Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Aspirations

Searching

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He falls asleep cupping my cheek with his pudgy little hand, tiny contented snores escaping his nose, his lips fluttering and sucking in search of his long lost friends, my breasts.

Calmed by his warmth, I think about my latest round of parental introspection, my quest for maternal perfection.

I have no better chance of becoming a perfect parent in this life than I do of becoming a perfect human being. Motherhood is who I am, not some hobby I picked up to master and then move on from. I need to learn to somehow be happy with myself without settling or stopping my progress.

Is it possible to be comfortable in your own skin while still holding out hope for the ideal?

Black History Month with the Darings

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We had our prelude to Black History Month in January where we learned all about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how to get people to be nice by giving them a sharp civil rights to the kidney.

This month we continued the celebration by playing GEEBEE’s Black History Memory game. I have pictures of us playing the game but… you know… the internet being down and all…

So the game arrived in the mail and the kids were stoked. You could send them a package of lentils in the mail and they’d be excited because it was a PACKAGE! They were pleased. I decided that the best way to teach them about black history was to tell them about these amazing people without bringing up the issue of race.

I wanted to raise them to be colorblind. So I told them we were going to play a game about heroes. The box includes a matching game and a booklet that gives a little bit of background about what made these artists, historic figures, scientists and inventors important. For example. Do you know anything about Buffalo Soldiers besides that they were dreadlock rastas, stolen from Africa, brought to America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival? I didn’t either but now I do. The game also has a small section on culture where we learned about the history of Kwanza.

We started the game about heroes with no mention of their race and I was thinking I was pretty smart. My thought was that their accomplishments were pretty impressive on their own without the caveat of, “Oooo. Look what she accomplished even though she was black!” I wanted to just say, “Oooo. Look what she accomplished! What a great woman!”

But as we continued to play, I was truly affected by their stories not just because they were amazing people but because they were amazing people despite the way they were treated. The handicap was not the color of their skin but the way people treated them because of the color of their skin and that’s a lesson that needs to be taught. I decided to bring race to the forefront of the game.

My kids need to hear about race relations and they need to know that amazing men and women worked their way out of slavery and then went on to make a positive difference to the world. They need to know that Harriet Tubman was not content with her own freedom but worked to help thousands of others as well. They need to know that these people were black and how they were treated because they were black and they need to work to never let something like that happen again.

The sad thing is that it’s still happening. People are not considered equal in this country, not truly. Every time I fill out a form that asks for my race, I feel twinge of discomfort. I am Caucasian. My race shelters me and makes things easier for me in ways I’ll never fully understand and how is that fair?

I wasn’t honestly sure how much of the teaching was getting through to them as they enjoyed collecting matches and laughing together and only half-listened to the stories I was reading between turns.

But when we finished Laylee touched me on the arm and said, “I’m glad I wasn’t alive when there was slavers. I wouldn’t ever want to have been alive back when people cared about skin whether it was light or dark.”

I’m sad that she will grow to find out that some people do still care about skin but I’m glad to be teaching her what I think about it. If I raise the kids to be blind to differences in skin color, then someone who’s less blind to those differences will get the chance to teach them and I’d rather have the chance to let them know that their only “racial intolerance” should be towards inequality.

You can find this and other Black History games and puzzles at Wal-Mart this month or at Pressman Toy.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Are You 100% Positive?

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Even the sweetest kid can be a Snarkity McSnarkle Pants sometimes. It’s just expected. We may roll our eyes and move on or try to correct the attitude. Sometimes we just lock ourselves in the bathroom with some lemon bars and a good book while they snark themselves into exhaustion.

For the past several months Laylee has been experiencing a lot of angst. To an extent I think it’s normal. Like Magoo’s recent too cute PMSing over every little thing, I think it’s mostly just a stage. But then there’s this little part of me that wonders if I’m raising a cranky little pessimist. I’ve tried all kinds of “techniques” to help get over the problem and honestly there’s been a lot of improvement.

I’ve tried being more attentive to her before she gets bent out of shape and we’ve helped her overcome most of her perfectionist tendencies. Beneath her sweetness, there’s still this smoldering frustration and worry that she carries around to an extent that I don’t think is healthy for a 4-year-old. She should be happy and fairly care free and not so quick to anger.

