Category Archives: parenting

July 19, 2009 · 10:13 pm

Zombie

I’m in the shower, all soaped up when suddenly there’s banging on the bathroom door. I see the door handle rattle back and forth in vain against the lock. If I don’t shut and lock the bathroom door I don’t get a moment’s worth of peace. There’s always someone wanting to get in, demanding my attention. If it’s not my husband (no, you can’t hop into my shower) then it’s my son, the dog, or in the case of one day last year, a partially deflated mylar Darth Vader balloon that caught some current in the air and floated, eye level to me, into the bathroom while I watched in horror and tried to suppress a scream (calm down. it’s just an air current, not a ghost. there are no ghosts. how would you know? you can’t see them…maybe it IS a ghost dragging that balloon… if it gets any closer, then surely it’s ghost…. RUN!).

And so I lock the bathroom door.

But that doesn’t stop people from banging on it.

“What?” I demand.

Muffled sounds come from the other side. The fan is running, the water is streaming down my face. I can’t make out what he wants.

“WHAT?” I holler again.

But again, I can’t make out the words on the other side of the door.

Soapy and perturbed I shut off the water.

“What do you want? I can’t hear you. I’m in the SHOWER!”

“MOM. HOW OLD WERE YOU IN 1902?” Snags scream-asks.

Now I’m really annoyed. This wasn’t an emergency. And REALLY!?!

“I wasn’t even BORN yet,” I holler. “I wasn’t born until 1968!”

“Oh yeah! I forgot!” Snags yells back. “I was thinking you were born in 1868!”

I roll my eyes and turn the water back on. I’m careful rinsing. I don’t want my rotting flesh and bones to disintegrate in the stream of the shower and clog up the plumbing. I thought that Darth Vader balloon was kind of scary. I can only imagine the horror a plumber would feel upon finding zombie parts in the shower drain.

2 Comments

Filed under ghosts, humor, motherhood, parenting, zombies

November 12, 2008 · 5:18 pm

Sunday School, Weenie Sabers, and The Sign of the Cross

I confess: I miss the lazy Sunday mornings, the mornings where I could stay in bed, or if not in bed, at least in my pajamas, until almost noon, reading a book while Snags watched cartoons. If we went to church, it was to the last mass of the day, but mostly we didn’t go at all.

Now though, Snags is enrolled in Sunday school. Our neighbor is his teacher. Her son is Snags’ friend. Two more of his friends from first grade are in his Sunday school class as well. He enjoys it, and I’m glad. Some weeks my neighbor drives him to Sunday School and my husband and I pick him up at the end and we all go to Mass together. Other weeks we drop him off ourselves and go to mass while he’s in class. Snags has decided we should alternate this. One week he’ll go to church, the next he won’t. I think he wants to ease back into it.

Most recently, Snags learned how to make the Sign of the Cross. Last Sunday he happily reported: “Mom! I earned a gold star for doing the Sign of the Cross right today! I only had to do it twice to get it right!”

“Wow,” I say in response. “That’s great!” I think back just a few weeks prior to this when he held up both hands and made an X with his forefingers. “Isn’t THIS the Sign of the Cross?” he asked. “No,” I said, “That’s more like the sign against vampires.”

Snags goes on to explain that it was difficult to make the Sign of the Cross in front of his Sunday school class because he was facing the class and because he holds the Wii nunchuck in his left hand… And no, I don’t have any idea what the Wii gaming system has to do with making the sign of the cross. We have Wii Sports and We Ski, Star Wars the Force Unleashed, and Star Wars Legos, the Complete Saga. Nowhere in that mix have I happened upon Wii Catholic Church, the Sign of the Cross (nunchuck required). Go figure.

Next up in Sunday school learning, if you’re in First Grade and want to earn another gold star, is memorizing The Our Father. “We can’t read it,” Snags informs me. “We have to memorize it.” I worry that he’ll mix it up with the rules of Tae Kwan Do he has to memorize. Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, I’ll always finish what I start, sir!”

I didn’t realize that I was supposed to be teaching the rules of Tae Kwan Do to Snags. I’d read them myself, of course, but when I got to number two, “I will always be a good brother or sister, sir!” I put the book away figuring that didn’t apply to Snags, as he’s an only child. A week or two later his instructor corrected me, put it into perspective, and said to think about it in the biblical sense.

