I need some good jokes for keeping the six-year-old entertained at the dinner table.
Our current fave:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Panther.
Panther who?
Panther no panth, I’m goin’ thwimmin’.
(Credit to a three-year-old friend circa 2000.)
Your turn. Hit me with your best joke.
In our house we often ask the six-year-old Peanut if he can hear us. We repeat requests *a lot* and have many ways of asking him to make eye contact so he can actually connect his ears to his brain, a link that seems detrimental to six-year-old existence and is therefore bypassed as often as possible.
I have no doubt that the two-year-old Butter is listening, though. He’s fascinated by words and wants to use them all.
Especially if they get a laugh.
At breakfast the other day, Peanut announced that, through some fault of mine in the cutting and cream cheesing of his breakfast, his was a poopy bagel.
Butter laughed so hard I feared for his safety.
He’s been repeating the phrase ever since. Except that, since he doesn’t know the word “poopy,” he heard “poop pee.” And he’s reversed it in his mind. So several times he says, “Mom. Pee poo bage-o! Hahahahahaha!”
And I can’t stop laughing. Sooooo wrong, I know. But I can’t help myself. It’s so completely ridiculous to have pee poo bagels (though maybe now, because of the wild popularity of this blog, Trader Joe’s will introduce a sprouted pee poo bagel…)
This morning during my shower, the door opened and a little face worked hard to belt out “pee…poo…bage-o!” and shut the door quickly. I laughed, quite against my will. And for a long time. He repeated it three times and then was done.
I find it fascinating that his comedic timing includes a willingness to let a joke go after three or four tellings.
I’m sure that will change in a few years. Right about the time he stops listening.
Our culture is obsessed with age, and I’m beyond sick of it.
I’m irrationally angry with people who judge others by the numbers on their birth certificate. With people who hide their age or lie about their age. I’m disgusted by the marketing and demographics research that is pivoting on what we should want based on age, and how to play to our age-related insecurities to get our money.
I want to harm, just a bit, those who say things like “The big three-oh” or “over the hill.”
Age is a mythology. Numbers are misleading and indicative of very little. Why? Because the amount and quality of living poured into each day, each month, and each year is wildly different for each person.
A man whose parents die in his teen years is substantially older once he gets to college than most boys who’ve been out of college for years.
A girl who was abused by a loved one is both wise and scared beyond her years.
A man who looks up as his life proceeds, making decisions about what he wants and how he wants to be is older and wiser than a man who puts his head down and does what he’s expected to.
A woman who falls into requirements set by someone or something outside herself is infinitely younger than women who make difficult choices.
Twenty with the decks stacked against you? Forty and never had to do a thing for yourself? Sixty and following your dreams? Thirty and stymied by all the options? Eighty and fighting hard? Fifty and scared? In each of those combinations, the number mattered very little. What I see is decks stacked, inexperienced, passionate, confused, engaged, and scared. Who cares how old: those are very, very different people with different lives and basic human needs, none of which care about birthday candles.
Everyone has different experiences: joys, sorrows, expectations, hopes, deaths, surprises, disappointments. There is a delicate balance of what happens to you and what you choose and I’m not here to argue that everyone has the same chances or that people need to do things differently than they are doing right now.
What I’m saying? Is that none of it is about age. It’s about the life that fills your years that colors who you are.
Today on Five for Five we’re talking about pictures. I’m going to take that to mean photographs.
Because I’m the blogger here and I’m in charge.
This Is how I picture perfection.
Much of my day is spent telling small people to use their words, and my evenings are spent bending words to my professional whims. So a Five for Five topic titled Words is my idea of a blissful respite in the sun-drenched meadow I know so well.
Words.
I have an unreasonable affection for archaic words that offer the positive for a common modern negative.
Example?
I love finding ruthful people,
and feckful friends,
kempt hair,
speakably bad films,
concerting ideas,
friends with peccable taste,
corrigible scamps,
sufferable books,
terminable lectures,
bridled passion,
flappable colleagues,
furled flags,
ruly children,
thinkable results,
and wieldy furniture.
It’s the contrarian in me, I think.
I also adore coined words. Not the Faulknerian togethercobbledwords that just show how alcohol addles the human brain, but genuinely new words that desperately need to be included in our language. The best coined word ever from my eldest child is yestertime. He used it whenever something happened longer ago than yesterday. Because, and he is correct in this and should be inducted into the lexicography Hall of Fame, many, many things did happen in yestertime.
