A Mother's Day Cry for Help

A day to honor me, Mommy Dearest, is nice and all but it really isn’t nearly enough to get the job done so I decided to extend the run of Mother’s Day to the whole weekend.

“You take whatever time you need,” David offered magnanimously. That was Friday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, while I sat in the chair of Arrojo studio, waiting for my highlights to soak into my hair and reading People, it was a different story.

“So what’s going on?” David asked on the phone, none too kindly, “When should we expect you back?”

In the background, Primo screamed that something was “ALL YOUR FAULT DADDY!” Seconda wailed her interminable wail.

“Well, I have a haircut after this and then I was going to do a little shopping,” I said, “But if you need me ---“

”No, forget it, we don’t need you,” said David curtly, “SECONDA DO NOT PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!”

Then the phone went dead.

My first reaction was rage at David for hanging up on me. My second response was fear for the life of my two young children under his care.

Rather than opt for either of these, I decided to laugh. Ha ha ha, ho ho ho! Because I was free!! And all the shit hitting the fan on the other end of the phone was totally not my problem.

I let out a hearty chuckle and got back to the important business of reading why Kirstie Alley has recently gained 83 pounds.

With a golden head of bouncy hair, I sashayed down 7th Avenue, feeling like a hot number. Popped into Loehmann's -- why not? -- and spent a whole hour happily shopping for clothes. But here’s where things took a turn.

I feel I need to get into this issue now, because, hey, I am not one to shy away from the tough questions, I am an unflinching investigator of the human condition. So let’s roll up our selves and dig in.

I can not stop shopping in the Juniors section.

Help me, please. Because I don’t want to be the grandma with single-processed platinum hair and boobs flapping around near her belly button pulling Necessary Objects shrugs off the rack to bring into a communal dressing room. And I think that’s right where I’m headed.

Here's how I know. When I got home and showed David the loot, I realized that every single item of clothing, all from the Juniors section, all peasant-y, patchwork, embroidered summer items, every single piece was totally and I do mean utterly see-through.

Now I have nothing against diaphanous apparel. Was a time I was the QUEEN of see-through clothing. Between the ages of about 15 and 30, I didn’t mind showing a little too much skin, because well, all the skin covered was muscle, bone and appropriately-placed deposits of fat that evolution put there for a reason. This was the chapter in my life, and I’ll be honest here, where I used clothing to adorn, entice and advertise my goods.

Two children later, the purpose of clothing for me has changed. I now choose clothing based on how well the piece of apparel deceives people into believing that I am less -- how can I put it -- robust than I really am. And see-through clothing is not helpful in that endeavor.

What we’re talking about here is aging gracefully. Aging gracefully means knowing when to stop wearing denim miniskirts, unless you are a celebrity. Aging gracefully means trying clothes on in a private dressing room, with a door, so the only person who has to see you squeeze your ample ass into one-size-too-small Capri pants is you. Aging gracefully means when you are pushing a stroller containing two bratty kids who are prone to attracting not-very-positive attention to you, that you should be wearing clothes that have no possibility of showing your cotton panties underneath.

I am failing at aging gracefully.

But I did have a lovely mother’s day weekend, complete with breakfast in bed, chocolate madelines and a gift of fine jewelry crafted by the hot new designer, Primo himself. The upside of my shopping misstep is that I now have an excuse to go back to Loehmann’s in less than fourteen days, to return see-through clothing. Anyone brave enough to join me and make sure I steer clear of Juniors?

A confession

I’m going to say something now that may shock, appall and disgust many of you. All I ask is that you have mercy on me, readers, and understand that save this one unspeakable flaw, I am a good mother.

I let my kids eat ice cream every day. That’s right, seven days a week. And I just announced that fact to the entire Park Slope Parents listserv. I expect a house call from Social Services any minute. There is no doubt that an intervention is in the works. Clemency, please. I mean no harm. I’m just a softy for Mr. Softie.

It all got started when a mom posted to the listserv yesterday asking if other parents let their kids have ice cream every day. Her kids are always begging for it, and she tries to settle on just 3 or 4 times a week, but it’s tough because they see everyone else lining up at the trucks.

