Knock-knock, Mocha-Fudger

OMG, YOU GUYS! I got a Knock-Knock Mocha-Fudger for Mother’s Day!!!! (<= fair warning, The Bloggess uses the actual-grownup words – if you’ve got a little one reading over your shoulder, might want to save that hysterical and oh-so-relatable read for nap-time).

IS HE NOT GLORIOUS?! IS HE NOT THE MOST MAGNIFICENT GARDEN ACCENT FEATURE YOU HAVE EVER SEEN?!?!

I love him. He made me laugh so hard, and I want to put him somewhere that I can see from my office window, so that I can burst into hysterical giggles at random all day long – preferably during long, boring, ever-so-serious meetings.

I also got this last night from Boo Bug, who made it herself.

I just about fell out of my chair when she brought that in. I even saw the cookies being baked, but didn’t think they were for, you know, me! Let alone going to be turned into this!

Just, wow.

Mother’s Day is supposed to be all about gushing about how much we love our mothers, and how much they love us, and talking endlessly about everything they have and continue to do for us.

And IMHO it is very important to do that, because frankly an awful lot of What Moms Do is all about little everyday things that nobody ever thinks much about, or even notices get done on a regular basis – unless, of course, it doesn’t get done.

But you know what? For me at least, what I get from being a mom is a lot more than what I give.

For me, being a mom is a privilege. It makes me a part of the future. What I give to my kids will keep on going long after I’ve left this world; some of what I’ve taught my kids will be taught to theirs, and so on and so on down through generations to come.

Plus, I find that hanging out with my kids is better than all the anti-depressants in the world whenever I’m feeling kind of bleh – which I have to admit seems to have been happening an awful lot these last couples years.

I’m just…well…tired, I guess. My hormones are all whacked out, I seem to boomerang from not being able to sleep to oversleeping, and my mood keeps just whizzing all over the place, because, #HormonesSuck, #CanPerimenopauseBeDoneNowPlz, #GrowingOldAintForSissys.

But my kids, well, they keep me going. They give me a reason to keep on getting up and doing the old try, try again day after day – no matter how hard the Universe is slamming its hand down on the lever trying to flush my whole life right down the cosmic toilet.

They’re full of fun and cool ideas and a unique way of looking at the world. They motivate me. They give me new ideas to ponder, new projects to undertake, a new way of thinking about all the same old problems.

They make me laugh on days when all I want to do is scream, shake my fist at the world, mutter a few curse words and then hide under my desk until the day I die.

They can relight my inner fire whenever it goes out, far faster than I could do it all on my own – with well-placed witty remarks, really bad puns, and the occasional offhand remark that starts with, “Have you ever noticed that…” and ends with me going, “…whoa…mind…BLOWN, dude…”

And occasionally…they even buy me metal roosters for my garden, and give me delicious bouquets made of love (and also cookies).

Yeah.

I am definitely the luckiest, most blessed mom in the world, and I wouldn’t trade a single hair on any of their heads for all the tea in China.

Father’s day, and EVERY day

It seems a bit unfair that these kinds of things only get posted once a year, because being an awesome dad is definitely one of those “every single day in every single way” kinds of things.

But at the same time, I suppose it would get a bit tiresome if I went on and on and on about how awesome a father the husband is all the time.

Because he is an awesome father, every day.

There’s all the usual “good father” stuff: When they were small, he would sing them awake in the morning with silly songs he made up on the fly; he would settle them down for the night with stories made up from words they would toss out to him.

And he faced even the nastiest of diapers with unflinching strength.

And we used CLOTH diapers for quite a while, gang. <= +500 Amazing Points for dealing with that added Nasty Factor.

He takes them for haircuts and dentist appointments.

He watches really lame movies with them.

Runs them to the mall when they want to meet up with friends and Mom is all, “Nope, no way, huh-uh, I have so damned much to do today plus you have no idea how tired I am because blah-blah-blah-40-minutes-of-whiny-lecturing…”

But that’s just, you know, the everyday-life stuff.

There’s so much more, the things that they don’t even realize he does for them…yet. But someday, they’re going to look back and realize just how much he did for them, and they’re going to realize just how much of their self-confidence and self-love come from these things.

Things like holding them accountable for their grades and behavior not in the “because it is all about me, and I don’t like it” way, but in the “because you are smart and capable, so, don’t act like you aren’t” way that reinforces the message that above all else, he believes in them.

Telling them they can too do or be something when they felt like they couldn’t.

Listening to them and giving them both his council, and his permission to disagree – so they never had to be afraid to tell him what they really-truly believe, or how they felt about something…because they instinctively knew that even if he didn’t agree with them, they wouldn’t lose his love and support.

He showed them what a good man – a good person – looks like. Loyal to his friends and family. Incredibly honest. Strong in all the right ways. Protecting and providing for his family without demanding constant worship for it.

He has taught them that being loving and respectful toward his wife does not mean trading in his man-card and becoming some kind of emasculated, subservient creature. That having an equal partnership can work, and work well.

And that no matter what they might see on TV or hear from their friends, it is not “just the way men are” for them to raise either their voice or their hand to their family, even when they are really upset about something.

I wish every kid could have a guy like him for their father; I truly believe the world would become a much better place if they could.

Happy Father’s day, honey. You really are a kick-ass dad, and the best husband a wife could have.

It was a dirty, low-down trick to pull…

…but I just couldn’t resist…

So, it was Boo Bug’s fifth eleventh birthday today. She had been asking for an iPod for her birthday. Repeatedly. It was, in fact, the only thing she had asked for – even though every time she brought it up, I snarled, “NO! TOO EXPENSIVE! TOO DELICATE! PICK SOMETHING ELSE!”

I continued doing this even after I had the Nano safely hidden under the bills in my desk drawer.

Because I am evil.

Oh, you don’t believe me. Read on.

This morning, I had to run to the drug store for the usual two things that had completely slipped my mind until, like, an hour before Everybody was supposed to arrive. (If I ever didn’t do this, I’m pretty sure the world would end.)

As I walked through the door, my eye fell on a floor-to-ceiling display of toys. You know, the kind that are a) for babies and b) really, really cheap.

Not only were they on sale, they had enormous, red-and-yellow, 400-point font stickers on front of them declaring that they were half-price and also buy two get one free.

I began to giggle to myself. OH yeah, it MUST be done...

I combed that toy section looking for the most perfectly awful thing I could think of for my Boo. Something that would horrify her, but be juuuuuuust close enough to reasonable to have her thinking that dear Gah, her mother REALLY DID buy THAT for her birthday present.

Finally, I found it: A set of My Little Pony knockoffs, with horrifically cheap little brushes and other accoutrements and grins on their horse-faces that were all like, “HI! WE ARE SO HAPPY IT IS RIDICULOUS HOW HAPPY WE ARE! WE ARE GOING TO BE CHEERFUL LIKE THIS, LIKE, FOREVER! BECAUSE HAPPINESS IS OUR THING! GROUP HUG!!!!!” – because, of course, your average fifth grader is all about the fake My Little Pony with enormous plastic grins.

And I left that damned ‘half off / buy three get one free’ sticker on the front of the box.

Also, I got the kind of poofy-princess gift bag your average five year girly-girl type old would die for, and the fairy-castle tissue paper.

And a super-sized Kit-Kat bar. And a super-frilly blue ribbon. Which I stuck more-than-a-bit off-center onto the candy bar before dropping it into the wadded up tissue on top of the ponies in the bag.

And then…I waited. Like a malevolent spider tending the web. I watched her open her friend’s present. I watched her pull out the new pajamas from Grandma (who also had gotten her an iTunes card, which I’d hidden in the office with the Nano).

And then…then…she picked up the bag. An eyebrow raised over the Princessy Princess of All-Star Pinkity-Pink Princess (now with more princess!) bag, but she made no comment.

She pulled out the candy bar, and looked at me suspiciously.

I attempted to look innocent while inwardly choking half to death on laughter.

She pulled out the Plastic Ponies.

There was a long pause.

“Oh. These are…really cute…” she said politely, surreptitiously peering into the bag. Empty. She made a couple more passes at acting like she liked the stupid things, before zinging me with a typical example of Boo Bug humor.

“Oh. And they were on sale,” she observed, drily, tapping the ENORMOUS sticker.

“Ooooooooooh, no! Did I forget to take the stupid sticker off?!” I shrieked.

“Ya, I think you did,” she smiled serenely. Zzzzzzzzzzzing!!

Now, the really awesome thing is: She actually bought it. For the, like, thirty seconds that I let her suffer before bringing out her real present, she actually thought that her poor, obviously-not-altogether-with-it mother had really bought her a $6.99 $3.50 set of cheap plastic not-my-little-ponies, complete with unusable brush and three-pronged comb.

MWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! HAHAHAHA!  HA!! HAHAHAHA!!!!!! {gasp-sputter}.

