Gosh, I do not know what is UP but I just have not had much time to blog lately. Seems like I’ve been writing only one post every 5-6 days, which is so much lower than my typical cadence.
This weekend was busy, so I guess that explains that part.
Friday
My last post was Friday, which was Ethan’s 16th birthday post!!
After work I went for my first real “solo, non-Charlie walk” since we got him in October. In my attempt to increase my cardio, but not necessarily have to run, because…. 😫….. I took a few people’s advice and decided to just try a brisker walk instead. Like a “real exercise” walk, not just a “stroll around with the dog” walk.
Apparently I walked 3.23 miles at a 15’28″/mile pace. To be clear, I paid zero attention to my pace in the moment and basically just walked, but obviously more quickly than I would while stopping frequently to pee on trees. (Charlie, not me.)
Usually with him my paces are well over 20’00″/mile when all is said and done. But that’s ok! It makes me happy to pause and let him just enjoy sniffing a pole, a flower, the grass…. this is his one, simple little life, and his walks are probably a real highlight of his days. Anyway, what’s the big rush? 🙂
My solo walk was really enjoyable too, though! I listened to a good podcast ep and it was nice and sunny and summery out at 5:15 p.m., which somehow felt pleasantly hot and sweaty while walking (though I know if I had been running it would have just felt really hot).
Guess I’ll have to make a point to ditch Charlie a few times a week maybe?
Then we went to a later dinner at Texas Roadhouse, Ethan’s choice. Originally he wanted Red Robin for burgers, but then decided he wanted Texas Roadhouse. Okay! His birthday, his choice!
We went just the 4 of us and it was a really nice evening. 🙂
I feel like we do less of these “just the 4 of us” meals out nowadays. Many times when we go out my parents are along, which is awesome, but also then it means dinner conversation for a group of 6 often morphs a little more into “adult conversation” on one end of the table and the boys kind of on the other. Or, even more commonly lately, the boys are either busy/don’t even want to go and it ends up being just me and Ivan!
Saturday
Saturday I was gone all afternoon with Asher for a swim meet in Appleton (~1.5 hours away) and we had to leave by noon.
Ethan had to work, and then Ivan and I spent the morning doing some household chores and I ran a couple errands. Our house needed a cleaning and all of our bushes outside needed trimming and our deck needed sweeping and there were cobwebs accumulating on the siding by the outside doors…. seems like it’s always something.
For some reason lately it has felt harder and harder to keep up with our basic cleaning, which I don’t fully understand since the boys are older and they legitimately help more now AND also make generally way fewer messes.
Not sure if it’s that my work has been more intense/ less flexible this last year or so, so maybe I’m squeezing in fewer bits of household maintenance during work breaks? I’m not sure. We’ve never had house cleaners, but lately I’ll admit we’ve been toying with the idea. But then again, our house isn’t that big and there are 4 of us able-bodied people here and it seems like this should be do-able and I’d rather not add another fixed expense if I don’t have to.
I guess my biggest pet peeve is that by the time we do the “regular cleaning”, it eats up any time that I might have been able to devote to more “projecty” stuff, like cleaning out our storage room, closets, decluttering, or other bigger maintenance projects like repainting our front door trim, which badly needs it. After the regular cleaning (and grocery shopping, etc….), I’m usually tired and not like, Ok! Now that THAT’S all done, it’s time to dive into the storage room too! You know?
Anyway, Ivan handled cleaning the kitchen/main level this time, which is the heaviest lifting at our house, and I headed off to Appleton with Asher.
It was a loooong afternoon. Left home at noon, stopped to pick up some subs on the way, drove 1.5 hours, arrived by 2:00 for warmups, meet didn’t start until 3:15, and it was slated to end by 7:30 p.m., then drive home.
It was HOT and humid and was a rare outdoor meet in a 50 meter long course pool. During warmups I went for a walk (before I felt like I was going to melt), and then retreated to stretching out on a blanket under a big shady tree with a book. (Which actually felt highly luxurious! I intentionally avoided eye contact with other parents because I wanted to sit alone. 😆)
But I did come prepared with this:
Mosquitoes have been SO BAD lately, thanks to sooooo much rain this summer. And very hot, humid weather recently. Thankfully, there was a bit of a breeze, so all I really needed was one Off wipe and I was okay.
