Michele A Hubbs

Chatty Child (Honorable Mention in LA Parent Magazine's Mom's Who Write contest)

2011-04-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

Every morning around 6.00 am I hear the most wonderful voice in the world, the voice of my son, Walker, asking me if he can be up yet. It’s early and I don’t want to be up, but since I haven’t heard his voice for at least 8 hours, I’m thrilled to hear him say, ‘can you make pancakes?’ And I can’t turn down that cute, little voice. Cut to 12 hours later, on his second sick day home from kindergarten, and I’m ready to stick my head in the oven so that I can have a moment of silence. It is an understatement to say that my five-year-old is chatty. Seriously, there are some days that I wonder how he can even be conscious. I don’t understand how he has managed even one breath between all those words that are falling from his mouth, an avalanche of stories, as he tells me about the world according to Walker. Usually, he chatters on about super heros or the latest Sponge Bob episode, or he will extoll the powers of each and every Bakugan as he refers to them by name - names that I am supposed to remember. I challenge you try to keep the names and powers of Dragonoid, Griffon, Claf and Frosh, just to name 4 of about 50, straight. Seriously, he will talk about anything just to talk. Sometimes he’ll sing some nonsense song, I guess just to hear his own voice. I know that sounds very creative and joyful and, of course, in about ten years, I will wonder what my son’s voice sounds like because he’ll be a moody teenager who shuts himself in his bedroom every weekend only to emerge for meals during which he grunts, maybe burps, and then leaves the table without even a nod to me. I know I should be grateful for this wonderful time of life when my son discusses with me the pros and cons of owning every single Transformer ever made or tells me why he needs all the Ben 10 aliens today instead of waiting until his birthday. I am grateful, truly I am. There are just some days that I need a little quiet time. And since ‘can I watch t.v.?’ comes out of my son’s mouth at least once every twenty minutes no matter how he’s feeling, I could, like most mothers who maintain some degree of sanity, use television as my babysitter for a little while each day, right? Wrong. My son wants to explain to me how the penguins can talk in one show and that in the next show, these two guys are always wondering where Perry the platypus is, and I’m actually supposed to pay attention. ‘Mom watch this, it’s so funny. Mom, you gotta see this’. The voice from the t.v. room reaches out and grabs me as I try deep breathing exercises, coffee guzzling and a chocolate fix to get myself through the day. As he carries on with his running commentary of his cartoons, I hang my head and wonder if I can fake bed time by closing the drapes, and I feel guilty for being tired of listening to him talk. I know I’m not the only mother who feels like this sometimes. I know it’s not the worst thing in the world to feel this way, but still, the guilt tugs at me like a five-year-old in a candy shop. In fact, I feel so guilty that I ask my son some silly question about Power Rangers knowing that he will spend the next 45 minutes explaining good guys vs. bad guys and rolling his eyes because he has to tell to me, once again, why those Rangers need to be strewn across his playroom floor instead of tucked away in their storage bin. (They are protecting the dinosaurs, really, mom. You should know this by now).

Now I’m sure I don’t have you fooled. After my son is finally asleep at the end of another long day, and the only sound coming from his mouth is a gentle and endearing snore, I kneel next to his bed and stroke his head and whisper that I love him bigger than the sky and forever and ever and I almost, but not quite, hope that he’ll wake up and tell me another long-winded story about how the Super Hero Squad saved the day.

http://losangeles.parenthood.com/directory/article/guide/moms-who-write

Armpit Confessions-What Makes me Sweat-Words that come back to haunt me

2011-04-10T15:57:00.001-07:00

Suck it up!!! As the words left my mouth, I knew I would be sorry, probably sooner than later. My son, the drama prince, had taken a little spill when his scooter struck the edge of the sidewalk. He had a very small sidewalk scrape on his knee which lead to an overly dramatic display of emotions. The tears, the howls, he actually had the neighborhood dogs going at it thanks to the strange noises he was spewing from his mouth. This from a 5-year-old who thinks he’s old enough to drive. Seriously, the other day we were out to dinner with my in-laws and he let out a huge sigh and asked for the car keys. I said what for and he told me he was ready to leave, he would drive himself home.