So on Sunday I was fasting, as members of my church are wont to do on the first Sunday of the month. We go without food and pay special attention to our prayers and devotion to exhibit our faithfulness to God and our willingness to put physical things aside and let the spiritual take center stage. Honestly I frequently have a super hard time putting the physical completely aside when my stomach is yelling in my face, but I understand the reasoning behind the practice and I’ve had a few wonderful experiences.

Anyway, I decided to dedicate my fast to asking my Heavenly Father for help with Laylee and her sadness/frustration/angst/snappishness. As I was kneeling down to pray, the words were not fully out of my mouth when my prayer was interrupted by the clear thought, “You need to be more positive.”

“Okay,” said I, “Thank you for that. Now about Laylee. Please help me to figure– ”

The thought came again only stronger, “You need to be more positive and watch the kind of things you talk about in front of her. On the phone. To your friends and Dan. Your negativity and pessimism are getting to her. If you change this, she will be changed.”

I was sort of taken aback. My fast had just begun and I hadn’t even completed my prayer and I was already getting an answer to my question though not the answer I wanted to hear. I think of myself as a fairly positive person but when I really thought about it, I could remember way too many conversations where I was critical, overly dramatic in a negative way or “humorously” sarcastic. Kids don’t get sarcasm. They hear mommy being mean to someone and they just feel the negative vibe.

So I talked to Dan and “we’re” working on it although honestly he doesn’t have much to work on. It’s hard to stop because it’s such a habit when I’m chatting on the phone to just be flippant or gloom and doomy. I’m actually annoyed by myself.

The key for me really is to try to think positive thoughts and try to speak in a more positive way even when I don’t think the kids are listening. It’s not like I have a switch I can flip on and off. It’s something I need to work on consistently.

So yesterday was the third day of this new plan and it shows just how much work I have to do. I’d been pretty positive all day, trying to get the kids excited about the world around them, a regular Pollyanna run amok, but with more personality. As we were driving to the grocery store, we were exclaiming over the beauty of the clouds and the sky and OH MY! Isn’t that the neatest thing? I really started getting into the spirit, caught up in their enthusiasm for the beautiful sunset. I felt for a moment that no one could be as lucky as I, two beautiful children, a great marriage, a lusciously cloudy Seattle sunset and a trip to the grocery store. What could be better?

Fast forward an hour as the kids had lost their minds and I wasn’t far behind. We made it out of the store alive only to have all kinds of rioting break out upon entrance to the van. They’d been picking at each other all through our shopping, as if to say, “ARE YOU INSANE TO TACKLE GROCERY SHOPPING AT LOSING OUR MINDS O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING??!!”

When they got into the van, their quarelling became unmanageable and so I turned the stereo up to eleven to block out the noise and proceeded to drive home. When Laylee confronted me about hurting her ears and giving her a possible “ear affection,” I told her that next time she could plug them but that since I was driving I couldn’t plug mine to block out their fighting and loud music was the next best thing. I guess if she really doesn’t like the music then next time I can just yell repeatedly “SERENITY NOW!!” at the top of my lungs.

“Oh,” she said. “Hmph.”

Oh hmph indeed. We glared each other down and I vowed to be more positive today. And I was. We’ll see about tomorrow. Baby steps.

Don’t Make Me Open Up a Can of Civil Rights on Your Racist 4-Year-Old Butt!

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I thought I’d take a few minutes last Monday and teach the kids about Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights in general.

We had a good talk in the car about who Martin Luther King was and what he stood for. Laylee could not get enough. “Tell me another more story about him,” she begged so I told her all about the civil rights movement. I explained how bad it was for people who were treated differently just because of the way they looked and I told her how much better our world is now because of the sacrifices made by so many people who worked to make things equal for everyone.

Magoo didn’t get much of what we were talking about and when we got out of the car, he began running around jabbing a stick at people and yelling, “I’M THE MOOTH ER KING! PUME! PUME!!!” I suppose we all have the right to celebrate the holiday however we choose. I do have a dream that some day he will get on the clue bus though.

