I finally understand the "egg shell" comment... !

Okay, as a teen I never really understood why my family would get mad and tell me they were "tired of walking on egg shells around me..." . Honestly I thought "how self absorbed, this is not about you, I am in crisis..." LOL - seriously though, I didn't understand the reference. Now with my own tween experiencing her own versions of personal crisis and finding her mother to be the perfect object for torture I TOTALLY GET IT! I come home from work and she is usually at the table doing homework - (since she is grounded until she is caught up) I look at her face to see what type of night we are going to have... here are the two main options:
1. We make eye contact and she smiles and says "hi mom, did you have a good day?" To which I smile, sigh in relief and we proceed with small talk (I still stay somewhat braced as usually she will hit me up with a request for money or something like that) OR
2. We make eye contact and she grimaces and says "why are you looking at me, why do you always look at me, I didn't do anything, this is not fair, you ruin my life....etc." Then I make a beeline out of the room and ask Kirk if he wants to leave and go play some tennis :)

In all honesty, things were pretty yucky the past couple of weeks... Tyler made a lot of bad choices in school and at home and I had to be firm and strict and all of those things you have to do to save your children from self destruction. So grounded, no computer, no phone, and limited contact with the outside world... finally, we are talking civilly again and she is getting the point that "i love you and can I have five bucks" do not belong as one permanently connected phrase - takes away from the sentiment :)

Tyler is catching up with her homework... she is one day away from two full weeks with no missing assignments and her grades are coming up. She has decent grades for the past two weeks, but her overall average still stinks. She will earn her phone back if the Friday grade check has no missing assignments and her grades are all As and Bs... she will also be off of her grounding... doesn't mean she is going anywhere but the possibility is there...

Tyler is going to be on the summer swim team at a local swim center. She will have four days a week of practice and meets every Saturday for the months of June and July. We are all looking forward to that fun. She is taking a break from tennis, for whatever reason she is rebelling from the sport her dad and I love to participate in (not a surprise I suppose) but we did tell her that she could do any sport, she just had to be active - so swimming it is!

So, mom, I am sorry for making you feel like you had to walk on egg shells... Hopefully I learned from experiencing your parenting what to do when she gets into another downward spiral in her teenage roller coaster... she is on an upswing right now, happy, smiling, being nice and HELPFUL, (knocking on my wood desk - sounds like laminate) so I will choose to enjoy this one day at a time and I will keep tentatively checking her face when I walk into the house at the end of the day... of course once she has her phone back she will start calling me again to see if I am on my way home and I can feel out the situation before I get in the house... I am hoping Tyler's teen angst won't last as long as it seems mine was... I would rather enjoy being her mother than dread what will happen next. So I will have to remind myself every day to take this one day at a time with her...

In talking to a friend who is a bit older than me, I realized a few things I had forgotten already as a mother... my friend was telling me that she couldn't remember her mother hugging her after she was about 10 or so... the context had to do with things going on with her mom now etc. but it got me thinking about when I had last hugged Tyler. While it had not been years, it certainly had been a while. When we fight I don't always want to hug her and we had been fighting a lot... so I decided I was going to hug Tyler at least once a day. Now at first Tyler resisted a bit or would ask me for money while I hugged her which made me mad... but we have gotten past that and every night before we go to bed (except Thursday unless she stays up to wait for me) and every morning before I leave for work we hug. I hope this make a difference because I even hug her when I am mad at her... she doesn't always hug me back, but last night she came in and hugged me while I was in bed watching TV - it had been a long time since she had initiated hugging me too. I am guessing we will be okay (and I tell myself that every day).

So for today, no egg shells and I have class so I won't see her when I get home, she will be asleep...so Thursday, March 26, 2009 is a good day... two phone conversations and a talk in the morning and we made it through a day without a fight or clash of any kind... ! :)

I'm Back On Track...

Wow, days fly by... We are all surviving - some of us doing better at it than others :) Kirk, Dylan, and I just returned from Indian Wells, CA - we were able to watch some incredible tennis - spent four days at the BNP Paribas Tennis Tournament and saw some great players. We all especially enjoyed watching them warm up, you can get so close and listen to what they are working on and see how they practice and correct errors etc... so great... saw Roddick (my favorite) during a real long practice with friends at La Quinta Resort and watched others at the tournament. It was fun - Dylan enjoyed swimming in the evening best, she tolerated the tennis all day to get to the pool.  

Tyler stayed with her grandma - didn't want to be with her embarrassing parents. Plus she is mad because she is grounded and has no more cell phone due to poor grades, and obsessive phone talking (one cal was 516 minutes) seriously, there is no one needing to talk that long!  She is now hitting the books to hopefully regain some privileges... she needs all As and Bs to restore normal life routines. She is at 1-B, 2-C, and 1-D.... so she is hitting the books. She did make swim team for this summer. She is taking one more class between now and then to finesse her strokes and then it will be four days a week with meets every Saturday... I don't know who is more excited, me or her, but whatever, she will be on the swim team. 

Dylan is pretty funny. Right now while Tyler is going through her early teen rebellion, Dylan reminds Kirk and I why we wanted kids... and we are sure that when Dylan is a teen we will look at Tyler as a young adult and be reminded that we will live through it again...

We forgot to take Dyl's figurines on our trip and she began playing with her fingers (as people)... she just loves to have animals or people and make them talk to one another... she will do it all day - no kidding, the whole car trip, her fingers were talking to each other and having great adventures.

Update on my birth mother... she went through the radiation treatment for the cancer in her brain... she is in complete remission. We are all surprised, as they were giving months and then indicating remission... hopefully she will stay healthy at this point, her body has a lot of rebuilding to do and she needs to take care of herself. Lerry is relieved, hopefully he will be able to move on in his world, he put a lot of hold, worried of committing to anything in case he needed to go and help his mom. 

Kirk is fine - riding his bike and staying fit is his thing and he definitely works hard at it.... from the goofy bike pants to the funky heart rate monitor... while we laugh at him, he will probably outlive us all :) but we do laugh anyway :) Tyler had a nightmare that Kirk showed up at school to give her lunch money and walked into her class wearing his riding pants (with pad on seat) and his bike shoes, helmet etc.... just picture it... she woke up mortified and told him to never show up at school for anything - LOL! 

The four of us are doing well, happy enough, and figuring out how to survive in the same house without harming each other permanently... Let's see if I can update sooner than a month from now...!