But back to the sidewalk scrape. I sympathized for a few minutes, comforted him, but when he cried until he hyper-ventilated over a little scrape on his knee, I had to do something. He’ll be afraid of everything if I let him cry on and on about a little boo boo, right? Well, so, I told him to suck it up and get back on the scooter. I said that’s what the big kids do and he is desperate to be a big kid, so suck it up he did. Back on the scooter, no more tears and no more spills. I did my job, or so I thought. Cut to the next day when I pick him up from school and his has a pretty ugly scrape on his elbow. I asked him what happened and he said he fell off the swing. Feeling that mother guilt for not being there to comfort him during this latest removal of a layer of skin, I sat him down, hugged him and asked him if it hurt. Yes, he said, it hurt. I asked him if he cried and he said no. That left me wondering. Does he only cry when I’m around to comfort him? Is that okay? Maybe I should hang around outside the school all day just in case my kid falls again. Maybe I should revise my previous statements about crying and tell him it’s okay to express his feeling. Maybe...just then my son patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘it’s okay, mommy, it hurt, but I sucked.” “You what?” “I sucked. Just like you told me to do.” And he jumped down from the chair and ran off to his playroom. So, my advice to suck it up turned into “I sucked”. Great. I wonder if he told Miss Linda, the woman on yard duty, that his mom told him that he sucks or that he should suck or she sucks or how that conversation might have possible gone. I shudder to think. Fortunately, after much prying, my son told me he didn’t think that he said that he sucked to anyone, he just sucked and got back on the swing like I said he should. And it was fun again. Thanks mom.” Right. Thanks, mom. I suck. Sometime, sometime very soon, I will explain the difference between sucking it up and sucking, but not today. I’m too traumatized by my own advice.

Armpit Confessions-What Makes me Sweat-Toddlers who lick

2010-07-26T18:25:00.001-07:00

My 5-year-old son just barreled full speed past me across the floor toward the stairs. I cringe; he bangs his head on the banister. I have told told him countless times not to run in his socks. I have begged him to take off his socks in this house of hard wood floors. I have reminded him over and over about the last slippery-sock mishap. Needless to say, it ended with many tears but, thankfully, no blood. This time. It makes me wonder, where do these acts of complete disregard for safety come from? I have a theory. It’s those valentine heart candies. You know the ones that are the perfect little decorations for toddlers to glue onto crafts in pre-school. But at 3-years-old, it is nearly impossible to ignore those candies even though they’ve been handled by every other 3-year-old in the school, glued, moved, shifted, glued some more and then colored on with markers by your little one. It doesn’t matter that the teacher reminded your son over and over that that craft is not for eating, it’s for hanging on the fridge or placing on the mantel. It is irrelevant that that craft fell on the dirty playground and was stepped on in the car. That craft is suddenly a tongue magnet. Something meant to be licked, something irresistible, it is candy, after all. And you, the recipient of said craft, cannot not put it out for the world to see what your little angel made for you. Until you catch your angel licking that craft again and again. I caught my son in the act at least 20 times before I finally caved in and hid it in my closet. He, of course, discovered my hiding place and proceeded to stand on a stool balanced on 3 pillows to get to it to then do what? Lick it again! After reminding him that those candies were covered in glue and marker and rubbed by dirty hands and who knows what else at school, I had to make that thing disappear. I didn’t even miss it, but he did. He asked about that thing for weeks. I feigned ignorance, pretended not to know what craft he was talking about or directed his attention to some nearby shiny object to change the subject. It worked after a while. We don’t discuss the heart shaped, candy and glue covered craft anymore. And now that my son is 5, I really have to wonder if the bonehead things he does today are a direct result of his glue licking 2 years ago. Is it possible? I know those glues and markers made for kids are supposed to be non-toxic, but do we really know? How can we be guaranteed that these things don’t affect mental capabilities as our kids grow? I guess we have to hope for the best. I guess I have to realize that kids do crazy things and embrace those things, as long as they are not eminently dangerous. And didn’t Pearl S. Buck say, ‘the young don’t know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible-and achieve it, generation after generation. It’s a beautiful sentiment, not necessarily referring to the crazy things my kid does, but I guess I could smile-and cringe only to myself-as my son for attempts to slide a record distance across the floor, or jump from his skateboard to the mini-trampoline and back or run at full speed across grandma’s deck and jump into the pool. I’m going to draw the line at licking my valentine gift because I’m quite certain that is not what Pearl S. Buck had in mind. No licking, and that’s final.

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Fibbing to a 5-year-old

2010-03-03T11:55:00.001-08:00

Perhaps my biggest fib, the one that will no doubt haunt me in the years to come, is that I have eyes in the back of my head. I know, my mother used to say it to me, countless mothers have used it, but my son may be the most literal soul on the planet. The first time I used it, I was turned toward the stove and my son was jumping on the couch. His eyes grew as wide as plates and he said to me, ‘you have back eyes?’

