Be Careful What You Wish For

Before our kids were born, or even when they were little babies, I liked to dream about all the wonderful qualities I hoped they'd have as children. Now that some of those wishes have come to fruition, I'm forced to consider that I maybe didn't think things through as thoroughly as I should have.

For instance, I hoped that our kids would love words; that they would love to read and to find out the meaning of words and would get as excited as their father does about where different words come from. I had not considered that this might mean that my children would have their own ideas about what books to like, and that I might have to suffer through hundreds of readings of our vast library of books on construction equipment, cars, farm animals, dinosaurs, princesses, and Disney fairies (let me just pause here to highly DISrecommend the tome The Fairy Berry Bake-Off).

I also must have forgotten about that joyous phase of every kid's life, where totally inappropriate or even slightly taboo words are the best ones EVER. This weekend, while riding in the car to the store with me, Daniel said, "Mom? You know what word I love?" Just as my pulse started to race at the thrill of my child having a favorite word, he concluded, "Butt." (pause of silence) "BUTT!" (only this time in that gooky voice that comes from talking through an emerging laugh). This is, unfortunately, the favorite word of both our children at this time, and the source of frequent entertainment and merriment in our home. Yesterday for Valentine's Day Kyle and I worked it into our good-morning conversation when we woke Daniel up for school, just to show him we love him.

I'd also hoped that our kids would be creative, which in Daniel's case seems to be playing itself out in the form of some outlandish storytelling. The other day when I picked him up from school, his teacher asked, "You don't actually have, like, 100 chickens on your property, do you?" When I reported that, no, we do not in fact raise chickens at all, she said she thought we didn't, but that Daniel had told her we were raising them in order to make lots of chicken pot pies. And while this particular story might have been a slightly altered version of the plot to Chicken Run, this is not the first time Daniel's teacher has had to seek a little reality-check at pickup time. In the imaginary pets department alone, I've previously corrected stories about us owning a rabbit and some chameleons.

Additionally, at lunch the other day we had some Bugles chips. I told the kids that they had to finish all their carrots before they could have chips, and this was no problem for Daniel. He did do this, of course:


...but who can blame him? I think this is a requisite childhood Bugle behavior.

The real winner in the creativity department this day, though, was Eva. She showed me a carrot-less plate, received and ate her Bugles, and then went down for a nap. Upon cleaning the kitchen, I started to dump out her nearly-empty milk cup and noticed two baby carrots, perfectly concealed under the last inch of milk. Drat! Outsmarted by a two-year old!

Finally, we are at last within sight of that blessed event: the end of diapers. I have been dreaming of the day when we can quit buying and changing diapers, and have been anxiously awaiting Eva's learning to use the toilet. Yesterday morning by 8:15, however, I noticed that we were on our seventh potty trip of the day already. It took me an hour to change sheets around our house, because I had to stop every two minutes to help with wiping and hand-washing and such. Similarly, I spent much of our trip to the library on Friday in the bathroom with Eva, and she's used potty breaks as her excuse to get out of bed twice during today's nap time. At this rate, I won't be able to finish this blog post and make our grocery list before nap time is finished.

So far, our grocery list only consists of our weekly 3 gallons of milk and 5-lb box of oranges. I guess that's what I get for wishing for kids who are healthy eaters.

Our Little Negotiator

When we were in St. Louis last month, several members of my family noticed that Daniel seems to have turned into a tiny lawyer overnight. He meets nearly every instruction given to him with, "How about this?" or "What if we do X and then do that?" Extra television, junk food, an extra few minutes before rest time; there is really nothing he won't try to negotiate.

Recently we were driving home from a late-evening event, and he'd had an early dinner. He asked if he could have a snack before bed, and I said I thought that sounded reasonable.
"How about some cookies?" he said.
"How about some fruit?" I replied.
"Okay, can I have an orange, then?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Can I have some milk with it?"
"Sure."
"Okay, so some milk, an orange, and cookies, then."

Seriously, this is how so many of our conversations go down. Being his parent requires constant vigilance against the onslaught of craftily-phrased demands. I wonder if this is what Monty Hall's parents felt like. Even when he doesn't get his way, he tries to work in a guilt trip, creating leverage to increase his chances of getting something else later. We're hoping one day that he'll be able to turn this skill into a profitable career as a realtor, union leader, or District Attorney.

