Parenting and Holidays

Early in October I took the kids to a pumpkin patch.  It was pretty awesome, and we all had a great time, until the two year old got lost.  He saw something that looked interesting, and took off running.  For the next twenty minutes I had no clue where he was.  I didn't completely panic, but when it took me more than three minutes to find him I did briefly recall every awful child abduction story I have ever heard.  And probably a few that I haven't actually heard, but imagined.  As I pressed through the crowds searching for my little redhead a few things occurred to me.  First, it was unwise to put him in an orange shirt.  He was dressed exactly the same as every other child within a five mile radius.  Second, I have not taught him what to do when he gets lost.

I found him at the exit of the straw maze.  He can't read, so the sign that said "for children 8 and over" didn't deter him.  He didn't even realize that he was lost, and I guess he's pretty good at mazes.  Still, I started to teach him some things about personal safety.  And all was well until Halloween.  Our church had a trunk-or-treat event in the parking lot.  I think this type of thing is perfect for the age of my kids.  They still get to dress up and beg for candy, but the whole ordeal is early, short, and safe.  We were going to be home in time for dinner.  I was super excited about it.  And then I heard myself essentially say to my kids, "See that strange man over there that you have never met before.  Yes, the one wearing a hat and a mask.  Walk right up to his open car and take that piece of candy he is dangling in front of you."  I felt more than a little hypocritical.

With the large number of holidays crammed into the subsequent months, my duplicitous parenting has repeated itself with regularity.

Thanksgiving wasn't too bad, but I certainly didn't reinforce any healthy eating habits.

At Christmas I told my kids about a stranger who spies on them throughout the year, and knows everything they have been doing.  I told them that he watches carefully for them to fall asleep and then sneaks into our house in the middle of the night.  And I told them to be very excited about it.

Until last week we lived in an apartment, and I spent much of my time trying to teach my kids to be courteous in close quarters.  We talked about using inside voices, and not shouting because the neighbors don't need to hear us.  Then on New Year's I again tossed all of my careful tutelage out the window and asked my kids to stay up late for the purpose of making as much noise as possible at an hour when most sane people are trying to sleep.

Last Independence day we went to a parade.  I asked my little boy to run into the street to pick a piece of candy up off the ground so that he could put it in his mouth.  Later that night I gave him a burning stick and told him to wave it around.

I think the term "holiday" can be correctly translated as "a break from responsible parenting."

Oatmeal

My meal planning and preparation skills lately have not been stellar.  Sometime last week it was bedtime, and unfortunately delicious dinner had not yet magically appeared in front of my children.  I looked into hiring a house elf, but it turns out that they don't actually exist.  I lacked the mental energy to make any food related decisions, so I just opened the pantry and asked the little redhead what he wanted to eat.

First he asked for Nutella.  I told him no.  Then he asked for chocolate pudding.  I told him no.  Then he asked for "spicy oatmeal."  Spicy oatmeal is oatmeal with cinnamon and nutmeg on it.  I told him yes.  My little girl is not as articulate yet, but when I got the oatmeal out of the pantry she pointed and started giggling, so I assumed she approved.  

As I spent approximately 128 seconds preparing the requested meal I allowed myself a moment of parental pride.  My little boy made a nutritional decision that was simultaneously health conscious, budget friendly, and low maintenance.  How often does the parent of a two year old get to say that?  And while I was proud, I was also somewhat bewildered.  I remember being only slightly older than him and absolutely hating oatmeal.  I remember shouting indignantly at my mother that when I had my own kids I would never, ever, force them to eat oatmeal.  So far I have remained true to this promise.  I don't have to force my kids to eat oatmeal.  They request it.  

After they finished eating, I started cleaning the mess.  Oatmeal always makes a big mess.  It ends up on hands, smeared across faces, smashed in hair, and sometimes inexplicably inside diapers.  While I was washing off his face with a dishrag the little redhead said, "No mama, this is oatmeal.  It has to be washed in the bathtub."  His little sister started chanting "bath, bath, bath."  My adorable little kids don't actually love eating oatmeal.  They just love taking baths.  

Kindness: Part 1

I was watching the news the other day.  There is a man who has become quite adept at purse snatching at a local day care.  In the time it takes a mother to walk inside the building and retrieve her child he can emerge, break the car window, remove the purse, and disappear.  I guess he is extremely successful. 