I read the post and thought it might alleviate this mom’s guilt or sense of burden to hear that I, too, have been in this bind, and that I opted out of the battle and just said, yes, why the hell not, yes, ice cream every day is A-OK. I just wanted to help. So I quickly composed a message which read:

Now, I'm no paragon of nutritious mothering (we eat glutens and sodium and probably msg and my son is subsisting currently on a diet of hummus sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner). If you can settle with your kids on ice cream 3 times a week, I applaud you. For what it’s worth, I let the kids eat ice cream every day in the spring/summer, although my one condition is that they share a cone. Portion size saves the day! Half of a cone from the ice cream truck is really a pretty small amount of frozen delight, and I think it’s about as innocuous a treat as a kid can get, as long as they're not mainlining Juicy Juice and loading up on Doritos the rest of the day.

Oh, and I'm not why this makes a huge difference in my mind but they are NEVER allowed to get sprinkles (that's my nod to restraint).

After I hit send, I read the responses which had already been posted to the group and now I’m nervous folks. I’m fearing a backlash.

“Just because the truck is there, does not mean you have to get ice cream,” wrote one parent, “As your kids get older, they will see a lot of things on the streets of NYC that they want - Today it may be ice cream. When they are grown ups, it might be a drink!”

And that’s when I realized I might be drawn and quartered for public admitting that I am my kids’ soft serve pusherman.

“I didn’t realize that ice cream was the gateway drug,” David said.

“Apparently it is,” I replied, “The kids are sitting on the stoop with their waffle cones right now, but fast forward ten years and that waffle cone is a forty. A forty, I tell you!”

The poster went on to say that the only times her kids, both pre-teens, get ice cream is when she surprises them with it, every so often. If they ask for it, they sure as heck won’t be getting any.

I read her post to Primo. His eyes grew wide and panic flickered across his face.

“Is this in real life Mommy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “Yes it is. So you see how lucky you are to have me as a mother?”

I never miss an opportunity to exploit the fears of my children.

Listen, the truth is, I applaud any mom who can implement this strategy. If you can manage it, you’ve got your act way more together than I do. If I had it my way, the kids would eat brown rice and kelp every day and have ice cream only on Christmas. If I had it my way, I’d have six-pack abs and a three-bedroom apartment. I don’t have it my way. In our house, this is how it breaks down:

Half an ice cream a day keeps Mommy’s nervous breakdown away.

I’m with these kids almost all the time and we struggle over so much that I just do not have it in me to fight about ice cream. It’s not arsenic, folks, not crack cocaine, its not even BPA.

I am appalled by so much out there and I don’t have any gall left over for ice cream.

So, write me up if you want. Bring me into the station. I’m not changing my story.

Now this is what I call taking pride in your heritage

Yesterday, my two year-old was slurping away at her pastina when she suddenly stopped, looked up at me, and said:

“I am not a person, I’m Italian.”

I think I’m going to put that on a T-shirt.

Monomania

Primo is my firstborn and because I have nothing to compare his behavior to, I often worry that it is abnormal. In case you’re wondering, this is not a helpful or constructive thing to worry about. My current concern is about his monomania.

“I wish you’d never read that word on the internet!” David complains.

I do this. I try not to, but I do. I skim scary shit on the internet and then I talk about it as if I am informed. For instance, I never read the Five Languages of Love but I talk about it ALL THE TIME. It is now fully integrated into my relationship-advice-giving lexicon, as in, “He just isn’t fluent in your language of love which is physical affection!”

I think I read “monomania” when I was researching the link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Just before Seconda’s first birthday, I read some emphatic posts on parkslopeparents, got fully terrified for about three days, skimmed all kinds of crazy stuff on the web, spoke to my ped and got the vaccine, as planned, and it was fine. Feel free to air your opinions in the comments section. Nothing is so welcome on this blogspot as a lively debate involving thousands of comments and millions of clicks and world-wide fame for me, the instigator. So, please, I invite you.

But, back to monomania, I latched onto this term, having little to no understanding of what it actually means and now, much to my husband’s annoyance, I use it frequently to describe my son’s obsessive relationships to his hobbies

When you get right down to it, I’m the same way -- an easily-addicted, immoderate person who fully immerses myself in fleeting passions -- so I can’t fault the kid. In fact, I am actually really proud of the depth and intensity of his attachment to his interests. He’s a serious guy, my kid, a real man of substance. Plus, his monomanias have all been pretty esoteric, and we all know that esoteric interests are the coolest ones.

