Category: kids

kids

humor, kids, mommyhood

Mission to Mars

WFAM

This is not an excuse, but I want to preface that the following exchange took place while on route to school. Getting out the door had been a circus-like endeavor and I was trying to focus on the nearby elementary school traffic. I can only do so much.

Full Speed: “Mom, what’s on Mars?”

Me: “There’s sand and desert.”

Full Speed: “Are there houses?”

Me: “No.”

Full Speed: “Do people live there?”

Me: “Not that we know of.”

Full Speed: “So you’re saying we don’t know them. Are they strangers then?”

Me: (exasperated tone) “No, they aren’t strangers. No one lives there.”

Full Speed: “So, there are houses, sand and desert but no people?”

Me: “Sure.”

I can blame the faulty government or our school’s curriculum. but really my children’s education is being threatened by my own low-threshold of exasperation. I sometimes say what I say just to get through my day. Houses on Mars, Easter Bunnies who reside at the Holiday Inn, who knows what I will say next?

kids, mommyhood

Huh?

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I was in the truck with Full Speed while Mad Dog ran into Office Max with little T.Puzzle. To pass the time, Full Speed  and I played some games. First, we had to look around us and find patterns and then we took a word and tried to rhyme it as many times as possible. The rhyming was going great. Full Speed shouts out, “Frog!”

I came up with, “Fog!”

In response I was expecting him to say log or dog. Instead he says, “Shmerce!” (rhymes with purse)

Huh?

“What’s a ‘shmerce’?” I ask.

Without missing a beat he says, “It’s a kind of smoothie.”

It doesn’t even matter to him that the imaginary word schmerce is no where close to rhyming with fog either. I know oftentimes I am living in an alternate universe from Mad Dog, now I realize, my world is completely different from Full Speed’s, too.

What can I say? It’s a dog eat dog out there. Or as Full Speed would say, ‘ shmerce eat shmerce’.

kids, mommyhood

Really Bad

WFAM

In our house there is much discussion as to what constitutes a bad word. Both boys have had their share of saying naughty words at the worst possible times. I will spare you the details.

This is how Full Speed kind of understands it. “A bad word is okay if you use it to name a thing but if you use it to call someone a name, then it is bad.” For example, if you sneeze and you get snot on your arm and are simply identifying the grossness all over yourself as snot, that’s fine. However, if you see your little brother, smack him on top of his head and call him a ‘snot,’ then you are in trouble. I know this seems like an odd rule but it works in a few instances like with bottom or poop. Believe me, we’ve run the of gamut this rules’ possibilities.

This all came into play on our ride home from school today. Little T.Puzzle is singing and being generally silly. Full Speed says, “You’re weird, T.Puzzle.”

I intervene. “Please don’t refer to your brother as weird. It isn’t nice.”

“Mom, I was just saying it as a thing; I wasn’t actually calling him weird.”

The only word that came to my mind was bad. Really bad. No matter if you named it a thing, a person or a highly confounding situation brought on by my five year old.

humor, kids, mommyhood

Funny Full Speed

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I had agreed a couple days prior to meet some friends and their kids at the movie theater in the evening to see “The Spy Next Door”. Mad Dog was planning on watching a football game and had done so much while I’ve been sick, I wanted to take the boys out to give him a break from us (let’s just say that I have been less than pleasant to be around as of late).

The movie was just okay but Full Speed’s reactions to the fight sequences were the stuff of which legends are made. My girlfriends and I were cracking up at him as he leapt about, shouting, karate-chopping and kicking with whole-hearted enthusiasm. His energy was contagious and since T.Puzzle only gave me minor attitude at the theater, I ended up enjoying the experience immensely. Thank you, Full Speed.

When it was over I linked hands with both boys and headed to the truck. To get my boys loaded, I always start with T.Puzzle’s side, and then while he is climbing in, I get Full Speed seated and buckled.

Since it was pitch black outside except for the intermittent, humming parking lot lights, little T.Puzzle asked if we could go see Christmas lights. Try explaining that the holiday season is over to an unpredictable, moody three year old who has their heart set on ‘Christmas lights!’. It didn’t go well. He was so mad he refused to climb in his car-seat when I opened his door.

“Well, I guess T.Puzzle is just going to get run over, then,” says Full Speed nonchalantly.

That made me laugh all the way home.

kids, loss of parent, mommyhood

Sunny Skies

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As you readers are well aware, I have been facing my share of challenges with little T.Puzzle and his emotional outbursts. Thankfully, I went through similar challenges with his older brother (we all survived!), and if you can believe, T.Puzzle is actually less of a handful to manage. Of course, beginning a New Year feeling extremely sick (I was back at the doctor again today) and realizing this is a year that will have no new memories of my Mom, I haven’t been dealing very positively with T.Puzzle. If I felt super-heatlhy and was grief-free, I would be frustrated and sigh a few times, but I would know that it is only a phase. I would maybe exhibit more patience and emit a more positive vibe. That would possibly help more than any amount of discipline I impose on him.

To try to change the energy between us, I spent extra one-on-one time with him yesterday. Full Speed was gone for the day/night with his Grandpa on a camping trip so I seized the moment. I picked up little T.Puzzle from school early, took him on a long bike ride, stopped at a nature spot to look for frogs (there were none, it was too cold). Then, after I fed him dinner, we went and sat on the lanai and snuggled under a blanket. We sang songs, talked about all the things we could see and made each other laugh. At one point I leaned down and wordlessly kissed his forehead. He looked up and said, “I love you, too, Mommy.” It felt good.

I know I have to make more of an effort to meet T.Puzzle halfway. He is going through the same transitions of growth as his brother before him. For whatever reason this is very hard for him. It’s hard for all of us.

And it all comes down to this. There’s a reason your kids look so incredibly angelic and peaceful when they sleep. It helps you remember on your worst days, that beneath the storm; sunny skies are always within our reach.