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Last year, I wrote about my delight in discovering the new tradition (I love a good oxymoron) of “booing.”  Booing involves leaving a bag with candy and/or dollar store-type toys at a neighbor’s door.  The bag also contains a poem with instructions explaining the tradition, its anonymous nature, and instructions about how to perpetuate the fun, neighborly activity yourself.  My son “Jack” and I fell in love with it, and looked forward to performing the ritual again this year.

Now, however, we live in a new neighborhood, one where the houses are spaced further apart and there are fewer young children living in them.  As Halloween approached, Jack eagerly recalled last year’s booing and begged me to get the activity going when no Boo Bag showed up at our door.  So we purchased a “Boo Kit,” (sold in lots of big-box stores), added a few embellishments of our own and selected a target house.  Just after nightfall one night last week, I drove Jack to the house in question and waited in the car as he crept up to the porch, left the bag of goodies, rang the bell and sprinted back to the car.  He slid at the end of the lawn like a baseball player into home, ending up on his face, but he didn’t care.  His heart was racing and he’d just had the best thrill of the Halloween season.

Then he waited.  And waited.  And waited.  He asked every night since then, “When is someone going to boo us?  I want someone to boo us!”  But no one has, and tonight, disappointed Jack didn’t even ask. 

So after Jack went to bed last night, I asked my husband, “Should I just put together another Boo Bag after Jack goes to school and leave it at the door for when he comes home from school?”  My husband gave me one of those aren’t-you-the-overly-soft-hearted-mommy looks, one designed, I’m sure, to convince me that there was no need to go out of my way to perpetrate this ridiculous fiction.  But I loved my own idea too much, and I retorted, “Come on, we’re going to tell him that the tooth fairy is going to leave him money for his teeth, and his aunt just asked him yesterday if he is excited about Santa Claus coming this year.  How is my secretly leaving my own kid a Boo Bag any different?”  My husband just shrugged, which I took to mean, yes, dear, you are of course right.

So to heck with my neighbors who aren’t getting in the spirit of Halloween.  If they won’t participate, I’ll just boo it myself!

I’ve written a lot about mantras lately, especially the ones spouted by my two-and-a-half year old daughter, “Emmie.”  But today’s post concerns one of my own, one which is chanted with increasingly frequency by the small group that comprises my family.

All together now, let’s say it out loud: “Mommy is not an octopus.”

I don’t remember which particular hair-ripping episode gave birth to this sentence, but it undoubtedly happened something like this: I had just picked up my two angels from school and daycare, and I was trying unload from the car two small children, a diaper bag, a school backpack, two jackets, my own sweater, my son’s water bottle, my daughter’s baby doll, my son’s dinosaur book-of-the-day, my bottle of water or open can of Diet Pepsi, packages from shopping, a bag of clothing soiled at school from the day’s roll in the mud, and, as always, various refuse like a two-day old banana peel and three or four used tissues.  At this point, Emmie began to whine, “I need helllllp” (imagine the pitch rising as the word “help” grows to four syllables), my five-and-a-half year old son—irked by Emmie’s mispronunciation—corrected her in a tone implying that she was, by her own design, the most pea-brained toddler to walk the planet since the Neanderthals, and then he turned to me and whined, “Mommy, can you take some of my stuff?”  (The “stuff” in question would have consisted of a single sheet of paper from school, as I would already have been struggling to hold all of their possessions in one hand while helping Emmie from her car seat and unlocking the door to the house with the other.)  It would have been at this point that I, like moms eternally, would have wished for more prehensile limbs.  Not being so endowed, however, I simply shouted, “Back off.  Mommy is not an octopus!”

“Jack” thought that line was hysterical.  I was sufficiently impressed by the fact that he noticed what I was saying that I decided the sentence was a keeper.  Now, when two children are somehow making six requests of me all at once, I pull out the line to, at a minimum, keep my blood from boiling and get the kids to stop barking at me for a second or two.  “Let’s say it together now,” I order them, and I chant, in an even, rhythmic tone:  “Mommy is not an octopus.”  And, smiling, they chant with me.

I’d still prefer actually to have a couple of extra arms.  But until I figure out how to make that happen, I and the kids will keep reciting my little mantra together.

Here’s a scenario to which all parents can relate: you’ve come down with your second bug of the school year (and it’s only October), you feel miserable, your husband’s thrown his back out, the older child has thirty-eight different activities to be managed, and the younger one keeps saying, “Mommy sick?” with a big smile, followed by, “Me bounce on Mommy!”

Yup, that’s where I am.  So check back on Thursday, because I’ve actually just managed to get everyone out of the house and I’m going back to bed.

Our kids really can serve as small reflections of ourselves.  If you want to know who you truly are, what you’re really about, just sit back and watch and listen to your kids.

It’s common, for example, to hear the discipline you dish out either come back to you or be transferred from your older child to your younger one.  “How many times,” demands the five-year-old of his two-year-old sister, “do I have to tell you not to knock my towers over?”  His frustrated and superior tone mimics your—my—own.

My husband was recently presented with a window into his persona by our two-and-a-half year old daughter, “Emmie.”  We’ve given a couple of our old, now defunct cell phones to the kids to play with, and Emmie was walking around the house, participating in imaginary conversations with one of these phones in her hand.  Suddenly, she pulled the phone away from her ear and held it out in front of her.  She placed the fingers of her other hand on the buttons and looked up at us.  With her voice full of gravity, she informed us, “This is my Blackberry.” 

“Oh, really,” I replied.  “It’s a nice Blackberry.”

“I have to check my e-mails,” she insisted with an air of importance, and turned away so that she could proceed with her work.

We dissolved in laughter.  My husband, who carries that darn “Crackberry” (as I’ve come to call it—a term I borrowed from a friend) everywhere with him, was busted.  He checks his e-mails at the dinner table, in the car, and, yes, even sometimes in bed.  And he just got called on his behavior by a two-year-old. 

It’s tough to hide anything when you have kids; they’ll reveal you every time.

No, seriously: what’s up with Crocs?

Take some squishy foam, color it in the loudest possible shades of magenta, chartreuse and the like you can find, carve it into the shape of a foot and you’ve got: either Michelangelo’s worst nightmare or the hottest trend in footwear.  Or both.

Now I get the whole “fad” thing.  Sometimes we convince ourselves that the ugliest trends are beautiful and sexy just because everyone around us thinks so.  (For proof, I direct you to photographs of my puffy hair and belted sweater vests from the ‘80’s.)   But these Crocs seem to have a unique magnetism among today’s fashion crazes.  I offer my own son as evidence.

Five-and-a-half year old “Jack” is generally impervious to peer pressure.  From what I can tell, he is fairly unusual in this respect.  Put Jack in a room with one hundred other children—including his best friends—who are eating hot dogs and cake, and Jack will still ask for a peanut-butter sandwich.  That’s not to say that Jack can’t acquire an interest from watching other kids engage in a new activity, but he’s only going to join in their activity if it truly grabs him; he makes up his own mind on these things.  (This trait, by the way, is in stark contrast to his two-and-a-half year old sister, who would likely do back flips off of a fifty-story building if she saw some other kid—any other kid—doing it.  Catch up with the crowd first, evaluate later: that’s often “Emmie’s” philosophy.)

Jack also is a stereotypical boy in several ways, none more so than his absolute indifference to his clothing.  If it’s got a dinosaur on it, it’s great.  If it’s got Lightning McQueen, that’s also good.  Nothing else even registers.  A fifty-dollar brightly colored sweater and a torn, gray sweatshirt look exactly the same to him.  When he is forced to go clothes or shoe-shopping due to the unavoidable fact that he grows, he desires only to get me to purchase whatever items will get him out of the store the quickest.

And then there are Crocs.

To date, the only clothing item that Jack has ever approached me to request is a pair of Crocs.  The first request came after Jack learned about the shoes at school last fall, as the snow was preparing to descend.  I promised him he could get a pair in the spring.  He asked me about them every month until the weather was warm enough for me to assent.  He carefully sorted through all of the shoe store’s “jibbitz”—little button decorations to be placed on the shoes—until he found ones he liked.  He wore those darn electric green plastic things every single day he could, all summer and into the fall.  When the weather turned cold last week, we cleaned the well-worn shoes so he could use them as “inside shoes” at school.  Then, on their first day in their new role, the beloved Crocs ripped, and a crisis ensued.  As Jack spent a day tearing around school in danger of breaking his neck by tripping over the torn strap dangling from the dying footwear, my husband made an emergency trip to the shoe store near his office to buy a replacement pair.  The jibbitz were transferred to the new, red Crocs, a now-headless dinosaur jibbit (is that the singular form of that word?) was replaced, and the new Crocs were safely tucked into Jack’s backpack to be carted to school.  We all breathed a sigh of relief, and Jack’s world was right again.

This from a child who would probably be content wearing pants as a shirt and vice-versa if the mood struck him.

So, seriously, what’s up with the Crocs? 

I’ve blogged here quite a few times about that baby and toddlerhood issue of paramount importance: sleep.  In particular, I’ve shared occasional tidbits from our struggle with some of two-and-a-half year old “Emmie’s” sleep issues since babyhood.  Recently, however, Emmie began a new chapter in the Sleep Wars, one which has demonstrated to us that, just like in so many other aspects of Emmie’s life, the resolution of these issues will be carried out on her terms, and ultimately, there’s not one darn thing we can do about that.

Sleeping with Emmie in the house has always been a challenge.  For a long time, Emmie cried herself to sleep.  We tried all manner of methods, Ferber-like and not, but she simply hated going to sleep.  It was part of her routine: pajamas, brush teeth, read story, cry loudly as though fingernails are being pulled off, fall asleep.  There didn’t seem to be any way to avoid it (short of holding her all night long, which my husband and I agreed was un unacceptable answer).

By the time Emmie was well into her third year of life and still screaming at every bedtime, my anxiety-filled ponderings regarding this behavior had reached a peak.  I made an appointment with an adoption therapist who specialized in sleep issues in young children, thinking that I would travel down any avenue to resolve Emmie’s sleep problems, both for her sake and for the sake of those of us who live with her.

But before the appointed time to meet the therapist, Emmie revealed a surprise to me.  “Mommy,” she said to me one evening, following no introduction or segue that I could detect. 

“Yes, honey?”

“Emmie no cry in crib anymore.  Emmie sleep in crib.”  Her tone was final.

“Okay, well that’s sounds great.  I would be very happy if you didn’t cry in your crib anymore,” came my disbelieving reply, cloaked, I hoped, in lots of enthusiasm.

That night, Emmie didn’t cry in her crib.

That was several months ago, and in that time, I think she’s cried at bedtime twice.

She simply got sick of crying in her crib.  So more than two years of hair-ripping (on my part) bedtime melodrama are over.  It’s much quieter in our house in the evenings now, and my nerves are a lot less taut.

And I’ve learned a valuable lesson.  Not a lesson about resolving sleep issues, of course; I still have no idea how to take those on successfully.  But I’ve learned a lesson about Emmie: she knows what she’s doing, and she’ll decide when she stops or starts it.  Much of the time, I’m just going to have to go along for the ride. 

It sounds like a good thing in some ways, doesn’t it?  For instance, I’m convinced now that one day she will simply say to me, “Emmie is all done with pull-ups,” and boom: so it will be.  But what happens when the battles become more sophisticated, say, as they will during her teen years?

I’ll have to let you know how it turns out.  Wish me luck.

I’m going to offer this caution right at the beginning: if you are not a parent, skip this post.  It will seem stupid, scatological, gratuitous and gross.

If you are a parent, keep reading, because I’m willing to bet that if you haven’t been in exactly this place, you’ve been somewhere pretty darn close to it.

Yesterday evening, I was working downstairs while my husband prepared our five-and-a-half year old son for bed.  “Jack” was responding to the last potty call of the evening, and I began to hear shouts and cackles clearly spawned by an event of great excitement.  “Mommy, Mommy!” Jack’s words tumbled down the stairs. 

Then my husband backed him up.  Between laughs, he said, “Honey, you need to come up here.”  When I reached the top of the stairs, my husband greeted me.  “Uh, Jack wants to show you something.”  His words emanated from a grin that told me in an instant that if I were responding to my own interests, I would run in the other direction from Jack, as fast and as far as possible.  But if I wanted to humor my son, I needed to find him in the bathroom.

Motherhood being what it is, I walked into the bathroom.  Naked Jack was sitting on the toilet.  “What’s going on, honey?” I inquired.

“Mommy!”  Jack was bursting with his news.  Holding out his palms to emphasize his words, he exhaled, “I made a huge, giant poop!  It’s the biggest ever!  Do you wanna see?”  My husband nearly gagged from swallowing his laughter and had to retreat behind the wall of the nearest bedroom.

