Category: Chatterbox

Peace Heart

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I had just come down the stairs and heard Eric talking to someone on the phone. “Sure,” he was saying, “you can come over at 11 on Friday.”

I started to wave to him to tell him something, but he’d already hung up.

“J is coming over on Friday,” he said to me.

“But…” I tried to be neutral. “The girl has a doctor’s appointment at 11.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that!” he protested.

“Yes, you did. We had a whole conversation about it.  Remember? I said, ‘Hey can you take the girl to the doctor this Friday because I’m working?’ and you said, ‘Sure, no problem, just put it on the calendar.’ and then I said ‘Are you sure?” and you said, ‘Yes of course.'” I waved my hands frantically at the calendar we keep in the kitchen. “See?! Here it is, right here, in orange sharpie. 11AM, doctor.”

“Well, how was I supposed to remember that?” he said.

This is when my head starts to feel like it’s exploding because, you know, there’s no one around to remind me when I have to take the kids to appointments.  I just do it.

I don’t remember exactly what was said after that, but our voices were getting raised and I’m sure a few “You always” were thrown around.

In the midst of this came the boy, scowling, who shoved a small purple construction paper heart up at us.

“You have! To use! The peace heart!!!” he shouted at us.

Eric and I stopped and stared down at him, and then looked at each other and smiled.  I reached out and took the peace heart between two fingers.

“Okay,” I said, “How does this work again?”

“You hold the peace heart! And you talk about your feelings!” he shouted at us again.

Since I was holding the peace heart, I looked at Eric and began in my best marriage counseling voice, “I am upset that when I discuss plans with you and you agree to them you do not remember them later.”

Eric started to interrupt me, but the boy snapped at him, “You can only talk when you’re holding the peace heart!”

I handed the peace heart over to Eric. “I am sorry that I did not remember the doctor’s appointment.”

We kept handing back and forth and, well, got over the relatively minor argument. Of course, it’s hard to keep fighting when your 5 year old is standing between you, arms akimbo, with an expression of combined anger, disgust and disappointment on his face.  I felt like I was being dressed down by a little league coach or something.

The peace heart, clearly a product of his Montessori school, is back on the refrigerator and the boy has pulled it out for us a few times since then.

Strangely, it always seems to work.

Even if I’m not feeling particularly peaceful at the time.

Nightmare

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Last night I went up to bed, and just as I crawled under the covers I heard screaming from the boy’s room.

I ran down the hall to find him quaking in his bed, half-awake.

I climbed into his bed and held him.  “What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?”

His head just nodded, small movements and fast.

“What was the dream about?” I asked.

He shook his head from side to side, and covered his mouth with his hands.

“You couldn’t breathe? Oh, honey that’s–” I started, but then saw he was shaking his head “no.”

“What was it?” I asked again.  I was getting worried that it was something bad involving ME, and that’s why he couldn’t tell me.

“I couldn’t,” he began.  “I couldn’t…”

“You couldn’t what?”

“I….I couldn’t get all the cereal out of the cereal box.”

“Oh, honey, I think that’ll be okay.” I patted him on the back, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Another crisis averted.

Gratitude

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To get an expression of gratitude from my son for ANY gift usually requires the obvious prompt of “What do you say?” After which a “Thank you” is uttered, with varying degrees of sincerity.  Even if he loves a present, it just doesn’t occur to him to say thanks.

Recently, I decided it was time to upgrade from the 13 year old smallish TV and get a flat panel.

The TV was delivered in the morning, but I was working the evening shift so I wasn’t home to see their reaction.

At the hospital, my pager buzzed and I looked down and saw my home number.

I called back.  The boy picked up, “Thank you Mommy. I love it,” he said in hushed tones. He then handed the phone back to Eric, who told me that the boy insisted on calling me, all on his own.

So that’s what I have to do to get some gratitude around here.

 

Special Daze

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We just got home from a great night out with friends and were chatting with the babysitter, Alex.

As most of you know, the boy loves wearing his suits whenever he can, though he hasn’t worn them quite as frequently these days.

Alex told us that she’d noticed this and had a conversation with the boy about it.

Alex: “So, I’ve noticed that you haven’t been wearing your suits as much these days.”

Boy: “Yeah, I only wear them on special days.”

Alex: “Oh, okay.”

(after a pause)

Boy: “When I wake up, I can feel if it’s a special day or not.”

Speech Therapy

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The boy has always had amazing language skills.  I remember when we’d go to his well child visits and would receive a sheet of paper with his expected language milestones, all of which he had achieved months prior.  I thought, rather uncharitably, that the milestones were for the dumb kids.

Things were a bit different with the girl.  We’d go to the same well child visits, look at the sheets, and she’d have maybe one or two of them achieved, and just barely at that.  I know you’re not supposed to compare children, but it’s sort of hard not to.

