Category Archives: Child Wrangling
Breath held, eyes closed
When I ask you to do something and you’re willing, you sing back to me, “Oak-kay, Mommy Day!” A nicer song was never sung.
When I ask you to do something and you’re unwilling, you brace yourself, and enunciate each word, “Mommy, I heer jew. One meedee.” And usually, after that minute you comply.
You think it’s funny to say that your stuffed alligator says, “Meow.” And that your stuffed elephant says, “Meow.” And that your baby doll says, “Meow.” But you named them all “Poe.” I don’t understand you, kiddo. And I dig that about you.
When you want something right now, you tell me, “Mommy. Look me eye, Mommy.” It’s nice of you to tolerate me and to use such compelling ways to get my attention.
You spend a week or so screaming in desperate frustration any time your hands didn’t do what you wanted them to. I taught you to ask for help instead of screaming, and now you cheerfully bellow, “HELP, EVEEBODY!” when your train won’t work. Luckily for you, everybody hears you and everybody helps. Nice world, eh, buddy?
You ruin even the best jokes, friend, with your own favorite punchline. “Knock knock,” your brother and I begin. “Who’s there?” someone replies. “POOP!” you shout. Very funny. Very, very funny.
When your brother is mean you pull his hair. When he ignores you, you hit. When he yells at you, you bite. These are not okay, things, Butterbean. Angry is okay, hurting is not okay. That nonsense has to stop.
Thank you for saying “soddy.” It feels nice to hear a sorry.
It’s very nice of you to thank me for the things I do. It’s wonderful of you to use words and ask gently to have a turn. And yes, it’s kind of funny that you insist on locking me out of the car every chance you get.
I don’t know how I’m going to leave you at school tomorrow, sweet cream Butterbug. I know you’ll have fun and you’ll learn new things about how people are different but all like gentleness and kindness. I know you’ll be happy to see me when I come after lunch.
I just don’t know how I’ll do. Aside from the whole “allowing a thought to proceed to completion” thing I vaguely remember from before you and your brother were born.
I think I’ll be pretty much demolished without you. I’ve wanted some space from you since those days at three months that you just screamed yourself purple. But I’ve never followed through with it for more than an hour every six months because I just can’t take it. You’re too little, too sweet, too attached, too new.
You’re my guy. I love love love you. And I’ll come get you after lunch.
Okay, Butter Day?
First day of First Grade
Oh, bloggity blogosphere. Hold me, for I am wrecked.
I wanted everything to go right today. Yesterday Peanut was terrible to his brother, and confessed when I asked why he seemed to bent on emotional destruction that “I’m worried about school tomorrow.”
Of course you are, I said. New people, new classroom, new things to learn. But you know, I reminded him, some of the people will be familiar. We checked the class list together right before dinner and he very much likes three of his returning classmates. We’ve seen the classroom before. And they won’t expect you to be in high school yet. They know what you learned in kindergarten, and they’ll start there for first grade.
It’ll all be okay. Uncomfortable in the beginning, but just fine once you get rolling. Hang in there. Newness fades fast.
And then I set out to make the day a success.I packed his favorite lunch. I gave him his backpack early enough that he could accessorize it with all his hoarder packrat-y bits of fluff and string and old raffle tickets. (Seriously, the kid’s middle name should have been Templeton.) I calculated and recalculated how long it would take us all to get ready, get the bikes out, and ride to school. I checked air pressure and helmet status and bike locks.
I woke early (I swear to Aphrodite, Butterbean, if you keep waking up so early and shrieking at me to get you vitamins, I’m selling you to the gypsies before you have a chance to unleash the Threes on me) and brewed some chamomile for the adorable little cautious and easily unsettled first-grader. I made a lovely breakfast. I kept Butter out of his face.
We made it ten minutes early and met the LOVELY teacher who fawned all over Peanut. Then I walked off with Butter for our first solo date in over a month.
And a few blocks later I sobbed. Walking down the street, toddler in my arms, I was more than a little surprised that I bawled to the tune of “I left my precious baby with someone else. Someone new who didn’t even know yet which of his resistances were based in fear, which stemmed from shyness, and which from assholishness.” Tears streamed down my face as I ordered coffee and a cheese roll for my littlest Little.
—
I got Butter to nap a bit late, but figured I’d wake him early to get his brother. First graders are important, and we must be on time. Don’t forget: first grade gets out later than kindergarten. Don’t forget.
