One must take advantage of
any opportunity to give
Earlier this week, Mimi got a gift in the mail, a new book! She is just beginning to fall in love with books, so she was really excited about Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy. Even though we’d just gotten home, hadn’t even taken off our shoes yet (always the first thing we do), we had to sit down and READ IT READ IT READ IT RIGHT NOW. So I was kinda primed to read it quickly and get on with making dinner.
But we liked it too much. We even ended up putting the DVD in and watching it. We admired Danny’s red shoes. We drew pictures of Danny and his sidekick, Skipper. We stopped just short of going out to find our own magic seashell (Danny’s preferred mode of transportation).
For Danny, it turns out, is a magic dragon who travels the world in a beautiful green and white shell, aided by his navigator, Skipper. (Please don’t ask me what Skipper is: a mini-dragon, perhaps? A chameleon? He’s cute and small and green and wears a sailor hat. That’s all I know.) In this book their ‘talking’ shell captures Jimmy’s imagination and, once at Jimmy’s house, they join Jimmy’s family for a fun summer evening.
It’s a sweet book with a simple storyline and gentle characters. What I particularly liked about it is that it wraps its lessons up in a story. We see how much the family members enjoy time with each other, how helpful Danny is in washing up the dinner dishes, how lovingly mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers speak to each other. It communicates volumes about good manners and respect without ever being didactic.
Mimi didn’t catch all that, of course, not directly, but at least she didn’t embarrass me by saying the characters’ behavior was totally foreign to her. She just loved the bright colors and clear illustrations. She loves that as much is told in the pictures — in the soup bowls on the table, in the faces of the children playing in the yard — as in the simple words. Mostly, she loves the character of Skipper. So much so that we’ve read the book at least twice a day since it arrived, and she wants a little green navigator of her own. And, really, don’t we all?
Filed under: Mimi
We’ve added a new princess to our stable: Ariel joined our DVD collection. Snow White and Cinderella are the grandes dames of the Disney princess world, but the Little Mermaid (released in 1989!) was the first modern princess. And oh, was she modern.
I know it’s simple coincidence, but I’ll always remember that right in the middle of this oh-so-looooooong princess phase, Jon and I took Mimi to see her first movie in a theater, and it was The Princess Frog. On a Friday night, with popcorn, and wearing her princess dress, of course. She was absolutely enthralled until about the last 10 minutes, when she suddenly could not have cared less who kissed whom and who was destined to be a frog forever — it was late and her popcorn was gone and she still had to take a bath and the sun has gone sleepies why am I still awake and why did you give me raisins and cheese for dinner that’s not a real dinner TAKE ME HOME NOW.
Princess Frog was the scariest Disney princess movie I’d seen in a while … with the skulls and the fire and the scary voodoo man. I’d forgotten how frightening Little Mermaid was, so when Mimi came into the kitchen to report that things were looking dire, I put down our dinner preparations to sit with her on the sofa and watch for a few minutes. When Jon came home, she announced that the scariest part was when “the sea witch locked Ariel up in the castle so she couldn’t go to the ball but she turned into a frog and jumped out!”
When Mimi came home, she was riddled with health issues; none too serious but several that could have become so. In addition to the ailments common to orphans she had weird things like rickets. She had no abdominal muscle tone, could barely sit up on her own, and could not crawl.
Mimi and I spent our first few months together visiting doctors, therapists, support groups. Our state has good programs for children and mothers, from nutrition to child development. I signed up for everything. One day I ended up in a classroom surrounded by teenage boys learning to change diapers. While it was an engaging afternoon — they were really cool boys — it wasn’t really what we needed.
Today, she’s caught up, as far as can be determined. The one lasting complaint is exotropia. Her eyes drift outward when she’s tired or upset. She’s a champ about it; what she lacks in coordination she makes up for in heart. It affects her ability to learn to read, so we’re working hard to resolve it as soon as possible, while hoping to avoid surgery. She has glasses, which she detests, and wears an eye patch for a while each day. For some reason this is a source of conflict for Jon and me. He can never remember the patch and I can never seem to stop myself from complaining that I’m the only one hunting down missing glasses and chasing her around with the patch.
The other night she was particularly resistant, so I decided that we’d wear patches, too, to show our support. We all slapped them on and went into the living room to watch a DVD. Whoa. Our depth perception disappeared, which made the characters on the screen appear to pass through each other instead of walking by each other. We found it easier to eat popcorn with our eyes shut than to try to make sense of our hands moving it toward our mouths. Trippy. When we walked across the room, we lurched and swayed like drunks. Mimi seems to handle it better than we did — she can walk and eat with no apparent problems — and she got quite a giggle watching us. I just hope she doesn’t think that’s going to be our regular Friday night fun.
