The Last Story

The first book I read to our son was a thick paged cardboard series made up of common images: dog, cat, ball, apple. It was white against black, and he loved it. The starkness against the shiny pitch, it kept his gaze. We first shared it on the night he was born. I kept on reading him to him, and then when his two brothers came along, I read to all three of them together. Every night of their lives since I first held them.

Some of our books were finished over a month, reading a chapter a night. The Boxcar Kids were a big hit. The one that really tried our patience but I was determined to get through it, was the Wizard of Oz. You'd be surprised just how different the book is from the Judy Garland movie we've all seen.

I always read to my kids, they'd cushion themselves around me, one would wrap himself around the top of my head, and we'd read a book before they'd go to bed.

It was an easy way to get them to fall asleep without a fight.

The stories we read were what made up our nights: a snack, a warm bath, pajamas, tooth brushing, and then under the blankets, pillows piled up and around, and headed for a good night story.

Then one night my 7th grade son went to bed. He went upstairs, shouted down to us that he was going to sleep.

"Sleep good, baby," I shouted back to him, thinking he was just that tired out. The next few nights, he did the same. I wasn't sure whether to ask him about it or not, so I didn't.

I was down to two around me for a story, but then the middle guy started to feel out of place without the older guy around, so he started going up to bed without a story, too.

That left me with our youngest.

"Hey," I asked him when he was leaning in under my arm one night at bedtime. "How do you feel about keeping on reading our stories, without your brothers?"

"I like it, mom. I was kind of feeling they were too old too. But I never said anything. But I don't understand how they can give up the stories just like that. You're such a good story reader to us."

"Do you think I should ask them why, honey?" I really wanted to know.

"No. They'll feel guilty. When it's your mom, you always feel like she'll cry about it."

"Yeah, you're right." I laughed at that part, because the truth is funny. I would probably cry if I asked them.

The older ones knew when it was time to be done with that part of our life together, the youngest one knew just where he still wanted to be.

Right now, I'm ready to read my nightly book. I don't read to any of them anymore. I'm here, under a blanket with a pillow behind me. And wishing I would have known that the last time I read to all of them, that I would have known, it was the last time.

* * * 

Remember Your Teachers

When my father died, two months into my year in the first grade, my mother was left with six children. The oldest barely 18, the youngest, a two month old newborn. Where I fell in that mix, was somewhere in the lost middle.

I have no bad feelings, no blame for anyone, I can't imagine what that time was like for my mother, a 39 year old widow, only six years in this country. She had to keep from losing her mind, and that is something I will always understand.

But, that is not to say, that within the space of the four children that fell between the youngest and the oldest, that my place in there didn't feel cavernous. There was no bottom to how we disappeared along with my father. My mother had to work, three jobs, and my Abuela, my Spanish grandmother, lived with us. While my grandmother of course had to tend to the newborn, the rest of us had what we needed. We were fed well, dressed warm enough, and slept under the roof of a home where we knew no cold.

My mother was stretched in every direction possible, and through no small miracle for a woman living her life as a new widow, she was able to take care of us.

What I craved, though, was not more of any of the things you think a child would wish for: toys, more fashionable clothes, fancier shoes. What I wanted, was someone to see me by looking at me, and to know me, by understanding I needed someone like that.

At the start of second grade, that person who would look at me, was my teacher, Miss Quill. Decades later, I still know that her eyes were yellow green. That's a visual you don't lose when someone spends time looking into your own eyes.

Miss Quill somehow knew just what to do for an eight year old girl, one not sure of where she belonged in a world that no longer had her father in it. And God above also knew, because he moved Miss Quill into the house next door as our new neighbor. She came with a houseful of roommates, all education majors, and all eager to try out their homework assignments on an eager to learn grade schooler. There was an art major, a music major, a reading specialist, and Miss Quill, a grade school teacher.

On Saturday afternoons, I knew where to go: next door. And the women there knew what to do in return: set out newsprint, printing blocks, tempera paints, new books, coloring pencils, and sliced apples as a snack. Miss Quill would hover behind, watching while I learned, complimenting me on my work, telling me how glad she and her friends were to have someone to test out their ideas.

She told me this, leaning in and eye to eye, in a voice that had me thinking that I was needed in their house. That without me, they could never see if their ideas were good ones.

Miss Quill knew what to do. She knew to be kind, gentle, attentive, to look at me when I would on some days find the confidence to have something to say. I remember the white table in the middle of her rented flat's dining room. The plastic green and yellow flowered tablecloth she'd set out for me so I could work without worry. I remember it, and I remember it today, with a lump in my throat.

Miss Quill is why I work with young children. It's why when they say my name, I look up from anything I'm doing, and into their eyes, so there is no doubt that I am listening.

And there would be no greater honor in my life, then to have these children one day say, "I had a teacher once, and for some reason, I can never forget the color of her eyes. They were brown."

 

* * *

I Don't Know What Kind of Free Range Chicken '70s Childhood People Remember But Mine Was Survival

See this nice playset? The chains are plastic encased, like a latex wrap, around each link so that there are no pinched fingers, no accidental scrape from a rusty spot that will develop into tetanus while your precious angel sleeps.

The tire has rubber brackets sealing the rivets that fasten the chain so that your child's thighs don't come into contact with a nasty metal edge. Farther over, to the right of this photo, is a 'horsey' swing, but it's minus the metal horsey head that sometimes became jagged along the mane from exposure to the elements.

Of extreme note is the soft and supple swing seat, the kind of bottom-hugging provided so different from the flat slats that see-sawed you off if you sat in them too quickly.

