Musings of a Mom

Names are a tricky thing when you have kids. I’m not talking about choosing names. No, I’m talking about remembering the names you’ve already chosen - especially when you have more than one child.My mom chose to combine the first two letters of my sister’s name with mine and vice versa, so my name was, and still is, Sh-Tam. It makes me sound like a superhero. Look!  It’s Sh-Tam! The woman who can multi-task at the speed of light!

My grandfather chose to run through the whole list of grandchildren in birth order, regardless of gender. I have 11 cousins and I’m at the younger end so it took awhile for grandpa to remember who I was.

My method is similar to my grandfather’s but with a slight twist. Since I only have two kids I shouldn’t have a problem, but to get to my daughter’s name I find myself first saying my nephew’s name (notice the difference in gender) then our dog’s name (the dog has been dead for almost ten years now) and finally Sugar’s name. 

For some reason, when Buddy came along I didn’t just lengthen the list, I changed it altogether. For Buddy I say my husband’s name, then Sugar and then I add “Whoever you are.” Now, I say this with a smile so he knows I’m kidding, but apparently my husband does the same thing. So now my son walks into a room and says, “Dad - Mom - whoever you are.”

I wonder what he’ll call his kids.

Okay, my kids are warped. I admit it. While my daughter would like to go to Disneyland, her vacation destination of choice is Hawaii or New York City, my son has announced that he wants to be an alien like E.T. and both of my kids think pulling weeds is fun.

Because the kids are having fun with yard work, my husband and I decided to get gloves and another weed puller for them. I was a normal child who understood that yard work was not fun. Think about it, the last part of yard work is work!

Somehow this chore has become fun for them. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the fact that my kids want to pull weeds. I just don’t understand it. They honest-to-goodness begged to pull weeds tonight after dark. Okay, well that WAS a ploy to postpone bedtime, but come on!

So I have to wonder, my son mentioned wanting to be an alien. He asked if he could breathe in space if he was born there. He asked if aliens get fleas.  Was he asking questions to throw me off track?  Maybe, just maybe, these warped kids who like to pull weeds are aliens!

I guess I better check the backyard for pods.

My son, “Buddy,” loves gardening. I know that he did not get his love of gardening from me because I can kill the heartiest plant. So my son takes care of his various plants and reminds me when I need to water mine.

One of Buddy’s favorite stores is a local plant nursery. Buddy loves to look at the different types of plants and learn their names. He always asks if we can buy a plant to take home.  He loves to visit the nursery so much that he asked his daycare provider to take the kids there for a field trip. Yes, they went.

The other day when I went to pick Buddy up from daycare, he was upset. “What’s wrong? I asked. “I…didn’t…get to…PULL…WEEDS!” he complained. I explained that we have plenty at home for him to pull but he was not appeased. His daycare person offered, “We can go pick a weed now if you want.” “I don’t want to pick only ONE!” This is where I flash forward ten years and hear this same child complain about HAVING to pull weeds. 

I’ll just enjoy my weed-pulling child as long as I can. 

 It’s spring this week and we’re getting some nice weather in California so it’s time to get some clothes for the kids. We needed shorts and sandals for them and now is the time to buy them, mostly because the stores don’t carry the items in the right season. Right now the stores are selling bathing suits and summer wear, but come May, you’ll only find these items on the clearance racks. At that point the stores will be stocking their shelves with school clothes for the fall. But I digress.

So we were out trying on sandals when Sugar found a pair of sandals that she HAD to have. “Please, Mom, Please can I have these?” They were heels! She’s 7 years old!  I don’t remember asking for heels until I was about 11 years old. So I did one of the dumbest things a parent can do; I started thinking logically. I said, “Sugar, you know you can’t run in those.” She said, “I know, you can only walk. I promise I won’t run in them. Can I have them, please?” Now, the real problem isn’t that I’m weak and give in to a begging child. No, the real problem is that I’m female and I too thought that these heels were really cute. In fact, if they had had them in my size I probably would have bought a matching pair.

So I enlisted my husband’s help. Or at least I tried. I asked what he thought about her having heels. He looked at me and then at her and then back to me. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. This is your department.” Thanks.

I let Sugar try them on and said, “Let’s see how you walk.” Now, I know walking in heels takes practice, but Sugar doesn’t know that. Plus, I was still trying to decide.

Now, Sugar thinks that she’s getting closer to getting the heels because I’m letting her try them on (and she’s correct in that thinking) so she’s excited. So she puts on the sandals and takes four steps and says, “Oh, no. I’m not getting these.” I asked why and she said, “Mom, these push you forward!” I said, “I know.  They’re heels. That’s what heels do.”  She said, “No, Mom, you just don’t know! They make you feel like you’re going to fall on your face!” I explained that I have a closet full of heels and so I understand, but to a 7-year old experiencing this for the first time, well… “Mom, you just don’t know. I’m a sport girl, I want my tennis shoes!” 

And in that moment, my precious little girl stayed 7 years old.

 Years ago my cousin told me that when she was a kid she tried to get out of eating something that her mother made for dinner. The rule was that you couldn’t leave the table until you had finished your dinner and so they sat…and sat… and sat, because my cousin refused to eat the offending food. 

Finally, she got an idea. She told her parents that she needed to go to the bathroom. They agreed to let her go and she grabbed her plate. When they asked what she was doing, she told them that she knew she needed to eat and so she was taking her food with her to the bathroom so she could eat in there. Amazingly, her parents let her! 

