Tag: Growing Up

  • Spending the Night

    The kid is at the age of “Peek Sleepovers.” Such as, the success or failure of a weekend can be determined if a sleepover occurs, regardless if the sleepover is a success or not. The kid has taken part in a few “slumber birthday parties,” and a weekend away with a friend whose family has a place out of the City. I do use the term “Peek” not only because the kid is super excited about having a sleepover, but also because the kids are still at the age where they will go to bed at a relatively decent hour, so we can all get some sleep. Once they get to middle school age, then it turns into staying up all night and watching movies, and there is no guarantee that I or the wife will be able to get any rest. But, as of now, the kid is happy, and that makes everyone happy.

    There other thing that I am happy for is that the kid has no issues with spending the night and being away from us. Not all kids are like that.

    I wasn’t – I went through phases though. When I was little, I had no problem sleeping over. Then somewhere around nine, it began to bother me being away from home. Like the first few hours would be fine, then all of a sudden, a feeling of dread came over me, like I would never see my family again, or ever be happy. I know that I was feeling home sick, and that’s natural, but the feeling was so controlling and paralyzing, and the only thing I could think of was getting home. And then when I got home, I was overcome with shame, that I didn’t have the courage of strength to spend the night, and, you know, be a normal kid. When friends would invite me over to spend the night, I would come up with excuses why I couldn’t.

    Then, it just all went away. The fear, the anxiety, all of it was just gone. I remember it was 6th grade, and I was over at my friend David’s house with some other kids. We all stayed for dinner, and then his parents said if we wanted to spend the night we could. There clearly was a bit of it was peer pressure to stay over, but also, I didn’t get that sinking feeling in my stomach. I remember calling my parents to ask if I could stay, and my mother asking me over and over and over if I was sure I wanted to do this. I said that I was, and then not thinking about it again. I ran home and grabbed some clothes and a sleeping bag, and I was just excited to hang out with friends, and stay up all night.

    I think we watched “Let’s Get Harry” on Cinemax because we thought it was a dirty movie. It’s not a dirty movie, it’s just a really bad and dull movie.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Recovery, Tottenham’s Next Season, and This Year

    (The future is in your lap…)

    Today is the first day that I feel 100% normal. Yesterday was like 95%, and I think that had to do with the side effects of the medication I was on. Yeah, Covid sucks, and I am glad that I had avoided it for four years. I am also aware that I had a very mild case, as I would say that it felt more like I had a bad cold than anything else. Also, the being exhausted all the time made me feel like I have lost a week of my life; I just couldn’t stop sleeping, which wasn’t as pleasurable as I had hoped. I just felt lazy. Now that I am back, I have the desire to exceptionally over exert myself to compensate for my “time off.”

    Tottenham Hotspur will not play in the Champions League next season, but they will qualify for the one of the two other European football tournaments. With Spurs final game against already relegated Sheffield, odds are that Tottenham are Europa League bound. This is an improvement over last season, but I can’t shake the feeling that the team choked during the second half of the season. Ah… next season. And there is a European Cup this Summer!

    Does it feel like this year has flown by for anyone else? Swear to God, it feels like we were just wrapping up New Years like a month ago. I know that I wrote a blog about how we had planned our Summer already, and just the other day, the kid’s school sent out the academic calendar for 24/25, and it’s like Fall is basically here already. I got an email last week about getting ready for the Great Pumpkin Blaze for Halloween. But with all of this, it dawned on me that kid will leave for college in 9 years, which means we are halfway through our time with her. Nine years of being a parent has flown by, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I wish it would slow down just a little bit. Perhaps I am to blame, as I forget that most of what I busy myself with really doesn’t matter.

  • Hurting the Toy’s Feelings

    Yesterday, on the way home from picking my kid up from school, she told me that she wanted to update her room. The issue, from her perspective, was that her room looked to “little kid,” and she wanted her room to look “older.”

    I did let her know that I understood that she was getting older, and her room needed to reflect that. Unfortunately, if she was looking for us to buy her a new bedroom set, that wasn’t happening anytime soon, but I would be willing to help her clean and reorganize her room to reflect what she was desiring it to look like.

    That was acceptable to her, and we started working on it as soon as she was done with her homework.

    To be honest, we were just shuffling stuff around – putting that under her bed, putting this on her shelf. Occasionally, she’d throw something away, but it was rare. I found so many candy wrappers. Clearly, she been squirreling away a large amount of candy.

    The biggest shock of the afternoon was that she wanted to box up her dolls, doll clothes and accessories, and put them away, up on the shelf. I knew this day was coming, but I didn’t think it would be today. At some point we all put our toys down, not to pick them up again with the intention of playing with them. I don’t know when it happened to me, but I know that by the time I was in junior high, it was sports and video games – no pretending with toys anymore.

    But the kid did ask me if this was going to hurt the dolls feelings, that she was putting them away up on the shelf. I was like, no, they’re always here when you need them.

  • Rockin’ Out in the Car

    You know how much Taylor Swift I listened to this weekend? And this has nothing to do with the Kansas City/Baltimore game on Sunday. I was the “Dad Taxi” and, oh, did I get my own version of The Eras Tour in the car. Yes, two Tween-girls were eating candy, chatting non-stop between singing Taylor songs, and it was like I wasn’t even there.

    And I couldn’t have been happier.

    I had no idea what to expect when I found out the kid was going to be a girl all those years ago. I had two older brothers, so my childhood was nothing but boy things. I can admit I was nervous about raising a girl, but not afraid to do it. I just knew that I was going to enter a place of parenting that I had no frame of reference, and that’s not bad – it’s just a challenge.

    I know that I only have a few years left of her openly acting like she likes me. I know what will come next and that’s okay. I want her to be her own person, and she has to pull away from me to accomplish that. It’s not like she’s going away, but if she’s just a little bit like the adolescent that I was, then she will be in her room all the time, listening to really “deep” music, and no one will be able to understand her. (I was pretty pretentious and obnoxious all at the same time.) But if she’s also like me, she’ll come to the other side of it, and will still talk to me. I got closer to my parents the older I got.

    But for now, I got be witness her getting excited about music and being with her friends. Maybe I did eavesdrop, but it was surprisingly reassuring to hear her voice her opinions and make some pretty funny jokes. Watching the kid grow up.

  • GOURDS!

    I bought gourds this morning at Trader Joe’s. You know, the Fall/Autumn/Halloween gourds that come out on October 1st, and are sold through Thanksgiving. Well, it was two tiny pumpkins and a gourd to be exact, but as I get deeper into the season, I will buy more of these. I wouldn’t call it a weakness, but it is the one seasonal decoration that I indulge.

    Soon, most likely this weekend, we’ll go to our storage space and get the box of Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations to put up. Most of what is in there are silly, kid-like things to put up. Also in that box, there is a collection of dollar store small glittery pumpkins. Soon our kitchen table will be a collection of both real and fake gourds. You know, how the Pilgrims intended.

    When the kid was little, two or three, she would paint the white pumpkins to add to the decorations. I don’t think she does that anymore. And I start to wonder how long we’ll keep decorating the apartment with these cartoonish and child-like decorations?

    My parents kept reusing all the old holiday decorations until I went away to college. With me, the final child was out of the house, so my mom decided that it was time to have more grown up decorations for all the holidays. Gone were the doe-eyed cats and bats, to be replaced with wreaths of fake orange leaves and gourds. (But her gourds were plastic and ceramic.) Christmas even got more mature with an all-white lights on an all-white tree. You get the idea…

    I have a feeling we’ll do the same thing when our kid heads out of here, to college or where ever.

    But I like my gourds.