ToddlerTrail.com

I just read an article on BabyCenter with the topic of what’s the most offensive thing said to you as a parent?  The article was fun enough and centered on the common stay-at-home mom remark, “What do you do all day?”  As amusing as the question is having lived in the moment questioned, it is deeply offensive and addresses the stigma against SAHM’s.

The part that truly interested me was the comments by users answering the most offensive question.  It ranges so much – because, it’s not like SAHM’s are the only people with a reply.  It’s everyone.

Working mothers are targeted with the, “How can you let someone else raise your child?”  Stay-at-home fathers are hit with the gender degrading remarks I won’t even repeat about being bread-winners and filling traditionally female roles.  We’re all fair game.

While it looks like the majority of the painful remarks seem to play on the mother or father’s sense of guilt, some things are just plainly cruel and don’t even attempt to hide the jab.

“How do you feel knowing that someone else is playing Mommy to your child?”
This was said to me the first day I came back to work after maternity leave when my nerves were already shot, one hand was itching to grab the car keys and bolt over to the day care, and my other hand was very tempted to knock the living snot off of her smug face. That was the only time I’ve ever come close to hitting anyone.

Why would anyone say something like that to a mother struggling with leaving her child for the first time?  I’ve dealt with my fair share of lunacy but come on.  I still firmly believe that the vast majority of parents make decisions to benefit their families.  Call it naive, call it what you will - I still believe it.  “We judge other people by their actions.  We judge ourselves by our intentions.”

I’m an OB/GYN and I had just finished my residency when my son was born. I felt the best thing for all of us would be for me to take some time off to stay at home with him. A “friend” of ours who runs her own business, flies an airplane for fun, and parties all the time, (unmarried with no kids) told me flat out that she had lost all respect for me because I was “wasting my life.” We were at a lunch with a bunch of other girlfriends (I was the only married one there)and she said, “Thank God no one else has turned into a boring housewife with nothing to talk about except the price of eggs.” I was hurt and angry, but even then I didnt feel I should have to defend my choices to someone who obviously wasnt a real friend. Needless to say, I stopped hanging out with her after that. Incidentally, those other girlfriends are married and moms now, so when we all get together, we have a great time discussing the price of eggs :)

That’s actually touching on a nerve.  Finally, when the long physically exhausting months of pregnancy are over, you have a baby, you lose so many friends.  I lost a huge circle of people, partly on purpose, I admit, to the isolated nunnery of a nursery. Motherhood changes things, after all.  All the same, it didn’t change my intelligence.  It may have changed everything else, but I still am a relatively functioning person – not a price of eggs discussing kind of gal, unless it is the topic at hand.  Much like the weather or whatever else is being conversed about: I’m kind of open to discussion.

Thank God I’ve been blessed with employers who had the breadth of mind to allow me to work at home.  I’ve been able to avoid the whole issue with a smartly arched eyebrow and reply of, “I work from home as a copywriter.”  It’s honestly one of the reasons I’ve worked so hard to be the best I can be – maybe better than I was before my daughter, to prove I can be a SAHM and a working mother all in one glorious chaotic bundle.  I don’t want to be vulnerable to attack.  Still, all the same, why should this even be an issue?  We all want to live our own lives.  Our children should be raised in the unique environment that is our personal culture.  Diversity has always been a battlefield, and I think it always will be.

When I was pregnant, I would go to toy stores often to search for those handfuls of items worthy of a place in the nursery.  During these excursions, I began to examine the mother’s w/their children in light of the pending arrival of my own.  So often, they were frazzled.  Dragging kids out of the store kicking and screaming, sternly telling a child to put a toy back, negotiating deals to avoid tantrums.  We’re a certain kind of people - the mothers of young children.

It looks like almost all of us have dark circles under our eyes and exhaustion in our backs.  Most of us need a make over.  It’s remarkable, and especially in terms of appearance, there’s usually this lack of make-up or presentation that is entirely lovely in a simple almost austere or modest way.  Maybe it’s because we spend so much of our time in the company of women and children, but there is this childlike return to play clothes, sneakers, and pony tails.

The part I dislike in myself is the speed of my thoughts.  Living with a 2 ½ year old, my thoughts are driven in the second to second range.  Completion of my thoughts is rare, and I guard my quiet time where I can relish a wholly formulated thought.  I try and constantly write, I must always be writing or else I couldn’t see my circumstances clearly, so subjective and close up is this minute to minute existence.