Now, she and I both knew that her parents probably agreed just to get her out of the dining room before they started laughing. She, of course, went into the bathroom, flushed the food down the toilet and returned to the table proclaiming how delicious the offending food was.

Now, my daughter has heard me tell that story and I let her hear so that she knows that it won’t work. But that is not how a child’s mind works.

Tonight, she did not want to eat peas. I can’t blame her, but my husband chose peas tonight, and peas we shall eat. (Or at least the kids will. I don’t need permission not to eat mine). So she whined about it and begged and then, while I was in another room and my husband was on the phone, she made her move. 

I caught her walking towards the bathroom with a napkin in hand. I asked, “What are you doing?” And she turned to me with a mouth full of peas and a napkin loaded with the rest and managed to say, “I’m going to the bathroom.” I said, “Oh, you’ve heard that story way too many times to think I’ll fall for it.” And she just flashed her best Cheshire cat grin and returned to the table.

I told my daughter that she was going to have to get really creative because her father and I were kids and we know other people who were kids, so we’ve either tried to get out of eating or we’ve heard how other people tried. Nevertheless, we know the angles and it’s a slim shot at best to get past us. 

I was wrong however. She ended up negotiating with my husband to eat green beans instead. Touché.

 Daylight savings time is difficult for adults to adjust to and it is even more difficult for kids to deal with.

Trying to get my kids to bed on time was more of a struggle than usual.  The clocks read 8:00 but their bodies did not.  So they stalled.  “Are you SURE it’s bedtime?”  “What time would it be yesterday?”

In trying to get the kids to comply, my husband and I would say, “Let’s close our eyes and go to sleep because tomorrow you’ll have to wake up earlier than you’re used to,” and “Go to sleep now so you’re not grouchy first thing in the morning.”

My son asked, “Why do we have to wake up FIRST thing in the morning?”  I am not a morning person so, while I thought his question was brilliant, I still found myself explaining that we get up early to go to school, work, et cetera.  Okay, so my answer wasn’t on the genius level of his question, but that’s what you get from a mom at daylight savings time.

 A friend of mine was recently telling me how frustrated she’s been that her 13-year-old son hasn’t been taking responsibility for his actions. She said he won’t get his homework done on time and then blames his parents, his teacher or anyone else he can think of. During the conversation I said the fateful words: “I know it’s coming, but I’m hoping we don’t have to go through it.” 

Two days later I was picking my son up from daycare when he loudly announced, “Mom, the WORST part of my day was DAD forgot my blanket!” Then when we got home and saw my husband my son said, “Dad the WORST part of my day was YOU forgot my blanket!” To which my husband replied: “I’m sorry about that, but someone else forgot your blanket too.” My son didn’t say anything so I thought I’d try and be helpful by saying “Who went to school with Dad this morning?” My son said in a very low voice “I….am….not….answering that.” Boy, without knowing the law, my son has claimed the Fifth Amendment. So much for teaching kids responsibility.

 My sister’s newest hobby is photography. A few months ago she got a fancy camera that has all the bells and whistles although it doesn’t have the one feature all cameras need: the alarm that yells at the photographer for making her subjects face the sun. Anyway, my sister has been playing with her camera and taking classes and talking about taking her son and my kids to a flower-filled field somewhere to take some pictures.

Right now in California the weather is great. It’s very spring-like and flowers are blooming.  In other words, allergy season has begun. So my sister chooses yesterday to get us together for a photo shoot. The thing you should know about my sister is that she is a planner. She researches for months where to go for day trips, birthday party preparations are made months in advance, vacations are…well, you get the point. Since my sister is a planner and she’s been talking about this flower-filled-field idea for a few weeks, I naturally assumed she had a plan. Now, two weeks ago she did mention going to Napa so I don’t think I was too far off the mark in making an assumption.

So imagine my surprise when we loaded all the kids plus my sister’s very excited dog into our vehicles and my husband asks “Where are we going?” And my sister says, “I don’t know, I was going to follow you.” Hmmm.

After various ideas were thrown out and we got on the road, we found the perfect place. The perfect place is an open field filled with what my sister calls mustard-seed and I refer to as the-pretty-yellow-flowers-that-you-see-on-the-sides-of-the-freeway. There are hills in the background and it’s a beautiful scene.  This is a great place for people with allergies to hang out at. So we unload from the vehicles: three adults, one teenager, two kids, one crazy dog and one camera. We find a great spot and my son, who doesn’t like to take pictures, decides to cooperate. My sister is getting some great shots of her son and mine. But with two kids, a dog and a teen, there’s bound to be drama and so there was. 

First, the dog goes nuts because there are ten thousand new things to be smelled and investigated and we’re making her sit in one place. How cruel can we be? Now, of course, she doesn’t understand that we’ve seen some very thorny vines and are concerned about poison oak, but the dog just wants to run and be free and bark at anything that moves.

Then my daughter, who is much more comfortable in New York City than she is in this field, sees the one and only bee in the area and refuses to move from her spot. She will not go near the flowers because she is sure they are infested with bees. At one point a bug flew by and she started howling that it was a bee. While this is going on, my son (the boy who wants to “take care of plants” when he grows up) is laughing while smashing the flowers in his hand. Now, my kids are normally pretty well behaved, but they must have spent too much time indoors this winter.

So here’s what I learned this weekend: Ask my sister if she has a plan, expect my children to do something completely unexpected at any moment (well, I knew that but I need to have a reminder.), get my daughter out in nature much more, everything looks like a bee when you’re scared, even in complete chaos you can get some great pictures.