Denver has a city program for early evaluation and intervention for any delay, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have the girl evaluated.  We sat on the ground with a bunch of toys, books, and puzzles, and two delightful women engaged the girl in a series of tasks.  During each one, the women would nod vigorously and beam at the girl, who was at her charming best.  At the end of it, they looked at me and said, “She’s not behind at all! She’s actually about 15% ahead of her age.”

Um..okay…I’ll just…walk away now…I’m not an overacheiving parent…no…not at all…

The funny thing is, I just went to find a video of the boy speaking at her age and you know what I found? They use exactly the same number of words.  The only difference is that the boy’s speech was much clearer.

The therapists did note this, especially that the girl tends to skip letters and drop the end off of words.   They encouraged me to enunciate and repeat sounds back to the girl to improve her pronunciation.  For example, if I show her a picture of a dog, and she says, “Daw!” I’m supposed to say, “Right! Dog! Do-Guh-Guh-Guh,” emphasizing the “g” sound.

I went over this at dinner that night, and the boy listened to every word.

This morning at breakfast, Eric asked the boy what music he wanted to listen to.

“Wilco!” he replied.

“Wacko!” parroted the girl.

The boy turned to his sister, “Wuh-Wuh-Wuh-il-il-il-ko-ko-ko.”

“Wacko!” said the girl.

He kept repeating the appropriate diction of “Wilco” until she more or less got it right. “Wuhlco!” she finally blurted out.

With such a talented speech therapist in the house, I’m sure she’ll be speaking clearly in no time!

You Probably Think This Blog is About You

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Yesterday at the school, a policeman came in to gave a talk.  According to the boy, he talked about how he is there to protect us and he tried to trick them with a disguise.

Today, I heard more about the encounter from one of the assistants at the school.

The policeman showed the kids pictures of “pretty” people and “ugly” people. He asked them to say whether or not they thought the person looked “good” or “bad” based on the picture. (I can’t say I love the idea behind this lesson, and there’s much to be said about it but since it’s not the point of this story I’m just going to let it slide.)  The kids uniformly said the pretty people were good and the ugly people were bad.  I’m not sure what all the “ugly” people looked like, but I was told that one of them was a man with a mohawk and an earring.  All the kids called out “bad” when the card was displayed, except for one kid who yelled out “that looks like my daddy!” Indeed, her father sports a kelly green mohawk, piercings and tattoos.  The policeman then went on to say that we can’t tell if people are good or bad based on whether they’re pretty or not.

The boy shot his hand up into the air and was called upon.

“Also,” he said, “If they are too pretty, then they might be vain.”

And really, isn’t that the bigger threat?

Unbelievable

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Today, no one was listening to a word I was saying.  Toys were not getting put away, dishes were not being washed, and thumbs were not coming out of mouths.  I started going on a bit of a rant, when the boy looked at me, fake pouted, and said quite sarcastically, “Ohhh, it’s so hard being mama.”

Little snot.

I wonder wherever he could possibly have learned to speak that way.

Toy Story

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Last week I took the boy to see Toy Story 3D.  Remembering the disaster that was our last movie theatre outing, this time I came armed with yarn to tie the glasses onto his head, banned popcorn, and knew that the terror alert level was low.  (Last time, halfway through the movie, he cried, “I can’t see anything!” Looking through his 3D glasses, they were coated in a thick crust of popcorn butter goo.)  The yarn worked like a charm, and there were no PTSD-inducing scenes. All in all a successful outing this time.

I hadn’t seen Toy Story in years, but largely remembered the story.  Now, I understand that any movie that involves talking and walking toys requires some degree of a suspension of disbelief, but for the most part the film stays true to the rules of the universe it sets up for itself.  In the last scene, Woody and Buzz race to get into the moving van taking their owner to his new house.  This is where Pixar loses me.  I can accept that toys could open the back of a moving van door, I can accept the firecracker taking them through the air to land through a moonroof into the car, but there is one thing I cannot accept.

The back of the moving van is largely empty.

Now, as someone who has moved multiple times and finds it to be a huge pain, as do most people, this is too much disbelief for me to bear.  There is no furniture crammed in, no random garbage bag filled with soft clothes, just boxes stacked up only filling one third of the van.  How could a single mom with two kids and a two story house fit into a ten foot moving van with SPACE LEFT OVER? Or why wouldn’t she have rented a smaller van? Really, Pixar, you couldn’t spring to at least draw the couch in?

Sigh.

We then watched a bit of Toy Story 2 last night at home, which is an even funnier movie, I think.  I loved the other movie references thrown out to adults: the “Jurassic Park” scene, when T.rex is running and you see his image in the side-view mirror, the “Star Wars” story line,  and some others I probably missed.  Then I realized, for the boy it will be the other way around.  When he sees “Star Wars” for the first time, he’ll exclaim, (big intake of air) “It’s just like Buzz and Zurg from Toy Story!!”

And thus does the timeline of cinematographic history go awry.