Tag Archives: Humor

May 4, 2012 · 11:06 am

The Joys of Motherhood, Even for a Bird

It’s an exciting time for a momma bird. Naked, needy hatchlings have emerged from speckled eggs kept warm in a nest of weeds and twigs. Suddenly, bellies need to be filled and bird parents stay busy feeding multiple babies. Only fresh worms and insects will do.

I wonder if momma bird is blessed with sleepers, but at 5 a.m. when I hear the chirp of birds everywhere, I know.

Parenthood is a whirlwind of constant feedings and early mornings for these birds. Before they know it, they’ll need to give those babies a nudge out of the nest to take flight and that nest will be empty.

Several years ago, my kids and I witnessed a brood of birds leaving their nest. My then four-year-old son watched in wonder as six fledglings perched on our neighbor’s tree branch and awkwardly plummeted to the grass below. They looked like fuzzy brown pom-poms scattered on the lawn, hopping about and chirping like children who’d just been let outside for recess. One by one, they tested their wings, flying a little farther each time. We watched as each bird flew around the tree, up to its branches, and within the safety of the yard.

Bird nest

Lives are about to change. (Photo credit: msSeason)

We quietly watched them for an hour until it was time for dinner. But one bird still hadn’t figured out how to work its wings. It still hopped around the yard, not knowing how to fly while its chittering siblings flew around each other and explored the great big world. My daughter was only a year old and would have put the jumping pom-poms in her mouth if she could. But my son began to worry for the bird. I think he would have stayed there all night to make sure that bird learned to fly and made it back to its tree.

We went in to eat dinner. I didn’t know what would happen to the bird and decided my son couldn’t worry about it anymore. But he did. He hardly ate and sat through our meal near tears. Afterward, we checked on the bird and didn’t find it. They were all gone. I told him they all found their wings and they were okay; sometimes it takes some birds longer to learn. Maybe he could relate.

Momma bird’s work, though in far less time than us humans, still required lots of effort: keeping the eggs safe and warm, the many feedings, keeping the babies safe from predators—and making sure her offspring all got out of the nest when they were supposed to.

My son still talks about that little bird. Every spring. I wonder if he still hopes it made it to safety, or maybe he just remembers how cool it was seeing nature in action. Regardless, it made an impact on his young life. In time, he’ll leave my nest and I have to give him a push, show him how to fly, and hope he’s safe.

There are many differences between a momma bird and me. But the biggest of all? When momma bird’s nest is empty, she gets to do it all over again.

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April 27, 2012 · 10:30 am

A Mom’s Victory: I Survived “The Talk”

It’s been a long time coming, something I’ve put off, danced around, hemmed and hawed at, and frankly didn’t know how to approach: the talk. You know the one, the birds and the bees. The uncomfortable, sweaty-palmed, God-please-let-this-end talk.

My son has flirted with the topic for probably a year while I’ve done nothing but dodge it. It’s not that I haven’t planned on having that talk. He just always catches me off guard. Driving home from school is not a good time for me to start talking about body parts and what goes where. It didn’t help when his younger sister began asking questions about our pregnant neighbor.

“What I don’t understand is how did the baby get in her tummy?” she’d wonder. It was all I could do to keep our van from veering off the road. Why did they never ask their dad these questions while he was in the midst of trying to have a normal afternoon?

The thing was, I needed to wrap my mind around what I was going to say to my son. I had to mentally prepare. I couldn’t blabber on. I had to breathe. This required rehearsal, thorough thought, simple explanation. I couldn’t get too scientific or explain too much. I had to be prepared for questions because I knew he wouldn’t be afraid to ask. This was a delicate operation. I never felt ready when the topic came up, but I knew I had to approach it. He came to me, not my husband, so I felt I had to be ready to answer him the next time he had uncomfortable questions.