Stories like this are common.  And they are followed by a consistent dose of government stalemate, international discord, and large scale disasters.  As many have observed and lamented, the news might be more aptly named the bad news.  Despite the deluge of negative press, I have found people to be generally kind, generous, and polite.  The small acts of kindness I frequently witness will almost certainly never be considered worth reporting.   I, however, am not a news outlet of any scale, and I don’t care what is newsworthy.   And so, this is the first in what I hope becomes a very long series of posts in which I intend to chronicle the small and seemingly insignificant moments of kindness that I frequently experience. 

-------

Friday was errands with Mom day.  We woke up early and packed a breakfast of cheerios, raisins, and string cheese.  We dropped the Texan off at work so that we could have a car for the day.  Our first and most important errand was a visit to the pumpkin patch.  It was a lot of fun, and we spent much longer there than I anticipated.  It was well after lunchtime when we left. 

The next errand on the list was grocery shopping.  I’m still pretty new to the whole mom thing, but one thing I am fairly certain of is that taking two hot, hungry, and tired toddlers to the grocery store is a very bad idea.  Another thing that I am acutely aware of is that once I get two hot, hungry, and tired toddlers home to be cooled, fed, and rested, the chances of me getting back out for more errands are quite slim.

We decided to go to Costa Vida.  (That would be the Royal We.  The junior redheads don’t really get a vote in such matters.)  The fact that it shared a parking lot with the grocery store was really the determining factor.  As it turns out, Costa Vida has a much different lunchtime clientele than Chic-fil-a.  Rather than the mommy crew I found myself surrounded by the left-the-office-for-a-quick-lunch crowd.  And while Costa Vida does have a children’s menu, I found them to be conspicuously lacking high chairs.

This was not the first, and I do not expect it to be the last, meal I have eaten with a small child on my lap.  It is one of my newly acquired talents.  We were quickly situated, and soon both of my children were happily chewing on a quesadilla.  Just as the group sitting next to us got up to leave my little girl decided that black beans would probably make excellent face paint.  After smashing them quite thoroughly in one hand, she shifted them to the other in a demonstration of her ever improving dexterity.  Then she smeared them on her cheeks and accidentally put a few in her mouth.  Eating the food was clearly not her intention and she angrily sprayed the stray beans out of her mouth at her brother.

On his way out the door one man looked back and noticed her antics.  He came back in and told me not to move.  He brought us a handful of napkins and stopped for a minute to chat.  He told me a little bit about his five year old son.  He took some time to say hello to my kids and play some peek-a-boo.  He told me they were adorable.  Then he went back to work leaving me with two well-fed and cheerful kids that were ready to go grocery shopping. 

Therefore, I conclude that the world is not full of purse snatching jerks.  

Merry Christmas

When I was growing up the Easter Bunny visited our house Friday night.  I think ideologically it was because my parents had no objection to hidden eggs and chocolate bunnies, but wanted to spend Easter Sunday focused on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I think pragmatically it was because getting to church on time was difficult enough without hunting eggs first. 

I don’t remember how my parents explained the altered schedule of festivities.  I do remember that since I received a basket of goodies earlier than any of my classmates I assumed that my family had our very own Easter Bunny.  And my childhood mind concluded that if we had our own Easter Bunny we must have actually had an entire complement of magical characters specific to our little family.  I was certain that there was a tooth fairy assigned to us exclusively.  And, of course, we had our very own personal Santa Claus.  I believed that our Santa had a north pole, a sleigh, flying reindeer including Rudolph, and an army of elves in a workshop making toys.  But it was all just for me, my parents, and  my siblings.  Other people had a different Santa.  I never wondered how Santa made it to all the houses in the whole world in one night because our Santa had only one family to visit

As I look back I am convinced that my childhood fantasies were the height of narcissism.  

Discoveries

I am very liberal in my usage of bathroom tissue. Actually, I don’t know that for sure. My consumption of toilet paper could be unremarkably average. Since bathroom habits are neither a frequent nor polite topic of social conversation I don’t really know how I compare to the rest of the population. What I do know is that toilet paper is not something that I make an effort to conserve. I use as much as I want whenever I need. My financial situation has never been so dire, and my concern for the environment never so great that I have felt the need to count and curb the number of squares I use. The Texan however, maintains the toilet tissue habits that he learned while living in Africa. When we got married he was rather surprised to see the regularity with which toilet paper made its way onto the shopping list. Now that the little red head has discovered toilet paper, I find that I am purchasing it at a frequency that seems excessive even to me.

