This year has been a challenge. Parenting any age has its challenges, but the past year — well, that’s not true; I’d say the past six months or so, really — has been particularly challenging for me.

Stinkerbelle is five. Just turned five. And so, SO much happens around five. And, a lot does not happen yet. And it all takes work.

I feel like we are in an endless rush, and yet we are going very, very slowly.

The rush comes in that there is so much going on now with our girl. She’s in school. She’s in various sports classes and developmental classes and whatnot. She’s constantly wanting to make play dates and go outside. She wants to help with everything. She has homework. She goes to the library. She’s learning to print. She’s singing along to songs. She’s mastering swimming and riding a scooter.

There are also many appointments and meetings and visits with teachers and service providers and therapists and people who are helping her get to the next hurdle: kindergarten in September.

There’s so much going on, all day long, all the time. It’s dizzying.

But the other part, the going slowly part, comes in that she’s not quite independent yet. Sometimes because of her age, and sometimes because of her challenges, and sometimes just because of who she is. She’s an endless barrage of questions verifying the minutiae of every step we take in everything we are doing. She wants to be independent with putting on shoes and printing her letters and setting the table and doing her homework, but she’s not quite there yet. She needs guidance and reassurance and help. The days are filled with bellowed questions about IS THIS THE RIGHT FOOT MOM and WHERE DOES THIS GO MOM and ARE WE GOING THIS WAY MOM. Even playing by herself involves being around or beside me (or her dad) or having something touching me and talking to me the entire time.

She’s completely independent, as long as she has one of us RIGHT THERE to talk to and help her.

It’s been really challenging. We’re also at the part of the show where we are slowly trying to claw back a little bit of “me” time, to fit in exercise or get some work done around the house or read a book or — hey, get this, POST ON MY BLOG — or whatever, but she’s not quite ready to fly solo yet.

She is, in so many ways. And in so many ways, she isn’t.

And then, come September, she’ll walk out the door and we’ll walk to school and she’ll walk in that front door and suddenly, six or seven hours of my day she’ll be gone.

And honestly, I’m ready to fly solo, too, but in so many ways, I am not.

Don’t get me wrong, I am LOVING the fact that she is off to kindergarten in September. She NEEDS to go. Stinkerbelle is the most social kid I have ever known, and she will love to spend her days surrounded by other children. Plus, she loves school and she wants to go and learn SO much. She will love the structure and the stimulation and the learning. She will thrive.

I know she will miss us. And for the first days or weeks, she will check in periodically with her teacher, just to confirm that her Mommy will come and get her at the end of the day, or that her Daddy will be bringing cheeseburgers and french fries and OMG ROOTBEERPOP home on eat-out night.

And I will miss her too. The house will be quiet, and although the time will be my own, to do all these things that I have been needing time to do over the past five years, I am also acutely aware that who I am and what I do has been defined by her presence and her needs and her love over the past five years.

I will feel her absence keenly in some ways for a little while.

But we are not there yet. And while I am excited for her to start school, frankly, I am in no rush to get there.

I am looking forward to the end of her JK time, and various lessons and classes and appointments, next month. I am looking forward to the start of summer, to enjoy the last two months of our time together, just us. Yeah, she will make me crazy, but that is okay. Because I know I will miss her when it is done, and this time will not come again.

We are taking the last few steps towards the end of the time I had always dreamed about having with my daughter. And we are taking the last few steps toward the first few steps on her next big adventure, and our next big adventure as a family.

It has been another week of sickness here, starting with barfing on the weekend, and progressing to diarrhea for the last two days. Which means I have been cleaning up some pretty vile things emitting from a certain small person a great deal this week. So that’s been fun.

But we have had some pretty good moments, and before I collapse into bed, I shall relate one to you.

The other morning (after the barfing had passed, but before the diarrhea had commenced), I laid out some clothes for Stinkerbelle on her bed while she was downstairs eating her breakfast. Once she came upstairs again, I told her to go in and get dressed. She likes to do this, “ALL. BY. MYSELF.” as we are regularly reminded. So I sat down at my desk and started to check email.

