Dozens of people have found this blog by searching “what is ambivalent parent?”
So nice to be the poster child for something. Even if it’s as the answer to a grammatically incorrect question.
Even if it’s an inaugural post from three years ago.
Maybe Google+ could rewrite the question for them. “Who is ambivalent parent?” “What is ambivalent parenting?” “How does one adore their own children yet want to run screaming from the building?”
Found a post at Por Completo that discusses the low standards society has for paternal involvement with children. Give it a read. The last two graphs, quote then commentary, are what intrigue, frustrate, and inspire me most toward change.
More of the Louis C.K. interview, incidentally, at Funny or Die.
What do you think? Does society have a different standard for “Good Father” than for “Good Mother”?
Found this daily roundup and am grateful. I wish I had time to agglomerate all the best news from the week. Happy that New Communities Daily by Genius Now Blog is doing this for us. My favorite article featured? The Salon response to the hysteria all over the Interwebs last week when Oxford University’s PR office issued a request that all press releases follow AP style. Serial-comma purists everywhere freaked, thinking that Oxford University was dropping its eponymous comma. Passion, tirades, and hilarity for grammar nerds ensued, for it’s rare that we have opportunities for punctuation smugness outside of The Blog of Unnecessary Quotations Marks.
What else caught my eye? A disturbing article about the misinformation from Japan about the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I’ve already read a report that my local dairy and produce has radioactive materials from the nuclear plant’s meltdown. I don’t know what we can do about local, organic food that tests high for radiation. Buy McD*n*ld’s instead? Hell no. Processed C*nAgra crapola? Of course not. So I feel helpless. And I can’t help thinking about the pain of generations of Japanese parents as I fear for all of us, especially our little dudes.
After that downer, I can tell you something that made me smile this week, though. A fabulous Saturday morning, getting my favorite breakfast next to my favorite random art (yes, that’s a hand-knit bike-rack cozy) and tromping through our favorite creek. Oh, so much smiling that morning. Bread and cheese and yarn bombs and water and lichens and dogs and sunshine and kids. Doesn’t get better, y’all.
What else? Well, there’s the debut of this. A couple of my friends were tired of feeling lost and frumpy and frustrated with their jobs. [Note: *feeling* that way. They are smart and funny and awesome and supportive. So their itching to use their skills for more than reading riot acts and writing lists of house rules I completely understand, but their sense of frumpiness was all in their heads. I thought they were 20 kinds of amazing before their new venture.] Now they’re standing tall in the name of replacing our yoga pants with real clothes. Go subscribe to their blog…it’s new and content is coming fast and furious.
What I dig about Dump Your Frump is the insistence that whatever is important to you can stay important to you, even when parenting (or work of any stripe) dominates your every waking moment. You do matter, and you can take little steps to remind yourself of that every day. The delightful ladies behind Dump Your Frump haven’t inspired me to care about makeup or clothes, but they have goaded me into shaking off my intellectual burlap sack. I have lists and lists in my daily notebook of priorities, as though writing down what’s important will make me cleave to my passions. Hasn’t worked. I still just have lists that make me feel like an underachiever. But Dump Your Frump is making me look at those lists…HARD…and commit to them. Writing. Reading. Exercise. More writing. Doctorate. Novel. Hard work, belief in self, meditation. Okay, fine…maybe some EWG-approved mascara and lip gloss. Because the little things really do make a difference.
now that's dumping your frump!
A question for the generations of women who have done this and been doing this and who represent a wealth of knowledge I need to tap:
Q: I beseech you, women of previous generations, when your children were playing in the yard, and you gently and politely asked the big one not to point the hose at the little one, looked away for a moment to put something down or pick something up, then looked back to see a guilty looking older child quickly turning the hose away from a soaked and crying younger child while proclaiming, “I didn’t do anything!”…
…how did you not beat the older child?
A: Not beat? Oh, sweetie, we use the switch for the lying and a belt for the disobeying.
Okay, that didn’t go as I’d hoped. Let’s try again.
Q: I beg of you, current parents in my community, when your older child is lifting your younger child toward the stovetop while you are chopping vegetables for dinner and you say, “Please put him down. Put him down. Put him DOWN that’s dangerous!” and he continues, reaching the little one high enough to catch his feet in the oven door and open it, hurting the little guy and endangering both…
…how do you not beat the older one?
A: We breathe, we get down on their level, and we talk. In fact, we often find an appropriate song and a snack helps in these matters.
