Swallow Back the Years (from the Momplex Blog archive)

July 18, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny4 Comments

I do not want my kids to grow up. There. I said it. I like them little. I like how they smell. I like how my daughter’s voice still sounds about half her age when we talk on the phone. I like how my son says he’s built a Lego structure by following the “durkstructions.” The backs of their heads and their little buns are cuter than any interspecies bonding pic you can throw my way.

A few nights ago, during bedtime snuggling, my 4-year-old son asked me, “Mom, does it make you happy if I’m not growing up anymore?” I didn’t answer right away. I don’t really want my kids to know that I want them to stay little. I don’t think that’s healthy. My cousin suffers from severe anorexia, and last year I read in some old 1970s book on the subject, written by an eating-disorders specialist, that some anorexics seem to have a deep-rooted fear not so much of getting fat but of getting big, as in not a kid anymore.

I don’t need a medical professional to tell me that it’s not wise to try to keep your kids from growing up, though. Kathy Bates makes the most compelling case of all:

But still. When my son asked me the question, he smelled like Mr. Bubble and was wearing his solar-system pajamas and had his tiny fat palms splayed on either side of my face. His eyes were searching mine for the truth.

“Yes,” I answered. “I suppose so.”

“Good! I’m not growing up anymore.”

“How are you going to do that?” I asked, realizing that I should have lied or at least told the other truth. Which is that I do want him to grow up to be a man but to also leave some sort of specter of his 4-year-old self behind, preferrably one that will still come cowlicked and bright-eyed and crunching down the stairs in the morning in his GoodNites protective “underwear” (a.k.a. an XL pull-up, as if we can’t read between the lines, Huggies).

“I don’t do it anymore!” he said. “I stopped growing up! I don’t ever grow up anymore!”

Man, he was really excited about this. Kind of heartbreaking, especially when I think about the comments his 9-year-old sister has made over the past year, about not wanting to turn 10 next year. She’s adamant that all the fun in life is when you’re a little kid, and that the bigger you get, the more schoolwork and life-work you have. Becoming a teenager? Fuggedabowdit. She dreads that. I set a kiss on the bridge of my son’s nose and smiled.

“Well, that’s a neat trick,” I told him. “How are you going to do it?”

“I just swallow it.” He gulped and smiled. “I swallow it down. When it comes up, it goes here [motions to his chest] then here [motions to his clavicles] then here [motions to his throat], and then I swallow it back down, so I don’t grow up anymore!”

“Wait a minute. Are you feeling sick?” I sat up and scrutinized his face. “Do you feel like you need to throw up?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “Because I swallow it down!”

“Your throw-up? You mean you swallow down your throw-up?” He nodded proudly, giving me his happy-drunk devilish smile with upturned-V eyebrows, a dead-ringer for Jack Nicholson:

A face only a mother could love. And I do, but only on my 4-year-old.

“When do you do this?” I was feeling sick myself now. “Did this happen today? Have you been feeling sick?”

“Whenever I feel it come up.” God, he was so proud of himself.

“That sounds pretty gross.”

“I like it!” he answered. “It tastes good.”

Ummmm, yeah, kid. You can go ahead and grow up now.

(From the archives, originally published 2012)

crafts · humor · motherhood · speed-posts

Pinterish: Kinda Sorta Making Something You Saw on the Web (from the Momplex Blog archive)

May 20, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny3 Comments

I once tried to fix the sole of a saddle shoe using nothing but Superglue. Just eight years old, I figured how hard could it be? I ended up conjoining two of my fingers and gluing the shoe to the kitchen floor. With a great deal of tugging on my part, the shoe eventually did lift from the floor but so also did the white tile—a couple of quarter-sized pieces at least. My mom arrived home just in time to see me crying hysterically while trying to cover up the bald spots. Out, out, damn spots! I was using white watercolor and a tiny watercolor brush.

Fast forward 30 years, and I am still not a quality do-it-yourselfer. I wish I were, but I don’t have the patience. This is an actual board I keep on Pinterest:

See that teepee to the right? See that bleeping teepee? Well, I don’t know who the hell I think I am, but I tried to make that thing today. I can’t explain why, but something came over me in bed this morning when realized I had a whole day with my 5-year-old to myself. (Normally my mom has him for a few hours on Mondays.) It was windy outside, and I thought, “We should have a kite.” My next thought was, “I could totally make a kite.” But once I got onto Pinterest, my ambition somehow morphed from cutting out a paper-bag square to building a mother-loving TEEPEE.

The crafter who designed this project had me convinced that she made it out of random fabric remnants already somewhere in her house, and that she just had to buy six 1x2x8 planks, tie them together with some jute, and glue-gun a bunch of fabric pieces to the frame. She didn’t spend even $10 on the whole thing! Someone else on Pinterest actually had the gall to refer to this nightmare as a “fun DIY gift idea!”

