Excellence in human living...

Last night was Annie's graduation from high school. (PAUSE). That short sentence holds inside of it 18 years of WOW.

I sat in the Hilbert Circle Theatre waiting for her to appear at the top of the stairs, ready to make her entrance as "Pomp & Circumstance" trailed from the quartet on stage. Why didn't I think to ask her what side she was walking in on?

And then, there she was. It was the first glimpse I'd had of her in cap and gown. She had a rose in her hand and smile on her face. Time stood still.

As tears streamed down my face, I captured her frozen in my gaze. A sudden panic rose up inside of me. How did we get here already? Have I taught her everything she needs to know for life? I think I need more time...

I watched her move down the stairs toward her seat with the rest of the Class of 2015. She was confident and happy.

When her name was called...Anna Michelle Magan (prounounced correctly, thank you very much)...she glided triumphantly across the stage. She graduated with honors, but even better, I think she graduated with Excellence in Human Living. She is both passionate and compassionate. She seeks to be a righter of wrongs, still unjaded by life. She is stubborn and sometimes maddeningly insistent. She is creative and inquisitive and determined.

As she crossed the stage, there was no hesitation, no panic on my part. Oh, there were a few tears. It was as if I could physically feel the separation happening as my firstborn child, my only daughter, stepped into her own life. It's a life where she will need me still. Heck, I'm almost 45 and I still need my mom.

But it is her own life and as she came down the stairs, diploma in hand and something bigger than a simple smile on her face, I thought to myself, "She's got this."

Give her an inch, she'll get her nose pierced

Remember when I gave in and let Annie dye her hair black? Let's call that an inch.

As her 18th birthday approached, she asked if she could get her nose pierced. I had to think about that one. Mike was definitely against it. I was about a 6 on the "don't do it" scale. But I thought of the several people I know who have tiny little diamondesque studs in their olfactory organs and decided it wasn't so bad. I talked to Mike and we agreed that yes, when she turned 18 she could get her nose pierced.

There were a few stipulations:

1. She had to get it done at Metamorphosis, a reputable, hygenic "body shop" that was recommended to me by my young-and-hip-go-to-colleague at work.

2. No nose ring. Not on the side. Not in the middle of her nose so she looked like a bull. She could get a stud.

3. She had to pay for it herself.

Yesterday was the big day, which conveniently coincided with a day off school. Annie made plans with two of her besties to go their favorite restaurant for lunch and then head to Metamorphosis. I suppose I could have tagged along, but it was also Robbie's birthday and his school got out early. So I picked him up and took him to lunch at Chick-Fil-A, his favorite.

After our lunch, I came home to take a little nap -- I was up until 2am getting the requisite birthday wrapping and birthday decorating done. Just before I dozed off, I sent Annie a text asking for a picture of her new jewelry. Then I promptly fell asleep.

About 45 minutes later, she called me. Sleepily, I answered the phone.

"Hello."

"Hey mom, it's Annie. Did you get the picture I texted you?"

I fumbled to open the text message, glanced at the picture and with my eyes still cloudy from sleep said, "Oh, cute." She had a little silver stud on the side of her nose.

"Um. Did you see both of them?" That would be the mile.

Both?! With that I sat straight up, fully awake and clicked back to the picture. Holy boogers, Batman! She had two studs in her nose, one on either side. I was honestly speechless.

"Mom? Mom...are you there? Are you ok?"

"I thought you were going to get a tiny, sparkly stud and instead you had a BARBELL put through your nose?!" I wasn't quite hysterical, but I wasn't quite in love either.

Annie assured me it was not a barbell. It was two individual stud piercings.

"Are you mad," she asked me, although I could have asked her the same question with a slightly different meaning.

The truth is that I wasn't mad. I was a little stunned. But honestly, I did think the picture she had sent me was pretty cute. Plus, look at that oh so happy smile. So, I promised her it was safe to come home. Then I sent Mike a message:

Perfect response.

So here it is, one day after Annie's 18th birthday and I'm the mother of black-haired acTRESS with not one, but two nose piercings. 

Little did I know on the day that she was born looking like this:

that 18 of the shortest years in history later, she would look like this: 

What a spirited, lovely kid, double nose piercings and all.

My kid wants to study theatre and I'm not sorry about it.

Get into a conversation with a parent in which one or both of you have a child who is a senior in high school and the topic at hand inevitably turns to college. "What does your child want to study?" "Where does she want to go to school?" My daughter Annie plans to study theatre and I'm not sorry about it.

When Annie first started talking about majoring in theatre performance and making the stage her life's work, I was excited for her. She has a passion for it. She doesn't just memorize lines and spit them back out. She studies her craft. She reads books on the techniques of acting, seeks critiques of her performance, works tech to learn another side of production. You can see in her eyes and her smile how theatre makes Annie come alive.

But when people started asking me what Annie plans to study in college, I kind of felt like I had to apologize for her career choice. After all, studying theatre isn't exactly a "responsible" choice like studying finance or medicine or education. I would deliver my answer of "theatre" with a slight smile and a quick roll of the eyes, as if to say, "You know kids and their unrealistic expectations." I thought that was how people expected me to react.

My husband and I have talked to Annie about the realities of a career in theatre. Jobs may be scarce and may not pay well. Waiting tables to make ends meet is a real possibility. Grad school may be a necessity; apartment sharing will definitely be. But this is what she wants to do. She is willing to make those sacrifices. No one goes back to school to study theatre. Now is her time.

And so, somehow in the course of Annie moving from her junior year in high school to her senior year, I've lost that obligated, apologetic feeling and the eye roll that came with it. I think about all the joy that the arts -- theatre being one of them -- bring to people. Without people invested in creating that art, that joy would be lost. I look around my own community and see adults working in the realm of theatre -- on stage, back stage, in promotion and development. I can see a future in that for Annie.

Does everyone who goes to theatre school end up winning a Tony or a Golden Globe or inking a deal for a network television show? Of course not. Just as not every finance major ends up being president of a bank and not every med school student wins the Nobel Prize for medicine.

