My son shall grow up to be a wussy Mama’s boy and it’s all my fault
June 1, 2009 by 23 Comments
My son can be sensitive.
He loves his mom. Anything that involves blood or death upsets him, and you better not touch his lego creations (that include 6 armed robots who are his best friend AND evil ships with aliens) or he will crumble into a million pieces and weep for their dismantling.
So I wasn’t surprised when he quizzed me about what is next in his life, mainly, Kindergarten ending.
Well honey we talked about this. After Kindergarten comes 1st grade.
…and then what Mom.
Then comes 2nd grade. And then 3rd grade.
And then 4th grade and 5th grade mom?
Yes honey. You got it.
So what happens when the grades are done?
Well then you get to go away to college sweetie. You get to live there, and be with your friends, it’s SO MUCH FUN.
Dead Silence.
Uncomfortable sighs.
Heaves.
SOBS.
Full-on hysterical crying.
Yes, my son was losing it over something 12 grades from now, and with good reason.
…but, but…Mom…I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE YOU EVER.
awww honey, you don’t ever have to go, it’s ok. Really sweetie calm down it’s ok. But trust me you’ll want to go. I know you don’t feel that way now, but when you’re older and as big as Drew (our good friend’s son who’s 17) you might want to be with your friends more than your Mom.
NO I WON’T! DON’T TELL ME THOSE THINGS! I WANT YOU MOMMY!
Oh honey. It’s ok. It’s ok. (hysterical sobs continue, tears EVERYWHERE) you can stay home. You can stay home as long as you like. Really. You know where we go to the Farmer’s Market? That’s a college! You can go right there to college and live here and never leave!
And then I realized what I had just said. And caught myself.
But promise me you’ll think about living away. Because you need to try things in life. Remember how you thought you hated salmon? And you tried salmon and now you love it? That might be what college is like!
No Mom. Not unless you come.
Ok honey. I can come to college.
Yes, in one tiny, bedtime exchange I promised my son that not only could he stay home from college but if he decided he wanted to go…I would go with him.
#fail.
Muscles
May 22, 2009 by 19 Comments
Said to the nice, unsuspecting, stunned cashier at a major department store:
“I have muscles in my VAGINA!”
It Won’t Last Forever
May 10, 2009 by 29 Comments
When she lays sideways against me, she usually swings her legs over my knees. They dangle. They dangle because she is tiny and even the simple act of laying across me is monumental to her. Her limbs looking so very small in relation to mine.
To me it’s heaven. Her body nestled across mine, while her brother rests his head on my shoulder. Everyone breathing in unison and calm together.
This is how we sleep from time-to-time. Not so often anymore, but often enough for me to realize it’s nearly gone.
Sometimes, when I lay on my side, she can still curl to spoon me. But her spoon involves her tiny feet against my thighs and her head in my neck. She still fits there. But barely. Just barely.
He is another story. He can’t fit there ever again. Now he wraps his arms around me like a little man, and uses one hand to pet my back, or pet my arm. He dotes in a way where before, he wanted the doting on himself.
Now when he rolls over, he’s careful to not touch my breast, instead choosing to lay a hand on my belly. This one is harder for me. More emotional of a change. Before his head would lay nowhere but my breast. Not anymore. He is embarrassed. He is aware.
It breaks my heart.
It doesn’t happen so often anymore, but when they are both at my side, sleeping with limbs strewn across mine and breathing on my arm it’s almost as if time doesn’t move, and I am at peace.
I can hear their breath.
They aren’t darting off to play, or at school, or in the yard.
It’s the one time of day I have no fear for them, or for myself. They are with me. They are safe. We are together.
This morning as I awoke with feet in my face and a sweaty head on my shoulder, I realized it was just a moment away from being gone. We are but days or months from being done with wanting to lay near Mom. Needing to lay near Mom. Able to lay near Mom.
They both barely fit any longer…not just in size.
It’s nearly gone. Time is so very short. Those tiny feet now push away instead of pushing on my thighs. That once small head now changes his mind and goes back to his own bed, full of independence and assured and able to comfort himself.
