Connor: "Mommy, what's my blood type?"
Me: "Let me look. I have it in my phone somewhere."
Natalie: "Mommy, Liza's got her nose in that bag. What's in it?"
Me: "Paint."
Connor: "Paint?"
Me: "Paint."
Connor: "Spell it, please?"
Me: "P-A— Oh, wait. Paint isn't your blood type. I was answering Natalie's question. Your blood type is A+."
© Jennifer Linney | bug and the sweet banana
Messy Colorful Stuff
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Connor went on a class field trip this week to Mount Vernon, George and Martha Washington's home on the banks of the Potomac River.
"I played tag on George Washington's lawn. Not very many people can say that," he bragged.
"Did you know that George Washington's sister had a home in Fredericksburg, where I went to college?"
"Oo."
"What is its name?" I ask myself. "'Ken'—not 'Kensington.' 'Ken—.' What is it? I can't believe I can't remember. I used to walk by it all the time. Well, anyway, George's sister's name was Betsy. Betsy Price."
"Oo."
I love that my audience of one is intrigued.
"Let me see what Google says about the name of her house," I mutter, typing "Betsy Price" in the search box. "Huh. Well," I stammer. "Betsy Price wasn't George Washington's sister, after all. Betsy Price is the mayor of Fort Worth."
"Mommy!" Connor scolds.
"George Washington's sister was Betty. Betty Washington Lewis, and her home is Kenmore. It was built in the 1770s."
Confusing the current mayor of Fort Worth with the first First Lady? That's me.
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Natalie has a "pay for college" plan:
"When I grow up I want to be a . . . call girl."
<Insert blank stare.> Just what kind of parenting is going on at our house?
The illustration elaborates:
Hmm.
Kall grll = cowgirl
That's better.
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"Mommy's having shower crowd!" Natalie town-criered.
shower crowd: noun: finely cut cabbage that has been fermented
turk-o'-lantern
vestibule
it's a toss up
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Natalie held her stuffed Llama Llama Red Pajama toy as we drove from ballet class along a backroad that she has named "Horse Hill Stallion Road" for all of the horses roaming the hills. There are plenty of cattle, goats, alpaca, and llama, too.
"Hey, Natalie. We'll go by a llama farm in just a few minutes." I had to give her fair warning: Natalie has what we call "Aunt Bobbie Syndrome," where we point out an interesting sight while driving and two miles down the road, once the sight is long gone, she pipes up, "Where? I don't see it."
"A llama farm?"
"Yep."
"Why are we going to go buy a llama farm? Does Daddy know?"
Mama wants to be a farmer, darling. Hush, now. Go back to playing.
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Question: Nancy Drew, the Hardy boys, and Jessica "Murder, She Wrote" Fletcher come to dinner. What do you serve?
I know just the thing. I handed Connor and Natalie each a fortune cookie after we finished eating Chinese takeout Saturday night.
"Whoo-hoo!" Natalie hooted, striking a pose in the kitchen. "It's mystery cookie time!"
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Natalie's taste runs towards the costly side, so I told her so: "You , my dear, have expensive taste."
"Oo! Does that mean I can taste money?"
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Natalie sat quietly and then turned to me and confessed, "I was a little disappointed with Thanksgiving."
"Woah. Really?" She's been concealing this disappointment for five weeks?
"Yes. When Daddy said he had to carve the turkey, I thought that meant he would take it outside and carve a face into it, just like we carve our pumpkins."
I see a new Thanksgiving tradition: Turkey as jack-o'-lantern, jack-o'-lantern as turkey. Mind Blown.
Who's with me?
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Apple Doggrell. ← He had a farm. ↓
At least, that's what Natalie says.
The sweet little miss has misunderstood the lyrics for "Old McDonald Had a Farm" and sings, "Apple Doggrell had a farm, EI-EI-O."
a mantra takes hold
some tea with his sugar
lost soul
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Connor's favorite car: the Lamborghini.
But, the other day, he admired a marashino-red Cadillac. "I like that red!" he said. I did, too.
Natalie glanced at the car. "I like Cadillacs," she shrugged, "but what I prefer is cattle drives."
the fastest turtle in the west
vestibule
it's a toss up
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I was chilly as we left a restaurant Sunday evening. "Let's wait here in the vestibule while Mommy puts on her coat," Jim said, pausing while I found my way into my coat and scarf and mittens.
"In the where?" Natalie asked.
"In the vestibule. Right here. Where we are," Jim told her.
"The what?"
"The vestibule."
"The testicle?" Natalie asked, puzzled.
"The vestibule."
"The testicle."
"Vestibule."
"Testicle."
All bundled and cozy now, I gave a nod and we ventured outside. Natalie has learned a new word.
The (most decidedly male) unicorn—note the, um, "vestibules"—that Natalie had drawn earlier in the weekend.
one of those posts
damn misunderstanding
no bone(r)s about it
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Back when I was just barely pregnant with Connor, Jim, Trouser, and I joined our neighbors for a little backyard barbeque. Our younger, more spritely Trouser misbehaved, and, when she wouldn't listen to verbal commands, I snapped my fingers at her and warned, "Don't you make me a mother who snaps!"
