Some Pig

Why I Am Not a Stay-At-Home Mom

What's your thumb, Mama?

Why do we have thumbs?

What would happen if you didn't have a thumb on one hand?

What's late morning mean?

Why don't I see all my friends every day?

What's the biggest thing, Mommy?

How small is a germ?

Is a germ bigger than a cell?

Is a germ the teeniest, tiniest thing?

What's a stem?

What happens if you eat a stem?

Why can I throw the stem away?

What does 'disintegrate' mean? (Okay, I asked for that one, using that word in front of her)

What's a pit? (said of a cherry)

Do cherries grow on trees?

Do strawberries grow on trees?

Why not?

What's a seed?

Why can't you eat seeds?

If you eat a seed, why don't you get a tree growing out of your belly?

Daddy said if you eat a seed, you get a tree growing out of your belly.

Is watermelon made of water?

Why not?

Daddy says watermelon is made of water.  (Clearly I am going to have to have a chat with Warren)

Can you please read me a book?  (Note the 'please' - she's polite when she wants something!)

What's August?

When is it late summer?

Why won't I ever be as old as Amy?

Am I four and a half?  A quarter?  When am I four and a quarter?

What happens if I fall asleep? 

When are we going swimming?

Why do I have to take a nap? (Because *I* need one, that's why)

I don't want to be this name anymore.  I want to be another name.  I want to be Snow White, or Ariel, or Jasmine, or Cinderella and another princess that I know.  What would that be?  I know! It would be Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.  Please can I have a different princess name? (This from the girl who wasn't allowed princess anything for the first three years of her life)

When can we go swimming?

Why is it adult swim time?

What if a little kid jumped in the pool during adult swim?  What would they do?

Why?  Why is there adult swim?

What would happen if we went swimming and there weren't any lifeguards?

Whose bandaid is that?

What would happen if bandaids were old when you put them on?

What would happen if bandaids never got old?

Why can't I ask any more questions for ten minutes, Mommy?

***      ***      ***

In the interest of avoiding being tarred with the J.T. Leroy/James Frey brush, let me be the first to state that this list is recreated as best I can remember and may not, in fact, be an accurate representation of all the questions India asked me in one six-hour period, particularly as big chunks of that questioning occurred when I was driving and had to focus on what I was doing.  However, it is a fairly accurate representation of a small portion of a typical day.

Long Days with Short People

A Recipe for Happy Children:

Ingredients:
Two young siblings (usually fighting and getting in each other's hair)
One rainy day
One large can of shaving foam
One bathtub

Add crabby siblings to tub with several gallons clean water.
Squirt sides of bathtub, tub toys, and available limbs of children with copious amounts of shaving foam.
Allow to marinate for at least one half-hour while you go about your business (folding laundry, drinking wine, maintaining your sanity) with one ear listening for trouble.
Increase shaving foam as needed to hold childrens' interest.
Rinse, blot dry with towel, clothe in pjs.  Serve immediately.

Letters From A Broad: I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar Edition

Dear MegaBookMart,

As an institution purportedly focused on customer service, you have some customer serving to do.  Given the fact that you cater to a (supposedly) literate and (therefore equally supposedly) enlightened segment of the population (albeit one inordinately fond of Dilbert mugs and gardening calendars), I assumed that your restroom facilities would reflect that enlightened status.  So imagine my surprise when I sent the redoubtable Warren off to the mens' room with a small daughter sporting a bulgy behind and a dry diaper, only to see him reappear mere moments later, bearing said small child, bulgy bottom, and dry diaper, all status quo ante.  "Here," he said, not bothering to contain his glee as he thrust said small child motherward, "you have to change her.  They don't have a changing station in the men's room."

Uuuuhhhhh ... WHAT?!?!?!

