Category Archives: Everyday Life

September 16, 2011 · 11:45 am

The Boys’ Bathroom: Sometimes You Don’t Want to Know

I am fortunate (I think) to have a son who tells me things. When I ask him what happened at school, he tells me about his day at school. He tells me the minutiae of his day. And he tells me the goings-on in the boys’ bathroom. For years I’ve heard stories about what goes on in those dank, smelly chambers. Boys sticking their feet in urinals. Boys–cringe–rolling on the nasty floor. Boys doing things they should not be doing.

This week I think I’ve heard it all. I can’t bear to hear another bathroom story. My husband doesn’t even know the story, why I keep lecturing my son about this. “Just don’t touch anything and wash your hands. With soap. I don’t care what the other boys do.” My husband makes fun of me for this.

My son told me he went in the bathroom the other day and George* wasn’t in there, so he used George’s urinal.

“George’s urinal?” I asked.

“Yeah, George has his own urinal and nobody can use it,” my son said.

“Why is it his urinal?” I asked.

“He licked it,” he said.

My brain stopped right there. Overload. Too much to process. Where are the teachers? Ugh. Should I tell his mother? No, she wouldn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I mean, you don’t want them to touch anything in the bathroom and this boy had slathered his tongue along the cold porcelain. I felt weak.

“Don’t you ever lick anything in the bathroom,” I said. “Anything. Don’t even touch the urinal. People miss.” I could have gone on for an hour. My son had already moved on.

He described how a line formed behind him and then George came in and said, “Hey, why are you using my urinal?” and everyone in line started pushing.

Then George put a pencil in a toilet and flushed it and they watched it swirl around and around. Billy* reached in to get the pencil out and threw it away.

“Don’t put your hand in the toilet,” I told my son. “Ever. Just don’t touch anything in the bathroom. And wash your hands. With soap. I don’t care if the other boys do or not. You wash your hands.”

Ugh. Sometimes you don’t want to know.

*Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

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September 14, 2011 · 11:49 am

I Was Dissed

I packed up my lunch yesterday and headed to school to eat with my kids. My daughter smiled and bounced in her seat at breakfast when I announced I would be coming. My son said OK. That’s pretty much how it goes every time. But I knew something was up when he walked into the cafeteria at lunch and looked at the wall instead of at me. He sat at his table with his friends, and when I motioned for him to join his sister, her friend, and me, he shook his head no and wouldn’t look back. Dissed. Is my third-grader already too old for this?

I’ll be honest: It stung a little. When the excitement of having Mom meet you for lunch has dwindled by third grade and wanting to be with friends begins to take over, it’s a bit of a shock. I know it happens. I remember vividly that inner struggle as a kid, wanting to be with my parents but wanting to be with my friends too. (Though I was much older, I’m sure.) You don’t want to miss any of the fun and really, you want to seem cool. Eating with Mommy isn’t cool after a while. Boys can’t talk about bathroom situations and gross stuff when Mom is around, and Lord knows they do. And Mom might ask questions. Yeah, I would certainly do that. “What do you like to do?” “What sports do you play?” Seems like a logical time to get to know the kids my kids hang out with. Maybe it’s too much.

My son looked over at me once during lunch. I played it cool. I mean, we were having fun. You know, yeah, whatever man. He had a good time with his friends, whispering and laughing and bonding over Spaghettios and Wonder Bread.

I don’t eat lunch often with my kids at school. My kids ask when I’m coming again as soon as I leave the lunch room. But when he blew me off and pretended I wasn’t there, I tried not to be bummed. I saw his point-of-view: time to hang with friends and let my guard down or be with Mom, another supervisor. It was just harder seeing it from a mom’s point-of-view.

That afternoon during pick-up time, I debated blowing him off. Instead, I decided to just let him sweat it out a few extra minutes.