It's eight years later now, and I am, indeed, a mother who snaps. Oh, how we become the parents that we swore we wouldn't be. (I know that I'm not alone here. What do you do now that you swore that you wouldn't do when you were footloose and child-free?)
It turns out that I am also a mother who uses full names when she means business: "Connor Ryan Linney!" "Natalie Anna Linney!" "Trouser Lyn!" "Liza Bean!" I call. "Get your tushie in here!"
Even Jim gets the full-name treatment when he frustrates/infuriates/surprises me: "James Daniel!" I say.
Connor picked up on this a while ago, but misunderstood, calling Jim "James Dangel," as if he were blending the words "danger" and "angel." "James Dangel!"
Natalie has now joined the Full-Name Exclaimers Club, but she uses Jim's full name as if it were a swear word, a word that one mutters under one's breath—and she says "Jim Daniel," pronouncing "Daniel" as "Dane Yell."
I caught a glimpse of Natalie as she tried to carry a handful of toy horses, plus a pink toy horse trailer, to the kitchen. A horse fell, and Natalie spat, "Jim Dane-Yell."
Sorry, Jim. Them's the breaks.
that ain't a word
the hogs, ain't they grand?
word to your mother
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My sister and her fiance will exchange vows in just a few weeks. They are having a nontraditional wedding—no attendants, no rehearsal, small guest list, and maybe, just maybe, pie. How refreshing is that?
Bobbie has asked Connor to hold her wedding ring during the ceremony, but not in a ring-bearer sort of way. Just for safe (we hope) keeping.
Connor has other things in mind: Today he called himself the ring burier.
Nontraditional or not, I'm pretty sure that's not what Bobbie has in mind.
setting the record straight
the elusive aunt bobbie
the shakedown
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Birthdays and anniversaries are a little, er, overlappy here at our house. Liza's birthday is the day before Jim's. Jim shares a birthday with his mother. My birthday is the day after Trouser's and a week after Natalie's. Connor's birthday is also Jim's parents' wedding anniversary. Jim's brother and sister-in-law married on that day, too. Jim and I, meanwhile, were married 20 days after his birthday and 20 days before mine.
There will be a quiz at the end of this post. No diagrams. No cheat sheets. Use a Number 2 pencil. Keep your eyes on your own paper.
"Hmm," Connor said, reiterating all that I wrote at the beginning of this post. (I won't put us through that again.) "Grand Hog Day is a few days before my birthday."
"Grand Hog Day? Do mean Groundhog Day?" Of course, he did. I'm up on my calendar facts. I'm good like that.
"That's what I said: Grand Hog Day."
Maybe he did say "groundhog." Maybe he's got a bit of a Texas twang going on there. Both he and Natalie say "stairs" as "stay-ers" and "hair" and "hey-yer." Maybe Connor is twangy.
"Grand Hog Day," I repeated, trying out a little twang myself. "Yeah, I could see that."
"See what? Like the grand hog sees its shadow?" Connor asked.
I looked at him puzzled. I hadn't realized that I'd said that aloud—that happens a lot lately—and I was lost in my world of words, pronounciation, and regional accents, trying to dredge up some sort of long-forgotten knowledge from my college linguistics classes.
Connor explained himself, seemingly for my benefit: "The grand hog looks for its shadow, and people think that whether he sees it or not determines whether winter will stick around or whether spring will come to town."
"Right, right. Grand hog, huh?"
"Yes, grand hog. You know, like the Grand Valley."
"The Grand Canyon?"
"That's the one."
Forget the quiz. I need to rest.
she says, he says
word to your mother
hot stuff
glitter quitter
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Connor enjoys football. He speaks in terms of yardage. He tosses around terms like "two-point coversion." He likes the idea of the coin toss at the beginning of the game.
He has been tossing coins all week, trying to work out differences of opinion: "OK. If it's heads, we read my books first. If it's tails, we read Natalie's," and "OK. If it's heads, I take a shower and Natalie takes a bath. If it's tails, Natalie takes a shower and I take a bath."
It's always heads.
I drew the line when Connor decided that a coin toss would determine what we would eat for dinner. I had already decided.
"If it's heads, we have pizza. If it's tails, we have chicken," he declared.
Natalie lost her mind. She wanted chicken. Connor lost his mind. He wanted pizza.
Two kids + two lost minds = We have breakfast for dinner and early tucks into bed.
I swiped the quarter when Connor put it on the counter, doled out some cereal, and called the urchins to the breakfast-for-dinner table.
"Where's my flipping quarter?" Connor muttered to himself.
He didn't just say that, did he?
"Where's my flipping quarter?" he asked again, louder this time.
"Connor, we don't use that language," I scolded. I've never used the word "flipping." Where'd he pick up that?
"I used English, Mama."
Mr. Smartypants, huh? Is he trying to get on the frayed bit of my very last nerve? I huffed and I puffed and I . . . realized that Connor's "flipping quarter" is the quarter that he tosses in the air. His coin-toss quarter. His flipping quarter.
Whoopsiedaisy.
Abashed that I thought so poorly of Connor for that split second—OK, OK, for, like, two whole seconds—I surrendered the quarter. "It's here. In my pocket. Let's put it in your room and wash your hands."
