Brand New

In the span of about six months my child has gone from this:

to this:

And it’s all my fault!

Last November I had a mystery shop at Aeropostale. Prior to that, I hadn’t stepped foot in that store and couldn’t tell you what they sold. It was one of those jobs where they don’t pay you a shop fee, but reimburses for the required purchase – in this case, a shirt. Kali wanted to tag along because the store was very popular with the kids in her class.

First, we had to deal with the little matter of how to pronounce the damn name. My father called it AIR-O-PO-STAL-LAY – all fancy, like he’s Madonna or something. Kali insisted that wasn’t right. I called it AIR-O-POS-TELL (rhymes with Aristotle.) Kali insisted THAT wasn’t right either.

So, I’m doing the shop and realize that I enjoy food way too much to fit anything in that store. Also, the clothing seemed to be catered towards people that actually left the house once in awhile. After holding up a few XS tees to Kali, I decided I’d make the required purchase for her and picked out a super cute orange T-shirt with AEROPOSTALE obnoxiously plastered down the side.

As we’re checking out, Kali nudges me. “Ask him!” she stage whispers.

I look at the young man ringing up the shirt. He’s wearing a tight plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans made to look like they’re dirty when they’re really not.

“My daughter wants to ask you something.”

If looks could kill they’d have been cleaning up a Nina-sized stain off the Aeropostale floor.

“How do you pronounce the name of this store?”

“AIR-O-PO-STAL” (Stal like Stalin.)

So, Kali was right.

He then flips his head, tossing back hair cut in one of those uber-trendy styles that only white boys can pull off, and says, “But we just call it Aero.”

Oh, well, excuse the fuck outta me.

And that was all it took. It’s been Aero this and Aero that ever since. I feel like pulling out one of my mother’s old standards and asking, “You got Aero money?”

For her birthday we took her to pick out some shirts. I was very happy to see the “ALL TOPS 50% OFF” sign in the window. I didn’t want to spend more than $50. We got two t-shirts, a plaid button down, and a white hoodie for just under $50 (everything was either 50% or 70% off.)

It’ a little weird watching her style change and some of it frightens me. I mean, come on! Look at that ad again. Those kids are an eating disorder and one roofy experience away from being an Abercrombie and Fitch ad!

But as long as I am in charge of picking out and paying for the clothes, this shouldn’t be a problem. The style may be older, but we’ll always remain appropriate.

And I’m already putting the brakes on this idea that only one name brand is suitable. She wanted Aeropostale flip-flops, but they were $10.

“Girl, we can go to Old Navy and get you some flip-flops.”

“But these are better.”

“Why?”

“Because they say Aeropostale!”

“Yeah, across the bottom where no one will see it. Let’s go.”

On the bright side, when she’s old enough for a part-time job, I know where to send her.

McDonald’s Money

The other day I was at the kitchen table, paying bills and balancing the bank account when Kali looked over my shoulder, pointed at a circled dollar amount on a sheet of paper and asked, “Is that how much money we have?”

Any parent will tell you that you always pause to figure out the best way to answer your child’s question no matter how innocent the question may be. My first instinct – sometimes to a fault – is to always tell the truth. But then you have to worry about the ramifications of telling the truth. Take Kali’s question as an example – I had to ask myself, “Did we have the talk about privacy and money? Do I have to worry that I’ll see this post on Facebook:

My Mom has $1,600 in the bank!

I realized that a simple yes or no answer might not be so simple after all, so I gave the standard Mommy reply when we need time to stall.

“Girl, go play.”

As I prepared to write this, I tried to remember what my perception of the family finances were when I was a child (without being biased by what I know now.) Did I think we were poor? I’m not sure if I felt like we were poor, but I knew we didn’t have money. At least not a lot of it. My mother always attached money to our wants.

“Ma, can we have McDonald’s?”

“You got McDonald’s money?”

“Ma, can we go to the movies?”

“You got movies money?”