Later on I was going about my to-do list at home. He came up and hugged me. A big bear hug. No words. No prompting. Just a giant squeeze around my waist. I get it, son, all of that growing up stuff. I do. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

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September 8, 2011 · 1:41 pm

Words That Make My Son Giggle

“Daddy, I learned a new word today,” my son announced at dinner. My first instinct is to always ask, “Is it appropriate?” His determination pushed him on. “G-E-N-I-T-A-L-S.” He spelled it for the sake of protecting his younger sister. Sweet.

I tried to stifle a snicker and could tell immediately that my husband was not amused. My daughter had a check-up at the doctor yesterday afternoon and we had the pleasure of trying to catch a sample in a cup. During that transaction, my son entertained himself with some wall reading, medical info. Nice.

A fit of giggles meant he found another funny word: penis. “Ha ha! Look, Mommy.” It was an eight-year-old boy’s dream, right there in the bathroom of the doctor’s office. Naughty words displayed for him to read again and again, providing that satisfaction in feeling he was doing something he shouldn’t be. Giving him reason to say it. I couldn’t dispute the fact that it was right there on the wall…several times.

Overall, a juicy discovery for a kid, finding sacred body part words in print. Learning a new one. Genitals. He even had to stop and close his eyes for a moment after he saw it. “Hold on. I need to remember it,” he explained. He was genuinely proud of this new word. Hopefully, he’ll fight the urge to share it during recess today.

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September 2, 2011 · 10:18 am

Cry Me a River

So it’s been a full week of back-to-school bliss. My days are filled with quiet cleaning, cool morning walks, peaceful time to work, hours to do what I want with no interruptions. And then at three o’clock every day, all hell breaks loose.

Here’s how our week has gone:

~Nearly everyone in my daughter’s class from last year is in another class together this year. “Why did I get left out?” Heartbreak for her, heartbreak for me. Not to mention the impulse to call the principal and ask him what in the world was he thinking doing that to my daughter? She shed a few tears.

~A fall down the stairs sent my daughter into a well-earned crying fit. More crying upstairs. I raced up to learn that my daughter had bumped her nose. And then when a mid-air flip attempt went awry, my son landed on his head. More tears.

~My daughter released a flood of tears one afternoon on the couch, just because.

~Tears flowed at the mere mention of writing thank-you notes for birthday presents my daughter recently received. This followed by a bit of rolling around on the floor and burying her head in a pillow.

~Homework, ugh!!! My son just didn’t get it and he wanted my help. Yet every time I read the directions to him and tried to explain it, he threw a fit. Did he or did he not want my help? I know he didn’t read the directions to begin with. Writhing on the floor, he screamed, “I hate homework!” Me too, man, me too.

~It took me 15 minutes to read one email due to four crying fits over a chair, a stool, a couch filled with dolls, and a knee to the eye. Each time I entered the room, it was a different story. “What’s wrong now?” I said, trying to keep my frustration to myself. My son kneed himself in the eye while doing flips on the couch. I didn’t even know what to say. After the whole head thing? Seriously?

~A math problem nearly sent me into tears. My son just wanted me to do it but I continued trying to calmly explain what he was missing. Hair pulling. Teeth gritting. Tears man, more freakin’ tears.

~Don’t even get me started about the announcement of bathtime and bedtime every night….

I’m amazed I’ve been able to get dinner on the table and homework done and the kids to bed on time (7:30 because they are so damn cranky). In years past, we’ve suffered nearly two months of this meltdown mania at the onset of school.

If you are a cranky mom this week, hugs to you. If you know one, give her a hug. Me? I think I just need a good cry.

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August 16, 2011 · 1:29 pm

Pick, Pick, Pick

I have a confession to make: I am in love with food. I might even go as far as to say I am obsessed with it. Really, I am probably obsessed with food. I like to cook only because it is a means to this food that I love. My days revolve around food and what I am going to eat or cook for my next meal or even the next day or next week. I am always reading recipes. I’m kind of obsessed with those too.

So imagine my joy when my son turns out to love food as much as I do. Even as a toddler, he ate anything I put on his plate, squeezing okra and calling the seeds “eyes.” He ate platefuls of the stuff. He’ll try anything once.

