by Jen Logan | Sep 27, 2018 | Life, Parenting
My daughter is a very kind child. It’s one of her greatest attributes and I hope she is always able to reach into that place in herself and remain kind as she grows up and learns that others in the world are not often like her. She displayed some of this kindness while we were on a family vacation this weekend, and as always I was impressed with her ability to be compassionate at such a young age.
We go to a Great Wolf Lodge a few times a year for little weekend getaways. It’s a hotel with a water park and other fun stuff for kids to do. My parents love spending time with Riley and they decided since we hadn’t gotten away for a little while as a family, we should all go. So the five of us jumped in the car and took a little three hour trip up north. I have to say, my parents are great sports when it comes to doing things for their grandchild. We stayed in a suite that had a little log cabin in one room with bunk beds. My husband and I slept in there with our daughter the first night and it was like sleeping on a medieval torture device. When she declared she wanted her grandparents to sleep in there the second night they gladly agreed. They had seen the beds and my husband and myself after a night in the beds, but they slept there anyway. They also dragged their elderly butts up 57 steps to the top of a three person raft water slide repeatedly over the course of the weekend just to be able to bounce around and hear their grandchild laugh firsthand. I know it was 57 steps because my mother counted them on her first trip up.
One of the other activities that my daughter likes to do at the hotel is called Magic Quest. It’s basically a bunch of scavenger hunts in the hotel to earn badges. If you complete all of the quests you are named a master magi, a title which is highly revered by seven year olds. My daughter spent many hours in between playing in the water park, pumping half of my dad’s paycheck into arcade games and stuffing all form of sugar in her mouth running around the hotel gathering runes to complete her quests. Her favorite person to do this with was of course her grandpa. We all got to play at some point, but by the end of the trip she was grabbing his hand and sneaking out the door to go adventuring with her favorite playmate.
On our day of departure she had one more quest to complete to become a quest master. She and her grandpa were working diligently to complete the job before we had to leave. With only about fifteen minutes to go they ran across a little boy who was struggling to complete the quest he was working on. They stopped to help and my dad explained to her that if she helped the little boy she would not have time to finish her own quest and become a master. She thought about it for a few moments and said “that’s okay, he needs help. I want to help him.” So she did. She abandoned her own journey to help him finish his quest with no complaints. I came in after loading the car and started to round up the troops when my dad shared this story with me. He said “You created a good one there.” I would have to agree.
We all gathered together and helped our little magi who had to go back to the beginning of her quest and start over because there was a time limit. She ran around the hotel and with a little help from her dad and myself, she was able to find all of the runes and become a master magi. It’s funny the things you learn from your kids. Earlier in the trip my daughter had stopped to pick up a pair of wolf ears that a little girl dropped on the floor. She handed them back to the little girl who was in a panic because at first she thought that my daughter was picking up the ears for herself. The girl turned to her mother and said “Mama, that little girl just gave me back my ears. She picked them up for me!” She was surprised by my daughter’s kindness. I watched lots of other kids pushing and shoving their way through lines, knocking down smaller kids over the weekend. I even watched a dad leave his kid behind on the steps to make it to the front of the line for a raft. I am grateful that my daughter isn’t making her way through life like that. I’m proud of her for stopping to pick up the ears for another kid, and for abandoning her mission to help someone else because it was the right thing to do. We did create a pretty good little human being. I am so grateful that I get to learn from her every day.
by Jen Logan | Sep 13, 2018 | Parenting, Screwing Things Up
My daughter attends the same school that I went to as a kid. It’s a small Catholic school with many long standing traditions. At the end of school masses and functions everyone in attendance sings the school song, gouter is shared daily and there are service days and conge. Another long standing tradition is the 1:15 dismissal on Wednesdays. Growing up, Wednesday was my favorite day because my dad would pick me up from school and we would go eat french onion soup and hang out. When the weather was nice, he would pick me up on his motorcycle. Some of my fondest memories as a child occurred on Wednesdays.
My daughter has been picked up from school at 1:15 by her grandparents for the last four years. They drove to the school yesterday just like every other previous Wednesday only to find a bunch of younger children waiting to get picked up, but not their grandchild. My daughter is now in second grade which is lower school and lower school does not have early dismissal on any day. I would have known this if I had looked at things like the website, school forms or after school sign ups, but I didn’t. My memory of Wednesday afternoons with my dad was so strong that it never even occurred to me that things may have changed in the thirty years since I ran through those doors to jump on the back of his motorcycle. So everyone in my family was under the impression that my kiddo would get to spend Wednesday afternoons with her grandparents the same way I spent them with my dad, but this is not the case.
