Little Princesses

Reading this today, reminded me that I did something horrifying on Saturday. It just goes to show I'll do anything for my kids. We had Small Fry's birthday party at the theater (say it like this ...theeahtah...but picture a teeny hole-in-the-wall overrun with adorable child actors and stage-moms-turned-face-paint-artists). Part of the deal was that Small Fry got to get up on stage and have the audience sing Happy Birthday to her. I was seated next to a loquacious 5-year-old by the name of Talky McTalkerson. Talky is just about the cutest little thing you've ever seen in your life - long dark ponytails, a delightful, bubbly personality and an amazing conversationalist, let me tell you. After the birthday song, during which Small Fry stood in the spotlight with a peaceful and satisfied look on her face as if to say, Yes. Yes. Now, this is living....the master of ceremonies informed us that they were holding auditions for a new play called A Little Princess. He tells us that the lead character is a spoiled little girl who frequently throws tantrums. To which my sweet Talky whispers, what's a tantrum? Obviously she is much too sweet and angelic to have ever thrown one so of course she doesn't recognize the word. I mime to her, you know... a tantrum...and I clench my fists and stomp my feet a little to demonstrate. The gentleman on stage continues to talk and then asks, Now who out there knows how to throw a tantrum? To which my sweet, darling, precious Talky shouts out - SHE DOES! and points at me. I am called up on stage and asked to throw a tantrum. For everyone. With a spotlight on me. It's strangely like every nightmare I've ever had. Except I am wearing my clothes. And as for dear, sweet Talky? Well, that girl is dead to me now.

If a Tree Falls, and Everyone Hears the Cursing....

We had some trees taken down at our house recently. If you haven't had the opportunity to witness such an event, it really is the bomb. I wish I could have gotten some better pictures, but I felt a little strange snapping photos of my shirtless guests, like some crazy suburban mother papparazzo. But let me tell you, it's pure, riveting entertainment for 8 straight hours. The passion, the drama, the blood, sweat and tears, the firings and rehirings all before lunch, the massive consumption of Gatorade, cigarettes and hose water...And for the low, low price of thousands of dollars you too can get the show to make a stop in your very own backyard! I was a little disappointed that the girls didn't find it quite as thrilling as I did. Boys would have been more fascinated by the process, perhaps. The girls instead were in all their bossy, nosy glory. First things first...Big Stuff comes to tell me (in case I was unaware) that there are some strange men in the backyard, and I should tell them to not even THINK of cutting down her friends, the small Christmas trees. Or there would be TROUBLE. Maybe she thought I would have the guts to put 6 grown men in timeout? Then Small Fry pipes up with her loud cautions and warnings directly to the crew, through the windows: "Be careful! Don't fall! That's too high! Stop yelling!" I don't know where she got that litany of bossy phrases. Finally, it was the colorful language that drove us away from the windows. Although I was riveted for longer than prudent I imagine. After 6 years of constantly stifling various curses, it was quite a shocking something to hear them flying freely and unrestrained throughout my backyard. I thought, this is the most excitement we've had around here in weeks! But, being the Mama and everything, I tore myself away from the show and hightailed it to Target, where the curses are muffled and the living is easy. We shopped in the usual boring fashion for school supplies, with nary a What The? Except in my head, of course.

My Kids Say the Darndest Things - Part Deux

Small Fry was in day camp for two weeks recently, which gave Big Stuff and me the chance to spend a few days alone together doing stuff that her little sister and I often do when she's in school....real quality-time stuff like running errands and having lunch at the Atlanta Bread Company. I'm too tired to be creative right now, ya'll. But even lunch at the ABC yields some good mama-daughter talks sometimes. Like this one:
Her: Mama, was Mema your mama when you were my age?

Me: Yes. She still is.

Her: Was she old then? (Apologies, Mom :-))

The mental wrangling she performs as she tries to understand time is hilarious. I'm pretty sure she was trying, in her mind, to stuff my 36-year-old self into a shorter version of me, because of course, shorter equals 6, and she was trying to figure out where grandmother fit into that line-up. In addition to the time and space continuum, she has also become quite interested in the Chinese. A few days ago, she saw some mundane item around the house and she called Small Fry over, reading out loud. "SF, this says Made in China. That means it's verrrryyyy special." Serious as a heart attack. Small Fry also performs mental gymnastics for our entertainment, and some of her best stuff is word twisting. At the pool, Small Fry kept trying to tell Cutie Pie and me something, and she became more and more frustrated that we couldn't understand her. She kept saying, "I've got an egg cake, mama." I would repeat back, "An egg cake?" And she would say, "Noooooooo, an egg cake! An egg cake!" This was accompanied by a look that told me I am surely the dumbest and deafest mama in all the world. Finally, after 8 or 9 tries, I got it. She needed a Tylenol, you know.....for the HEADACHE!! Sheesh.