My daughter, however, is my challenge. My beautiful, picky daughter. It breaks my heart that I cannot share this love with her. Cooking she loves. She’ll sidle up to the counter and measure and pour, even taste a little. But put it on a plate in front of her and the battle begins. We’ve tried all the tricks. Everything. None of it works. Nothing.

We have well-meaning friends who offer up advice. Make her try it. How do you make anyone do anything? They don’t know what that would involve, prying open a clamped jaw with my hands and trying to force lasagna down her throat. How to get her to swallow? Rub her throat like a dog who won’t swallow a pill? I can see it now, the looks I’d get in a restaurant…and the escort out.

Or how about making her sit there until she eats it? Yeah, I have better things to do for a week. Do you? Because you can come sit with her until she eats it. Feel free.

The thing is, those things bring tears, yelling, and a whole lot of stuff I don’t want to bring to the table. And believe me, I’ve had to leave it many times. It all leaves me feeling bad. I can’t imagine the damage it does to her. Food should be a pleasant experience, with warm memories like grandma’s kitchen.

The best advice I’ve gotten? Don’t make dinnertime a battle. Put out healthy food and let her make her own choices. Amen. From our pediatrician who raised his own picky eater, who is now a chef. That’s right, a chef.

My daughter eats from all food groups. She loves fruit and often, but not always, prefers homemade to processed, meaning mac ‘n’ cheese and bread aren’t things I can just whip up. A speck of parsley or pepper in her food stresses her out. There’s just not a lot of variety in her comfort zone. I have faith that she’ll get bored with that. I have to trust that she’ll outgrow it. And she’s starting to come around…painfully slowly.

Take, for instance, the grilled cheese she tried recently. Growing tired of her meager menu, she decided a grilled cheese sounded safe. She likes bread. She likes cheese. It felt a little daring to put the two together. Nervously, she licked. I couldn’t bear to watch and paced behind the counter, ready for defeat. My son gave me the play-by-play and quickly announced it was all over: She had eaten the entire thing…and she wanted more. I couldn’t get cheese between two slices of bread fast enough.

Once that one was devoured, she pondered what had just taken place in her mouth. “I didn’t really like that cheese,” she announced. Hmmm. This usually means she doesn’t really like it. But here’s how I get around it: You eat it once, it’s on your menu now, Missy.

“We’ll work on it,” I said. Many tries later, we still can’t get it quite right, but she’s still willing.

I love her, pickiness and all. “You’ll make some man very happy with your high maintenance one day,” I tease. Check in with me in 20 years. I bet she’ll be a food critic. She’s getting good practice.

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August 1, 2011 · 10:00 am

Motherhood: I’m Just Along for the Ride

I have a motto as a mom: It’s just a phase, it will end, and I’ll get through it.

For many months, I’ve been tested on every level known to mom. My eight-year-old son yearns for independence of the college set, wanting to do everything his way with none of that motherly advice thrown in. He pushes my buttons like he’s operating a remote control car and I just try to hang on.

We’ve been butting heads over any issue, big or small. I tell him to stop doing something and it’s like telling a two-year-old he has to take a bath during Barney. I have literally been tiptoeing on eggshells.

Many thoughts have raced through my mind: What is going to set him off next? Is it hormones? At 8? Heaven help me when he’s a teenager. And he’s such a sweet kid. Where did my sweet boy go? Something must be wrong with him. Is this normal?

Just what do you do when you tell him to stop and he says no again and again? By gosh, he’s too heavy for me to carry to his room anymore and he knows it. Yelling makes things so much worse. I tried to stay calm, but that was a big test for me. I screamed inside…and what I said was not very nice. For months, it has been up and down, and I’ve been waiting, knowing my motto has always held true. Is this what my next ten years will be like?

And then, just when I was at my breaking point, the ride ended. At least, I think it did. Do the phases just get longer as kids get older? They certainly get harder. But surely they do end.

