Chapter 11 for the Tooth Fairy

Ever-dwindling blog no more! I don't know why it is such a struggle for me lately, perhaps for the same reason that it is a struggle for me to peel my arse off of the couch to do anything productive. I need a little motivation.

We all know that our country is in trouble. We've got a ginormous deficit, our banks and lenders are closing down like local grocery stores on the heels of a Wal-Mart grand opening, and our Representatives are likely going to vote to spend $700 billion of our money to rescue our economy from certain doom. While nobody has enough fingers to point at those responsible, the American consumers are certainly near the top of the list. How many people do you know who live in homes they can nary afford? Or drive cars that cost more a month than some mortgages? Or take vacations with limitless budgets and host elaborate birthday parties for one-year-olds? This culture of entitlement and overspending has found its way into the made-up mind of at least one fantasy character: the tooth fairy.

When I was a kid and lost a tooth, I laid it under my pillow before going to sleep and woke up to find a shiny new quarter in its place in the morning. I was thrilled. A WHOLE quarter! My son lost his first tooth yesterday. He put it in an empty Ambien prescription bottle (that's just how we roll around here) and placed it carefully under his pillow. He woke up to find not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE crisp dollar bills under his pillow. FIVE! I hung my head in shame this morning realizing my mistake. Darn that Tooth Fairy Diva! She's a high-fallutin', over spendin', wracked-with-debt dental fairy with nothing better to do than poison my mind with her mass kindergarten entitlement conspiracy.

Déjà Vu

The kids and I sat down for an early lunch this afternoon. It was an odd mix of leftovers. My daughter had a slice of pizza and some broccoli. My son had a PB&J and some strawberries and I had some teriyaki chicken and rice. We were all very hungry for some reason so we weren't talking much at

the table until everyone's plates started to clear. Then the chatter started. My daughter had eaten her pizza to the crust and then tore the crust in half and handed me a piece. She said, "You be this guy and I'll be this guy." Then she held up her half of the pizza crust and started bouncing it around, attempting to anthropomorphize it (do I get props for that word, or what?!). Here's how our little pizza crust dialogue went:

Daughter: (in strange, muffled deep voice) What are you doing friend?

Me: (attempting to imitate the bouncing with my half of the crust) I'm getting ready to be eaten.

Daughter: NO! NO! Don't let her eat you! No!

Me: How do I stop her?

Daughter: (looks mischievously at the pizza crust in her hand and takes a big bite out of it) Ah! No! No! Help!

Me: (taking a big ol' hunk out of my half of the crust) Sorry man. I can't help you.

My son, the whole time, was watching our conversation with great interest, smiling as the poor crust halves met their fate. I couldn't help myself. I turned to my daughter and said, "You could not be more like your brother." I winked at my son.

He looked at me innocently and said, "What do you mean?"

I just laughed and said, "You know what I mean."

Neither one of us spoke again. I just marveled at my two glorious weirdos who can turn the most mundane items into dramatic scenarios and smiled.

It’s a Magic Number

Three is a fun age, isn't it? Let's hear it for three. My daughter (an adorable three-year-old) demanded milk this morning. There was no please, no pleasant voice, no question, simply a demand. This might be my most loathed childhood action. I realize that making demands is at the very heart of gaining autonomy but it is the lack of respect that I cannot tolerate. Doesn't, Mommy, can I please have some milk? mean the same thing as, Get me some more milk!? I have zero tolerance for the latter, regardless of whether the child saying it shares my DNA. When my own children make demands such as these I usually respond by refusing to respond. This doesn't always go well. Here's what happened this morning:

Precious Three-Year-Old Daughter: (in a demanding voice) Get me some MILK!

Me: No response

PTYOD: (in a slightly louder demanding voice): Get me some milk Mommy!

Me: No response

PTYOD: (in a loud, shrill, almost unbearable voice): Mommy! Get me some milk! I want milk! Mommy!