The group of women that I’ve become close friends with grows by bounds every month.  I’m not by nature a social person, but it’s with these women that I think I’ve found something close to a childhood friendship – maybe even comparable to the dear friend you had when you were 13 and figuring out how to put make-up on.  The intimacy of that relationship cannot be underestimated, and on some levels, we’re all learning to become wives and mothers together.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had this many close friends.  The other day, I organized a play date at the FABULOUS local ice cream store, and we took over the whole place.  I stood back for a moment looking at us all with the kids raising holy hell and the mothers chatting each other up about the world at large, and I was so thrilled because we’re in the same boat and for the most part trying to keep each other afloat.  It’s a powerful thing, and I don’t think I could do it without them.

My grandmother gave us a bread maker for my anniversary, and I have been baking bread almost everyday since.

My mother and great-grandmother are/were the spectacular bread makers in the family.  My great-grandmother’s bread was the most fabulous light sweetness I’ve ever eaten in my life.  My mother makes wide varieties of breads, and I was raised with it in the house all through the cold months.  White homemade bread with butter and honey remains my favorite thing to eat when I need comfort.

There’s something spiritual about making bread for my family.  Despite the technology of the bread-maker, I feel like I’m doing something that generations and generations of women have done to take care of their family.  I’m prone to drifting away into my imagination, and I love to think of that while Buttercup and I measure the ingredients carefully into the basin.  It’s like I’m helping my great grandmother squeeze out perfect rolls of dough again, and for a minute, she’s with me again.

So far I’ve made honey wheat, white, three-cheese, parmesan peppercorn, cinnamon and raisin, and a rustic Italian loaf.  It’s delicious.  The honey wheat makes the most tempting French toast.  The cinnamon raisin is good for that, too.  It’s a good thing I joined the Y, or I’d be in great danger of getting a little more wiggle in my jiggle.

I want to make stuffing and bread pudding with the leftovers.  Next, I’m going to try my hand at pizza dough and someday soon – I’m going to attempt to make soft homemade pretzels :)

While I can’t quite make bread by hand as well as my mother or great-grandmother, I can do a decent job.  With the bread maker, it’s so much less time consuming that I can make all the bread for the house.  Considering the cost of a decent loaf of wheat, I’m happy to do this.  You can even use powered vitamin C as a preservative.  How much healthier is that than the alternative?  I can’t wait to go to the farmer’s market and check out the local flours available.

The idea that I would like weight training is as bizarre to me as it is to the people who know me well.  While I love taking walks, playing at the park, and enduring the sit-ups that hurt my neck, I’ve always regarded weight-training equipment as something of phallic expression of masculine strength ;)

The husband and I joined our local YMCA.  I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a long time, and it’s working out well.  I had gone to another gym, and it wasn’t for me.  There were a lot of large muscular men there who freaked me out a little bit, as big men have a tendency to do to me.  At the Y, it’s an entirely different dynamic.  During the day, when I go, it’s just me and the older gentlemen and ladies.  Apparently, weight training is popular for older people who need rehab for injuries or just to build their strength.  Well, I fit right in with them, and I don’t feel self-conscious at all, which is what I was primarily worried about.

The equipment is amazing, because so far - I haven’t hurt myself.  I was in three car accidents almost in a row as a teenage gal between myself and gal friends learning to drive.  I have a tendency to hurt my back, neck, and shoulders often and painfully.  The equipment doesn’t hurt me, which I thought it would.  I love it.  In fact, it seems designed to avoid injury.  The extremely built gentleman who showed me how to use the equipment promised me it wouldn’t make me big and bulky, but leaner and stronger.  He also said that it would make my metabolism sky-rocket, and I’d loose weight as I went along.

After I work out there, I have this incredible high.  I had no idea that exercise did this to you, but it’s this wonderful feeling of strength and accomplishment that blend into the whole day.  I want to go everyday of the week.  Who knew?

The best part is that they have an amazing children’s center where Buttercup can play while I work out.  She’s been doing pretty well with being away from me, and she’s lasted about an hour and a half both times until she told the teacher to come and get me, which I told her to do when she wanted me.  I’m totally impressed with her for handling being away from me.  I can see the window of the play room from the weight room, and I think this might be a really good way to ease her into being apart from me without any painful issues.

I’m really hopeful this will not only make me stronger and leaner, but that little beauty will benefit as well.  They also have a Mommy and Me swim class that I want to get us into…I went ahead and bought bathing suits today for it.  Here’s hoping my mommy weight training at the YMCA turns into a positive thing for the whole family.

My little brother, who is now such a grown-up, has been coming to see us a lot.  I’ve missed him, and he happens to be my baby brother - I worry about him in the way that I worry about everyone I love dearly, which is to say constantly.  He’s a good boy, and I think despite his towering height and maturity, I still see him as a little boy.  I try very hard not to treat him as such, since he’s still at that age where he wants to be taken very seriously :)

He’s always been amazingly good with children.  They flock to him.  Buttercup is no exception; I was having a stroke while he tossed her up into the air, twirled her around the room, and generally raised hell with her.  By the time he left, she was so hyped up she was in a tizzy.

While I was watching them play, I was realizing how much alike they look.  When he was a baby, he was this ball of blonde curls and blue eyes peeking out.  He really was the cutest baby.  I think she looks a bit like him :)

The pistachios worked.  There was a squirrel in that cage in less than two hours.  If you’re having problems luring a squirrel, use my nut of choice - pistachios.

My husband, with great amusement, took the squirrel up to a nearby mountain and dropped him off in the woods.  When he returned, it was to rounds of applause from me.  My hero, my knight - defeating the mighty squirrel.

My story gets better.  Upon his arrival home, we went into the closet to check things out.  The squirrel only has access to a garret above the closet.  He’s not in the whole attic - just that one garret.  I banged on the ceiling and immediately heard a scratching squirrel panic.  There’s still a little effer in there.  My poor beloved husband began laughing hysterically.  I began laughing hysterically.  His sense of humor has saved me so many, many times.  I don’t think I would’ve made it without him laughing next to him.

At this point, I’m wondering exactly how many of our beautiful city’s squirrels we are going to have to take to mother nature before we catch the RIGHT squirrel.  I really don’t know that I care anymore.  In fact, when I saw the little effer in the cage, I felt so bad for him I almost wanted to cry.  He’s just a fluffy tailed squirrel with a passion for nuts :)  I told Daddy to leave him a handful of nuts where he dropped him off - just in case that he didn’t know how to survive without the city at his disposal.  God help me.

Usually, I am a generally sane kind of gal.  I have my sobbing over cheap love songs kind of moments, but I’m mostly okay.

The squirrel is driving me effing crazy.

Now, I think what I need at this stage in the game is a bubba.  I need some brawny man to come kill him a squirrel.  My husband says he’s developed an affection for the squirrel in the way arch-rivals ultimately become tangled up together.  He compared the squirrel to Lex Luther :)

So, we have gotten a trap that some brawny man at Lowe’s recommended.  It’s a Have-a-Heart trap, and honestly, I was expecting something a little more deadly.  What in God’s name am I going to do with a squirrel in a trap?  I mean, are we supposed to pick this trap up with enraged squirrel in it and take our city squirrel to the woods?  Do we put it in the trunk?  I’m going to need falconer gloves or something.  I really do not like squirrels.  I never have.  They freak me out to no end.  They twitch too much - they’re volatile!

Despite my hopes that someone would bring over a BB gun and end this madness, I think we’re setting the trap tomorrow with some kind of nuts in it.  I have pistachios in house.  The part that pushed me over the edge is when I began wondering if I should shell them for the squirrel :)

When I was a little girl, my grandmother always took me to a park near her old house.  There was a duck pond and a playground.  We used to stand on a bridge to drop leaves in a stream and watch them come out on the other side of the bridge over and over again.  These memories are some of the fondest I have.

With Buttercup, one of my favorite things to do is take her to our local park, feed the ducks, and play on the equipment.  The last time we were there, we dropped sticks and leaves in the stream for a long time - just watching them reappear on the other side of the bridge.

I know this is not an unusual pastime, but I think one of the primary reasons I delight in days like that with her are simply to recreate the best memories of my childhood.  I wonder how much of that affects how we parent - whether trying to recreate or avoid memories from our own childhoods.

We’ve been vacationing in the same beach town for several years now.  It’s close to my in-laws home, and it’s your classic East coast beach town.  When I was a little girl, twice a year, we went to visit my father’s mother in Cape Cod.  Cape Cod remains one of my favorite places in the world.  If I had to pick a place to retire, it’d be on the Cape in the same town where my grandmother lived.  I wonder if for Buttercup, the beach town my husband’s family lives near will be the same way.  Will she have the same kind of sandy and seashell ridden memories I have?