Stinkerbelle began to strip off her jammies, and soon a small nudenik was walking past my door on her way to get dressed. A few moments passed, and then the small naked kid appeared in my doorway.

“Mom”, said That Girl, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said, turning from my computer.

Stinkerbelle came in, in her altogether, and sat down on the carpet in front of me. She said, “I was putting on my panties, and…” At which point, she splayed her legs out and started futzing about with her undercarriage. Showing me, I might add, all that Nature had given her.

“And I saw…” she said, pointing at her nether regions, “um… What is this?”

I fought with every fibre of my being not to dissolve into hysterical laughter right on the spot. Because every parent KNOWS that the time for That Talk is coming, but you are never REALLY prepared for it. I mean, you THINK you will handle it with great calm and dignity and appear cool. But the reality is, you rarely do.

Which I can tell you, I certainly didn’t. I probably did alright though, and kept the silent-laughter-shoulder-shaking and tears rolling down my face to a minimum.

“Well,” I began, as all good and calm and relaxed discussions of one’s personal regions surely MUST begin, “that is what makes you a girl. That’s a vagina.” Which I know in actual fact is not REALLY what it is — vulva, vagina, clitoris, women’s parts are so complicated, AND BELIEVE YOU ME, SHE WAS SHOWING ME SHE HAD THEM ALL — but that is, for the sake of ease, the catch-all term we’re going to go with at this time.

(Also, it’s not the ONLY thing about being a girl, but DUDE. We’ve got YEARS of this stuff ahead of us.)

So then I continued about how “boys are made differently, and they have a penis.”

“Penis,” she repeated, trying the word out. “Vagina” was too complicated to try, apparently.

“So boys don’t have this?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“But Charlotte has this?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Charlotte is a girl, so she has a vagina.”

“And does Jamie have this?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “Jamie is a boy, so he has a penis.”

“But Daddy has this?” she wondered.

“Nope, Daddy is a boy, so he has a penis.”

“But I don’t have a penis,” she confirmed.

“No, you have a vagina. Girls have vaginas.”

“Vagi…” the word trailed off into a mumble.

So I began telling her how boys and girls are different, and was starting to get into how girls have vaginas and breasts and… I didn’t get far.

She stood up, and with great gravity said, “I should go back to my room now.” And walked out.

Clearly I am going to need to work on my delivery before she hits puberty.

Today was one of those days where I felt like I need to be better. At things. Lots of things. But mostly at being a good person.

Two things happened today that made me feel the need to do better. The first occurred when I picked up Stinkerbelle from her carer’s house after work. When Stinkerbelle came down to get her gear on to head home for the day, her carer Fran told me about how That Girl and Fran’s little girl had gotten into trouble earlier today.

The two of them were in the bedroom, where they were supposed to be snuggled up watching a movie. Instead, they had gotten into a tub of Vick’s Vapo Rub and had been schmearing it all over their faces, in their hair, and on their clothes.

I reprimanded Stinkerbelle, not angrily, but sternly. She burst into heartfelt, apologetic sobs.

After a long, quiet ride home, during which I considered that Vick’s wasn’t harmful, nobody got hurt, and it was really kind of funny, I got on the computer and debriefed with BDH. He reminded me that Stinkerbelle is four and four year olds get into stuff, and it really was funny.

And I admit that much of my frustration stems from the fact that I am the one who has to deal with Stinkerbelle’s long, thick hair on a regular basis, so her having a head full of Vaseline just means that I have to put in two or three hours washing, combing, and restyling it, when I just did it two days ago. And that’s selfish.

And I admit that I am hard on my girl. I am strict and I expect her to behave herself and remember her manners and take turns and Do All Those Things. I see too many parents let too much slide and I am not going to let Stinkerbelle be one of those kids. And so I am hard on her.

But she really, really IS a very, very good girl 99% of the time, and I admit that I have to let up and let her be a kid and screw up like a normal kid in that 1% of the time. Or more, even.

And I let her down. On a day when she got into a mess AS KIDS WILL DO and had fun doing it, I could have just let it go and let her enjoy it. Instead, I left her sad and feeling fraught with shame and guilt for being A Bad Girl.

