May 16, 2008

family values in action

Charlie and I are sitting at the table, where he is eating cheese and telling me about the day he broke his arm.

“Daddy didn’t see me fall, he just heard me screaming.”

“Oh my.”

“It was like this: doo doo doo doo AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.”

“Wow, that’s quite a story. You can tell your little buddies about that some day.”

“NO. I am NOT going to be a daddy.”

“Really? You’re not?”

“NO. And I am NOT getting MARRIED.”

“Oh I see.”

“NO. How long does married last?”

“If you’re lucky, forever.”

“Why don’t you and Daddy get married?”

“Uh, we did, a long time ago.”

“Why wasn’t I there?!?”

“Well we decided it might work better for us if we got married FIRST and had you and Henry LATER.”

“But I wanted to be there! To bring you the rings.”

“That would have been nice.”

“Yes, it WOULD have. Now I am mad at you.”

“For getting married before I had you?”

“YES.”

“I think I can live with that.”

May 14, 2008

Happy Mother’s Day, by Henry

My mom’s name is Susan.

She is 8 feet tall and weighs 26 pounds.

She is 40 years old.

When I’m at school my mom works at home.

Her favorite store is Target.

Her favorite food is peas.

Her favorite TV show is basketball.

The thing my mom likes to do the most is cooking.

The thing my mom likes to do the least is listen to me and my brother being loud.

My favorite food my mom cooks is chicken nuggets.

My mom’s favorite color is pink.

I love her because she loves me.

May 13, 2008

natural consequences

Tonight Wade and I had a Parenting Moment, you know the kind, where something occurs that seems totally innocuous until you stop for a moment to think about what just happened and you realize that OH MY GOD THIS IS ONE OF THOSE TEACHABLE MOMENTS except that you have NO IDEA what the lesson is so you flounder around until you land on something that seems to reinforce the Golden Rule and then you pat yourself on the back and hope like hell that you said the right thing and won’t regret this when the kids are in high school.

THAT kind of moment.

I will not bore you with the details of what happened (seriously, even as it was unfolding I was thinking how essentially stupid the whole thing was, except of course for the part about how we might do the wrong thing and scar the children FOR LIFE). I will tell you that I was in the kitchen preparing a healthy meal for my family (shut up, I was) while Wade managed The Situation, which meant multiple trips up and down the stairs to consult with me about what we were hoping the take-away was.

All that and no alcohol! Woo!

I’ve been thinking about my parents, about what they were like when my brother and I were kids. When Henry was a toddler, I told my mother-in-law that I felt like I should start every conversation with my parents by saying, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked. “What are you sorry for?”

“Oh, you know, just EVERYTHING. Things I don’t even remember doing. I’m sure there’s something to apologize for.”

The list is endless, in fact.

What I remember the most about my parents is the way they always had our backs. My mother was always happy to pretend that she wouldn’t let me go out when my friends were doing something I didn’t want to do, or when a creepy boy asked me out. My dad was always reminding us that if we were ever at a party and no one was sober enough to drive home, we could call him and he would come get us, no questions asked.

The night before Wade and I got married, I took him up on that and had him drive Wade and the best man to the hotel where they were staying. I think he liked that.

I remember being Henry’s age and getting into trouble, and having my mother say, “When your dad gets home I will need to talk about this with him.” That always freaked me out, not because my dad was tougher than my mom but because that meant that there would be no end run around the punishment, no claiming to one parent that the other parent had said something different.  I was going to be in trouble and there was going to be NO getting out of it.

They worked as a team, and they played good defense.

I have started, recently, to tell the boys that I will need to discuss things with their Daddy, and I can see the same look in their eyes that my brother and I used to get. My kids don’t get in any kind of real trouble, not yet at least (knock on wood) but Wade and I are trying to be consistent about consequences and privileges, which means we need to talk about things. What the kids don’t realize is that we’re not plotting against them, we’re just completely unable to remember what the punishment is if we haven’t talked about it.  And even then, there’s a 50/50 chance I will have to call Wade at work and confer with him about what precisely it was we told the kids would happen.

Parenting is hard, you know, especially when you have no short term memory.

Tonight when Wade was going up and down the stairs, and we were hashing out the solution to The Moment, I realized how much work it must have been for my parents to present that united front. And now I think that instead of saying I’m sorry every time I call, I should just go right for “thank you.”

So thank you, Mom and Daddy. My boys thank you, too.

Now about all that money you “loaned” me over the years …

May 6, 2008

why we are never having family dinner again, ever

At the dinner table.

Henry: Dad, how did you know that Charlie’s arm was broken?

Charlie: Because it was BENT!

Me: Whoa, stop. Please.

Henry: But did you KNOW it was broken?

Wade: Yes.

Henry: How?