Jump!

Well, summer's going real fine, thanks for asking. I must admit a small letdown, as we took our vacation tres early this year, and I'm already scheming about where to go on our next summer vacation. But there's still plenty of good stuff going, no doubt about it. Tonight's excitement was Cutie Pie trying to bribe Small Fry to learn to swim via a three-day old chocolate milkshake from Chic-Fil-A squirreled away in our freezer. "Come on baby, just jump in...it's all for the chocolate milkshake now. Come on, on the count of three. One...two...three..." Annnnnddddd nothing. "I'm not doing that, daddy," she says, very matter of fact. For an outrageous daredevil who hasn't figured out that she's not invincible, she sure does have a healthy respect for that pool. Which I'm plenty glad of, believe you me. BUT the crazy thing is, during "learning" as she calls it, she has been known to step right off that bottom step as soon as I turn my back...but to swim INTO my waiting arms??? Well, that's just out of the question. It's so her, though. She will do it on the day, in the hour, on the minute that she's ready to do it. Our job is to wait patiently. And try to bribe her with milkshakes.

Post update: Two days after this post, Small Fry jumped like a wild woman into the neighborhood pool, unprompted and unassisted. And then proceeded to do it about 50 more times!

Great New Song, Have you Heard it?

This was my treat this morning: (to the tune of London Bridges)

"Up the carrots, here we go, here we go, here we go. Up the carrots here we go, my Bare Lady....."

Pennsylvania or My Kids Say the Darndest Things

The other day we were riding in the car, discussing the 50 states. I don't know why. Sometimes I'm only half-listening when someone will say something that knocks my socks off. That day it was, "Does Pencil-vania have a lot of pencils?" Good one, Big Stuff! Last week at the grocery store, Small Fry was trying to wiggle herself into the cart-seat thingy. I'm like, sitdownsitdownsitdown, and she says ( in all seriousness ) "Mama, my Donald is too fat to sit in this seat." ( Donald is her new word for butt... ) I started laughing uncontrollably, and she looked at me as if I was losing my mind. ( A distinct possibility where her mother is concerned. ) She says, "Are you just going to laugh and laugh all day long?" I might, I really might. She was recently asked if everyone tells her she's cute. She corrected them, "Mema says I'm gorgeous." At Christmas, one of the cuter sayings was Big Stuff's "Partridge in a Parrot tree." Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Also, stating the obvious, Small Fry would often say "Seenta loves children." ( Perhaps this was a mantra repeated over and over to reassure herself of that crazy old guy's intentions ) But the best was: "Angel say don't be 'fraid. Follow star."
They also have great names for their assorted animals and baby dolls. Most are rather generic and straightforward, like Baby. Or Mousey. But this particular little guy has been Sneaky Bob ever since he came to live with us. I have no idea where that came from, but it's the obvious choice, isn't it? He IS Sneaky Bob and no other name would do. This weekend they spent the night with a friend, who has a daughter Big Stuff's age. There is apparently a tradition at their house in which the dad, Bill, makes them milkshakes. This tradition has been enjoyed many times by Big Stuff, but this was Small Fry's first time. As soon as she got in the car after we picked her up, she said ( as if confirming the rumors ) "Yes, Dollar Bill does make the best milkshakes." Cutie Pie asked if he could come next time and have a milkshake, to which she firmly replied, "No, he only makes them for kids."
And here's the sweetest... last week GranJanny stopped by. We were showing her around the house, and Small Fry was pointing out items of interest. In the playroom, she told GJ about how the lightbulb went out a while back ( a rather traumatic event ). GJ: "Oh, did your daddy fix that?" SF: "Um, actually he did, and I love my daddy because he's the most nicest daddy in the whole world." GULP. Some days are really, really good days.

