Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
Today Heather has asked us to tell her one thing we’re currently procrastinating.
I am currently procrastinating opening a very spam-ish looking piece of postal mail that says:
IMPORTANT — DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY DISCARD
State law requires that you take care of an important matter related to your move.
Please do this today.
What if I discard it ON PURPOSE? What then? I don’t know. I’m sort of putting off that decision for a while.
But he wouldn’t budge.
Last night I came home late. Dan had put the kids down already, which is always a sort of bitter-sweet experience. Bitter because I love them and I adore to squidge them, and sweet because I get out of doing the real work and yet I can enjoy them in their most lovable state, the one where they’re sweetly sleeping and not wiping their spaghetti mustache on my pants because I didn’t get them a nakum fast enough.
Magoo woke up shortly after I arrived, screaming as though he’d had some terrible nightmare, like the one where you’re driving to Butte, Montana naked in front of a crowd of people and you NEED to pull over to pee so bad but every exit is blocked by evil clowns sucking back helium and singing that Celine Dion Titanic song. I’d scream too… if I’d ever had a dream like that.
Dan went to save him, but I ended up joining in the fun (okay, I completely took over after Dan got him to the calm-snuggly phase).
He was so cuddly and squishy and needy and it was one of those moments I fantasized about before I had children. Me and my baby dolly alone in a dark room, the nightlight softly glowing. I rocked him back and forth, humming nonsensically soothing songs. I kissed his peach fuzz and gently squoze him. He nuzzled into me, batting his sweet sleepy eyes, his bottom lip sucking and fluttering in and out.
I knew what he wanted. I knew I still had it and I knew I had to either give it to him right then or abandon him and go have “the talk” with Dan about whether or not we were ready for round three of Operation Repopulate Seattle with Attractive Small People.
I thought “Seattle needs more cuteness and we need to start that crusade tonight” was a pretty hard sell.
So I offered my weaned-two-months-ago-but-his-mom-still-inexplicably-has-the-goods bubby a taste of the special milk “he” had been missing so desperately.
Yeah.
He acted like I was trying to jam my elbow down his throat.
My appendages bashfully retreated as he walked off arm in arm with his new girlfriend.
“Mom, I’m with Nuby now.”
Yeah, whatever. Suck rubber. What do I care?
~This post inspired by Jess~
Thanks to Lauren for pointing me towards this after reading my interview over at mommybloggers.com.
Here’s the excerpt she was referring to:
Mommybloggers: We love that you host Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battles. In fact, we’re thinking that there needs to be a way to incorporate it into BlogHer 2007. Can you give us a sample of your lyrical prowess?
Kathryn:
Get yer tooth-BRUSH from the vanity, OOO let’s fight cavities
You better put away the play-doh, this moment
You own it, you better never let it go
Crusty. You only get one tub, do not miss your chance to show
Grammy your sculpture once before bedtime, yo
You really don’t get the whole experience with just the words on the page. If you could picture me as one of the white moms on Oprah trying to “get down” with one fist raised in the air, attempting some wooden-legged booty-poppin’ as they watched Mary J. Blige perform recently, you’d feel like you were actually there in our living room for a DFFRB. Laylee and Dan like to add some flava with a sweet two-fingered wiggedy-wiggedy faux-vinyl-spinning maneuver which I plan to incorporate into my own routines at some future date.
The tips on the WikiHow Site are invaluable and I’m sure the flo will be more flo-inacious after I read through those a couple of times. I especially like the part where it explains that to “spit” in rap culture does not mean the “forcible expulsion of saliva from the mouth”. Thanks. We are all so much more “down” now.
******
Oh, and the Blog This tattoos are gone. I still have a few MommyBlogHer tatts for any mommas out there who want them.
My good friends, parents of Big Moses (the underwear swapping boy), are jumping ship and moving to California. As a faithful Seattle area resident for the past 3+ years, I find this traitorous move extremely unforgivably traitorous.
I just got the invitation to their going away shindig and it has been asked that we bring nothing but fruit to the memorial services, at Big Daddy Mo’s request. It was listed as his “final” request.