A huge storm moved in in the evening which ended up cutting the meet short, too. He only got to swim 2 out of his 3 events. 😦
We made a mad dash into a mall for dinner and then had to sit and wait for a really long time while torrential rain and flash flooding and lightning occurred. Yay.
Eventually it lightened enough that I felt mostly comfortable driving, but it rained pretty hard the ENTIRE drive home (and I was on very dark, country type highways where I could barely see the lane lines…. fun times). On the plus side, we were treated to some really spectacular lightning shows as we drove. 😬 I think we got home just before 10 pm.
Sunday
On Sunday my parents came to celebrate Ethan’s birthday! We were originally going to grill out, per Ethan’s request, but I was tired from the long day Saturday, and we ended up just deciding to go out to Red Robin instead. (That was his original b-day request before he switched to Texas Roadhouse, so this way he got both of his choices in one weekend and bonus, we didn’t have to do any food prep/ clean up at home.)
Besides another big storm rolling through while we were at dinner, forcing us to sit and wait longer than planned, it was a great night!
Back at our house we did pie and presents.
Our big gift to him was a new bike! He BADLY needed one. His old bike was now comically small for him. So now he has this nice, adult sized bike that should hopefully be our last ever “new bike purchase” for him, since I think this size should last long term!
His main gift from my parents was a pair of Birkenstocks!
Besides Crocs and socks, Birks and socks seems to be the other “high school boy staple”, at least around here and in his circles. He already has well worn and well loved Crocs, so I guess now he’s all set. Ha.
BIG DAY Monday
And then, we finally got to Monday. The day he had been waiting for!
His driver’s road test.
😬
It was at 9 a.m. Monday morning. He was annoyed because we hadn’t been able to secure a time slot on his birthday on Friday… We scheduled it back in May, but I guess we were still a little too late as Friday was full.
I won’t keep you hanging: he passed!!
Here he is waiting in the Road Test Parking for his evaluator to come outside. I waited a little nervously inside for the 15 minutes.
Fortunately, she said he did great! No automatic fails (thank goodness- that was our biggest fear, some sort of random auto fail) and he only lost 3 points out of 25. (1 of them was for not using his turn signal at the end when turning into the parking spot….Do I signal there? I’m not sure. I feel like probably only if there is someone riding my tail and/or coming from opposite side and I want to show them hey I’m going for the spot on the left so don’t even think about it!)
He was thrilled! He’s now a full blown, licensed driver!!!
I was excited for him, of course. But also…lots of other emotions. Namely, PANIC. haha. Just kidding. I guess more like, nerves.
I know there is never a guarantee he is 100% safe when he’s in any car, whether I’m driving, or Ivan, or anyone else. But I feel like him driving around solo = a big loss of control on my end! I can’t tell him to “watch that car on the right” or warn him of a pedestrian or remind him to go easy on that tight curve. I guess that feels scary to me. We’ve done what we can on our end (helping to teach him, practice, etc.) and now we just have to sit back and pray and basically hope for the best! 😬
He did a couple short drives here in town both Monday and Tuesday, and today he actually made the big ~30 minute drive to/from his high school for summer soccer practice (involving several interstates…).
I was extra nervous about this. We talked as a family and debated if he should even do this yet, but ultimately decided to let him go. He has driven this drive a lot (with us), and he’s going to need to do it for school every day in less than a month. The practice today was mid-morning, so non-peak traffic time (a good place to start).
But still, part of me cannot believe that he’s driving this drive already! I mean, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said HELL NO. (You might recall I was freaking out about him riding with another new driver just last June on this exact drive, and now here we are, letting him do the same thing. I guess it’s a testament to trusting the process and slowly but surely growing up along the way….)
He’s a good, cautious driver and we’ve seen no reckless behavior of any kind. Obviously, inexperience is my #1 concern, but unfortunately, really the only way to gain more experience is by…. driving.
I am so glad he had the full calendar year with his learner’s permit. We will definitely be having Asher get his right away too when he turns 15 in December. The more practice, the better!
Despite being mildly freaked out by all of this, I am already seeing some benefits to having another licensed driver. Haha. Today I just sat here and worked while he went off to soccer and back, and then again while he drove himself to and from work. Yesterday he ran Asher over to a local community building to pick up a waterpark ticket he needed for a swim team outing today.