This is a safe playset. I'm sure there was some sort of play-lab situation where clip boards and white-lab coated researchers were called in to take note of possible injurious situations. This is my kids' playset and this is their life in the 2000s.

Now, my childhood, the one from the early '70s, was a different one from the things that have been written about with regard to growing up before so much child injury and safety obsession.

I read what people remember from this time, the afternoons spent uncaged and unsupervised, and the words are cast with undeniable wistfulness for the free range days of the past.

I don't think that was a good thing. Because when I sit back and place myself in the days before needing deodorant and Clearasil, it's not with the same sighs of nostalgia of these '70s remembers. I sigh, loud and in disbelief, for the number of times we were in the emergency room. Stitches, casts, ace bandage wraps, and being woken every two hours in the night after a head injury. I don't recall free range but I do recall the free fall of those days.

You'd think my question would be Why would my mother buy us plastic guns that shot out corks, bows that did indeed shoot arrows--rubber tips do nothing to tone down the sting of a target hit, bouncy balls the circumference of an electric car and that sent you face down into coffee tables, and rusty gougey untethered unsafe, backyard play sets? Why? Maybe with that last one, I might be able to understand: dirt cheap light weight cash and carry aluminum.

I was talking to a friend this morning, and as conversation goes with good friends, we went from hello how was your coffee to "OMG Do you remember the dangerous toys we had?" in three texts.

Did you have the kid coffee percolator?
OMG Yes.
How about the lawn jarts?
Sweet Baby Jesus we had them too.
How about that dangerous red bouncy ball you rode?
Yup.
And the clackers that your brothers had that could crack a skull from across the street?
Yes. Both. The clackers and the brother that almost took my eye out.

I look at the safe and reassuring playset above, and think of my children on the day this structure went up. They watched from the kitchen windows while three workers hammered things into place, and after 10 questions of Can we go out yet? Is it done yet? It'll be done today, right? I gave the go ahead and my kids shoved their way out the kitchen door and had at it, not a worry in the world.

That was 15 years ago, and the playset is as safe now as it was that first day. We've had no reason to take it down either.

Contrast what my children's playset memories will be to the playset of my childhood, a metal seat and rod delight that lasted from Friday night to Saturday evening.

It was a saddle-like looking pumping station, made up of four seats. Each seat radiated out from the center and in front of the seat was a handle. You pumped, all four of you, as hard and as fast as you could and the seats would twirl around and now we know why the box was marked with a name I know I will never forget, Twirly Bird.

The first Friday afternoon, we set out to pump. Young, cautious, by Saturday afternoon we had become careless. I'll bet you thought I was going to say braver, maybe confident. Nope, we didn't respect the power of the spin, so careless is what we were. All four of us set to pumping, spinning, pumping, spinning faster, pumping, twirling, going going going spin spin spin! Until the pull became too much for a 42 pound weight of a little girl temporarily mad with spinning power and I (was there any doubt who that little girl was) went careening off my saddle seat and my small pinhead barely missed the cement block foundation of the basement of our house. I landed four feet away, on my back, staring as much as I was able, into the blue summer sky, cumulus clouds overhead, so serene and in juxtaposition to the terror I was unable to voice as I gripped the blades of grass with my fingers, desperate for them to hold me to the ground and keep me from falling in the sky above or below. I was as befuddled as a pilot in a pitch black night flying over an ocean. I could no longer discern up from down.

Next to drop like a shooting star was my brother. My little sister was tossed off like one of those white haired dummies on the shelf at a carnival. We were dropping like flies and after my brother threw up the green Kool-Aid we had had for lunch as he was sent projectile to the other side of the yard, my mother was done. She had the tenant from the floor below dismantle the Twirly Bird and she didn't tell him to take care with it, as I recall.

The Sears purchase was placed curbside, not even donated to a thrift center. My mother did not want any other child plucked into the atmosphere against their will again.

I tried to find a picture of the Twirly Bird for this post. I googled "World's most dangerous toys." I tried "World's most irresponsible toys." I searched "class action lawsuit toys." I tried "vintage but deadly toys."

Nothing.

The thing is, I know the Twirly Bird was real. The memory I have of complete disorientation is one no one forgets.

That Twirly Bird was real, as real as I'm sure the days of the '70s that others remember as free wheelin' exploratory fun.

Free wheelin' for them, but free hurling through space, for me.


Hurling, definition: the act of throwing or casting, usually with great force or strength. See: Twirly Bird.

 

* * *

For the Love of The Quirky Child

Just as I'm not like most adults, I also wasn't like most kids. I had a few quirks. *coughsputterletsbehonestlotsofthem.* For starters, I had about thirty phobias. They didn't fit in any category, I was more of a sampler box. Some of my fears were founded, others nothing that a quick prayer and the sign of the cross didn’t cure.

How I came to amass these phobias is a complex explanation. To help you envision what life as an 8-year-old me was like, try this on: whereas someone else might hear someone tell of a frightful situation and make a comment then move on, this shared story would move into my heart and soul, my mind took it and made it into omg that could be me.

When I was in the second grade, I read that it was an asp that killed Cleopatra. That’s all the information I needed to heave the pre-Google days of my childhood straight into a breathless run to the library, my chest leaning against the reference librarian's desk. "Pictures, pictures please, of an asp!" The librarian (why didn't she ever ask my name? you think she'd want to know my name) would peer over her bifocals and walk me over to the science shelf. Once there, I would sit with the nature books open before me and memorize every pictorial rendition of an asp, in all its possible lengths and widths, so if one were to slither up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I would know it and escape accordingly.

