Oh and Also ...

Random other things I feel like telling you:

This weekend is the annual giant fair in my hometown (well, giant by this town's standards), and the community theater is performing The Beatles cover show Saturday and Sunday at the fair.  I'm just the emcee, but the general consensus of all involved parties seems to be that the kids just aren't putting a lot of heart into these performances.  I don't know if it's the heat, or people missing rehearsals for vacations, or just the general makeup of the cast, but the result is a show that's just kind of meh.  You might be thinking that it's really rotten of me to say this kind of critical stuff on the Internet, but I assure you that it's nothing that every single one of the participants hasn't said multiple times at rehearsal.  I guess it's still kind of rotten for me to say this stuff on the Internet, though.  Oh well, there are benefits to having a little-known blog. 

Anyway, the bottom line is that we probably won't go on to do our final performance of the show, which was supposed to be at the end of August.  So, today is our last show.  I'm kind of relieved because with the freelance work coming in ... I mean, it's not like I don't have time for both, it's just sometimes hard to mentally juggle these things. 

I am also supposed to be writing a script for an interactive murder mystery play, which will be a dinner theater kind of thing performed in January.  And the powers-that-be are hoping to make it an all-adult cast, so if you live near me and you're an adult, please consider auditioning.  It's so fun!  It's at least two hours a week away from your kids!

No, seriously, I do enjoy doing these shows, because they really do allow me to step out of the mom role for a little while.  Even when I have to bring Nathan to rehearsals, I still feel like there's a bit of a distraction from my day-to-day life.  What always makes it weird to me, though, is seeing the theater kids out in the community while I'm in the mom role.  Because even though it's not like I see these kids as peers, in a sense at the rehearsals we're all just performers doing a job.  Then I see the kids at the pool, and they're kids going to a pool, whereas I'm a mom in a mom bathing suit with her kid at the baby pool. 

In other news, Nathan is going back to camp this week.  So there's that. 

You know what I'm feeling bad about as a parent right now?  I really just don't feel like I have any hard-and-fast policies.  I mean, I don't have any hard-and-fast policies other than basic safety issues like "don't run out in the street," "wear your seat belt," and "don't take medicine unless an adult gives it to you."  But I feel like my generation of parents is all about hard-and-fast policies, like "I only feed my kids organic fruit," or "My kids are allowed one hour of screen time per day." 

The thing is, I'm overly analytical, so I always find exceptions to the hard-and-fast policies, making them hard to enforce and/or stick to.  Like, take the screen time one.  There are days when Nathan gets up and I whisk him away to some activity, and then the rest of the day we're either out doing things or else we're home and he's playing with his toys.  Those days maybe he doesn't watch any TV.  And other days I need to get something done, so he watches two hours of TV.  It all evens out.  I guess I also don't like the idea of making TV a "forbidden fruit" kind of thing that has to be regulated, like I'd rather just give him a life where TV is just one of the many fun activities you can choose from.  I guess I feel like we do enough other non-screen stuff, and I try to make sure he gets some form of exercise each day, so I don't think I need to create a policy on TV.

But, I still feel terribly guilty.  I wish we had a life where we always woke up at the same time, and we had some kind of strict schedule wherein we always do such-and-such an activity at such-and-such a time.  Okay, I do not wish we had a life like that.  I feel like we should have a life like that.  In actuality, a life like that seems tedious and unrealistic.  My husband doesn't work predictable hours, so it's not like I can always say that we eat dinner at X time.  I guess ... I don't know, I just always feel like I'm doing everything all wrong. 

Which brings me to the food issue.  The other day I was having a conversation with a woman who was telling me that her kids don't like a particular food item, and how the kids will eat that food cooked into this dish, but pick it out of that dish ... and seriously, in the course of the conversation she rattled off the names of like four food items that my kid won't even touch.  I feel so guilty about my kid's eating.  I imagine a perfect life where my family sits down to dinner every night, and I just serve my kid the main dish that I've made, and he eats it.  As it is now, sometimes we eat together, and I try to force my kid to have three bites of the main dish, but he usually ends up eating carbohydrate items for most of his meal.  And when my husband is working late, I usually just make Nathan a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.  Again, I'm pretty sure I have screwed this all up royally and everything's my fault. 

The fact that I take the blame for everything my kid does wrong makes it really odd when I have conversations with people who are just ready to blame every single outside person/institution/societal trend besides themselves for their child's problems.  Like, there's this mom at swimming lessons, and I don't really know what her name is, but I'll call her Susie.  So, Susie's kid, AJ, and Nathan go to camp together, and I mentioned that Nathan also goes to school at that same facility.  Susie asked how I like it, and I said fine, because I think we all know I'm not one to get all uppity about the quality of education at a preschool.  Susie complained that she had spent all this money on a different preschool for AJ, and she felt it had been very detrimental to his education.  She explained that AJ is very advanced academically (of course), and she had taught him all his letters and numbers, and he was ready to read at age 3.  But, she said, she didn't know how to teach him, so she outsourced his instruction to this particular preschool.  And then she said that the preschool really only presented learning opportunities that were beneath AJ, like he had to do a worksheet with letters on it, and he already knows his letters.  She feels they really set AJ back academically at this preschool, like from being advanced to just being average (her words).  Then she said AJ was misbehaving at school because he wasn't being challenged enough, and therefore acted out due to boredom. 

Now, I will say that having been an elementary school teacher, the "my kid acts up because you're not challenging him" argument is not my favorite.  While I acknowledge that there absolutely are situations where kids aren't being challenged, coming at the teacher and blaming her for your kid's misbehavior feels cruel and doesn't get you what you want.  You need to approach it more as, "What can we do together to make sure AJ is challenged and behaves appropriately?"

But that is really beside the point.  My point is, I just don't get how I'm ready to blame myself for every single little possible thing my kid does wrong, and then there are people out there who can't do anything but blame outside sources for their kids' problems.  Now, in actuality, I think maybe I take things too personally, whereas these people need to step up to the plate and solve some of their own problems.  As usual, it's probably best to take a middle ground. 

I guess people are just different.  Hmm.

On a side note, is it really the end of the world if your three-year-old has to do worksheets that reinforce the learning of letters?  It's not as if your kid's in fifth grade or something.  Also, in my experience, a very small percentage of the preschool day is devoted to formal academic learning anyway, so I'm sure AJ is learning many other useful things at that preschool, such as how to get along with others or how we celebrate particular holiday traditions.

Anyway, this post kind of took a left turn somewhere.  I guess I just needed to get some things off my chest.