Even more questions and the single mom

So, I made a joke a few entries ago about how I was going to turn my blog into an ongoing record of the bizarre and puzzling questions my son asks me.  I really did intend for that to be just a joke, but it seems that all the good material I get these days really is about his endless questions.  I swear, the next time something interesting other than a question comes up, you'll be the first to know.

In the meantime, enjoy this gem from the other day...

We're sitting in Zaxby's having a quick little meal before running some after-Christmas errands.  Across the way is what appears to be a young couple.  I wasn't really paying attention, but at quick glance said maybe late teens, early 20s.

My son looked over at them for a minute or two and then turned to me and asked, "When you're a grown man and you have a girlfriend and you don't like her in a few days, you can't just get a new one, right, because then you'll have two?"

I want you to take a minute and ponder the many levels of that question. ...I'll wait...

...grown man...

...don't like her IN A FEW DAYS...

...then you'll have two...

First, I'd like to applaud my son for an early recognition of the virtues of faithfulness and monogamy.

Second, though, I'd like to see a doctor to have the bits of half-chewed chicken fingers that tried to come out of my nose when I heard that question extracted from my sinuses.

Typically when I relate these queries of my son's, I often go on to describe how I responded, or at least how I tried to respond.  I won't subject you to that on this one because my answer was surely so incoherent and meaningless as to be, well, incoherent and meaningless, and somewhat anticlimactic for this blog.  Suffice it to say, the answer involved trying to explain the concept of "breaking up" to a 5 year old.  That went about as well as you can imagine.

Santa questions and the single mom

Well, since it's Christmas, this edition of "What will he come up with now?" will focus on the Santa-related questions and commentary that have been going on in my life (OK, my car) for the last few days.

As you can imagine, my son, surely like all children everywhere right now, is very excited about Santa's imminent arrival, repeatedly counting down the days.  It's funny to hear, though, because his grasp on abstract concepts like "tomorrow" and "yesterday" and "next week" is tenuous at best.  So I get things like, "We have to go to sleep today and then wake up and then go to sleep the next day and then wake up and then the next day Santa comes.  Right, Mommy?" 

I think if he had a better understanding of time and how it worked, he'd be counting down the hours or even minutes.

Because that jolly old elf is so prominent right now, my son is, as usual, chock full of questions.  Some of the usual -- "How does Santa get in our house since we don't have a chimney?" (magic key) and "How does Santa know whether I'm asleep or not?" (again, magic) -- and recently some more unusual ones.  On the way home from the grocery store last night, I got some interesting questions that revealed perhaps my inquisitive son will not long be placated by the "magic" go-to answer.

"How old is Santa?" he asked.

"Well, um, son," I murmured desperately trying to buy time to come up with something.  "Santa has been around for a really long time."

"But how old is he?" he insisted.

"I don't know really, but Santa lives forever," I said.

"But how does he live forever?" he asked.

"Magic," I replied (what else?).  "That's part of the magic of Santa -- that he can live forever."

"What magic does he have for fighting?" my son asked.

"Fighting?  Santa doesn't fight."

"Well then how does he not die?"

"He just doesn't, baby.  Santa just lives forever.  It's magic," I tried again.

"But I want to know how," my son insisted.

"I do, too, son," I said.  "I do, too."

Fortunately, that was the end of it for a while, and he segued into questions about Santa's beard and why it's so long (because it's cold at the North Pole, duh) and whether he has to trim it occasionally.

Of course, that magic shtick can come back to bite me in the butt.  This morning on the way to drop him off at the holiday camp he's attending while school's out, he told me he was very excited about Christmas because he couldn't wait to get the movie "Tangled."

Well, I cautioned, it takes a while for movies to be able to come home on DVD, and "Tangled" isn't there yet, so maybe he shouldn't look forward to having that just yet.

"But Santa can get it even if you can't, Mommy.  He's magic.  He can make it."

Well, just freaking great!  I can't really refute that, but of course I can't get my hands on a "Tangled" DVD either.  Let's hope excitement and distraction play their crucial role Christmas morning to keep my son's mind off Santa's obvious shortcoming this year.  How in the world my parents kept up this charade, shepherding intelligent kids through the obvious leaps of logic and reason it takes, for so long is beyond me.  He's 5, and he's already killing me on this!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

More questions and the single mom

I believe it's a truth universally acknowledged that kids come up with the craziest questions and parents struggle and ponder and grasp at straws for ways to answer them. "Why is the sky blue? How do airplanes fly?"

My son is no exception to this rule. Regular readers of this blog may recall I've had such gems in the past as "Do bears have belly buttons?" and "What are my nipples for?"

In fact, it seems my son has entered an age where he asks so many random questions at such a regular pace that I'm just going to start reporting them from time to time on this blog -- short little entries to give you a peek into the outright bizarre conversations I have with my son (that occur, almost without exception, in the car).

Here are a few gems that came up during a weekend drive to Atlanta (all those silent miles to fill -- of course it was a treasure trove of strange musings):

-Can George Washington see us from heaven?

That one first got started with my son asking some question about Abraham Lincoln (where that came from in the first place, I haven't the foggiest notion). When I told him Lincoln was the president a long time ago, he asked who the very first president was. Then he asked if we could see him one day, at which point I had to break the sad news that George Washington had long since died. That's when I got the above query.

-Does it hurt when you die? (Obvious follow up on the death of George Washington discussion.)

And the piece de resistance: How will I find a wife?

"How will I find a wife?" Where does he come up with these things? That was totally out of the blue, too. We weren't having any kind of discussion about marriage, wives, husbands or even family -- not even George Washington's wife.

Just, bam -- "How will I find a wife?"

Warning: here comes the mushy, snuggly part of today's post.

I told him that when he got older, he'd meet someone and fall in love and maybe get married.

"No, Mommy. I want to marry you."

All together now: "Aawwww."

I didn't bother to dissuade him from that path. He'll grow out of it soon enough, and for now I'll just revel in being the biggest love in my son's heart.

Growing up and the single mom

I guess it's every parent's experience to constantly revel at the rate at which her child is growing. I have a good friend who recently (read: 3 months ago) had a baby. Her own blogs and Facebook posts are often filled with comments about how quickly her son is growing and changing, and my reaction is generally one of slight bemusement. I have a little smirk on my face and a twinkle in my eye. I remember feeling that awe in the first months of my son's life. But (sorry to have to tell you, B) the constant amazement wanes.


The feeling comes back, though, every once in a while. And when it does, it comes less as a sweet and fleeting moment of awe and wonder and more like a sudden brick to the frontal cortex reminding me how quickly and how much my son is growing. I had one such moment the other day.


I dropped my son off at school the other day, like I do every day. And like every day, he hopped out of the car with his bag and lunch in his hand. Like every day, he said "bye" as he closed the car door and headed for the front door of the school. Unlike every other day, though, that was the end of it.


He usually turns around just as I'm pulling away, giving me this sweet smile and a little half wave and watching for me to wave back. It's almost as good as a big hug by way of warming a mother's heart -- knowing the last thing he wanted before heading into school was a little connection with me. You may think I'm reading a little too much into a smile and wave, but you'd be wrong. My son is such a loving, affectionate little guy, and it's just like him to, in the absence of a big hug, offer the next best thing from afar.

The other day, though, another little boy was getting out of the car in front of us just as my son was climbing out of our car. (I knew the other boy was a kindergartener as well by virtue of the special bag they all carry at my son's school.) Instead of the normal sweet farewell, my son offered only a peremptory "bye" to me just as he slammed the door and went racing up to the other boy just making his way down the sidewalk in front of us.