Oh, yeah. Giving the Denizens things to tell their therapists about in years to come…it is my mission in life…

I’m rather proud of her, though. I suspect in that moment when she was looking at this thing and thinking that this had to be in the top ten worst birthdays of all time, she was half-ready to ask for a divorce from this whole family. And when I was eleven, I’m not sure I would have handled that sort of disappointment so handily; at best, I would have pulled an immediate and thorough disappearing act.

But she handled it so beautifully, with grace and good-nature and by the way a side-helping of teasing me right back.

Heh.

Yeah. I like the woman she is growing to be. Sweet and spicy. Kind and (a little) sarcastic.

Loving but don’t mistake her for an emotional boot-scraper.

That’s my girl.

Happy birthday, kiddo. Hope you enjoy being able to listen to your music, without arguing with your sisters (or your parents, for that matter) about whether it is cool or lame or too loud or too soft or theirs or yours or anybody else’s.

And what have we learned today…?

Last night as I was settling into an evening plan that featured a shower, knitting and something martial arts-y on Netflix, someone came upstairs and said the husband wanted me out in front of the house.

For something that wasn’t good.

I was expecting something like a broken tool in the garage, or a fallen-over fence part, or even a stolen lawnmower.

I was not expecting that one of the Denizens had thrown a toy gemstone toward the neighbor’s lawn, instead pitching it into the back window of another neighbor’s Explorer – shattering it in a glorious shower of safety glass nuggets.

Holy Crap, Child!

(And right here I have to own up to a peculiarly bizarre form of pride, because one of my first coherent thoughts upon witnessing this and hefting the Implement of Destruction in my hand, was Wow…I had no idea she had that good an arm on her! Not bad, kiddo! – and then I was all, No! No, Tama! BAD THINKING! You are supposed to be all angry and saddened and SERIOUS right now, not thinking that maybe what this kid needs most is to do time on a baseball time to learn how to AIM a little better…!)

(I am dying to get the girls into some form of sports. They don’t “do” sports. They do chess club and book club and art club, but nothing that involves running / kicking / throwing / sweating. This is called “being exactly like their father at that age.” Whereas I was one of those kids who had to have the {volley, base, basket, foot} ball pried out of her claw-like hands at night and be dragged home kicking and screaming the whole way about how unfair it all was. STUPID DINNER, WHO NEEDS IT, I WAS GONNA WIN!!!)

So I put on Serious Face and made Serious Noises. And I felt bad for Danger Mouse, because she’s crying and embarrassed as all @*^&@, and has that look that clearly says, “Why won’t the earth just open up and swallow me right now?!”

I finally sent her into the house to have a little witness-free panic attack while we grownups stood around and talked about kids today and how they all do that and making arrangement with the neighbors to take ownership of their out of pocket costs for replacing it, and so on and so on.

These neighbors, by the way, are a “no kids” household. Which was part of the reason the kids were all terrified about having broken out one of their windows. We have told them approximately 32 million times to stay the heck away from that house. Right now, there is a (guesstimate) 30-foot boat (not theirs, but parked right there nonetheless because of course it is!), an equally enormous RV, two Corvettes, the Explorer, a vintage VW bug and a very new Civic hybrid in and around that driveway.

It’s just not a good place for a pack of children to be getting all wild and crazy, you know?

They are not “kid people,” either. They’re nice folks and don’t have any active dislike for children, but they’re also not people who are like, um, well, me.

I dote and fawn and forgive just about anything kids get into, really. They’re going to be messy and noisy and obnoxious, they break things and eat stuff you were saving for something else. It’s sometimes really hard for me to act like The Mom©, too; I mean, how do I look them in the eye and be all, “That was wrong, girls, very wrong indeed…!” about something I did about eight thousand times myself at their ages?

They’re more of the “I guess we’ll just have to tolerate this for a while, until they all grow up and leave” variety. And we try to keep the kids from frolicking around their stuff, but at the same time…kids are like cats that way.

Have you ever noticed that if there is one person in an entire crowd of people who has a dislike for cats that borders on a phobia, and there is a cat anywhere in the vicinity, the varmint will hone in on that one person and begin making all kinds of love at them?

Kids do that with people who don’t really like kids, too. My youngsters had to be watched like hawks whenever they had sidewalk chalk, because the little Rembrandts would migrate themselves to the one driveway in the court that was acid-washed annually to keep it in like-new gray glory (whereas the rest of us go with the mottled “interesting patterns created by allowing crap to Just Sit on your driveway, like, FOREVER, instead of sweeping it regularly strategically allowing certain natural elements to imprint random dyes into the concrete over time” look).

Sigh.

Well…it’s probably going to be a rather pricy way to learn a lesson about thinking about what is going to happen before the object has left your hand – which is, frankly, not one of Danger Mouse’s stronger points. She will still do the darnedest things, only realizing it was a terrible idea after the goats are running around downtown eating the petunias and pooping on the sidewalks.

And I think an excellent way to reinforce that lesson would be to sign her up for a season of baseball. If you wanna be throwing things, here’s a few pointers, honey…

Taking off the training wheels

I tried to reply to this in the comments from this morning, but it got too lengthy. (Me? Lengthy? Never!) Anyway, you know the number one reason I feel I absolutely cannot continue the ‘modified plan’ for Danger Mouse the way I am for Boo Bug and Captain Adventure?

It’s this. The first week of school, I put $60 into her lunch fund. I KID YOU NOT, less than a week later – she skitters past me, stopping just long enough to blurt out, “Oh! And! I’m out of lunch money!”

“No, you’re not,” I said confidently.

“Well, the lunch lady said so, and I had to have cheese and crackers for lunch,” she tells me.

Uh, wha-now?!

MUCH. PRODDING. LATER., I learn that my beloved idiot of a child has blown through $60 buying French toast sticks and fruit snacks for “everybody,” plus getting cash-back (!?!?!) at the register of her middle school for the ice cream truck later.

(I’m sorry. I need a moment. I am still so @^*&@ing pissed about that last one. IN WHAT REALITY is that even possible?! I MEAN, I KNOW, it’s middle school, blah blah blah responsibility blah blah blah growing up etc. etc. etc., BUT LORD LOVE A DUCK, that is just…ARGH!)

Needless to say, I called the school the next day and said, “Yeah, hi, I’m Danger Mouse’s mom – can we put a block on her lunch account so she can’t purchase the a la carte stuff?”

This is what we did at her elementary school to keep her from doing the same exact thing, minus the cash back part which they were not STUPID ENOUGH to allow.

{collects self…deep breath, and hooooold for a moment…long slow release…OK! moving on!}

The fact that she couldn’t do it didn’t teach her a damned thing. The instant she discovered that she could do it, bam. Her lunch money burned a hole right through the floor of the cafeteria.

And now? Now? We are in Middle School. Which apparently is some kind of magic ‘all-grown-up’ place where the same kids who three months earlier couldn’t be held accountable for wiping their own noses are suddenly more than capable of handling all their own responsibilities without anything by way of adult intervention.

Which is why they responded to this with, “Oh, hell to the no. SHE has to take responsibility for HER OWN actions.”

And I looked at this kid of mine, starting to wear bras, about two seconds from having to arm-wrestle her big sister for the box of menstrual pads, and suddenly…it hit me, hard, that this kid, this same kid who had just done this incredibly brainless thing, this too-smart-to-be-so-stupid child…was never in a million years going to be “with it” enough to make a lunch in the mornings. Or remember the lunch. And I’ve been out of the house for three hours before she leaves for school – it’s out of my hands.

She’s going to be going without food from dinner the night before until 3:30 the following day, every day, because this is how she is, she’ll never get her act together on this, it’s just not how she is, it’s not her nature, and hang on a second…why do we take that ‘as read’ with her?!

I sat there in this tunnel of past and future rushing by me, counting up all the various ways we’ve tried to impress the concept of budgeting on her; all the times we’ve walked her through how this stuff works, slowly, carefully, with charts and graphs, with budgets and ‘tell me what $7 plus $5 is,’ with real money and pretend money.

And always, always, having to bail her out. Having to wrestle the money out of her hand, slap her upside the head and say, “What did I just say?! You cannot spend this whole thing at the first churro stand you run across!!!”

We intervene. Every single time. We go back to the charts. We explain how 2 + 2 ends up as 4. We talk it to death. We have different color cards. We use different kinds of money-markers. We talk until we’re blue, and the instant we hand her money again?

The instant you take your hand off the brake, she is full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

It’s like giving an ADHD squirrel a plate of frosted sugar cookies for snack with a Red Bull to wash them down, and then trying to take it for a walk on a leash made out of embroidery floss.

After six years of trying to teach her self-control…I’ve got to start letting her crash, if she’s going to insist on speeding up as she approaches the wall instead of applying a little brake…and then instead of rushing in with the Neosporin and band-aids, I’ll have to just tell her where they are and remind her what to do with them.

Hopefully, by the time she’s having to buy gas (OHMYGAH, WHA?!?!), she’ll be better able to remember to take care of those most important things first, and then have her fun.