Me: No response

PTYOD: (doing her best impression of Axle Rose during that awful scream at the opening of "Welcome to the Jungle"): GET ME SOME MILK! I WANT MORE MILK!

Me: (quiet, calm) I don't respond to requests like that

PTYOD: Mommy, can I please have some more milk?

Me: Sure. I'll get you some

This strategy, although rough on the ol' ear drums, eventually gets me the response I want with my own kids. I don't really feel comfortable using this strategy for kids that are not mine. How do I go about handling these pesky demands in other people's children? Do I ignore them? Submit to their requests? Threaten them with physical violence? What do you do?

Pop Tarts and Demons

I wrote this post back in February to save for a rainy day.
Today is one such rainy day:

If you ordered say, blueberry pancakes, at IHOP and the
waitress brought you strawberry instead, would you freak? Would you morph into
a demon and scream at the waitress as if she were an imbecile? Would smoke come
out of your ears? Probably not. You’d do one of two things: A) Bring the error
to the waitress’s attention and politely request the correct dish or B) Accept
your fate and enjoy the strawberry pancakes. But you’re not my son. And the
waitress is not me, on the phone with a doctor from New Hampshire, conducting
an interview for an upcoming article.

It was a pop tart. I gave my son a cherry pop tart instead
of a blueberry one. We were out of blueberry. I loathe pop tarts. They’re
chock full of high-fructose corn syrup and they amount to a nutritionally
worthless breakfast but I keep them on hand for after-lunch treats (my kids
split one) and emergencies. This interview was one such emergency. I called the
doctor on Wednesday. My house was quiet and orderly and I could have conducted
a highly professional interview but he was not in his office and I left him a
message. He called me back yesterday morning and instead of telling him that I
would have to call him back and getting the kids in order, I acted impulsively
and decided to take the interview then. I hauled out the big guns: pop tarts
and Sponge Bob and sat down in front of my computer.  Things started to go south about 10 minutes
in.

My son was not pleased with his cherry pop tart and kept
yelling, “Mommy WHY-DID-YOU-BRING-ME-A-CHERRY-POP-TART-I-DON’T-LIKE-CHERRY.
GET-ME-A-BLUEBERRY-ONE.” This was not said in a kind voice. It reminded me of a
tape I heard in Sunday School in junior high of a man possessed by a demon
named Legion. Not pretty and just a tad distracting. The doctor was gracious
and kind and, best of all, a father of two kids under 5. He kept right on
talking and I kept right on listening, occasionally peeking into the living
room to point at the phone forcibly and give my son the evil eye. As you can
imagine, it was highly effective. My parenting skills, especially under duress,
are off the h-iz-ook.

So, writer Mamas, what’s your strategy for effective and
professional interviewing? Hire a nanny? Invest in a kid-cage? Sound proof
walls? I’m up for suggestions!

Third Rites

There are many rites of passages associated with particular birthdays. At 16 you can drive, at 18 you can buy tobacco products (yippee!), at 21 you can drink and, last but certainly not least, at 25 you can rent a car. My daughter is obsessed with two of her little known three-year-old rites of passage. The first, swimming lessons, consumes her thoughts on an hourly basis. She asks me at least ten times per day, "Mommy, am I going to imim lessons today?" I only get to answer her question with an affirmation on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the rest of the time she sulks around, depressed about her non-swimming, three-year-old existence. This morning, a swimming lesson day, I awoke to green and white striped lycra two inches from my face and my daughter repeating, "Can you help me put on my bathing suit for swimming lessons? Can you help me put on my bathing suit for swimming lessons?" over and over again. I finally gave in, surrendering the fantasy that I might actually get to sleep until 7:00am on a non-school day. Where do I get these ridiculous notions?