When I ran out of the 4-year-old-appropriate stories I knew about the civil rights movement, I started to make up scenarios to apply racism to Laylee personally, leaving Magoo to his own devices.

“What if you tried to go to preschool and they told you that you couldn’t go to a good school because you were skinny and they thought skinny people were bad so skinny people had to go to a yucky school? How would you feel? What if people threw stuff at you or wouldn’t let you use the restrooms because your skin was that peachy color?”

We talked all about how we should treat everyone with kindness and how even if people are mean to us or others, we should stand up for what’s right without being mean back. I asked her what she would do if she saw someone at preschool being mean to another kid because of the way they looked.

She stopped, thinking so hard you could almost see the thoughts popping out of her ears and then she said, “If I see anybody being mean to somebody at preschool… um… I guess I could do the civil rights on ”˜em to get ”˜em to stop. I wouldn’t hit ”˜em. I’d just sort of do the civil rights.”

“What do you mean by that?

“You know, just, like, do the civil rights to them.”

With her word choice, it sounded to me like code for some sort of brutal playground hand to hand combat move. “Well, Jimmy likes to use an uppercut or just whack the other kid over the head with a Little Tikes folding chair but I personally prefer to mix it up by giving ”˜em a quick civil rights to the solar plexus.”

I suppose she could be planning a sit-in or something. At dinner later that night she told Dan that for civil rights you mostly just sit places and sing songs. This description could apply equally well to a peaceful civil rights protest, Woodstock, or a class at Gymboree.

Maybe we’ll try this again next year.

I Don’t Need to Be the Biggest Loser, Just the Loser with the Biggest Thumbs

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I’m a little bit sick still in my throat but I’ve been working out anyway. Somebody came over and left a crusty comment about how I should be working hard instead of railing on a reality TV franchise and I just want to tell you all that there is such a thing as humor and that I am working hard and I feel at least 1.7% better about the health of my body after one week of serious exercise. Yipee!

For those of you who asked, the book I’m using is The Biggest Loser Fitness Program intermediate routine #1 with cardio on my off days. I’m also supplimenting with Super Paper Mario for the Wii for thumb strength and map-reading skills. For those of you who didn’t ask, that was probably too much information.

While I’m doing all the working out, Laylee is occupying herself well. The latest is up at Parenting.

Biggest Loser – EXPOSED

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It has come to my attention that the entire Biggest Loser franchise, Jillian Michaels specifically, is not working to help overweight Americans but rather attempting to kill fat people.

I started watching last season when Dan was working a billion hours and there was nothing on TV Tuesday nights and heaven forbid I do anything productive after 8 o’clock at night. I was inspired by the alleged “transformations” of the “contestants.” I even softened my stone-cold veneer for a few moments and cried once or twice…
every episode… for the whole season.

Now I’m somewhat fluffy myself and after watching several episodes while chowing down on my favorite snack foods, the propaganda started working on me. I thought, “I could do that [snarf, snarf, crunch crunch gobble gobble]. They’re so inspir[munch munch]ing! If she could lose that much weight, I could totally [swallow gulp gulp] shed the pounds I have to lose and tone up like a swimsuit model.”

Am I the only one who can’t stop eating while they watch that show?

So I bought the Biggest Loser Fitness Plan book, which was approximately as uncomfortable as purchasing my first box of tampons. You know if someone sees you buying feminine hygiene products they might know you’re a… a… a girl and if you buy a BIGGEST LOSER book, they might suspect you of being overweight because I’m sure they couldn’t tell by the pinchable pudge of your too-loveable-for-a-person-over-the-age-of-2 cheeks.

After doing the workout one time yesterday, I’ve finally figured out their master plot.

It’s true that the producers want to decrease the number of overweight Americans. They plan to accomplish this by convincing us to try the diet and exercise routines, effectually picking us off one by one like puffer fish in a barrel when we can no longer raise our arms or effectively move our legs.

It seems fairly obvious to me at this point that the so called “contestants” are really just smoking hot athlete/models in remarkable stage makeup for a show that is to weight loss what the WWF is to real wrestling. No real pinchable overweight person can live through these workouts.

