No More Words

From my soul to yours – move along!

I love the way my seven year old daughter’s brain works. In many ways she is like an adult already, but she lacks life experience and she perceives things a bit differently than I do. The other night we were talking about the activities surrounding lent at her school. She told me they had discussed almsgiving and one of the activities would be giving to babies. She brought home an empty plastic baby bottle to fill with money and return to her teacher. She interpreted this act as giving money to babies in general, not just those whose parents struggle to provide for them. She has a teacher who just had a baby. She decided it would be a good idea to give her teacher’s new baby some cash.

She presented this idea to me excitedly. “Since we are collecting money for babies, we should give money to Mrs. K’s baby. We could say here is $50 baby, and here’s $20, and here is $100, and take some change too, and here is $18. That’s a tip for you baby. Namaste. Enjoy your day”.

I kid you not, those are the words that came out of this child’s mouth. She even put her hands together and bowed when she said it. I, of course, laughed, so she has been walking around the house saying “Namaste. Enjoy your day” as a response to any conversation she wants to end. I tell her to put her crafts away and get ready for bed and her response is “Namaste. Enjoy your day” as she continues doing what she is doing. Brush your teeth, help empty the dishwasher, fold your clothes, make your bed all elicit the same response. It’s a slightly less obnoxious form of the 90s “talk to the hand” fad.

My little mini me has the same reaction to her words being used against her as a politician. She can certainly dish it out, but she cannot, or rather, will not take it. When she makes her demand for an after school snack I smile at her, bow and say “Namaste. Enjoy your day.” Two can play this game!

I wrote this blog while listening to Modest Mouse

You Say It’s Your Birthday

At 7 years old a dance party is a must!

I was born in July. I never knew how lucky my parents were to have a summer baby until I had a child in March and started to throw birthday parties. The weather in Michigan in March is as fickle as Taylor Swift. The day of my daughter’s first birthday party in 2012 was an unseasonably warm day. We had to turn on the air conditioning an hour into the party because it was starting to feel like Aruba in August with thirty people in the house. The following year we had to put extra rugs by the front door for people’s boots. There was over a foot of snow to remove in the driveway. Needless to say, birthday parties are indoor events for our little Logan.

Birthday parties for children are also more extravagant than they were when I was a kid. They are no longer backyard barbeques with Mom’s uneven handmade cake. They are full blown events with themes and party favors and cakes the size of small cars. There is valet parking and wait staff. I used to watch the movie Billy Madison and laugh at the parties at the end of each grade level completed. Now I cringe. I’m waiting to drop off my child at a third grade party to be met by an elephant and giraffe.

Nothing like a cake to feed 30 for a party of 15!

By the time my daughter entered preschool, we decided that alternating between small family parties and larger parties with all of her classmates would be the only way to survive. The last party we had with her whole class was when she turned five and we invited a couple dozen kids to a place that had several rooms full of bounce houses. She had to stand on a chair to blow out the candle on her cake and I spent weeks finding the perfect decorations and party favors.

This year she turned seven. She had some pretty lofty plans for her party. She wanted to go bowling, then rent out a movie theater for a private screening, move on to a restaurant where she would perform a cooking demonstration and then have a giant dance party. This little shindig was apparently going to last several days and cost more than her future wedding. No problem. I told her she should talk to her Grandpa about the party planning.

Chef Ryan and Chef Riley

After researching “over the top kids parties that will bankrupt you” for several weeks I narrowed it down to two options – a cupcake battle at a tea room that could accommodate fifteen guests or a cooking demonstration at a local Italian restaurant where her entire class could be invited. She opted for the restaurant. I think this was partially for the chef coat she would receive as a gift and partially because the boys could be included. She even invited a boy that changed schools last year who she misses seeing every day. I’m pretty sure the biggest pull was that she got to stand up at the head table with the chef and help with the demonstration. My kid loves to be the center of attention. I have no idea where she gets this quality from…

I sent out the invitations on a Sunday night and by the following morning I heard back from over half the class that they would be attending. By the week before the party it was established that twenty three kids would be there. Luckily we were able to have the largest banquet room in the building and the party began before lunchtime, so it wouldn’t be too crowded yet. I can’t even imagine trying to usher that many kids through the kitchen or to the bathrooms with a restaurant full of people. It was already similar to cattle herding to get the kids to wash their hands. All I was missing was an electric prod.

