Busy Schedules Create Cranky Kids and Moms

The craziness of our lives has yet to slow down. We're entering Hell Week 2, what with dance recital rehearsals, chorus concerts, field trips and the recital itself. Jack just returned from a conference in Connecticut over the weekend. I leave for a conference in NYC next week. I'll be glad when the school year is over and everyone can take a deep breath and recharge. Patricia has her "Moving Up" ceremony the last week of school, and no, it isn't like the Jeffersons, movin' on up to the east side. It's moving from fifth grade, the elementary school, to the middle school. It's hard to believe she'll be a middle schooler next year, but she has matured and changed so much this year I shouldn't be surprised. She's become very poised, very funny. She's lost some of that confounded sensitivity that would send her crying at the slightest challenge or embarrassment. She's still sensitive -- she will still well up at some things, like when I tease her about some of the very cute things she did as a young girl. But they're fewer and farther between. She's become very proud of her physical accomplishments -- the higher fitness level and being able to fit into clothes she had previously outgrown. People have been commenting on it, and she seems happy. We're just keeping an eye out that it doesn't become an obsession or a body-image problem, which is so difficult and prevalent at this age. It's all about choices, and she's making some very good choices. I'm proud of her.

Margaret has been doing some typical teen things lately, like going up to her room after school and not emerging until dinner time, only to return afterward. She's doing homework for the most part, or reading, but it reminds me of me when I was that age. She has been working hard with her drama club to prepare for the end-of-the-year performance of one-act plays. Between dance classes and rehearsals and drama club practice, she's been incredibly busy. She's also trying to spend as much time as she can with her friend, Maggie, whose family is moving from the area at the end of the school year. That will be hard on Margaret because the pair have really become very, very close. She has a few other close girlfriends, but Maggie is her best friend.

Brigid has been having some very weepy episodes, most of which happen when she's not on track with her regular routine at school. The weekends are hard on her and she loves going back on Monday mornings. She's been learning how to skip and enjoys skipping around the living room with Patricia, and her vocabulary and ability to communicate in longer sentences has just exploded. She still has a very odd propensity to want to strip as soon as she returns home. Actually, she's also tried to get us to remove her clothes when we're out, like at a restaurant or the mall. She feels very comfortable running around in just a onesie. It's the first thing she says when she gets home, that she wants us to take her clothes off, or her pajamas off when she wakes up in the morning. I don't know how they manage to keep her clothes on at school. I'll have to ask.

She's still very much in love with Boose-ah, which is how she says "Patricia" now, as opposed to Ba-det, although Ba-det sometimes makes its way back into her vocabulary. Ma-get is and has been for some time Margaret. She'll pine for them and prefer them in many instances to myself, usually when I've said no to something or when I have to do something contrary to what she wants to do.

Her mood has been out of sorts lately because of stuffiness, too, and that always makes for a difficult time. She is very congested and her nose bothers her. It may be allergies or it may be a cold, but it bothers her. So I dose her with Dimetap at night, which helps her sleep. She's still not sleeping through the night, however, and instead crawls in with us to finish the night. It doesn't help that Boob still plays a big part in her routine. But it's a lot in life we're both not ready to give up yet. We'll see how she does when I'm in NYC for two nights.

Summer is quickly approaching and Margaret and Patricia will be involved in the summer musical theater program at the college through the end of July, at which time we'll be on vacation. A friend from college will be visiting her family in Vermont at the end of July through the first week of our vacation, so we were able to arrange for us to go down for an overnight visit. We'll then be able to extend that visit for the rest of the week out onto Cape Cod, since White River Junction, Vt., is two hours toward the Cape when we go. It will be our first time out to the Cape since the summer of 2004 and Brigid's first time at the ocean, so we're really looking forward to it, even if it's not our usual time in the cottage.

With all the recitals and dance classes, Brigid is still enjoying dancing on the sidelines. Although she won't be a hula baby next season, she'll be able to be in the 2009-2010 class. By then, she'll be a seasoned pro. With her temperament, I'm sure she'll be telling all the other kids how to do it. I can tell them from personal experience, you don't cross the Brigid.