Do people still do Wordless Wednesday? Or do they write a two sentence preamble and then post a photo claiming it’s Wordless Wednesday, though clearly it is just Slightly-Less-Wordy Wednesday?
As long as I’m already ruining the whole Wordless thing, can we get a vote about whether the above depicts conspiring or plotting?
Ah, Seven. The age of testing boundaries, I see. No, you may not demand things in a gruff voice and hope I’ll think you’re adorable enough to give you what you want. You will be ignored and like it, little man, until you can ask nicely. What you practice is what you become, and you’d better stop practicing talking to your family as though we’re fecally constructed. Otherwise you’ll talk to your subjects that way when you’re dictator.
Oh, Three. The age of burgeoning independence. Yes, of course you can do it yourself. I’ve known that for years. But now you end every conversation with, “Mom. I can do whatever I want.” May I just point out how terrifically cute that is, despite its terrible foreboding? You’d better not contract “second child gets away with murder” syndrome, because I can’t bear to know that you’re going to take my car without asking in 12 years and just tell me, sweet eyes shining, “Mom. I can still do whatever I want.” Didn’t you just hear me tell your brother to knock it off? You, too.
I remember when you were both just adorable and needy. What’s up with this capable and sassy authority-defying thing?
Where the heck did you get these qualities? Certainly not from me.
I’m not trying to blame the lows of my day on lack of sugar and crackers.
I’m simply saying that I packed my children’s lunch and gave an egg to only the one who likes hardboiled eggs. Rather on-top of things, I thought. But it was raw. Relatively useless as a protein source, especially since he tends to swing his lunch around and bang it against things.
I’m not saying that my lack of focus today was based in my steely-willed refusal to indulge in my best friend: hot cocoa.
But I did get a scoop of raw almonds in the bulk bins and then walked off with someone else’s cart. And I didn’t notice until I had emptied half the cart onto the checkout belt. Well, okay, more honestly until the cart’s owner tapped me on the sleeve and sweetly indicated her chard and coconut and whatever else. And left me alone to locate my cart. You’d have thought it was clear I needed help. I thought about leaving the boring, dumb old groceries, since they were raw and healthy and lacking in sugar anyway, but I kind of needed to use a coupon before the end of the month.
I’m not blaming my spaciness on the fact that I used up all my attention and energy on fighting urges to eat caramel and then urges to murder anyone who would not give me caramel.
I’m just explaining that when my eldest, the sweet enigma who is so touchingly sensitive and brash and quiet and exuberant and like me and not like me, was telling me how he wrote a story at school in which good conquers evil with Briar-Rabbit-like trickery (despite not yet hearing any of those stories) I quite understandably sliced off the heel of my hand with a cheese plane.
He freaked, I calmed him. Because if you don’t bleed on the Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Co-op’s Dante, everything is good.
I didn’t make it through the day without sugar. I made cocoa. First I tried coconut milk, cacao nibs, and dates. If I had used cacao powder I might have been sated. But it just wasn’t enough. So I mixed fair trade, unsweetened cocoa powder, unsweetened almond milk, and raw, local honey.
And it was phenomenal.
There’s no way I’ll make Intentional Cocoa every day. Tea is easier. But it’s nice to have options. Because I can only pack hazardous lunches, steal people’s groceries, and slice off pieces of my hands so many times before I decide to go back to ordering gummy cherries by the case.
Oh, this whole “eat really healthy and minimally processed and nothing I couldn’t make myself” thing is going to be easier than I thought. Because I’m totally cheating, yet still feeling righteous in my efforts to (eventually) eat better.
I’m going to start calling this the baby steps experiment.
No sugar rule? Well, I licked the knife after making the kids’ PB&J. The jam was cloyingly sweet, though I buy the low-sugar stuff. It felt nice to know that I’m already completely clear of the sugar habit. One day, totally averse to sugar. I don’t need sugar! Who needs sugar? Let’s just…oh my god, coffee tastes horrible without sugar. So I added a teaspoon of agave. That kind of substitution is not going to change my need for sweeteners, so I have to knock it off. Today’s modified rule: no sugar except agave in coffee and sugar added to stuff I lick off knives. Tomorrow’s rule will be no sugar. Maybe.