Her second obsession is with the nursery at our local YMCA. We are regular Y-goers so that nursery and the wonderful staff that helps care for the kiddos is a second home for my kids. My daughter and I go sans my son on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while he is in preschool and then we all go on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The days when my son is present are a little complicated due to the fact that my son is in the 3-5-year-old section and my daughter is in the 18 month-2-year-old section. The only thing that divides these two areas is a 3 foot book shelf but my daughter can't stand it. She wants to be with Bubba in what she refers to as, "The Boy Room." The other room where she spent hours of agonizing partial separation from my son on Tuesdays and Thursdays is aptly named, "The Girl Room." There is, mind you, no separation based on gender in the nursery. This is just how my daughter sees the world I guess. Suffice it to say, she was thrilled to death when, on Tuesday, she was permitted to stay in "The Boy Room" with Bubba. She practically danced past the 3 food bookshelves and staked her claim in the space right next to Bubba. It was a victorious day.

Fear of Furries

D

My tummy not feel better!

My tummy not feel better!

This is what my daughter says every time she feels vulnerable. It started about a week ago and, like any good neurotic mother, I ran through all of the worst-case scenarios in my head:

• Stomach cancer
  



• Obstructed bowel
  



• Constipation due to a diet of chicken nuggets and bread (she's at that stage where she boycotts all nutritionally valuable foods)
  



• Anxiety
  

With the help of some careful observation and sage advice from an experienced YMCA child watch center worker, I have come to the conclusion that none of these scenarios apply. What is happening when my daughter utters these five words is nothing more than pure manipulation. At the ripe old age of two and a half she has figured out how to play me like a fiddle. She senses my hypersensitivity when it comes to her well-being. She knows that her one ace in the hole is her health and I will always err on the side of caution when she cries "sick."

In the past week, my daughter's stomach has hurt during the following scenarios:

• when I drop her off in the Y nursery



• when I deny her request for candy



• when she sees the Easter Bunny (she's terrified of all furries)



• when she is in the company of someone new and feels shy



• at bedtime 
  

Anyone detecting a pattern here?

I'm wise to her games. It took me seven days but I've finally decoded the two-and-a-half-year-old mind. Impressive huh? Now I just use her fear of furries against her. Whenever she feigns illness, I threaten a visit to the Easter Bunny. It works like a charm! Sure, I might be damaging her enjoyment of Easter for life but, oh well, it works. I never liked the Easter Bunny all that much anyway. He gives me the creeps with his giant head and ridiculous outfit.

1 in 4

Let's talk about this new study claiming that 1 in 4 teenage girls has some form of STD. I was floored by this and very disturbed. Maybe it all goes back to my naivety and the fact that I can still measure my daughter's age in months but this seems like an epidemic. I'd like to get the back story on the numbers. The sample was 838 young women but I don't know if they were taken from several regions or how they were obtained. Regardless, these numbers are scary, really scary.

I wonder what the same study would have shown if it were taken during my teen years: 1988-1994. Would they have been much different? I think so but I may be naïve and was, without a doubt, a total prude at age 16. I can only hope that my daughter is a naïve prude like I was. Now I've got to decide on a tactic. Got any ideas? Open communication? Threats? A pregnant suit? Fear? Religious fanaticism? My options, at this point, are wide open.

EC

I read this article in Brain, Child magazine and it really caught me off guard. Did you know that in some Eastern African cultures, a high percentage of infants are diaper-free by 4-6 months of age? Did you also know that there is a Diaper-free movement right here in the good ol' USA? I didn't. I had heard of EC (Elimination Communication) during my cloth diaper-makin' days from some of those crazy diapering Mamas on the Mothering.com message boards (No offense ladies but you guys can get a little nutty about cloth diapers!) but I dismissed it as completely absurd. The prospect of potty-training an infant seems ridiculous. I'm still wearing a big gold star on my lapel for toilet learning my baby girl at age 2. Go me!

My daughter (and her non-diaper-free Mother) would be behind the curve in the EC circles. Those mamas would take one look at my gold star, roll their eyes and laugh at me, "Two years old?" they would say,  "Try two months old! What kind of Mother waits until her child is two years old to take off the diapers?!" According to a spokeswoman for DiaperFreeBaby.com, there are 37 U.S. states that offer organized Diaper Free Baby support groups. Surprise! Tennessee is NOT one of them. We're still sitting on our back porches in our rockin' chairs, chewing on weeds and watchin' our babies run around in the grass in landfill-bound diapers that we purchased at Wal-Mart. We listen in awe to the stories about babies who learn to use the potty before they reach their second birthday. We consider that these children might be prodigies, headed off to some Ivy League college on a potty-trainin' scholarship.

