by Jen Logan | Dec 20, 2019 | Being Awesome, Parenting
It’s amazing what you can learn on a seven minute drive. Every morning I feel like I gain a wealth of knowledge from my 8 year old passenger. Most of this knowledge is about the best books in the orange dot level at the library or which girl’s feelings were hurt because another girl didn’t want to sit with her at lunch. I get the gossip about who may or may not have had lice and who is telling people she is related to Beyonce (she isn’t).
I rarely get information I can share at a dinner party. I am always looking for this type of data since I suck at small talk. My conversation starters are usually “So, who is your favorite serial killer?” or “I used to have to wear leg braces to sleep at night when I was a kid. Weird huh?” So, this morning when my daughter asked me if I wanted to hear all about Walt Disney, I was like hell to the yes I do!
Unfortunately after reading all about Walt’s life, her knowledge consisted of three things which she listed for me. He was born in 1901 and died in 1966 of lung cancer. He married a woman he worked with named Lilly. They had a daughter named Diane but they didn’t like her so they found another baby. When I asked her to elaborate on the part about the children she said she forgot what the story was but they had a baby and they didn’t like her so they got another baby. I asked what they did with poor little unlikable Diane and she said she had no idea. She did wonder how parents couldn’t like their own baby though. I had so many questions and she had so few answers.
Unfortunately we arrived at her school before I could dig a little deeper into this story, so I had to go home and google the whole Disney child situation. The story as presented led me to believe Walt and Lilly had a child and gave her up for adoption and then later went on to have another child. This was not at all the case. They had a biological child named Diane in 1933 and then adopted a child named Sharon in 1936. They loved both girls and doted on them. Apparently Diane made them love parenting so much they expanded their family and gave her a sister. I was happy to know that Walt and his wife were not the type of people to dump their kid and trade her in for a new one. That would be like learning Mr. Rogers was also the Zodiak Killer.
I guess I am going to have to share with my kid what I discovered. It’s these little bits of useless information that nestle into your brain and I wouldn’t want her sharing that Walt and his wife traded in their first child for a better one at a dinner party with her boss twenty years from now. Either that or I just tell her all about the little girl we were thinking about adopting next time she acts like a little asshole. I haven’t decided yet.
*I wrote this while listening to some good old fashioned Christmas music!
by Jen Logan | Jul 26, 2019 | Parenting, Screwing Things Up
At the beginning of the summer I had all kinds of plans for my child. Some of the plans were just for fun, like spend a day at the zoo and check out the zip lining place that we’ve been meaning to check out for two summers. Other plans were more practical, like teach my kid how to tie her damn shoes already. Sometimes I am amazed at my laziness as a parent when it comes to the little things. My husband likes to remind me that our child has been cooking since she was four and reading a year later. But I still cringe when I think about the things she can’t do, like tie her shoes, ride a bike unassisted or roller skate.
As part of some unseen action plan, my dad took mini-me out to buy a bike last weekend. I’m pretty sure this is his way of telling me I am slacking as a parent. He bought her a baseball glove last year and a scooter the year before. This is also coming from the man who put a fur hat on me as a helmet when I was a toddler and padded me up to shoot hockey pucks at me when I could hardly walk, so I’m not going to read too much into it. She got a pretty little white Trek with lime green flowers on it. Her last bike was also white and looked as new the day we got rid of it as the day we bought it. She walked it around the block on occasion and spent many hours packing and unpacking the cute little purse on the handlebars, but even with the training wheels on it, she was terrified to ride. When we forced her to go for a trip around the block she stopped at every corner dismounting her bike to turn it. She was afraid turning the handlebars more than a millimeter would topple the whole package and she didn’t want to get run over by her own bike.
She is behaving much the same with her new, bigger bike. She sits in the driveway ringing the bell and walks it up and down the sidewalk. At least now she actually straddles the bike while walking it instead of standing next to it like it’s a puppy she’s taking for a stroll. Her dad had to cover the pedals with washcloths and duct tape to prevent them from scratching her legs. I’m not entirely convinced she will ride the bike even after seeing her balance on it while coasting for about 50 feet. All I can picture is the episode of Friends where Phoebe is finally learning to ride a bike as a 30 year old.