No, I don’t want to see it.  Of course I don’t want to see it.  One of the happiest days of my life was the day you announced you were done with diapers and I didn’t have to look at it anymore.  “Of course, sweetie,” I replied.

Like I said, if you’re not a parent, you’re appalled.  If you are a parent: you’re smiling right now, aren’t you?

As children, our birthday wishes are very concrete.  Five-and-a-half year old “Jack,” for example, recently told me what he wants for his birthday in a few months: “Dinosaurs.  All kinds of dinosaur stuff.”  Simple, concrete and surprisingly broad—we ought to be able to accommodate this wish.

As adults, however, our birthday wishes can often be more abstract, or, at the very least, much less easily packaged and delivered.  True, some things we want are as concrete as children’s toys—in fact, sometimes we want adult toys; e.g., that new sports car.  (Whether or not that’s attainable is a whole different story.)  But sometimes what we really, truly want is something intangible and complicated, and we leave those who would give us gifts scratching their heads and wondering what to do with us.

I recently had a birthday.  (No, you may not ask, “Which one?”)  My sister called before the event and asked me what I wanted as a present.  This was an easy question for me, as I knew exactly what I most wanted.  “An undisturbed week or two at a writers’ retreat to work on my book, and some talent,” I answered quickly.  I was as certain of my heart’s desire as my son was of his dinosaurs.  The only problem is that my sister was powerless to deliver either of the items on my wish list.  (She did instead get me a gift certificate to one of my favorite clothing stores, which is a pretty good substitute.)

I related this story to a friend who also recently had a birthday.  “I know just what you mean,” she sighed.  “I want a babysitter.  No, what I really want is the ability to use a babysitter.”  She then explained that even if she could justify spending the money for one, her and her husband’s work schedules, their remote, rural location and the alignment of the stars all conspired to make it nearly pointless to try to get a night “out” together.  I sympathized with her predicament, but there was nothing I could do to help fulfill her wish.

Once we were kids who wanted nothing more than toys and excitement; now we are adults with responsibilities whose desires may be more esoteric, more difficult to achieve than the ones we harbored when we were our kids’ ages.  Presumably, however, the rewards will seem that much sweeter if and when we actually manage to realize those desires.  Presumably, that’s a lesson that we learned as kids when we couldn’t wait one more darned minute for those dolls and games and bicycles.  Presumably, that’s a lesson we’re trying to teach our own kids.

Oh, and by the way: my husband did give me the gift of a promise that I could attend a multiple-day writers’ conference of my choice, even promising to take time off from work if necessary to take care of the kids.  (There are limits; he indicated that he had not saved enough money for me to attend the annual Maui Writers’ Conference, for example.)  Pretty cool, huh?

As for the talent, however; well, there he informed me that I am on my own.

“A man was struck by a bus in front of C_____ Hospital yesterday morning. He suffered life-threatening injuries . . .  The man flew about 10 feet before landing face down . . . .”

The voice reading this quote to me from the newspaper was clear, full of accomplishment and comprehension.

The voice was my five-and-a-half year old son’s.  Oh no, I thought.  Now I can’t leave the newspaper lying around anymore, either.

I hardly ever listen to National Public Radio anymore; I haven’t in years.  Once my son became old enough to pick out words like, “murder,” “child molester” and “killed in an ambush near Karbala,” I just didn’t feel comfortable listening to the news around my kids.  I knew I would have to explain what these words and concepts meant, and they are just too young for most of that.  It goes without saying that I don’t watch the news on television anymore, either.  (These changes initially triggered severe withdrawal symptoms from this admitted news hound.)  But now we’ve entered a whole new world.  Again.  Once I heard my young son read to me from our local newspaper the story about the man hit by the bus and all of the aftermath, I realized that I will now have to be very careful about where I leave one of the last vestiges of my pre-mommy self: printed news.  After all, “Jack” may be able to read the news now, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to learn about all of the nastiness that goes on in the world.

On the other hand, maybe this is a sign that Jack is growing up and I’ve got to face it.  If he can go out in the world and read about its realities, then perhaps I should stop hiding behind my newspaper and begin explaining more about the world to him.  If he can read it, maybe he’s ready to know it.

Well, maybe.  He probably does need to learn about the consequences of not being careful when you step into the street in front of a bus.

But if I have to explain the public’s fascination with Britney Spears to him, I’m not sure I can handle that!