Not that kind.

This weekend I got to have the following conversation with Fiona.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of travelling soon, Kiddo,” I said, trying to lessen the blow of having to leave the hotel pool.

She got really excited, jumping into my lap in the hot tub. “Really, Mommy? Like time travel? I want to see dinosaurs!”

I was silenced and sat blinking at her.

“Erm, no.” I said slowly and slightly strangled. “We’re going to go on a long car trip to see family.”

“Oh.” She frowned just a little. “Okay. That sounds fun too.”

My Favorite Part

Grass is a wonderful place to vomit. At least it’s not my couch? Parenthood makes you cheerful about the strangest things.

Fiona is sick. She has been sad, cranky, miserable sick. She had the flu a couple weeks ago and just hasn’t really kicked it. So, with the addition of puking to our misery checklist, I took her to the doctor.

I don’t know if it’s normal, but my kid LOVES the doctor. She wiggles with anticipation as the doctor checks her nose and ears and has the biggest grin on her face when her doctor listens to her heart and lungs. After the doctor moves the stethoscope she whispers happily, “That’s my favorite part!”

The doctor, says that she does indeed have an ear infection, and that she needs antibiotics. Now, 24 hours and three doses of Amoxicillin later, Fiona is not coughing. She’s not cranky. She is feeling better. And that’s my favorite part.

A good reason

Bedtime is often an adventure around these parts. Which is a vast improvement. A year ago, I would have said that bedtime was an unmitigated disaster every day. So, “often an adventure” is a step in the right direction.

The process of this has been painstaking, tedious, and gradual. We’re at a midway point between holding and snuggling and reassuring until sleep finally flattens us despite tears and theatrics, and a kiss and hug and walking out (the goal). This halfway point means that I sit in a chair next to her bed until she falls asleep, usually about 15 minutes.

The key word there is usually.

Last night it was closer to an hour. Despite the clear need for sleep, she just couldn’t seem to slow her mind down enough to fall asleep.
I spent 45 minutes of being asked questions in between suggesting, cajoling, and ordering her to sleep.

“What lived before people, but after dinosaurs?”
“Mammals, that were just starting to evolve and then got bigger and more complicated and birds. ”
“But which ones?”
“I think you’ll feel better if you get some sleep.”

“But Mommy, what if you did send me to school with a broken bone?”
“I wouldn’t do that. I am a good Mommy.”
“But what if you did?”
“Fiona, please go to sleep.”

“What if zombies were really real?”
“They aren’t”
“But what if they were”
“They aren’t”
“But what if they were?”
“THEN I would go to the butcher shop and buy cow brains!”
“But –”
“Go. To. Sleep.”

Finally, she rolls and on her side and says, “Mommy, will you scratch my back?”

Through slightly gritted teeth, I respond, “Give me one good reason that I should?”

She raises her little eyebrows, grins beguiling and says, “Because it itches.”

I scratched her back and after a few minutes, she was quiet and fell asleep. And, honestly, it’s a pretty good reason.

A great puzzle.

So, I’m faced with an awesome dilemma. We just finished doing food trials. Fiona has out-grown her allergies to corn (and corn-syrup) and to milk.

Unfortunately, I now have absolutely no clue what to make for dinner.

It’s a fantastic puzzler.

On Farming Ants

Last year for her birthday, Fiona received an ant farm. My friend, who gifted it to her, had purchased two, one for each of our daughters. She gave one to us, she said, so that someone else could try it out and tell her how it was before she tried it. A resounding endorsement.

I’m such a good guinea pig, that I put off trying it until now, eleven months later. Fiona has been pushing me to get her a ” ‘spirment animal” like tadpoles or caterpillars that she could ” ‘sberve”. So, I being a little cheep, thought, “What the heck, we’ll order some lousy ants and let her watch them.”

And so I set up the farm, and wrote a check for a bizarre amount of money. You want $12.95 for 30 ants? I could probably pay the neighbor kids a quarter each per ant and save money.   In retrospect…

 

So several weeks pass, Fiona impatiently asks me every day when her ants will arrive. “Soon. Soon,” I assure her.

Have you ever noticed that no matter what happens it will always happen at the worst possible moment? It’s a weird universal constant that the dishwasher only breaks, the sink only backs up, the fridge goes out the day you have people over for dinner. The washing machine only breaks right before an important meeting or a long trip.  I believe that’s why the ants arrived on Saturday.

