Party Favors

With her early-summer birthday, I usually try to do something summer related as a party favor. Last year we only had 3 kids over, so each kid got a sand pail with chalk, a small shovel, and a bottle of water in it. This year we had a dozen invitees, so I bought a couple 6-packs of scented bubbles (they're supposed to smell like different things, but they all smell like sno-cones to me) and some fancy tissue paper. I traced & cut star shapes out of cardstock and wrote on them with a silver Sharpie. Simple, easy, cool.

The kids really liked them, but I handed them out at the party as were waiting for the food (it was a at a big bounce-house place, so we were having the pizza they supplied with our "party package"). The only thing worse than one kid whining "When are we going to EAT?! Where is the PIZZA? I am TOTALLY STARVING TO DEATH RIGHT NOW!" is ten kids, all at top volume, in order to be heard over the noise of the indoor play-place. I grabbed the basket and started thrusting small packages into sticky hands as fast as I could while I whispered to my husband for the love of God, go find our party hostess and figure out where the hell the food is before they start gnawing on our limbs.

Before the pizza and accompanying "party hostess" made their way back to our bright-blue party room, I realized two things, two terrible and tragic mistakes I had made:

1. If you're making party favors to give to little kids, make sure they can untie the ribbon themselves, otherwise you will have a room full of preschoolers squealing in frustration because they cannot get your super-tight double-knots off the thing they want so much to open; and
2. It is not a good idea to give 10 kids sticky colored liquid unless they are outside and possibly surrounded by fire hoses.

I apologized to the parents, who all gave me a wave and a "Please. This is nothing. Two drops of water-soluble pale-blue bubble solution on that shirt will be totally eclipsed by something much worse any second now." But the kids loved the bubbles, and they all ran around blowing bubbles, smelling each other's bubbles, trading colors, and generally having a very good time with the stuff. Most importantly they stopped whining until the food arrived.

The only major problem was some tears from the birthday girl, because she can read her own name now, so she thought all these were hers. "But those are my presents! My name is on them!"

Shrinky Dinks!

She got these for her birthday, and during one recent (looong, boring, HOT) day we busted them out. I didn't even know they still made them, did you? And what better way to cool down on a hot summer day than baking some plastic?

Piper thought the first part - the coloring - was pretty cool, but she got really concerned when I put them in the toaster oven. "Mommy! What are you DOING to the mermaids?!" I think the process sort of disturbed her. At least the first batch, anyway. The second batch, she was fascinated by the curling and shrinking and seemed quite sorry when we did the last one. After they cooled and she discovered she now had multiple small creatures she could stuff into an old cocoa tin and carry around (and shake and make a LOT of noise), she was pretty happy.

They came with little cardboard stands, so we set them up and had a little play, which probably should've been titled "Medusa and Zombie Mermaids Beat the Shit Out of Some Small Sea Creatures."

4!

Yesterday was her birthday, my baby girl is now a whopping FOUR years old.

Unlike last year, where almost everything was handmade (including that quilt sewed entirely the night before her birthday), I did not make any gifts this year. I also did not make her cake or cupcakes, because she told me she didn't want me to.

(sniff, sniff - cue one mama's heart cracking just a bit)

She told me, "No, I don't want you to make the cake. I don't want cupcakes." She wanted "a pink and blue Hello Kitty cake from the bakery at the store," a sugar-laden mountain of frosting she had seen at our local mega-mart. So, rather than bust my ass making the totally-from-scratch, blueberry-filled, topped-with-homemade-blueberry-whipped-cream cupcakes I'd planned, I ordered the cake.

It was pretty good, actually.

We also did not do the party at our house this year, because it was just too HOT. She has many more friends this year, 11 classmates plus a few others, and even if each kid only brings one parent, that's still 20 extra people to cram into my house. Last year it was about 100 degrees the day of her party and this year promised much the same thing, so we just invited some school friends to the Monkey Joe's closest to where they all live. It was totally easy, all I had to do was show up with the cake, and absolutely worth the money. The kids got to run around in air conditioning and have a blast, she got to have her best birthday yet, and I did not have to cram 20-30 people into my house. Which turned out to be a good thing, since we have gotten a couple calls to show the place, including one yesterday which only gave us 20 minutes' notice. I am so happy people are finally looking at the house that I can't say no, but I also cannot imagine trying to evacuate over a dozen party guests and clean the place with 20 minutes' notice. Yesterday we were gone when they called, out having family birthday fun, so we'd left the place not exactly pristine, and my husband worried that nobody was ever going to show the house again because the beds weren't made and there was wrapping paper on the floor, but I assured him that a crock-pot soaking in the sink and a few scattered birthday cards were hardly the worst things a real estate agent could've seen.

First Day of School/Last Day of School

One of my friends saw this and said "She went from having baby arms & legs to having big-kid arms & legs!" It's true. She's all limbs now.

Conversations With Piper: Poop and Parts

We've now reached the poop stage, I think.

I thought we could avoid it, because we are not the sort of people who find poop jokes funny most of the time, and we don't usually spend a lot of time talking about poop. I thought there would be a few questions about poop, maybe, but had no idea that this subject would occupy so much space in my daughter's brain. I think it comes out of a growing awareness of bodies (her own and others'), body functions, and discovering how many creatures share characteristics. Whatever the reason, we have been discussing poop and body parts a lot lately:

While petting the cat:

"Mommy, is this Mei-Mei's belly?"
"Yeah, but don't...just...just - pet her gently, okay? GENTLY."
"I'm pettin' Mei-Mei's belly."
"Yes, you are. GENTLY. Don't squeeze."
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Baby?
"Do you think there's poop in Mei-Mei's belly?"
"Well, yeah, I think there's probably some poop in there."
"Do you think she's going to poop in the litterbox?"
"Yes, that is where kitties are supposed to poop."
"Do you think there's poop in her belly?"
"Yes, I imagine so."
She paused and then looked at me. "Mommy?"
"Yes, Piper?"
"Is this your belly?"
"Yep."
"Do you think there's poop in your belly?"
"Probably."
"But do you think you're not going to poop in the litterbox?"
"No, kiddo, I don't think I am. In fact, I can say that I am definitely not going to poop in the litterbox."
"You're gonna poop on the potty."
"Yes, I am. Because that's where people poop, they poop in the potty. But kitties poop in a litterbox."
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Baby?"
"Do you think there's poop in Ellie's belly?"
"Yes, I think there poop in Ellie's belly. Don't whack Ellie on the head like that..."

Before we go to the playground:
"I'm going to go potty before we go, okay? You really should too."
"Are you going to poop?"
"No, I'm not going to poop."
"You should poop! Please try to poop!"
"Kiddo...oh, you know what? Never mind. Just find your shoes, okay?"