My own experiences around the same age included a boy passing the S encyclopedia around the class and pointing out the passage about sex. After a minute of reading and comprehending, I merely replied, “EW!” Later I overheard more details while I pretended to be asleep at my sister’s sleepover. I pieced things together. My parents never sat me down. They gave me a pamphlet about puberty. My older sister would never answer my questions. When I felt like the only kid who didn’t know things later on, I was embarrassed. I decided not to do that to my kids. But that hasn’t made having the talk any easier.

I knew my son knew the logistics. He gave enough hints. And I planned to bring it up. We talk about a lot of things. But last night he beat me to it. He gave me the talk. He schooled me in what third-grade boys think sex is. I sat, mortified, shocked, disbelieving, and a bit humored at the whole scene—unfortunately there were demonstrations, though certainly nowhere near correct.

But I was proud of myself. I remained calm. I wasn’t nervous. I set him straight about a few things even though he giggled through a lot of it. I used all the correct names like I was supposed to, and I told him the plain and simple truth. It was easy and fairly painless. My preparation had paid off.

Then he asked, “Did you and Daddy do that?”

“Uh…”

I totally wasn’t prepared for that.

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April 23, 2012 · 7:55 am

Not the Sound of Music

While I initially feared the sound of a dying cat clawing its way up a blackboard, I was relieved at the sound of a more tolerable low, moaning whistle. My son brought home a soprano recorder from school last week. He needs to learn songs as part of a music grade.

Knowing my son, he will diligently practice. Already I’ve heard the choppy notes of “Hot Cross Buns” early in the morning, after school, and before his bedtime stories, but I have to give my son credit for making the effort without any prompting from me.

My son playing a recorder

"Hot cross buns, hot cross buns. One a penny..."

I fear the reason is because anytime my kids get a whistle, kazoo, or flutophone, I firmly instruct them not to blow that thing in the house or anywhere within earshot of me. The sound pierces my ears, and it doesn’t take long for a headache to sink in when my kid’s musical attempt sounds like a torture device stuck on repeat. For years I have confiscated these things at any sign of abuse, meaning one shrill note too many, and stored them high atop our refrigerator with other illegal toys. Having a noisemaker with permission from school means my son can basically huff and puff on it whenever he pleases, all in the name of pass or fail. It’s like they’ve given him their blessing to taunt me.

Well thank you, school system. Thank you for bursts of unhinged melody, constant squeaks, and boring repetition. Two more years of this, I might add.

The bright side? It could have been drums.

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April 17, 2012 · 10:23 am

Somewhat Strange and Tasty Collections I Didn’t Know We Had

My son collects things. He accumulates armies of knobby creatures that he makes scream and knock each other down. He’s obsessed with Legos. If he gets one set, he wants the entire line to complete his collection. He collects erasers. Just the plain ones that sit on top of a pencil. He lines them up, makes patterns with them, battles them, who knows. During his Cars the movie era, I can’t tell you how many times we patrolled the toy aisle searching for the elusive Tex Dinoco.

Now he collects names. Names of Harry Potter characters he reads that he scrawls in third-grade penmanship on lined paper, two columns, three pages front and back, and still going strong. Names of multihued tropical fish he reads about, likes, and dreams of one day owning as pets. Names of planets and their moons. Names of baseball teams and football players.

I have long wondered whether his quirky obsessions are normal, what it means for his future, and where on earth it came from. I can be a bit of a pack rat. My husband is a borderline box hoarder. But for years I’ve had no clues as to where his collecting insanity came from.

Then, as I tried to tame my overgrown pile of torn-out recipes the other day, it hit me like a swarm of cookbooks.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I like food. And I particularly like the challenge of finding a recipe to match whatever food I’ve recently inhaled and become infatuated with. Consequently, I’m a bit of a recipe hog. One could say I collect recipes.

Want to see my collection?

This vintage box holds my prized recipes that I use almost every day.

Look, there's room to grow!

These are recipes I want to try.

This doesn't begin to show my stack of recipes. Man, there's some good stuff in there.

And these.

Hmm. Forgot about these.

And I still need to go through these magazines to tear out the recipes I want to try because I know I will…or won’t…but just in case.