I want to see a painting of yestertime.
Most people react to the sound and sensation of words. I love to say ping pong over and over again. Makes me happy. So does spork. In fact, a spork might be my desert island companion, because it’s both useful in varied culinary instances *and* delightful in conversation.
My friend hates the word moist. But she loves the words slacks and pork. I’m plotting to have her birthday cake read “Moist Pork Slacks!” so she’ll have to choose repulsion or reluctant acceptance. And so we can be featured on Cake Wrecks.
So. To entertain me and give me fodder for your birthday cake, please use your words to tell me your favorite and least favorite words.
Please.
Panic sets in whenever I have a blog topic assigned to me. Today’s Five for Five topic is Change.
The parent in me wants to talk about how children change: how each day with a newborn is completely different, how infants can be the same for a week and then pivot in a new direction, how older children change in little ways every day but you really notice new words, new skills, new moods…
But the human in me wants bigger change. I’m tired of talking about children. I’m tired of thinking about only them. I want to change my focus. I want an evolution for myself and my writing. There are so many tactical things I need to change: the way I eat, the way I treat myself, the way I handle my day, the way I react to flashpoint moments with my children, the way I bill clients, the way I spend time on the Internet.
I’ve done a lot of work to become more mindful in my work, both writing work and parenting work. New Year’s Resolutions have become ongoing projects that I evaluate weekly and change as needed. I’m trying to balance priorities and passions, align my needs with the few minutes a day I have to myself.
The process of change, then, is changing, too.
I want my day to change so I can focus on the things that are important to me. Reading. Editing. Writing. Friends. Good food. Joy. Exercise. Sunshine. Blueberries. There has to be a way to blink in the 13 hours of full-time, unceasing child-rearing so I can get some of these. Sunshine and blueberries should be easy. Reading and exercise sure aren’t.
One of the things nobody can really tell you about becoming a parent is how the day’s rhythms, timing, and flow are completely and totally out of your control once a child comes into your life. The timing of when my body goes, stops, eats, and thinks, is in the hands of someone else. Someone whose very important job is being entirely selfish and not caring what I want or need.
Part of me thinks I need to change my expectations. Another part suggests I need to work harder to eliminate the time waste and focus on what’s important. Another part says enough already with the organic food and the “eat your protein” and the “I can’t I have to work because they’re asleep”: we need to play hooky in this family and watch movies and eat popcorn all day. Organic cheese popcorn, of course. It has more protein.
Maybe the change I need is to slow down and hope things don’t change. Because as tight as the moments are, I do stay present to focus on each moment. I do try to be and do my best. I do try to just love and live and learn.
Why the hell would I change that?
Okay, I seriously don’t understand how to do dinner prep with small children. Many of you have similar creatures, and many of you seem to be functioning at more than a basic level. So please: share your secrets.
Mine are young enough that without near-constant parenting, they make really poor (often dangerous) choices. There is always screaming if I’m out of the room for more than one minute. So I need to parent. I need to offer eyerollingly frequent reminders that “use your words so he understands” and “hands are not for hitting” and “you may do what you want with your own penis but you may not do that to his” and “no bumper scooters” and “tell him he can have it when you’re done” and “we don’t call names” and “get your penis off the toys” and “stop it or I’ll gouge out my eyes.”
My spawn are also young enough that they need a regular infusion of calories. Without food, decisions get worse, and the frequency and pitch of their screaming increases. So do my threats to gouge out my eyes.
So I need to make meals. Until there is a viable living room version of the Easy Bake Oven, I have to leave the room to make meals. Often I cook the night before and just reheat. I resent this, for after bedtime is my time and I’d like to read, write, exercise, or stare at a freaking wall without admitting that this job is a 24-hour-a-day kind of thing.
But even stepping away to scoop and reheat leaves small people screaming and hitting and grabbing and knifing (okay, not the last one, but it seems as though). If, heaven forbid, I try to wash a bit of produce, cut it, throw something in a pot or pan, and plate it when it’s all ready, my children are bloody, bedraggled, and writhing in a pile of all the belongings I used to hold dear. I don’t make nine-veggie quiche or anything. I’m not segmenting oranges and candying the peel. I crock-pot a chili or soup or I bake a casserole or I cook carb/protein/fiber in separate pots and just throw it all on a plate.