The second thing that made me feel I should be better was around dinnertime, when I heard the doorbell ring. I thought it was BDH, but when I got to the door there was a man on the porch. He was small-ish, and it was hard to tell how old he was. But he was polite, and introduced himself as Tyler, and said he was canvassing for the local addiction recovery charity. And he showed me his badge, his ID.

Now, because I am home alone with That Girl during the day, whenever I answer the door, I have gotten into the habit of sizing up whoever comes to the door, and noticing what they look like or what they’re wearing. You know, JUST IN CASE. So I kind of tuned out what this fellow was saying for a moment.

It’s really, really cold here today. Arse-freezing cold. Lots of blowing and drifting snow. Wind chill. And dude, this guy’s not wearing any gloves. He’s got a toque on, sure, but the jacket’s kind of a canvas-y style thing. But the hood’s up, so that’s good.

But his pants. Oh my dog, his pants — they’d been split at some point, and they’re sewn together with a random colour of yarn. He’s got pants held together by yarn. And no gloves.

And he’s as polite and as meek as possible, and I tuned back in when he said “and anything you guys can contribute would be appreciated. Even a dollar, that would be helpful.” And because I have learned not to trust anyone at the door, I made a lame excuse, and I turned him away. And he very politely and meekly thanked me, and left.

Now, BDH reminded me when he got home and I mentioned it to him, this could have been a scam. The guy could have been a scam artist. He could have been collecting just for himself. But I have a hard time believing that a scammer is going to come around dressed that poorly in such weather. And so what if he was collecting just for himself — the man’s got no gloves and he’s wearing clothes HELD TOGETHER WITH STRING.

And I couldn’t spare him a couple bucks.

I felt really badly about that, afterwards. I felt like I had let down my fellow man. I let down someone who might have needed a buck or two, or the organization he was doing charity work for on such a bitterly cold evening.

I let people down today. And in so doing, I let myself down.

I let myself down. I need to be better.

I can’t always help my fellow man — sometimes we just can’t afford the money or the effort or the time, I understand that. But sometimes we CAN, and I need to get better at maybe doing that.

And I can’t always be the perfect mom to my daughter. I can’t always be patient and calm and do the right thing and let her be. But sometimes I can, and I need to learn to do just that. I need to learn to be better for her, to be better to her, and to teach her by example to be better.

I need to learn to be better.

Two things have happened recently that lead me to believe that, in fact, I am actually asleep.

First off, I learned that I must register Stinkerbelle for kindergarten in the first week of February.

Second, today I was settling That Girl in for a little quiet time on the sofa this afternoon, and she needed a blanket because it’s been really cold here recently. So I went down to her bedroom to grab a blanket, and in her closet I found the baby blanket I knit especially for her, that travelled to and from Ethiopia, and covered her every night in her crib. I grabbed it and when I went to cover her with it, I realized that she’s too tall, and it won’t cover her anymore.

Now, I just KNOW that this is some sort of cruel hoax. There is no way that it can be anything but. There’s no way that nearly four and a half years have passed. There’s no way that she can be old enough to go to school, proper school all day, with lunch and recess and all that. And there is CERTAINLY no way that my little tiny newborn-sized baby is too big for the blanket that positively enveloped her in crib, plane, car, and her mom and dad’s arms.

Not true. Didn’t happen. Prove it.

But even more than that? This means that I am almost FIVE YEARS OLDER. And there is NO WAY I AM HAVING THAT.

I have a four year old. She will start kindergarten in September. And, today, some INSERT VILEST WORD YOU CAN THINK OF walked into a Connecticut kindergarten class and fired an assault rifle. AT SMALL CHILDREN.

I cannot cope. My brain does not have the capacity to understand this. I have no language to express how I feel about this. There is nothing I can say that will make any sense.

I am just going to leave this article from The Onion here. It’s full of cussing, which, given the circumstances, I find incredibly restrained.

Go. Hug your kids. Hug whoever you love, come to that.

I had a meltdown this morning. A full-on ugly-cry meltdown.

