Underappreciated

Scene: Minivan pulls up to daycare. Mom unloads a preschooler and a baby. Preschooler looks at storm drainage ravine.
KID: Mommy, when it rains, that fills with water like a river.
MOM: Yup.
KID: If I fell in, I would float away!
MOM: Yup. That’s why we stay away from the edge, right?
KID: Yes, Mama, I be careful. <approaches mother, grabs her leg in a vice grip> If I fell in and floated away, I’d be lonely and just so sad all the time.
MOM: <touched that her child is so sweet and loves her so much> Oh, sweetie, I’d be sad, too! So let’s be careful!
KID: I’d cry a lot. I’d just miss Grandma so much!!!
MOM:

Magic time machine

Like many people in this age of cell phones, I don’t wear a watch. 

So I was more than a little taken aback a few nights ago when I announced to Drew it was time for bed and he held his finger up to me – wait a minute, mom – and looked at his (bare) wrist and said “Nope! My watch says it’s time for one more show!”

Since then, this magical watch has informed Drew that it is also not time for a bath, poop goes in pull ups and not the potty, and dinner should be chocolate and not ravioli. So, well, ok, the watch may have been ok on that last one.

This is the sort of thing no parenting book can preare you for. There are chapters on hitting and biting, on nutrition and discipline, but no one can tell you how to counter the imaginary watch that is your childs id come to life.

So first I had my own watch.

“Well, Mommy’s watch says you have to eat grapes and not puzzle pieces for a snack.”
How did that go over? Not so great. Apparently I didn’t sell it enough, because he pointed out, quite reasonably, that I was not wearing a watch.

Taking a page from his book, when the Watch told him that it was time to go to the playground despite the cold rain, I mentioned to him that I didn’t see a watch. That was met with the Look. The look that says You stupid, stupid grown up. You think you know so much, but you are really clueless. and “Mommy. My watch is a KID watch. You can’t see it.”

Umm, ok.

So now we are just going with “yeah, I know your watch says you need a different sippy cup, but until your watch can get you one, seems like you are out of luck.” I am not getting ahead with this approach, but I am at least holding ground.

Secretly, I love the watch. And I love the kids imagination. But don’t tell him that. I don’t want to go to the playground today. It’s like 40 degrees!

memories

Isn’t it funny how the most commonplace things can suddenly take you back to another place or time? The weather here has been cool, and after a summer of the house hermetically sealed in air conditioned comfort, it has been nice to open all the windows and let the fresh air in. We have all the windows open, and today as I was leaving the guest room, the little gust of air from the window made the door sound a certain hollow way as I closed it, and I was suddenly transported back in time to my father’s mother’s house. The door just shut the exact same way. Weird. I felt like a little kid. My grandmothers house was just a place of love. Noschool, only the books we wanted to read, those little boxes of cereal for breakfast with raisin toast and, honestly, whatever else you wanted Grandmother (never GrandMA!) to make for you. Aunts and uncles in and out of the house, the obligitory single afternoon at “Other Grandma’s” house (after which we were relieved to return to her house!), and little bowls of Hershey kisses everywhere. My whole family seemed happier. Now that I have my own inlaws and have a more adult perspective of the relationship my mother had with my fathers parents, I am sure that the adult visits were somewhat less carefree than mine, but they did a great job of hiding all of that from us kids.

I miss my grandmother. She would have loved to see her great grandkids, and I am so, so sorry that she never got to. My son is named after her husband and my dad. I remember being enveloped in hugs of Estee Lauder perfume, her always bright red fingernails (a lady always has her nails done!) and her smile. Many times I’d catch her watching us play, with a fantastic smile on her face – she was always just so happy, as she said, to have her house noisy again.

So I cherish the moments when I flash back to something that reminds me of her, that might make me feel like she’s still here. I feel a tug of pain, but then a relief that I can still feel that way – something more than just a 2 dimensional memory.

Selfless

I suffered from a vicious stomach bug this weekend. Ugh. I’ll spare you details. Because I am nice like that. :P

Drew was mostly very accomodating about the fact that I was essentially out of service for a full day. I nested in my bed, Cliff brought me the baby when he needed to eat, and I slept. Occasionally, I’d wake up to find Drew playing very quietly next to me, or find that he had left me a stuffed Darth Vader on my pillow or tucked a toy in next to me, in case I woke up and was bored.

When I woke up in the late afternoon, feeling a bit better, I saw that he was playing at the foot of my bed.

ME: How you doing, kiddo?
DREW: Mama, do you think some M an’ M’s woudl make your tummy feel better?
ME: No, sweetie. It’s nice of you to think of me, but I don’t think I want any M&M’s right now.
DREW: Well, then, maybe I could have them.


Selfless, that one.

Let's make a deal

When Cliff and I were in Morocco last year, we bought a gorgeous rug for our foyer. Because that’s what you do in Morocco. I had read up on all the places we were going, and everything I read about Morocco talked about the shopping — more to the point, the bargaining process. The price they give you is not the real price, it’s all about negotiation. I was not happy to hear that. I am not much of a bargainer. I once bought a (lovely, kitchy, delightfully tacky!) bust of Elvis from a flea market. I asked the lady the price, it seemed fair enough in comparison to how very much I wanted a bust of Elvis (having been thus far eluded by my Dream Art — an actual black velvet Elvis painting), and I wrote her a check. She about passed out on the spot to have received her first offer. But that, to me, is the way things should work. I have a Thing that I want to sell. I think it is worth X dollars. If you want to buy the Thing and think it is worth X dollars, buy it. If you think it is not worth X dollars, walk away. So nice, so tidy.