No bread rule? Dinner included three leftover finger sandwiches for the high tea I made this weekend for my mother-in-law’s birthday. Whole wheat with olive tapenade and cheddar. Because I was hungry and because I’m not going to waste food on a stupid premise that bread might send me onto a slippery slope of processed food. Today’s modified rule: no bread except leftover bread. Tomorrow’s rule will be no bread. Maybe.
No processed foods? Easy. Breakfast was leftover lentil salad and some jicama. Lunch was peanuts and more salad. Dinner was three leftover finger sandwiches, leftover black beans, leftover brown rice, and cheese. After-fencing snack was peanuts. Clearly, if I have leftovers and easy snacks, there are no pretzel and ice cream binges. But ask me again on a day when we don’t have leftovers.
I don’t feel any better (perhaps because it’s day two and I haven’t actually ditched anything, really), I don’t have more energy, and I’m fiercely grouchy from 4-7pm. Tonight I fixed that by exercising.
Boring. I wanted cocoa instead.
I’ve noted three things in this second day of experimentation:
1. I’m already sick of talking about food.
2. I want candy really freaking badly after 5pm. Ever minute after 5pm. Every second after 5pm. Evening candy is habit and tiredness. If I can be mindful of my tired cravings I might actually change the way I treat my body long-term. Or I have to ban candy from my house.
3. I am hungry most of the day and don’t bother to eat until I’m in the car. That’s why the fistfuls of peanuts the past two days: peanuts are already sitting, waiting, ready, beckoning in the car. I need to keep healthful snacks in the car, and do a better job of sitting down during the day to eat.
So that was day two: cheating on invented rules, realizing I need food to be easy, and rethinking ways to get to bed by 4pm.
Side note: I want cocoa.
I’m going to go to bed instead, but I’m willing to put money on my waking up wanting cocoa.
Oh, heaven help me, I’m trying to eat healthfully for a month.
Actually, for a few hours I said I was going to eat nothing processed.
But I realized that someone cut the mint leaves and put them in a bag for me to make tea. And someone toasted the coconut and someone sprouted the pumpkin seeds and put tamari on them. All that is processing. I’m not going raw and I’m not doing too much work myself. So minimal processing of whole grains and legumes. Raw or sprouted nuts and seeds. No sugar, no corn, no wheat. Because I don’t like the way I feel lately. Runs are like slogs, and afterwards I stuff myself with bread and sugar. My posture is terrible, so I feel tired, which makes my posture worse. I keep myself up late with candy instead of just going to bed. As a result, my body acts as though it belongs to a long-lost neighbor who it increasingly suspects is not coming back. I don’t like feeling like a renter in my body. I like to own it.
And I feel that the mortgage is paid and I owner occupy when I make healthy choices for food and exercise.
So I finally gave myself a talking to and started this eating plan. Last night.
After two hours I wanted cocoa. Desperately. So Melissa Camara Wilkins tweeted me a recipe for cacao, date, coconut-milk cocoa. I have none of that right now, but will. I still want cocoa, but I know Melissa’s recipe will get me through. I kept on going.
After twelve hours I was mad. I wanted granola and candy and crackers and toast with jam and cocoa. I had mint tea and went running. After the run I chased some chia seeds with more mint tea. I had a handful of tamari pumpkin seeds and a small bowl of locally made granola (yes, sugar but give me a break. I’m new to this). I didn’t think about sugar or bread or cocoa for hours. And I had a handful of stupid ol’ peanuts. And I kept on going.
By then I was really, really grouchy. Not hungry. Grouchy.
Dinner was a stupid Napa cabbage salad with stupid lentils and stupid beets and a stupid french vinaigrette. And a handful of stupid toasted coconut.
I WANT COCOA. Cocoa is warm and sweet and promises good things for the morn. Cocoa is love food.
Stupid vegetables and stupid lentils are stupid growing food. It’s the stupid stuff I make my kids eat while I sneak delicious, wonderful candy in the kitchen.