Hello, MegaBookMart?  Have you ever actually looked at your customer base?  A bunch of them are men!  Of the male persuasion!  And a bunch of those come replete with children!  So why, pray tell, are your diaper changing facilities limited to the ladies' room??  How antediluvian an attitude is THAT?? Did you need those extra two square feet for something else - the latte flavorings counter, mayhap, or the extensive displays of designer-fabric-covered journals and mini-book-lights?  Furthermore, have you looked, I mean really looked at the men who frequent your store? To put it kindly, they do not tend to suffer from excess testosterone syndrome.  They trend toward the sensitive-crunchy-vegetarian- wearing-sandals-and-socks type, leavened with a generous helping of stylistically-challenged-techie types and - important to note here - harried-looking-father-of-small-child-in-a-front-pack types!  So what happens when one of the latter, diaper-wearing child in tow, tries to, oh, say, give the child's mother a much-needed break by getting the little vermin angel out of the house and out of her hair for an hour or two, and the angel in question has a poopy butt?  Is he supposed to ask the multi-pierced, barely articulate barista to change his pride and joy?  Or do you expect him to stand outside the ladies' room and ask random female passers-by to change his child's befouled bottom?  And what of the children of single dads?  Or those who have two daddies?  What are those kids expected to do - sit in their wet, stinky diapers until their poor paternal family figures can find an establishment whose policies are firmly rooted in this century, never mind millennium?

Okay, okay, I realize you will shuffle your feet and mumble something about "perverts" and "lawsuits" when I bring this up, so I'll offer this compromise:  How about adding a single-stall, unisex bathroom with a changing station in it?  That would cover multiple bases at once, and stave off the threat of the protest I have in mind:  A mass poop-in!  Yes, imagine your aisles of mugs, bookbags, stuffed animals, picture frames, and incidentally books, all filled with daddies changing babies who have been fed a steady diet of cauliflower puree, raisins, and apple juice and chanting, "Hey, hey!  Ho, ho!  My baby's gonna go!" 

There's still time to mend your ways, my friends.

Signed,

Some Pig

My darling Warren, light of my life, partner of my heart, man of my dreams,

We are in MegaBookMart on a desperate hunt for a last minute birthday gift for one of India's little friends, the selection and purchasing of which has to transpire immediately if not sooner.  Upon clapping eyes on the childrens' section of the store,  the fruit of our combined loins start to head down divergent paths with but the same goal:  Total and utter decimation of every book, game, and toy display in sight.  "So which one do you want," you ask merrily, as our children bolt in opposite directions, "the small destructive one, or the large destructive one?"  To which I answer, "How about you watch both of them, and I'll pick out the gifts so we can get out of here faster?"

And then you say, in a sort-of-joking-but-serious-underneath tone of voice, "But that's hard."

Uhhh ... YEAH.  Here's a news flash for ya:  Doing anything with two little kids in tow is hard!  Try grocery shopping with these two, especially when it's creeping up on the arsenic hour and they're hungry and tired and cranky.  Try going to the garden store and asking about the strange bugs on the lilies while your two kids do their utmost to manhandle every delicate decorative gewgaw and tip over every tropical plant in sight. Try talking coherently to the freaking computer repairman on the phone while the baby clings to you screaming hysterically and the older one lies on the couch moaning, "Nooobody's taaaaalking to meeeeee ... nooobody's taaaaalking to meeeee ..." ad infinitum.  This, my friend, is why I sometimes beg and plead with you to take just one of the little buggers darlings with you once in awhile when you have to run to the hardware store.  And why I stomp off in a huff when I ask you if I can leave the kids home now and then to make a run to the grocery store, and you give me the old "I'm in the middle of __________ (insert manly and vaguely dangerous household maintenance chore here) and it's hard to stop now," speech, and why I double stomp off and roll my eyes when you add, just a touch impatiently at the end, "can't you just take them with you?"  For while you are an incredible, involved, in-touch father and husband who supports and cares for his family beyond my wildest dreams, this is the one thing you just don't "get".