Needless to say, my parents were pretty disappointed to not be able to spend that time with their favorite person on the planet, my daughter was sad that she didn’t get to see her grandparents and I’m pretty much where I always am, screwing things up somehow. I did at least get to laugh with the faculty when I picked up my daughter at her normal dismissal time. I told them I would see them at 1:15 next week.
I wrote this while listening to The Chats.
by Jen Logan | Sep 6, 2018 | Parenting, Screwing Things Up
I’m bad with names. I always have been. I have tried to use all of the tricks they teach like using people’s name right away when you meet them or associating their name with something familiar, but those tools don’t work well for me. I think I come by it naturally. When my parents got new neighbors years ago my Dad called the man Pedro for a year. I, of course, also called him Pedro. His name is Hector. I don’t know what my mom called him for that first year, but I hope at least one of us got it right.
Sometimes I will be introduced to someone I know I want to talk to again. I will say their name over again and again in my head before I begin a conversation with them. I walk up thinking “Bob, Bob, Bob” and say “Hi Tom!” Usually Bob doesn’t really want to talk to me after that. Either does Tom. So now, unless I am absolutely sure about someone’s name I don’t use it.
I have been a little better when it comes to my daughter’s classmates. Luckily I only have a few dozen to remember and they don’t change from year to year. There are a few that I get mixed up though and it happens repeatedly. There are two girls who are equally cute but not twins by any means and every single time I see one of them the other one’s name pops in my head. My child has corrected me on this at least a dozen times and I still get it wrong. The worst part is I have now called one of the girls by the other one’s name to her mom three times. I walked right over to her yesterday and said “Oh, Riley’s desk is right across from Jillian’s” to Adlyn’s mom. She just smiled at me politely like she was happy to hear it. I had actually been on a field trip where three moms were supervising four children with Adlyn and her mom and I am still calling this poor child by the wrong name.
I also have to remind myself repeatedly while talking to any of the moms in my daughter’s class their first names because I will undoubtedly call them by their child’s name at least once. I remember when Sex in the City was popular and everyone wanted a necklace with their name on it like Carrie wore. Can we bring that back? That would be really helpful for people like me. Until then maybe I should walk around with a stack of name tags and a sharpie in my purse and label anyone who strikes up a conversation with me.
I would like to hope this is something that gets better with time, but I listened to my dad call my friend’s daughter by the wrong name for two days last week so I fear that it is probably something that is just going to get worse for me as well. I’m expecting within the next five years I will be calling my husband Kevin and my daughter Alexa and they are just going to have to get used to it.
by Jen Logan | Sep 2, 2018 | Life, Parenting
The Woodward Dream Cruise is an annual gathering of grease monkeys, old timers reliving their glory days through metal and rubber and muscle car junkies. What started as a one day event has slowly turned into a week long series of events and traffic nightmare. People line up lawn chairs along the curb for miles waiting for the pageantry as mustangs and bitchin’ camaros burn rubber. Lime green hearses and airbrushed vans also cruise up and down the avenue as well as the occasional 1978 rusted out pinto. It is a giant pain in the ass for everyone else traveling within five square miles of the ten mile stretch for a week.
We are a car family. Fast cars. I have heard stories about my dad’s mom racing anyone who pulled up next to her in her Chevelle. Years later I did the same thing in my mustangs and porsche. I vividly recall my dad waking me up to watch the car race scene in Bullitt when I was a teenager. The rumbling of a big block engine elicits in me the same response as the aroma of chocolate chip cookies coming out of grandma’s oven.
Needless to say, my dad is all about the dream cruise and all it entails. He has rented hotel rooms for the day to have a place to keep snacks and have easy access to a bathroom for his friends and family as we sat under tents watching cars roll past for hours on end. This year he bought VIP tickets to an event at the beginning of the week called “Road Kill” which was drag racing at the northern most part of the Dream Cruise stretch. He spent an entire day with his friends watching cars peel out. He brought home souvenir foam fingers and back packs which my daughter has been carrying around for days.
He has been trying to get her as excited about cars as he and I both get with little luck. She doesn’t quite get it yet, being only seven and not having actually put the petal to the metal. She is a late bloomer in my family. I was on my first motorcycle ride at six months old and wearing my first helmet by age three. I was also driving a motorcycle by this age. This is the first summer that my kiddo has actually started to feel the need for speed. She has driven her dad’s car a few times and the wave runners on the lake.