The phone rang half an hour before I was to wake the little guy. (Why do phones only ring REALLY loudly when a small person is napping?)
“Did you know that today was an early release?”
My heart just fell to the floor, bounced twice, turned to crystal, and shattered down the stairs.
“Today is WHAT?!”
Every child in the first grade was taken into the safe, warm, loving arms of a caregiver, except mine.
The new teacher, who knows nothing of my commitment to family, learning, and being ten minutes early to everything, reassured me that Peanut was fine. In the office with our delightful secretary.
I grabbed the sleeping toddler, my keys, and the backpack I needed for our bike ride home. I walked as fast as a human has EVER walked the almost-mile back to my little boy.
Twenty-five minutes late the first day of school. His first experience of being a really big kid. And I screwed it up. Beyond screwed it up.
While I stew in that, I’ll add this tidbit for your information so you can help me pick out the right hair shirt for the next twenty years of self flagellation: Closing up his lunch this morning I wanted to add something extra, in case he was first-day-of-school hungry. Something easy, somewhat healthy, and adored…
A lovely, locally grown, organic apple.
For the kid with *three* loose teeth.
Effing parent of the century, don’t you think?
How Parenting is Like Camping
All the parents who hate the dirt, bugs, and lack of showers implicit in camping already know from the title why having children is like camping. Dirt. Bugs. Lack of showers.
But I feel the need to expand a bit more for those who have not experienced the wilderness joys of small children.
1. If it’s not locked up, wild things will eat it.
My toddler climbing the fridge to eat what’s in the freezer = your teen eating a week’s worth of groceries in one sitting = bears. They all need it, they all want it, and they all *will* get it unless it’s properly stored.
2. You’ll be surprised at the end of a day how much dirt can get on one person.
3. Rain is the least of your worries.
4. You will learn to handle bugs. Don’t care if you like ’em or hate ’em. Children and camping are both inextricably linked with bugs.
4. People tend to plan for the first day (year) and forget to brace for the third. If this blog teaches you nothing else, let it be that Year (day) Three is the hardest.
5. Someone won’t like the food.
6. You’ll get less sleep than you think.
Nope. Even less than that.
7. The fun is exhausting. So are the frustrations. So is the worrying.
8. You can never have too many washcloths.
9. When you forget sunscreen or bug spray, bad things happen.
10. No matter how prepared you are, you’ll forget at least one thing.
11. No matter how many times you’ve done this, at least one really obvious thing will surprise you.
12. Good luck using the phone, shower, or bed.
13. It will be your most ____________ experience ever.
(You fill in the blank. Rewarding? Amazing? Annoying? Memorable? Frustrating? Give me a status update on your camping or parenting below.)
September rituals
When Peanut was born, I vowed to create rituals to mark the passage of the seasons. Hanging peanut butter pine cones for the critters on Winter Solstice. Springtime Egg Hunt on birthdays (because egg hunts only once a year is some bullshit). Heavy drinking and sobbing the penultimate day of school. Stuff like that.
I’m not on top of my game yet, but I’ve been consistently playing around with traditions for summer, winter, spring, and birthdays. I’ve been thinking this week about our Fall events and noticed we need something for September. Peanut, the eldest just started school last year, so I’m new to the signpost of how a new class and teacher colors the rest of the year.
I think we’re going to send letters (actual paper with actual stamps…ask your parents, they’ll know) for the boys as school starts.
When Spouse and I married, we kept the lovely notebook in which our vows were handwritten. We take it out each anniversary and write each other a letter to be read the following year. [Well, we did, anyway. We haven’t since Peanut turned Two several years ago. That’s another problem for another day. See also in the forgotten category: personal grooming, libido, sanity, and ability to think at advanced level. We’ll start writing notes to each other again when the kids are in college, right?]
But I thought that starting a journal of letters we write the boys should be family-heirloom-caliber important. So for birthday, first day of school, and last day of school, we’re going to write a letter to each boy and mail it. We’ll keep a scan of each as a .pdf and make them a book of the images for when they go to college. Or the Peace Corps. Or prison. (Laugh all you want, but if you prepare for everything, steady stress comes from the daily nonsense yet the catastrophic stuff seems manageable. Example? College funds easily transition as use for bail.)
