Mom in the Mirror

Moving meltdown

It was bound to happen, and today it did. As Colter was starting to do his homework (35 minutes of writing about his holiday plans), he screamed, "I don't want to move. I never wanted to move. I didn't want to move from North Carolina and I hate my school and I hate my life!"

Just moments before he was telling me how much he loves his life, so either (a) he's bipolar with rapid cycles, (b) he really hates doing homework, (c) he's worried about moving, (d) all of the above.

I'm going with (b) and (c) for now; (a) is a possibility I can't even consider at the moment.

We talked for a while about why he hates this particular homework, and it turns out his teacher had him read a previous writing assignment to the class yesterday and they laughed at it. Colter -- like me -- doesn't enjoy doing things he doesn't do well, and he feels like he's a bad writer. So, he avoids it, which is tough since he's assigned 30 minutes of writing a week.

He's also starting to realize we're really moving, and this is the second time in two years that we've done so over the holidays. I didn't even consider the effect that would have on him, and if I had, I might have moved at a different time.

Plus, last year, I told him we would "be here" for the holidays. I meant here in Florida, that we wouldn't be traveling to North Carolina or Chicago. In his mind, he heard, "We'll be here in this apartment for the holidays," so he also believes I've broken a promise.

On Monday the moving company will come pack our lives into boxes. On Tuesday they will move us a few miles away to our renovated house.

Meanwhile, what do I do for my son?

The sleepover that wasn't

I remember sleepovers this way: a dozen of us in one girl's basement, away from the adults, staying up late, eating pizza and Oreos, getting crumbs on the pool table, making phony phone calls to boys we liked, and feeling very sneaky. I wonder now, did those parents intentionally cut us lots of slack (playing along as if they didn't know what we were doing) or were our pajama parties -- and our lives in general -- just less supervised back then?

As a kid, I always made the fatal mistake of actually falling asleep at these parties. Once I caught on that the event was misnamed (it should have been called a stay-up-all-night-and-don't-sleep-over), I dreaded the experience of trying to keep myself awake.

As a parent, I still have mixed feelings about sleepovers.

Sleepovers can give kids a taste of another family's way of life and of how our own way of life may seem to another kid. Colter has loved having friends sleep over, which almost makes up for how little rest I get and how cranky I am the next day.

If Colter's sleepovers are any indication, they're much tamer events these days. He usually has one kid over and they play outside, look through each other's Pokemon or Yu-gi-oh cards, watch TV or a movie. Colter's typically asleep by 10 p.m.

He has only slept over at friends' houses a few times, and he admitted to us last night that he was homesick during a recent attempt at a sleepover (the attempt ended with us picking him up because he'd been vomiting).

He told me last night during bedtime:

Colter: It's so easy to fall asleep cuddled up with you.
Me: It seems easy for you to fall asleep anywhere if you're tired.
Colter: Not anywhere. You remember when I threw up? Well, I was a tiny bit wanting to come home.

How do you handle sleepovers?