None of these are really extraordinary or uncommon pastimes, but I can’t help but think I try and put the best part of my childhood into hers.

We had a success at Play and Learn, and I wasn’t there for it.  To preface all this, we’ve had problems with Buttercup wanting to hug and kiss and generally maul any available child with physical affection.  She’s enormously demonstrative and loves to hold hands.  The kids at Play and Learn haven’t been into it lately.

Daddy took her the other day so I could work while they were out and about.  I was kind of concerned about this because he usually doesn’t take her to things like that without me.  Well, apparently, it was a total success.  I swear she behaves better for him.  I really think she adores him and wants to impress him.  With me, I think she feels comfortable enough to act up and raise baby hell. 

She shared, she held hands nicely, and she listened to him perfectly.  Despite my delight that it went so well, I’m kind of peeved that it was so magically easy for him :)  Is that wrong?  Maybe, but all the same - is there something to the expression, “Daddy’s girl?”  Do little girls just adore their fathers so much that they behave better for them?

Despite my growling rumblings of loneliness, there were two birthday parties to attend this weekend.  Our friend a couple of blocks down had her party, and it was gorgeous.  There was candlelight, wine, tapas, and the most pleasant and relaxing atmosphere of comfort and luxury.

My beloved husband helped Buttercup settle down for the night while I went.  I was just there for two hours and back before bedtime, but I feel like I’ve had a weekend at the spa.  Three of my favorite mothers were in attendance, and we talked about so many things from the local politics to bras.  It felt so good to sit at a table covered in candlelight from a chandelier around candlesticks drinking a glass of wine and holding a full conversation over delicious food and wholesome company.

On Sunday, we went to my mother’s house to celebrate her birthday, my grandmother’s birthday, and my little brother’s.  It was great to be with all the family, and my sister-in-law and I cooked dinner for my mother, who still has a very bad problem going on with her leg and back.  We made a stuffed pork roast and all the sides.  My mother has been cooking all her vegetables for meals in a huge stock pot filled with the broth from the vegetables and a choice piece of meat.  Then, you just lift them all out and mash the turnips, and then the potatoes, and put the carrots out on the platter with the pork roast.  She had most of it set up for us, and she is the most amazing cook in the whole world.  Dinner was fabulous, and my mother had a little bit of rest, which was most of the goal.

I suppose I have no reason in this world to feel lonely.  I have so many people to love, and after years of careful deliberation on this topic - being loved isn’t as much of my goal as loving other people.

Like the rest of the world, friendship means a lot to me.  It seems that right now, I’ve been put into a place where I’ve lost two people I love.  I had a random disagreement with an old friend, and my best friend moved away to Mexico.

I have lots of folks to hang out with and play the social game, but there are only a few people who I’ve been able to really be honest with and shed whatever veneer I keep up and running for the majority of the human population.  Two of them have gone MIA.

My husband always says that I’m good at glossing over people.  Whatever nonsense is going on in a social setting, I generally am able to smooth it over.  He says it’s because I’m always a neutral party.  Now, for the most part, I relish being neutral in social settings, but it has taken time to become that way.  Unless there’s some kind of personal connection between myself and another person, I’ve stopped investing myself.  I don’t offer opinions or words of wisdom.  I try and listen, which is really what people want, anyway.  I just want to wade; I don’t want to swim.  As my boss would say, “Don’t get involved.”  I didn’t used to be like that, but I’ve found that there’s a lot of potential for hurt out there.  I don’t like getting drawn in, because I fall in love with people like a heroine out of a trashy romance novel - full fledged, unreasonably, and usually - something goes wrong.

Nevertheless, with my dearest and nearest friend moving to Mexico and the ties cut with one of my only true confidants, I’m left with a situation where I should find someone outside of my immediate circumstances to befriend.  This is more horrifying to me than dating.  It’s been so long that I’ve had everything I needed in terms of intimate friendship that it’s like getting a divorce and being thrown into the dating pool again.  I really dislike it.  How do you know who to trust out there?  How do you know who has some traits sympathetic to yours?  I suppose there’s instinct, but in my life, it’s been much more trial and error, and I am dreading the error.

Recently, there was an afternoon where little gal and I had to get out of the house or we were going to drive each other bananas.  For the most part, we were both exhausted and cranky.  I hadn’t slept the night before at all, I have been keyed up about a variety of very serious and personal matters - I wasn’t operating at the highest level of functioning. 

