momtrolfreak

My Husband: Putting the "C0ck" in "Hancock Building"

I have this compulsion when my husband and son are heading out of the house for the day to say, "Be safe!" Can't help it. I have a very active imagination. I can bring myself to tears sometimes just looking at my son and thinking how great he is and how lucky I am to have him in my life and then wondering if something horrible will happen to take him away from me. There was a tragedy several years ago  involving my young nephew (a fatal accident when he was the age my son is now), so I thought that was why I worried so much, but as I talk to other mothers, I hear more and more that it's universal. We worry. It's what we do. Some of us worry about our children getting hurt. Others worry about the psychological damage we are inflicting on them (from divorce, from NOT getting divorced, from being maniacal about cleanliness, for being impatient with them).

I can be all free-range for awhile, but if I'm stressed or tired the overprotective helicopter parent in me comes out like gangbusters. I told my own mom about this, and she said that when I was little she always worried I would not live past  the age of seven because she could not imagine me older than that. Oddly, this made me feel better. I'm sure that's indicative of how screwed up I am.

It's human nature to worry, i guess, at least for mothers. We invest so much of our being in these little people. It's excruciating to think of something happening.

Incidentally, because I know my weaknesses, I do not ever let myself watch Law & Order or CSI or any of those other dead-body shows. I made the mistake of watching Angelina Jolie's The Changeling and worried for weeks about kidnapping. It also helps me not to watch network news (I get my news from NPR, which rarely covers stuff like child abductions). No 60 Minutes and no 20/20, either: those shows are porn for worriers. I have to stay away. BACK AWAY FROM THE WORRY PORN.

So yesterday, as my husband and son were headed out the door to go to the top of the HANCOCK BUILDING, sweet Jesus, my usual "be safe!" morphed into "PLEASE BE SAFE" with a sidecar of two texts and a chaser of one phonecall on their way there, reminding my husband of things that could go wrong at the top of the Hancock Building with a three year old. You know, just in case he was planning on letting him rappel down the west face of the damn thing.

So about an hour later, my husband sends me a picture from his cellphone, with the title

HI MOMMY WE ARE BEING CAREFUL ON THE 93RD FLOOR:

Oh, HAAAA ha ha fucking ha. Soooo funny.

(This is, by the way, a MURAL of buildings, with a faux scaffold. Had this been an ACTUAL emergency, the tones you hear would have been followed by a rage blackout and a divorce.)

You know how the therapy for a fear of flying is working your way up to taking a *real* flight? The theory is, I suppose, that you just immerse yourself in the fear and as a result, you get over it.

If you are a worrier, then, the best cure is to marry my husband.

You receive total full-on FEAR IMMERSION and eventually you chill out.

In theory.

I'm waiting.

Rhymes with Orange

Frog is starting to learn to sound words out on the page, and part of that skill includes a fascination with rhyming. He will say things like "hit, fit, it rhymes it sounds the same! match, catch, it rhymes it sounds the same!" He likes for me to challenge him.

Frog: "Hey Mommy, let's play a rhyming game, ok?"

Me: "Sure kiddo."

Frog: "Okay you ask me a word to rhyme."

Me: "Cat."

Frog: "Hat!"

Me. "Good job. House."

Frog: "Mouse!"

Me: "Right, okay you do one for me."

Frog: "Okay! Scissors."

I'mmmmmmmm Dreeeaming of a Whiiiiite Two-Days-After-Christmas......

I spend a lot of time subconsciously beating myself up about failing to do the things I should be doing. It's hard for me to congratulate myself on accomplishments, probably because when I was a kid I would get an a 99% on a test and my dad would look at it and ask, "Which one did you miss?" If I got 100% he would ask if there was extra credit, and why didn't I get it.