What he’s into right now is the book/ song “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.”

After reading the book and watching the Scholastic lightly-animated version, and singing the song about four million times, he moved on to making his own Old Lady books and performing Old Lady plays, with his matrioshka dolls.

That eventually grew tedious, even for him, and now he mixes things up by varying the theme of what the old lady is swallowing. If you read my post about the f7@cking fours, you may remember that the old lady went through an unfortunate period where she liked to ingest Halloween spooks like Frankenstein and Count Dracula. I was pretty impressed he could rhyme with Dracula, but, it turns out, that was nothing. Last night, my little rhyme-master outdid himself.

I was getting his room ready for bedtime while he jumped up and down on my bed like he’d just mainlined a packet of Fun Dip (did I just age myself as prehistoric with that reference?), when all of a sudden I heard,

“MOMMY WHAT RHYMES WITH PERSEUS?” This piqued my interest.

Primo was working on a Greek-myth-inspired Old Lady song, and, understandably, the name Perseus was giving him some grief. So I rolled my sleeves up and together we got the job done. I have to confess, though, that my rhymes are woefully inferior to his. Seriously. I did the first two verses and he handled the final two. You decide.

There was an old lady who swallowed Perseus

It was such a curse on us

When she swallowed that Perseus

There was an old lady who swallowed the Sirens

She checked her environs

When she swallowed the Sirens

There was an old lady who swallowed Medusa

She drank Jamba Juice-a

When she swallowed Medusa

There was an old lady who swallowed a Glockenspiel

She let out a squeal

When she swallowed the Glockenspiel

Perhaps she’ll DIIIIIIIIEEEEE!

(I know Glockenspiel has nothing to do with the Greek myths, but in our home, we fully embrace stream-of-consciousness in the creative process.)

Am I high, or is this really happening?

You know you’re old as dirt when you’re watching Tivo-ed SNL on Monday night at 8pm. And that is precisely what my over-the-hill husband and I were doing last night. About halfway through the show, David faltered with his remote responsibilities, allowing for a slight lag between when the commercials started and when he hit fast-forward. The advertising we saw then totally blew our minds. Blew. Our. Minds.

It was a commercial for AmbienCR and it started innocently enough. “When morning comes in the middle of the night, it affects your entire day.”

Now here was a statement of fact I could relate to. Morning comes in the middle of the night all the time in our household, and when it does, I would have to agree, it throws the whole day into a big ole pile of shit. So, AmbienCR had my full attention.

But just as I was beginning to feel all warm and sleepy and relaxed by the lulling voice of the man praising the many restorative benefits of the sleep aid, things took a strange turn. The voice warned that before you decide to take AmbienCR, there are a few potential side effects you might want to consider.

Like what?

Like, say. sleepwalking, the voice said. Oh, well that’s not too bad, I thought, a little sleepwalking here and there never hurt anyone too terribly much and what a small price to pay for putting morning back in morning’s place.

Oh, and there’s also the slim possibility, the voice continued, that you might be prone to eating or driving while not fully awake with “memory loss for the event.”

“WHAT?” David sputtered, “Did he just say, ‘eating or driving while not fully awake?”

“I think it’s a part of SNL,” I replied, with my usual savvy,

We listened, riveted, as the lulling voice told us that taking AmbienCR might also lead to “abnormal behaviors such as being more outgoing or aggressive than normal . . . and confusion, agitation and hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations?” David exclaimed.

“I feel like I’m hallucinating right now.” I shrieked, “are we HIGH?”

“We are not high, this is REALLY HAPPENING,” David confirmed.

“Wait, wait, I can’t hear him, be quiet!” I said.

Now the lulling voice was on to “swelling of your tongue or throat which may be fatal . . . In patients with depression, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide may occur.”

“HOLY SHIT!!!!” David and I were wide-eyed, disbelieving. Then we began to shriek with laughter, a regular Harold and Kumar on the couch.