Those who do end up with those career superlatives have certain things in common: they work their butts off; they seize opportunities when presented; they don't take no for an answer; and they do what they do because they are passionate about it.

My daughter is passionate about transforming herself into characters on a stage for the purpose of entertaining, and sometimes educating, people in the audience. And you know what? I'm not the least bit sorry about that.

I know it's just hair, but I still might cry.

I was wandering Target last night (a perfectly acceptable Friday night activity) when Annie sent me a text. It was a brief conversation:

It was not one of my most open-minded moments, but her hair -- her natural-grows-out-of-her-head hair -- is so pretty. Dye her hair black? My mind immediately went to a pasty-white-faced girl wearing a safety pin through her ear and black combat boots on her feet. 

Honestly, look at this senior picture Mike took of her: 

I know I'm terribly biased, but I think she is beautiful and her hair is just gorgeous. So why in the world would she want to go and dye it at all, but especially why would she want to dye it black? 

She had an answer for that:

It was late, pushing 11:00pm. I didn't really have a good argument other than "because I said so." It is only hair. I was too tired to argue and figured in 6 weeks she will be 18 and technically able to make her own decisions anyway, barring "my house, my rules." And I'm trying to be less of a control freak. So I waved the white flag of surrender:

And because I'm still a work in progress on the whole control freak thing:

A mother can hope, right?

So that's how the kids are doing it these days

"Mom, I need to tell you something, but I'm nervous."

That's not the kind of conversation you really hope to have on a Wednesday morning before school.

"Ok," I said, trying to not let my mind fly in 37 different directions. "Just tell me."

"Well, I'm just worried about how you'll react. I don't want you to be mad."

Having now reached at least 24 different mind-bending directions, I said, "Annie, I'm sure I'm not going to be mad. Is it something bad?" 

"No, it's not bad. And it makes me happy. But you can be judgmental."

Red alert! Red alert! Mind approaching explosion status and stomach trenched firmly in my shoes.

"What?! Tell me," I'm saying trying to remain calm and doing a decent job of it, if I say so myself.

"Well, first, I'm not a lesbian and I'm not pregnant."

So that knocked out two of my most prominent thoughts, one of which would have been way worse than the other. 

"Ok...so what is it?"

"I'm in a relationship. With a boy."

Me, sitting on the couch smiling at the cuteness of all this...and she was so nervous.

"And he lives in Arkansas."

Truthfully, I didn't exactly see it coming, but I wasn't entirely surprised. She's mentioned this boy before. Luke. That's his name. 

"You're not mad?"

And I'm not mad. On one hand, a daughter with a boyfriend who lives 9 hours away is much easier to deal with than a daughter with a boyfriend who lives 20 minutes away. There are no real worries about broken curfews or canoodling while the parents aren't home. But there were a few concerns I raised. 

"Are you sure he's real? And he is who he says he is?"

She explained that yes, they met on Tumblr over two years ago and began leaving each other messages, re-blogging each other's posts. She was "introduced" to his Tumblr by the friend of a friend. Over time, they exchanged cell phone numbers, texting each other and eventually FaceTiming.

"You're not sexting, are you?" Hey, a mom has to ask these questions -- and then do some investigating to verify the answers. "NO! Mom!" 

I believed her and went on to the next concern. "There will be no secret meetings, no telling me that you're spending the weekend with Kallen and then running off to meet this boy somewhere. If it gets to the point where you two want to meet in person, then we will talk about that with his mom and dad and work something out."

"And I'll need his Tumblr address and I'll be looking up his Facebook account as well. If that's how you met him, that's how I'm gonna get to know him." 

"Well, you can't really judge a person by what they post on Tumblr," which was my invitation to launch into the "people will judge you by how you conduct yourself -- online included -- and you should not post anything that you would be uncomfortable with your priest or your grandmother seeing."

A day later, after I'd already come home from work and put on my pajamas (and after I checked out this Luke person on Facebook), she came to me, phone in hand, and asked if I could meet him right then. I hesitated; I was wearing pajamas for gosh sake. But she gave me the "please, Mom" and I could tell it was important to her. So I said yes. 

Then, before I could say "online dating," he was on the screen in front of me. I asked about his grades (decent), what instrument he plays in the band (saxophone), his family (he's the youngest of 5 kids). It was a brief conversation, but long enough for Annie to be completely embarrassed by what she termed my interrogation. 

And my conclusion? He seems like a nice enough kid. Based on our FaceTime conversation, the Facebook stalking I did and what Annie has told me about him, Luke seems pretty ok. (Though now it occurs to me I didn't do a Google search of his name to see what skeletons fall out.) 

Am I freaked out that my kid has a relationship that began on one side of a computer screen? Not really. I have plenty of people in my life I consider to be friends who I only know because we happened to be on the same web page at the same time. In fact, there is a group of women I got to know before Annie was born. We all hung out on the Parent Soup Jan/Feb/Mar '97 board on AOL. We still keep in touch on a daily to weekly basis via a Facebook group. I've met a few in person, the others I know only through the magic of the internet. But I consider each one of them a friend. 

So the fact that my daughter has a "boy from afar," as I've taken to calling him, doesn't worry me, at least not at this very early stage. It will require me to step up some of my monitoring habits and maybe someday I'll feel the need to meet the parents via FaceTime as well. The times, they are a'changing.

If they ever want to meet in person, I did warn Annie of one very certain thing. That when it comes time for this young man to meet Mike, he will without a doubt thrust forth his hand and say in a pseudo-deep voice, "LUUUUUKE. I am Annie's father." 

Because you know, some things never change. 

Double digits

Today is kind of a big deal at our house, not just because it is both Annie's and Robbie's birthdays. Not just because it's Annie's Sweet 16. Not just because today is Robbie's 10th birthday. But because,  as of 9:51pm tonight, all of my kids will be in double digits.

For some reason, this milestone has caused me to be a little weepy today. I'm not sad that they are getting older. That's what my job as their mom is, right? To raise them to be independent, contributing members of society. Rather, I'm a bit teary-eyed because I am so proud of who they are as people. And not just my birthday kids, but Charlie too.