I see. This is harder than I thought. I envisioned wisdom involving margaritas. Or caramel. Deep breathing and talking I’ve tried. Let’s try again.
Q: Internet, please, I beg you. When the older one thinks it’s funny to take the big exercise ball and bounce it in the living room just hard enough to knock over his brother, and he has been told firmly that such behavior is not acceptable and that bouncing the ball must be gentle and not near his brother or anything breakable (else have the ball removed and placed in the garage); and you step out of the room to check the food almost burning on the stove to hear a screech and a crash and return to a fallen and crying toddler, and a fallen and broken lamp…
…how. do. you. not. beat. your. older. child.?
Hmmm? How? Help me Interwebs. You’re my only hope for wisdom today.
A:
To: unsubscribe@Internet.earth
From: naptimewriting@grouchy.com
Subject: Unsubscribe
Go away. Leave me alone. I don’t care about your sale or your pending legislation or your opinion about things or your new address or your recent newsletter. I don’t want prophesies or doomsday or light reading or forwarded jokes. I do not want your daily deal.
I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.
If you send me another announcement about a sale or a bill or an opinion or an address change or a newsletter or anything else that stares at me from my inbox and tells me I’m missing out or uninformed or need to be doing something, I will glare my magical stink eye and I will crash your server. Forever and ever until the Interwebs are dark, amen.
You may send me good thoughts and joyous greetings that do not hit my inbox. You may smile or nod or wave. In person. You may always comment on my unnecessarily verbose blog. But you may never email me again.
That is all.
Oh, wait…
UNSUBSCRIBE!
Go away. Leave me alone. Stop talking to me electronically.
(Not you, readers. The auto-e-blast-sender-bots.)
—-This message originally sent by naptimewriting June 29, 2011. Unsubscribe.—-
To the two dads at the library this weekend: you are a couple of jackasses. I’m guessing your partners asked you to “please take the kids somewhere so I can have one freaking hour to myself.” When you agreed, layered under the gratitude and the giddiness there was an unspoken understanding—unspoken because your partner should absolutely not have to say this—that you would actually be with your kids. Whether you chose the library or not, you should have known that being with your kids means parenting your kids. Not taking them somewhere and ignoring them.
Jackass #1, I don’t want your goddamned daughter following me, hovering over my shoulder, leaning on my kid to see what I’m reading or showing him on the computer, and asking me to read to her. I don’t like her. It’s not her fault; it’s yours. You left her alone with a big wad of gum in her mouth and a need to talk to someone, anyone, who would listen. She’s five, dude. Spend some time with her. And take that goddamned gum out of her mouth. When she asks you to read to her, as she did when you finally showed up an hour later, don’t tell her “not now, maybe at home.” Fracking dillweed. You’re at the library. You have to read to your kid. It’s the law. (By the way, why would you bring home that crappy book she chose all by herself while you had totally abandoned her to do whatever it was you desperately needed to do alone while your kid wandered aimlessly and alone? Why not read that piece of junk now and take home something good? Something that, say, you pick out with her based on her interests? Oh, right. Because you’re a jackass.)
Jackass #2: Thanks for making Jackass #1 look good. He, at least, told his daughter not to leave the library. Your four-year-old is in the freaking parking lot answering questions from strangers about where her daddy is. She doesn’t know your name, by the way, you anal pore, because you don’t spend enough time with her for her to think of you as human. In her defense, we don’t think you’re human, either. And she doesn’t know where you last were because you’re so self absorbed that you don’t know four-year-old time runs in a parallel universe where fifteen minutes of something they like is “one minute” and one minute alone equals fifteen minutes of destruction. Or fear. You’re a useless sack of subhuman compost. And a useless father. When the strangers who are helping your daughter find you I hope they read you the riot act. And that they then call your partner who will now pay for that one hour of trusting your sorry, pathetic lack of common sense with the knowledge that that one hour a week, that one glimmer of hope at a sense of self should become a whole weekend twice a month (if you got joint custody, which no judge would grant). You’re as useless and horrible as a spicy linguine speculum. Jackass.
To all you other fathers out there, I hold out hope that you actually spend time with, think of, and care for your daughters. Leaving them alone at the library is, as you well know, not acceptable until they are old enough to head for the Judy Blume section. Once that happens, it is your job to hang out near the librarian’s desk so you can answer questions, listen in, and escort her out when she’s ready to be with you again. Until she’s reading Forever, though, please actually parent her. And after she reads it—for the sake of all that is awesome about fathers and daughters—keep parenting her.
