Sunday, July 17, 2005

Kids
The first week here at the beach we amounted to Lydia, Little Benny, Baby Sadie, and me. Then Dan came down for a day or two bringing with him Andy and Ashley, his other kids. So for most of this past week we’ve been a larger group of vacationers. I’m experiencing culture shock.

For an old lady, an extremely out of shape old lady, to be with tiny children 24/7 is a change. Lydia does all of their care, but they are powerful personalities, requiring attention. The insistence of their needs and wants goes on all day and right up to their bed time, somewhere around 8:30 P.M. Add to that the fact that Baby Sadie got one new tooth last week and another is coming in right now and you have a child who needs plenty of holding and snuggling and so forth and so on. At night she wakes up frequently and cries until soothed and nursed back to sleep by Lydia…who, to her eternal credit, jumps up the second she hears even a tiny peep from the baby. Benny, a child with his own super-crowded internal agenda, has to be told everything about 10 times. “Benny, Benny, Benny, Benny, Benny, Benny….BENNY!!!!!!!” The good side is that these children are adorably cute, charming, sweet, cuddly, interesting, and funny.

And now two teenagers. Mothers of teenagers know that no matter how hard their children try to please, well, they’re teenagers. They criticize food prepared for them and eat it as a special concession. “I don’t know if I like this. I’m trying it, but I’m not sure…” That’s a sample. Whatever they do eat is consumed in a configuration that requires the entire upper body to slump up and over the table, fore arms planted on either side of the plate. They want, at great length, to tell you their thoughts and reactions to everything…mostly consisting of “Like…like….like…like….yuh know, yuh know, yuh know…” They experience sullen sulks at one another and at others in their vicinity when they feel sulky. When you ask them to do something, they tell you that they already did it. On the positive side, both of these kids are sweet and kind to the little children, play with them and help to entertain them, never even think a cross thought about them. That is worth everything to me. I’ll keep on sweating over a hot stove to prepare criticisized meals, make beds, do laundry twice/day and dishes, tidy and clean, listen to minutiae of life’s least important details as long as the teenagers are so dear and sweet to the small children.

I am impressed with Lydia beyond words. How did she grow up to be so kind, so controlled, so funny and entertaining even when she’s tired? She was always a wonderful little girl, but as an adult, she is magnificent. Her children have a SUPER MOTHER. By last night she was so tired that I thought she’d break down and scream, “ALL OF YOU CHILDREN GO TO BED RIGHT THIS MINUTE AND LEAVE ME TOTALLY ALONE FOR THE NEXT TWELVE HOURS!!!!!” But that didn’t happen. She more than sweetly saw each little pest into bed after an evening of fun, love, happiness and entertainment. Then she sat down to work on the sandcastle website she’s doing for the older kids. Lydia brought about thirty books to the beach, has had time to read only one of them, but right now she’s over on the mainland buying two copies of the new Harry Potter book so both older kids will be able to read it without having to wait for turns. If I had any tendency to get on my high horse and lay down the law to these four kids, I’d have to first consider that Lydia, who does 99% of the childcare, is only and always kind to them. Yes, this summer is a bit of culture shock…been a long time since I had a child with me 24/7 and then that child was the perfect little Lydia. However, this is a good experience. I enjoy it.

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