In less than a month, my daughter will be in middle school. First off, I could barely even type that sentence without my screen looking blurry from my tears. Secondly, I have put off writing this blog because I have been a total and complete wreck.  I find myself looking through old pictures more and more these days. I find myself starting out conversations with “remember when…..” and I can barely finish my thought. I remember the day that I walked her to her Kindergarten class like it was yesterday. Her blonde hair hitting the top of her brand new backpack which was upon her brand new dress and she skipped along to class in her brand new shoes and she placed her little hand in mine and held on for dear life. Or, maybe that was me holding on tight.

That first day turned into a very fast paced lifestyle and one year just sort of seemed to run into one another without warning. When you are pregnant, people seem to throw advice at you every chance you get. One of the main things people tell you is to enjoy every minute you possibly can, because you are only a first time mother once. There is something so absolutely magical about it, even through the morning sickness and the emotional roller coaster you embark upon throughout your pregnancy. I will never forget one piece of advice that was thrown my way years ago, and it was so long ago that I forget who told it to me. They said “enjoy your years prior to your daughter starting Kindergarten, because once they get into the school system, time will fly by and before you know it, they are graduating.” Man, was that the truth. Spot on.

I have always worked full time, ever since I was 18 years old. Once I became pregnant and I had my daughter, I always knew I was going to go back to work. I had, or have, a thriving banking career and financially I had to go back to work to support my family. I was very fortunate to work for a company who understood the importance of parenthood and I was able to work out my schedule so that I could volunteer in her class every Friday for an hour. I did that up until 3^rd Grade and then work became more demanding, and I was unable to volunteer in her class as regularly as I would have liked to. And in reality, it wasn’t really super cool for her to have her Mom in class, so there’s that. Many nights I would come home from work and prepare treats for her class the next day, or help her with some elaborate school project that was due yesterday because she failed to tell me about it a month prior when it was actually assigned. I walked up that hill to her classroom on many occasions with my cell phone ringing, my highest of heels, and my hands full of Valentines Day treats for her class.  All while dropping everything to wrap my arms around her friends who came in for a hug. I was late many mornings to work because she couldn’t quite convince me that her hair or her teeth were brushed. I left work with every phone call I received from her saying she had a sick tummy or achy bones. As difficult as it is to juggle a career and single parenting, it’s my normal. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.

I look back at those years and I love that I was her phone call. I was the one who chased away the monsters under her bed and I cuddled with her while watching that Disney movie for the 100^th time when she couldn’t sleep because her night light burned out.  I was the one who would tuck her into bed and pray that she would fall asleep super quick so that the “tooth fairy” could swap  her tooth for money because the fairy was so damn tired all she wanted to do was go to bed. But she didn’t. She stayed up for hours until it was safe to go in.

All of these thoughts have been sort of stockpiling in my mind for the past year because I’m realizing that I probably will not ride this ride again.  As I walked her to class on her first day of school several months ago, I realized that would be the last first day in elementary school. I cried as I made that lonely walk back to my car, and the tears really didn’t subside as I drove off. They also come back every now and then. Recently she had a field trip with her class and she asked me if I would chaperone and I jumped at the chance. She even wanted me to ride the bus with her and her friends. As I’m typing away right now, she is actually on the way back from her 5^th grade coast trip where she spent the last couple of days camping and making memories with her friends. It all sort of hit me on Monday morning as I dropped her off at school and waited with her until the bus came. I wanted to take a picture of her and she was mortified. I managed to get one picture but she was totally not excited about it. She barely hugged me as I walked away and I looked back and she was already having the time of her life with her friends. I couldn’t grip her little hand in mine like I used to. I try to every chance I get, but not because she needs it. I try so hard to hold on to that little blonde hair blue eyed girl whose eyes would swell up with tears if I tried to walk away from her. Now, she barely looks back. I find that in those moments she is learning her independence and exercising her strength. There’s an awful lot I can learn from her, actually. In the meantime, I’ll treasure the fact that she still expects the tooth fairy to visit her and I’ll never ever stop taking pictures.

Nope, not the “talk” you might be thinking of. Social media. Instagram. Facebook. Texting. Snapchat. Twitter.  Dangers and benefits. Oh, and she’s only ten. All I wanted to do was call my mom for advice and then it hit me. My mom never dealt with these issues when I was younger. If you are in my age group, you’re probably going to come to this very same realization at some point. Our parents can recall slow dial up connection and call waiting and the importance of teaching us patience. Or how frustrating it was when they had an outdated encyclopedia for us to do our research papers. Times have most definitely changed. We live in a world where information is at our fingertips and it’s super fast and it’s a very “now” mentality. Terminology is vastly different. Our parents taught us about an index and table of contents and glossaries and we are now teaching our children about Google and Siri and Dictionary.com. We also grew up in a world where if we hurt someone’s feelings, we would walk up to them and apologize, and see the hurt in their eyes. Now our children are learning how to smooth things over by text and cute little emojis. Technology is not slowing down and I’m quite alright with moving along with the trends, but it’s seriously insane having these conversations with my daughter. Sometimes I wish I could just avoid it all and send her a text.