We went to the mall, and she played for a while before getting into the, “I want to run free through the mall without my shoes on - aren’t I cute?” routine.  Of course, she is cute.  All the same, she can’t run free in the mall.  There was a brief but loud tantrum about that.  Then, she threw a fit regarding the food court.  She wanted to eat.  I finally caved, and I ordered a couple slices of pizza for there along with a pie to take home for Daddy’s dinner.  With her, a shopping bag, and my purse in my arms, I went to get a couple of bottled drinks out of the restaurant’s case.  Almost immediately after getting our drinks into my hands, Buttercup moved quickly in my arms, and I dropped the orange juice bottle in the middle of the food court where it exploded with an unbelievable range of spray.  I think that some of the patrons may have been hit with the mist. 

For a moment, I stood there contemplating the situation with a sense of humor.  Then, I looked up to see the entire food court staring at me.  Promptly, tears sprang into my eyes, like an idiot, and I carried little Buttercup over to grab a handful of entirely useless napkins to try and stem the flow of our orange juice catastrophe.  Buttercup, very aptly, patted me on the arm and said, “That’s otay, Mommy, accident happens.”  Oh, dear God - that did not help with the watery eyes situation.  Now, the nice lady came and told me to stop, she’d clean it up, and she called me honey which didn’t help my uncontrollable urge to weep.
 
Now, if it had been possible, I would have bailed and hustled out of there with my tail between my legs.  Since I had ordered two slices and a pizza to take home, I was stuck.  The man eventually gave my blushing, embarrassed, almost stammering self, the slices of pizza.  We sat down and ate while I calmed down.  I was mostly over it when I saw him holding up my pizza box.  It was huge.  I looked at Buttercup, I looked at my shopping bag and purse, and I looked at the pizza box again.  How in the hell was I going to carry it all across the mall without spilling the entire contents?

This took me to a completely new level.  Thank you, Jesus, I waitressed in high school.  Had it not been for that experience, I don’t think I would have made it out of the mall without the pizza being spread all over myself, the floor, and the baby.  I planted Buttercup, the purse, and the shopping bag on one arm/hip, and I held the burning hot hell of the bottom of the pizza box on the palm of my other hand.  There were times when I thought I was going to drop it just because of the heat factor, but I didn’t.  I had to reconfigure this entire arrangement to get us into the car, out of the car, and up the steps into the house, but I made it without bursting into tears until I was in the privacy of my bathroom :)  This is kind of how it goes sometimes - I just don’t have enough hands.  I truly don’t know how people with more than one child do it, but I’m reasonably sure I’ll find out one day.

One of the challenging parts about making decisions for your child is the comparison to other methods used by other mothers or fathers.  The problem primarily occurs because most parents, I think, put very deep and considerate thought into how they raise their children.  There aren’t a whole lot of snap decisions, at least in the parenting world I’ve encountered.  Deliberate time-consuming reflection goes into every resolution.

I’m not someone who believes there is just one correct way to raise, discipline, teach, feed or nurture a child.  In fact, I can see where a lot of families are coming from in most of their methods.  Unless you’re hanging the kid out the window by their toes, it’s none of my business, is how I feel about it.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case with a lot of other parents.  Open-mindedness is something people save for their public politics, if that.

Recently, someone said to me, “If you’d spank her and put her in a time-out, she wouldn’t do that anymore.”  Now, the comment was regarding nose picking.  The child has had a runny nose.  It’s not like she was doing something to another child or harming anyone.  We don’t spank la Buttercup.  It’s just not something we’ve needed to do with her.  However, when I told the person in question that we don’t spank her because we feel she’s too young, I got a look that could kill.  You see, rather than accepting my decision for my child, the mother took my choice as a direct opposition to hers.  Honestly, I was almost amused, but what could I say?  “My child doesn’t need it, but I can see where ___ would need spanking?”  I even deliberately gave her a route out of comparison between us because her child is older than mine.  This route was a ruse, as I would never spank Buttercup:  it’s not how I discipline her.  I don’t think spanking is the devil; it’s just not for her or me.

To take it one step further, the mother in question is not a close friend or a member of my family.  To me, unless you’re one of the two, how to discipline my child is not a topic of discussion I really care to pursue.  Not just because I consider it private, but it leads to hard feelings between people.  It’s a very difficult to discuss and important conversation that is best left to dear friends and family.