What about those Elimination Communication babies who are toilet-learned by 4 months of age? Well, I just don't know what to think about them. Who knows? Maybe I'd be a believer if I actually met a Mom who'd used this practice successfully but I haven't. I've read a couple testimonials and frankly, it seems like entirely too much effort to save yourself and your baby a year or two of diaper duty.

Red

There is a new book coming out on November 8^th  by Amy Goldwasser called Red: The Next Generation of American Writers—Teenage Girls—On What Fires Up Their Lives Today. Let's be honest, the title is less than subtle and a little long but the content absolutely demands to be red.
I am terrified by what I might find but, for the sake of my daughter and teenage girls everywhere with something to say, I must read it.

I remember what it felt like to be a teenage girl. I remember being consumed with my social missteps and my weight and my wardrobe. I remember feeling absolute despair when my best friend stayed home from school and I had to face the day without her. We were partners in the teenage survival struggle, Heather and I. Her absence meant that I was alone and loneliness was unbearable.

Teenage girls are perhaps the most interesting creatures in the world and they are an absolute mystery unless you happen to be one of them (and even then they can be a mystery). I'm pretty sure that I would have pounced on the opportunity to publicly share my personal struggles as well as my penchants for writing as a teenager.  A sense of purpose (other than the quest to stay thin and the desperate need to piss off your parents) is something that many teenagers are severely lacking. These young writers got it and I can't wait to read what they did with it.

Bring it on teenage girls! I can take it! It might just make me a little less judgmental when I see you walking through the mall, wearing stripper-esque duds, text messaging and smacking your gum.

Potty Prodigy

What is the most gratifying developmental milestone of early childhood? Potty training. It's an
accomplishment for both child and parents and sets you free from the expense and the hassle of diapers and diaper bags. My daughter, who is not quite 2 and a half, is officially potty trained. I put her in panties last Monday and she has had one accident in the 9 days since. The "training" part of the process took all of 15 minutes. She wanted to wear those panties. She's my little potty prodigy! This whole experience is her little way of apologizing for waiting so long to walk and all of the anxiety it caused me. In your face early walkers!

On a related note, did you know that there is actually a PC term for potty-training? It's now called, "toilet learning." I guess the use of the term, "training" is somehow offensive.

Middle Management

Most preschool boys have lofty occupational goals. Some of the
most popular at this age seem to be fireman, policeman, astronaut, train
engineer and Spiderman. My son has dreams of driving a train or a monorail but
his fantasy role of the hour seems to be that of someone in middle management.
I don’t think this necessarily makes him a realist (I see him headed for upper
management at the very least) but it does make him unique.

Here are some of manager musings from the last few weeks:

One of my workers has been to the South Pole. He stayed
warm because his coat was made of bricks.

Mom, we need to bring food to my workers because they
don’t have any money.

I have to make ramps for most of my workers. They are in
wheelchairs and can’t climb ladders.

It’s my workers birthday and we are having a party for
him so we need to make some cake.

 I take pride in the fact that my son seems to be a pretty
good boss. He throws birthday parties for his employees, makes sure that the
disabled among them are accommodated, listens to their elaborate vacation
stories, and brings food to them when they are in need. My only concern is that
his workers seem to work for him out of the goodness of their heart. I asked
him once if he paid them for the work they did. He laughed and said, “No Mommy.
They don’t need money.”

Entitlement rears its ugly head yet again.

