Uh oh

Two quick "uh oh" stories

Scene 1: Baby S and I are (slowly) walking home from dropping older sisters off at daycare.

Me: Oh look, Baby S, a cat!
Baby S: RAAAAAHHHR

Scene 2: Afternoon. Baby S has just deliberately spilled beans all over the floor.

Me: No! It is NOT OK to make a mess!
*N enters*
N: Mommy, who were you talking to?
Me: I was talking to Baby S, honey. She just spilled her food on the floor.
N: OK
*N exits*
N (speaking from other room): It's OK, guys, she was talking to Baby S. We can keep going.

Quiz: Are you a domestic goddess?

Are you a domestic god/goddess, or the opposite? (which shall hereinafter be referred to as "an Alirsnan"). Take my handy quiz and find out!

1. The only way you’d be wearing crocs at 10 am is:

a. You’re home sick

b. You have the day off. What’s wrong with crocs?

c. You can’t find your slippers, and you’re afraid to walk on the floor barefoot.

2. You're a bit embarrassed to admit it, but in the past week your house once smelled like:

a. Pine-scented floor cleaner, instead of the lemon scent.

b. Sour milk.

c. Slurng (That’s the word you’ve invented to describe the unique combined smell of stale urine, mud, fresh urine, and the eggs your child hid under their bed three weeks ago).

3. When you look at Martha Stewart, you think:

a. Amateur.

b. I want some of what she’s on.

c. I hope to never be on whatever she’s on.

4. You use your kids old, stained clothing as:

a. Fabric patches for the unique, hand-made quilts you sew in your spare time.

b. Cleaning rags.

c. Clothing for your kids.

5. Cleaning help is:

a. For the weak.

b. For the rich.

c. Something your spouse has learned not to expect from you.

6. Do you ever plan out meals for the week in advance?

a.  You tried that, but planning for just one week seemed inefficient, so you went back to a monthly menu. 
b. You tried that, but it was just too much of a hassle

c.  You considered it, but it seemed kind of pointless writing, “Cheerios – Chocolate sandwich – Frozen pizza” over and over like that.

7. Is there a recipe you’re known for?

a. Stuffed leg of lamb with balsamic-fig-basil sauce.
b. That cake made with cake mix, pudding mix, chocolate chips and cool whip.

c. Charcoal cookies.


Scoring:

Mostly As: You are a bona fide domestic goddess. Women either admire you or spend every interaction subconsciously searching for imperfections. Men don't notice.

Mostly Bs: If you ask me, you're normal. If you know me, you'll deem my assessment of your normality worthless. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Mostly Cs: You're a kindred spirit. We should hang out! Preferably at your house.

After a couple busy weeks of cramming, I had my first Infi test yesterday. I aimed for the highest goal I could think of that was still somewhat realistic - namely, to fail with dignity. I managed the "fail" part, at least.

So now it's back to two more months of cramming.

Here's how you can tell you've been trying too hard in your math/science courses: when you get your books for your other courses, and find yourself actually getting angry at how easy they are.

I was reading my first assignment for political science, and thinking, "Is this a joke? What is this, seventh grade? So all I have to do is read the book, understand it, and demonstrate my understanding of the material by answering a series of questions - that's it??? I can't believe they call that a college course."

I mean, the terms we have to define in the first paper were even mentioned in the book!

I remember when I worked up the courage to ask one of my math teachers why the problems in our assignments looked nothing, but nothing, like anything in the book. He reacted with the kind of horror that most people reserve for finding that their family pet has been ritually slaughtered in a sacrifice to Apophis, god of Chaos.

If the questions were like what was in the book, he explained, then how could teachers tell that we really understood the material? Students could conceivably figure out how to find one integral simply by looking at other, similar integrals, rather than by doing things the real way and figuring out advanced problems through a combination of deep understanding of the underlying principles, deductive reasoning, non-prescribed ritalin and cheating.

OK, he didn't mention those last two. I added them based on my own observations.

Anyway. I do not cheat (I admit to once collaborating on a homework assignment, but as mentioned here, we got a combined score of 40, so it doesn't count). I also do not do what any sane person would do and give up and accept a major more suited to my intellectual abilities (is there even a degree in professional drooling?).

I simply persevere. And whine. OK, I mostly whine, and maybe 10% persevere.

I admit that I'm looking forward to a class where reading the book, remembering the things it says, and doing the homework is almost certainly going to be enough to earn a decent grade. As one of you warned, all I have to do now is not get confused between the real history and the Game of Thrones.

(pictured above: the actual face I make when attempting to concentrate. Also, I apparently think with my kidney, which my math TA would probably say explains a lot.)

And now, to bed. My apologies for slacking recently on the valuable parenting advice I usually try to dispense. I've been parenting up a storm lately, though, so hopefully soon I'll have something to share.

Recently I saw an online discussion on the subject "You know you're a mother when..."

There were some good answers.

I was afraid to share one of mine - "You know you're a mother when you find yourself singing ditties you composed about bodily functions." That might just be me.

**********

Another thought on being a mother: people stereotype mothers as using annoying baby talk. Which is sometimes true. But when you're really in trouble is when you're so desperate that you find yourself trying to use grown-up talk with a baby.

**********

Another case of that:

[The scene: Dani has somehow obtained a pair of scissors. Naturally, she is trying to cut up everything, and most immediately, the tablecloth.]

