“I’d like to add green accessories to my blue room because those two colors respond well to each other.” Okay, then. Wow. I’m a little bit blown away by this statement coming from my eight-year-old. I go immediately to my old friend Google to see if this is decorator’s lingo or something he may have heard on some television show. Google informs me that colors ‘work well together’, ‘coordinate with each other’, ‘go really well together’, but respond to each other? Not so much. And there are no references to television shows quoting the response of one color to another. I think it is quite a beautiful statement. Of course, I am making too much out of an off the cuff remark, but I think I’m the writer here, and my kid just said something I’d like to steal as my own. I think, perhaps, I should be thanking his wonderful teachers for encouraging his creative little mind. He wrote a story about a monkey in class not long ago, and he mentioned how the monkey slept ‘above the below’. Again, can I steal from my kid? Isn’t that a lovely way to explain that the monkey slept in the trees? Or is my love for my amazingly brilliant son clouding my judgement? Oops, hold on, my amazingly brilliant son is licking the popsicle box again. Creative genius or bonehead? Thoughts? Anyone?
The Magic Bag
“Mom, did you bring my ipod?” This question is coming at me from the back seat of the car quite a bit lately, and I have only myself to blame. For the past 8 years, my son has not had to look any further than my ‘magic bag’ for anything and everything he needs once we leave the house. Well, within reason. He knows he won’t find his basketball in my bag, although we do keep one in the car these days, just in case. He knows he won’t find an ice cream cone in there, but he knows he will find the cash to buy an ice cream cone, the napkins to hold around the cone and the hand wipes to clean up his sticky hands after indulging in the ice cream cone. In fact, my bag is so well stocked, that when my son was a toddler and we joined other kids for play dates, his little friends would stare longingly at my bag upon our arrival, wondering wide-eyed about what treats I might have for them that day. Apparently, I carried the best snacks. The freeze-dried fruit was very popular, and I also indulged in the name brand Gerber puffs instead of basic cheerios. I arrived with juice pouches instead of sippy cups, and mini corn muffins with blueberries baked in them. Or maybe it was just that I always had some kind of new surprise in the form of a snack, and it is common knowledge that toddlers are all about the snacks.
It’s my own fault that I have seen fit to carry everything from some kind of hand-held entertainment device to a change of underpants for my son all this time. But once he graduated to the ipod, I decided he needed to take responsibility for himself. Oh, I still provide the basics from hand wipes to benadryl to band-aids to a small flash light to search for things under the seat of the car to scotch tape for an emergency repair of homework sheets to extra baggies so I can divide up snacks into separate servings for each friend so no one bogarts the treats. And then there are those special days when I have a role of duct tape, always a handy item to carry with you, an extra mouth guard, or those sour candies for times when a snack isn’t quite right but you’ve gotta have something. Yes, it’s as if my bag is straight out of a Harry Potter or a Percy Jackson book. It looks relatively small compared to what I pull out of the darn thing. No tents, swords, compact kitchens or magical beans, but it’s still pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. But I should draw the line at the ipod. If my son wants it, or more importantly, if he is allowed to take it on whatever field trip we are on, then he should remember to bring it himself, right? Or am I being a mean mommy now that he’s so used to me having everything he needs in one compact location? Boy, I like being the one with the answers and the ipod. I think maybe I’ll sneak that thing into my magic bag for a few more years and really ruin him for his future wife, that’s okay these days, right?
Do girls fart?
“Do girls fart?” Whew. Finally, a question from my 8-year-old that I can answer without hesitation, without wringing my hands and stumbling over my words. A question with a one word answer that will not keep me up all night wondering if I answered it correctly, confidently and with a comforting tone of voice. A question that cannot be answered in hundreds of different ways. A question that will not send me to the internet to read 565 different versions of what the the correct answer should be. Like the questions he asked when he was 5.
As a 5-years-old, he wanted to know about God and death. He wanted to know if there were toys in heaven, and if he could bring his own toys to supplement the heavenly toy supply. He wanted an accurate description of the place, the housing situation and the local weather patterns. He wanted to know if it was on another planet and how he would get there, and if he had to hold my hand while we crossed heavenly streets. He wanted to know if our dog could go to heaven too, but first he wanted to make sure she would live to be one hundred, and if not, why not, and what will we do, and how will we go on?
At 8, he wants to know about farts. Girl farts. He must have heard at least one girl fart in the past 8 years. It doesn’t seem that there is much in the way of modesty among kids his age yet, although I see it slowly coming on now. But truly, some girl must have farted in front of him. Damn, I must have farted in front of him at some point. Maybe I don’t qualify as a girl. Whatever. He wants to know if girls perform the same bodily functions as boys.