“Yes, I do,” I replied and thought that was the end of it. Oh no. He was amazed at my super-hero like abilities. He proceeded to ask what other eyes I had. Did I have side eyes? Top eyes? X-ray eyes? All of which I decided I did have, because most moms do have a sort of psychic eye into the havoc their children are causing behind their backs. I thought I was justified. This was 3 years ago, and to this day, my son will still ask me if I have my back eyes on when he wants to jump from couch to chair or swing his light saber at the dog or, dread, pick his nose.

I’m already sweating the day that I have to admit that I don’t really have my super-hero back eyes. They have come in handy so many times, more times than I can count. I admit, I do overuse my back eyes at times, like when my son asks me to look at his painting after every single brush stroke. Thankfully, so far he hasn’t quizzed me on his color palate or his design. He just believes me when I say that it’s awesome.

There are time when using my back eyes actually feels like I’m performing a public service. For example, consider the hundreds of times he asks me to ‘look’ while I’m driving because he’s created yet another ball out of Bendeross. I say, ‘very nice’. He says, ‘do you have you back eyes on?’ I reply with a very upbeat, ‘of course’, and he just says, ‘okay’. It also works when he’s playing with his seat buckle, something I can hear but can’t see. When I tell him not to do it, he just asks, well, you get the idea. Works like a charm.

The problem is that lately, I’ve been having a re-occurring dream that I do actually grow eyes in the back of my head. They would come in handy, sure, but they would be very unattractive. Imagine my hair hanging in them all the time. And if I couldn’t reach them to apply mascara, yikes!

For now, I’m sticking to my story, and I’m keeping my back eyes. This is a fib that I don’t really want to live without. I’ll take my chances that my son will forgive me when he discovers the truth. By then, he won’t think I’m cool or fun or interesting anymore anyway, right?

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Santa Claus

2009-12-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

“Mommy, is Santa Claus real?” My 5-year-old son asks quietly from the back seat of the car. Oh no. How do I answer this one?

“Do you think Santa is real?” I ask as I break out in a cold sweat.

“Yes.”

“I guess he’s real then.”

Silence from the back seat, not a good sign. He’s thinking. He’s thinking, and he’s not happy with my answer. My husband and I, like most parents, have tried to stress the true meaning of Christmas to our son, not just the commercial one. We tell him it’s about love and family and giving and, for some people, it’s the celebration of the birth or Jesus, the son of God. That, of course, sparked another sweat inducing conversation, which I will share at a later date. But sticking with Santa for now, I know my son is not satisfied. He wants, no he needs, me to tell him flat out that Santa is real. I’m stuck and I’m not prepared for this question, even though I know I should be. This is one of those conversations I should have had with myself at 2 a.m. some morning when I couldn’t sleep and had 4 more hours to compile possible answers and log them in my brain for future use.

“Mommy, tell me in true, is Santa real?”

“Did someone tell you he isn’t real?”

“No. I just want to know.”

“Santa is in your heart. If you believe in him, he is real.”

“What?”

Exactly. What the heck am I saying. I don’t want to lie to my son, but I don’t want to spoil ‘Santa’ so early on in his life. And I certainly don’t want him blabbing to the other kids on the playground that Santa doesn’t exist because his mommy said so. I’m torn between honesty and good old fashion seasonal fun.

“Does it matter, really?” I ask and wince.

“YES!”

“Okay. Fine, but you know that you only get one present from Santa anyway. All your gifts come from your family and friends who love you and spend their own money to buy things for you for Christmas.”

“Whose money does Santa spend?”

Oy. “I think he gets it from the government.”

“Who’s the government?”

Wow. I am is so much trouble here. The only thing I can think to do is to pray. I pray that the neighborhood kids are outside in front of our house on their bikes and skateboards. If that’s the case, my son will be distracted from the Santa question in about 30 seconds, once we turn the corner onto our street. If my prayer is answered, my son will jump out of the car, grab his scooter and all his gear and get busy with his friends, so busy he’ll forget our conversation from moments before. Please Santa, if you do exist, I need help here. I need the neighbors to be playing outside. Right. Now.

“Mommy, did the government give Santa enough money to buy me a Dual Action Light Saber?”

Come on, come on, I’m almost there. There’s our street. I’m turning, I’m turning onto our block, yes! There are at kids everywhere. Helmets are on, skate boards are rolling, balls are being thrown. I’m saved. There is a Santa after all.