Which brings us back to Sunday school. As Snags was going on about having to learn the Our Father, I thought to warn him that the Hail Mary is HAIL Mary, and not Hell Mary, as I once thought. But before I could even form the sentence completely in my head, Snags took another breath and said, “And then we have to learn the Hell Mary!”

“Hail Mary,” I said, trying to suppress a laugh. It’s “Hail Mary.” There isn’t a cuss word in the prayer. Snags started to get upset, he hadn’t meant to say a bad word. I tried to reassure him, told him how I also thought it was Hell Mary when I was a kid, but that it’s not. The apple, they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree. Or is it, Great Minds Think Alike?

I keep meaning to tell my neighbor, the Sunday school teacher, about the Hell Mary. That maybe she ought to explain to the children the difference between Hail and Hell, Fire and Brimstone, whatever. But then her son was playing in my yard the other day, playing with plastic light sabers, fighting a battle against evil. He took the light saber, stuck it between his legs, and deemed it a Weenie Saber.

I’d mention this to my neighbor, but then Snags has been going around and using his favorite tag blanket as a whip. We recently let him watch the first Indiana Jones movie, the one where Indie goes in search of the Ark of the Covenant, the container that held the tablets of stone that the Ten Commandments were written on. Only Snags doesn’t call it the Ark of the Covenant, he calls it the Ten Commandments Box.

I wonder if it’s big enough to hold a Weenie Saber?

4 Comments

Filed under boys, church, humor, kids, life, parenting, Snags, Star Wars

October 16, 2008 · 3:29 pm

Room Mom Woes and Wars

Let’s go back in time a bit, shall we? Let’s go back to this time LAST YEAR, when I was the room mother for Snags’ kindergarten class, busy planning the Fall Party. It’s the “FALL PARTY” because we cannot, in this era of political correctness, call it was it is, which is a Halloween Party. No matter that parents send in decorations of bats and witches and mummies. Those things, as everyone knows, are signs of AUTUMN, just as surely as the leaves changing color and the air turning crisp. In fact, if you play your cards right (no, it’s not politically correct to admit to gambling), you just might find bats and witches and mummies hiding under that colorful pile of leaves you just finished raking.

But I digress. The FALL PARTY. I was the room mother. My duties as room mother were to coordinate with the teacher and enlist parents to help donate supplies, food, crafts, and their time at the party. I had a particular interest in this because Snags has food allergies, and without some role in the party planning, especially the food, the classroom could quickly turn from a party atmosphere to a danger zone.

And I gather, from talking to other room moms, that I was lucky. Snags’ kindergarten teacher had a thing for SIMPLE. One snack. One game. One craft. Perhaps two crafts if time allowed. The party ran for approximately 2 hours, and all 18 children had to get a turn at the snack, the game, the craft. Or two.

And things went well. I survived the fall party, the holiday party (it’s really a Christmas Party, but please don’t tell anyone), the Spring Party, and the End of Year Party. Things were simple, things were fun.

When first grade rolled around, I volunteered once again to be room mom. I was told at first, by Snags’ first grade teacher, that another mother had “expressed interest” in being room mom. When I explained that I’d like to be involved somehow, because of Snags’ allergies, I was told I would be THE ROOM MOM. But that somehow morphed into being CO-ROOM MOM. And I was okay with that. Until… My co-room mom called me, in SEPTEMBER, about planning the fall party. The fall party is the day before Halloween. So we had plenty of time, no? And co-room mom went on about how she and ANOTHER CO-ROOM MOM (How did we get three room moms?), had been planning the craft activities and wanted to talk to me about the food situation. And it was SEPTEMBER and OMG! I can’t even decide what the hell to cook for dinner TONIGHT, let alone plan the snack for a party that is over 30 days away.

Eventually I agreed to meet, in person, with my co-room mom and HER co-room mom (whom I shall now call Thing One and Thing Two). Thing Two seemed somewhat new at room mom duties and genuinely concerned about having the party be safe for my son, as well as the two other children in the class who also have food allergies. Did I mention that food allergies are on the rise? Note that three children out of 22 in ONE CLASS have them? Thing One, however… Thing One. Thing One was IN CHARGE. She has taken it upon herself to be THE ROOM MOM. Somehow, somewhere, and I don’t know how and don’t know where, CO-ROOM MOMS got dropped, and Thing One TOOK OVER ALL PARTY PLANNING AND PREPARATIONS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