I was always left with the feeling that we didn’t have any money. Of course, now I realize when my mother said, “I don’t have McDonald’s money,” she meant exactly that. She had money, just not for McDonald’s. There was never a time when we didn’t eat, we just didn’t have McDonald’s.

Even though my mother and stepfather never fought about money openly (or even stressed over it in front of us) it wasn’t hard to figure out our financial station in life. Hell, just spending any time with family and friends who had more money or turning on The Cosby Show told me that we weren’t exactly the Rockefellers.

As a parent, I worry about what kind of financial message (even silently) I’m sending to my kids. There’s very little that Kali wants that she doesn’t get. But she also knows that these things don’t come magically. We’ve had the discussion about pay, taxes, and bills. She understands that going to work means getting paid. She saw me doing side merchandising and mystery shop jobs before the holidays in order to buy the laptop she wanted for Christmas.

I’m hoping this has given her an appreciation for the things we have. But there’s a fine line. We want our kids to take care of the things they have because they know they cost money and they know that money isn’t plucked out of thin air, but we don’t want our kids worrying about money. I don’t think they should have to.

I found myself choosing my words carefully when explaining our recent move to Kali. It’s an uncomfortable sentence, but I thought, “Mommy and Daddy can no longer afford that bigger house,” was appropriate. It was the perfect segue way into how much it costs to, well, live. Bigger houses are more expensive to heat in the winter and keep cool in the summer, this means bigger monthly bills and less money left over for extras or savings, etc.

Spending habits are just that – habits. If you have poor ones, your kids are in danger of picking them up. Of course, there’s also the chance that your kid may grow up to do the exact opposite. So affected by growing up in a household where utilities were also at risk of being shut up off, a child may grow up to be super responsible with their finances to simply not repeat their parents’ mistakes. But why risk it? Even if you’re faking the funk, is it better to always put on a happy face in front of your kids when it comes to money?

No matter how tight money becomes, there’s one area in which I refuse to have my kids affected. Food. Growing up, there was four of us kids and not a lot of extras. We pretty much ate breakfast and lunch in school, and things like cereal were saved for the weekends to be devoured in front of Saturday morning cartoons. And though we weren’t denied food, there was definitely the unspoken understanding that food couldn’t be consumed just for the sake of doing it. It seemed everything had to last. There wasn’t a lot of extra snacks laying around the house.

Soda was a treat. Kool-Aid was a (cheap) staple. It always seemed to me that other people had it so much better than we did. I’d go to my cousins’ houses and marvel at the amount of Sunnydale juices in the fridge or bags of chips in the cabinet. I was fascinated when school friends could go into the kitchen and prepare a sandwich without having to ask first. To me, these folks were living large! As a result, I make sure my house is filled with the things my kids like to eat. There are very few things (snacks purchased strictly for school) that Kali has to ask for before eating. I wonder if she thinks she’s living large.

Then again, she is only 11 and 11-year-olds aren’t exactly known for being rational thinkers. The other day she asked if we were poor. I told her no and then wanted to know why she asked.

“Well, I keep asking to be a premium member of that website I like, and you keep saying no.”

So, let me this straight: you live in a nice house with nice televisions, every game system on the market, tons of video games and DVDs, you have nice clothes and your own laptop and you think we’re poor because I won’t pay for unlimited access to a site where Chester Chester, Child Molesters could be lurking? *facepalm*

But maybe this means I’m doing something right. Maybe this means that she has all the understanding of money one needs to have at 11: things cost money and sometimes Mommy and Daddy will buy you the things you need/want because they can and it’s appropriate and sometimes they won’t because they can’t or won’t. Then again, maybe she was just being a smartass.

So, how much info is too much info? Should your children know what’s in your bank account? Should they be aware of exactly how much money it takes to keep the roof over their heads, the lights on, and food on the table?

Snoopy McSnooperstein

I would like to point out right away that I was not snooping on purpose. Oh, I was snooping, but it was because the opportunity to do so kinda fell in my lap. Like, when you find a dollar on the street. You don’t walk around looking for dollars on the street, but when one presents itself, you’d be a dumbass not to take it.

