Some Days are Diamonds; Some Days are Stones

There’s a counter-saying in there somewhere – something like, “If life gives you stones, make a Zen garden.”  My Zen landscaping skills are leaving much to be desired, because I’ve got a stone quarry in my hypothetical yard.  Perhaps I should turn to feng shui. 

But really.  Two weeks ago, a considerably long and intense battle with Ellen occurred (over whether or not it should behoove her to get in her car seat), and I emerged the victor by juuuuust a hair.  (Hair idioms are quick to pop in my mind, since these days I deal with frequent bouts of insubordination, during which Ellen loves to spout her favorite response to my requests, which is “Mom, not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.”)  After she was finally in her seat and strapped down, I realized that I forgot something in the house, which I had locked already.  Exceedingly annoyed, I went inside, found said item after a search that took waaaaay longer than it should have, and when I came back out and locked the door, I was muttering something under my breath (or maybe not so much), which was probably self-deprecating, but certainly peppered with color.  I looked over and my nice neighbor Mary, who is a brand-new young mom, was retrieving her mail and looking over at me with a grin.  “Are you having a moment?” she asked.  There is just no masking of my moments anymore. 

Last night, my mom and I took the girls to watch my brother-in-law’s game with my sister.  My car is newly leaking radiator fluid, so we had to do a car seat shuffle and lots of moving of stuff from one trunk to another so that we could drive my mom’s car to the game.  This resulted in my leaving my own keys (including my house key) on the wrong side of the front door, which of course I did not realize until after the game.  45 minutes past bedtime, I was in the backyard with the girls and my sister, waiting for Dave to return from his soccer game.  Mary came outside to her own backyard with her two-month-old son, Drew.  “Another moment?” she asked.  Mary is privy to some very winning portrayals of my darker side.  I’m not sure if she should feel privileged or terrified.

It’s not all bad, though.  Stones AND diamonds, right?  Here’s a diamond moment – one for the ages, I think.  It’s the kind that we’ll be telling when the girls and their cousins are in high school and sure to be completely embarrassed by our laughter.  My little unborn nephew Charlie (coming soon) may feel especially sheepish after the future retelling of this little gem.  I almost hesitate to include it in my blog, but it has to be recorded somewhere.  So here it is:

Ellen was taking a bath and my sister was helping her (though at 35 weeks pregnant I don’t know why I was allowing her to do that – must have been a special request from Ellen for Auntie’s help).  I could hear them from the dining room methodically washing all the body parts.  “Arm,” my sister said.  “Armpit.  Tummy.  Bum.  Legs.”  Ellen’s little voice piped up: “It’s vulva time.”  I could hear my sister stifling laughter as she took the opportunity to practice boy and girl differences with her niece.  “Charlie won’t have a vulva, will he?”  “No,” said Ellen, “he will have a vuh-JIN-yah.”  Trying even harder to stifle that laughter (and beginning to fail), Rachel said, “no, he will have a penis.”  Ellen responded, “Oh THAT’S right,” as though she had known the answer all along.  “A tiiiiny penis.”  (Sorry Charlie).

Busted

Both Dave and I have come to the humbling conclusion that we do not have the smarts to fool our three-year-old.  Cases in point:

J  A while ago, Ellen lost one of her trains – Toby, the brown square one, to be exact.  We looked for weeks without success, and Ellen mentioned (out of the blue) on several occasions that she really missed Toby and was so sad that he was lost.  So finally, I broke down and bought a new Toby at Target.  Unsure of whether or not this was a wise parenting move, I put him on top of the fridge without showing him to Ellen, and decided to wait it out a little longer.  A few days later, Toby the First miraculously appeared from waaaay under the driver’s seat in the car.  Toby the Second remained on top of the fridge.  Fast-forward to yesterday, when Dave lifted Ellen so she could put something in a high cabinet in the kitchen.  He put her down just as her head was whipping around to check out what she spotted out of the corner of her eye, and he quickly hid Toby in a cupboard.  “Hey Dad, what was up there?” she asked.  “What, you mean this little cup?” he said as he held up something to that effect.  “No, Dad,” she said.  “It was brown and square.  Ack-chally it looked like Toby.”      

J  I often secretly discard of art projects that Ellen brings home from preschool or play time.  We put them up and admire them for a while, and I save a few that are special.  But she has brought home enough art projects to wallpaper our entire house, so I comfort myself with her preschool teacher’s mantra (“it’s about the process, not the product”), and put them in the garbage.  The other day she came running into the living room clutching two projects that didn’t make the cut.  “Mom!” she yelled.  “These aren’t trash!  Did you get confused?”  I just looked at her, feigned utter shock that such beautiful, unique pieces should be disrespected in such a way that made them equal to banana peels and dirty paper towels, and said, “oh dear.  Yes, I must have gotten confused.”  As she carried the projects into her bedroom, I heard her say “it’s okay, Mom.  It was just a acks-dent.”    