The Fall Party THIS YEAR? Starts at 2:30, Ends at 3:20. Those times are PER THE TEACHER. So we have, if I remember first grade math, 50 minutes. To accomplish the following activities planned by Thing One, THE ROOM MOM, with 22 children:

• Frost and decorate pumpkin shaped sugar cookies.
• Eat frosted and decorated pumpkin shaped sugar cookies.
• Eat grapes.
• Eat potato chips.
• Eat Fritos.
• Drink juice.
• Play Bingo.
• Play Bingo.
• Play Bingo.
• Hand out Bingo prizes.
• Hand out Bingo prizes.
• Hand out Bingo prizes.
• Read a Halloween Story.
• Decorate Halloween Bags. And no, I don’t know why we are allowed to read a Halloween story or call them Halloween Bags, but Thing One and Thing Two thought the children could use the bags to collect their Trick-or-Treat candy the next day.
• Count and weigh pumpkin seeds and compare the weights for dry roasted pumpkin seeds verses wet pumpkin seeds.

Now, if ALL THAT wasn’t enough to keep 22 kids busy for 50 minutes, Thing One met THING THREE who had an idea: Stuff popcorn into gloves and paint finger nails on the gloves to make “monster hands.”

But wait, it gets better. Thing Three wants to bring in an air popper to the class room and let each kid pop their OWN popcorn. In the class room. At the party. And then the kids will take that freshly popped and burning hot popcorn and stuff a plastic glove with it. Then they will dip the ends of the fingers of the gloves (which, if I may point out, will probably be MELTING from the hot popcorn) into paint to make finger nails. VOILA! MONSTER HANDS. (and no, I’m not sure if the monster hands are meant to be the melting gloves stuffed with hot popcorn or the children’s hands that now require a thick slathering of burn cream).

And OMG people! FIFTY MINUTES. TWENTY-TWO children. I hope these kids are fast. Because I just pulled out a calculator and 50 divided by 22 is 2:27 minutes. Less than 2 ½ minutes PER child, to accomplish all of the above. Granted, they aren’t doing things one at a time. They won’t be standing in a long line waiting for the classmate in front of them to just move along already, you’re eating into MY 2:27 minutes of party time, but still. Fifty minutes. Twenty-two children.

And so I’m thinking, hey, what the hell? Why don’t we go ahead and have the children plant the corn, grow it, harvest it, shuck it, dry it, break it off the cob into kernels, THEN pop it and stuff the hot popcorn into the plastic gloves. We’ll have time for that, right? We’ve got a full 50 minutes, after all.

5 Comments

Filed under Fall party, Halloween, life, parenting, party planning, room moms, Snags

September 7, 2008 · 3:05 pm

My Fault

Last Thursday night my husband and I returned from Back-to-School Night to find Snags and the babysitter relaxing on the sofa as they raptly watched Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase. Actually, I think the babysitter was probably itching to leave and go home already, but Snags begged her to stay until the very end and so she sat, for the remaining 20 minutes of the movie, and did exactly as Snags instructed: “Watch this! Watch! Watch this part! Watch!”

When we finally let her make her escape, Snags announced that he had a sore throat. My husband gave him Children’s Tylenol and sent him to bed where all was well… Until 2:30 in the morning, when Snags woke up felling very ill, and vomited. “I feel better now!” he said, somewhat jubilantly, as he stepped back to flush the toilet.

Friday morning dawned, and Snags, while not feeling entirely up to snuff, was able to eat a slice of toast and drink some water. Since he kept that sustenance where it belonged, in his stomach, and he had no fever, just the same sore throat as the night before, I decided that he should go to school. Because that vomiting? Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe the Tylenol didn’t agree with him. And also? It was only the second week of school. You can’t start raking up absences in the second week of school. Because the school? They’re keeping score.

It was also show and tell day. Snag’s first grade teacher was bringing in a snake skin that her dog had sniffed out in her yard. I mean, how cool would that be? A kid with just a sore throat wouldn’t want to miss that, right? Plus, said kid with sore throat had his own cool item for show and tell: a hornet’s nest knocked down from our roof (don’t worry, we sprayed it with killer bug spray and stuck it in a ziplock bag).

And so Snags got dressed and set off for school. I kind of expected a call from the nurse that day, but it never came. Snags soldiered on and stayed in school all day. That afternoon I even took him, with his sore throat, to get his hair cut.