And, quite frankly, even if I were looking to snoop, it would be my right seeing as how I carried her for nine months and went through 26 hours of labor (24 without drugs) and pushed her out in 53 minutes which, I’m told, is a Herculean-like feat for a first time pusher.

And really, let’s blame Facebook. And Farmville while we’re at it. It’s not my fault that Kali got bored with Farmville after a week forcing me to log in to her Facebook account and tend to her farm because really, I take my farming very fucking seriously. And, and, and, it’s not my fault Facebook allows two people to be logged in to the same account from separate laptops thus allowing me to see everything that is going on with her account in real time.

Note: So, if you are a parent looking for a way to snoop, there you have it. You’re welcome. And don’t feel bad, damnit. It is your God-given right!

Usually, I give Kali a heads-up that I am logging in to her account so she can log out. It is so annoying to have her little chat boxes popping up when I’m trying to harvest my crops. A grown ass woman can only take but so much OMGs and LOLs and my personal favorite, OMGCYBI?!!111!?

Last night I didn’t tell her I was logging in because I planned on being in and out. I posted a feather collection and I wanted her to snatch one. (Don’t judge me!) So, there I am waiting for Farmville to load when a chat box pops up. (I’d also like to point out that Kali has about 12 chat boxes minimized at the bottom of her screen. I honestly don’t know how she does it.)

So, this chat box pops up and it’s from a little boy in her class. Let’s call him “David.” And I’m pretty sure he’s the little boy pulled from school early the day Obama gave his speech to students and he told Kali, “My parents don’t like Obama and black people.”

Fucking lovely. Tell me again how this sudden surge in anti-government/anti-Obama rhetoric is not about race at all.

Anyway, the box pops up and little David says…

“Xena says that you think I like you cause I keep sending you game invites.”

Note: I am totally going to correct the spelling in the retelling because typing all of those “u’s” and ur’s” gave me a headache.

And Kali says….

“Um, no.”

“Oh, ok. Because no offense, but I don’t like you like that.”

Well, fuck you, little twerp.

He continues…

“Can I ask you a question? Do you like me and do you like anyone in our class?”

And my girl replies…

“Um, that sounds like two questions and the answer to both is no.”

My daughter is fucking awesome!

“OK. Well, can I tell you who I do like?”

“Sure.”

“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“I swear.”

“Destiny.”

“WOW. I didn’t see that coming.”

Neither did I, ’cause not for nothing, Destiny sounds like a black girl’s name and I can bet mini-David Duke’s parents ain’t having it. I should probably point out that – in case this is your first time on my site – I am black, my husband is white and Kali looks white. Like, could totally pass if she wanted to. Thankfully, she doesn’t.

Then he clarifies….

“The white one, not the black one.”

“Oh.”

Oh.

At this point, my daughter starts a new chat with another friend.

“I KNOW WHO DAVID LIKES!!!”

When I tell this to Donny his response is, “Our daughter is trifling.”

“I know, right?”

What follows is five minutes of this kid trying to get my daughter to admit that she likes ANYONE in their class and my daughter telling him she doesn’t. Either that, or it was five minutes of Kali realizing I was in her account and not setting herself up for an ass-whipping.

So, Donny posts a gold egg and I go to Kali’s home page to get one. (Hey, what did I say about the judging!?) And I see this status update from one of her other friends. We’ll call her “Angela.”

“I love my boyfriend soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!”

OMGCYBI!?!?11?!

Another little girl leaves a comment asking, “Who is your boyfriend?” And I’m guessing Angela tells her privately because dumbass comes back and leaves another comment saying, “Harrison? Really?” (We’re just gonna call him “Harrison.”)

Then, a few comments down, Harrison weighs in…

“And I have the best girlfriend ever!”

People, these kids are TEN. TEN! 10. 1-0. One-Zero. Just barely into double fucking digits ten!

