Monthly Archives: September 2011

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled…

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Taking a rare shower this morning, I forgot where I was and got lost in the warm rainfall.

Then the door banged open and the toddler (whose father was watching, perched on crutches, just out of view) padded into the bathroom over to the stepstool by the sink.

“Tookatookatooka,” he said, pointing at the empty playdough container and Green Toys tea-set bowl full of mutil-colored fist prints he had just put there. Then he marched back out.

A few moments later he was back, with another empty playdough container. He poured the contents of the bowl into the canister. Then from one trademark yellow cup to another. Then he grabbed the lavender, recycled milk jug bowl and scooped some water from the cat’s dish. He poured that water into the playdough sculptures. Seven tiny, newly competent scoops, seven dumps. In silence.

And then he was gone.

Come on, now. How can I long for solitude when there’s that much cuteness in my house?

Now even my spam is insulting me

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I post often about awesome spam, befuddling spam, and pathetic spam.

This is a new high in spamming. Behold, the (poorly written) smackdown spam:

“The following time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I imply, I know it was my choice to learn, but I really thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you would fix if you happen to werent too busy on the lookout for attention.”

I’m pretty sure, if I parse the terrible English properly, that said spammer just called me narcissistic, disappointing, incompetent, and whiny.

Hey, when did my ex and my relatives start writing spam?

One and a Half

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Dearest Butter,

It will come as no surprise to you, sweet one, that Mama wants to talk with you for a moment….”Hair”? Oh, Butterbean…yes, you’re right, we don’t pull hair. Pulling hair hurts. What I want to…”Bang”? Yes, Butternut, hitting hurts. We don’t bang people. Thank you for remembering this time. I hope you remember next time your brother is in the room….But we’ve already talked about that and the past is past and I love you and…

What I really want to say…”Go”? Yes, honey. We can go for a walk…What’s that sign—tomatoes? To look for tomatoes? Okay…”ground”? Of course, yes, if there’s one on the ground you can squish it. But tomatoes in the neighbors’ yards are just for looking….Yes, like that. Looking. Mmmm-hmmm.

Butterpat, Mama wants to tell you…”Go.” Uh-huh. Yes. Peanut did go. He went to school. Yes…”Cry”? You’re sad? You miss him. You like Peanut. Me, too….Love, the crayons are for coloring, like this….Yes, throwing them sounds interesting. It sure does. Can we try coloring with them?…No, of course not. Silly suggestion.

Butterbug? Can we….Yes, throwing markers sounds different than crayons. Yes. Different. You signed “different.” Markers are different. But babe, can we…Yes, I will help you open that….Here you go….”Grrr.” Yes. Frustrating. You feel frustrated…Yes. Would you like help? Okay. Here are the words: “Mama help.” No? you don’t have to say it, Butterbutton. Okay. Here you go. Lid off.

Now. Buttersmoosh. Mama wants to say…yes, darling, we can go outside. “Outside.” Right. I see you signing “outside.” Do you want shoes? “Na-na-na,” of course not. I should have known better.

Butterbud, please, just looking at tomatoes. Just looking….”Ick”? Yes, dirt. Dirt feels nice. Oh, nice on your toes? Mmm-hmmm….Nice on your whole body, huh? You like to lie down in dirt….Okay…Honey, can we go inside….
Uh-oh. Yes dirt in hands, no dirt in mouth….”Ick.” Yes, that’s yucky. Yucky. Blech…Yes. That’s right. May I tell you….Sign for banana? You want a banana? Okay. Let’s go inside…Oh, honey, why do you have sadness? I just meant for a banana. Bananas are inside. We are outside. If you want to eat a banana, we have to go inside…Oh, sadness. You want outside, not inside. Sad.

