Live from the Red Carpet . . . with a five year-old

When Primo was five, he and I broadcast Live! From the Red Carpet (or at least the red pillow on our couch). It was scintillating fashion coverage, his very first; you won't want to miss Primo's commentary on Penelope Cruz and Heather Graham and purple pocket squares. Now, prepare to fire up your time machine and go back five years to when my tween was just a tot (still full of ideas):

"This year marked Primo’s first time watching the Red Carpet for the Golden Globes on E! and it is official – I have a new viewing companion. Kid’s a natural when it comes to fashion commentating (just shows you what a child can get excited about when he gets to stay up late to do it). Ryan Seacrest, watch out. There’s a new pretty boy in town. He picks his nose on camera, digs unconventional couture and has no mercy for Fergie. Behold: Live from the Red Carpet! with my five year-old



I should add that when we first turned on the TV and I explained to him that the point of the show was to look at what everyone was wearing and see if you liked it or not, he chastised me: "This is very vain, Mommy!" And I agreed one hundred percent and explained that that's precisely why we only did it twice a year. I told him it was like Halloween: you couldn't eat that much candy everyday but once or twice a year it was perfectly unobjectionable to glut yourself. After that, he abandoned any concerns about the frivolity of our enterprise and dug right in.

Here's the sum-up:

Best Dressed: Jay Manuel

Worst Dressed: Fergie

Best Umbrella: Mariah Carey

Best Hat: Mickey Rourke

Best Accent: Penelope Cruz

Other highlights include when I ragged on Elisabeth Moss’s poor choice of color, he agreed but he did stand behind her choice of straps (“they are SUPPOSED to hang off her shoulders like that, Mommy!). He and I both loved Christina Hendricks’ Christian Siriano gown and we both despised Julia Roberts’ exceedingly humdrum frock. Vintage Yves Saint Laurent, my foot! As Primo put it: ”Its not fancy AT ALL!!!!” Give us glamour, people! My own regret is he didn’t get to see Chloe Sevigny’s Valentino get stepped on and the actress show her slip, so to speak, when she went all apeshit on the poor fellow who couldn’t help my trip over her riot of ruffles. He would have loved that wardrobe malfunction.

And now, an exclusive for you a mom amok readers, is what Primo deems the ideal ensemble to wear to the Red Carpet:

Big black overalls

Purple patent leather shoes

A tuxedo jacket with jewels all over it

A top hat

Big golden earrings

and of course . . .

A purple bow tie

Zac Efron, take note. Primo is available for consultation, on an after-school basis."

When you plant an apple seed, you get a . . .

Yesterday, I gave Terza an apple.

A half hour later, she came to me with a very chagrined look on her face.

"Mommy!" she said. "There is yucky stuff inside this apple!"

By which she meant the core. Which she had never seen before. Because she is two years old.

It was one of those moments where I was pierced suddenly by the revelation of how small she is, how unthinkably new. These moments always make me think several things at once:

1. How amazing and magical to be discovering everything for the first time!
2. Shit, she's so pristine. I can't possibly keep her like this. I'm going to screw her up.
3. No wonder she has tantrums and throws things. She's two fucking years old.
4. Kiss! Cuddle! Hug! Devour!

Once that exhausting thought process was through, I replied to her:

"Oh, look what you found! It's the apple seeds!"

"Apple seeds?" she asked, dubiously.

"Yes, and if we take them out and put them in soil and water them, do you know what will grow?"

Her eyes got wide and her face wore that "Knowledge is slowly dawning on me! I got this! I got this!" expression.

Then she shouted: "CARROTS!"

Repeat thoughts 1-4.

Why do kids love pretend shopping but deplore actual shopping?

When we were in Philly, I took my girls to the Please Touch Museum. Every time I hear the name, I think of my friend, who refers to it as the Please Touch Me museum. That is not relevant to the story; I just thought since I was permanently marked with that, I should mark you as well. I told that to my husband and he started referring to it as the See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me Museum, raising the crazy to nonsensical levels.

So, we went to the Please Touch Museum and the girls had a blast. We stayed for almost three hours and they didn't stop for a minute, just ran from one pretend play area to the next.

David and Primo went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (they did not run up the stairs singing the theme to Rocky, in case you're wondering, and that is precisely why my family needs me because I would have forced them to). When the boys picked us up, Primo asked hat they had in the Please Touch Me, See Me, Heal Me Museum.

"Well they had this huge pretend kitchen which led to a pretend supermarket and a pretend bakery and a pretend hospital with a pretend garden in back. And then, of course, there was the pretend garage with all the pretend vehicles, to say nothing of the pretend treehouse."

"So, it was all just pretend play stuff?" he asked.

"Yes, but the girls loved it. Especially the pretend kitchen. Imagine your workaday play kitchen, only twenty times bigger, so that it's really almost the size of a real kitchen." I explained.

