Actual sign

(I apologize in advance for not having had my camera at the ready.)

I visited the Stop & Shop in Hudson, MA today to pick up some citrus fruit.

The sign above the lemons had a photograph of some lemons and read:

FRESH LEMONS
3/ $2.00

Great for orange juice!

Poop

New Baby has had horrible diarrhea since Christmas Eve, methinks rotovirus, and has pooped on me twice.

The cat pooped on the rug in the girl's room today.

This has been a bad day, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.

Bully

It must be Mama Bear week, because I'm in a tizzy about another individual who has threatened my cub. I am spitting, clawing, raging mad as any good mother would be when someone actively attempts to do harm to her child.

The problem with this, folks, is that the aggressor is 8 years old and she lives across the street.

I'll call her Mean Girl. She's the new kid on the block, just moved in at the end of summer. There is a recent divorce in the family, she seemed shy and so I was so willing to be inclusive-have her come over to play with Old Baby, invited her for dinner-the usual stuff. For a while it was fine, they seemed to get along well, and then something changed and I'm not sure why.

I have watched over the last few weeks as she has tried to play our other neighbor girl (Old Baby's BFF), whom I will call Sunshine, against Old Baby. I've seen Mean Girl whispering into Sunshine's ear and overheard some of the comments about what a baby Old Baby is (she's 2 years younger than Mean Girl) , I've heard her imperious tone, seen her get bossier, heard Sunshine's mother warn me that there was trouble, watched as she attempts to exclude Old Baby (in her own home, mind you) and I kept saying to myself that I would not get involved.

That changed this afternoon when Old Baby came home telling me that according to Sunshine, Mean Girl hates her.

Today, all three girls were at our house putting on play make-up and nail polish, playing Guitar Hero, getting along swimmingly- I thought. I was keeping a watchful eye and a listening ear and though there was a slight condescension in Mean Girl's voice, nothing alarming. After a while they went to Sunshine's house where they played for a few more hours, and then Old baby returned with this news: "Mom, I have something to tell you but I don't want to because I think it will hurt your fellings. Mean Girl said she hated me to Sunshine and she doesn't want Sunshine to play with me anymore."

At that moment I was struck by a couple of things: The first being that DAMN my child is keen in recognizing that I would be hurt by someone hating her, the second being that this is EXACTLY the kind of bullshit that happened to me when I was a kid...and I am not going to stand for it.

Girls do not fight fair, they are just as bad a boys when it comes to bullying. No, strike that, they are worse. The ringleader enlists the other girls so that the object of the bullying has no ally. They gossip, they sneer, they ostracize, they attempt to annihilate the girl by destroying her self esteem. I can recall being so afraid of what was going to be said to/about me on any given day that I would make myself sick so that I wouldn't have to go to school. (Of course, I would join the pack whenever the opportunity arose in order to avoid being the object, so I can see it from both sides). I do not, however, remember this being an issue at the age of 5. The really difficult thing about girl bullying is that they can feign concern for the victim so easily in front of parents/teachers, but the moment the authority figure is gone, they attack. Mean Girl has been pulling an Eddie Haskell on me and I suspected as much...damn, I should trust my instincts!

My dearest husband takes the attitude that we should simply tell Old Baby to ignore it and that it will eventually stop. My dearest husband was never a little girl, and never subjected to the type of colossal mind-fuck that an elementary school age girl can inflict on another. My dearest husband is completely wrong in this approach, and I told him so.

I cannot advise my child to ignore or avoid Mean Girl because we see her every day, and will probably be seeing her every day for years to come. We are going to have to do something.

For those of you who are concerned, I am not going to do anything rash. I am going to calmly and rationally approach Mean Girl's mother, a very nice woman whom I suspect has no idea what is going on. First, I am going to extend an invitation to our New Year's Eve party, then I will bring up these issues between our daughters, and I am going to make very clear that I cannot allow this to continue. I do not allow this type of behavior from my children, and I won't stand by and watch as someone mistreats another. This isn't just about my kid, and it isn't that the other kid is BAD, this isn't about me fighting my kid's battle for her- this is about the reality that parents need to protect their children as much as possible-sometimes from other children, sometimes from themselves.

I feel much better now, thank you for letting me vent, I'll let you know how it goes.

Nothing says "holiday spirit" like embarrassing a child

I am grumpy because it's Christmas, but in trying to keep with the spirit we attended a neighbor's holiday family get together---briefly.