On the days I wasn’t monitoring the ground for asps on my ten-block walk to school, I feared that on the first day of the week back to school on Monday, the lunch lady would give me back my lunch money change in counterfeit change, because I always started the week with a fresh five-dollar bill that I’d have to break on Mondays for Hot Dog Day. We had just discussed counterfeit bills in school, especially with five dollar denominations being the most common ones counterfeited!

It was exhausting being scared, and at the end of the night had I know of the word masseuse, I would have dreamed of one. I could only occupy my mind with one fear at a time, and my existence was energy consuming. Until one day I got smart and decided to combine my phobias for less physical exertion.

I was as smart as I was neurotic.


Mondays could be counterfeit money and asp day.

Tuesdays I would allow my sweaty-palmed fear of my pens running out of ink during a spelling test in combination with not having enough tissues in my desk in case of a dry-air bloody nose. (these two things did happen to me, and here is your example, a fine one, of a phobia that is founded) 

Wednesday I could kill two phobia birds with one relief stone by walking around practicing what to say in case the most popular girl in class talked to me (one day in home ec class, one did) and rehearsing an at-the-ready apology in case there was someone I had absent mindedly forgotten to say sorry to. (my sewing teacher, who was always so kind to me, but she spoke to me at the same time as Connie Piscitello did, and what can I say--I was starstruck)

This doubling up was freeing up some serious mental time and I was loving it.

It didn’t take long to realize that streamlining my phobias could leave me with a blank mental slate and free me up for Saturday and Sunday.

But needing to get all my phobias in by Friday meant I had to schedule four or five a day. Efficiency fell into place with alliteration, because grouping like sounding items together works for everyone.


Fridays were my F day.

Friday, when I’d mince my Food with my Front teeth For Fear of Finding a Fish bone in my Friday night Fish Fry and choking combined with Fearing that I’d Forget to ask For a Five-dollar bill For the Following week.

Clever child that I was, this plan worked, I had an as close to normal life as a child like me, could.

 

 I’ll Stop here and Say that Sweet Saturday and Sunday came none too Soon. Their Sunrise arriving with a Sigh, to See me Serenely Smiling in the Secure Surrender of the Safety of the Subliminal Silence in my Skull.

 

Ah, the sensation of sweet sleepy stimuli-free Saturday and Sunday.

 

***

Why Old Moms Tell New Moms, "Enjoy Them While You Can!"

In the days when venturing out happened with a bitty one snuggled into a front carrier and two more just as bitty in my double stroller, older moms would pass me and glance with longing. "Ahhh, I miss those days. Enjoy them while you can! They grow up before you know it!," they would sigh a warning as their eyes misted over.

As if I hadn't been hearing that since first becoming a mother.

I knew what the older moms were saying was true, in fact, children do grow up. Of course they do, but it didn't feel like that was something that was going to happen in my life any time soon. When you're drowning in the endless days of motherhood, how do you even digest advice like that?

From the moment my oldest child was born, I was his favorite being. Only I would do. When he was five days old, I walked into his room and just at the sound of my voice, his eyes began searching out. Followed by the cry for me, the wail, actually. He had such an enveloping need for me that my husband would have to lift him up and hold him overhead to see me when I disappeared behind the shower curtain, trying for a shower for the first time in days.

I couldn't take it anymore and my husband's shoulders started breaking down so one day at the discount homegoods store when I saw a see-through shower curtain, I knew I had the answer to our sanity. Now everyone could see me in my full naked glory, just like they all screamed for. My child could not live without me remaining in his sight, I was that essential to his survival.

 

My son and I lived a co-existence, one rightly filled with highs and lows. It was hard to tell where I left off and he began. At three years old, when I would ask him what he wanted for lunch, he'd answer, “What mama have!” I was submerged in motherhood during those days - loving him so, and at the same time, falling apart with the fear that things would always be this consuming. 

 

I didn't know about the seasons of parenting. Just as with his finger sucking, that I thought would last forever. And his climbing on chairs and falling off onto the kitchen hardwood floor, his determined screams of refusal when it was time to take a nap and therefore be separated from me ... I thought each one a static condition, and eternal.

 

But life is fluid, dynamic, and though we see children growing up when they belong to other people, it is impossible for us to imagine that tomorrow comes for us. Will our own children not always be an infant, a toddler, a child in grade school? Nope.

So when that same baby of mine, who once imagined that the oxygen he needed to breathe could only come from me, left for college and found his own air, I couldn't find mine. It turned out he was right, because now I'm the one searching for how to breathe without him here.

The memories I have of holding his small body in my arms are some of the sweetest in my life, but I never thought the moments would end this quickly. When did he grow up? Because I had my eye on him the whole time, and I watched for changes.

 

The days slipped by because children don't grow up little by little, they do it overnight. You go from leaning down to snap their size 2T onesies to standing in front of them, your arms reaching up as you help them with their tie on graduation day. Like that.

Childhood is temporary, even on the days it feels permanent.

Older moms on the bike path who would pass me with reminders of the whooshing of the days, I would hear them, I would. But how could I tell them Thanks for the reminder I know you mean well but it doesn't feel like the half-second that you remember it as because I am knee deep in the seasons of babyhood.

You have to be at the far end of anything before you can look back. That's the only way it works. How can you see your starting point if you're not at the finish line? In those days of early parenting, when women feel it their duty to tell you, “Enjoy every bit of it!,” I didn't want to reflect on that.