It was about many things — money, debt, parenting, ALL THE FEELS — but mostly about me being overtired. Like a child, and since I was a child, I have always been the type of person who gets emotional when she gets tired. But one of the things that BDH and I discussed mid-meltdown was working.

It is interesting, the perspective we have about how hard others work and what constitutes “hard work”.

Years ago, BDH and I made the choice that I would quit working in the corporate life I loathed and instead become a full-time mom. It meant halving our income, but we figured it was more important for someone to be home with our kids than to have all the material stuff. But then, first with infertility treatment and then adoption, we found our debts began to pile up, while our income increased less quickly, with raises and cost of living and whatnot.

So the coming of the holidays and the thoughts of spending, plus some other personal circumstances coming into the discussion, made me come a little unhinged this morning.

BDH works hard. VERY hard. He works long hours, and with soccer, he’s not able to be home all that much during the week. And he’s tired on the weekends, but he tries his best to be present and do the Dad thing and spend as much quality time with Stinkerbelle as he can. And I know that he works these long, hard hours so that we can afford to live the life we chose, here, and with me at home with That Girl.

So I try very hard to bear that in mind, in everything. I spend almost nothing on myself in the course of the year in terms of material things. I shop in clearance sections online and take advantage of sales to shop for others. I try to shop for groceries with a budget. And our house needs a lot of work, but we can’t afford it, so we try to make it work as best we can.

And I try very hard not to talk about buying stuff, except in the abstract, “wouldn’t-it-be-nice” and “when-we-win-the-lottery” sense. Because I am acutely aware of just how hard he works to give us all the comforts we have, and how much it hurts him when he thinks he’s not able to give us all the extras we could dream about.

So, this morning, I was melting down, and insisting it was nothing, because I didn’t want to sound like I was complaining, or ungrateful, or unappreciative of all his efforts. But we got to talking, and in the course of talking, BDH came to the conclusion that I was overtired.

Overtired, he said, because I am working too hard.

I disagreed.

There’s a scene in Love, Actually that I relate to, where Emma Thompson’s character Karen says,

The trouble with being the Prime Minister’s sister is, it does put your life into rather harsh perspective. What did my brother do today? He stood up and fought for his country. And what did I do? I made a papier maché lobster head.

I see others around me, friends, peers, whatever, making gains in the world — particularly since I walked away from big salaries and job titles and all that, in favour of, you know, NONE — and I sometimes feel like what I am doing has no worth, or that I have nothing to contribute in social situations, or that we will never get ahead financially. It is easy to lose perspective in a job like mine, where you are alone with a small child or a computer most of the time.

You begin to lose sight of where your value lies.

But BDH never does, and this morning, he started talking about what I do in the course of the day. I get up with Stinkerbelle and get her breakfast and dressed and ready for her day so that BDH can get ready for his. I get her to school and then rush home to do a couple of hours of work, paying work, before I go back and get her after school is done. Then lunch — mealtimes are still an ordeal, at least an hour of cajoling and pleading and begging — some school-skills stuff or playtime with Stinkerbelle. And if she’s tired or has some quiet time maybe I can sneak in some work or housework in the afternoon. Then it’s cooking and dishes and getting dinner on the table. Another hour or hour and a half of dinner, and getting the kid into bed. Then if work didn’t happen during the day, it happens at night. Along with maybe some laundry.

He said I work hard, really hard, doing a job on top of my work taking care of Stinkerbelle and the house. And that I sell myself short.

I had never really thought about it before, from someone else’s perspective. I guess, from the outside, it seems like a lot. It doesn’t feel like it, mostly because I spend my time dwelling on how poorly I feel I am doing at my job as Mom, and not really celebrating or appreciating the good I do with her. And my paying work is bringing in a little bit of money, but it’s such a far cry from the salary I used to make that I really devalue it.

And I shouldn’t, because we really do benefit from the extra cash. Just like I shouldn’t devalue what I do with Stinkerbelle because she really does benefit from having a parent home with her all the time. And that we are very fortunate to be in the position to be able to do so.