Some light reading.

I’ve been clipping recipes since around ninth grade. While my friends flipped through Seventeen and YM taking quizzes about kissing and fashion, I pored over Good Housekeeping and Martha Stewart, learning about cake frosting and chicken potpies. It certainly explains a lot about my awkward teen dating years.

Before kids, I used to try three or four new recipes a week. My husband and I like variety, tiring of the same old casseroles and quinoa salad week after week. Then came two kids who like my cooking but not adventure. They prefer comfort foods, the same old thing every week. But it’s OK. It seems there’s plenty in my collection for everyone. Just don’t ask me where anything is.

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April 11, 2012 · 9:12 pm

Wanted: Five-Star Scout Camp

After a recent overnight field trip with my son, I felt I’ve already met my camping quota for the year. But what I do for my son, I try to do for my daughter. So I set off for Scout camp with my daughter. I would be going as a mom, not a chaperone, and besides, this overnight Daisy Scout trip offered horseback riding, something neither of us had ever done.

After seeing our accommodations, I quickly rethought my evaluation of my previous cabin experience. I may have had to use a bathroom stall with my legs angled a dozen different ways, but it became clear that I had been pampered. Those bathrooms were five-star compared to what I experienced at the Scout camp: an outhouse.

Not all cabins in the woods are charming.

I have camped at campgrounds equipped with bathhouses. I’ve put up a tent in the woods where nature was our bathroom. But an outhouse has many factors involved: no lights, bugs, and, well, bugs. It didn’t matter that someone put a toilet seat over the wooden hole. You just can’t fancy up an outhouse. And if you go into an outhouse not wanting to touch anything, as I did, you close the door and realize how tiny the space really is and how ridiculous that notion is. One needs clever balance and maneuvering just to fit without brushing the walls or falling into the pit. And I’m pretty certain “Little Miss Muffet” was actually written about a girl in an outhouse and not someone eating. How terrifying it is to be caged in and turn your head to see a spidey creeping down one wall and a patch of red and black hatchlings on the door. The outhouse never saw me again.

I don’t sleep well while camping. Nature can be so freaking loud. I much prefer the hum of electricity or my husband’s breathing to a chorus of strange what-the-heck-is-thats. While I lay there at 2 a.m. hoping a raccoon wouldn’t crawl through our ripped cabin screen, I realized I wasn’t the only one awake. Dogs barked, geese honked, crickets chirped, frogs croaked. From what I know, some of those animals are not nocturnal, right? A thud announced my daughter falling out of bed. I sleepily scrambled to get out of my sleeping bag as she tried to climb in bed with a bunkmate. At least the kids could sleep through nature’s hysteria.

The next morning, I took a turn on a horse named Tuffy. While the other moms easily made their horses enter the ring and circle the barn, mine stood there ignoring my commands. I wondered whether he had a rough night too or whether he was actually part mule. I just crossed my fingers that he wouldn’t throw me off. He knew he had a first-timer and I had to work for my ride along the wooded trail, making kissing sounds, squeezing him with my legs, and prodding him with my heel to get him going. He trotted slowly behind the other horses most of the way, then finally caught up and tried to pass one. I think he was checking to see whether I knew my commands. Thankfully “whoa” comes naturally to someone on a speeding horse.

Not the stubborn horse I rode. This one liked to give kisses.

Now I am officially bunked out, cabined out, camped out, and tired. And I promise to never complain about my bed or my toilet again.

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April 4, 2012 · 9:09 am

The Temptation of Chocolate Easter Bunnies

Every Easter morning of my childhood I awoke to a basket brimming with gooey marshmallow eggs, rainbow-colored jellybeans, speckled malted eggs, and other glorious pastel confections. The prize in the basket, though, was always the big chocolate bunny.

Having the sweet tooth, or teeth, that I did, it didn’t take long for me to plow through those springtime delights. By dark, I had eaten all of the good stuff and struggled with my failing elementary schooler’s willpower.