Because I just wanted one freakin' second to myself.
Because those days of early parenting are trial by error/ baptized by the flaming hot fire/flying by the seat of your pants.

 

No one can tell you what those days are like because you have no point of reference. Loving those minutes so much that every thought is about your children, their well being, what they need, do they have it all? The other half of your body and soul are falling apart while you watch. How do you explain to a parent that both ends of the spectrum are part of life with children? That you can't untangle either one and would they believe you, if you tried? 

 

That's why “Enjoy them when they're little!” doesn't work. I want to say it myself, to so many new moms, but I catch myself and swallow the words because I know. Just as when it was said to me, the woman with three children hanging from her neck like necklaces, it's impossible to project that far out with little chubby fingers waving in front of your face. When your days are made of four-hour sleep the night before and your lunch is left-over finger food from toddler's plates while you stand at the sink rinsing something out for the twenty-ninth time that day, who's going to believe, "Enjoy it while you can!"

 

Had you told me that one day this 20-pound baby of mine sitting on my husband's shoulders, red faced from screaming on the other side of the shower curtain for his mama while I for the love of God took just a three-minute shower for the first time in five days for God's sake, would today be half an inch shy of six feet tall and grabbing for the car keys, I'd tell you that happens to someone else's child -- but not mine. Mine will always need me there in front of his vision, won't he?

 

If I could say anything to new parents, it would be this: Smile when you can, cry when you have to, and know that where you are now, is part of the beautiful seasons of your life.

 

You don't need me to tell you to enjoy them while you can.

I have no doubt that you already are, and know how -- in your own way.

 

Just like I did.

 

 

Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee 2014 Videos Are Here!

It's just like the holidays. When the Listen To Your Mother Show videos go live, my internet goes wild. Everyone, cast and producers, are sharing. This year, LTYM had 32 shows in 32 cities. Our videos are ready for viewing on our channel, Listen To Your MotherYoutube Channel.

I had the joy of sharing a story again this year in our Milwaukee show. Giving you a feel of life, when your grandmother considers modern medicine, a far cry from anything to be taken seriously.

My piece, "The Medical College of Abuela."

An Abundance of All That Is Good

Driving my youngest child home after he's had a full day of school is better than winning any lottery could ever be. I settle our black van in the school pick up line early so I'm one of the first cars he sees, and then along with my mid-afternoon coffee and a book dog-eared to the page from the day before, I wait.

I spot his curly head run for our car, and the way his backpack bounces against every disc in his spine makes me cringe with sympathetic pain. His eyes never leave mine once he's locked into my gaze, and when he's almost at the car, I push the button to open the automatic sliding doors. He falls in like he just made it onto a lifting helicopter.

The backpack is flung in first, followed by his all-legs body lunging across the middle seat. With his head tossed back against the headrest, he exhales a big sigh. His sets the stage, his first words are always the same, "What a day."

And then he sits up, animated, he buckles his seatbelt, and the words pick up pace as he realizes how much he has to tell me. The unbelievable events, the surprise twists, the triumphs, the challenges, the happenings of his day in his 5th grade classroom that YOU WILL NEVER GUESS BUT GO AHEAD TRY, MOM, TRY!

He dares me to see if I know who held the court at foursquare at lunch, to guess who finished the math quiz first! And then, who do you think forgot their homework again!

I guess, and most times, I'm right... and the short ride home is over way too quickly. We pull into our garage, and the chattering stops. He scoots out of his seat and runs into the house, not able to wait one minute more until he can peel his school uniform off and ball it onto the living room sofa. He opens the refrigerator and rummages for a snack, our conversation from the ride home already left echoing in the car.

Except for me, his voice lilts in my head like the first chirping of birds after a much too long winter. I replay all he's told me because I never want to forget the sound of him, still so bell-like and clear, and young.

My children are what make Mother's Day what it is for me -- a time for me to celebrate this role of my life. I need no more than the gifts I already gloriously have, that of their love as they greet me with the enthusiastic retelling of their day. What more could there be, than how this child of mine saves and gathers his words, until the time of when he sees me again.

 

* * *

Colombian Gold

photo credit: Nino.Modugnohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mozzarellahead/3615483975/">Nino.Modugno

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Growing up raised by my Colombian grandmother, not only did I learn to speak Spanish but I learned the idioms that come along with being a native speaker. The expression "loses a bit in translation" becomes glaringly apparent when a native speaker tries to explain a colloquialism to a book-taught speaker of Spanish.

The literal translation of these quaint sayings is golden. As wonderful as trying to explain "pull someone’s leg" to a non-native speaker of the English language. There are hundreds of expressions that I heard while growing up, and when I sat down to write them, it was hard to stop.

So much Colombian gold, but the ones I’ve culled here are the best.

Colombianisms, for when you find yourself, sitting next to a Colombian:

--Me gusto mi chocolate espeso — "I like my chocolate thick," said about a *lively* to-the-limit style about anything. Chocolate is expensive and thick chocolate is pure luxury. Apply the thick chocolate premise to my shopping style, making the words here mean “I like my shoes expensive.” But I'm sure these words would work just as well while watching Pitbull.

--Con mucho gusto — Said after every introduction, or interaction. It means With much pleasure! Think how much nicer our world would be if every time we had anything to do with anybody, we always ended it with “With much pleasure!” This is especially nice, because one says it, whether you mean it or not. Even through gritted teeth.

