Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
When I think of Magoo, I hope I always remember him running down the hill to our house, his fluffy hair bouncing, his little McQueen-crocked feet pumping like bolts of red rubber lightning. I violated my rule of not buying “character” clothes when I saw the look on his face at the shoe store.
They were like the air to him.
It was a good decision.
I never had his baby shoes bronzed. Maybe I’ll do these.
I was a mom pretty much all day today. Here is my report:
I cruelly forced someone to wear pants outside in 40-degree weather.
I cut peanut-butter sandwiches in the shape of dinosaurs and delivered them to an alfresco restaurant-for-2 at the end of our driveway.
I danced like a lunatic while driving in my car. My passengers said I was good. I chose to believe them.
I changed shirts twice but never showered.
I calmly explained AGAIN why people under the age of 30 should never use permanent markers… ever.
I threw away 3 packs of wipes that had been left open and dried out completely. Yes. I heard the earth and Sheryl Crow scream out in pain and betrayal.
I received a visitor while sitting upon the throne who proceeded to hug and cuddle me tenderly while I peed… just because of love.
When they asked “Why,” I answered. All day long.
I held a large child like a baby while he cried and showed me his bonk. Twice.
I giggled on the escalator while holding hands with a boy and agreed that it was “JUST LIKE A RIDE!”
I tried to play a girly ballad on the car stereo but was told, “That song’s scary!” “No it’s not,” I retorted. He responded, “It’s not scary to YOU, but it’s scary to ME.” I navigated my Zune back to Eye of the Tiger.
I sat out on the front porch to sort the mail so they could keep playing outside until it was All the Way Dark.
When asked to squeeze the ketchup in the shape of a dinosaur, I did my best but was informed that it looked more like an AT-AT.
I purchased the socks with the grey bottoms even though they cost 50 cents more because they help him run so much faster.
After 3 hours of hard work, I unearthed a parking spot in our garage and put my car in it, only to be scared and confused when I went to leave for a meeting and found that the car was “missing” from the driveway.
I sat in a meeting full of other moms, animatedly discussing ways of extorting money from friends and family to support education. An award called a “Golden Acorn,” professional jump-ropers, and nominating people to be on a committee to nominate people were all discussed at the meeting as well.
I picked up two slugs with my bare hands and threw them to freedom so the children’s squealing would stop. One was on a rubber ball. One was on my living room carpet. They felt like congealed slime… because they were.
Upon request I composed two original songs, one called, “Hooky Joojie” and the other called, “Mommy, the Laylee’s Mommy,” sung to the tune of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer.
I heard two people pray about how much they loved me.
Today I was a mom. It’s not a bad gig.
Hey. We’re having some technical difficulties over here. If you email me in the next couple of days at my daringyoungmom.com address, your email will be lost in a vortex of time and space where it will party with its friends, never actually making it to an inbox of any kind. Then I will appear to be a jerk for ignoring your oh-so-important communication. I will not be a jerk, but as you know, things are not always as they seem. So if you have an urgent message for me, please leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you from another email account which I choose not to publish on the internet.
Laylee: Mom. Magoo and I are hunting. We’re shooting cows to get milk.
Me: You don’t shoot cows to get milk. You only get milk if they’re still alive.
{PAUSE}
Laylee: What can we get if we shoot them?
So we’re experiencing the worst flooding here in ~90 years and our town is cut off in every direction from the rest of the world. Dan made it home before the flooding and our house is up high enough that we always fare okay. There’s just no new mail, no garbage pickup, no grocery deliveries to the stores and no easy access to hospital care. So many people have lost their homes throughout the state and as the waters recede, there is damage to our major routes out of town, so it may be several days until people can get in or out safely.
Luckily Dan is stuck on this side of the water and is able to work from home fairly effectively. And although Laylee thinks she’s broken her leg and is begging me to take her to Children’s Hospital for X-rays, I’m fairly certain that the Arnica I just rubbed on it has done the trick. With the way she’s prancing around the living room, I think I’ll hold off on calling the fire station emergency evac boats into immediate action.
Click over to Parenting to read about the REAL secret of how we’re handling the whole situation. Parental wisdom comes from surprising sources. It’s humorous and highly useful information to enrich your life.
Whatever pride or dignity I thought I possessed as a young whipper-snapper came spilling out of my body along with the child when I lay helpless in the hospital answering to the name of Mother for the first time, midwifes and nurses, grabbing, pulling and touching me in ways that I would have previously found appalling.
Over the past 6 years I’ve periodically made attempts to regain some of my lost pride but it’s hard when you live with people who can’t BELIEVE there’s not a baby in your tummy because it’s SO big, who use you as a human tissue, and who pray to Heavenly Father that he will help them please be on time for school tomorrow. Laylee knows I’ve shown myself incapable of regular punctuality so she likes to call for backup.
