Making Christmas

This year, my goal is to put some effort into Christmas again. Holidays aren't difficult for us anymore, but during the two or three years when they were, I got into the habit of doing the bare minimum, and then inertia took over and I never bothered to ramp back up.

On top of that, for a couple of years now G has been in the Preteen Killjoy phase that most of us went through at the same age, during which you don't want to do anything that might be remotely embarrassing or make you look childish. (She was mortified that her school had "Santa's Village" out in the quad last week, until I said "They don't actually think you believe in Santa, it's for fun. Remember fun? That thing you'll have again once you're old enough not to worry that someone will think you're immature?") This eliminated most of our traditional leading-up-to-Christmas activities, such as visiting Santa, riding the Polar Express train, making snowman crafts out of cotton balls, etc., and made it even harder to get in the Christmas mood--a condition that a friend of mine described last year as "lack of Christmas foreplay."

With these things in mind, this year I'm taking a combined approach of:

1. Not being a lazy slug. I put the tree and lights up in early December and have plugged them in every night; I went out and bought new ornaments to replace the ones we lost, and I'm actually sending a few cards for the first time since 2005. I also bought an additional, tiny, real tree to put on a high shelf in hopes of infusing some pine scent into the house--we can't have a full-size real tree because one of our cats likes to eat greenery--but somehow I managed to choose a totally odorless one. Oh well, it looks nice.

2. Finding acceptable Christmas activities. In G's defense, she's right: a lot of local holiday-themed events are geared to very small children--we had the same problem at Halloween, when she would have loomed like Gulliver among the Lilliputians at the various face-painting, pumpkin-decorating, costume-parading festivals, but was too young for haunted houses aimed at teenagers--and she doesn't have younger siblings to give her a reason to attend anyway. Instead, we've been watching more grown-up Christmas movies, listening to Christmas music together at home, and drinking hot chocolate and apple cider, all of which she's enjoyed. Hopefully we'll get around to baking cookies sometime next week.

This year is also a little different from previous ones in that for once, there's no place we're required to be on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. G, whose idea of a perfect day involves pajamas, video games and not much else, is ecstatic, and I'm looking forward to spending the time quietly at home. I may be putting more into "making Christmas" this time around, but I'm still all about doing things my own way.

Gimme a [letter of your choice]!

G's school had tryouts for the middle-school cheer squad last week. G wanted nothing to do with them because she prides herself on being a sort of anti-cheerleader--if you remember your early adolescent stereotypes, G is the Artsy/Goth Girl, although she hasn't yet embraced the music that goes along with it--and also because, as she accurately observed, "I can't do a split to save my life." The newly anointed cheerleaders appear to include the usual complement of popular girls, with one exception: G's friend "Penny," whom I think made the cut due to sheer dance/gymnastic ability.

This fascinates me for a couple of reasons:

1. How do the cheer coaches know, six weeks into the school year with a brand-new crop of seventh graders, who is popular and who isn't? Does it show somehow, or do the popular girls just tend also to be the bouncy, outgoing type who have taken lots of dance lessons?

2. If you become a cheerleader because you have actual skillz, does this automatically make you popular too? Can you be a cheerleader and be socially shunned by the other cheerleaders? Penny is a cute, sweet little girl, but kind of like an overeager puppy who does whatever she thinks will please whomever she's with at the time, and I can imagine the cheerleading crowd dismissing her as a wannabe.

To show her total rejection of cheering and all that goes along with it, G instead used last week's club rush to join the newspaper, which is much more her sort of thing. The meetings happen during zero period, which means she'll have to be there by 6:45 a.m., but she's pretty motivated and I think she'll do fine. She's been like a different kid this year in terms of the morning routine: where last year I had to drag her out of bed and she was late a shocking number of times, this year she gets up on her own when her alarm goes off, gets dressed without being told, finds her own breakfast (not the healthful bowl of whole grains and fresh fruits I'd like her to eat, but at least she does it herself) and is usually downstairs waiting at the door to the garage while I'm still brushing my teeth. I don't know why this happened, but I'm glad it has. We had quite a few no-holds-barred cage matches over getting ready last year, and I wasn't up for another 10 months of that.

Time keeps on slipping

If I'd needed something to underline the fact that we've entered a new era in G's life, I got it by seven a.m. on the first day of seventh grade. At her small, familiar old school, the first day always meant a stream of parents walking hand-in-hand with little girls sporting braids and fancy barrettes, little boys in new, dark-blue jeans, and tiny kindergartners laboring under backpacks bigger than they were. At her giant new school, I drove past a crowd of unaccompanied teenagers who looked old enough to be driving themselves, stopped, and waited as G gave me a casual "see you later," hopped out of the car, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away in a pair of my knee-high boots that she'd successfully campaigned to borrow. I'd warned her that those boots would hurt by the end of the day, but she didn't believe me. When I picked her up late that afternoon, the first words out of her mouth were "OMG, my feet are killing me. I'm never wearing these again." I suppose when it comes to some things, experience is the best teacher.