Love,
Your Wife

Dear Mainstream Media,

Do you mind if I call you MSM, Mainstream Media?  After all, given how much time I've spent following your every doings, I feel as if I know you.  And I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in you, MSM.  For the past year, watching you has been like watching one of those skits where a nice but not particularly bright straight man observes the comedian choking or drowning or otherwise facing imminent bodily harm and takes an exceptionally long time to figure it out. First, one major Presidential candidate is referred to as a "bitch" in front of another major Presidential candidate, and little note is paid.  Then you seemed to miss seeing the Hillary nutcracker almost completely.  Then you take little notice of John McCain calling his wife - his wife, mind you, she of the millions of dollars and personal airplane, without which Johnny would be back in the Senate as yet another Republican also-ran - a See You Next Tuesday!  In public!  I won't even write what he called her, that's how vile I consider that statement to be.  And then, after a couple "soul searching" articles to the effect of, "Gee, some people think we're vaguely misogynist?  Huh.  I wonder why that is," you let slide the by-now-infamous crackbrained commentary calling Michelle Obama a "baby mama" on Fox News! 

HELLO?  Not only was that comment derogatory for being sexist, it was also derogatory for being racist!  It was a twofer, and if it hadn't been pounced upon by the left-wing blogosphere, it would have gone practically unnoticed!  Why aren't you jumping on this with both feet, MSM?  Why am I not hearing stories about that commentator being censured, or demoted, or fired, along with editorial broadsides from the major news outlets warning against future displays of such troglodyte impulses by the Fourth Estate?  Why isn't every pundit and personality of note seething with public fury about this?  Why, David Brooks' face should be as purple as the lovely tie he's wearing here over this!  The furore in the MSM should be just barely dying down now, instead of dying down almost as soon as it came to life!  The head poohbahs at Fox should be manning the barricades right now, just having come from wiping the egg off their collective face and taking their collective foot out of their collective mouth.  Every other professional in the MSM should be inching their seats away from the Fox reporters and giving them the "I don't see you" body language message when they run into each other in public until Fox gets the hint that that shit don't fly in a civilized society.

How bad is this?  Well, replace all the derogatory comments made over the past year that were based on being female with derogatory comments based on race.  Replace all the female-based negative descriptive terms (like "cackle") with race-based negative descriptive terms ("shuck and jive").  Now imagine what the public reaction would have been to the use of those terms.  See what I mean?  DUH.  Now all of you in the MSM call your mamas right now and apologize.

Don't make me come over there,
Some Pig

In Which I Declare My Complete and Unconditional Surrender

When India was a wee slip of a baby, Warren and I had a donnybrook over the fact that she ate the organic cheese tortellini before she ate the steamed organic zucchini.  He wanted to ban any and all processed foods from her diet posthaste. (I reference it somewhere in the dim past but can't be arsed to search it out.) 

On Friday, when I walked in the door bearing the tell-tale white cardboard box with the iconic red-and-green print of Italian-American takeout food, Celeste's little face lit up as she yelled out, "PEE-TA!"

Before I had kids (when I knew what I was doing), I swore that they would eat real food, dammit!  There would be no dinners consisting only of the pale foods (mac'n'cheese, corn, fries).  No nights spent cooking two meals, one for adults and one for kids.  No drowning any and all questionable foods (i.e. vegetables) in ketchup and/or ranch dressing so the kids would eat them.  No catering to unformed and unsophisticated tastes would transpire in our kitchen, by golly!  If dinner was kale and spicy sausage soup, then you bet your bippy my kids would be eating kale and spicy sausage soup!  And they certainly would NOT be allowed twenty slices of bread in lieu of a good, healthy, homemade dinner!!

I look back fondly on those days.  It was nice living in my own little world.

Stop the Madness!

Dear Fellow Parents,

Come with me on a trip down memory lane.  I am four years old and it is my birthday.  My mom has the neighbor kids across the street over to mark the occasion.  The festivities consist of everyone singing the birthday song, consuming their weight in cake and ice cream, and leaving. I don't even remember if I got presents. 

Fast forward one year.  I'm five, and the celebration has become correspondingly more sophisticated:  The clientele includes more friends than just the kids across the street; we play "Mother, May I," and "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and then have cake and ice cream. I open presents (mostly small plastic things from the local five and dime) while everyone (again) eats their weight in sugary treats and vamooses posthaste.