“Ow!”
~Kathryn Thompson~

Herod and I — We’re Jerks

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We’re trying to fight the media-oric power of Santa’s publicity machine and teach Laylee and Magoo that Christmas is actually a religious holiday with fun attached as a festive bonus. Some days we win and sometimes the kids get all “Manger, what? Maybe I’ll care if you tell me it was full of liquid sugar.”

So tonight for family night I asked Laylee to tell us all the Christmas Story minus the reindeer, elves and abominable snow people. She asked me for a refresher and using the Little People as props, I took her through the basics.

When we got to the sinister part where Herod told the wise guys to come and tell him when they’d found Jesus because he wanted to worship him too, Laylee went into full panic mode. “I don’t like this part. I hate this story. He wanted to hurt the baby! I don’t like this part. I don’t want to tell it.”

She completely lost control and started shaking and bawling. Holding her in my arms trying to comfort her fear, I told her it was okay because he didn’t get to harm the baby. God protected Jesus and told the wise men what Herod had up his sleeve. She didn’t care if the baby got hurt or not. It was enough to know that someone was evil enough to want to do it. It was too scary.

We’ve talked about this story a bazillion times before and she’s never been bothered by it. When we get to the Herod part, she usually flinches, gives little smile and shakes with pretend fear and a look that says, “Phew! That was close.”

What was different today?

Adult things. I’ve been talking about hairy scary adult things for days, flooding, sadness, homelessness, despair, destruction, death and loss. To her I explained the disaster in a way a 4-year-old could understand. I gave her the Bambi version. “Bambi. Your mother can’t be with you anymore.”

Then I proceeded to watch news footage, talk on the phone with friends and family and cry about what I’d seen. “Bambi. Your mother can’t be with you anymore.

“Hey Thumper, don’t tell Bambi that his mom was brutally murdered by a faceless thug with a shotgun. They’re everywhere these days. It makes me cry just thinking about it. Bambi will likely be the next to go but don’t tell him. It may stress him out.

“Like I told you B, your mom’s gone on a long vacation but everything is juuuust peachy.”

I got her calmed down with sugar cookies, something I never thought I’d hear myself say, and I now pledge to be more protective of her innocence. She’s a baby in a world that wants her to grow up way too fast and she’s not deaf and I am not equipped with a soundproof telephone booth in which to cry and muse about the horrors and tragedies of this world in her presence.

She seemed to bounce back quickly, although her mental state is altered to the point that she’s now convinced she’s a feline and will only answer to sentences that begin with the word “Meow.” But then I’m not sure that particular disorder has anything to do with me, floods or evil biblical kings. She may just be four.

Setting Fire to All That’s Precious

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Does your kid have special things? A duck? A blanket? An infinitesimally miniscule bracelet that is of mind-boggling importance to her little preschool world?

Sometimes, when you’re visiting Daddy at the maze of a complex that we call MEGACORP for a reason and you can barely find your car again when it’s time to leave, does your daughter REPEATEDLY drop her prized one-of-a-kind beaded bracelet from Grammy and Papa that they bought at the Zoo store because they are the only adults in this family kind enough to take the kids inside the Zoo store and actually spend $4,000,000 buying a life altering trinket? Mine does.

When she drops the bracelet on the 3 mile walk through corridors, up and down stairs and around the cafeteria, does she suddenly make a sheepish face and say, “Uh-Oh! My bracelet’s gone again. We NEED to find it?” Mine does.

When this happens for the third time and Daddy goes back to search for the bracelet while you wait in the car with the sniffling child, only to discover it’s right next to her on the seat, do you secretly want to dispose of the bracelet in a sinister display of parental pyrotechnic power? I do.

I was thinking about it today and I decided that with all the crying my kids have done in their lives over lost treasured items, we could provide much-needed rainfall to a mid-sized African country. Now as cool as it would be to have a cistern in Ghana named after Laylee and Magoo, I’d really rather just stop the madness.