I don't quite know how to explain how these two little boys looked as they immediately fell into step beside each other and shared a quick laugh over some little joke known only to them (and funny only to 5 year olds, surely). It must have been what I looked like with the best friend of my youth -- joined inseparably at the hip and wrapped in some isolated world all our own.


Seeing that image, I immediately had this flash of how much my son has changed in the last few months since he started school. He's so much more aware of and interested in his friends and the, for lack of a better word, "culture" of childhood. I can feel him ever so gradually drifting away from me and becoming more independent.


Granted, he's not exactly driving a car or taking a job just yet. And when I picked him up that afternoon, he was my sweet, loving little boy once again, eager to fling himself in my arms and tell me about his day. It was nice to dream for a while that it'll always be that way.

Captain Generous Heart and the single mom

My little boy is such a sweetheart. I know I'm biased, but really. No, really.

He came home Friday from school carrying a little goodie-type cellophane bag filled with what appeared to be shiny tinsel-like material. He informed me that it was a Christmas ornament that was "very breakable" and we had to be careful until we got home.

As soon as we walked in the door, with the bag delicately clasped in one hand before him, he reached in and pulled out all that shiny red tinsel (which then went all over the floor, but whatever) to reveal a glass ornament that he had painted at school. He proudly found a spot for it on the tree, hung it up and admired it for a moment or two, and then turned and asked me for some string and tape.

"What do you need string and tape for?" I asked him.

For a little project he said. He was going to draw some hearts on paper and color them purple. And then he was going to cut them out and tape some string on them to make a bracelet. And then he was going to take it to school for his friend Jen.

My first thought was that he had a little crush on Jen or something. But that wasn't the case at all.

Jen, you see, got only plain red paper strips as padding in her cellophane ornament bag, rather than the shiny red tinsel -- a slight that surely was causing her pain wherever she was at that moment. So my son took it upon himself to heal that wound with his ministrations -- or at least a few purple hearts on a string.

It was so sweet that I just wanted to wrap him in my arms and shower him with love for being such a thoughtful little guy. There are times when the extraordinary self-centeredness of kids (and some adults) can really blow me away, but this was when of those times that was quite the contrary.

Winter and the single mom

I hate winter. I just plain hate it.

Don't try to convince me why you disagree; I shall not be swayed. Don't tell me that you like winter better than summer because you can always add more clothes when you're cold but can take off only so much when you're hot -- that's total BS.

I have a bulleted list of why I hate winter (in my head -- come on, I'm not THAT obsessed), and it's at least a dozen entries long. The constant shocks of static electricity, scraping ice off car windows, waking up and coming home in the dark, feeling like the Michelin Man and still being cold, lugging a coat around inside just so you don't freeze again outside -- I could go on and on.

What I've recently added to my "Reasons I hate winter" list, though, is time. The amount of time it takes to go anywhere with a child practically triples in the wintertime.

This morning, as with every morning since this latest cold snap set in, I started the process of heading to the door several minutes before I normally do and yet ended up dropping my son off at school several minutes later than I normally do. Where is the time lost in the middle? Here are a few clues...

"Mommy, do I need my heavy coat today?" (coat goes on)

"Mommy, where are my gloves?" (gloves go on)

"Wait, I can't zip up my coat with my gloves on." (gloves come off)

"Mommy, the zipper to my coat is stuck." (coat zipped)

"Oops, that's the wrong hand for this glove." (gloves back on)

"Mommy, where's my hat."

"No, not that hat, my other hat." (dig in the closet)

"Mommy, I can't get my hat on with my gloves on. Can you help me?" (hat finally on)

Already it's been a 5-minute process, and we haven't even begun the painfully slow march to the car that my son performs on cold mornings. ("It's too cold to walk fast.")

And then we run into further problems like the difficulty of getting in a car seat with a bulky coat on and buckling seat belts while wearing gloves.

So not only do I have to wake up in the dark on winter mornings, I have to wake up even earlier than during warmer months to account for the exceedingly time-consuming process of getting bundled up and getting out the door.

You know what I need? One of those machines on "The Jetsons" that dresses you while you're standing there. I'm not all that demanding. We can handle our regular clothes. I really just want one for outerwear. Is that so much to ask?

Reading and the single mom redux

Upon reading my last blog about the whiz kid in my son's class who was practically reading "War and Peace" off the art museum wall like it was "Cat in the Hat," I got a couple of comments from well meaning friends and family seeking to placate my evident distress over the situation.

My mom first suggested that perhaps that child had been to the exhibit before and already learned about Charlie Parker playing be bop. Perhaps. But then what about the different kid who read "Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie"? If she'd previously been to the art museum too, then my failing has gone from not teaching my child to read appropriately to not exposing him to any culture whatsoever (unless the children's museum and occasional library outings count). I don't feel better.

My father, taking a similar but slightly different tack, suggested that if I had whispered "Charlie Parker played be bop" in my son's ear before that other mother did, there'd be another blog bouncing around the virtual world right now waxing less-than-poetically about my son's amazing accomplishment and their child's relative shortcoming. Alas, theory #2 is also kaput. That child was sitting next to no one but other children. And I find it no measure of solace if another kid whispered the answer to him. I still don't feel better.

However, the one thing I do take heart in is an article I read just today indicating that it's completely normal for kids to begin reading anywhere between ages 4 and 7. The precocious readers seem to just pick it up before they ever set foot in a school. Some kids, who turn out to be perfectly intelligent and competent, aren't able to put the abstract concepts together until nearly 2nd grade. It's all a matter of brain maturity. The basics can be taught, but the whole deal can't be forced or rushed.

Whew! Now that makes me feel better.

Reading and the single mom

Like most kindergartners across the country right now, my son is learning to read.


And he's loving it. He loves the painstaking process of sounding out words: c-a-t. kkkk-aaaa-ttttt. Cat! He's so proud of himself with it all, as well he should be.


He tries to read signs as we drive down the road. He tries to read labels on food in the house. He tried just the other day to read the "Do not remove" tag from my hair dryer.


But realistically what he can read is limited to simple, single-syllable words. At this point, they're teaching only the short sounds of all the vowels (think "o" in "hop," not "hope." And don't even think about crazy things like "hoop."). The silent "e" has not made an appearance, and letter combinations like "sh," "th" and "nt" are just beginning to crop up. Vowel combinations like "ou," "io" or "ei" are light years off.

Just last night he read every word of a little phonics primer book from school. Granted, the sentences go something like "Del got Jon wet. Jon is mad. Jon runs to get Del. Del falls in a big tub. Del is wet." Still, it's quite an accomplishment to sound it all out himself.

And sound it all out he did. It was a painstaking process for nearly every word. "Ddd-eee-llll. Del. Ggg-ooo-ttt. Got. Jjj-ooo-nnn. Jon. Www-eee-ttt. Wet. Del got Jon wet." You get the picture. We were there for a while.

But I was so impressed. When he started school a few short months ago, he couldn't read a word, barely knew all his letters and maybe a handful of letter sounds, and now he's sounding things out and learning a few words by sight (the, and, was, etc.). He's eager and excited about reading, and I'm just bursting with pride.

So imagine my feeling of defeat yesterday when, on a field trip to the art museum, I learned that my son isn't quite the star reader I think he is. During the tour, the docent asked the students if they could read the words on the wall of one exhibit.

I was sitting in the back of the group, veritably rolling my eyes at this joker. "These are kindergartners, man. No, they can't read that," I was thinking.

