Fa la la la FREAK

On Friday we had our second session of Music Together, a "mommy and me" music class for toddlers and parents so desperate for outside contact that they will shed their shoes and dignity and dance around with scarves to hippy, folky music while their children watch them aghast, agog and drooling. After our first class, I was sure that a Renaissance woman was leading the class. Not Renaissance in the "capable in multiple areas" kind of a way, but more in an "I dress up for Renaissance Faires and my friends and I act out witty vignettes in Elizabethan prose amongst the crowd and I always play the Saucy Wench" way. My reaction to our first class was to call Gregg afterwards and shout "I will NEVER, EVER, make you go to this class." I knew he would be unable to handle the improv-like warm up exercises, including the Becoming the Bee exercise and the beating on the chest while trilling scales. The thought of him twirling scarves around Madelena's uninterested head while dancing to a saccharin version of Autumn Leaves Are Falling was almost enough to warrant investment in a secret video camera and additional couples counseling, but I decided the risk was greater — if only by a smidge — than the hours of gut busting laughter provided by the tape, sure to become a favorite at family get togethers.

After our second class, I downgraded our instructor to perhaps more of a Burning Man participant — still gung ho and in character, but more ironic than creepy in her belting out of Tiny Frog and Hey Lolly Lolly Lolly. Just like those who share a foxhole, the mothers bond through the shared the pain of the scarf dance and more than a bit of embarrassment for the one mom who seemed to find it stimulating and an outlet for her inner Salomé. And in the hours and days that have followed our class, I find myself mindlessly singing Sandpiper, Sandpiper and Rocket Ship and even the Hello song, which seems to play in my head in a constant loop, my first thought in the morning and a buzz in my ears that awakens me at 3am. At home I try to come up with new "spontaneous" verses for Hey Lolly Lolly and Jim Jiggety, knowing that I will be called upon for some improv verses about my child, a body movement or a color. I don't want to be the mom who stops the party because she is confounded by the sudden need to create a new line, unable to croak out "Jim jiggety, twirl jiggety, twirl joesy joe" and instead stares in a panic at the cheery, expectant teacher.

Recently I've been reading articles and essays about making families more adult-centric than child-centric, providing your child with the independence and self-sufficiency they need to recognize their insignificance in the larger world. Send them off to play by themselves while mama and daddy have a pitcher of martinis, some rumaki and adult conversation before the kids become little egocentrics who expect to be included. Taken to the extreme, some say children who are always catered to and cheered on just for breathing and blinking are later shocked when they realize they need to get jobs, work hard at relationships and find self-worth inside rather than in the world around them. They will fall into lives plagued by promiscuity, career failure, drugs, porn and right-wing Republicanism.

As I sit on the floor in ratty socks singing All The Pretty Little Horses while wrangling Madelena into some semblance of calm cuddling, I wonder if I am doing her a disservice. Should I instead be sitting at a café enjoying a strong cup of Peets and thrusting the business section in her face when she demands my attention? Will she sleep with a bike messenger at the age of 15 because I just spent the last hour playing small musical instruments and will spend the upcoming hour playing with wee farm animals and monkeys on the floor, showing her the joy of putting them into muffin tins? Will heroin be her drug of choice because I make her organic meals and feed her not only before me but also often in lieu of filling my own body? IS AN ADULT-CENTRIC STRATEGY MY GOLDEN TICKET, A GUILT-FREE ONE-WAY PASS OUT OF HERE AND INTO THE NEAREST MARTINI BAR?

Not a chance. I spent nearly 40 years focusing on ME and my needs, and now it's my turn to just suck it up and sing some folky, overly sweet songs and dance like a freak with a tie-dyed scarf and ensure my daughter knows that yes, yes, she is the center of the world.

This just in

As I stepped into the shower this morning after a disturbingly long absence, I noticed lavendar and seeds stuck to the sides of the tub, along with a dense layer of foam. I told Gregg I must be losing it, since I knew it had been at least a week since I'd taken a bath with my lavendar sea salts and clearly had not cleaned the tub afterwards.

"Oh, that's mine."

WHAT?

"I just took a shower, and see, what you do is plug up the tub so you can keep a few inches of water in there...then you add the lavendar and you get a great steamy spa shower...it's SO relaxing."

To quote my friend Chris's wife, yes, yes, my husband is JUST gay enough.

Never say never

As the parent of an only child, I looked slightly askance or slightly downward at parents who used the television as an adhoc babysitter, plopping their child down in front of it for 30-90 minutes at a time while they checked their email, read a book, made dinner or drank a fifth of vodka. Now, as the mother of two, I see both the desperation and the wisdom in the TeleSitter.



What was once a treat two or three times a week has been become a daily occurence: The Viewing of Diego, the Patron Saint of Bilingual Households. Now entering our view is also Plaza Sesamo, Dora and on occasion, Design on a Dime. Whatever it takes to buy 30 minutes of blessed happiness/stupor for my children, allowing me to clear the dishwasher or make dinner or swiffer the floor for the 5th time that day. I want to go back and apologize to every parent I gave my "oh, we don't watch television" speech, in retrospect so very condescending and an example of Wrong Thinking. I want to light a candle in a shrine to bilingual, educational programming creators who have saved us from ourselves — left without these choices, I may very well have abandoned all reason and allowed Shawn Joaquin to watch some program with bad animation and superheroes and a dearth of counting and letters but a wealth of screaming, fighting and examples of who not to be. Instead, he is learning to sing new songs in Spanish, all about nearly extinct animals, and — thanks to HGTV — good space planning.

