An exasperated call came in last week from Kiddo’s teacher to Josh. He said she could hardly take a breath as she quickly expelled every instance of misbehavior that any child had ever pulled on her wait I mean only ours. Ms. ThirdGrade spent a solid twenty or so minutes on the adventures of having Kiddo in her classroom and then Josh repeated this by calling me to recap. I was on my way to a midterm. We aren’t surprised so much by the problems our kid faces with authority (it’s been since kindergarten) but we are struck by how bold she has become. Outright refusal – arms crossed, leaning back in her chair – ain’t gonna kind of attitude. Drawing on her desk mere seconds after being scolded about that very thing. Waiting until someone’s back is turned to run off from the bench she’s supposed to be parked on during recess. The list goes on but too deep and I lose my shit so we’ll stop there.
I arrived to my midterm flushed, blood shot and shaking. I can get as mad as I want to but when someone else is mad at my kid, well. It hurts, man.
This is going to take some research and maybe a therapist or something to get to the bottom of because Kiddo is painfully, sickeningly sweet and mild tempered at home. She listens and does what she’s told. The problem lies in us having to repeat ourselves over and over and over and over because her attention span is approximately three and three quarter seconds. (TEXTBOOK ADD, my kid.) But refusing to do something? Deliberate, stone cold defiance? I haven’t met that kid.
Daily progress reports are coming home now. When it was missing last Friday she insisted that the reports aren’t sent home on Fridays. For some absolutely ridiculous reason, we believed her. Come Monday afternoon, the Friday report is in her folder with a note or two about “refusing to listen to directions” and “did not turn in homework.” But Friday leads to Saturday and Sunday and do you even know how much bike riding there is to be done on those days? She’s crafty and I know she didn’t bring that paper home for a reason.
School kid and home kid are two different sets of practices and behaviors.
I asked Josh when he thinks one is going to catch up to the other. I think that’s when we’ll be in for it.
In four months, she’ll be nine. In seven years, I’ll be locked away in a padded room. Will you come visit? Bring mojitos?
-CJ
For the first week anyway, third grade is looking better than second. I hope second grade goes down as the hard year (what with the almost total lack of shit-giving when it came to homework and not goofing off in class) and it’s all pencil shavings and stickers from here on out.
Pencil shavings and stickers being good things. Simple. Requiring little to no parent/teacher conferencing that begins with the teacher sighing heavily at you.
A week or so ago, Josh encouraged Kiddo to take her bike down the cul-de-sac and make conversation with some kids around her age that had been playing. It was an un-Kiddo-like thing to do. She is independent, maybe a little awkward and not comfortable in social settings. She would certainly not be the type to initiate conversation with a group of a strange kids, I thought.
And yet all week she has been with this little clique of local boys and girls keeping her outside, pedaling around the block, streamers flying. There’s a quota for hours spent outside and scabs earned on knees and elbows before one can act all grown up and ask for a Facebook account or a cell phone. I’m glad she racking up those hours. I might be more excited than she is that she finds herself with all these new friends instead of clinging closely to only one, as she’s done previously. And they’re all so damn sweet. I don’t say this of many kids. More often I speak fondly of wanting to elbow drop on other peoples’ kids.
On the first day of school Kiddo made a friend that showed her the ropes of the morning daycare place and the short ride to the school and where to go and when, etc. A little elementary tour guide. I asked her to tell me about her.
“She has yellow hair and she wears pink everyday.”
“But you’ve never seen her before today.”
“I know.”
Good point.
-CJ
In March of 2004, I decided to fly to Florida to visit my cousin. We’re just about the same age and we’d been built-in best friends since we could crash our walkers into one another while our parents drank beer on the patio. Her family had moved across the country on account of my uncle’s job transfer and I’d yet to visit her there.
The thing was, and there were some things, I had never flown before. And I had fourteen month old. That I was going to take with me. And I was eighteen without a friggin’ clue about anything.
WOO!
This is much like now though the difference is that now I know I don’t have a clue. No one told me when I was eighteen, “Uh, hey friend? Those little anecdotes about life in this society that one acquires through time and experience? YAIN’T GOT ANY.”
Kiddo looked about like this at the time. Do you just die? I die.
