Teeny Manolo

The other day a friend and I visited the local aquarium with our kids.  Sadly, the thing that held their interest the longest was the splash park located outside.

There was a cement shark with various buttons to press that caused water to shoot from different points on the shark’s body.  The prize spot was on top, where the largest jet of water was located.  This jet sprayed more vigorously than the others, and was easily diverted by placing your hand in front of it.  This was great fun because you could cause people standing on the sides of the shark to get wet, or really any direction you wanted the water to go.  Sort of like when you put your thumb in front of a hose.

A little boy got to the top of the shark, but decided he just wanted to sit there.  Wasn’t pressing any buttons, wasn’t directing the water anywhere.  Well, playground rules dictate that if you don’t use it, you lose it, and soon other boys were climbing on and while not pushing him off, utilizing the full features of the shark.

This upset the little boy, who was whining and hitting people’s hands away from the water and the buttons.  He was easily six, if not older, so should have known a bit better than to do that.

Lately I have tried to keep out of any of the Munchkin’s interactions with other kids.  Unless someone is about to get hurt, I have vowed to have a more hands-off approach.  This is very difficult for me, but I am trying.  So, I watched this little boy having a fit and trying to push the Munchkin away as he tried to play with the water.

After the third time, the Munchkin looked at him and said, “Well, you just aren’t very nice, are you?”

The boy had nothing to say to this.  He whined some more about people playing with the water.

In his most reasonable tone of voice, the Munchkin said, “But you don’t own this. This isn’t yours to tell people what to do.  The aquarium owns this.  It isn’t the only one here either, so if you don’t like other people playing with it, you should go to a different one.”

Not being able to refute this logic, the boy got off.  Although still whining, he went somewhere else.

Do I sense a possible Ambassadorship in the Munchkin’s future?

(Photo Credit: Jono Rotman)

There is a family next door to my parents whose son is a week older than the Munchkin.  Sometimes we get the boys together to play, and there is invariably a conversation that goes something like this:

Mom: Soooo, the Munchkin is very tall.  How tall is he?

Glinda: Uhhh, I want to say something like 45 inches, I’m not really sure.

Mom:Hmmm….  Is the Munchkin reading yet?

Glinda: Yes, yes, he’s reading.  He really likes reading.

Mom: I seeeee.  How about math?  Is he doing addition?  What about writing? Can he write his name?

Glinda: All of that, yes.

And on it goes, the sole purpose of which is to measure her son against mine.  Who’s taller?  Who can throw the ball better? Which one has the better social skills?  It’s sort of exhausting answering the seemingly endless battery of questions.

While I can understand the temptation to compare since they are so close in age, sometimes I just want to completely lie.  To say something totally outrageous and actually dare her to call me on it.

Mom: So, what kind of books is the Munchkin reading?

Glinda: Well, yesterday we finished War and Peace, which he just loved.  Now I’m thinking of starting on some Shakespeare, maybe Henry V, maybe Hamlet.  It’s so hard to tell which one he will like better.  But I think so far his favorite book has been The Republic by Plato.  He’s really into the whole just and unjust concept.  We debate it practically every night before bedtime.

That’ll teach her.

Maybe.

Anyone that knows me knows that Glinda does not do camping. Not that I have anything against people that do. I am sure there are some very enjoyable things about it. I just never really intend to find out.

Of course, as luck would have it, I had a son. A son, it turns out, who thinks camping is the Best. Thing. Ever. Granted he’s only done it once so far, but he is simply enamored of the entire concept. From sleeping in a tent, to the campfire, to peeing on a tree, he’s all over it.

The idea of camping just makes me shudder. The bugs! The lack of showering facilities! The non-bed aspect! I just can’t wrap my mind around why someone would want to actually do that and yet call it a vacation.

Luckily for the Munchkin, his father has camped many times (before we started dating, anyway) and thinks it is a nice family bonding time. Unfortunately, he thinks that family bonding time should include me as well. Not a month goes by that he tries to guilt trip me into going with them, labeling me a bad mommy who won’t share in her son’s interests.

Listen, Glinda likes nature. She has absolutely nothing against nature at all. She just prefers to experience it from a balcony while sipping her tea, wrapped up in a comfy robe.

Is that so wrong?

This debonair young man belongs to the blog PrettyFlyForABabyGuy, where he shows off several of his finest food-based looks. Is that Blueberry Steel?

Betcha didn’t know the words for “Stage Mother” are the same in Japanese.

Ah, remember the Fifties? When everything was Mom’s fault? And the Sixties, and the Seventies, and the … you get the picture. At some point, however, don’t you have to say, “No, maybe Mom is not exactly June Cleaver, nor Wonder Woman, but might it not be possible that Junior here is just a complete twerp on his own merits?”

Because, you know, Junior here is just a complete twerp on his own merits.

From the original poster on YouTube:

HOW IT ALL STARTED- Some boy named Noah complains that he was trying to get his mom’s attention by poking her arm. His mom gets angry and jabs him back very slightly to tell him to wait… He gets pissed and gets a boo- boo for like 20 minutes… Then they argue on national television for nothing. After intense violence and warfare, Noah slaps his mother across the face… What do you think of this matter? Please respond. Ironically, I think it’s the mother’s fault and other elements that kids are exposed to daily. (School, Media, TV, ect.) However, this child needs to learn respect using his common sense. He has gotten into lots of trouble too. It is quite obvious he is abused and that his family is distorted. He has a single mom and his sister died of cancer. He complains his mother hits and abuses him and then denies it. He and his mother have been fighting for years. Noah has also claimed that he has called the Child Protection Services because of physical abuse. THIS IS THE MOTHER’S FAULT!

