Some belated Valentine's day treats made by Gigi and E 

and a random thought on parenting...

Do you know I would be a terrible single parent?

Like ter...ri...ble.

I'm not knocking single parents, mind you. I think they are incredibly capable and brave people. I am just saying I am not one of them.

This I know.

Doing double duty? 

Yeah. Not this girl.

Maybe, you know, if I had to. But things would probably get ugly lop-sided. Ugly fast.

Maybe it's "Mommy guilt". Or maybe it's thinking too much. Or maybe it's having read an improbable amount of parenting books.

I don't know.

But I tend to approach most situations where E is concerned with a how-can-we-minimize-the-risk formulation.

My husband by contrast?

Well, his middle name is risk.

Case in point?

Training wheels. He took them off E's bike when she was barely 4. And you know what? She was ready. 

Another case in point?

The TV remote. He felt E needed to learn how to use it. I myself would have been fine running into the family room every 5 minutes when she needed help with volume or pausing something or even opening the DVD tray. After all, we didn't need anything getting reprogramed or reset to Spanish or something. But once again, she was ready.

And just recently?

 Math grades. Since we are homeschooling and she's an only child and easily moved to tears when things like subtraction don't come as easily as, say, addition I figured we wouldn't do letter grades. Or percentages. We could even say we were just being all modern and non-traditional about it, if we felt like explaining it away. But Josh apparently felt different. Or maybe he had no feelings at all. One day he simply explained to her the concept of getting 100% on her math pages; meaning not making any mistakes. And since then it has become a daily challenge for E. A successful challenge. She does so much better because she knows we are keeping track.

Novel, huh?

Not really. That's how grades work. I thought the risk of discouragement would outweigh the benefit of self-competition but I was wrong. 

Maybe I subconsciously bought into the whole self-esteem thing?

Then again, maybe not.

As I said, I am just always looking to minimize the risks.

But life is a risk.

Certainly being a parent is. Whether you are solo at it or not.

I'm just so thankful I have a partner who does the whole, rhetorical "what's the worst that could happen?" thing a heck of a lot better than I do.

Or E would probably have training wheels forever.