Just Call Me "Mommy"

Why is it that little people always try and grow up too fast? I vaguely remember that feeling, that rushing when-will-I-be-able-to-eat-candy-for-breakfast sentiment that comes with the irresponsibility and ignorance of youth. When one is young, one wants to be able to make every decision (and then one becomes an adult and making decisions isn't always as much fun as it's cracked up to be).

My four-year-old son recently had the following discussion with me.

R: "Mom, when I was three, I called you "Mommy." Now, when I'm four, I call you "Mom."
Me: "What about Daddy?"
R: "When I was three I called him, "Daddy." Now that I'm four I call him "Dad."

The next day he went on to tell me that when he's five he's calling me "Faith."

Seriously, I know there is a certain amount of independence that comes along with knowing how to read, the ability to state the difference between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores, and being able to discern the particular type of a dozen different dinosaurs and sharks by sight, but I want to be "Mommy" for at least a few more years. Indefinitely would be better.

I Was Tackled by a Bear

My son has graduated from one sentence emails; he is now writing short stories with his Dad.













"I was tackled by a bear. It felt pretty good. I got hurt. That's too bad."

The End.

Great Minds Think Alike

My husband recently started a new game with my son. It's called, "let's send an email!" This game is loads of fun because my four-year-old gets to sit in the computer chair and send messages to various family members. The idea behind this type of communication is new to him, so we generally have to prompt him to decide what it is that he intends to say. Otherwise the people on the receiving end of the email would just get lines of gibberish (as in the following subject line, "if i did buT RRRR").

His spelling and reading skills are very advanced, but it still takes a while for him to type because the letter "a" is not next to the letter "b" on a keyboard. Generally his emails are limited to one sentence. The other day when asked what it was that he wanted to say he responded with the following:

"HI A VUlture kicked me in the leg."

This was just too good a declaration to pass up. My husband summarily whipped together an illustration to send along with the message.





I love my boys. Separately, they both make me chuckle. But they're even better together.

Don't Feed the Fish

So, the whole mushy sweet potato thing didn't go so well. Rice cereal, however, is a big hit. Pretty darn big. I feel as though I should get myself one of those fencing get-ups to protect my important parts: my face, head, and neck. Certainly, it couldn't hurt to have the rest of myself enclosed in some sort of protective covering.

The closest thing that I can think of to relate the baby-feeding experience to is a feeding frenzy in a pond: a person walks up to the edge and observes about a dozen fish milling about, floating lazily to and fro, then they toss a crumb into the water and all of those seemingly gentle and sedate fish converge on said crumb in a whirlwind of flashing teeth and flaming eyeballs. Yeah, that's what my sweet little baby turns into when she sees that spoon approaching- a scrabbling, grappling lunatic who appears to have been starved of sustenance for many a long day.

I fear for myself during these times. I really do. Today I gave her a sippy cup of water to wash down her cereal, and she actually managed to take big gulps from it. Without choking even. It's quite possible that I have lost myself in a time warp and that she is actually older than the five months I calculate her to be. That would also explain why she has the strength of a twenty-five-year-old man.

Slave to the Pear

I'm going to start the baby on solid food this week. She'll be five-months-old (already!) in a couple of days and she is definitely, positively, absolutely ready. I know this because 1) I'm Mommy so I know everything and 2) I'm no dope- I can read body language pretty well.

I recently made the mistake of sharing a pear with the baby. One feels rather guilty, after a while, of eating in front of another person who stares, salivates, and makes somewhat uncontrolled motions toward grabbing said food; especially when the person doing the salivating acts as though their life depends on that chocolate chip cookie one is eating, and will suffer a slow and painful death if it is denied them. Of course the cuteness factor just helps to heap the guilt on all the more. The day I finally gave in I wasn't eating a chocolate chip cookie, I was eating a pear. A nice, fresh, healthy, good-for-you pear.

As I moved the pear toward the baby's mouth she stuck her tongue out and licked my pear. She seized the hand holding the pear with determination and force, and tried to shove both the fruit and my entire hand into her mouth. She sucked on the pear. When I removed the pear from her jaws of doom and much mashing, she kicked me. Okay, I exaggerate ever so slightly. But her eyes got really, really wide and she lunged for that pear like a lioness pouncing on a gazelle.

She may try to pull my plate off of the table if she happens to be sitting in my lap whilst I eat, she might mechanically watch as my fork goes from my plate to my mouth and back again, but she now knows a pear from all of the other foods in the galaxy and if she senses a pear in her general vicinity one had better just LOOK OUT!

So bring on the icky-food-faces, and the orange-and-green-colored stained bibs: this kid is ready for pureed sweet potatoes and squash! At this point I fear my only other choice is to start sacrificing my fingers to the little slave to the pear.

Crossing Gender Role Boundaries

I fear that it may be a long time before my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter becomes a lady. At times she reminds me strongly of my younger sister, Bethany, who could put a grown man to shame with her belching capabilities as a young girl. (Well, let’s be honest, my sister may be approaching her late twenties, but she can still burp with the best of them.) Some part of me, that no longer exists, was a bit disgusted by all that belching and burping.

I distinctly remember a time during my later teenage years, when the whole family was traveling I-don’t-recollect-where together, that I unintentionally let out a rancid belch of my own. My sister was impressed, my Dad was impressed, and quite frankly my entire family was impressed, or at the very least, amused. Perhaps that was when I lost some of my snobbery toward people blessed with the ability to express their backed up gasses in such a vocal and rumbling fashion. I do retain, however, an appreciation for politeness in these situations. A little “excuse me” goes a long way.

Anyway, back to my little girl. Against my wishes Daddy betook to amuse himself with teaching the whole “pull my finger” routine to the kiddos. He's a bit of a gasser, and the children think the whole thing is splendid. Especially my little Princess Meatball, as Daddy calls her. In fact, after many months of indoctrination into the cult of finger yanking, she will now instruct her brother and Daddy to pull her finger. Luck might be a Lady, but my daughter? Well…

The especially charming thing about all of this is that she can burp on command. Two-years-old though she may be, she has already walked away from numerous burping contests the victor, leaving the men of the house in her small, tiny little wake. Suffice it to say that upon pulling her finger she promptly lets out a curt belch.

Yep. That’s my girl. Hopefully, as time goes on she tempers her skill with an aptitude for cooking or sewing or something. At least for now her Daddy and her Auntie B are violently proud of her. I suppose something has to be said for that.

And Then There Were None

I missed my sisters today. Maybe it’s the cold winter blues. Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of my friends’ lives have drifted away from my own. Maybe it’s simply because all three of my siblings moved away in such a short period of time.

I am almost twenty-nine. My closest sister is twenty-seven, the next, twenty, and the youngest is eighteen. The baby of the family left for college in the end of August, moving five hours away to the other side of our rather large state. One week later my closest sister moved an hour and a half south to take a job in Philadelphia. And then in October my last remaining sister married and is making her new home three hours away in Maryland. I’m the only one who stayed.

Everyday life generally keeps me busy enough that I don’t notice, but today I found myself feeling emotional and rather lonely for their company. I suppose I shouldn’t complain because they don’t live terribly far away. And I suppose it’s nice that we all get along and love each other to the point of missing each other now and again.



















Kneeling from left: my mom holding my daughter, my son, my daddy
Standing: my closest sister, my baby sister, me holding my baby, my little sister, my grammy
Back row: my husband, my brother-in-law, my pop-pop