But I have to say, it's looking good as I go into 2010. I finished my grad degree, for one thing, which has allowed me to actually have something the rest of you may have been referring to all these years as "weekends." For three years, mine have been spent shooing my family out of the house, or locking myself in the bedroom with headphones on to cancel out the noise of two boys (the one I gave birth to and the one I'm married to), so that I could read GOBS of, oh, say, Dante's Inferno or non-fiction studies of Old English. (For those without advanced degrees, in Old English you just add an "e" to the end of everythign and double some of the letters, for example, "Ye Olde Bookshoppe" - at least that's what they taught me at DePaul. Huh, is that not right?)

This morning, on a REAL LIVE WEEKEND, I went to a 2-hour yoga class at my gym. TWO HOURS, I TELL YOU.  Frog totally had cabin fever (he's not used to this public-school, two-weeks-off thing, and adults are oh-so-boring when one has to deal with them for days at a time), so for the first time I took him to the gym and put him in their childcare. He didn't even have a problem separating; he was thrilled to have some kids his age to play with. He said "Bye, mommy!" and I trotted out the door and around the corner to the gym and up four flights of stairs to a darkened room with sitar music playing and floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. As I did my vinyasas and cycled through sun salutations, I felt something I haven't felt in a long time:

calm. 

At one point we were in triangle pose facing north and I looked out the fourth-floor windows and surveyed my neighborhood, my kingdom. Fluffy snow was falling steadily on the rooves (yes, I know, rooves is an antiquated pluralization, but I like it and I can't make myself type "roofs") of what I recognized as my son's school across the street, the gelato place on the corner, and, in the distance, the building I used to live in and the homes of some of my friends. Everything was completely silent, snow falling steadily, blanketing each roof like the peak of a far-off mountain, buffeted away by the smoke rising from so many chimneys. We were high up enough to where I couldn;t see the streets, so there was no movement except the snow (down) and the smoke from chimneys (up). It all struck me as very Dickensian, except without the starvation and corruption. (Well, SOME corruption--it's Chicago, after all.)

As the wonderfully chill (they're not all chill, surprisingly) yoga instructor asked us to breathe in and thank ourselves for taking this time to honor our bodies, I really felt that gratitude. I surveyed my little corner of the world, blanketed in snow, and felt extremely limber, alive and blessed.

"The feeling of centeredness that you have now, after sivasana, is always with you...you just have to access it," she said. What a wonderful reminder.

I picked up my son from childcare and we took 30 minutes to walk the two blocks home as we stopped and made (and threw) snowballs, wrote letters in the snow on the sides of buildings, caught snowflakes on our tongues, and just generally enjoyed the (20 degree) weather. 

It's not normal for me not to hurry in 20 degree weather. 

It's not all that normal for me not to hurry, period.

May I take this feeling of gratitude and happiness and calm with me into tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year.  May that attitude, cultivated and honored, enrich my son's life and the lives of others around me. And my own.

I know I will fail in this, sometimes. Probably often. But I will try not to criticize myself for it. I will recognize it, and let it float away, like thoughts during meditation. The more relaxed I am, the more relaxed my son will be, the more relaxed I will be.....

I'm not going to make any resolutions, per se, as they always fail. Lose weight, exercise more, write more, blah blah blah. 

I will almost certainly have weak moments where I bitch about work, or "fuss" at my husband, or tell my kid to hurry up. I might even say something snarky to an old person who should mind his own business, but I hope not.

I can promise you unequivocally, however, that there's one thing I'm NOT going to do this year.

Homework.

Glitter: The Herpes of the Preschool Set

People.

ENOUGH.

Enough with the fucking glitter. Every holiday card I open has glitter all over it that got crunched up when it went through the machines at the post office and then ends up all unstuck from the card and all over me like fucking Anthrax. It seriously harshes my holiday mellow to open an envelope that turns out to be a freaking dirty bomb, spraying me with yuletide shrapnel as if I was standing too close when Ziggy Stardust stepped on a landmine. STOP IT.

p.s. YES THIS MEANS YOU, AUNT LUANNE. [As if glitter isn't bad enough, Luanne likes to stuff her cards full of motherfucking christmas-tree-shaped CONFETTI. Holy fucking shit confetti, are you fucking kidding me.]