And yet within five minutes someone squirts someone else with a hose and someone screams and exacts revenge, and someone climbs on my desk and throws off all the tax papers and the carefully stacked scholarly articles (yes, I print them…sue me), and someone asks to make lemonade and rips two million lemons from the tree and gets juice on the floor and demands agave and then spills the whole lot, and someone pees on the floor, and someone rams a scooter into my ankle, and someone begs for popcorn, and someone tracks mud through the house, and someone torments the cat, and someone starts throwing LEGOs, and someone goes outside to get the mail but leaves the door open for another someone to wander out…
In five minutes.
I’m not kidding. That all happened tonight while I tried to make stir-fry and rice.
Someone once told me (demand credit in the comments if this was you) they’d like to see an episode of Top Chef where the quickfire challenge was to create a delicious meal from what was in the fridge in ten minutes WHILE having to stop every 30 seconds to break up a fight, being away from the stove for an unpredictable number of minutes, and stopping at the midway point to wipe someone’s ass. And the wall they poop-painted trying to “help”.
How do you make a meal when your children are young? I have no earthly idea how people do this. Do other people have a partner or a helper or a prison guard in the half hour before dinner? Do you serve crackers and cheese every night? Do you tie the children to various doorknobs through the house and tell them the last one to free herself get a pony?
Do I need to bribe? Threaten? Order takeout?
HOW do you do it?
Peanut and Butter each have a toothbrush that plays a minute-long song so they can brush their innocent young enamel and gumlines for the right amount of time.
Because the manufacturer is focused on non-toxic materials and earth-friendly practices, the brushes’ rap talks about turning off the water while you brush and other such lovely green messages.
It also, at one point, says “grab your parents; grab your mom, grab your dad.” I’ve always thought about the families this might alienate, for some have only onehttps://naptimewriting.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post of those, some are grandparented, some are two-mom parented or two-dad parented.
Either way, I had no idea the kids were really listening until I watched Peanut brush.
As the song said “Grab your parents” he clutched the seat of his pajama bottoms as he brushed and danced.
Turns out he thought it said, “Grab your pants; grab your mom, grab your dad.”
And now that he knows it’s funny enough to make me shoot water out of my nose, he runs around the house singing, “grab your pants,” as he does so. With little Mini Me following and garbling the lyrics even worse than his big brother does.
It is side-stitchingly hilarious. And I need that at bedtime.
My son’s a genius, and I think it’s because I’m so awesome.
Really.
Look, I’m the first to assert that serial killers, bullies, and medievalists are the fault of their parents. So may I take credit for the following?
Peanut and I were talking last night, in a rare moment of the-toddler-fell-asleep-early-and-we-can-take-a-breath-and-have-a-normal-bedtime bliss. We talked about the Universe’s vastness and how the outrageously ginormous solar system is relatively diminutive. We talked about the SETI Project and ways they’re listening for life beyond the planet. We talked about how life elsewhere might look like germs or octopi or monsters, and my brilliant six-year-old interrupts me.
“Mom,” he says. “If we find something out there, if it’s germs or aliens or fish, they’re going to think *they* are people and that we are aliens.”
My dear, sweet, amazingly empathetic six-year-old: you just surmised, all by yourself, what I hoped to teach you over the course of your young life. Look at the situation with someone else’s eyes.
I marveled at his revelation, and, for good measure, threw in a bit of “that’s why when we think of ‘other’ people from another culture or country or who look different, we need to remember they’re people, too, and we need to see things their way.” But I didn’t need to. Because I’ve already done such a good job that he’s wise beyond his years in such matters.
My work here is done, people. I think I just earned a leisurely evening of confections and John Hughes films for my awesome luck parenting.
Found this via Boing Boing today. Go read BusinessWeek’s second annual How To issue. Phenomenal ideas. Small pieces so you won’t choke. Yummy!
I keep myself up into the wee hours of the night “because I haven’t *done* anything today.” Every day.
So tonight, in the interest of getting to bed at a decent hour, I offer the following:
I finished our taxes.
And finished my reading for the Gravity’s Rainbow group read at Infinite Zombies.
And finished tossing/donating/selling 200 things and am well on my way to the third 100. Yes, I counted each thing, including each diaper in a box of cloth diapers going to a friend. So what? I can walk through the garage now.
I got started on a follow-up project for a client.