And no sooner did that thought cross my mind than one little hand shot up from the assembled group on the floor and the eager little boy piped up with, "Charlie Parker played be bop."

My jaw practically hit my knees. Yep, that's exactly what was written on the wall. "Charlie Parker played be bop." And this kid didn't stumble or pause his way through the words, the way my son does through even simple constructions like "chin" or "ball."

Just "Charlie Parker played be bop," just as fast as you're hearing it in your head right now while reading. I was flabbergasted. How, when, where did he learn to do that? What have I been failing to teach my son? How can a 5-year-old pull off words like "Charlie" and "played"? Do you have any idea how many phonetic principles (and the exceptions thereto) it takes to understand words like that? Silent "e." Consonant combinations. Consonant and vowel combos. An "i" that's neither long nor short . The whole conundrum of the letter "y". How in the freaking world?

A few moments later another child proudly read "Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie" from another part of the exhibit. They're killing me here, absolutely killing me.

I've read before that children generally aren't ready to read before age 6 and that forcing it before then does them no favors developmentally. I'm trying to chant that to myself while fighting the sinking feeling that my son is the class dolt. I'm still so proud of him for reading like he is, of course, and I think he's smart as a whip. But perhaps I should start breaking out "War and Peace" a little earlier than I had planned.

A new look on parenthood for all moms... and dads

Today I want to share a rather funny article I came across recently that equates parenthood with addiction. It's actually a compelling, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek argument.

A fair warning: if you're at all touchy or defensive about being a parent, don't read it. If, on the other hand, you've got a good sense of humor about the real-life travails of being a parent, you'll get a kick out of this.

Oh, and you new moms (yeah, I'm talking to you, Becky), don't even bother. You're still honeymooning as far as I'm concerned.

http://www.slate.com/id/2274721/

The letter "T" and the single mom

My son brought home an activity sheet for homework the other day. They're studying the letter "T" in his class right now, and this particular sheet required him to cut out pictures, choose which ones begin with "T" and glue them on a big turkey.

He had no problem with toothbrush or truck or towel. He easily discarded doll and cat. But then he held up one picture toward me and said, "Mommy, what is this?"

I nearly choked on my own laughter as I said, "Son, that's a typewriter."

What granny is sitting around in a windowless office in an academic press somewhere churning out activity sheets for today's 5 year olds? A typewriter? Really? I'm not sure my son has ever laid eyes on a typewriter, much less the kind of old manual contraption depicted in this picture. It's 2010, people. Pick it up.

After he had finished gluing on all the "T" words, though, he still had one empty tail feather on the turkey where another "T" picture should go. I asked him to look back over the ones he had set aside and try again to find the missing piece.

"Doll. No, that's D," he said. "Cat. That's C."

Then he picked up the final picture and said, "Phone. That's F."

With a slight shake of my head, I informed him that the whole word is actually "telephone."

But, really, who uses the full word "telephone" anymore? It's at least less archaic than "typewriter" but still not necessarily reflective of a modern child's experience.

I say forget the old standbys. The "T" pictures should be things like Taylor Swift, Toy Story and Twitter. They'd have that whole pesky alphabet thing down in no time like that.

Not one, but two 5 year olds and the single mom

Yes, yes, I know it's been ages since I wrote. I have no good excuse. I'm lazy and I'm a procrastinator. Deal with it.

I had an interesting experience recently. A good friend of mine wanted to take his older son on a backpacking excursion, one that would be too long and grueling for the younger son to tag along for, so I volunteered to keep him. We'll call him "M."

M is the same age as my son -- only about four months separate them -- so they're quite the dynamic duo when they're together. And by "dynamic," I, of course, mean "destructive force of nature."

In order to corral their abundant energies and point them in a more productive direction (i.e. more productive than converting the stairs in my house to a makeshift sledding ramp or something), I took them to the Children's Museum on Saturday. They played and explored in general merriment all afternoon with minimal friction between them. Sunday, I took them to a local park with a great playground for a little more fun and games (and hopefully energy drainage).

By mid-Sunday afternoon, we'd had about 28 hours of time together, and the boys were starting to be a little worse for wear. And this is where one of the differences between them started to show. My son is an only child and is quite accustomed to and adept at playing alone. M, on the other hand, is a younger brother who has had a built-in playmate his entire life.

They had been playing upstairs in my son's room when I heard a clamor and came to the stairs, only to find M on his way downstairs crying over something and my son at the top of the stairs loudly proclaming his innocence and flinging accusations of his own at M. In an effort to defuse the situation, I asked if they'd rather play alone for a few minutes until everyone calmed down and we could get along again.

They answered in unison.

"No," M said.

"Yes," my son said.

I bribed M with a video gameto distract him until my son was ready to play again, and that seemed to placate everyone. M happily played the game while my son stayed in his room doing whatever he wanted to for a while. My son came downstairs a little while later and announced that he was ready to play with M again, which they scampered off to do with little conflict for the rest of the afternoon.

What I took away from the situation, though, was A) amused observation of the difference between a child who often plays alone and is thus completely content to have some time to himself and a boy who's never had that luxury of alone time and would rather not get along with his playmate than be on his own and B) a sense of some accomplishment that my son was able to recognize his own need for a little "time out" from playing together, take a few minutes to gather himself and then be ready to resume the fun. That's a handle on his needs and emotions that most adults haven't mastered. Not too shabby.

A new addition and the single mom

So my son had had it with me the other day.


For months now, he's occasionally mentioned wanting to get a fish -- or perhaps a lizard -- as a pet. We have a cat, but, still, he wanted a fish. I've generally said something noncommittal like, "Ok, sweetie, we can probably do that" and then relied on his short attention span to eventually take over and dissipate the idea.


A few days ago, this devious plan of mine caught up with me. I was in my son's room while he was getting dressed for school when I could see a little glimmer flash across his eyes. If he had the command of language and tone that adults do, what he told me would have been something like this (and I want you to read this in your mind with the words as utterly drenched with impatience and sarcasm as you can possibly fathom):


"Alright, look, Momma. I have told you for months now that I want a fish. It's go time. I want either a fish or a lizard or a turtle, and I want it now. It's your call which one, but make it now and get in the car. Let's get this taken care of ASAP because I'm tired of you blowing me off."


The real words were, of course, something more akin to this:


"Mommy, you said we I could have a pet. I want a turtle or a fish or a lizard. Can we do that after school today?"


That very day wasn't going to be a possibility, but I told him we would go over the weekend. He practically made me swear a blood oath that I would not back down.

He was excited about the prospect all week and practically bursting with excitement as we walked through the doors of PetSmart on Saturday. He picked out a Betta fish very quickly, promptly named it Nemo (not particularly original but whatever) and proceeded to nurture an overdeveloped sense of attachment to it.

"Nemo" he would cry and wrap his arms protectively around the little plastic bowl he came in.

Anyway, we got the fish home and settled happily into a roomy vase. My son insisted that Nemo live in his room, and so we cleaned an area off the top of his dresser to make a new home for Nemo. (The funny part is that the dresser backs up to a wall that's painted blue, and since the fish is blue, it's pretty good camouflage. I have to really look for the fish sometimes.)

As I'm about tapped out on the number of creatures I can be responsible for keeping alive at once (me, son cat), I put my son is in charge of feeding the fish, which he dutifully does every morning. "It's my 'reponstibility,'" he says.

We're nearly a week in, and the fish is still alive and my son starts his every day with, "Morning, Mommy. Morning, Nemo." Everything's cool. Now, if he starts asking for a dog, that'll be a whole other situation.