At this point, I’m ready to chime in that these kids need Jesus, but I’d be doing so under Kali’s name thus ensuring she will never have friends or a boyfriend of her own… and suddenly, the idea doesn’t seem so bad.

“Nina! Log out of her account. Stop being nosy. You’re invading her privacy!”

“Are you new? She doesn’t have privacy! She’s ten! Also, she knows that I do this. I warned her. If she says or does something she knows I wouldn’t like, then she wants to get caught!”

Then an IM pops up from a little girl we shall call “Megan.” I don’t like Megan. Megan is grown and mean. Megan wears inappropriate clothes and influenced some inappropriate internet activity over a year ago. Megan’s partner-in-crime, a boy we shall call “Pete”, also sent Kali a Facebook friend request which I promptly “ignored.” She’s lucky I let her be Megan’s friend online… but only because I monitor.

So, I’ve seen IMs from Megan before and I can just tell what kind of teen she’s going to be. She’s going to be like all the girls I hated in junior high school and high school: catty, petty, jealous, boy-crazy, and sometimey. I want Kali to learn early that that isn’t the way to be. More importantly, I want her to learn how to not give a fuck when girls around her are that way. So far, it’s a hard lesson to drive home.

I scroll back and read the conversation from earlier that evening. Several times Megan referred to people or things as being “gay” which reinforced my belief that she’s a bitch-in-training. The rest of the conversation was her having a hissy fit because Kali wasn’t writing her back fast enough even when Kali explained several times that she wasn’t feeling well and even when Kali explained that she had been away from her laptop eating dinner.

“Fine. If you don’t write me back in five seconds, I am never talking to you again,” she wrote at one point when Kali was in the bathroom.

“5….4….3….2….”

“What?”

“Too late. BYE KALI!”

“Wait! What are you talking about?”

“I told you, you had five seconds to answer and you didn’t.”

“I was in the bathroom.”

‘Whateva.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I typed,

“Goodbye, Megan!”

What I wanted to type was, “Goodbye, bitch,” but I’m adult and she’s ten and I ain’t tryna go to jail. It’s 9pm now and Kali’s laptop shuts off automatically. I hear her in the other room playing with Jack, but Megan is still typing away – threatening Kali that she’ll never speak to her again if she doesn’t answer her RIGHT NOW. Then, out of the blue, she asks…

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

“Megan, this is Kali’s mother. Her laptop is off. She is not allowed online after 9pm. She is getting ready for school tomorrow.”

Like your little ass needs to be.

“Oh. OK. I’m sorry.”

Donny turns to me, “Do you feel better now?”

“No.”

I will feel better when Megan is no longer around my daughter in any capacity. I will feel better when we move in two weeks and Kali is in a new school and can start over. Oh, I’m sure the ten-year-olds in the new school are no different/better, but still.

I will feel better when I know that Kali realizes that calling something “gay” isn’t cool. I will feel better when Kali realizes that having a boyfriend at ten is out of the fucking question. I will feel better when Kali realizes that a ten-year-old girl asking another ten-year-old girl if she’s ever kissed a girl or boy is inappropriate. I will feel better when little David is old enough to decide for himself if he’s going to be a racist fuckstick or a decent human being so I don’t have to worry about my daughter associating with him in any fashion.

And that’s just a start.

Mommy Monday: I Never Thought I’d…

There are times when Kali and Jack will be cuddled up, giggling over something he just did – or sometimes nothing at all – and she’ll look up and say, “I never thought I’d have a baby brother.” She’ll further explain that she kind of resigned herself to always being an only child.

As we pack up the house for our move, she’ll sometimes say, “I never thought we’d be moving. I just kinda thought I’d always live here.”

She really does think about these things. At ten, she has definite ideas on how her life is, how it should be, and how it will be. In that sense, she’s a lot more connected to herself than I was at that age. I didn’t give the future much thought at ten. In fact, I kind of expected things to change at any moment, so when they did it was normal. When I was Kali’s age, I’d already lived in at least three or four different places.