“Lemme out, mama, quick!” My son yells as I roll to a stop in our driveway, and he barrels from the car to catch up with his best buddies playing dodge ball on the front lawn. I sigh a deep sigh and relax, until I realize that this is only a temporary fix for the Santa dilemma. Does he or doesn’t he exist? Lie or don’t lie to a 5-year-old? I better get my story worked out in my head pretty quickly, because I know this question will come up again later at bath time. That’s when the big questions usually come.

Now I’m the one who’s barreling out the car and making a bee-line to the mommy next door. She has undoubtedly already tackled this question since her kids are a bit older. I need some advice, now. I’ve only got 5 hours until bath time! Yikes.

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Deep Thinking 5-year-olds

2009-10-30T12:04:00.001-07:00

“Does God have shots in heaven?” This question comes after I mention to my son that he has to get a shot the next day. I know what your thinking, don’t tell him he’s going in for a shot, you’re just asking for trouble. But my son is on the ball when it comes to the doctor. He knows it’s the ‘shot’ place; he also knows it’s the really cool sticker place. He’s very conflicted about the doctor. And he seems to do much better when we talk about things first. He wants a heads up or he will make me pay.

But back to the God giving shots in heaven question. My answer took a few minutes to formulate, but I thought I had it covered.

“I don’t know if God has shots in heaven, I’ve never been there,” I say confidently.

“I bet he doesn’t,” he says and throws himself down on his bed. Yikes. Is my son going to go to sleep wishing he could go to heaven tonight so he doesn’t have to get a shot tomorrow? That’s enough to keep me from sleeping for a week, and enough to make me sweat a shower under my shirt.

“Kids need to get shots to protect them from getting sick,” I say, trying to switch the direction of the conversation.

“Does God have any kids?” He asks. Oops, that didn’t work.

“Well, some people believe that Jesus is God’s son.”

“Do we believe that?” What ever happened to discussions about what the cow says and who oinks?

“I believe that Jesus is the son of God,” I say.

“What do I believe?” Hmmm. Before I could come up with an answer he asks, “what does daddy believe?”

Oy. “Daddy doesn’t believe or dis-believe. He has a broader view of God and heaven and Jesus.”

“What?”

Okay, I am dripping wet with sweat. This is not the kind of question you want to hesitate to answer, but also the not the kind of question you want to get wrong. Even if there is not real wrong, there could be a wrong answer for you and your family. And I just gave an answer that confused even me.

“You, me and daddy believe in heaven. And remember what I told you the last time we talked about heaven?” (Yes, we’ve had a similar discussion before. You would think I would get it right the second time around.)

“No.”

“I told you that most people live to be almost 100 years old, then they go to heaven.”

“Forever?”

“Well, yes.”

“What do we do in heaven forever?” My son has a look of panic on his face.

“What do you want to do in heaven?”

“Will my toys will be in heaven?”

“Well.” Deep sigh. “I think that whatever and whoever you love will end up in heaven someday.”

He seems to be contemplating this and he also seems to be much more at ease for the moment. I, on the other hand, am a mess. I don’t want my son to be scared of the whole God and heaven and death thing, he’ll be touched by it many times in his life, in fact, he already has been. We’ve had to deal with the death of my sister and the death of a friend’s infant son. I don’t want my son feel like he’d like to go check out this heaven place, but I don’t want him to be scared to go to sleep because he thinks he might die either.

“I think God has kids,” my son says finally.

“Me too.”

“I’m taking my toys with me when I go to heaven.”

“Okay.”

“Not ‘til I’m a hundred though, right?”

“Right.” Whew. He wants to stick around, even if it means he has to get a shot.

“Do I still have to get a shot?”

“I promise to get my flu shot if you get your flu shot. How about that?”

“Deal.” He puts out his hand for me to shake.

“Deal.”

I need a drink, and not some wimpy drink that ends with the words ‘fizz’ or ‘sour’. I need a drink that ends with the phrase, ‘straight up with two olives please’. Bartender?

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Poop

2009-10-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

My son has a mild fever and a tummy ache.

"What does it feel like?" I ask.

"Yucky," is the answer.

Well that doesn’t narrow it down for me much. It could be he simply needs to poop, and the fever is leftover from his ear infection last week. Or, he’s got a piercing pain in his stomach and he has the H1N1 flu and he will be admitted to the hospital within hours with life threatening symptoms, and I'll hold a vigil at his bedside banging myself on the head with his food tray and weeping that I should have been a better mom. My mind goes wild with possibilities, real and imagined, crazy and insane, none of them substantiated with any facts. But who cares. I need my stress fix for the week, and I ‘m sweating bullets. Turns out he just needed to poop.