It was a good discussion to have, even though it was first thing in the morning, and I was a crying mess, and Stinkerbelle was the usual Four Year Old Drama Llama, all while BDH was trying to get out the door to work. As BDH said, “The women in my life are having ALL THE FEELS this morning.” It gave me some clarity on an aspect of my life I had lost some perspective on, and while other issues I was upset about still have to be worked on, it certainly helped.

It took awhile longer for the sting to leave from behind my eyes, and the feels to abate, but by mid-afternoon I was getting my groove back. I am grateful for BDH’s support in so many ways, but this morning was really important to me. Whenever I feel like what I do is less than other, it’s nice to have someone who has an appreciation for how hard it can actually be, and that he appreciates that I am working hard, as opposed to hardly working.

And to remind me that I should, too.

So, my kid is finally of an age that we can do Christmas things and talk about traditions and such, and she actually is GETTING it. She has a firm idea in her head about Santa and his sleigh and reindeer and presents.

OMG PRESENTS. She LOVES the idea of presents.

Now, she’s not one of those kids who expects every. single. thing. under the sun. She does not demand every single toy she sees. She knows that if she is a good girl, Santa may come with his sleigh and give her presents. No, what she’s all about is THE LIST.

She is ALL about the list.

And most of the time, toys don’t even enter into it. She finds random and sundry things out in the universe that she thinks she might like, and she’s all I HAVE TO ASK SANTA ABOUT THAT. It could be a toy, a book, food, a friend, clothes… she likes it, so it is GOING ON THE LIST.

So far, she’s come up with the following:

• birthday cake
• Winnie the Pooh jammies
• a puppy
• a blue bathrobe like Grammy has so she can be just like Grammy
• slippers
• the sun
• clothes (my kid asked for clothes. I KNOW.)
• any one of a number of books in her school library
• her friend Fiona coming to her house for a play date
• her friend Jamie coming to her house for a play date
• pink socks
• more slippers
• soup
• skates (or a skateboard or a scooter – in her mind, they’re all basically the same thing)
• another scarf and mittens
• an apple tree in the backyard
• a sweater knit by Mommy
• various and sundry large mammals (and the occasional large sea creature — recently, a walrus), and
• a baby sister.

The only ones she’s been really consistent on are the bathrobe and the baby sister. (And honestly, I’d put both on my list too. I love a good bathrobe and a good baby.) The bathrobe we can do, but sadly, the baby sister is pretty much an impossibility.

So, the list we send to Santa is going to be something. I dunno what, exactly, but definitely SOMETHING. I hope Santa is understanding.

If we’re honest, when it comes to toys, Stinkerbelle doesn’t want for much. She has lots of toys and what she doesn’t have are the big ticket items that we can’t afford anyway. And she doesn’t ask for a lot. She has some things she loves, and loves to do, and we try to make sure Santa knows about them, and there are some things that would help developmentally that I am sure Santa will remember.

But the kid doesn’t ask for much. She’s happy with almost everything. So I am just letting her make her list with whatever comes to mind.

One of the things I AM hoping to do with the list is take some of the ideas — some of the more esoteric and non-Christmas gift-y ideas — and incorporate them into an advent calendar I am making (if I can get it done in short order — it’s going to be close to get it done for the first, but maybe shortly after). So, maybe I’ll make one day’s little prize to plan a play date with a friend. One prize can be to make soup together or a cake (or something similarly baking-ish). Maybe one can be to plant an apple seed together that she can water and watch grow. Maybe one prize can be to pick yarn out for a scarf and mittens (or probably a hat.) That kind of thing.

That Girl is pretty easygoing and giving by nature. She doesn’t want for much, and doesn’t ask for much. But at this time of year, when she does ask for things, it might be fun to incorporate them somehow.

Okay, the baby sister will still be a no-go. And I admit that, despite the best of intentions, there’s no way I’m going to get her a walrus. They are hell to gift wrap.

So, I noticed the other day that Netflix is now offering a season or two of early Sesame Street episodes. It’s what they call “classic” and, since both I and Sesame Street were created within a couple of years of each other, I suppose that makes me “classic” as well. NICE.