I was too busy reading to give much thought to how many siblings I’d eventually have. My parents just kept popping them out and somewhere between To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, I’d look up to find a new baby sister.

Then again, I was convinced I’d never live past 18. Not sure why. I couldn’t envision myself in my 20′s or 30′s. I shared this prediction with my best friend once. She thought I was crazy. Not just cause it was a very morbid thing to think, but because I’d also recently confessed to being able to control traffic lights and NYC subway trains with my mind.

So, I am fascinated when Kali and I have these conversations in which she shares what she imagines for herself and our family. She seems to take change with ease. Excitement even. It’s like by having another baby and moving to a new house we’ve opened up a whole new world of possibilities for her.

Never thought you’d have a baby brother, but now here one is? Why not another? Why not a baby sister? Of course, this also teaches a valuable lesson in disappointment when I explain to her that Mommy will, most likely, not be having anymore babies.

Once, after she’d admitted that she still couldn’t believe she had a baby brother, I asked, “Is that a good thing?”

“Yeah. I never thought I’d have one, but I’m happy I do. Life is so funny.”

What a funny thing for a ten-year-old to say, right? She already has this sense of wonderment about life and an appreciation for it. I hope that never goes away.

Do you talk to your kids about their expectations? Their wants? Their dreams? What are they? Do you feel a responsibility to keep things as they are for your kids or have you found that your kids adapt well to change?

Mommy Monday: Facebook Fiend

It was bound to happen. Just a few short weeks after getting Kali a laptop for Christmas, she now has a Facebook account.

Thanks to Windows 7, we’ve been able to closely monitor not just her internet use, but everything she does while on the computer. So, she won’t be tempted to stay up late doing God knows what while we sleep, we have a timer set so that the laptop shuts off at 9pm on school nights and 11pm on the weekends. Only games of a certain ESRB rating are allowed to be played/installed and as the administrator I watch her browser history with Dick Cheney-like hawkishness.

(She’s also kinda under the impression that every night her laptop emails my laptop a complete video of everything she did on the computer that day.)

The fact that she has since joined the Facebook fray is totally my fault. It all began when I would ask her to log in to my Farmville and Petville accounts to harvest my crops and clean my apartment. What?! It’s not my fault Zynga has yet to install the upgrade where you can peruse the local Home Depot for Mexican day workers!

Like all oppressed, she started grumbling about reaping the benefits for herself. Why can’t I have my own farm with neighbors and stuff? Why, indeed.

So, I let her have an account under the rules that I will accept all of her friend requests, read her emails, and get first crack at her golden eggs when she posts them. Don’t judge me.

I made my status updates invisible to her and only sent out friend requests to family and friends that didn’t post questionable content. Of course, it has recently come to my attention that one family member in particular got super offended when  they were excluded from Kali’s friends list and I’ve since been defriended. Ain’t the first time, won’t be the last.

But that’s the beauty of being the boss of your own kids. You get to make the calls, rules, and decisions. They may not always be popular with others, but my motto is, “They’ll be aight.”

I’m afraid, though, that I’ve created quite the Facebook monster. Kali is kinda obsessed with two features: quizzes and Facebook chat. The latter has gotten out of control. She can be sitting across the room when suddenly:

Sometimes, it comes in handy:

And my child has never met a quiz she didn’t like.

What kind of Miley Cyrus song are you?

Who are you more like: Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez?

Is your name nerdy?

But my favorite:

Needless to say, I can’t stop calling her Butter Nuts.

Mommy Monday: Getting To Know You

Your children assume that your life began the moment they were born.

Kali is always shocked to find that I know things.

“Oh my God, Mommy. How do you know this song? I’ve never heard it before.”

“Um, cause it’s from 1982.”

Once, we were headed upstairs with our dinner and I carried both of our plates and glasses.

“You’re really good at that.”

“Well, I used to be a waitress. This is a breeze compared to some of the stuff I carried.”

“You used to be a waitress?!”

“Uh huh. In Texas.”

“You lived in Texas?!”

She asked both as if I’d just confessed to inventing ice cream.