Stupid October. Stupid not-yet Thanksgiving. Stupid plans to feel better about myself.
This cacao Melissa told me about had better be all that. I’m getting some raw cacao nibs tomorrow. They had better make a good cocoa. They had better blow my mind. And make me feel like Wonder Woman.
Otherwise everyone near me will hear five weeks of grousing about stupid nuts and seeds and veggies and fruit for a stupid chance to feel better and stronger and healthier. So much stupidity.
[If previous experience going off sugar is any guide, I’m going to be mean as hell for two weeks. Minimum. My poor family.]
I often feel sympathy for quadrupeds because they can’t hug their babies. This mama looks as though she wants so badly to hold this teeny, tiny* newborn.
*Teeny tiny being relative and all. Small and new to her, hence teeny tiny.
NB: Anthropomorphizing is my favorite pastime. Am I alone in that?
Every week at our family meeting, we talk about what has worked and what has not worked for the family. (Still a pretty big fan of The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler.)
And every week we all agree that time spent together outside makes us feel good about the ways in which we interact. We’re nicer outside. Hiking, running, playing ball, and exploring make us kinder to each other. Kinder makes us all feel warm, fuzzy, and proud. And it begets more kindness. Cycle of goodness, circle of life, and all that.
But tonight trumped even the best hike.
Some second-grader at school taught Peanut and his whole class to use their armpits in the way nature intended: to fake fart.
He was so excited walking home. “Mom! Mom! Did you know this? You can make a toot with your armpit. Watch!”
I was so proud. I recalled my aunt armfarting with her sons, and relished the thrill of finally feeling my role in the tradition of the lone-woman-in-a-family-full-of-males tradition. It is my sworn duty, in this pivotal of all parenting moments, to produce better fake flatulence than my kid.
So I tried. And tried. Nothing.
Peanut didn’t notice my colossal failure. But later in the evening, he produced his new, Harvard-entry skill for the rest of the family. And I renewed my efforts to show him how it’s really done.
I tried so hard, so unsuccessfully that I made the little guy laugh. “What’s wrong with Mommy?” Spouse asked Butterbean, as I flapped my elbow furiously, trying to make my barely audible puffs of air into the best nonverbal noise available to humans.
Nothing.
Peanut rolled his eyes. “It’s so easy, Mom. I’ll bet Dad can do it.”
Oh, boy did he. We all laughed ourselves teary as Spouse put on an armpit symphony. He grinned, and bowed.
“See, Mom?”
No way. I will not be shown up. I build furniture (sure, from Ikea, but I do it myself and it doesn’t wobble, so it counts), I change lightbulbs, I replace batteries, I splice wires, I build circuit boards. I won’t be bested in the simulated arm-gas competition.
I changed my hand position. I cupped my pit more carefully.
Nothing.
I tried the other side.
Nope.
And I realized why.
There wasn’t a complete seal. Because of my undergarments.
So I shoved Spouse out of the way, for his demonstration was wearing on my patience. I casually employed the quick and easy unhook-and-yank-out-through-a-sleeve.
And I let out four of the most beautifully resonant arm farts you ever did hear.
Success.
All I’m saying, is if you’re fighting a fake-flatulence war with Y-chromosome-bearing armpits, ditch the bra. In all other cases I say unto you, “wear what you want to wear, when you want to wear it, if you want to wear it.” It’s your body. Support your Cooper’s ligaments as you see fit.
But if you need to rip a fake one? Remove the interference.
[This post will self-destruct before I apply to law school or run for public office.]
I was getting a bit worried about Butter. Not worried, really, but wistful. He hasn’t gone through the Age Three Incessant Why phase. And I rather miss it. I loved telling Peanut several years ago why the sky is blue and why there are white and yellow lines on the road and why bread has holes in it and why toilet paper comes on rolls.
I love why, that’s why.
But Butter doesn’t ask why.
Look at that: navigating between a rock and a hard place.
And I wondered, for the briefest moment, if he might be his own person, built differently than his brother and I are. He’s not of course. He’s my baby doll to do with as I please and to coerce into my plans and to bend to my whims.