I tell you this not to reinforce the notion that I am ancient (Although when I was young, the Old Testament was just "the Testament" and Methuselah was often chided for his callow youth.  "He's so young, the tribal elders would say, clucking their tongues over his latest juvenile transgression - chariot joyriding, oxen tipping and the like - while the womenfolk tried to placate them.  "Remember when you were like that?  He'll mature over the next couple score of years.").  I realize you might get the impression that I'm superannuated, what with the reference to the "five and dime" and all (Okay, keeds, the five and dime was like an exceptionally small, locally-owned Wal-Mart, where'd you go with your allowance and ... oh never mind.).  No, I tell you this so you'll have some context to understand why I was so surprised to pick up my daughter at day care the other day and find a yo-yo in her cubby with a note purporting to be from the birthday girl, explaining that this little trinket was given in celebration of her birthday.  Oh, and, by the way, my daughter doesn't even know this little girl, and as far as I can figure, she's not even in the same class.

Um, exsqueeze me?  I must not have gotten the memo that says we now give random strangers gifts on our childrens' birthdays.  I can only guess that Mom must have bought a gross of the things from Oriental Trading and had no other way to get rid of them, because otherwise, why would you give favors to kids who don't even know your kid?  And whatever possesses someone to give a room full of three-and four-year-olds each a yoyo, fercrissake?  My daughter can't even yo!  That sure made for an enjoyable evening, listening to her screams of frustration as the yoyo spiraled out of her control and rolled around on the floor.  Maybe I can use future birthdays as an excuse to give everyone a Ninja throwing star or something of that ilk. 

So can we all agree to a period of detente in the birthday party arms race?  I know I'm guilty of birthday overachievement (India's third birthday extravaganza immediately comes to mind), but at least I've never fallen prey to the urge to up the ante on everyone else. I suggest that we all go back to the standards of the seventies, a time before themed birthday parties, mandatory favors for the attendees, destination events, and parents hanging around during the festivities.  We can lead the kiddos through a rousing game of "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button," let them loose on the swing, dole out too-large slices of cake (made from a mix! with no organic ingredients!) and then send them on home.  Gifts will be given from the attendees to the birthday child, and parents of those guests who protest will be remind the protesters of their own birthday that a) has just passed, or b) is coming up.  Thank-you notes will not purport to be from the (pre-literate) birthday celebrant, typed in a child-themed font, or written on stationery engraved with a four-year-old's name.  Best of all, the entire time required to plan, prepare for, hold, clean up after, and thank people in attendance at the event will be kept to a maximum of six hours (at least until said children are of an age where they want slumber parties, at which point you are on your own, folks).

So who's with me on this?

Jekyll and Hyde, Table for One

I have to make this fast because the kids are playing nearby and I don't know how much time I have between summonsings.  Is that a word?

India is playing with a little friend of hers from day care.  These two are often separated because there are times when they don't play together well.  I was, of course, laying all the blame at the other little girl's feet because, hey, MY kid's brought up with discipline!  And manners!  And all those other good things.

Imagine my consternation, then, when it turns out that MY child is the one who's being an enormous pain in the tuchus.  Actually, to be honest, her behavior has been pretty heinous.  She's not sharing well.  She's not taking turns.  She's complaining about her toys.  And she's whining, whining, whining.  Trying to be objective here, her little friend is a bit overbearing, but in an only-child, used-to-her-way kind of way.  It certainly doesn't warrant the constant whine-fest my daughter is offering in return.  We've already had two or three of those mother-daughter conversations in the stairwell that consist of me hissing You will treat your guest well and behave or I am calling her parents right now and India - well, whining.  This isn't her standard M.O., either.  We spent the better part of five hours with a little friend of hers last weekend and I never heard a peep out of either of them - well, aside from the screams and giggles, that is.