This is troubling to me on many levels. Will there be a firing squad after the beach ball volleyball? Is he too good for The Best Cookies in the State of Washington? In his fruitalicious plea, is he suggesting something about the people of California or his fellow Washingtonians? Dude. We can’t even bring granola?
And finally, if you’re reading this Big Mamma Mo — so help me if this is the final request I get out of you. Seriously, if we lose contact — I will hunt you down and I’m gonna be wielding something more powerful than a piece of fruit.
There is no orange or purple either.
Dark pink?
Yes.
Orangy Pink?
Yes.
Purplish pink?
Also affirmative.
Laylee wanted you to know that.
***********
I just wrote what I like to think is my last post about BlogHer… for this week… and it’s being hosted over at the Mommybloggers’ site. They were nice enough to hand out (read this: attack people and brand them with) custom-made washable tatts at ye olde conference.
For those of you who were unable to attend, I accidentally grabbed about 30 of them from the table the last night (I swear they said something about “take as many as you’d like”)
If you’d like one of these fabulous tattoos, email me your address, tell me which one you want, swear a blood oath that you’ll email me a picture of yourself wearing it, and I’ll mail you a tattoo as a service to the town, courtesy of the Mommybloggers.
Then I’ll post a gallery of all the tattoees with links to your blogs.
***I’ll let you know when they’re gone***
This post originally appeared on The Parenting Post on August 7, 2006.
It was me. I let them in and I make no apologies. I made the uniform before she was old enough to say “huntsman,” “dwarves” or “Michael Eisner’s marketing empire.” I bought the videos. I spent the ten bucks at Home Depot and put the removable stickers up all over her room.
In my grey‐hoodie‐wearing‐leatherman‐carrying‐aspiring‐ documentary‐film‐makering days, I swore that if I ever had children, they would not know what a Disney princess was, let alone have a room littered with them.
Then came an itty-bitty thing called reality.
I gave birth to a girly girl and I suddenly wanted to shroud her in pink satin and staple very small bows to her bald head.
As a new mother, I grew a memory and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for the princess-loving days of my tomboy childhood. I always wanted to be Snow White, but with an older sister who was much more feminine than me, I was doomed to remain a prince for all time and I was not going to deprive my daughter of the girlish joy of make-believe.
I made a conscious choice to dip my family’s feet into the world of mainstream media and now I get to decide whether the princess stickers go in the cart, whether we buy the shoes with Dora on them, how many minutes of TV we watch a day and what makes up those minutes.
I hear so many parents of young children talking about how they can’t stand the fact that their entire house is covered in Teletubbies paraphernalia or how they’re so sick of listening to alternative metal music but Little Timmy just can’t get enough of Korn. “We’ve spent so much money following their tour around the country, painting Timmy’s nursery black, getting his tattoo and fashioning pictures of the band members into an attractive mobile for his room. I can’t wait for him to outgrow this stage.”
To the parents I hear saying this type of thing, I have to ask: What time do your children put you to bed at night and are you allowed to sleep with a sippy cup?
This month marks my one year bloggiversary. What a wild ride this has been!
In celebration, the Mommybloggers are hosting my debutant ball over at their place. So put on your lace gloves, save me some room on your dance card, and stop over for a glass of lemonade.
When I got back from the conference, my parents were already here waiting for me, cleaning and organizing my house and building shelves like an elite trained strike force the government can only dream of employing. My garage went from this:
to this:
in the course of a few days. I can PARK in there now for the love of PETE! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maybe I’ll just install a strobe light and start a disco instead.
Last week my home was filled with friends and family. Now that they’ve all left, I return to my blogging nerdery like a wino to his bottle.
My new post is up over at Parenting and here’s the schedule for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn discussion. Feel free to post comments here or comment on your own blog and leave a link in my comments.
Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th
That’s about 100 pages per week. You don’t have to stick to the schedule and you can definitely go WAY “off topic” in your discussion. If you’re discussing it, that makes it “on topic”. Happy reading. It really is a fabulous book.
One fine collegiate day I was walking on BYU campus when I spotted a guy across the quad who looked SO familiar. It was amazing. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before, but not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. I felt I had seen him so many times that we had possibly been very good friends at another time in my life, possibly even relatives.