In any case, centuries of custom in Africa do not agree, and bargaining is where it’s at. I was lucky to be with Cliff, an avowed bargainer who, as a salesman, really knows the ins and outs and can drive a deal home. Yay. We got a pretty rug, and we paid more than a fair price for it.

I think, though, that now I could have procured an even better deal. If I were in Morocco today, I wager I could bring home an even nicer rug for damn near free of charge. Why my sudden increased confidence in my negotiating abilities?

I have a THREE year old. :|

My life is now nothing but a series of negotiations. He wants 40 colored Goldfishies right before dinner? How about 5? He counters with 30. I offer 10, but in his favorite bowl that I then have to wash, not in a plastic baggie. He proposes 25, and he won’t throw himself on the floor of the kitchen and lay there for a half hour, motionless and silent, in protest against my Goldfish Tyranny. We reach an agreement – a reasonable 15 Goldfishies, in a plastic baggie, with one screeching wail of “Mooooooore Goooldfishieeeeeesssss!!!!”, but no floor collapse.
 
And the deal is done.

Looks like I was right to be concerned

When Drew was first born, I was terribly terribly concerned that he was a boy. I thought “Geez, it’s cute, but what the hell am I supposed to DO with it?” Coming from a family of all girls except for Dad, I felt a little like someone who had grown up with a dog but was suddenly handed a goldfish.
In one particularly distressing moment, I was opening some mail shortly after Drew had arrived. There was a nice greeting card in a blue envelope – a congratulations card! On the front flap of the card was a little sketch of a crib, covered in blankets like a little tent with a hand drawn sign that said “No girlz alowed!”. I think I cried for a half hour. That was my greatest fear – that’s what I was terrified of. Being shut out of some all boys club, only by MY boy. Not scared I wouldn’t love him enough, but that I would love him SO, SO much, but someday he would look at me and see just a girl. Now, of course, I realize how silly that all was, that he will never see me as a girl, I will just always be Mommy. And I can’t imagine my life as anything other than a mom to my rough and tumble boys, full of match box cars and dinosaurs.

But I was in the bookstore yesterday (Ahhh………the pleasant oasis of a half hour at the bookstore!) and I stopped by the parenting section, just to browse. I noticed a large segment of books dedicated to raising boys. Bringing Up Boys. The Wonder of Boys. Raising Boys. Raising Boys To Be Like Jesus. (!?!?!?!) Raising Cain (What is with the religious theme?) Don’t Screw This Up Or He’ll Be A Serial Killer.

Ok. I made the last one up. But here I had spent the first three months of Drew’s life convincing myself that all my concerns about him being a boy and my implied culpability at being to blame if he grew up to be a crazyperson were all just silly worried rantings of a post partum mind! The parenting section of the local Barnes and Noble seems to have a differing opinion. The authors of these books seem, based on breezy glances at the back covers, to believe that it IS something different to raise a boy, and that it WILL be my fault when, as a teen, he is either so absurdly hyper masculine that he joins a high school biker gang and holds up local liquor stores or conversely demands tickets to every traveling musical production that hits town and refuses to leave the house without his Little Orphan Annie wig and patent leather Mary Janes. Either way, IT’S ALL MY FAULT.

Meh. As I turned to leave, the weight of my two precious boys future perched squarely on my shoulders, I noticed they also had a similar section for girls. Relief! If I was struggling to find balance between motorcycles and Playbills, then my girl mom friends had to worry about Heidi Fleiss versus Heidi Klum. And I stopped being worried. I don’t really suppose there IS much difference, not really. I don’t need to know how to raise Boys. I need to know how to raise Drew and Zachary. And as it happens, the only experts on that are them.

Drew robot

Drew wore this box around the house all day Saturday. He told me he was Drew Robot (complete with robot voice). Drew Robot has been an off and on inhabitant of our house for some time, but it’s the first time he had an outfit. I admit to only adding the eye and arm holes after a couple of hours. I wanted to see how long he’d walk around the house, blind and armless, bumping into walls and furniture. The second time I caught the lamp (my gorgeous, tacky, gypsy beaded lamp) right before it crashed to the floor I decided the eye hole was a good idea. There were a couple of cry worthy bumps – primarily because he’d put his robot box on my bed, and then crawl into it and try to move around. The cardboard would start to slip, and he’d careen out of control off the bed into the wall or the nightstand or whatever else was in his way. Not that it slowed him down one bit – just a kiss on the booboo, a mechanical “tank yew, mommy!”, and he was back in the box. After the eye and arm holes were taken care of and a strict No Robots On Mommy’s Bed policy was enacted, it was just good times for all. I did refuse to make robot boxes for Zachary or the dog. It just seemed best.

And I have started to think about Halloween. A smaller box (the head) stacked on a larger box (the body)? Covered in tin foil? Clothes dryer ductwork for arms and legs? Hello?!?!?!?