Butterbear, chairs are for sitting. I don’t want you to get hurt. Please sit down….Thank you….Butterbutt, please sit so I can get your banana….Okay. Mama’s going to turn and get the banana on the counter…Butterbug, that’s not safe. The dishwasher does look like a ladder, but it’s not. We don’t climb onto counters….Yes, the knives look interesting but they are no touch. Not safe. Hurt baby….Yes, getting down is frustrating. Butter’s angry with Mama. Say, Mama! I want up! I don’t want down!…I know, sweetness….Here’s a bite of banana, and I’d like to tell you…Oh. You didn’t want banana? You throw banana, banana is all done….”Trash”? Yes, it goes to the trash….Wait a minute, did you do that just so you could throw something in the trash?…Butterybubba, we don’t throw food. We eat food. Banana is for mouth, not floor….Sure you can have a bite….Butter. Banana is for mouth. Not for floor….Yes, now it’s trash. No, you may not throw it in the trash….Because I’m going to make Daddy eat it later….”Ick.” Yes, yucky. Yes, germy. Yes, trash….Not right now.

Butterplum, Mama was going to say Happy Half Birthday. Mama was going to say sweet words about loving you. And I will say those things later. But would you please, please, please eat something and nap? You are a whirlwind, you delicious little pat of butter. And Mama needs to sit down.

I bow to you

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Ladies and Gentlemen: let me begin with a nod to all humans who do their best—child-free or parental, gainfully employed or working your bum off for free—I acknowledge your hard work. I know life’s not easy. But I have a special something to say to a few of you…

Dear Mothers with Three Children:
I bow to you. I have recently gone from just-barely-hanging-in-there Mother of Two to no-way-I’m-going-to-make-it Mother of Two plus an immobile Spouse who eats WAY more than a child, but uses his words and can be trusted not to damage any of the stuff in his room if left alone for extended periods of time. Which he isn’t, with the ice and the food and the meds and the requests for a change of Netflix streaming to “I don’t know…what is there?” Three children must be more work, but I don’t know how it’s possible to actually do all that work without losing a limb or a child or your sanity or something. And I therefore bow to you. Namaste.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Mothers of Three Children:
[I reject the stay-at-home designation because it’s code for “easy job” amongst the uninitiated, and because you don’t actually stay at home.] I bow to you and fall over with exhaustion now that I’ve glimpsed one iota of what you do. But three inept people 24-hours with no break and I would. Break. Especially if they were all under 7 or so. Email for a quote of how far back into my head my eyes roll thinking about how you can possibly still stand at the end of the day if your Three are either very young or teenagers.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Single Mothers of Three Children:
I hereby elect you President of the United States. Because being the sole source of everything for three inept creatures with no other adult support IS HANDS DOWN harder than being the leader of the free world. [If you have a chef and a housekeeper and a Cabinet like POTUS does, I disqualify you from this election. Cuz you know nothing about anything and I resent that you tricked me into bowing and then voting for you.]

So I suppose that this is my way of telling the rest of the world that there is a Bermuda Triangle whose delineating points are:
Three Dependent Dependents
plus
No Breaks
plus
No After-Bedtime Partner
that equals the trifecta of Everyone Should Repeatedly Bow to You and Give You Their Spare Chocolate.

And if you live in that Triangle for more than a week, your local bottler and brewer should sponsor your evenings right here, right now. I know the first three drinks are on me.

P.S. Full-time Mothers of Four or More Children: I just passed out from trying to imagine. I’d like to give you all a cyber-nap because without one I’m guessing you’re all dead right now.

P.P.S. Full-time care givers of both small children and an aging parent: I did not forget you, but your situation is not at all funny, and no matter how I wrote this I couldn’t make it funny and I’m sorry that all I can offer you is deep empathy and wishes for all the best. And chocolate. I wish you chocolate, too. But keep it quiet because the Moms of Three think they’re all deserving and whatnot, and who am I to burst their bubble at how easy their lives are, relatively, since I just told them they have me glimpsing how easy my normal life really is, relatively. “Really” and “relatively.” I’ll bet your life doesn’t even allow for words of that many syllables, simple thought they are.