I like to think of myself as an old soul. I love the feel of a book. I like flipping through the pages and feeling the history beneath my fingertips. I like hand written thank you notes. I like to look at someone in the face while having an argument or a deep meaningful conversation. I want to laugh with someone, cry together, and hug it out. I sort of feel like the younger generation is losing out on that a little bit. Now, I’m totally making generalizations here, and I understand that. I can think of at least ten friends of mine who raise their children without iPads and video games and television and they homeschool, and I respect that fully and completely. I work full time, I’m a single parent, my daughter has been in daycare since she was little and has always been in public school. So I’m just speaking to my life and trying to figure out a healthy balance. When she was little, she never needed a copious amount of toys. I never had to bring a bag full of toys and blankets and snacks every single place we went. She adapted to her surroundings and she really just learned how to occupy her time absent of materialistic items. Over the past several years, she has become accustomed to a more technology advanced lifestyle. Yes, that’s a fancy sentence and I probably could have just said that she watches a lot of television and plays on her tablet and some days would rather post selfies on Instagram than go outside and ride her bike. Anyways, I learned quickly after she graduated 1st grade that I would need to keep up with the latest and greatest electronics so that I could keep up. She is now in 5th grade, and they learn on tablets and computers and teachers reference apps to download for extra practice. And thank God that I follow her elementary school on Facebook and Instagram, otherwise I wouldn’t even remember that there was a staff development day or parent teacher conferences. Don’t gasp. I’m not the only one who forgets.

Social media is prevalent these days, not only in school but in business, government, law enforcement, you name it. Every single organization is utilizing it because it’s inexpensive, and it’s the quickest way to relay a message to the public. It’s also the quickest way for a seemingly innocent comment to be misconstrued. Hence the “talk” I had to have with my ten year old. I allow her to have an Instagram account because it’s set to private and I monitor it very closely. I approve or deny any friend requests she receives. I can see every picture she posts, and I can see all of the comments her friends make. I thought it was as simple as that, but I quickly learned otherwise. I can’t see comments she makes on her friends pictures and I also didn’t know that you could send pictures directly to someone or a group of people and have offline conversations. Not that my daughter was sending or receiving questionable pictures. Her friends would send pictures of their family dog or pictures of some One Direction poster in their room. A comment was made about somebody’s looks because ten year olds don’t have filters like adults do, and it hurt one of her friends feelings. The second I mentioned it to my daughter, she felt remorseful, and I followed that up with a lengthy discussion about the dangers of social media. And that was followed by me deleting her Instagram app from her phone. Not necessarily as punishment, but because she isn’t fully mature enough to understand that words stick. Especially when they are typed up and posted online.

Although my daughter has lost her Instagram account for the time being, it doesn’t mean I don’t talk to her about it regularly. We have a tendency to become pretty brave behind our computers. We type away with our fast little fingers and hit send and we walk away. We don’t give a thought to that passive aggressive post and the many lives we have actually disrupted. It’s not tangible. It’s so easy to delete friendships on Facebook and just as simple to unfollow someone on Instagram. I don’t find that to be clever, actually. I think it’s far more brave to look that person in the eyes and explain to them why their friendship isn’t worth it to you anymore. I’d be willing to bet most of us these days would find that to be pretty daunting and quite difficult to do, and quite frankly, we probably wouldn’t even do it. While I’m a huge fan of social media and use it on the daily, I feel quite fortunate that I was brought up more than half of my life without it. One day, my daughter will utilize social media and far surpass my little bit of knowledge on it. I am absolutely confident that she will be teaching me new things on a consistent basis. In the meantime, she can enjoy being ten. She can make new friends, she can work it out in the playground, ride her bike, and enjoy reading a book from the glow of a lamp vs. the glow of a computer screen. She can get lost in the laughter between friends and not caught up in reading between the lines of some silly online banter. We could all benefit from that, actually.