Annie is funny and dutiful and caring. She is the one other kids turn to when they need an ear to vent to or a shoulder to cry on.

Charlie is my roll with the punches kind of kid. He doesn't know a stranger and is comfortable in almost any situation. He's my tough guy athlete with a sensitive soul.

Robbie. Oh, Robbie. Robbie is the one who keeps me up at night, who I worry about most of all, maybe because he is my baby. But he is goofy and resilient and shows me every day that there is more than one definition of success.

Way back when my life revolved around sippy cups and diaper bags, preschool Valentine parties and mother's day out, I could not have imagined this day of double digits. I'm glad for that. I'm sure my imaginings would have been far off base.

16. 13. 10. All of them, double digits. Thank you, God.

Something smells good in here (Giveaway)

If you walked into my house anytime between a few weeks before Christmas and now, you might have thought that I was baking up a delicious storm. You would have been wrong.

What I was doing was enjoying the scent of Cozy Vanilla Sugar, part of the Holiday Collection sent to me by the smell-good folks at Febreze.

When Febreze first came out, Mike and I regarded it as a way to get the smell out of places where the dog had sat too long or where a naked-bottomed toddler had learned the hard way while potty training. It was an odor neutralizer. Not having a dog or toddler around for a while, I'd kind of gotten disconnected from the brand.

Then, after I'd responded to a giveaway offer in an e-mail (I do have two stinky boys), the Febreze Holiday Collection arrived on my doorstep and I was plenty surprised.

This is what I received:

• a Vanilla Sugar Febreze candle
• a can of Vanilla Sugar Febreze Air Effects Spray
• a Vanilla Sugar Febreze NOTICEables® wall plug-in
• a two-pack of NOTICEables® re-fills

My favorite was the NOTICEables® plug-in. I put one downstairs in the guest bathroom. The scent was so welcoming. There is a switch on the back of the plug in that allows you to control the rate of the scent release. When set to "high", you could smell Vanilla Sugar as soon as you walked in the front door. The low setting contained the scent mostly to the bathroom. Either way, the smell was soft and natural, which is a good thing if you ask me.

Annie quickly absconded with the other one for her bedroom. She is a scentaholic -- and I was happier to let her have the plug-in than the candle, which I put on the kitchen windowsill.

Here is what Annie thinks of the Febreze NOTICEables® plug-in:

 
Speaking of magic -- that's one of the six scents in the Febreze Holiday Collection:

• Apple Spice & Delight: The warming scent of fresh-baked apples coated with sweet cinnamon (available only online) 
• Cozy Vanilla Sugar: Sweet as notes of vanilla that comfort you like a cocoon of blankets
• Cranberries and Frost: Rich as ripe cranberries and frost on a white winter’s day
• Glistening Alpine: As soothing as a tree-lined mountainside glistening with the scent of pine
• Winter Magic & Glow: Crisp as sunshine-lit icicles in fresh, frosty air 
• Holiday Bloom & Cheer: As cheerful as a chorus of holiday aromas blended with winter blossoms

I think the Winter Magic and the Cranberries and Frost especially would carry right through the Valentine Season.

The Giveaway

Not only did Febreze give me a gift pack of yummy-smelling stuff (and information about the product), they want you to have one too. One lucky 4th Frog reader will receive a gift pack that includes a $10 Febreze coupon booklet and a $15 Visa gift card! If you use those coupons and watch the sales, you can snag a bunch of Febreze items with the Visa gift card.

I'm going to keep this one simple.

To enter, leave a comment with the scent you would choose if you are the big winner. For an extra entry, like The 4th Frog Blog on Facebook and leave a comment below letting me know you did (or that you already do). The winner will be drawn at 9pm, Wednesday, January 9. The prize pack will be sent directly from Febreze to the lucky winner.

Thanks to Febreze for this smellarific opportunity. I can't wait to see what springtime scents are available! You can keep up with Febreze on Facebook or on Twitter, too.

NOTE: Febreze® does not represent or warrant the accuracy of any statements or product claims made here, nor does it endorse any opinions expressed within this blogsite.

My kid is not a pothead

but she plays one on stage.

Actually, that's not quite true. She plays a "poser stoner." That's a kid who acts like she does drugs and drink just to be popular, but who doesn't really like to party.

Annie is in a show this summer called "Facebook Me." As part of the character development exercise, the director of the show told each of the kids to create a Facebook page for their character, which is what Annie did this afternoon while I was on the couch trying to recover from 3 hours and 30 miles in the car. 

As I was sitting there, mindlessly staring at the television, a text message popped up on my phone. 

"Are you with Annie?"

YES.

"OK. Don't tell her I'm texting you. And I'm only doing this because I would want someone to do the same for me."

OK. What's up?

"She's inviting people to friend a kid on FB named Jessie. Can you go to that page?"

OK.

So I click over to Annie's page, see the post that says "You should friend Jessie Wilson. I hear she's really cool."  When I clicked on Jessie Wilson's link, there was a picture of my child. And on the info page of the profile, it said things like: 

Interests:  Partying hard and smoking pot --- and a bunch of other things that I don't remember exactly, but that I would not want people thinking about my kid.

Fortunately, I knew two things. First, I knew that Jessie is Annie's character and that she'd mentioned they were supposed to make Facebook pages for the characters.

Second, I know my kid and I know that she is a tea-toteler and not interested in drugs or alcohol. (Seriously, I know everyone is shaking their head at my now, but honestly, it's true. The boys? Yeah, I will worry about them some day.)

So I explained to the texter -- whom I love for looking out for my kid and whom I will not name because I protect my sources -- that this was a character for a play. 

"OMG! I was freaking out, thinking 'Not Annie!'" was the text reply. 

Then I insisted that Annie delete the page. This did not go over well. She did it, but with much frustration and muttering about people not trusting her and not knowing that she would never do that or say that stuff. 