(I don’t promise not to nag, though. I can’t help it. I’m like a walking, talking calculator with her. “That’s $6.50…that would leave you with only $39.75, are you sure you want to…I mean, seriously, dude, you don’t even like that color, why do you need to buy…OK, it’s your funeral, I’m just sayin’…!”)

(MEANWHILE, Boo Bug [her younger sister] is all, “Oh, I’m out of lunch money…oh, wait, it costs how much for breakfast at school? Welllllllll, we have plenty of muffins and waffles in the freezer, how about just lunches…and I’ll make a lunch on Thursday because I don’t like the school lunch on Thursday…” Heh. How can four kids with the same two parents all be so different?!)

Sometimes I hate being the grownup

I’m constantly trying to figure out a “good” way to teach the Denizens how money…um…works.

As in, “No, there isn’t a magic money tree in the backyard that spits out twenty dollar bills whenever y’all want something.”

Or, “Just because you saw an ATM receipt that said $387.29 does not mean that I actually have $387.29 that I can spend on just anything right now.”

And the ever-popular, “I know you were innocently looking for mints when you accidentally (ahem) noticed that I have $200 in cash in my wallet, but this does not mean I can ‘totally afford’ to hand over $15 to the ice cream truck for six popsicles that would cost me about three bucks at the supermarket.”

About a month ago, I instituted a new thing: I gave each of the kids a blank checkbook. Every month, I give the girls a $100 deposit (it’s not into a ‘real’ account! don’t hyperventilate! breathe! breathe, people!), and they can also earn extra cash for doing extra chores.

Everything they want or need is then paid for out of this money. If they don’t feel like making a lunch because this is “too hard,” then almost half of their $100 will be going to the cafeteria. If they want a cell phone and minutes to use it with, they’d better think about that before they decide they need whatever shiny thing just popped up on their little radar.

It’s already been a fascinating – and painful – experience.

Captain Adventure is on a modified plan: He has a checkbook, but instead of a big deposit from mommy that covers everything, he gets a weekly deposit based on his ‘checks’ – he’ll get a check for decent behavior at school, two checks for really good behavior, and four for super-extra-awesome. He also gets them for doing well on school work, and for doing his chores. Each check is worth a quarter – and then he gets to use them for the things he wants, like treats from the ice cream truck and Wii games.

Eldest, on the other hand, has had her own real checking account since her birthday in March – Wells Fargo has a ‘teen checking’ that is kind of like a checking account with training wheels. There are no ‘regular’ fees (ATM transactions, low balances, that kind of stuff), and reduced fees for the ‘oopsie’ things (overdrawing the account). There are also no checks, but she has a Visa debit card she can use to get cash and make purchases.

She has been incredibly mature and responsible with it. She keeps careful track of her balance, has been very conservative with her spending, and I believe has bought something like three shirts and five book since we opened the account. She hasn’t come anywhere close to overdrawing it, and is already becoming the kind of customer the banks fall all over themselves trying to acquire. (*sniff!* I’m so proud…!)

Boo Bug still has a heavy amount of…ahem…let’s call it parental advisement. OH yeah. I am totally running interference with her. I’ll make her sleep on decisions, and I’ll even flat out tell her no. You need this first. You have outgrown all of your jeans – we are going to find you a couple pairs of pants before I let you sign up for a twenty year membership on the Pixie Hollow website, kid.

But Danger Mouse…she’s the kid that tends to be the reason I find myself muttering, “I have got to find a better way to teach them about These Things!!”

She lives entirely in Now. Not only is she really into instant-if-not-sooner gratification, she has limited-to-zero ability to remember that there even is a tomorrow…let alone that she’s got something she has to do in that far, far away world.

This weekend, I had to do something that I found horribly difficult: I had to allow her to run through the balance in her virtual account on festival froodideries.

Which I knew was going to happen. Before we piled into Homer the Odyssey for a day of fun at our annual Bean Festival, I said to myself, firmly, “Now listen here, Momma I’m Going To Protect You From Everything Forever: You KNOW she’s going to blow it. It is her nature. It is this nature that must be brought under control. She can either learn this lesson now, when it is safe and she doesn’t go hungry or without a roof over her head…or you can go ahead and wait until she’s out there in the Real World on her own and then has to figure out what happens if you spend your entire paycheck the minute you get it, without remembering that you’ve got to come up with $X for rent and $Y for food.”

With this internal pep-talk ringing in my mind, I proceeded to practically have a nervous breakdown as she zipped through her entire balance over the course of about three hours. By the end of the day, I was repeating things like what her balance would be, reminding her that the next ‘big’ deposit wasn’t coming for three long weeks, and listing off the things she had said she wanted or needed ‘more’ like I was an electronic parrot with brand new batteries.

It did no good. She ripped through her cash like it was nothing, and only at the very end of the day, when she was sitting there with a $9 tri-trip sandwich (which she wasn’t going to eat more than three bites of) in her hands staring at $13 left in her account did she realize…that’s another month without the coveted cell phone.

“That’s why I wanted to go there first,” she wailed. “I knew this would happen!”

“Then it’s good that we couldn’t go yesterday,” I shot back. “You have got to learn to think about tomorrow today, kid!”

Which was pretty brave talk for someone who was trying to figure out a loophole in her own system that would allow her to let the kid get the cell phone anyway, huh?

Sometimes, I hate being the grownup. I hate when teaching bleeds over into torturing. I hate watching my kids cry when their own choices come boomeranging back and smack them upside the head.

I hate it when it seems best to let them take a fall and find out it hurts.

The rest of September is going to be ugly for #2. She’s going to “need” things, and I’m sure there will be tears and lamentations that she cannot have them right now. And I am going to be sorely tempted to just…get them for her. BECAUSE AFTER ALL, she is still so young! AFTER ALL, this is hard for grownups! …because after all, it’s not like our parents ever taught us…this…stuff…

…oh…yeah…kinda…my job here, isn’t it…

…sigh…

Someday all too soon, she’s going to be leaving this little nest of ours. She’ll be out there on her own, with a real paycheck, and a real checking account…and real obligations, none of which are likely to give her a free pass on account of her youth, or their own tender feelings.

She’s got to learn how to do this, and so many other things.

It sucks being the grownup. And I suppose it isn’t much fun being the one who is growing up, either.

I just hope that someday she thanks me for it half as hard as I think she hates me for it right about now, as it settles in on her just how many things she traded for an afternoon of new hats and tri-tip.

Four little words

One of the hardest things about Captain Adventure's autism, for me, is That Thing where he is emotionally disconnected; it's the thing that worries me most when I think about his future.

He's That Guy, you know? The one who will just...walk away, right in the middle of the conversation, because, well, HE'S done. He'll say extremely rude things, and not get why it made you mad.

Social skills remain extremely important, in our day to day lives - for good reason. Without them, we'd be at each others throats all the time.

So when I'm in a mood to worry about his future, I frequently start there. How will he get and keep a job? Will he have friends, a wife, children of his own? Will he love them? Will they KNOW he does?

Personally, I find loving my kids to be the payoff for all that huff and bother.

Well. That, and being able to say, "Why yes, that crazy-beautiful, wicked-smart, artistic prodigy ball of pure AWESOME *is* one of mine!"

...like I really had much to do with it...they just CAME that way. All I do is buy them supplies, try desperately to keep up with them,and then take credit for their successes while conveniently glossing over the stinky bits. Sweet gig, huh?!

But I digress.

So last night, I was putting Captain to bed. We hadn't had a particularly smooth process, there - I'd let him go too long on the computer AND we'd let him stay up too late. He fought me tooth and nail, the whole way.

But eventually, I was snuggling up with him in his bed, talking about Best Part / Worst Part (our daily review), and I was starting one of my Worry Bouts.

...future...future...future...

Then I was doing the final bit of our bedtime ritual.

"All right, mister. Night-night, sleep tight, sweet dreams, I'll see you in the morning - I love you."

Usually, he says nothing, just rolls over and sighs. Sometimes he'll ask for the door to be left ajar, or a light to be turned off, or for daddy to use headphones if he's still watching something on TV downstairs.

Last night, from the darkness, his little voice sing-songed: I love you, too.

Words the rest of us toss off all the time - stimulus / response, I love you / love you too.

From my Captain, they're rare and treasured jewels.

He loves me too.

I am the luckiest Mommy in the whole wide world.

Math and guns

The husband, laughing so hard he could barely talk, just asked me to come watch our Eldest’s little speech on the ‘farewell to Mr. H’s class’ DVD – the end of year compilation of all the adorable children from sixth grade. (This was from last year, mind you.)