--Y quien pidio el pollo? — Literally, “and who ordered the chicken?” A delicious thing to say after someone gets in trouble from their own doing. You go out with that less than desirable character, and your heart is broken, so you run home crying to your mother who has been waiting her entire life to say, “and who ordered the chicken?”

--Sentir fiero — You say this when you are on fire! to do something. Meaning: “I feel the fire to do this!” The Spanish are so gusto grabbing. As for me, I'm hoping to someday sentir fiero! to clean this house.

--Con hambre, no hay pan duro — I say this to my kids when they are less than pleased with my mid-week refrigerator dump dinners. It means, “With hunger, there is no bread too hard.” Hard bread aka my zuchini squash summer salad.

--Ni amarrado! — A handy little phrase. Meaning: “not even if I was hog tied!” Two words, and how it packs a wallop when that mean old thing from a few blocks away invites you to her Pampered Chef party.

--Que mas pues! — After a morning of people rushing into parking spots while you're in the midst of heading for them yourself, followed by a two hour put on hold phone call to your insurance company that eats up your afternoon, you suddenly remember that you need to take flowers to your school's open house that night, so you rush to the grocery story with 10 minutes left and someone with just a touch quicker than you reflexes grabs that last carnation bunch that you needed. You look up and shout to the universe, “and what else? What else?!” Dramatic? Yes, these are Colombianisms.

--Duerme mas que gato con anemia — Oh, how I love this one. Literally, “she sleeps more than a cat with anemia.” My mother used to say this about my brother's girlfriend. If my mother were alive today, she'd still be saying it.

--Mas duro que mordisco de loco — “That was harder than a bite from a crazy man.” Pull this charmer out at the next PTA meeting.

--Entonces? — This is, oh... Only The Best Way To Answer a Phone Ev-Er. The words actually mean “And so…?” So lovely, cuts to the chase, efficient and practical.

There you have it, my Top Ten Colombianisms. Use them in the best way I know how: with a good, loud fake phone call while you wait outside at school pick up time. Give the gaggling hens around you something to cluck about. And doesn't that one over there look worse than a cat with anemia?

*Blog Bonus: pronunciation guide below:

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 Other Places You Can Find Me This Week:

Huffington Post

Aiming Low

MetroParent Milwaukee

Purple Clover

Guide To Skylanders For Parents of Kids Who Don't Know By a Kid

Skylanders Part 2/4 (If you already don't know what this is about go here) 

 I am writing this today because my mom is resting. I'm going to write four of these. This is the second one about my favorite game Skylanders. I write it on openoffice writer and then put it here.

 * * *

Part 2: Skylanders Giants, and the types of Skylanders

by me (Baby E or Auggie if you know me)

The second installment of the Skylanders franchise is Skylanders Giants. 

In Skylanders Giants there are eight giants that are twice the size of normal Skylanders. Also I am typing this fast because I had soccer and just finished homework and have to eat my tacos but I want to write this so your kids can play with you.

The story is that in ancient Skylands, there were evil giant robots called Arkeyans [THIS IS NOT SPELLED WRONG] that enslaved Skylands. 

The giants were summoned to stop them but I'm not sure by who so I don't want to say if I'm wrong. 

They defeated them, but with their last bit of energy, they banished the Giants from Skylands.

And now they have finally come back and it's your job to put them on the Portal of Power as the master of control charge to bring them to life and decide which ones.

There are five types of Skylanders, with three new types coming in the new game.

Type number 1 is series one, the original Skylanders, the series 2, which are better version to me of the series one and have enhanced ability Giants, which are GIANTS, lightcore [THIS IS NOT SPELLED WRONG] which light up in certain parts from the light emitted by the POP, and core which come out with the second and third games and are original to that game, though Series 2 version can made from them.

TELL ME IF YOU NEED TO KNOW MORE.
Bye.
Thank you.

-Baby E

 _______________________________________________________________________

I Cannot Tell a Lie

Folded in haphazard half, was my Mother's Day card from my youngest.

It was printed with pink marker on pink paper, which made the letters look kinda of orange-ish, pale -- but I could still make it out when I stood next to the brightness of the kitchen window to read it.

An acrostic poem, and an ambitious one, too. Not just made up of first letters of my name spelling out only one word vertically. This boy had written me a deluxe model acrostic -- he had penned in a complete sentence for the first letters of my name, which he thinks is MOTHER.

It was a wonderful read, and I had tears from the laughter. He, of course, didn't understand what was so funny, and when I couldn't stop laughing he explained, "What? You know cards are hard for me and it feels funny to not tell the truth."

I'd photocopy it but against the pink paper and pink marker, it looks like a dark blob. Letter for sentence, I've copied it here.

Happy Mother's Day

Many sided sides to her.

Other things I can say about her.

There is a lot of stuff that I like about her but people say is weird.

Hours and hours of fun we have doing her favorite thing of nothing.

Everything she says with the faces that go with it.

Realistic, she tells me exactly what she thinks.

I love you mom.  

 * * *

*Pretty sure this is a love note, don't you think?


xo (hope you all had a wonderful mother's day)

** BONUS day for me today: besides this wonderful note from my boy, I'm also being featured on mamapedia! Voices! with a post on parenting and teens, "What Happened to the Meat?" THANK YOU mamapedia! Stop over and check them out, you'll find great community voices as well as online resources for all sorts of sharing info. and parenting's nuggets of wisdom.

Happy Mother's Day To Them

For the past 18 years, Mother's Day has been a celebration for the three of them, my sons. The ones who made me a mother. I spend the holiday doing for them because they have made me so happy.

I don't ask my three for anything, but they still make me their cards and have their dad take them to buy me my flowers.