It's not just the holidays. I already have to deal with enough glitter as it is. It's on every damn craft project my kid brings home.

I swear to God sometimes I think I send him to preschool all day in a gay disco.

What part of the curriculum says "you must sprinkle TINY SHARDS OF METAL AND/OR GLASS all over your artwork, so that they stick to your clothes and your hair and every surface of your home and hopefully, make their way into your eye so that when you rub your eye it is lacerated to the point that you blind yourself and then you have to go to a school for the blind and CPS won't have to deal with you anymore"? Wait...I think this might be Chicago's way of solving classroom overcrowding.

Last year, we gave MashugaMom's older boy, Monkey, a gift bag for some minor holiday that had "Moon Sand" in it. IN MY DEFENSE, the packaging for moon sand made it look like Play-Doh, but in cooler colors, and with a moon on the packaging. I thought it went nicely with the rocket and the astronaut that were also in the gift bag. I did not know I SWEAR TO GOD I DID NOT KNOW that Moon Sand is crumbly and dry and weird and IMPREGNATED WITH GLITTER. Not even glitter...glitter DUST, the microscopic, subatomic-particle-version of glitter. MashugaMom's husband looked at me like I'd just given his son a Glock. "Dude, WTF?" he asked. "Glitter is, like, the herpes of the preschool set. We're gonna need antibiotics now."

I quickly dustbusted up the remaining Moon Sand and we threw it all away right then and there, but Jesus, these people have carpet. That shit is never going away. I was there last night for a Chanukah party (yes, AFTER Chanukah, they know, and there wasn't any popcorn on a string but there WAS peanut butter chocolate mousse pie so, you know, we cool) and the carpet--a year later, mind you--is still sorta sparkly. So with the time warp from the late Chanukah and holding their new little baby on my hip and all the sparkling, it was kind of like I was having a flashback: "doodle-oo, doodle-oo, doodle-oo." <--say this out loud in a high pitched voice and wave your fingers in front of your face, you'll get it. Work with me, here.

So Frog ate a shitasston of Chanukah gelt at this party (Trader Joe's sells it as interdenominational "COINS OF THE WORLD" by the way), and THEN made and ate some cookies, and then, like idiots, we were all, "Okay, let's go home to bed!"

Morons.

It was like giving a 25-year-old guy some cocaine and then saying "Hey! Let's not have great ideas about how to change the world and invent stuff!"

First, he came out and had to go potty.

Then, I caught him in his book nook (aka dog bed) reading books with his rocket flashlight.

Then, he was fiddling around with his radio, changing the music. I knew he wasn't sleeping when I heard Nirvana playing. ("Mommy, WHY is it less dangerous with the lights out?" great bedtime music).

Then, he came out and asked, "Mommy, if cats eated the mice" [he had seen a dead mouse on the sidewalk outside his dad's optometrist that afternoon], "then what amimal" (not a typo, that's how he says it) eatses the cats when they are died?"

Me: "Uh...." (referring quickly in my mind to the "i know an old lady who swallowed a fly" song, the source of most of my knowledge lately) "dogs."

Frog: (big exasperated sigh) "Mommy...no. Dogs eat dog food."

Me: "OH, then....bigger cats?"

Frog looks at me for a moment, expressionless.

Then: "I'll ask Daddy." Shuts door.

Seriously? You believe, for instance, that a giant man in a red suit comes in our house through the balcony, eats cookies and leaves you presents, and then departs via reindeer, but not that cats might sometimes be eaten by bigger cats? Since when AM I NOT AN AUTHORITY on these matters? Just because Daddy watches Mythbusters does not make him an expert on debunking shit.