Throughout the week, I’d nibble the lame remaining candies and eye my older sister’s basket, still overflowing with goodies just like Easter morning. It tortured me like a pair of Sunday tights with a sagging crotch.

Every year, I gave in to my temptation. Daily I snuck into her bedroom, grabbed her chocolate bunny, and raced back to the safe haven behind my bed. Kneeling on my pink shag carpet, I fumbled with the packaging, trying to quiet the crackle of plastic and peeking over my bed to make sure my sister hadn’t heard. I took one bite of the bunny’s ear, savoring its creamy goodness, and sent it back to its package. Knowing I was safe for a while because the front of the box covered the bitten ear, I put it back in my sister’s room. I repeated this many times a day for several days until my sister noticed something had nibbled away her bunny’s ears and was headed toward its face. Sitting in my room, a shriek would break the silence. “KAAA-REN!”

Bunny ears I can't bite. He only looks chocolate. Bummer.

The jig was up. I may as well have had chocolate on my face. My story? You can’t leave something so good sitting there, in plain sight, and not eat it. Easter was over. Eat the candy already. She never learned her lesson. And I don’t think she ever caught on about her trick-or-treat bag either. She really could have tried to hide her loot better.

As an adult, I made up for the many bunny ears I ate as a kid. One year I gave my sister a chocolate bunny with super-duper bunny ears. I think we’re even.

My kids don’t know how to haggle over holiday candy. They simply don’t know what they’re missing. They politely ask to eat a few pieces of candy on Easter. By Halloween, we realize we still have Easter candy lying around. Poor kids don’t know how to work the system. Good thing they have me to eat whatever good stuff is hanging around.

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March 29, 2012 · 9:38 pm

What a Ball Taught This Wife About Her Husband in 20 Seconds

Across the street lives a not-so-nice man. I’m pretty sure if the kids are ever in the road when he comes home, he’ll squash them like a squirrel with his truck and never look back. When my son was three, this grouchy man yelled at him for getting a cool stick out of his yard. My son still gives him the stink eye whenever he sees him, and we never so much as touch a blade of his grass now.

The other night, my husband, son, and I tossed a ball around on our driveway, ignoring Mr. Meany, working in his yard. Until our bouncy ball rolled into the street and toward Mr. Meany’s driveway. The three of us looked at one another in horror, our eyes bulging like waterlogged diapers. Silently I beckoned for the ball to stop, to come back, to roll six feet to the left and hit the curb. But the laws of physics cannot change for one errant playground ball. Speed was not in our favor. That blue rubber ball gained momentum and rolled up Mr. Meany’s driveway as he walked up it toward his garage.

Hang on to your balls, kids.

I looked to my husband, the man of the house, sure that he would handle our awkward situation. He took one look at the ball’s position and sprinted away snickering like a cat that tipped a garbage can. The punk. My son stood paralyzed with fear, looking from his fleeing father to me. I knew he wouldn’t retrieve the ball. He won’t even go to Mr. Meany’s house to trick-or-treat.

I gulped. I wanted to avoid a confrontation with Mr. Meany. When a stray toddler steps foot into his yard, he yells, “Get out of my yard!” Neighbors have told me of past run-ins when their kids’ ball landed in his yard and he scooped it up and said, “Mine.” For a small frame, he delivers a whopping blow: unfriendly and no second chances.

It seemed if we wanted our ball, it was up to me. I dashed across the street and hoped Mr. Meany wouldn’t yell at me. Why my husband nominated me for this job was beyond me. I yell back when provoked. But wait, the ball started rolling down the driveway! Mr. Meany looked down and watched it roll past him. I grabbed it off the end of his driveway and ran. No eye contact. No words exchanged. Quiet on both sides of the street. My kids didn’t need a vocabulary lesson anyway. And now I know I can count on my husband to run away from my every beck and call.