It’s your mothereffing job.
(So is kicking the crap out of the Jackasses who don’t do their mothereffing jobs. Help the rest of the parents out, would ya? We can’t do this alone.)
“Parenting is overrated. A secret for child-rearing success: do less http://theatln.tc/ifc4ae #longreads”
The Atlantic‘s tweet makes it sound as though we don’t have to parent, because nature takes care of most of it. In fact, if we try hard, we’re screwing them up. But the article says different. The article says if we do everything we’ll screw them up. If we are perfect, our kids will suffer.
No risk of that here. I’m not trying that hard. And I’m failing with a nice steady rhythm that would back a hot hiphop routine.
But I was all prepared to let up a little. Twitter promised me a parenting vacation, seeing as how all my attention was killing my children’s future potential. I had a lot of reading to catch up on, so I was willing to try lounging and reading and ignoring.
But all Lori Gottlieb argues, really, is that overprotecting children, carefully directing and managing their every moment makes for unhappy future adults. Duh. If you don’t let them feel disappointment, handle their own sorrow, wallow a bit in a stew of lonliness and marginalization, we rob them of coping skills.
Who are these parents who have so much time they can get them invited to every party and armwrestle teachers into better grades? I can barely get three meals and two snacks into them. I can barely get books back to the library within ten dollars of their due dates. I can’t even remember their jackets half the time. How the hell am I gonna micromanage their emotional lives to spare them disappointment? Please.
I’d be happy to back off more, except that if I back up much further I’ll need binoculars to see them grow up. My goal is not to make life perfect for these amazing, sweet, interesting, wonderful little boys. My goal is to give them every chance to figure out who they are and what’s important to them. To offer them what I can and have them make the rest for themselves.
So I felt betrayed by The Atlantic, whose tweet had promised a parenting vacation of novels and bonbons. But I couldn’t hold a grudge because an hour or so later I got really mad at Rolling Stone.
I saw in a Rolling Stone piece that Michele Bachmann was raised by two lifelong Democrats. Too much parenting? Not enough parenting? All I’m saying is that what keeps me up at night is that if we try really hard and parent in earnest, and then wind up with a borderline psychopath for our efforts, I’ll have to explain myself to Rolling Stone. In an issue with a reinvented, 80-year-old Madonna on the cover.
Act I
Interior, Boys’ bedroom. Bedtime.
Peanut notices Butter is happily cuddling a little green bear. The bear he gave his younger brother months ago. The bear he said he was done with and didn’t like. The bear that represents one of only two things he’s ever given Butter to keep.
“Why does he have that? I want it.”
I’m going to spare you the details of the next ten minutes. Suffice it to say it was a ping pong match of screaming versus calm. He wanted it back. I am not going to take a bear from a happy baby. Ill-gotten gains would be a different discussion. But the 5 year old GAVE the bear to the toddler.
Peanut bellowed and writhed for 10 minutes. And he refused to calm down, to lie down, or to stop screaming. I sat next to Butter’s crib, reading a book. (Most nights I nurse the wee one, and put him to bed awake. I leave the room. If he cries I come back, tell him to lie down, fix his blanket, and leave again. After four tries, if he won’t settle, I sit in the rocker and read until he’s asleep. I might actually read a whole book this year.)
I told Peanut I would talk with him when he was prone and quiet. He refused. I had lots of tricks up my sleeve: the other green bear on Peanut’s bed, the idea of taking this green bear back tomorrow, the possibility of a trade for the orange monster Butter has never liked, and the piggy bank just itching for a new bear purchase. I get to use none of my masterful techniques because my child’s stubbornness rivals my own.
He’s actually quite hilarious, and I had to fight not to laugh. First he walked circles around the room for ten minutes while I ignored him. Clearly tired, he finally sat down on his bed. But he refused to lie down.
And he told me so.
And he stared at me, fuming, sitting on his bed, for another ten minutes.
It took half an hour before I told him he could have the bear back in the morning.
Act II
Interior, morning, days later
I wake to the sound of Peanut mimicking Butter’s morning sounds. They banter in toddlerese for a while, then Peanut reads (from memory) and embellishes (from his awesome cache of storybook rhythms) Butter’s favorite book. I go in when Butter gets frustrated because he can’t get out of his bed.
His bed that now contains the forbidden green bear. I casually ask Peanut what they’ve been doing and he tells me, “I brought Butter the bear and told him he can cuddle it for a little while, but that I’d like it back later.”