Yes, the kitchen and grocery store was the piece de resistance and as the afternoon wore on, it got more and more crowded so that, again, it resembled a real grocery store mobbed with grownups doing actual shipping. Standing there, watching the children frantically filling and emptying their miniature shopping carts with groceries -- many of which were actual food boxes and cartons, covered in contact paper -- I wondered something:

"Why is it that when we go to the real grocery store, and do exactly this, it is pure torture but when we go to a "pretend" one, it is sheer unadulterated joy and hours of satisfaction?"

And then, immediately, I realized why. It's just the tiny little matter of control.

When they come shopping with me, they can't go where they please and push their own carts, and fill those carts with ten boxes of graham crackers and six loaves of Italian bread and then, two seconds later, throw all of the bread on the floor, and then ten seconds after that, put it on a shelf and then, five seconds after that, put it back in their cart.

So, I'd like to announce that I have discovered the secret to keeping kids happy while grocery shopping. Just give them a cart and let them do whatever the hell they want.

In fact, I'll go one step further and say I've discovered the secret to keeping kids happy everywhere and all the time. It's exactly the same thing, just without the cart.

Yes, I know, totally invaluable.

If you're sick of parenting experts, you'll love this

From the funny folks at the Onion, "Parenting Expert Has Nerve To Tell You How To Raise Your Own Goddamn Kids." Spot-on. 

The "M" Word

Just read a really interesting article in New York magazine's The Cut, called  If You Aren't My Child, Don't Call Me Mom. Lisa Miller tries to put her finger on why that term triggers her gag reflex, when a grown-up uses it to refer to her:

 “Mom” derives from baby talk: ma ma. It’s a deeply intimate word that the tiniest humans learn at the breast and as such is inherently demeaning when applied broadly to all women with children, not too far from having your boss use lovers' endearments like “darling” or “hon.” It’s a kid’s word at heart, containing a kid’s-eye view of things. “Mom” is an overpowering presence: omnipotent, mythic, nurturing, and bosomy, a perfumed provider of succor, discipline, and food; but also (as the child grows up) embarrassing, annoying, nagging, insufficient, disappointing"

I don't mind the term the same way I mind "mommy" as an adjective, say, but this next point I found pretty fascinating:

"There are those who would say that “mom” is an honorific, somehow, a blessing and a tribute to those who do the hardest job of all. But if that were true, then “dad” would be, too, and it’s not. (Look at the text of Obama’s 2008 Father’s Day speech, a 4,000-word exhortation to responsible fatherhood. There, Obama said “father” 44 times; “dad” and “daddy” were each used once.) When we speak of male parents with reverence and respect, we use the word “father”: When we want to signal they’re fuckable we say they’re “cute dads.” 

So, all you mamas out there, be sure to catch this Mom Read.  (Yes, I'm being annoyingly sarcastic).

Snow Day? They should call it Heightened Productivity Day!

I'm not a homebody. I like being out in the world. Spending too much time at home tends to make me claustrophobic. It doesn't help that I share a small apartment with four very large characters. They are large and they are loud and they are messy. So, at the end of a day spent at home, I have:

A huge freaking mess
A headache from yelling at the kids to clean up the mess (and still, it remains a pretty sizable mess)
A headache from the general cacophony of kids at play and kids in fights and kids being kids.
A guilt complex from how much screen time they'd had
Did I mention the headache?

To stave this off, when we are stuck at home, I go into Super Intense Prpductive Mode.

So when my kids hear "snow day!" they think, "Yay!! No school! We can take it EASY!"

And I think, "Time to get shit done." If you dramatically re-enacted this scene for television, this would be the musical montage where you'd see close ups of me rolling up my sleeves, tying a doo rag over my hair and punching my fist into my open palm  in the universal, "It's on!" gesture.

I get VERY productive during snow days. Very. And I cannot help but involve the children in my intense industry because the largest project is always the "Rehabilitate the Children" project. Which is totally great from a multi tasking point of view. If this continues, my kids may very well be the only ones in the U S of A to hate snow days.

The real secret to my success for last week's snow day was that we dragged Nonny over to stay at our apartment for the blizzard. It was supposed to be this historic storm, and we didn't want her on her own. Also, we needed her to mop the floors and then wash the mop and generally help me take my Mommy Dearest act to new levels.

We did laundry.

We made chili.

We cleaned out our closets.

We changed the bedclothes.

We practiced math word problems.

We matched the mountain of unmatched socks (well, 20% of them, the rest have no match. But we hold out hope for them! Single socks will not be tossed away in our house! On a related note, we may be borderline hoarders. Not sure.)

We made piade, which are Italian tortillas.

Then the kids were poised for revolt so we let them play Just Dance for a while and then we made homemade Italian crema to forestall mutiny.

We super glued every item in the large pile of toys and accessories and hardware and home decor that has required super gluing.

We paid bills.

We cleaned out the high cupboard that only David can reach without a ladder.

Primo did most of his big school project on the Civil War and Seconda wrote an essay for a summer program she's applying to.

We scrubbed the bathtub and threw out the 8 year-old bath toys which probably carry dysentery.

It was so much FUN!

Then, when even Nonny could take no more productivity, we watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure and everyone, even the doubters among us, laughed their tired asses off.

And when the kids found out there was school the next day, I think they were more than a little relieved.