March 15, 2010 | Parenting, Son of a..., The Blue One
Ian said “Mama, will you please come cuddle with me?”
And then he threw up all over the couch.
Archive for the 'Parenting' Category
March 13, 2010 | I Just Logged On My Internet, Parenting, Tae Kwon Do, Who are the People in Your Neighborhood?
“I have to tell you” she said.
“I googled you and I found your blog.”
If you want to know what stops my heart it is a mom in Ian’s class telling me that she read my blog.
I don’t keep it a secret. I am not anonymous. I am mostly pretty proud of my work here, but this was this morning and I happen to know I wrote a post this week about testicles and I only know this lady from kindergarten class parties. I have no idea what is coming next.
Fortunately it was ” I read your post about your underwear falling down at Tae Kwon Do. I was reading it at work and I was laughing so hard I was crying. I can completely relate.”
I got lucky. This particular mom is very cool and has a sense of humor.
Now two parents from Ian’s kindergarten class have approached me about my underpants issues. I am thrilled that they are reading me and like my work, but I have two concerns.
1) If you google my first and last name and, I don’t know, zip code, is the first thing that comes up The Saga of the Traveling Underpants?
and
2) Am I going to become known as the lady who had underwear problems at Tae Kwon Do?
I guess these are the risks that you run when you tell all of your most embarrassing stories to the internet.
March 8, 2010 | Parenting, The Blue One, The Goon Squad
I was driving my five year old twins and my nine year old neighbor to Tae Kwon Do today. They were talking about “Jackmania” which is the imaginary kingdom of next door so I was pretty much ignoring them when the conversation took a turn that made my ears perk up.
“Hey Ian!” said the older boy. “You know how squirrels eat nuts?”
Because I think like a nine year old boy I could see where this was going a mile away.
He continued “Ahhh! Squirrels are after my nuts! They are in my pants!”
Ian laughed, but he was clueless and the older kid knew it.
“Get it? Because I have nuts in my pants!”
Ian asked “Why do you have nuts in your pants?”
“Because your nut is your penis!” neighbor boy replied.
I had a conundrum. Your nuts are not your penis and I know this. I don’t want my kids to go around with bad information or making jokes that don’t make sense. On the other hand, I don’t really want to talk about scrotums with a random 3rd grader. I am friends with his parents, but I don’t really talk to them about testicles that often so I don’t know how they would feel about me giving their children lessons about anatomy and slang.
I am not a patient woman, but I bode my time. I was a relatively mature adult and I waited until we got home and I was alone with my children.
“Listen guys,” I said “Remember when Jack said that your nut was your penis? That isn’t exactly true.”
I said penis. I had their attention.
“Your nuts are really your scrotum,”
*blank looks*
“your testicles”
*blank looks*
“the thing under your penis. You know what I am talking about?”
Claudia said yes and walked away.
Ian said “Under my penis?”
I was always under the impression that boys were obsessed with their balls, but here is my son, almost six years old and he forgot that there was something under his penis.
I said “Yeah, the thing under your penis.”
Then I actually said “Put your hand in your pants and feel under your penis.”
He figured it out. I am an excellent mother.
So far there has been no further discussion of the nuts, but I have a feeling that this is nowhere near over.
And oddly, I feel like I did the right thing.
February 24, 2010 | Friends, Parenting
This morning my five year old son told me that he needed to take his lunch to school in a shopping bag instead of the $30 Bakugan lunch thing I bought for him because that is what all of the “cool kids” were doing.
Then he said that he knew he was a cool kid because he had a stuffed dragon.
I kind of wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t worry about the cool kids. The kids that are cool in high school usually have pretty mediocre lives by their mid 20s and nobody even remembers who the cool kids were in their Kindergarten class.
I wanted to tell him to be himself and to have fun. I wanted to tell him that if it made him happy to take his lunch in a hat then that is what he should do.
I wanted to tell him that the cool kids don’t matter.
Of course, I still care about the cool kids. Yes, I care about them much less than I did when I was in 8th grade, but a tiny little part of me will always want to part of the “in” crowd. I know it doesn’t matter. I know I am happy. I know my life is good and I have great friends, but this girl is still in there somewhere wanting to be friends with the most popular girl in school.
Now I’m just hoping that the cool kids have decided against bras to the grocery store because I accidentally left the house without mine on this morning and had to shop in my coat the entire time.
I’m also hoping that my daughter can somehow continue to avoid caring about what the other girls are doing. This might sound sexist but it always seemed like the popularity game affected the girls more than the boys. I would love it if my children could avoid the pain of insecurity.
This week I’ve heard some of the most amazing writers I know worrying about how much they suck. These are men and women in their 30s and 40s who astound me on a regular basis. These are published authors and A-List Bloggers and people whose words have made me cry or howl with laughter.
Maybe the insecurity never goes away. Hopefully it just gets easier. I feel bad for my kids because they still have to get through the worst of it, and they don’t even know it is coming.
And I can know what I know about growing up and still try not to worry about the shopping bags and dragons I can’t predict for them that I know will show up. And I can be glad that he says he knows he’s a cool kid, for now, for whatever random reason. It can’t hurt to store some of that up for the times when I know he won’t feel that way.
Maybe we will get lucky and all they will have to do to be cool is take their lunches to school in shopping bags. I have hundreds of those and I know where to get more when they run out. I bought the stuffed dragon on eBay so I can replace that too.
But the Kindergarten kid who decided on shopping bags owes me thirty bucks for the Bakugan lunch bag.
Parenting, The Goon Squad
The following is an incomplete list of things that my husband and I have had to ask our children to stop saying in the past month or so due to either repetition or content.
1) “fancy getup”
Wylie Dufrense
2) Wylie Dufrense
3) “a-s-s”
He was just spelling it over and over. I have no idea why. I mean, I know why, I just don’t know why he wouldn’t stop. We also had to ask him to stop signing it.
4) Obi-Wan Kenobi
5) diarrhea
[photo]