Easy to Please

The Department of Family Services of Bradley County has a
surprisingly nice waiting room. It’s got a floral tapestry loveseat, a couple
high-gloss dark wood chairs and a coffee table covered with a wide variety of
pamphlets. I’ve been there three times this week, dragging my kids with me.
They get excited each time we pull into the parking lot, “Is this the place
where we get to sit in all the different chairs?” my son will say wide-eyed.

“Yes, it is.”

They sure are easy to please. They play musical chairs while
I talk smack with the woman behind the plexiglass window. I’ve been trying all
week to get my son’s application submitted for preschool within the public
school system. The paperwork is a beaurocratic nightmare and, after my fourth
attempt, I finally had all of the documents in order. Now, we wait. We won’t
find out if he gets in until 30-45 days after the start of the school year
because they have to give all of the people in the Head Start program a chance
to apply. After that time, they’ll start letting the general public in. I’m
crossing my fingers. It’s a great program. And it’s free.

My kids and I walked hand in hand out to the car. They each
picked up a souvenir and started “reading” their respective brochures as I was
pulling out of the parking lot. It was a really cute sight until I noticed the
title of the pamphlets: Rape and Sexual Assault: What You Should Know.

Fabricated Milestones

Today was my son’s first day of 4-year-old preschool. He is
going to the same preschool that he attended last year with a different teacher
and a larger class. His day went well. He likes his teacher. He knew some kids
in the class and he got to eat some chocolate chip teddy grahams (the highlight
of his day).

I got right back into my non-summer routine:

• Wake up at 6:00 a.m.



• Shower



• Make myself presentable



• Wake kids up



• Feed kids and myself



• Dress kids



• Drive to school



• Pull into the circle drive and let the staff escort my child from the car to his classroom. I don’t even have to take off my seat belt.

I ran errands with my daughter until it was time to pick my
son up. We pulled in the circle drive and let the staff place him in my car.  I felt great about my day. I got to spend some
quality time with my daughter. My son was thrilled to be back in school and I
felt energized as a Mom. I bid a fond farewell to the summer doldrums that have
plagued us for the past few weeks.

This feeling of elation stayed with me until about 2:30 when
I received an email from a friend. Her son is in my son’s class this year and
her email was entitled, Pics of Cody’s First Day at School. I opened it
up to find four pictures of Cody in various positions in the preschool. There
was one of him just before he walked in the door and three more of him engaged
in some type of preschool-y activity inside of the room. The first picture was
even narrated at the bottom with the phrase, Cody standing outside his classroom.

Crap. What kind of Mom am I? I didn’t even walk my kid into
the building, let alone snap some pictures of him entering the classroom. Hell,
I didn’t even take one picture of him at home in his cute outfit, all ready for
his first day. I am terrible at documenting milestones. I suck at pictures. I
suck at baby books and scrapbooking and any type of mementos that preserve when
my kids lost their first tooth, took their first step, rolled over for the
first time. I filled out my daughter’s baby book at the end of her first year
and made just about everything up. Granted, it was in the ballpark of accuracy
but completely fabricated. What does this say about me?

I am really good at documenting the bizarre behavior of my
children and my own mediocre parenting skills. Does this count for anything?

A Genuine Shiner

My son has a genuine shiner. It’s dark purple with blue
edges and, as he put it, “Mommy, it looks like a rainbow.” This is not his only
facial injury. He also has a ½ inch scratch running along the side of his other
eye, right next to the bridge of his nose. These two eye injuries, along with
his various bruises, make him look like a child that they might use to play
orphan #3 in a modern version of “Oliver.” The wardrobe people would probably
throw a little dirt on his face and outfit him in some tattered clothing but he
wouldn’t need any make-up. From the neck up he looks like a street child.

Both of my kids had doctor’s appointments today. My son had
his preschool physical, complete with three shots and a finger prick, and my
daughter had her two-year-old check-up. I came very close to cancelling both of
these appointments when my son ran face first into the window ledge last night
causing injury number two. What if they think I abuse my child? What if they
call DFS on me? How am I going to explain the black eye? I tried to devise a
cover story to explain away his injuries. Granted, it was the truth, but I
still felt the need to rehearse it. It went something like this:



See doc, my son is the world’s biggest klutz. He walks on
flat surfaces with no impediments and falls flat on his face, tripping over
nothing but his own feet. He’s currently learning the perils of running in the
house the hard way. The first injury occurred when he ran through the kitchen
and fell onto a chair. The second one happened when he ran through the living
room and accidentally planted his face on a window ledge.