Fair enough.
Act III
Interior, afternoon, days later
I’ve fallen asleep nursing Butter before his nap. Peanut sneaks into the room and softly talks to me. His whispers are a change from moments before, when he was begging for a movie, cursing my name, and threatening not to eat ever again if he couldn’t have pudding for lunch.
P: Do you want me to pull the curtains?
M: Hmmm? What? Oh, that would be nice. Thank you.
P: [he closes the curtains] Is that enough?
M: Yes. That was such a huge help. Thank you.
He gets the magical bear from his bed.
P: Which way will his head be when he gets in bed?
M: That side.
P: I’ll put this in the middle so he sees it no matter which way he sleeps.
M: That is so friendly, P. What a great idea.
What!? Who is this model citizen? This is the kid I met years ago and haven’t seen since he started preschool. This kid standing before me has been missing for two years. Is it possible he’s shaking his Threes and Fours just in time to leave our sphere of influence and enter the terrifyingly unsheltered, unprotected, unsavory world of public school?
Cool!
Act IV
Interior, bedtime, same day
The boys rush into their bedroom after bath, screeching and laughing. B sees his crib and points. He wants the green bear. P sees me give it to him and seems fine. B holds the bear, kisses the bear, drags the bear around during the bedtime ritual. And as he nurses he bangs me in the face with the mangy little thing. Repeatedly.
Peanut laughs. A lot.
And I’m guessing Butter can keep the bear now. Because he has helped Peanut turn the nauseating little urchin into a partner in crime, used first in a petty war but now as a weapon against the arch-nemesis Mama. Forget rivalries. They’ve moved onto the bigger picture: their lifelong rebellion against the Forces of Rules and Expectations.
This morning we enjoyed a delightful breakfast. Butter didn’t so much enjoy it as throw it all over the room. And then kick his high chair’s tray off.
Peanut announced, as Spouse caught the tray midair, “That shouldn’t happen before Father’s Day. It’s unfatherish.”
Happy Not the Mama Day!
Took Peanut and Butter to a padded room last week, mostly because I wanted to put them in a padded room. But also because they play nicely together there, climbing and sliding and laughing and bouncing. The gym (my recent compromise on having no child care or breaks from the kids) has a climbing wall and bounce house and huge toxic foam climbing structures for our use, free (now that I’m paying for a gym membership), whenever we want.
When it’s time to go I give a five minute warning, and a “last chance to do something that’s important to you” warning. Then we go.
But last week Peanut would not leave. As is his wont, he ignored, ignored, ignored, then yelled, “No!”
I was calm, I was respectful, I was nicer than I should be. I wanted to throw him against a padded wall but went with:
Me: Yes. It’s time to go. We need to get home for dinner.”
P: No. Come on, Butter, let’s go over here.
M: Butterbean, come get your shoes! [He does, thankfully.] Peanut, we’re getting out shoes on and then we’re leaving.
P: I’m not going.
M: Oh. Well it’ll be hard to have dinner in a bounce house, but I wish you the best of luck.
P: I’m not coming.
M: I heard you. And I’m not compromising.
P: WHY?!?!?!!
M: Peanut, please use an inside voice. I’m not compromising because we came here for you to have fun and to bounce and climb. And you did have fun, bounce, and climb. So now it’s time to go home.
P: I did NOT have fun.
M: Mmmmmmkay. That’s a shame. Maybe next time, then. Come on.
P: No.
M: Okay.
He comes over to the child-keeping door and climbs the half wall instead of going through.
Me: Sweetie, that’s not safe. Please get down and come through the door.
Peanut: This is the only way I can find to get to you.
M: Honey, try the door.
P: No.
M: Peanut, get down. This is not a climbing wall. Come through the door.
P: No.
M: Yes.
P: I can’t.
M: Little boy, this is not working for me. Get down. Now. Because what you’re doing could hurt you.
P: But the door has a forcefield and I can’t go there.
M: I see. Here. I turned it off. Now come through.
P: NOOOOOOO! It’s invisible and you can’t see it.
M: And you can’t see my angries, inside me, but they are circling their wagons right now and getting ready to come out all over you if you don’t get down.
P: You don’t know anything.
[just a look. a really long, blinking, calmly enraged look.]
P: I’ll climb when I want and where I want.
M. [deep breath] You will take a deep breath right now and consider how you’re talking to me. And you will consider that coming here is optional and climbing is optional and bouncing is optional, but talking nicely to your mother is. not. optional.
