Musings of a Mom

Kids are terrific for showing you your shortcomings. They watch everything you do and mimic it whether you want them to or not.

My husband learned a bit about himself the other day. He was trying to clip Buddy’s toe nails but Buddy just couldn’t keep still. My husband said, “Stop squirming or I’ll clip your toe off!” Buddy asked, “Will it hurt like hell?”

Sadly, I’ve had to learn the hard way too. One time when Sugar was in kindergarten her teacher pulled me aside and said with a grin, “I hear that you say the ‘S’ word a lot.” I laughed and said, “I’m afraid I do, but do you know what the ‘S’ word is?” She said she had a pretty good guess but I told her that she would be guessing wrong. The “S” word to Sugar was, and still is, another word for “dumb.” For those of you still wondering, I can’t say it without getting in trouble so I’ll spell it, S-T-U-P-I-D. Of course her teacher laughed at the explanation but I had been ratted out by my own child! I can’t complain though, sometimes I do have a potty mouth and she could have told on me for some other word.

My husband and I are learning and I’m sure we’ll make mistakes but you can rest assured, the kids will be sure to remind us of what we’re doing wrong.

My daughter has a loose tooth. This isn’t the first loose tooth she’s had but the process hasn’t gotten easier.

The first two teeth became loose, she wiggled them and eventually they fell out. The next two loosened, she wiggled them, the new teeth grew in behind them and the darned baby teeth tightened back up. Both of the stubborn teeth had to eventually be pulled by her dentist and what an ordeal that was. Now, most children would resist the dentist pulling a tooth, but “Sugar” fights with everything she’s got. She works herself up into a frenzy and is sure the dentist is going to do something horrible to her. Before you get the impression that Sugar is overly sensitive or that we coddle her or anything like that you should know that she’s one tough cookie and those who know her are surprised at her fear of dentists. On a side note, for a post regarding teeth and dentistry I sure seem to use a lot of sugary references, don’t I?

So last week Sugar noticed that she had another loose tooth and started wiggling that thing like crazy to avoid the dentist. She asked her dad to help her pull it but then shied away when his hands got close to her mouth. The other problem here is she has tiny teeth and a small mouth and his hands are fairly large so he wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work anyway.

Last night the loose tooth finally got to be a bit too much for her. She got out of bed to once again have Dad try to pull it. (Looking back, it was probably partly a stall tactic too.) Again, she was scared. Finally my husband said, “Just pull it out. What’s the worst that could happen?” (We really need to stop asking our kids that question!) She replied, “I could swallow it, choke and DIE.” Needless to say, the tooth is still hanging in there.

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.

 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.