You see on Saturday I was helping to host a baby-shower for one of my friends. I had to move locations at the last second because of the heat. I had baked a cake and frosted it, decorated, planned games, and ran from the moment I got up. So, at 12:30 when the mailman handed me an envelope as I was running between the outdoor picnic area where we were meeting and my home where I had everything I needed. I hardly paused to glance at it.

Except that it had a giant sticker on the outside, “LIVE ANIMALS. OPEN IMMEDIATELY.”

What? Really? Today? Blah, later. The ants will be fine for a couple of hours while I finish what I’m doing. Right? Right? I don’t want to kill the expensive little buggers.

Okay, well then, oh well. I can’t deal with it at the moment so they’re going to have to be tough.

 

Five hours later, I was feeling remarkably guilty and frustrated as I had been coerced into an outing to the pool after we were finished with the shower. Jeez. No problem, I’ll just take a quick minute and shove these little guys into the farm. That way I can go enjoy the pool and not worry that I’m being a horrible ant killer.

I pick up the tube of ants, they look pretty lethargic. I pop the top off the farm. I pop the top off the tube.  I begin to gently try to shake the ants from the tube into the farm.  Only ants. Suddenly, lively, active, fast ants are on the move. Lively, fast, FREAKING RED ANTS!  I jump back and recap the tube in my hand while yelling at my husband to grab some cups. We slap cups over the escaping ants.

One, two three, four, five, and five in the  farm. Seriously, what the heck kind of system is this? The mouth of the tube of ants doesn’t fit in the opening of the farm. The ants are wicked fast. And as I stare at the horrible little bastards through the glass wall of a shot glass they wave fierce huge mandibles at me. This is, for the record, not at all what I signed up for. Where are my happy little non-biting black ants? This is not intuitive. I grab the directions.

“When your ants arrive, be sure to read the directions that come with
them. Before you open the tube of ants, put it in the refrigerator (not the
freezer) for about 15 minutes. This makes them less active and much
easier to put into the habitat. They will soon “warm up” to start working. “

Oh. Well then. If at first you don’t succeed, read the owner’s manual.

I put the tube in the fridge, set a timer and tried to fathom how to retrieve five ants from under individual shot glasses while Fiona danced around me nervously, “Are those my ants? Will they bite? Maybe I should go change my dress? What if they get on me? Can I hold them? Can I put them in, Mommy? Are those my ants?”

Jeff meandered over to help. What had been a quick, toss them in, and go to the pool, was rapidly turning into a difficult task.

We found a piece of card stock and working together carefully jostled one ant from the cup into the farm. The next one escaped us and a quick frantic search of the table ensued. After recapturing it under a cup we finally we put those five alarmingly fast ants into the farm.

The timer beeped.

Ten in. Twenty to go. Still, these should go easier, right? The instructions state “less active and easier to put in”. This time it will be fine. We read the directions. No probs.

Right.

I would like to note, it was NOT easier. They were NOT lethargic. They were still wicked mandibled little speed demons on crack.  (Uncle Milton, you’re a jerk!)

Still, practice makes perfect. We got many of them in. Only four escaped. This time Jeff waved me away, “Go to the pool. I’ll get them in.”

And he did.

So, my friend, Gift-er of Ants,

Having been your guinea pig in the farming of ants, I have advice for you:

1. The ants you will receive by mail are red, biting ants.

2. They are freaking fast.

3. Follow the directions, but I would recommend at least 25 minutes in the fridge.

4. The plastic tube that comes with the farm to connect it to another farm? That thing fits into the openings on the sides of the farm and also slides neatly into the ant shipping tube. I think that using that tube to get the ants into the farm would be a big improvement over the “gently shake the ants into the farm” method.

5. Keep a shot glass (or five) handy.

6.  I love you, Sweetie, so this one is the important part:  Give the other ant farm away. Preferably to someone you dislike. Intensely.

Gender Awareness

Fiona was sitting playing a video game this morning and I was surfing the net and I happened to over hear a conversation she held entirely with herself.

“Mwua-ha-ha-ha,” She laughed her best deep voiced wicked chuckle as she created some kind of gate across a path blocking her opponent from something.