I laugh now at myself. Wanting not so long ago for them to learn to sleep in their own beds. Willing it. I needed the break, or the space, or the freedom at night. Forgetting one of the mantra’s I would tell others when they looked-down on our co-sleeping habits, “it won’t last forever.”
And here we are. Forever. And I’d like it to last just a bit longer.
Please.
Lack of Halo
May 4, 2009 by 24 Comments
And to think I nearly took a 4-year old down for hurting my daughter…
A funny thing happened on my couch last night. My daughter animatedly told my husband and I a story about her day that included a classmate…let’s call him Cody…getting in trouble for “being mean” to her.
You see as she told the story, Cody was mean. He did something…and that was as specific as it got…that made my daughter angry and she “didn’t want to play with him” anymore.
Of course I did what any mother would do. I was ready to take down Cody AND his mother. Who was this kid? Why was he “mean” and could I get him kicked out of nursery school?
Ok not really, but you know how you get when you hear your child had an encounter with anyone that was less than polite to them.
hold me back!! let me at the bastards!!
But then the story went on as I asked more questions, as I am prone to do…
So what did Cody do that was so mean?
And why didn’t you want to play with him?
And the girls didn’t want him there?
And you told him to go away?
Why did you tell him to go away?
So you don’t want to play with any boys?
Uh huh. This was a clear case of gender discrimination on the playground. Our Princess Peanut banished Cody from playing with her…because he was a boy.
There was the typical parental discussion after. We play with everyone. We’re nice to everyone. Its’ not nice to tell him he’s not allowed to play with you. blah blah blah.
And how did she take it?
She folded her arms and scowled at me like I, too, had a penis.
Clearly I did not understand the politics of a preschool playground and clearly I was a stupid mother for even suggesting she play with a boy or be NICE to a boy.
I’m going to miss this, aren’t I? The her hating boys thing? I’m going to LONG for this day again in about 10 years.
Sigh.
Probably. But what I won’t long for is the attitude she had when talking about Cody. You could hear that “mean girl” venom dripping from her words and it scared the shit out of me. I knew full well what it was like to alienate a classmate from a playground game. And yes, it was and is still MEAN.
My daughter CAN NOT be mean. It’s NOT ALLOWED. She can’t have that nasty attitude some girls seem to pick up and wield in social circles. IT MUST NOT BE.
Just as soon as the story was coming out of her, I wanted to force a change in the attitude I was witnessing.
FORCE.
But all I could do with sit there, alongside her beloved Dad, and reiterate to her how she must be kind, and include everyone, and never hurt any one’s feelings.
I don’t think she heard us. I don’t think she cared. And I’m fairly sure she went to school this week and ostracized poor Cody.
Who has a penis, by no fault of his own.
Because Nothing Says Family Fun Like the Cops Surrounding the House
April 30, 2009 by 20 Comments
Dinner time should really be that time of day when the family winds down and shares their day. You sit at the table, tell eachother how school/work/thepark went and calmly and quietly eat and talk.
I’d recommend it NOT be the time of day when an alarm blares loud enough to actually be painful to your ears and sheriff’s deputies, with guns drawn, surround your house and peer through your windows.
I can make this recommendation speaking from experience, because my 6-year old had 3 cops cars at our house the other night...the gangsta.
Raise your hand if you have a junk drawer in your kitchen…. uh huh…I know you do. We do too. In the back of that junk drawer is a little remote control with a panic button.
As my son searched for AAA batteries for his Robot, he found the remote and, being six, pressed the red panic button.
Not the green button. Not the blue one. Not even the yellow one. No…he went straight for the red “holy fuck we’re being attacked’ panic button.
I was upstairs putting away laundry and cleaning screwing around on the computer when I heard
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
and there was much gnashing of teeth and screaming and crying and chaos.
Flying downstairs thinking the rapture was upon us I found my son screaming “make it stop! make it stop! make it stop!”while my daughter had dive-bombed herself under a blanket.
As calmly as I could I asked my son to show me exactly how this ungodly noise started in our home, realized it was the house alarm, and went to press the code to, in fact, make it stop.