My child can be great at 100 things but the 3 things she can’t do will take a sledge hammer to my self-esteem. I feel like I am a total failure as a mother when my kid can’t get the little bunny to go through the hole with her shoe laces. Or maybe the bunny is supposed to go around a tree. Or maybe it’s just bunny ears that are supposed to be tied together. I’m not even sure, which is probably part of the problem. Regardless, my kid might still be wearing Minnie Mouse velcro shoes in high school if I don’t get it together and teach this kid how to loop, swoop and pull. This is the stuff that keeps me up at night and keeps my therapist in business.
After realizing summer is already half over, I have been attacking my to do list like a sniper in a bell tower mowing down college students. I have been knocking off trips to the zoo and the movies while reading multiplication tables out loud and picking up books from the library. We spent the morning at our local historical museum where we walked from building to building with no indoor plumbing or electricity and antiques like chamber pots and looms. In a log cabin a woman dressed as a pilgrim demonstrated a toy that essentially taught children the motion to milk a cow. It was a little monkey that climbed two ropes when you pulled them. As my daughter struggled to get the monkey all the way to the top all I could picture was myself lounging on a hay-stuffed couch crying to a pioneer therapist about how my family would probably starve because my daughter was never going to master her milking skills. Luckily there were no sheep shaving games or carrot harvesting challenges or we probably would have been asked to leave due to gross incompetence. We would never have survived as settlers.
I have decided that I need to put a few things on my own to-do list and the first thing is quit freaking out about insignificant shit that I won’t remember worrying about five years from now. I like to put things in perspective by thinking about how I will look back on them in a year or five years. It helps me realize what is worth focusing my attention on. Instead of wasting my time worrying about how I am going to find shoes for my daughter to wear to gym next year, I’ll daydream about her attending Harvard or Yale. Of course she will be wearing her velcro Hello Kitty sneakers as she pushes her bike to class, but she won’t starve!
by Jen Logan | Jun 26, 2019 | Being Awesome, Parenting
I know one thing to be true. Just when you are convinced your child is a genius, they will do something to completely shatter that belief. The universe has a way of keeping the perceptions of parents in check and it usually involves shaking the pedestal they are standing on after their child does something wonderful.
Over the weekend we attended a church service where my eight year old daughter read the prayers of the faithful. It was a long reading with a lot of unfamiliar words, but she nailed it. She did such a fantastic job that the priest actually paused afterward to commend her. He said she should be a public speaker based on the job she did. I was especially impressed since it was an emotional time for her considering it was her great grandmother’s memorial mass. We had debated even letting her do the reading, taking into consideration her emotions might get the best of her. But she hit it out of the park. I am still receiving compliments about it.
Four hours later, while still basking in the glory of the accolades from my little superstar’s performance, I got a call to come home from the gym immediately. I could hear my little mini-me sobbing in the background that she was afraid she was dying. My husband was trying to comfort her while simultaneously addressing my question of “what the hell is going on?” and quickly losing the battle. He finally blurted out “she ate a LEGO!” and “settle down, you’re not going to die!” all in the same breath.
As I was walking to the parking lot, I received a photo of the LEGO piece she ingested. It was a tiny little tube, about the length of a fingernail. I gave up my frantic internet search after realizing the giant LEGO block I pictured lodged in her esophagus was not the situation we had at all. I did notice that the list of search results all noted toddlers swallowing foreign objects. There was no mention of nobel prize winners, mensa members or ivy league college graduates shoving pieces of plastic down their throats. No wonder I thought that my days of telling my child to keep foreign objects out of her mouth were over – it is apparently a common problem for toddlers.
I’m thoroughly convinced this was my fault. I’m pretty sure my child picked up my proud vibes radiating from five miles away and decided I might be setting the bar a little too high for future expectations. She decided my mommy pedestal needed a good shaking and promptly inhaled the smallest LEGO she could find. Maybe she really is a genius after all. A lazy, evil genius!
**I wrote this while listening to
by Jen Logan | Jun 9, 2019 | Chick Stuff, Life
Life would be easier if everyone would just do what I tell them to. When my family and friends are acting exactly as I want them to, things run smoothly. It’s when my cast goes off script that the wheels come off the wagon.
