Spoiled Only Child

Change sucks

I'm feeling a bit nauseous right now. I just dropped Mia off for her second day in the 4-year-old class. She's in the same daycare where she's been since she was 6 months old, but it feels like a different world in her new class. She looked so shy and apprehensive as I walked away, I could barely contain my tears. I can't remember the last time I felt teary about dropping her off.

There are a few issues at play here, one of which is extremely touchy. But I'm going to go there because I believe in honesty. Let's do this in a list, and we'll save the best for last.

1. Change is always hard. As I told Mia in the car this morning, it always takes a while to get used to new things and places and people. You just have to deal with the feeling that you might throw up for a while, and eventually it subsides.
2. Her 3-year-old teachers were out-of-this-world great. It was by far the best year she's had, and I knew all year that we could never expect other teachers to match them. They were ambitious and enthusiastic and warm and smart, not a combination often found in a field where the salaries are poverty-level. I had become used to dropping her off to teachers who seemed genuinely overjoyed to see her each morning. They noticed when she wore new clothes, asked what she did over the weekend, even knew all the jibbets on her Crocs. Mia ran to them, practically glowing with happiness.
3. In comparison, her new teachers seemed less than thrilled to welcome her to class this morning. Their sad attempts at "hello" just did not stack up.
4. Here is the big one: This class is full of poor kids. Mia goes to a very expensive daycare, and in all her other years, she has been with kids who can afford to attend this place. In theory, I've always lamented the lack of diversity. But for 4-year-olds, there is a state-funded program that allows poor kids to attend preschool for free. Our center gets that state funding, and it mixes the subsidized kids half-and-half with the paying kids. So you end up with classrooms that are half poor minority kids who have never been to school before, and half privileged kids who know all the ins and outs of circle time. You can tell who the poor kids are just by looking at a list of the kids' first names. In class, they're the ones crying their eyes out or stomping away from the circle saying "No! No!" They are noticeably different, and Mia told me yesterday morning that she didn't like the new "black-haired" friends. Oh my. I quickly let her know that it was "not OK" to judge anyone based on the way they look, that we're all the same on the inside, that some of the kids just aren't used to school the way she is. But I doubt that my words can touch that innate sense, which I can't help feeling either, despite all my best intentions, that these kids are not of our world. I am a firm believer in public schools and busing and whatever else it takes to keep our schools integrated and make sure that poor children have a fair shot at life. But watching your innocent 4-year-old be thrown into a world tainted by racism and poverty is hard. Mr. SOC, another staunch believer in public education, pointed out that, unlike public school, we are paying more than $10,000 a year for Mia to attend this daycare. Doesn't that give us the right to shelter her for just one more year? I know the right answer to that question, the answer my conscience dictates. And honestly, when I dropped her off this morning, all the kids seemed to be doing fine. It seemed like a happy little preschool classroom. And I trust that her new teachers know what they're doing, and that this year will go well. I don't know why I felt so sad leaving her there. I guess that's just life.

I realize I'm taking a risk in talking so openly about race and class here. But I really believe that, if we could all talk a little more openly, we might be able to make faster progress on these issues.

Could someone please give me a coherent argument about why princesses suck?

As I type this, a Disney princess balloon is floating over my head. An Ariel costume lies on the coffee table. On the bathroom counter sits an Ariel toothbrush (which turns on when you press a raised bump on her chest). And in the closet is a box of Disney princess stuff that I plan to use to adorn her birthday cake this Saturday. I bought all this stuff, and no one was pointing a gun at my head. What the fuck?

I seem to remember writing on this website, not that long ago, "I draw the line at buying Disney princess crap." Well, apparently my line was drawn in the sand. I can't even pinpoint a moment when I said, OK, I've changed my mind about the princesses. I just started thinking about what Mia would like for her fourth birthday, which was yesterday, and I imagined the look of joy on her face when she saw the princess crap, and I went and bought it. Or maybe I imagined the look of disappointment when she saw that there was no princess crap, and that was my motivating factor. Because, for months and months, she has been asking for a princess birthday party and talking about her princess cake and telling my mother specifically that she wants a Tinkerbell toy. (Is it possible that the new Disney fairy crap is even worse than the princess crap? Yes, I think it is.) So I think that having her birthday with no Ariel or Belle or Tinkerbell would have been a flat-out declaration that, no, dreams do not come true. Not even when you're four, and all it takes to make your dream come true is $50 worth of crap from Target. Suck that, kid.