Peanut starts first-grade this week. I’m nervous for him…will The World adore him or abuse and misunderstand him…but not as terrified as I was last year. He can now read a bit, but I’m not expecting him to read these letters from me and Spouse. I’m just hoping to add gravity to the year—to create milestones that don’t exist anymore in our electrically homogenized year. If I can’t get them to bed at 4pm in the winter like agrifamilies did in the 1800s, at least I can write a missive that makes them feel guilty for not appreciating me, right?
Butter starts day care next week. Three times a week for a few hours each morning. I’m devastated. And desperate to blink again. And wrecked. And clawing toward the air. And heartbroken. When words fail me, I steal: “It will work out.” “How will it?” “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” He’s perfect in every way and will do fine. I’m abhorrently flawed and will not. But that is the way of the world, no?
What do you do for the first day of school (or the transition from Summer to Fall if you homeschool)? If you don’t have children, does your year stretch from New Year’s Day to the next New Year’s Day without markers or do you do repeat something special each year to note the passage of time? Which of your rituals may I steal and fold into our family calendar?
Sad-sack-itis
Today, my two-year-old asked for help with his wooden train tracks. His trains were upstairs, his train tracks were downstairs, and he preferred relocating the relatively large, intricately linked and somewhat difficult to move rails to transporting the things on wheels.
Cool. It’s a day, man, and we gotta live it however we gotta live it. Happy to be of service if you’re gonna play and not scream.
So I went downstairs and brought the train tracks up.
When I arrived at the new train station, he said, “You good helper, Mommy. Good helper.”
And I got a little weepy.
Because nobody in six and a half years has told me that I’m a good helper. Or if they did, they used a regular, grown-up voice and verbs in their sentence so I didn’t completely internalize what they were saying. Either way, it felt really, *really* good to be noticed.
So, either I need a job with regular performance reviews again, or I need to hear these wonderful children when they thank me. We all know the appreciation in this job is at best implied and at worst deferred until they have kids of their own and call, weeping with the exhaustion and overwhelming terror of having a newborn, toddler, preschooler, or teenager to apologize for what shits they were as kids and to express their awe at what great parents we were to tolerate them.
So I’ll take my “good helper” kudos and chalk up my points for teaching him to ask for help, appreciate it, and articulate his feelings. Plus bonus stickers for actually *being* a good helper.
Now, where do I turn in these tickets for prizes?
Your baby or your life: wilderness edition
The family and I went camping and as we checked in heard the same dire warnings that we’d heard before: our local bear problems mean lock up every single thing that smells like food. Not in your car, because they’ll claw it apart. Not in your tent because that’s like gift wrap to a bear. If your kids spill, change their clothes and store them in the bear locker. If you have a chance, vacuum out the carseats before you enter the park.
On and on. Lip balm will draw them. A closed can of soda in a car will draw them. Referring to your unsightly waistline as a muffin top will draw them…okay, not that last one. But close.
So we always heed the warnings. Spouse and I watch the kids carefully and pick up every crumb they drop. We put dirty clothes and washcloths in the bear box. We store the bug spray and sunscreen and lip balm in the bear box. We even lock up the backpacks that might have at one time had a cracker in them.
And on night three it occurred to me: I’m still lactating.
I think Butter has weaned. He went from nursing before bed every night to several nights a week to a couple of times a week to forgetting for two weeks to forgetting again for…I think it’s been a month now. I’m a child-led weaning sort, and I don’t offer, don’t refuse. And he’s a toddler, so he’s busy and he forgets and…
What if a bear can smell that you make milk for months after weaning? I’m not kidding. Tiny babies can smell if mama is in the room. Bears are about seven billion times better at smelling.
When my first child was born we visited a wonderful friend. My four-months’ pregnant friend held my four-month-old baby, who took about two minutes before he opened wide and went right for her fully clothed breast. Made a hilarious (or mortifying, depending on whom you ask) wet circle on her shirt.
Because he could smell that her milk had just come in (at about 20 weeks).
If my four-month-old can smell milk through several layers of clothes and unused milk-delivery system, I’m guessing that a bear can smell me through the single-layer-mesh tent windows better than that closed soda in that closed car.
And riddle me this, readers: What week of the month do you think we happened to be camping? I was surprised to find (on day three of the trip) that it was the time during which an old myth holds that women are attacked by bears and mountain lions much more frequently. Blah blah blah pheromones…blah blah blah bleeding…blah blah blah unsubstantiated claims that mostly apply to polar bears.*
Whatever. These wee hour machinations did not inspire relaxed appreciation for the scenery: firmament, heavens, flora, nor fauna.