P.P.P.S. I must now go weep that the best modifiers I can conjure are “really” and “relatively.” Seriously.

Enough

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I started running again a couple of weeks ago. I let go of the Shoulds and the Rules I’d constructed around my life and let myself have 20 minutes, three nights a week. Because I need exercise to feel good and I have been denying myself that because there are other, more important things to do. Because I need oxygen to feel good, but I have denied myself that, too, because there are other, more important things to do. I know I need to follow the rhythms of my body, after a day of following the rhythms (often conflicting) of two little people, to feel good, but I don’t let myself because there are things—an endless list of things—to do. I was being self destructive and eating to relax because I can eat while I do at least half of the other things I need to do.

Need. To do.

So I started running. And the first night I went, I relaxed and let go and tried to feel the night and the lights and the air and the PAIN of running after almost a year wash over me. My body has not been my own since I grew Peanut six years ago. And I took one step in getting it back.

At the midpoint of my teeny tiny run I saw a woman laughing near the window of her living room, the walls of which were decorated with exotic percussion instruments. She had her arms over her head, and she was dancing and playing some bell/drum thing. [Let’s pretend I was going so fast I couldn’t quite place the instrument; more likely I was trying to be in the moment and not stare at the neighbors.] And I thought, “That’s what I want in my life.” She looked happy. And comfortable in her body. And she was having fun with music in her home in a cozy neighborhood that I’ve loved for years.

As I ran by she saw me. And stared. Really saw me and stopped to think about it. It was probably only four seconds, but in my head it was forty. And she was thinking, according to my self-doubting Critic brain, “What is that woman doing? Is she really out running and ruining your knees on asphalt, alone, when there is life to be lived? Wow. I can’t imagine.” In my brain she is much more gentle with me than I am, because she probably should have thought “pathetic,” “delusional,” and “clearly unbalanced.”

I kept running, but seeing how this woman spent her 20 minutes this evening had me thinking about how my rejection of my rules, of my shoulds, needed to go even further. I needed to be drumming and dancing and singing. I needed to be happy. I needed to reorganize my priorities and balance my life and don only what’s most important…well, it simply wasn’t enough to work all day, without a break, then run and then write or edit and then clean and then prepare and then start all over again. It was just not enough. I am not Enough. And she’s the one who told me that with her look.

[jump forward one week]

Today after school Peanut and Butter and I went to a playground with two other families. We liked each other, we wanted to see if our kids could be friends, and we wanted some adult company while our kids burned through their after-school energy. So we talked as I chased Butterbean through a creek and across rocks and up hills and after dogs. And when I mentioned where we lived, one of the other moms told me where she lived. I told her that her house was on my new running route.

She looked at me and said, “I knew that was you I saw running. I was in my living room acting like an idiot and I recognized you.”

And there it was. She stared because she knew me. And from that recognition I read judgement and pity and superiority. I told her I thought she was looking because I was pathetic. And now that she knew I had seen her, she quickly tried to couch her reckless abandon as silliness and lunacy when all I had seen was joy and humanity.

The rules and the shoulds and the inferiority and the judgement are there, waiting to sabotage. Waiting to say it’s not enough, whatever it is.

Maybe, every once in a while, we can remember whose rules they are. Because if we’re not Enough we can change, and when we are Enough, we need to see it.

Maybe we could see into our own living spaces with the eyes of a gentle, tired, flawed human and see who we really are.

I’m pretty sure it’s Enough.

***

(This post is being simulcast over at Dump Your Frump, where they believe whatever you do is more than enough.)

Now that’s just delicious…

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Five year old put on the toddler’s socks this morning.

They don’t tend to be in the same moods or on the same planet most of the time; and they are almost never smiling in stereo. So this was, for us, a small moment of indescribable success and joy.