Saturday dawned dark and gray and the skies opened and rained upon us. But it didn’t matter. Snags was still fighting that sore throat so we stayed home where it was warm and dry and we could watch TV and play board games. But by evening, Snags was decidedly miserable. His throat still hurt, and he had a slight fever. He was so miserable that he decided it was all MY fault. As if I’d opened a box a sick and poured him a big bowlful of it for breakfast. Here, eat this. It will make your throat sore and you’ll get really grumpy and mean and blame me for your illness. Good stuff. He blamed me because I’m not.a.doctor.

“This is the WORST virus EVER!” he cried, over and over as he shot piercing accusatory glances in my direction.

I tried to make him feel better. I told him how I bet a bunch of kids in his class at school had sore throats too. Because that always happens when school starts back up in the fall. Kids get sick. Viruses go around. Snags, I said, could rest assured that he wasn’t the ONLY one feeling under the weather. It was just a virus, he’d fell better in the morning, I was sure.

And the thing about a bunch of kids in his class having sore throats too? Ahem…cough… cough… It’s probably true, NOW. Because this morning we took Snags to one of those health clinics that’s open on Sundays with the hope that they’d do something to stop his whining and complaining and blaming… and they did! They gave him an antibiotic for his STREP THROAT. His STREP THROAT that I unwittingly sent him to school with on Friday. His STREP THROAT that he started complaining about on Thursday night. When the babysitter was here.

And so I’d just like to remind the babysitter, that I paid her very well, and she should think of anything else that she may have received on top of the cash I handed her as she walked out the door, as a special kind of bonus!

Mea culpa. But then again, Snags was right. I’m not.a.doctor.

2 Comments

Filed under illness, kids, life, parenting, Snags

September 2, 2008 · 11:06 am

Perfect Insanity

There are certain things that drive me to the brink of insanity and they are these:
The sound of the dog licking her paws at night when I am trying to fall asleep.
The sound of cellophane crackling.
The sound of Snags playing Perfection in his bedroom at five o’clock in the morning.

That last one? Heard it this morning.

The rule is, the kid is supposed to stay IN BED, and preferably in bed ASLEEP, until 7:30 a.m. And that is the sole reason why I bought him a digital alarm clock. So there could be no mistake on the hour.

When I decided I’d heard enough, heard enough plastic pieces rattling around, heard enough small explosions as the timer ran out and the Perfection pieces flew into the air, I shakily climbed out of bed and opened his bedroom door. All the while repeating to myself, “it’s just a noise, don’t kill him. It’s just a noise, don’t kill him…”

GO.BACK.TO.BED! I nearly barked.

He looked at me mildly, said, “But Mom, I’m just playing Perfection.”

“GO.BACK.TO.BED!” I said again, perhaps a bit louder this time. “You don’t play perfection in the middle of the damn night,” I added as I turned out his bedroom light and yanked the door shut behind me.

“It’s not the DAMN NIGHT!” he cried back at me from behind his closed door.

He’s been crying a lot lately, this child of mine. I’m not sure but I think it’s the stress of first grade. Summer is over and now he can’t spend endless hours playing video games or building starships out of LEGOs. In first grade, unlike kindergarten, there are no naps. The kids have to be up and alert like the rest of us, for a full six hours straight. That kind of paying attention can wear you out, wear you down.

Snags comes home from school in the afternoons and lies upon the sofa. He watches whatever cartoon he can find on Nickolodeon, his eyes glazed over. He denies being tired even as he yawns, even as he “rests” his eyes.

And little things are getting to him. Little things are setting him off. Like yesterday, when I made him set the frog free. Snags caught a frog, or maybe it was really a small toad. I don’t know. I’m calling it a frog. He brought it home and made a home for it inside an old aquarium that he set out on our front porch. He put in some water, and some rocks and the frog. And then he more or less left him there, in the aquarium, all alone. He played with the frog sometimes, but he didn’t feed him. He dropped the frog at least half a dozen times on its head, on the pavement. I’m sure the frog, if he had the ability to think, must have wondered if he’d been captured and sent to Gitmo. There was the small room where he was kept, Snags the guard who occasionally tortured him by manhandling him and dropping him on his head, and there was the isolation. Left all alone in the aquarium, in the bright sunlight, for days on end. Five days to be exact. And then there was the starvation. I’m not sure what frogs eat but I assume they eat bugs. And no bugs were flying into the aquarium. And the frog wasn’t let out to hunt on his own. By yesterday I’d had enough and told Snags he had to set the frog free.

