smart mama

e: mom, how do you know everything?
m: I don't know, I always wondered how my mommy knew everything too.
Maybe it's something that just happens when you become a mom.
e: yeah, and five-year-olds know everything. When I'm five, I'll know everything too.

Move over Ariel:

Mama has a new favorite movie: Disney's Enchanted
Great family movie and fulfills the following mama criteria:
1. crush on patrick dempsey
2. classic disney princess tale
3. lots of singing
4. crush on patrick dempsey

girl's night out!

After all the keggers, frat parties and mornings hurled over the toilet...we grew up. We've given birth, drive mini-vans and read books with only three words per page. Through all that, one thing holds true: you can take the mama out of the party, but you can't take the party out of the mama:

left to right: allisun, julie, betty, jaime, mama, kelly, beth

Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout.

One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too.

Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-Did" Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

on ghosts & monsters & television programming:

e: I don't want to sleep in my room because there are ghosts and monsters
m: no, we don't have ghosts and monsters at our house because we have dogs, they scare all ghosts and monsters away
e: oh
e: well, what if we didn't have dogs?
m: we'd buy ghost and monster repellent and spray it around the house
e: oh
e: well, I still don't want to sleep in my room
e: I'll make a deal with you, I'll sleep in my room on the nights that the show with the eight kids is on (jon & kate + 8, only on monday nights)
m: that's really not a deal, because that's only one night a week and we hardly ever watch it anyway
--
m leaves to take a bath, returns in 20 minutes to find e asleep in mama's bed.
mama fails again, oh well.
(Thinking of getting jon & kate + 8 dvd's...they could be on everynight! but yes, that would mean we would need a dvd player....but for a night w/o knees in my kidneys, it might be worth it)

mama's boys:

in regard to where mommy & daddy were last week:

e: they're at a sleep-over in mount california!

e: mom, sorry I was stressing you out.

Is this a joke?

bad, bad mom, part two:

I have officially been sucked in. I have spent the better portion of my evening on facebook. Yes, I fed and bathed my children, put them to bed, started tomorrow's dinner, and....facebook'd. I could have spent 2+ quality hours discussing how g & e's days were at their respective schools (g would just grunt [which, btw, means yes] when I'd ask him if he saw... jack? grunt. hailey? grunt. Miss Angie? grunt) E would tell me a story about how George Washington's teeth fell out. But tonight, no. No stories of eating dirt or the first President's dental hygiene. nope, facebook. I am pretty certain I am going to grow lesions and become attached to my desk chair much like the gal on her toilet in her trailer. It's not lookin' good. Blame it on Allisun.

tooth fairy?

e: Mom do you remember when George Washington losed a tooth?

the albrecht beauty salon was open last night;
we had one satisfied client:...maybe I chose the wrong career,
that's a pretty sweet haircut.

ummm....has anybody seen g?

Please be advised, we are now officially on
"Operation Albrecht Lock-Down."
- newly installed hook/eye locks on all exterior doors since a deadbolt is too easily unlocked.
- fancy cabinet locks, because the traditional push down & open are a breeze.
- bi-fold closet locks, do NOT even think of messing up mama's martha-stewart-perfect folded towels & washcloths
- all forks & knives hidden
- soap and toothpaste ("peest") put well out of reach
- bungee cord on dog food
- anti-open/locking door knob thingys on all closets, bathrooms and bedrooms
- toilet paper is located inside bathtub or sink depending on which restroom you're using...plan accordingly, as to avoid the strategic "run" to fetch the said TP.
- A&D ointment is NOT toothpaste OR face lotion and has been removed from butt changing station
- sticks for securing sliding glass doors are NOT for hitting sister, must be hidden when not in use...usually located in daddy's closet on top of work shirts OR under yellow couch.

We ask for your complete cooperation during this serious time. If you find yourself locked in a bathroom or caught-up in a lazy susan strap-lock, Please dial 911 and tell the mound police to swing by earlier than their regularly scheduled daily visit. thanks, mgmt.

honey, you don't need to do everything mommy does:

mama currency:

6 jelly beans = one 5-minute phone call

1 additional jelly bean = one additional minute added to original phone call
1 elmo video = 4 email replies
1 cell or cordless phone = 15 minutes uninterrupted time + one visit from mound police
1 bomb pop = vacuum entire main floor

When life hands you lemons...
put on a little lip gloss and go...you'll be fine.