The Louver Poll Conclusion

My name is Dorisa, I am 33 years old and I have brown eyes. Most of you know these to be facts, as did I until 11:30 last night. Imagine my surprise when upon looking through some old photos that I discovered that my eyes are in fact, NOT brown. Yea, shocker. My mother assures me that they used to be very brown, but they haven’t been for a long time because the photo I saw it in was from 2006. Don’t ask me how I didn’t notice that I was lying. I have no idea. Apparently eye color changes in about 10-15% of the adult population, so if you have just been assuming you know what color your eyes are, check again; you might be wrong. Let me know what you think my new eye color is. There still is brown in there, but it's definitely not the dominant color anymore.

Meanwhile, while Oskar is out spreading rumors and telling people I sleep all day, Elena is my champion.

Elena: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Sitting and relaxing.”
Elena: “I didn’t know you could do that!”

Well, the louver poll is closed and while Dan technically won, it’s safe to say that we are both losers here. With statements like: “Everybody knows what a louver is!” and “No one knows what a louver is! You only know because of your job!” we would have needed more than a 3 vote difference to say either one of us was right. Anyway, all y’all who don’t know what a louver is? Please educate yourselves.

I caved and Elena has recently started ballet and tap. She loves it so much and despite me not wanting my kids in so many activities at this age, she is doing exceedingly well in both dance and gymnastics. Besides thinking gymnastics is a race, that is. She’s still not hurting for confidence either. We got a save the date the other day and she pointed to the guy in the photo and goes, “Is that the silly boy who loves me?”

Putting her awesomeness aside, we may need to get a psych evaluation done on her someday. I mean, she’s had a couple creepy moments previously, like when she randomly said the sun was burning out (technically not wrong) and when I told her not to choke me and she responded by saying, “Not yet,” but she did a couple drawings lately that had me cringing.

The first isn’t as bad as I initially believed, it is apparently a camel, but I definitely thought it was her having a bonfire on the couch. Though she just clarified that someone sprayed fire on it, so yea, this here is a picture of a camel… on fire:

Alright, moving on. Next picture. Here I thought she had drawn a baby in a hot air balloon. Cute, right? 

No. No, it wasn’t. Because I had it upside down.  It’s a girl. A girl on a mountain who is sick. Okay, so that’s fine. Kind of sacrificial offering in depiction, but whatever. “She’s going up into space!” Well, that’s pretty cool! Why is she going up into space, sweetie? “To get kill the aliens and get died.” Well that’s just great.

Add all this to her comment about refusing to play a game that doesn’t include eating or killing and I am becoming a bit on edge around her. I mostly joke, but seriously, if any of you all are licensed professionals in the art of understanding children and I have any reason to fear for my life, please let me know. She’s often quite a sweet child, but she does enjoy hurting with hugs, so add that to your evaluation.

Oskar is a trouble right now and Dan has admitted he is to blame for passing down his behavior and ADD (currently being assessed). I am struggling because my brain works so much in the opposite direction of his that we are having major communication issues. We are fortunate so far as any issue he may or may not have has not yet impeded his academic progress and he continues to do well in school, even with the lack of focus and distraction. We really struggled (Oskar and me) with communicating when he was three(but who doesn't at three?), and at the time if we both just stopped yelling at each other and I gave him a hug, we were able to figure it out. That method has unfortunately gotten less and less effective and he has gotten infinitely louder, so, yea, it’s been rough lately.

My favorite breakdown recently ended with Oskar screaming, “YOU’RE TREATING ME LIKE THEY TREATED MARTIN LUTHER KING JUNIOR!” To clarify, we were doing no such thing. Fortunately, even he saw the absurdity of his statement and didn’t make it through the sentence without laughing. I was seriously appalled that he thought to even utter such a phrase and I was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. I’m so, so glad that we were at home and no one else heard this. After a lengthy conversation explaining that even his largest plights as a middle class white boy would never compare to those of anyone fighting for civil rights, I knew the lesson hit home when he responded by saying, “You can’t ring the liberty bell.” So Dan said, in summary, “That’s right, you can’t ring the liberty bell and you can’t compare your struggles to civil rights leaders.” There are so many things we say as parents that just ought not to be said, but then there they are, and there’s no going back. A couple days later he jumped on me in bed saying, “That man who killed Martin? We can infer that he was a VERY bad man.” Thank you, Oskar. That is very important information to tell me first thing in the morning. Excellent use of ‘infer.’

Now here's Oskar to sing us out: