Bribery Can Get You Everywhere - If It's Done Right

I'm gonna type you this love poem. And when I'm done, you'll be in my power

Because my life is so exciting, I was engrossed in a Dateline NBC special the other day when the doorbell rang. Before I could pick myself up off the couch, the bell was followed by frenzied knocking. My lovely daughter was away driving the next door neighbor crazy at a birthday party, and I assumed she was making another visit home to update me on the awesome toys her neighbor friend was receiving that I must match in a few months.

            Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found not a giggling, dancing, greedy child, but a tasty looking piece of chocolate cake on my front doorstep. Hmmm. Weird. But tantalizing nonetheless.

I looked left – nothing. I looked right – no one.

            I assumed it was meant for my daughter. Like most kids Chris doesn’t eat cake at parties because she’s too busy playing and mainlining full-sugar candy from her goodie bag. Then she later complains that she didn’t get a piece of cake as if drinking half your body weight of fruit punch isn’t enough of a head start on diabetes. So, I figured she finally learned to snag a piece for later and was giving it to me for safe keeping. By the way, that would have been a huge mistake. 

Breakfast in bed? No. Movie ticket bribe.

            Still, I was making no assumptions. There was no name on it. I mean, who could resist a free piece of cake that’s apparently been delivered by the angels at the most perfect time? So I picked it up and had the fork half-way to my mouth when I figured I should probably make sure this cake wasn’t one big fat joke. Not that it would stop me from enjoying it, but it might make me pause long enough to brush it off if I knew it had recently made contact with dirt or bugs.

            So I yelled for Chris and heard giggling. I yelled again and she popped her head around the side of the house.

            “Hi Mommy! I got that cake especially for you because I know how much you looooooove cake,” she said with a smile. Then she skipped away to go play and inhale some more sugar.

            So with the green light I inhaled the cake, which had the wrong kind of frosting but was tasty just the same. But the entire time, I also had an uneasy feeling. Something didn’t sit right and I could feel the chocolate confection sitting like a ball in my stomach.

I know my kid. And I know this was no gift cake brought to me with loving joy. This was most likely bribery cake. You see, whenever Chris does something good, I’ve learned from experience that there is usually another shoe waiting to drop.

Yep, right after my birthday dinner Chris begged for her friend to spend the night.

            For example, she doesn’t just clean her room to earn her allowance or so she doesn’t have to live in filth. She cleans her room in a pre-emptive strike against my list of reasons why she can’t have a sleepover. And Chris doesn’t eat her vegetables because she’s so happy to be eating healthy. She gags them down because she believes that will put her in good standing to enjoy dessert.

            So you can imagine my unease knowing that this sugar bomb was left at my door with me specifically in mind. There was something up and it wasn’t long before I knew the real reason behind the cake. An hour or so later Chris showed back up at the door with her friend Kayla in tow (knowing from experience that it’s harder to say no when they’re ganging up on you) and asked if I would drive them to a park across town.

            When I laughed and said she must be crazy, you would have thought that blood was dripping from the knife in the child’s back and creating bloody frowny face drawings on my chalk-covered stoop.

“But I brought you caaaaakkkkkkeeee!” she cried.

            Of course. Bribery cake.

            If you have kids you’ll understand. There comes a point when a hug, a kiss and ‘I love you’ makes you instantly cringe and wonder where the broken vase is hiding. An offer to help unload the dishwasher is a clue that a bad report card is just around the corner. There always seems to be an ulterior motive involved.

            Chris still hasn’t got it quite right yet because she always seems to break the first rule – don’t let the bribee know that you are trying to bribe her. Just like the kid she is, she can’t hold onto a secret long enough to make the bribe do its intended duty. Like on birthdays, for example, when she tells me days in advance that she’s working on something special for me. Oh and, by the way, maybe I should remember just how much I love her present when she asks me if she can stay outside a little later with her friends. Fail.

            She’ll get it soon enough. As a friend pointed out to me, she’s still learning the nuances of a good bribe. Until then, I’ll enjoy her failures and fear the day when her skills will be so fine-tuned that I won’t know her loving kindness is all a ploy.

She learned from example. The only way we could get this thumb sucking to stop was by bribing her with pierced ears.

How Much, Exactly, Is Too Much?

         

Fancy a spot of tea? We've got you covered.

             My mother emailed me yesterday with a quick message that read, “Chris decided she wants to host a tea party after you get off work tonight. Sound good?”

            “Of course,” I replied, smiling at the thought of cookies dipped in lukewarm tea in plastic cups and maybe a feather boa draped across our necks with big earrings dripping from our lobes. Duh. I should know by now that such a party is lame for the females in our house. We do theme parties. On steroids.

            Last night I walked into Grandma’s house where Chris has been spending her summer days and immediately felt a flowery hat being plopped on my head. A flowing scarf was draped around my neck where it clashed with the gym clothes I naively thought I would sweat all over after an obligatory few sips of tea. That did not happen since I ended up too stuffed with tea party goodies.

Even Grandpa has to suffer through our craziness.

            I was escorted into the kitchen and given the fancy rundown. The table was set with a lovely vase of flowers on a dainty tablecloth and surrounded by fine china and decorated napkins. Bowls of Strawberry Romanov graced each setting. Nearby was a tray of homemade scones with clotted cream and lemon curd topping, a plate of cucumber finger sandwiches, and a fancy teapot filled with steaming liquid. Undoubtedly the teapot was one Grandma carted back from her trip to England – because it NEEDS to be authentic.