“Of course,” I tell him. “Girls poop and pee and fart.”
“Ewwww,” he says. Okay. Does this mean he is starting to see girls a little bit ‘differently’ than his male friends? I mean, why is it ewwwwwy that girls fart, but he and his friends can wreak havoc on any small space, kill small insects with their stink and even drive the dog out of the room all while falling apart with laughter at the sounds emanating from between their butt cheeks.
“Well, what would you like girls to do with their gas?” I ask. “It’s a totally natural function.”
“So why do you tell Dad he can’t just let them rip?” He wonders with a phrase that I know probably came from his dad.
“It’s just not polite or even nice to do in certain situations.”
“But it’s natural,” my son says with a whole lot of sarcasm.
“Don’t be a stinker, I say. “Get it!” He doesn’t laugh but rolls his eyes at me instead. “It is natural,” I say, “but it is also not very romantic or appealing to be sitting next to someone who is shooting off farts.”
He laughs at that, in fact, he laughs a pretty hearty laugh at the idea of farts shooting out of someone’s butt, and he tells me that the next comic book he writes-he writes comic books with his own superheroes-will be a guy who shoots people with farts. Great. Those drawings will be really great ones for Grandma’s refrigerator.
At least, I answered his question honestly and with the same answer that he will get from anyone he asks. That was easy. What a relief. Now we can discuss all of Fartboy’s super powers, right? Question number two. It’s 7.15 a.m. Did I mention the time? And we are out the door on the way to school. Question number two, “Mom, what’s puberty?”
Trying out being nice?!
My sister and my nieces are here visiting, and my son is excited that they are here, but I think he is most excited that he gets to take a day off and go to Universal Studios instead of to school. He is also excited to get to prank them. It’s true, all these girls have invaded his space and are sleeping in his bed and living in his room and leaving bras on his bedroom floor, something that thoroughly disgusts him. It’s not that he is usually mean to my nieces, he loves them, he enjoys spending time with them, but he also likes to tease them any way he can. He has already put his plastic bugs under all the pillows and tried to pour salt on their cereal. He has hidden their shoes and taken blackmail pictures of them sleeping. So, when he spends the morning asking my oldest niece about college and how she is doing and if she needs anything, she is justifiably suspicious. I hear her asking my son, “Why are you being so nice to me?” His reply, “I’m just trying it out.” She has a big laugh at that, so do I. But as the mother, I feel that however funny his comment is, I must follow up my laughter with a query as to why he needs to ‘try out being nice’. His reply to that, “To see if I like it.” “And?” I ask curiously. “It’s okay,” he tells me. Alright then, it’s okay to be nice, it feels okay. Should I be proud, confused, concerned or just indifferent? Should I let it go right here or turn this into a long discussion about behavior and morals and that fact that It matters. Shouldn’t everyone automatically feel great about being nice? Why does one need to try it on for size? I wonder if this is a kid thing? Do they all try being nice on for size before they commit? I have to let it go for now though, I realize, because we’ve got something to do today. I tell him that we are taking him out for ice cream. He jumps up with a huge grin and punches the air with a loud whoop and a ‘yeah!’ Then, he calms down quickly and says, “Wait. Why?” “Why not?” I say. “Why are we going for ice cream? What’s the catch?” The catch is that we are also going shopping for a prom dress for my other niece. Ah ha. I’m caught. I see the day before me suddenly, and I don’t see my son spending any more time on the trying out being nice thing, in fact, I’ll be lucky to escape this day without a migraine. So much for being nice. I guess I need to up my bribes!
Underpants, again!
“Do me a solid, Mom, smell my underpants.” Say what??! Can I laugh at that or would I be reinforcing inappropriate behavior? Or inappropriate language? What do you do with that? Is it open for discussion? Should I ask why he wants me to smell his underpants? Does he really want me to smell his underpants? Is there an issue with his underpants? Does he want to see if they are fresh enough to wear again tomorrow? Is he testing me to see what exactly I will do for him? Did he hear this said on television or on the playground? And since when does my son ask me to do him a ‘solid’? Or is that the least of my woes at this point? I did want to be mad because somehow it must be inappropriate, at least to say anyplace else on the planet besides in his own room to his own mother. Thank God that is where he chose to try this statement out. He did assure me that he had never and would never say that to anyone else, at which point I allowed myself to break down and laugh. I know, I’m a little old to think that the word underpants is funny, but sometimes, it just is.