"Because money is dirty," Connor said, finishing what has become my mantra lately.
Money is dirty. Flipping quarter.
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"The vultures are circling," I said as we three drove home from Connor's school today. A committee of five vultures flew above ranchland that is home to longhorn cattle, a donkey, and a llama.
Best day ever—as far as farm-life-spotting goes—if you're, you know, into that, um, sort of thing, as I clearly seem to be: The time when I saw the donkey and the llama in a kicking-up-dust footrace. Good times, good times.
But back to the vultures.
"Oh, my gosh," Natalie, my Valley Girl Lost In Texas, said. "Those vultures are huge."
"They're as tall as your nips," Connor said.
Nips? He said hips, but it sounded like he said nips. I nearly burst with laughter.
"What are nips?" Natalie asked.
Just as I was about to say, "Hips, Natalie. Hips. The bones just below your waist," Connor said, "Like, you know, nipples? I didn't think that it would be appropriate to say 'nipples,' so I shortened it to a code word: Nips."
Nips? He said nips? He said nips. He's six! He has only just lost his second tooth! He's still wild about me. Well, mostly. He said nips?
"Oh, ho! He said nips!" Natalie chortled and chuckled, beside herself. "That's. So. Funny."
Nips. He said nips. Damn vultures.
he wows the crowd
an angel underneath, innocent and sweet
be decent
classic
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I thought for a brief, disappointing moment this evening that Natalie had conjunctivitis. "Can I see your eye for a minute, Natalie? It almost looks like you have pink eye."
"Yay!" Natalie cheered, missing the dread in my voice. "I! Love! Pink!"
karma wears a floofy pink dress
pinkity-pink-pink aaaaaaand pink
flower power
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Natalie came rip-tearing out of her bedroom, crying as if someone had just announced that she could no longer pledge allegiance to the color pink.
"Brady hurt my knee! My knee! My knee!" she hollered, sounding her siren.
My first thought: Oh, brother. (Little Girl is prone to hysterics.) My second: Who the hell is Brady and what is he doing in our house?
"Brady?"
"He hurt my knee," Natalie sobbed, just devastated. She held in her hand her little Andalusian mare, the one with the braided mane, the one that she had named "Braidy."
There is no toy-throwing, knee-kicking, tantrum-prone rapscallion in Natalie's bedroom. Just a horse named Braidy that, I suppose, Natalie knelt on, hurting her knee. (Way to misplace the blame, kid.)
Connor, who witnessed the whole incident, took charge of Natalie's recovery, applying an icepack and a Band-Aid to her knee.
Natalie milked it for all that it was worth.
The little urchin gets so frustrated when I can't remember the names of her horses. Besides Braidy, there is Sparky, Cloud, Louder, Dark Whitey, Polky and Polka-Dotty, Rosy, Orangey, Brownie, Chocolatey, Up Tail, Big Foot, Long Hair, Small Head, Softy, Hairy, and Clydesdale.
Name tags. We need name tags.
all amped up
winnie mcphee
you know what a drugstore cowboy is, right? this isn't about that.
going down to cowtown
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We have been passing a cold around here at Casa de Linney like it's a hot potato. Sharing is so not caring. Natalie has missed two days of school, and she and I have bided our time snuggled on the couch, watching movies (her) and napping (me).
One of Natalie's favorite movies is Despicable Me. She calls it The Skippable You. And, you know what? I can skip like no one's business. Little Girl is on to something.
Natalie can't mug for the camera without striking a pose. And, yep: That's a pink bunny tethered to a belt with a hair clip. Like George Bernard Shaw said, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." And so, there's no asking why.
so totally stoked
half breakfast, half lunch
in my shell, I shall sleep
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We saw lots of this:
this:
and this in California.
We also saw quite a bit of this:
as well as a man walking his pony along a Sonoma sidewalk, but that's a whole 'nother story for another time.
Here, in "Far From the Ocean, Far From the Sea" Fort Worth, we don't see much of that, at all.
And, ever since I got some good sense about me, my children haven't seen an ironing board very much at all. Wrinkle-free, natural fibers: That's how I try to roll.
So, when Natalie and I turned a corner at Bed, Bath & Beyond—which she and Connor think is called "God, Bathroom Beyond"—she spotted these:
and gasped, "Surfboards!"
© Jennifer Linney.
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I listened with half an ear to Connor and Natalie yuk it up before bathtime. Lots of quick chatter, guffaws, and giggles. Natalie even used her throaty laugh: The startling, seemingly sinister, and way-too-mature-for-her-age "ah-ha-ha!" laugh that comes to the surface only every so often.
They chortled away boisterously, and then I heard Connor ham it up, "That's a bunch of balloony!"
Close, but, um, no guitar. Or something like that.Text © Jennifer Linney.
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS . . .
venus flytrap
zsa zsa no more
shock and guffaw
wolves in sheep pajamas
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I'm slated to travel to Manhattan in a few weeks and discussed my travel plans with Jim over dinner. We volleyed the word "New York" back and forth a few times during our conversation, and Natalie followed along as if she were a spectator at a tennis match.
Lost, she finally scrunched her nose and asked, "What's 'You Nork'?"
