I am so excited for this new blog.  As I just posted about over there, I am going to move all my kid-related blogging over here, though I guess for now I’ll cross-post it there too.

What’s on my mind this morning is that yesterday I realized that I am an official honest-to-goodness soccer mom.  I went to the annual meeting of the Association for Women Lawyers.  The best part of that event is the awarding of scholarships to women in law school.  Their backgrounds are always humbling and inspiring, and yesterday was no exception.  Awards are also given to practicing lawyers, for mentoring, pro bono, and community service.  The winner of the community service award in her acceptance speech talked about how working moms everywhere are involved in so many activities beyond their work and their kids, like soccer.  She accepted the award on behalf of “all of us soccer moms,” to great applause.

At first I felt left out, and a little irritated, because before being a mom, I reacted really negatively to all the emphasis on women’s roles as mother, even in professional groups like AWL.  Then suddenly I realized that in a couple of hours, after the meeting, I would be going to pick up my kindergartner from soccer practice.  !  I am a soccer mom!

I resolved my mental conflict about being a soccer mom while at the same time resenting the constant adulation of women as soccer moms this way:  soccer moms like me, who’d rather not think of themselves first as soccer moms, are still soccer moms!  Indeed, I wish there were more of my type.

Well, I have no pithy ending, that’s it.  Happy Friday everybody.   Peace, out.

PS Wondering what the heck the “minions” reference means, look here.

Cross-post from Your Brain on Kids.

Hi, loyal readership!  I am happy to report that a friend of mine (another mom) has started a new blog basically like this one, and invited me to join it.  I think that I will keep this one going, for those (okay, grandmas and grandpas and aunties mostly) who like to just read about my little munchkins.  But if you would like to read funny or sad or other interesting stuff about other kids, then you can always go join me over there at the new blog, This Is Your Brain on Kids.  I will cross-post there and here, i.e., whenever I post it will show up in both places.  If eventually everybody just reads over there, maybe I’ll shut this one down?  Cheers!

I can’t really explain why I haven’t been posting here lately.  It was a busy summer, we had a lot of fun and happy times, I have been talking to my actual friends in real life about the cute things my kids do, rather than just posting here.

But I like this blog, dangit!  And some of you who like to read it live too far away for me to actually go have coffee with or whatever. So, I am going to try to start writing here again.

Today, I am thinking about how different the perceptions of kids must be about time.  As I get older, I realize that time really, truly does pass more quickly, at least for me.  It’s as if, the more time I have lived, the faster each day seems, measured against the rest of them.  I am hoping that the days at the end stretch out a bit.

So anyway, I think I have figured out that for young kids, time passes much more slowly.  Or maybe, more precisely, each moment is so full that it must feel like a lot is happening all of the time.  Because their memories are so short, a year ago can be like a lifetime ago;  a few months are like a year or more.

Of course I knew this, logically, but I really _knew_ it a few months ago, when I was talking about one of older son’s past day care teachers.  Let’s call her Lisa.  He loved her.  And she adored him.  She really was like a second mom for him.  They cuddled and cooed and played.  She gave him a soft blankie with cars on it that he still likes to cuddle with, now and then, although those sweet cuddly moments are fading even now, even though he’s only six.

So, anyway, a few months ago, when I was talking about her, I realized that he doesn’t remember her at all anymore.  He hasn’t really had much contact with her for more than a year, because she took a different job and isn’t at the center where he goes after school. And even before that, his contact with her had been very limited, since sometime before he turned 3 he went into a different room at the center, with new teachers. So, it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t remember her, right?  He basically hasn’t known her since he was three.  I don’t think I remember a thing from before I turned three.

Still, the moment when I realized that was really sad.  It’s strange to have this little being in your house and your life, that looks like a miniature version of an adult, but is actually a different creature in some ways.  He had an intense, emotional relationship of love with Lisa, but for him, it’s not even a memory.  It is just gone.  I like to think that the experience stays with him in some way, that she and her love are still in him, as part of his feelings of safety and love and security.  But it is still sad that he doesn’t know that, any more.  I don’t know whether he would recognize her now.

The other incident that made me think about this recently happened on the first day of senior kindergarten.  There were two junior kindergarten classes, bit there are three senior kindergarten ones, with some new kids mixed in.  So there is a mix of old and new friends.  He does remember the kids from last year, especially his good friends.  But the first day, he was very shy with them.  It was as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, as if they needed to get to know each other again.  I couldn’t understand it at first, especially with the boys and girls he’d had playdates with, and was so excited to see again.  For instance, Izzy.