As a WFH parent, summers have always been a bit tough (so many interruptions!), but I have a feeling they are about to get a lot less tough here all of a sudden! Woohoo! (But still, 😬😬)
Parents of new drivers… how long til the nervousness goes away?? (My coworker, who has college aged/adult kids, told me today, “I don’t think it ever really does. Maybe that’s why my 80 year old dad always still tells me to “drive carefully”, and I still check my 20-something kids’ locations to make sure they arrived safely…).
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful Ethan passed his driver’s test on the first try! And that he has approached all of this responsibly and maturely.
GRATEFUL KAE 
I don’t know if your paid work has gotten more inflexible but I do know that back in October you had a very cute increase to your home workload. I’ve had a very hard time keeping up with the cleaning since we got our very cute increase to our home workload in January. And exactly what you say – I feel like time spent cleaning is taking the place of everything else in my life, and I’ve never felt that way before now. Now mind you I’m a long way away from wanting to pay someone to clean my house, I’m just at a place where I want to complain about it.
I’ll let you know when I get comfortable with the kids driving – since it hasn’t happened yet. But the way to get comfortable is for them to have more time behind the wheel…
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That’s true!! Why do I always forget about the impact of Charlie!! haha. I don’t think he actually MAKES messes (and he doesn’t shed, so no fur etc to clean), but I think he just dominates all little snippets of free time. Now I’m probably outside with him or walking him instead of doing little bits of housework, I suppose.
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can I say I really miss your daily posts Kae?! I know you’ve been busy, life just gets busier with all the kids related things. Big congrats to the new driver! He looks so professional! But I get the feeling that it’s never going to feel non-anxious around kids driving. They’ll be our baby forever no matter their age.
Such an enjoyable walk with Charlie. don’t worry about the pace, it’s really the experience of walking outdoor that is so beneficial.
birks!!!! I want to buy it for husband and Sofia, but both said too expensive to justify. They don’t know what they are missing out. I just replaced one of my pair when I went to the US. I live in it.
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I know, I miss having more time to write more frequently too! I feel out of the loop on a lot of other peoples’ blogs too… I have been reading quickly on my phone but haven’t had as much time to engage/ read all the comments, so I miss that too. 😦
I know, I used to have Birks a long time ago and was thinking about getting some this summer…. Ivan thinks they’re ugly, haha, so I don’t have to worry about him wanting any. But now that Ethan has some, not sure he’ll want to match his mom! lol!
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Congrats Ethan! I can answer that question – the nervousness does go away. I only low-key occasionally worry now, like if there is a giant snowstorm or something. My kids just drove from Kelowna to Calgary and back together, that’s eight hours on the highway through the mountains and I will say I DID NOT WORRY ONE MOMENT. Of course, they’ve had their licenses for a while now (they are 20 and almost 19). The first little while after they get their license is the worst, but then things ease up. So not to worry, that will come! It helped for me to think of myself at that age, and know that the kids were ultimately good drivers and things would be fine.
My walk pace with Rex is similar to yours! Sniff sniff sniff, etc.
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It’s good to hear eventually the nervousness fades! I mean, I feel like driving + cars is always a risk and is inherently something that makes me nervous, for anyone I care about, but hopefully with time I will think about it less at least. I think what just freaks me out is that it’s like, all it takes is ONE wrong move!! I have tried to impress upon him that you can’t let your guard down, not ever, basically for the rest of your driving life!
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CONGRATULATIONS ETHAN!!! Yes, it will ease your workload a lot and yes, you will be nervous! I’m still a little nervous when my son is out driving around (although, he drives at school all the time and I don’t even think about that- it’s only when he’s driving here that I worry.) Look at it this way- he’s probably LESS likely to get into an accident than someone who’s been driving a long time, because he’s being extra cautious.
I agree that your Charlie walks should be as leisurely as he wants! Those walks are all about him. It would be mean to rush him along.
I don’t know what the answer is about cleaning. I also find that I’m struggling just to keep up with the basics, which then leaves no time/energy left over for any projects. And yes, there’s always SOMETHING crumbling to pieces- owning a house is a big, non-stop job.