When I'm giving Ellie Benadryl:
"Is that Ellie's medicine?"
"Yep. It's for her belly."
"Does Ellie have scratches on her belly?"
"Yes, she does. That's why I'm giving her medicine."
"Did Ellie scratch her belly? And that's why she has to get medicine?"
"That's exactly right."
"Mommy? Do you think Ellie has poop in her belly that she was scratching?"
"Yeah, Kiddo, I think there's probably some poop in her belly..."

At least every other day, we have a conversation similar to this. We also talk about how other people do the same things we do; that is, if it's bath time at our house, she speculates that one of her classmates is probably also taking a bath at their house. I can see where her little mind is going with this, and how she's realizing the world is so much bigger than what she sees and touches every day. It's pretty damned cool, actually. 

Snapshots: Not-August 2010

I thought I had all this written down already, but either Blogger ate it or I am starting to dream about blogging. Either way it means that I'm re-writing it from memory, so 80% of this post is only 75% true. Guess what I re-read lately?

I am a note-writer and list-maker. Our house often looks like some Notepad Fairy came through and sprinkled every flat surface with oddly-sized and brightly-colored mini books of paper. I love to write things down...and then forget about them. This leads to finding weird notes I've written to myself, one or two tiny pages of an itty-bitty spiral-bound dollar-store notebook filled up with my huge scrawl. I always tell myself to just get basic ideas down, because I'm sure I'll remember the details later. When, weeks or months later, these forgotten works of genius re-emerge, I stare at "beans pumpkin onion ball glitter SAVE!" or "Forget try NPR birTHdy" and have no idea what it means.  The most baffling one I've found lately was in the kitchen, on a page torn from a mini-notebook with Sailor Moon on the cover. It said "wicked witch thought promo snatched away by fresh-faced no idea how works." I am completely clueless as to what I was talking about, but my writing is so frantic it must've seemed really important at the time. I spent 10 minutes yesterday staring at the note as I slurped down my morning coffee and wondered if I could turn it into a haiku.

Always with the questions these days. At bedtime yesterday: "Daddy? Do you think food makes my nose grow?" At lunch: "Mommy, do you think some strawberries could be purple?" Playing outside: "Do you think bugs could eat some dirt?" Any time of day: "Mommy, do you think we have three cats here in this house? Just three and not four?" "Mommy, do you think pumpkins are good to smell?" "Do you think the kitty's belly smells like food? Or does it smell like candy? Do you think cats like gum? Do you think Mei-Mei has gum in her belly?"

I am finally getting around to reading those Stieg Larsson books. If they're as good as everyone says, I expect to spend a lot of nights staying up way too late reading them. I do not understand why they feel the need to re-make the movies, though. I think I'll be skipping those.  I am still working on Consuming Kids, although since I find it too upsetting to read right before bed and that's when I get 99% of my reading done, it's been slow going. Very much enjoying the author's blog, though.

There has been a paper explosion at our house. I was doing a pretty good job of keeping the in/out flow of paper, junk mail, bills, and stuff at a steady pace, not allowing things to accumulate on flat surfaces and in piles around my desk. In the last month, either the rate of intake sped up or I slowed down. There are now piles and piles of paper on every flat surface in the house. I believe part of the blame rests with my mother-in-law, who not only brings a stack of not-that-useful papers, articles, magazines, and books every time she visits, but also sends thick packets of junk every month as well. Expired coupons, magazines totally unrelated to our lives, color-copied magazine articles, puffy foam glitter-shedding stickers, detailed instructions for craft projects we will never get around to doing. She sends it all and more, and we have to at least keep it and look through it all, because she will phone up and ask about each item. I am trying to repay her in kind by sending folder-fulls of Piper's artwork to her house, so that her floor can be covered in crusty flakes of dried tempera paint, stickers that never come off, and crayon-shavings the same way mine is. I take special pleasure in giving her the papers covered in glitter.

I keep subscribing and then un-subscribing to the Wardrobe Refashion RSS feed. Some days I'm all inspired and some days I'm like "aaahhhh too many posts oh the crazy embellishment helllp!"

Piper started preschool last week (which is why it's been so quiet on this blog), and so far she loves it.  This is a 100% improvement over the school we had her in last year, where she cried and begged us not to take her every morning. We are getting to know the other parents. It's awfully cliquey, since most people there have already had kids in for 1-2 years, and the 2-year-old class, where all the other newbies are, doesn't meet on the same days as Piper's class. It's a non-profit, so they rely heavily on parent volunteers. I decided to jump in and immediately signed up for 4 or 5 things. I'm hoping I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

15 Answers

...to questions my daughter has asked me in the past 24 hours:

1. "Well, yeah, I do think the Beatles probably ate a big bowl of ice cream when they got home from work. What flavors do you think they like?"

2. "No, I do not think Daddy wants you to stick that up his nose. In fact, I'm pretty sure he doesn't."

3. "No, you cannot hold Mei-Mei. She does not like it. Yeah, that? What you're doing right now? DON'T. Put the cat DOWN."

4. "Yes, there is poop in the cat boxes. Yeah, it's pretty smelly."

5. "Well, if you want to eat a block of dry ramen noodles for a snack, I suppose I don't see the harm in it."

6. "In that picture? Oh, that big pile is George's fan mail. The boxes are candy - jelly babies. Yep, because he likes candy."

7. "What's in his mouth? Uhh...candy. Yeah, it's, um, candy." [It was a cigar.]

8. "Yeah, I think the Beatles probably liked to drink water."

9. "I guess strawberries could smell like cabbage."

10. "No, I do not think Ellie wants to wear that necklace. Please stop whacking her with it."

11. "No, you cannot go outside and get the mail while naked. Just putting on shoes doesn't count."

12. "What's in Ringo's hand? Uhh...a drumstick. I think it's a drumstick." [It was a cigarette.]

13. "Sure, it can be time. I'll get it out for you. 8:30 a.m. can be time for Play-Doh if you want it to be."

14. "No, I will not give you any more whipped cream on your strawberry pancakes. Eat some strawberries, eat some pancake. But no more whipped cream."

15. "Yes, I think the Beatles liked to eat pie. Probably cake too."

Don't Bother To Cut The Cheese

Suffering from cabin fever combined with a lack of imagination last week, I took her to the grocery store right before naptime. We were both hot, cranky, bored, and sick of being cooped up inside (it was yet another day of near-100 temps and ozone alerts, so outdoor activities were off the roster). I couldn't think of anything else to do, certainly nothing that would get us home in time to attempt a nap, and I needed some things anyway. It's not like it was a hardship; she loves the grocery store. There's one two minutes from our house, but I usually drive a little farther to the one that's more fun for kids. She gets a free cookie, I rarely turn down her request to ride in one of the cars with the big plastic "car" on the front, I let her partake of the samples in the produce and cheese departments, and at the end of the trip, I usually pony up $0.50 for her to ride the whiplash-inducing singing dragon located in the vestibule.