Charlie: IT WAS BENT!

Me: STOP. Please.

Henry: Come on, Dad, tell me. How did you know that Charlie’s arm was broken?

Charlie: Henry, he knew because it was BENT. Like THIS.

Me: OH MY GOD I AM BEGGING YOU TO STOP NOW.

Henry: How much was it bent? Like this? Or more like this?

Charlie: It was TOTALLY bent, just like this–

Me: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP NOW PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU.

And then Wade choked on his dinner because he was laughing so hard. The end.

April 24, 2008

four-OH!

Today is my birthday; I am 40. I could wax eloquent about all the things I expected to do before I was 40 or all the things I hope to do now that I am 40, but instead I will tell you about my day, because you will NEVER BELIEVE THIS.

My birthday went like this: get up, get dressed (in an actual DRESS even because I was going to have lunch with my husband and then go to the Apple store to replace my iBook’s power cord and perhaps also stop at J. Crew because IT IS MY BIRTHDAY), get kids up, get kids dressed, take kids to school. Come home, eat cereal, read New York Times, get ready to talk with magazine editor about writing for magazine. Call editor, leave message, think about starting to clean up house.

And then the school calls because Henry has an ear infection and has cried the ENTIRE WAY through Mass. Woo!

I spent the rest of the day with a kid who alternately felt FINE and wanted to tell me IN GREAT DETAIL about an episode of SpongeBob he watched TWO WEEKS AGO when Charlie was forbidden to move and was watching TV for twelve consecutive hours each day and then felt HORRIBLE and cried and sobbed and wailed and moaned and clung to me with all his strength and power and 63 pounds of heft.

All this was all before lunch, which clearly I was NOT going to spend in a grown-up restaurant with my husband. Instead we took Henry (who was feeling pretty good at that particular moment) to HIS favorite restaurant, a local sandwich place that I have decided I am OVER. And we had a lovely lunch even though I am OVER Gourmet Deli. Sorry.

After lunch, Henry spent what seemed like a hundred hours but was probably only one sobbing and crying and insisting that I FIX HIS EAR RIGHT NOW. And then he was fine again and we picked Charlie up and they talked about their days and then we got to the doctor and he sobbed in the waiting room and then we went into the examining room and he was polite and cooperative and then we left to drive through at the pharmacy and he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and insisted that the people in front of us FINISH ALREADY AND GET OUT OF THE WAY because his EAR HURT WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CARE THAT HIS EAR HURT AND WHY WEREN’T WE GETTING THE MEDICINE AND HIS EAR HURT DID I HEAR HIM ABOUT HIS EAR WHY AREN’T WE GOING HOME YET OWOWOWOW ITHURTSITHURTSITHURTS MAKEITSTOPNOW!!!

I’m guessing that I must have passed out about then because I have no idea what was next.

So far, being 40 feels just like being 39 and 30 and 25, except for the part about the screaming kid, which I would never have seen coming a decade ago (or really even yesterday because who knew he had an ear infection?!? not me, clearly). Apparently 40 is the new 30, whatever that means, although I think really it just means that a whole group of us is getting old and trying desperately to turn old into cool which just seems kind of lame to me.

And that is what I have learned at 40: trying to be cool is lame. Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen! Apparently I my work here is done.

April 15, 2008

a little something to take the edge off

Pharmacist: How can I help you?

Me: I called in a refill for my son, and got a message saying that the scrip can’t be filled. I’m just wondering what’s going on.

Pharmacist: Patient’s name? (Looks him up in the computer.) Oh, right! We’re all out of that.

Me: Come again?

Pharmacist: It’s on backorder at the manufacturer. We’ve been waiting about three weeks but we still haven’t gotten any. Apparently they’re just not shipping it.

Me: Okaaaaay …

Pharmacist: You can try giving him a different antihistamine, an OTC, if this is for allergies –

Me: No, see, he takes it for ANXIETY and he’s really having kind of a tough time right now and he really NEEDS his meds and OH MY GOD IS THERE ANY WAY TO FIND SOME BECAUSE WE ARE TOTALLY OUT see my husband spilled the bottle but I was out of town and my OTHER child has a broken arm and it’s been really HARD for all of us and we’re not sleeping very well and –

Pharmacist (stepping back from the counter and putting her hands up in the air in a gesture of what can only be described as alarm): Um, I’ll see what I can do.  You just … stay right there.  Okay?  Okay …

Honestly, I have no idea where Henry gets his anxiety. I cannot even imagine, can you?  You know, with such calm and cool parents.

(Still no meds. Apparently there MAY be a similar drug he can try, but the developmental pediatrician was out of the office yesterday and until we change the scrip we’re just medication free!  Woo!  Which is really not lowering MY anxiety level AT ALL. The end.)