©Jennifer Linney
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS . . .
darn it, william spooner
bonked. crunched. and leaking.
a nice walking city
in my shell, I shall sleep
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We went to brunch last Sunday, something that we do only every so often and not nearly as often as we used to when we were two and not four. (Oh, Monroe's Italian sweet eggs and French toast with orange butter, I miss you. I do.)
When we told Connor and Natalie the plan for the morning, and Natalie scrunched up her lips, furrowed her brow, and asked, "Brunch? What's brunch?"
"It's a meal that is half breakfast and half lunch. Brrrr-unch."
"Brawnch," Connor said, pronouncing it with, what I reckon, is a French accent. "I like that. Brawnch."
"Not 'brawnch,' love," I said. "Brunch. It rhymes with 'lunch.' Brunch." (Tacking the word "love" on to the end of a correction or scolding softens the blow. In my guilty mind, anyway.)
"I said that," my bullheaded reasonable son countered. "Brawnch."
"Well, it's pronounced 'brunch,' really, but no matter. Let's get ready."
Connor continued to call the outing "brawnch," and, today, he said, "Hey, Mama, since we will be out by the brawnch restaurant, maybe we can have brawnch again today."
Sometimes there is just no convincing him that I know a thing or two about a thing or two. Like brunch. ©Jennifer Linney
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS . . .
heartstrings now being tugged in terminal A
a meeting of the minds
he got told
the lady approves
flowers and mudpiles
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We arrived home from swim class last Monday, and as I walked into the garage after fetching the mail, I saw this little lovely:
A big old screw in my brand-spanking-new tire.
". . . aaaaand a happy Monday to you, too, karma," I muttered.
"Who's Karma?" Connor and Natalie asked in unison.
"Well, karma's not a who, more of a what."
"What?"
"You know the Country Road song that Jack Johnson sings?"
"Yes."
"They sing, 'What's meant to be will always be though I control my destiny.'" I wagged my finger, tilted my head back and forth, eyes to the ceiling. I might have wiggled my hips—just a bit—as I sang there in the garage, but I'm not telling. "Then they sing, 'Be careful of the things you do, it eventually comes back to you . . . The things you do shall be done unto you.'"
"And they whistle," Natalie chimed in. Both she and Connor tried to whistle, but it was hopeless. Neither could.
"Right. But the lines, 'Be careful of the things you do, it eventually comes back to you . . . The things you do shall be done unto you.'"
"Yeah?" They both think I'm nuts, that the heat has done me in.
"That is karma: 'Be careful of the things you do, it eventually comes back to you . . . The things you do shall be done unto you.' So, if you do good things: If you behave well and treat others nicely and do kind things, then good things may happen to you. But if you do bad things: If you misbehave or aren't nice to others, then not-nice things may come your way."
"Oh," Connor said.
"I don't like karma," Natalie said, backing away from me, a look of terror on her face. "She sounds mean."
"Like the Tooth Fairy's mean sister or something," Connor added. "The Tooth Fairy is nice and beautiful—and I hope she brings me a new bicycle when I loose a tooth—and she does nice things for kids. But karma? No way."
A new bicycle? For a body part falling off? Chaa-right. Lower your expectations, kid. I'm thinking pocket change.
"A mean fairy? Karma is a mean fairy? She's a mean fairy!" Natalie panicked. "I don't like karma."
My little lesson on moral compasses: Spinning way far out of control.
"But, bad things come back to you only if you do bad things to begin with," I said, desperate to defend karma. "If you do only good things, then only good should happen to you."
Natalie wasn't buying it. Connor's wheels were turning.
"So, then, Mommy? What did you do that was so bad that the karma fairy put a screw in the new tire?" he asked.
Up against the wall. ← That was me.
"Well, maybe it was the fly that I killed last night in the bathroom. Or the spiders that I vacuumed off the front door."
"Or the one that you swatted with a fly swatter."
"But Mommy screamed as she swatted the spider, Connor," Natalie said, backing me up. "Mommy said that you have to scream when you kill a spider so you scare it half to death first." I suppose that in Natalie's eyes, my screaming softened the blow for the spider. She's on my side.
"What about the worm that Mommy wouldn't say hello to when we were washing the car?" My girl ditched me. She's not on my side. The stinker. "Mommy backed up and said, 'Don't come any closer.'"
"Yeah, maybe," Connor said, weighing all of my wrongs. And then he scolded, "You should be nicer to nature, Mama."
© Jennifer Linney.
♪♯ Download 03 Country Road (feat. Jack Johnson) ♫
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS (proof that I'm not a nature hater) . . .
tempted by the fruit
pumpkin patch punkery
shoo bee shoo bee shoo
karma wears a floofy pink dress
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So.
Connor.
My little nature child.
He soaks up books about wildlife. He loves nature documentaries, especially the BBC's Planet Earth, Life, Frozen Planet, and Nature series. My point being, he has seen images of wildlife mating. I'm not sure that he knows exactly what goes on during all of that mating, but he knows that the process is called "mating" and that baby animals come of it.
Cut to Scene I: Connor and I had a sweet little date at a coffeeshop, and while I waited for our drinks, he set off to nab a table. He staked a claim on one next to the window. And as we sat there, talking and drinking, we noticed two little sparrows, well, getting it on. The male sparrow flew-jumped atop the female, flapped his wings into quite a fury, and hopped back off. This happened for a good 10 minutes, many times in succession.