I love holidays … they’re such good times to celebrate happy things. We all love someone or something, so please tell me … where is your heart today?
This morning started like many others, with Mimi sitting straight up in bed an spouting something completely random. Today it was, “Boys don’t wear shirts to swim!” I imagine it comes from careful observation during swim class. As soon as she notes that it is unfair that men have this freedom and American women don’t, we’ll talk.
Within a few minutes, though, the house fills with this: “Booty!” “Butt!” “Bottom!” She dances around her room shouting them like some perversely simple code. We blame it on school, of course, this first foray into the forbidden delights of “bad words.” I am sure that there are larger values at play, probably a healthy dose of debutante training tossed in (AGAIN with the debutante reference. I really do not know what that is about.), but the short answer here is that I just don’t like hearing “booty” or “butt” drop out of that pretty pink rosebud of a mouth.
At least not yet. I do not subscribe to the position that bad language is the hallmark of a limited vocabulary or a lack of imagination. Some of the best cussers I know also have the largest, most florid vocabularies. And I don’t think language belongs to one gender or the other, although I do think that masculinity and femininity are informed by the words we use. And I really really really am not the type to say “the ‘f’ word” or what-have-you. If I want to say “fuck” I’ll say “fuck” and if I’m not comfortable saying it in a given social setting then I won’t say it. I really do hope I’m never in a setting in which I feel compelled to say “fuck” to my daughter, although I’ve heard my own mother drop it once or twice and I admit it achieved an effect.
There’s absolutely no way butt/booty/bottom won’t have a role in the language of our house, as we are still wrestling somewhat with potty training — STILL — and she has a rash that likes to flare up if I forget to put cream on her bottom under her bathing suit. Plus she’s at that developmental place where all parts of the body are equal, which is a delight, yet she’s discovering that there’s something about certain parts of the body that just might make people blanch, which isn’t so delightful. I have been glad to learn that, like most 3-year-olds, she soon tires of that which doesn’t get attention so ignoring is still my best weapon, but somehow this butt/booty/bottom routine has become a Thing. Not a Big Thing, a very Small Thing, but a Thing.
My sister Dawn uses the word “buttocks,” and you cannot convince me that that word can be said consistently without it sounding silly. Especially if you say it like she does: butt-ocks. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that Mimi has not caught onto “ass” yet. That’s a word I don’t like at all, for reasons more related to how it sounds than anything else: like the word “puke” makes me turn green yet its cousin “barf” bounces right off of me. I also don’t like the word “vehicle,” but that’s probably because where I come from it’s always pronounced “ve-hic-le” and accompanied by a wad of chew. Some of my favorite words are “popcorn,” “church,” and ‘muffin,” because they’re just so much fun to say.
Right now my daughter’s favorite word is “booty.” Sigh. She’s made up a song with lyrics like, “Daddies say butt! Mommies say bottom! Boys say booty!” Which leads me to believe she’s already figured out the I-can-say-it-but-not-get-in-trouble-if-it’s-a-quote” defense. Double sigh. An here we go.
Slowly but surely I’m seeing recognizable glimpses of myself in Mimi. My gestures, my postures, my facial expressions, and, heaven forbid, my style. If you look closely here, you can see that she’s set the table with candles (two, from the birthday candle stash), a coaster (under my Cubbies mug), placemats (these are from my hometown), and cloth napkins (Always. Really. My mom, too. Blame her.) I can’t really explain the gargantuan mixing bowls, the Lincoln logs, or the puzzle pieces; I was fixing stew and I guess she was hungry.
If you’ve never thought much about your table-setting style, then you are not from the south. At least not the same cult as me. Martha didn’t invent this. I know my mother got the ball rolling, but I also remember practicing at the debutantes’ deportment classes, held every Saturday morning at the home of the junior leaguer responsible for educating the 18-year-olds. [Quick aside: Why don't debutantes go to orgies? Too many thank-you notes to write.] This woman’s name was, I kid you not, Rhett. Of course that was her first name, and in my neck of the woods women were “Miz Smith” or “Ma’am,” so I’m sure I didn’t hear her name until years later.
Last night after Jon pointed out the strange concoction Mimi threw together on our table I actually took a good look. It’s the kind of thing, like wearing socks with your sneakers or rolling up the toothpaste tube that after a while you’ve just done it or not done it for so long that you tend to proceed on autopilot. But, curious now, I turned to the Internet, my source for all knowledge (true or otherwise), and was amazed to discover that not everyone sets their tables with cloth napkins, coasters, placemats, and candles.
So if you should venture to the southwest, wander around the playgrounds, and meet a group of three-year-olds, Mimi? Will be the one who curtseys.
