dancing_crow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancing_crow) wrote2011-04-20 09:49 am
dancing_crow) wrote2011-04-20 09:49 am
(no subject)
It is vacation week, and I am coated in children. We had some of Alice's friends for supervised foolishness (photographic scavenger hunt, homemade pizza, walk to town to choose videos and candy, stay up-but-not-too-late to watch and then pancakes for breakfast) Monday and Tuesday, then Alice slowly succumbed to a headache last night complete with weeping and puking. If she is OK this morning, it was a migraine. If she continues wibbly, it is illness and I don't ride today.
Aerin has a boyfriend.
Just typing that makes my heart contract with love and fear.
They've been friends for almost two years. I think, personally, he's been angling at her for almost that long. Last week she said "Jared and I think we are maybe going to start dating." and I say that sounds like a lovely thing, how does she feel about that (how proud of that response am I?), and she kind of shrugs that question off, and smiles, and says "how should I tell dad?" and I wabble my eyebrows because, yanno, he isn't that hard to talk to, and she says "to maximize the head popping off potential of this moment" and grins an evil grin and I figure she is Just Fine Thankyou if her biggest issue is how to get the largest leap of panic from her dad.
(this was actually a lot of fun thinking about ways she could poke at her dad's paranoia, like skirt-to-Here plus unbuttoned-to-Here so he could say "you're not going out of the house looking like that", or Alice asking about dating so he could state that Aerin has to have a date first [see also Ten Things I Hate About You] or Aerin asking about condom sizing, or.... We had a very silly day texting ideas like that back and forth.)
Monday he came over and they flew kites. Then she went to his house and together with another techy they made flamethrowers. I think. She wasn't clear on the details.
As a parent, what I worry about most is that someone will break my kid in a way she hadn't guarded against.
Aerin is not the kind of person who worries about heartbreak, so that is what I worry about for her. She will defend herself vigorously against physical things, and mental bullying. So I am less worried about this than I might be. Plus, I like him. He's a nice kid - another theater tech kid, someone who has liked her for a long time, someone she's already good at talking to about things other than the relationship, a shared sense of humor and curiosity. It could all be so much worse. (there's restrained enthusiasm for you)
So. life in the parent mines.
Aerin has a boyfriend.
Just typing that makes my heart contract with love and fear.
They've been friends for almost two years. I think, personally, he's been angling at her for almost that long. Last week she said "Jared and I think we are maybe going to start dating." and I say that sounds like a lovely thing, how does she feel about that (how proud of that response am I?), and she kind of shrugs that question off, and smiles, and says "how should I tell dad?" and I wabble my eyebrows because, yanno, he isn't that hard to talk to, and she says "to maximize the head popping off potential of this moment" and grins an evil grin and I figure she is Just Fine Thankyou if her biggest issue is how to get the largest leap of panic from her dad.
(this was actually a lot of fun thinking about ways she could poke at her dad's paranoia, like skirt-to-Here plus unbuttoned-to-Here so he could say "you're not going out of the house looking like that", or Alice asking about dating so he could state that Aerin has to have a date first [see also Ten Things I Hate About You] or Aerin asking about condom sizing, or.... We had a very silly day texting ideas like that back and forth.)
Monday he came over and they flew kites. Then she went to his house and together with another techy they made flamethrowers. I think. She wasn't clear on the details.
As a parent, what I worry about most is that someone will break my kid in a way she hadn't guarded against.
Aerin is not the kind of person who worries about heartbreak, so that is what I worry about for her. She will defend herself vigorously against physical things, and mental bullying. So I am less worried about this than I might be. Plus, I like him. He's a nice kid - another theater tech kid, someone who has liked her for a long time, someone she's already good at talking to about things other than the relationship, a shared sense of humor and curiosity. It could all be so much worse. (there's restrained enthusiasm for you)
So. life in the parent mines.