And cleaned and oiled the annoying butcher block countertops our landlord holds so dear.
And have maybe actually found a regular babysitter after three years five months of intense searching.
And paid the bills.
And stocked the fridge with fruits and veggies to get serious about my resolution to treat my body better.
And ran four miles.
And finally started doing yoga again.
That leaves 1,746 things to do tomorrow. Better stay up late to get at least those pesky six done so I start with a round number in the morning…
We’ve dodged a bullet on the sex talk so far, and I had been lulled into a false sense of security.
But Kate at And Then Kate has shaken me violently from my fantasy world into a world full of reality and questions and a ticking time bomb in the form of Judy Blume chapter books.
Seriously, I don’t know how we’ve avoided The Talk. Except that I do, because our six-year-old hasn’t asked yet.
He was 3.5 when I told him we had to go to the doctor because either I had a germ making me very very sick or the chemicals from a growing baby were making me very very sick. He eventually asked how the baby would get out and I explained uterus, cervix, vagina. He asked if the baby had a key to open the cervix. I explained contractions. He was satisfied with the answer, though disappointed that the baby didn’t get a key and that, by extension, he didn’t either. Please. Like I’d give that kid the key to my cervix. He’s way too facile with a fire extinguisher and there’s no way I want my cervix opening when I’m least expecting it. Like at Target, when I’m lording my fabulous parenting skills over the people screaming in the dollar aisle. Terrible place to have your cervix flapping open.
He never asked, over the seven subsequent months, how the baby got there or why. We were prepared with a “when two grownups love each other…” but never got to use it.
He did ask that year why his cousin looked different from her family, and I told him about how some families really want children and how other people really want to give a special gift to those kinds of families. We talked about how families come in all sorts of varieties and how great that is. We talked about how some bodies can’t have babies and how some people don’t want to. But he didn’t ask why or how some people get to choose. I was ready. But never used that conversation, either.
At two different points, he asked why he’s a boy not a girl and I said the seed that grew to be him was a boy seed, and how it was full of all the information called DNA to tell his body what to be like, but that who he is—the thoughts and dreams and choices—is not in the seed and that though he can’t choose a lot about his body, he gets to decide who he is. Mostly because I really didn’t need “well, the seed that I grew from just doesn’t eat vegetables/say please/put away toys.”
I didn’t bother with the detail that it takes two half- seeds to make a seed, nor how those half- seeds find each other. Because I’m smart enough to answer the question asked, not insert my own interpretations.
[You know this one? Boy runs into the kitchen and asks, “Dad, where did I come from?” Dad replies with love and sperm and egg and intercourse and gestation and birth. Boy, mouth agape and increasingly horrified, manages to say, “Wow. Jimmy says he came from Los Angeles.”]
So every day Peanut doesn’t ask, I’m happy. I could handle it, I guess, but I don’t want to.
But soon, the questions will pounce on me and I will die, right there, on the spot.
Except I won’t. Because Kate says this book, available through your local, independent bookseller, will fix everything. My indie bookseller says that the window for that book is almost closed and I might soon need this one. And this one for boys about puberty. [slight panic sets in.]
And Near Normalcy told me how to handle everything.
Except one part. I have boys. Part of my discussion about the fact that some day you’ll think your penis is more than something to grab *constantly* whether you’re awake or asleep, is that you may not do whatever you want with your penis. When you’re alone, you may do what you want with your body as long as it doesn’t hurt. But when you’re with other people, you cannot do anything you want. For one, a penis is a private thing and not for sharing. And even when you’re a grownup and you love someone and decide to share your penis, it is only okay if the other grownup you love says “yes.”
You have to listen to people’s words about their own bodies and they have to listen to your words about your body. Your body is just for you. Sex is not for kids, sex is private, sex is only when you’re a grownup and another grownup you love says yes to you. Until then, remember that your penis is private and only for you. Private, only for you, no means no.
[Holy guacamole. Panic now full blown and I am in serious need of self medication. Easter chocolate already gone. This is too big a job for jelly beans. I need something stronger. Is there such thing as Jack Daniels over jelly beans? An Amaretto Jelly Bean Daiquiri? I think that’s a thing. I think I have a recipe here somewhere and I’m going to…oh, screw it. I’ll just wing it.]
Oh, boy. I am so glad he hasn’t asked yet.