He went out to do so, but reluctantly. I followed him out to make sure he did as I had instructed. He told me that he’d opened the frog’s mouth and looked inside.

“HOW?” I asked.

“Want me to show you?” He said.

“Yeah,” I said, curious now.

But Snags wasn’t having any luck. The frog’s mouth wasn’t opening. In fact, the harder Snags tried to open the frog’s mouth, the harder he pressed upon the frog’s… chin? neck?, the more I feared he was going to rip open the flesh of the frog’s throat. I couldn’t bear it and so I asked Snags to stop. I yelled at Snags to STOP. Let the frog go NOW.

And Snags got upset. “YOU NEVER LIKED FROGGY!” He screamed, tears streaming down his face. “YOU DIDN’T LIKE HIM FROM THE MOMENT I GOT HIM,” he cried. His face was red, contorted in anger. His eyes bulged. Except for the tears I think he was a perfect picture of me, the way I felt when I heard him playing Perfection in the middle of the damn night. In the blink of an eye, the leap is made from peaceful calm to perfect insanity. Over a noise. Over Perfection. Over a frog.

5 Comments

Filed under anger, boys, frogs, kids, life, parenting, Snags

August 18, 2008 · 1:54 am

A Beer by Any Other Name…

I was fixing lunch for my six year old son, Snags, the other day when he asked me, “Mom, how did you and Dad name me?”

“How did we decide to name you Snags?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Where did you get my name?”

I thought this was an interesting question. I wasn’t sure what prompted his interest, but I figured he deserved an answer.

The larger truth is, we just liked the name Snags. The details behind that larger truth are what I explained to Snags. But maybe I shouldn’t have.

“Well,” I said to him, “When your Daddy and I were in graduate school together, we knew a man with your name, and he was a really nice guy, just like you are. So right away we kind of liked the name.”

“And then one day,” I went on, “You’re Daddy and I went out to lunch at a restaurant in the city. This restaurant made their very own brand of beer called Snags Ale. They even had coasters they served your drinks on. They’d bring your glass of iced tea or soda or beer, or whatever you ordered to drink, and put it on a coaster that said Snags Ale. Ale, by the way, is a kind of beer. Anyway, when we saw the coaster it reminded us again how much we liked the name Snags. And I even took one of those coasters home with me!”

“And now,” I said, “We even have these glasses, like the one you are drinking out of that we bought from that very same restaurant, and the glass as you can see, says Snags Ale on it. So you have drinking glasses with your name on it!”

That is when Snags interrupted. “So let me get this straight,” he said. “You named me after a BEER?!”

“Well, uh… not really,” I stammered. “Remember, your Daddy and I liked the name Snags. There was that nice man at graduate school. And OH! also there is a character in a movie with your name, and it’s a good movie too, and so when we saw the coaster with the name of the beer on it, it just reminded us that we liked the name Snags. So you see, we didn’t really name you after a beer.”

“Actually,” Snags said, “You kind of did.”

I guess now that the truth is out I have nothing left to do besides wait for the day that Snags is given a homework assignment to research his name. I can see his classmates standing up to report that “I am named after my grandmother, Mary…” or “I am named after my great uncle Paul.”

So now I’m thinking, that to avoid the inevitable meeting with the principal when Snags stands up to report that his parents named him after a beer, I am going to teach him to recite this:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Snags.
What’s Snags? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a beer. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a beer
By any other name would taste as good;
So Snags would, were he not Snags call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title…

Or maybe I ought to just leave well enough alone.

4 Comments

Filed under beer, humor, kids, life, parenting, Snags

August 7, 2008 · 11:29 pm

That Ain’t No Cat

I was in the sixth grade, when a male classmate, David, asked our music teacher if she had a pussy. I don’t recall how much sex education we’d had at that point in time, but certainly we’d had enough to realize, at least on some level, that there was some kind of forbidden sexual connotation to his question, and the class sat and watched in fascinated horror as the teacher turned from her seat at the front of the class toward the boy.

She asked him to repeat the question, (WHAT DID YOU SAY?) and feeling emboldened by the barely suppressed nervous giggles of his classmates, he did. She was not amused. Nor was she placated when he insisted that he was talking about a cat. Did she have a cat? A PUSSY cat?

David was sent to the principal’s office.