P: FINE.
M: Peanut Full Name Naptime, that is not talking nicely. I will not ask you again. You will talk nicely or we will think of a consequence together.
At this point a deep breath didn’t help. A snake breath I read about in a Mothering Magazine article on Mama Rage did. Especially when Butter mimicked it and I started laughing.
I still snubbed Peanut for a while, even after the situation was defused. Because I’m petty and nasty and immature. And because I could *totally* see that forcefield. What does he think I am…old? Powerless? Unfun?
(I am so old and powerless and decidedly unfun lately. But how dare he notice? He doesn’t know anything.)
Dear Grey Hairs,
It’s nice to see you.
No, seriously. I’ve been waiting for you.
Most people express horror in meeting their pigment-free hairs. Not me. I’m excited. I’ve always felt like a fraud. A little kid sneaking into high school. A tween who tricked her way into college. A teenager posing as an adult in jobs. An adolescent playing house and pretending to be married.
A friend and I always joked that ordering furniture was the milestone after which you became a genuine grownup. I ordered an armchair, a rich purple velvet and gold brocade lounge-singer-y armchair in 1998.
Still no grownup.
Once I had children, though, I felt pretty damned grownup. Paying the bills wasn’t a ruse any more. We needed heat. Buying groceries wasn’t for fun. It’s really really seriously to feed small, growing, helpless creatures. And seriously, lactating feels pretty damned mature. (Let’s ignore for a moment that 13 year old girls can do this. Don’t interrupt my revery, grey hairs. This is for you.)
It was after having children that you, my sweet greys, arrived. I rejoiced. I even thought about having a potluck in your honor. You’re invited to a “Welcome to My Head, Expired Hair” Extravaganza. Please bring a side dish or salad.
Since you first appeared, you’ve been reproducing REALLY quickly lately.
Maybe it’s the sleeplessness.
Maybe it’s the constant struggle to stay patient in the face of such blatant illogical hysterics as those acted out by tiny people.
Maybe it’s the worry. Not just the “oh my word, please don’t fall down the stairs” worries, but also the “will the world be cruel; will he be bullied; will he follow the wrong crowd” worries. Even the “will he tell his therapist this” worries.
Maybe it’s the total lack of breaks. Maybe my hair pigment decided to go on vacation.
Whatever it is, dear greys, I honor you. I totally dig seeing more of you each time I look in the mirror. Sure, that’s about once a week on average, since I just don’t care rarely have time to check my appearance. But you are coming on fast and furious.
And I dig that about you, grey. To the point that I’m promising you I will not color you. I will not hide behind chemicals, greys. I can’t afford it, honestly. I respect you too much. So much, in in fact, that I’m willing to risk the British spelling in defiance of the American disdain for gray. For you, my rime, are the evidence of my adulthood.
Grey means I’m old. Grey means I’m free to stop trying to look young, act young, feel young. With grey hair I’m allowed to complain about my aching back, refuse to go out late because “I just can’t do this anymore!” With grey hair I can stop trying to keep up with technology and can adopt slightly antisocial behaviors. Because we have enough friends, don’t we, greys.
With you, grey hair, come all the possibilities for what I can do and be when I no longer focus on the nonsense I’m supposed to as an American woman. No longer caring about being “nice” and thin and measured and muted seems quite freeing. I can let go of the trying to look in favor of trying to be. I can finally nurture my eventual curmudgeon.
And I owe that release to you, my greys. You are the wind beneath my withheld flying fig newton.
It was looking dicey, even from the first line, but I found the perfect plan. To avoid crying through the last few pages of Charlotte’s Web, I realized I had to distract brain while my read-aloud muscles did their job on autopilot. So as I pronounced the words of Charlotte’s death and motherhood, I let my eyes scan the line from initial consonant to initial consonant, noting the relative frequency of each letter. I made myself count and calculate rather than falling into the words.
“My, how often Cs and Bs appear. Wow, there are a lot of Ts this line.” Never mind lessons about mortality, enduring love, generational connections, and children who grow up and fly away. There are surprisingly few initial vowels at the end of the book.
Oh, my trick worked beautifully. I read Peanut the whole last two chapters without losing it. Charlotte died, and I was calm and reassuring as I smoothly glossed over each word, my eyes silently grabbing for the consonants further down the line. Her babies were born and I rejoiced, at least in my voice, but maintained control by counting Ss. Her three daughters set up their webs above Wilbur—three distinct personalities, all of whom evidenced something of their mother. And White wrapped the whole story in a warm blanket of friendship and enduring love, yet I sweetly and breezily narrated it with my best reading voice. And I didn’t cry once.
