Bigger kids have bigger issues

Yesterday I subbed as a soccer mom. My friend and her husband were going to an event supporting research working to find a cure for a genetic disease her older child unfortunately has, so I schlepped her three kids and mine to (if I can recall correctly) soccer practice, softball practice, and Cub Scouts. These events all overlapped, though thankfully they were near each other and my friends had already worked out a comprehensive plan for making sure everyone was at the right place in the right outfit with the right accessories at more or less the right time. It took a spreadsheet to communicate all the information to me and even so the children (ages 5, 7, and 9) were my main guides, telling me where to park and whether the turn (though nobody knows right from left) was close or far.

It all went well. I think one of the Cub Scout dads may have tried to talk me up, which I found so confusing that I was inadvertently rude. This experience was an educational look at what may be to come. But I was horrified at the food all the children ate at the events (hot dogs, chips, HFCS sodas, cookies) and the overheard conversations of the teenagers congregating everywhere (I’m not sure why I suddenly despise adolescents). Back at my friend’s house for bedtime, I ran across the 7-year-old’s CosmoGirl magazine which had articles about meth addiction, partnered vs. solo sex, makeup, slutty-looking “famous” people I’d never heard of, tattoos, and so forth, and realized that it is imperative that I shut Baby off from all outside influences immediately so that she might grow up pure of mind and body.

But of course I can’t. She’ll eventually have to join in all of that, or at least know about it, and I guess I’ll just have to put in my two cents on everything and hope some of it balances out. Remembering my own mother’s attempts to bubblefy me, and my reactions to them, does not make me optimistic on this score at all. I want to freeze time.

(Let it be noted that I did, as I always do, really enjoy the bustle of all the children around, as did Baby. I just am not especially interested in manufacturing a host of children, at least not at this juncture, to create such a bustle in my own home).

A trip to the park

We met my friend D and her little boy Z at the park. There was climbing and sliding and swinging–you know, the usual. There were two teenagers canoodling at the top of out of the play structures, lying indolently on the platform and blocking it off from children. Pissed (I just started my period; that’s my excuse) I climbed up there with Baby on my hip and gave them an earful. I said things like “you aren’t between the ages of 2 and 5 at all, and that’s what the sign says this playground is for!” and used the word “inappropriate” an unaccountably large number of times and I think I once paired it with “behavior.” I’m surprised I didn’t conjecture anything about what their mothers would think. After they skadoodled, one little girl told me plaintively, “they were here for an hour!” That’s me, a crazy and apparently quite aged lady who enjoys yelling at innocent teenagers just looking for a shady place to flirt.

This park is also frequented by a chubby, red-haired little boy about eight years old. He always wears black shoes, black pants, a black Batman T-shirt, and, oh yes, a black cape and mask. He talks a lot about bad guys and carefully selects various sticks to pretend they are some kind of weaponry associated with his craft. He would be a lot scarier if he weren’t constantly nibbling on a drooping corner of his mask like a little bunny. My friend’s kid thinks this kid is amazingly awesome (he calls him “The Man”) and follows him around. And of course Baby follows him around, so they formed this little duckling-like parade today while Batman brandished assorted bits of tree detritus and ate his costume.

Next to the park is a library where we later went to get new books and return old ones. As we were walking out, I ran into the woman (with her kids) who was the leader of my local La Leche League back when Baby was a newborn. I said hello, she didn’t recognize me, I didn’t expect her to. I told her it had been a while, I asked her was she still leading, she responded, we bade each other farewell, and that was that. I didn’t feel the need to regale her with tales of all my insane pumping (though if she could have placed me, I’m sure she would have wondered what happened with that) or justify my stopping or anything like that. Refreshing to consider how far I’ve come on that.

And nice to feel like a member of a community–involved, familiar, cantankerous.

Neighborly

At least twice a month the ten-year-old girl who lives next door comes knocking on my door, having somehow been locked out of her house upon her arrival home from school. She uses my phone, some relative zips home and opens the house up for her, and that is that. Sometimes I give her a snack while she waits.

When Baby was very young, these intrusions used to drive me batty (especially if I was pumping), and I spoke with her mother about leaving a key with us (she never brought one over). But they don’t bother me now, especially since we have gotten to be friends with this girl and Baby loves to see her. Invariably when we are out in the front yard reading the mail or doing yardwork she will pop by to play with Baby, and sometimes when we’re in the backyard, too. She once helped me immensely while I was picking up downed branches by keeping Baby busy doing the same with small sticks. Sometimes we’ll chat about topics like the inadvisability of kissing boys. I think she does all this because she wants me to ask her to babysit, but judging from her inability to keep herself from being locked out of her house I don’t think she’s quite responsible enough.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear pounding on my door around three thirty this afternoon. I asked her and the buddy she had with her if she needed to use the phone, but she surprised me by saying no.

“Because I’m wearing pants.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m only supposed to wear skirts.”
“Skirts? It’s cold outside! Why can’t you wear pants?”
“Because I’m a Christian” she said with exasperation, flapping one hand dismissively.