It seems in the midst of the chaos the alarm company called, we failed to answer (not hearing the phone over the alarm and all) and they immediately called the police.
So while I sat the kids down and had a nice discussion with them about NOT TOUCHING shit they aren’t supposed to touch, my brother exclaims “the cops are here…they have guns…I need my ID…”
I look out my front window to see a very nice sheriff’s deputy, gun drawn, at my front window.
Um…holy shit?
This news prompts the 6-year old to panic and cry, and me to sooth him with “don’t worry you’re not in trouble, the police just want to make sure we’re safe’ tones as I open the door and apologize to the …6 (?) uniformed deputies and plain clothed detectives out front.
Yes, I am fairly certain my son will never push another button again for as long as he lives.
Yes, I am really glad the cops showed up so quickly and were not hauling us all off to jail for screwing up.
Yes, I will- if this ever happens again- try and contact my alarm company a bit faster.
Yes, I cost my city tax payer dollars because I have a messy junk drawer.
and yes, even our quiet dinner times here are never, ever, dull.
No wonder the neighbors love us so much.
Princesses Save THEMSELVES
April 28, 2009 by 23 Comments
I love my daughter’s imagination. One minute her stuffed toys are getting on an airplane to fly to “Michigan or the grocery store” and the next she’s pretending to be scaling a wall to escape the evil Bowser.
She’ll ask you to play along, in her own way that really doesn’t include the “asking” part.
Now you be the Prince and I will be the Princess and you have to say ‘Princess I am here to save you’ and then I have to say ‘Oh I knew you would come!’
If you flub a line or miss a cue she makes you do it over again. And over again. And over again.
And you do. Because she’s 4 and she’s adorable and she’s twirling and doing that thing with her lips that reminds you she’s part you.
But I keep throwing a new line into playtime that she ignores. Ignores entirely as if it’s never been said, or doesn’t matter at all.
Princesses Save Themselves
She doesn’t even look up to acknowledge me when I say it, nor does she bat an eyelash when I launch into the 10 minute explanation.
Princess don’t need a Prince to save them. They can do it themselves. I know you’re just as smart as that Prince and you can figure out how to get down from this tower. You don’t need him, you don’t need anyone to help because you can do it all by yourself!
She thinks the Prince, or Mario, needs to save her. It’s every game she plays and every story she wildly imagines. Every. Single. Time. It’s how the story MUST go.
A boy must come save her from some large, hairy, evil monster.
Now I want to blame someone for this. Movies. TV. However she’s watched just as many Princesses get saved by their strong man as she has ones who have kung fu’d their captor’s ass.
And she has me, and her father, reinforcing the “you can do it without a boy’s help” constantly.
She doesn’t care.
Now maybe it’s because she has a big brother and she thinks he’s the greatest thing on earth. Greater than Mario and greater than any cartoon that has climbed a castle wall. Maybe it’s all those other Princesses who do sit around waiting for their Prince Charming.
Maybe it’s her mother who still gets a kick out of acting the damsel in distress for some y chromosome attention.
Maybe I need to lighten up about it. I mean, when my son pretends he’s attacking the bad guys with a sword I don’t immediately think he’s going to grow up and slay people. Nor do I feel the need to remind him over and over again that nice people don’t stab.
I’m not sure. But I am going to keep repeating it, just in case. Over and over again. This way, if nothing else, it’s stuck in the way back part of her brain that she will tap into whenever it is we tap into the stuff our parents told us but we didn’t believe…
Princesses Save Themselves.
Frankly, Scarlett
April 26, 2009 by 19 Comments
I wasn’t home while my son had his first bout of strep and…wait for it…Scarlet Fever. Not that I have guilt or anything.
Here’s the thing about this Scarlet Fever crap…it looks SO MUCH WORSE than it is. And apparently I wasn’t even home for the bad part. I got off the plane and my son had what looked like…POX all over his body. Head. Fingers. Feet. Legs. Arms. Chest. NOTHING was unpoxed.
Scared the shit out of me.
Of course he was apparently pox’d and bright red while I was gone, so I got the toned down version. Either way. I’m glad I’m home. If anyone else gets pox’d, it will be on my watch.
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