So after school on the playground, I tried to encourage him to play, but part of the time he just wanted to sit on the grass and watch the other kids.  And Izzy’s mom actually stopped to say to me that Izzy was a little that way too, that she sat all alone at lunch and seemed nervous.   When I thought about it, it made sense.  They were really nervous and awkward around each other, because for them, the few months of summer were like years of time.  So many new experiences, so much growing and changing and learning.  They were all really different, and needed more getting to know each other time than adults would after a summer.

It’s hard to imagine what that is like.  But also very fun to imagine.  How wonderful, what a gift we have to experience and learn that way as children.

For some reason, this post has turned so heavy!  And now it’s making me think of the Moments video, have you seen it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNVPalNZD_I

Mom, lets play a hundred.

Hmm.  I don’t know how to play that.

Oh, it’s eeeea-sy!  First I say a number and then you say a number, and then the one who says the biggest is the winner.

Okay.

Now, the youngest goes first, so I go first.

Okay.

Okay.  Thirty-nine hundred jillion google thousand hundred twenty-eight thirty-six thousand hundred.

Whoa.

Yeah, that was big wasn’t it.

Yeah.  Okay, I’ll try.  42 thousand hundred hundred million kajillion billion and nine.

That was a good one.

But you win.

Yeah.

(You may have noticed he was sort of playing a hundred to himself in the last post.)

One of the truly charming things that the toddler does is to shout out when he is really enthusiastic about something.  Like, “I heard it!  Bird, mommy, I heard it bird!” Or, “ant! I see it ant, mommy!”  (He is fascinated by ants.  Maybe because they’re down at his level, easy to see by just crouching down on the sidewalk?  They are very industrious and active, I guess.)

So anyway, sometimes the enthusiasm extends so that he is shouting out about things that he does not _actually_ see or hear.  ”Moon, mommy!  Moon up!” when the moon is not visible at all.

The other day when we were driving to Grampa’s house, after waking from his nap, the toddler was very impatient to be to Grampa’s.  Frankly, we all were, it’s kind of a boring drive, especially the umpteenth time you drive it.  Though it was very beautifully green.

So, when we were still about 40 minutes from the house, toddler starts exclaiming, “I see it!  I see it, Grampa’s house, mommy!”  Pointing out the window and smiling, kicking his legs.  So cute.

Older son and I laughed and smiled and got into the excitement, “oh, really!  Where?  Show us.”

Then, after the episode had passed and we were all quiet again, older son said, in a very serious tone, “you know that I can really see the house, mom.”

“Sure,” I answered.  ”You’re part roadrunner crocodile.”

“Yes,” he nodded, not skipping a beat.  ”And you know that they can see very far.  They can see for 39 thousand hundred miles.”

“I know.”

And then we both just smiled, and I kept driving.

First, peeing in the car happened again today.  I won’t go into details.

On to the Supreme Being.  That is what older son and I have taken to calling the toddler.  He is so cute and hilarious and sweet…and demanding and unreasonable and tyrannical.  Reasons he has had tantrums:

1.  Because his brother got to eat a piece of candy too.  It’s not that he had to share his own, or that there wasn’t enough to go around: he just didn’t want his brother to have any.

2.  Because I ran out of honey for his bottle.

3.  Because he wanted the green bottle, not the yellow one.

4.  Because he actually wanted the yellow bottle, not the green one.

5.  Because he couldn’t ride both of his little trike-type-things at once.  Meaning, I was trying to help him do so, but he just physically could not.

I dunno, maybe it’s all just normal toddler stuff.  But the shriek continues, too.  Lower in frequency, thanks be to God.

Well, I just haven’t had the time lately to update here as I should.  But I think things are settling down a bit, so, I hope, I will be able to get back to more regular posting.

So, you’re probably wondering about the pee.  First, the toddler is starting to want to use the toilet.  Mostly, to play with it and throw toilet paper in it and flush it wastefully.  Also, to stand in front of it, on a little stool, for ten minutes or so, doing nothing besides jabbering too himself about potty and poop.  And then as soon as he steps away from it (and before getting the diaper back on) peeing.  On the floor.

And second, and more amusing, older son.  First, background:  one time when we were on a long car ride, on a rural highway with no gas station nearby, I let older son pee in an empty cup.  It was that or stand on the side of the highway, and the cup seemed better.  I thought that was the end of it.