So have any of you had this experience, where one of your offspring's little friends turns your ordinarily at least somewhat bearable child into someone you'd gladly sell to the gypsies?  What did you do about it - or, as Dr. Suess would say, what would YOU do if your bloggy friend asked YOU?

The Slippery Slope

The first couple of times your kid wets the bed, you strip off every stitch of bedding, compromised or not, and wash it with bleach and borax on the "sanitize" setting of the super-ultra-fawncy washer you bought specifically for that feature.

Later on, you settle for the "hot" setting because, damn, your electric bill's not cheap.  After all, your mom never had no "sanitize" feature and you survived, didn't you?

Then you get to the point where, before you strip the bed, you give the outer layers the feel-n-sniff test, because, hey, why wash something that doesn't need to be washed if you're going to wind up washing it in the near future?

After awhile longer, you just strip off the sheets and chuck them in the washer on "warm" with a bunch of other stuff that needs washing anyway. 

You know you've hit rock bottom when you find yourself eyeing the rubber sheet from hell that takes three people to wrangle on and off the mattress and thinking to yourself, do you really think she'd notice if you just let the sheets air dry?  It was just a little bit of pee...

Excuses, Excuses

To Whom It May Concern:

Please excuse my daughter, India, from the social standards by which most of us live.  I realize she has appeared in the same outfit three times this week.  Little did I know when I opened the packages from Nonni containing the pink dress with ivory and blue flowers and the snowflake-and-striped tights that I was going to see that particular fashion statement, with only slight variations thereon, multiple times per week for the next six months of my life.  At first I thought it was sweet when she insisted on wearing dresses and only dresses, NO PANTS MOMMY NO NO NO, figuring it, like all her other fashion enthusiasms to date, would be a phase that would pass within the fortnight.  But when the dress craze stretched on for three weeks and then four weeks and then into months, months that were especially snow-laden and cold, well, it got old fast.  Add to that her sudden insistence that everything in her life had to be "beeeyooooteeeefulllll" and she wanted to be a "pwincess" and, well, this is one Free To Be You and Me-era girl who was biting her tongue so hard she nearly severed it off.  Oh yes, while we're on the subject of minor royalty, no one warned me that I would be living in the land of the Passive Aggressive, and India is their Queen.  Those times when I put the maternal foot down, clothing-wise, the doyenne of despair spent hours (or at least it felt like hours) doing the verbal equivalent of donning sackcloth and ashes (which she would never deign to wear, as you know, since they are neither beautiful nor princessy, even if you can get away with calling a sackcloth somewhat dress-like).  "I'm coooooooooold," she'd moan, basset-like, over and over; or, alternately, "I'm toooooo tiiiiiiiiired to wear this, Mommy.  Mommy, I'm tooooooooooo tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired."  And it didn't help that one time when we absolutely, positively mandated that she wear pants to go sledding, her friend Amy came prancing into the house fully bedecked in all manner of princess attire, from the gaudy tiara on her head to the "glass" slippers on her feet.  She didn't say anything, but I could feel India's respect for us plummet as her gaze slid over her friend's royal regalia.  "Sledding my ass," her facial expression said to us as she glared us down, "that's the last time I take fashion instruction from the likes of you!"