"They are mating," Connor informed me. "They wrestle to see which one is the strongest, and then that male gets to be a daddy."
I wasn't prepared to have The Sex Talk with Connor right then and there in the coffeeshop, so I didn't explain what the birds were actually doing or that the male head-butting ritual is what some animals do to decide who gets the girl and that the actual mating comes after the head-butting is all said and done.
But back to my point: Connor has seen wildlife getting down with its bad self.
And now, Scene II: Connor is playing in the backyard with the puppies. Liza and Holly spend hours stalking, chasing, tackling, and wrestling each other, and they go about it ferociously. Liza has suffered blunt force trauma to her eye twice now from all of their rough-and-tumble play. I call her Winky-Blinky. She looks plain pathetic with her mostly closed, teary eye, prescription ointment clouding her vision. She needs a helmet. And an eyepatch.
But back to Connor.
He races into the house, barely pausing to open the back door. "Mama!" He's doubled over with laughter. "Liza and Holly were playing 'Stalk and Capture,' and Liza caught Holly. She hugged Holly from behind and went like this: 'Oo-chee, oo-chee, oo-chee!'" My sweet innocent son thrust his hips back and forth, back and forth most disturbingly.
I sputter with laughter, and then, remembering that I'm the mother, I collect myself, and say with as much nonchalance as I can muster, "Oh. Yeah. Well, that's just how animals dominate each other. Like when bighorn sheep butt heads. Liza is showing Holly that she is the alpha."
"Well, Trouser is really the alpha," Connor says, "but she doesn't go 'oo-chee, oo-chee, oo-chee.'" Again with the thrusting.
"Right, right. You're right. Trousie is the alpha. She doesn't . . . she doesn't do that 'oo-chee, oo-chee' business because she shows her dominance other ways."
Connor makes his way toward the back door.
"Hey, Connor?"
"Yes?"
"Let's not do those 'oo-chee, oo-chees' anywhere else. Like at school. That'd get you in a whole lot of trouble. A visit-to-the-principal sort of trouble."
"OK." He giggles, "Oo-chee, oo-chee, oo-chee," as he stumbles back out the door.
I am now accepting applications for a sex-education teacher. Outsourcing The Talk, that's how I'm rolling.
© Jennifer Linney.
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS . . .
birds! land here!
tu parles français? oui?
he speaks the truth
'round and 'round it goes
in my shell, I will sleep
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Remember Fred? That guy led around by a needle? He's returned.
Natalie sang her old standby, Do-Re-Mi:
"Do, a deer, a female deer
Re, a drop of golden sun
Mi, a name I call myself
Fa, a long, long way to run
So, a needle pulling thread
La, a note to follow so
Ti, a drink with Jan and Fred
That will bring us back to Do oh oh oh."
Indeed. Tea is no longer a "drink with jam and bread," but a "drink with Jan and Fred." Our Fred seems to have found a lady friend.
The world lost a gentle soul earlier this evening. My thoughts are in El Paso, where Jim and his family bid a final farewell to his dad. You raised nine amazing children, Charles Linney.
© Jennifer Linney.
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Connor spoke to me with way too much sass. I scolded him, ending with, "You've gotten way too big for your britches," sounding quite a bit like Mama Junebug Jones from the Skippyjohn Jones books.
He plodded off to his room for some quiet time that lasted all of a minute. "Um, Mama?" he said, inching his way around the corner. "What are britches?"
"Oh, um, a kind of pant that men used to wear a couple hundred years ago. I think that the pants that horsebackriders wear are called 'britches.'"
"But I don't understand: How could I have gotten too big for my britches when I don't even wear britches?"
Foiled by an idiom. Curses.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Natalie, Connor, and I sat in the car, listening to music and waiting for Jim to join us.
A few songs shuffled through the iPod and then Cake sang Short Skirt/Long Jacket. If you're not familiar with the song, a guy wants to meet a girl who has "a mind like a diamond" and "eyes that burn like cigarettes," a girl who is "fast and thorough and sharp as a tack," one who "uses a machete to cut through red tape." His girl would have "fingernails that shine like justice and a voice that is dark like tinted glass." And, perhaps most important, she wears "a short skirt and a long jacket."
Connor listened intently, processing every word. "A short skirt and a long jacket? At the same time?"
"Mm-hmm."
"But then, no one would know that she is wearing a skirt." <Insert pause while Connor ponders.> "That's awkward," my innocent kindergartner declared. One day he'll understand the allure.
For a completely cerebral analysis of the song, look here.
© Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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I've introduced Natalie to The Sound of Music. And she has met Anne of Green Gables. Next up was Meet Me in St. Louis, so we two sat down one rainy weekday afternoon to watch.
When Natalie isn't referring to Meet Me in St. Louis as The Movie With the Singing Girls, she mistakenly calls it Me Me and You-ie.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS . . .
the hills? they're alive
the grables
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Connor and Natalie ran through the yard and rolled around the dry, clingy, dead winter grass while the pups—all three of them—did their own kind of running through the yard and rolling around in the dry, clingy, dead winter grass.