            As we nibbled on the delicacies Chris had slaved over all day, Grandpa remarked that if only it wasn’t 104 degrees outside we could make the afternoon more authentic by dining on the lawn as a cricket match played in the background. Or maybe cheer on some polo players.

            It’s not the first time we’ve had such a tea party. Mom and I stayed up into the wee hours to watch Will & Kate’s nuptials a few years ago. We enjoyed some biscuits (that’s cookies to you uncultured folk) on that long night and laughed at how fun it was to have a full-on British feast.

See, we don’t just clink our teacups and call it a day. We go completely overboard and fall into every stereotype imaginable. That’s how we roll.

Please enjoy the train ride and excuse us while we beat the birthday train theme like a dead horse.

            It doesn’t stop with the London loving. We go overboard with every party we have. It seems like once we get a theme in our heads, we can’t stop the fabulous ideas. For instance, Chris’ last birthday was a BBQ party in the yard. So of course she had a hamburger-shaped cake complete with matching “Chris-py Fries” made out of cookies and invitations shaped like a BBQ grill.

            A couple of years ago when her birthday was at a train park, of course she got a train cake complete with cars of toxic waste, gold nuggets, logs and circus animals.

            Then there was a flip flop birthday with a flip flop-shaped piñata, a beach scene cake and flip flop picture frames in goodie bags decorated with…flip flops.

It may be a bit much, but it's the
coolest pinata you will ever see!

            It’s not only Chris who gets a full-fledged theme shoved down her throat.

            When my niece turned 16, we had an Academy Awards/movie party for her birthday. The glittery event featured a red carpet leading to the front door where her movie poster face welcomed guests, star-shaped cookies, theater popcorn containers and Oscar statue party favors.

            When my nephew graduated from high school he didn’t just get some Star Wars plates and streamers. No, no. He got a Millennium Falcon-shaped cake, Chewbacca cookies, a Death Star piñata and Light Sabers made out of pool noodles. Plates and streamers? Those are for wimps.

            I know it all sounds utterly delightful. And it is. Really if you enjoy being bombarded by a theme until you think you may throw up from all the matchy matchyness, we are your party planners.

But I can’t help but wonder if I’m saddling my child with another therapy-inducing personality trait. Will she spend the rest of grade school thinking a book report about the civil war isn’t complete without a period costume and hardtack snacks? Can she imagine a Halloween in which the entire family, including the dogs, isn’t trick-or-treating in an outfit that would be found in the Bee Movie (yes, last year we were worker bees, a honey bee, a queen bee and a bee keeper)?

Not just a cool cake. But thermal detonators too.

            It all hit home the other night when Chris told me, incredulously, that one of her friends didn’t have a vocabulary quite as large as her own. In fact, she told me, she had to explain to her friend what the world “overboard” meant. “Say it’s my birthday and instead of just buying me a cake my mom makes me a special cake that’s really huge and she decorates everything with tons of balloons and stuff and it’s all the same theme, that’s going overboard,” Chris explained.

            Oh. 

            Does that mean we should reign ourselves in? I’ll work on that. As soon as we finish this year’s “Cats! Halloween Extravaganza!” 

Car Horrors

         

Don't want to disgust you with pictures from my gross car. So here's a cute baby picture of Chris to distract you.

  Raise your hand if, like me, you’ve found these puzzling and frightening things in your car. Or maybe something even worse:

• One CheezIt Cracker, circa “your guess is as good as mine”
• One black Sharpie marker with lid miraculously snapped on
• Handful of random McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, most broken, jammed between the seat cushions
• A $5 bill that would have come in handy yesterday at Starbucks
• One balled up, dirty sock from when my kid who wears a monstrous size 4 shoe used to be a size 2
• Various KidzBop CDs, all of which have a scratch on the one song which is semi-tolerable
• One pair of toddler sunglasses missing one lense

            Sound familiar? I could go on all day about all the interesting science experiments that have been found underneath the seats of my car. You may even have heard the screams not long ago and worried that there had been a volcanic eruption nearby and people were running for their lives. Mainly because you heard the shouts of “Run for your liiiifffe!”

            Don’t worry. There wasn’t a natural disaster nearby. But unfortunately, there was lots of screaming coming from the vicinity of my garage that morning.

A few car items that make you wonder why: plastic lei, lottery ticket,
bee pillow from Chris' baby crib, ballet outfit from 1 1/2 years ago.

            You see, we took the dogs for a ride to the dog park last week and they had trouble wading through the piles of trash in the backseat so they could get out of the car to go run. And seeing how I could now write my name in the dust piled up on the dashboard, I knew that time of year was upon me – car cleaning time.

            Most of the car wasn’t horrible. I made piles of toys, random child leggings, and bags of gum wrappers and other miscellaneous trash. Then I set about giving the dustbuster a workout by vacuuming out months of gravel, French fry bits and dog hair.

            After a while of cleaning, I could put it off no longer and I steeled myself for the horrors I knew were about to come. I know you probably think I’m embellishing, but you weren’t there. You didn’t see how I had to dance around the garage like a prizefighter trying to psyche myself up for the main event. There was lots of deep nasal breathing and lots of positive talk like, “Come on Osborn, you can do this! It won’t be that bad! Just get it over with!”

