A Proud Mommy Moment

My obsession with language has been well documented on this blog.  Thankfully, my daughter is extremely articulate, especially for her age.  But even more amazing is that I see her developing this same love of language.  She is constantly experimenting with new words and trying to fit the latest buzz word of her vocabulary into as many sentences as she can  (right now it’s the word perhaps - a very fine word if I say so myself).  She is a dream child for a grammar geek such as myself.  But last night she hit a whole new level of linguistic showmanship that made me so proud.

I told her I would read her two books, so she eagerly went to her stash and started to pick them out.  After a moment, she came back in a panic.  One of her favorite books, I Was So Mad, was not there.  I had recently bought her four books out of the Little Critter Series and this one so far ranks way above the others in her opinion.  She comes running over and says, “Mommy, mommy!  The mad book is not there!”

So I went over to her pile of books to help her.  While I am sifting through the disarray and picking up each of the books, flipping them over, etc., she’s yelling at me with increasing panic, “No not that one! The mad one!  No, not that one! The mad book!”  Well, I knew what she was talking about, but I had sift through all the others to find it.  But I guess she thought I just didn’t understand her, because finally she says to me in complete desperation, “THE ANGRY BOOK! THE ANGRY BOOK!”

And that is when my heart filled with such intense pride I had to scoop her up and smother her with kisses. Using synonyms at the age of three!  How did I get this lucky?  Later that night while lying in bed, I was still beaming with pride.  Then I thought to myself, “OH. MY. GOD.  Soon she’ll be writing! Just imagine what she’ll do with PUNCTUATION!”  

Be still my heart.

It Only Gets Worse

My daughter is three and already hates her hair.  It breaks my heart and I want to help her, protect her from a lifetime of stressful mornings, not to mention an intense phobia of humidity.  But alas, I just can’t change her DNA.  I know how she feels, after 42 years of my own living hell.  She’s too young and innocent to be brutally honest with her.  So, I tell her it’s a wonderful curly life, when in reality it sucks and it’s only gonna get worse.  Way worse.  The poor thing.

Everywhere we go, the first thing people comment on is her hair.  Look at all those curls!  She is too adorable with that curly hair!  Meanwhile, back at the bat cave, there she is constantly trying to get her mangled mess into a fancy hair style to look just like her sisters and all the other little girls blessed with normal genes.  I just watch her suffer, there isn’t much else I can do really.  Later in life, I will try to help her and make her feel better about it.  But by then, the beautiful soft curls she has now will have turned into one big course wiry mess and no amount of gel, mousse or comforting words will make it any better.  The best advice I could give her later on in life is to never go to Japan.  Nothing but heartache and an inferiority complex for you in Japan.

At least for now, she isn’t really that worried about looking posh or sleek or semi normal, thank heavens.  Right now, all she cares about is the length.  While all the other girls her age have hair midway down their backs, Piper’s barely touches her shoulders.  Unless it’s wet, then we’re in business.  So naturally, she is obsessed with wetting her hair. 

Last weekend, we were at a birthday party and they had a pool.  They had a slide in this pool and all the kids were taking turns going down the slide.  Each kid, one by one, would scream as they went down the slide, giggle as they collected themselves, then immediately jump out and run back in line to do it all over again.  Not Piper.  She too screamed as she went down the slide.  She too giggled as she landed with a splash.  But then she would linger in the water, dipping her head way back to get her hair all wet, swishing it around so it fanned out around her while the poor sucker in line behind her patiently waited until she got the hell out of way.  Every now and then, I would prod her to move it along so little johnny can take his turn. She would then would climb out and slowly mosey her way back in line, shaking her head back and forth, back and forth so she could feel the wet hair hanging down her back and across her shoulders.  Sometimes she acted all bothered by it, flinging it off her shoulders as if it was so annoying. 

She was too cute, but in a way it broke my heart.  A little girl shouldn’t have to soak her head in order to feel pretty.  Life isn’t fair. The entire ride home, I debated with myself if three is too young for extensions. 

Update and Disclaimer:  Thanks to humourworks’ comment, I now realize how harsh this post sounds.  It’s not meant to be harsh, but funny (OK, I failed at that). I actually love Piper’s curls and am constantly in awe of them (and I think she likes them too, just wishes they were longer).  What I was trying to express was that even at the ripe age of three, she is in a love/hate relationship with her hair already.  A battle I see will not end, but only get worse.  She wants to have hair that flows, but instead has hair that bounces.  C’est the vie.  The grass is always greener…  if I had a nickle for every silky sleek headed woman that told me they envied me for my “wild and different” hair, then I might be able to afford to make my hair look exactly like theirs!

Then & Now - Same Old, Same Old

I like to remind myself to keep things into perspective as much as possible.  It’s the existentialist in me, I suppose.  I can ruminate over something to the point of obsession, but in the end I try to remind myself that it is all a matter of perspective and it is all relative. The glass is neither half full nor half empty - it is just a 16 ounce glass with 8 ounces of water. 

Lately my obsession has been with how to discipline my very willful three year old whithout breaking her spirit or mine.  I just want to do it right, you know?  I figure the least I can do is read a lot and learn, learn, learn.  So there I was researching on the internet how I can become a better parent and hopefully raise a happy, healthy, respectable, well rounded child. And I came upon this quote: 

 “Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” 

As I was reading this, I was shaking my head in full agreement, telling myself, “Yes! Yes! That is it and that’s the problem.  Kids today are running amok, but how do we as parents combat this downward trend and churn out kids that are better than that?”

But then I saw that the quote was by Socrates, circa 400 B.C.

Perspective.  We’ve been fucking it up for centuries. 

It Isn't As Clear As Black & White

I’ve told you before about our lovely cat named Oreo.  He was named Oreo because he is almost all black, except for white paws and a white tummy.  Black on the outside and white on the inside, thus a very befitting name.

I honestly can’t stand Oreo cookies, never liked them.   For that reason, I never bought them.  For the past three years, the only oreo in our house was the fat cat.

Apparently, my husband really likes oreo cookies.  I never knew that.  I found this out when he decided to buy them on a whim at the grocery store last week.  And apparently my daughter likes oreo cookies too.  I never knew that either, although I could have guessed since she is all about anything chocolate.  She likes them a lot now, but she didn’t like them very much in the beginning.

When my husband offered her an oreo cookie for the first time ever in her life, she happily accepted it.  A cookie is a cookie, after all.  She took the cookie, checked it out, handed it back to him all pissed off and said, “This isn’t an oreo cookie!” 

She stood there mad, we stood there confused, the cat came running over because he heard his name.

Yes it is, sweetie. It’s an oreo cookie. Don’t you like it?

{meow}

“IT IS NOT AN OREO COOKIE!” 

{meow}

Yes it is, honey.  Why don’t you think it’s an oreo cookie? 

{meow}

“IT’S ROUND!”

Yes, honey.  Oreo cookies are round.

{meow}

“NO THEY’RE NOT!  THEY’RE CATS!”

Ahhhhhhhhh.  Duh!  How could she possibly know that the cookie came before the cat?  Explaining the black and white part didn’t do much help either.  Finally tasting it was the only thing that got her over it.  The taste seemed to overpower her prejudice against it’s non-cat shape.  But at least we were no longer confused as to why she was so upset.  The poor cat, on the other hand, spent the remainder of the week in a constant state of confusion.  One minute she calling his name, the next minute she’s pushing him away.  There she goes calling him again, asking for him over and over.  Then she ignores him and tells him to stay away from her cookie…

He still hasn’t figured it out.  Peach pit brain.