I'm happy at home, starting the day with the cinnamon rolls they love so much, and asking them what they'd like for dinner.

Because truthfully, in the life I've had, this holiday has always felt hollow and mandatory to me... until they were born.

Mother's Day is a day spent like any other of my days; in disbelief of the gold I've been given. The diamonds of my every days -- and though I have never not begun or ended a day since they've been born thanking everything under the stars for the jackpot that has rained down on me with them as my life, on this annual celebration, I say to myself over and over, I can't believe I am their mother.

I spent Sunday staring at their faces while they talked, the way their cheeks look so soft when the sun hits them from behind, reveling in the sound of the joy in their laughs, recognizing the uniqueness of each of their smiles and how one's lip curls up only on the right. I know just how one stands with his left leg jutted out, and how the other one always points his left knee out to the side.

Mother's Day is a day of granted requests, and I wait for them to sing to me. It's what I tell them I want when they ask me what I want them to do today. I laugh and order them, "Sing me a made up song!" And they do. Each one out voluming the other in hopes of getting the loudest applause from me, and at the end of it all, with furrowed brows, they scold me and say I can't clap the same way for all of them.

So they decide they have to do it again.

Thank you for today, my children, for giving me a holiday to celebrate. Happy Mother's Day to you.

* * *

We live in an imperfect world, and as well intended of a sentiment as Mother's Day is, for many, it brings on an overload of complexities and life circumstances. If you're someone looking for shared words to help you feel like you're not the only one struggling with this holiday, here's a magnificent post I found: via hopefulworld .org (a great community site) In Case Mother's Day is Hard for You.

xo

This is 11

It strikes me so funny that you've turned 11, my dear youngest child, because 11:11 has always been your magic time.

When this grip of 11:11 got a hold on you, I can't remember. But it seems like for always you'd look up at the digital clock, wait for it to flip to 11:11, and then BAM, you'd say "11:11! Mama, time to do something magic!" And somehow, you always would -- just by looking at me with that smile, you would make my heart melt. Magic.

I remember a morning in summer, driving home from the pool, nothing on but our wet swimsuits and you saw the blue numbers on the car's dashboard blink to 11:11. "Mama! It's 11:11! Do something different!"

And so I would. I'd honk the horn, I'd steer with my knees while I clapped, I'd do anything for you to work your magic on me. I'd put my hat on backwards and pretend to drool and you'd laugh that laugh that would make my eyes sting with happy tears. Yes. 11:11. Magic.

You're 11 now.

That magic number 11.

11 is you still holding my hand.
11 is still able to fit together in a movie theatre seat with you.
11 is you, who still calls me mama. 

And 11 is the time of magic unseen, but I can feel.

Just like you telling me, "Mama! It's 11:11! Do something different!"

And so you do.

11 is you asking me to pack away the bedspread of dragons that you picked out for your room not so many years ago.
11 is you choosing to go with your oldest brother on rides now, instead of automatically reaching for my hand.
11 is me surprising you with a visit at school lunch time, and you thanking me for coming, then asking if it's all right if you go play with your friends, though.

Of course it's all right that you play with your friends. And that we picked out a solid orange new bedspread for your room. It's also actually good that you want to do things with your big brother now, really. He leaves for school in only a year's time.

You're 11 now. That magic number of 11. And you work that magic every time you sneak downstairs after you've gone to bed, and see me sitting here in the computer's white light. You stand behind me, your arms encircling my neck as you bend over to kiss me, and I feel your hot breath against my ear. I close my eyes and hear you whisper, "Mama, it's 11:11! Do something magic!"

Oh, I wish I could, son, but you've already beat me to it.

**I love you, Auggie. Happy Birthday, my beautiful boy.

* * *

Son, Now That You're 18, There Are Things You Should Know

Dear beautiful firstborn child,

Happy birthday!

Today you turn 18. As the dedicated parents we are, we know that to serve you well, there are some things that we need to tell you. The most important being that your father and I truly adore you. You make us beam with pride and we are beyond fortunate to be your parents.

When you walk into a room, it's hard for me to not stand up shouting "It's him!" and start clapping -- so I've quit trying to stop myself. Your father's punch to your arm is his way of saying he loves his world because you're in it.

And today you turn 18.

As of 1:39 pm today, I will be living with two men.

You'll be leaving for college much too soon and I'm going to stick my head in the sand about that for awhile longer, but in the meantime, your father and I would be doing you a great injustice if we did not tell you the things you need to know now that you're an adult.


Please keep this information from your younger brothers awhile longer, won't you? Here we go:


The Truth You Need To Know Now That You're 18:

• When we ask you "Were you born in a barn?," we really don't care what you answer. We only care that you close the doors because the cold air gets in and we pay for heat. That's all. I'm not even really sure about the paying for heat part, but your dad says it because his dad said it. One day, you'll say it too.

• No one has a money tree. I know we ask you to "look outside, you see a money tree out there?" like some people have them and some people don't. We are sorry if we ever made you hope that maybe someday we'd be a family that had one.

• I know we've told you "the trouble with trouble is that it starts out as fun." Not true. When you get to college you'll realize much too soon, trouble usually starts out as trouble right off the bat.

• You really won't fry your eyes out and need new eyeballs put in if you sit too close to the TV. It may affect your vision if you spend megahours doing it and you're superyoung. But for the most part, you don't need to go out and buy that eyeball surgery insurance.