Before they made soup out of one of the party guests…

The chef who led the party was fantastic. When he arrived in the room the kids were playing a giant game of tag that started as soon as three kids stoof together. I had been attempting to slow them down with no luck. As I apologized for their mounting noise he replied “there is nobody in this restaurant and they are being kids”. That was fine for the time being, but the restaurant was going to get busy and the party was only going to get bigger and louder. And we were going to start packing these little beasts full of sugar within an hour.

The kids had a fantastic time during the tour through the kitchen and the cooking demonstration. I was expecting either a giant food fight or complete boredom and we landed somewhere in between with all of the kids laughing and smiling. They were mesmerized by Chef Ryan and he was able to both entertain them and keep them in line. The only problem was that at some point he had to get back to preparing meals for the regular restaurant patrons, and my husband and I were left to wrangle two dozen wound up littles with only the help of my parents. As soon as the chef left the room the game of tag resumed with kids running circles around the waitresses as they brought out beverages. After mounds of pasta, breaded chicken, cookies and brownies were consumed and giant bowls of salad were left untouched at the buffet, we got to opening presents.

And so it begins…

The trend at birthday parties has been to not open the gifts at the party. Unlike most trends, this is actually something I can get behind. However, we had two more hours of party to go and the kids were fed and ready to get crazy, so we had the little chef open her gifts while sitting in a big chair similar to a throne. One would think this would be a time of peace and relative quiet with no bickering or whining. One would be sadly mistaken. My Dad and I spent the next half hour telling kids to stop crowding and sit down while others yelled that they couldn’t see. The kids that were sitting up front were actually getting stepped on by others trying to wiggle their way up to the throne. It was like a Walmart in the bible belt on Black Friday.

Even the guests at kids birthday parties stick with a theme. The little chef opened aprons and baking sets, cookbooks and rolling pins, and even edible markers to decorate cookies. The child was in heaven. She also, of course, got her fair share of brightly colored craft sets. For the next month she will be making her own bath bombs, stickers, slime and make up, and knitting everything from stuffed animals to hats. She opened enough legos to build us a house which we may be moving into after we pay for this party.

Every little girls dream gift, edible markers!

I was happy to see that the Shopkins fad has passed, but now the kids are collecting tiny little dolls that cry and pee while leaving behind a trail of glitter. You buy a ball with no idea what is inside, and that is apparently the fun of this gift. Well, that and the bodily functions it performs. I tried to hide these gifts under the table as quickly as possible before the boys started playing baseball with them. One of our more dainty guests had already been beaned in the head with a squishy cupcake being tossed around like a football.

Within forty minutes the gift table sat empty while the girls huddled around a pile of neon packages. I unsuccessfully tried to gather all of the boxes and bags and match the gifts with the cards that came with them. The boys continued to play football with the giant rubber cupcake and my Dad and I continued to reprimand them for being wild and pray that nobody else got hurt. I came to the conclusion that I would have made a decent defensive back after making a handful of interceptions.

Dance, dance!

We gave up trying to calm the kids down and instead opted for a more organized chaos. It was time to kick out the jams. I grabbed my little portable speaker from my purse and began streaming the latest Disney movie soundtrack. The kids quickly got into a circle and had a dance off. This produced more tears but also a lot of laughter. They made it all the way around the circle throwing down all of their best moves within about three songs. When I found a full thirty minutes left before parents would arrive to pick up their little gremlins and the dancers were fading, I finally gave up. I was content to let them tear the roof off until my parents brought up the idea of musical chairs.

This game is best played when only one butt fits on a chair. We started the game with six open chairs because all of the girls were huddled at one end sharing seats. The game progressed this way with every round being a toss up when it came to who had the chair first. I let the kids act as referees for themselves unless it was getting too heated and then I pretty much tossed a coin. I was expecting a full force riot once the game ended, but the last two girls in the game were pretty mellow and didn’t much care if they won or lost. The first two players out were harder to eject than the last two.