“This is INSANE!!!” I yelled, “This has to be a joke,”

Thanks to Tivo, we could settle the matter definitively. We rewound and watched the commercial about four times through before we could certify that it was, in fact, a real commercial.

It’s hard to say which of the long list of potential side effects is more upsetting. Worsening of depression including risk of suicide is hard to beat in terms of awful, irremediable, bottom-of-the-barrel side effects. But I have to say that it really freaks me out to think that a pill could make me DRIVE or EAT while asleep. I’m a bad enough driver and eat enough while fully awake. And then there’s the matter of your tongue potentially swelling up in your throat to fatal proportion. All I have to say is WTF, readers, WTF? Those are some high costs right there for putting morning back in morning’s place.

The most outrageous part of the commercial is the fact that, after detailing these freakish and terrifying side effects, the lulling voice goes on to say, “If you notice any of these, contact your doctor.”

“How the hell can you contact your doctor after you sleep-drive while stuffing your face when you have NO MEMORY OF THE EVENT?????” I shouted to the TV.

David was giggling like a schoolgirl.

Wow. Thanks to Ambien CR for making me feel as though I smoked one down last night, without the actual drugs.

As my darling husband noted: “This is the shit we miss because we don’t watch commercials anymore.”

A cricket by any other name . . . .

I love that my little ones are city kids. But sometimes I feel sorry for their ignorance about the great outdoors, an ignorance for which I am largely responsible.

Case in point: we were in the state park near my parents’ place in New Jersey a few weeks ago when Primo discovered an interesting insect.

“Mommy!” he yelled, “Come here! I found a CRICKET!”

I ran right over to witness his discovery. Now, I’m far from an expert, but even I can tell you that was no cricket.

It didn’t look anything like Jiminy or the cricket in Times Square or this picture of a cricket I found in Google Images, titled “Typical Cricket.” It just looked like your garden-variety fly, you know, small, shit-colored, ugly.

Did I disabuse my darling of the notion he’d found a cricket? Certainly not. I didn’t know what the hell it was anyway, could’ve been a cricket I guess, and I’m certainly not one to get hung up in the detailed classification of insects. But then he kept talking about his little cricket so lovingly, and passing along his erroneous understanding to Seconda, who was soon shouting, “Oh you coote little CICKET! I LOVE YOU CICKET!”

“Don’t yell or you’ll scare our baby cricket away!” Primo advised her.

“Okay, I gonna be ky-et!” Sec agreed. Then she rested her check on the palm of her hand and inquired of her older, her so-much-wiser brother, “What’s that cicket doin’?”

“Oh,” sighed Primo with a contented smile,” he’s just doing what crickets do.”

And they stood there, heads cocked to the side, mesmerized by the bug standing still on a branch.

This cricket- watching is part of a more global interest Primo now has in bugs. Ants, mostly. The truth is, he’s too scared to actually touch them, but he has no problem harassing me to pick them up (“GENTLY Mommy you’re being too ROUGH !”) and place them in his “bug habitat.” This bug habitat, made by Fisher Price out of cheerful yellow plastic, is nothing more than a torture chamber for ants, who starve or asphyxiate to death after being locked inside.

The good news for the ants is that I usually end up killing them instantly when I capture them, since it is pretty hard to catch one of those suckers without crushing it stone dead between your fingers.

But since Primo is not too savvy about these things, I can usually get him to believe the ant is alive for as long as he is interested in it, which is usually about five minutes. It’s Weekend at Bernie's, bug-style.

“Oh I love my little ant!” squeaks Primo, as we head up the stairs from our stoop to our apartment, “Do you love him, Mommy?”

“Of course I do,” I reply, “He’s my grandantbaby.”

We get home, and Primo wants to see his ant in action.

“Look, I built an obstacle course for little Anty to crawl over,” Primo says, “So put him on the table.”

I do. He lies there on his back, still, lifeless. dead as a doormat.

“Why isn’t Anty moving?” Primo asks.

“He’s probably exhausted from all this excitement,” I said, “Anty has never been adopted and brought to live with a little boy before.”

“Maybe he’s hungry,” Primo offers, “Let’s give him something to eat. Give him an edamame.”

I deposit the edamame on the table and check my email while Primo watches his dead ant do . . . nothing.

“He’s not eating, Mommy.”