So now, wide awake at 3am, surrounded by the most beautiful bear country, after three glorious days with my boys and husband, who do you think felt more small and threatened than any woman should?
I lay there, reeking of honeydew ice cream on one end and of sloughed nutrients on the other, desperately hoping I’d live to plan the next camping trip a little better.
It’s rather unfair, I raged, after I spent an hour *terrified* and flinching at every sound. The two things that give me superpowers, the two things that make me the most vital I will ever be in my biological life…those things should not be a life-threatening liability.
I wouldn’t, even if I could, stuff my breasts and uterus into a bear box. I don’t care if the mountain lions and the bears and the wolverines all planned a hunting party with my photo on their usenet.
I can make a human and feed a human. And that means bears will come from miles around to feed on my superhero flesh?
Oh, hell no.
Except there was no “hell no.”
There was a small creature lying next to me who cried, in his sleep, “No! No! Carry!” And he reached his arms toward the sky lit with more enormous stars than I have ever seen in my life. I silently rolled him closer to me and curled around him. Knowing I couldn’t protect him. Knowing that, if anything, my very existence threatened his.
But he twined his fingers in my hair and settled into the warm, sweet baby sleep of a mammal with its mama.
I wanted to sink into our nest.
But his damned breath was so loud I couldn’t listen for bears. I had to choose whether to take this time to be his mama, in all its painful and scary challenges, or to roll away in the name of vigilance and preparedness.
I woke up exhausted and stiff with his fingers still in my hair, hoping the bear would at least wait until I had my patented campfire coffee and cocoa blend.
Sometimes weakness makes you strong. Sometimes strength makes you weak. And sometimes you gotta hope there’s a bumper crop of blueberries, honey, and salmon several miles away.
*Public service note: the myth about bear attacks on menstruating women is patently false. See this article and this study, to which I did not have access in the wilderness, because apparently a wilderness without cell access seems more attractive to nature snobs like me. Must rethink that position next time I’m awake at 3am.
Toddlers are…
Oh, dear sweet Two-and-a-Half. You’re so delicious. What amazing life skills you have developed.
It shows impressive planning skills to wait until Mommy’s not looking and then do what she just asked you not to do. My! Your scientific mind is certainly in prime display while rolling trucks down the stairs. I know I’ve cost you the Nobel in Physics by stopping you. But right now it’s not safe. No rolling trucks down stairs.
Hey. No throwing them, either.
Oh, how clever you are to think of ways to achieve your goals yourself. Yes, the refrigerator handle is a pretty handy foothold when you’re trying to get into the freezer for ice cream. I have an idea, too, that’s probably less to your liking. Maybe ask a tall person for help. I know. That would preclude your eventual gold medal in pole vaulting.
You, sir, model quite impressive forethought and patience to ask for a spoon, then throw food at your brother when I go to get it. And again when I turn to look as the doorbell rings. And again when I close my eyes to sneeze. You’re going to be an internationally renowned ninja master if you can teach others not to blink for fourteen hours, too.
I marvel at how prepared you are, already, for college. How you can sit there an concentrate on carefully removing the screw from the battery door on your train despite having not napped in four days is simply beyond me.
But really, I most marvel at your fine-motor skills. Only an experienced jeweler or a well trained surgeon could take toy pliers and, pinch by pinch, remove most of the potting soil from that palm tree in the living room. And heap it onto the arm of the couch. And call me over, quite proud of your accomplishments. Sorry I gasped and said “uh-oh.” I’m sure that questioning your crowning glory has scarred your for life. But I had to sweep it up. That, my friend, is a no touch.
Even when I’m not looking.
Hey. Did you hear me? Or are your training to be in Congress?
Pitter patter of little feet
My version of heaven:
I’m downstairs, working on my book. I hear Butter wake from his nap, climb out of his newly converted toddler bed, pad to the bathroom, pee, wash his hands, and start walking downstairs.
And it happened today.
Except the walking downstairs part. He played in the sink for a few minutes before I came up to greet and redirect him.
Just when I thought I might lose my mind from the 24-hour-a-day “on” child-rearing status of my brain, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Complete adulthood (for me) is decades away, but it’s there. Hills and valley betwixt there and here, but it’s there.
