The birds and the bees

The time had come.

I’ve talked to The Big Sis about body changes and puberty, and she knew that babies are made by combining the seed from the dad and the egg from the mom. But over the weekend in the car, she asked, out of the view and point blank: “So, how exactly are babies made, and do you just decide you want a baby and then it’s there?”

As we were all in the car together, I told her, “Good question. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Now, it would have been simple for me to pretend I forgot to address it later and hope it didn’t come up again. But I figured I should proceed with telling her about the nitty gritty while she was still eager to hear it from me. It would be a potentially uncomfortable conversation, yes, but I knew this talk would help lay the groundwork for whether she comes to talk to me about these things in the future as well. Being evasive would have only made her pull back.

So, later that night, before bedtime, I asked if she really wanted to know how babies were made. She did, and so I proceeded to tell her all about it, doing my best to explain some very complicated topics. She did declare by the end of it that she’s not going to have kids anymore, but overall I think the talk went very well. She did think it was gross (I assured her she’d likely change her mind when she was a little older), but she didn’t seem super embarrassed (nor did I), and she asked a lot of great questions — enough that sometimes it’d make me get a little sidetracked because there’s just so much of cover. In the few days since then, she’s also asked me a couple follow-up questions, so I really do hope that continues in the coming years.

NaBloPoMo? No.

It wasn’t until about the fifth day of this month when I realized, “Oh, CRAP! It’s November! You’ve missed out on NaBloPoMo,” which I’ve done every year since 2007. For a sliver of a second, I decided I’d write five posts to catch up, and then I’d stay on top of writing a post each day for the rest of the month, despite my obvious lack of dedication to this blog this year.

But the truth is that we’re operating in “(minor) crisis mode” currently, and taking on anything extra just isn’t going to work right now. For one thing, I’m operating at less than full capacity because of trying to recover this &*&^#@ broken ankle, meaning that most days I can’t even seem to get normal household chores done, let alone more than that. My bathroom right now? Needs attention in a bad way. But also, we are dealing with some challenging behavior issues with The Big Sis at the moment — she has been defiant at school this year — and so I have been spending nearly every minute of my free time reading, looking for ideas, and enacting various fixes to try to ultimately help the problem.

Example: She and I now do 10-15 minutes of “special time” each day, on top of homework time and reading time and talking time at bedtime. Special time is a block of time where she can choose the activity, and she can choose how much I participate or if I just watch her, and I am not allowed to question or suggest or correct anything she does in that block of time. In addition, she and I have started passing back and forth a blank notebook, and we use it to write notes to each other every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes we write about serious stuff, sometimes we write about less serious stuff, but the ultimate goal is to strengthen our bond and to give her a safe place to talk about things she might not want to address out loud.

With a daily routine that previously didn’t include much extra time in the first place, especially on weeknights, these things have been a struggle to fit in (again, on top of dinner and homework and extra-curriculars, and, oh yeah, giving her time to just PLAY and be a KID), but hopefully they will prove to be worthwhile.

The good news is that The Big Sis, despite her defiance and wiggles at school, brought home all A’s on her first report card, and she has passed each of her multiplication facts quizzes on the first try each week, so clearly she’s not struggling academically, at least.

Anyway, we’re trying to get down to the WHYs of her behavior so we know how to fix it, and while I think we’re uncovering some good stuff, it’s still quite a time-consuming and emotionally-draining process.

Thus, no NoBloPoMo this year.

I would feel bad about it, but I don’t even have time to fit guilt in! 😉