Is it, now? Well, I suppose she DID get pregnant in the first place.

The phone rang, and I automatically glanced at the LCD display to see who it was. Don’t we all?

Oh, a mom friend of mine, one whose daughter is in the Munchkin’s class. Fabulous! What gossip does she have to dish out to me today?

Instead of mom, though, I hear a rather breathless, “Hello, this is Cutest Little Girl in the World and is the Munchkin home and may I speak with him?”

Thrown for a bit of a loop, I walk over to where the Munchkin is sitting. He is engrossed in his newest obesssion, which is an old Scooby-Doo movie where Scoob and the gang meet Batman. I think he pretty much has all the lines memorized at this point.

I hand him the phone with a chirpy, “You have a phone call!”

And ever the clueless male, he continues to watch the television until I make him pause it. He then chatters rather aimlessly for about a minute and a half, and they hang up. Something about chocolate chip cookies was communicated, that I know for sure. The rest is anyone else’s guess.

So he says goodbye and hangs up the phone. Instantly, he turns the television back on. No big deal. Just a blip on his radar screen.

And all I can think to myself is awwwwwwww, he just got his first phone call from a girl!

Then…

Oh crap! He just got his first phone call from a girl!

I am so not ready for this!

Dear Creator of Zip-Off Pants,

Although I searched and searched on the vast internets, nobody knows who you are. Which is a shame, because such an invention deserves to have legions of mothers sending you millions of personal thank you notes.

Sir or madam, I would like to get down on bended knee and offer you my sincerest thanks for your ingenuity.

Because of you, I do not have to worry about the transition from morning into day, or from day into evening. Your pants are there to help. I do not have to carry around separate shorts and pants, or simply leave the house throwing up a prayer and hoping just one or the other will do. With your product, I can be happy, carefree, and have more room in my purse.

Some might argue that you have “softened up” our children. That being either too hot or too cold builds needed character. Pshaw, says I. What your pants do is save me, over my lifetime, what would most likely amount to hours of whining.

So to you, nameless innovator, I again offer you thanks.

Smooches,
Glinda

P.S. I have only one suggestion for improvement, and that would be to somehow make sure that it is impossible to lose the zipped off remnants of fabric. I know, I know, I ask for yet another miracle, but I have faith.

P.P.S And also, it is probably the one article of clothing that we mothers of boys have that mothers of girls probably wish they had too. I shall resist the urge to say “Neener, neener.”

Apparently, country music comes from Hartman, Arkansas. How appropriate.

A twelve year old and his ten year old sidekick got “liquored up,” stole his father’s truck, set off in search of a girl they’d met at the rodeo, jumped a guardrail, and ended up at the bottom of a hill in an Ozark forest in the middle of the night.

From the Modesto Bee:

Clark James, 46, who lives down the road from the crash site, said he answered the boys’ banging at his front door with shotgun in hand about 2:30 a.m.

“I opened the door and the first thing (the 12-year-old) said to me was, ‘I’m drunk and I had a wreck,’” James said. “I looked at him and I thought ‘You’re kind of young to be out drinking. And you sure shouldn’t be driving.’..”

Teresa Belew, executive director of the Arkansas chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the 12-year-old is the youngest person she’s heard of facing a drunken-driving charge in the state.

James bets that both Johnson County boys are grounded for life.

“If not, then they should be,” he said.

How long till they get a movie deal and an interminable Kenny Chesney song?

When you learn that you are having a boy, a sort of resignation sets in about the whole fashion and clothes thing.  I mean, boys have this reputation for beating up their clothes, not caring if they are particularly clean, and basically as long as a few threads are holding it together, they are good to go.

I was also particularly fearful that my son would inherit my husband’s inability to match items of clothing.  Although he has many fine qualities, fashion sense isn’t one of them. Brown belt and black shoes?  What’s the problem?  Gray shirt and gray pants?  How in the world can I keep insisting that he can’t wear it out of the house, because if two things that are the same color don’t match, then the universe has a serious problem.

Anyhoo, my son had been displaying the usual young male indifference to his clothing.  Clean, dirty, matching, unmatching.  It was all the same to him.

But then last week, something happened.  Dare I say it, a breakthrough of sorts.

They were having “graduation” pictures for his preschool, and I had picked up a lined navy blazer for eight bucks, in one size larger than his normal size.  Yes, I know you are jealous about that.  Often when shopping for the Munchkin, I have the Bargain Angel on my shoulder.  For myself, not so much.

My son knew he would be wearing a white button down shirt and brown linen pants, but hadn’t known about the jacket. I showed it to him in the morning as we were getting ready and asked if he would like to wear it.  His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, yes!”

So he got dressed and I put the jacket on him.  He immediately went to the full length mirror in my room and stood in front of it.  And he actually began to preen. 

“Mommy, I look like I am forty years old.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Mommy, I look like the mayor or something.”

“You do.”

He turned to me with a big grin on his face.

“Mommy, I look really good, don’t I?”

Indeed, perhaps there is hope after all, my son.

Surreptitiously, I wiped a tear from my eye.

And if the amount of squealing from random unknown females on the way to class was any indication, I may also want to think about amassing a large number of sticks.