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March 28, 2012 · 8:59 am

Bathing 101: Explain, Rinse, Repeat

Quite some time ago when my husband had the clever idea of letting the kids bathe themselves, I thought it was one more task we could scratch off our parental chore list. It seemed easy enough. Our kids sat on the receiving end of countless scrubdowns in the tub and shower, and it seemed logical that they would know what to do with a bar of soap and a squirt of shampoo.

But when our daughter emerged from the shower with a half-dry head of hair or our son stood covered in bubbles waiting for a towel, it became increasingly clear that Bathing 101 was in order.

Some nights we had to remind them to wash specific parts and show them how. One kid would admit to not having washed his face in a week, promptly sending me in a flurry for a washcloth, soap, and warm water. “We’re washing it now.” For every shower since, I yell into the steam, “Did you wash your face?”

A small rubber duck bathing.

If a bubble touches you, you're clean, right? (Image via Wikipedia)

Each shower brought a new lesson that we hadn’t thought of. Sadly, it was evident that we had to spell it out for our kids in a way they would understand: “Wash your body from head to toe, with soap, between all your parts, every crack. Understand?”

I don’t think they got it. After my son’s shower one night, I sat down to trim the claws growing from his toes. He seemed set on using them to climb trees in the back yard. I feared he’d permanently snag them in his leather shoes. Overcome with harsh vinegary foot odor, tears filled my eyes and I gasped for bits of fresh air. “Did you wash your feet?” I asked between choking sobs.

“No,” he said. They smelled like he’d worn sneakers in the jungle for a year with no socks.

“They reek. You need to wash your feet. I can’t believe you just got out of the shower and they smell so bad,” I said through the hand covering my nose and mouth.

“I never do,” he admitted. “I just let the bubbles on the floor get my feet when I rinse.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. “You need to rub soap all over them. Your armpits too. All the smelly areas. Your whole body!”

I can imagine his third-grade classroom and the odors of freshly bathed children wafting through the air. No wonder teachers sit near the windows.

Next I’ll discover my kids just run their toothbrushes under the water and don’t actually brush them.

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March 24, 2012 · 1:30 pm

Who Learned More on the Overnight Trip: the Chaperone or the Kids?

I recently chaperoned a two-night third-grade field trip and lived to tell about it. Previous field trips have left me exhausted and irritable, so I was nervous. Never having experienced an overnight camp as a child, I set out with another mom, our kids, and a carload of more crap than we needed not knowing what to expect. I felt certain we’d get no sleep, I’d be grumpy, the boys would be wild, and it would rain to the point where we’d need canoes to get around. I was wildly mistaken, pleasantly surprised, dry, hot, hungry, tired, and eager to learn.

Here’s a recap:

1. I learned how to read a compass and follow a course through a horse pasture. Each point we found led to another point and so on. Thankfully, we found nothing else.

Thanks to a compass course, at least I know what to do if I get lost in the woods now, or a horse pasture.

2. I learned there are more than 70,000 types of U.S. soil. The kids talked about viscosity, porosity, horizons, and permeability, which is not “when you get a perm,” in case you were wondering.

3. A field of geese is an open invitation to a gaggle of boys who just had to sit quiet and still for 30 minutes and listen to a cool bird presentation. They couldn’t upset the birds being shown inside, but no one said anything about the geese outside, who I’m pretty sure won’t return to that field for a while.

4. I learned that a dark, quiet, blow-up astronomy dome showing the night sky offers a perfect place to catch up on missed sleep. Just be aware when the instructor points the laser in your direction and you’re suddenly in the constellation spotlight.

5. I learned that I can’t sleep to the sound of 11 sleeping bags swishing and plastic mattresses scrunching all night after day one, but after day two, I can sleep through almost anything.

6. When given the option, boys who don’t have their moms with them will not shower for three days, regardless of how sweaty they’ve gotten, how much grass and sand they’ve rolled around in, and whether they splashed around a little too much in the stagnant water in aquatics class.

7. When allowed to go through the dining hall line alone, boys will return with a plate full of carbs, cheese, and not much else. When you point out they could have made a salad with the lettuce, they tell you they didn’t see that.

