Getaway

Silje and I took a little weekend trip this last week.  It was the one last getaway off the farm before spring planting starts.  We drove some hours to the Mall of America in the Twin Cities, and there we went to the American Girl store, and the the crowning activity: the gorgeous aquarium they have in the basement of the mall.

I haven’t ever done any trip like this before.  I’ve never just singled out one of my kids for a treat this massive.  It’s something we were planning to do, though, since she was a little baby.  Silje is turning 10 shortly, and is one smart girl.  I guess I think of all of my kids as “kids” but Silje is shortly a pre-teen.  I didn’t put much stock in it, or even think of it until I started seeing the bigger mood swings in her, and seeing her searching for sleep more often, and start getting so tall.  She’s still such a baby in my eyes, but I want to be careful not to treat her as such.  Also, I don’t want to treat her like a grown up when she is still so much a child, even though she has such an old soul.  Talking with friends of mine with teenagers, I asked them if I was seeing things.  Could all of this really be starting this young?  My friends gave me a resounding “yes!”

This awful balancing act of give and take, withholding, pushing forward… I’m told is only going to get harder, and only going to get worse before it gets better.  I’m determined to make the most of it.  I’m determined to give a lot of grace, because I know that personally, I will mess up a lot and will need it as thickly as she will.  We want to do a trip like this for each of our kids when we start to see the pre-teen attitudes emerge, and we can have lots of long talks about emotions, dating/courting, responsibility,  independence, authority, and basically together coming up with a mutual agreeable plan in which we keep communication open, and conversations common.

We spent a lot of time talking, but mostly we just had fun together.  She’s been craving that so much.  We did some shopping, ate out a lot, and visited as many animals as we could.  It totally filled her cup.

I was so proud of my girl as she took me around the aquarium, explaining to me the names of all of the species, and interesting facts about each one.  For instance, in sea horses, the mom give all the eggs to the dad, and he carries all the eggs “to term” in his pouch.  As I’ve stated before, she reads an insane amount of biology books, and marine biology is one of her favorite kinds of biology.  She told me how rays and starfish eat, and why the sharks were behaving as they do.

We got there about way before they even opened, and I think they may have let us in early because we had the place nearly to ourselves for a good 30 minutes.  That was really neat.

We signed up ahead of time for a behind the scenes tour, for which I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera along.  It was just amazing.  We saw the “time out tank” where animals that are bullying other animals or humans are put for a month or two.  There was a giant sea turtle in there at the time, thinking about his behavior.  We do the same thing with our chickens when they misbehave.

We got to see the prep kitchen where all of the animals’ food is prepared, and the big wall chart with the names of each animal, showing which animal gets which food and how much each day.  When the tour guide asked the people on the tour to guess what they fed the jellyfish, Silje raised her hand and guessed a certain species of plankton.  The tour guide said, “Good guess, but try again.”  So Silje raised her hand again and named off some other species of plankton.  (I say other species, because I couldn’t even name you one species of plankton to even write here.)  The tour guide said, “No, but those are great guesses, and I can’t believe you actually know the names of all of those species!”

It was at that point that I realized I’m raising Hermoine from Harry Potter.

(For those wondering, the aquarium grows “sea monkeys” to feed to the jellyfish.)

The weekend was not without meltdowns as the big mall is full of repeated “No.” answers from me to her.  There is so much to do there, so I felt as though I said “no” the whole first day, over and over again.  That was really hard.  We had talked about a loose schedule and basic expectations for the trip before we left, but she hadn’t prepared for all the overwhelming options once we got there.

Since I grew up in Denver, then Phoenix, and lived for a time in Chicago and Minneapolis as an adult, big cities and big malls like this don’t intimidate me.  I did notice for the first time that while I’m a city girl, my kids are country kids.  Silje couldn’t get enough of the escalators.  She wanted to go on every escalator in the mall, and I’m pretty sure she would have been happy if we did that all day.

On realizing that she was so unfamiliar with the city, I took the opportunity to teach her some basic self defense moves, and practical suggestions for if she ever went to college in a big city.  For instance, always have your keys in your hand when going out to a parking lot.  Don’t get to your car and start searching your purse.  That way you have your panic button handy, and the keys make a great weapon if needed as well.  She thought that was pretty funny.  That brought her mind to the idea that should we ever get a black kitten on the farm, she wanted to name him “Ninja.”

She also wanted to chop off her long, nearly waist length hair for the second time in her life.  I got a haircut too.  My hairstylist made Silje laugh out loud a few times.  He was a pretty flamboyant fellow, and super nice.  He had tattoos all over, colored hair, and ear holes stretched out large.  He was really funny.  Silje’s hairstylist was this Barbie-doll look alike, with platinum curls and gave Silje some great tips for dealing with her thick hair, and made some suggestions to alter Silje’s cut out picture of what she wanted her hair to look like.  Explaining that Silje’s hair is so thick, and has a strong wave, she talked Silje into keeping her hair at least shoulder length (Silje was thinking more of a short bob), and she added some nice layers as well as thinned it a bunch.  It’s gorgeous.  I just haven’t caught a picture of it yet.  (Sorry, Mom!)  Silje is very pleased with the result.

My hairstylist asked Silje where she went to school, and she explained she was homeschooled.  He gave a typical response, “I think I really would have liked being homeschooled.  I’m all for it in many respects.”  Then he turned to me, “But don’t you worry about her not having any friends, or being a little weird?”  That’s when Silje laughed out loud.  “Um…I have friends! [mom’s note: she obviously has ears too!] You can find friends in lots of other places besides school.”  None of us mentioned the irony of a so obviously counter-culterual soul doing his own thing, worried about our counter-culteral lifestyle or her turning out “weird.”  I hope she didn’t make him feel too bad.  She got quite the kick out of that.

Ingrid did a terrible job for Knut at home.  Neither of them got much good sleep over the weekend.  She got a runny-nose cold and just wanted Mommy.  Both of them were very eager for Silje and I to get back.  Ingrid doesn’t like me getting out of her sight now, and has started getting really clingy when she’s tired.

All of us (besides Knut of course) still see the chiropractor monthly due to our car accident last summer.  Our appointment was yesterday and all the kids were pretty stiff for it.  I’ve noticed that all of us start falling apart the last few days before an appointment, from migraines, sleeplessness, constipation, or just aches all over.  So I know we still aren’t fully well.  Monthly appointments are manageable, though, so I’m thankful for that.  It was probably not good judgment to leave Knut with Ingrid the tough last few days before her adjustment, which are the worst, but they made it.  We’re all feeling better now, and will hopefully be able to rest better soon.

It was a trip that I hope both of us will remember forever.