Mom Things (again)

You're well aware of the phenomenon of the unmatched socks, but upon searching for matches to various flip-flops and sandals in your three year old's closet, you've come to realize that this is also applicable to shoes. 

You liken white pants on toddlers to unicorns.  They're pretty but you don't believe in them.

You've learned to dress your kids in dark clothes when they want to play outside after the rain.  The stains from Georgia red clay do not come out, but if they're wearing dark blue pants it doesn't even matter.

After three kids, you learn how not to be so Type-A.  When your three year old volunteers to help you fold towels, you totally take her up on that (even if they aren't exactly perfect the way you like them).

You've been humiliated by at least one incidence of voluntary public nudity on the part of your child.  For instance, this might mean discovering a pantless, diaperless 18-month old strutting around in the aisle of Sonny's Barbeque.  After getting over the embarrassment, you couldn't help but be a little proud.  You had no idea he could undress himself.

Thanks to your own mother's hoarding skills, your kids now have the privilege of playing with such retro toys as troll dolls, glowworms, and the original Littlest Pet Shop Pets (complete with pieces that could choke you). Interestingly, your kids love them as much or more than you did.  Who knew that in 2010 a troll would be your kids constant companion?

When your six year old tells you he can run a mile faster than you, you tell him to put his running shoes on.  About half a mile into it, he eats crow.  And while you feel a little bit bad about saying, "Booyah!" to a little boy, you think you made an excellent point about the dangers of talking smack.

At the kindergarten luau, your son received a flower lei, a straw hat, and a drink with an umbrella in it.  But because kids are weird, he didn't care about any of that as much as the single plastic gold coin he dug out of a sandbox in the treasure hunt game. 

Your one year old starts grunting with anticipation of food the instant you put her in her highchair.  And here you thought you didn't have any patience.

You realize your little boy is turning into a real, live little boy when he asks to go outside and look for frogs after dinner.  (And actually catches one.)

And as always, Happy Wednesday!!!

This post was easy...

Because Ben did all of the work.

For some reason, I haven't been making too many lists lately.  Maybe that's why I feel simultaneously free and stressed at the same time.  Lists are my constant companion and also my constant reminder of how much I have to do and how little I have actually accomplished.  I love lists.  I hate lists.  Friend and foe - those things.

But here's a list that I love.  It's actually a book that Ben made in Sunday School class this past week.  A list of ways he is and/or can be a helper around the house inspired by the story of Ruth being oh-so-helpful to her mother-in-law Naomi.

Long story short, it made me smile and I hoped it might do the same for you.

Here goes:

Pushing usually helps.

(Help build the playground)
That's the playground lying on its side...as it remained for much of the time we were building it.

That's "printer" to those who don't know. Mainly, we print coupons and make Ben go retrieve them for us.

There you have it.  Next time you wonder "How can my child make him/herself useful?"  Consider these things.  Out of the mouth of my six year old.

Flashback Friday: In the very strictest sense of the phrase

I'm not sure what prompted it the other day, but I got a little hung up on memories of my childhood.  In the words of Lucas from one of my favorite cult classics, "Who knows where thoughts come from?  They just appear."  Maybe it's because over the weekend I was pondering which of the day's mundane events might end up being a prevailing memory for my own kids.  Maybe it's because every once in a while I get really nostalgic when I think about my grandparents who are no longer with us.  No matter the reason, I found myself recalling little moments from my childhood out from behind the dusty cobwebs of my memory.

I had one of those All-American childhoods.  I grew up in a suburb in the Baltimore-Metro area.  We lived in a rancher in a tight-knit community with a sidewalk leading anywhere you wanted to go (if your mom would let you walk there).  My mom stayed at home with my sister and me, while my dad worked a typical 9-5 (give or take).  We ate dinner together as a family every night and went to church together every Sunday.  My mom volunteered in the classroom and my dad was a deacon.  My sister paved the way for me in the classroom, on the athletic field, and with my parents.  We were a model of the typical American family, our family. 