Utter.
Chaos.
Natalie found a shoulder-high stick that Holly and Liza had abandoned . . .and she marched around the yard as if she were leading a parade.
Not one to miss an opportunity to order his sister around, Connor stepped up and acted the part of a drill instructor. "March! March! March!" he hollered.
And Natalie, who is not one to take orders, just ignored Connor and continued along the cheery parade route in her mind.
When Connor noticed that she was paying him no heed, he cried, "Pick up the paste!" mistaking "pace" for "paste."
There's nothing like a little word confusion to knock the "I'm in charge here!" out of someone.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Soon after word got out that I was expecting Connor, a friend passed along all of her parenting books. Among them was one called The Irrepressible Needs of Children. Or something like that. (I never did read it. My children, it seems, needed me.)
I'm thinking about writing a companion book: The Irrepressible Needs of Puppies, because, let me tell you, two puppies are, like, four times the work of just one.And after I finish penning that book, I figure that I might as well just change Holly and Liza's names to "Beck" and "Call" because those redhead snippets are running me ragged.
In other news, Connor has been marveling at my <ahem> mad typing skillz. He has asked several times, "How is it possible that you can type so quickly, with all of your fingers, and not look at the keyboard?"
I pieced together an explanation that made sense to me, at least, filling his mind with thoughts of muscle memory and practice and an oft-used backspace key.
Earlier this week, Connor watched intently as my fingers clickety-clacked across the keyboard. He broke out of a dreamy-eyed trance to ask, "Do your fingers have eyes?"Connor's ah-ha moment was no more far-fetched than the one that I had as a preschooler. I had fallen from a piece of playground equipment, and while the teachers fussed over my bloodied leg, where a yellow Lego brick that I had fallen on lay embedded in my knee, I had the epiphany of a (four-year-old's) lifetime: If a Lego stuck so well in my knee, I reasoned, then I must be made of Legos. How else could the Lego brick stay so well in my knee? Of course! People are Lego creations!
Cue the apple-and-tree comments riiiiight . . . now.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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We live among acronyms: We pick up prescriptions from CVS. We eat PB+J. We find our way with the (sometimes questionable) help of GPS. I call yogurt "YGT," if only because an ice cream shop in my hometown once announced, "WE NOW HAVE CHOC AND VAN YGT." So YGT, it is. Packages arrive via UPS. Jim flies out of DFW airport and travels to D.C. Nevermind the array of acronyms that he uses when speaking about his work.
Lots and lots of letters.
So, it made perfect sense today, that when Natalie spied the mail truck flittering from mailbox to mailbox like a honeybee buzzing from flower to flower, she said, "Look! The ABC truck!"
For more of our (mis)adventures with letters, click here.
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Natalie sobbed overreacted, completely, when the water that she had been sipping from one of the reusable bottles that I take with me to the gym spilled down the front of her dress.
"It's wet! It's wet!" she bawled, utterly beside herself.
I ambled over calmly, hoping that my laid-back attitude about the spill might talk her down from the ledge. "It's fine, it's fine. It's just water. It will dry," I said.
"Nooooo! It's wet! It spilled!" she sobbed, reminding me so much of Ruby Gillis's hysterics during The Lily Maid scene in Anne of Green Gables: "It's too late! She's drowned! And we're murderers!"
"Why did it spill?" I asked Natalie as I blotted her dry with a dishtowel.
"Because the bottle tipped over," Natalie wailed, struggling to catch her breath.
"Well, yes, but how did it tip over?" I tried again.
"On its side," she sniffled. "It tipped over on its side," she said, totally missing the point of my question.
"But what made the water spill?" I asked, thinking that, yeah, this time, I have finally simplified my question sufficiently.
Instead, Natalie yowled, "Gwabity!" mispronouncing "gravity."
Ah, the benefits of having a science-crazed brother. Touché, little girl. Touché.Connor had a similar run-in with gravity back in the day. Read "darn it, newton."
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Connor told me about a documentary that he had watched about the kangaroo population in Canberra, Australia.
"The kangaroos have moved into the city because a drought has made finding food in their natural habitat difficult," he explained. "There used to be just a few hundred kangaroos, but now—wahblah—there are thousands. In the parks. And in people's yards. And they're getting hit by cars."
"Wait, wait. What was that, about how there used to be just a couple hundred kangaroos?" I asked, unsure of what I'd heard.
"That there used to be just a few hundred kangaroos, but now—wahblah—there are many thousands?" Connor asked.
"Yes, that. 'Wahblah'?"
"Wahblah," Connor confirmed.
"I think you might mean 'voilá,' like 'Shazaam!' or 'Just like that!' Am I right?"
"Yep. Voilá."
And there we have it. Wahblah.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Natalie, Connor, Trouser, and I saddle up for a walk and a bicycle ride around the pond. I say "a walk and a bicycle ride" not because we are bi-athletes of any sort, but because Connor rides, and Natalie does, too, until she grows weary. Then, she plods along, leading her trike beside her as if it is a horse. Trouser and I—or when I'm feeling r e a l l y wild and crazy, Trouser, Holly, Liza, and I—walk at an excruciating pace behind Miss Natalie.