            After a while, even I started to think I was being ridiculous and reasoned with myself. “I mean, come on? When was the last time she even ate any food in the car?”

            Well. That soon changed. As soon as I moved Chris’ car seat to take a brave look underneath, it was more like, “Gross! When was the last time she even ate in the car? Dear God! What is that? Is that…is that…moving?”

            I danced around some more and shook off the heebie jeebies and ran into the house to search for some gloves with which to peel the melted gel fruit snacks off what were once gray fabric seats. Now they're spotted gray and black seats. And I’m really just guessing here when I say fruit snacks. There’s really no way to know without the benefit of a microscope.

Guarantee you whatever is in this lunchbox is now
embedded in my fabric car cushions.

            Honestly, the only reason I can think of that there is not a constant line of ants marching from the garage door to the car door is that pest control is a little luxury I will scrape together my last dimes to purchase. I’m sure when the pest guy makes his visits to our house he peeks into the dirty car windows and knows that he must give us the high strength stuff because the bugs will be attracted to the half-eaten chicken nuggets we’re carting around in the backseat of our automobile.

            I know I sound disgusting for driving a portable trash can. I really do have good intentions of keeping the car clean. I really do. Every time I go through the totally gross-out stuff I swear up and down that it’s never going to get that bad again. And then I lecture my kid all the way to school to take a good look around the car and see how clean it is and to make sure she does her part to keep it that way. And then when we get home after school I tell her to pick up her junk out of the car and usually get the exhausted response, “But I’m so tired,” as if she’s just run a marathon and I’ve asked her to run another 5k.

            I understand the feeling of exhaustion. I get it. So I give myself a pass and give up on the car save for the few times of the year when the dogs are in danger of sticking to the seats.

I live by the proverb “kids will remember the quality of time you spent with them, not the cleanliness of your house.” Sure. That’s why I don’t clean all the time, not because there are too many good books to read. Frankly, keeping an uberclean house is not at the top of my priority list. In fact, if my kid gets a vegetable or two with her meals I count that as a pretty stellar parenting day. I can’t do it all!

            Nevertheless, I do wish our car never gets to the state that it was in on that particular morning last week. Honestly, I can’t describe to you the fear always I feel before pushing that car seat to the side to see what’s underneath.

            I don’t really know how to justify all this filth. All I can say is I don’t think it’s going to get better until my daughter goes to college. And I don't think they can create a CarFax that can fully describe the horrors my car seats have seen. So when the time comes my plan is to just torch the sucker and start fresh.

Someday she will drive herself. And I can have a clean car. 

It's Not Bragging When It's A Fact, Right?

         

I'm sure very soon we will have to invest in a trophy case with a kid who is just this fantastic.

          We had a particularly rousing game of Just Dance 4 on the Wii the other day. After spending a good 10 minutes proving just how white and out of shape I am, I handed Chris the nun chucks and sat down on the couch to see where my hundreds of dollars of dance lessons have gone – spoiler alert – Chris must have skipped the dance lessons and spent the money on candy because she’s nearly as uncool a dancer as her mother.

Anyway, while I was watching her awkwardly and robotically “dance”, I noticed something I had never seen. Just Dance prints the words to the songs at the bottom left of the screen! It’s like karaoke sans the microphone! And we actually have a microphone at home! Of COURSE I’m going to sing along to that stuff now. Look for me soon singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” at your neighborhood karaoke bar now that I’ve learned the tune from a kid’s video game.

            After belting out the 80s disco hit, I looked at Chris and said what we were both thinking, “Wow! I sang that song really, really well! Oh, and you danced pretty good too.”

            Hands on knees as she tried to catch her breath, she rolled her eyes at me and retorted, “Mommy, don’t brag.”

            Don’t brag? Helloooooooo, Pot….I am your mother….I am a kettle….and we’re both a little on the dark side. Ha! Get my Star Wars/Old-timey Idiom Mashup? Yes, my child has a little bragging problem at times. No idea where she picked up the dirty little habit.

            Sometimes Chris has a little trouble looking in the mirror. She can instantly point out a braggart without understanding that she does it just as well – so well! In fact she is so much better at bragging than you!

Even in the backseat she's a rock star. Of course.

            I suppose part of it has come from her parents and teachers who offer nothing but good will. We only want her to have a healthy self-image and grow into a strong and confident young woman, so we heap on the praise when she does something spectacular. In Chris’ case, there’s no denying that she’s fairly smart. She will definitely surpass me one day in the brains department, but right now she is just a slightly-above-average 7-year-old who has somehow gotten the impression that she’s a genius. And it’s not bragging to make sure everyone knows it, she informs me. It’s not bragging when it’s a fact.

            During a visit with Urgent Care doctor a few months ago, I learned exactly how far Chris’ self-image had come. Not content to sit on the sidelines, she tried answering all the questions the doctor had directed at me.

            “How long has she had these symptoms?” the doctor asked me, the educated parent.

            “Well,” Chris interrupted, “At school I was trying to listen to the teacher and my stomach kept hurting so I asked to go to the bathroom but I didn’t have to poop so that’s not why it was hurting so I came back to class and told the teacher that my stomach still hurt and she sent me to the nurse and I told her that my stomach still hurt and she called my mom and told her that my stomach still hurt…..”

            The doctor’s eyes glazed over. That may be why she made the mistake of saying, “Well! You’re very well spoken for a 7-year-old.”