NB: ten minutes later he was screaming because I gently mentioned that, while lollipops taste good, they’re not really a post-nap snack food. And we don’t have any. Tantrum lasted twenty minutes.
My summer vacation
Things I learned this summer:
1. The lyrics to dozens of classic songs to appease the insatiable children who suddenly want all new songs at bedtime. Songs I’ve memorized include Home on the Range, Do Your Ears Hang Low, Polly Wolly Doodle, There’s a Hole in the Bucket, and I’ve Been Working on the Railroad. Useful for bedtime and ending unwanted adult conversations early, for nobody wants to stay in a meeting with someone whistling Polly Wolly Doodle. All six verses.
2. How to plan, prep, and cook four meals a day without any childcare help, ensuring that my kids won’t kill each other or watch t.v. (Hint: pretzels and hummus for dinner) (Second hint: and lunch and breakfast)
3. The name of every sea creature ever discovered. Go here and print out all the cards. Make your kids cut them out, color them, and play with each other. Mine wouldn’t, choosing instead to make me read each card to them. Over and over and over.
4. Scrivener is exactly what my novel and I needed to be better friends. Editing is proceeding slowly but steadily. In addition to learning how to use Scrivener, I’ve learned how to use it while one of the four yowling creatures in my house howls in a different room. Editing and ignoring: skills from the professional world translating to an investment interval at home. Sounds like someone should update her LinkedIn profile.
5. The name of every type of truck used within a 30 mile radius of our house. Butterbean is keenly interested in trucks in a way that rather devastates my desire to raise the boys in a gender neutral, “everyone likes trucks and trains and fairies and glitter” kind of way. Thankfully, he likes pink trucks best, so I’m not too worried. But my willingness to debate skid steer versus front-end loader, dump truck versus tipper truck rather frightens and annoys other parents. And construction workers. And everybody, really, except my youngest child.
6. Several online recipe sites have the chutzpah to categorize bacon posts as vegetarian, asking me to “try making without bacon for a vegetarian option.” Chef? You and I both know recipes made with bacon taste good. Taking out the bacon means not enough salt or flavor. Please don’t tease me. Create a veggie recipe that stands on its own and take this deliciousness out of the veggie category, ‘cuz you’re just taunting us.
7. Buying local costs a heck of a lot more and involves kids throwing major fits and breaking stuff in public. I’m not saying I’m not willing to have more stress and pay through the nose for that stress; I’m just saying consider that in your self-righteous campaigns about how good it is for my community. Try the tagline, “Buy Local: It’s Good For Everyone but You and You Owe It to Your Neighbors to Subvert Your Needs and Sanity for Your Principles!”
8. Six Year Olds are totally old enough to play Scrabble. Since I had children primarily to have Scrabble playmates, my life is finally beginning in earnest.
9. Returning to fencing at 40 has pros and cons. Pros: great exercise, rare opportunity for intense focus, good reason to ditch Spouse with the kids. Cons: knees, ego, knees.
Thank you PlayMobil for including fencers in the Olympic figures collection. Thanks for giving them foils. Next round maybe add a lefty and a female, please.
I also learned how to remove creosote from a toddler’s nose, how to make cool alka-seltzer rockets, how to fold paper airplanes, how to switch to fluoride-free toothpaste to thwart a goofball toddler, and to never go on a roadtrip with my children ever again.
But the best thing I learned this summer? Scientists can take a huge robot, mount it on a crane, fit it with an ablating laser, fill it with chemistry sets, launch it 350 million miles into space, and land it safely in a Martian crater. I am so gobsmacked by this real and actual fact of intergalactic engineering I have nothing to say. Congratulations JPL, NASA, and scientists everywhere. You rock space rocks.
Looks as though I’m avoiding the dreaded summer knowledge loss. How about you?
Twenty-nine more days
Oh, sure: summer is nice. Long days, bone-warming sunshine, delicious fruit, swimming, and popsicles. Delightful summer goodness.
But you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for counting the days until both boys are in school. 29. If I make it through today.
Butter, our two-year-old, can now handle his own bathroom needs, and his running pronouncements that he’s on the way don’t mean I have to drop everything to help him avert disaster. I finish up my task, then join him for the end-of-task cleaning.
Further, Peanut, the six-year-old, is making frequent, concerted efforts not to beat the crap out of his younger sibling for toddler-esque transgressions.
And they have both adopted several new adorable phrases this summer.