On this day, we swooped in and scooped up the items on my list. She asked for "cheese, that big one to eat in my hand," and pointed at the 1/2-lb blocks lined up in the dairy case. I figured cut-up cheese would be a pretty decent snack and told her to put it in the cart. We survived the checkout line, she rode the singing dragon, and we headed for home. I could tell that she was really, really tired, and I realized that I was playing a pretty dangerous game here. Sure, our little field trip had probably helped tire her out, but now there was a good chance she would fall asleep before we got home. If she did, well, GAME OVER. If she falls asleep somewhere that's not her own bed, even for the last three minutes before we pull into the driveway, she will not take a nap. Will. Not.  No amount of pleading, bribery, yelling, taking away books and toys, putting a baby gate on her room, letting her lay down in our bed, or reading 35 books in a row changes this fact. It's even worse if it happens before bedtime, because then she won't fall asleep until at least 1:00 a.m.

Anyway, I knew I had to do something. She sleepily mumbled something about being hungry and asked for her cheese, so I grabbed it from the bag, opened the wrapper, and handed it to her. A half-pound bar of cheese, and I gave it to her to munch on like it was a 3 Musketeers. She only ate a few bites, but she did not fall asleep on the way home. She took a 2-hour nap later in the afternoon.

Improvisation and a disregard for cholesterol. I has them.

Life Lessons, Brought To You By Tragically Ordinary

I am miserably sick today with some sort of sinus thing, and since I haven't quite completed my latest knitting project (and therefore can't share it yet), all I have for you is a list of things I've learned. These are things I've been thinking about a lot lately, because we've had some discussions about our future plans for this little family (actually, at this stage, it's more like 'plans to have a plan to make plans') and for ourselves. Friday is my birthday, which I always dread, but I'm trying hard not to get too hung up on it this year. I'm trying to view all the hard knocks and missteps and bumbling that have occurred in my life so far as learning experiences, instead of a list of reasons why I shouldn't be allowed near people and should never be given power tools or a checkbook.

 What I've Learned So Far:

1. Wear an apron while cooking bacon. Do not cook anything while drunk or naked. Definitely do not cook anything while drunk and naked.

2. If you buy your significant other something awesome for their birthday, and the same year they buy you some unwanted, bewilderingly useless kitchen appliance for your birthday, it's time for a new relationship. This is particularly true of college relationships, and quadruply true if the other party doesn't understand why you're upset. If they can't comprehend that you make $7.50 an hour yet managed to buy them an amazing and perfectly-chosen $125 gift, and that their reciprocal $35 newspaper-wrapped breadmaker might be upsetting, especially given that you don't bake, they're probably not The One. If you've been together for two years and get a shrug and a "I didn't know what else to get you," they are definitely not The One.

3. You will  never be able to convince anyone else that their significant other is not The One. It's really something they need to realize on their own.

4. If your baby makes a gigantic mess every time she eats blueberry applesauce, either deal with it or stop giving her blueberry applesauce. Don't try and feed it to her while she's in the bathtub. It's going to make a bigger mess than you ever imagined.

5. If you're moving to another state, some place you know nothing about, RENT for a year.

6. Investigate strange smells promptly. This applies to any and all strange smells in any and all locations. 

7. All mothers are crazy. All mothers drive their daughters crazy. Most mothers-in-law are crazy, too. Everyone's definition of "crazy" is different, so it's all (HA!) relative.

8. Air conditioning, a working dishwasher, and a sense of humor are key components of a happy marriage.

9.Before you buy that extra t-shirt or stack of discount books or whatever trinket you're eying, consider how you feel about moving it back and forth across the country a few times. Doesn't sound like fun, does it?

10. Don't confuse "adventure" with "stupidity." Don't confuse "caution" or "responsibility" with "fear."

So what about you? What have you learned so far?

Piles of Surprises

More birthday posts, I know. Yes, her birthday was at the beginning of the month but the craziness and business have dragged it out so that the posts have spanned all of June. Probably July too, if I don't get it in gear...anyway, here you go.

 

 
We don't use the fireplace very much for heating the house, but we get a lot of mileage out of it as a staging area. Whenever we have something to give her, gifts for birthdays and what have you, we put it in front of the fireplace. Then we wait for her to notice the goodies in the morning. The surprise and delight on her face every time is killer. This was her little pile of birthday gifts this year:

- Birthday Shirt, which has become a yearly tradition. For her 1st, we bought one of those generic "Birthday Girl" ones from some big-box store, and I was never satisfied with it. So last year we made her one with iron-on transfers, featuring owls (It said "Who's Two?", ha-ha). This year, of course, it was totally Beatles-inspired. Next year I might try stencils or something, because every brand of iron-on transfer we've tried barely lasts one day before starting to flake off. Sometimes they're peeling in a matter of hours.

- Beatles Quilt, made with love (and some choice language) by Mama.

- Yellow Submarine Hoodie, also made using iron-on transfers. When they flake off I will replace them with nice embroidered patches; I just couldn't find the ones I wanted in time so I used transfers.

- Spider-Man Sticker Book - Spidey is loved very nearly as much as the Fab Four in our house, and stickers are a continual source of fun. This was a HUGE book with tons of stickers and little scenes to place characters in. I still expect to find Spider-Man, the Green Goblin, and Mary Jane stuck all over the house.

- Dragon PJ's - my husband picked these out for her, because, although they are from some cartoon movie she will probably never see, they had a little cape with hood that Velcros to the shoulders, so that it looks like a dragon costume.

- Beatles Coloring Book - we made this ourselves. I took an old 3-ring binder and filled it with all the readily-printable Beatles stuff I could find on the Internet. I hit the jackpot when I stumbled upon pages from a never-published Yellow Submarine comic book. They are AMAZING, and many are only half-colored or less, so it was perfect. I also added a set of 10 Smencils (those things are awesome) for her to color with.

- Wooden hand-carved (but not by us) train toy - just the engine car. She's way into trains at the moment (show me a 2-3 year-old who isn't), and was quite taken with this one when we saw it at the farmer's market. The guy who makes these is really nice; I plan to go back and get some of his kid-size furniture, doll furniture, and step stools. 

- Cardboard Playhouse - we had seen one at the mall, but as it cost $60 and we could not bring ourselves to spend that much on something our cats would probably use as a scratching post, so we made our own. I came up with the concept (I might have even drawn a sketch or two) and my husband did the execution. The purple duct-tape was my idea; I wanted something that looked like trim and we needed a way to shore up everything. The bad-ass chimney, however, was all him. It's totally awesome.