            “Yes,” Chris affirmed without a blink. “I am the smartest kid in my class. I am already reading chapter books that are for third graders and my Grandma said that I know lots of big words.”

            Flummoxed, the doctor had no choice to reply, “Well, that’s really great. Keep up the good work.”

            She then called Chris to the examining table to take her blood pressure, look in her nose, etc. You know all those things that somehow affect a stomach ache. As she prepared to peer past the ear wax that undoubtedly clogged Chris’ ears, she fingered a ringlet and said, “You have very beautiful hair.”

The curls that brought down the doctor.

            Instead of doing me proud and murmuring “Thank you” as I have instructed her a thousand times, Chris instead knocked the wind out of the doctor when she said, “I know. I get that a lot.”
           The doctor actually asked her if she had a dictionary at home so she could look up the word "humble."

            Oh geez! If she didn’t think we were a conceited family before, it’s now been fully confirmed.

            Recently Chris competed in her first ever team event for cheerleading. I had seen these girls at practice and thought that unfortunately they didn’t have a shot in the dark at winning. Because that’s unusual for Chris so far in her charmed life, I tried to prep her on the drive there by reminding her that sometimes you don’t win things and you have to remain a good sport. Sometimes you try hard and you’re just not good enough but you should be happy for the winners.

            By some stroke of luck, the kids placed second, earned a medal and a trophy and a chance to compete at the state level. Of course Chris was certain that she carried the team and seemed pretty put out when she told me her trophy was made of plastic and that she had thought a winning trophy would be made of solid gold.

            Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being confident in your appearance and abilities. A little bit of conceit is a good thing, in my opinion. But it can go too far when you start believing that things are always going to come easily to you. Fortunately I don’t think all is lost with Chris yet.

            Last summer I had a conversation with my cousin after Chris had had like a day of swim lessons. She told me she would never be able to play water polo because she just couldn’t get swimming. She sunk into a deep depression as she hung out at the shallow end of the pool and I told my cousin I was worried she would be one of those kids who is always a quitter when things got too hard. Then I left him to babysit and drag her around the pool while I went shopping.

Keep your eyes peeled for your newest
Olympic swim team member.

            When I returned, though, he surprised me by showing me how well Chris could swim across the pool after one afternoon. He told me she must have overheard me and decided she was going to show me. So with severe determination Chris forced my cousin to spend the entire afternoon in the pool turning pruny until she got it down. So she’s not a quitter after all. That’s fantastic news that she can rally and give it some effort when it’s required.

But unfortunately, we’re back where we started. According to Chris, all that hard work has paid off and she is ready for the U.S. Olympic Swim Team. She’s just that good. Get used to it.

Slow Down!

We're not ready to stop the ride or get off. We (and by we I mean mom only) just want it to slow down!

It's 4 a.m. on a Wednesday and I jump out of bed as usual with good intentions of stretching, and watching the sun rise with a cup of coffee in hand while inhaling deeply and smiling foolishly as if I'm in a Folger's commercial.

But you know that doesn’t happen.

What really happens is that I trip over a pillow that has been kicked to the floor during the precious few minutes I’ve had to sleep, swear quietly so as not to wake the little giant known as my daughter and pray I can have just a few freaking minutes to myself before she demands cereal we don’t have in the pantry. So instead of using this time to meditate and garner my strength, I tiptoe downstairs where I begin to lovingly stroke my Chinese boyfriend - otherwise known as "remote control".

It seems like yesterday, but time
is going much too quickly.

“My precious," I think.

I could spend this time doing some yoga like poses and becoming a better person. But as I am going through withdrawal from being forced to watch kid-friendly programming 90% of the time, I decide instead to rot my brain. I time it just right so that I can quickly hit the volume down button as the TV is powering up because you know my child must blast the Disney channel at ear-splitting setting #25 so as to be able to hear the oh-so-important programming over her own constant commentary on how much she loves "Just Kickin' It" and that despite never setting foot in a dojo she could totally ‘kick it’ herself.

It’s not long before I start to feel guilty and it’s not because I’m using this rare down time to drool on the couch while an episode of "2 Broke Girls" softly murmurs in the background. I’m feeling little pangs of guilt as my eyes flick constantly to the stairs and my ears strain to hear the pitter patter of little feet on said stairs.

I am feeling guilty because I should not be watching such a show in my house with a child around. Hilarious as it is, this particular episode is about HERPES and I can’t concentrate and enjoy the single gal hilarity as I am contemplating how I might explain STDs to a 7-year-old should she wake up.

            I am feeling guilty because this is yet another thing a young kid should not have to think about or even hear about.

            Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time remembering way back to when I was Chris’ age. I don’t know if I am blocking some trauma or if I was really naive, but I really don’t remember knowing as much about the “real world” as my child does now. Ultimately I have decided that things just move much faster these days.

            Chris is very tall for her age and at seven she could easily pass for 10. As funny and amazing as it is to watch her growth spurts, we’ve joked often about plying her with coffee and cigarettes, and piling bricks on her head to stunt her growth. Add to this height the fact that she has been raised around adults and talks (or fakes it) like she is wiser than her few years, and I wonder what kind of supersonic roller coaster ride we’ve boarded.

These cute two-pieces used to be much
more cute and a lot less scary.