And she posted this on her Facebook page:

To everyone who went to Jessie's facebook page:
It's for a character. I am not doing any of the things on there and I would never. As part of the show I'm in we had to make facebook pages for our character and my character is a poser stoner. I AM NOT DOING ANY OF THAT. Please, do not worry, it's part of a character building exercise and "Jessie" is a girl who pretends that she smokes. Hence all the nonsense on her page. Sorry for alarming you all. I did not create a fake name and facebook and even if I did, I wouldn't be stupid enough to advertise it on here.

Finally, I called the director and explained that while I thought the character development idea was a good one, I thought maybe the girls might need a little more guidance. I can see it now:

"I'm sorry Annie. We cannot admit you to Best College Ever because this Facebook page clearly shows that you are a substance abuser."

Yeah. So please, everyone just know: My kid is not a pothead. Honest. But I'm so glad to know that there are people keeping an eye on her.

The $100 uniform skirt

Yesterday was Annie's first day of high school. Unlike when she went off to kindergarten, she did not throw a fit about having to wear a plaid uniform. Instead, she was quite adamant that she would be wearing the plaid uniform skort on the first day of school.

Her exact words were "Mom, if I show up to school in khaki pants on the first day, everyone will think I'm a lesbian." Never mind the fact that she wore khaki pants every day to summer school and no one questioned her gender identity.

So, skort for school -- fine by me. Not so fine by the uniform store.

I think uniform stores and bridal salons are in cahoots to make girls and women feel totally crappy about their size. Although the skort Annie tried on at the uniform store was tagged as 2 sizes bigger than she actually wears, it was too small.

I asked about ordering something in a larger size. Seriously, Annie is not that big of a kid. No. This was all they had to offer me. However, if I wanted to, I could order the plaid fabric and have someone make a skort for her. Other students had done the same, the saleslady told me, and the school had the pattern.

Ok. Fine. Let's order the fabric.

Well, not so fast. See, the person on duty at the store while we were there didn't actually know how to order the fabric. Could someone call me the next day to place the order? Sure.

About a week passed before we actually connected and I authorized the $45 charge for the fabric. Once the order was placed, I called the school to see about getting the pattern. Except that school doesn't exactly have a pattern. As in they definitely do NOT have a pattern. But not to worry, the person I was speaking to (who happens to be a friend of mine) said she would figure out what was going on.

She asked around and found out that yes, some girls did have their skorts custom made last year -- by the uniform store. So I called back to the uniform store where I was promptly told that no, they didn't offer that service and never have.

Frustrated, but not yet defeated, I called the store's 1-800 customer service number. I was hopeful because when I went to the website, it says right there "Full Size Ranges -- We fit the whole school from preK to teachers." The nice but clueless woman on the other end of the customer service number had no idea what I was talking about and suggested that I just find my daughter's size on the size chart on their website and order accordingly.

Ugh! If it were only that easy!

So I called back to the local store, told them that I was coming to buy a skirt that I knew didn't fit. But I was going to take it to the fabric store and use it to find a similar pattern skort. Then I would buy the pattern, find a seamstress to make the skort, and return the store-bought skort for a full refund. Praise the Lord, they had no problem with that.

The (next) trouble came in trying to locate a skort pattern at the fabric store. Annie and I went straight from the uniform store to JoAnn Fabrics, where we spent more than an hour trying to locate ANY skort pattern, let alone one that would match the sample skort we were carrying around.

(As an aside -- why in the world haven' t Butterick's, McCall's, Simplicity and all their sewing cronies entered the 21st century? Seriously, we had to page through book after book after book, looking up indices, trying to find skort patterns. Where are the kiosks that allow people to go on a computer, type "skort" in the search terms and then be given near instantaneous feedback as to where such a pattern might exist? But I digress...)

Having run into another brick wall, I turned to the place everyone turns in times of desperation or desire for inspiration: Facebook. "Does anyone in the Indy area know of a seamstress who can make a skirt w/o a pattern, just by looking at a sample piece?"

Within a few minutes, I had a couple of names. 

I called Cele (short for Celadonia), an older Venezuelan woman who has done lots of sewing for family friends of Mike's family. She said sure, no problem. Come on over.

Cele looked at the sample skort and said she could make one in Annie's size. She took Annie's measurements, asked when we needed it and said she could do it. Before we left, I had to hug her. She was a long-awaited answer to an admittedly egocentric prayer.

The day before school, I called Cele to see when we might be able to pick up the skort.

"This evening."

A little close for comfort, but ok. About an hour later, she called and said that she needed a few extra measurements. A few hours after that, she wanted us to come over to try on the shorts part of the skort.

When we got there, the shorts, though unfinished, fit really well. Annie was excited. Cele looked tired. It turns out her son is getting married in Venezuela this weekend and she'd spent much of the past several days sewing dresses for her granddaughters. But, she would get the skort finished in time for Annie to wear to school the next day.

In the meantime, I started preparing Annie for the possibility of spending her first day of school in khaki pants. She reacted as most 14-year-old girls would -- with tears.

At 8:00pm, I called Cele to check in. 9:30, she said. The skort would be done then.

At 9:30pm, she called to say she needed about 20 more minutes. I could her the exhaustion in her voice. I told her if she wanted, we could get it another day. The world would not come to an end if Annie wore khaki pants to school on the first day.

"No, I promised and I don't want Annie to be disappointed."

We arrived at Cele's apartment at 10pm. So much for early bedtimes the night before school starts. She was finishing the hem of the skort. We chatted as she sewed. She wanted to press it. I said not to worry. One good thing about school uniform plaid is that it's industrial strength and rarely needs to be ironed.

Cele sewed in a "Made Especially for You by Celadonia" label, then Annie tried on the skort. It fit perfectly! Both Annie and I hugged Cele this time.

For all of her efforts, Cele only charged my $40. I knew how much time she'd put into it and I really appreciated her working late into the night to get it finished, so I gave her good tip as well.