My mom’s best friend worked for an airline at the time so I purchased an inexpensive flight through her. There were going to be a couple hiccups but with prior knowledge and planning they would be no thang. The flight to Orlando would layover in Houston but I could stay on the plane and wait for everyone to re-board. (This was incorrect.) The flight home was a stand-by flight but it wasn’t even half way full so it would be a non-issue. (This was incorrect.)
My dad and my boyfriend delivered Kiddo and I (and my duffel bag, backpack, carseat and diaper bag) to the LAX labyrinth. It was a teensy tiny LOT overwhelming. I had kind of forgotten that I tended to get hysterical and anxious when I had to part with Josh (doth thee have some issues, Calamity?) and I became an inconsolable mess. Once inside, Josh was allowed to help me carry my baggage (as he’s done for almost a decade now, ho ho ho) until the security point where I took over and managed to maneuver one thousandy pounds plus a living, moving (adorable, chubby) being through the metal detectors and the like. Again: first time. I didn’t know I had to take my jacket and shoes off and was impatiently told to step aside and do so. In the process, I set Kiddo down and she promptly began crawling away from me. I was already exhausted, heart racing, hot and wanted someone to hold my hand. But I remained calm and collected NOT AT ALL.
Unlike most aspects of this trip, I had experienced a metal detector/baggage scanner situation once before. My mom and I went to court when I was but a wee unpregnant teen for a traffic ticket I’d received. We were sent back to the car three times. Giant novelty safety pins (why?), disposable cameras and Swiss army knives? Not allowed in court.
My belongings went onto the belt and the kid and I went through the archway o’ safety. My favorite black jacket never came off that conveyer belt, may it rest in peace. Onward to the boarding area, a kind gentleman chased me down to return the trail of items that were spilling out of my back pocket including cash and lipstick. Why, thank you, may I wipe mine and my toddler’s snot trails on your sleeve?
By the grace of something holy, we made it on that goddamn plane. But I could not stop crying. Despite my efforts at discretion, my seatmate asked if I would be alright and offered comforting platitudes. There would be nothing to worry about, she promised. She did this all the time. But being thousands of feet in the air was not a concern for me. It was being lost and confused and lonely and full to the brim with regret for trying to be a big girl and thinking I could just go across the country with my baby.
In Houston, we touched down and I was asked to exit the plane. I asked if I could just wait in my seat but there would be none of that. I stayed as close to the gate as I could, knowing that if I even looked away for a second it would disappear and I would be trapped in Texas forever and ever.
The plane nor the path to it disappeared on me. I took my seat with the angelic one-year-old and we set out for Orlando.
My cousin found me quickly in the airport when we landed. We waited for my checked baggage and it seemed that (one of) my worst nightmares had, of course, come true. I knew that I couldn’t trust my luggage all out of sight and tucked away under the plane. The carseat did not make it. It was hanging out in Houston, not being sat in by any adorable diapered butts.
We risked the drive to Cocoa Beach with Kiddo in my lap. When we arrived I swore off travel forever.
To be continued with: New Jersey, corn & pee!
The end of a holiday weekend woes are with me, unlike the Force. I loathe the creep up to the alarm firing off after a few days of blissful late nights and later mornings.
Friday was nice, when my boss allowed us all to duck out early. I was super selfish and came home for my workout before I picked up my kid from school. I know, to hell with me. I actually doubled that workout in anticipation of All The Beer. We had some vague plan shapes that frothed over into nothing when Josh went out to finish the dragon tattoo on his arm. I hung out at home with kid, did some shopping, did some cleaning. A young gentleman got in line behind me at the grocery store with a case of beer. I told him to cut in front and he asked if I was sure. “Come on, you’re obviously going somewhere fun and I’m *sweeping gesture over the cart of lunch foods and dinner ingredients* going home.”
The thing about being home sort of alone on a Friday night is how fucking awesome it’s become. I am thrilled for those wide open weekends with few to no commitments so I be loungey and cleaney and do everything I want according to my watch.
My watch is set like that of most other Pacific time zone dwellers, so I guess I do things according to theirs too but you know.
At one point my mom called and asked what we were doing. I told her Kiddo and I were fresh off a “penis and vagina conversation*,” to which she asked what one had to do with the other. “Um… a lot?”
“Really? Penises and pajamas?”
Choke laughs, snorts and tears followed. I told her what I’d actually said, baffled that she hadn’t put it together on her own, and told Kiddo, “Grammy thought we were talking about penises and pajamas. Haha, go wipe your pajama!”