            Recently we had to go swim suit shopping. First of all, this is yet another area in which things are moving much, much too fast. Chris gravitates – as all the other young girls apparently do – towards the string bikinis that barely cover her private bits.  So buying a suit is understandably an epic battle to balance age-appropriateness with size availability. Because of her size, very soon we will have to leave the Hello Kitty section and shop in the junior department. If you're not familiar, let me just point out that as the girl’s sizes get larger the amount of fabric shrinks in order to ensure that young teenagers appear as cute and sexy as possible. Fantastic.

            It is a Herculean task to find a kid-friendly swim suit that fits Chris’ very long torso. This leaves me simultaneously overjoyed and dismayed that she can’t fill out the top of a larger suit that is long enough for her body. And I refuse to buy one of these itsy-bitsy bikinis that have ruffles strategically placed to accentuate curves. 

We finally found a two-piece that I agreed wasn’t too racy because it was a sporty suit for athletic-type pre-teens, which is perfectly fine in my opinion. As she tried it on, Chris proved that her mouth is older than her years when she said, “This top feels funny. I don’t like the way it fits. The bottoms, however, feel delightful.” She's spending too much time with Grandma.

            All I could do was stifle a snicker and tell her we’d have to try another store with other one-piece suits.

            The adult choices for much-too-young children don’t end there.

            The other day I found myself ranting in the children’s shoe department because roughly half of the girl’s summer sandals have wedge heels. These are basically high heels, and in my opinion there is absolutely no reason a seven-year-old should be wearing high heels unless they are the dress-up plastic kind she wears with a Disney dress for Halloween and cause her to complain about her aching feet and thus give me hope that she will forego the future pain for sensible footwear.

            Of course Chris is gagging for a pair of these sandals and I have told her no so many times that even I am not beginning to understand why she is the only kid she knows who doesn’t have a pair. I was beginning to wonder if I might have Amish tendencies when I noticed a mother lingering nearby with her infant in a stroller and was convinced she was gathering evidence to report me to the fashion police.

            But when Chris began her begging anew, the woman slowed her stroller and shocked me with some solidarity.

            “I wouldn’t buy you those high-heeled sandals either, honey,” she told Chris, who fortunately didn’t roll her eyes at a stranger’s unsolicited advice. “You’re much too young for those shoes and they will make your feet hurt anyway. I won’t buy them for my little girl either.”

            Granted her little girl was probably around 12 months, but I appreciated her words nonetheless.

            In fact, I wanted to jump up and down in relief that I wasn’t Amish after all. I am just a mother who realizes that time flies much too quickly. One second they’re wearing an adorable princess two-piece suit with a swim diaper, and the next you’re praying the strings don’t pop off when they dive in the pool.

It’s too fast.

Let’s turn back the clock about 30 years so Chris can get a little taste of what real childhood is like. We can start with the sandals. Then we’ll talk about my TV programming.

Until then, I will continue to wake up at 4 a.m. so I can keep her from the real adult truth.

Maybe she can wear high heels for this event. Maybe.

Fremdschämen - Look It Up

Yes, living a life this way can be embarrassing. It's even worse when your parents write about it.

            If you’re an avid WhatMyKidSays reader, you may have had a hard time getting out of bed because you noticed I haven’t blogged in the past few weeks. I suppose I’ve hit a bit of writer’s block. And possibly since Chris hit her 7^th birthday she’s not nearly as funny as she was the first six years of life. Or possibly since she hit her 7^th birthday I’ve hit a funk realizing the time is going by too quickly.

            We also had a discussion in the car the other day about the blog and Chris told me flat out that she hates it and wishes I never wrote another word about her because it’s sooooooooo embarrassing. I lied a little and said nobody was laughing at her – just laughing at the funny things kids say – but she wasn’t buying it and made sure I knew what a horrible parent I was becoming.

So cute. But she seems
more angry than humiliated.

Honestly, I did pause for a minute and wonder if I was causing irreparable emotional and mental trauma to my child. In fact, I’m sure since the internet is pretty much here forever there will be all kinds of trauma in about 10 years, right around Prom time when she might sit down and actually read some of the crazy stories about her life.

Ultimately, though, I decided this is my revenge. People keep telling me that with a mouth and personality like Chris’, I am going to be in for some serious trouble in a few years. So, yes, this is my pre-emptive revenge and despite her protestations I probably won’t stop.

It can be humiliating when you
don't know how to eat cake.

I do completely understand Chris’ feelings of embarrassment, though. In fact, I feel a little embarrassed myself sometimes that this child is what I created. I recently learned a new word – fremdschämen - which is a German word meaning external shame. In essence, it stands for the embarrassment that others feel on your behalf, vicariously even, for the humiliating things you may have done or said.

For instance, I am fremdschämen that Chris loves to paint her fingernails in bright prostitute colors (no other color description is available or even necessary because you get the picture – her nails look like a hooker’s talons). But it's not like she cares that much about her appearance since I have to beg, plead and threaten to get her to brush her teeth. And she has worse gas than a sailor living on a ration of canned beans.

I am fremdschämen that when she took her first swimming lessons Chris swallowed so much water that the instructor couldn’t help but sarcastically comment that she would never drown because she could burp so well. Chris didn’t get it and replied, “I know. I’m really, really good at burping.” It’s a skill she might not find embarrassing, but which causes me much embarrassment when she’s in the middle of an important book report in front of her class. I have visions of her giving a valedictory address and turning it into a rendition of Will Farrell’s ‘Elf’ on soda.