And that's how Annie got a $100 uniform skort. I think it was worth it:

A better job than I thought

There are some things about parenthood that are universal. Things like thinking your baby is the cutest ever born. Or dreaming of the day she says "Mama" or "Dada" or "Diet Coke." Or praying that whatever you do, you don't screw up your kid too much. 

Annie graduated from the 8th grade last night. Apparently, big deal 8th grade graduations are a Catholic school thing. I wouldn't know because it's all I know. I had one -- which I got to watch from the cry room because I had the chicken pox. My siblings all had them.

I digress. So, Annie graduated from the 8th grade last night. It was the culmination of about a month of special activities for her and her classmates. I wasn't nearly as teary as I'd anticipated I would be, although I was trying to figure out how she went from this:

to this:

In fact, I was pretty proud of myself for not crying at all. The graduation Mass and ceremony was really a celebration. Of the 49 kids graduating, about 43 of them have been students at the school since kindergarten. Sitting there, listening to the names of kids I've watch grow up being called for recognition of scholarships and awards, I was truly happy for the kids and the class as a whole. And I was so thankful for the role the school has played in our lives.

One of the final awards to be given was the Joseph Maley Foundation scholarship. Joseph is the son of a school/church family. He was born with multiple disabilities and died from leukemia at the young age of 18.  After his death, his family created the foundation to serve children of all abilities. Though we are not especially close friends of the Maley family, I do have two distinct memories involving them.

The first was before Annie had even started school. I saw the family with their 5 boys leaving church one Sunday and made some comment about them having enough boys to form their own basketball team. I remember Vivian's good-natured laugh, even though she'd probably heard the comment more than a few times.

The second memory is from when Annie was in second or third grade. The school was observing disability awareness month. Vivian and Joseph had made an appearance at the school, telling Joseph's story. It was a story that really stuck with Annie. She came home and talked about Joseph several times for the next few weeks.

The Joseph Maley Foundation award is given each year to a student who has shown integrity, kindness, quiet leadership and openness to all people, regardless of abilities.

Of course because this is my blog, you've probably figured out that Annie won this award. However, I didn't have the benefit of that insight sitting in the church last night, so I was taken by surprise when last year's winner called Annie's name.

Here is what was said about Annie:

"This year's recipient was nominated by her peers and teachers. She is described by her teachers as patient, nurturing and a leader; she has learned from her experiences with her family and her classmates how to treat every person with compassion. Whether it's being patient with her kindergarten buddy or helping one of her peers, she reflects the best in each of us."

Ok. So that got me crying.

Mike and I were talking about it this morning and what he said really sums up the pride that I feel. He said that the best part of Annie receiving the Joseph Maley Foundation award is that it wasn't something she had to compete for. It is a recognition of who she is already is as a person (well the part of her that is not the snarly 14-year old who was rearing her attitude earlier in the day).

One of the youth ministry staff posted this on Annie's Facebook wall:

Congrats Annie! I was sitting across from you and as they read the description I thought they were talking about you and I could see you saying to someone "it's you, it's you" and then the look of shock on your face was priceless! That was why you won...b/c you never even suspected that you might, you just treat others that way naturally. Always keep that attitude!

And while I think most of credit for this amazing kid goes to grace from God, I am glad to know that maybe the job Mike and I are doing raising her and her brothers is not too shabby either.

Somewhere out there

(Anyone feel like breaking into the song from An American Tail?)

It's almost 2:30am. I'm awake. Nothing unusual in that. But I'm hoping that Annie is asleep. I don't know for sure because she is on a bus with her classmates somewhere between Washington D.C. and here. They are making their way home from their 8th grade class trip.

We dropped her off at school at 7am Monday morning to board the bus. She had fruit snacks, granola bars, gum, magazines, books, her camera, spending money and NO cell phone. In fact, none of the kids had phones with them -- they were outlawed on this trip so that the kids would fully engage in the experience, not spend all day with their heads bent over little cell phone screens.

Totally understandable. Great idea. But hard for this Mom. We had phone numbers for the chaperones and were free to call them to get in touch with our kids. But I wasn't about to risk the "MOM! That was so embarrassing!" lecture, so I resisted. Annie did call on Monday night to let us know they'd arrived at the hotel. (The teacher coordinating the trip sent nightly e-mails so we weren't completely incommunicado.)

By Tuesday night, I was definitely missing her. I wanted to talk about her experience at Arlington National Cemetery. I wanted to know if she slept well in the hotel. I didn't expect her to call, but I would have been happy if she did.

On Wednesday, they went to the Holocaust Museum. I wanted to know how it moved her. I thought she might call. But the phone remained silent. I saw a few Facebook updates from her friends and hoped that she might have stopped at the hotel's lobby computer or found a friend with an iPod touch, just so I could hear from her, or better yet, see a picture of her. No such luck.

I knew she was having a good time and that no news was good news. But boy, was that hard. By Thursday afternoon, I was contemplating -- out loud on Facebook -- whether I should call one of the chaperones' phones to talk to Annie. I really thought all my FB friends would say, "Sure! Give her a ring!"

Nope. I was counseled to wait it out, which would have been tough to do. I was rescued by an e-mail from one of the chaperones. There was no message, only this wonderful, awful, grainy picture of Annie next to Fonzie's leather jacket at the Smithsonian. It was so good to see her smiling face!

It turns out, I wasn't the only one missing Annie. Robbie has been counting down the days to her return since Monday afternoon.

Charlie was a completely different kid without her here. Usually, he is the kid that you have nag, nag, nag, prod and plead to get chores done. Without Annie here to fill the shoes of responsible oldest kid, Charlie stepped up.

He picked up the family room without being asked. He did his homework without reminders. He helped Robbie with his homework. I'm wondering if we can sneak Annie home without letting Charlie know? I'm totally enjoying this new-found son of mine.

We finally heard from Annie at 8pm last night, when she called to say they were boarding the bus for home. I talked to her for a few minutes. Mike did too. I was surprised when Charlie said he wanted to talk to her, and even more surprised when I heard him say, "I miss you. I love you."

I'm enjoying the memory of that because I'm sure by tonight, they'll be back to picking at each other. Just as it should be.