He was, I suppose, the kind of boy who, had this been the 1950s, would have been considered a bad boy. The kind of boy who girls might like, but parents wouldn’t like at all. He might have been like Arthur Fonzarelli from Happy Days, or Danny Zuko from Grease, or even Eddie Haskell, from Leave it To Beaver. Except he had big blonde hair, and this was 1979.

David, as it turned out, liked me. Or more specifically, he liked my chest. There were few girls in the sixth grade with a stack like mine. He asked me to be his girlfriend. I think I asked my mother if I could have a boyfriend. I don’t remember what her verdict was. But I remember going to the pool one summer afternoon and seeing him there. He tried to kiss me. I was a good girl, and he scared me. He talked about my boobs too much. That made me uncomfortable. I hated my boobs. In all truth, I still do. I avoided him after that.

A few days ago, my son Snags was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Bored out of his skull. He played Star Wars LEGOs on Xbox. He got bored. He played Star Wars LEGOs on his Game Cube. He got bored. He moved on to Star Wars LEGOs The Complete Saga on his Nintendo DS. He got bored. He built some ships with his Star Wars LEGOs. And what do you know? He got bored.

I suggested that he play outside. He said it was too hot. I suggested he go outside and ride his bicycle. He didn’t want to. “I don’t want to change my shoes,” he said. He was wearing Crocs. He was too lazy to kick them off his feet and switch to tennis shoes. I suggested he go outside and ride his scooter. His eyes widened with interest, but just as quickly returned to normal when he realized he couldn’t ride his scooter wearing Crocs.

In a last ditch effort to get him outside, I offered to walk with him to the nearby playground. “I’ll push you on the swings,” I said. That was something I knew he liked, and so finally, he thought that sounded like fun. An escape from his boredom.

As we started up the sidewalk toward the playground, Snags said to me, “Mom, there’s this thing called a pussy…”

Sixth grade music class came back to me in a rush. I wasn’t ready to give a sex talk. Snags is six years old, not sixth grade. And this was summer vacation. I couldn’t send him to the principal’s office.

I didn’t want to hear any more, but warily I said, “Yeah?” I waited, with dread, for him to go on.

“Yeah, there’s this thing called a pussy and I don’t know the rest of what’s it’s called or I can’t remember what it is exactly?”

What should I say I wondered. Should I explain that boys have a penis (which he knows) but that girls have a, um… No. I can’t, I thought.

But before I could decide how to respond, he went on…

“And this thing called a pussy… something, it grows in a pond!” he said.

I died with relief right there on the side walk. As I lay there dying, my sixth grade life flashed before my eyes. I saw my music teacher point David toward the door. I heard her reprimand as she sent him to the principal’s office. My final words, right before I died for good were surprisingly strong for a dying woman, and nearly shouted with joy: “PussyWILLOW? You mean a PussyWILLOW?”

“Yeah! That’s it!” Snags said, all smiles. “A pussywillow!”

And then a miracle happened. I was brought back to life and we walked on. To the playground. And the swings. Where Snags wasn’t bored at all.

3 Comments

Filed under humor, life, parenting, Snags

July 7, 2008 · 2:32 pm

Stuck in a Pile of Baby Parts

I don’t know how it happens that I am always the one that gets caught, like a deer in the headlights, with the hard questions. With questions like, “Mom, tell me everything you know about babies!”

My first thought, when Snags asked me this two nights ago was, as always: “Where the hell is your father now?” Followed by, “Why don’t you go ask him?” But once again, I held fast. I sat there, rooted to the spot by my panic, and trying to stall.

“Um… what do you mean, exactly?” I asked Snags. “I don’t know what you are asking. Tell me specifically what it is that you want to know,” I added, desperately hoping for some clarification. Because I know a lot about babies. I know they pee and poop, cost a fortune in diapers, and cry and cry and cry and keep new parents awake ALL.NIGHT.LONG, but I had a feeling that wasn’t what Snags was asking.

I was right. It wasn’t.

“Tell me,” he said, “like how babies are made and where they come from and all that.”

And ALL THAT?

I don’t know if Snags heard the little part of my brain that up and died a screeching death as it wailed in horror, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not THAT!” I think the sound was so high pitched that only dogs could really hear it. When it happened, I didn’t hear anything myself, but I felt it, and a few seconds later I heard some dogs barking outside. I went blind soon after that.