I waffled between thinking it was too much and being convinced it was not enough, or between being proud of all our hand-made-by-us/artistic/hand-made-by-local-crafters stuff and being gripped with fear that she would scorn our hard work and ask for a new set of Yo Gabba Gabba dvd's. I needn't have worried, because she loved all of it. She put the hoodie on immediately and dragged the quilt around with her. She was thrilled with the coloring book and tried out the Smencils right away. She played peek-a-boo in the playhouse and pushed her train up and down its walls. When we left to go out for her much-anticipated birthday pancakes, she insisted on bringing along at least half her presents. This, of course, meant that ten minutes after we left the driveway, the back seat of our car was littered with colored pencils, various articles of clothing, and half-colored pictures, but I didn't mind one bit. We had been up until 3:30 am finishing all this stuff for her, and even though we were exhuasted, I did not begrudge her even a minute of sleep. Not when I could look into the back seat and see my newly-three-year-old girl, wearing her hoodie and scribbling away in her new coloring book while softly singing "All You Need Is Love" mixed with "Happy Birthday."    

Beatle Birthday Brainstorm

Otherwise known as a shameless plea for ideas and advice because I am clueless.


My child is not the only one with Beatles on the brain right now. I have spent every waking minute lately thinking about the Fab Four, because Piper's birthday is in just two weeks, and although I have been musing over a Beatles-themed birthday since, oh, January or so, somehow this just snuck up on me. Like so many things.


I had grand plans to start early, but it is only now that I find myself spending three hours Googling "Yellow Submarine quilt" and "Beatles Fabric." She's still in her "toddler bed" (aka Ikea crib with one side taken off and a rail put on), so whatever I come up with only has to fit a crib mattress, thankfully. I have a couple pieces of the Cranston fabrics that were put out in 2008, but it's not quite enough to do a quilt. At least not a very interesting one. The stuff is still available at some places online, I suppose I could order more. I only have one set of the four panels, a yard (I think) of this print and a yard (I think) of this print.  I've looked around at a lot of the quilts made with these fabrics, but none of it is exactly what I'm looking for. She already has a set of pillows made from the pillow fabric, and I feel like doing a whole quilt in the same stuff would be too much. I want something sort of modern-looking, kind of understated, not too cartoony, something that won't look like just a bunch of fat quarters held together by sashing. Then I saw this woman's quilts. You see it there, in the top row? Go ahead, click the picture and take a look. I'll wait.

I know, right? It's FABULOUS.

It's totally Yellow Submarine without being too cartoony, which I think was the trouble with trying to put together a quilt from all those bright print fabrics. I'm not even sure if "not too cartoony" even makes sense since we are talking about a 90-minute cartoon movie here, but I think you get the idea. Anyway, I am so in love with that quilt, and I want to make my own. It's just some strips and some applique, right? Even though I can't hem napkins properly, I could do that, right? And in less than two weeks? Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

I have also had fantasies of knitting her some Beatles dolls, which, since I am a super-slow knitter, not good at making up my own patterns, and don't know how to do colorwork, are clearly not going to pan out.

Although I am usually opposed to cartoon characters on clothing, I think I could make an exception and churn out a skirt or a dress from Beatles fabric, either what I have or one of the other fabrics in the collection. I'm thinking a skirt or sundress in this rainbow words print might be kind of cool, and this blue or this yellow would also make a nice but not too loud dress. If I want to go all-out, there's this crazy print (they have it in orange, too). I'm running out of time to order anything, but I have no idea what to do here.

What I do have is a plain white hoodie I picked up on clearance for $1.50 several months ago, and I've been trying to figure out how to Yellow-Submarine-ize it. I'm ordering some iron-on patches, but I think I could do something cool with inkjet iron-on transfer paper, too. I was trying to figure out how to stencil a big yellow sub on the back, but it would be a 7-color stencil and I don't think I'm up to that challenge. Which reminds me, have you ever used the inkjet-printable transfer paper? Do you have any recommendations? We've done it twice and both brands we bought sucked. If I can get it to work, it will be a 30-minute project, which is great, because between my quilting delusions and the dress I am knitting for her, I don't have much time.

Don't even get me started on what I want to do for the party. The party that we are not having. Memorial Day is the weekend before her birthday so we can't do it then; my in-laws will be here the weekend after, so that's a no-go (there are many, many reasons why not, starting with "If one Grandma gets to come to her b-day party and the other doesn't, all Hell will break loose"); the weekend after that my family might be coming for a visit (see above), and we don't know that many people here, so if we did it at all, it would be a three-weeks-after-the-day celebration for two other kids and eight other adults. Yet I am scheming about cakes frosted in many shades of yellow, playing pin-the-ring-on-Ringo, and making rainbow beanbags to toss through a Sea of Holes cardboard cutout. Hmm, maybe I could combine them into one game and have a toss-the-rings onto Ringo...

Pioneer Women

Piper spiked an inexplicable fever on Saturday. Nothing else, no complaints about hurting ears or throat, just a restless night followed by a temp that started at 100.6 and climbed to 102.5 by lunchtime. I let her drink about 5 of the tiny, watered-down apple juice boxes she loves so much, in quick succession.  We bought a box of popsicles and let her go to town. I pressed water on her, and, once the fever climbed, gave her medicine and packed her off for a nap.

We made calls, of course, to the pediatrician's office that wasn't open at 12:30 on Saturday afternoon. To the Urgent Care centers in our area, asking for hours and procedures for getting seen. To the insurance company, trying to get authorization to take her to an Urgent Care center or, failing that, the ER. We were advised that we could do that, but since our ped "doesn't do" the sort of referrals we needed, we'd be paying out of pocket. That is, if any place would see us without the referral in the first place. The very nice nurse on the help-line at the pediatrician's office told us that we were doing all the right things and that, unless the fever didn't respond to the medicine or got to 104, it probably wouldn't help to take her in anyway.

As I sat there pouring out cups of water and apple juice, unwrapping popsicles, and making our temporal-artery thermometer work overtime, I stewed in my feelings of fear and rage and helplessness. Once we'd determined that there was nothing to do but wait it out, and Piper was snoozing away in her room, I snuck in to feel her forehead again. This symbolic gesture, not capable of easing her illness or of providing any accurate information about it, served only to comfort myself. I looked at her sweet little face, curls spilling over her forehead and her cheeks flushed. I sat down on the floor beside her bed and watched her for a moment, taking in the steady rise and fall of her breathing.

I thought of all the other mothers who have sat beside the bed of a sick child. Women who held small hands and willed that tiny form to keep breathing, keep breathing, please just be okay. Thirty minutes before I had been cursing the few options available to get my child to a doctor, raging at this ridiculous healthcare system that would make us choose between health and poverty, drowning in bitter resentment of all the circumstances in my life that had brought me to a point where I could not just truck off to the ER with my insurance card. Now I thought all we have to do is get to Monday. The pediatrician's phones would turn on at 8:00 Monday morning; all we had to do was keep the fever at bay until then. Then there would be an office visit, antibiotics, an explanation. This will end, and she will be okay.