Roots and wings

There's a saying that you've probably seen on some cheesy wooden plaque at Cracker Barrel that goes, "Our parents give us two things. The first is roots, the other wings." I'm having a roots and wings kind of moment today. Except that I'm feeling one different sentiment for two different people.

Today is February 13. The date upon which Annie and Robbie made their entrances into the world -- in 1997 and 2003, respectively. So today they are turning 14 and 8 and I am left completely believing the cliche that they grow up so fast.

It's for Annie that I'm feeling the exhilaration of wings.

I am just marveling at the person she is becoming. She has found her niche in art and theater. She's off to high school in the fall. She cares for other people's children -- and her brothers -- so well that I sometimes forget she is really still a young girl herself. She is far more confident in herself than I was at her age. She's also stubborn and mouthy at times; I mean she IS a teenage girl. I find myself wanting give her space to enjoy this time in her life, to stretch her wings and figure out where it is she wants to fly and how it feels to do that.

Then there's Robbie. He has me clinging to roots.

Before we had a "baby of the family," I always thought it was ridiculous that parents seemed to treat the youngest of the bunch with so much ease and tolerance. But now I find myself fighting an internal struggle to stay firm and keep my expectations high. Annie and Charlie will tell you that I'm failing. I can't help it. He IS my baby. I secretly love that he climbs in bed with us in the middle of the night. I melt when he comes to me and asks if I will cuddle with him on the couch in front of a movie. So he doesn't tie his own shoes or ride a two-wheeler, yet. That means that he still needs me.

Yes, I am proud of the roots that we've helped Annie dig deep into the soil of who she is. And I do find joy in the wings of independence that Robbie is testing little by little. But mostly, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here for the ride.

Career advice from a 14-year-old

We were talking about places the kids can work when they get a little older. I told them they were lucky to have so many places near us where they could get a job.

“You could work at Target or Marsh or Subway…” I offered.

“I’m gonna work at a video game store,” said Charlie.

“But, you could a bag boy at the grocery," I said. "That would be a great job for you. You get to move around and go outside all day.”

“Nope,” Charlie insisted. “I’m gonna work at a video game store.”

Which is when Annie chimed in.

“Charlie, at least at the grocery store you could meet girls. At the video game store, you’ll only meet geeks.”

Modern definition

Charlie: "Mom, what does 'legitimate' mean?

Me: "It means real or truthful."

No response from Charlie.

Annie: "It means 'fo shizz."

Charlie: "Oh, thanks."

324.5 reasons to pay attention

I've mentioned that we dropped our cable television service last fall in an effort to reign in our family budget. Since, then, however, our AT&T bill really hasn't seemed that much lower. Last month, it came in at over $400! That includes the home phone, three cell phones (two of which are iPhones with data plans), and home internet.

I've mentioned to Mike that we really need to do something because even without the cable, the bill is still outrageous. He reasoned that for all the services we're using, it was probably about right. Still, I thought there has to be a way we can lower this expense. So the other day, I went to the AT&T website and printed out the entire bill.

Now, I realize that most sane and responsible people probably do this on a monthly basis. However, I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of people like us who have the bill sent to their e-mail and have it set up to auto-pay online. Anyhow, I printed the bill and sat down with it, hoping to find a solution to this money-sucking problem.

I looked at the number of minutes we're buying on our cell phones each month. There's some room for cutting back there, as we have plenty of rollover minutes, which will expire on December 31. Unlimited texting, which is pretty much a must for someone living in a house with a teen who has a cell phone.

The charges for my cell phone line were pretty much what I expected. $9.99 for the phone service, $30 for the data plan. No other charges associated with my line. Then I moved on to Annie's cell phone line.

The first charge I see is "AT&T Navigator, $9.99." I don't even know what that is.

Then, the real epiphany began. "Personal Psychic, $2.13." What the blue blazes?! A personal psychic? Oh, and it wasn't just one encounter with this psychic. I counted. In November alone there were 48 charges to the personal psychic at $2.13 a pop!

My first call was to Mike, who was picking the kids up from school. "You are not going to believe this," I told him. He got the fun of talking to Annie about it. Then I called AT&T to see how this happened.

The woman on the other end of the phone -- Tina was her name -- is a mom like me. When I told her what I'd found, she said "Oh no...she didn't..." followed by "oh yes...she did!" as Tina went through the phone records. I told her that I was pretty certain that Annie didn't realize that she was being charged for this "service." I assumed it was something she'd clicked to see and then was roped into some daily recurring thing.

After looking at the account, Tina found that the psychic thing is a text service and that the charges happen when you text them. So my lovely daughter was deliberately consulting a "psychic." Tina also told me that AT&T Navigator I'd seen was a GPS subscription that cost $10/month and that Annie had signed up for that in July! Plus, there was some quiz alert service -- another $10/month -- that she had just signed up for in November.

Trying to figure out how much Annie was going to owe us to cover the cost of all this mess, I asked Tina if she could look up how many psychic consultations there were. Because each one was a separate charge, she said it would take a little while to do. So while her computer was churning that, Tina set up a purchase blocker on Annie's phone line which will not allow her to do anything that will incur a charge. Novel idea, huh? I wish the guy at Best Buy who set up the account for us would have clued me into that one.

In the meantime, I got a text from Annie that said, "I talked to Dad and gave him $200. I didn't know they were charging me and I canceled my psychic account."

Ninety minutes later (yep, 90), I was still on the phone with AT&T. Tina said that she was going to have to finish up the process the next day and would call me back to let me know the grand total. 

And that, my friends, is where I got the title of today's post. Three hundred twenty-four and half reasons to pay attention to what your kids are doing and to your phone bill -- that's one reason for every dollar in charges Annie racked up.

Now before you pass out from the shock, which is what I almost did, there is a happy ending to this story. That wonderful Tina from AT&T credited our account for all $324.50. I'm not sure why she did it. Maybe it's because Annie is a minor. Maybe it's because for every one customer like me who complains, there are 10 others who grumble about their bill, but pay it anyway without looking to see what is being added to their account. Whatever the reason, I am grateful...and wiser.