I feel as if I could have published this blog with the mere title alone. No explanation needed. But it wouldn’t be much of a blog without content, so here I go. Parenting is bananas. On all levels. I have always known it to be true, but it hit me like a ton of bricks the other morning as I was fighting (not arguing…full on fighting) with my daughter to brush her teeth. She’s 10. Brushing teeth to her, in her little 10 year old world, is the equivalent to filling your gas tank up. It’s necessary. We know this. But there are 500 other things I would rather do than pull off the exit, roll up to the pump, turn off my car, and sit there while my car is getting filled up by crap that I don’t really care about, but it’s good for my car and it makes it run. It’s a necessary evil. So the other morning, I ask her if she brushed her teeth. She yells back…”yesssss MOMMMMMMM.” I immediately knew she didn’t. So I ask her again, she gets more vocal, and eventually it escalates to her stomping around and telling me I just don’t understand, I don’t trust her, etc. I never knew that a simple question which involved a child’s general health and wellness would evoke such anger. But I guess I struck a chord. So as I’m arguing with her and well aware that it’s not going to be resolved, I revert to a child myself. I, as a 35 year old woman, ask my daughter to swear on one of her family members to prove that she brushed her teeth. Bam.  Truth came out, I called her on it, she couldn’t swear on her uncle, and her breath smelled. So she walked back into the bathroom, defeated, and brushed her teeth. You can’t play a player.

Parenting is one of the most joyous and rewarding jobs in the whole entire universe. Hands down. But it’s also the weirdest. I have spent the last 10 years of my life lying to my child. I have made her believe that a fairy roams the sky at night and enters our home when she is asleep and picks up her lost tooth and leaves her money under her pillow. She believes with her whole heart that a jolly old man named Santa creeps into our house down our chimney (which we don’t have…so I have to tell her that he uses magic to enter our house) and leaves all of the presents that she has asked him for. From a list that she leaves the night before Christmas. Talk about magic. Then we leave cookies and milk for him and also some carrots for Rudolph and all of the other reindeer.  I have also spent many nights chasing away monsters under the bed using a “secret magical potion” that I spray on the floors in her room and in the closets so they stay away. I buy crazy outfits for her every Halloween and have her dress up in costume and knock on strangers doors and ask them for candy. Oh, and lets not forget about the leprechaun who visits every year to leave footsteps throughout our house and leads her to a pot of gold. Parenting is weird.

OK, lets talk about school. Getting ready for the first day of school is dumb. Fun? Yes. Absolutely. I love taking my daughter shopping to get her “first day of school” outfit. She gets a new haircut, new school supplies, new backpack, new lunchbox…it’s fresh, it’s new, it’s exciting. It’s about a week before school (yes…I wait until the last minute, and sometimes I even wait until the night before) and I look online to see the “LIST”. The dreamy list that the school district pushes through to their website so that parents know what to buy for their child. Loves it. First on the list is pencils. Not just any pencil. It’s specifically a “Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil”. Then you move on to the erasers…and it’s specifically a “Pink Pearl Eraser.” Ok. For reals. I am on a budget, and when asked to provide pencils and erasers…I’m going to buy store brand and whatever is on sale. I’m a rebel at heart, so had you not been specific on the brand, I may have bought the Ticonderoga or the Pearl. But since you (not quite sure who “you” are) told me what to buy….I’m going to go with what I choose to buy. And what I choose to buy? Is the store brand that costs a fraction of the price, because I would rather save my money for the mandated school agendas and suggested cash donations I have to make to her class.  And by the way. It’s not a suggested cash donation. We have to provide it. And we will.

Now, I’m coming at this as a single mom. I’m certainly not wanting to chase away the readers who are married, and I’m not playing the single mom card and saying it’s harder to parent single vs. having a partner. Wait. Yes, I am. It’s harder, #sorrynotsorry. When you are a single parent, and you reach your breaking point, and you realize it’s time to turn yourself into an insane asylum, it’s much more difficult to know that you have to fill out that paperwork on your own. When  you have a partner, at least you have peace of mind that if it does truly get to that point….they can at least drive you there and fill out the paperwork for you. It’s just different. I have been married before, and although I thought I did most of the parenting, I always had the comfort of knowing that he was there. He would probably make me fill out my own paperwork, but he would have at least taken me to the insane asylum. I think.

I feel like we live in a bubble sometimes. I think we all want to depict our lives as something brilliant and perfect and seamless. Like…Leave It to Beaver. If your life is like that show? I applaud you, and I need to know you. I know I’m not the only mom out there who argues with their kid to brush their teeth. I even have my daughter make her own breakfast and lunch in the morning because I have to get ready for work and I’m not supermom. I yell more than I should hug sometimes. I make mistakes. I fall. I pick myself up. And as I’m running out of the house in the morning with 10 different bags filled with after work clothes, and soccer balls and cleats and lunches and everything else, and my daughter grabs a bag from my hand to help me. After we fought like mad about whether or not she brushed her teeth. I realize she really does like me. I’m also kind of glad she still thinks Cupid shoots arrows on Valentines Day and that food just magically appears in the refrigerator once we run out. Childhood is truly magical. And parenting is truly bananas.