So then later I caught him fiddling with his nightlight, making shadow puppets on the wall, and I opened the door. He scowled at me. "I don't want you in here. This is my room."

Holy teenager, batman.

I went over and sat on his bed and said I just wanted a hug. So he relented, came over and sat in my lap and I sang to him for awhile and then we put our heads on the pillow, and he hooked his little arm around my neck to keep me there, in a tiny headlock. So I stayed. And we cuddled, and he kept his arm around me the whole time. I stayed for about 10 minutes and then tried to get up, but he hugged me tighter and kissed me on my forehead, so I gave in, overcome by cuteness, and ended up falling asleep there and being woken up by Aquaman at midnight.

Frog has never wanted anyone in his bed before. He's never asked to be in our bed. He is the most independent, straight-to-bed, great sleeper, not clingy, not particularly cuddly child I know, but last night, my kid wanted to cuddle with me for HOURS, so I released into it and got it while the gettin' was good.

I didn't realize until I looked in the mirror this morning that there was one unfortunate side effect of sleeping on a preschooler's pillow:

(*@#^@(*#@(# glitter in my hair.

Still.

Worth it.

Where oh Where Can My Child Have Gone? Alas, I Shall Never Find Him, For He is So Skillful at The Hiding and The Seeking....

p.s. Which reminds me of this stand-up bit from Louis C.K. about playing hide and seek with his daughter (the hide and seek part starts at time marker 1:35), here.

And Yet, Despite the Carnage in the Little Town, Christ's Capacity for Forgiveness Is Steadfast

Oh, Little Town of Bethlehe--OH SWEET JESUS, THE HUMANITY!!!!!!

It's all fun and games until the skeleton dinosaurs attack your town.

 

Bad Ads: Avast, Ye Mateys, There Be Some Lead Paint

When Frog was an infant I became a subscriber to the listserve for the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), so I could stay "in the know" about all the dangerous things I should keep him away from. They have yet to recall knives OR child molesters, which are two pretty obvious dangers, so I think they may not be doing a very thorough job. At any rate, over the years they've recalled a shit-ass-ton of drawstringed hoodie sweatshirts (choking hazard, DUH), all that Thomas the Train crap, and now, ALL windowblinds (choking hazard again), and a lot of stuff for lead paint.

Occasionally their description of something will sound similar to something Frog has, so I'll click to see the photo to reassure myself that I don't have something super dangerous in my house. Many of these things are sold in dollar stores, and I usually don't buy his toys at the Dollar Store (I mean, come on, it was a Dollar Store box of condoms that got me into this mess) <--JOKE but when they recalled some pirate play sets I had to look because maybe they somehow got sold somewhere else too and if so THE RECALL COULD BE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!!

So I looked.

This one, I'm not quite sure why anyone is surprised that it had to be recalled for lead paint, I mean COME ON, they advertised that there was lead paint in it, there was full disclosure, DO YOU NOT SEE THE SKULL AND CROSSBONES ON THE TREASURE CHEST? Everyone knows that means poison. Duh, CPSC.

The next one:

 
 
I'm not sure if it was the lead paint that prompted the recall or the fact that the pirate is suicidal. (Could they not at least have pointed the gun in the other direction?) Maybe because they are making him wear a chastity belt? That's gotta put a cramp in a pirate's lifestyle, taking raping and pillaging down to just pillaging. Although, on second thought, he's probably impotent, because look at those muscles. I'm pretty sure that's a keg full of steroids. 

At any rate, Frog doesn't have any of these toys. All of his pirates are non-suicidal, non-chemically-enhanced, virile young 'entrepreneurial seamen.' Neither scurvy nor lead threatens their livelihood. And they are raising their families in Arrrlington Heights. Ba-doom-chah.

Anyway, here's my PSA, if you want to be on the CPSC listserve you can sign up here.

 

 

I am Creeped Out By My Kid's School Craft Projects: V for Snowman

They say that the reason you keep singing a song that's stuck in your brain is because you don't sing it all the way through, so there's no resolution, so your brain keeps going over it again and again to get resolution.