Anyway, I pointed it out to Stinkerbelle and told her that this was the Sesame Street that Mommy used to watch when she was a little girl. The first episode on offer was from 1972 and featured Bill Cosby, so one morning I decided to give it a go.

We’re on our 7th-ish episode now. And I have to tell you, for the most part, a lot of the early stuff still really stands up.

Sesame Street has always held some magic for me. As a child raised by television and in a stressful environment, the Street provided me with a place to learn and enjoy the arts that was friendly, inclusive, and welcoming. Every time it was on, I had an hour to be transported to a place where learning was cool, people of all types were equal and loved, and it was almost always happy and sunny and everything was going to be alright.

I needed Sesame Street in my life. If ever there was a show that offered education wrapped in escapist fare, this was it. It was like an electronic hug.

So, watching it again as an adult, the old Street that I remembered, was interesting. I have watched newer Sesame Street with Stinkerbelle. A LOT of it. And I appreciate what they are doing nowadays, too. It has been interesting to compare the two.

There are so many things that are brilliant about classic Sesame Street. There were a lot more traditional learning segments back then — a lot more numbers and counting and letters and word identification segments. They repeated their key number and letter segments twice in each show, as well. And repetition is good. My daughter is already picking up things from classic episodes that I know have been covered in the new format — but not as clearly or with enough repetition, apparently.

Guest stars were not as big a deal as they are now, at least in the beginning. A guest star got a single segment. Bill Cosby does the alphabet. Lena Horne sings a song. That was it. It was almost as though the kids were more important than the guest stars. (I kid. Of course they were.)

And oh, the kids. No professional actors. All shapes, all sizes, all colours, all beliefs. It’s one of the things that Sesame Street actually does better nowadays than back then, even with all the celebrities, but you could see the gauntlet being thrown down in the early days. Kids were the centre, the focus, and the goal to make kids better, happier, more confident, more accepting members of society, all while entertaining them, never seems to waver.

The real people, the regulars — there’s a reason why so many of them are on Sesame Street for so long. I watched a very young Maria, a very young Luis. And Bob, who was always my favourite, singing these hopeful, happy songs with several kids on his lap, talking to each one by name. These are the adults I wanted to guide me through childhood.

Of course, a show that’s been running for close to 45 years needs to revamp itself every now and again. And while a lot of these segments are shelved in their new format, there’s a lot of good in the new Street too.

Although the traditional learning pieces are fewer, one thing new Sesame Street excels at is their first 10-15 minute segment. So much natural learning is available in these set, sometimes choreographed, segments — cultural points, language, self-esteem, respect, caring, in a long and often vibrant piece. Sometimes it’s got a big, stage-musical-style number in it, and it’s then that the piece really shines. And I gotta tell you, these Street regulars have still got it, some of them decades in. Professionals in song, dance, comedy, and education.

I love the fact that Murray, a new but very sweet and funny monster, is narrating and guiding the educational pieces and is out on the street, the REAL street, with real people. He is an engaging monster who interacts well with kids, and the learning pieces now have real kids doing the learning. And kids love to watch other kids. While the artistic and musical learning pieces of classic episodes were great, they were also kind of passive. Now, there’s questions and answers and dancing and shouting and it’s a lot more engaging.

And anything that gets kids up off the couch and moving and dancing while they learn cannot be a bad thing.

And say what you will about Elmo — everyone loves to hate on the little red monster — but he draws the kids in. He voices the problems and challenges of learning for preschoolers. He gives them something to relate to. As an adult, even though I prefer my kid watch the learning pieces more and could do with less Elmo, I understand why he’s there and why he’s a big draw. And who knows, with recent events on the Street with Kevin Clash, perhaps this will be another opportunity for Sesame Street to reinvent themselves again.

I hope so.

It’s been wonderful to share part of my childhood with my daughter, and watch her experience what I did in becoming a devotee of Sesame Street. I love it when she asks me, “Mommy, can we watch the Sesame Street that you watched when you were a little girl?” It makes me feel like we are sharing something special together.