I've tried to explain to Mia once or twice why princesses are not all that great. "They don't really do much," I said. "They don't work or do things to help the world. They just sit around and wait for a man to marry them." Mia didn't seem to have any understanding of why this was a bad thing. And then, seeing that I seemed set against princesses, she suggested that she could change her career aspiration to fairy. Sigh. This exchange made me see that even I was not sure exactly what is bad about the princesses. I just know that all of us Whole Foods-shopping types sneer at them, and think that of course our children will be more original or authentic than to walk around with a buxom mermaid painted on her shirt.

But what really is wrong with the princesses? They all seem like good people, polite and devoted to their fathers, interested in reading and exploring the world, ready for adventure, loving and able to sustain close friendships. No, they never have any mothers, and no one knows why, but we can't blame them for that, can we? Really, the idea of transforming from a mermaid to a human, and all that's entailed, is fascinating--and I think it has taken Mia's imagination in new directions. Some of the movies suck, but some of them are actually good films. Beauty and the Beast? A wonderful musical. Is it just that they're so ubiquitous? Is it that they're so homogenous? So skinny and busty and typical of our impossible standard of beauty? Is it that they reinforce stereotypical gender roles? Yes, they do all those things, but so do lots and lots of other children's toys and television shows and, really, everything in our culture.

Part of me hates what has become of Mia. Obsessed with pink and dresses and sparkly shoes and princesses. I feel like a failure for somehow letting it seep in, for giving in to it and, now, for encouraging it. I mean, there must be a way to keep it out. Look at Juniper. She is reprimanding other kids for their love of princesses. Surely, she didn't get an Ariel costume for her birthday. I wonder if I am helping Mia close her mind to all the different ways to be a woman in this world, encouraging her to believe that its all about beauty and glitz, planting the seeds of impossible dreams of a happily ever after kind of life. The other part thinks, for christ's sake, she is four. She's into princesses, and it makes her happy to have shiny pink things, ans what is the big fucking deal. A zillion kids go through this stage, and you don't see all the 20-year-olds walking around in pink sequined gowns. This will pass, and to resist it will only give it more power.

I've written all this and I'm no closer to a conclusion than I was before. All I know is that Mia was pretty damned happy when she put on that Ariel costume, and I think she would run away from home if the cake at her party this weekend arrived princess-free. So I guess I've made my choice without making one at all.

Serious business

There's something about kids that I don't think anyone understands until they have one. It's how serious they are about play. Things that sound completely ridiculous to grownups are life-and-death kind of important to kids. Things like which cartoon character is on the Pull-Up that they are putting on their ass. If the Pull-Up has Diego instead of Dora, and is blue instead of pink, there will be hell to pay. There will be crying and thrashing and howls of, "But it's not pink!!!" And no, the child will not understand that we were out of Pull-Ups, and Mommy ran to the store, and it was already bed time, and she was frazzled, and the store was out of Dora ones and the Disney Princess ones were not on sale. And Mommy will consider going to a different store at 9 p.m. to get Pull-Ups that have pink on them, because the meltdown will be nuclear.

Mia has this tiny pink stuffed poodle that my mother got her. It is probably 4 inches high and plays a very shrill version of "Happy Birthday" when squeezed. Every night this poodle has to be laid carefully atop a pillow in the hallway outside Mia's room, its head resting on a smaller pillow, its body tucked in to a miniature sleeping bag. It must also have an animal, a pony larger than the poodle itself, to keep it company. Now, this sounds funny, right? But if Mia were not allowed to tuck in her poodle, or if we moved the poodle from its spot, there would be a fit that would be no joke at all. We might all end up in tears.

Just last night, Mia got an Ariel sticker at the doctor's office. (Who's Ariel, you ask? The Little Mermaid, of course.) And it was sparkly and Ariel was wearing a pink dress, and Mia could have cared less that she just had stitches pulled out of her head, because she had the greatest sticker on earth!!! She was on top of the world. All night she was convinced that she was a princess, and she put on her long nightgown that brushes the floor just like Ariel's dress. (We see how well my attempts to shield her from the Disney Princesses are working.) We had to peel the sticker off her shirt and put it on the nightgown. And of course, it didn't stick very well and was lost in the bed just minutes after we turned out the light.

Before we know it, Mr. SOC is upstairs searching the room for a sparkly Ariel sticker while Mia stands in the bed, wailing pathetically, a full hour past her bed time. Soon he's yelling down to me, exasperated, "Do you know where the Ariel sticker is?" And then we are all on the hunt for the no-longer-sticky Ariel sticker. It is fast becoming a full-blown family crisis. Finally, the sticker is found, and stuck to a horse stuffed animal, after attempts to convince her that it would be safer on the bed frame failed miserably. We all breathe a sigh of relief.

