Daring Young Mom

The Honesty of Children

Posted on May 3, 2010 by The Daring One

My kids laugh at me when I jump rope. They say they can’t help it. It’s just so funny to watch my belly jiggle when I jump. They cover their mouths with their hands and promise they won’t laugh if I’ll please please do it again. And then they laugh.

I gave them a good talking to about how we should treat other people, how it’s not nice to laugh at someone because of their physical body and that even though I was pretty secure and not prone to being devastated by their giggles, other people might not be so secure.

I stopped jumping and they stopped laughing. Magoo even came up to me later, looked at my stomach and said, “See? I’m not laughing at it now. I just laughed when you were jumping because it was SO funny. You know?”

Yeah. I know. But I’m old enough to have learned to control what I say and what I laugh at most of the time. Kids are more honest than that.

One of his friends was over this week, watching Wanda playing on the floor. “That’s a weird toy!” she exclaimed, “It’s a slug! With a HUMAN FACE!”

Essentially yes. It is. But a grownup would never say that.

Then there’s Magoo’s other friend who was coming over to play last week. I told his mom that it was good he would be there to keep Magoo occupied because my house was trashed because we’d been moving the furniture around and had let the house go to shambles. She said what most polite women say when a friend apologizes for the unsightly state of her house, “Oh, you should see my house. It’s a mess all the time and I don’t have your excuse.” I’m paraphrasing here but I think we’ve all said that line or had it said to us at one time or another. It’s comforting. It’s a gesture of friendship.

So we got back to our house and as I opened the door, Magoo’s friend got a wide-eyed look on his face. “Wow!” he said, “This really IS a mess.” He then leaned towards me with a conciliatory air and said, “You know, my house isn’t actually messy.”

Called his mom a liar right there in my front entry. It was all I could do to not bust out laughing. Yep. It was a mess. But he played with Magoo while I power-cleaned and everyone was too preoccupied with their fun to notice what parts of me may or may not have been jiggling around hilariously.

Posted in Honesty of Children | 6 Comments

Magic

Posted on May 2, 2010 by The Daring One

Today was May Day. It was also Saturday. Saturday is a day to rejoice.

Magoo is only allowed to play video games on Saturdays. He loves them so much that he refers to Saturday only as “My Lot of Game Day.” I’m not honestly sure if he even remembers what it’s actually called.

The other night he was getting into bed on a not-Saturday night and he said, “Mom? Do you wanna know something magical?”

“What?” I asked.

Sheepishly he pulled my Nintendo DS out from behind his pillow. “Look what I found,” he grinned. “It just appeared… under my pillow… like magic.”

Now he knows he’s not supposed to be playing and he knows he’s not supposed to take the DS without asking. He knows a lot of things but I looked at that magical muffin-head and wondered what I was supposed to do.

“Did you take it from my room?”

“No. It was magic… Yes.”

There’s sort of a parental gray area where misbehavior and honesty are concerned. On the one hand, you want to give your kids credit for telling you the truth and admitting when they do something wrong. You want them to keep confiding in you so you don’t want to come down too hard on them when they tell the truth.

At the same time, you don’t want them to think it’s okay to become a heroine dealer, sleep around, and kidnap other people’s pet gerbils as long as they fess up quickly after the fact. It’s a tightrope we walk, balancing the olive branch of honesty in one hand and the hammer of “YOU DID WHAT?” in the other.

In general, my balancing act looks something like this:

Notice that as the child increases in foreknowledge that what they are doing is wrong, the seriousness of the consequences increases. Also, if the child confesses quickly, the consequences will be less severe than if, for example, they reach a 10 on the graph which involves lying repeatedly, blaming a sibling for the wrongdoing and possibly swearing a blood oath of innocence before finally confessing to the misdeed after hours of intense interrogation, including but not limited to, denying the child food while eating Mike and Ikes 3 inches from his face.

All that being said, I think any child should receive one get-out-of-jail-free card the first time he uses Magic as an excuse, but only if he does it with a huge grin on his face.

Posted in kid stuff, technology, world domination | 5 Comments

HTC Incredible – DROID

Posted on April 28, 2010 by The Daring One

So I’ve been playing around with the Motorola Droid for a few weeks and I’m gonna share some thoughts on the experience soon. However, I’m first going to jump to the end and say that I LOVE the Droid.

I had all but decided to buy one when I found out that its hotter younger brother was coming to town April 29th so after much thought, consideration, reading rave reviews, plunking down $199, squealing, and stalking the UPS package online, I am pleased to announce that our new command center is safely home A DAY BEFORE RELEASE and charging happily on the windowsill. I’m not sure if you can see but he already has a Wanda fingerprint on his face. I’m sure he likes it. I hope he doesn’t catch her ear infection.

I’ll be sure to let you know if it lives up to all the hype when I surface from the technological honeymoon.

Posted in Reviews, shopping, technology | 5 Comments

What’s In a Name?

Posted on April 25, 2010 by The Daring One

Magoo came home from a birthday party last week and told me they’d eaten cheese-flavored cake. After a brief retch as I imagined a block of cheddar covered in frosting, I figured out what he was talking about. Why does his name sound so revolting and the other so delicious?

Posted in food | 2 Comments

Swabbing the Neck

Posted on April 21, 2010 by The Daring One

Although she’s been known to ingest her fair share of playing cards in her day, Wanda has discerning tastes when it comes to real food. She likes her rice cereal done just so and only sometimes. She enjoys fruits and occasionally tolerates vegetables if the moon is in the proper phase.

Wanda begins each meal with her jaw clamped tightly shut. You can press the spoon against the thin line of her lips. Nothing. Na-da. She will not budge. If you happen to squish in a small amount of food, she will savor it thoughtfully and if she finds it a worthy specimen, she will open her mouth and give it entrance into her digestive system.

Wanda likes the taste of food better after it has been spat out 2-3 times. The yummy food goes in and then – SQUERCH – she spits it through an amazingly small opening in her lips with incredible speed and distance. I scoop it up off her bib, the tray, my bib, the wall and stick it back in her mouth. When the food is eventually seasoned to her liking, Wanda humors me by swallowing a bite and we proceed to the next.

I think the truth is, she believes in quality family time around the dinner table. Why rush through a meal when you can spend a nice evening with your peeps, eating and re-eating and re-eating your dinner one. bite. at. a. time?

The hardest part of dinner with Babida Bubbida Boe is swabbing the neck. It’s nearly impossible to find the neck and once you do, you have to pull back so much “skin” to clean it that the grand finale of most meals is a big fat scream fest. And I just have to say in my sweetsiest voice, “But Wanda, I love you too much to let food rot in your neck folds.” Tough love – it’s a choice I make every day of my life.

Posted in baby stuff, food | 8 Comments