Team Gray!

“Bee it ever so bumble there’s no place like comb.”

Frank B. Gilbreth, in Cheaper by the Dozen

Yesterday, I desperately scraped together the last of the bacon bits to put on a grilled cheese sandwich for Yanni. She has been volunteering for the past two weeks, and, being a notoriously picky eater, she has been skipping lunch.

It was Wednesday, our park day, and I’d arranged to meet our friends at a local beach. I thought I’d take Yanni. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a treat.

I thought I’d try to be a good mother and give her some food.

She left the sandwich on the sign-in table at New Genesis.

I whined about not wanting to push her into some sort of eating disorder by insisting that she eat. I’ve never cared one way or the other whether she ate or not; I knew she wouldn’t starve. And yet, here I am all worried about her and eating. She tried to reassure me that she liked food and cooking too much to starve herself.

So, anyway, I’m on this quest to have fun with the children, right? And Yanni would rather be sweeping a hot gym with her friends than at the beach with her family. And it hurts.

She resists just about everything I try to do, until she hears it from someone else. It burns me up, because I had a strained relationship with my mother growing up, and I vowed I wouldn’t have that with my daughter. So I suck it up, and put up with more from her than I’d like.

She’s really about what’s in it for her, though. Must be the age, and I shouldn’t take it personally, but 15 1/2 years is a long relationship.

We used to play together. We learned to cook together. We learned to clean together. We have been close for a long time.

I almost blew it yesterday by being sulky. Instead, I stayed open to listen to what Yanni had to say about volunteering. I didn’t make her watch her siblings. I just let her be. And she ended up going out in the water to play with Imani and Joy. Esteban clung to her for dear life, and she came out of the water, pulling him off like a leach. I went out in the water, thinking what great accessories little children are when you’re ashamed of your body in a swim suit.

I mentioned that to Yanni when I came out carrying Esteban. She laughed and remembered a picture of me hiding behind her when she was 8 months old. I had a great figure then. What was I thinking?

Yanni will take drivers ed next week. I have been taking her out in the evenings to practice driving around a parking lot. I hear she is supposed to know how to drive for real before taking Driver’s Ed. Lisa told me that she’d gotten a reprimand for her oldest daughter’s lack of driving skills by the first day of Driver’s Ed.

It’s safe to say I’m scared to death. But I don’t want to let Yanni know that. I still want to keep it fun, even while mentioning “Mechanized Death,” and all the lovely health and safety movies we watched in Driver’s Ed.

Yanni is so excited. And we have fun going out in the car. I tell her to pretend that the empty spots around us in the parking lot are cars, and to avoid them when pulling out. She was so excited to park backwards, and to get the hang of parallel parking.

Despite her everyday seeming to jab me, telling me I’m not fun. AT ALL. EVEN A LITTLE BIT. . . When she sees what’s in it for her, she has fun.

Last night when I picked Yanni up from volunteering, she told me that the sandwich had been waiting for her on the sign-up table after the beach. She ate it, and it was good, and the other kids were jealous.

I guess I’ll hang in there with her.

I like to play. I mean, I like to get down on the floor and do puzzles. And I like to feel mud in my fingers and toes. And I still like to play on the monkey bars, ride my bike, jump double dutch. . .

And I’d do all these things even without my children.

But, if they want to join along, the more the merrier!

My father tsks and says things like “Adolescence is lasting longer and longer.”

Quiet as it’s kept, my father is the same way. At almost 73, Daddy has just stopped joining in for jump rope. But he’ll still dance, or bowl, or play any board game.

So he needs to keep quiet on the matter. I just never understood the grown ups that sit and watch their children at the playground. Why would you just sit there, when you could play? Granted, that’s a little harder with a baby nursing, or maybe if you’re talking to your friends, but otherwise, I just don’t get it.

I feel pretty much in the minority. In fact, it is embarrassing sometimes to be so into playing with the kids. I should be doing something else, right? Something more important? Like laundry. Which I try to turn into a game. I let the children tie it into their never ending spy game,let the older kids hide their younger siblings in the huge laundry cart and carry the clothes up and down the stairs that way.

Until the cart broke to the point that it’s almost not useful any more. So I tried to come up with a different laundry game. And Yanni glared daggers at me and made me feel foolish for even trying.

As I type this, I am coming off the exhilaration of playing a silly game I made up tonight. I was laying on my back, shooting hoops in Esteban’s baby basketball hoop. If I wanted to get the ball, I had to roll to get it, or somehow scoot along on the floor. I could not stand up or sit up. The game kicked into high gear when I invited Xay to join me. He rolled like a bowling ball, kept score, and made sure I didn’t sit up. When I introduced the very hard element of shooting a basket with your feet, lying flat on your back, then I was engrossed.

Bath time came. I was still desperately trying to make a basket with my feet. Xay had long since accomplished this, and was counting his score at 36. (You get 20 points for making the foot shot). I was down to my last few shots. I meant it. I was done after this shot. No, this shot. No, Esteban, go upstairs and brush your teeth. Ok, this is the real last shot. And I made it! I was already hoarse from all the cackling during the gameplay. But that put me over the top!

And I had energy to give the three babies a bath, and read two stories (although I fell asleep on the second one. Reading while asleep is very interesting. . . ), and then play piano and sing the two prayers, and. . . have Yanni put them in bed, and then I took Yanni out to practice her driving.

So maybe there is some value to play?

(to be continued)