Toddlerhood

Our little boy is growing up.  He doesn’t walk very much yet, but I’m pretty sure he is solidly in the toddler phase of life.  I base this assessment on the large path of destruction he can create in a very short amount of time.  I realize that for all of you with kids older than mine these types of events are old news, but it’s a first time adventure for me, so please indulge my story and pretend that you find it as cute and humorous as I do. 

A cold has been making its way through our household.  Today I had an awful headache.  Finally this afternoon I decided that what I really needed was a nap.  So I put my little boy in his room to play and went to lie down.  He was pretty sure that he had been abandoned for life and screamed like it was the end of the world.  This uproar did not help my headache.  So I rescued him from the confines of his bedroom, grabbed some of his toys, turned on some cartoons, and set him down to play in my room.  He settled down and I fell asleep.  20 minutes later I woke up when he pulled the Texan’s night stand down.  My little redhead looked at me and laughed like it was a spectacularly fun game.  I was really glad that he wasn’t hurt and the lamp didn’t break.  I got out of bed to start picking up and discovered that he had been very busy for 20 minutes. 

He had unpacked the diaper bag and spread pretzels throughout the room; unloaded both drawers of my night stand (I'm pretty sure he couldn’t reach those last week); tried to eat our rent check; found a sucker and unwrapped it leaving sticky handprints on the wall and a purple spot on the carpet; unloaded, and unfolded, all of the laundry that I did yesterday; and left all of his toys untouched.  Now it is his turn to take a nap.  

Some Thoughts From this "Holiday" Season

The term Holiday Season used to bother me. It seemed like another concession to the insanity of political correctness. I’ve gotten over it. I do think it’s pretty silly when people try to disguise their Christianity by saying Holiday when they very clearly mean Christmas, but I have also decided that Holiday season aptly describes the November to January festivities that I participate in. This year has seemed to me to be the year of complaining. I have encountered a number of grouchy Christians that, in their effort to preserve the piousness of their celebrations, I think have become quite Grinchish. In addition to bemoaning the atheistic title of the season and objecting to the commercialization of Christmas, they find fault in almost every aspect of traditional American Christmas celebration. I think they are missing out on what could be the “most wonderful time of the year.”

I know that Christ was not born in the winter. I am fully aware that Christmas is in December to coincide with the ancient pagan holidays celebrating the Winter Solstice. It doesn't bother me. I don’t think that makes me less Christian. The fact that pagans thousands of years ago thought that an evergreen tree had mystical properties because it did not die in the winter is interesting. The fact that I choose to think of the evergreen tree as a symbol of everlasting life made possible through the Son of God does not make me an uninformed purveyor of pagan traditions as I place a Christmas tree in my house.

I know that retailers push the beginning of their Christmas observance as early as possible in order to raise profits. I realize that the Thanksgiving holiday was moved a week earlier in order to lengthen the official Christmas shopping season. I have decided that I don’t care. I have been known to put a stocking or two up before Thanksgiving, and I have no rigid date set for the appropriate beginning of Christmas music. Despite the fact that I join the evil corporate monster in beginning Christmas before December, I don’t believe that this makes my own personal observance of Christmas any less spiritual. I like the idea of combining the two holidays. Certainly a day dedicated to gratitude is in no way diminished by remembering the birth of the Savior, for whom I am extremely thankful. And the celebration of Christmas is probably enhanced by adding an element of thanks. So instead of sighing at the lost soul of America as I see candy canes displayed the day after Halloween, I find some peppermint ice cream and start to wonder where my Nativity sets will be best displayed this year. I have spent the last ten Christmases in ten different residences, so it really is a legitimate question that often requires some extensive pondering.

On a much less defensive note: I have a small collection of nativity sets. My favorite one is magnetic. It is my favorite partly because I love all things magnetic, and partly because it goes on my refrigerator door in the kitchen where I spend a significant portion of my life. I like that I don’t have to find a place for it every year. It usually goes up first (before Thanksgiving) because I don’t have to think about where to put it. I also like that I can see it amid meal preparation and dishes. It’s a good reminder to me that I can seek the divine even among the mundane parts of life.