“Why don’t you just let him rest, honey?” I offer, “And you draw a picture while he sleeps/”

So Primo starts drawing (with his fist, no fingers thank you very much) and before long, he’s onto the next thing – having giant mutant spiders knock down whole cities made of blocks – and I discretely brush dead Anty, not my first and certainly not my last grandantbaby, into the trash, without so much as a verse of Amazing Grace.

That’s how we roll in the big city.

Get a Grip

I just wasted an hour surfing the web, searching for ways to get my son to hold his pencil like a writing utensil and not a bludgeon. I’d just like to say up front that personally, I don’t give a shit how he holds the pencil. I don’t want to get all “my kid is frighteningly gifted” on you, but it is incontrovertible that Primo has some mad drawing skill.

So, since the art he produces is so impressive and since he’s so happy producing it. I haven’t quibbled about his process. I figured he’d get with the pincer program eventually.

Turns out, this was a bad idea. An expert told me so.

Upon the recommendation of his teacher, who have noticed his fist grip, Primo was evaluated by an occupational therapist, to make sure he didn’t have fine motor weakness.

“His fine motor skills are fine,” said the OT lady, “Better than fine. He scores off the charts.”

Great!” I replied, “I’m so relieved.”

“But his grip is terrible.” she continued, “Really bad, I mean, BAA-AAD.”

She went on to tell me that is was one of the worst grips she’d seen, and that if we didn’t fix it pronto, he’d have tons of trouble in kindergarten, writing and doing homework.

So, we’ll fix it, right? I mean, how hard could it be to get a kid to hold his pencil between his fingers?

The answer is: quite, quite difficult, if it is my progeny you’re talking about. Primo is, to use a term I’ve noticed educators like to employ, “resistant” to changing his grasp. These educators are being kind – either that or he is being kind to them, by showing just some “resistance.” Because when I oh-so-gently remind him that he might want to try using his fingers rather than his fist, he flies into a full-on, balls-out, no-chains-can-hold-him, rage-against-the-machine hell-no-we-won’t-go tantrum,

“STOP BOTHERING ME!” he bellows, “YOU KNOW MY FINGERS RUIN MY DETAIL WORK! NOW LOOK WHAT YOU DID! YOU RUINED MY PICTURE!”

This is invariably accompanied by him throwing his colored pencils to the ground and a temperamental wail, “FIIIIIIIINE! I WILL GIVE UP DRAWING!”

Its gotten to the point that if he sees me watching him use his fist, he will warn me gently, before I even say anything, “Please don’t make me angry, Mommy.”

So I did what any parent would do: I bought some shit to help me help him. We now possess every manner of grip-helper or writing-aid on the market. Every color, texture and variety. Totally and immediately worthless. Especially the one that the OT lady recommended, which is a kind of bracelet-type band that has a hole for the pencil and a little silver dolphin that he was supposed to curl his two bottom fingers around, to keep his hand in the right position.

“Look! You can hold the dolphin!” exclaimed the evaluator, like clutching a little plastic dolphin in a sweaty palm was some great thrill.

Primo looked at her like, “Let’s get serious, lady. I’m an urbanite. A dolphin isn’t gonna get this deal done. Now can we start talking or what?”

So we started negotiations. Bribing, I mean. The OT evaluator recommended that I replace the dolphin with an M & M that he could hold while drawing, and then eat afterwards as a treat. This worked like magic -- for one afternoon. In that afternoon, he drew with his fingers for two hours and ate a whole pack of M & Ms. After that, he had built an immunity to chocolate candy.

Sticker charts proved equally ineffective. I would throw out or hide all the writing utensils in the house until he surrendered but the thing is, drawing is the only activity he performs without bothering me constantly, so its become my salvation. Also, this is my son we're talking about. He's stubborn like a pigheaded mule, to use a term my grandmother is fond of. The kid would find something to draw with, and I probably wouldn’t like what he came up with. I saw the Marquis de Sade movie starring Geoffery Rush.

So I’ve done the only thing possible: Give up. Or rather, I’ve taken a moment of pause to let all my hard work sink in and let his willingness catch up to my resolve.

I mean, there’s a lot to worry about out there and the finger grip just can’t be topping my list anymore. Am I right?