Weekend report

[mamajoan]

Our weekend!

We got up "early" on Saturday, which means like 9:30, heh, and had a bit of breakfast before heading out. Isaac and a bunch of his friends and their dads play touch football frequently on weekends (the occasional sister or mom joins in, but it's usually pretty much boys and dads) and this weekend the game was at 11am on Saturday, which is a bit earlier than usual.

After dropping Isaac off, Ruthie and I went to Porter Square to get a birthday present for her classmate. The parking lot at Porter was even more insane than usual, so after circling a couple of times, I decided to let Ruthie out to start looking at stuff in the toy store while I continued looking for a parking space. I gave her $10 and told her that if she found something, bought it, got the store staff to gift-wrap it, and was all done and I wasn't back yet, she should wait outside the store for me. I haven't done that kind of thing with Ruthie before, but I felt pretty sure it would be fine. I didn't think she would leave the area on her own, and it's hard to get much safer than a toy store. ;) I was, however, feeling a little nervous because I had left my cellphone at home (shows how half-asleep I must have been!). Luckily, though, I found a parking space fairly quickly, got to the toy store, helped Ruthie choose an item, paid for it and got it wrapped, no problem. We stopped into Panera because I had promised Ruthie a cup of tea -- her latest thing in the ongoing series of "trying to do everything mom does" -- and fortunately they had decaf english breakfast which was just what she wanted. Then we popped into the grocery store for cat food, got back to the car, and got back to the football field just as the game was breaking up.

So we retrieved Isaac and went back home for a brief respite and lunch, and then it was time to take Ruthie to her classmate's birthday party.

I shall digress at this point and say that Ruthie has been very boy-focused for the past 9 months or so. By which I mean that she is rejecting everything she sees as even slightly "girly" -- she plays mostly with boys at school, has rejected all of her clothing that is pink and/or otherwise girly, refuses to do activities that she sees as girly, and so forth. She has been keeping her hair very short and gets mistaken for a boy ALL the time. It has all been pretty "interesting" and I keep meaning to post here in more depth about that...maybe sometime I'll get to it. So I was kind of surprised when she agreed a couple of weeks ago to go to the birthday party for this girl in her class, whom (as far as I can tell) she barely knows. I certainly didn't know the kid; I had to have Ruthie point her out to me. (and then I asked the girl what kind of things she likes for presents, and she said airily, "Oh, I like pretty much everything, both kinds." me: "Both kinds?" her: "Yeah, boy and girl." Oyy. But this sentence shall serve as a placeholder for a MUCH longer post, or series of posts, about the extreme gender-ification of children's play in America these days.)

Anyway, as it turned out, I was glad that Ruthie went to the party because it looked like there weren't very many kids there. The birthday girl had invited all the girls in the class (the rule at school is that you can only hand out party invitations in school if you're inviting either the whole class, or all the kids of one gender in the class) so I warned Ruthie in advance that it might be a particularly girly party, but she still expressed willingness to go -- and she still seems to have enjoyed it, even though not only was it girly but there was pizza and chocolate cake, neither of which she likes (yes, my child is a crazy chocolate-cake-hater). I guess it's kind of hard to express how excited I was about this, without going into all the long background of how Ruthie has been behaving lately.... Suffice it to say that she has been, ahem, "difficult," especially when it comes to activities/events that turn out unlike what she was expecting or such.

While Ruthie was at the party, I had a pleasant 2.5+ hours of one-on-one time with my boy, which was lovely because Isaac and I really don't get very much of that in our daily lives. We went to a Chinese restaurant (we both love Chinese food and Ruthie doesn't) and chatted at length about school and stuff over scallion pancakes and tofu with broccoli. He actually opened up and talked quite a bit about what he's learning in school, the various dynamics and cliques at work in the fifth grade, etc. -- such a pleasant change from his first few years of school when I couldn't get anything out of him! He is actually learning some interesting stuff now so it really keeps him engaged, even though he still feels compelled to claim that school is "boring" just to maintain his kid cred. ;)

Then we had enough time to stop off at home, put the leftovers in the fridge, and chill for a little while before going to pick up Ruthie. I was pleasantly surprised by how cheery she was. Back home again and just random hanging out for the rest of our Saturday evenings.

On Sunday, I got up not feeling like making breakfast, so I suggested that we walk around the corner to the trendy new bar/bistro/diner-wannabe for brunch. So we walked around the corner, only to find that the East End Grille isn't doing Sunday brunch any more! :( Luckily, just a few doors down from there is another breakfast place that we hadn't yet tried since moving to our new home last year (another thing I should really post about sometime). So we went in there and discovered a seriously tiny gem of a place. It literally has exactly two tables, and there was exactly one person working there. So some patience was called for as she had to make all of our food herself while also helping other customers; but we went with it, and the food was excellent. Ruthie had french toast and hot cider, Isaac had pancakes and hot cocoa, and I had egg-n-cheese on an english muffin and tea. It was all really good.

Then we went home and gathered up Isaac's "Magic: the Gathering" cards, and took him to the comic book store in Davis Square where they have a MTG tournament every Sunday. It was Isaac's first time attending this event, but a number of his friends were there, so after a bit of hesitation at first, he warmed right up and was eager to give it a try. So we left him there and Ruthie and I went driving around a bit, wondering what to do with ourselves ;) and calling some friends to see if they wanted to hang out, but no one answered their phones, so eventually we just went home and hung out together until it was time to pick Isaac up. Just as we were about to leave, another parent called and asked if I could bring his kid home too, which of course I could. So we went back to the comic book store and picked up Isaac and Eli, took Eli home, then took us home. Isaac had a good time at the tournament although he apparently only won one game and lost 2 or 3. But in any case he enjoyed himself and is super excited for the "big" tournament next weekend, which is a prerelease party for the new set of cards coming out next month. I should probably do a whole separate post about the Magic obsession and such at some point too. Oh how my list of topics is growing and growing!

Anyway, that's pretty much our weekend. Ahem...well, I suppose I left a few things out that also merit longer posts. Oyy. Stay tuned, I guess.

Comments

[downwardlashes.livejournal.com]

Caspian, up until three weeks ago when he started a new school, wore girl's clothes pretty much every day. Now, he wears boy stuff most days to school (kinda mixed feelings on how I feel about that!) but still mostly only wants to play with the girls. But I noticed that it's not too uncommon even in just his class of 20, because there are two girls who wear boy clothes, and one of them cried when someone tried to make her be the pink part of the rainbow they were making. I think the extreme genderization that's been going on for the past decade or two has blown up for some kids, making them reject it outright, instead of finding a middle ground. I hope it all swings to a more neutral gender culture soon. Remember 70's and 80's kids and the bowl cuts and overalls every kid had?? How did we get here?