The conversation didn’t turn out quite like I expected. The doctor
asked my son directly and he answered honestly, omitting the whole “world’s
biggest klutz” explanation. The doctor encouraged my son’s rainbow fantasy
telling him that it would change colors as the days went on, first to light
blue, then green and then yellow. He ate this up, gazing up at the doctor with
stars in his eyes. At this very moment my son is standing in front of the
mirror whining because his eye hasn’t changed colors yet. So much for a lesson
learned.

Chaos and Ruin

It blows my mind how different my two children are. My son
is totally type A. He’s a neat freak. He likes order. And he appreciates a
routine. My daughter, the antithesis of my son, is a two-and-a-half foot
Tasmanian devil. She spins through the house at warp speed leaving chaos and
ruin wherever she goes. Here’s what happened to day at the hands of my little
rogue:

At around 11:00 a.m. I had to pee. Normally this is a
customary, all-too-frequent (ask anyone—I’ve got overactive bladder. I could
take Detrol LA but I’d prefer not to be associated with Betty White at the ripe
old age of 32!) occurrence but today there were extenuating circumstances. I
flushed and watched in horror as the water rose rapidly to the brim of the
toilet. Thankfully, it stopped but I noticed a fairly large clump of white
paper that seemed to be stuck in the toilet causing the clog. I took a closer
look and discovered that my daughter had taken the box of wipes, which I had
refilled this morning, and dumped the entire contents into the
toilet. I slid on my elbow-length, industrial kitchen gloves and pulled the wipes out of
the toilet, rung out the pee-soaked water, and put them in the garbage. It
really brightened up my morning.

At roughly 2:00 my son got out his art box and he and my daughter
started coloring. They were playing peacefully together so I decided to take this
opportunity to clean the bathrooms. It was blissful really, cleaning without
interruption. I got so much done and felt great when I finished mopping the
floor and went into the kitchen to check on my kids. I found my son
coloring contently at the table, very into his current project. My daughter was
also coloring contently. Her medium, though, was not paper. It was my stove.  She had decorated the table, two chairs,
the stove, the floor and various parts of her body with every color in the
rainbow. I gave myself a quick pat on the back for having the forethought to
purchase washable markers and got down to the business of cleaning my newly
decorated kitchen.

All was not in vain as I
have learned a valuable lesson from these incidents: As long as I can hear my daughter, I don’t
have to worry. It’s the rare patches of silence that are cause for concern. If
she’s not talking or singing or screaming or whining, then she is, in all
likelihood, silently destroying something.

Madonna's Footsteps

When I pulled into the driveway on our way back from the
YMCA this morning, there were some packages sitting on the doorstep. My son,
always excited about packages, asked me, “Mom. Do you want me to carry the post
in?” The post? Who calls it the post? My son, that’s who.

Following in Madonna’s footsteps, my son has become British.
When I pull into the gas station he says, “Mommy. Are we getting petrol?”
Petrol! What ever happened to good ol’ American gas? Don’t get me wrong. I have
nothing against the Brits. I just find it humorous that my son is becoming
one of them. He’s never met anyone from Jolly Old England and he laughs
hysterically when I attempt an English accent during our many tea parties. He
does, however, like the terminology.

The origin of this British transition is no mystery. I know
precisely where he is picking up terms like, “the post” and “petrol.” It’s from
his favorite TV show, Postman Pat. Postman Pat is the cleanest, most benign television show I have ever seen. It is very simple and focuses
around the antics of a Barney Fife-ish Postman in a small town in England. It
is old school claymation and my son could not love it more. It comes on HBO
Family and, as a result, there are no commercials. PBS and HBO are favorites in
our house because of their lack of commercials. I suppose my son’s transition
into a young, British lad is the price that a four-year-old has to pay for a little freedom from marketing.