Last week it was my dog. Her poop was mush, not just loose, I’m talking mushy mush. It’s mush quite often. She eats everything. What else can I expect but mushy poop. Still, I needed my stress fix for the week, something to make me sweat. This one actually sent my spiraling for a few weeks because it is an ongoing problem. I wanted to get her spayed, but what if she has explosion of poop while she is at the vet and they take her away from me and hand her over to doggie protective services because I should have gotten treatment for her mushy poop, and then my son never forgives me for losing the dog. (Whew, see how my head works.)

Actually, I did try to get her treatment. I've spent about $800 dollars on her for numerous visits to the vet and tests and medicines to get to the bottom of, no pun intended, the poop problem. Multiple doses of diarrhea medicine later, she still eats rocks and still doesn’t know how to poop like a proper dog.

‘Does it really matter?’ You ask. Well, she wakes me up a few times a night to be let out of the house to poop her mushy poop all over the backyard. So yes, it does matter since I haven’t slept through the night in 3 months. Sound like a newborn? It is, in a way, although I can leave her in her crate and go to the grocery store, And yes, leaving my son in his crib while I went out was something I thought about but, of course, never actually did, when my son was an infant. The thing is, infants will poop and sit in it and play with it, they don’t care. Dogs care. My dog won’t poop in her crate.

Lately, my little boy gets in to the dog’s crate with her, and as most mother’s would probably contemplate, but might not admit, I think to myself, ‘can I lock the crate and go for a pedicure? I’ll be quick, I promise’.

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Underpants

2009-10-29T12:01:00.001-07:00

My 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 recombing 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 ensue 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-olds 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 faux paux?

“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.

Armpit Confessions-What Makes Me Sweat-Tree Mold

2009-10-29T11:58:00.001-07:00

“Mommy, what’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? You’re the mom.”

Uh oh. Now I’m sweating. Make something up. Make something up quickly, I think to myself. I’m not exactly fast on my feet under pressure, especially the pressure from a 5-year-old who thinks I know everything. And who am I to discourage that thinking? I need an answer, fast.

“It’s mold,” I say.

“On a tree?”

“Sure, why not.”

“No it’s not.”

“You said I know everything, and I say it’s mold.”

"Yeah, Right.” My son smirks and walks away to hang from a branch on a nearby tree.

Yikes, I think to myself. I better get busy and study up on something. Anything. What if my kid asks me another question and I can’t come up with an answer. Sure, he didn’t believe my answer this time, but I came up with something and feigned confidence. When I figure out what that green stuff on the tree is, I’ll just toss it into a conversation some where and correct myself without admitting error. Right?

Well, it turns out there is such a thing a tree mold. Thank you Google. Maybe I do know everything, except of course the names of the all the Transformers, but come on, I’m looking at names like Mudflap, Soundwave, Grimlock and Waspinator. Any mom would struggle with those.

So I’ll jump around on Google tonight, just in case. I’ll just pop in any old phrase and search. Hmmm, the mating rituals of the preying mantis. That has come up recently. We found one on the screen door and we had to move it before the dog saw it and decided to bat it around the yard for a while or have it as a treat. As I carried it gently across the lawn, my son asked where his mom and dad were. I said I was sure they were just over there, in the direction we were headed.

“Does he have a honey?” My son asked.

“A honey?”

“Like daddy is to you.”

“Oh, a honey. Right. Well, maybe she’s over here too,” I say as I place the preying mantis on a nearby bush. I didn’t want to mention that I may be saving a she, not a he, and she has probably bitten the head off her honey already, so he won’t be joining her for dinner. But according to the website Wonderworld.com that turned up on my Google search, which I promptly did right after my son went to bed because he was sure to revisit the saga of the lonely preying mantis again this week, it’s not very common for the female preying mantis to bite the head off the male in the wild. It occurs much more frequently when the mantis’ are in captivity. Whew, I don’t have to explain that, for now. I can just tell my son that the preying mantis is a solitary creature, he hangs alone. To which my son will inevitably comment on how boring it is to hang out alone and then he’ll ask, ‘why don’t I have a brother or a sister to hang out with?’ At this point, I will bring the conversation back to tree mold. I will tell my son that I looked it up on the computer and that tree mold does exist and that’s what we saw on the tree the other day, and I was right, and did he want to go looking for more tree mold? He’ll say cool, because he is 5, and I can coast on that for a while, until the next sweat inducing question comes along. I give it 10 minutes, wish me luck.