Nice moms finish frustrated

Here was my agenda for last night:

1. Laundry
2. Blog
3. Make my Christmas gift-giving spreadsheet
4. Clean my bedroom.

I had from about 5pm until whenever free and clear to get all of these things at least started, if not finished. But Annie wanted to go to a haunted house with a group of her friends. It is on the other side of town and she and a few friends needed a ride.

I figured laundry could wait. This is her 8th grade year. She's got a great group of friends. It was something a little different than a movie. So I said that I would drive several of them down there. I picked the first friends up at 5:30pm. By the time we met up with another driver and group of kids, then picked up the final kid who was going, and arrived at the Hanna Haunted Acres, I'd been in the car for almost 2 hours.

This place is not like any haunted house I've been to. There is a haunted hayride, a scary corn maze and four other structures of spooky fun. There is a also a "no touching" policy, meaning that the scarers cannot touch the scarees. And it is not cheap. $27 to go through all the attractions. I gave Annie $30, with the agreement that she would work it off around the house.

The other mother and I gathered the kids before turning them loose, giving them the "stay together and don't do anything you would be embarrassed for your grandmother or your priest to find out about" speech. Then we sent them off to buy their tickets for two hours of fright.

 

The few parents who were with us gathered in the field that stood in the center of all the scary attractions. We walked around a little, checking things out and listening to people getting their scream on. (I'd brought my laptop in the car, hoping to get a little blogging finished, but the nearest free WIFI was over 6 miles away.) After about 45 minutes, my cell phone rang. It was Annie, panicked and frantic. She got chased by some guy with a chainsaw and then a clown (which she hates) popped out of the corn maze and she WAS NOT GOING BACK IN.

What?! I gave up my whole night -- and $30 -- and you're not going back in? Oh, no way. Soon, two of her friends appeared and told me that Annie didn't want to come back in and they would sit in the car with her. One girl had lost her ticket in the corn maze and couldn't go into any of the other attractions without it. The other one was just being nice enough to stay with her friends. I told them to wait a minute and I'd go talk to Annie.

I found her standing at the entrance alone. Um, hello? Did you forget about staying together?! She had wound herself into quite a tizzy. They had gotten chased by the chainsaw guy in the field on the way in -- I saw him chasing other people. He was just an ordinary guy with a de-chained chainsaw. She screamed and ran. Then when she thought she was safe, he chased her again and "Mom, I thought he was going to cut my head off!"

"Annie, they can't touch you. It's all for show. Touching is against the rules."

"But Mom, robbing a bank is against the rules and people still do it!"

Then she told me that her friends got her to go into the corn maze, but about 1/4 of the way in, a scary clown jumped out in front of them, again with a chainsaw, and she ran back out of the maze, across the field and back to the entrance and she WAS NOT GOING BACK IN!

I tried the sympathetic approach."I know you were scared, but it's all pretend. Let's go in and find your friends so you can have fun with them."

She wasn't having any of it. So I tried the peer pressure approach, "Annie, I said you could come to this because I thought it would be a great way for you to spend some time with your friends and standing out here at the entrance is definitely not spending time with your friends."

No luck. Then I tried the guilt trip approach. "Annie, I had plenty of things planned to do tonight. But I put that all aside to drive you and your friends down here. I gave you $30. And you have spent not even 5 minutes trying it out? Are you kidding me?! And I can't even just cut my losses and take you home because I'm responsible for getting three other kids home -- kids who are in there having a good time."

In the end, we gave Annie's ticket to her friend Jordan, who had lost her ticket, and Annie and I sat in the car. I called Mike to share my frustration. He had some good insight and was more sympathetic to Annie than I had been. (Easy for him to do, he wasn't the one who spent time driving all over hell's half acre with a crop of teenagers.)

By the time we got back home, I'd spent 6 hours and $41 on this little excursion (the extra $$ was from the stop at Steak-n-Shake on the way home for some emotional eating). I know I can't be mad at Annie for the way she felt -- I'm a big chicken and would never do that stuff. Now we know she is too, so we can avoid this scenario in the future. Lesson learned.

The whole night wasn't a loss. I had fun talking with Annie's friends and maybe scored a few points as a cool mom. Still, in the end, this cool mom finished frustrated.

The great high school hunt

Where I grew up, when it came to high schools, you had two choices. The Catholic school or the public school. And if you lived in my house, you had one choice -- the Catholic school. Now that Annie is about to enter the 2nd quarter of her 8th grade year, we're knee deep in the great high school hunt.

Actually, we started checking out our (her) options last year, going to the open houses of three different schools. Before the open houses, we had schools A, B & C on our radar. Going in, I liked school A, based just on what I knew from other families. Annie liked school B, and we were both mixed on school C.

After the open houses, I liked school B best, she liked school A best and school C had pretty much been thrown out. So I was pretty sure that we'd be choosing between schools A & B this year. However, last May, enter school D.

D was really out a bit out of my comfort zone. It's a public school; I've always thought that our kids will spend 12 years at Catholic school. But, it's a charter public school, so it does have some of that private school feel. And it's got an arts bent to it, which sold Annie on the idea of school D even before she set foot in the building.

Mike and I decided we wanted to check out school D for ourselves before we allowed her to get all carried away with excitement (too late!). We scheduled a tour and spent an hour or so in the school during a regular school day. We were very surprised to find that we really liked school D. Some of our concerns -- there would be lots of weird kids there, it would be too small -- were just not true. The curriculum structure makes sense to us. But we still wanted her to look at schools A & B.

On Wednesday, Annie shadowed at school A. When I picked her up, she was all smiles -- so much that I wondered if someone had injected her with Botox in the science lab. She had a great time. Everyone was so awesome. People were very friendly. She knew a lot of the answers in Spanish class. The art teacher was really cool. And it was fun to see kids she knew from grade school. She said that on a scale of 1 to 10, one being "get me the heck out of here" and 10 being "sign me up now!," she would give school A a 9.