To make matters even more galling, we lucked into the motherlode of all hand-me-downs when some relatives bequeathed us with three giant storage tubs of youth clothing.  I now have a nearly-full box of size 3T girls' wear that got only passing use, if that.  When I could wrestle the aforementioned dopey pink dress off her body, India had two other dresses on top rotation, a second string of perhaps four other dresses, and a distant third team of items I managed to get her to wear through force, subterfuge, or outright bribery.  Even now I feel a pang of regret when I think of the cute outfits I never could entice her to wear.  The LLBean sweater with the lobster on the front?  Worn twice, maybe.  The cute pink pullover top with navy stripes?  Perhaps she wore it once.  The red cableknit turtleneck with navy leggings that looked so fetching in my mind?  Existed only in my mind.  Even some of the aforementioned dresses got the short shrift, like the purple corduroy jumper (so cute!) with the multicolored buttons, or the navy pinafore dress with little pink polka dots.  "I'll wear that next time," India would demur when I dragged them from the nether regions of the closet, reaching past me for the snowflake dress, the denim jumper, or the (gag!) STUPID PINK DRESS WITH BLUE FLOWERS. "I'll wear it on Thursday," she'd promise on a Monday, although I knew full well that Thursday would find us either 1) with a sobbing India on the floor and an irritated Mommy standing over her, hated garment in hand, yelling, "YOU PROMISED!", or 2) with India making up excuses about why she actually couldn't wear that dress today, after all ("I can't wear that dress.  Anya doesn't think I look pretty in it."), upon which my head would blow up.  Either way, it seemed to be a lose-lose situation for me more than anyone else, and in the end, if I wasn't willing to take it to the mat, I had to let it go.  But I will admit to hurrying India along to the next size up perhaps a few weeks earlier than absolutely necessary, if only to savor the moment when the dreaded stupid pink dress would make its last appearance in the laundry basket prior to being burned carefully put away in archive-quality storage. 

I know all you mommies with docile, well-behaved children are now congratulating yourselves for your superior child-raising ability, and mentally figuring I'm getting what I deserve, but I just want you to know that I am not alone in being collateral damage in the fashion wars.  I will leave you with the thoughts of no less august a personage than Sandra Tsing Loh:

Susannah is busily rummaging around for the Kitty Cat Glitter Blouse and the Pleated Red Skirt (KCGBATPRS). It's her school uniform. Of course, Susannah is the only kid there who has a school uniform. All the other preschoolers vary their outfits...(I could always send a mass e-mail to the other parents: "For the record, we do own a washing machine. And yes, we have bought Susannah other clothes. Photos of cute alternate outfits she will never wear are attached. Enjoy.")

If you would like visual confirmation of the panoply of clothing options that India chooses to forego, I will gladly send you notarized photos.

Yours,

Some Pig

Memo to La Leche: Suck It (And I Ain't Talking Nursing)

I am in the bathroom attempting to get ready for the day, and I am in transition between nightclothes and my outfit for the day (which is the polite way of saying I'm nekkid).  Celeste comes barging in because, hey, there's less modesty around here than there is in the Playboy Grotto.  Seeing her favorite body parts of mine unencumbered by clothing, she makes a beeline straight for me, the ferocious gleam in her eyes like I imagine one sees in a lion's on the veldt when he spies a particularly plump and juicy gazelle.  Having fulfilled my maternal duties earlier, I have no interest in providing a follow-up snack. "No, Celeste," I say in my best I-mean-it voice, folding my arms over my chest.  In response, she grabs my arms and attempts to force them down by my sides, chanting, "Mine! Mine!"

Is it time to wean this kid or what?

I Predict an Extended Illness and a Long Recovery

Being that her little sister still isn't very good at playing in an interactive way, India usually dragoons me into her games of make-believe, hide-and-seek, mommies, and the like. This requires that I follow India's detailed expectations to the letter while I silently wish I could make my contribution whilst reading uplifting literature of some kind. 

But today, things started looking up!

India has developed a game she calls "hospibble" (hospital), played with the aid of her doctor's kit.  In Hospibble, I have to sit in the playroom chair (aka the waiting room) for an indeterminate time (we're into cinema verite chez Pig).  Then I'm escorted by the nurse (India) into the doctor's office (India's room) and asked to lie down on the bed until the doctor (who is also India) can see me.  The doctor enters, whereupon she insists that I be tucked into bed so she can listen to my breathing and my heart with her toy stethoscope.  Then the nurse (India, again) brings me dinner (various plastic food-type items, generally of the same consistency and attractiveness as real hospibble food).  The best part is when the doctor is called out of the room to attend to urgent business (chasing her sister down the hall) and I am forced - forced! - to lie quietly under my blankets until the busy, busy, busy health professionals can care for me again.

I look forward to many, many future repetitions of the Hospibble game.