So I stood there and watched my darling child tell the camera, in her earnest and slightly nerdy way, the following:

“Yeah, OK, so…math? It’s kind of boring and stuff? But? You can totally use it to make, like, bows. And guns. And stuff like that. Yeah. That’s what my mom says, anyway.” {smile!}

{head-desk}

And now I know why alllllll the teachers at her school tend to kind of…look.at.me., all funny like that…

(Funny thing being, our actual conversation on the topic was more like, “Well, shoot, honey, think about a bow and arrow…now, you can use math to figure out how many pounds of pressure per square inch your arrow exerts on the target and how many feet it travels per second, and then you can experiment with different bows and start making note of what changes cause which effects, if a shorter bow with a bigger arch makes it go faster or hit harder, and then you can incorporate those findings into the next bow you build, see? And you can get better at hitting the target in the first place if you can get a basic understanding of geometry, how shapes work, and the physics of movement blah blah blah, mom keeps going LONG after the pre-teen’s attention span has officially ended, blah blah blah…)

(Except that she obviously retained the key words ‘bow’ and ‘gun’ and ‘math’ and then threw them all together in her ‘bye, Mr. Teacher, it’s been so awesome being your class and by the way I’m totally going to build myself a gun using the math you taught me, buh-bye!! {smile!}” speech.)

(Once again…{head-desk!}…)

I swear, it wasn’t what you’re thinking right now…

A little bit ago, I was looking at Regretsy (and laughing myself silly, which was nice because yes, I’m still sick and that pisses me off no end) (three errands today, and I was all like, ohmygah, I’m DYING, no, for REAL this time…).

And then I heard this noise coming from my bathroom and I said to myself, Hmm, what’s that noise? and then I got up to see what it was, and what it was, was, my son getting into my earrings. Spreading them out on the edge of the bathtub and loading up his pockets with the ones he particularly liked.

So I took them away from him and was doing the old, “Blah blah blah mine blah blah blah NOT yours blah blah blah out-out-out!” thing.

And, as I finished putting them back where they actually belong on the counter to be put away, you know, later, and was coming out of the bathroom (shutting the door FIRMLY behind me), still going “…blah blah blah furthermore yap yap yap stay out blah blah blah,” I saw him…staring at my computer screen.

With rapt fascination.

Because naturally, my browser was sitting on a nice if fugly example of someone’s cross-stitched endearments around what a BLESSING children are and how LOVELY it is to be that most sacred of beings, A LOVING MOTHER the enema pin.

Awesome. I can’t wait. “Oh hai, Mrs. Captain’s Mom, this is his very young teacher? Ya, he said something about looking at ‘butts’ on your computer, and I was just wondering, ummmmmmmm…?”

Sigh.

Last week, he told her during a moment of High Drama, that he wanted to killllllll himself. Not because he actually wants to, you know, kill himself, but because he wanted a do-over. His whole world is framed like a video game right now, and to him having a character “die” or “get killed” means they’re going to :ping!: back onto the screen, back at the start of the level. So when things aren’t going his way and he’s pissed off to the point of no return about it, he’ll start saying things like “I want myself to die!” or “I’m going to KILL myself!” in the same way that I might say, “GAH, I wish I could have a do-over on today!!”

Even knowing this, it still creeps me the heck out whenever he says it. And I have to resist grabbing him and delivering an emotional lecture about it – which would, of course, deliver only one message, loud and clear: Heyyyyyy, saying that sure gets a rise out of mom! I should totally do this any time I want to piss her off, which is about forty-seven times an hour!

Fortunately, his teacher being an autism specialist and all, she understood instantly when I explained this to her. (And agreed with me that while he may not mean it in the traditional sense, we do still need to keep an extra vigilant eye on him whenever he starts that, on the off chance that he might throw himself under the bus wheels or something, expecting that he’ll just :ping!: back into his bed and it will be morning again and now he gets to “do the level over” – isn’t special needs parenting awesome?!)

However, I’m not so sure if I can explain an enema pin to her. Especially given my tendency to just really keep going when I get nervous, instead of shutting up like a smart person would do.

“Ya, well, you know how there’s Etsy? You know, Etsy? Etsy? The online art marketplace thing where, ya, well, it’s, you know, art? Ya, well, then there’s this Regretsy blog, ‘where DIY meets WTF’ and, uh, well, there was this…well, a lot of times, it’s like…see, this one time, she found this one where this woman uses her boobs to do paintings? HAHAHAHAHAHA, I mean, heh, yeah, well, ahem. Aaaaaaanyway…it wasn’t what you’re thinking right now, it was just, this…pin…celebrating (I guess, celebrating), uh, enemas, and I mean, heh heh, really, what could be more WTF than that, huh?”

And then she’ll look at me.

And really…I mean…but…

It wasn’t anything like that. It was just, you know…sigh…

…is it way too late to take the fifth right about now…?

Funny, I don’t FEEL particularly god-like

At 5:00 this morning, my life went from Fast to Stop. Captain Adventure went to bed with a fever last night, which automatically meant I was not going into the office today – but I hoped he’d be feeling better this morning and I’d be able to settle him down with some crayons or the Wii or something for a few hours and, you know, work for money.

At 5:00 this morning, I woke up to him crying in his room. Aw, biscuits.

So I got up, grabbed some children’s Motrin and went in to check on him – burning up, sweaty, clingy, super-extra-high-maintenance.

Captain Sez: FULL STOP!!!!

This post has been interrupted seven…heh, eight times so far. (He started bellowing, “Noooooooo, doan touch it mine pay-per!!!” – apparently, a sister was trying to “help” him color. Sigh. Full-bore sibling warfare, and I’m the United Nations. Awesome.)

But I’ve been thinking today that, you know…Mommyhood is a crazy job.

I didn’t gain any Cosmic Insight the day I became a mother. Shoot, poor Eldest spent the first year of her life bawling because I couldn’t tell the difference between a ‘hungry’ cry and a ‘hurt’ one and a ‘bored’ one. We dragged Danger Mouse to the hospital emergency room because of a fever – one that came right down with a single dose of Tylenol, never to return.

I frequently feel like I’m in a boat without an oar when I’m confronted by things the children drag into my life.

But the Denizens trust me to know what to do about just about anything; the older ones are starting to suspect that maybe I might have a human failing or two, but for Captain Adventure I’m still infallible.

He stopped crying the minute my hand was on the door handle this morning. He knew it was me. He reached out for me from the bed, confident that I was going to make everything all better.

Not the grape flavored medicine – me. He trusted me so much that he stopped crying the instant I was there, so sure that relief was coming with me that he actually felt it before it was really there.

Being the woman behind the curtain, I know the wizard is full of flaws, frequently uncertain about what she should do, not sure which path is the right one.

But to the Denizens, The Mommy is all-knowing, all-seeing, and (mostly) benevolent being.

It’s a lot to live up to, day in and day out.

But comes in handy when somebody has a rotten sore throat and is running a fever – I shall use my shazam!, and because you beeeeelieve, you shall feel better immediately (and by the time you’d start to think maybe I’m full of it, the Motrin will have kicked in…SHAZAM!!!!!)

(Bets on how long before whatever germ he’s got moves into my system, anyone…?)

(Ohmygah…he’s trying to give me his candy. Which he has probably already licked. Seriously, is it, like, a kid rule that they have to do everything they can to give Mommy whatever disease they’ve picked up?!?!)

Yeah, we should totally have that talk…some…other...time...

"Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Sure, sweetie. What's on your mind?

"Can I stay home tomorrow? It's soooooooooo boring at daycare; I mean, you know I'm also thirteen, and I was talking to Leader yesterday and she says that she doesn't take kids who are over twelve anyway, so I was thinking that instead of being bored at daycare, I should, you know, practice being home while you're working, since, you know, I'm going to have to since I'm almost thirteen and all…"

Bored, huh? Well, I can fix that. What YOU need, little princess, is your bear…

">

"…and I promise I won't blah blah blah and I will yadda yadda yadda and I have my cell and etc. etc. etc…"

Yup. One pink bear. HOURS of amusement. Just need to find your bear and you'll be A-OK at daycare for ten, fourteen hours, no problem…



"I can fix my own snacks and I swear I won't even think about using the oven or the stove for anything. I'll even not use the microwave if you say I can't, I can make a sandwich or something…"

A sandwich? Aren't you just the cutest thing…sandwich, indeed…



"…after all, school starts next month, and I'm supposed to be walking there and back with Melissa and Jackie from next door, right? So you're supposed to be giving daycare notice anyway, right – although do you even have to do that, or are they giving you notice? Well, anyway, so, I really think it would be prudent to have me, you know, try staying home on my own a few times and…mom? MOM! Are you even listening to me right now?!"

{blink-blink}



What the @*&^@?! When did that freakin' happen?!

In just over a month, this tiny baby will be starting seventh grade – and will officially be over the age and grade limits for every daycare I've contacted. With the budget cuts, the after school programs are likewise history.

There's nothing for it. She's going to have to be home alone from time to time while I'm working away from home.

Whether I like it or not, she's…she's…she's not…well. Allegedly and if recent photographic evidence can be believed, she's not seven pounds, nine ounces anymore. She's not eating mushy, flavor-impaired vegetables from a rubber-padded spoon, either. Nor is she particularly keen on the idea of taking a fluffy pink bear to daycare, even though I'm pretty sure it would be The Answer to that whole "bored" problem of hers.

