Preemptive strike

I’m supposed to be taking a nap right now, but I’m not. It was a Sunday afternoon present from Mr. David Copperfield. He is sweet that way.

I asked the kids to have the laundry put away by the time I came out of my room. It had all been folded and was stacked in neat piles on the sewing table, and I have this crazy notion that I might actually sew something this afternoon. Or next month, whenever.

Just now someone slipped a note under my door. (And it’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to nap because you just KNOW the little shooshing sound of paper sliding on a hardwood floor would have roused me just at that delicious moment when I was sinking into slumber)

All the laundry on the table is YOURS, the note says. Proclaims, one might say. Firmly. Not quite belligerently. Sternly, perhaps. You have assigned us two contradictory objectives, is the subtext. Your instructions cancel each other out, Mother. There is no way we can leave you alone for a little while so you can get some rest AND put away *all* the laundry. It is physically and even metaphysically impossible for us to do everything we are supposed to do at this point in time.

To which I say: Welcome to my world.

No wonder I got soaked during the last invisible rainstorm

Her Royal Highness comes to me with her hand upraised, fingers curled around something that isn’t there.

“Dis my um-rella,” she informs me gravely.

“Oh! That’s your umbrella?” I echo, because that is what mothers are supposed to do for their two-year-olds; that is what the two-year-old expects and, indeed, demands.

But this two-year-old is looking at me like I have an umbrella where my head should be.

“No,” she says in tones of exasperation and bewilderment—how could I be so silly?—”Dis my fish.”

Somehow I think the message got garbled

The six-year-old, explaining to me why she would have to bite her sister in retaliation, if her sister bit her first: “Daddy said! He said, ‘Do unto others as they do unto you.’ “

I think the word she’s looking for is “leech”

Overheard: Child watching a cartoon mouse attempt to cook and eat the Pink Panther.

“That bloodthirsty little lech!”

How to book yourself a long stay in Purgatory

Smack your little brother in the face with your Rosary beads.

I swear this is exactly how the conversation went

We’re in the car, discussing pizza versus Taco Bell. Shut up, it’s a Sunday, we wanted to treat ourselves.

Hubby decides on pizza. We can have it delivered, so we head home. The baby is asleep in the carseat, and the rest of us wait in the van while hubby carries her inside.

The second he’s out of the car, Mary erupts with complaints: I wanted Taco Bell! I don’t WANT pizza.

Me: Sorry, honey, today we’re having pizza.

Mary: But I like Taco Bell much better.

Me, because I am a total softie: Tell you what, we’ll have it for lunch on Tuesday.

Mary, not missing a beat: No! I can’t have Taco Bell!

Me: Bwah?

Mary: I can’t. I don’t like it.

Can’t blame a girl for trying

Mary, the contrary one, comes to me, sobbing. She is eight and a half, and she takes rejection hard. It seems Jill, the six-year-old, doesn’t like the Pretty Pony that Mary gave her. When was this gift given? I have no idea. A long-ago birthday? It wasn’t this year, I know that much.

“She doesn’t like it!” wails Mary. “My present!”

They are tears of outrage more than sorrow. The nerve of Jill, having an opinion that does not please her big sister.

So I’m hiding a smile, but it does sound like Jill has maybe been a bit rude. Time for the “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all [to your sister's face]” speech. I summon her, and she too is bawling. Full-blown heart-rending belly sobs.

“It’s not my fault!” she sputters, before I can speak. “I WANT to like it! I TRIED to! I just DON’T!”

Oh, well then. I feel the same way about olives.

It’s about time

A thread over at BlogHer got me thinking about how fortunate I am to be able to be home with my kids, and have them home with me. My sister doesn’t have that luxury. I know a lot of women choose to juggle out-of-the-house jobs and kids, and I know that lifestyle has its challenges, but they are challenges that come about by choice which must make them easier to deal with, right?

My sister, a single mom, has no choice; she has to work, and she therefore doesn’t get to spend much time with her daughter.

This makes me think about that BBC show Berkeley Square that aired on PBS several years ago. It was all about nannies in Edwardian London. I think it was Edwardian. Or was it Victorian? I’m trying to remember if there were any motorcars. Now it’s getting muddled up in my head with Upstairs/Downstairs. It doesn’t matter. The point it, there was one nanny who had a child of her own (secretly, or she would have lost her job). She was an Irish girl who got pregnant by the son of the lord of the manor, oh the scandal, and she left home and went to London with her baby and found lodgings with a nice Russian woman who took care of the baby for her all day. And that just killed me, thinking about this girl having to leave her own baby to go take care of other people’s children.

But that’s been going on forever, and it happens all the time today.

I am so lucky. Well, my religion says you shouldn’t say “lucky,” you should say “blessed.” Except I have a hard time with that, because why should I be more blessed than my sister? God loves us both the same. I guess I do think there is an element of luck at play in our lives—not a superstitious concept of luck but something for which there is no better name than the luck of the draw. I drew a pretty fine hand of cards. Did God stack the deck in my favor? Did I just make better decisions with the hand I was dealt?

Hmm, better than my sister, yes probably. But still.

Okay, yes, I did work hard to put myself in the position of getting to stay home with my children. And I have made sacrifices, choices, that make this work. Small house, frugal living, career on the back burner.

But still, but still.

One of my kids just bounced over and asked me to scratch a terrible awful itch in the middle of her back. I got to stop writing this and scratch her. And I knew it was a luxury, a great blessing, a high card for my royal flush.

Ain’t no bigger gift than time to just be together.

Kid fight du jour

You have to feed the imaginary fish twice a day. No, once! No, twice!

She may have blood lust, but at least she’s polite

A note delivered to me while I was on the phone:

Dear Mommy,

I know this is a lot to ask but could I have a bow and arrow?

Love,

Mary