My casual glances turned into stares and eventually I made a direct beeline for the dude with one question on my mind. “Do you recognize me?” He looked so familiar that I simply HAD to discover our past connection.
As I drew closer, he began looking at me and smiling, a quizzical look on his face. I smiled and continued to close in, never breaking eye contact until I stopped, alarmed, 3 feet in front of him. It was Steve Young. No relation to Daring “Young” Mom.
My eyes widened. I turned on my heel and marched firmly back across the quad.
I’m the girl who walked up to Melissa my first 10 minutes at BlogHer and asked her name and whether or not she had a blog. Yeah, she’s tampering with a little blog called Suburban Bliss.
I got an email at the conference from my father-in-law Pops telling me that Guy Kawasaki would be at the FilmLoop booth and I should go over and say hi. “Sure,” says I. “I’ll go chat it up.”
So I walk over to the booth and start asking everyone their names. I can’t remember his name at this point but I’m sure if I hear it, it’ll ring a bell. None of their names are soundin’ familiar. So I start asking if there’s anyone else who might be working the booth later on and what their names might be. Do they know anyone else in the company with another name than the ones they’ve been listing?
The woman at the booth finally comes out and asks me why I want to know.
Me: Well, I’m supposed to meet somebody named “Guy Something”.
Booth-Lady with British Accent: You mean Guy Kawasaki?
Me: Ye-AH! That’s it. He here?
BLBA: He’ll be here tomorrow but I’m sure he’ll be absolutely swarmed.
Me: Cool. I’ll just stop by.
BLBA: He’ll really be swarmed. Would you like me to set up an appointment with him?
Me: I… I… don’t know who he… is? My father-in-law told me to say hi.
BLBA: We should probably set up an appointment.
Me: No, I really don’t have a clue who he is. I’ll just try to catch him tomorrow.
The next day in a moment of Zen I not only see Guy across an empty ballroom, but I actually recognize him (okay, how many Asian MEN were actually at BlogHer?) and yell out, “HEY! Are you Guy?”
“Yeah” he says in that there’s-a-Wikipedia-entry-about-me-but-I-still-try-to-act-like-a-regular-“Guy” tone of voice. I explain that although I have no idea who he is, I’d really like to take a picture with him to pass along to my daddy-in-law. He humors me.
Pops – This one’s for you!
Aggressive kids.
I don’t really have them, unless you call ripping your brother’s arms off, chewing on them and then beating him over the head with them aggressive. She only really does that sort of thing when he does something really insane like look at her while she’s eating marshmallows, so I wouldn’t exactly call her aggressive. He’s only got a few arms anyway and I think once they’re all gone, the problem will pretty much be solved.
Truly though, this is a major issue that I often hear parents talking about. Either we worry that our own child is too aggressive or we have playdates with kids who gank toys, bite chunks out of other kids’ flesh or show up at your house with a fist fulla steel.
Please leave tips for either circumstance. What do you do to help tame your own child’s out-of-control aggression? How much discipline is too much? Have you found a great way to calm Nina down before she detonates her bomb of toddleric rage on the playground?
On the other hand, how do you deal with other people’s children who you feel are too aggressive towards your own? Do you think it’s acceptable to discipline someone else’s child as a form of protection? Do you think your child should fight their own battles? How do you address the issue with the other parent?
Personally, I think that biting or hitting back are a lazy way to solve the problem and may do more harm than good. A more appropriate way to manage the behavior would be to use a little love and logic parenting. “Oh, that’s such a bummer. Now you have two choices. Either you need to untie Timmy and take the play-doh out of his mouth, or you need to at least ask his mom what color of play-doh he likes being force-fed best.”
When your child is being bullied by someone else and the other parent is present, I think it’s more appropriate to mention it to the other parent than to try to attempt to discipline the child yourself. For the most part, I try to teach my kids to deal with it and stand up for themselves. That’s why I’ve hired my own professional ninja to work with them on technique and help them with their wardrobe.
Now please, tell me what you do. Not everyone has the means to hire their own personal ninja or the patience to parent with the love and the logicality.