And I hope that what I believe to be the very best television for children will be around for years and years to come — perhaps even long enough for her to share with her children. Kids will always be kids, and kids will always need to learn. And, for good or bad, kids will always need a warm nurturing place to visit, to come and play, where everything’s A-OK.

I really don’t know what to post about tonight. I really don’t. I’ve been working on a project for work for much of the weekend, and so I haven’t been tuned into the world around me much.

I had forgotten how that could happen. I used to work full time, before I became a mom full time, and there were times when work life would just dominate everything. Deadlines would loom, clients would need this or that, and you had to get it done barring everything else. Work could suck all the air out of a room.

It was a lot more stressful, too. There were periods when I could not sleep for all the work I had to do, all the worrying and preparation that was required. There were long periods of time when I dreamed about work, doing phone calls in my sleep or working on items of a project over and over and over again, all night long.

There were long periods when I was miserable. Long periods when I was exhausted. Long periods when I hated my job and my life.

Note that corporate life for some people is very rewarding, and satisfying, and meaningful. And that’s fantastic. I’m just not, and have never been, that person, is all.

The project I am working on, for the job I do now, is not the intense, stressful monster that work projects used to be in my former working life. But still, old habits die hard. I will be fretting about it all night. But the good thing is, I’ll forget it by mid-week.

I don’t miss my full time working life. I remember the feeling, back in high school, when we had to decide what we wanted to do with our lives, where we were going to go to university, what our plans were. I remember distinctly knowing, KNOWING, that working in an office would absolutely kill me. That the corporate environment was NOT for me, and that i would just suffocate and die if I had to go that route.

I remember discussing it with my father, an office man all his life, who got very angry and very insulted. So I said I would become a teacher.

That appeased him. But not me. I didn’t want to be a teacher; I just said it to call truce. So, I didn’t. And when I finished school with absolutely useless qualifications, I eventually ended up working in the corporate world. Software, to be precise. And while the gadgetry and toys of that environment really appealed to me, the office atmosphere most definitely did not. If there was anyone anywhere more ill-suited to working in an office, it was me.

And after 15 years, I was never so glad to leave anything in my life.

Being a stay at home mom who works part time, mostly from home, has its fair share of stress. Your clients are very demanding and are with you all the time. Your office generally looks like a tip. You get about as much sleep as you did when you were burning the midnight oil in a cubicle somewhere. And your paying work has to get done when your main clients go to bed.

But you know what? Corporate life could learn a lot from this.

I can wear comfy clothes and slippers to work. Comfortable workers are happy workers.

I have flexible hours. As long as I get the work done, when I say I will, then that’s what matters. And I plan for deadlines that absolutely can’t be changed, like school start times and dentist appointments and the like. Core hours are irrelevant to a four year old, who lives in the now.

My commute is a couple of steps, maybe up or down some stairs, depending. The only crazy people I deal with on the commute is a kid who has to ask me a question RIGHT NOW MOM or Lucy the cat roaring up and down the stairs and trying to trip me up. Except one day a week and then it’s all YAY WE ARE GOING OUT. (Not Lucy.)

When I do a good job, there’s always a big kiss and a hug and heartfelt thank yous. Not that this would be a good thing in an office, but really, some thanks and appreciation for a job well done is wholly lacking in corporate life, mostly because others are too busy taking credit for your hard efforts and good ideas.

My workplace is pleasant. I have music to listen to and art to look at and snacks. And some of it is created by my client, who is also, by the way, good at sharing.

Yeah, we don’t have as much money and we can’t just buy what we want when we want like we used to. But we have what we need, and we’re happier with it, I think. I don’t get out of the workplace much, or talk to many adults, or have many friends. (Wait, that’s not much different to the way life was when I WAS in a big office, actually.) And I don’t have a big fancy title.

Except “Mom”, which is the best and most satisfying one I’ve had to date. The least empty title I can honestly say I ever had. And the one I worked the hardest to get and to live up to.

Now, I just need to hang it on my office door. And probably, I’ll need an office door, as well.