This morning on the way to school, I noticed I hadn’t even run a comb through her hair. This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion, especially since she gets to pick her own clothes. I need the teacher to see one sign that she is not being physically neglected at home. So I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to do a quick fix with the only tools I had, a comb and a bobby pin. Without tangle spray or local anesthetic it’s nearly impossible to straighten Laylee’s bird’s nest without shrieks of agony so I “smoothed it over,” told her I’d done the best I could but it wasn’t great and got back into the drivers’ seat of the car.
“It’s okay,” Laylee replied. “Being on time is way more important than just looking nice anyway.” As she said this, I wondered if she was as aware as I was of my unshowered, unbrushed hair or the near-pajamas I was wearing. I could have been the poster child for “Looking Nice Isn’t That Important Anyway.” Then there was the reminder that being on time was more crucial than looks and that I’d let her down so many times in the past.
Kids will let you know what they think of you. Frequently their words are filled with love and often with that love comes brutally honest assessments of your worst traits, your biggest insecurities. Even their criticisms usually aren’t malicious at this age. They just stem from curiosity, fascination or just plain lack of social skills but they can still hurt or at least bump your pride down a notch.
Lately the kids have been using “humor” to share how they see the world, their favorite being the knock-knock joke that’s really a why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road joke in disguise.
Both of these gems came up at dinner last night to much raucous laughter.
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Why did the mommy cross the road?
I don’t know. Why?
To go shopping.
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Why did the mommy cross the road?
I don’t know. Why?
To pick up her prescription
Nice. So this “mom” person is a materialistic shopaholic who NEEDS HER MEDS? I see why that’s funny. Almost.
Then driving to school yesterday, Magoo pointed out the window at a woman walking along the sidewalk and asked, “Mom? What name is that lady?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied.
“Oh. Oops,” he said. “That’s no lady. She’s just a MOM!”
AAAHHHHH! And yet. I love this job so much it hurts sometimes. What would I do without these kids? Besides be more of a “lady,” that is?
Sitting eating hot dogs outside the Costco tire center today, Magoo went nuts when he saw the Michelin sign and noticed that it prominently featured an overfed STORM TROOPER!
Somebody needs to hit the imperial gym in a big way. Seeing as he’s a clone, we KNOW it’s not genetic obesity. I think this is a quality “before” picture for when he makes his debut on that one Loser show.
He seems so much more jolly than the typical storm trooper. Kind of like Al Roker before the weight loss surgery.
Coming out of a movie theatre the other night Dan and I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between 4 teenagers. One of them had lost his wallet and they were all trying to find it. He said he was desperate to retrieve it, if for nothing else, to keep hold of his military ID. His friend chimed in earnestly, “Yeah, and your library card.”
To that his friend said, “Oh. I don’t think I have a library card.”
“What?! You don’t have a library card?!!
You gotta have a library card!
You can use a library card for anything.
If you don’t have a library card, you *&!?%# SUCK!”
His friends just stood there, semi-dumbstruck by his rabidly loyal defense of one of our country’s most beloved public institutions. Maybe he changed their minds. Maybe one or all of them went out to get library cards the next day.
Whatever happened, I think his diatribe should be put on a poster in an elementary school somewhere with a smiling portrait of Raven-Symoné, holding a copy of Stuart Little.
After our New Years’ Eve play date, Laylee came up and showed me the beautiful heart our friends’ young son, her kindergarten classmate, had drawn for her. Then she started rehearsing lines from I know not what.
Laylee: Mom. Look what Joseph made me.
Me: Wow. That’s really friendly.
Laylee (dreamily): I’ve been thinking about it all night and I think I’m in love with him.
Me: Hmmm. That’s nice.
Laylee: I’m pretty sure he’s the man I’m going to marry.
Me: Well, you’ve got a long time before you have to decide that.
Laylee: I’m pretty sure.
So I think the conversation is over but after we get home, she approaches me with that same dreamy spaced-out look and says, “Mom, I’ve decided. The next time I see Joseph, I’m going to kiss him on the lips.”
So here I start fumbling, picturing the fiasco if she really does attempt a predatory make-out session during recess or at church, “You know, kissing on the lips is kind of a thing for big people to do.”
Upon hearing this, Magoo piped up, “I will kiss you.” And walked over and gave me a big kiss on the lips. Great timing Bud. Way to help me prove my point.
So again we hear from Laylee, “I just can’t imagine falling in love with anyone else.”
Ah me. Young love. I have several journals filled with such nonsense so it shouldn’t freak me out too badly. However I’m pretty sure I didn’t start that young. I know I was at least old enough to write by myself before I considered stealing the lip virtue of any young gentleman friend.
Later that night when I was standing in the glare of a squad car spotlight trying to explain that I didn’t know fireworks were illegal in our town on New Year’s Eve, my head was filled with visions of a special lock-down for romantically-advanced little girls. It looked something like a super-sized life pod, with a lock on the outside and plenty of face time with mama. It looked something like our house, actually.