I took the kids to Gambado on Friday. It's a soft play area, that is enormous and chaotic and I lost Lulu twice. The first time our friends found her at the top of the slide. It's not a gentle slide, it's very high and fast. The second time, I found her because I could hear her crying (this is impressive given the noise level of that place) but I couldn't see her. She was in a tunnel, just sitting there crying. So I got her and then I got the kids some lunch and she had about four bites before she tried to run away again. "But you were just crying in a tunnel, honey," I said. "No, no, not!" she replied. Sigh. But also. I'm impressed that my peanut of a daughter is independent and confident and not at all worried that I won't find her if she chooses to cry for me while in a hiding spot.
So let's talk about something that is killing me. It's the fact that despite investing a fair sum of money in very un-earth friendly plastic bins, playmobil and Lego keep getting mixed up. Yes, obviously I am a bit OCD and I don't say that in any sort of flippant way. I know I am. For example I will not touch anything on the Tube and then touch my face or my hair so I have to always hold on with the same hand so I can move my hair out of my eyes or scratch my nose with the clean hand. (And shockingly I am the only person I ever see using hand sanitizer as I exit the station. Does everybody else wait until they're at their office? I don't understand.) This subway situation, however, is manageable because I control it. But I do not control the toy bins. This morning I forced Tommy to go through them with me because I cannot identify each piece and he can (well, except for one which I put on his nightstand so that we can ask Eli tonight).
To make matters worse, Tommy and I "built" one of his new Lego sets together and right when I was feeling proud of our progress, he announced that he had to use some of the pieces for his own ship. And so we (I) couldn't finish building the real ship because quite a few key parts were unavailable. I am embarrassed to confess that this also drove me crazy and I kept taking deep breaths and reminding myself that if Tommy doesn't care that his Lego is never built as pictured on the box, I should not care. But! I do! I want the satisfaction of completing the Lego.
These are the parts of parenting I never would have imagined would be tricky and they're the ones that require extraordinary amounts of patience and maturity on my part (and let me confess right here that the patient and mature parts of me do not always win).
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Yesterday, we went swimming (after Gambado, so without the aforementioned neurotic behavior on my part, I would have been the best mommy ever) and two eight-year-old girls got into the pool with us and headed straight for Lizzie. They wanted to hold her and know how old she was and her name, and her big brother was very jealous of the attention. "Her name's Lizzie. She's my little sister, but she likes to play by herself. You know what you need? To play with a FIVE-YEAR-OLD!"
And then today, we were walking down the road and he asked me if people ever wake back up again after they die. Again, a challenging parenting moment which culminated in talking about advances in medicine so I'm sure he is completely confused about death at this point. Sigh.
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