I'm not sure what this "snowman" project Frog brought home reminds me of; it's adorable but also somehow very disturbing. The closest thing I can come up with is that it's somehow vaguely reminiscent of the masked dude in V for Vendetta. See?

Same hat, same outstretched gloved hands, same kooky white face and even the moustache, right?

But this can't be it, because I am still obsessing over it, so clearly my subconscious is searching for a better answer. Anyone help a girl out here? I need to know what this "snowman" reminds me of SO HE WILL STOP CHASING ME IN MY DREAMS.

I'm-a Letchoo Finish but MY Kid Says the Funniest Shit of All Time: A Retrospective of FrogBoy Brilliance, Circa 2009

I keep a little journal at home, where I write down little shards of ludicrousness that come out of my kid's mouth so that I remember them later. The list below represents about a third of the stuff that was good enough to write down this year. I think he's employed writers without telling me, but I don't know how he pays them. I know I'm totally embracing the whole "mommy blog" stereotype (i.e., listen to the cute thing my kid did today) with this. Deal with it.

Frog on recycling: “I am putting dis box in the blue bin so the earfth will eat it.”

On “rosemary & herb” flavored Triscuits: “I want a nudder different cracker, dis one has food in it.”

One night he sang me a bedtime song, and I said it was great.                                                                     He said, “No Mommy, dat’s not the song, dat’s the credits.”

On pottying:

        “I need to use the potty.”

        Me: “Okay, can you hold it for five minutes?”                                  

        Frog: “Yes I can hold it; I will hold it in my body, not drop it in my pants.”                             

On playing ‘hooky’ from school:

        “I am not going to school, Mommy, I am playing HOCKEY.”

On seeing some masked gunmen/terrorists on the cover of a newspaper:

        Frog: “Why are those bad mans on the paper?”

        Me: “Um....It says they caught them and put them in jail.”

        Frog: “Oh Good, now they won’t push people down anymore.”

At the zoo:

        Me: “Look! A flamingo!”

        Frog: “No no no Mommy, it’s a FUNeengo.”

        Me: “Right, a flamingo.”                         

        Frog: “No no, listen,” (he points to his lips as he enunciates) “Fuh. Neen. Go.”

On being taller now:

        “Look Mommy THREE year old boys can stand on their toes to peepee in the potty with NO STEP, but they still look down at their penis, to make sure it’s working.”

On snacktime:

        Me: “Do you want some juice?”

        Frog: “I don’t know….Is it chocolate juice?”

On bedtime:

        Frog: “IT IS NOT TIME FOR BED!!!”

        Me: “Did you just yell at me?”

        Frog: “No, I didn’t.”

        Me: “You need to say you’re sorry.”

        Frog: “I can’t be sorry because I didn’t yell.”

        Me: “You didn’t?”

        Frog: “No, I screamed.”

On school:

        Aquaman: “Do they have any toys at your new school?”                                                                    

        Frog: “Of course they have toys Daddy, or else we would have to LEARN all the time.”

On bedtime (part 2):

        Me: “OK, time to get ready for bed.”

        Frog: “Sorry I can’t hear you because I have my eyes closed.”

On extracurricular classes:

        Me: “Did you have yoga today at school?”

        Frog: “No I had Jell-O.”  

(later) Me: “How was superhero class today?”

        Frog: “Fine.”

        Me: “Who is your favorite superhero?”                                 

        Frog: “You are, Mommy.”

On bedtime (part 3):

        Frog: “Goodnight Mommy, here’s a kiss.” (kisses me)

        Me: “Oh, are you putting yourself to bed tonight?”

        Frog: “No, Mommy, YOU are putting me to bed!”

        Me: “Oh, but you went ahead and kissed me though, so I was confused.”

        Frog: “No, Mommy, I kissed you because I love you.”