I thought of so many other women before me, my ancestors. Women who journeyed with their families from the interior of Germany, to the Volga plains of Russia, and then on across an ocean to America. Women who came from England and Ireland and Wales, who left everything they knew and bore children in a strange and wild country. Women who watched those children sicken and die, who lost them to accidents or coal mines or farm equipment or the filth of cities, and could not do a damned thing about it. These women held the hands of their children in tenement apartments, in sod houses, on crowded passenger ships. They prayed and sobbed under cover of temporary shelters, the canvas of wagon-hoods or in farm houses surrounded by rolling acres of wheat. They prayed and sobbed and hoped, because that was all they could do.

As much as I joke about moving into a mud hut and leaving civilization behind, as much chatter as there always is about "the good old days" and going "back to basics," I don't envy those women. I wouldn't want to live in a time where an ear infection or a broken arm could kill my child. I live here, now, in this turbulent and fearful world, where there is so much to be angry about and so much to inspire despair. But it's also a time where I can soothe a fever with popsicles and apple juice, where a $4.99 bottle of bubblegum-flavored ibuprofen can knock out symptoms, and where the promise of a waiting room and white coats means that everything will be okay, and for that I am grateful.

End of the School-Brick Road

Today was Piper's last day of preschool.

After all the trouble we went through to find a place for her, we are pulling her out after only four months. I feel sort of ridiculous, but it's not working out. It's just not.

She likes it okay, but doesn't love it. It has been great for her sense of routine and her sleep schedule, but she went from loving it when we enrolled her at the end of December to sobbing every time the word school was mentioned at the beginning of February.  School staff, the grandmothers, our friends, and strangers on the street all dispensed the helpful advice that "she's just adjusting" and "she'll get used to it." But all through February and into March, we had to get her ready those two mornings a week without so much as a whisper about where we were going when we got in the car. To do otherwise, to even let her see that you were putting her school backpack in the car, was to trigger a meltdown of epic proportions. "I don't want to go to school today! No no no!" she would wail, thrashing and bucking as we tried to strap her into her car seat. Drop-off was worse. She would start to cry as soon as we turned into the parking lot; she would wail and cling to us as we tried to leave her classroom. It broke my heart to turn away from her as she cried, to ignore the huge teardrops sliding down her face.

Eventually, the massive crying fits became more subdued, but we still couldn't mention school at all or she would cry. On the mornings she didn't go to school, she would wake up and say "Probably not going to school today...?" cautiously, then repeat it with satisfaction when we anwered "Nope, it's not a school day. Today we're staying home." Sometimes she still cried when we turned into the parking lot or when we dropped her off. Many times, she was crying when I picked her up. Her teachers told me she'd been fine until she saw me in the hallway, or until it was close to pick-up time. Again, there were all reassurances that this was very normal.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I picked her up and she was bawling. The rest of the class has naptime for the last 45-60 minutes she's there (annoying, since we're paying for her to sit at a table and play with plastic frogs while everybody else sleeps) and I came in and she got up from her table and she was sobbing, really upset, not just like the "when is my mom going to GET HERE?" tears that I was by now used to seeing. The teacher - a sub, her normal (very awesome, sweet and kind) teacher was out that day - said "She's been fine all morning, and she just got upset and started crying after lunch" before I even asked her what was going on. Piper was upset all the way out the door and started to perk up when we got outside. On the way to the car I tried to ask her what happened and why she was so upset, but all she would say was "I was crying at school." Finally, after I got her buckled in, she said "I was crying because [something something garbled] say mean things to me."

"What did you say, Kiddo? Who said mean things to you?"
"Miss Sarah say mean things to me."
"Miss Sarah said mean things to you?"
"Yep, she did."
"Why were you crying?"
"Because Miss Sarah say mean things to Piper. She said mean things to me."

I tried quzzing her more, but I couldn't get out of her exactly what "mean things" meant. We repeated the performance later for Ryan, but he couldn't get what "mean things" were said either. And, granted, she's two, so "mean things" could mean something entirely different to her. But still. She's started to cry and freak out whenever we enter situations with a group of other kids present; she won't go to story time at the library, she completely lost it when I tried to drop her off in the nursery at church. Maybe it's just her age - a friend told me her daughter got really clingy around this age, too - and maybe it's not. I just don't want to sour her on group situations and the idea of school altogether.

And it's costing a frigging arm and a leg. The place is more like a day-care, most of the kids go full time or at least half-time, and although she's only there 8 hours a week, we are paying 55% of what they charge for their full-time, five-day-a-week kids. There's always a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) pressure to enroll her for more days or go up to full-time, and I resent that. Not to mention that part of that arm and leg we are handing over is paying for her to sit at a table for an hour and color or play with rubber insects while the rest of her class naps.

There are other things, like her sudden fascination with princess stuff (we don't use the p-word at our house, so there's only one other place she could've learned it), the food they give the kids being of the industrial not-so-healthy chicken nuggets/pizza/canned fruit in syrup/French toast sticks variety, and the computers at the "technology center" in her classroom where the kids play cartoon-character games. We enrolled her in this place because we liked that they had lesson plans and a set curriculum, but she doesn't seem to be getting much out of it. They studied planets and transportation, which I thought was kind of cool, but they also did an entire unit on fairy tales, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't any sort of "tall tales from around the world"-type of thing, either. She seems to be learning more when I work with her on academics at home.

There were a lot of really good things about this school, too. The day-care like atmosphere means she could go year-round if we wanted. The staff are all really nice, and Piper's teacher is terrific. She really cares about the kids (she's working on her Master's in Early Childhood Ed) and she's great with them. Everybody in the building knows my little girl, from the infant teachers to the cook, and they all love her. I loved dropping her off and hearing all the other kids call out "Hi, Piper! Hi, Piper!" in the morning. It cracked me up that the kids would all say "Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!" when we walked in (or ask "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?" if only one of us was doing drop-off). Their playground is really cool and creative. The schedule they keep to worked out well for us and having that structure got my kid sleeping in five-to-eight-hour-chunks for the first time in her 2.5 years. And boy howdy did I love having those eight hours a week to myself. If Ryan was going into work later, we'd drop Piper off and go grab coffee together. Those few hours of adult conversation were precious and very much enjoyed. I could go home and clean without a small person un-doing all my hard work. I could write, I could go to the grocery store kid-free. But we weighed everything, and the things we liked weren't quite enough to make up for the 15-minute-plus drive each way two days a week (times two if I went home and came back), the cost, and Piper's unhappiness. So we decided to withdraw her for now, and keep looking for a new school.

And of course she had a great day on Monday. Her teacher showed me pictures she took of the kids doing music time, and there was Piper, marching in place banging drumsticks together. I started to feel guilty. There were some tears when I dropped her off today, but she was happily sitting at her table with her bucket of plastic frogs like normal when I picked her up. Her teacher hugged her and said good-bye, genuinely sorry to see Piper go. She gave me a giant good-bye card the class had made for Piper. I felt another pang of guilt. All our way through the hall and out the door, other teachers poked their heads out of classrooms and asked for hugs and told me how much they would miss my daughter. The Assistant Director was at the front desk when we got to the door and asked for a hug, too.