Three- and four- and five-year-olds, when they start firing up the imaginative play, can come up with some pretty nifty fun. They’re suddenly all about dressing up, and pretending to be animals and superheroes and princesses, and acting out little mini-dramas with their Little People. And their world begins to be peopled with new friends. Imaginary friends.

I never did have an imaginary friend. I was an odd kid, though. I remember my niece having an imaginary anti-hero. His name was Victor Knee. He was always getting into trouble. You could hear her, in the other room playing school or whatever, and Victor Knee was ALWAYS catching shit for something. “You sit on your mat, Victor Knee!” she’d say contemptuously. I found it pretty hilarious.

My daughter has always been very social. Like, from a tiny infant, she was described as “social”. So, in keeping with this, we’ve learned that she doesn’t have an imaginary friend — she has imaginary FRIENDS. Plural. Apparently, she travels in a gang.

She also has about eleventeen billion stuffed animals and dolls, so I guess I should not be surprised by the sheer number of her imaginary friends. She’s not terribly creative in how she names her dollies and such, though. A couple of them have actual names, like Dorothy the Draguana, and Lula the dog, and a duck named Henry Holden Duck, Esq. (Actually, he used to be my duck. Ahem.) But by and large, her naming convention is pretty straightforward — what you see is what you get. Her monkey is “Monkey”. Her baby dolls are all “Baby”. Her Raggedy Ann doll is “Raggedy Ann”. Oh, wait. That one doesn’t really work.

Anyway.

So when we learned that she had some imaginary friends, we were not surprised to learn their names were “Girls” for the pack of girls, and “Boy” for the boy. Apparently, there’s only one boy. I don’t know why, and she is not telling.

At first, I was feeling pretty badly about the fact that my kid had a crew of imaginary homegirls (and boy) hanging out with her. I felt maybe that she was lonely, and I was pretty sucktastic at entertaining her and playing with her, and so she felt the need to make up imaginary friends to keep from shrivelling up from boredom in her time home with Mom.

And then I remembered Victor Knee and OH YEAH MOM, IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU. So now I’m just rolling with it.

It’s fun to watch her interact with her friends. She sits down to lunch and then tells them where to sit, and dishes up sandwiches and milk to each friend. She chats with them in the car on the way to different places. She just generally bosses them around, politely and firmly. And she lays out some rules, which, of course, hold up a mirror to our parenting and what she hears every day.

“Be careful girls and boy, so you don’t spill your milk.”

“Now girls, don’t be silly at the table, or there will be a timeout.” (Why the boy is not admonished about being silly, I shall never know. He’s no Victor Knee, apparently.)

“Now, girls and boy, you wait in the car and have a nap while I am at soccer practice.” (This is the same rule laid out for any stuffed friend or dolly that travels with us, to avoid them getting lost. We don’t actually leave our daughter in the car while we go in to soccer practice. I DON’T EVEN PLAY SOCCER AWRIGHT?)

It has really been quite entertaining to listen to. Unfortunately, we can’t pay TOO much attention or ask too many questions because it apparently kills the mood. She gets embarrassed or something, and clams up. But it always seems to be very pleasant — she doesn’t go to them when she is upset or anything, as some kids do — and she seems to enjoy being the Bigger Girl Who Is In Charge.

Also, it does tend to get a little surreal when there’s just me and her and a gang of imaginary children in the house. There have been times when I have had to discipline the whole lot of them about being silly, and banish Girls and Boy to go in the other room because Stinkerbelle is not eating her lunch or paying attention when I am talking to her. And it’s those times when I hope to dog there’s no hidden cameras on me to witness my disciplining of kids who aren’t actually there. Proof that I am spending too long without adult conversation.

I don’t know how long this phase lasts, but it really is quite sweet. I do really love the innocence and imagination of it. I wish they all had names, like Victor Knee, that I could write down and tell her about in years to come. But I am sure that even just knowing they are Girls and Boy might bring back some happy memories for her.

I am not sure what the next phase will be, but I kind of hope that she gets counting down quickly, so I can ask her to tell me how many imaginary friends there are in Girls and Boy before they go wherever it is imaginary friends go when their time in a child’s imagination is done.