Most of the kids didn’t leave until a few minutes before we had to vacate the room. I was happy that we were putting every second of the room to use, but I was also exhausted. I would never make it as a teacher. Or a zookeeper for that matter. My newly anointed seven year old headed to the bar to hang out with her grandparents. It was St. Patrick’s Day after all. She promptly lost her balloon and cried. It brought the tear count up to about a thousand for the day. The manager quickly jumped into action and rescued her balloon while we packed up the car. We called it a day about a half an hour after the last child left, and I am pretty sure we will be opening and organizing gifts until the next party. I should probably start planning tomorrow.

 

 

 

Every Breath You Take

Seriously, look at this guy!

What’s not to love?

My child is stalking a guy on my meditation app. At the end of the meditation a screen appears with a congratulations and a list of people who were using the app at the same time. When the meditation ends, my daughter immediately picks up the phone to look at all of the pictures of the people who were meditating with us. Every night there is someone named Chris who uses a picture that she likes in the list. And every night she tries to click the button to send a “thanks for meditating with me” message. She literally scrolls through pages of little pictures until she finds Chris every single night. I have tried to explain to her that we don’t know Chris and if we continue sending messages on a nightly basis that poor Chris might become frightened and think that we are obsessed with him. Her response was that she IS obsessed with him. Clearly.

She has no information about Chris other than he has a picture of what she thinks is an alien with trees growing out of his head and that he lives about thirty miles from us. Chris could actually be a woman. Or Chris could be a psycho serial killer, although I doubt it. I mean you don’t really hear much about serial killers spending a lot of time getting zen. Either way, we know nothing about Chris, yet my daughter is obsessed with finding this person nightly after our meditation ends. She is even getting antsy during the meditation if it lasts too long, which is kind of defeating the purpose of meditating. She starts bouncing around grabbing at my phone when the timer gets down to under two minutes.

I’m not like a regular mom. I’m a cool mom…

In her six year old mind, she and Chris are friends because they meditated together. I can’t really blame her though. We call her classmates “friends” and her gymnastics teammates “friends” and even the other children who she sees a few times a week at the child care center at the gym “friends”. Clearly if they are her friends, then so is Chris. At least she knows his name, which is more than I can say for half of her “friends” at the gym.

I wonder what Chris thinks about the weirdo who keeps thanking him for meditating together. Who is this No, Seriously person? What can Chris ascertain from my profile? Well, we can begin with my tagline which is “square peg in a round hole world” which could be interpreted as “I’m a rebel”. My photo only adds to the mystique – you know, no face and the super cool old school NYC concert venue shirt. Looking through my activity he could hopefully gather that I am a parent based on the nightly meditations from the kids – sleep section. So obviously I am a super cool mom who is defying the laws of aging. Then again, from the photo and activity combo he may think I am an immature teenager who really likes rainbow angels. The joke is on Chris. I am a really immature middle aged woman going through what appears to be the longest mid-life crisis in history! Poor Chris is in for an even bigger shocker – it’s not a angsty teenager or middle aged soccer mom doing the stalking; it’s a six year old little fireball with a penchant for unusual cartoon characters. Sorry Chris.

That’s What She Said

I’m gonna chug it!

My six year old just handed me her cup that she had filled almost to the top with sparkling fruit water and said “here Mom, have a drink.” I knew this was because she had overfilled her cup so I asked her if she needed me to drink some so she could carry it into the other room. Her response was “Well, yeah… you have big jugs!!” Sometimes it takes me a minute to decipher what this kid is trying to say. She is funny and sarcastic but sometimes her vernacular is a little off. My mind was shuffling through all of the phrases that sounded remotely like the words just uttered and finally came to “you take big chugs” which is what I believe she was going for. That, or she thinks my chest is inflated with bubbly water. I never know what goes on in that kid’s head. What comes out of her mouth leaves me wondering!