Independence and the single mom

There's been a subtle change that's come over my son since he started school nearly two months ago, a phenomenon that's altering the state of my life irrevocably. I've talked to friends and family about it, and they know what I'm talking about. But, still, the accurate words to describe it elude me. The best general descriptor I can come up with is "independence."

My son is becoming more independent. And not just in the little ways like being able to dress himself and brush his own teeth. It's more than that. It's an attitude, a tone of voice, a way of carrying himself, a confidence or maybe just competence that's new in his life.

It's not just that he hops out of the car in the mornings without looking back -- although it's that. It's not just that he comes home singing all the little variations on songs that are ubiquitous in elementary schools -- although it's that too. And it's not just that he's obviously growing more interested in friends and less interested in me by the hour -- although it's also certainly that.

It's all those things and many more that I can't really put my finger on. But it's been really quite a distinct change over a short period of time.

It's not like he spent the first 5 years of his life at home. He's been in full-time daycare since he was about a year old, so I don't think it has anything to do with his being away from me and with peers. It's got to be something uniquely different about the school environment -- a certain degree of expected independence from the students, the presence of older kids in their midst, something.

Part of me bursts with pride to see him getting his feet under him so quickly and assuredly in this new "big boy" world. The other part of me wants to burst into tears, of course, that my baby's growing up (by the way, the longer I'm a parent the more I wonder how my mom avoids doing that every day of her life whenever she glances at her three completely grown children).

There's also a third part of me that wants to wring his little neck for transforming from my sweet, loving, affectionate little guy (although he is still that a lot of the time) to this annoying little boy creature who comes home singing "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear." Really, man, really?

Punishment and the single mom

I picked my son up from late stay at his school yesterday, and he came bounding out of the door, happy to see me. I got a cursory hug and a quick, "Hi, Momma" before he had a question for me, one that had surely been eating at him all day.

"If I get yellow or red (on his class behavior report), can you ground me?"

Another mother walking by me at just that moment actually laughed out loud. And wouldn't you? Who asks to be grounded?

"I guess so, son. Where did you learn about grounding?"

From one of his classmates, he said, who is apparently grounded for having yellow or red days at school.

I've never used that particular term with my son, so I wasn't sure if he'd gotten a description from this friend at school or what.

"What do you think grounding means?" I asked my son.

"That you take away all the stuff I sleep with, and I have to sleep on the ground," he said, matter of factly.

No wonder he's asking to be grounded! In his mind, it's a little adventure where he gets to sleep on a pallet on the floor. Hopefully I nipped that misconception in the bud before he started acting up at the school just for the joy of being "grounded."

Tattoos and the single mom

My son, like pretty much every kid his age, loves temporary tattoos. I think he'd be covered in them head to toe every day of the week if I didn't draw the line.

He recently came home to me after a weekend away with a fresh one on the middle of his back. According to my mom, who was the one who obligingly applied said tattoo, he wanted it there because that's where Uncle J.J. has a tattoo.

So this is where this is going -- the real thing vs. the fake one.

I have a small tattoo (about the size of two quarters) in a discreet location on my body. My son saw it the other day, not for the first time, and asked why I always had that "picture" in the same place.

How to explain the a real tattoo's permanence? Turns out, straightforward is the best approach.

"My tattoo doesn't go away. It's there forever," I told him.

He very nearly visibly cringed.

"I never want to do that," he said.

If you felt a sudden rush of breeze blow by you yesterday morning, it was probably my enormous sigh of relief wafting across three states.

I know, I know -- that stands very likely to change in the years to come, but I don't know if I could stand the idea of a real tattoo being appealing already to my 5 year old. I'll take the cringe any day.

The report from the front and the single mom

Well, my ex's visit has come and gone -- and frankly gone a lot better than I expected. My son spent the past two weekends with his father and handled it exceedingly well.

For the first weekend, I specifically avoided calling to talk to my son. His time with his daddy should be fairly uninterrupted time with his daddy, I thought, and so with great effort, I put the phone down.

While it was torturous for me, I figured it was in my son's best interest for me to keep my distance since he tends to get needy and whiny when he "remembers" he misses me. That hunch turned out to be right when I finally called Sunday morning, at which point he immediately launched into, "I want yooouuuu," complete with tearful voice and plaintive whining.

(An aside to this tale: my family and I had a big boating trip on the Intracoastal Waterway planned for that weekend, which my son obviously did not get to join us for. I had planned on -- and was succeeding in -- keeping it a secret so that he didn't feel left out. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

As soon as I got on the phone that Sunday morning, my niece, who was on the trip with us, blurted out that she wanted to talk to my son. I didn't hear what she said to him, but I'm guessing she spilled the beans because as soon as I picked my son up on Sunday, he launched into a scathing criticism. "You went to the beach without me. That's not fair! I wanted to go to the beach!"

I didn't even get a "Hi, Mommy" or anything, just complaints. "But you got to spend the weekend with Daddy," I offered as some comfort. My ex would have cringed to hear how quickly his son blew that off as completely irrelevant and downright boring compared to going on the boat with his cousin.

I fielded these sort of comments for a solid hour before I finally put my foot down and told him I wasn't going to talk about it anymore.)

The second weekend with his father (this past weekend) went fine as well. I again stayed away from the phone for the most part and was pleased that I didn't get any wailing bedtime calls ("But I want you, Mommy. I want to come home."), as I have during past visits.

My ex actually delivered my son directly to my mom on Sunday afternoon. (My parents had taken a long weekend to go camping and were keeping my son Monday while he was out of school for Fall Break and I was still at work.) Mom said that he was a little whiny and pouty while he was with them, but he was pretty well back to his normal self after a good night's sleep Monday night and a day off with me Tuesday (Fall Break continued).

So, all in all, good news to report for the ex's visit. No temper tantrums. No crying jags. No newfound defiant streak (sometimes a symptom of the daddy visits). I'm counting my blessings.

The prodigal father and the single mom

He's baaacck! My ex-husband that is. He arrived home from Afghanistan for his two-week leave earlier this week and is, just as I'm typing these words, picking our son up from school to see him for the first time in about 8 or 9 months.

I've tried to hype the visit to my son so that he'll be excited about being picked up and carted away from his home and comfort zone by a veritable stranger. (I swear I've been more positive than that when talking to him.) And I was patting myself on the back a little for doing a decent job, it seemed, at balancing infusing a little excitement without loading him with too much expectation.

I made sure he knew exactly when and where he'd see his father so that nothing was unexpected. I used that happy, high-pitched voice parents use when they're trying to impose cheerfulness on their children (I make no bones about the game I've been playing and the obvious pretense involved. As much as I generally hate this phrase -- it is what it is).

And it was working. My son would cheer when we talked about his daddy picking him up from school and talk about getting to see his daddy soon to other people.

But then last night, the house of cards came tumbling down around me. About 30 minutes after I'd put my son to bed, he called for me. I went in to his room to find his lower lip quivering and his eyes welling on the verge of a real crying jag.

"What's wrong, baby?" I asked.

"I don't want to stay with my daddy all weekend," he wailed, bursting into tears. "I want to stay with you."

The plan was, has been, still is for my ex to pick my son up from school today and spend a few hours with him and then bring him home for the night. He'll then pick him up from school again tomorrow and keep him all weekend. It's an all-or-nothing arrangement for the weekend because I'll be out of town and unavailable to pick him up mid-weekend.

As I said, I'd been informing my son of the schedule so he knew what was coming. And what made him, after days of seeming excitement, break down into pitiful tears over the prospect, I have no idea.