[Let’s let everyone who has ever known a three-year-old pause to laugh after that one. If you’re bored while you wait for the cackles to die down, go see what Peanut did when he was Three, for a sample of this delightfully demonic age.]
So as I longed for the Whys and fretted a bit and wondered if I’d missed an important phase, I realized the reason Butter has skipped Why.
Because his approach is “Why should I believe you when life is so uncertain?”
If I tell him that cheese might be white or orange, and we’ll see what’s at the store, he’ll tell me, “Mommy. Maybe it’s blue. Don’t tell me no. Because MAYBE.”
When I tell him that we’re going to eat, take a bath, read, and get in bed, he tells me, “And maybe we’ll go for a bike ride. Really, Mommy. Maybe.”
Hard to argue with maybe, I guess. Can’t imagine where he learned that.
Tonight I told him that tomorrow is Tuesday. He said, “Mommy. It’s maybe going to be Monday. MAYBE. Maybe, Mommy.”
So instead of searching for a scientific cause, a reason for that which is, Butter’s looking for a nuance that will let him out of the laws of physics. And society. And the space-time continuum.
He’s looking for an out, not a why.
I think a legal career, maybe. Or advertising. Shades of gray. Politics, perhaps.
Shudder.
We found a babysitter.
That doesn’t sound like much of an announcement, but believe me, it is. Especially given the terror of being without my children wrought by this week’s events.
I have a hard time letting go. During Peanut’s first year, I was away from him for 10 hours. Total. I still remember each hour: dentist, bra shopping, 10k, surgery, theater. Over the next few years, only trusted friends and relatives watched him, and only an hour or two at a time. And even then, only rarely. Three times a year, maybe.
When Butter was born, we tried to get out for an hour once or twice, but he cried himself purple and I just couldn’t take it. So we stayed together unceasingly until he was almost Two. Friends tried taking the little guy for an hour or two at a time. And we paid a sitter, a well-vetted preschool teacher, to stay with both boys for part of an afternoon. Four times, total.
That was two years ago.
So to say we found a babysitter is pretty freaking huge. She has great references. Preschool teacher, summer camp counselor. Local. Loves all the things that Peanut does. Gave her a trial run and we all had fun. And we need her because on the one day a week I work at the co-op preschool, she will pick up Peanut from second grade and occupy him for two hours until I get home.
The night before her first time picking up my amazing, responsible, articulate, beautiful son, I freaked out. I wrote a long email about how, though here references are great and she promised she’s not a serial killer, I had doubts about the safety of the Universe and I really need a text when she gets him and a text when they get home.
The sitter kindly reassured me. Told me how she’s picked up kids at this school before and that she knows the ropes. Tells me she’ll text me. Tells me everything will be fine and that she does this for a living.
And she does. So okay. Trust. Breathe. Believe.
My sweet little man had our spare key on a ring in his backpack. The very thought of that violently smashes up two simultaneous thoughts: “He’s such a delightful, responsible kid, this is great for his feeling of independence;” and “OMG I’m a 1970s mom going to Jazzercise while my second grader walks home to an empty house!” The shards of my psyche that result from the idea collision kept me awake that night.
I’ve mentioned, I believe, that I don’t let go well. Also not big on perspective. Hyperbole, though? Some significant facility with that tactic.
At the designated hour on their first day together, I pull out my contraband phone and ignore the preschoolers cavorting around me for five seconds to see that I don’t have a text.
Five minutes later, nothing.
Ten minutes later, I text.
“Do you have him yet?
“Yes. Just got him. On our way home.”
[Why are you fifteen minutes late? Doesn’t matter. I’ll ask later.]
“Okay, home now!”
So I relax. And I smile at children and clean up after children and negotiate conflicts with children and sing with children and wonder why I’m not paying someone to do this stuff so I can go play Mancala with my eldest child.
We get home and I’m relieved. He’s happy, she’s happy. Everything is where I left it. No severed limbs, no puddles of blood, no house party.
Letting go…hard time…rather consistent theme…moving on.