• Wet socks will give you Vietnam rot. Lord help me I don't know why we'd say that to you when you'd walk in soaking wet after a soccer game. Seriously. All we had to do was say "take off your wet socks." And also, as if you wouldn't??

• Getting a cavity hurts worse than I can ever tell you. Well, it hurts a little. We just wanted you to brush your teeth. Sure, if you let it go long enough it will, but you guys just keep brushing and flossing twice a day and seeing the dentist every six months and you're good to go. 

• Monkey see. Monkey do. Have you ever seen this at a zoo? No. Not too much imitating. Mostly just ignoring us and random screeching once in awhile. We'd say that when we didn't want you to be a sheep following the pack. Just be yourself, never mind the monkeys.

• Don't read on your back with your book held up in front of you. I don't why the hell not. Ignore this from the past 18 years. 

• If you ever decide to smoke a cigarette be sure to have a cellphone in one hand ready to dial 911 and a cigarette in the other because you'll hear your lungs crackle as they burn up. YES. I KNOW WE SAID THIS. Please try to forget the visual we've scarred you with for life and just know this: cigarettes are bad for your health, not overnight, but cumulatively. And you can spend your money on organic broccoli and pesto instead. Better choices, see? 

• And how many times have you heard this one? You are the most wonderful beautiful smartest boy in the world. Well, maybe not to other parents, but to us, YOU ARE. 

Happy birthday, wonderful child, we are proud to say that you are our son (this one? so true).

* * * 

Want to read more on teen parenting? 
--You can catch me here this week on mommy. com  talking about Society and Raising Boys.
--And here on Care. com where they interview me and ask about our house rules for teens and cell phones.

Maybe Someday They'll Tell Me

*with special thanks to my ever musing muse, Taming Insanity.

Questions I Want To Ask My Children:

1.)   Do you walk around then stop mid pace to fart, just for my benefit? Or are your friends at school treated to this special delight, also?

2.)   During lunch at school, does the conversation also begin with your favorite blood letting scene in a movie and then end with how you'd perform brain surgery on yourself via your nostrils, or, again -- am I just the lucky one?

3.)   Are screaming goat imitation competitions held elsewhere other than this house? Or do you feel it can only be done at home, because the acoustics are best when they bounce off the back of my head like that?

4.)   I have a feeling you place bets with your friends on whether or not I will bring your lunch to you at school if you forget it at home, don't you? You know what? I don't care. The thought of you with no food just dissolves me.

5.)   I won't ever get an answer to "who left their socks on the coffee table?!," "who left the empty pitcher of kool-aid in the fridge?!," and "who left the van door open all night?!," will I?

6.)   Why do you think I can get you to school in negative ten minutes and reverse time when the rest of the world would take twenty minutes to travel the same distance?

7.)   Please explain to me, so that I can help myself understand, why I go through the work of setting the table with silverware when you each grab the meat off the platter like cavemen after a shared mastodon kill.

8.)   Do you boys know I have no special skill in finding things? When something is lost, I have to look for it in the same way as any other human being does -- search and locate, boys, just like everyone else.

9.)   Please tell me when you'd like a class on toilet paper roll replenishing. I'm pretty much home all the time.

10.)  You do know I'm on to you, right, when you tell me that no one butters toast all the way to the edges like I do, just so that you get me to do it for you? Again, I don't care, the thought of you no longer being here for me to do this for, dissolves me.

xo

* * *

Enjoy Yourselves, Still

This week is Semana Santa in our house.

Holy week.

Bigger, brighter, more talk, more reading, more about our faith, the things we believe in, than the average household.

More jelly beans, more hidden Peeps, more Cadbury eggs. Larger baskets, more cleverly hidden (we use clues leading them to the baskets and so what if they're teenagers).

How Colombians do Easter. Now with more mandatory Easter viewing of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Yes, children do have to listen while mom sings along. And later in the week, I'll smile through proud tears as I overhear all three boys at one time or another singing to themselves, "I don't know how to love Him."

Happy Easter, a Blessed Passover, so many good wishes to you all for peace, love, rest, centering.

'Till next week.

xo

* * *

The Grim Reaper Finally Got Him

I assure you, our guy did not look this good

I've tweeted about our scraggly bedraggled blue betta fish for over two hundred years now.

Made jokes about building him a tiny little fish wheelchair. Poking fun at the way he'd lay half on his side, half upright, he'd appear asleep or dead, both looking the same.

I'd harass him at dinner and bring him over in his fish bowl over to watch me filet whitefish.

I was so wrong -- but I only did it because I knew he'd last forever.

Why? Because three or four years ago while downstairs one day, probably again fileting whitefish, I heard my three boys upstairs shouting for me. "Mom! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!"

Slapping the boning knife down on the plastic cutting board, I leaped the stairs two at a time. I ran into the boys' bathroom where GoldFish Massacre III was now playing, in technicolor. Seems the separating mesh screen that kept our two pet betta fish apart had fallen to the side.The reason for the screen is the aggressive nature of the betta fish breed. My children stood, wild eyed, fingers in their mouths, as red betta fish was now pulling off scales one by one from blue betta fish. The fin brothers were going at it.

Have you ever seen betta fight? I'll tell you this, they're known as Siamese Fighting Fish for a reason.

It's nasty, dude. We had to painfully watch them circle one another while they took sneaky nips at each other and yanked each others' fins off. They moved, darting so fast, I just couldn't get them off of each other fast enough.