How does that happen? How does something thirteen years in the making go by in the blink of an eye like that? How does a creature that can't even get through a night without bawling for me two or three times suddenly, seemingly overnight, become something that not only can start having independence…but arguably should.

Oh baby. I know it horrifies you terribly, but you're still, well, my baby. Yes, yes, I know how old you are. I know how to do the math, even if it involves carrying a one. I know "all" your friends are doing the same thing (and that's actually part of what worries me, but let's not go there right now).

And I know you know the rules (and that vee haf vays of knowing whether you're following them) (the cell phone GPS thing? I'm so freakin' glad my mom didn't have that when I was a kid…not that I ever did anything she didn't know about and wouldn't approve of, mind you, ooooooh no, heh heh, never! Except maybe once or twice…a week…or so…)

And yes, I trust you. I really do. I trust you to be cautious, and to avoid being in trouble, and to be a good kid. (Don't let the "nanny cam" stuff we're installing all over the Den mislead you. That's because, uh, we want to keep tabs on Dharma. I'm afraid she's on heroin or something. I don't want any kitty raves going on in the Den while I'm at work, yo.)

But, you, you are a good kid. And a mature and sensible one. Far more mature and sensible than I was at your age, come right down to it. I did some pretty stupid stuff when I was your age, stuff that could easily have gotten me killed…because my mom didn't have nearly the control issues or the control mechanisms we have today, and hey, guess what? I lived. And learned. And have to admit I'm probably a better rounded person because I was taking city buses to and from school alone by the time I was your age…or in the company of the little brother who was under my thumb in my care for most of my return trips from middle school…

But I just…I can't talk about it right now.

Let's talk about this later, OK?

Maybe, you know, when…when you're just a little older…



Yeah. We'll definitely have to talk…when you're just a little tiny bit older…

The Specialest of the Special

There are times when I find myself stunned by what special education teachers deal with on a daily basis. You have just got to have a special kind of patience to voluntarily take on that job, y’all…I often marvel that anybody is willing – let alone eager – to deal with what-all goes on in those classrooms.

Last week, Captain Adventure bit his teacher. Bit! His! Teacher!

Now, my first reaction was the usual parental reaction to such things, which was to shriek incoherently, swallow my own tongue, run in circles flapping my arms like a chicken, demand of everybody he comes in contact with if they had any children around who bit because Obviously!, my Widdle Precious would neeeeeever do such a thing (snort!)…and then I remembered which kid this was and went straight into a state of rather great surprised-but-not-surprised.

He hasn’t tried to bite anyone around here (that I know of) for months.

Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he doesn’t bite me anymore because I head him off waaaaaaay before he actually sinks his chompers into me. I see it coming before he even opens his mouth for an attempt – because I’m his mother, which in this case means the person most likely to be bitten / kicked / pinched / scratched by a furious little Captain.

It’s lovely being the “safe” adult, really it is.

BUT, since it’s my lot in life, I’ve learned to see the signs of impending violence and cut him off – diverting his behavior before it begins. If you catch it early enough, nobody will ever know we were ten minutes from a Class A1 Meltdown.

So I was immediately thinking about what signs we might have missed that he was going to have That kind of day, and running through the last 48 hours of his little life looking for where he’d had too much sugar, not enough sleep, been frustrated by something big, etc. etc. etc., when it suddenly struck me how weird it all was.

My son, my five year old, kindergarten-attending son, had sunk his teeth into his teacher’s leg. If one of my typically-developing daughters had done that to her kindergarten teacher? I’m pretty sure there would have been a fair amount of hysteria on all parts. There would have been phone calls and conferences, maybe a few days of suspension, some referrals to anger management therapists specializing in overly aggressive five year olds…

But this…is a special needs classroom. Just like me, his teacher wasn’t freaking out because she had been bitten – she was looking for his motivation for doing so, and incentives that would prevent him from doing it again. Her email wasn’t accusatory in any way – it was like that of a coworker saying, “Weirdest thing happened today, what do you think we can do about it?”

You know…I deal with an autistic kid every day because, well, I had a baby and some time went by and we started noticing weird things and then there was a lot of huff and bother and expense and then we got the diagnosis and now here we are.

I certainly didn’t sit down and say, “You know what I want? A kid on the spectrum. That’d be awesome! Dealing with temper tantrums loooooong after you expect that part to be over, still having to buy diapers five years later, having a kid who just doesn’t ‘grok’ social interactions, having to carry my five year old through the parking lot because he’s still like a toddler when it comes to ‘safety and you’…my gosh, the list of stuff that boils down to ‘having a kid who is perpetually about two years old no matter how big he gets’ just never ends! C’mon, it’ll be great!!”

These saints who work with him every day at school, his teachers and therapists and aides and more therapists and more aides by choice…just really amaze me.

Especially since they often tell me no, no, you have no idea – Captain is one of the EASIEST little guys I’ve ever worked with…

Holy smokes. I find him…challenging. Granted I’m comparing him to my ‘typically developing’ daughters (which is arguably very unfair of me), but I have days when I look at him and think, couldn’t you just, I dunno, snap out of it, already?!

And these teachers and aides and therapists, they put a smile on their faces every day and deal with him and his classmates, with all their wild assortment of oddities – ranging from the relatively ‘so what’ like inappropriate singing or disrobing during class (ahem, yes, they had a stripper in his last class…they couldn’t keep clothes on that little boy with Super Glue and a staple gun…) to children who will gnaw their own fingers bloody, or slam their heads into walls until their skulls crack (!!), or quite intentionally out of pure aggression attack other people for no apparent reason whatsoever.

We had one of those last year, too, in a different class (whew). For that little girl, the special needs immersion was supposed to be her first step to mainstreaming…she wasn’t anywhere near ready and had to be pulled out only a few weeks in after she took a chair and threw it –hard – at the teacher’s head. No reason. No real anger at the teacher. Just a general desire to hurt somebody…oh look! A somebody! {THWAK!!!}

And that teacher came right on back to the classroom, lump on her head still big and obvious. Kept smiling. Kept working with these children, with their varying levels of need. Kept hoping, sometimes against all scientific evidence, that their little clients were about to have a breakthrough – major or minor, didn’t matter.

Dealing with just one autistic child is enough for me. Just one set of hopes and dreams, of triumphs and failures, of progress and regression, oh-oh-oh, he’s got it, he’s TOTALLY go-…oh…never mind, he don’t got it…

I kind of have to hang tough on this deal. He’s my baby, and I love him, and all those other parent-y things.

They don’t. They are free at any time to say, “You know what? This bites. Literally. I’m going to do something else, something that doesn’t involve changing poopy diapers on a seven year old or being bitten by a teenager!”

Not to mention getting away from all of us crazy parents, who have decided that this thing our best friend’s uncle’s cousin’s coworker saw on the Internet is the thing and we want, nay, DEMAND!, that it be implemented !immediately! in Precious Poopsie’s classroom. RIGHT NOW! (And also, by the way, we want the State to pay for it. And if not the State, then, uh, we’re OK with you just sort of…making it happen…)

Seriously, sometimes? It isn’t the kids I think are going to drive away these wonderful people – it’s us.

But…they don’t flee. They stay. They help our children and hold our hands and put up with all our assorted Crazy and don’t make us feel guilty when our kid bites them and in fact talk us down off a fence if we get all hysterical about it.

They are among the specialest of the special.

I am so grateful to them for all they do I can’t find a single word to really express it.

Bless them, one and all. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Mommy v. Buydoobah: The Smackdown

Captain Adventure has a…friend.

This friend’s name is Buydoobah.

Buydoobah…is a right stinker.

Who tore up the coloring book and flung the shreds all over the hall? Buydoobah.

Who splashed sixty gallons of water all over the bathroom floor? Buydoobah.

Who took the cap off a brand new tube of toothpaste and smeared the stuff all over the counters, walls, floor and yes, ceiling of the bathroom (no, I have no idea how it got all the way up there)? You guessed it: Buydoobah.

So far, I’m about 0 and 20 with Buydoobah. That little @*^&@ has been wrecking my house for weeks, and as Dog is my witness, I’m two seconds from wringing his invisible little neck.

This evening while I was trying to catch up on email, I heard rustling in my bathroom. Hmm. Triple Doppler Mommy Radar indicates heavy chances of Captain Adventure getting into something like band-aids…

“Whatcha doin’ in there?” I hollered.

“No!” Captain Adventure yelled back. Uh-oh. I got up and stalked to the bathroom door. Eh. Not band-aids – cough drops. Several of which were no longer individually wrapped, argh.

“Captain Adventure! Come out of there, right now!” I bellowed.

“NO! What Buydoobah say? He say, ‘Doan talk Captain Adventure right now!’”

“Excuse me?”

“Buydoobah say doan talk me right now, ‘bout dat.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Buydoobah is not the boss of me, little man! You two get out of my bathroom right now.”