It comes up so much, this little tug of war.  Here’s what I have to say about it:  Just because I’m raising my child differently from the way you raise yours doesn’t mean I think you are wrong nor does it make me wrong.  Can’t we spend our time supporting each other rather than battling one another?  After all, we’re on the same side:  most of us just want to raise a happy and healthy child in the best environment we can provide.

Personal as these choices are, I can only expect so much from another parent who disagrees with a certain train of thought.  There’s little room for the idea that there are difference between children’s personalities and inclinations that dispose them to certain methods or techniques.  It’s not that I think a system is wrong - it just may not work for my child.  Nevertheless, it’s always strange how it has to be, “I’m right, you’re wrong, because if you’re right that would make me wrong.”  I know we can’t all be right, but I think it’s deeply important to show parents of children support rather than disparagement.

It’s been a rough day.  To start the madness, I promised Buttercup we’d go to the pet store.  For us, going to the pet store is a blast.  She loves the animals - if they have puppies out to pet - God help the puppies.  It’s as fun as going to the zoo with half the hassle.  Anyway, we got ourselves dressed, primped, and ready to rock.  I turn the ignition and nothing happens.  My battery was dead as a doornail.  Poor girl didn’t understand this - and I had to tell her the car was broken.  Well, all you-know-what broke out:  she was upset, and I can dig it.  I’d promised her a trip to one of her favorite places.  I thought about finding some lunatic to give me a jump, but the street is mostly empty during the workday.

To get her back in the house, I promised her we would go in the backyard and ride her new tricycle.  We get upstairs, and I hear the whine of a chain saw.  A couple days ago, we had a hell of a wind storm.  The neighbor’s tree had lost a lot of branches, some very large and still suspended in the tree.  So, the tree guys were there doing their thing in a cherry-picker.  So, we couldn’t go in the backyard.  Gladys, our cocker spaniel, would have been barking like a satanic fiend, and I really had my doubts about the proximity of the tree to our yard and the somewhat questionable looking gentlemen wielding chain saws.  So, I took her to the window and showed her the men at work.  I explained they were fixing the tree.  She looks at me and says, “Mommy, why car broken?  Why tree broken?  Oh, no, Mommy!  Daddy come home and fix.”  By this point, we had three emotional catastrophes:  the car, the tree, and now, she wanted Daddy home right now.  Oh, the emotional epic that followed this little sequence of events was on soap opera level.  She was not having it.  I eventually calmed her down by drawing pictures of our crazy day to show Daddy.  It sorted things out and helped her process what was happening, and it gave her something to show Daddy when he came home.  So, it all worked out, but it’s just another wild day around here.

To make matters more interesting:  that wicked squirrel is still haunting me.  I haven’t heard him or seen him, but animal control is MIA until Monday because of the holiday.  On the bright side, I’m thinking karma may be at play here.  The branches that the neighbor’s tree lost might have been helping the little pisser climb onto my roof.  I really felt like opening the window and calling out to the men at work, “If you see a squirrel while you’re up there, I really wouldn’t miss him…”  Here’s hoping those chain saws scared him away…

There’s been an ongoing war between me and a certain squirrel of infamy in our household.  Some people like squirrels - they think they’re cute.  I cannot stand a squirrel, and I have my reasons.

This particular squirrel has harassed our household for some time now.  I think it’s rabid or something.  My mother saw it with a BIRD in its mouth.  He even tried to get in the house.  He was trapped between the screen door and the French door.  I nearly had a heart attack.

Frankly, the squirrel makes me nervous.  Since the bird and door incident, whenever I see him twitching in the branches of one of our trees, I feel like dragging Buttercup back upstairs.  The dog runs around the yard barking and looking upward while I keep my eye on the stinking thing.   Apparently, he’s not intimidated by our ball of fluff dog, because he hangs around glaring down at us.  Now, I truly do think it’s just one squirrel terrorizing the household, because I’ve never seen other squirrels act that aggressive.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

To sidetrack, one of the things I love most in the world is fresh, clean, new drywall.  The places that have new drywall in the house make me so happy.  I love how pristine and white it looks.  My father had built us a walk-in closet that has new drywall.  I loved that new drywall.  Now, it has been marred by what appears to be some little effer trying to get in the house.  I’m assuming it’s the squirrel that has made it into the attic and is digging his way into the closet.  Now, I’m jigged up to no end that one day, I’m going to open up that closet door, and there’s going to be a little fluffy tailed neurotic squirrel terrorizing me.  I’m going to have to go Caddyshack on the squirrel shortly. 