I consoled him as best I could, reminding him that he was first going to see his father for just a little while and then come home. Still, it took several minutes to get him to calm down and drift back toward sleep.

I might normally shrug this off as a not-unexpected emotional reaction to all this change (and I'm not saying it's any more than that), but my son has been upset in the past about going to spend nights with his father, calling me in inconsolable tears at bedtime and frustrating my ex to no end. I know it hurts his feelings that his son wants to come home to me (as it naturally would anyone), and I'm not sure he has enough experience with the delicate emotions of a child to deal well with the situation.

For now, I don't think there's much to be done about it, at least from my end. I'll continue to encourage my son to be positive. I'll do my best to console him when needs be. I don't know that there's much else to do. Got any brilliant ideas? I'm open to suggestions.

Anatomy and the single mom

Dear readers, I apologize for my extended absence over the past (nearly) two weeks. I really do try to blog about twice a week, but schedules and conflicts and general fatigue sometimes win over my good intentions. Last week, though, I was trampled instead by strep throat. Ick!

I'm fully recovered now, though, and eager to recount a little anecdote for your amusement.

My son was taking a bath the other day. (No, that's not the whole story, although impressive enough in and of itself). Just as he was beginning to wash up, he asked me, "What are my nipples for?"

After I got done biting through my lip to try to keep from bursting into laughter, I replied simply, "Nothing."

"When they grow up, girls use nipples to feed babies ," I said. "But nipples don't have any particular use on boys."

As amusing as the very question itself is, if you're a reader of this blog, you know there's always a second punchline coming when it comes to my son.

With a slightly pensive, slightly puzzled look on his face, he then said, "So they're just there to make me look handsome?"

Behavior, embarrassment and the single mom

I spent a couple days deciding whether or not I wanted to write this blog entry. I know that there's nothing perfect about parenting. I know you, dear readers, know that too. But I'm still loathe to admit my own shortcomings in such a barefaced and public way. (Surely that's a condition of all humanity, right?) On the other hand, if the point of this blog is to share my experiences with even one other person who might empathize or just not feel alone, then I need to be honest (mostly).

So here goes... my child, in his first few weeks of kindergarten, is apparently already a discipline problem. His school (and others, I'm learning from friends) has a color chart indicating each child's behavior for the day. It's not unlike the terror alert system, actually -- and let's face it, 5 year olds can be a terror. From best to worst, the colors go green - blue - yellow - red.

What color day each child has had is sent home daily in his or her homework folder. Most days of the week, my son is on green or blue. But a couple prominent times, he's been on red.

Never on yellow, mind you. Always totally good or totally bad. He's either an angel or an absolute demon all day long. All or nothing, baby, all or nothing.

On the days he's on red, his teacher will write me a little note about what the problem. "He had trouble listening today and used mean words and voice to talk to two of his friends." "He had a hard time following instructions today and had to be told repeatedly to complete tasks." Heartwarming things like that.

And then the piece de resistance came when I got an email from his teacher the other day asking for us to meet next week to come up with a plan to address his "behavior/attitude in class." Oh, things just keep getting better and better in my little world.

I acknowledge that my son sometimes has to be told two or three times to do something. It's a common problem I wrestle with at home. But I didn't think he was extraordinarily stubborn or defiant. It's normally that he's not paying attention or is easily distracted by a toy on his way to do whatever it was I asked him to do. I recognize also that listening the first time and following through are important skills for him to master now that he's in school.

But here's the thing -- I have no idea what kind of "plan" to come up with. We talk about his listening the first time. It does no good. I fuss at him for not listening the first time. It does no good. I take away privileges or toys for not listening the first time. It does no good.

This is decidedly a failing on my part, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that I still don't know what to do. And now I'm not only frustrated but also mortally embarrassed because it's grown from a frustration inside the four walls of my house to a public exposure of my wickedly poor parenting.

OK, I'm exaggerating for effect, but I am still embarrassed at having to be called in to talk to the teacher in the first few weeks of school. And unless she has some brilliant insight or bag of tricks that I've heretofore been ignorant of (and maybe she really does -- that's the hope), I'm not sure this meeting is going to have much purpose other than making me feel like more of a failure as a parent than I already do. Ugh, this is all just so awesome.

Reincarnation and the single mom

My son takes after his mother in more ways than one. He's got my eyes and my way with words and, sadly, my attitude on some days. Most pertinent today, though, is the fact that he is not a morning person. Learning to get up early to accommodate a school schedule has been an intense challenge for both of us for the past two weeks.

This morning, he was more tired and more reluctant to get out of bed than usual. I have no one to blame but myself for that because I didn't get him to bed on time (we had dinner with a friend last night and just didn't leave when we should have). So when I went to wake him, he was especially groggy and grouchy.

It took a few minutes of coaxing, but I finally got him to rouse to consciousness and then went back across the hall to my bedroom to continue getting myself ready. I called out to him a few minutes later to make sure he was getting dressed, to which he confessed he wasn't yet. I walked in there to find him curled up on the bed with his arm draped over the cat.

"Baby, you need to get up and get dressed," I told him.

"But I'm cuddling with Henry," he said.

"Well, you need to stop cuddling with Henry and get dressed."

"Why does Henry get to lay in bed while I have to get up?" he asked.

"Henry's a cat. He doesn't do things like go to school," I replied.

And now, here comes the punchline...

"I want to be a cat," he said.

Brilliant thought, son! Wouldn't it be great if we could all pick the most ideal creature in the world and just become that? I might choose a lizard -- sunning myself on a big rock day after day. Or perhaps a lion -- a boy, not a girl. Lounge around in the sun, shaking my impressive mane and roaring while the lionesses do all that tedious chasing and hunting for me.

But then again, a cat's not a bad choice. Sleep, eat, sleep, stretch, bat something around a little, repeat. I'll take it!

Nonchalance and the single mom

Today is my birthday.

If you, friend or stranger, are now feeling at least a little compelled to smile and wish me a happy birthday, you have joined the company of my parents, my brothers, old friends and others who love me, but NOT my son.

He checked the mail yesterday, as he likes to do, and it just so happened that all we received was 3 birthday cards. Frankly, I think it's some kind of miracle that there were no bills, no solicitations, no junk of various sort. Just 3 birthday cards, which is as it should be on the day before my birthday, I say.

So my son gets these cards from the mailbox and walks over to me. "Just some cards in the mail today, Momma."

I asked him if he knew why we got those cards. He said no, so I told him the next day was my birthday. He looked at me for a moment as if this information might hold some passing interest for him and then, upon clearly deciding that it did not, said, "I want to be 6. When is my birthday?"

So what I'm hearing is something along the lines of, "That's fabulous, Mom. What I want to know is how does this information affect ME, really? How can I turn this conversation into something about ME?"

This morning I went into his room while he was getting ready for school and asked him if he knew what today was.

"Um, Friday?"

"Well, yes. But it's Mommy's birthday."

"Hmm," he said as he continued to walk around his bed (buck naked, I might add) to make it up.

"Shouldn't you say something to me?" I asked. I've evidently reached the point of pleading with my son for birthday well wishes. Desperate. Pitiful.

"Oh! Happy birthday, Mommy!" he finally managed to eek out. At least he did put a little heart in it and did come fling his arms around me (yep, still nekkid as the day is long -- there's clearly no shame in our house) for a big birthday hug.

Turns out it was the best birthday present I could ask for.

School bells and the single mom

Well, it's official. My son has started school. (Insert weeping here.)