He came out in a high state of indignity, holding his hand cupped. Buydoobah is often very, very small – palm-sized, actually.

“Buydoobah,” he announced solemnly, holding up his hand so I could check out the invisible scowl Buydoobah was wearing. “Is not happy at you, Mommy. Him say ‘doan talk Captain Adventure ‘bout dat right now.’”

“Oh yeah? Well, now hear this, Buydoobah: You’d better drop the ‘tude, mister, or you are goin’ bye-bye.”

There was a long pause while Captain Adventure processed this announcement.

On the one hand, Buydoobah is above the law. What does Buydoobah care for Mommy’s rules? Pffft. If Buydoobah cared about such trivial things as Mommy’s wishes, there would be no toothpaste on the ceiling right now that Mommy can’t get off because she is not a tall woman, people.

On the other hand, Mommy has proven time and time again to have mythical powers. She can kiss a boo-boo and make it better. She knows when you’re tired, even though you think you’re not. She commands and Sisters obey, even though they are unruly creatures who seldom obey either their brother or Buydoobah.

Shoot, even Daddy wilts before the awesome power that is Mommy.

She is the Goddess incarnate. The Woman. Dark and Light, equally portioned. Maker of snacks, and time-outs. The Wound Healer. The Sayer Of It’s Bedtime Mister.

She giveth…she taketh away…

Hmmmmm…

“Wellllllllll…wat…wat Buydoobah say? Him say…him sayyyyyyyyy…”

Have you ever feared you’re going to actually, physically pop from holding in laughter? The expression on his face was so priceless as he stared into his cupped hand, trying to decide which was the greater force: Mommy, or Buydoobah.

“Buydoobah sayyyyyyy…OK, Mommy. You talk Captain Adventure ‘bout stay outta that bath-oom.”

“Good choice, Buydoobah. Good choice.”

Mommy: 1.
Buydoobah: 20.

…I think I smell a come-from-behind victory coming on…

Breaking it to the kids

Our local news ran a segment on how to let the kids know this might be a somewhat less jolly Christmas. As I watched, I found myself growing more and more dismayed. Most of the advice was subterfuge.

Buy them lots of little presents. Lots of $1 and $5 things. So, you know, they still get open fifteen thousand boxes…start a co-op with other parents…enlist Grandma and Grandpa to buy-buy-buy for you, and you’ll pay them back when things improve…

You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me!

Now, I’ll admit that in terms of how many toy boxes they get to open, this Christmas will go just like every other Christmas for the Denizens. I hand each of them a toy catalog and a pen, and they get to circle up to ten things they want.

They will get two of those things, maybe three if what they’ve chosen is inexpensive enough.

They’ll also get some clothes, clothes they need. This is another part of the segment I found disturbing: How to “trick” your kid into “accepting” something “practical” as a “present.”

Sorry. That was way too many quotes. It’s just that the whole concept seemed so unreal to me that…it had to have “quotes” telling you that it wasn’t “really” what they were “saying.”

My kids always get clothes for Christmas. And they don’t question that they are presents, and darned good ones, too. Granted, I’m not boxing up the new underwear and pretending it’s the best gift, ever! or anything crazy like that…but hey. Boo Bug has been pestering me for weeks, months even, about wanting a new nightgown.

She’s going to be super excited to get two warm, fluffy nightgowns with matching slippers and headbands, no less! under the tree at Christmas.

But the thing that bothered me the most was the whole feeling of the segment, which was basically, “How to fool your kid into thinking that nothing is wrong.”

Here’s a novel concept: How about sitting down, looking them right in their earnest little eyeballs, and telling them the truth, instead of trying to create a kind of bubble around them, a Perfect World in which there is no struggle, no worry, no mounting debts and unemployment and crazy?

You don’t have to dump the full horror into their little laps, mind you. I’m not going to tell my kids this is the worst economy I’ve seen in my adult life, that I’m actually a bit frightened about how it will all play out in the end, that even my hopeless optimism is having a hard time seeing a “quick turnaround” here.

But I did tell them that I’ve been looking for work a long, long time now – and have found nothing. That daddy’s job ended, and he’s just starting a new one and doesn’t have a lot of hours yet. That money is really tight, and that we need to be very smart and careful about how we spend it.

I told them another truth, too: We will be OK, in the end. No matter what, we will be OK.

Even if we end up living in an apartment with grouchy neighbors all around us, we’ll be OK.

The house doesn’t matter. The clothes don’t matter. The toys don’t matter.

We matter.

And we will be just fine.

Big hugs, everybody.

Now, go pick up your danged socks and do your homework and do not make me say it again!

I say this with love, my darlings, I say this with love…

BEGONE, CREATURES OF DARKNESS!!!!

Tonight, Captain Adventure really worked to keep me in his bedroom as long as possible. First, he wanted to read the book himself. V-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

“What dat, mommy? Dat fly, dat right! Good job, mommy! What color is fly? Noooooo, ee no gray, ee black! Good job, Captain Adventure!”

Sigh.

Then he wanted to argue for two books. Three books. TEN books. All the books there are! And then he realized he had made a tactical error because his name the colors and shapes book is, I kid you not, more than sixty pages long and loaded with endless, ENDLESS I TELL YOU, Q&A.

How many dots on the ladybug’s wings? What color is the BROWN lion’s NOSE? Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. SIXTY PAGES WORTH, PEOPLE…

So he wanted that one. And I said, firmly, “No. We already read A Fly Went By. It is time for lights out.” (I also made a mental note to take the “educational and therefore loooooong” books out of his room.)

And he said, “No! Noooooo! Is color book! Is good book! Mommy! I wanna so smart boyyyyyyyyyy!”

Oh yeah. He is a so-smart boy. Will use blatant emotional blackmail to keep mommy in the room an extra half hour…

A few alligator tears later, I had the lights out and was rubbing his back. He sniffled a little bit and then said, “Oh! Mommy! Wait! No sleeping…is Oats!”

Hmm. OK. This is a new word, and I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about a nice bowl of oatmeal, here. Oats. OK, Tama, think…think…he tends to leave off the beginning and/or ending consonants a lot…

“Ghosts?” I guessed.

“Yeah,” he said.

“There are…ghosts…in your room?”

“Yeah. I scared of oats, in my oom!”

Alrighty then. This is one of those rare areas with Himself where I know exactly what to do – whether he’s really scared of ghosts or just using them as a way to keep me in the room a while longer, I know how to bring this game to a skidding halt.

In my best Mommy Voice, I addressed the room: “OK, listen up, ghosts! It is time for sleeping. You need to go home now and go to bed, because Captain Adventure can’t play right now. He needs to go to sleep, and so do you. You can come back and play tomorrow after school.”

I gave the ghosts a moment to say, “Awwwwwwww!” and trundle off to their ghostly mansions. Then I patted Captain Adventure confidently on the back and said, “OK, there you go! Everybody is going night-night now!”

There was a long silence as Captain Adventure pondered this solution. On the one hand, ghosts being Minions of Darkness and all, what are the chances that they’d just *poof!*, go to bed like that?

On the other…well…Mommy Voice…

“Oh,” he said at length, then stopped for a little more thought. Hmm. Well, nothing for it, really, because Mommy Voice Means Business and all… “Oh…well…night-night, oats.”

“Night night, honey,” I said, firmly, pulling his covers back over him and kissing him firmly on the cheek. There was a little whimpering, a couple half-hearted protests, and then a long-suffering sigh.

“Night night, mommy. See morning. WAIT! Is hug you! {attempts to throttle me, plants big juicy kiss on my ear} OK, is night night. See morning.”

“Night night. See you in the morning,” I replied, slipping quickly into the dark hall. A few sobs (purely for effect), and then silence.

Not a creature was stirring, not even the spirits of the departed…which left me free to ponder the many things I never anticipated motherhood would bring. The things nobody ever told me, the things I never read about in any of the (too many) books I read on the subject.

Yeah.

The ability to banish the Creatures of Darkness simply by telling them to go home to bed in a firm, no-nonsense, I will brook no denial tone of voice…definitely not something they tell you about in all those “what to expect” books.

But pretty darned handy, wouldn’t you say?

Ooooooh, guilty as charged!!!

MomLogic had a guest blogger writing about Attention Baby Disorder.

Here’s how she puts it: Tossing a fabric-covered ball back and forth makes me want to eat a box of Twinkies 'cuz I'm so bored.

WAH! HAHAHAHAHA!

Yeah. Oh yeah. {snicker, snort}

Been there. Frequently.

I about died right up at the top: My face is frozen in a smile so insincere it would rival Miss Runner Up's in any pageant.

It’s like she’s been in my house, taking notes!!

So in answer to their question: “Do you ever get bored while playing with your kids?”

Uh…yeah. Yeah, I do. And to Tom, who commented, “If you’re bored playing with your kid when they’re 2+… you have some issues.”…I, uh, apparently have some issues.