Funny quotes from a funny boy!
“Will I die if I wear my swim goggles all day?” Hmmm. Well, I didn’t want him to continue to wear his swim goggles, after all, we’d been home from the pool for about 2 hours. I guess it didn’t really matter that he had what looked like permanently imbedded marks around his eyes from those goggles, or that he was talking funny because they kind of pinched around his nose, or that they were fogged up and he had to keep tilting his head backwards to see out of them, not the safest way to ascend and descend the stairs. But would he die? No, I think not. I didn’t want to scare him, but I didn’t want him to live in his swim goggles either. So, I settled on the truth. Sort of. No, he wouldn’t die, but he would get a really bad headache if he hit hour 3 in the goggles. ‘Really?’ He wondered. “It’s possible,” I said. Okay, it might not even be probable, but it did get the darn things off his face. After all, nobody wants to die in swim goggles.
“What? That’s not okay anymore?” He asked me when I look at him incredulously as he wiped his hands and his mouth on my kitchen curtains. First of all, ANYMORE? When was it ever okay to wipe his hands and his mouth on the kitchen curtains? Does he do it all the time and I just never caught him doing it before? Or worse, has he ever done it at my mother-in-law’s house? Second, how did it ever occur to him to do it in first place? Did his father show him this trick? A friend? He claims innocence. He claims no one taught him to be so clever, he came up with it all on his own. Third, he thinks it’s clever. Well, I suppose it does save on the cost of paper towels and napkins.
Armpit Confessions - What Makes Me Sweat - Underpants
My 5-year-old son went off to kindergarten without his underpants today. Here’s how it happened. He dressed himself. He likes to dress himself. We pick out his clothes the night before, and in the morning, I lay those clothes out on his bed and he gets dressed. Unsupervised. He usually does a great job. He’s very independent and has always been independent. He was an early talker and one of his first sentences was, ‘I do it my own self’. He is also very hung up on his hair. He spends several minutes a morning combing, wetting and re-combing his mop top. Then he smiles his, ‘I look good’ smile at himself in the mirror and he’s done. Then he runs into his playroom to line up his transformers for battle that will ensure after school. This morning, the routine held, all seem right in our little world at 7am.
Off we go to school, and we arrive early. The playground supervisor, Linda, hasn’t even opened the gate yet. So I jokingly say that we must have forgotten to do something, otherwise how could we be this early for school.
“What? you forgot my lunch, again?” My son asks in that resigned voice that only a 5-year-old can lay on you. It made me realize that he might be thinking his mom is going to turn out to be ‘that’ mom. The one who’s always forgetting something important or running through the parking lot with her kid dragging behind, trying to beat the bell every morning. Well, don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with that mom. I see how easy I have it. I don’t have to scramble around in the morning to get myself and a child together by 7.30am. I don’t have to rush off to work. I remind him that we are always early, and I’ve only forgotten his lunch once.
“So what did we forget?” He asks, sweetly now.
I tease him. “You have a shirt on don’t you?” He touches his chest and looks down. “And pants?” He pulls at his shorts and smiles. “And underpants?” I knew this would make him giggle. The word underpants seems to make all 5-year-old kids giggle. He giggled. He reached down and looked in to his shorts. His face registered shock. “I forgot my underpants.”
I catch my breath and feel my armpits fill with sweat. “You’re teasing me.” I say hopefully.
“No. See”. He pulls down his shorts enough to show me his little nakedness and indeed, there are no underpants on my child. “You can bring them to the office and Teacher Beth will get them for me.” My son says helpfully. No. no, I can’t bring your underpants to the office and ask a teacher to get them for you, I think to myself and I sweat in the driver’s seat trying to decide what to do. Is this bad? Is this okay? Is this just a funny omission or a terrible mistake?
“Just don’t tell anyone you forgot your underpants today, okay?”
“Okay, mommy. Don’t worry.”
“And don’t forget to wear underpants again.”
“Okay, mommy. Look, kids are going in. Hurry up! I want to get a swing,” my kid yells and starts pushing on the car door.
I think for one last minute at the possible outcome of child in school without underpants. I decide it’s no big deal. I can stop sweating, and make a note to myself to remember underpants for my kid and antiperspirant for myself every morning from now on.
One more note about underpants. For about 3 months now, I have been finding my son’s underpants under my pillow. He thinks it is hysterical to hide his underpants in my bed every night. I think I should be sweating this one, but I’m not because he’s 5. If he’s still doing it at 15, I’ll be sweating bullets.
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