My eyesight slowly returned as I thought to myself, “No, this is not REALLY happening, is it?” But there sat Snags with an look of eager anticipation on his face that would surely have landed him a spot in a Heinz commercial if they had come knocking at that particular moment.

Only they didn’t.

So I asked Snags for a bit more clarification and he said: “Well, I mean does God build the babies by putting two halves of them together, like the left side and the right side? Or does he build them by taking all the parts, like the legs, and attaching them to the stomach, and then does he screw on the head like this?” (pantomimes screwing a head on to a baby – note it had a LOT of threading, because he had to turn and turn and turn that invisible head onto the invisible baby).

“Ah,” I said, nearly crying with relief and understanding. This was less about HOW babies were made than it was about how babies were MADE. I almost laughed out loud.

“Well,” I said cautiously, “I think that babies actually grow, kind of like a plant, from a seed. I guess God gives a seed to a mom and a dad when they really love each other and then it grows into a baby.”

Snags seemed happy enough with that explanation. He didn’t ask how the seed gets into the mother. When he does ask that question I am going with one of two answers: “Go ask your father!” or “She eats it.”

Still, Snags had one more question.

“Well then,” he said, “The thing I don’t understand is, if babies grow from a seed, how come they have this line down here?” (pointing to towards his perineum).

“Hmmm…I don’t really know,” I said. “Maybe that’s just how the seed grows into a baby.”

“Or maybe,” Snags said, “Maybe that’s the medicine hole. If a baby is in its mommy’s tummy and needs medicine but closes its mouth, maybe there is a hole there and they could still get medicine to the baby that way and then it closes up when the baby comes out or however it gets out.”

I pretended to ignore his comment about how babies “get out”.

Instead I said, “You might be right.” And I pondered two things: a misplaced umbilical cord, and the pillow I made in Home Economics in 7th grade. The pillow was made by sewing three quarters of the way around on the reverse side of the fabric. Then the pillow was turned inside-out (or right-side out as the case may be) and stuffed with pillow stuffing. The small opening was then stitched shut by hand, leaving a bit of a seam. Not unlike the perineum, I suppose.

Lucky for me, it was bedtime at that point, and Snags didn’t ask anymore questions as he settled down to sleep.

I however, had a question. Actually, two: Where the hell WAS his father? And why, once again, was I the one stuck with the baby questions?

Okay, I admit, there was a third question: If God really did screw our heads on, why can’t we turn them all the way around, like an owl?

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Filed under babies, humor, kids, life, parenting, questions, Snags, where do babies come from

June 20, 2008 · 12:45 pm

Beauty School Dropout

“PLEASE mom,” my six year old son Snags begged. “Please let me give you a make over. Please?”

I tried to convince him to do something else, clean up his toys, get ready for bed, read a book, even sit idly and watch TV, but he wasn’t interested. He only wanted to give me a makeover.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” my husband said.

“Why not?” Snags asked.

“Because,” my husband intoned. “Boys don’t give makeovers.”

But we all know that’s not true. There are plenty of male stylists out there. All you have to do is watch TLC and you’ll see Damone Roberts, the makeup artist on 10 Years Younger. Or Nick Arrojo cutting hair on What Not To Wear. Other’s come to mind as well. Vidal Sassoon, Toni and Guy, Ken Paves, and surely more I’ve never even heard of (which, incidentally, is why I am not listing them here).

“Alright,” I sighed. “Let’s go. But makeup only. No nail polish, no hair gel, and NO SCISSORS,” I warned as Snags took my hand to lead me up the steps. When we got to my bedroom I saw that he had already pulled out my makeup case. Dust from powder and blush tinted the bed sheets from where he had sat opening the various containers he had found.

I washed my face, dried it, and sat down. The first thing Snags applied was blush. All over my face. I looked like I had gotten a dirty sunburn. He put dark purple eye shadow on my eyebrows. Then two shades of lipstick on my lips. One color on my top lip, a different color on my bottom lip. Brown eye pencil was next, followed by even more blush.

Hair barrettes held my bangs back so he could apply the finishing touches. Close your eyes, mom, he said, pressing something (a tattoo?!) to my forehead and laughing.

“Oooh! You are looking pretty,” he said. “Dad is going to be so jealous!”

When he was all finished he ran to grab a mirror. He showed me his artistry with glee. “Do you like it?” he asked.

“Wow! I said, as I looked in the mirror. “Wow,” I said, again, nearly speechless. “I look nice,” I lied.