On the way to tumbling Thursday, we stopped at the bank, where I turned down the teller's offer of a sucker for Daniel.
"Why did you tell her 'no thank you'?"
"Well, because you had a leftover Halloween sucker 30 minutes ago, and because we're on our way to tumbling, where suckers are not allowed."
Silence.
"You know, Jesus lives in my heart."
"Sure, Buddy."
"You know, I was going to put that sucker in my belly button so that Jesus could hold it. So now Jesus isn't going to get a sucker."
"I'm sure Jesus will forgive me."

Teacher Benefits

As anyone who watches the news knows, we here in the Midwest had a massive snowstorm yesterday.


We managed to get Faisal back from visiting his uncle in Portland in the early morning hours Tuesday, just before the storm hit and the government closed I-70. We'll be tracking down his luggage for the next few days, I'm sure, but we're thankful we were able to scramble together a shuttle and a ride from his language program Director when his flight from St. Louis to Kirksville was canceled.

While there are surely some people without power, or city works employees weary from plowing all night, this has been a little vacation for us, only with more driveway shoveling. We have plenty of food and we haven't lost power, so no eating cold soup straight out of the can or anything. The snowplow has made a lane in our street, so as soon as I get stir-crazy enough to connect Kyle's driveway shoveling to the plowed lane we'll even be able to get the cars out. The kids are all hanging out in their pajamas, reading books and watching movies and playing whatever this game is here:


And so we arrive at one of the great, uncounted benefits of teaching... The Snow Day. Today marks our fourth one this year, which makes for a pretty easy semester so far. Sure, people in other professions might get higher pay and stuff, but while they are scraping the snow off their cars and driving to work at 10mph we are sleeping in, making pancakes for breakfast, and doing stuff like this:


And that's GOT to be worth something, right?

Old Friends

Two weekends ago I went to St. Louis in order to attend a memorial service for the father of my oldest childhood friend Maureen. She and I have been friends since we were eight years old, when we lived on the same street and spent nearly all of our spare time at each others' houses. Naturally, we used to spend a lot of time around each others' parents, but less and less over the years as we've become adults. When I'd initially heard about Tom's death, I'd walked around feeling melancholy for a several days, but by the time of the St. Louis memorial, weeks later, I was really more focused on the chance the trip gave me to see Maureen, who lives far away in Texas now.

On the day of the memorial, my dad kept the kids for me, and I was able to meet my brother for lunch first. So pleasant was this rare child-free time with Ian that I kind of entered the church in a light mood. I saw Maureen, her husband, and her kids outside of the building as we pulled up, and actually felt excited to see the family I used to be around so often growing up. That's the irony of funerals; they're so good at bringing people together, but under circumstances nobody wants.

Walking into the church and seeing Maureen's mother sobered me right up, though. Being there, I had to confront the fact that Tom died, and that I would not see him again. And, as older-looking versions of Maureen's once-familiar relatives filed by, I also had to confront the fact that I don't really know them anymore. That, despite our occasional exchange before he handed the phone over to Maureen, I didn't really know Tom anymore, either. As people talked, I thought about how he'd held jobs I wasn't around to witness, had health problems I was only vaguely aware of, even moved to a city I've never been to in order to be closer to his daughter and grandchildren.

I started thinking about how when you've known someone for 25 years your concept of them isn't just who they are now, but who they've been throughout your whole history together. I still think of Tom, and probably always will, as a funny, athletic, boisterous man who teased us about boys (and our overly-hairsprayed bangs, for saying "like" too much between phrases, and for thinking being on the debate team made us cool). I will think of him every time I see a Diet Dr. Pepper or a Wonder Bread truck, or a picture of fireworks over the Arch. I have no idea whether Tom still loved the DDP as much at the end of his life as he did 20 years ago, but I know he hasn't delivered or sold bread for ages and did his photography in Houston these days. But when you don't see your old friends very often, they become like a legend in your head, stuck in an era that, to you, will describe them forever. When I was a kid, Tom's laugh was sometimes so loud and so sudden it would frequently startle me. I'm sad I missed my chance to hear it again.