Actually, it all went very smoothly. He was a little emotional yesterday morning before we left the house -- wanting to cling to the lovie he sometimes sleeps with and bursting into inordinate tears when I asked him to leave the lovie in his room. (This is something he doesn't even remember to sleep with many nights and never brings downstairs, so this emotional show was certainly out of the ordinary.)



Once we got in the car and headed for school, though, he seemed fine -- no random displays of overwrought emotion or anything. When we got there, he was still cool.



The only small sign of trepidation was when an older student, one who'd been assigned the duty of helping the new kindergartners find their way, approached us at the door and asked if he wanted her to walk him to his class. He hugged tightly close to my arm and simply pointed at me as if to say, "No, I want her to go."



Once we got where he was supposed to be, though, he was totally fine with my depositing him there and walking away.



I confess I shed a few discreet tears in my car, but even I handled it better than I expected.



And when I picked him up that afternoon, he was in a perfectly good mood and chatted about the picture he had colored of a tree and how he had chopped it down with an axe and it had made a "chink" and then a "thud" sound (yeah, he gets descriptive).


This morning, he was the picture of "I know what I'm doing and don't need your help" cool. We pulled in front of the school, and he hopped right out and headed for the door with a little wave back to me.


Part of me is bursting with pride that he's going to school and handling it well and ready to embark on his own. The other part of me -- and I'm working to silence her for the good of my son, I promise -- hates that he's growing out of the need for me. I know that's an exaggeration; I know he'll need me for many things for much longer. Hell, I still need my mom for a lot of things and I'm 3-- well, grown up.

(Getting in the car yesterday morning to head to school.)

(Actually arriving at school.)

Not-so-fun game and the single mom

Through the influences of an older child, my son has become enthralled with a game that we all surely played as children. That would typically be fine with me -- a passing of the torch, so to speak, for my son to be playing the games I played in my youth.

This time, however, I've got little romantic nostalgia and am instead now cursing whoever invented Punch Bug.

That's right, my son has become the keenest lookout for VW Beetles the world has ever known. The boy can spot at Bug at two miles -- two and a half in clear weather.

What really makes this game irritating is that I have to willingly submit to the beating every time.

"Give me your hand! Give me your hand!" he pipes excitedly from the back seat.

At which point I drape my arm back there for him to wallop me and shout "Punch bug!"

In all fairness, he doesn't really punch. He balls up his little fist and does little more than tap me on the arm -- just enough to be able to say he's gotten me. But it remains hilarious to me that I have to deliver my own appendage to him for, albeit mild, abuse.

I guess it's better than the days that will surely come in which he'll lean forward in his seat and deliver a sock in the shoulder worthy of the growing strength and lack of restraint of an 11-year-old. Any chance Volkswagen's going to discontinue Beetles anytime soon?

A single mom's music lover

My son loves music. No, I mean really loves music.


He loves for me to turn the radio up, and he'll sing along with every song quite loudly from the backseat (sadly, he inherited his mother's singing voice, so I've had to replace a few inadvertently cracked windows, but that's neither here nor there).


He's also pretty opinionated about his tastes for a 5 year old. He tells me what CDs he wants me to play, which songs he wants me to skip and which ones he wants me to repeat.


I've been told that he walks around school singing songs throughout the day. And I don't mean songs like "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" or "Oh my darling, Clementine." No, I'm talking about the songs currently being played on country radio (which is what we listen to -- don't judge me), which invariably tickles all the teachers. "Give me that girl with her hair in a mess, sleepy little smile with her head on my chest..." is not standard preschool classroom fare.


As much as my son enjoys music on the radio or CDs, he most especially loves live music. Granted, he doesn't get a whole lot of live music in his life because, let's face it, the Handlebar frowns on my taking him down there. The one place he reliably gets live music, though, is the Saturday Market in downtown Greenville.


Any time I announce that we're headed to the market, his first question is if we can listen to the music. And, unless we're bizarrely pressed for time or something, I let him indulge in it for as long as he wants, which, as it turns out, can be a really long time.

We went to the market this past weekend. After patiently tolerating my irrational insistence on purchasing some blackberries and peaches (We're here for the music, Mom, not this pesky food!), we headed straight for the tent where a man and woman were playing simple folks songs to an audience of exactly zero. In all fairness, I'm sure a few folks walked by a little slower or at least turned their heads in the general direction of the music, but no one was sitting around listening.

Enter my son.

He plopped down in the middle of the street (yes, it was closed off the for the event) and sat mesmerized for song after song after song. Every few minutes, he'd stick his hand in the plastic bag by his side and pull out a blackberry to pop in his mouth. Aside from that, he was like a little cross-legged boy statue.

And he was completely content for ages. After every song, he'd look up at me with these pleading eyes and ask if we could stay "just one more song." "Just one more song" turned into about 15. I get the feeling that music lessons of some sort need to be in his future.

A harbinger of things to come and the single mom

I've had two back-to-back instances this week that are reminding me of the fears I have long harbored about being a single mom raising a son. There are going to be things I can't explain, things I don't quite understand and certainly things I just plain don't know about.

And then there are going to be those things that I wish I didn't have to deal with, times when I could probably come up with the knowledge but that I'd much rather a man deal with. Turns out, we're there already.

My son was climbing into the backseat of the car with me the other day after we'd been on a trip with my parents. As he buckled up, he said something along the lines of, "It feels weird when my pee-pee sticks out, and I have to push it down." (Forgive me if that's not verbatim. I'm doing everything I can to wipe the memory from my internal hard drive, but it's not working. It's burned in there permanently, it seems, in the way only traumatic, scarring events are.)

Sure enough, I look over, and there he is, pushing down a little hard-on over and over. I suggested maybe if he stopped pushing on it altogether, it wouldn't stick out like that in the first place.

"But I like the way it feels."

Well, no duh. But, damn!, I'm not equipped for this conversation with my 5 year old.

And then a night or two later, he was getting ready for bed. He had stripped down to his birthday suit and was walking around the room gathering pajamas and pull-up and other bedtime accoutrements, the whole time with his penis in his hand.

I glanced over at him and told him to stop walking around playing with his penis. Ever the obedient child, he promptly sat down to continue playing with his penis.

I texted a (male) friend about it, and his response was, "What else could he do?"

I'm trying to be enlightened about this. I don't want to teach my son, either purposefully or accidentally, that it's wrong or shameful to explore his own body. I just don't want to see it while he's walking around his room!

So, brothers dear, if you're reading this, I'm calling one of y'all next time this situation comes up (no pun intended) so that someone, anyone other than me, can start explaining to him about discretion and privacy.

The eye of the beholder and the single mom

This is just a short little entry to share a funny comment my son made the other day (yes, in the car).

He, like many other children, likes to pretend he's different things. In fact, most days when I pick him up from daycare, the first thing he asks is, "Know what I am today?" It's often an animal of some variety or a superhero or something. (Or sometimes something bizarrely specific and rather odd like "a regular boy who has a red sword that can transform into a big truck." Um, OK.)

On a recent day, he was being a car.

"I have eyes and a mouth. But no nose. That would be silly for a car to have a nose, right Mom?"

Yes, son, totally silly for a car to have a nose. Totally normal and unsilly to have eyes and a mouth. But a nose? Well, that's just one too far.

"Silly," it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

Names and the single mom

Driving down the road the other day (yes, all my meaningful and/or interesting interaction with my son seems to occur in vehicles), my son asked me what his name was going to be when he grew up.