And I’m so glad I just jinxed myself right here on the Interwebs. Good job, Me. Way to freaking go.
Of course, there are probably shades of grey between World’s Worst Parent and Total Parenting Genius, but I’ll ignore them for a moment. Nuance is not as much fun as hyperbole.
So here’s my bid for the Worst Parent title: We’re not doing Easter.
We had an egg hunt for Peanut’s birthday party last month. And I used up all my non-candy, non-toxic, secular egg-filling ideas back then.
So we’re not having an egg hunt. Or Easter baskets. Or any recognition of the holiday other than a journey to some awesome friends’ party.
I guess that means I’m making our friends do all the work in Easter’s name. And since this is two years in a row, I guess my kids will associate this holiday with someone else’s family and the expectations will be aimed squarely at *them* next year.
This slacker idea is looking better and better.
Terrible? I don’t know…seems that if we don’t celebrate the Jesus part of Easter we shouldn’t get the other stuff. And that if we have three birthdays in March I’m allowed to skate past a holiday I find ridiculous. (The secular part is ridiculous. The religious part is entirely your business and I totally get why you’d celebrate it. I’m quibbling with the bunny who poops chocolate, not with your Lord.)
Awesome? I don’t know…seems as though my entitled, still reeling from the glow of several birthday parties kids are missing out on something magical. Like a springtime festival of…oh, wait, we do that for the equinox. Like a raucous search for plastic eggs…oh, wait, we did that already. Well, certainly they’re being robbed of the chance to…dye eggs? Get plastic grass all over the house? Eat candy?
Doesn’t sound genius, but it sure doesn’t sound as bad as, say, hissing through clenched teeth on an airplane “Please, for the sake of all that’s holy, knock it off and use your inside voices because we’re stuck in this plane for four more hours and I swear to God I’m going to lose it if you both scream one more time!”
Ahem.
I just know I’m not doing any more holidays for a while. Frivolity is all fun and games until…until someone loses an eye? Steps on a wayward jelly bean? I don’t know. I’m just saying “no” this year.
Or, more to the point, I’m not saying anything at all.
[Shhhh…Happy Easter!]
Keep meaning to dash off a note to you delightful readers to say:
I’m losing my mind;
I’m having more than a little fun;
I’m not getting nearly enough accomplished;
I’m worried about the state of the Union, the world, and the Universe;
and I can’t decide if the days slipping away without any of my major projects getting even one iota closer to completion is a) to be expected, given circumstances and whatnot, b) pathetic, c) depressing, or d) all of the above.
But since those states of affairs all sound petty and selfish given the realities most people are living with, I’ll just button my fingers and post when something of note happens. Or doesn’t. Again.
I’m not going to judge, blogo-world. I’m not going to label or name or do a Michel Foucault Order of Things kind of categorization. I’m just noting a few things. For your information or enjoyment. Or blackmail, later.
1. Toddlers who don’t sit down, ever, do not do well on airplanes.
2. Toddlers who like to scream “No!” at everything do not go over well with strangers. On airplanes.
3. Rescue Remedy pastilles work Every. Single. Time. Even if it takes half a tin to calm a Screaming Toddler on a Plane. And even if I don’t remember them until hour 4 of Screaming Toddler on a Plane.
4. There are things way more scary than Snakes on a Plane. See #3.
5. Toddlers who like to scream “No!” are particularly amusing when they bellow at the ocean. “No!” does not seem to keep toddler-piled dry sand safe from waves.
6. My six-year-old is really fun to be with.
7. It has been a long time since I was alone, playing, in the silence, with my six-year-old.
8. My toddler is really fun to be with.
9. It has been a long time since I was alone, playing, in the silence, with my toddler.
10. Aforementioned bouts of silent play, at least one hour with each child, brought to us by LEGO.
11. I will now buy stock in LEGO, despite my anger about their gender-ghetto pink and purple manicure salon and beach-lounging LEGO sets.
12. Kids do believe several servings of ice cream per day is just right.
13. Children kept to very regular sleep schedules at home are wildly wakeful on vacation.
14. Your own kids playing in the pool are the cutest thing ever.
15. Other people’s children playing in the pool are not cute. Ever.
16. Every kid playing in the ocean is adorable.
17. In public, women tend to look at children, especially babies as they go by. And often smile. Men almost never look, no matter how adorable the children or behavior are.
18. All of the above still shock me.
NaptimeWriting 