I’m really not sure what to do about this, but I’m going to place a phone call to my father.  He’s got to be getting into the attic somehow, and we’ve got to seal that up.  Let’s just hope to God he doesn’t make it through into the closet before we can figure this out.

You know, I’m not sure what I did.  However, my comments have gone MIA from tons of my posts.  Now, the only reason I can see this happening is that I “deleted” those comment notifications from my Gmail inbox.  I definately didn’t do that to remove the comments, I just wanted the notices out of my inbox.  I can’t stand clutter! 

Have any of my other gmail buddies had this problem:  deleting the notification from your inbox results in deleting them from the blog?  The comments I have archived are still up and running.  It looks like it’s just the comment notifications coming into my inbox I read and then deleted.  Odd!  Sorry if I deleted yours:  it wasn’t intended!

The mine issue appears to be like the tides - ebb and flow.  We make enormous strides, and then suddenly, we’re right back where we started.  The mine situation appears most often with other toys and children.  So, usually, I’m standing guard for this.  A brief tug of war ensues, and someone comes out victorious, usually the other child, because I don’t let her win unless she had the toy first or some legitimate claim over it.

However, we were at a birthday party yesterday, and another little girl was sitting on my lap.  I was quite surprised at Buttercup’s reaction.  It was really very primal.  “NO!  MY MOMMY!”  Oh dear God, I put the little girl down and had a talk with her about it.  She calmed down, but for a minute, it could have gone either way.

On another play date, she did really well, and I was so proud of her.  She had the other little girl’s baby doll, and the other little girl was getting upset.  She walked over, handed it to her, and said, “Don’t be upset.  Here you go,” in that singsong voice.  I was so happy I could have cried.  EMPATHY!  What a concept!

It really is like walking around with the underlying and uncontrolled part of yourself:  like if you took out all your needs, desires, and unrestrained emotion and put them out on the table, you’d have a two-year old.  “I want, mine, no, but I love it!” 

The “But, I Love It” part is the hardest.  I have goals when I go into a toy store - the main of which is simply to get out of the toy store without buying something.  It’s a straightforward goal, really, but it’s rarely achieved.  The reason this became so hard is she started clinging to the toy in question, looking up at me with those ridiculously big blue eyes and saying, “But, I love it, Mommy!”  You know, that phrase just triggers some flood of maternal emotion, and I think she knows it.  She’s a smarty pants, and she knows which buttons to push.

I always balance these situations against the concept that her emotions are very pure and uninhibited right now:  so, it’s not like she’s doing something because she wants to cause a problem - she’s just learning how to express herself.  I think the biggest thing is to work on is empathy, just understanding that other people having feelings, too.  My mom says, “They only get to be queen of the universe for such a short time.”  It’s true, and I want to find the balance of respecting and being sympathetic to her emotions while teaching her how to share, be polite, and accept that a lot of the world is communal.  It’s challenging - but I guess that’s why this is called the terrible twos.

My husband was the one who pointed out to me that it would be important for Buttercup to buy us Christmas gifts.  I hadn’t really thought about it like that.  Rather, I’d been planning to make craft gifts for her to give to him.  I guess that’s pretty routine around here, though.  It seems like everything she makes is to show or give to him :)

So, I asked her what she thought he would want for Christmas.  She paused and considered this for a surprisingly long time.  In a few moments, she looked up with the biggest smile on her face.  “A puppet!”
“A puppet?  Daddy wants a puppet?”  She then proceeded to tell me that he wanted a puppet from our favorite local toy store.  Now, for those of you that have been in the store with us, this makes total and perfect sense.  One of the reasons we get along so well, is my husband is the most lighthearted person I’ve ever known.  So, promptly, upon entering the store, he finds one of their huge varieties of puppets, and comes to harass me with it.  Now, if he can manage it, sometimes this takes me by surprise.  Mostly though, he gets the exasperated wife look.  Sometimes, I find my own puppet, and we have a big time.  We’re quite the pair.

So, when she finally decided what Daddy wanted for Christmas, I was thrilled.  We went to the store, and she picked out my personal favorite - the bunny rabbit puppet.  They wrapped it all up for us, and she’s been whispering to me, “Santa Claus brings a puppet for Daddy?”  It’s the sweetest thing in the world.  We’ll have to see how life with a puppet in the house goes - if Daddy keeps up his antics, the puppet might go MIA.

