i give you permission

i love parenting. i love the snuggles & the challenges & the cuteness & creativity that come into play when you're a parent. you get to do any of the stuff that you loved as a kid & sometimes it's just as awesome as you remember, sometimes not so much. i love that you can choose to let your kids do things that you were never allowed to do when you were growing up. i love that you can repeat the things you loved from when you were a kid in hopes that it brings your own kid as much joy as it brought you. i love getting to make the rules. i love that there are as many flavors of parents as there are of people.

sometimes i think i fall into rather non-traditional parenting because we don't do santa clause or the easter bunny. i kind of tried to the do the tooth fairy thing, but brooke told me "mom, i know it's just you & you can't be the fairy because you're too big to wear the suit." (that was around the same time that she told me i was round & have a bulbous chin. she makes me feel so good about myself.) i have reasons for doing these things, it's not just some arbitrary law that i've decreed. santa steals most of jesus' thunder (to my mind) and i want him to keep his thunder. also, i want brooke to be thankful to the people who make her christmas gifts possible. how can she show proper gratitude to some imaginary entity? and as for easter, i think that bunny is out to do the same thing as santa. upstaging God again. she still gets the gifts, baskets & candy so she won't feel like she got the crap end of things, we just do it on a day prior to easter morning so that the focus of the holiday doesn't get diluted by sugar & goodies.

we also celebrate valentine's day in the way my mom invented when we were kids. growing up, we didn't get easter baskets for the same reason as brooke doesn't get one on the real day, so instead, mom made valentine's day a big deal. we got a basket with candy, a treasure hunt with some great gift at the end & the valentine squirrel would hide hershey kisses around our room for us to find when we woke up. sometimes it was months before all of them were found & they had melted or turned white. i haven't worked the treasure hunt in yet because once you introduce something fun to a kid, it becomes the expectation rather than just a one time treat & i'm not ready for that yet. maybe i never will. brooke, of course, felt like she needed to be able to see the valentine squirrel, so we found one in the dog toy section of walmart & now he comes out for about 2 weeks each february & the rest of the year he hibernates. this past year, i made Tiny, the squirrel, a little shirt to wear for his big day. you can't see it very well in the picture, but there's a white heart on the back of it. i never knew creating a pattern and then hand sewing a shirt for a stuffed squirrel would be more challenging than making people clothes!

i also let brooke do things that most other kids aren't allowed to do. i realized it when brooke was about 2 & we'd go out to restaurants to eat with other people & i let brooke stand on her chair or crawl under the table because it was too much to expect her to be able to sit & be quiet while the adults finished eating & talking. my other friends made their kids sit still, but it just didn't seem reasonable to me, so i didn't care. she couldn't jump around, but standing & crawling were fine.

when we got a new refrigerator a few months ago i spent a lot of time switching the contents & cleaning up the old one while the new one cooled down. while i was working on that, my big cat sat up on top watching me like a vulture. brooke decided that she wanted to be a raccoon up there beside sophie cat, and for once in her life, i let her sit on top of the refrigerator. she was required to sit still while she was up there, but she loved the chance to sit up above the regular world & get the critter's eye view of the kitchen.

this past winter, brooke asked one day if she could throw a party with a bathroom theme. i barely hesitated for a second before saying yes. for the next few weeks we plotted & planned & laughed as we came up with all the different things that would make a potty party fun & yet not over the line into obscene. we invited friends from out of town who wouldn't be offended & we served burritos with refried beans & corn because it looked like things you might find in a bathroom. we drank pee punch (lemonade) & served chocolate cake made in a crockpot & call it crotchpot cake. it was the most, ooey, gooey, delicious thing i've ever eaten. we all wore panties on our heads & everyone had to tell a potty joke before they'd get their plate of gross looking food. somehow i only managed to snap a picture of my friend & i, but not the kids. probably even funnier that way. most moms i know wouldn't have wanted to attend our shindig, but i tell ya, it was a good time! and i think brooke will always remember our potty party fondly. i know i will!

i let brooke wear costumes around the house every single day if she wants to. until she turned 7 i even let her wear them out in public almost whenever she wanted. last summer a friend of hers was in the hospital for nearly a month after having surgery & brooke wanted to wear her dinosaur costume when we went to visit one day because she knew her friend thought that costume was particularly funny & she wanted to cheer her up. it was a bit odd strolling through a hospital with a kid in a big, furry dino suit, but it brought smiles or bewildered stares to most of the faces around us. then we had to run several errands afterwards, so she went to walmart & the library as well as a couple other places in the dino suit too. and when brooke wears a costume, she doesn't just walk around like a normal person. oh no, she gets into character & with the dino attire, she holds up just 2 fingers on each hand (to be a proper t-rex) and puts on her snarliest facial expression. she likes to lurch around hunch-backed & roar loudly & sometimes scares small children. she never apologizes or comforts a kid who she scares - because a t-rex would never feel badly for scaring children, so she doesn't either.

