Category: October Blog Challenge

Eight is great! Well, sort of…

6 Comments

Ah, eight.  Eight is great!  Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?

Okay, that was kind of random.

First Communion cake – my decorating skills are improving!
Photo by Kay Kauffman

For my kids, eight was a pretty great year.  Both of them participated in the ritual of First Communion at our church and were surrounded by family and friends as they celebrated the holy sacrament for the first time.  Tomcat was privileged to gain two new baby brothers within a month of each other during his eighth year, while Miss Tadpole spent her very first night away at Girl Scout camp.

Such a pretty smile!
Photo by Kay Kauffman

Miss Tadpole attended Camp Tahigwa, the very same camp that I attended myself as an eight-year-old.  I was so excited; I had never been that far away from home before and the brochure made everything look super fun.  With Puppy by my side, I could face anything that camp threw my way. Or could I?

Lucky seven? I don’t think so.

6 Comments

Isn’t she cute?
Photo courtesy of Vickie Hansen

When I was growing up, seven was somewhat less than fun.  When I was seven, my two-year-old niece passed away.  I remember sitting on my mom’s lap when she told us what happened and being nigh inconsolable.  A few years later, when my sister was seven, a girl in her class was killed in a car accident.  She and her family were on their way to church when they were hit by a drunk driver.  Her seatbelt snapped, she was ejected from the vehicle, and their van rolled right over her.  I remember thinking when we went to her visitation that she looked like she was seventy, not seven.

Finally, a race Jeff Gordon can win!
Picture by Kay Kauffman

But thankfully, seven has been a perfectly lovely age for my kids thus far.  Tomcat competed in his first Pinewood Derbyat the age of seven.  He even came in third place – not too shabby, especially since neither of his assistants (Seymour and Aunt M.) had any experience in Pinewood Derby racing.  Tadpole got a new little brother at the age of seven and was tickled pink because a new little brother meant she didn’t have to share her bedroom.  She was, however, disappointed that she had to give up her bunk beds.  Apparently she hadn’t thought of that when she said she wanted a brother.

The maternal instinct is strong in this one.
Photo by Greg Kauffman

I hope the age of seven will be equally uneventful for Cricket and Thumper.  But then again, who knows?  By that point, I’ll have teenagers running amok and things are never uneventful when there are teenagers on the loose.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Six years old and crazy already

21 Comments

I hate to make sweeping generalizations, but I think all writers are a little bit crazy in their own unique way.  Tales about eccentric and reclusive writers throughout history abound.  In my online writing group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders, every time someone pops their head into the forum thread to join in for the first time, we try to warn them that we’re all mad here.  Sometimes, they happily throw their own unique madness into the mix right along with ours and hilarity ensues.

My own particular brand of crazy began developing at a very young age.  See, there was this boy in my class.  We met in preschool and it was love at first sight.  Well, it was love at first sight for me, anyway.  He wanted nothing to do with me.  But that was only because he didn’t know me!  So I followed him around the classroom like a puppy, from the blocks to the sand table to the picture books and back.

When we started kindergarten, it was more of the same.  He made my little five-year-old heart flutter so!  But still, every time he saw me, he would take off running.  How on Earth was he supposed to get to know me if he wouldn’t stand still long enough to talk to me?  If he wouldn’t get to know me, we couldn’t fall madly in love!

But then first grade arrived.

Kindergarten envy

8 Comments

When I was five years old, my mother cut my hair.  Well, she didn’t do it, she took me downtown to the Hair Clinic and had Angie cut my hair.  The point is, prior to the age of five, I looked like a girl.  When I started kindergarten, though, I looked like a boy.  The pictures of me on my very first day of school are about the only pictures of me in existence that look like pictures of my kids.  Several of my old teachers are still teaching at my old elementary school, where Tadpole and Tomcat now attend classes, and they’ve said more than once how much Tomcat resembles me.  I vehemently disagree with this, as he is the spittin’ image of his father and the older he gets, the more he looks like him.  But, at the age of five, with hair so short I couldn’t even put barrettes in it, we looked a little bit a like.

My first day of school. I was so excited!