Since Buttercup was a newborn, she’s been able to sit through short “one sentence per page” books.  She loves stories, and it reminds me so much of myself.  I’ve always loved the classic fairytales even as an adult.  I’m devoted to the originals, but Disney is down with me, too.

There’s an elemental beauty there - the stories are told with such texture and color.  They remind me of tapestries, and if I could illustrate the classic fairy tales - it would be through tapestries and embroidery.  There’s nothing else that would give them the same raised height - almost like reading Braille - that they had from my childhood perspective.

Having said that, some of these stories are pretty intense.  Buttercup is a sensitive little person.  I think it was Snow White that pushed me over the edge.  I started editing the classics for her.  In a way, this was hard for me to do at first - I felt like I was committing some kind of literary crime.  Now, I don’t care at all.  These are some prime examples of what I’m talking about.

Snow White:  This is a classic.  She’s always loved Snow White.  I think what drew her in was the animals in the beginning of the story when Snow White is lost in the woods, and the animals come to help her.  She loves looking at all those adorable characters.  But before that, there’s the scene with the huntsman who takes her into the woods to kill her and ends up leaving her - well, that’s been changed by yours truly.  Instead, he’s taking her on a walk in the woods, and they get lost.  Clean cut there.  Next, when the Queen comes back and gives her a poison apple - oh, forget that altogether.  Snow White goes to sleep in her glass coffin or whatever it is, and the prince gives her a kiss to wake her up.  That’s my latest version of Snow White.

Anything referring to a cat as a p-u-s-s-y:  Okay.  I’m probably going to get all kinds of bizarre traffic from that statement, hence the dashes.  I don’t want my two-year old running around saying p-u-s-s-y in public.  No more to say on that topic.

Beauty and the Beast:  The worst part of this one is simply when the father leaves Belle with the Beast.  Oh, hell to the no.  This one drives my husband nuts.  He also doesn’t like the beast in general.  I’m kind of with him on that.  I mean, it does have value as far as appearances aren’t always what they seem; don’t read a book by its cover, and a bunch of other random clichés on human nature.  I really don’t care.  Daddy doesn’t leave his daughter with a beast.  Her interest in the story has been increased by my repeatedly skipping it, but I’ll figure that out as we go along.

There are more - lots of little nursery rhymes/stories that she loves but are so oddly inappropriate.  For instance, last one, I promise, and maybe taken out of context, nevertheless…

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

I’m French-Irish, and I still have to disagree with this one.  I know the English have had their moments that may or may not have led to massive populations of people disliking them a great deal, but we can’t start her off by teaching her revenge and death are the way to go.  Nevertheless, she loves shouting, “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum!”  My little giant, it’s really amusing, but I dislike it.

So, I’m thinking that because of her ability to sit through longer children’s stories, we’re just going to have to be careful to remember she’s our two-year old audience.  Parental supervision is required.  I don’t know what I’ll do when she learns to read, but as my father says, “One crisis at a time.”

I found the guitar, and it should be on its way here today.  I’m very excited.  I was talking to the nice customer service guy on the phone, he read the product number, and I said, “That’s my girl!”  He said, “Already referring to the guitar as a girl, are we?”  Really, guitars have always been the other woman to me.

So, I got the Gibson Les Paul Studio - and I’m thrilled and excited.  I never thought I’d find something I’m as passionately covetous of as jewelry.  My infatuation with guitars apparently surpasses my love of jewelry, because I got sucked into the guitar vortex.  I truly tried to buy a moderately priced Fender Strat, and my boy at Sweetwater called and told me it was out of stock.  The world conspired against me, it really did.

They retain value, these guitars.  I tried to find something on eBay at some point, and it was all priced comparably to traditional e-tailers.  So, that just pushes the right button for me.  I always gauge the worth of material goods by their resale value.

Besides that, I didn’t want the Fender.  I wanted the solid mahogany body, made in the USA, single cut out of the Gibson, and now, I’ve made something up to my husband that has lifted a weight from my shoulders.  I am free of guilt!

He wanted the ebony finish w/chrome hardware and that’s what I got him.  Now, if it had been my guitar - keep in mind, I don’t play, lol - I would have gotten the root beer finish.  HOT!  It looks like a tigress.  So, maybe I’ll let Daddy of the Year teach me how to play.  I just want more guitars!