The ensuing conversation was amusing in and of itself -- and we'll get to that in a moment -- but what first caught my attention was that he didn't ask IF he'd have a different name when he grew up; he skipped ahead and asked WHAT that name would be.

This is a question that I seem to ask a lot, but where in the world did he get that idea?? Sometimes I can perceive or deduce where the seed of some bizarre question started, but I've got nothing here. Where ever did the idea that he'd change names come from?

At any rate, I told him that his name would be the same as it is now. This, as it turned out, was not an answer he was pleased to hear.

"I don't want my name to be the same," he announced rather petulantly.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I don't like it," he said.

Well, so-ooooo sorry about that, buddy boy. Didn't realize I was saddling you with the world's worst moniker.

Despite my slightly wounded feelings, I gathered my mommy wits about me and realized that arguing with him about the relative merits of his name would get me nowhere, so I accepted the premise of the conversation and simply asked what he'd like his name to be.

He calmly responded that he'd like his middle name to be his new name. I told him he could go by his middle name if he wanted (a confession: I wasn't serious about that offer in the least because I want him to go by his first name, but I was taking an appeasement approach on the fairly reliable assumption that he'd forget about his newfound stance in a day or two), but that wasn't good enough. He wanted the order of his names switched altogether, thank you very much. His middle name would be his first name, and his first name would be his new middle name.

"I will henceforth be known as this," he pronounced. OK, maybe he didn't use that exact language, but he did make a clear statement to the effect that he was reordering his name whether I liked it or not.

Again, going with the approach that picking an abstract fight with a 5 year old was a losing game no matter what, I simply said, "OK."

Of course, my earlier statement about the short-lived nature of his conviction was correct, and by the time the first opportunity to directly address him by his name rolled around, he had completely forgotten and answered happily to his (real) first name. And I've heard nothing further about it since then -- for now at least.

Surprises, guilt and the single mom

Not long after posting yesterday's blog about my ex's relative absence from his son's life of late, I got a surprising email from him.

Our son starts school in a few short weeks a private school where uniforms are required. I had mentioned this to my ex sometime back but hadn't thought much more about that conversation since then. His email today was just to ask if our son needed anything to start school and to offer to help get his uniforms or other things he may need.

To be clear, my ex has not been in the habit over the years since our divorce of offering to pay for things in excess of his regular child support, so this communication came as a genuine surprise.

And, of course, it made me feel bad about my rant. In all fairness, sending money for school uniforms and staying in touch with your son are completely unrelated issues, and he's still lacking in the latter. But I got pretty close to accusing him in the blog of not being interested in his son and what's going on in his life, and, particularly in the light of his email today, that was an unfair thing to say.

I still think he needs to work harder at staying in touch with his son, at connecting with him on his level, but perhaps I need to give my son's father more credit for the doing the best he can in the best way he knows how.

Baby daddies and the single mom

OK, so this blog isn't so much about baby daddies as it is about one baby daddy -- my baby's daddy.

Yes, that's right -- buckle up folks, we're in for another bumpy installment of "Amy's ex-files."

My son's father, as some/many/all of you may already be aware, is currently deployed to Afghanistan. I'm sympathetic. I was once an Army wife who's husband was deployed far away to dangerous areas (it was Bosnia and Iraq when we were married).

But that also means that I know it's not prohibitively difficult to stay in touch with the folks back home. There's phone, which is not always reliable. There's email, usually at least accessible. And there's good old-fashioned mail, slow but reliable and free for deployed military members.

My ex-husband, my son's dear father [insert scathing sarcasm here], had availed himself of none of these methods of communication for two months. No calls, no letters, no emails for me to read to our son or even asking how he's doing. No carrier pigeons, no smoke signals, no dream invasion (sorry, I saw "Inception" last night, and I have a dream thing going on right now), nothing. For two months, since our son's birthday in May.

I know there's a struggle with the time difference (the few hours that my son's with me and awake in the evenings is pretty much the middle of the night over there), but there's been a weekend or two -- or eight! -- over the course of the past two months when it'd be easier to make contact.

I know it's tough to make time to call when that can involve standing in lines or when you're so exhausted all you want to do is sleep for the few hours you can. But I also know that my ex has spared no effort to call his wife during his deployment (as he should); would it be so tough to extend that same effort every once in a while for his son?

When I think about it, I'm part infuriated, part disappointed, to be honest. My son misses his father and loves his father and asks about him and talks about him. I want them to have a good relationship, but I can't force it.

My son finally did talk to his father this past weekend while he was visiting with his stepmom for an afternoon. My son told me that she called him somehow; I didn't even know that was possible.

I asked my son about talking to his father, but he said he was "shy," which is his way of saying he didn't want to talk or didn't really have anything to say. I think that's because his father has, of course, been absent for two months and, perhaps more importantly, never learned to talk to his son.

"How you doing, buddy?" is going to get you only so far with a 5 year old.

"Good," he'll say and then wait for the next question.

I've spoken with my ex husband before about his being frustrated that our son doesn't have more to say on the phone, but I know from experience that my son will talk a blue streak to someone who shows an interest in what he has to say.

But for that to work, you've got to know what's going on in his life to ask about it. You've got to figure out how to ask questions that'll get him talking about things that he likes. You've got to just be there -- and I don't mean physically, because I know he can't. You've got to show up with your heart, with your time, with every attempt you can because a long-distance relationship with a 5 year old requires work. You've just gotta do it. It's important.

Emotional satellites and the single mom

A friend of mine and I decided that small children are like some sort of emotional satellite dish: they intensify and reflect any emotion going on around them. Get excited and they start bouncing off the walls. Get frustrated and they become angry, sullen little creatures. Get upset and they end up an inconsolably weeping blob.


That last scenario happened to me last night when I took my son to see "Toy Story 3." I was crying near the end of the movie because (spoiler alert!) Andy -- the kid whose toys we've loved for years now -- had grown up was and heading off to college.


As a mom, I was crying, not because the movie's terribly sad or anything, but because I was envisioning my own 5 year old in years to come packing up his room and driving off with an old car stuffed to the gills with stuff.


(Side note: A woman in front of us in line at the concession stand just before the movie warned me that I was going to cry. Perhaps I should hunt her down and apologize for mentally rolling my eyes and scoffing at the very notion. At the very least, I send out apologetic karma, wherever you are, lady in the purple shirt.)


My son saw the tears streaming down my cheeks and immediately burst into tears himself. He crawled into my lap and cried and cried while my own tears, coming on even harder now that my sweet little son was crying in my lap (OK, maybe I'M the emotional satellite), trickled down onto his hair.


Once the movie was over, I asked him what made him sad, and, predictably, he didn't really have an answer because there wasn't anything in there that would make a child feel sad.


"It just made me sad," he said. And the very act of saying that short sentence would bring on his waterworks again.


Emotional satellite, I'm telling you.

Twisted memory and the single mom

My son and I were lounging in my bed one lazy morning recently when he commented that he wanted a ceiling fan in his room like I have in mine.

"We'll have to see what we can do about that," I told him.

He then asked why we didn't have that guy who brought our downstairs fan bring another one for his room.

I'm sitting there racking my brain -- the guy who brought our downstairs fan? What in the world is he talking about?

It took only another second or two for me to realize he was referring to my ex-boyfriend who installed a new fan in my living room about three years ago.

"Do you mean Jim?" I ask him.

"Yeah," he said. "The guy who brought the fan."

First of all, I'm impressed that my son remembers anything from when he was 2 years old. Second of all, I'm thoroughly amused by the transformation of Jim's role in his life from a buddy and Mommy's friend to "that guy who brought our downstairs fan."