The older she gets, I realize there’s a lot she doesn’t know about me. The other night, while driving home from the library, I dropped another bombshell.

“I have to tell you something.”

*pause*

“I used to be married. To someone else. Before Daddy.”

We’d already had the biological Dad convo a few years ago and I thought I’d save the first husband revelation for a later date.

“You were?!”

“Yes.”

“To who?”

So, I tell her about my first husband – met him when I was 18, married at 22, divorced before you could say, “infidelity abound.”

She leans forward from the backseat and whispers conspiratorially, “Does Daddy know this?”

“Yes!”

“Well, just checking. I mean, I can’t believe he married you knowing you used to be married to someone else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He wasn’t married to someone else before.”

“So? He had girlfriends and stuff.”

“That’s different.

The conversation was taking an ugly turn. I thought this revelation might make me seem worldly and mysterious to my daughter. That she would see me as someone other than the woman that worries about bills and drives her to the library and after-school book club. I wanted her to think I was cool. Instead, she kinda made me feel like The Whore of Babylon.

We get in the house and she says, “Are you sure Daddy knows, cause I’m gonna tell him.” And then, just in case I was lying, she proceeds to confirm that Donny did indeed know that he wasn’t my first husband.

Nice to see whose side she’s on now.

“When will you tell Jack?”

“Well, I don’t know now. I’m sure you’ll tell him soon enough, Ms. Judgey McJudgerstein.”

Last night, I thought she’d get a good laugh out of this pic from my 18th birthday:

“Can you believe Grandpa let me wear that out of the house?,” I asked, giggling like a fool. “It was a nightgown, but I wore it as a dress.”

“I can’t believe anyone let you out the house like that!”

It’s odd what impresses her. She’s more in awe of my past in the food service industry than my tales of hob-knobbing with, now, irrelevant celebrities or how damn hot I used to be.

“I mean, why would you wear a nightgown in public? Why not just buy a real dress? I know your birthday is in August, but it couldn’t have been that hot, could it?”

“OK. Go to bed.”

“I don’t have school tomorrow.”

“Go to bed anyway.”

So, how do you handle discussing past relationships/escapades with your children?

Mommy Monday: You Can’t Make Me!

I am painfully aware that everything I do is allowed only because my children are feeling charitable. Take changing Jack’s diaper for instance. Sometimes he lays there nice and calm and allows me to do what I have to do. Other times, he throws a major fit like his ass is covered in paper cuts and I’m using salt-soaked wipes. During the times that he lays quietly, he kinda eyes me like, “Yeah, that’s right. Make sure you get under that scrotum real good.”

And then I realize I’m his bitch.

With Kali, it’s a different story. And though I’m not one of those “because I said so” parents – I’ll supply a reason for why I’m making her do something or forbidding another – it is expressly understood that once I give my reasoning, she will abide no matter what.

So, I was very firm in my decision to force Kali to participate in a book club at school. Every two weeks they meet after school to discuss a book and practice quizzing each other on it. Next month, they will compete against other schools’ clubs that have read the same books. Personally, my nerdy ass thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Kali? Not so much.

I told myself that this wasn’t the same as parents that suit up their kids to play sports two seconds after they learn to walk without any idea if the child 1. has any desire to play the sport and 2. is any good at it. Hell, Kali’s 10! I know she likes to read.

“I hate to read!,” she yelled recently when I told her that she could not quit the club.

How could any child of mine hate reading? Then I remembered that she was, indeed, my child and therefore prone to exaggeration.

“You like to read!”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t like to read the books in the club. They’re boring.”

She had a point. Of the half dozen books assigned so far, only two have been anything Kali would have chosen on her own. The rest were boring books about dogs on the open range and little Native American girls.

The club isn’t fun for her, but I’m remiss to let her quit. What kind of message is that sending? Or is it okay to encourage quitting something you forced them to do anyway? Am I just as bad as those parents living out their varsity dreams via their offspring?