Aside from sore feet and a broken P.E. locker, her first week as a seventh-grader was supremely smooth and easy. She has six classes--biology, honors history, honors English, P.E., pre-algebra and vocal music--and already seems to have mastered traveling between them, as well as using the library and navigating the food service lines at lunch. (That said, I think I'm going back to packing a lunch for her, because on three out of four days, the only vegetarian item was pizza, and on the fourth day she had to get pasta and pick out the bits with no meat sauce.) She says her teachers are nice and is happy about all the subjects she's taking, so from her perspective, everything is roses.

For my part, there's been some emotional adjusting to do. I'm not sitting around sniffling soppily over her baby photos, mind you. If anything, I'm excited for her, because it became obvious to me last year that she'd outgrown the confines of elementary school and was ready for something new. But at the same time, this transition has really driven in the fact that she's getting older and the number of years she'll be at home with me is dwindling fast. Of course I've known ever since she was born that one day she'd get her driver's license, graduate from high school, go off to college, be grown up; but these always seemed like things that would happen far off in some hazy, half-imagined future. Now they seem like real events that are coming soon (very soon - she can get her learner's permit in less than three years) so I'd better start mentally preparing myself for them, not to mention figuring out what I want to do with myself after she flies the nest.

Of course she's only in seventh grade and it's not as if she's moving across the country tomorrow, and I don't want to spoil the next few years by constantly focusing on what's going to happen later. But time has a way of sneaking past faster than you think, and I don't want it to catch me off guard, either. Looks as if she and I both have a lot of work to do.

Body follies

We had an unexpectedly chilly weekend and I turned the central heat on a few times. This morning, I woke up with a split lip, a bloody nose and aching sinuses. Dry air much?

Also this morning, G had an adolescent complexion crisis. She came up to me in the kitchen, pulled her hair back and said "Look at this!"

"Hmm, looks like a breakout," I said.

"What do I do?! I don't have enough concealer to cover all that!"

"Well, there's not much you can do," I said. "You can't wear a whole face full of makeup, so you've just kind of got to deal. I'm sorry."

"Isn't there anything that can help?" she moaned.

"We can try buying some tinted moisturizer after I pick you up tonight," I offered. "That might cover it a little without looking all heavy like foundation. I know it sucks, but the reality is that for the next few years, breaking out is going to be a fact of life for you."

"I didn't know it was going to be this bad," she said as she went away to try artfully draping her hair over her forehead.

I didn't have the heart to tell her it can get a lot worse!

Putting her face on

G had a field trip to see a concert at the local performing arts center today. Apparently she was excited about it, because she not only got up when the alarm went off and started getting dressed without being told, she also brushed her teeth and hair (!), and accessorized her outfit of cream sweater, black skirt and leggings with a bracelet and a sparkly headband.

It wasn't until we were in the car and nearly at school that I realized she also had accessorized her face with lip gloss (okay) and blue eyeshadow (forbidden at school). I said, "Are you wearing eyeshadow?" and she said "Yes," with such a guilty expression that you would have sworn she thought I was going to smite her on the spot. I was about to turn into the parking lot at that point, so I just told her to use her fingertip and blend it a little more - she'd applied it pretty subtly anyway, which is why I hadn't noticed until I saw her in full daylight - and not to be surprised if her teacher caught her and made her wash it off.

I suppose I ought to have scolded her about it, but in fact I found it kind of funny, because she had such a Busted! expression, and it's such typical behavior for her age. Most 11- and 12-year-old girls (me included) try to sneak off to school with makeup on at some point, or else hide it in their backpacks and put it on when they get there. I did remind her that she's not allowed to wear makeup to school until seventh grade, though, as she knows full well. Clear or sparkly lip gloss is fine, nail polish is fine, those strawberry- and bubblegum-scented teenybopper perfumes are fine, but not the heavy stuff.

Even when she does expand her cosmetic horizons, I'm sure I'll be checking every morning to make sure she hasn't caked it on - a bit hypocritical of me, given the amount of black eyeliner I wore in high school, but yesterday's moody Goth teen is today's fussy mother. Although come to think of it, I do still use a lot of black eyeliner. Hmm.

End of an era

G is giving all her Barbies to the 6- and 8-year-old daughters of one of my friends. She could certainly use the extra space in her room, but it's still bittersweet to see her giving up something that used to mean so much to her without a backward glance. I did save two of them: her very first Barbie, which was always known as "Barbie Barbie" for some reason, and a Wonder Woman one that P bought for her. She may disdain them now, but in 20 years, she'll be glad she has them. Who knows? Maybe she'll even have daughters who will enjoy playing with a few of their mother's toys.

I'll tell you one thing, it took me forever to dress 30+ Barbies in matching clothes and straighten out all their hair. Not that they probably won't end up naked and tangled with their new owners (the tragic fate of all Barbies) but it seemed unsavory somehow to hand over a bag of nude dolls to a friend, especially a male friend. I'd have felt like a purveyor of Barbie p0rn.