i let brooke color on our kitchen floor regularly. it started out as a reading game for school (thanks, mom for the awesome idea), where i'd draw out a big game on the floor & she had to read words & if she read them all & was pleasant about it, i'd wash it all off & let her have her way with the floor for the rest of the day. now we just design maps or other things from time to time. it's a bonding thing for us & it washes off easily, so there's no harm.

recently brooke & i went to a creek with my friend who has 2 girls close in age to brooke & we sat on the banks while the girls romped in the water. it wasn't long before one of them found a good, muddy spot on the bank & started rolling in it. then all three of them were doing it, and reveling in the opportunity to get wholly & completely filthy. there was a wedding going on at the park several yards away & people kept walking down to the creek in their fancy, wedding clothes to take photos & i can only imagine that some of them had to have gotten pics of our disgusting mud crawlers in the background. thank you, God for making kids washable!

brooke spends most of her free time lately drawing. she makes scenes & animals & people & anything else her awesome brain can dream up. she likes to cut them out & play with them like toys. she also likes to draw eyeballs and collars onto her hands to make her hands be dogs. it makes her feel better if she's lonely or nervous in public to be able to take her dog friends with her. she draws on her legs regularly - says it's her tattoos. i don't care. it washes off & isn't hurting anything. until recently, i've always said no when she asked if she could color on her face. i don't really know why since if i'm going to go with the rule of "if it's washable & not hurting anything, then i should say yes" then this would qualify for a yes as well. so a couple days ago, i surprised her by telling her to go ahead, get to coloring. her face lit up like it was christmas morning & she dashed for the marker box. she got a little mirror & set it up below the computer monitor so she could google pictures of various animals & then look into the mirror & draw the face onto herself. none of them lasted long because she always quickly thought of something else even better to color onto herself. but she was so happy! she was grinning from kitty ear, to kitty ear.

i can't give brooke everything i'd like to in life. i can't sign her up for cool activities or take her on fabulous outings very often. i can't give her kids to play with regularly, but one thing i CAN give her is permission. permission to fantasize about crazy schemes & then make them happen. permission to do the things other kids would get yelled at for doing. permission to get dirty & make messes & create memories.

how the cool flows

i think it's funny how our definition of "cool" is fluid throughout our lives.
when you're 5, cool is a clown at a party who makes balloon flowers & gives out tootsie rolls.
when you're 10, cool is getting hand me down clothes from your popular teenage cousin.
when you're 14, cool is a boy who dresses outrageously & uses bad language and doesn't seem to care that all the adults are keeping on eye on him.
when you're 20, cool is smoking cigarettes, having too many drinks on the weekends & making out w/ a stranger.

i think that at some point during my 20's, cool stopped being such a focus in my life, stopped being something i strove to either be or get close to. i was too busy trying to have a job that paid the bills and cars that ran & figure out my infertility issues. trying to get out of one state & into another. i didn't have time for cool anymore. at some point i realized that the people who used to count as cool didn't qualify anymore if they were still acting that way as an adult. it wasn't cool for a man to make others nervous due to his wardrobe or foul language. it wasn't cool to smoke or make out with strangers. clowns w/ candy don't interest me & well... i still like hand me downs, so i guess maybe i had it right when i was 10.

google defines cool as "fashionable and attractive at the time; often skilled or socially adept; "he's a cool dude"; "that's cool"; "Mary's dress is really cool"; "it's not cool to arrive at a party too early"

or  "Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style, influenced by and a product of the Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. ..."

recently a friend of mine who is a husband of one & father of four posted a video on facebook.




he commented that he saw a lot of himself in that, but he was sad to admit to being so uncool. i immediately wanted to reassure him that he is absolutely cool if he's like those guys. to a wife & mom, a man who does yard work, balances the checkbook, fixes stuff, watches movies with the kids, can cry at a disney movie, gives his dollars to his family & sings night night songs & puts the kids off to bed is the new definition of cool. he sure beats the cussing, badly dressed cool guys of my youth.

so by this new standard of cool, my dad is the coolest guy i know.
who knew?

you're my new bff - what's your name?