So, we're saddling up. Connor snaps on his helmet. I grab my cell and my tumbler of crushed ice, San Pellegrino, and lime juice. I stash a house key, as well as the garage door opener, in my pocket, not because I'm thorough like that, mind you, but because we have been locked out of our house two more times since that dramatic first time. While other children play House and School, mine play Locksmith. (Mother of the Year award, come to mama.)
Natalie slips her new running shoes onto the wrong feet and then scurries to the basket where we keep the dog leashes. "Here's your leash, Trouser," she says, pulling Trouser's orange leash from the tangle.
Natalie gasps, delighted as she notices that Trouser's harness is already snapped to the leash. "Aaaaand here's your highness!" Natalie announces, mispronouncing the word "harness."
The puppies' worshipping Trouser as if she is The Queen! The Queen! The Royal Queen! has convinced Trouser that she is, indeed, royalty. Even Natalie has bought into the idea.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Jim and I sat pondering the Golden Globe Awards. We're tired and overwhelmed and aren't as nimble of mind as we were when it was just us.
"The Golden Globes," Jim said, thinking aloud. "Are they awarded for television shows?"
"No, that's the Emmys, isn't it?" I answered.
"So, movies?" he tried again.
"No, that's the Oscars. The Oscars are for movies."
Natalie sat between us, folding laundry. (She took the initiative, and I, well, I supported her efforts fully.) "No, Mommy," she said, plucking a cloth napkin from the laundry basket. "It's Oscar the Grouch. Oscar," she said slowly to make sure I got it, "the Grouch. Oscar the Grouch."
I love a confident girl.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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"Mama? Can we go to Tennessee?" Connor asks as he straps on his new running shoes, which he claims make him run faster, jump higher, round corners tighter than ever.
"Tennessee?" He must mean Kentucky.
"Yes, Tennessee. It seems like a very athletic state," Connor explains.
"Athletic? Tennessee?" I just can't connect the dots.
"Well, yes." Connor is growing exasperated. "It's name: Tennessee. It sounds like they play a lot of tennis there. A lot a lot."
Tennis-y. I get it now.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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The weather these last few days has been balmy with a chance of balmy. Back into the closet went the long sleeves and cardigans, out came the short sleeves for one more hurrah.
This morning when we reached Connor's school, he struggled to loosen his seat belt. I stepped in to help, but had already taken Natalie from her seat and worried that if I let go of her warm little hand, she might get squished by a car in the parking lot.
"Stand right here," I told her, pointing to a spot that corralled her between me, the open passenger door, and the vehicle itself.
Natalie obliged, but then Little Girl got her groove on and danced there in place, getting down with her bad self.
"Can you stand still for just a moment longer, Natalie? Freeze right there for just a minute, love."
"Brr," Natalie said, wrapping her arms around herself and pretending to shiver despite the muggy air.
I'm going to have to introduce her to the game of freeze tag. Next sunny day. My yard. Bring a picnic lunch.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Connor, my speed-obsessed boy who likes to pretend that he can pedal his bicycle to speeds in excess of 200 mph, boasted, "My bicycle and I zipped around the pond! I used turtle boosters to go so fast."
Turtle boosters. Turbo boosters. Same-same.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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We woke earlier this week to a dense fog shrouding much of north Texas.
Visibility was something like just a quarter of a mile. There were lots of drivers with their hands at the trusty old 10 and 2 as they peered like moles over the steering wheel, hoping to see just a bit of the roadway.
Connor, Natalie, and I talked all morning about the fog and what caused it, but Natalie misunderstood and declared it a "soggy day," pronouncing "soggy" as "saw-gy." When we walked into the garage to drive Connor to school, she peeked out into the driveway and said, "Hmm. Still soggy."
Considering that the weather report listed the humidity at 97 percent, "soggy" about summed it up just right. The girl was on to something.There's still a smidge of time to throw your name into the hat for the signed copy of Bear's Loose Tooth by Karma Wilson. I'll be out and about for most of the day and won't draw a winner until late afternoon. Up the ante. Just post a comment to butterflies sleep in trees.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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I stumbled and nearly met my untimely demise as I tripped over Connor's running shoes.
("Sneakers" is what we called them where I grew up. But Jim mocks that: "Do you sneak around in them on tiptoe? Are they very sneaky? Why 'sneakers'? Sneakas. Sneakas!" he says. And so, "running shoes," it is.)
"Connor," I called, "Could you move your shoes? They're blocking the way."
Connor came peeling around the corner at top speed. "My shoes are walking away?!" he said, misunderstanding me. "I'd better stop them!"
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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We went to dinner last night at a restaurant whose entrance boasts a revolving door. Fun for the little urchins. Terrifying for their catastrophic-thinker of a mom: Wedged heads! Nipped fingers! Pinched necks! Oh my.
As we drove into the parking lot, Natalie saw that I had ignored her request that we eat at "the bear restaurant," another local establishment that has a trophy grizzly bear and a trophy polar bear, er, "gracing" its foyer. (I'm not one for hunting; I'd prefer it if wildlife stayed wild and, well, alive. I am, however, all about the one-liner. I never, ever tire of elbowing Jim in the ribs, jerking my head toward the bears, and saying, "Those two? Hung. Like. Bears.")