Crossroads

I’ve reached a crossroads in my parenting life. My two-year-old daughter, an angel since
birth, has become more annoying than my son. She is extremely demanding, relentless and very, very loud. It’s like living with Shannen Doherty
without volume control or the ability to take “no” for an answer. 

This recent graduation into full-blown toddlerdom has caused
me wax nostalgic about my son’s baby years. He used to be angelic. I used to
look at other children taunting their parents with blatant disobedience
thinking, “what did they do to that kid?” I was so grateful to have been blessed with a child (all of 6 months
old) who was so well behaved with such a calm, passive disposition. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Just tonight, I talked to my husband about
"that demon living under our roof” in reference to my son. 

Things change. I
realize this now but apparently I did not learn my lesson the first time around. Just three weeks ago I had myself convinced
wholeheartedly that my daughter was going to miraculously skip the toddler
stage. She was, after all, the perfect
baby. And, let’s face it; she’s pretty
easy on the eyes. Adorableness can mess
with your brain. I was convinced that
her long, dark locks and her big brown eyes would be enough to warm my heart in
the midst of even the most taxing toddler years. I was wrong. 

My daughter looks at me with those big, beautiful eyes and yells,
at the top of her lungs, with her face less than 15 inches away from mine,
“MOMMY! Ont milk! Ont milk!” If I don’t stop what I am doing immediately and fetch her some milk, she
turns up the volume and yells some more. I have become, for lack of a better word, a slave to my daughter’s
needs. My mind tells me it’s a phase
but my instincts tell me to lock her in her room for the next two years and
feed her through a makeshift mail slot in the door.

Dumbin' Down

I have never been one to alter the way I speak in order to
accommodate my children. I use the same
words that I use when speaking to my friends. I will happily explain the meaning of a word if I
am asked (I often am)
but I refuse to dumb down my vocabulary for the sake of my kids. This parenting philosophy makes me very unlikely to condone baby talk but I do like to prolong the use of some of
the more endearing words and phrases that come out of my children’s mouths. My daughter, for example, calls her shoes
her “woos” and I have adopted this word as my own. I rarely say “shoes” these days, even to my husband or son. I realize this is a little strange but I am
clinging tightly to my daughter’s youth and want to prolong the cute phase as
long as possible. I know what comes
next and cute is not one of the many words that come to mind.

Sometimes the choices that we make as parents actually
payoff. It is rare that we get to
glimpse the tangible results of our actions but it happens, sometimes. My refusal to modify the way that I speak to my children paid off last
week when I went through the motions of letting my son out of time-out. I asked him if he knew why he was in
time-out. This is what my four-year-old
said:

“Because I was antagonizing my sister.” Slam! Duh duh duh.

 

Stay-At-Home-Mom Syndrome

The image of the stay-at-home-mom has changed in recent
years. Our aprons have been replaced
with cell-phones and we’ve traded in our cocktails for Xanax and Prozac. The peaceful, nurturing spirit that used to
fill our minds when we thought of stay-at-home-moms, along with the smell of
fresh-baked cookies, has disappeared. Today’s Moms are in a big freakin’ hurry. They're not sure where they’re going but they are going to get there
fast and no one, not even their children, is going to stand in their way.

This image of the pill-popping, cell phone wielding Mother
is not always a fair representation but it certainly is a common sight. I saw an incident today that would make
anyone shudder. I was at the pool,
taking a break from my constant poolside anxiety because both of my kids were
out of the water, when I saw some commotion by the baby pool. There, in the pool, was a little boy who
looked to be around 2-years-old. His
face was in the water and he was clearly struggling. The group of women by the pool called out to his Mother who came
over casually, cell-phone at her ear, and attempted to lift the boy out of the
water by his wrist while still talking on her cell-phone. In her attempt to multi-task, her hand
slipped and her son fell, face first, into the water. She still did not put her phone down. Instead, she rolled her eyes, kept talking and grabbed her son
again, this time successfully taking him out of the water.