I was recounting the story to a friend of mine who made me laugh when she said it sounded like it had become a pretty simple equation in my son's mind: "that guy equals cooler air equals thumbs up for me. Let's get him back here."

I had once worried that my break up would upset my son or that he'd have memories of Jim that would make him sad. Clearly I needn't have been concerned since he remains in the wisps my son's memory as little more than a serviceman it would be handy to have around again.

More questions and the single mom

If you've been a reader of my blog in the past, you've seen my posts (here, here, here and here -- subscription required) about the incessant and rather bizarre questions my son tends to ask.

The other day was the mother of all bizarre question days. We were driving home from the beach, so, granted, he had a lot of free time on his hands for his little mind to wander to diverse and varied topics. But still, some of these are just out there.

Here are the questions I got over the course of a few hours (and these are verbatim -- I wrote them down to be sure):

-Why do grownups have parents?

-Is my daddy dead yet? (To clarify this one a bit -- I asked him why he asked that, and he said, "Because he smokes a lot.")

-Do police never let bad guys go?

-Does God live?

Seriously. Seriously? These are the questions I have to figure out how to answer while driving 75 miles an hour across the heart of the Palmetto State, battling back weariness and fatigue and the growing urge to pee? Seriously?!?

I was recounting this list to a friend and her first question, and perhaps yours as well, is what did I answer. Well, I wish I had spewed forth some awe-inspiring wisdom, but mostly I just fumbled my way through something that would satisfy him.

Little did I know, he had more gems waiting for me in response to my feeble efforts.

"Well, honey, the bad guys can be let go after they get punished for a while. Like when you get a time out, you have to sit for a while but then you can get up and play. Bad guys have a grown-up time out for a while, and then they get a second chance to be good and can go home."

"But bad guys don't have houses," he replied.

What have I wandered into now, I thought.

"Of course they do. They have to go home somewhere just like we do."

He thought about this for a moment and then decided, "They don't have food in their houses like we do."

It wasn't a question. He was stating, for the record, that bad guys' houses don't have food.

I guess he needed to make sure bad guys were different in some way from the rest of us. I guess if I were 5 years old, it would seem awfully scary for bad guys to be just like the rest of us, too.

Still, where does this stuff come from??

Fearlessness and the single mom

My son and I spent this past weekend at Myrtle Beach.

On our first afternoon there, our trip to the beach coincided right with the incoming tide, so the surf had some big waves crashing in.

After watching me swim out beyond the breakers to float over the incoming waves, my son wanted to join me, in which request I happily obliged him. Decked out in his swimmies, he held onto my arms as we made our way through the surf to the calmer waters just beyond.

As we floated around out there, we'd occasionally catch a wave awkwardly or a larger one would come in and break earlier. We'd get splashed pretty good or dunked a little by the crest of the wave, but it was nothing major ... until THE wave.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you saw something bad coming and just couldn't do anything about it? That blink of an eye just before a car crash? The mug teetering on the edge of the counter just before falling? The false step or little stumble at the top of the stairs that sends a kid careening down them? (I know that last one a little too personally.)

That's what it felt like as I saw this wave coming toward us. It was huge (huge by South Carolina standards anyway) and was clearly going to break right on top of us. I grabbed my son, told him to hold his breath and tried to lift him up as high as I could above the wave just as it crashed onto my head, pounding me into the sand and ripping my son from my arms.

After being tumbled around pretty fiercely by the wave, I dug in my feet and stood up as quickly as I possibly could in the retreating surf and immediately looked around for my son, who should have been bobbing close by thanks to his floaties. I can't possibly describe the sinking sensation in my gut, the instant sense of panic that flooded my every cell, when he wasn't anywhere in sight.

I screamed his name and heard my friend call from the shore, "He's beside you." Just then, my son did surface about four feet away from me, spitting and coughing out the sea water but generally unharmed. (My friend said he saw the whole thing from the shore and, from his vantage point, could see my son just below the water's surface when I couldn't.)

Do you know how frustrating it is to try to run through water that's up to your waist? It seemed to take forever to get to my son and get him into my arms, though in reality only a few seconds had surely passed.

I picked him up and headed for the shore, spitting and coughing myself the whole way. We were both fine, but I had had enough of the ocean for the afternoon with that episode.

But here's what gets me -- my son indulged in being held and petted and checked over for a few minutes. He "wow"ed with me over what a doozy that wave was and sat down on the beach -- for a grand total of about 3.7 seconds. And then he was up and headed back to the waves again to splash and play, completely undaunted by the experience that left my adrenaline surging and my heart pumping.

Of course, I should admit that I'm guilty of the same offense in a more protracted form. We did the exact same thing the next day. Again, incoming tide, high surf, battering waves. Again, swim out past the breakers and float over the waves. Again, giant wave slams into us, pounding water into our ears and noses and our bodies into the sand.

The second time, though, might have been even worse. Remembering what happened the last time, I braced myself better and managed to hold onto my son that time. It spared me the panic of the previous day, but because I held onto him, I couldn't stand up easily and we were blasted by a second wave that came right on the heels of the first.

We were really tumbled around under the swirling water pretty fiercely before I could get my footing and get us out of there. I swallowed so much water that I was nauseated for a while, and I had saltwater running out of my nose for 10 minutes as it tried to unflood my sinuses. (I know y'all were eager to learn that.)

But, again, my son proved himself utterly fearless and returned to play in the surf long before I had recovered from the tumble. Some kids are just unstoppable. Seems I got one of them.

Texting and the single mom

So my son, quite obviously a child of this technology-driven era, likes to text. He can't read or spell anything really, but he likes to text nevertheless.

It works like this: he tells me he wants to text someone, often Uncle JJ. I get the text feature open on the phone and then hand it to him, at which point he proceeds to ask me how to spell out whatever sentence is on his mind while he painstakingly finds every letter on the little keyboard on my phone.

I have a distinct memory of walking around Bed Bath & Beyond doing some shopping with my mom while my son ambled along behind us texting something about alligators to someone.

"How do you spell "alligator'?"

"A"

"OK, then what?"

"L"

"Where's the 'L'?"

"The middle row of letters."

"OK, then what?"

"L"

"Another L?"

"Yes, another L."

"OK, then what?"

You get the picture of how this goes (and how long it takes!)

Well, we were driving in the car the other day when he said he wanted to text Uncle JJ and asked for my phone.

"How do you spell 'wilt'?"

"Wilt?" I was intrigued by this rather sophisticated word choice and curious about what message he was trying to send.

So, naturally, I asked, "What are you trying to say, sweetheart?"

His response: "Are you sad?"

It's so absurd that there are no words. But, being a writer, I'll try...

First, where did "wilt" come from in the first place? For all I know, maybe he meant "whilt" and he was on the verge of composing a Shakespearean ode.

Second, the obvious question: why do you need to spell "wilt/whilt" in order to write completely unrelated words?

"How do you spell 'breathe'?"

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm trying to say, 'I'm going to the store.'"

(Insert your own inane scenario here. No, really, try it. It makes a good game.)

I seriously, seriously wish I had a window into what goes in his brain. And that's becoming the case more and more often as he talks and reasons and asks questions more and more. It's certainly entertaining, if nothing else.

A new location for the single mom

Dear readers,

If you've found this blog, it's probably because you're one of my friends and family (or you know one of my friends and family) to whom I sent the link.

I'm relocating my blog to this site since access at my previous site has been restricted. Keep checking back for adventures in parenting.

Thanks for reading!

Amy