And all of that is pretty boring, if I might say so myself.

The things I've been remembering are the quirky things.  The little moments.  The stuff that makes this life interesting.

For instance, as I fought with, cursed at, and borderline assaulted our lawnmower last Friday trying to get it to work, I remembered that as soon as I was old enough I took over the lawn mowing duties at my childhood home.  We kept our mower in the back portion of our mammoth shed.  The little room that it was housed in had its own door, and I was terrified to go back there and get it out because one time over the course of my childhood I had seen a wasp nest in there.  And also, because I knew chipmunks and other small rodents made nests on the floor of that little back room.  The door was a snug fit in the frame, and resultingly required a good bit of strength to tug open.  I would snatch the door open, hop back, and then ever so carefully reach a single arm inside and pull the mower out with two fingers with my feet planted as far away as they could possibly be.  I remember the smell of that back room.  It was a familiar combination of old (but not rotten) grass and gas fumes.  I think it must have been a forty year old mower because, well, that's what my dad does.  He fixes old things and used them for half centuries.  I'd always need help getting it started before I mowed our yard of plush grass white clover.  And then as soon as I finished (and sometimes even before), I would hear our retired neighbor crank his mower up because it would be almost criminal for our grass to be shorter than his.

As I fiddled with the mower, I thought of how proud of me my dad would be that we continued to use such a colossal piece of junk.  I can count on one hand the number of vehicles my family drove growing up, including the red Ford Escort that didn't have a/c (and yes, it gets hot enough in MD in the summer that we needed it), the Ford Station Wagon that carried us on a trip to Tennessee when my sister was 12 and I was 7 during which my sister and I fought so badly she spent the majority of our trip banished to the very rear squished among the suitcases, and the Ford Aerostar which served as a necessary replacement for the station wagon if my family ever expected to survive a trip longer than 3 hours again and which we utilized for a tour of New England the following summer.

Since I've been consciously trying to remember things, it seems that I can't stop.  Everywhere I look I'm reminded of some small experience I had that makes me smile.  A friend of mine had a tooth extracted and I remembered the time I had my own 2nd molars extracted, and my grandmother made me split pea soup with bits of hot dog in it so I wouldn't go hungry.

I went to Ben's field day and saw these things...

 

...and I remembered how badly I coveted everyone who had one when I was little, so I got on and demonstrated for the kindergartners how it's done.  (Not to mention the flood of field day memories that came flooding back, not the least of which being that it always seemed to fall on the hottest, most humid day of the year, and our elementary school was not equipped with air conditioning.  Dark ages, I tell you.)

I saw a pair of Reebok Classics in a magazine and I recalled how that was the first pair of name-brand shoes I ever owned in my life and how I had saved for months before my seventh grade year to be able to buy them.

So many things like this keep popping into my brain.  It's like a little exercise to keep my memory sharp.  Forget Sudoku and crossword puzzles.  Memory retrieval, here I come!  (Okay, who am I kidding?  I'll never stop doing those.  Because, well, I'm a nerd.)

There's how the four of us would walk to the "Snowball Lady's" house for a snowball with a hefty pricetag of a quarter each.  She only offered two flavors:  Sky Lite and Egg Custard.  My mom and my sister got the former.  My dad and I got the latter.

Then there's the time it snowed, and I was too sick to play so my mom sat me on a stool by the window so I could watch my sister and her friends play out front.  To make me feel better, she filled a small tupperware bowl full of Doritos for me to snack on.  It worked because, in my opinion, that was a rare enough, delicious enough treat to warrant missing snow play.

Though it seemed like my parents never went on so much as a date together without us, there was the time they flew off to Florida, leaving us home with my grandparents when I was five.  When they left I was wearing these socks (complete with red pom poms)

and from henceforth, they were dubbed "Airplane Socks" by yours truly.

It's the strangest things like this that make me wonder, "Why did I commit that to memory?!"  And that also make me wonder what my children will remember twenty years from now. 