The morning after the memorial, I did get a chance to catch up some with Maureen. I met her for brunch, along with our other close childhood friend Brittyne. We easily filled an hour and a half with updates regarding our kids, our schooling and work, how our husbands like their jobs... Maureen talked some about her parents, and then we just had time to snap a quick picture or two before it was back to our lives.


Brittyne complained before we left that we didn't have time to get to the reminiscing, the rehashing of the mutual exploits of our youth (like roller figure skating?!?). It occurred to me later that just the fact that we were there, in St. Louis alone together, was kind of reminiscent of another time, considering the seven (soon to be eight) kids between us and the fact that two of us don't live there any more. We do all have separate lives now, in different places. And, though I read Brittyne's blog and talk to Maureen on the phone every month or two, this is just frequently enough to maintain our relationships while forcing us to share only a very narrow version of what is going on in our lives. I have to admit that my perception of the two of them must also be somewhat the stuff of legend, built partially on my memory of who they were as girls. Though I do feel that they (Maureen in particular) know my core in a way that doesn't change over time, I wonder if aspects of the way they see me are somewhat dated, as well.

Despite the distance and the amount of time that has passed, I am very pleased that I can still call these two my friends. Maureen and I were "spit sisters" (too squeamish about cutting our fingers to be blood sisters) after all; if I cannot maintain a lifetime friendship oath sealed by drinking after each other, then what good is my word, really?

It's hard to describe my mood driving back to Kirksville after that weekend. I had a pretty good cold going, and was missing my husband. The kids slept in the back, and I just enjoyed the silence for most of the three-hour trip. I thought about the drive; how quickly I regain my comfort driving in the city on these trips to my hometown, how hopping from one suburb to another or one highway to another feels like an old sweater I forgot I liked. I thought about another faraway friend, Melynne, who'd kept me company on the phone when I'd been drowsy on the way to St. Louis a few days before.

Mostly, though, I felt melancholy again for a bit. I thought about how Tom was the same age as my own parents, and about how I'm now old enough to have a 25-year friendship with someone. About 30 minutes away from home I turned on the radio, and there was someone talking about Bob Dylan. The person was discussing the song A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, which Kyle and I agree is one of Dylan's best. In high school I was obsessed with the version sung by Edie Brickell, and have grown into the original version in recent years. It's not a cheery song, but the sadness and loneliness of it matched my mood, and it was so familiar that hearing it felt like the comfort of an old friend.

Got Her Groove Back

I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much I really love Zumba at our YMCA. It seems like such a trendy, suburbanite thing of me to jump on some popular fitness craze. Yet there I am, every Tuesday and Thursday, smooshed somewhere up in the front right corner of the gym...

For those of you not familiar with Zumba, it's an exercise class that involves high-impact dancing to Latin and hip-hop music. It's kind of like difficult aerobics where the teacher doesn't call out instructions as to what's coming next. You just have to watch the instructor and catch on.

I started going this summer because my friend and fellow sorority alumna Diana was teaching, and I knew a few other people who went to her class. The dance moves she did were pretty straightforward, and I danced some back in my cheerleading days, so I caught on pretty fast. It was fun, and involved enough jumping around to be a pretty good workout, so I continued going.

In the fall the regular teacher returned with the start of the school year. She is a college student who is on one of the dance teams at Truman, and I had heard her classes were pretty intense. This turned out to be quite an understatement. Despite having done the class all late summer, the first week Claire took over I was so stiff and sore I could barely move. Really, it's basically an hour of sustained squats, lunges, and jumping, cleverly reinvented over and over with different arm movements and pelvic thrust/hip roll thingies. In Diana's class I could decide to really push myself, or to take it a little easy, but in Claire's class everything is full-out all the time. If you don't move fast and jump high you can't get most of the moves done, and if you slack on the arm movements she will tease you about it.