“No, YOU wipe your pajama, Mom!”
Totally had to be there. Mom got it right when she said, “Yours is the only eight-year-old that would laugh at that.”
*It’s high time she had an educated conversation about those, IMO.
Halfway through a cheap bottle of red and several Chelsea Lately episodes down, Josh came home, showered off the Bactine smell and showed me his new, raw goods. He has had the outline of a “paper cut” style dragon in need of shading on his forearm, which I fawned over and accidentally touched a few dozen times.
Then I touched his bathrobe, over his chest, and he flinched. He opened the robe to reveal a freshly shaved patch of chest with my name BLAZED across in large, fancy letters.
“Oh, you’re not fucking around, huh?”
“Nope.”
This is translated roughly to: “Oh, you’re very serious about us, huh?”
“I am.”
There’s some history here: In October of 2002, eight months after we’d met, he came home to his pregnant, sleeping girlfriend to reveal a small, printed “Jill” on his chest, with a small x dotting the ‘i.’ A few months after Kiddo was born, I took on a scripty little “Josh” on my right hip. Over the years, his little chest piece faded and faded. I asked him to get it touched up but it never happened. Queue epic breakup of 2007, after which I spent thirteen hours (in three sessions) under a needle to get a huge, colorful dragon down my ribcage to my hip, covering his name completely. HA, I scoffed. And then last summer, we got back together. He still had my name, despite having dated others in our down time. If I mentioned touching it up, he gave me that look that says, “Bitch, please. You erased me.”
A (super-cropped) glimpse of the top portion of my cover-up:
Needless to say I did not expect this huge, bold proclamation in place of his tiny, faded one. I’m still shocked when I see him shirtless. It makes me giddy.
Saturday was the day for All The Beer. My neighbor rolled his BBQ downstairs to our common courtyard/front lawnish type area and grilled up some burgers, brats and dogs. We had a number of folding chairs out under an awning filled with friendly faces. Perched next to me was my blue ice chest filled with frosty Coronas, which I sipped on for a solid seven or eight hours, in between dipping chips and smoking cigars. On every rare occasion we get this group together, we say, “Why don’t we do this more often?!” There’s no right answer. It was a really good night that even included some new faces, though I’ve forgotten the names attached to them.
At (my) of the night (11ish) (some others didn’t head home until dawn) came a text message from my friend Oscar, inviting me to a one o’clock Dodger game the next day, which I happily agreed to. Once I was jersey’d and ready that next morning, I found out we were on the FIELD. The tickets retail around $120 each and could have sold for over $200, surely. They were incredible seats, which we toasted to over and over. They were a last minute gift from a rep at our work who I will seek out and hug. I drunk-Tweet’d from said incredible seats.
There are so few things better than perfect weather at your favorite team’s stadium, cold beers and good company. When my plastic cup emptied, I spied a new one in the next cup holder. “A fresh one?!” I asked Oscar. And he said, which will stick forever, “The beer fairy came.”
The girl I’d overheard turned out to be this hilarious, super baked young girl that we laughed with as well as at for about seven innings after we’d shook hands and declared ourselves friends. That’s one of my favorite things anymore; those single serving friends you meet when you let your guard down and stop thinking the world believes you to be a freak.
And today: Kiddo went off to swim with a girlfriend and Josh and I were blessed with a sudden three hour window for an afternoon date. We loaded up on gummy type candies and hit the movie theater for Hangover 2. If you find the first one to be epically hilarious, and you should, this one is worth seeing. It’s not up to the same caliber as the first, though not much is. It is very, very funny though.
Now I’m slow-cooking some chicken and looking forward to some serious ice cream eating in bed with my freshly inked and wonderfully sexy lovah.
-CJ
Mother’s Day is about as cool as my birthday. I’m so content to have nice things coming my way all day via phone call or text or Facebook or flowers or champagne. I enjoyed it more this year than almost any before, except for the tiff between my man and I that kept us from having brunch together. Which just made for more time to be spent with my folks, my aunt and uncle, my little sister, my kid, and my cousin that was celebrating his 20th birthday on what was supposed to be a day exclusively for his mama. The audacity of being born! If I could have eggs Benedict and mimosas for every meal of every day, I would. Without hesitation.
