Growing Up Austin

The girls were excited. They helped set the table. (Well, they spent most of the time picking out the candles. Candles are their favorite.) I got out the table cloth and nice plates. The girls’ simple salads of carrots and ranch dressing were arranged in a circle, all fancy.

The special occasion was Buttercup’s $0.01 dress from Nordstrom’s Rack, the one on the left. It was super cute, her size, and marked as “100% Savings!” on the red clearance sticker. It was a computer error, but they honored the price. It is hard to buy just one beautiful girl’s dress in our house, so I found another one at the same store for Sparkles for $12, no computer error, just a good sale price.

Who wants to come home with such beautiful dresses and have no where to go? Not me! Who wants to do something expensive and complicated, spending all the money they saved on a $0.01 dress? Not me, either!

I am not Martha Stewart. If you have been to my house for dinner or a party, you know this for sure. I’m never ready on time, I don’t have the right serving pieces and I might have to microwave the bar-b-que chicken to cook it on the inside before the grill burns it on the outside. It is all well intentioned, but it isn’t pretty.

This dinner was like that. There were creases in the table cloth, the meat was a little over cooked and it was a multi-course dinner only because my timing was lousy. But none of that mattered. We set the intention for it to be a special dinner. We did extra things to make it nice. Blue Eyes was surprised and happy and the girls thought it was special.

It’s sweet when you are two and four-years-old. It’s easier to make something special. I want to be more open to that feeling. That I don’t need to spend money or eat something or be validated in some official way to have a good night. Some times I can just say that it is and light a candle, making it so.

I hear myself say it and I know something is wrong.

“If that is how you are going to play, I don’t want to play with you.”

I’m playing The Memory Game with Sparkles. You know, the one where you put pairs of cards face down in a random order and then take turns turning two over at-a-time, until you find all the matches.

Sparkles is setting the cards out for the next round and she is putting all the pairs side-by-side.

That isn’t how the game is supposed to work. She is making it too easy. That’s when I said I didn’t want to play with her anymore.

There is this space in parenting when you say something that you change your mind about and you have a chance to recover, if you can pause.

I was taking this pause because sounded like a 4-year-old. That couldn’t be good. It wasn’t like she was cheating to make the game easier for just her.  It’s not like I didn’t play the drinking version of Trivial Pursuit in college and I think those rule changes improved the game. And changing the game is a creative process in itself. I wanted to see more.

I gave up my protest and we played the game.

For the next game, she put the pairs one above the other.

For the game after that, she put the pairs together and facing up.

I smiled. If you are really good at making something easy, are you lazy or a genius?

Then Noel sat down with us and saw how we were playing. She added a new rule. She said whenever you pick up a pair, you have to add a sentence to a story about the picture on the cards. Noel is a genius for sure.

That is how T. Rex took a train to a tropical island while the bunny got on a rocket to find the pink teddy bear aliens.

The rule changes had improved the game. I’m glad I was able pause. Parenting feels like a constant balance between structure and freedom, knowing when and how much to have of each so you can learn and have fun and now and then, enjoy the story a T. Rex who takes a train to a tropical island.