In response to my request that they end play to do something dreadful like eat or go on an adventure, the toddler makes intense eye contact, furrows his brow, and shouts, “Mommy, I heeyo zhou! One moe mini!” So charming. He hears, he acknowledges, he wants another minute. Sure. Can’t wait until you try that on a teacher.
Peanut, the six-year-old, just rolls his eyes at anything I say. He sighs, “Oh, come on,” exasperated with my existence. Clearly I should reconsider my position after such a persuasive argument. I generally tickle him into submission and move on with my day.
He has been particularly moody and mercurial, though, acting out in wildly annoying and nasty ways. So I’ve sought help from my favorite internet and offline opediatric resources. Dr. Sears notes that an angry child is often a forlorn creature whose needs aren’t being met. Easy diagnosism, then: the older one is pissed because he gets very little attention. The younger child is still quite dependent.
But I try. I read a book to Peanut, with Butter whining and shrieking for attention. “Excuse me, but I’m reading to Peanut. This is important to him. When I’m done I’ll listen to what’s important to you.” Textbook response that honors both and should buy me a few minutes. Right?
Yes. Four minutes, to be precise, during which Butter went upstairs and ate a quarter of a tube of toothpaste.
Does fluoride poisoning cut down on sassy comments? If so we might come out ahead on that one.
I tried to give the big guy some soul-food attention the next day by planning and working on a science project with him. Butter made lots noise about needing company while he played, but I told him this was Peanut’s time, and that he could watch or wait to do something together with me in just a few minutes.
Mind you, the kid gets 13.75 of 14 hours a day. Peanut wanted fifteen minutes. Needed it.
So Butter got my stash of chocolate out of the freezer and gnawed happily on it. A lot. I found him standing on the stepstool, freezer door open, half a bar of Dagoba lavender chocolate gone. Quite tidy, for what that’s worth: no chocolate on his face at all. Mad skillz. Hard to criticize the waste of electricity, safety issue, and violation of chocolate privacy.
Yesterday, as I stood watching, the little guy figured out how to climb one of our backyard trees into his brother’s treehouse. Not with a ladder, y’all. We pulled that a year ago so the big guy could have some space just to himself and so the little guy wouldn’t be tempted. But yesterday Butter quickly scaled the tree branches into the treehouse. At age Two. In the giant outdoor playpen we call a backyard, into which I shoo both children each evening so I can make a lightning fast homemade meal.
He was very proud of himself. And yelled at me when I offered to help him down. So I watched and waited, and the second I turned my back he climbed back down and stood grinning, proclaiming, “Me need Mommy…no!”
So we’re looking at 29 days of freezer meals. I guess it’s a good thing Butter made room by demolishing my chocolate.
I’m mean.
Word on the street is that I’m mean. Former employers, current clients, friends, and Spouse haven’t heard this rumor yet, but it’s burning like wildfire through the living room.
The constant accusations from my six-year-old are that I’m mean, not fair, and stupid.
The latte I won’t stand for. He hears, “We don’t say that word. It hurts. You may not call me names.”
The other two, though, get operatic replies.
“You’re being mean, Mom.”
[singing]
Mom, you’re mean
Mom, you’re mean
Mom I can’t bear anymore of this scene.
Mom you’re a brute
Mom you’re so rude
Mom if I ask nicely will you get me some food!
But nay she won’t feed me
And nay she won’t need me
To clean up, for she gives me no toys!
My mom she deprives me
And yes, she derides me
Cuz my mom she is so mean.
The lyrics change each time, but the tune is always catchy with a bit of melancholy. In the song I note how I’m mean for giving him nothing, doing nothinbg, never listening, and making untenable rules.
It’s the rules, after all, that are rendering his life unlivable.
“Mommmmm. You’re not being fair.”
[singing softly] Mom is not fair
Mom doesn’t care
Mom drags me around
The house by my hair!
Mom is so cold
And yes, even bold
As to walk around making
The rules though she’s old!
Mom gives much more
To everyone at the store
Than even to her dear sweet son!
My mom is so bad
It makes me so sad
That I think I’ll get a new one.
The first-grader doesn’t like the fair songs either, though the two-year-old seems to.
I’m sick to death of the word mean. I’m tired of avoiding the “life’s not fair” lecture. I would much prefer a cogent list of grievances and demands so I can carefully consider them and reject them.
Because I’m mean. And not fair.