8. When asked about the coolest thing they’ve ever done, half the kids say going to that camp, fishing for their first time while there, or catching their first fish there. I learned that for some, in their short lives, it was a lifetime experience.

9. Third graders are really smart. They knew answers I didn’t expect them to know and made conclusions I didn’t expect them to connect.

10. During the course of our stay, the parents struggled a bit to keep up, wished for better sleeping accommodations, cursed bathroom stalls that required feats of contortionism to use, and yearned for gourmet food. I didn’t hear the kids whine, fuss, or complain about the heat, the long days with no breaks or snacks, the gross food, or little sleep. For them, it was thrilling hands-on learning outside the classroom.

The camp may have been geared toward kids, but I know I learned a lot.

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March 16, 2012 · 9:56 am

Field Trip Anxiety: Two Nights, 80 Kids Equals Panic for This Chaperone

A father and I talked on the school playground the other day about an upcoming overnight third-grade field trip we are chaperoning. We both admitted to being a little nervous about it. We’ve both chaperoned field trips before. But as the conversation continued, I realized he had not thought this overnight thing through as much as I had.

I began to talk about kids who may not have ever been away from home before and homesickness and worry about how to get them to sleep.

“Gee, I hadn’t thought about that,” he said.

I talked about how exhausted I am after just a few hours on a regular field trip and what will two nights and three days of constant yammering and nonstop drama and incessant whining do to me?

Then I mentioned that I hoped the stomach bug that was going around didn’t plan a surprise attack in the bunks one night.

His face scrunched up. I’m sure he wanted to run from me.

“I was excited for this trip, but I hadn’t thought about all this,” he said. I think I took a pin and popped the air out of his balloon.

I think too much. There’s no doubt about it. I can think a topic to death. I think about every possible terrible thing that could happen and how I can possibly handle it, and then I’m pleasantly surprised when things go smoothly or things are just boring, as my life so often turns out.

But I must say I was surprised that this father hadn’t thought about these things because being with so many other people’s kids for two nights will be a challenge whether or not anything catastrophic happens.

The last field trip I chaperoned didn't require sleeping bags, just snacks evidently.

Doesn’t he remember what a normal field trip is like? The last field trip I was on, I had five boys in the rain for four hours with no snacks. In the end, I’m not sure who was grumpier, the boys or me. For four hours they griped, whined, complained, and fussed about being hungry. Like zoo animals, I really was not supposed to feed them. My blood sugar was getting low. I get headaches when I don’t eat. I had a snack. But I didn’t have enough to share with five boys and I felt too guilty to eat in front of them. So we trudged through mist and misery. The boys didn’t want to look at the historic buildings or listen to people dressed in colonial garb talk about life with no computers and no TV. They saw corn cakes cooking in the fire and wanted to reach their weak arms over and steal one out of the hot pan. The only respite of the morning: a paper-thin Moravian cookie that made our mouths water more and our stomachs pretty stinkin’ mad.

When lunchtime finally did approach, the boys had only strength enough to mosey across the entire colonial village back to the bus squatting, giggling, and cocking their rears side to side in an all-out potty-talk fest. “Pffft this” and “Pffft that.” “Oh, that was a good one!” I did not have energy or patience for this. My stomach had turned inside out and through a forced smile I begged them to catch up to me, stop that nonsense, and COME ON! My hands were shaking and food was minutes away. No silly boys and their bathroom talk would keep me from my lunch. I was ready to ditch them.

That night, my conscience got the better of me. “I feel bad,” I told my husband. “I kind of yelled at the kids today.” I decided that in the heat of their third-grade foolery, they probably hadn’t noticed or cared.

I hope this trip next week goes smoother, though I’m bracing myself for no sleep, cranky homesick kids, and whatever the days may bring. I’ll sneak snacks if I have to, for my own sanity. And I’m gearing up for lots of fart jokes. Please send happy thoughts my way.

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