We walked through the parking lot for the last time, and I felt like I could, with very little effort, tear up. This was the first place we had ever left our baby, the first time she'd ever been entrusted to the care of anyone but us or her grandparents, the first time she went to school. I felt more guilt, not a pang but a stab this time, because I was ending something she liked, at least part of the time. For all her tears, she had been happy here too, and I wondered if we were doing the right thing. I still don't know. As parents, can we ever really be sure?

Snapshots: Mid-April 2010

My mom made Piper these magnetic fabric letters. Piper, in true Piper fashion, refuses to leave them stuck to the fridge or dishwasher and instead packs them into little bags or boxes and carries them around, or lines them up in rows on the floor, or stuffs them into odd places (like various kitchen cabinets). Turns out those little magnets are fairly strong, and will stick to the bottom of a stock pot. The letters are also small enough that you might not notice. On a related note: fabric letters will smoke a great deal when placed directly on an electric stove-burner. While they disintegrate, they don't actually burst into flames. And now we need a new C and P.

For some reason, our yard has been overtaken with...things that are not grass. I don't know how it happened. We worked diligently last year to spread grass seed and keep it watered. We babied and nurtured the tender young shoots that arose to cover the bare spots in our yard. We yanked out large weeds and put the yard toys over the little ones. When the recent rain + warm weather caused our brown yard to turn green overnight, I went out to inspect the new recruits. Much to my horror, I discovered that all our hard work was for nothing. The front yard is entirely clover - every bit of green visible is not grass but stomping grounds for wayward leprechauns.

I had both Piper and a friend's 19-month-old little boy for a couple days last week. The little guy is charming and sweet, but Ye Gods I had forgotten how difficult that age can be. He's still mostly in the "screech and point" phase when he wants something, so I spent a lot of time asking him to use his words and say please. Piper alternated between wanting very much to help take care of him (fetching diapers and wipes, finding his misplaced sippy cup, reading him a story - which melted me into puddles, by the way) and howling because he had the thing she wanted most in the world at that moment. They did that a lot. Whatever one of them had was suddenly the other's object of burning desire. They also cracked each other up making silly noises, begged me to chase them and dump water on their heads, and licked markers during art time. Luckily, my friend is the sort to just laugh when I texted her and warned her that her son was coming home with blue teeth.

It was kind of fun, and also taxed my reserves of patience and stamina. I think I was pretty short with Ryan by the time he got home both nights. For Pete's sake, man, I have spent all day smeared with banana and listening to full-volume screeches, wails, whines, and howls. There is applesauce in my hair and every time I open my mouth my lips form the word "NO" out of habit. Find your own damned socks.

Pukus Maximus

I'll warn you right now: this post is not for the faint of gut. If you have a weak stomach at all, you probably just want to skip this one.

I got puked on yesterday. Hardcore.

My daughter has only thrown up one other time in her life. Sure there was plenty of spit-up during the infant days, but the only other incident involving actual barf was a couple of months ago, when a wicked cold caused her to cough so hard she upchucked on our freshly-shampooed carpet. Other than that, our house has been pretty much a puke-free zone.

Yesterday, we went out to dinner with another couple, some friends of ours who love Piper but have no kids of their own. We were at some Southwest-themed bar & grill, eating burgers with jalapenos and hot sauce slathered on top. Piper seemed to be happily munching on her fries, kid-size burger (minus the jalapenos and hot sauce, of course), and chocolate milk. Her appetite had been a little off for a couple of days, but she'd already sucked down most of her chocolate milk and was plowing through her fries, so I figured it was nothing. She said she had to go potty, so I took her to the bathroom. We came back, and her eating slowed down. She asked to sit on my lap, so I took her out of the booster seat and settled her on my leg. She snuggled into me like she was cold, so I took off my gauze scarf and draped it around her. I held onto her and continued eating one-handed.

She turned to the table and seemed to be looking for something. I gave her my phone, which she'd been using earlier to play a spelling game. I asked her if she wanted another drink of her milk and she whispered, "Yeah." So she took a sip, put the cup on the table, gave a funny little cough, and hurled down the front of my shirt.

We are talking gallons of chocolate-milk and french-fry puke here, people. Right in the boobs. She heaved again, with a loud belch, and unleashed another torrent of vomit onto me. She immediately started to cry and ask to go home and change her clothes. I grabbed my one paper napkin and dabbed pathetically at the mess. Dimly I heard my husband going "Phone! Phone! Phone!" and I realized that I was still clutching my iPhone, which had taken a direct hit and was dripping with puke. I handed it off, grabbed some more napkins, and gave an emphatic yes to whoever asked if we needed some real towels. One of our friends was looking a bit green and scooting out of the booth really fast; she's a nanny for two four-year-olds, so she has seen her share of messes, but she'd just taken a bite of chicken wing when the eruption occurred and very nearly gave the old heave-ho herself. Our other friend was asking the waitress for towels.

I stripped Piper out of her dress and left her wearing just the tank top and leggings beneath; it didn't help much, because it was all covered. She was crying and I was trying to reassure her. I worked quickly and calmly, trying to clean up her, the booth, and the table. I ignored the fact that my jeans were soaked through and there was vomit dripping down my shirt. The blonde-early-20's-college-student waitress, who had been remarkably absent for most of our meal, suddenly appeared and asked for the towels even though I was clearly not done with them.

"I'm sorry, could you just put that towel on this plate?" I guess I couldn't blame her, I wouldn't want to touch some kid's puke either.
"Yeah," I said, "just a sec." I worked even faster to wipe down the booth, the table, and everything else within reach. I gave up the dirty towel and reached for a second, which was soggy with the remnants of someone else's table-dirt.
"If you could just put the towel right there on that plate, that would be great," she said again, watching me as I scrubbed at the vinyl seat-back.
"Um, okay, yeah," I answered again, giving up the only wet towel I had. I reached for the dry one and had no sooner dabbed at my shirt than she asked for it. I relenquished it, which left me with only a pile of puke-soaked paper napkins. The waitress disappeared through some secret doorway, and was not seen again. Ten bucks says she doesn't let her birth-control prescription run out for a good, long while.

Luckily my friend appeared with a pile of wet paper towels from the women's restroom, which I used to clean up Piper. Ryan came back with my cleaned-off phone in one hand, and his undershirt in the other. He offered it to me, but instead I stripped Piper out of her wet tank top and pants, and put it on her. It was enormous, but she stopped crying. Our wonderful, dear friend took her to look at the pinball machines while I continued to wipe down the booth and table. I was finally able to asses the damage to myself and quickly concluded that nothing short of a long, hot shower was going to fix this. I gingerly took off my t-shirt (getting that thing over my head without dumping chunks in my hair was quite the feat) and sweater, leaving me with barf-soaked jeans and a barfy tank top for the ride home.