A few weeks later, I left older son in the car while I went into the house to pick the toddler up from day care.  When I came back out and was putting the toddler in his seat, older son said, “Mom, I had to go pee.” I said, oh, sure, of course they’ll let you use the bathroom, come on in. 

But as I was opening the front passenger door to put my purse on the seat, older son said, “Oh, no, it’s okay, I mean I already did pee.” And indeed he had. There on the front passenger seat was a plastic to-go container, which he had apparently obtained from a bag of recycling materials in the back of the minivan.  It was about half-full with pee.

I told older son that in the future he could just ask, and I would take him in to use the toilet.  He said okay.  I thought that was the end of it.

A couple of weeks later, on the way to drop older son off at afternoon kindergarten, I stopped at home to get him an apple.  As I was walking to the house, I realized that I’d forgotten to tell him not to leave his seat.  But when I came back, he was still in his seat, with his seat belt buckled.  Oh good, I thought, he stayed in his seat.

I got into the driver’s seat and was about to congratulate older son for staying buckled up, when, beside me, on the passenger seat, I saw a glass jar (another recyclable that I’d been carrying in the car to take to the dump).  The jar was half full of pee.  ”Oh.”  I said.  ”So I guess you had to pee?”

“Yeah.  Sorry.”

“Next time, please ask to come in the house.  You can hold it until I get back.”

“Okay, Mom.”

I really hope this is the end of it.  I am very ready for both of my boys to handle their own bathroom duties.

Sorry for the long silence here.  We’ve been busy.  Glad to be back.

We don’t have cable anymore, so a lot of our tv watching is on the computer.  Hulu, youtube, netflix streaming, whatever.  Lately we have enjoyed Free to Be You and Me videos on youtube.  My parents were hippies, and I loved these stories.  We never saw the movie when I was a kid, we just had the record.  

So anyway, if you don’t know about Free to Be You and Me, you should go watch this clip, Ladies First, before reading the rest of the story.  Ladies First is the clip about the “tender sweet young thing” in her pressed white clothes and her shiny shoes and her lovely curly locks.  She is a lady and insists on being treated like a lady.

The other day older son and I were talking about how girls who are so worried about how they look, like the tender sweet young thing, annoy us. We decided that one of the main problems is that if you have to stay so clean and  perfect, you can’t have as much fun.  Most things that are fun involve getting dirty.  One of the best things about Izzy (you remember, the girl older son hopes to marry, possibly in some sort of polyandrous relationship) is that she loves to play in the dirt and run around pretending to be an animal.  The last time I saw her she was being a maiasaur.

So, the story.  Yesterday, not having had time to watch my hair, I used hot rollers.  I left them in a little extra long.  I asked older son what he thought, as we were about to leave; did it look too curly?  At first he said “no-oh!” in his sweet reassuring way, “you look byoo-ti-ful!” 

But then there was a little pause, and a troubled look.  ”Well, mom, I am sorry to tell you this.  Can you handle it?” 

Me:  Yes, I think so?

Son:  Well, the truth is, you look like the tender sweet young thing.

Me: Oh, no! (looking in mirror) You’re right! I will try to straighten it out.

But even at the end of the day, I still looked a little like the tender sweet young thing.  Next time I won’t leave the rollers in so long.

Older son:  Once upon a time, in a world of butts, there was a boy who was made out of butts.  And everything in that world was made out of butts.  The houses were made out of butts.  The sun was made out of butts.  The snow was made out of butts.  (pause here for uncontrollable laughter) All the people were made out of butts.  Where their head was, there was a butt.  The bears were made out of butts.  And when the people  (laughter again, interrupting words), and when they opened their…

Mom:  Enough!  I know what’s coming next and I don’t want to hear anymore.

Note:  I blame Rebecca, ask her about the magnum opus, Chicken Butt.

So.  The boys are about to go meet their grandmother and auntie, who are visiting from far away and who they don’t get to see very often.  I thought it would be nice to make cards for them, so we did that little art project this morning.

Unfortunately, older son is absolutely obsessed with the words “butt” and “poop” these days.  I will post later about his “once upon a time, in a world of butts” story, which I’ve been hesitating to post about.  

So, guess what he wanted me to write on his cards?  Yeah.  I refused.  So guess how he decorated them?  Yeah.  And then he threw a fit until I showed him how to write the word “poop.” Which he tried to write on the cards, too.  

Nice.  I hope grandma and auntie have an appreciation for five year old humor.