I blame Costco
To Peanut: I’m glad you got a sleepover with grandma and with it the alone time you crave. You really did not have to spend 24 hours back in three-year-old tantrum land to prove to me that re-entry is so hard. I get it; I’m supportive and understanding. Knock it off.
To Costco: when you say, “Come in; we have nine tires to replace the one you just blew and the three that will soon,” and I come in, then go home for my checkbook because you have a sweetheart deal with KILLING ME that card I only use in emergencies, and *then* when I come back you tell me you can only find three tires? You lose a customer for life.
To tire dealerships within a 20 mile radius: Seriously? I have the most popular car in the area. Surely you knew you’d need four of this size soon. A pox on your auto-service establishments. All seven of them I called.
To my children: I could kiss you on the faces for being patient at the tire store and the other tire store and the mechanic and the knee doctor and the grocery store. Considering the fact that you’re six and two, you were rockstars*. You’re the only group in the whole lot that gets a customer for life.
*Except for Peanut’s 24 hours of age-inappropriate tantrums. And Butter blindsiding me twice in my bad knee while playing a game of “run away from nothing.” Not cool, guys. Not cool. I will forgive you because the tires are on, the knee is healing, and the kitchen is full. And because I have way too much invested in our brand to ditch you now.The Bright Side
You know the upside of having kids shift their internal clocks for summer, going from 7pm-6am mostly asleep to 9pm-5am barely asleep? Absolutely nothing. Sucks rotten eggs.
You know what’s funny about being in the car while one kid screams, “Stop looking out my window! Look out your own window!”* while the second kid just stares across the car at nothing through his brother’s window? Again, nothing. No benefit at all.
*technically, he shrieks, “Peanuh! No look me weendoh! Own weenndoh!”
Wanna hear the silver lining, for me, of children who eat their own weight in watermelon every day? Once you push aside the exorbitant cost of organic watermelon, the sticky pink drips everywhere, the moonscape yard in which every available square inch of planting space is waiting for watermelon seeds to grow, and the pain in the neck of washing and sharpening a huge knife twice daily, the good part is…I don’t know, something about lycopene and prostates. No silver lining for me.
Hey, have I mentioned the great part about having friends who happily let my kid play with their kid, the results of which are 1) happy kids, 2) happy friend who can basically ignore children playing well together and spend a couple of hours doing whatever they want to around the house, and 3) a blissful return to a time when my toddler naps and I have time to write? Well, I just enumerated them, so consider the great parts mentioned.
So the score, if you’re playing along with our Fantasy Humanity League, is Summer 225, Me Infinity. (It’s new math, so let me give you the formula: annoyances are one point per day and time alone in the middle of the day is infinity points.)
How’s your summer score looking? Not that you keep score, of course. But if you did.
Best money I’ve ever spent
1. Online coupon for Scrivener completely overhauls my novel editing process.
Cost: $32 (tax-deductible)
Benefit: New lease on creativity, productivity, and immortality. Joyful hours in which I imported 310 pages of fiction into hundreds of scenes and move them around the way I’ve wanted to since a brilliant friend recommended I buy a giant cork board to index card my scenes. Complete revolution to my writing and editing. Giddy eagerness to tackle an otherwise daunting project. Elated moments of productivity even in the wee hours when I’m usually at diminished capacity.
Thank you Literature and Latte for knowing what writers need and for coding it all into little computer goblins who move words around at my behest.
2. Local grocer has a bottle of organic lemonade on sale. I buy one, freeze into popsicles. My kids, who are used to homemade yogurt and orange juice pops go nuts, sit sweetly together in the shade and eat two popsicles each.
Cost: $0.16 per child (calculated just the juice by the ounce and figured freezer costs negligible since the freezer would be running, anyway.)
Benefit: 30 minutes in which I stripped and washed the car seat covers, vacuumed the car seats (ew), vacuumed the living room, and ripped four CDs.
Thank you Santa Cruz Organic for the $0.64/hour babysitting. I plan to recreate with our overburdened lemon tree and newly minted, knife-accomplished sous-chef six-year-old for improved cost effectiveness.
3. NPR interviews Daniel Pink, and a year later I finally remember to buy his book Drive at a local bookstore.
Cost: $8 something.
Benefit: Interesting research, good writing, and highly useful appendices get me on track for several professional goals.
Go buy his book. Read it. Work through the appendices. Change your work, your life, your family, your employees, your children, your world.
That’s money well spent.
NaptimeWriting 