Jewelry Making Girl

One of String Bean’s favorite projects at school is making necklaces. They have lengths of thin cord and an endless supply of beads that she simply cannot resist. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve got maybe twenty necklaces in a huge tangled mess in the toy box now, and every time she comes home with a new one, I return it in secret the next time I drop her off at school, to be disassembled and recycled. When I pick her up, and she runs to her cubby to fetch her artwork, her sweater, and whatever other treasures are waiting in there, her teacher will warn me with a good-natured apology if there’s a necklace coming, too.

I can tell the teachers are steering her away from the necklace station now, as she’s coming home with more artwork and pipe cleaner and paper cup flowers and other creative crafts. So, she’s taken the art of necklace making home. Now, I find my nail clippers threaded through a couple of pipe cleaners which are tied together with a rubber band, which String Bean proudly hands me and asks me to wear. She loves these pipe cleaner necklaces, and can string two or three of them together, complete with charms, also made out of pipe cleaners, dangling in the center. I find these on her, her sister, the dog, the rocking horse, every stuffed animal she owns, and hanging from every doorknob in the house.

Not that I’m complaining. I like all of her creative streaks, and even if I dismantle most of her projects when she isn’t looking, I coo and fuss over them whenever she presents them to me. I like any expression of artistic ability, and want to foster that side of her, as we all know the arts are getting cut left and right in schools. I also know that some of my favorite earrings were made by my very gifted jewelry-making friends and family, so I’ve got hopes that she’ll soon be making me not just nail-clipper necklaces to wear around the house, but beautiful jewelry sets to wear out and about.

Telemarketers

I usually don’t even answer the phone between 6 and 8pm, because even though we’re on the big “do not call” list, we still get those pesky telemarketer calls. But tonight, since hubby’s out of town, when the phone rang just after dinner, I answered it, thinking it might be him. No such luck. But the man on the other end was polite, and asked me how I was doing, and because I was still lingering in chat-with-hubby mode, and was distracted by the Facebook Scrabble move I was in the middle of making, I said I was fine, then asked how he was doing. He stopped and said, “Well, I’m fine. Wow, I don’t get asked that very often. How nice of you!” I felt all warm and fuzzy, until he assumed I was making a commitment to his vague cause to support some group of unnamed kids with a $100 donation. When I told him I was sorry, but I don’t make donations without knowing more about a cause, he hung up on me. So much for the feel-good variety of telemarketer call. And he wonders why people never show him any kindness when he calls…

Courtesy Lives

Last week we met our play group at a park with a water feature for the kids. The girls love this place, with its fountain to rush under, and the terraced “stream” that runs down to a shallow concrete pond to wade in. We brought our buckets and shovels, for digging in the sand under the play structures, then for filling with water as the girls “washed” the rocks around the pond.

When String Bean needed to use the bathroom, I left the buckets in the care of one of the other moms as we headed for the restroom. A little boy, maybe seven years old, came running up behind us, to ask if we were done with our bucket, and if so, if he could use it. I told him we weren’t done, just taking a potty break, and the girls would want to keep playing with the bucket as soon as we finished in the bathroom.

“Sure, fine. But can I just use it for a few minutes, until you guys get back?” he asked. His pleading face was hard to say no to, and we were in a hurry, so I agreed, figuring if we never saw it again, it’d only be a dollar to replace it. As soon as we made it back to our play group, he recognized me. “You’re back. I’ll get it!” he yelled, rushing over to his friends, dumping out the wet sand they’d filled it with, and bringing it back to me. “We were making a sand castle inside the slide,” he said, pointing at a monstrous heap of wet sand inside the tube-shaped slide. “Now we’re going to slide through it!” And he was off and running, climbing up the play structure with his buddies.

The girls had a great time rinsing the sand off the bucket, until they noticed their matching shovel had disappeared. I followed the flow of the bricked-in stream, until I reached another young boy, about the same age, holding it over his head and waving at me. “Is this your shovel? Careful or you’ll lose it down there.” He pointed to the run-off pool at the bottom of the water feature.

Now, I don’t know who the mothers of these polite young men were, but whoever they are, I’d like to thank them. One thing I’ve noticed during our many park visits, especially during the summer, is that aggression and competition among school-age boys is rampant, and often little toddler girls get the brunt of it. I’ve seen my girls knocked down and run over. I’ve watched boys steal their toys then refuse to return them. They’ve had sand thrown at them, and water dumped on them without cause. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough that whenever older boys are dominating a play structure, I steer my girls toward some activity away from them. I’m happy to say that these respectful young men-in-training have restored my faith quite a bit. Thanks, moms, whoever you are. Keep up the good work.