Oh, it isn’t that I’m bored playing with them all the time. Shoot, no! I love playing with them…for the first couple hours each day.

But slowly, over time…I start thinking it.

Oh no. Not the fairy unicorn princess game again…c’mon, Danger Mouse, pick something ELSE, will ya?!

Uh…does this story have, you know, an END, Boo Bug…?

Gah…I have 11,762 things I’d rather do than play Wizardology with a cheating 10 year old right now…(Eldest does cheat, you know – shamelessly!)

Yeah, that’s right, we’re NAMING FRUITS. Yay, you know a banana is yellow…{yawn}…

Overall, I love playing with my kids. I find them fascinating and entertaining. They charm me, inspire me, motivate me and otherwise add a depth to my life that I would miss if they were gone. Our playtime gives me something to look forward to, a lot of laughs and frankly, a chance to reclaim my own childhood a bit.

But at the same time, I have other things – grownup things – that I’d like to do, too. Sometimes I am absolutely filled with longing about those things. Even the things that aren’t as much fun as playing fairy unicorn princess or listening to a long, long tale about a puppy who ate a worm.

You play the same repetitive game enough times, I tell you what: Sorting out the mate-less sock drawer sounds exciting, comparatively speaking. And the very young child tends to really dig doing the same.damned.thing, sixty million times per day.

Right now, I am sick to death of playing the Lightning McQueen and Mater Drive Around and Around and Around the Coffee Table game. Captain Adventure is enthralled with that self-invented game at the moment. Skidding into the room, he will yell out: “Go DIS way! C’mon, mommy! Go DIS way! Is Cars! RED car, BROWN car, vroom, vroom, VROOM!!! KA-CHOW!!!!!”

Gah. Again?! Can’t we do something else? Or maybe couldn’t you do this, you know, solo, this time?!

Now, don’t be like that, I’ll scold myself, as I begin obediently running Mater (I’m always Mater) up and down, around the obstacle courses Captain Adventure has put into place, a plastic smile glued to my face and my Dora-inspired play-voice urgently and optimistically responding to his cues: “Where is the red block? Right! There’s the red block, good thinking! Where do we go next…”

Meanwhile, my mind is wandering. Far, far away it wanders. Counting the hours until preschool starts, my three hour break from the constant mommy-mommy-mommy, the urgent demands that I engage in non-urgent activities. Wondering how long before he’ll be ready to move on to a new game. Pondering the state of the laundry, or tonight’s dinner. Thinking about the cash flow (or lack thereof) and how much work I have to do before the sun sets today…

Feeling guilty for my lack of absolute attention to this valuable play. Valuable! Essential, really, building the nuts and bolts of his language and communication. I should be reveling in his desires to include me, blissfully sunk in his acceptance of a partnership-play, cherishing these moments while they are here for lo! Soon, he shall be grown and flown…

…mmmmm…youngest child, grown and flown…imagine the knitting time…NO! Stop that! Focus…focus on the play…

…around, and around, and around the coffee table…red block, blue block, back again…vroom-vroom, ka-chow says Lightning, git-er-done says Mater, ha ha ha, that’s right…{yawn}…I wonder if we have any Twinkies…

Why did it take so long?

This morning was an interesting departure from routine. It was a pretty normal morning, with a lot of scrambling and carrying on and the short people having to be asked fourteen times to put on their shoes.

We skidded into the school parking lot with five minutes to spare, ejected the three older Denizens from the van and began the return trip to the Den. I had a list of stuff I thought I ought to get done – my new little friend wasn’t coming today (praise be) and I had thoughts of dirty kitchen floors and clothes needing putting away and ancient folders with receipts for meals long ago turned to dust needing their final closure.

As we pulled into the driveway, Captain Adventure voiced his opinion: “NO, Mommy.”

“No?” I parroted automatically. “No what, honey.”

“No go home. Go-go-go! Go van! Go out!” he enthused. Hmm. Problematic. But then, I did have some errands I’d been putting off, a deposit to make at the bank, and he needed t-shirts.

“Hmm, well, I need my glasses,” I prevaricated. All business, he unsnapped the top of his seatbelt and fussed with the bottom part.

“Go get glasses. Then go van!” he declared decisively.

He is a Leo. They are often bossy like that.

Anyway, we went into the house and I went into my bedroom and began to putter a bit. I put away a book that was on the floor, and I made the bed.

And then I turned around to find him thrusting my glasses at me (what the- where on earth?!), his eyes snapping and twinkling and a grin across his whole face.

“There ‘ee go!” he rejoiced. “Glasses! OK! Go van now!”

Uhhhhh…right. OK. Well.

OK.

So we got in the van and we headed out. The bank wasn’t open yet, nor was the thrift store. Hmm. Well, what the heck. Live dangerously. I headed for Starbucks, got myself a mocha and Himself a Snickerdoodle and a child-sized apple juice.

And then suddenly…I had the strange sensation of Responsible Behavior simply taking a hike.

We drove out toward Sonora, into the hills, looking for something interesting. A little over an hour and one sudden turn off the highway later, we were pulling into a little place called Knight’s Ferry, on the Stanislaus River.

Captain Adventure was entranced by the whole experience, which consisted of getting out of the van, greeting the local seniors having their lunch at the picnic tables and accepting their accolades about his Cuteness, and then exploring a tiny area of no more than a football-field. Blackberry bushes, he discovered, gave boo-boos. He didn’t like the look of the algae waving from under the deceptively mellow water at the edge of the river. He did like the way rocks splashed into the water, and thought mommy was the cleverest person, EVER because she could make them skip.

“Oh, dat wah-der!” he yelled, gesturing at the swiftly flowing river.

“It’s a river,” I corrected.

And then suddenly, it hit me. He’s never seen a river.

We took him and his sisters to the beach, once; I have the gray hairs to prove it. I cast around in my mind. Had I taken my son to Lake Tahoe? Had I ever taken him into San Francisco? My mind scrambled through my memories, looking for when he had been on a ferry, when he had eaten dim sum, when he had felt the icy grip of Lake Tahoe on his toes. I knew he’d never seen Yosemite – two of his sisters throw up from motion sickness no matter how straight the road or what medication we give them, so making the winding journey to that stunning display has been out of the question for years.

He’s never watched water flow like this. He’s never seen a blackberry bush. He has no idea that he should watch out for snakes in that growth, that on hot days rattlers like to curl up for a nap in the relative safety of their thorny embrace. They don’t like being abruptly awakened by a hulking creatures with appendages that look like another snake striking right above their heads. (Who would?!)

He doesn’t know that the juiciest berries always seem to be on the water-side, and that a kayak is great way to get at them – highly maneuverable, and not generally made of stuff that will pop if it encounters a large thorn or sharp rock.

He’s never slept in a tent, or gotten up in the dead of night to walk out into stars that seem so bright and so close you’d swear you could reach out and touch one. He’s never seen real snow, never had the dubious pleasure of hiking through it and finding patch after patch where a wee bit of snow is covering a big old hole.

So many things he’s never done, never seen, never tasted, never heard, never felt.

“Do you hear it?” I asked him. He was snuggled up in my arms, watching the water ripple and flow, the constant changing-sameness. He laid his cheek against mine and said, “Yeah. Hear it.”

The birds sang songs gentle and rough. Jays were scolding. Crows were cawing. Smaller birds chirped in the gaps they left. The water rippled and sang. Our rocks ploinked and plopped and skipped.

He learned that throwing a rock was better than tossing a handful of sand, especially when the wind is blowing toward you. He spit, rubbed his face, and laughed. “Oh no, mommy! Captain Adventure get dirty!”

Far too soon, it was time to go. I grieved. It seemed so unfair, to wait almost four years before showing him a river and then yanking him away before he’d even begun to become accustomed to its shapes and sounds and scents.

But we had to go. He had school to attend, and shortly after he started sisters would begin getting out. Even if I decided his chances of attending Yale wouldn’t be too badly damaged by missing a day of preschool, we still couldn’t stay much longer.

We had to go.

Why did it take this long for my boy to see a real running river? Why did I have to snatch him away from it so soon? Why is it that even when I’m being irresponsible, I still have Responsibilities?

I eased his outrage with a dum-dum and an in-flight movie. We pulled up to the park by his school for a little more running before he had to go serve his time, one last "hurrah!" before serving his time for the day. It was a mixed experience: he loves to run and play in the park, but it makes the whole going to school thing that much harder to swallow. In the end I had to sling him like a sack of potatoes and haul him, yelling and protesting, all the way down the block to school.

He wouldn’t look at his teachers or say any of the words he had been so gleefully shouting a few minutes before. But when I picked him up a few hours later, he ran out yelling, “Mommy! Mommy! I HAF RIVER TODAY!!”

Tonight he lay in my arms drifting off to sleep, one hand curled in my hair, the other grasping my arm firmly – it is important to make sure The Woman can’t sneak off, even though she always somehow manages it.