I am fremdschämen that when I sent Chris with money for her school’s book fair, she returned home with “Bieber Fever”, a pictorial about the life and times of Justin Bieber. Complete embarrassment. Again, she has no idea that 7-year-old girls are pretty much the only people in the entire world who don’t recognize the humiliation factor of crushing on The Biebs.

It should be embarrassing to be in love with a frog. But, alas, she's not embarrassed.

I am fremdschämen that because Chris has lived her entire life in Arizona, she does not believe that snow falls from the sky, but that it gets trucked in to areas where kids play, like the zoo. On a trip up north last year she was so devastated that no white stuff was on the ground that she begged me to “call them and tell them to bring the trucks!”

I am so, so fremdschämen that I duck down in the driver’s seat on afternoons when I pick her up from school because Chris can’t leave the circle drive without hanging halfway out the car window yelling goodbye to all the friends with whom she has literally just spent the last eight hours. And if they don’t hear her she will yell louder, wave her hands in the air, and hang farther out the window until her mostly clean shirt is covered with a layer of dirt that once covered our traveling trash can.

Speaking of clean shirts, I’m fremdschämen that Chris can’t eat a meal without dripping something onto herself and am sad to inform her that I know from personal experience that she might as well purchase a bib to carry her through the next 50 years. I can always tell what she has had for lunch but she doesn’t seem to care that her clothing is usually a walking abstract painting.

And I’m fremdschämen that Chris is stuck in this family, where we think it’s hilarious to point out one another’s embarrassing habits. My mother always had this saying about adversity, “it builds character.” I always used to tell her, “I have character coming out of my ears.”

I believe blogging about things that Chris finds embarrassing, or the things that she doesn’t find embarrassing but make me cringe on her behalf, is going to help her builds tons of character too. She should be thanking me, right? Right? I will keep telling myself this until the therapist asks her to confront me for ruining her life.

The first bikini will probably be a source of embarrassment soon. 

It's So Insulting

We always hurt the ones we love.

            The other night, Chris was sliding in her socks across the tile floor, slipping onto her stomach and flying precariously close to the corner of the kitchen island. I closed my eyes and could see her demise perfectly – because it happened to me.

            “You know when I was your age,” I started out the way all fantastic advice begins, “I was doing the same thing at a neighbor’s house. She was waxing the hardwood floor, and it ended up not so fun for me. I had to go to the doctor and got a scar on my face after I accidentally slid into the coffee table.”

            Not sufficiently frightened, I dragged her into the bathroom light to prove how her beautiful face could be scarred for life. Rather than being afraid, she was curious and I’m sure if a magnifying mirror were available she would have examined every inch of my skin for youthful injuries.

            “What are these scars from?” she asked, moving her fingers lightly across my forehead.

            I wracked my brain. Was that the time my sister threw the swing at me and I was too slow to duck? Scars from skin a dermatologist callously froze off while lecturing me about the dangers of redheads in the sun?

            “Which scars?” I asked Chris for clarification.

            “These ones!” she said. “These ones right here. The ones you get when your forehead moves.”

            Ohhhhhh. Not scars. Wrinkles. The darn kid not only noticed, she felt the need to point them out.

            “Wrinkles!” she screeched and laughed. “You’re old! Do you have grandchildren?”

            Yeah, she went there.

            This is one of the many situations that those parenting books don’t discuss. One thing that I have learned along my motherhood journey is that you have to have a pretty thick skin.

I mean, I grew up in a family that traded constant practical jokes and teasing. And I spent four years in hell otherwise known as high school. But nothing can bring tears to your eyes faster than when the angel you have lovingly cared for blurts out in front of the bank teller, “Mommy, your breath is really stinky.”

Chris is already a master at the personal jab. Sometimes, though, what she states as fact can seem pretty insulting if you’re not prepared.

            The big story making the rounds at the family dinner table is the one about Grandpa and Abraham Lincoln. Turns out Chris and Grandma were reading a book about Abe and came across a picture of our former president. Grandma pointed out to Chris that ol’ Mr. Lincoln wasn’t a handsome man. In fact, she said, some people thought he was kind of ugly.

            Chris looked up and said, “Oh! Like a skinny version of Grandpa!”

            I’ve been at the receiving end of Chris’ comments before so I imagine that suddenly Grandpa felt that he needed to put back the cookie in his hand and go shave. And he was probably a little bitter about it too.

            Like I said, I’ve been there. I can’t tell you how many times Chris has pushed against my belly with a knowing look in her eyes and I’ve had to quickly change the subject before the words made their way from her little brain to her big mouth. I know I’ve been a longtime resident of the husky category, but I could do without my daughter announcing at megaphone decibel, “My mommy said she needs to go on a diet but I saw her eating ice cream last night.”

Brace yourself. I have something to say and it's probably mean.

            Even Grandma is not immune to Chris’ sharp tongue. The other day Chris brought home a school paper that read, “When I am 100 years old I will look like my grandma.” At least I’m not the only one who looks old.

            I suspect someone – probably grandma - had a conversation with her at one point to try to impress upon her that it’s offensive to say things without regard to another person’s feelings. One thing you can say about that kid, she’s a quick learner. It wasn’t long before her insults morphed into, “No offense, Mommy, but your shirt looks kind of weird. No offense though!”

            Somehow, I think you do mean to offend!

            Of course, most of the time she really doesn’t mean to offend. It’s just a kid’s way of figuring out the world and what she states as fact – because it really is fact – just seems mean because we’re so self-conscious as adults. We all know the truth, we just don’t want that bathroom magnifying mirror held up to show it to us.