But more than an hour later, I go upstairs, and find Mia wide awake in her room. As soon as I step into the room, she gives me a status update on the sticker. "I put the sticker on my pillow," she says, "because it wouldn't stick to the horsie." I nod solemnly, thanking my lucky stars that the sticker is accounted for. This parenting stuff is very serious business indeed.

Dear Mia,

This week I am working the nightshift, and to make up for not seeing you in the evenings, I took you out for a special before-school treat today. We went out for bagels and then to the park, where we rode the carousel and the train and walked around the lake. Some of the highlights were: the buzzer going off in the restaurant to tell us our order was ready (your shout of glee was so loud the whole restaurant knew our order was ready), finding a forgotten pacifier on a bench (it is now your most prized possession), letting a ladybug crawl on your finger, and saying hello to two honking geese. You were so full of wonder and enthusiasm, practically glowing with pride that you were out with your mommy on a special trip to the park on a school day. 

It was the kind of day I've always dreamed of having with my daughter, the kind of day I remember having with my own mother. At the end of the summer, she always took me out for lunch at a "fancy" restaurant at the mall, and I always got the very fancy hot dog wrapped in puff pastry. And one day when I was in elementary school, I will never forget, she pulled me out of school early for no reason at all just so we could spend some time together. I will always remember her standing at the front of the classroom, telling the teacher I had a dentist's appointment—and my delight, when we walked out of the classroom and she told me there really was no dentist's appointment. She just felt like picking me up early. I want you to have the same kinds of memories, of special time spent with me, of knowing just how much you are cherished. It's amazing how easy it is to skip doing these kinds of things, because we are so caught up in our routines of getting to school, getting meals on the table, taking baths, cleaning up, doing errands. But today reminded me just how important our unscheduled time is. Those will be the days you remember, I hope.

It's so nice to be able to think happy thoughts about you, and our relationship, because things have been really tough for the past couple months. That's part of why I haven't written one of these letters in so long, because I didn't want to write, "You are a little monster and I am going to sell you!" For weeks it has felt as if you were constantly on the edge of some crazed and irrational tantrum, looking for a reason to lose it, unable to cope with even the smallest bumps in the road. A request to change your pants or put on your coat could be met with 20 minutes of flailing, screaming and rolling on the ground, biting your own hand in fury. Every request, for more milk or snacks or help putting on your coat, came as a bratty demand or a scream. Those that weren't met immediately turned into meltdowns. 

But then about a week ago, it was if a switch flipped. You are sweet and fun to be around, constantly making lovely observations about the world, happily doing what you're asked. And I find myself thinking about you all day, melting at the memory of your sweet smile. You are my girl who loves pink with a passion, and despite my best efforts to shield you from the forces of marketing, would like nothing better than if every one of your possessions was pink and covered with the faces of the Disney princesses. (I draw the line at buying Disney Princess junk.) Colors seem to be how you process the world right now. Everything is defined by its color, every person identified by their favorite color. You are fascinated by letters, and learning to write them. You love to count things. You go up to 12, and then begin randomly calling out numbers like sixteen and twelveteen. And you are beginning to draw pictures. People with arms and legs and faces, rather than aimless scribbles or endless spirals that you called lollipops. You are growing up. I can only hope I am enjoying you enough along the way.

Love,

Mommy

Brief encounters with the law

I still haven't done my worry ritual, because it's been miserable and rainy and that does not go with my plan of standing peacefully in a garden and releasing my worries to the universe. But I wanted to share this little vignette from my weekend.

We are pulled over by a cop on a cold, gray and rainy morning. Expired registration. Who knew? (Turned out the whole problem was caused because I was delinquent on my car taxes. The outstanding bill: $1.52. Glad I have the law to keep me in line.) As we sit and sit and sit and sit, waiting for the cop to return with our ticket, Mia pipes up, "I need to go potty." Perfect. We establish that she really needs to go right now, that she cannot wait. So we try to get out of the car, and get shouted down by the cop who is about ready to shoot us and even runs up to the car and demands to see Mr. SOC's hands to make sure he doesn't have a gun. This guy is holding us prisoner in our Honda Civic with a 3-year-old about to wet her pants because of an expired registration. I love the law!