After brunch, I dropped my kid sister off with her boyfriend to do mother’s day with the ladies in his family. It was so grown up of her. I don’t think I was in those kind of relationships in high school, where you gave a crap about the other person’s relatives. Relationships at that time were for passionate make-outs and not much else. But as we know, my almost sixteen-year-old sister is light years above me when it comes to maturity.
Over at my parents’ house, champagne was opened and kiwi strawberry juice was added and poker was played. I was the recipient of multiple bright sunflowers from my mom and from my sister-in-law and an orange daisy from my brother’s friend, which kind of melted my heart in a way that almost made me squeeze him with enough fervor to pop his eyes out.
When kid and I got home that night, Josh was scurrying around, room to room, closing doors behind him. I couldn’t figure out what he was up to but I was champagne-tired and ready to whip off my bra and put on my loosest fitting pajamas. Just as my eyes got heavy, I felt his weight on the mattress. Softly, quietly, he gave me and kiss and said all the things that I wanted to hear while presenting me with a silver gift bag and a construction paper card with a pink daisy on the front. Looking at it now on my corkboard at work, I’m thinking he used the cover of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence as a guide. It looks a lot like the book cover/my arm tattoo, and oh my God, I love it so much harder right now.
Okay I asked him and he didn’t use the book. Still. Well done, sir.
As masculine as he is, which, despite his sexy purple shirts, is a lot… Josh can clothes shop for a woman better than anyone else. I would fully trust him to start my wardrobe over from scratch, to dress me for any occasion, to pick anything from undergarments to hair flowers for me. In the gift bag were two tops that I was immediately in love with and a pair of dark denim capris. He bought all the right sizes, nailed my style and kept comfort in mind. Monetary gifts can be few and far between when they’re this good. They can be kept until the end of the night on Mother’s Day when they’re this good.
To all of you raising a little one, helping someone else raise theirs, taking care of kiddos on the side or for work, or step-momming… happy (late) Mother’s day. You are (probably) really wonderful.
-CJ
Yesterday Kiddo came running to me from the living room, in a Stage 5 panic. She grabbed my forearm with both hands, little fingers with chipped black polish at the nails pushing into my skin. “I SWALLOWED MY GUM.”
In the second before reacting, I wanted to widen my eyes, gasp incredulously and see her expression when she believed, for a moment, all of the horrible things kids say will happen when you swallow your gum. How it stays in your system for seven years. How you have to go to the hospital to have it removed. Then I remembered how I had relinquished all of my evil eight years ago when Kiddo was born.
“It’s totally fine.”
“Oh. It is?”
“Totally.”
Utter relief. And then, “Can I have a piece of cheese?”
I can only wish my fears were quashed so quickly.
-CJ
Filed under: as a mama
My friend complained by way of e-mail this morning about “another F-ing fundraiser” at the kid’s school. I replied, “I throw them out. I’m not working for the school; otherwise I’d be… working for the school. Employing the kids to sell crap just grosses me out. I can’t believe it’s still going on.”
Because, for real, it’s an old practice and it needs to be canned. The kids cannot go door-to-door like I once did. It is a given that mom or dad takes the assload of paperwork and triplicates to the office or around to the friends and relatives and the only reason anyone ever submits to the crap catalog offerings or overpriced wrapping paper and peanut brittle is out of guilt or to please the kid and boost them into some shitty prize category where ten hours of effort and pestering earns a toy that costs a sixth of a cent to make in a third world country and has a thirteen minute lifespan before it is in pieces and next thing you know your vacuum is in the shop or your dog is choking until it vomits plastic and brown goopy kibble.
Thus, elementary school fundraisers = dog puke.
-CJ
Dear sitee-site,
I survived one work week at the new job. I went in with zero excitement, much to my dismay. Work was work was a paycheck was a job, new place, old place, where is happy hour held this week? But the transition has been smooth, the work is steady, the people are nice and that giant private office upstairs? All mine.
Please feel free to send me some living, breathing greenery to keep me company.
There’s a Thai place nearby. I’m slacking on my quest to try new foods so I think I’ll head there for lunch soon. What’s a picky girl to order from a Thai menu?
The other day when I picked up Kiddo from school, there were some screaming kids on a nearby playground, around her age (or size at least), and one yelled, “I’LL SMACK THE KOREAN OUT OF YOU.” No shit.