my sweet, quirky girl went to vbs this past week. it was a 4 night event at a church where she's gone over the past 4 summers, but we don't go to church there & we don't know anyone who does. brooke really looks forward to going every summer & this year it took a bit of arranging since we've only got one car & chris works evenings, but it was worked out because it was the one thing she said when our car died last winter - "does this mean i can't go to vbs next summer?!" funny how, as parents, you're willing to suffer through an awful lot of inconvenience for your kids when there's something they really want or need to do.

so far, every year that brooke has gone, she has latched on to a particular kid on the first night & refused to release them from her friendship until the final night of festivities. as far as i can tell, she bases her choice of a partner solely on appearance. she doesn't know any of them, she doesn't have any sort of interviewing process, she just looks around her group as soon as they all congregate & chooses a girl who's small & looks somewhat like her. she'll push her way through the sea of children to get beside the girl of her choosing & if she has to throw some elbows or yell at someone to get out of her way in the process, she's certainly not too good to do so. watching from afar, it's like she does "eeny, meeny, miny mo. catch a best friend by the toe. if she hollers, don't let go! eeny, meeny, miny mo. my mother said to pick the very best friend & you are IT! ready or not, you're my friend!" and from that moment on, in brooke's mind, that kid is her new bff.

she's pretty much oblivious to social cues, so the kid would have to be blatantly rude to her more than once for her to even consider releasing them from their unsigned friend contract. she wants to hold hands & pick them up & try on their shoes & do back to back to determine who's taller. she wants to trade silly bands & tell them all her deepest secrets while sitting in bible class. she wants to eat off their plate during dinner & whisper that  she sleeps commando except when she's having a sleep over.

sometimes she lands on a friend who is thrilled to be saved the work of finding a friend & embraces the whole package of brooke & her instant love. other times she gets someone who is very uncomfortable with this strange process of friending & doesn't appreciate their choice in the matter being taken away. the girl this year was named cate & i think brooke probably picked her because she was the only kid in their group who was shorter than her. some of those other girls are about 5 feet tall & have already grown boobs, so i don't really blame her for feeling like she needed a partner in little-ness. cate didn't push brooke away, but she didn't embrace her either. brooke came home the first night & told me that cate didn't like to be touched. i'm not sure how that information came out, but i suspect the girl must have told her that flat out because it's not likely she'd have gleaned it based on body language or facial expression. she said she didn't hold her hand, but she couldn't resist picking her up anyway. no wonder the next 2 nights, when brooke came in & squealed cate's name happily, cate avoided eye contact and tried to walk on past.

but brooke is a very determined, if clueless, little girl & by the final night, cate appeared to have been won over. she looked happy to see brooke & she even invited her to cut in line so that they could stand together & chatter & touch each other's hair. they talked about clothes & justin beiber & it made my heart very happy to stand back & watch as cate called out to brooke to come over and sit next to her while they ate their popsicles. to see them comparing mosquito bites and bathing suits.

i'm glad for brooke that she doesn't catch a lot of the social under-currents because as kids get older, most of them aren't very nice. she misses most of the snotty comments & glares and judgemental cliques around her and a lot of the time, she wins out in the end because she got to have her friend of choice. she doesn't suffer from insecurity because she has enough goodness and positive reinforcement in her life that she doesn't need to look around and wonder what anyone thinks about her. she doesn't notice the looks or comments from other kids & sometimes adults and that has to be better. she can go to bed at night and thank God for herself & mean every word of it.

i just feel like writing

sometimes i hesitate to write something here because it wouldn't be appropriate for the whole world to see (not that i think the whole world reads me, but they do have that option should they choose to use it) or because i don't want my mom and dad to read it (since they're about my most faithful readers) or because i feel like it's boring & might chase people off. but this is my online outlet & if people don't want to read it, that's okay with me. i like putting things here that are funny, not just so that people will laugh, but because i love to tell a good story and it's cool to be able to take something that's only vaguely amusing & turn it into something that can get a real laugh. i love to read the blogs of funny people, but i almost feel sorry for them  once they fall into the rut of being a consistently funny writer. if people tune in for a read & don't get their anticipated laughs, they feel let down. i don't have enough funny in me to keep the hilarity going every time i write. there are days when i can't find the funny anywhere at all. sometimes i really want to complain or whine about things, but no one wants to read it & it generally doesn't make me feel better afterwards anyway.

so here's my stuff that i feel like writing about today -

we went to a birthday party at chuckie jesus today & brooke loves to ride the simulated roller coaster thing there. she told me, "i like to leave my seat belt off & put my feet up on the handle bar & play the air guitar when i ride this thing - it makes it more extreme!"  and she is absolutely right. i wish i'd thought of that!