There were two girls in my class who had hair long enough that it reached their waist.  Oh, how I envied their hair!  One girl’s was dark blonde; the other girl’s was red.  Every day they came to school with their hair in barrettes or ponytails or braids and every day I envied their ability to change their hairdo at a moment’s notice.

Four

2 Comments

Four.  Today is the fourth day of October, the fourth day of the blog challenge, and I must admit that I am finding myself a bit stuck.  I seem to have a shortage of four stories; I can’t remember any stories of myself at that age and the one I was going to relate about Tomcat’s first fishing trip can be found here.

But, now that I’ve been interrupted and had my poor fried brain distracted for a bit, I’ve remembered a story.  I actually had this one in mind a couple of days ago, only for it to be forgotten because I didn’t write it down (yes, I’m already suffering from CRS at 28).

Anyway…

Troublesome Threes

10 Comments

My grown-up guy
Photo by Kay Kauffman

When I was growing up, my aunt used to babysit.  She watched a little boy who had the same name as my cousin, right down to the middle name, so my cousin became Big D. and the boy my aunt watched became Little D.  That kid is now in his early twenties and, last I saw him, taller than me, but he’ll always be Little D. to me.

Anyway, my aunt watched this kid when he was a toddler, and I remember her talking about the terrible twos and the troublesome threes.  I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time and since I was a kid myself, I didn’t really care, either.  Now, though, I know exactly what she meant and boy, do I care!  As I recall, Tomcat’s twos weren’t overly terrible, though Cricket’s twos have thus far fit that bill, but boy, were his threes ever troublesome!  I suspect Cricket’s may be the same way, but I’m hoping they won’t.

When Tomcat was three, our lives were in a state of upheaval.

Two-fer Tuesday

8 Comments

Today is the second, which is the perfect day to write about age two.  And, lucky you, I’ve got a couple of stories!

I am two years and five months older than my younger sister.  For most of our lives, we’ve fought like cats and dogs, although we do seem to get along better now that we don’t live under the same roof.  I’m glad, because we’re all each other has left of our immediate family (by which I do not mean the families we’ve created for ourselves with our husbands, both of whom we love very much).

I digress.  I do that a lot.  Anyway, rumor has it that once upon a time, like say, before she could walk and/or talk, my sister and I actually got along pretty well.  Turns out I was a helpful little stinker.  Too helpful, even.  See, we had this grate in our hallway floor upstairs for the furnace vent and apparently I liked to help change my sister’s diapers at the tender age of two and a half, whether she needed a diaper change or not.  Being a wee lass, I was not exactly up-to-speed on the proper diaper disposal techniques, so I lifted the grate and chucked them down the vent.

Cricket is now a very helpful, sometimes too helpful, toddler of two.  He enjoys helping me change Thumper’s diapers, though he and Thumper are closer in age than my sister and I.  Thank goodness, though, that Cricket hasn’t yet taken it into his head to change Thumper’s diapers by himself – I have a hard enough time convincing him to keep his own diaper on during naps and at night.  For some reason, he thinks he’s old enough to go commando.  A couple of times, it’s resulted in a very large, very smelly mess in their bedroom.  It even led to a failed attempt at potty training.  I swear my kids are plotting to drive me loony.  Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wait, I take that back.  I would change one thing.  I’d be a lotto winner – then I could afford the diapers.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

October Blog Challenge

17 Comments

 

About a week ago or so, I ran across an interesting blog challenge.  Officially, it’s called the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge.  That’s a bit of a mouthful, so I shortened it up a bit for my post title.  Anyway, you can find out more about it here on Jane Ann McLachlan’s blog and sign up for it, should you so desire, here.  I thought it sounded like fun, so I signed right up.

On the off chance that you haven’t clicked through to find out what it’s all about, here’s the gist of it: Write 25 posts in 31 days.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Ah, but there’s a theme: Each post should be a memory or reflection for each of the first 25 years of life.  From the original post:

It can be a personal memoir from your life, a reflection on turning a certain age, a recollection of someone else at that age, a poem or a photo, on the ages 1 to 25.

For example…