I began to wonder how schools B & D would hold up in comparison. The next evening, school D hosted an open house. I wasn't sure we needed to go. Mike and I had already seen the school and Annie will be shadowing there in a couple of weeks. But Annie really wanted to go and since we didn't have anything else planned and since it is kind of her FUTURE, I piled everyone in the car and we headed down there.

First, we went in the wrong door. Here I am, not even a school parent yet and already breaking the rules. We made our way to the cookie table first, to keep Robbie quiet get the boys a snack, then were paired up with two students to show us around the school. There were musical performances going on, amazing art displays on the walls and a whole heckuvalotuv people there. I was surprised to see six other families that we knew.

As we went from room to room, Annie started warming up, asking a question here and there to either the students showing us around or to the teacher at the front of the room. By the time we got upstairs, she had actual conversations with a math teacher, an art teacher and was deciphering Latin with the help of one of the school's Latin teachers.

By the end of the night, she'd made friends with a sophomore that one of her current school friends introduced her to and said she wanted to shadow with that student on her assigned visit day. I looked across the large room where we were standing and saw her standing there with these kids, absolutely at ease, not at all nervous.

Because the open house was drawing to a close, I gave Robbie and Charlie another cookie (so I didn't have to hear "what's for bedtime snack" when we got home) and tore Annie away from her conversation. On the way to the car, I asked her what she thought of school D on that same scale of 1 to 10. She said, "well, if school A was a 9, school D was a 13!"

She did not stop talking all the way home. She must have said "I love that school!" at least a dozen times. If I had said, "If you go to school D, you must scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush every night," I'm pretty sure she would have said OK.

We are still making her do the shadow day for school B (and for school D). But I'm afraid school B is going to have to spin upside down on its head while twirling firecrackers to get Annie's stamp of approval. And if it can, more power to them.

I wish I could explain how awesome it felt to see how alive she came just at the prospect of being part of the school D community. Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. But I looked at her, I watched her eyes, I listened to her talking to the teachers and I felt joy...JOY....to see that she knew where she belonged.

(Of course, she's a 13-year-old girl. So probably next week, she'll be all about schools X,Y, and Z and I'll be left shaking my head...)

No kissing

Robbie and Annie have always been especially close. I like to think it's because they share a birthday. However, in recent weeks, he has had a short fuse when it comes to his sister. He doesn't want her to hug him. Saying he's cute is an offense worthy of severe punishment.

Personal boundaries must have been on Robbie's mind tonight at church. He leaned over to me and asked me how to spell "kissing." I told him and watched as he started to write something on a piece of paper. Here was his finished product:

When I showed it to Annie, she -- of course -- leaned over and kissed him on the head. In retaliation, he reached up to my ear and whispered, "Tell Annie she is grounded from Justin Bieber for the rest of the day!"

This kid means business.

*******

Don't forget to join me in the 4th Frog Fab 40 Fest where you can help celebrate my birthday by helping someone else. Between now and Friday, do one random act of kindness for someone else and let me know about it. I'll share all my "gifts" in one wrap-up post. Get the details here.

Gone camping

Annie is away at camp until Friday. We dropped her off around 2:45pm on Sunday and by 5:30pm that same day, I was missing her.

It could have had something to do with the fact that the boys (all 3 of them!) were driving me straight up the banana tree with their over-the-top energy, their boy humor -- think burps and farts -- and Star Wars/Spongebob quote fest. But mostly I think it was that not being able to talk to her for five days just seems like so long.

Curiously, the way I'm feeling is a little how I felt when she went to kindergarten. In preschool, when I picked her up there was always a sign outside the door telling me of all the day's activities. I could chat with the teachers about how her day was. When she went to kindergarten, no one sent home a daily note with a list of what they did in art and whether they had math or reading centers and if she ate a good lunch that day. I felt a little bit lost and disconnected, kind of like I'm feeling not having a chance to talk or text or e-mail her until the close of camp on Friday.

Annie's been to sleep-away camp once before. But at that camp, they would post pictures each night of what had happened throughout the camp, so I could at least look for her among all the other girls. For this camp, we can send letters and e-mails, which are printed out and given to our camper. But it's a one-way street. There's no writing back. That's ok because she is most likely too busy swimming and canoeing and all those things you go to camp to do.

As ok as it is, it's a little hard for this Mom-of-oldest-child-at-camp to get used to. I think of her several times a day, wondering what's she's doing right then. She was a little nervous when we dropped her off; so I worry a bit that she's homesick, though she's there with a friend and I'm sure having a great time.

I don't consider myself a hovering, overprotective parent, so I'm kind of surprised that I'm feeling this way. I guess it's just one of those million little separations we help our kids make on their way to one day leaving the nest. I'll get over it, or maybe just get used to it, I'm sure.

And next year, when I send the boys off to camp with her (they were begging to stay when we dropped off Annie), instead of being sad, I'll probably throw a party underneath that banana tree.

Old lady shoes

Annie made her theatrical debut in the school musical last night. It was a fun show called "Friday Night Fever." She played Mrs. Koonsman, the high school chess club sponsor.

I wish I had a picture to post here because the dress she was wearing looked a whole lot like our family room couch. The outfit was completed with panty hose and a pair of black shoes. But the pictures are stuck in Annie's camera and I can't find the cord to connect it to my computer.

Anyway, back to the outfit. The school provided the dress; we had to provide the hose and the shoes. Last Wednesday night, I was at a work event late when I got a text message from Annie.

Annie: Mom, I HAVE to have old lady shoes for rehearsal tomorrow.

Me: Sorry. Goodwill will be closed by the time I get home. Just tell them we'll have them in time for the play.

Annie: Ok.

Five minutes later, my phone buzzed again with another text message.

Annie: Mom, I went in your closet and found the perfect shoes.

Me: You did?

Annie: Yes, they are black with a small heel and a buckle.

Me: Those are NOT old lady shoes -- I JUST BOUGHT those shoes!

Guess who is shopping for new black shoes this weekend?