I heard my husbands words in my head again, “Boys don’t give makeovers.” I think what he really meant to say is “Six year old boys don’t give makeovers, very well.”

Here, take a look for yourself. You be the judge…

Later, when I said I was going to wash my face, Snags didn’t complain. “Well, okay,” he agreed. “And, mom, you can take off that snake tattoo on your forehead. I don’t want people to think you are weird.”

Which is good, because I don’t really want people to think that either. Although I realize, it might be too late for that.

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Filed under humor, life, makeover, parenting, Snags

June 16, 2008 · 12:41 pm

The Choking

Have you ever seen a person choke? If you’ve seen it in the movies, or on a sitcom, it doesn’t count. You have to see it in person to understand how truly frightening it is. And when it’s your own child who is doing the choking, it’s much, much worse than anything you can imagine.

Snags has choked twice in his life. The first time it happened he was a baby, six, or maybe nine months old. He was eating Cheerios for the first time. He was eating them in his car seat while we were driving when he started to choke. That event scared me so badly that I didn’t feed him Cheerios again until he was 3 years old.

Snags choked again last night. On an ice cube (of course, I didn’t know it was an ice cube at the time). My husband and I were at the deep sink in the basement, filling water balloons for the Kindergarten picnic today. I had sent Snags upstairs to get ready for his bath, I told him I’d be up in a minute. Two minutes later he returned to the basement looking ill. He had his hand on his throat in the universal choking sign, and his face was red. We asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t answer.

Sometimes I ask Snags a question and he doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t hear me, or because he is thinking about something, usually Star Wars, or more recently, Speed Racer, and he’s lost in his own world. Or maybe, sometimes, he is just being stubborn. On those occasions, I repeat my question, louder, usually by yelling my question over and over until he finally does answer. And then he’s always bothered, wanting to know why I was yelling. Because, I tell him, YOU DIDN’T ANSWER ME. If you hear me ask you something, then answer me. Answer me the first time I ask you a question. If you don’t, then I end up yelling. I do not, in general, speak rhetorically. At least not to six year olds.

So last night, when he wouldn’t answer, I started to yell my question, “Snags! What’s WRONG? ARE YOU SICK? ARE YOU CHOKING? ARE YOU OKAY? WHAT IS WRONG? ANSWER ME!“ He tried, he really did, but his hand was on his throat and his eyes were wide and terrified and he could barely make a squeak.

As the realization that he was choking hit me, the only thing I could think to do was to hit him on the back. And as I did so, my husband yelled something. I thought he was yelling at me to stop. He was reaching for Snags at the same time I was. I thought he was trying to pull Snags away from me so I wouldn’t hit him.

Here’s the truth — in a moment like that, there is not time to sit down and calmly discuss the situation, decide who will do what, which method will be better. You do not coordinate your actions, you simply act.

After the fact, I realized my husband wasn’t yelling at me to stop, and he wasn’t trying to pull Snags away from me. He was yelling the same questions to Snags that I was. He was trying to turn Snags around so he could do the Heimlich maneuver on him.

Luckily that wasn’t necessary. Either my hitting Snags on the back dislodged the ice cube, or the ice cube melted enough to go down. Maybe it was a bit of both. Snags started to cough and wretch and gag and that’s when I grabbed a trash can and bent him over it, thinking I shouldn’t have hit him on the back, I must have been wrong, he must merely be sick. I was yelling, “ARE YOU SICK? ARE YOU GOING TO THROW UP?” But he wasn’t. He was okay, but he was scared.

When Snags started to cry, I started to breathe again. I wrapped my arms around Snags and held him. I looked up at my husband with wide eyes, and he looked back at me, his eyes just as wide. Witnesses to the unbelievable.

When we asked Snags what he had choked on, he said it was an ice cube. The weather’s been hot and Snags had been filling glasses with ice cubes and munching on them. Yesterday afternoon he thought it was funny to give me a cold kiss on the cheek, the cold from the ice he’d been eating and dripping on his lips. I didn’t like him doing this because he was also dripping water from the ice cubes around the house, leaving spots of water on the floor. He kept spitting the ice cubes into his hand and then putting them back in his mouth and sucking on them. This time, though, it all went wrong.

We’ve come to an agreement, Snags and I, that he won’t eat ice cubes anymore. I’m even thinking about taking the Cheerios away again.

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Filed under choking, life, parenting, Snags