I ask this wonderful creature, who has delivered unto me my seven year old, for her report of the day.
“Everything was fine. I went to the wrong door to pick him up and waited rather impatiently because there were tons of police cars and one of the parents told me there had been a lockdown but she didn’t know anything, so I walked up to another, confident looking woman and introduced myself, said I was picking up a child for the first time and what is going on?”
Having a hard time breathing, in part because my eyes are open so wide they’re sucking all the oxygen from the air and all the energy from my other muscles.
“She told me that there had been a lockdown at the school because someone had gone inside and the police were called.”
And boom, thus ended all future babysitting hopes and dreams. My children will never be out of my sight again.
Sandy Hook is geographically distant from here, but it’s not far from any American elementary school. It’s right next door to all of us.
I tried to breathe but found only hot waves of tears.
“Are you okay?” she asked, clearly concerned at my willingness to lose control of my tear ducts upon hearing about silly things like police cars and lockdowns.
I look at the stove and the fridge and the first aid kit and the fire extinguisher. And I nod. “He’s fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine, so I’m okay, but no, I’m not okay.”
“I finally figured out to go to the right door and I talked with his teacher and he didn’t seem worried that I was late. And I felt awful because you told me the right door, but all those other times I picked the kids up, we went to the other door, and…”
“I’ll ask him, but I’m sure he’s fine. I’ve been late and he knows that his teacher will make sure he’s okay. I’m more worried about the lockdown, really.”
“Well nobody knew much, and you never know if what you hear outside is rumor or truth or partial truth. So ask him. He’ll tell you.”
She left in a blur and I pretended everything was fine and casual and normal. Because I have so much practice asking my suburban, sheltered kid what happened when the sirens went screaming outside the school, right? I begin low key, because there is exactly zero benefit to freaking the kid out.
Stick to the ritual: How was your day, what was your favorite part, what was your biggest challenge and how did you address it; and by the way, what was up with the lockdown?
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t even really know what a lockdown is. What does it mean?”
“We were outside and the teachers all yelled, ‘Inside now,’ and pointed so we went inside and then we went back out.”
“Oh. Inside your classroom?”
“No, the cafeteria.”
“And [shrug, beat]… what did they tell you?”
“Nothing. We were trying to guess why we had to come inside and I thought maybe the police found something that a robber took.”
“Hmmm. Maybe.”
And now came the veteran move. Wait. Say nothing. Wait. I can always ask again later if I really need to know. But wai…
“I didn’t like it.”
“Oh?” Faking casual. “Why?” Pure liquid goo inside, wanting to kiss his face for twenty hours because he’s still alive, calculating the cost to my sense of self of homeschooling, and praying that he wasn’t scared at any point.
“Because we only came in for a few minutes and then went back out but it felt like it took away all our play time.”
“Yeah. I don’t like it when I get interrupted for a drill or an emergency or anything and then get less time to do what I want.”
“Yeah.”
We talked a bit more about his favorite part of the day, and we finished the night as usual. Face kissing limited to a few minutes so as not to reveal my secret baggage full of helpless liquid goo and fear and whatnot.
The second the boys were in bed I texted another parent to find out what happened.
The neighbors called the police when they thought they heard a gunshot. Several squad cars rushed to the scene. Some staff members saw the police and called a lockdown. *Then* they called the police to see if they should be concerned. The police reassured them that all was clear. Better safe than sorry, good job team, moving on, just another day.
What rings in my ears are the colliding voices of terror, “My baby knows what a lockdown is;” and “I won’t always be there when things get bad.” Earthquakes, bad people, fires. Tragedy. Cataclysm. You can prepare and you can hope.
But you can’t always be there.
I hate every single brushstroke of that.
Something fantastic is happening within the walls of my everyday life. Though the weather says Summer and the calendar says Autumn, our life is accepting the contradictions and melding into a strange, wonderful trifle of peach-raspberry-pumpkin-spice pie.