Until I said “The End.” Because there wasn’t anywhere to go after those words. No more consonants. Damned End even ends in an E. I wasn’t prepared for a vowel. Or for my trick to run smack onto a blank page.
And I bawled. Talking through pathetic little sobs, I told a surprised Peanut that “it’s just my favorite story and I love how gentle the friends are with each other, how sweet and true and friendly.”
That book gets me every time. Damnit.
Peanut told me this week that he wants a new mom.
He ain’t the only one shopping for my replacement.
I’m done.
I’m just done.
I finally found a sitter, after two years of a Spouse who worked such long hours he only saw our eldest on weekends and two more years of an intense kid who was awake 14 hours a day and most of the night, and another year with two children, the sum of which ate away all my reserves. And put me deep into patience debt. And fun ideas debt. And giving a shite debt. So I found a sitter from a trusted source and scheduled her twice a week for two hours.
Four hours of solo time. Of daylight hours where I could choose my own destiny. Or at least have a cup of tea and close my eyes while walking. (I love doing that.) Or, heaven forbid, writing.
And this answer-to-my-prayers babysitter has canceled six times now. Out of eight appointments. Sick some of those times, needed at work (a preschool) others, planning a trip another, and “tired and unable to be attentive” once. Five cancellations were an hour before she was due here.
So clearly I’m not going to ask her back.
And without outside help I’m back to 86 hours a week of being tasked with guarding and teaching and protecting and not stabbing small children. And another 14 hours a week while they sleep of cleaning and preparing and cooking. And another couple of hours every night, when the toddler wakes 2-6 times for comfort and milk and the older one wakes for bathroom or nightmares or some bullshit invention that tests my theories of nighttime parenting.
I’m too tired to calculate it, but that seems as though at least 114 hours of my week is child-centric. (For those keeping track, that leaves less than 8 hours a day, so I can do all children all the time and sleep, or rob my sleep to have some reading, writing, exercise, thinking, talking, adult time moments.) I love these kids 168 hours a week. But 68% of every minute of my year seems like a lot of unblinking moments. With healthy, loving, awesome kids. And two hours to myself most weekends. Whine whine whine. Except, come on.
With a sitter who calls in too tired to pay attention to my kids for two bleeping hours.
So when the five year old offers to throw me out on my ear, I’m eager for the chance.
P: I get a good allowance, you know. I can buy a new mom.
M: Hmmm. What are you looking for in a new mom? What qualities will make a new mom worth your money?
P: Well, mostly what I’m looking for is no rules.
M: Oh. Yeah, that would be nice.
P: I want one who says yes to hitting.
M: Well, let’s see. That knocks out M’s mom and E’s mom and R’s mom and your aunt and your grandmas. Who else do you have in mind?
P: I don’t really need to buy a new mom. I just need to pay you to have no rules.
M: No deal. You still have to hold hands in the street and wear a seatbelt and use sunscreen if I’m your mom.
P: Okay, but I want to pay you so I can hit.
M: What do you want to hit?
P: I’ll give you $100 if I can knock down this house.
M: There’s a problem with that plan. If you knock down this house I have to pay the landlord a lot more than $100. So it’s not worth it to me. Sorry.
P: Well, I’ll keep looking.
M: You do that.
…I do not think it means what you think it means.
Peanut: I’m wearing my hunting hat.
Me: [thinking: Dear gawd, no! Please tell me you are hunting blueberries or something] What makes it a hunting hat?
P: Oh, you know. It has pockets…for when I find trash in the forest…and pick it up.
M: Oh. [Phew.]
[ Also, what kind of trash fits into a 5 year old’s hat pocket?]
P: Not like collecting because I wouldn’t keep it; but collecting like collecting it all together to put in the trash.
M: I see.
P: Because nobody likes garbage in the forest.
M: No, they don’t.
P: [long pause] A hunting hat.
We don’t know yet which kindergarten Peanut is going to attend.
We don’t know yet what to do with our days this summer.
We don’t know if we’re staying in this new place, which we quite like but which is bleeding us dry.
We don’t know if Butter is signing “Dad” or “cow” or “horse” until he moooooooooos.
That usually clears it up.
NaptimeWriting 