Walking through a parking lot the other day, my nearly six-year-old daughter and I held hands like always. Surprisingly, my son grabbed my other and in that instant, life was really good. He said, “I love summer,” and gave my hand a light squeeze.

“Yeah, me too,” I said over the lump in my throat. We kept walking and I thought, “I can make it through any bad day for this tiny moment.” I held on as long as I could. As long as he’d let me.

And just when I started to enjoy the calm and started to relax, my daughter, who has been syrupy sweet all these months, entered a phase. There’s no rest for the weary and it’s time for me to buckle up again. Hopefully it will be a short ride.

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July 22, 2011 · 9:16 am

RIP Little Fish

How could one become so attached to an animal the size of a small paper clip? Ask a kid. A kid who will tell you he just had the worst day ever.

We had just returned from a weekend trip, and my son found his fish at the bottom of the bowl. This is the third fish we’ve lost, but he was just as sad as if it were the first. He recently lost a pet hermit crab, Hermie, that we used to let race across our playroom floor. No tears. After a quick backyard funeral, my son wanted to know when he could get another one.

But these fish that he could never hold had a special place in his heart, a certain distinction: that of first pet. At the end of kindergarten, his teacher gave him two fish that had been used for science lessons in his classroom. Mosquitofish. Nothing fancy, and teeny-tiny. They were babies when we got them. Our family has enjoyed watching them chase each other and seeing their family grow. My son taught us everything he learned at school about them.

Fernick and Sammy, that’s what he named them. Turns out they would be parents the first year we had them, and we had to keep a watchful eye. No eggs, live birth, and these fish eat their very young. Our son told us the mommy fish often die after giving birth. He knew signs to look for when she was about to have the babies. Finally, one day I saw a tail hanging out of her. We scooped her into a waiting bowl of water and watched as she gave birth to three pinhead-size fish that looked like specks of dirt falling to the bottom of the bowl. A wiggle and shake and they took off swimming, all eyes.

Soon, just like our son had said, Fernick was dying. And it wasn’t quick. He took it hard.

Months later, a pregnant fish died before giving birth. He didn’t say much about it. I thought maybe we had that initial pet dying thing over with. But when he saw this time that it was Sammy, the dad, at the bottom of the bowl, his heart broke again. I tried to tell him it was one of the other fish. It had lived two years. That’s amazing for bait. But he loved them. He raised them into adults and saw them have babies. He’d had them nearly the entire span of his school career, an eternity to an eight-year-old. Why tears over two of the fish and not even Hermie? It made sense to his heart.

I guess your first pet is special no matter what it is. And size just doesn’t matter.

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July 18, 2011 · 10:21 am

“Mom, I’m Bored!”

We’re into our unscheduled weeks of summer. No trips, no camps, no real plans. Just me and the kids and some much-needed lazy days. Every summer I forget how hard this new routine can be. Going from the rigmarole of school to wearing your pj’s till lunch is a shock to the kiddies. To me it’s grand. Nowhere to be? I leap with pure joy.

I do freelance work from home and took some mornings recently to finish a project. A highly effective mother would have a plan in place to occupy the kids so she could work. It just so happens, I did have a strategy one day: a kid-friendly camera and a scavenger hunt list for the kids to take pictures of. Their photography exploration bought me enough time to finish work, put sheets on the beds, and trim a bush that was two feet higher than it needed to be. Fantastic!

The next day, no plan. Disaster. I noticed them hovering as I got dressed. They sighed. They paced. We began to fuss at each other. Hmm. My first instinct is always to get them to clean up. They usually find something else to do fast. But they cleaned. Boredom was that bad, huh? Back again, as if being next to me is an exciting alternative to the wonderland we have upstairs. Hmmm. With so many toys they forget they have, it should feel like Christmas.

My next trick is to let them know that whatever they find not fit enough to play with must be ready to give away. That threat always works. When left alone a little longer, the kids find something to do. They always do. And of course it involves an 8-foot-by-10-foot mess that I have to maneuver. Then it sits there like a minefield. I hop through it each time I enter the room, loathing it more and more. That night when I announce it’s time to clean up, I get lots of, “Ah, Mom, we’re going to play with it later” and “It took us so long to set it up.” I get it. I was a kid too. So I let them leave it another day or so…until I realize they aren’t really playing with it. And they’re bored—again.

