Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

television

Lean In?

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I have never denied how busy I am or how many more hours I would like in a day.

Spouse, children, day job, writing, family…I never feel like I have enough time for everything.

When time management books tell me to cut back on my television time…I can’t tell you the last thing I watched for me. Yes, I have watched Nailed It with the kids, and I have seen waaay more than my fair share of Octonauts. But other than that, I have not watched TV or movies for myself in ages.

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Only 47?!?

And now I consider whether or not I should take a more active role in my girls’ love of dance. I will never be a “dance mom”, and I will never see dance as more than an enjoyable way for them to move their bodies and get some exercise. We live in a really cold state. It’s an indoor sport. Seems like a good fit.

And they love it.

My youngest daughter was running around the house pretending to be Link from Legend of Zelda wielding her sword and shield and taking on “bad guys”.

Why, yes, she does have gamer parents. Why do you ask?

When it was time to go to her dance recital, she was singing the theme song to Dino Trucks as we got her dressed in her beautiful purple sparkly dance dress kind of like this one.

I love the variety little girls have to choose from today!

Dinotrux
Daughter’s favorite show ever.

She was so excited to be going to her dance recital, and she couldn’t wait to show us “her moves”. My little one, who is normally not a fan of the spotlight, got up on stage in front of a sold-out theater and did her best.

My oldest daughter overcame stage fright so she could dance.

Not sure I am allowed to admit this, but I am amazed how graceful and coordinated she is on stage! If you saw her off stage…

We are also blessed that we found a dance studio that truly is inclusive. The girls range in size from almost six feet tall to barely five feet. Some are thin some are not and some are very heavy. But all move together beautifully, and I love seeing the diversity on stage. I love seeing girls, of any size or shape, dancing and enjoying the freedom of movement.

Of course, now my oldest daughter wants to do “everything”.

Dance is expensive. Then, you have to drive them to class and wait for them. And she has a sister who will want to do “everything” with her.

As we’re trying to figure out transportation, which classes we can actually do, how many is “too many”, etc, I am also asking myself if I should be more involved.

Should I volunteer for things? If this is really going to be important to my daughters, how much should I get involved?

Do I want to?

Well, no.

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Do I want to doing something with my girls that’s important to them?

Of course.

I am just not sure how all of this works. What the right path is.

It’s all new territory to me. And the parenting books forgot to mention this back when we were trying to learn all about the joys and pitfalls of children.

 

 

Adulting. It’s Hard.

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For those of us late Gen-Xers or millennials, we’ve learned that adulting is hard.

Putting aside the Great Recession and the resulting under-employment for many new college grads, there are a lot of other reasons why our lawns look the way they do. Besides many of us not wanting to use weed killer on the same grass our kids play on.

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Here are the top four reasons I came up with for why adulting is so hard.

 

  1. Video Games –  Pick your flavor. Whether you play MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, console games like Skyrim or Fallout 4, or Angry Birds on your phone, this is not an option that even existed for my dad when I was a kid. The Nintendo came out when I was in elementary school. I didn’t think much of it. We eventually got one, and while I loved Tetris and Super Mario Brothers, it was really easy to put down. I didn’t fully understand the possibility of the system until Legend of Zelda. Now, you have the option for a fun little time-waster like Candy Crush while you wait in line at the grocery store to the black hole of time games like World of Warcraft and Fallout 4 are.

 

  1. Wanna Watch Some TV? – When I was a kid, there were three television stations. Even if you were lucky and your parents sprang for cable, there was still less than thirty stations. You actually had to be sitting in front of the TV at a designated time (7pm Monday nights for MacGyver!) to get to watch a show. You couldn’t just watch whatever you want whenever you were feeling lazy or like procrastinating. I remember on certain nights the only thing on was bowling. Going out and “leveling up” your lawn or cleaning out the towel closet was infinitely more fun than that. I have no idea how many thousand channels are even available now (we gave up cable in 2009), but I do know you can stream TV shows through Amazon and Netflix. You can binge-watch an entire series on a Saturday.

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  1. Movies – We had a VHS player when I was a kid, but movies were expensive (like $75 in 1980s money). Most of the time, we rented them. It took forever for new movies to come out, and then there was a long wait until your name came up and you could rent the “new” releases. Going to the movies was an expensive endeavor with kids, and frankly, my parents didn’t want to pay theater prices for them to sit bored through a kid’s movie. Not only are dvds relatively inexpensive today, you expect them to come out within six months or so of the movie. You no longer go to the VHS aisle of your local grocery store and hope they have something decent. Now, there’s On Demand, Redbox, Netflix, and Amazon. The video rental places of my youth are all gone. Of course they are. Why would they exist when I can own anything in Amazon’s vast army of movies with two clicks? There were some benefits to a VHS, though.