Apparently, her mother doesn’t want her to wear pants (which I see her in all the time, which made this exchange even more confusing) because of their religion (they’re members of some group that spends Saturday night at church and doesn’t celebrate Halloween). After she explained that if she called her mother, her mother would see her wearing pants, which she said she wore for PE (I told her she didn’t have to justify her pants usage to me), I offered her the use of my phone and a skirt. I dug up a size 4T skirt I had gotten secondhand for Baby a few months back, and the skinny little thing managed to put it on.

“Won’t your mother wonder where you got this new skirt?”
“Oh, I’ll just tell her she bought it for me and if she forgot it’s because she’s old.”

And just think–one day Baby will probably lie to me just like that! So much to look forward to. Shit, I hope I don’t have a neighbor like me who helps her, though. But I didn’t want her to get in trouble for wanting to wear pants to PE on a cold day!

What do you think I should have done?

Celebrating spring

Ready to go to an Easter Egg Hunt! And dressed UP since, um, I incorrectly assumed that was the norm. All the other kids were in jeans and everyday jackets.

Riding a pony for the first time! Doesn’t she look like a little aristocrat, all overdressed like she is in that coat? Adorable. She held on great during the ride, though she was clearly a little uncertain.

Baby caught on to the Easter Egg Hunt pretty fast. I”m not surprised; she really likes collecting items of a kind and putting them in containers, so it was right up her alley.

Here she is investigating the eggs. She didn’t care about the candy, just liked emptying the eggs and seeing what was in there.

So grown-up looking!

Finally it’s spring!

Baby loves to pick flowers. Or weeds, whatever.

Seven random facts about me

I don’t usually do memes (I don’t really have a reason why not), but I’ll do this one which I was tagged for.

When I started drafting this post, I ran into trouble. Apparently under the mental category of “about me” I also include information about Husband and Baby; it seems they’re a part of my identity. But here is some highly scintillating stuff just about me.

1) I can’t wear socks to bed. I can be puttering around besocked all day with no trouble, but as soon as I sit down on the side of the bed, the socks must come off.
2) One of my favorite, rarely enjoyed, pleasures is, freshly showered, to snuggle naked in bed and read for an afternoon. Almost never happens.
3) When I was fifteen my mother and I spent the summer in Ireland where we stayed in bed and breakfasts and university dorms and convents. I stole a small piece of artwork from one convent and have it to this day. It’s somewhere in the attic.
4) Uh, this is remarkably difficult. I’m having a hard time coming up with stuff. Okay, on the first day of kindergarten some dog (from where I don’t know) jumped up on me and I refused to go back. I started the next year instead.
5) I have a thing for antique-looking globes and maps. They’re the motif of my living room. I can count nine just from where I’m sitting here on the couch. One is a globe liquor cabinet kind of thing, a clock, art, doohickies on the mantel, and whatnot.
6) My favorite color is periwinkle, my favorite flower is the gardenia, my favorite game is Life circa 1956, or maybe Mudslide Monopoly, which is when you get drunk on Mudslides and then play Monopoly. I only ever play these games at the beach.
7) I think one reason I wanted to have a child so intensely from a rather young age was because I was (am) an only child. I just wanted some company! And my family has conspired to keep me an only child even though my parents remarried: they chose people who had no children and either wanted none or agreed to forgo them.

Don’t worry about it: you’ll be dead

Recently my husband and I finalized our wills. It was fairly simple: we get each others’ stuff if the other dies (my husband snarkily wanted to know what, exactly, of mine he would be getting–my filthy car? my stained wardrobe?), and then it’s on to Baby. We had some light disagreement about first choice guardian, alternate guardian, alternate alternate guardian and so forth for her. Overall it was painless, though.

My main concern actually was that, apparently, you don’t get a tombstone if you are cremated. What! I wanted some kind of sign, you know. Oh well. I do have a certain fondness for cemeteries, having spent quite a bit of time as a teenager wandering morosely through them, or making poor choices with boys under their aged trees. But basically I can’t get myself too worked up over where, exactly, to spread my ashes (after I am donated to science, and definitely in lieu of burial, which grosses me out), or what kind of service to have. Obviously I want a secular one, but I didn’t put that in my will, since at this point, if I were to die, my mother would likely be in charge of the service, and she can do what makes her feel better. It’s not like I’ll care: I’ll be dead.

This attitude marks the fundamental difference between me and my husband in this area. He, a man who is not afraid of emotions, found himself rather affected by the experience of deciding upon Baby’s caretakers in the event of our demise. He was upset about how awful it would be for her to have lost her parents, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t similarly mopey on this topic. Now, it goes without saying that I don’t want her to have to experience her parents’ deaths, yes. And I don’t want to die for my own sake. But I’m already doing pretty much everything I can not to die. It’s not like I’m dancing around, inebriated, wielding chainsaws in both hands. If something were to happen, it would be quite against my will. And if it did happen, well, I wouldn’t know, would I?: I’d be dead. It wouldn’t bother me. So why get worked up now about a feeling I’ll never be able to have?

Unholy

Something has happened during this past week: my child has acquired some irritating personal habits. I never understood too much before when people talked about wanting some time off from their child, but suddenly, I do.

