Training Mommy

This evening I was preparing dinner when Aaron came into the kitchen and asked me to help him pick up his toys. I was up to my elbows in carrots, so I said, "I can't right now. I have to cook dinner." He disappeared. A few moments later he came running into the kitchen, crying that he could not play. What? "I can't play!!" When I asked why he answered, "Because I made a mess in your garden room." I stepped around the corner to investigate and saw nothing wrong. He pointed to the mess...a small toy wheelbarrow filled with toys, and a couple of toys littering the ground beside it. I explained that this was no mess at all, and as I bent down to pick up the few straggling toys, Aaron dumped the wheelbarrow over, spilling all the others onto the floor. "Well, NOW it's a mess," I said. "Can you help me pick these toys up, Aaron?" He answered very matter-of-factly, "Oh, no I can't right now. I have to cook!" and he walked off.

Gossip

It’s very common, when we hear of something happening in another person’s life, to share the information with others. And unfortunately, the bad news spreads just as quickly as the good. In the process of mentally sorting through third-party details, I have to remind myself that I’ve not heard the whole story and am not certain of the validity of what I did hear.
Usually when I finally connect with the grapevine and am shocked by the news I hear, I tend to turn to my husband to relay the message. “Hey, did you know about…” And more times than not, he answers that he has, in fact, heard that news already. That’s when I fly into the Spanish Inquisition with questions like, “How long have you known?” “Who told you?” and “Why didn’t you tell me?!!” Dom is such an amazing man. He calmly gives a half-hearted shrug, glances at me and states simply, “It’s none of my business.” The unspoken part of his answer is: and it’s really none of yours, either. Let’s not judge something we don’t understand. See, God knew what he was doing when he brought us together. Dom keeps me grounded, reminding me not necessarily of my faults, but of my capacity to be better than I am.
So often I have felt an array of emotions over gossip – anger, pity, satisfaction. But have I ever paused to say a prayer for the person who is the subject of the news? And then further vowed not to spread the details of someone else’s trouble? How much better off would everyone be if, when we hear gossip, we simply remembered not to judge something we don’t understand.

Feeding Mommy

Aaron loves fruit chews. We have found Elmo fruit chews, Pooh fruit chews, and the highly-coveted Bob the Builder fruit chews. We ration this sugary snack because Aaron is known to pack them away in his cheeks for too-long-at-a-time. Fruit Chew time is usually spent with me reminding him to chew them up or he will have to spit them out. Today Aaron decided to share his precious Bob fruit chews with me. I was busy feeding Victoria, so I graciously accepted his feeding me the fruit chew and declared it to be the tastiest fruit chew I had ever eaten. Aaron decided then that I needed more. He immediately fed me "anunner" and "anunner" and "anunner" until my mouth was so full of fruit chews I covered my mouth with my hand to prevent the inevitable overload. As I hurried to swallow them down, Aaron showed me the cup of fruit chews he had been feeding me. They were shinier than I remembered them looking in the package. Aaron explained, "See, Mommy? I spit them out!"

Monsters

Aaron has suddenly become afraid of "monsters." I guess this is normal for someone 2½ years old, but I really don't have any source of reference on this, outside of my own paranoia. If you are an expert here, help me out. He loves Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc., but now every monster is green, and they hide in his bedroom. Yikes! We've done the monster dance to expel them from our midst; we've searched the toybox and evicted a really cute toy bug; and we've tried to understand that maybe the monsters are just as scared of us as we are of them (oh, PLEASE! They're monsters, for crying out loud!!!) You need to know that I am a monster wimp. I don't fear King Kong, Nessie, or Godzilla, but ugly faces, little creepy things, subliminal monsters, and the paranormal REALLY wig me out. So, needless to say, my imagination can send me running for a populated room in two seconds flat. Lately, with Aaron's fear of monsters, I'm afraid (no pun intended) that I'm not as much help as I should be. Especially when Aaron tells me, "There's something laughing in my bedroom. It scares me." Or when he announced last night, "There's a monster in the window." Where, I asked. "In the bushes." Short of putting a For Sale sign in the yard, I don't know what to do. It's very hard to be reassuring when my own heart is about to beat out of my chest. Even typing this is giving me the heebie-jeebies. Someday it will all be a humorous tale. Either that, or I will be so creeped out that you'll be visiting me at the funny farm.

Defining Relationships

Some conversation we were having prompted me to say, "I'm the mommy." Aaron turned to Dom and asked, "Are you the Daddy?" Dom said, "Yes, I am the Daddy. And you are the son." Aaron pointed to his chest and said, "I'm the son." Later, I was standing at the kitchen sink when Aaron walked through and asked, "Mommy, am I the son?" I said, "Yes, Aaron, you are the son." Then he asked, "Mommy, are you the moon?"

Toy Story

One of my favorite Christmas icons is the Old Time Santa. A few years ago, Stacey gave me a large old-world Santa with a flowing beard, dressed in a gorgeous robe and toting garland. He stands about two feet tall, and he has a sweet grandfatherly face (an important feature, given my irrational fear of faces, which Stacey understood.) Each year I stand him in a prominent place, out of the way of children, which lately is in the living room. So, this Christmas, my Santa would be peeking out from beside the Christmas tree. Peeking. Peeking! What the heck was I thinking? The very last thing I need is the thought of something peering at me from behind (or beside) another object! I foolishly dismissed the thought and left Santa by the tree. I did notice that I was not spending much time at all in my living room, a past holiday favorite. In fact, the only time I ventured into the room was when I had to turn off the tree lights, and then I had to lean over Santa, fearing that his face would turn upwards to look me in the eye before he shoved his cane through my lung. I realized my imagination was working over time, so I stepped back to breathe deeply and convince myself there was nothing to fear. Now, Aaron has a Sesame Street alphabet school bus. Big Bird, Elmo, and Zoe call out the letters as the child pushes the buttons on the bus. Cute toy. I couldn't resist buying it. But, as I stood there all alone, calming my own fears, and convincing myself that my two-foot Santa was not going to spring to life and hack me to death, that damn bus started chanting, "U...U...U." I screamed and ran. Santa was in a box the next day.