I was sort of laughing as I worked, because really, what else could I do? It was like a scene from a sitcom or something. Less than five minutes earlier, our friend had complimented us on how cool we were. "You guys are parents, and good parents - your kid is awesome. Piper is an awesome kid who's fun to be with," he said. "But you also still seem like yourselves, just with a few extra responsibilities. And that's cool. You guys are very cool."

Three minutes later, my "awesome kid" covered me in a river of partially-digested french fries and corn-syrup-laden dairy products. Real cool.

I was apologizing like crazy to our friends, who seemed a little shell-shocked but mostly surprised at how well I handled it.

"You're just...just taking it all in stride," he said. "That's amazing."

I had wiped down the entire seat and gotten pretty much all of the mess up, and without towels there was nothing more I could do. I balled up the sodden clothes and wrapped them in my sweater, tied the whole thing shut with the sweater arms, dabbed at my pants once more, and scooted out of the booth. Piper was giggling in our friend's arms, proudly holding two rubber bouncy balls wrestled from the clutches of the $0.25 prize machines in the video-game room. As we walked to the car, I realized that not only were my jeans soaked, so were my underwear. And I stank. Ye Gods, I stank.

When we reached our vehicle, my husband asked, "Uhh, do we even have plastic bags in the car?"

"Yup, we certainly do," I said. "Because your wife is awesome." I opened the door, retrieved the pile of plastic grocery bags I'd stashed in the car, and tossed the ball of puke-clothing into one, then tied it shut. I spread more bags on my seat and put one on my lap so the seat belt wouldn't get vomit on it. We rode home with the windows open, until Piper started howling "I'm COLLLLDDDD! I'm cold cold cold!" from the back. Then we had to shut the windows and I was left to ride in a cloud of my own stink, holding the seatbelt away from my vomit-covered chest.

As soon as we got through the door I hit the shower with Piper in tow. I stripped off my sodden tank top to find that not only had the vomit soaked through my bra, there were chunks of my daughter's dinner in my cleavage.

Yeah, I thought as I herded my daughter into the shower and started scrubbing her off, real cool.

Tea and Cookies

She had a crappy day at school (crappy enough that it cleared up any debate on our decision to pull her after only four months, even after all the work to find a preschool) on Wednesday. It was a cold, crappy day outside. I had a tea set stashed in the closet, which was supposed to be an Easter gift, but one look at her overflowing basket and we decided to hold it back. The theory was that I could whip it out on just such an occasion, when we both needed something new and she needed cheering up. so we made some M&M cookies together and I brewed some of the Tangerine-Orange Zinger tea she had picked out a few days earlier at the grocery store. Everything was a big hit. She dumped as much as she poured, but I put plenty of double-folded bath towels tablecloths down, so it was okay. She had a great time and that's what extra-large capacity washers were invented for, right?

Yeah, Mom, Turn Around

It was really hot last week so I set a bucket of water in the front yard, gave her some measuring cups and toy boats, and let her have at it. Except she has this thing about drinking water from places she shouldn't (mud puddles, the swimming pool, bathwater, the toilet that one time - that we know of, dishwater) so I had to tell her over and over to STOP DRINKING THE WATER YOU JUST DUNKED YOUR SHOES IN. NO IT'S NOT OKAY, NOT EVEN IF YOU PUT IT IN A CUP FIRST.

Me: Piper, if you drink any more of that water, we are going inside.
Piper: You're not supposed to drink the water, it's just pretend.
Me: No, not even pretend. Not this time. You clearly cannot handle even pretend-drinking this water, even though it's got dead bugs and grass clippings in it.
Piper: This water is gross. Don't drink it.
Me: That's right.
Piper: Hey Mom, turn around!
Me (thinking we are playing some fun new game and desperate to distract from the water-drinking): Okay! I'm turned around!

(slurping sound behind my back)

Me (turning back around): Piper, did you drink that water?!
Piper (giggling): Hey Mom, turn around again!

October 2008: Lists, Part 2

Another one of the posts I've found abandoned in draft mode. Orignally written 10/28/08. Piper was 16 months old, starting to talk a lot, and running, jumping and climbing with ease. We had been in our house in Charlotte for about six months.     

Things My Child Likes To Pay With
Broken cellphones
Cats
Cat toys
Kleenex boxes
Entire rolls of oh-so-shreddable toilet paper
My knitting books
Magazines
The horribly pink singing teapot my mom bought her
Bottle caps
Anything she can reach through the child-safety-latched cupboard door and grab
Entire bottles of shampoo
Ink pens
Yard trash
Rocks

 Things My Child Couldn't Care Less About
The $10 all-natural wooden teething ring she liked in the store
The $11 Petey Piranha plush she wouldn't let go of in the store
The $12 Domo plush she wouldn't let us leave the store without
The $30 non-toxic and totally safe Haba Stockpile House she wouldn't leave alone in the store
The gigantic stuffed dinosaur plush she carried around the grocery store for twenty minutes
The other two gigantic stuffed dinosaur plushes we bought because she loved the first one so much and they were on clearance
The gigantic "world's biggest piano mat!" my in-laws bought her last Christmas, which is taking up space in the closet.

Boys and Girls

Rae and Dana are having a "Celebrate the Boy" month, to spotlight crafty endeavors that focus on making things for boys.  I think it's a good idea, because they are right, boys often get overlooked when it comes time for a craft-o-rama.  Mostly, I think, because it's easier to sew up a tube of fabric and slap in some elastic for a skirt than it is to make a well-fitting nicely finished pair of pants or a button-up shirt (I get queasy just thinking about collars).

They've showcased some really cute and creative ideas, and I have to say I am mostly relieved.  While I have some misgivings about designating certain colors, fabrics, or motifs as "BOY" or "GIRL," the projects they've shown off (their own work and that of others) go far beyond the "It's blue! It has sports on it! It must be for boys!" mentality that seems to permeate children's clothing (and toys).

I have seen a couple of "oh, I'm so tired of pink and ruffles, thanks for doing a BOY feature!"-type comments in articles and around the web, at which I sigh and roll my eyes. I want to shake those people and say "You know girls aren't limited to pink and ruffles, right?  And you do realize that 'boy' doesn't just mean the opposite of those things either?" It's such a simple concept, but so many people just don't seem to get it.  And worse, they (sometimes very consciously) push their kids into these pre-determined roles of 'girl' and 'boy.'  It makes me sad to watch a parent snatch a doll from their sons arm's and say "No, dolls are for GIRLS. You can't play with that." As though learning to be empathetic and care for others is a bad thing.  Conversely, these same sort of people will automatically hand truckloads of dolls to their girls, bury them in pink play kitchens and call them 'little Mommy.'  As though taking care of others is all they should learn.