Mommy Do It

One of my kids’ favorite expressions, and their father’s least favorite, is “Mommy do it.” They say, shout, scream this whenever he tries to do any task that I normally perform in his absence (yes, this means just about everything). From buckling them into car seats to putting pajamas on them to filling their morning cup of milk, they lob this little demand around like it is a perfectly reasonable request. It frustrates hubby and I to no end. For one thing, he’d really like to help, and he’d like a little cooperation on their end when he tries to help. For another, I don’t want to have to do everything kid-related, and when he’s available to help, I’d love to have an extra set of hands pitching in, without all the fuss about dad pitching in. So why the big battle on letting Daddy help out? This has been going on for so long that we’ve just accepted it. We’ve tried every solution to getting past the “Mommy do it” demand, from forcing them to accept his help (often resulting in ridiculous tantrums that, in the end, hardly seem worth it), to bribing them to accept his help (“no dessert for girls that don’t let daddy change their diaper!”), to just giving in and doing the kid-related stuff myself, while hubby handles the dishes, toy pick-up, and various other non-kid-related chores. I don’t have any pearls of wisdom to offer on this as-yet unresolved issue. I just wanted to complain a little. I feel better now.

My School

Last week, String Bean was talking about her school playground and the new spongy surface they just put down instead of tanbark. Peanut piped up, “And now it’s my play ground!” String Bean was quick to point out that it wasn’t, yet. Every time we drop String Bean off for school, Peanut asks, “Is it my school yet?” She has two weeks before she starts preschool, and while I’m feeling all sentimental about my baby going off to school with her big sister, she feels no such nostalgia for the good old days of hanging out with Mommy while big sis is off playing with her friends on the cool new play ground. Peanut wants to go to school, now.

Monday when I was signing String Bean in, Peanut looked around the classroom that’ll be hers in two short weeks, and said, “Is it my school today?” The teachers all laughed and promised it would be soon. So, I don’t anticipate any of the crying drop-offs we had with String Bean when she started preschool. I knew when I started sending her that it was to teach her some much-needed independence and that she wouldn’t like the lesson at first. But Peanut has been an independent sort since the day she was born. And while String Bean always needed a little nudge to approach other kids and make new friends, Peanut is always running up to other kids, older or younger, and flashing her big blue eyes and winning smile, waving her little hand and saying, “Come on! Come play!” and the kids come running. I have no doubt that she’ll do fine at preschool. And no doubt that I’ll be the weepy one at our first drop-off.

Personal Trainer

One of the nice things about my daughter is that she makes a great personal trainer. Just the other night, as I was attempting to read her a bedtime story, she turned to me and said, “Why don’t I color instead, and you can do some exercises?” She wasn’t content until I agreed to do my long-forgotten abs routine right there on her bedroom floor. When my stomach muscles started burning and I paused for a moment to rest, she looked up from her coloring with a stern expression and said, “Why are you stopping?” I had been planning to quit, but not liking the feeling of being judged and found lacking by a four-year-old, I started right back up. I kept at it until she pronounced both of us done, put away her coloring, and gave me a kiss goodnight.

I remember a time when I was little and my mother put me in charge of her diet. It was my job, as the kid with no interest whatsoever in food, to serve her reasonable portions and put away the rest of the dinner before she could go back for seconds. At the time I thought it was fun, despite being an added chore to my day, sort of taking on the parent role for a few precious moments each day. But now I get it on a deeper level. Moms have this way of holding themselves even more accountable when looking at themselves through their children’s eyes. After all, we aren’t just caregivers, we’re role models. Sure, it may just be a few crunches you hadn’t planned to do that day, but even still, why quit if you don’t really have to? I’d like her to grow up thinking of exercise as a normal part of any day. And thinking that you don’t quit just because you start getting a little tired.

Mouse in the House

Okay, so it’s not really in the house, just in the garage, but having a mouse anywhere in the vicinity of our home is something I have a problem with. First off, we have both a cat and a dog, so what is the little bugger thinking? He’s probably thinking, “Hey, that dog and cat never come into the garage,” and that’s why he’s living in there. There is no food out there, we’ve made sure of that ever since the ant infestation that discovered an old bag of cat food out there, so what is our little resident mouse up to out there?

We’ve heard the tell-tale mammalian rustling sound in the corner of the garage behind the storage cabinet, and have seen the little poopy calling cards he’s left behind, and lost not just one, but both phone lines one night. We followed the trail of phone cords across the garage to find a row of neat, tiny teeth marks all along the cord, and a couple of places where the mouse chewed clear through our ability to communicate with the outside world. Enough is enough.

So now we have borrowed a fancy, expensive mouse trap from my father, and are waiting to get rid of this pesky problem. We re-routed the phone lines and have put up barricades to (hopefully) keep the little critter from venturing into the house in search of other phone cords to eat, or even tastier snacks. Wish us luck.