Julep: shifting gears

Just read an article quoting Rand Paul in which I immediately thought, "What an idiotic thing to say." A little normalcy is a nice thing.

The kids start their new school on Monday - and will be classmates with the Twinkle sisters! I am excited about this in the big picture but getting anxiety about the transition. Under the new regime, Mr. J will be responsible for dropping the kids off every morning. He will have to be up and somewhat functional at 7:30 a.m. five days a week, and I am here to tell you that he is not good at getting out of bed in the mornings.Yes, he is an adult. Yes, this is the sort of thing that the rest of us had to learn to adapt to a solid twenty or thirty years back. I'm not trying to say it's reasonable, but it's a concern.

If it were me, I would be spending the start of August carefully trying to calibrate my bedtime and rising time to the new normal, so that next week would not be such a shock to the system. I don't have to tell you that I have (thus far) seen no signs that Mr. J is doing the same.

I thought I had a plan in place that was going to give me at least some way to force his hand -- I told him that I would get the kids up and dressed every morning, then leave for the office and let him handle breakfast and the drop-off. This plan masquerades as a division of labor, while allowing me to make sure the children are dressed decently and that they are up and roaming the house thus giving him an urgent sense of the need to get out of bed rather than simply sleeping though his alarm clock.

Then I realized this week that I will be out of town for work on Thursday and Friday mornings next week, and at least three mornings of the following week. Three mornings is simply not enough to get Mr. J into a new routine.

I'm starting to worry. My poor kids are going to spend their first two weeks at a new school being those kids who can't show up on time.

Julep: Your Spirit Celebrity

I told LoLa last night that her ensemble reminded me of Reese Witherspoon. Behold, Exhibit A.

I think we all agree that Reese Witherspoon would be our friend if we knew her in person. Also Jennifer Garner (and I think she could use a night out with the girls these days, bless her heart. I hope she has real-life friends who laugh as much as we do). And I suspect we all acknowledge, a la Charlene on Designing Women, that Dolly Parton is our Celebrity Godmother. Who else is on the list?

I think I would quite like Taylor Swift, with the same sort of big-sister spirit I feel towards the young woman associates in my office. Sandra Bullock would make a great Celebrity Big Sister. I have a lingering soft spot for Jennifer Aniston, although I feel that I would be rapidly annoyed with her hipster dude husband. Also I think she would talk too much about yoga and her skin care products. But she might take you with her to Bora Bora, so that would make up for it.

Any other thoughts?

Julep: Solidarity

Twinkle, I just read your last post, and I want you to know how much I sympathize with your situation. It's hard balancing the roles of mother and daughter.

I also want to tell you that your post was really good inspiration for me on how to handle some emotional dramz on my end. See? You're not a bad daughter or mom - you're actually a great mom and a source of tips and guidance! I know your post was really about dealing with your mom, but the parts that rang clear to me are the parts about how you try to keep your girls on an emotionally even keel, being aware of their sensitivities without kowtowing to their whims.

At my house, Little Bits is a drama queen and a diva in the making. She is always wailing about something. Occasionally the wailing is justified, but she howls just as loudly when her brother lightly bumps into her as when he intentionally pile-drives her. This is a problem, and I'm actively working on getting her to toughen up. I want her to stay her sweet, kind self, but as I keep telling her, everything cannot be a five-alarm fire.

The issue that worries me more is when she pitches a fit to get her way. If you tell her "no," or correct her behavior in even the lightest fashion, she screams. And if she doesn't get what she wants? Screams. Let's say that Bear gets a treat after dinner, because he has cleaned his plate. Bits will not eat all of her dinner -- she will not even eat the three bites of veg and two bites of meat that have been given to her as her "eat this much and you can have dessert too" level of eating. When Bear gets his popsicle or cookie, she will proceed to scream bloody murder the whole time he eats it. 

If she bites her brother and gets put in time-out, she screams - and she's not weeping "I'm sorry," it's quite clear that she is doing it for the sole purpose of bullying the other person into backing down. I personally do not back down at the screaming. But Mr. J does ... he swears he only does it in the car, for the sake of his focus on the road, but I don't believe him. Even more worrisome to me is that Bear has started to do it too. Bits has what I call a full service mentality. She will ask me to do something for her that she is perfectly capable of doing, say, getting her doll. When I tell her to do it herself and she starts working up a howl, Bear will trot across the room and collect it for her. 

This child is delightful in many ways, but her potential to be a spoiled brat is off the charts. I want to respect her sensitive nature - I appreciate that being high-strung is not an inherent flaw - but I don't want to raise a kid who expects the world to revolve around her and makes everyone else walk on eggshells.At the same time, I would prefer that my child not hate me, the only person in her world who ever attempts to jerk a knot in her chain. Sigh.