I did NOT see all this growing up they have been doing this summer.

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I wrote the last in my series about school choices over at Borderless News and Views: Getting Schooled: Part V: Public Schools

I am also at Baby Gizmo today with an article about taking small kids to the beach: How NOT to be Beach Bummed

There is a GIVEAWAY for a $50 credit to minted.com over on the Giveaway Page!

Filed Under: Charlie, Eddie Tagged With: growing up

my generation?

February 3, 2012 By Katie

I have a wandering minstrel in my first hour.

For the past two years, I have watched this kid walk the halls between classes with his guitar strumming made-up tunes, current tunes, and riffs from my own teenage years.

This fall he wandered into my class and sat in the front row.

He is a junior who was born the same year I was a junior in high school….1995.

We talk music a lot because he enjoys the bands from my teen years. For awhile he and his friends would jam out some Weezer tunes in the hall after school. They congregated quite a crowd.*

He (and quite a few others at this point) and I discuss concerts since they are at the age that I was when I started my mad concert-going years. We talk about who is coming to our city and how I can’t go because I am all pregnant and tired and responsibly an adult now. And then I hope they go so they can report back.

Today he asked me how the band Bush was when I saw them in concert.

In 1996.

Most kids in my first hour were only barely a year old when I was at that concert. Bush with openers Goo Goo Dolls and No Doubt. And yes, that was when the Gavin and Gwen romance began. I went to the show on that fated tour.

At the end of the hour, he proceeded to play “Glycerine” for a group of students and I couldn’t help sing along as I entered in my attendance and other busy work things I have to do before the end of each hour.

That is when I realized the students were listening to something recorded before they were born.

I am almost 34 years old.

All these years I have been waiting to turn into an adult…waiting for that feeling of being a grown-up.

But I just feel like….me.

I am waiting to forget what it’s like to be a teenager…to lose my understanding of the angst of being 17. The way it seemed to me that adults forgot their teenage years when I was 17.

But I don’t forget.

Each feeling from my childhood…of being scared or nervous or anxious…come back to me when I see Eddie.

Each confused and hurt and joyous experience from my teen years come back to me when I talk with students.

I can’t forget.

I married someone who was with me through my teenage years. Who I grew up with. Who I spent countless hours discussing bands and movies and life with.

I don’t feel like I have changed.

But I know I have.

I worry about budgets and cleaning.

I get excited about carpet being installed.

I have babies and degrees and a professional career.

I remember on my wedding day giggling with my best friend about how “grown up” getting married was and how I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do it.

I was 27.

The first time I became pregnant I was embarrassed to tell my dad because he would know what I did to get that way.

I was married and 28.

Today Cort told me that Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit was on a radio show we both listen to talking about how it has been 17 years since their first album dropped.

I remember it.

I was at their very first shows in tiny little po-dunk bars wondering who this crazy awesome band was that was covering George Michael’s “Faith”…in heavy metal.

I remember being pushed to the front and wondering…will this always be awesome? When do adults suddenly look down on this and forbid it?

When will I be one of those parents who just don’t understand?**

This morning it hit me that I am an adult.

I know that seems weird, but I think today was the day that it finally hit.

I teach high school.

Every year the kids are 15-18 years old.

But I don’t stay the same age.

I am not 25 anymore like I was when I started.

I am not saying I feel 25 or 17 anymore. Goodness no.

But I don’t feel like I have morphed into the way I always thought adulthood would be either.

Today I realized I am an adult.

Because of a 17 year old wandering minstrel.

People try to put us d-down
Just because we g-g-get around
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby ***

*a million points to the reader who knows what song I lifted that line from. And no, Cort, you cannot play. I know you know.

**this line? anyone? Come on…it’s an easy one!

***If you don’t get this one we can’t be friends anymore.

Filed Under: Sluiters, teaching Tagged With: becoming an adult, growing up, music, not how I imagined adulthood

in my heart

May 8, 2011 By Katie

Being a mother was supposed to be natural and easy.

but it wasn’t for me

Being a mother was supposed to be pure joy.

But it hasn’t been for me.

Being a mother was supposed to be what I was made for.

But it’s been difficult for me.

Being a mother was supposed to “make me understand” what my mom said all those times when she was worried or happy or proud or scared or just overwhelmed.

And it has.

Being a mother has made me believe in things I thought only happened to other people…