            Or maybe the reason Chris is so insulting is her defense mechanism to keep the ugly truth from happening to herself.

            Last night she told me, “There’s no way you can be my mother. You don’t like onions and I do, but I like sloppy joes and you don’t.”

            I responded back, “Hate to break it to you kid, but you look just like me.”

            “That’s just wrong,” she replied. “The only thing the same about us is the color of our eyes. And we both burp a lot.”

            See, even when she doesn’t want to be like me she finds a way to insult me!

            So I got her back. When she asked if I had grandchildren I gritted my teeth and gave her a little smile and sweetly told her the answer.

            “No dearie, I don’t have grandchildren. And at this rate I never will…because you won’t live long enough to give them to me.”

Ahhhh Young Love

It's cute now. Ten more years and he'd better run fast.

            When I was Chris’ age, my Grandpa Don would put his hand on my leg, just above my knee and squeeze. If I laughed or squealed, that meant I was boy crazy. I was so ticklish that he barely had to make the hand-squeezing motion and I would dissolve into a pile of giggles. Oh, and I was also majorly boy crazy.

            In Chris’ case no leg-squeezing test is necessary. I think she popped out of the womb primping for her first date.

            More than once I’ve eavesdropped on conversations between Chris and her much, much older friend Jasmine who is “like 8, Mom, and she still spends time with me!” The first time I heard it I had to choke back my guffaws because you’d think those two were a couple of stay-at-home housewives killing time over a cup of coffee until their soap operas started.

            “Sooooooo, tell me about the boy you like,” Jasmine asks as they ride their scooters past the bench where I’m not hovering. Just taking the dogs for a little walk. I swear.

            “Well,” Chris replies, waving her hands around excitedly. “He’s IN THE SECOND GRADE and his name is Jake.”

            “He sounds cute,” Jasmine says. Well duh, he is an older man.

            Not long ago Chris told me about three of the guys she currently likes – two she likes at the same time as her friend Mikayla because your friend's approval is necessary criteria. When I prod her to explain why exactly these boys have caught her eye she just gets embarrassed and says, “You know!”

            “Because he’s cute?” I ask.

            “Yes!” she yells. “Now leave me alone! You’re embarrassing me!”

            Well that is in my job description.

First love triangle. Don't worry it worked out well. She chose the cake.

            But she can’t help it. She’s so boy crazy that she must drone on about all the boys she likes, even at the risk of embarrassing herself. One boy, she tells me, is a mystery to her. She and Mikayla don’t even know his name but they see him all the time in the library (smart boy – Mommy approves) and they get so scared that they just go “tee hee, tee hee” because they don’t know what to say. Those are her words, not mine.

I feel kind of bad for the kid because she’s not used to having to work for what she wants. Like many girls with only-child syndrome, she can’t fathom a world in which men don’t swoon at her feet as if she were Cleopatra.

        That’s not to say the love-bug doesn’t bite the boys too. Not long ago Chris and I spent the day with Landon, who is two years younger than Chris. The next day Landon told his mother he wanted to see Chris again and when she told him it wasn’t possible he said very matter-of-factly, “But I love her.” I imagine it was much the same way he might say he loves waffles or the Power Rangers, but nevertheless it’s difficult to resist her gravitational pull. One day was all it took for him to fall under her spell.

Already feeling the heat. Feels like choking.

        The “more mature” boys that Chris does drag into her web seem somewhat dazed by her overwhelming personality. She’s already learned how to be bossy and nags them into submission. So it’s usually the ones who don’t have a shot that will put up with her tyranny. The ones Chris likes are fortunately out of reach. And fortunately they are also oblivious to her charms.

         A few months ago at a parent’s lunch at her school, Chris proudly pointed out her crushes on the playground. As they were firmly ensconced in a game of kickball they never looked her way, which is how I remember it going down all those years ago when I was so boy crazy.

        And that’s just fine with me. Right now it’s all so sweet and innocent too. It’s funny to watch, if not a little pathetic since I know a little bit about what her future might hold. I know there will be lots of heartbreak down the road. I know there most likely will be pimply boys ringing our doorbell and voices breaking up over the telephone. I know there will be a LOT more giggling and excited whispering with her friends.

        Right now, though, I’m happy that she loves from afar. Very afar.        

Still Daddy's Little Princess. Let's just leave it that way for now.

  

The Scent of Broken Promises

She smells like strawberries. I, however, do not.

           Did you ever wonder how broken promises smell? Wonder no more! I can tell you from personal experience that broken promises smell like a sweaty linebacker who has attempted unsuccessfully to cover the stench by bathing in cheap cologne.

            Allow me to explain.

            You see, my kid talks a lot. Yes, yes, soon we’ll make the leap together from motor mouth to migraine-inducing odor. As I was saying, my kid talks a lot. At home I can tune it out, but in class with 23 other kids also vying for attention, I’m sure her teacher is keenly aware that Chris is one of the loudest. So far every single correspondence we’ve had with a teacher since the beginning of her education has read, “Chris continues to excel academically. But she still needs to work at not talking during quiet times.” They might have just printed up a whole stack of these reports at her birth.