It was a very disturbing sight and not one I hope to see
again anytime soon. It brought to light
the stigma that is associated with the modern stay-at-home-Mom as  anxiety ridden, cell-phone weilding,  multi-tasking monsters hardly capable of taking care of themselves, let alone their children. Is the stigma accurate? Obviously it is in some cases. Every stay-at-home-Mom (including myself) I
know has a cell phone that gets a great deal of use and there are a whole lot
of Mamas on Prozac.  The vast majority of them are, however, good people, good mothers
and good citizens of this earth. They
are our friends, our neighbors and, for better or worse, the Mothers of the
next generation. Some of their children
are just going to need a little more therapy than others.

In a very timely, if less-than-graceful, act of redemption
for stay-at-home-Moms everywhere, a Mom (a friend of mine) was sitting by the
baby pool, looking at her friend’s newly printed vacation pictures when her
2-year-old son started to struggle in the water. Without hesitation or regard for anything or anyone, she
jumped into the one-foot waters of the baby pool. She could have scaled a small building with the leap she made
and, before anyone knew what was happening, she had her son out of the water to
safety. Those freshly printed pictures
lay on the surface of the water effectively ruined. If her cell phone had been in hand (it wasn’t) it would be
waterlogged at the bottom of the pool. Everything in her lap at the time her son went under was sacrificed for
her rescue attempt. It was a glorious
sight.

Range of Motion

They say bad things come in threes. I guess I’m living proof of that. Less than two weeks ago, I discovered a dead
body on the banks of our campsite. Three
days ago I became ill and made every effort possible to keep my body firmly
planted on the couch, despite my children’s many requests. My son learned a little bit about
self-sufficiency during that time. And
today my daughter fell from a swing-set fort to the ground and landed on her
back. It was about 4.5 feet high (this
is a guess) and my 33-inch tall daughter fell sideways off of the platform onto
the ground with a fairly loud thunk.

I went to the ER about 10 minutes after the fall. She seemed OK but was a little lethargic and
crying in a way that had me worried. I
called my doctor but he was at lunch and I couldn’t stand not taking her
in. I had to make sure she was OK. So, I called in a favor with Melinda to take
my son home with her if necessary (thank you Melinda!). I explained to my son what was going on and
I jumped in my car and drove the three miles to the hospital. I got to see the triage nurse relatively
quickly and she did a fairly extensive check-up on my daughter. She said that she would be happy to let a
doctor look at her but she was quite confident that my daughter was fine. By that time she was calm and smiling. I asked her what she would do if it were her
child and she said she would take her home, observe her and come back if there
was anything noticeably wrong later on. I took her advice and went back to pick up my son and hang out a little
bit with some friends.

My daughter seemed fine. She ate lunch and was a little moody but I attributed it to her being tired  and a little shell-shocked from the fall. I took the kids home and they both napped for a couple hours. When my daughter woke up she was clearly
favoring her left arm. She held her right one pretty close to her body and kept pointing at it and whimpering. It took me about three seconds to get both
kids in the car and on the way to the hospital. We got right in again with the same triage nurse and saw a doctor within fifteen minutes of arriva. My
daughter charmed the scrubs off of everyone in that hospital and managed to
coerce the nurse into snatching a popsicle for her and my son from the staff’s
freezer. She sat still for the doctor,
licking her red popsicle and grinning while the doctor pulled her arms and
legs, checked her back, neck and head and, every once in a while, looked at me
as if to say, “Why did you bring her here again?”

My daughter is fine. The range of motion in all of her appendages is normal and she walked
out of there with a new bracelet, a sticker and a popsicle. She thinks the hospital is some type of amusement
park full of friendly people and frozen treats. I walked out of there with a $300.00 bill and a post-it note
stuck on my daughter’s file that says, “Warning: Neurotic Mother.”