And this year she went cruising with grandpa during the dream cruise. He picked her up on a Wednesday night in my mom’s convertible and they went driving around checking out cars for a few hours. She even took a few pictures and chatted up some of the drivers. She came home with her first dream cruise t-shirt and has been asking me to tell her stories about all of my old cars and racing. I think she has finally been inducted into the family tradition. Watch out world, here comes another little thrill seeker.
by Jen Logan | Aug 16, 2018 | Life, Parenting
The other night I told my daughter we were going to church in the morning because it was a holy day of obligation. When she argued that it was a weekday and not a church day I told her we were going to celebrate the virgin Mary. I explained that we have all kinds of celebrations for Jesus but just this one day for his mother who was so important. She asked “will there be cake?” I guess it’s not a proper celebration without cake in her mind. I almost lied just to get her to comply, but I knew that would somehow lead to me actually purchasing a cake, so I stuck with the truth.
When I shared this story with my husband his reaction was “I’ll go to church with you if there’s cake!” Now he is sending me photos of cake ideas. He’s going to be really surprised when he comes home to find 24 cupcakes with rosaries on them. He forgets it is summer and I am home with a small child all day – we have nothing but time. So for anyone who didn’t celebrate the Assumption with a little cake after mass – you are doing it wrong.
by Jen Logan | Aug 9, 2018 | Parenting
Like most seven year olds, my daughter is obsessed with YouTube. She has been interested in filming videos for a few years now and I have told her that she can make videos, but I refuse to let he open toys, play with toys or otherwise promote toys in videos. She has settled on cooking, even after many attempts to bribe her to do more Logan Family Band videos. I guess my music skills are really that horrific.
In addition to wanting to make videos, she loves watching YouTube. There is a family from Arizona that she recently discovered that makes a variety of videos. The kids are cute, but watching the parents makes me crazy. The dad has a cheesy frat boy arm band tattoo and I really need the mom’s number so we can talk about getting her some eye cream. (Side note – selling skincare makes you look at everyone with a critical eye. You want to save everyone from their wrinkles.) I have also made a mental note to stay behind the camera in these future YouTube videos so as not to attract the same kind of snarky criticism I am internally dishing out to all of the adults on screen.
The thing is, my seven year old wants to emulate whatever YouTube channel she is obsessed with for the month. Last year she was consistently watching a girl who face painted, so my whole family had their faces covered in neon hues on a weekly basis. She even called her grandparents over to be victims. My daughter does not have what you would call a light touch. Her application process is similar to patching a hole in drywall. After having their faces nearly torn off with scratchy brushes and being doused in glitter we sent them on their way back home, reminding them they may need to swing by the local party store for a bottle of water on their way. I waited patiently by the phone for a call from the police station or mental hospital that night. My mom did call later asking for the best technique to remove glitter from my dad’s ear hair.
The channel she is watching now has a variety of skits that take place in a classroom or a hotel. She has focused on the hotel and has, herself been pretending to live in a hotel for the last few days. It started with us driving to my parents’ house to “check out the resort”. We decided not to stay after we found the staff relaxing in the pool and booked a room at Loganland. My husband’s roles have included manager, chef, bellhop and concierge. I have been asked to play a guest (of course!) and the MAID. Seriously, does this child not know me at all? She has watched me destroy two vacuum cleaners and clean an entire room with a wet one, yet she cast me in this role. We also may need to have another talk about equality of the sexes since her reasoning for casting me in this part was “you’re a girl”.
My husband is really getting into his parts. He is accepting room service calls, cooking to order and basically delivering anything requested by his guests. He is even answering questions like “what is on the activity schedule at the resort today?” I think he may be taking it a little too far though. Last night I told my daughter that I had requested a wake up call from the front desk so she wouldn’t be late for camp this morning. I was awakened by my husband saying “this is your wake up call!” at 5:30 am. My alarm was set for two hours later. He was promptly driven away, confused by my annoyance. He thought I was serious when I requested that he wake me up in the morning. Now I am asking does my husband know me at all? I never thought I would need a “safe” word for playing a make believe game with my child.
I am a little concerned about some of the amenities this resort offers. I have never stayed at a hotel that insists on complimentary cuddles at night from the manager. I think that would warrant a bad Yelp review at the very least, if not a restraining order. I do enjoy that they let us roam around the hotel in our underwear and help ourselves to the pantry at all hours. Their snack selections are a little lacking though.
At this point I’m pretty confident we could turn our home into an AirBNB rental if we ever needed an extra source of income. I’m sure it would be more lucrative than my daughter’s blossoming career as a YouTube star. I’m guessing the complimentary cuddles would earn us some great reviews. Hopefully my husband won’t figure out that this was all just a long drawn out ploy to get him to serve me breakfast in bed.
Recent Comments