Part of the reason for her eccentric vocabulary is that she spends a lot of time with my Dad who has some really interesting sayings. She has spent many summer days running around the backyard hearing “turn on the burners” which may be why she once said to me in the car “turn down the burners lady!” She is apparently getting a little more cautious as she ages. When she was barely five years old she yelled from the backseat at the car in front of us “Go man, go! Are you driving or talking on the phone?” about three seconds after a light turned green. I guess driving with Grandpa is a lot more soothing than driving with me. I understand, it’s hard to be a passenger when mom thinks she’s in a race car. Sometimes there is a little role reversal in the car. A few months ago my little girl said to me “If you you don’t turn down this music, we are going to cancel punk rock in our house!” Again, her vernacular was a little off, but I got the jist of it.

Queen of the road!

I know kids are little parrots which is why I have cleaned up my potty mouth dramatically. Unfortunately when I drop my phone in the parking lot of the gym or stub my toe, instead of swearing my brain now temporarily shorts out and my mouth blurts out things like “God bless America!” or “Son of a Seabiscuit!” People look at me, but my kid has yet to drop an F-bomb in the middle of Target. I almost closed my entire hand in a gym locker last week and screamed “God save the queen!” Apparently in addition to my Tourette’s Syndrome I also become British when in pain. My daughter has yet to repeat any of these phrases. Although she does say “Wow Mom!” a lot when I blurt out such phrases so she must know the meaning behind the actual words is not as it appears.

Occasionally my kiddo says things that are clearly out of the blue. Last week she said to me “JEN, don’t be so hard on me!” when I asked her to pick up her toys so we could leave her grandparents’ house. I can only guess where she picked up that phrase. She also says things like “what in the heaven are you doing?” which I suppose is better than saying hell – which is exactly what I said at the age of four to the Avon lady! So things could be a lot worse. At least she has quit calling me Bloggy!

I wrote this while listening to this awesome album by some chicks who probably drop F-bombs in Target:

Pretty Vacant

Getting zen

In our house we meditate. We practice both individually and together. If you have met me, I know this is probably hard to believe – but can you imagine what a spaz I would be without meditation? At night before my daughter goes to bed we all meditate together in her bed. We take turns choosing the guided meditation nightly. Whenever it is my daughter’s turn she chooses this really bizarre guided journey about a child with an angel friend that looks like a rainbow.

It starts out okay enough, even if the main character is named Sarah and “could be a little girl or a little boy”. I’m thinking maybe if the main character was unisex that a name like Alex or Logan could have been used. I mean, SNL gave you Pat and Google is right at your fingertips, yet Sarah was the chosen name for the little girl or boy. So right away, the poor little boy Sarah has some issues that a rainbow angel may not be equipped to handle.

The guide explores scenarios where the rainbow angel could help Sarah with her physical ailments. She goes through the colors as she talks about blue fixing her boo boos and green making her feet feel like they are in cool grass. When she says that when she has a tummy ache her rainbow angel fills her stomach with the color red to make her feel warm and relaxed my logical little mini-me turns to me and says “red is the color of blood. Filling her stomach with blood would NOT make her feel better!” I’m glad I am not the only one who thought this.

By the time the guide has made it through the colors of the rainbow I am a little annoyed that she didn’t do any research as to what each of the colors represents. They seem so logical to me, but maybe she just went with her gut, which is apparently full of blood. Somewhere in the middle of the mediation I hear a loud “VROOOOM VROOOOM” from Sarah’s rainbow angel. After hearing this meditation at least five times, I still have no idea why this is happening. Maybe the guide thinks this noise is a color.

She goes on to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” after the rainbow angel fills Sarah with the color silver. By this time I am fairly certain this woman is on drugs. In fact, this meditation may have been written by Hunter S. Thompson on a bad acid trip. By the end my head is more garbled than when it started, which is, from my understanding the exact opposite of the desired result. Instead of feeling zen, I feel confused and a little annoyed. The thing is, my daughter is totally relaxed and ready for bed. So, I will listen to crazy lady with the color blind rainbow angel every night if that’s what it takes. My mind is clear as soon as I see that tiny little face sound asleep.

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