What's a girl to do?

My 6th grade daughter, Paige, is an avid reader of my blog. She reads everything I write and tells me exactly what she thinks. This is good for me because knowing she is part of my audience helps me edit myself appropriately. I keep the mindset that everything I write should (for the most part) be kind and respectful of others -- especially my children and husband.

What Paige also does, is keep track of how many posts are about Taryn compared to her and Carter.  And, well, I haven't been exactly equal in my representation.

The truth of the matter, as I explained to Paige, is that many of the things she is experiencing as a middle schooler and the conversations she and I have, while blog worthy, are also kind of private.  I don't want to embarrass her and she understood.

However -- I am putting aside my concern of embarrassing her for the moment because this just made me giggle!

I should start by telling you that Paige HATES talking about boys.  She has not entered the stage where boys are cool -- at least she won't yet tell her mom she thinks boys are cool.  And I am absolutely fine with this.  I talk to enough 12-year-old girls in my work at the HopeLine that are WAY to wrapped up in boys and what they think, resulting in really stupid and sometimes harmful behavior.  However, I do keep telling her that I think it is O.K. to be friends with boys.  But she doesn't seem interested in even that.  Which I don't exactly understand, because many of the guys in her class she has known since she was in diapers.  They have gone to nursery together, had play dates as two-year-olds, gone to Sunday School and school together.  Yet the other day as Paige and I were walking down the hall together to go to Carter's basketball practice and we passed 5 guys from her class, I say "Hi guys," while she looks at the floor and they look embarrassed.  It's an interesting age to say the least.

Now that you understand Paige's sensitivity to absolutely anything suggesting she might like a boy, perhaps you will find this little scenario as funny as I did.

Last Sunday at church there were two baptisms -- so the church was packed full.  We were running late, as usual, and for some reason I was even farther behind than the rest of my family.  When I find the pew that my crew is sitting in, I realize that there is really only room for the four of them, they have not saved a place for me.  But now that I'm down at the front of the church, I really have no where else to go, so I squeeze my little behind down between Paige and Taryn pushing Paige shoulder to shoulder with a visiting boy of her age.  I was surprised she didn't jump up right there and make me trade places with her, but she kept a level of maturity about her and just sat there...trying not to graze hands with him.  When it was time to greet those around us, he turned to her and shook her hand.  A little later he even offered her a piece of candy which she politely declined.  It was all I could do to keep a level of maturity about me -- I could tell she was ready to just shrivel up in her seat.  At one point...as my claustrophobia was rising...I whisper to her "I need more room."  To which she gives me an exasperated look and whispers back "I'm already touching his shoulder!"  And that was it...I started to giggle.  Paige gave me an elbow to the rib which helped me pull it together.

Needless to say, it did not go unnoticed by Paige's fellow classmates that she was sitting shoulder to shoulder with a cute 12-year-old boy.  She took a fair amount of teasing.  Oh, the joys of middleschool.  What's a girl to do?