            I know she’s smart and it’s tempting to blame her big mouth on being bored in class. But what my father drilled into my own developing skull years ago is that there simply is no excuse for not following classroom rules. If he had raised her, it would be “respect your elders and speak only when spoken to.” I don’t go quite that far, but I have tried to impress upon her that it’s incredibly disrespectful to distract the teacher and the rest of the class that is trying to learn something you may already know.

            At heart Chris is a good kid. She knows there are certain times she is supposed to be quiet in class but for some reason she just can’t help herself. Must….talk…can’t….keep…mouth…closed.

            So we’ve tried grounding. We’ve tried withholding TV and toys. We’ve tried the disappointment speech and the angry speech and come pretty close to begging. I mean, I don’t want her to be branded the kid who won’t shut up, because you know those teachers warn one another about their little, uh, angels.

            Finally, we resorted to bribery. Yeah, I admit it, I bribe my kid.

            “If you can make it through one whole month with good behavior reports, we can do something special that you choose,” was my final resort.

            “Ooooh, maybe I can have Icees every day for a month!” was Chris’ first choice. Since I’m so smart I realized that daily frozen colored sugar water would only compound the problem and I nixed that idea. Instead, I urged her, she should choose an activity like a movie, or a zoo visit, or even a trip up north to go sledding.

            “OK, stop!” She said. “I know exactly what I want to do. I’ve wanted to do it my whole entire life. I want you to take me ice skating. Pinky promise.”

            Uh, what? Ice skating? Not something I imagined I’d ever do again in my life after the one feeble attempt in high school in which I couldn’t even stand on the skates and gave up after about three minutes. Plus, I suspect she really only wants to go ice skating because she thinks that means she will be wearing a sparkly outfit like those girls she saw in the Olympics.

I don't smell like this either.

“But what the hey,” I thought. “It’s not like I have to worry about it. I mean, it’s been a year and a half and we haven’t made it through three weeks without a negative behavior report because of talking.”

            I should have had more faith in my kid, because lo and behold, she did it. The month of December sealed the deal and filled me with terror. Can you imagine me on ice skates? You’ve seen my version of walking (tripping) and I can’t afford any more ER visits. Plus, I can just imagine the Richter scale baffling local scientists every time I hit the deck. Double plus, I really have no desire to look at the ceiling of the ice rink that many times.

            So I put it off. Then put it off some more. Then Christmas and New Year’s came and went. Suddenly I had no more excuses and felt like a pretty crummy parent when Chris wailed in the car, “When are you going to take me ice skating? You pinky promised!”

            Ugh.

            But then fate stepped in with the perfect excuse. Bronchitis! I honestly tried to get up the gumption to take her ice skating, I swear. But I couldn’t make it on a short walk with the dogs to the mailbox without a major coughing fit. So, reluctantly I told Chris we’d either have to put off her ice skating dreams another week or two, or she could choose something else.

            “Choose something else!” I silently willed her.

            After a lot of back and forth, she finally chose a girl’s day – lunch out with just the two of us and maybe a little shopping. This I could handle. Besides, the kid desperately needed new shoes of the unscented variety (she has chronically stinky feet).

            So today we waited impatiently for the mall to open and then hit the road. She counted out her savings of nickels and dimes for a pair of ice cream cone earrings. We agreed after much arguing on a pair of non-high-heel shoes (Seriously! She’s 6! Why on EARTH are all the kids sandals made with wedge heels?!)

            As we were making our way out of the department store, I told Chris to hang on while I made a quick glance around the purse clearance section. No problem, she said, as she wandered an aisle or two over and unbeknownst to me sampled not one, not two, but at least five different varieties of perfume.

            Let it be a lesson to you, if you remark, “Whew! Someone really went overboard with the cologne!” and your normally vocal child doesn’t comment, you are in for some trouble. It’s not your imagination; everyone in the checkout line really is staring at you and talking about you – or rather your kid’s aroma. It hit home for me when she touched me on the cheek to get my attention while we were waiting for the cashier and my eyes began to water.

            “It was you!” I spat out. “You’re the one who sprayed the perfume!”

            “Only a little bit,” she said. Yeah right.

Give it up. A bath won't turn back time.

            I got her out of there and into the car before a HazMat team was called. Big mistake. I rolled down the windows but Eau De Everything had already permeated the fabric seat cushions. I plugged my nose and pulled into the Target parking lot where I drug her into the bathroom and told her to wash her hands. Meanwhile, I soaked four paper towels with water and rubbed at her neck.

            “You know, it only takes one squirt of cologne,” I told her as I tried to hold her down. I guess it tickles when you rub a paper towel on your neck.

            “I did do one squirt. Just of a lot of different kinds. I couldn’t decide which one I liked the best so I tried them all,” she replied. No duh. I could smell “them all”.

            After all that, I assumed we had solved the problem. But we barely made a dent and I had to chew gum since the scents were making me sick. When we finally arrived home I quickly agreed that she could ride her bike, thinking the fresh air might blow off the stink. But it was apparent that wouldn’t work either as a kid on his skateboard constantly kept moving upwind from her.

            Soon, I could take it no longer and drug her inside to shower. I scrubbed her neck again with a rag that I constantly had to keep wringing out since it was drenched with toilet water. Eventually we got the job done. But after all her protestations that she didn’t need a bath that she already smelled good from all the perfumes, I had to come out and say it, “No you don’t. You really, really stink.”

            Chris looked me square in the eye. I thought she might cry or be offended. But she simply blamed it all on me.

            “It’s all your fault,” she said. “This never would have happened if you had taken me ice skating.”