yesterday i had to do my monthly cleaning of an office downtown & there was no air conditioning, so the thermostat said it was 90 degrees the whole time i was in there. i was a big blob of sweat & determination for the hour & a half that i spent cleaning. but i felt kind of proud of myself for staying & doing the job even though i'd been offered the chance to skip it by the office manager. my parents taught me a strong sense of commitment even when we seriously didn't feel like it & most other people wouldn't have bothered. thanks, mom & dad.

after cleaning the hot, stinky office, i came home & after a brief couch flop, a fat, nasty storm kicked up. i scrambled around to get the electronics shut down & unplugged (we've had two computers struck by lightning at this house even though they were on power strips. maybe it's because we're on a hill.) and then i realized that the kittens were getting totally drenched from the rain blowing through the windows into their little house. so i threw on a raincoat & ran outside to close the windows & put a cat carrier in there which i tossed them into to give them a little more protection while they screamed & cried & scratched up my arms. when the torrential downpour stopped i went back out to check on them & found that some crap scraps had washed into the middle of the house from somewhere & then gotten squished by the pitiful kitten feet & i felt compelled to lean into the house & scrub the poop soup off the concrete as best i could to get rid of some of the flies & horrible stink.

today we sent the first of our babies to her new home. her name changed from hector to tesla and brooke cried when she left. she's with a family who we know a little bit & i'm sure she'll have a good life there, but tonight, i suddenly felt all weepy & sentimental about the first of my babies being off with a new family in new surroundings. i'm not sorry she's gone, but still... i hope she makes a good chicken kitten & earns her keep.

and there you have it.

the kitten chronicles

for the past 12 weeks we've had twinkle, the stray kitty living in our yard. brooke fell truly, madly, deeply in love with having both an inside & an outside cat. she loved that twinkle would follow her around & come when she called & join her on her forays into the woods. brooke spent more time in our weird yard than she ever has before and didn't even beg me to come out with her. she didn't need me because she had twinkie for companionship.

five weeks ago twinkle gave birth to 4 healthy, squirmy babies while we watched over her and encouraged her. she's been a great kitty mom & has kept all of them healthy & safe with no close calls or incidents that i know of. i really didn't expect that a stray cat who's not much more than a baby herself, and living outside would do as well as she has with her brood. i've spent a lot of time over the past 5 weeks each day going out to feed twink and to play with & snuggle those babies. i pretend that i do it for brooke, but i really do it because i love it. i even go out after brooke goes to bed at night. i like to check them a couple times every night to be sure a raccoon hasn't carted one off or they haven't escaped & been made into road pizza. i can't tell you how many mornings i've been out front in my pajamas checking on everyone & doing head counts while feeding a hungry mommy cat.

and all this time i've been thinking about whether or not we should bring one into the house when they were old enough. i talked about it with chris & my landlord & my friends & family. i probably talked and thought about it more than i really needed to, but i couldn't help myself. i just love the cats. i've never rescued a stray before. i never got to witness the birth of anything before.  maybe that's why i've loved them so. i think this has been as much fun for me as it has been for brooke & i do believe i'm going to cry as hard as she does when the kitty babies go to their new homes. they're only a week away from the recommended date for when they can be homed, so i decided that it was time to take brooke's favorite kitten to the vet today for a checkup. i wanted to make sure she didn't have feline leukemia that could be shared with our indoor cat, sophie.

we took nim this afternoon & she tested clear for all the yuck except for ear mites & i expected her to have those since her momma does. they poked & stuck & weighed & prodded & jammed & examined about every inch of her, much to baby nim's dismay. brooke had to leave the room because she couldn't bear to see and hear her baby suffering. she happily romped in the waiting room w/ a schnauzer puppy while i listened to the baby's cries. the vet then told us that since nim's already eating solid food, i shouldn't let her back outside with her family because she'll pick the bugs right back up again. i wasn't expecting that, but it was a pleasant surprise. i'm actually relieved that i don't have to worry anymore about nim getting squished or eaten before she's old enough to come inside.

nim walked into the house uninvited a few days ago when i was giving all the babies some free time on the stoop & i let her stay in long enough to meet sophie. i won't say sophie was signing up to be the leader of her fan club, but she didn't put the smack down on her either, so i considered it a victory.