Of course we had to watch the neighbor kids open gifts because we have terrible timing.

One of the neighbor girls recieved an American Girl doll (puke!) named "Emily" and Old Baby, wanting to be a part of the merriment, speaks up and says "I have an American Girl doll and her name is Sarah!", because her doll does look just like an American Girl doll and her doll's name IS Sarah...as are all of her dolls...

At this point the grandmother of the neighbor girl says "There ARE NO American Girl dolls named Sarah!" in a tone of voice that was totally inappropriate for use with anyone in a social setting, especially a 5-year-old. In that one small remark, this woman essentially called my child a liar, called her doll a fake, and, absurd as it may seem, made me want to cry. Old Baby didn't cry, but she looked really confused and then went and stood in the kitchen.

Merry fucking Christmas, Lady!

My husband's love for his children makes me sick.

As all of you know I am living in a constant state of home improvement. Because of the unending nature of the living room painting project, I have gotten into the bad habit of leaving all sorts of adhesives and paint, etc. laying about...out of reach of little hands but accessible at a moment's notice to me.

Last night after dinner, the kids were in the living room and B and I remained in the kitchen chatting for a while. After a few minutes New Baby ran back into the kitchen with a mouth full of something and spit it on the floor. It was white-ish in color and smooth in consistency.

Alarmed at what she may have ingested, I ran to the living room to see if she's managed to get ahold of any of the toxic chemicals I have stored there. Nothing seemed amiss, all the paint cans, etc, sealed up. I returned to the kitchen and wiped up the spit up with a paper towel, assuring the father of my children that everything was OK, she hadn't swallowed paint or glue. I stood there with the disgusting sputum covered towel in hand, about to throw it away, when my Doubting Thomas of a husband rushed over, swiped a figure through the mystery substance and TASTED it. "I had to be sure." he said.

It turns out that New Baby had squirrelled some cheese sauce from her dinner in her cheeks and had been holding it there for a while before presenting us with it.

As you might expect, I had no choice but to retch. This may be one of the most horrifying things I've seen anyone do.

I think I need to be sick again. Goodbye.

Before I forget this one forever...

When we first moved to Massachusetts and were settling in to our new home, my dear mother came for a visit-to help out with the unpacking and all of that. What she did best, of course, was watch after her two darling granddaughters.

One afternoon, Grandma took the girls on a walk to the library and for ice cream afterward. At some point during the walk, Old Baby made the decision to screw around atop a rather large piece of granite (superfluous note: this place is chock full o' igneous rocks, big chunks, which is novel to those of us used to a more sedimentary type...I'm still surprised to see big boulders of the stuff lying about), and as a result fell and injured her foot/ankle area. This is the type of thing that happens almost everyday so I didn't really pay it any mind until my new next door neighbor approached me the following day after Old Baby had spent some time playing at their house.

She looked a little confused, and asked me what exactly had happened to Old Baby's foot. I told her and a look of relief washed over her face.

"Why do you ask?" I inquired, wondering where this might be going.

"Oh, it's nothing", she replied, "only that she told me earlier today that the reason that she had a boo-boo is that she had been attacked by a police dog yesterday."

My neighbor continues, "She also claims that she has a deadly allergy to watermelon." (No, she doesn't, and I'm fairly certain no one else in the world does either.)

We're still laughing about this.



Little bullshitter.

The American Dream

After the Obama election, I walked around in a haze for a day or two, shedding the occasional tear of joy and thinking about how to best explain to Old Baby why this was so important.

As my husband and children are all "persons of color", I wanted to impress upon my 5-year-old why this election was of particular interest to our family, but I had a hard time coming up with the proper way to say it, especially due to the fact that I don't think Old Baby is yet aware of any type of racial bias.

What I ended up saying to her was simply: "This election has shown us that it is possible in this country to become whatever you want to be if you are willing to work hard enough for it." This was, admittedly, pretty lame.

Old Baby looked at me for a moment, removed her thumb from her mouth, and told me: "I want to be the Tooth Fairy".

Realizing that this would require some backpedaling on my part, I explained that the Tooth Fairy job has been taken, permanently, and that she would have to think of something else she really wanted to be.

After a couple of seconds, she tells me her second choice dream job: "Then I'll be the Mexican Tooth Fairy."