Eventually, the cop releases me and Mia from the car to go to the bathroom while he continues berating Mr. SOC and demanding to know what he is doing with his hands. We happen to be pulled over right next to the police station, so I get the officers to grudgingly to do us the immense favor of allowing us to use the toilet in their public building, and then we head back to the car in the cold rain. Mia is, as always, dawdling and looking for puddles to step in, while I am trying to get back to our warm car ASAP. After we get back to the car, my step-son describes how we looked during our journey. Me: head down, face scrunched, pulling Mia's arm, grimly determined to get out of the miserable weather. Mia: strolling along, beaming 1,000 watts. I think this scene pretty much sums up the difference in how we see the world.

Parenting 101

I think I have reached a more stable level of mental breakdown now. Economy sucks, no bottom in sight, job might go away, few other prospects, don't know how we'll manage if I lose my job, what is my future?, what is the future of our country? ... all of that has receded to a sort of fuzzy background noise for the moment. It's always there, but it's low-level enough to allow me to get on with life. Although I have become rather obsessed with figuring out how to save money on beer. And yes, I know, stop drinking it is really the easiest solution to that problem. But it's not going to happen.

In other news, I just finished a parenting course. Just the words "parenting course" are enough to make people who don't have children, or who still have compliant little babies, roll their eyes. But any of us who knows how wily and difficult children can actually be, I hope, understands the need for such a thing. Anyway, it was wonderful. I am already seeing Mia respond to many of the techniques, which center around abandoning the idea of punishment. Discipline is not about making your child suffer for her bad behavior, it's about teaching her the correct behavior. We were instructed to tell our children what they should do, rather than what they shouldn't, tell them what good can come of doing the right thing, rather than what bad can come of misbehavior.

Above all, the teachers said, express your belief that the child can do what you ask, that you believe in them, that if they fail you will give them another chance to get it right. (If they don't do what your ask, say, "I bet you can do it next time.") Now, when Mia balks at doing what I ask, I say "I know you can do it!" And she often goes and does it. Then I make a big deal about how proud I am. The other morning, I forgot to praise her after she picked up her own toy and she said, "What were you going to say to me?" Confused, I asked, "What do you want me to say to you?" And she said, "I knew you could do it." It's working! Should have taken this course before birth to avoid spending all this time screwing it up.

Happy birthday to you

"If you'd never been born, well what would you be?
You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree!
You might be a door knob! Or three baked potatoes!
You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes!
Or worse than all that... why, you might be a
WASN'T!
A Wasn't has no fun at all. No, he doesn't.
A Wasn't just isn't. He just isn't present.
But you... you ARE YOU! And now, isn't that pleasant!"
-- Dr. Seuss, from Happy Birthday To You!

Isn't Dr. Seuss just the greatest philosopher of all time?

Mia's birthday is Sunday, but today is her "school birthday," as I have dubbed it. I took her to class wearing a handmade (by my mother) crocheted birthday hat and T-shirt with a giant 3 on the front. She was unspeakably cute. I brought cupcakes, and this time I decided that the can of transfat that Betty Crocker calls icing just wasn't going to cut it. So I made cream cheese frosting and dyed it three different colors and iced 24 Betty Crocker transfat cupcakes, and as I looked at the dishes with my back aching at 9:30 last night, I thought, "Why couldn't I just buy some fucking cupcakes?" But it seems I am incapable of simplifying things for myself, especially if simplifying involves store-bought food of any kind. Maybe someday Mia will remember that I was the only mom in her class who made cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting rather than just stopping off at the Harris Teeter.

The birthday party is tomorrow and, of course, I am ridiculously worried about it. It's five toddlers and their parents. We're going to swim and then eat burgers and cupcakes. How complicated could it be? But what if some kids are afraid of the big pool? Should we set up a wading pool too? What if the fat parents are embarrassed to be seen in their bathing suits? What if I don't have enough food? Should I add another dish? What if some of the guests are Kosher? How many decorations do I need? Should I put the banner at the pool or at the house? What kind of toys should I have out for dinnertime? Mia says she wants "bouncy balls" at the party. Does she really mean it? Should I run out and get them? Does she mean big bouncy balls or little ones? And I haven't even gotten to worrying about the family party on Sunday. I realize I am insane.

Now, let's end this post with some happy thoughts about butterflies and rainbows. I have decided that I'm done with insomnia and moroseness and fast-beating hearts and all the rest. I am fucking done with it. I declare it to the world. I am me! And now, isn't that pleasant?