Tack it on yesterday’s mellow morning, full toddler nap, and awesome creek-exploring playdate in the nirvana weather of a Bay Area summer, and we’re building some serious reserves for the next few weeks.

Just in time for Spouse’s surgery and the post-surgical reality of three children in my care.

Wish us more sock and creek and sunshine moments, for we wish you the same!

Flummoxed

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And wangdoodled. And flabbergasted.

Let me ‘splain.

Peanut had a playdate with a friend at the park. They promptly went to their “secret place,” a hedge behind which he and all his other friends hide to pretend they don’t have younger siblings or parents, but do have swords, moats, and dragons.

I kept my eye on them, and they were talking and spying on people.

Fine. So I take Butter down the slide a few times. I overhear something about “and no grownups” and I overhear something about “castles” and I overhear something about “soda.” I’m only concerned his fantasies involve soda, and only because it’s not on my list of approved play time topics.

Kidding.

Kind of.

So Butter and I plant ourselves in the sandbox a few yards from Peanut (okay, 20 yards, but he’s 5 and we can kind of see him). The friend’s mom is hailed by another woman we know, and she heads to the secret place.

And returns, laughing, holding a box. As she gets closer I see it’s a case of Budweiser.

“They found this and were opening the cans and squirting them all over and I tried to take it but Peanut told me it was his and he brought it from home.”

I frown a bit. “I usually give him a 24-pack early in the week, but I doubt he’d have that much left at this point. It’s probably not his.”

She’s amused that I’m playing along. I’m amused that I’m playing along, too. Because by the time she hands off the beer to the rec center staff, eight thoughts have occurred to me.

One, my kid found beer and opened it without my noticing.
Two, he is completely slipping away from me.
Three, it’s all kindergarten’s fault.
Four, it could have been a needle or broken glass or drugs or a gun.
Five, I can’t believe I didn’t check behind that bush before I let them play.
Six, oh my gawd he’s gonna be the kid who gets killed playing with another kid’s gun.
Seven, wow the teenagers around here are stupid.
Eight, and they have really crappy taste in beer.

Clearly, that day we had talks about not touching things you find. And about asking grownups if an unknown something is safe. And about not doing something just because your friends do.
And about what makes a beer worth drinking versus spraying all over the playground.

Oooh, they learn early.

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Me: Peanut! Time for dinner. Please go wash.
P: In a minute.
M: No, sweetie. It’s time to eat.
P: I’m not ready.
M: I am, the food is, the post-food bath is, and bedtime is. We’re all ready. So it’s time to eat.
P: But Mom, I’m reading a book!
M: [fights the parenting kryptonite…and loses] Okay, but come when you’ve finished that page, okay?
P: Maybe.

I really have only myself to blame for this one. I checked into the whole “how do you create readers” and “how do you interest your kids in books” and it turns out that damned habit I have of reading to him, and of staging Spouse with reading material whenever possible has taught the little whippersnapper that we value reading.

Curses! I mean, yay?
Yes. Yay.
Definitely yay.
Except he now wins every debate that ends “but I’m reading.”

Dagnabbit dadburnit daggumit! Outwitted by my own bookish spawn.

It’s almost midnight and not much is well

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Long day, fair readers. Long day. And I can briefly say that Peanut is handling kindergarten well, that he was reasonably eager the first few days of school.

Things are a bit stressful over here, between kindergarten and sibling asshattery and a mountain of freelance work (which I really wanted but which is piling up in my eagerness for work and inability to admit that two very active people demand almost all of my time).

So today I offer you this: someone else’s post. On keeping your cool. On seemingly insurmountable parenting anger and how to manage it. How to keep from sitting up at midnight worried that you’re making horrible, terrible, awful parenting choices. (Actually, that’s not in there. I really wish it were.)

Here. Enjoy. Identify your triggers, let the little stuff go, remember you’re teaching, and don’t take it personally. Thanks, www.mothering.com.