I am a recovering control freak. It’s a condition I have been afflicted with my entire life. I think everyone is born with it. I mean babies are the biggest control freaks on the planet. They want what they want, when they want it and they are going to scream and cry until they get it. Some of us just never outgrow that phase of life I guess. I am one of those people. Although now I don’t scream and cry to get my way – I usually just give a stern look or manipulate the crap out of the situation. I can also argue my point for hours and wear my opponent down if need be.
I didn’t even realize what a control freak I was until a few years ago. People just always kind of did what I asked of them for most of my life. I think this is the way with a lot of control freaks. I knew I was a pain in the ass, I just wasn’t sure why. Now that I know I have an issue, I try to step away from the controls. The problem is it’s like having your hands on a marionette and then expecting the strings to move by themselves when you let go.
My first family vacation in control freak recovery was a tough one. Instead of getting prime seats by the pool, we sat a few rows back. We ended up eating lunch at a restaurant that I didn’t have the menu memorized so I had no idea what to order and a storm blew through while we were still outside. I blamed that storm on my letting go of the wheel – like I could control nature! Things just didn’t move as quickly because everyone was standing around waiting for me to bark orders. If the rest of my family had known I was trying to step away from the wheel, it would have been fine.
Things have become easier now that my family knows I am trying to let go a little. Sure my kid goes grocery shopping in a costume and we show up late to almost everything, but nobody has lost a limb yet and I haven’t given myself high blood pressure. I do still pick the restaurants most of the time, organize events and do most of the driving – even other people’s cars. But believe me when I say I am A LOT better than I used to be. What can I say, I’m a work in progress.
by Jen Logan | May 17, 2019 | Life, Parenting
My daughter had her first communion last week. But first, she had to complete her first reconciliation. She had been talking about this event all year and, of course, I had a few questions for her about the process. Namely, when she needed to confess and what atrocities she had to confess.
I recall going to confession as a child and debating about what to tell the priest and what to keep to myself. It wasn’t necessarily that I was such a bad kid at the age of eight that I thought my sins were unforgivable, I just didn’t want to admit I was wrong about anything. Telling the school priest that I had been mean to my mom or lied to a friend seemed like a not so smart thing to do. I was always a skeptical child, so I was pretty sure the priest was going to blab all of my dirt to my teachers. I pictured them sitting around the lunch table gossiping about what the kids said to their moms and each other. I didn’t want anyone to have any dirt they could hold over my head.
A month ago when my mini-me and I were talking about confession she asked what kind of things I had talked to the priest about when I was her age. I told her it was mostly me being sassy with my mom or not being as nice as I could be to friends. “What do you do if you don’t have anything to confess?” she asked with a straight face. I told her I could give her a list if she needed one. She sounded just like my Dad who jokes that he has nothing to repent for. Unfortunately, she wasn’t joking. In her mind it was a totally valid question.
The day before her first communion was spent preparing for the big day. The kids practiced the readings, found their places in the chapel where they would sit with their families and tasted the wine. I had learned earlier that they give all of the kids a sip of the wine the day before so nobody spits it out on their dress at the main event. My daughter had a rather lengthy discussion with a saleswoman at the shoe store about this as we picked out a pair of white heels. She talked animatedly about how disrespectful it would be to God to have some kid spit out the blood of his son all over the floor. She had already talked to me repeatedly about the church wine. She was scared to drink it because she thought it would taste bad. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was obsessed, but the wine was on her mind much more than her weekly spelling words or current lego project. I was happy to know it would be put to bed after her retreat.
When she came home from school that day she had two things to share. The first was that she did make a confession and it was that she made me crazy in the morning (which is true). She was not given penance with the rosary, but was instead told to cut it out. She of course shared this information with her grandparents, but did not want to divulge the conversation to me. Smart kid. The second piece of information she shared with her dad (again, not with me). She walked in and promptly told him “Dad, I loved the wine. It tasted so good!” He immediately texted me to let me know that fear was coursing through his veins. Well, that seems about right – my kid worried about the wine for a month and we will now worry about it for the next twenty or more years.
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