Every question is answered with, “no”; every command is gleefully ignored, often in a way that involves running off in the opposite direction with an inappropriate item; tantrums ensue at any opportunity, most of them with totally unclear origins; and, though you’d think she’d be annoyed with me, too, she nonetheless wants to hang on me constantly.

At first I thought she could be ill, but I’m beginning to think that this is just something that sometimes happens to 18-month-olds. She has ideas, and she isn’t going to compromise on them. While that’s very nice for her, I, personally, would like to get some things done around here, and without a very short person snatching all the flowers off my new plantings, or hiding the phone, or thrashing about, screaming, because a) I washed her hands and then b) I stopped washing her hands.

My husband is entirely unsympathetic. “How can you be annoyed with her? She’s just a baby!” Yeah, well, if you act annoying, then I will get annoyed with you, too, buddy. In fact, I just did.

This phase only lasts a week or so, right? And then she’ll be a compliant, sensible, independent angel-baby once more, until she’s off to college?

My baby can READ!

Or at least that’s what my husband thought.

I was ironing linen decorative hand towels downstairs (I know, I’m so domestic) while Husband and Baby were in the play room. When I go up to say hi, he asks me, “She can’t read, can she?” Apparently, she happened to look at the page of book (that she’d never seen before) with a picture of a birthday cake and the words “Happy Birthday” on it, and starting saying, “appy bir ay!” over and over again. She was bouncing and saying it, still, when I got in there, quite clearly. He was convinced she was a genius.

I had to burst his bubble. Twice this week we went to a puppet show that featured a birthday cake and the birthday song. She must have picked it up that way, though she hadn’t sung along with the song at the time (however, I sometimes sing that song apropos of nothing; look, I don’t know a lot of songs). Now she’s saying “appy appy appy” all the time, dancing. Darling.

Fertility expert

One of my grad school friends has just started trying to conceive this past month. It didn’t work the first time and she was concerned. They had had sex every day for a month! What could be wrong? Did I have any tips? Tricks? (Yeah, ask the lady for whom it took 2.5 years to get pregnant for her helpful conception techniques). I encouraged her not to worry, that it’s much too early for that. Then she told me that she, indeed, had reason to worry. Something was wrong: the “stuff” would come back out of her! How could she get pregnant if it wouldn’t stay put? Oh my. I assured her that this was normal and happens to us all. She was much relieved. Then she gave me a hug.

Like a bumblebee

I’m fixing to have the busiest damn weekend. I’m teaching Saturday morning and then throwing a baby shower. Sunday afternoon I am attending a baby shower, and then going to some participatory murder mystery theater event my friend-with-three-kids (and our husbands) (she always has these grand ideas for things to go do for fun, but we are each other’s main babysitters, so going out together for grown-up doings takes some planning; my mother is coming to town for a short visit to help). So I’ve been planning for the course I teach, studying for my own class (“studying” is something of an exaggeration, really), cleaning the house (downstairs for the party, upstairs for my mom), making/buying gifts, getting things ready for the party (food, activities). And then there’s the yard; we are working very hard to get it ready to put some grass seed down as that would be preferable to the bare dirt that’s in some places. Today I finally finished the last steps on that, and Husband burned the last of the branches and sticks, so at least that’s out of the way until next week when the top soil arrives. So, yes, busy. Prime of life, I guess.

Control

I never know what to make of big, sudden leaps upward in my readership. I can never figure out what stirs them. And then, often, just as bafflingly, they dissipate, and I am back to my regular readership, which feels more comfortable for me. It’s not that I’m not delighted to have new readers; really, I’m just quite curious about how I got them, and likely will never know.

About a year ago I posted about my stretch marks, and mysteriously, several months after that, that post started getting massive amounts of traffic. Since I didn’t know how that had come about–were strangers making fun of my tummy? or were other women happy to find solidarity with someone else who had stretch marks? I couldn’t say–I took that post down. I still wonder about that episode.

It’s not really possible for me, for anyone, to control readership; nor do I want to. But this is one of the fundamentals of blogging that sometimes I still manage to forget: it’s so public, and once I hit “publish,” there’s not much I can do about what happens. Mostly I’m at peace with it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get curious.

Cheap entertainment

The three of us were playing on the bed. Baby (or I guess I should really say Toddler) was gleeful and rambunctious, giggling wildly as she licked our noses and climbed over us. She decided to investigate Daddy’s belly button, and while playing with his tummy, she discovered a mole. What was this? She opined that it was a boo boo (she thinks any skin irregularity is a boo boo). She quickly learned to say “moh” and started hunting around for more “mohs” and poking deep into Daddy’s belly button. Fun as this was for her, Daddy wanted her to find a new activity after a bit, and directed her to Mommy’s tummy. “Look! You can jiggle it!” Well, obviously this new game, “jiggah,” was beyond hilarious. She grabbed my belly with both little mitts and waggled my midsection and almost died laughing. And then, to make it even more fun, she started licking mommy’s jiggly tummy. We were all beside ourselves giggling. Oh, the fun we have!