If I gathered up every toy, scrap of crumpled paper, gold fish cracker and sippy cup that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT, even the ones that they don’t yet know that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT but that they will discover that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT the minute they’re missing, stacked them all on the bamboo pile out back and lit a match, they would probably cry. And scream. And bonk their heads on the ground while screaming, “Why, oh WHY?!!! I NEEEEED that!!!! Erp. Angelina Jolie please adopt me now and save me from this heartless mother who never drives back to the mall to search for the precious rubber band I was saving in my shoe that my she told me 10 times to leave in the car because I’d probably lose it and halfway home I noticed it was MISSING and did I mention she wouldn’t go back for it??!!!!” Once.

They would have the fit once and then in would be over. All the special things would be gone and they wouldn’t have anything left to lose or whine about or make me feel guilty over my callous disregard for EVER AGAIN… until I gave them an apple to eat… and they discovered a seed inside it… THAT COULD BE USED TO PLANT AN APPLE TREE IN THE BACK YARD after being carried to preschool and back and across 12 or 13 continents until they noticed it had fallen out of their pocket somewhere between Minsk and Oshawa.

But at least when they asked about the seed, I could tell them, “Don’t you remember? I’m pretty sure it was lost in ”˜the fire’.”

My House Smells Better than a Dead Whale

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Do you have your very own marine biologist to change your Betta fish’s water? I do. I pay her with leftover enchiladas and stories about all the crazy people I’ve known in my life. She likes the stories and I like that when she leaves my house, it’s always cleaner than when she came and I always feel better about my life.

She does a good job hiding the fact that she may be judging me because I don’t eat organic biodegradable recycled soy milk or use free-range toilet paper. When I feed her and tell her not to ask what’s in the Mexican food, she doesn’t ask what’s in the Mexican food.

Tonight I invited her over to share some reheated culinary loveliness if she promised to close her eyes to the abundant evidence that I’d had several friends and their precious spawn in and out of my house all day, and hosted and cooked for a birthday luncheon. The main floor of my house was covered in a thick blanket of playdate sputum and I was seriously contemplating waiting 24 hours to remember what I wrote earlier this week and get my act together.

So while I rattled around in the kitchen, popping the pan of enchiladas back in the oven and nuking the other leftovers, she asked what she could do to help. Like any embarrassed woman would do, I told her not to worry about it and for heck’s sake to keep her shoes on when walking on my crusty kitchen floor.

She went into the family room and started picking up toys with unnatural speed. She picked up books, cars, blocks and spit-soaked Spiderman-flavored cheese crackers. She put away toys the kids thought they were still using and said, “Out of sight, out of mind.” In 20 minutes she managed to tidy up my entire main floor, the main floor that had looked like a tornado-ravaged Value Village. Then she joined me in the kitchen where I was ineffectually shuffling the dishes who were waiting for their turn in the magical automatic dish washing shower stall. In my house, dishes who are capable of washing themselves are never subjected to hand washing. It just wouldn’t be right.

She stepped to the sink and started rinsing the waiting dishes. She separated them according to shape, size and possibly color. As she went to dump some plastic silverware in an opaque pitcher of water to soak, she noticed something moving in the water and jumped, “AH! I almost dumped these dirty dishes in with your fish!”

I apologized for keeping JackAgain in a dish so near the drain board. He’d been there for 4 days because I was “cleaning his fishbowl.” In a miraculously non-judgmental tone, that somehow communicated “I want to save the dolphins but I still like you,” she insisted that he be moved back to his bowl immediately before he had a heart attack from the stress of his current living arrangements.

So she cleared out one side of the sink and brought his nasty stinky bowl of old ishy water over to wash. What happened next is a blur but there was a loud crash, Laylee had appeared out of nowhere, was now smiling up at me too innocently to really be innocent and the floor was covered in blech.

I muttered something about how much it stunk as I ran upstairs to get some towels. “It’s okay,” my neighbor called from the kitchen. “At least it doesn’t smell as bad as a dead whale.” She’s a marine biologist. She’s seen and smelled things I hope never to experience in my lifetime. She cleaned my house and saved the whales living in it. She ate my not-from-Whole-Foods food and asked for my recipes. She kept me company on another long lonely night and she told me I was a good mom.

I want to be that kind of friend. I know I’m grateful to have a few.