A friend came over with his four-year-old son recently, and the boy asked where Piper was.  I told him she was taking her nap at the moment, but I'd be happy to play with him until she woke up.  My husband and the friend immediately started talking (and then playing) video-game stuff, so I took the son into the playroom and we played.  He made a beeline for the box of crocheted play food Piper's grandma made for her, and got out the toy dishes.  We cooked up some apple-hot dog-sushi pancake sandwiches and some egg & sardine soup.  We baked some pizza-taco-corn on the cob casserole. Then he spied Piper's little toy shopping cart and said "We need to go to the store! You be the mommy and I'll be the daddy. We gotta go to the grocery store." So he pushed the cart, with one of Piper's dolls in the front seat, and we did a lap around the house together.  As soon as we got into the living room, our friend said "I bring my son over here, and you make him do girl stuff." He was only half-joking.  Maybe not even half.  It clearly made him uncomfortable that his son was pretending to grocery-shop. The boy wanted to join the video game they were playing, but his dad told him he could have a turn when they were done, so we continued to play.  We cooked some more and he served lunch to the doll ("The baby is hungry, she wants some apples," he explained to me). The dad poked his head in every few minutes, still looking uncomfortable. Eventually the play food gave way to things like the wooden ball run and, finally a game of "these two stuffed dinosaurs will chase each other and try to bite each other's heads off."  As we ran around the house, stuffed dinosaurs in hand, growling and roaring (quietly, since Piper was still asleep), the dad looked relieved.

"Don't worry," I said to him as we dashed through. "We're not doing 'girly' things anymore, we're playing fighting dinosaurs. His is winning right now because it bit the head off the other dinosaur and then ate a dog."
"Now THAT sounds like my son," he answered. 

They continued to play video games, Piper continued to sleep, and we continued to play.  I got the definite impression that this kid did not get a lot of one-on-one play time without a TV screen involved.  He'd go and check on the game the dads were playing every once in a while (Wii bowling), and sometimes take a turn, but he always came back and picked up our game again.  If the TV had been off, I don't think he would've given it a second thought.

Eventually he cycled back around to the doll in the shopping cart, and wheeled it out to Piper's small table, next to our dining-room table.  "Let's have lunch," he announced, and had me put the doll at the table.  He brought out a stack of play dishes and pretended to make lunch.  "The baby wants some food," he proclaimed. "She wants to sit right there and have something to eat."

His dad glanced over and made another crack about "doing girl stuff." He then started to hang around the little table, hovering closely over his son and saying over and over that it was time to go, or didn't he want to play the video game again?  The boy said no, he was busy. The dad insisted it was time to go. 

I could not keep my mouth shut. "Oh, are you making her a good healthy lunch, just like your dad makes for you?" I said pointedly.  The dad backed off and went to play his game again.

They left a little while later, shortly after Piper woke up from her nap.  I felt saddened and annoyed by the whole experience.  Ryan tried to defend his friend, saying it's just the culture down here and he doesn't know any better, but I think that justification only made me more annoyed.

"He's a single dad," I answered.  "Yeah, his wife has the kid much of the time, but that's not by his choice.  And he did a lot of heavy lifting even before they were divorced.  He loves his son, and he tries to be a good dad.  Why get upset when his son tries to be a good dad too?  Why do people find that so disturbing?"

Truth be told, this was best interaction I've ever had with this kid. Normally we groan when we have to spend any amount of time with him, because he's always snatching toys out of Piper's hands or stuffing his face full of something he doesn't want to share or shoving over store displays or pitching a fit because he wants to play video games or taking food off other kids' plates or demanding to leave somewhere after five minutes because he's bored or whining enough to make your head explode. This time it was really fun to play with him, and think I got a glimpse of how things could be if he got a little more interaction and a lot less screen time.

And I was really, really annoyed that his dad saw what we did as "girly stuff."  You need to eat.  Your kid needs to eat.  Sometimes you are going to have to obtain and cook food for your child.  That's not "girly," that's basic survival, for Pete's sake! And you'd think more people would encourage their sons to take up an interest in food and cooking, since it can make you a lot of money if you do it well.

Xmas 2008: The Thought Didn't Count For Much

I have been digging around in my own archives a bit lately and was surprised to discover a number of half-finished posts. I thought I'd work on finishing them up and share them with you, just for fun. This particular one tells the story of our Christmas last year, involving a well-meaning gift that totally missed the mark. Piper was about 18 months old, and this was our first Christmas with her that didn't involve hordes of family trying to get a piece of the baby action.



It looks like an idyllic Christmas scene, right? Stockings, presents, everything waiting for our eager little cherub come Christmas morn. Little did we know the terror that was about to ensue.

We told the grandparents not to get Piper anything for Christmas, because she already has enough crap to outfit a daycare. They asked if they could send small things, stuff she actually needs. I requested plain white socks, solid-color yoga pants, and board books. I got some of those, but of course it didn't stop there. My in-laws sent a multi-piece music ensemble that includes a drum, rattles of various sorts, a recorder and a kazoo; my mom sent some really awesome play food she crocheted herself. It's totally amazing - an entire hamburger assemblage: Bun, meat patty, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and onions; a hot dog with ketchup and mustard on it and its own accompanying bun; an apple, a pear, and corn in a husk. She even made sushi! I think we were more excited over the play food than Piper was.

We saved our gift for last, since we have been looking forward to giving it to her for months. She was so into Halloween this year, when we saw this Fisher-Price playset online, it seemed like the perfect gift. It has a doorbell sound and when you move the bat, a ghost pops up with an "Oooooo!" Since she runs around the house with a blanket on her head going "Scary ghost? Oooo!" we figured she would love it. I ordered it in November and it had been sitting in the closet for weeks, while we congratulated ourselves on being awesome parents.

Once she had opened evvvverything else (not least of all this monster shirt, which she insisted on wearing immediately, over her pajamas - which also had monsters on them), we brought the carefully-wrapped box out from its position behind our tiny tree. She opened it and was excited to play with the "ghoss" and "punkin" and "weetch." Everything seemed to be going well, so we decided to put the batteries in.
We showed her how to push the buttons and make all the noises - spooky music, kids saying "trick or treat!", a doorbell, and the ghost that said "oooooh!" She played with it and asked us to make the noises "More? More? Ghoss more?"
Then this happened.

She would cry, play with it, cry, play with it, and cry again. Finally, after another round of the pop-up ghost, she started to scream in earnest. We tried to get her to play with it sans batteries again, but it freaked her out so much we had to put it back in its box and stuff it under our bed, because she could not even look at the plain brown shipping box without sobbing. Our totally awesome present, the thing we were most excited to give her, was a total FAIL.

*Ed. Note: We left it in its box under the bed for many months. I tried a few times to get her interested in it again, but each time the mere appearance of the its plain square box was cause for shrieking. Eventually she realized that there were little figurines and a trike to play with, and then she warmed to it. I think it took a good solid six months before she would even let me take it out of the box. Now it lives - without batteries - on a shelf in the playroom. She plays with it, but it is by no means a cherished object. C'est la vie, I guess.