Acting her Age

Just look at my youngest child, would you? Is she not the cutest thing on the earth? Stop it, I am not being prejudicial. She really is the cutest thing on this earth! In this picture, she is reading Junie B. Jones to her babies. Or maybe they're her students? Actually, they are probably her audience, because no one loves an audience more than this kid. She claims to be "shy" but this is just something she says to get me to laugh. The three of us read Junie B. last night before bed, and I swear...after one hearing, she repeated it back to these dollies with amazing recollection of the story and the cute things that JB says, such as "wink, wink shy boy" and "Mrs. say there no meatball in bottom of Valentimes box." In between the coherent sentences, she just fills in with "words" that sound something like "nyum nyum nyum." It's a total stream-of-consciousness peek into a wee girl's psyche. Sometimes she will play mama and baby and I will hear her crying out "mama, mama." I say, "What, Small Fry?" And she says, "I not crying. I just tending." She also told me from her carseat today: "I just laxing, mama." That's relaxing, in case you wondered. She competes with her sister to tell the funniest knock-knock joke, although her punchlines are something like "blah blah blah..." followed by hysterical laughter. She just will not act her age. She is determined to be as old as Big Stuff, and she tells me every day "Tomorrow I go to kindergarten OK?" Easy there, sister. I'm going to wring every last bit of baby-ness I can out of you! Speaking of staying young, her birthday is coming up, and she (naturally) requested an Aurora party. That is Sleeping Beauty for anyone lacking a two-year-old in their lives (or a two-year-old's taste in movies). So I spent a couple of hours making the cutest invitations. I researched ideas for Sleeping Beauty parties. Found cake toppers, party favors and such on the internet. OK, it was not a big deal because I secretly love doing it. But do you know what she said this morning? "I no want Aurora party, mommy. I want FighterFighter (firefighter) party." Alrighty then.

Bedside Manners

January seems to be the month of check-ups. Good time for a tune-up I suppose. I had mine, and now the girls are having theirs. We paid our respects at the ENT on Tuesday. Today it was the dentist. I know you will say I'm strange, but I love taking my kids to the doctor. I don't even mind going myself, as long as there is no danger of a painful procedure being performed as part of the appointment. I'm sure there are some mean and uncaring doctors out there, but thankfully, I have not had the bad luck to encounter more than one, maybe two, in my life. They are always so nice to my kids. And to me. The nurses make a big fuss over the girls when they come in. They make up great little stories about what they're doing, such as, "Do you think I can find a princess in your ear?" or "Your job is to give Mr. Thirsty a kiss so the flouride doesn't set up camp in your tummy." They give them little prizes. Today Big Stuff got a mood ring from the dentist. She thought this was THE BOMB. She marveled over it all day. "What does black mean, mama? I think blue means I am very, very happy." And the thing I really like? The doctors make me feel like such a good mother. I'm sure they pump up every mom who schlepps in the place, but for those 10 or 20 minutes I am the Queen Mum. And really, how often do you get direct and effusive praise for the everyday things you do, like say, keeping your kids alive for another year? I may not have a thing in the world to do with where they fall on those growth charts, but dang, it makes me glow with pride when they tell me my kid is better than 98 percent of all the other kids in the world...I mean taller. I am also lucky that the girls are great patients. The doctors never fail to compliment them and marvel at their good behavior as they are being poked with things or asked to listen to the wind for the 48th time. And again, although I probably have very little to do with their behavior at that given moment, I just glow with happiness. They are good, I think to myself, really good! The first pediatrician I had with Big Stuff was such a gem. He was an older guy, on the verge of retirement. Very old school in the way that he would just spend all morning talking with you, if that was what he wanted to do, totally disregarding his nurse's promptings to move on, bub. He would also give you all these great home remedies and teach you a little about anatomy and germs and the inner workings of the inner ear during your visit. I read a lot these days about how your doctor should be your partner in your healthcare. I doubt that many young doctors in these big old HMOs feel compelled to make a bunch of nervous first-time mothers their partners, but Dr. W sure did. I loved him for that. And he never failed to say at the conclusion of the appointment, "Well, you're doing a great job, mom." Man, those are some sweet, sweet words!

Maybe the fact that the girls have escaped feeling dread at seeing the doctor has something to do with their grandmother. She was a nurse (isn't she pretty?) for a pediatrician, a dear man whose family became like our own and still is. Mema is an encyclopedia of medical knowledge and experiences. I always call her first before I call a doctor. She's also a great caretaker, and she doles out special treatment and makes you feel downright spoiled anytime you are ailing. She taught me that when you're sick, a doctor helps you feel better. That's all. No biggie. So maybe that is why none of us seems to fear doctors too much. Small Fry even thinks some of them live in fairy tale books I suppose. At her ENT checkup, the nurse said, "I'm going to call Lois in to look at her ear." When she left the room, SF whispers to me, with a puzzled look on her face, "Who is coming? Lo-Bis?" I said, "Yes, Lois is coming to look in your ear." She says, still more puzzled "Is Lo-Bis a giant?" I'm not quite sure where she got that idea... probably something about someone getting into her ear, getting giant mixed up with leprechaun.. who knows? But how cute is that?