I think I’ve come up with a solution. I still think reading and discussing books is a good thing. It teaches them to really think about what they’ve read and see things from other perspectives. With that in mind, Kali and I will have our own book club.

We’ll read the same book and discuss it. We’ll come up with a handful of questions each to go over together. Any of you are welcome to join in with your kid of the same age (or close to it.)

So, where should we start? I’m thinking of starting with the Percy Jackson books. Here’s the trailer for the movie based on the first book.

So, suggest some titles for Kali and I. And don’t judge me when I force her to read the Harry Potter series.

Shower Power

Back in April, I wrote about Kali’s reluctance to bathe. It wasn’t that she liked being dirty and/or smelly, she just had better things to do. She refused to slow down long enough to bathe because she would miss something happening downstairs, on TV, or outside the window. Why slow down to bathe when there were shows to watch, books to read, and video games to play? In short, she had shit to do.

But then Jack came along, outgrew his baby tub (sorry, Amy), and he became fascinated with standing by the side of the tub in the master bathroom as Kali was forced to take her nightly bath. Well, what really fascinated him was tossing objects in the tub, laughing as his sister squealed and ducked flying dirty underwear, toothpaste tubes, and hand towels, before Donny or I would drag him out of there. When he started stripping off his diaper and trying to climb in the tub with her, we realized we could kill several dirty birds with one stone – if we let him in the tub with Kali they’d both bathe, we’d get at least fifteen minutes of quiet time, and Kali wouldn’t get beaned with toilet paper rolls. Win/win/win. What we didn’t count on was Jack now tossing everything IN the tub out, and getting the floor soaking wet in the process.

Kali, sick of cleaning up after her brother and the responsibility of cleaning the tub before and after bathing, decided that she was finally ready to take her first shower. I helped her prepare by showing her how to adjust the temperature and stream of the water. I showed her how I usually draped my towel over the door so it’s ready when I’m done and told her where she could hang her loofah after she bathed. And, we were off…

Her first shower lasted 15 minutes, the second lasted 20. We are now at the point where I have to go looking for her to make sure she hasn’t drowned.

“Oh, Mommy! It’s so awesome! When you turn your back to the water it feels soooo good!”

I have created a monster. Albeit a very clean one, but a monster all the same. A monster that apparently doesn’t understand water bills or the concept of “using up all the hot water.” I find myself having to time my own showers around her schedule for, you see, she likes using my shower because it has a cool frosted door and resembles something out of an amusment park. Her own shower, by comparison, was too old school with its plastic shower liner and blue cloth curtain. Don’t ask me how one who just discovered the joys of a hot shower can be so damn picky.

But, I guess, I shouldn’t complain. My child finally, without having to be bribed or harassed, regularly, and enthusiastically washes her ass.

Language, Language

I have the pottiest of all potty mouths. My mouth is a veritable cesspool of filth and f-bombs, molars and motherfuckers, incisors and… a really bad word that starts with an i.

I like cursing. It makes me feel better when I’m mad or stressed. Some people meditate, I yell obscenities. I think both are preferable alternatives to breaking dishes or choking the shit outta someone so, don’t judge me.

And yes, I curse in front of my children. Maybe I curse because adults cursed around me when I was young. Who knows? I really don’t buy into these theories that state that what’s done around you as a child shapes the kind of adult you’re going to be. Some people who grew up with F-bombs dropped like they were hot, never curse. Some people who got regular spankings as a child, never raise a hand to their own children. Maybe we are going to be who we are going to be regardless.

Kali, as far as I know, doesn’t curse. I say this with the same certainty that a parent who never curses around their child can. We can never be 100% sure what our kids are (or aren’t) doing when we’re not around. She says she doesn’t and I believe her. This is the same child that once refused to tell me the “c word” a fellow student had used in school. My mind raced. I asked myself, “Cunt? Cock? Cracker-ass-cracker? What could it be?”

She decided to spell it.

“C-R…”

Why would a little white boy call someone a cracker-ass-cracker, I wondered.

“…A-P.”

“Crap?! He said crap, Kali?!”