J  I dislike folding and putting away clothes.  I think nudists REALLY have that “no laundry” thing going for them.  I admit that on probably more than one occasion I’ve muttered to myself “damn, guess I gotta do a load today” while pulling on my jeans over the last thing in my drawer that passed as underwear – that is, my swimsuit bottoms.  My point here is that because of my laundry delinquency, sometimes sheets, etc. make the transfer from washer to dryer a little too late.  Now, Ellen has an enthusiastic Grammy who makes her enough blankets and quilts and pillowcases that if she were to use them all at once, she could probably sleep rather comfortably under a bridge in the dead of winter.  She might even get a little too warm.  With all these coverlets to choose from, she has taken to sleeping every night with a Curious George blanket, a Disney Princesses blanket, and a quilt with an owl on it.  So, when I tuck her in to bed with her three blankets, she gets to choose how she wants each blanket to be placed on her.  It can “fly” (I toss it in the air and it falls to cover her), “vroom” (I start at the feet and quickly pull it up to the top of her head), or “chuff” (a la the trains on the island of Sodor).  On one particular night after she gave the directive for her trio of blankets to “fly; fly; fly,” I realized that I had committed the mistake of not putting the Disney Princess blanket in the dryer after washing it that day.  There were only two blankets.  Rather than launching into an explanation, I made a command decision.  I flew the Curious George blanket.  I flew the owl quilt.  Then I picked up the owl quilt a second time and flew it again.  Stifling a little smile, I bent over to kiss Ellen’s head, which she lifted off the pillow immediately.  She looked down at her blankets, then put her index finger on each, as though she was counting.  She looked up and said, “Mom, did you just pretend that the owl blanket was the princess blanket?”  There was no way to deny it.  You can imagine my face as I said to her sheepishly, “yes, yes I did.”  “Why did you do that?” she asked.  My only answer: “well, I don’t know.  I guess I felt like being silly.”

Below, there’s a picture of Ellen with two of the three blankets – Curious George and the owl quilt, which you can just barely see under George.  My mom’s dog Piper is on her pillow, which you’ll note is covered with a princess pillowcase.  That Grammy.

P.S.  I always feel a little sorry for Cecilia when I write these posts.  I suppose there will be plenty of chances for her to be the blog post star when she starts talking.  Until then, here is a cute picture of her, just to make it even.    

We Want the Funk

4:30 in the afternoon is the time of day when I am fighting the urge to text Dave with "WHAT TIME WILL YOU BE HOME" (I know that he will text back "5:30" just like every other weekday), and to put Ellen in front of a Thomas the Train episode, put Cecilia in her jumper, and put a little Bailey's in my fourth cup of coffee. 

I fight those urges with my iPod.  Music is a great way to make time go by, since you can always make it through "one more song."  Your painfully slow post-nap (or - horror - napless) afternoon can be measured and tolerated in delightful three or four minute increments.  After singing along to several songs you can look at the minute-hand's new position, mutter a satisfied "yesss" while doing an inconspicuous fist-pump, and then sing some more.  And if you get a nice long one in the mix like "Stairway to Heaven" or "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, NOT Clapton Unplugged) or Frampton's live "Do You Feel Like I Do" then the updated minute-hand position might be so satisfying as to justify a dance around the room to some Bee Gees and Jackson 5.  The girls and I have enjoyed such revelry on many occasions.

But you gotta watch what's in your music library.   

I usually choose a safe playlist like "Ellen's Faves" for these afternoon parties.  But the other day I decided that for fun I'd do a shuffle.  We started with a few nice suprises which we hadn't heard in a while, such as Tiffany's cover of "I Think We're Alone Now" (shout-out sixth grade), Pure Prairie League's "Amie" and "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg.

After that: the title track from Red Hot Chili Pepper's album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.    

I wasn't able to get over to the iPod before it caught Ellen's ear because she said, "ooh, what's this one called?"  I decided to give her an abridged title.  "It's called Magik" [with a k], I told her.  She didn't believe me.  "It's not called Magik...what is it?"  "Yes it is," I said, "it's called Magik.  Let's go to another one.  Should we JUMP?" [with Van Halen].  "No, don't turn it off, don't turn it off!" she squealed as I got closer to the speaker.  She started dancing around.  "Do you like this one?" I asked.  "YES," she said as she wiggled around with her hands in the air.  "Does it have a cool guitar riff?" I asked.  "It DOES," she said.

Well, she's right.  I let it go.  We danced into her room and during the chorus I chatted her up about her stuffed animals and which she'll bring to pajama day at preschool next week.  For the rest of the song, Tony Kiedis is in a vocal fry and really doesn't have any inappropriate vocab for a three-year old.  Maybe some explicit ideas...but they'll go over her head.  Yes?   

Enquiring Minds

We are full-on in the phase of “Why”.  For the most part, Dave and I are amused by all the questions.  But the inquiring mind of our three-year-old makes us realize how little we actually know about anything.  Everything.  So we’ve had our fair share of Humble Pie.

In the span of twenty minutes (the time it takes to drive from my dad’s house to our house), I came up with what I thought were pretty decent answers to the following:  “Why do people build flags?”  “What if there was no Earth?”  “Why do people need tongues?”  “Why is a dead end ‘dead’?”  “Why does the moon follow us home?”  The problem is that to a three-year-old, each answer just raises more questions.  My “pretty decent” answers produced mostly silence and a subsequent “why?” from her (the ultimate nah-nah-na-boo-boo).  So after considering the answer, choosing appropriate language to use so that she will understand yet also be challenged and introduced to new and useful vocabulary, and presenting my reply in a way that will not freak her out (my “what if there was no Earth” answer somehow found me discussing how the Earth was the perfect distance from the Sun so as to be warm enough to sustain life but cool enough not to turn us into giant balls of flame, and at that point I wondered if I had gone too far), what I get in return is basically a “you really sucked at explaining that to me” wrapped up in “but WHY?” 

A few times I’ve gotten to the point where I really have no more to say about a given subject.  I’ve exhausted my knowledge on the matter, and so my final answer is “because that’s just the way it is.”  Sometimes after receiving that answer, Ellen actually erupts into tears and says “but I KNOW there’s more ‘bout that.  Can’t you tell me some more?”  (To wit: “Why is the snow white?” and “Why do people have ten fingers?”)          

I suppose there’s no hope that Cecilia will ask the same questions when she turns three, so I could have about two years to ruminate…or at least do a really comprehensive internet search.  Oh well.