Whatever it is that they happen to recall, I hope the memory is accompanied by the warm fuzzies...just as I'm filled with warmth at the recollection of a million and one random memories from long, long ago in a faraway place. 

Today, I challenge you to conjure up a memory you haven't thought about in decades.  Share it with me, so I can relate and remember something else of my own.  I bet it will bring a smile to your face.

Go ahead...I dare you to remember.

How do I know I'm a mom? I'm so glad you asked...

You can identify the flavor of unopened packs of poptarts by touch (and you're not exactly sure this is something of which you should be proud).

You've come home and for a fleeting moment thought, "Oh crap!  Someone ransacked the house!"  Then you realize that's just how it looks at any given moment, and as a result, you live in constant fear of someone "just stopping by".

You have opened your mailbox to get the mail only to find that it's been almost completely filled with mulch.

You "caught" your kindergartner practicing his end of year program in front of the mirror in the bathroom.  Just another example of a time you beamed with pride. 

When posed the question, "If you could win a lifetime supply of something, what would you want it to be?", you waffle between AA batteries and American cheese slices.

You have survived a hotel stay with three children, which may or may not have included one child sleeping in the bathroom.  (No worries, it was in a pack-n-play.)

You finally understand the phrase "a face only a mother could love":

(I'm pretty sure she does better than that without the spoon.)

You wonder what your kids' prevailing memories will be when they're adults, and you pray they don't include the times you were less than patient, raised your voice, or were just "too busy".  Some of your prevailing memories from childhood are hanging out in trees all summer, participating in the reading program at the library (and earning free Pizza Hut pizzas), getting cold in the dairy & frozen food aisles of the grocery store, and being rewarded with treats off the Dollar Menu at McDonalds.

You've had to explain to your six year old that just because most of the other children in the neighborhood are allowed to roam about without rules or guardianship does not mean he is entitled to do the same.  And you've had to explain that while it feels unfair, it's for his safety.  (And someday, years down the line, you know he'll understand.)

You realize that your three year old has far more friends than you when, on a routine trip to Target, she greets three other children by name.

Question: Where is it hotter than Hades?

Answer:  Central Georgia, apparently.

Here's the proof:

If you can't tell what that is, it's my Dunkin' Donuts giftcard.  (What?  I like coffee.)  I left it sticking halfway out of the in the visor of my van.  The result:  It melted.

Amazing.

While I'm on the subject of hot Georgia summers, this would be a good time to debunk the stereotype that all Southerners like it hot.  It is simply not true.  They (I say "they" because I'm a transplant myself) might tolerate the heat better because they have lived in it, but just like all northerners don't love having two feet of snow on the ground in the winter, all southerners do not like 90+ degree temperatures with humidity that rivals that of a tropical rainforest.  I'm sure you can find some that do, but they are the exception...not the rule.

This year marks the eighth summer I have endured living in Georgia.  (I experienced one before that, but wasn't technically a resident at that time.)  I still sweat from walking down and up my driveway to get the mail.  I still sweat from standing (even in the shade) in my tank top and shorts while watching my poor uniform-clad son play t-ball.  I still gasp at the thickness of the air when I walk outside in the morning.  But you know what?  I'm learning to tolerate it.  And with that comes less complaining.  (If you think I complain now, you should've heard me while I was walking around 9 months pregnant in the summer of 2003!  I swear that was the hottest summer in the history of the world.  It couldn't possibly have been the watermelon I was carrying in my belly making me even hotter.)

I'm not exactly sure what the moral of the story is here.  Perhaps it's this:  if you're going to travel to the Deep South in the summertime, be sure to consider that otherwise un-meltable things can indeed melt when left in your car.  (I'm not helping the tourism industry with this post, am I?)

P.S. - While a Dunkin' Donuts giftcard is hardly an amazing photography subject and these are hardly prize-worthy photos, I should mention that I shot these in manual mode on my camera.  Baby steps towards #72 on the list.