Here's where we get to what I really love, though: because she's young and on a college dance team all the moves Claire chooses seem to be really too difficult and way too cool for most of the people in the class. You look around, and the class is mostly moms (and even some grandmas); women in their 30's, 40's, and 50's. The parking lot's full of minivans, but inside everyone is dancing like Shakira. There is nothing patronizing or condescending about the way things are presented or taught. Both Claire and Diana basically just put on the music and start dancing, as if this is a song we've all heard a hundred times and nobody is going to have any problem picking up the material. The first time Claire put on Drop it Low and started the dance, the lady behind me said, "Oh she has GOT to be kidding," which (to be honest) was pretty close to what I was thinking. But a week later we were all not just doing it, but doing it fairly well and enjoying it.

I think there is something about being a mother that requires you to be inherently uncool. Sure, there's the spit-up smell, the reduced time for grooming, the focus on another person's defecation habits, but it's something even more than that. It's the status of it, that you're someone's MOM, for goodness sake; I know I pretty much walked out of the hospital with Daniel, donned some loafers and a cardigan sweater and that was it. Nobody expects you to know the songs being played in nightclubs or the latest Lady Gaga video. You have a child to raise now, an important job, and the soundtrack for that job is lullabies and nursery rhymes. Maybe, by the time your children reach adolescence, you can lapse into some kind of bland Top-40-adult-contemporary listening.

I've found that after a few years of youth culture treating you like you're old and boring and uninteresting, you start to feel that way a little. You can fight it as long as you're not a mom, but it becomes much more difficult after that. Having small children creates a haze of need that makes it difficult to see outside your own situation in order to participate in things like world news, social life, or hobbies. I feel like my kids are just starting to get independent enough that I can get back to some friends or interests. I've kind of been having a look around the past few months, seeing what I'm interested in these days.

I think falling into Zumba when I did was good for me. To see that, no, I actually CAN still make myself move like that has been empowering. I wonder if I would have had the nerve to try singing in our church's Christmas Cantata last month if I hadn't tried dancing first. I was interested enough in current music to download some new songs for my running playlist. Songs that our 19-year old international student recognizes!

Now believe me, I have no illusions that a bunch of middle-aged women dancing to salsa and club music at the YMCA is inherently awesome. I think, though, that I am slightly cooler for having done it.

I Couldn't MAKE UP Material This Good

Maybe my sense of humor is just better now that grades have been turned in for the semester, but it seems like funny stuff is going on all around me lately. Some examples:

From around town
-A few weeks ago someone put a (real) stuffed bear on the roof of the Catholic Newman Center at the University campus. We pass it every morning when we drop Faisal off for school. One day last week Eva said, "What's that bear doing up there?!" "Probably growling," replied Daniel, totally serious.

On Friday, when Eva said, "What's that bear doing up there?!" Daniel said, "Hanging Christmas lights." Sure enough, someone had put a Santa hat on the bear and a string of Christmas lights in its paws.

Sadly, there was a wicked snow and wind storm Sunday, and the bear is no longer on the roof. I will hope that he was safely removed and not blown off.

-The same day we saw the bear with the Santa hat (in fact, immediately afterwards), I noticed that the car in front of us had a little Pekingese dog in its back window. A little Pekingese dog wearing a sweater. And eating a donut. With sprinkles. No joke.

From church
-As I've previously posted, I will be singing this coming Sunday in our church's Christmas Cantata. This past weekend, we were rehearsing a song that contains the line, "Watching wise men journey in a tiny caravan..." when the conductor stopped us to tell the guys in the back row (all adult professionals) to quit talking. "I know what you're laughing at," the conductor said. "Guys! Why didn't we get a bigger van?!" one of the guys in the back row blurted out. Great. Now nobody can sing that line without laughing.

-The kids had their Christmas program at church (Kyle has a video on his blog if you're interested). Daniel and Eva did about how you'd expect a 2- and 4-year old to do on a stage in a costume. At one point, though, there was a trio of 3-year old boys who were supposed to share a microphone to sing one verse of one song. One of the kids, though, pushed the other two out of the way, grabbed the mic, and put it right on his mouth. Of course, then, the other two kids started jockeying for their turn, and it turned into a bunch of pushing and trying to outdo each other's singing. The director of the play tipped the mic so none of them could reach it, causing them to finish the verse on tiptoe or jumping. I laughed so hard I cried.