“Yes, that’s a bad word.”

So, you see what I’m dealing with. I hope that Kali, if she decides to start cursing, does so the way I did. I never cursed in front of my parents until I was an adult (a.k.a Grown Ass Woman), I cursed as a teen with my friends, I was never one of those teens to curse around other adults, and as an adult I don’t just curse in public willy-nilly (in the market, in the workplace, etc.) and around other people’s children. If I slip, I apologize, correct myself, and make sure not to do again. Most times, the parent will wave their hand and inform me that, “oh, they’ve heard worse at home.”

I don’t think that cursing is an indication of intelligence. Anyone that does is a fucking moron. I’m sure there are a bunch of nuclear physicists with a healthy cussing appetite. The key is being smart enough to know when not to cuss.

So, what are your thoughts on cursing and children?

Class Act

For years now I’ve wanted to get Kali involved in some kind of extra curricular activity. It’s been hard because most activities are ridiculously expensive and Kali is ridiculously picky.

When she was four she took ballet at her preschool for a year. She enjoyed it, but became too old for that particular program once she started kindergarten. Since then, we looked into piano lessons and soccer. Both were very expensive. We were thisclose to signing her up for soccer, but when we explained that she’d have to attend weekly practice and compete against other teams, her interest quickly waned. Thank God too, because the costly registration and uniform fees were non-refundable.

A few weeks ago, Kali’s school sent home some information on local activities for kids. One that caught my eye was a creative arts program. The class meets once a week for an hour to learn acting, dance, and video production. They put on two performances a year and it was only $50 a month. I told Kali we’d be going to the signup – with complimentary pizza and beverages – whether she liked it or not.

She did not.

She hit the roof. She insisted that she’d be no good at singing, dancing, and acting and that she didn’t want to talk in front of other people. I explained to her that she had no idea what she was good at because she refused to try anything. She agreed to go simply for the free food and also, the small minor detail that she really had no damn choice.

Now, I’m not a fan of parents pushing their kids to participate in programs against their will, but my child has never tried anything past the elementary ballet lessons. I figured I’d pay for it for a month or two and if she didn’t like it – or sucked at it – I’d pull her out.

Saturday, my Mom and I took Kali and my little sis (who is very much interested in the performing arts) to the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet place in order to sign up for the program. I’d warned Kali before we left, “Don’t get there and act like you’ve never had anything. You can have one slice of pizza, maybe two, and something to drink.”

It was the ghettoest thing I’ve ever seen. There was no organization at all. The director who ran the program looked like she’d had a Xanax shake before we got there. There were no forms to fill out, no program schedule and the website promised that each child would receive a bag of items needed for class complete with a journal – I didn’t see those either.

The director floated around talking to each parent without saying much of anything. Kali sat and ate her two slices of pizza with a smug look on her face. She knew I was not feeling it. When the director made her way to our table, she couldn’t even tell me the exact address of where the classes would be held. She was not getting my $50!

“Mommy, can I get more pizza and maybe a brownie?”

“Sure, Kali. Eat up.”

Not all is lost. Friday, her school sent home a sign-up sheet for a book club. Every other week Kali will stay after school for an hour to meet with the club. They discuss the assigned books and come up with questions about what they read. Then they practice competing with each other using a buzzer to answer the questions. The ten best participants will make up a team that competes against other book clubs in the county in February. Cost? $5 to cover the snacks provided at the meetings.

“I don’t want to do it!”

“But you like to read!”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to do the buzzer thing.”

“Are you kidding? Buzzers are fun! I’m all about buzzing in before the other guy. It’s awesome!”

“I don’t want to compete on a stage and have everyone looking at me.”

Now, I reason that if she doesn’t like the competition part of the meetings, she’ll suck at it and won’t make the team. And that’s fine. But I want her to have the experience of discussing books with other students. Book clubs are fun!

“Fine! But I’m only going cause there’s gonna be snacks!”

“Yeah, that and I’m making you.”

Are you sensing a pattern here?

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