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I’m glad to hear it’s not just me with the cleaning!! Why does it seem to be so complicated?! And I’m also glad to know you don’t worry so much about your son anymore. It is interesting how we kind of ease into things, though. I mean, I’m still really on edge about it, since it’s very new, but a year ago I thought I would be freaked out to the point that I maybe wouldn’t be able to let him do it! I guess seeing the progression and how he learned, and improved, little by little has helped to make it seem more okay. I think my issue is that I feel like there are plenty of times when I’M out driving and I’ll feel like, Oh, that was a tricky move! Or that guy just cut me off. Or, I had to make a quick decision, or brake really hard, Etc. And I feel like, I’ve been driving for over 20 years! And I still find it “challenging” some days, even though I feel like I’m a strong, experienced driver. So I think that’s what mostly makes me nervous…. I’ll think, would he have been ready for that situation?!
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I loved this post. Charlie! Ethan! Your lovely reflections on life. I agree with Coco that I miss your more frequent posts, but you know what LIFE GETS BUSY!
Your kids just seem absolutely delightful and such responsible, kind, and genuinely interesting human beings. And that’s wonderful.
I am already nervous about the whole driving thing, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And it’s so true that the only way to gain confidence is to drive a lot, but that’s terrifying!!!!!
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Yep, like you commented once so astutely recently on one of my posts, I think I have a tendency to try to fit too much in sometimes! So I guess sometimes blogging has to go. 😦 But it ebbs and flows and some weeks I have more time than others. The nice thing is, there’s no “rule”. 🙂
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Congrats to Ethan! My parents were thrilled when one of us got our license as that meant less shuttling around of kids. I am sure they were less thrilled for some of my siblings but I had Ethan type of energy – very responsible, etc – so it was nothing but positive for my parents. But I got my license at 15! I could have gotten it at 14 but my parents made me wait a year. In ND you could get your license at 14 which is bananas.
I totally see the allure of the cleaning person and I wish Phil would concede on this but he just won’t so he continues to fit cleaning in when he can, which is typically during downtime on a Friday or when I have the boys out of the house on the weekend. I think our time is worth too much to spend it cleaning. We don’t have a lot of free time between work and caring for the kids so I would rather not spend that precious time cleaning when we can easily afford a house cleaner but Phil has an issue with paying people to “clean up our messes.” So it’s more a philosophical view than a financial one.
Love the flashback photos of the boys!!!!
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Driving at 14 is crazy sounding!!! Asher is 14 1/2 and he is excited to be able to get his temps this winter. I mostly feel like…ughhh we just did all of this, and now we have to start over from the beginning again with another one! haha.
Yeah, I think I’m with Phil in that it’s sort of a philosophical thing for me. It’s not that much money and we could afford it too, but I just feel like it’s sort of a “waste” of money, I guess. Like, yes, I know it would be time back so maybe a good use of money, but like, there are lots of things that I HAVE to spend money on, like, car insurance, or the electric bill. A cleaning bill is an OPTIONAL bill, and I get stuck feeling like we “should” be able to manage this, so then isn’t it just a waste?? haha.
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Any walk without the dog is a wasted walk. LOL. I had to go to the post office and library earlier this week and I walked there without the dog and it felt so weird.
I was the type of teenager who really hated driving and didn’t like to practice and it wasn’t really until I left for college that I was driving regularly. Talk about jumping in with both feet. I think it’s better now with the graduated license system and I am happy that it reassures parents and new drivers as they build up their driving skills!
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It did feel weird to be out walking without him!! lol! When I left he was outside on the leash with Ethan and he was looking at me like, hey, where are you going?
I agree- the graduated license thing is good. At first when I heard about it I was like, what?! They want to let them drive at only 15??! (Was 15 1/2 when I was a kid.) My first reaction was that that was way too young. But then when I realized, oh wait, this means they’ll now have a full YEAR to practice driving, instead of only 6 months, it made more sense and I agreed it was a good thing.
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NO, NO, NO. I refuse to think about any of my kids driving. Or dating. They are not doing either until they are at least 35. Right? Right. LOLOLOLOL
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! HAPPY licensed driver day!!! All of that is amazing but, Kae, how can you not cry? Or maybe you did, I don’t know…
Cleaning section of your post… I can SO relate. We outsourced the lawn, why can’t we outsource the inside, too?… Especially when we are both working September to June… The cleaning rates for our house (3,700 sq feet) are $300 per clean plus which is fair but I just want to faint when I think of spending this much money on a cleaner…
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Congratulations again to Ethan. So wonderful that you got to celebrate with family this weekend. And that’s a nice looking bike!
Also, congrats to him for passing his driving test. I can understand that you have mixed feeling about him being able to drive … what a bitter-sweet milestone.
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