-Friday we took the kids to Parents' Night Out, a free monthly babysitting service put on by one of the campus ministries at Truman. You basically drop your kids off at a local church for the evening, and the college students play with them, help them make a craft, and show them a movie. When I went to pick Daniel up, we were attempting to identify his craft bag from among the rows of colored-on paper bags. "Here it is!" Daniel said, grabbing a bag. "Does it say Daniel on it?" asked the student who had escorted me back to get him. The bag was prominently labeled (in one of the college students' handwriting) as "Weirk." "Oh, that's his dragon name," I said casually, before realizing that this makes me sound like a total lunatic. This student didn't even flinch, though, but smiled and said "Oh, okay!" and led us back into the hall. Thank goodness for her and for whoever humored Daniel by writing Weirk on his bag. Good to know that somebody else can appreciate our son's (frequently assumed) dragon identity.

From the mouths of our children
-The other day Eva was pointing out the window and saying something about a passing truck. It took me a minute to figure out that she was calling this pickup a "Pull-up truck." Potty training is coming along.

-Come to think of it, Eva says a lot of funny things. For breakfast she likes to have "eatmeal" or yogurt with "knowla" in it (what can I say, the girl likes her oats). She calls her Winnie the Pooh "Poop Bear," and recently told her feverish brother, "Don't worry, Daniel. Daddy's getting you some Tylephone."

-Not to be outdone, Daniel recently told Eva (who was playing dress-up), "Eva, you're the prettiest blutterfly I never sawn."

-Daniel has also recently taken to using the adjective "man-sized" to refer to things. Like, "That's a man-sized candy bar there!" or "Whew! That was a man-sized sneeze!" I have no idea where he picked that up, as it is probably the last thing that would ever come out of Kyle's or my mouth.

...So there you have it. A bunch of stuff that may or may not be as funny to you as it is to me. At least it's saved for posterity, in digital form, to embarrass my kids in 10-12 years.

Anger Management

Daniel is very interested in dragons and superheroes these days, so we've been letting him watch movies like The Incredibles and How to Train Your Dragon. He played these kinds of roles before we let him watch the movies, but sometimes I wonder whether we're feeding some very violent kinds of play. Today, for instance, he convinced me to partake in a rousing game of Trucks vs. Dragons. First, we had to line everything up like this:

The rules of this game, roughly quoted as he explained them to me are:

"Okay, so the Old Person (referring to me) takes the trucks, and I take the dragons, and they just PUNCH into each other really hard like they're trying to break something, 'cause these are REALLY mean dragons. Oh yeah, and Eva has all the flying things (referring to a plane, a helicopter, and Buzz Lightyear), and they're just going to stay over there and watch."

This was pretty much how the game went down, except that we had to start over a couple of times because I was not driving the trucks fast enough or hitting the dragons hard enough, and because eventually he decided that the dragons were going to pick up the trucks, "fly them in the air," and then drop them in a heap of ruins down the hallway. Here was the carnage at the end of all this:


I have to admit that I got bored pretty fast with the reality of Trucks vs. Dragons, despite my amusement with the name and object of the game. Once the trucks had been thoroughly destroyed, I took a break to make a phone call. In typical kid fashion, Daniel and Eva devolved into a screaming, hitting fight two feet from me the instant I got someone on the line. I finished the call with a lot of "uh-huh's," hoping that I sounded like I was hearing and understanding my end of the conversation. I hung up and very sharply explained that this behavior was not acceptable, and that now the person I was talking to likely has a terrible impression of both me and my rude, rude children.

Daniel then started into what seemed like an unrelated ramble, telling me all about the counselor at his school, and how she came to his class today and told them that sometimes kids have strong feelings, and might need to find something to do to calm down those strong feelings, like jump on a trampoline, or ride bikes, or run around in the yard, or take deep breaths, or sing a song or count to ten... Then he says to me, "Mommy, I see that you're having some strong feelings right now. I'm wondering if you should go jump on a trampoline or ride your bike or something."

Really, as a therapist I had to admire his use of the here and now in our session. I ended up telling him what a good idea that was, and how maybe I could just use a few minutes ALONE to take some deep breaths. Maybe I should have just asked to play another round of Trucks vs. Dragons.