Amid my children's horrified screams, I hurried to remove at least one of them from the bowl, but with all the float like a butterfly sting like a bee Muhammad Ali stabbing and jabbing going on, it felt like forever trying to pull them to safety. The brawl was only seconds, but it was enough for our little blue guy to feel the brunt of it. From what was left of BlueFish, clearly, RedFish was winning. I frantically fished them both out (ha!) and kept them permanently separated after that. All I could think was how here we had moved to the suburbs, and my kids somehow end up with ringside seats to a Mexican cockfight.

While Mr. BlueFish did not emerge victorious, he did emerge with his life, albeit one fin shorter. Barely surviving his war torn state, we were sure we'd be playing taps for him before the sun came up to greet the day.

Well, if 7 a.m. the next morning didn't have us sounding like Gomer Pyle because, Sergeant Carter? Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. BlueFish was Christmas Miracle healed! And it was RedFish that had put his weary head down, never to Siamese fight again.

BlueFish had lived.

That was three years ago. Mr. BlueFish kept going, and we kept feeding him; me occasionally changing his water (though admittedly, I could've been more conscientious). Every day he'd call up his Siamese warrior genetic coding and play his game of "Ha! Try and catch me won't you, Grim Reaper!" We'd walk past and bend over his little bowl, whispering little fishy words of encouragement like "hang in there." I kept him on his toes by taunting him with translucent whitefish filets waved before him. There'd be weekly family updates on BlueFish.

That fish is the longest fish we've ever had alive, Mom.

I know. I don't know how he keeps going. Every time I look at him, I think he's dead.

Or depressed. Depressed or dead. That can look the same. (*thanks worldly wise 10 year old.)

Our family kept watch as BlueFish fought the good fight, heroically working his one remaining fin, it serving him like a broken oar to swim circles in his little environs. He became my cooking buddy, keeping me company in the kitchen as he sat in his bowl right next to the sink.

All plodded along well, until late Sunday night. I went to sprinkle in his black poppy seed-like shrimp krill just as I had done every evening for the past 877 nights and gasp! ... no need.

At the bottom of his round home, amid the blue and black speckled gravel, lay a lifeless glinting sliver of flesh. I gently shook the bowl, though I had a sinking feeling there'd be no movement other than his limp body in the resultant waves. Nothing, not even a pathetic attempt at a one-finned last wave good-bye to us. BlueFish had gone to a better place, one with cleaner water, where those without two working fins can swim. In a straight line.

We miss you, BlueFish. Now who am I going to wave this whitefish filet in front of?

**We miss you, little guy -- you were a scrapper. And will live on forever in what is now our family's rally call when times get tough, "What are you?! BlueFish or RedFish?!"

* * *

photo credit: Cherrie 美桜 via photopin cc

Secretly, My Life Was Better Than Easter Baskets

Hard to not be envious, as a child, of the kids who had Easter baskets taller than they were, stuffed with 24 inch high chocolate bunnies (bet they were hollow), miniature chocolate bunny eggs wrapped in pretty yellow and purple foil (impossible to peel, anyhow), and plastic eggs rattling with coins inside (pennies, I'm sure).

Hard.

Unless you had something better during this time of year, like I did.

We Colombians do a lot of things to the moon and back, and Easter -- well, come find out why I say "No thanks, you can have your shredded plastic green grass."

I'm always proud to be featured at TikiTikiBlog, I'd love to see you there today for "La Via Dolorosa."

*thank you.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

I can remember being in kindergarten and falling in love with the sturdy book in my hands. Bright clean colors within contrasting dark lines, the BIG BLACK FONT, all trademarks of a Dr. Seuss book. The box of new books had just arrived in our classroom while we were out during lunch, and we stood huddled around our teacher's oak desk, our tip toes up so we could see over each other's heads as she pulled the sealing tape off the brown box.

There were so many books, no one who wanted one, had to go without. I remember reaching for If I Ran The Zoo because of its stark white cover and haphazard black letters that almost filled the entire space. I flipped through the pages and the crazy pink skies and unheard of blue grass and a six foot tall polka dot cat, was it a cat? and trees that looked like spray painted ice cream cones had me running for the reading corner, where I could sit, uninterrupted, and read. Reading never felt like work in that classroom.

I learned to read with Dr. Seuss, something I've never forgotten. When my children were a year old I bought them each their own six book starter set of Seuss' books. Since my boys were only a year and a half apart in age, we quickly had a full dozen Seuss books in the boys' shared bedroom. They'd make their way over to their short book case every night and pull out their favorites for me and my husband to read. But many times I'd catch them on their own, tucked into their chairs, a Seuss book in their laps, imitating the words they'd hear when we read to them. In their wonderfully childish voices, they'd mimic "Da B book. B is for big brown banana boxes..." and one that I love still, "Are you my mudder? Are you my mudder?"

Yes, my children learned to read on Dr. Seuss books too. And that floods me with warm memories.

Happy birthday, dear Dr. Seuss, you made me think of myself as a reader.

If you have a little one, or know of someone else's little one, and they've got a special day coming up, gift them with some Seuss. Remember the silly loveliness of Seuss' illustrations and the rhyming ease that helped you guess at words so you'd feel accomplished and like you were reading, even though you weren't.

My children pretended to read two years before they actually could. And they did it with Dr. Seuss books.

Here's an awesome link to the best the Doctor has to offer, from his website, Seussville.

Thrill a child, let them think they're reading before they can. They're called self fulfilling prophecies for a reason.

* * * 

**TAKE your kids to the coolest interactive website EVER: Seussville.
(Games, clothes, puzzles, classroom aids, projects, printable sheets. Oh, and maybe one or two books. xo)

photo credit: charliecurve via photopin cc