Yesterday morning a small, precious creature rose from his bed, used the bathroom, changed his clothes, and tromped downstairs to find his brother, who had engaged in a similarly self-directed ritual half an hour before. There was no struggling to climb into my bed, no sweet cuddling and twirling my hair, no early-morning screaming, no nursing, no heart-piercing dread of him falling down the stairs, no mid-night panic that he might have died in his sleep.
My youngest stands at the doorway between baby and child. And it’s amazing. Incredible to watch, intense to fathom, and lovely to experience. The steady flood of adrenaline that has colored my life for almost seven years has slowed. Anxiety pumps through me infrequently now. I pause. I breathe. I blink.
I didn’t remember what blinking felt like. Doesn’t that sound twisted? I had forgotten to blink, or couldn’t blink, or wouldn’t allow myself. To blink.
It’s quite nice, I must say, to stop the visual input, lubricate my eyes, and rest my brain. For a whole second every now and again. Quite delightful.
Last week the two boys and I walked into a restaurant and I asked them to sit down. They did. And I dropped my shoulders. I ordered burritos, paid, got water and salsa. During that two full minutes, I didn’t panic that they were falling down and cracking their heads, that they would fight, that they were bugging the other customers, or that they would run out the door and I’d lose them forever. I looked over once or twice, and they were sitting. And talking.
As though they were real, live humans.
Life is more like life now and less like a muscle-clenching jolt through incessant struggle and fear and joy and crying. Mothers with tiny new babies and precocious toddlers know the unblinking cycle of love and panic and love and panic and love and panic and frustration and love and panic. But elementary school and preschool have a different rhythm. The pace still daunts, but there are breaks for air. Time to drink water, enjoy hugs, breathe through frustration, and hold conversations.
This world is foreign, but I no longer feel as though I’m a human forced to live amongst bats.
My life is increasingly mine: a three-dimensional structure to layer and paint and plan. And inhabit. Time no longer flies by with me hanging on for dear life. I am in my skin, I own my voice, and I’m creeping toward a time when I will again make powerful decisions about who I am and what I want.
I’m not saying my children stole my power, though the sensation I’m finally shaking would make more sense if I were a vampire and they had mirrors strapped to their heads. And bottoms. And feet. I’m saying that I chose to parent in a particular way, and that I won the Lottery of Intense Children, the result of which is that my ability to exist in my own life has simply been missing for seven-and-a-half years.
And now that I’m coming back from life in a distant, alien land studying in a foreign language to be someone I’ve never actually intended to be, I have choices about how I’ll put the pieces of my life together. This is decision time. I’m debating returning to full-time corporate work. I’m contemplating law school. I’m even thinking of going back to teaching. I’m finishing my novel (yes, still). I’m both taking and turning down freelance work.
So why continue the blog? I began this blog five years ago because I felt lonely and frustrated as an intensely driven, full-time parent of a highly sensitive toddler. In moments of solitude I used this space to process my thoughts and feelings. I wrote my frustrations and my triumphs. I found ways to make going crazy sound funny. I vented online to keep from spiraling deeper into depression.
And the blog found an audience. As my son grew and changed and turned our family upside down in all the ways a small child can, I wrote and was heard. I helped readers and they helped me. We became a community and it felt nice to talk with the kind of people I never found in person while we lived in Southern California. The blogosphere kept me sane, so I did my best to write well for them.
When we moved to Northern California and when Butter was born readers were loyal and kindly listened while I stumbled about, trying my best, failing, and trying again. I wasn’t as funny as I had been with only one child, but I tried. And it was enough. Because with two small children and a nighttime freelance career, all you can do is try.
Or drink.
But the heart of this blog—loving my children and clawing toward an unseen buoy while fighting the upheaval to my sense of self—might not be my truth any more. I’ve accepted the major sacrifices and changes that parenthood on my terms has wrought, and I’m beginning to see a richly warm light at the end of a long, dirty, dark, wonderful but claustrophobic tunnel.
So is aging out of a major phase a reason to kill the blog? Nobody here naps any more. I’m not writing at naptime. I’m writing and researching and parenting and cooking and avoiding and volunteering and striving and observing when I can, without marking time based on what tiny creatures do. That which now feels more relaxed and less frantic might be less interesting.