Back to my tale . . .
Natalie cried, "But I want to go to the bear restaurant!" (It does serve up the. most. amazing macaroni and cheese, I must admit.)
But then, just like that, just as we drove past the front of the restaurant, Natalie stopped short of a full-on meltdown.
My little ballerina gasped. "Oh! The twirly door! I want to walk through the twirly door!" And then, just like that, all was right with the world.
The twirly door: putting the kibosh on a meltdown and saving dinner. My hero.
This isn't the first time that Natalie or Connor has turned the ordinary into something twirly. Come on over to this post.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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One of my college roommates confided that when she was a girl, she could never quite figure out why her grandmother often bellowed, "Up and at 'em!"
"I knew who Adam was," my roommate said, "but I just couldn't figure out who Up was in the Bible."
That Adam guy has thrown Connor for a big old loop, too, it seems.
Back a few weeks ago—when Connor was a wee little pre-kindergartner—his teacher sent home a note that read, "I often call the girls in the class 'Madam' just for fun. Today, Connor stood up and said, 'OK, Adams, let's put away your white boards!' His classmates all looked at him, confused, wondering, 'Who is this Adam?'"
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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I knew this day was coming, and well, here it is. Natalie no longer refers to herself as "Natty-yay." She is now officially "Natawee." Bah humbug and all that.
I am bracing myself for the day she pronounces her name correctly. It'll come sooner than I hope, I just know it.
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Connor begins kindergarten tomorrow. I'll skip over the absolute frenzy in my mind and jump right to this, a sign I spotted while we were Galveston earlier this month.Figured it might come in handy, considering the <ahem> kindergarten requirements.
Cannot wait to see all the kindergartners arrive at school, showing off their spicy Latin dance moves.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Natalie wasn't fond of the salty ocean water either. She trudged out of the waves, scraping her tongue on her teeth and declaring, "Saucy, Mommy. The water is saucy," meaning, of course, salty.Later, when she drank milk at dinner, she set down her cup and wrinkled her nose. "I think it tastes a little bit saucy."
Now she's just making things up.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Jim and I introduced to Connor and Natalie the idea of a weekend trip to Houston to visit with one of Jim's brothers. "And while we are there," we said, "we'll take a day trip to the beach in Galveston."
The word "beach" was all Connor and Natalie needed to hear to get all riled up about the trip.
For four days straight, Natalie melted down while we drove Connor to school when she learned that we were not driving to the beach then and there, that day.
"But I want to go to the beach!" she sobbed.
"We will, we will," I told her. "Just not quite yet. We need to pack our suitcases, after all. What should we pack?" I asked, in a flawed attempt to rediect her attention.
"Sunblock," she of the milky-white skin replied. "And my swimsuit. And water shoes. And my towel."
Natalie pronounces "towel" as "towe-wool," I imagine exactly as it is meant to be pronounced, not the way I slur it into "towl."
"Good, good!" I encourage her along. "How about shorts and shirts and undies?"
"Yes, those, too."
The next morning, Natalie rushed from her bedroom and announced, "OK! Let's go to the beach!"
I looked up and saw her dressed in her swimsuit and water shoes, toting her wheeled ladybug suitcase behind her. She looked quite like a lady of leisure on a mission.
Inside the suitcase were two more swimsuits, and that's all. She didn't get the idea of packing light from me—Ms. Pack for Contingencies—let me tell you.
Nothing, nothing, can describe the fury of a two-year-old who has been told, yet again, that, no, we're not going to the beach just yet, not today.
In tomorrow's post, we do head to the beach, and, in doing so, I win back Natalie's affections, once again.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Natalie eyes me curiously as I putter about the kitchen, putting away dishes, wiping countertops clean, shaking crumbs from the bottom of the toaster.
"What are you doing, Mommy?" she asks.
"Oh, I'm just cleaning up a bit. We have a mess on our hands."
"No, we don't," Natalie said, studying her palms. "We have pink hands. See?" She traipses over, holding out her hands. "Our hands are clean."
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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I've had some sort of back-neck-shoulder-arm issue going on for the last week or so that has really put me on the disabled list. I hurt.
I grimaced (not unusual) and tried to sit comfortably at the dinner table. Natalie, our girl who really has such a caretaker instinct, took notice and said, "I'm sorry your shoulder hurts, Mommy. We'll take care of you. We'll take you to your back doctor, and he'll take off that shoulder and put on a new one. Everything will be just fine. You'll see."
Little sweet babochka.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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Natalie flitted around the kitchen in her petal pink tutu and ballet slippers, performing what she called "The Dance of the Wombat."
Very graceful creatures, I'm sure.
She twirled in place, her arms over her head, her fingers just barely touching. "When I'm older," she said, "I'm going to dance with boys."
Jim's eyes opened wide. He froze midway through making a sandwich for Connor.
Natalie grasped the oven door handle and practiced her arabesque. "I'm going to dance with boys at the barre," she professed.
And with that, Jim's world stopped spinning. It just stopped. The protective daddy in him heard, "I'm going to dance with boys at the bar," and that's a whole 'nother notion, and not one involving girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.
©Jennifer Linney. All Rights Reserved.
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