Shit happens, all too often

I didn't want to write this post. I didn't want to be the person blogging about her kid's poop. But oh my god, this potty training is kicking my ass. It's been going on for months, and we are still far from finished. I had always been afraid of potty training. I tried to put it off. I prayed that the daycare would do it for me. But when we passed two and a half, and there were no signs of progress, I felt I had to do something. And it has been every bit as bad as I feared, if not worse. I feel as if it will never end. All the books say you are supposed to take accidents in stride, and believe me, I try. But all the books also show pictures of children with wet pants looking sheepish and ashamed. I would want to comfort and coddle them too, just like the perfect moms in the books. But my child doesn't seem the slightest bit upset about her accidents. Sometimes, she seems downright giddy about them. We've already taken one extended break from potty training after a string of "accidents" (they felt intentional to me), capped off by a poop just as I was trying to get out the door to work, drove me to the edge. But in the past couple weeks, we'd been making good progress. Then we went away for the weekend, and had a major setback. We were in the car, on a boat, in restaurants. After a nasty accident that left me splattered in poop up to my elbows, on the boat, where we didn't have water or wipes, we left her in diapers the rest of the weekend. This morning, I put the big girl underwear back on. And just as I was finally going to get on my way to work, she did a nasty runny poop that ended up all over her, me and the floor. I held it together until, after I had her cleaned and dressed again, she started on her usual delaying tactics. She went limp as I tried to hoist her into her carseat, saying that she wanted to get in by herself, and I ended up shaking her limp body and shouting "GET IN THE CAR! JUST GET IN THE CAR!" Oh, potty training, please be over soon.

The annoying neighbor

Imagine you have a neighbor who carpools to work with you. This neighbor shows up at your house and you are ready to go, but he has to use the bathroom. But he doesn't want to use the regular toilet. He demands a special seat cover. So you run upstairs to get it for him. And then he takes his sweet old time in the bathroom, even though you really have to go yourself, and you are standing there with legs crossed. Finally, he emerges from the bathroom and demands your help in pulling up his pants. You get the pants up and think you are finally ready to go. But he drops his keys. As you stand there waiting, he drops them four or five times more. You're beginning to suspect that he's doing this on purpose just to annoy you. When you go to get in the car, he wants to bring his dog with him. And he wants the dog to sit in its own special seat with its seatbelt on. He wants you to strap the dog in. You agree to avoid an argument.When you arrive at work, he takes his sweet time getting out of the car. Oh wait, he has dropped something under the seat. He has to find it! He doesn't care that you are 15 minutes late. He pulls something out from under the seat. It's not what he was looking for, but he takes a minute to examine it and show it to you. You smile, trying not to show your desire to strangle him, and then he resumes looking for whatever trivial thing he has dropped under the seat. You eventually realize that the only way you're going to get him out of the car is to physically remove him.

So, what would you do to this neighbor? You would kill him. Or you would refuse to ever drive him to work again? Right? Is it any wonder that I sometimes can't help yelling at this kid like a horrible mother, "GET OUT OF THE CAR RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!"? If only I could make her catch a cab to daycare.

The big girl bed

Last night, we decided to move Mia into her big girl bed, hoping it would reset her increasingly nightmarish bedtime routine. She seemed genuinely excited about the idea. "Yes!" she replied when I asked her if she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed. As we set it up and put on her new butterfly sheets, she was practically ecstatic. She was jumping on the bed, rolling on it, snuggling in the covers, shouting with glee. As we read books in bed, she pointed out all the pictures of kids in their big girl beds. (Apparently, boys also sleep in big girl beds.) I got swept up in the excitement too, and I couldn't help feeling wistful. I made Mr. SOC go get the camera, to document the first night in the big girl bed. He snapped several shots of our cherubic child lying happily under her quilt. I looked at her old crib and thought about how my baby was gone.

But as I turned out the light and got ready to leave the room, I could sense her becoming more and more apprehensive. And the second I walked out the door, I heard her crying, "I wanna sleep in my crib." So, 30 seconds into her first night in the big girl bed, she was back in her crib. And 10 minutes after that, she was naked and wailing again. Aaaah, the good old days had returned. Tonight, she is in the crib again, and as I type, we're coming up on 90 minutes of wailing and demands. "Bring me a tissue! Mommy, bring me a tissue!" she's been screaming at the top of her lungs for the past 15 minutes. And I'm sure as soon as I bring her a tissue, she will need something else. She's already been naked twice tonight.

When she finally does agree to sleep in that big girl bed, do me a favor and kick me if I get weepy about leaving behind the era of the crib.