i've been letting her come in once in a while over the past week just to help her acclimate to being inside & she really seems to like it. her siblings seem lost & scared when they've come in, so i'm glad we chose the one we did. she lets brooke hold her on her back & just gazes up into her face like she's seeing her true love. she's a very sleepy girl & can't take much romping before she's falling asleep in a fluffy little ball of adorable-ness.

from brooke's perspective, this has been just about her best day ever. however, from mine, it's left something to be desired. i'm trying to keep my hands off the baby when brooke is around so that they can bond, but that baby apparently got the runs from all the butt digging she suffered through at the vet today & she's still so young that she's not good at the litter box etiquette. she cries when she poops & then stomps right into it & swings her tail so that i have to scrub her whole back half down while she screams & claws me. i had to do this 3 times today as well as cleaning up 3 piles of puke. i'm really ready for her to learn some litter skills & get her stomach settled so i can turn over the clean up to her.

this evening brooke went to vbs & chris & i were able to go out to dinner alone, which is always a really nice treat. on the way there i realized that i had poop smears in a few places around the front of my shirt & i had a faint odor of crap hanging around me.  i called a friend while driving to pick up chris to ask if i should just leave it alone & hope it went unnoticed or maybe turn my shirt inside out. that would mean the poo was flush up against my skin, but at least it wouldn't show & maybe the smell would decrease temporarily. she suggested that i should try to use some water & a napkin & scrub it off, but i was afraid that would draw even more attention to the area & i didn't really want to be going out to eat w/ my hubby w/ a big wet spot with rolled up napkin bits stuck to it on my boobs. there really was no good choice, so i decided that the least offensive of the bad options was to just leave it alone & hope chris didn't notice. he didn't. or maybe he was just too kind to mention it during dinner.

now my two little girlies are tucked in & both sleeping, maybe dreaming of each other. all in all, it's been a wonderful, eventful day & i hope that tomorrow will include contact with far fewer bodily fluids as we adjust to life with a new kitten.

the naming of the warts

tonight when brooke was getting ready for bed, i got out the ole compound W to do a wart treatment on brooke's foot. while i was applying the stinky acid, brooke started talking to her warts. "oh wendy, why did you need to be contagious? now we have jiggly, wiggly & wendell." i asked her why she was naming her warts & she said, "well i just like to. but don't worry, i'm not getting attached to them."

what to call THAT region

when i was pregnant, i tried to think of all the things i would need to have planned before the baby arrived. nursery clean & decorated - check. diapers on hand - check. tiny clothes washed in baby-safe detergent - check. crib bedding washed & arranged cutely - check. name picked out for boy or girl - check. decisions about immunizations - check. what to call the baby's genitalia - um.... not check. for some reason it seemed like a big deal to me that we decide ahead of time what we would be calling & teaching the baby to call his or her groin area. i did a ton of babysitting, as well as being a nanny & teaching preschool, so i've heard some pretty interesting things from the mouths of children when referring to their do-not-touch-unless-you're-a-doctor-or-parent-giving-a-bath region.

i wasn't crazy about hearing little girls refer to their vaginas because, first of all it sounds rather bizarre to hear that word said in a little baby voice & secondly, the part the kid is usually referring to isn't technically her vagina. it's her vulva. i didn't want my child to use a word like twat or coochie as i'd heard at the preschool from a little girl who also told me once that she saw her daddy stab a pencil into her mommy's neck. i wasn't crazy about the idea of chi-chi or fu-fu or any of the other cutsie names either, so i decided that i wanted to find the proper name for vulva, but in some other language. i did some research online, but none of the online translation sites could provide me with that word in any language, so i was stuck. i was leaning toward just going with vulva, but then i had a vision of being at food lion w/ my future 2 year old girl & scooping her up & putting her into the shopping cart seat a little too quickly & her yelling in her loud, high pitched, shrieky voice, "OUCH MOMMY! YOU HURT MY VULVA!!!" and everything would go silent & strangers would turn to stare at me and judge me for having a 2 yr old who yells about her wounded vulva in public.

so i was left w/ a conundrum. i wasn't able to make a decision about a good word to use & eventually i decided it wasn't all that important after all. it became "crotch" by default since it can serve multiple purposes & be gender neutral. i recently discovered though that brooke thought it was a female specific word when we were watching america's funniest videos & the announcer guy said something about a man getting hit in the crotch. she looked at me with the strangest expression & said, "they just said.... that... the man had a crotch!" i didn't see the problem until she said that men don't have crotches, only girls & ladies. i think we've got that ironed out now, but i'm still a little bit disappointed that we don't have a more interesting word for it. i hate to use vanilla words when there are so many spicy options out there to choose from.