Then softly said to herself, “Only, I’m a girl.”

And I had just a brief moment to dread her editing herself, changing herself to something softer and gentler in the pursuit of a culturally imposed perception of femininity, before she corrected herself.

“Mwua-ha-ha-ha!” She said again, more loudly, more fiercely, and about an octave higher in pitch.

I smiled to myself. I think I can live with that. Being a girl to her doesn’t mean being less ruthless, it doesn’t mean not chuckling over the defeat of your enemies, it doesn’t mean being softer, or gentler, or sweeter. It does seem to mean that your voice is higher pitched and you don’t have to force it low to be fierce.

My Favorite Fiona-isms

So, the thing is, I know she’s out-growing these. By the end of this year she won’t have that super-cute little kid sound to her words anymore.

She doesn’t call the computer a “po-cuter” anymore. But she still calls spaghetti, “pa-sgetti.”

My favorite though, is this, “Wow! It’s Gi-NAN-tic!”

 

For Peace and Politics

Some months ago…

“Awww….” I said, sipping my coffee and perusing my morning feeds. I tend to spend a little while at my computer every morning looking for all the things that make the world big and round when you can only see a tiny corner of it.

“What, Mama?” Fiona came clambering onto my lap.”What ‘aw’?”

I showed her the picture I’d been looking at. A beautiful wedding photo, the happy couple radiating joy and love as they kissed, both wearing full lovely wedding gowns.

“Awww…” Fiona repeated. Then she giggled, “But they’re both girls.”

“Yep.” I said. “The laws just changed where they live and they can get married now.”

“Oh.” She said in a thoughtful tone. I watched the wheels in her head turn.

After a minute or so, I added, “Mommy and Daddy think that two people who love each other should be able to get married even if they are both boys, or even if they are both girls. More and more people are starting to believe that and so the laws are changing.”

She squints at me, and turns back to the picture on the screen, “Let’s look at more pictures. They are so cute.”

This week…

“And these two are getting married, ” Fiona says to her friend. I glance over at them. Their heads are nearly touching as they play with dolls, glossy black hair against ruffled tawny curls.

Her friend laughs, “No, Fiona. They can’t marry. They’re both girls.”

“They can too!” Fiona sounds outraged.

“Cannot.” Her friend argues.

“They can.” Fiona states. “Two girls can get married here. It’s the law. And they’re my dolls and I said it was okay.”

“But they’re both girls.” The other girl argues. “They can’t!”

“They can!” Fiona’s volume and temper are both rising, so I decide to intervene for the sake of peace and politics.

“Fiona’s right.” I call out, “Here in California it’s okay for two girls to get married. Or for two boys.”

“Oh.” Says the  other girl,”Well not my dolls.”

“These are mine though,” says Fiona with exaggerated patience, “so it’s okay.”

After a few minutes of wedding planning their play returns to a quiet sort of murmuring.

‘Is that true?” Says the girl’s mother, my friend, from across my dining table where we sit sipping coffee, “Isn’t it odd? It doesn’t happen often does it?”

I smile. “It happens fairly often. It isn’t uncommon. It’s a good thing that the laws are changing so that anyone who loves each other can marry. But she’s right, it is the law here. “

She gives me look that I find indecipherable. Truth be told, I think for the sake for peace and politics I’ll not try too hard to figure it out.

Preordained.

Fiona drew a rocket

Fiona drew a rocket. In fact, she drew five. Yesterday. She’s been drawing rockets lately, and talking about them, and pretending to fly in them, and building them out of other things.

So, I asked her, “Fiona, you’ve been drawing a lot of rockets lately, do you want to tell me about them?”

And she answered me, “I have to draw rockets, Mommy. It’s my destiny.”

Some things are preordained. I wonder, is it the rockets or is it the drawing of rockets that is destined to be?

Not the same.

Little kids have friends. They have buddies. They also have that kid that their parents stick them with on a regular basis who doesn’t know who any of the Ponies are, keeps snatching toys, and says infuriating things like, “Mine is better.” All. The. Time. Their parents do this because the other Mommy is awesome and makes great playtime snack food and the kids are within two years of age.

In case we as parents have missed it, Fiona has informed me that this is not the same thing as friendship.

“She are not my friend. Her mommy is your friend.” She sighs horribly, “That’s not the same.”

 

I have been informed.