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July 12, 2011 · 9:11 am

6:25 in the Morning

It’s 6:25 a.m. On a Saturday. It’s summer for Pete’s sake. And he’s up, our son the rooster. My husband and I know this because the toilet flushes. No matter what time he goes to bed, his eyes pop open at the first beam of sunlight. He peeks into our room. We don’t flinch. About 15 minutes later he comes in again. “Go read,” I mumble. It’s not even 7 a.m. I see him quietly peek in one last time a bit later before I finally get up.

When he was younger, he used to come in every three minutes and drive us crazy until one of us got up. And sometimes he’d wake up at 5 a.m.—in the dark. That was rough. Now at age 8, most of the time he’ll read. 

I’m not a morning person. He is. Don’t even talk to me until I’ve eaten and showered. I don’t care to chit-chat. The thing about my son is that he has been up for an hour or more and he is bursting with questions. Every sentence starts with Mom, and there are no breaths in between.

“Mom, if a whale washes up on the beach, probably three or four people have to carry it back out into the ocean.”

Well, they’re too big to lift.

“Mom, what happens if a dolphin washes up on the beach? I bet the lifeguards would have to come pick it up and put it back in the water.”

Well, a dolphin and a whale are pretty heavy and if one washes up, it’s sick or dying. Lifeguards don’t do that sort of thing.

“Mom, probably Animal Control comes and takes it to the animal hospital and they fix it.”

I tell him that marine biologists probably come take a look at it there on the beach. It’s really too early for me to function, but he wants some answers.

“Mom, do they have whale sharks at Sea World?”

I haven’t a clue.

“Mom, whale sharks when they open their mouths, it is bigger than our playroom.”

Man, that is really big.

“Mom, if a stingray washes up on the beach, probably the lifeguards can just pick it up by its tail and throw it back into the ocean.”

I don’t know if the lifeguards would touch it. (Oh, make it stop.)

“Mom, but if it’s a minnow, they can just fling it back in.”

Yes, they can just fling it back in. (My brain is hurting. But I smile.)

“Mom, did you know they make the Knight Bus Harry Potter Lego set and it comes with…”

(Not again.)

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July 6, 2011 · 9:50 am

Bedroom Basketball

My son adores his daddy, the big man he literally has to look up to, yearns to be like, and begs to play with. My son often requests one-on-one basketball games in his bedroom with my husband. I’m not sure why he repeatedly takes the pounding. He is all giggles over it and my husband is all game. My son laughs so hard he can’t breathe, and my husband takes every advantage to slam-dunk.

Anywhere in the house, one can hear the screaming and shouting, the thundering footsteps. It sounds like an entire team up there. Nope. Just my husband and son getting in that quality one-on-one time.

I usually stay away from these sweaty mismatched match-ups, but the other night my daughter and I had front-row seats. My husband takes it to the rim and dunks. “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!” he shouts with all the gusto of an announcer calling the Eagles’ Super Bowl–winning touchdown, falling to his knees in utter glory.

My son somehow manages to score between the taunting, the wrestling moves that pin him to the floor, and the tricks that have him reeling with laughter. My husband stuffs the ball under the back of his shirt. “Where’s the ball?” he teases, then displays it as he makes a run toward the net. My son is cackling all the while. “Oh. Did. You. See. That?!” says his dad.

My son gets a few surprises in of his own. My husband takes one to the groin. Luckily, it’s just a foam ball. The crowd and the opposing team roar with laughter.

It’s been a close game, but Dad gets a second wind and a few more shots. “Oh man, off the ceiling, off the clock, and iiiiinn!!!” my husband screams.

48-40! Game over.

My son decides to just make practice shots for a bit. I’m sure his face just needs a break from all that smiling.

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