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  1. The Internet – Whether surfing it, using social media, watching YouTube, or buying your groceries, the internet has changed the way we spend our time. Sure, some call it a time waster, and it can be, but it’s also become a vehicle of our leisure time. Why would you be chasing dandelions off your lawn when you could be watching funny cat videos? Reading blogs? Or literally doing anything else?

 

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How about you? Do think today’s plethora of entertainment options has made it harder to be an adult? Or at least acting like the adults of the past? Do you find it harder to do lawn work or other boring chores when there are so many other fun things to do? Anything I missed that you find to be a distraction to the work of adulthood?

The "i" Generation

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toddler2

I wish the above weren’t so true. Although, she is figuring out a fork. Just not as fast as she did my iPad.

There is a ridiculous amount of guidance out there on how much “screen” time you should allow your children to have.  For the longest time, children under two weren’t supposed to get any. Even if they had older siblings.

We tried to follow this with our first child, and I swear she could smell the iPad. She could find it tucked away in the back corner of a dark room, and she hated dark rooms. She would find it and come toddling out with it triumphantly clutched in her tiny fingers.

Our saving grace was that she loved being showered with attention more. Loved being read to, “helping”, anything that put her front and center of our world. So, we could get the iPad away from her without a complete meltdown.

I know, kids cry, etc. But when you work, you’d like your few hours with your child to be as nice as you can get them without a tug-of-war over an electronic device every day.

At a neighborhood block party, I asked some of the other moms how they kept their little ones away from their TV and iPad. They offered me a cocktail, told me to sit down, and then explained that they didn’t. If the pediatrician asked them about it, they’d lie.

Wait, what?

Most had older children, and they said it just wasn’t possible or reasonable. They then informed me our school district gives kids an iPad starting in kindergarten to do all of their homework, reading assignments, etc.

Still, I tried to keep her away from TV and the iPad for a while longer, but the realities of making dinner, doing laundry, and washing the dishes won out, and we allowed her to have Sesame Street.

That mostly made her happy, and she would drop TV like a rock the moment we could again give her our undivided attention.

DD2 is an entirely different child. She likes attention, but on her terms. She laughs, gives hugs, and even pets you to soothe herself, but she wants “alone” time. We were terrified at first that this was a sign of autism, but our pediatrician reassured us. DD2 was normal. DD1 was exceptionally high maintenance.

However, this means that if DD2 gets a hold of an iPad, there is no getting it back without screaming. It’s like stealing her favorite toy. Which, in a way, it is.

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So, we compromised, as parents so often do. She’s at a formal daycare all day, so she gets no screen time during the day. We figured a little at night while we’re making dinner won’t hurt anything. And if I’m truly honest, I’m concerned not introducing kids to technology early enough puts them at a disadvantage to their peers.

We took our old iPad and removed almost everything from it except some games specifically designed for her age group that her therapist recommended. These were games she was only allowed to play while she stood on uneven surfaces, for example.

She loves them, and they do seem to be teaching her things.

We still have story time and snuggle time. Playing with Fisher Price Octonauts time, Duplo time, and Magna Tiles (Magna Tiles are amazingly fun, even if you’re a grown-up). To that, we have added TV time and iPad time.

Everything in moderation.

How about you? Did your kids know how to work an iPad before a fork? Did you allow them to have any TV?  Could you lure them away from an iPad with books?

The "Talk"

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This is my daughter’s first year in public school. As part of their curriculum, they learn about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as well as Christmas. So, I wasn’t entirely surprised when my daughter came home and told me she wanted to celebrate Hanukkah. I figured all the days of gifts would appeal to her, even though there is only one thing on her Christmas list. (One of the benefits of having Netflix and Amazon Prime rather than cable TV!)

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I explained to her that we aren’t Jewish, so we don’t celebrate Hanukkah. She’d have to wait for Christmas.

Then came the question. “What’s Jewish?”

I should’ve seen it coming, but I walked right into that trap.

I find myself trying to explain religion to a five-year-old, knowing she’s going to repeat everything back to her class and really not wanting a parent-teacher conference if it doesn’t come out of her mouth the same way it went into her ears.

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As I stumbled through, my husband came to my rescue and asked our daughter if she’d like to watch an episode of My Little Ponies before dinner. As she usually only gets TV after supper, she jumped at the chance and raced into the other room to watch Ponies.

He never said I owed him one, but I totally do. Just like he was the one that explained to her when our cat died. She wasn’t yet three, but he sat her down and explained that our kitty had gotten very sick and his body stopped working. He wouldn’t ever be coming home because he’d died.

There it was. Simple as that, and she accepted it. Sort of. She would repeat his words at what seemed like random times to me, but it helped her get through it. And she never asked to see him or for him to come home.

While he saved me on this conversation, my husband did remind me that we have daughters. There’d be another “talk” they’d need to get, and that was coming from me. Not sure that’s a fair trade…