I had to have a quiet chat with the super amazing after-school supervisor gal about Kiddo. I was afraid we were in a bully situation and mine was not the victim. There’s a younger girl in the same after-school program that has told Kiddo once in front of me and once in front of Josh that she hopes Kiddo will be “nicer tomorrow.” Which totally freaked me out to the point that I couldn’t even take my kid’s word that she wasn’t being mean. Super amazing after-school supervisor gal assured me that the other child complaining about everyone and everything and I should definitely not worry about my kid being mean to anyone. Exhale. But when it came to speaking her mind, apparently Kiddo’s got the gold medal. The gal told me how she’s so straight forward that some of the other kids have trouble even trying to react to her.
I’m good with her telling someone deadpan that she doesn’t want to play with them, as long as she’s not shoving them while she does it.
Alright, turning off the mom and turning on the SEX DRUGS AND ROLL ‘N ROLL.
A bunch of my actual family members went out to Vegas two weekends back for my Floridian cousin’s wedding. She and her new spouse decided to forego the fancypants wedding and put that kinda dough toward a reverse vasectomy so they could make BEBES*.
*I KEEP DREAMING I’M HAVING THEM. At least once a week, I’m taking care of a newborn and the memories of almost a decade ago come flooding back.
Upon arrival at the Orleans, Josh and I freshened up and hit the casino with various members of my family. Within an hour, I was pocketing this:
& yelling at various strangers, “I JUST WON FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” This was a huge boost for us, being that we had only booked one night with our meager earnings and would be booking the second night once we arrived. We were able to have a good time, guilt free, and leave our bank account untouched.
The wedding was short and sweet, Vegas style. My sister-in-law took one jillionty pictures on her awesome, gigante new camera:
wedding prep
I took some grainy cell shots, as usual:
It was so, so fun. I am reminded that my extended family is so, so cool and I can’t wait until we all get together again.
-CJ
On this lovely Friday evening, when I left the office after what felt like a long, long week, I should have felt lighter. Carefree. But I was weighed down by my pillowcase sized pursebag (I have to always carry ALL THE THINGS*) and my laptop bag and one overflowing bag of my co-workers’ generous food donations. When my arms regained their feeling, I took a deep breath for the first time in days. Work is so overwhelming in its quantity. School feels like a chore (one! more! week!) and my kid is making me crazy.
*I can’t even talk about going to the bank without saying it exactly like this, and yes, I do a voice.
When I got home, the bathroom reeked of an awful mildew.
From when the toilet overflowed. Twice.
Again.
And so I cracked a beer and got back to work on my laptop, this time in my long basketball shorts and a baggy MMA thermal, hijacked from Josh. (Athletes must be so COMFY all the time.) Two hours of OT didn’t dent the stack of papers I brought home. The stack that Lucy decided looked like a good place to lay upon. We all know I did not stop her.
Kiddo has taken to lying. A lot. For silly, nonsensical reasons that will not benefit her. Except by the time she realizes it won’t benefit her, she’s stared me in the eye and said with conviction that she lost her lunch money.
Er, spent it on charity candy.
Um, bought cheap breakable toys at Santa’s Workshop, where the kids can buy inexpensive presents for their family with a couple dollars.
She’s admittedly thrown responsibility to the wind. When it comes to bringing home her jacket or lunch box, or turning in important papers, or listening to at least ONE of the words we say to her, the kid could not be paid to give a chocolate dipped fuck.
In the car last night, I told Josh, “You realize… she’ll be a teenager one day.”
“And she’ll have her lunch money outside the liquor store…”
“Begging for booze and cigarettes…
“Coming home with tracks marks and saying, ‘Mo did it!’
“And we’ll be like, ‘Mo’s been dead for five years!”
I reiterated some portion of this to my mom in a woe is me and parenting stinks phone call. Surely she rolled her eyes and laughed maniacally when he hung up but before that, she reminded me, “This is parenting. Being able to laugh about it.”
dramatic sigh.
I GUESS.
Wouldn’t you want to trust this face?
Is it any wonder where the blue eyes came from? This is my (incredibly handsome, yes?) dad.
-CJ
Filed under: as a mama
Posting videos won’t become a habit, I swear.
Josh and I were watching Kiddo’s favorite show the other night, America’s Funniest Videos, and swore to commit double suicide if this video didn’t win:
Mom throws toy (Blasted thing won’t embed.)
We didn’t finish the episode, so I guess we’ll see another day.
Any mother on the planet knows this feeling and any woman considering becoming a mother? Get ready to know this feeling.
-CJ
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