Honorable Mention in LA Parent Magazine's Mom Who Write Contest

2009-10-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Toddlers vs. Pets

I have come to the conclusion that toddlers are very much like cats. Now I’m not saying I should treat my toddler like a pet, although I do believe in treating my pet well and with lots of love, nor do I think I should push my toddler off the couch when he puts his little butt in my face, but there have been many moments since the birth of my son when I have thought to myself, these two, the cat and the kid, are shockingly alike. I feel that I must reiterate, I do not think I can leave my child unsupervised while I go to the store or say, to Europe, but on a daily basis, it turns out that the years of taking care of my cat were pretty good preparation for taking care of my son.

Let me give you some examples to back up my logic. I learned, over the years, that my cat does not want me to tell her when to eat. She wants her food left out so she can graze at her leisure throughout the day. With my son, this is slightly altered, but for the most part, he’s a grazer. He doesn’t want to sit still for a meal; he is in perpetual motion. So, if kids need three meals and two snacks a day, a nap and lots of entertainment, those meals and snacks seem to be best administered by leaving a bowl of food out and accessible at all times, so he can grab at it between our laps around the house or the yard or the neighborhood.

When my cat was younger, she used to like to bat at the roll of toilet paper, pull it off the holder and tear it apart. Hmm, suspiciously, just like my son. Now, kitty cat outgrew this behavior long before my son in grew it or grew into it, or something like that. So it’s not a learned behavior; both cat and kid seem to be instinctively from the same school of thought. Unfortunately for the grown people in the house, that means the roll of paper stays off the holder and up on the counter, annoyingly out of reach from the sitting position on the toilet.

My son likes stickers but gets crazy, screaming mad and jumps up and down when they get stuck to him, almost like my cat. Instead, she runs in circles when they get stuck to her paws. My son sometimes snuggles tightly in my arms when he wants to feel cozy, my cat snuggles up on my head while I’m trying to sleep when she needs to feel the same way. You see, different, but not really.

If you are not familiar with cat behavior, I can tell you that they love you all the time but they only show it when they are in the mood. Suspiciously, when I ask for a hug or a kiss from my son and he is not in the mood, he tells me ‘way’, as in get out of my.... Of course, when I least expect it, I’ll get a big hug and a juicy kiss for no reason at all, from my son, not from my cat.

I used to joke that my cat understood the word ‘no’ but would pretend that she didn’t just because she could. She’s very smart and will stop in her tracks when I say ‘no’, but then she seems to quickly realize that she doesn’t actually need to listen. She understands that she can pretend to not know what I mean when I say ‘no’. My son does exactly the same thing. So, I do exactly the same thing with both my son and my cat. I remove the little being from the situation that required a ‘no’ in the first place. There is usually much hissing and moaning, but they both seem to get over it pretty quickly. Which leads me to my next comparison, grudges. I’ve heard people say that cats punish their people for bad behavior, like not cleaning the little box or not refilling the water bowl, but I’ve never found cat poop in my shoe. I’ve just never had that issue with my cat, or my son. My boy is happy to walk around all day with a poopy diaper if it means he doesn’t have to stop moving. But if I do insist on a diaper change, there is much hissing and moaning, however as soon as I place him back onto the floor, my son is off and running. The incident is forgotten as he leads me by the finger into the next room he’d like to tear apart. I guess I’m pretty lucky that my cat responds the same way, although she might not if she was wearing a diaper that had to be changed, but she seems to forgive and forget pretty quickly.

My son used to claw his way up my husband’s body as soon as I said the word bath, as if daddy could save him from the dreaded ritual of washing. Oddly, bath is also a word that my cat recognizes, and when I used to try to give her a bath, she clawed her way up anyone or any piece of furniture that she thought could save her from the dreaded tub. I’ve since given up on trying to bathe my cat myself, but you’ll be happy to hear that I have not given up on trying to bathe my son.

I feel I need to promise you that my son is my world and I spend countless hours just staring at him in amazement, so please don’t call child protective services because you think I have left him alone at home with an open refrigerator and a litter box in the corner. I would also like to say that my husband does not like my comparison of cat and kid, and he just recently pointed out that we have not had to treat our son for worms. Now, I know you are thinking exactly what I’m thinking, we have not had to treat our son for worms, yet.