“I haf…river today…” he told me softly. “I haf…rocks today…I haf…birds today…I haf…ah-weh-nuh today!”

It took me a while to realize he was saying adventure.

Oh, baby. So many adventures still to have.

Just you wait, my little Captain Adventure. Just you wait, and see.

And touch.

And hear.

And taste.

And feel.

The Coin of the Realm

I thought long and hard about the whole “allowance” thing. So many Expert Opinions™. So many ways of thinking about the whole issue (which I didn’t even know was An Issue until I started wondering how much the average nine year old gets these days)!

Finally, I settled on a commission basis for the Denizens. I structured it so that, with almost no effort at all, they can earn $1.25 a week; if they really apply themselves, they can actually make upwards of $20! (Thank $DEITY they don’t often apply themselves…)

I went to a local school supply store and got somewhat realistic play money – it is the wrong weight paper and the colors are ever-so-slightly wrong, but otherwise quite faithful to the real deal; the coins are plastic, but exactly the right size and color. Then I made up a little grid: Six rows (categories) with seven columns (one for each day), one section for each Denizen.

Make Bed / Tidy Room: Every morning after I’ve dropped them off at school, I walk down and peek in their rooms. If I see a reasonable attempt at making the bed and a space that doesn’t strike terror into my heart, I’ll give them a check in the ‘make bed / tidy room’ category. That’s worth a quarter.

Homework: When they show me that they’ve done their homework for the night, I give them a check. Have you ever heard a child whine because they didn’t have any homework to do? It is a truly religious experience…

Perfect scores on tests / classwork: When they bring me their graded papers, I give them a quarter for each perfect score. It is astonishing the difference this has made in at least a couple little minds. One little mind, however, really needs to quit daydreaming about fairy unicorn princess dragons and stay on task a little better. Ahem. Moving on…

Citizenship Bonus: The Citizenship bonus is my way of rewarding Model Behavior. Children who show respect to themselves and each other, children who go out of their way to make my life easier, say, clean up after their brother when he’s been on a tear, who win awards for being good citizens at school, or who finally get an actual cartwheel at gymnastics, get a check or two.

Other: We often strike deals with the kids. “I’ll give you a buck if you’ll keep your brother out of my hair for the next hour!” or “Two bucks to weed the backyard, and that’s my final offer!”

Deductions: Yes, there is a category for ‘deductions’. Deductions can be for things like…wanting a candy bar before we cash out on Friday (you have to pay an extra $0.50 if you insist on doing that). It can also be for extraordinarily bad behavior, and I have to wonder what people around me have thought when I’ve been stalking through a store with a whining Denizen in tow snarling, “If you ask me for a cookie one more time, I’m putting a check in your deduction row!”

The kids usually make about two bucks with their efforts; sometimes they really put forth the effort and have windfall weeks, other times, well, they put forth negative effort and get nada. There was even one week when Eldest had to pay me money. Not her best week ever…

So, what do they do with their earnings?

I have a Rewards Book. It is quite lengthy and changes frequently.

They can buy things like…candy bars ($1.25), or a trip to the ice cream store ($3.00). They can buy an extra hour of video game time for $5.00 (they usually get one (1) hour each, weekends only, timed - with this, they can buy an hour ‘after homework’ during the week, or, get a two hour turn on a non-school day). They can pick what’s for dinner, right down to the side dishes and dessert, for $5.00. (Hey, if you’ve been revolted for three weeks straight by the glop Mom’s been serving up? $5.00 to choose spaghetti NO MEATBALLS and buttered toast NO GARLIC and NO GREEN STUFF and then ice cream for dessert is a small price to pay.)

You want Chuck E. Cheese’s? $25.00, please. Build-a-Bear? Groovy! $30.00! You want to go to the mall and pick out a Brand!New!Outfit!? Who doesn’t?! Forty bucks, kid, and you’ll be stylin’!

There’s other stuff, too. Trips to the Lawrence Hall of Science, or the Monterey Aquarium, trips on a train, trips to local “fun zones” – and of course, the Holy Grail: Disneyland. Two Hundred Smackers, and I will pack you up and drive you down for a weekend with the Mouse.

They can also make a case for other things. For example, Eldest is going to Disneyland for her birthday soon, and she asked me if she could “cash out” her savings for a Disneyland gift card of equal value from the Scrip table at school. At first I balked, because she was talking about cashing out $100 and, well, uh, I’m on a budget and some junk? But, she made a good case for why it was fair and pointed out that her classroom will get $8 from the Scrip program for the card, sooooooo…OK. She’s getting a $100 Disney gift card to use on whatever she wants while we’re at the park.

I’ve tried to keep the prices more or less in line with reality. My hope is that my children will begin to understand that if you want something !AWESOME!, you may have to save for it. You may have to say ‘no’ to smaller things. You may have to work harder. Also, I’m hoping that the idea of consistently putting out a good effort, both with the small stuff (making your bed) and the biggest stuff (acing the test), has its rewards.

So far, it seems to be working really well. Their work in school has, overall, improved (with a few notable continuing issues); their beds are almost never made, but! Danger Mouse has been making a concerted effort this week, so I’m sure there will be demands for a beach trip coming up soon.

Also, I have to say that on a note of pure, unadulterated selfishness, it is wonderful how much more help I get from the children. Boo Bug will clean every mirror in the house for $0.50, and Eldest will empty all the trash cans for $0.25. She’ll keep Captain Adventure amused and occupied and out of my hair for a buck an hour. It is a small price to pay, people.

However, I got a clear warning that one day soon, I’m going to be busted on that $1.25 for the candy bars – Eldest went with me to WalMart recently, and pointed out that a HUGE box of Nerds cost $0.88. She said musingly, “Huh, mommy, check it out, that’s a good deal…‘cause, we pay $1.25 for a regular box, right? So…are those…on sale?”

“Uhhhhh, yes! YES THEY ARE! See the sign? ‘Rollback prices’, yup-yup-yup, hey! WHAT A SALE!”

“So, can I give you $0.88 when we get home, and get the Nerds now?”

**sigh**

Not a stupid kid in the whole bouquet…

Parenting is SO overrated

My children are annoying me. They want snack. And (ugh) interaction, or some junk like that.

Do they not understand that having just discovered Judy's Magic Cast-On, I cannot be expected to do anything else except IMMEDIATELY cast on a pair of socks so I can see how this works?!

Sheesh. This "parenting" thing can be so darned inconvenient sometimes...

In which I say, “…oh…”

So there I was. Banging my head on the wall, micromanaging Danger Mouse, wailing about her ‘distractibility issues’ and worrying endlessly about the whole homework thing.

My worrying had gone from whether or not Danger Mouse was able to keep up with the second grade world to whether or not she had been prepared as well as we had thought for second grade and fretting about what our lives were going to be like this second grade year – we do, after all, have gymnastics on Wednesday nights which has us gone from home for almost three hours all told. If Danger Mouse is going to need five hours every single night to do her homework, well.

This is a problem.

I mean, it’s a problem regardless, but what, WHAT I ASK, are we to do on those (numerous) occasions when Something is happening midweek which eats a hole in the Time Available For Homework.

Yessir, I was real worried. I fretted about it last night. Like a terrier with a rat, I growled about it, shook it every which way, threw it in the air a few times, and bitched about it endlessly to anyone with the bad fortune to be near me.

“Will that be paper or plastic, ma’am?”

“FIVE PAGES of math problems, and then a bunch of spelling and I’m going to tell you what – it just isn’t human! Is she supposed to do that every single night?!”

“Uuuuuuuh…I’ll just…plastic, then?”

So this afternoon, it was with a sense of terrible dread that I asked, “Did you turn in your homework?”

“Oh, yeah, about that. She kept saying ‘Friday.’ Apparently, it’s due on Friday.”

“What?!”

“She said homework is due on Friday.”

“Uhhhhhh…did you get new homework today?” I think I understand what she is saying, but I can’t quite believe it yet.

“No.” She is now looking at me sideways with an expression which clearly says, My mother is an idiot. Film at eleven.

“Wait, are you telling me…Danger Mouse…are you saying to me that what you did last night was supposed to be your homework for the entire week?!”

“I guess so. She said it’s all due Friday.”

“You mean to tell me you did an entire week’s homework last night?”

“Yup.”

“You weren’t supposed to do all that last night?”

“{giggle} Yes.”

“We made you do four night’s worth of homework in one sitting?!” {In case you missed it, the transition from ‘worry’ to ‘guilt’ happens right about here.}

Danger Mouse is laughing brightly. She thinks the whole thing is highly amusing.

She is a noble soul.

Personally, I’d’ve been plotting serious revenge around this point.

Being as I am a descendent of Cormac MacCarthy, genetically imbued with eloquence, scion of bards and warriors, I immediately rejoined with the following proclamation:

“…oh…”

Smooth. Real smooth.

But now I’m feeling kind of proud. My kid? Week worth of homework, in one (1) night.

Not too bad for a highly distractible kid with attention issues, huh?!