I don’t think this is what Gandhi meant when he encouraged passive resistance. Okay, she is wearing a turban here, one of those microfiber things that helps your hair dry quickly, they’re just great, and it does make her look unbearably cute. But don’t be fooled.
A few weeks ago we were in the grocery store. She wanted some cookies. I said no, we have cookies at home and it’s almost dinnertime. Suddenly she was no longer at my side.
She was standing completely still, head down, looking at the floor. It was an odd pose. I spoke to her and she shook her head. I told her we had to get going. I explained. I commiserated. I used my firm “I am the boss” voice. She remained stone still.
I put my hand on her arm and she screamed. SCREAMED. One of those high-pitched wails I have rarely heard from her, followed by a shrill, “No! No! No! No!” Heads turned, the cashier’s hand moved almost imperceptibly toward her emergency call button, brows furrowed. Great. Now I am That Mother.
I barely got us out of the grocery store that day without a police escort. What’s worse, having recognized the state it puts me into (I couldn’t cloak my reaction that first time… I was too startled!), she has repeated this many times since. Oh, where is my sweet baby? She’s served time-out, been punished, I’ve told her that that kind of screaming is only for hurt or danger, it’s really scary…. and this seemed to give her more appreciation for her parlor trick. If she doesn’t want to do something, or does want to do something she can’t, which pretty much covers most of the time… she stands completely still refusing to move. And if I touch her she pulls away and screams bloody murder. Of course I can still pick her up now if necessary, but I have to get rid of this trick before she gets too big for me to lift or too loud for me to tolerate her hollering in public.
I can deal if she only does this when we are not in a public place and we have plenty of time to stand around and wait her out. When does that combination ever occur? I can just see her at 14, getting off a plane or something. She’ll stop still in the aisle, keeping dozens of passengers from exiting the plane, screaming if I touch her and willing to stand there until she grows roots. Ever seen passengers held up unnecessarily from deplaning? It’s ugly. And this isn’t as farfetched a scenario as it might appear for us. I am growing desperate.
Internet, whatever do I do?????
Remember this post ? My, but I can feel like the sky is falling sometimes. I so appreciate the emails and comments … the sky isn’t so threatening when you have people to commiserate with you about it.
But of course, the saga didn’t end there. Apparently tree roots have broken into the main sewer line, far away from the house in a corner of the yard (it’s a lovely tree, by the way, with purple and white flowers in spring, you’d never guess it was so lethal) and anything that uses water, including the washing machine and the dishwasher, stopped. Including our one and only toilet.
I’ll just say this: a reluctant-to-potty-train preschooler and bad plumbing DO NOT MIX.
So it was off to a hotel for us. Three nights in a hotel! It was a budget hotel, sure, but it had a tub I didn’t have to clean and beds I didn’t have to make and carpet I didn’t have to vacuum and TELEVISION. (I got to watch the GOLDEN GLOBES. Weren’t the dresses dreamy?)
We got ROOM SERVICE (the first night. We were too weary to deal with an equally weary Mimi in a restaurant. After that I brought food from home. Our room had a microwave!)
Clearly I am easy to excite, as I am now speaking in exclamation points.
We also solved a wrenching domestic mystery. We had the line snaked, something Jon had tried with a machine rented from Home Depot but it didn’t work when he did it. The plumber got it cleared, and what do you think popped out? Mim’s Little EInstein Annie doll. She’d disappeared last week after a fight with Little Einstein June, and I had assumed the worst. I predicted that she’d been confiscated by a dog in need of something to shred, or handed off to another child at preschool, or perhaps we would discover her one day deep under the couch … but given Mimi’s general attitude toward the toilet it should not have been a surprise that she met a watery end.
Annie was, sadly, not recoverable, and despite Mimi’s long neglect of the toy that looks a bit like her in favor of the ballet-dancing, tutu-twirling, vaguely exotic June, she was devastated. We were as surprised as she when the plumber emerged from the bathroom cradelling the muck-caked doll; we could only identify her by her red dress and one blue foot (she was missing the other foot and most of her head). The plumber handled her gently, and this assuaged Mimi’s grief a bit. That plumber is either super sensitive, or he has children; without knowing the toy’s story he automatically assumed the best tactic was to take care with Annie. And from Mimi’s tears one would never guess that she’d not asked after Annie once since her disappearance. So callow!
And more good news! We’d anticipated a horrible, horrible plumbing bill, and his bill was nowhere near what we’d feared. It wasn’t our first choice of how to spend $500, but it could have been thousands.
So now we are home. Everything appears to work. I’m getting caught up with laundry, on my way to pick up Mimi from preschool and take her to swimming lessons… life is good at the moment.
Oh, and did I mention I quit my job? I’ll write about that as soon as my fingers stop shaking every time I think about it.