Me: D, stop that right now! You know you're only allowed to cut paper!
D: *Ignores*
Me: D, I said STOP THAT, RIGHT NOW!
D: But I'm a LION!!
Me: *becomes desperate enough to make the universally stupid decision to try to use logic with a toddler*
        Lions don't use scissors. Lions don't even have opposable thumbs!
D: OK I'm not a lion.
D: I'm a frog.

[the good news - D gets so distracted by jumping that I am able to snatch the scissors back with relative ease]

********

And one last story before I go back to staring at the screen and pretending I'm studying:

[the scene: children are watching Dora]

Dora: We had a lot of adventures today! What part was your favorite?
Child: I like that I'm tired.
Dora: ... I liked that part, too.
Child: Dora's happy that I'm tired?


(editing this post to add a brief thank you to those of you who tipped me off that my email was hacked. I think I fixed it.)

Memories, then and now

Some things are just so different from a child's perspective and an adult's perspective.

Like, when you're a kid and there's a holiday coming up, it's all fun and excitement and getting to watch TV and open presents.

But when you're an adult, it's all planning and cleaning and buying presents and sitting your kids in front of the TV while you nurse a headache.

I was thinking about this today as a friend mentioned that she'd milked a cow once as a child. I also milked a cow once as a child. I think most people I know did, it's one of those requisite childhood memories, like losing your first tooth, or going fruit picking, or going to a slaughterhouse and deciding to never eat again (don't tell me I'm the only one whose 2nd-grade class took a field trip to the local slaughterhouse).

Anyway, milking cows... Looking at it now, from an adult perspective, I find myself thinking - where the hell am I supposed to find a cow?

There aren't any in this neighborhood, that's for sure. Plenty of stray cats, and some dogs roughly the size of small cows, but no actual livestock.

Trying to milk a stray cat would certainly be a memorable experience. But let's face it, if it came down to a fight between me and a stray cat, I'd probably lose.

There is one other option, of course: wait a few years and then tamper with my kids' memories so that they think they milked a cow. This has the added benefit of doubling as a fun (for me) experiment.

Think of the possibilities. We could spend every holiday sitting on the couch watching Dora and Barney, but in 10 years the kids will remember the fun trips we took to the beach and the aquarium and wherever it is that cows live. I just have to be careful not to get mixed up and try to convince them that we milked cows at the aquarium or something like that. (They may also wonder where they had the time to pick up an encyclopedic knowledge of Dora.)

I can't help wondering, did one of my parents (you know which one of you I mean...) have the same brilliant idea 20-odd years ago? Or did you actually find a cow? Either way, I could use some tips.

I took candy from a baby today. It's not nearly as easy as you might think.

This happened at the park, where a bunch of mothers and kids were hanging out and enjoying the sun. Taking candy from the baby wasn't the interesting part - sure, it earned me a good 20 minutes of pouting and whimpering from Baby S, and she did eventually get smart and pretend to be playing only to dive for my purse when she thought I wasn't looking (why is it that every time I notice my kids doing something really smart, really advanced for their age, it's somehow connected to stealing from me?) - but it wasn't embarrassing, and I know some of you want to hear the good stories, the ones where karma comes to give me a good swift metaphorical kick in the shins that's been 20 years in the offing.

So here's that story:

I'm sitting there next to another mom from the daycare when her 3-year-old walks up and says, "Mommy, do you like to eat poop?"

Now, I know where this is coming from, so I suddenly develop an interest in a nearby magazine as she says, "What?! Honey! We don't use words like that! Who did you hear that from?" But I wasn't so interested that I didn't hear him say, "Dani said it."

Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near good enough an actress to pull off a, "What? Dani? Oh, there must be some confusion," so I ended up mumbling, "Uhh... yeah, that sounds like something she'd say." Of course it would have been hard to deny anyway, what with her standing just a few feet away waving her chocolate lollipop around announcing, "This is poop! It is tasty!"

It's really not Dani's fault. It was her older sisters who started the whole chocolate-is-poop thing. For a while now if I give them bread with some chocolate spread as a treat, they grab it, then one of them opens hers up, looks inside, and shouts, "My sandwich has POOP!" And then they roll around laughing hysterically, because poop jokes just never ever get old. Not even when you tell the same joke 50 times every single time I make the sandwiches. Nope.

It's a whole set of terms now. I won't get too into it here, what with this being a family blog. Suffice to say, if you ever hear my four-year-old saying, "I don't like to eat penis. I like to eat poop," what she means is that she prefers chocolate spread to jelly.

Anyway, this is all very exciting for Dani, because for once she's in on the joke. She can scream, "Poop! Poop in my sandwich!" with the best of them.

I did have a talk with them about how certain words are Bathroom Words, and we only use those words about actual bodily functions, and it's really not nice to use them around guests or at daycare or when there are social workers around. Adi looked at me warily and nodded - Adi always gives me a wary look and nods when I have A Serious Talk with her, even if she's simultaneously devising a plan to do exactly what I'm telling her not to do - N said "uh-huh," and Dani said, "You're poopy!"

So... mixed results, there.

I think I'll send them to daycare with egg salad sandwiches tomorrow. I'm pretty sure they don't have a word for that one yet.

PS - my apologies to anyone who found this post through a google search and was looking for something very, very different.

PPS - my apologies also to parents of boys, if you still had illusions that if you have some female children next you could catch a break from the potty humor.