Let me tell you, I worked my ass off making this ridiculous teepee today. Do you know what happens when a dwelling is designed by a crafter rather than an engineer? It looks great on Pinterest but has the stability of a drunk snow crab. Also, I don’t know how the hell this crafty person defines collapsible and easy to store, but I think she was smoking something. Well, actually the teepee was extremely collapsible until I went rogue with her design, yelled GODDAMNIT in front of my kids, and tied the thing my own way.

While I was trying to put together this hot mess of a teepee, the only way the kids could really help was by cutting some strips of fabric. Once that was done, I was on my own. It took me three freaking hours and so many hot-glue gun burns to my fingertips and wrists to make this unholy mess:

It looks fine. I realize that. But if I had seen a picture of MY teepee on Pinterest this morning, coupled with an honest description, I never would have done it. I’d have made a paper-bag kite. “This overwrought reading nook will cost you only $60, too many hours, and much of the respect your kids had for you before you started it!”

I yelled a lot today, for example when my 5-year-old randomly peed his pants for the first time in probably two years while honoring my request that he find something to do other than beg to reload my hot-glue gun. He did find something to do, in the upstairs bathroom:

Not sure what you’re looking at? I’ll zoom in:

Still not sure? Me neither. Whatever it was, he couldn’t bring himself to leave it for long enough to sit on the toilet RIGHT NEXT TO IT when he needed to pee. And was he ever pissed off when he later discovered I’d drained that sink. He said I’d killed his “little glue man.” What? I don’t even know what. All I could think to say was, “OH. MY. GOD. DID YOU USE MY LAST HOT GLUE STICK!?” I said this as if he’d eaten the last tin of smoked fish on an Arctic expedition, leaving me no other option for my next meal but human flesh.

The sad part is that I was just trying to do something fun with the kids today and had it backfire in the worst way. Instead of making memories, I made a scene. Instead of making dinner or making time to read or making my son put on actual pants instead of his pajama pants with the hole in the crotch, or just anything normal like that, I made a mess. My son and I actually had Home Depot hot dogs for lunch because I was more concerned with building this teepee than making something to eat. Which wouldn’t have seemed stupid at all if this teepee had been as awesome as advertised–not just to look at but to make. As it was, I worked on it all the way until my husband walked in the door from work, late, at which point I said, “Go look in the basement, then in the bathroom. Don’t ask me questions until after bedtime. I haven’t showered. The kids are having frozen pizza. We’re ordering Thai.”

When he came up from seeing the teepee, he couldn’t resist asking just one question, with the slightest hint of annoyance in his tone:

“Is that thing collapsible?”

No, honey. No, it isn’t. But I sure as hell am.

humor · phobias

How to Control Your Hygienist’s Uterus (from the Momplex Blog archive)

April 29, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny6 Comments

A gal walks into a dentist’s office. It’s the day of her child’s first-ever filling. This is a child who’s uncontrollably afraid of shots–so afraid she can’t even say the word shot. The child has tried, but before she can get it out, her face goes white as a sheet and she looks like she’s going to pass out. So, this gal who walks into a dentist’s office? She’s a little nervous about the Novacaine shot that’s going to precede her daughter’s fillings. She comforts herself with the signs that remind her it’s a children’s dental center. Of course, children’s dentists are trained to create a magical experience, calling their instruments of torture things like Mr. Thirsty and Little Tickler, words that sound dirty and sexy to adults but like a bucket off mewling kittens to kids.

Still, the gal is anxious that someone’s going to slip and use the word shot. If they do, all hell will break loose. There will be whistle-register shrieking and gnashing (instead of fixing) of the teeth. She watches as the hygienist straps the laughing-gas mask on the child. The gal bites her lip as the hygienest begins detailing for the child what she’s up to, showing off the parts of the machinery and such. Here it comes, the gal thinks. She’s going to say That Word. A thin line of sweat comes trickling over the gal’s eyebrow and into her eye. She’s filled with the dread and with the regret of not having properly warned the staff. Oh, sure they’ve seen “afraid of shots” before, but they’ve never seen it quite like this. Eardrums will be ruptured. The windows will shatter.

Panicked as the hygienist continues explaining the steps to come, the gal grabs a large piece of scrap paper from her purse, rummages out a pen, and quickly scribbles a request. She casually walks over to the hygienist and clears her throat.

“I need you to just take a quick look at this,” the gal says. She shoves the scrap of paper under the hygienist’s nose. The hygienist looks confused, affronted. Is this really so much to ask? the gal wonders. She can already feel the brush-off, the certainty of being dismissed. More aggressively now, she sort of shakes the paper at the hygienist. And with her eyes, not her mouth, she says, Look, honey, register what I’m telling you and heed me before you do something you regret.

Then the gal realizes what she’s used for scrap paper, and that she needs to rotate it counter-clockwise to reveal her handwritten secret message:

“Ahhh,” says the hygienist to the gal, laughing a little. “We never do that here, not even with the older patients.”

And yes, that gal was me.