Is that enough reason to stop blogging?
I hope not.
Because this new feeling? This sense that I might actually make it and that my children might actually make it and together we might actually make something we’re proud of? This is an experience I’d really like to share.
I hope you’ll stick around to hear what happens.
I’m already bored of this joke.
Get your act together, Congress. You can’t just take your ball and go home because you don’t like one part of the government. If you don’t like something, govern. Write your laws and get them passed.
I don’t care what you do…I’m not actually going to hold my blog hostage while you act like idiots.
Anyone else want a real post soon? And maybe even a real government?
If my blog is shut down in protest over grownups pretending to do their job but instead throwing petulant fits and refusing to do their job, then why am I still getting fake followers every day?
Fake people pretending to follow me, fake legislators, pretending to…well, they’re not even pretending.
So the spammers fake following me hoping that I’ll click over to their spammy websites are better people than legislators refusing to do their jobs? Yup. I think so.
If you’re not pretending or faking today, what do you think? Much respect for the pretending and the faking? Or the fits?
I’m already bored with holding this delightful blog hostage with a faux shutdown.
Except that somehow nobody is commenting on or visiting the blog lately. Maybe I’m in alternate universe where people only visit my blog when they have jobs, and all my previous readers had government jobs, and now they have no income and nowhere to go, so they don’t read my blog? Maybe?
I don’t know. But I know that sitting on my hands isn’t going to work out well. So call your Representative and Senators and let them know you want my blog back. Or something similar, like a functioning government and economy. Right?
Day one of my blog shutdown.
I cannot post because the people in my house are bickering about things and cultivate short-sighted reluctance to see the forest. Because of the trees.
….Aaaaaaand SCENE.
As soon as a baby is born, we work to learn their language, and they ours.
Each cry means something different. Each coo, burble, and shriek conveys an idea and it’s our job to interpret as best we can.
We try to learn and we struggle to communicate. So it goes with baby sign language, toddler babbles, preschool mispronunciations, elementary school obsessions.
Right now I’m learning two languages.
The simultaneous rise in importance of proprietary LEGO languages, Pokemon lingo, and team sport jargon have been relatively easy to pick up. All I need to do with my seven-year-old teacher is show interest, and he’ll explain everything. Somewhat patiently. He gets rather mad when I can’t remember which ninja possesses which fictional power, but I suppose he gets impatience and a resistance to foolishness from the X chromosome I gave him. And so I forgive. And learn.
The three-year-old is very insistent that I learn his language, and that I respond appropriately to every cue. He has many rules and is dogmatic about proper adherence. This is more difficult, since he’s taken to spelling his secret language.
“P.O.B., Mom!” he’ll shout.
“Um, okay!” I’ll offer.
“No. Mom. P.O.B. means look at me right now this very minute.”
Okeedokee. Except that pob doesn’t mean look at me. Neither do any of the other words you’re spelling.
Today P.U.V. meant please take off my shoes. And if I forgot that, even once, he screamed. “MOM! P.U.V.! Don’t you know what that means?”
Nope. I don’t. Because it’s pretend, you’re a tyrant, and I don’t like this game. “I forgot, pumpkin. You have to remind people gently when you’re teaching them.”
“Hey, Mom. P.O.C.”
“P.O.C.? What does that mean?”
“Moooooom! You said it so you should know it.”
“Um…okay. P.O.C. means I should turn off the hose.”
“No, mom. Workers never turn off the hose. P.O.C. means please dig with me.”
“Babe, you know I’m the sweeping worker and the paint worker and the mower worker but I’m not the digging worker.”
“P.O.S., Mom.”
Oh, dear goddess, as tempted as I am to say,”right back at you,” please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means.
“What does P.O.S. mean?”
“It means let’s go. Time to work.”
“Okay, buddy. Let’s go work.”
Just please tell me you won’t holler P.O.S at me when we’re in public. Because I’m pretty sure with your brother’s penchant for profanity and your high volume, we’re in for a rough time explaining things to your respective schools.
P.O.S, y’all. P.O.S.
NaptimeWriting 