Other things we have learned: in Latin America, Big Bird is green and pink and yellow. All Spanish-speaking puppets tend to have gravelly morning-after voices. And Diego, Dora and all of the characters within those two franchises have nearly indistinguishable voices but a great love of the environment and an ability to create a good responsorial with even the most recalcitrant preschooler. Go, Diego, GO! Mil gracias, mi amigo.

Screw the environment

There was a time when I had a relatively clean car and took pride in my personal appearance and the state of my home and our impact on the world. We recycled everything, used rags and dish towels instead of paper towels, only ran the dishwasher when we had a full load, ate organic and limited meals out, adhered to high hygienic standards, kept a neat house and were on time to each and every event in our lives. Enter Baby Number Two.

Yesterday I watched Madelena, sitting on the dirty ground in the school parking lot, reaching into my car to pull out various items and drop them on the ground: a three-day old Peet's cup, a string cheese wrapper, stale and desiccated Cheerios, a dried up pen, two used tissues and some dirty, sandy socks. And I realized that I had, despite all efforts and self-directed promises, become the mom who drove That Car. As I looked down at my dog-hair covered yoga pants, dubiously matched socks and now dirty child, I was torn between total abandon and a desire to run home and change into something that actually has contact with my body and had been cleaned recently.

No one plans on becoming the woman on Aisle 4 in the pajama pants and unwashed hair at 10am. No one says that "someday I will subsist on the food left on my child's plate, possible pre-masticated, and food eaten in the car on the way to school pick up." No one dreams of only being able to refer to themselves in the third person and by the name "Mama" instead of the one they once used in professional, dating and social life. At no point did any self-respecting woman decide that bathing was optional and that every-other-day showering and shining was more than good enough. Yet here I am, and I am not alone.

I look around me at the grocery store and see similarly dressed and harried women, wearing their husband's shirts and worn Gap shorts — a look that was cute and sassy on a decade-younger body but now has a whiff of desperation and an odd but unmistakable resemblance to a crazy aunt from Livermore...the same woman who dresses up by wearing bedazzled Keds with her pink sweat suit. I meet moms at Peet's who wax poetic about hair clips that enable them to get up and not bother with a brush, let alone a shampoo. We sit outside on the benches feeding our children bits of boiled egg and bananas, enjoying the respite from the ever-present, sticky high chair and the same wall we face three times a day as we feed our precious children who seem to have all the manners of a drunken, elderly monkey.

Whenever possible at home I use paper plates and napkins and towels so that I can immediately discard of the 14th meal of the week that was eaten or rejected and in either case smashed between small fingers and into hair. I run the dishwasher nightly, regardless of load, to avoid hand washing bottles and sippy cups and lunch box inserts. I do loads of laundry daily, sometimes the same load twice because it was forgotten overnight and now smells like the San Francisco Bay at low tide. I drive to the store at least twice a day for emergency refills on soy milk, fresh bananas, pears and other foodstuffs that need to be on hand for the most demanding eater in the house. I have given up on environmentalism, the wearing of fitted clothing, make up or matching socks. I no longer read the paper, tap into TMZ.com every hour or even check my email on a regular basis. I have given up on being part of the solution to global warming and instead am more concerned with the consistency and frequency of poop, naps and bottles. And I would not change a thing. Except my underwear, and only because clean underwear is the last shred of dignity to which I cling.

Sharp dressed man

When Shawn Joaquin is waking me by wailing at 2am I WANT MAMA MAMA MAMA NOWWWWWW while whacking me in the head with his Diego doll, I will try to remember this image and hope that it keeps me from doing bad things in order to ensure my return to sleep.

Things I never thought I'd say to my child

No, I don't think you should smell your penis.

Please, stop talking and just watch Rachel Ray.

You're right. I do have hair there and you don't.

I don't care if Daddy does it and even louder. If I catch him, he'll get a time out too.

Highlights of motherhood

I NEED TO POOP. I NEED TO POOP NOW.

So go to the bathroom and call me when you need me.

I NEED TO GO NOW. YOU COME WITH ME.

No, go by yourself and call me when you need to wipe.

Shawn Joaquin dashes to the bathroom while I sit on the floor putting a toy back together. Suddenly he's in front of me, bare bottomed and bent over with his butt two inches from my nose.

HERE IT IS!

Oh happy day

Finally, for the first time in 19 days, we're having a happy day. I found myself having the surreal experience of lunch with two kids at IKEA, eating Swedish meatballs and listening to "Hungry Like The Wolf" while sitting on clean-lined, white, modern furniture and watching trucks go by on the 80 overpass. Shawn Joaquin was in heaven — watching trucks while eating meat and with the allure of funky plastic toys a few yards away and Mama not paying too much attention to the Interloper. I had a cringe moment when I realized I had given Madelena a french fry to keep her content and extend our few minutes of joy, a food choice denied to Shawn Joaquin until just a few months ago and even then only a few at a time. But given the copious amounts of fruit, egg whites and other healthy treats she's normally eating or smearing in her hair, it seemed worth the price. Plus she's already suffering from the second-child syndrome, being allowed to eat non-organic foods and dirt and having fewer photos taken, her baby book still sitting in its box on a shelf somewhere next to the plug outlet covers and hand-mixer for food.

As I later pushed my two kids in the cart, Madelena in the seat and Shawn Joaquin enjoying a usually forbidden ride in the basket, I was overwhelmed with love and pride in my beautiful, happy and exceptional children. I had one of those moments when I absolutely knew that my children were far superior to any other child in the store. It's one of those moments that every parent has at some point during any given week or month and will never admit - the absolute certainty that their child is the most intelligent, attractive, likeable, kind and loving person in the world. We look at other children and know they have great qualities, but there is a secret part of us we can't reveal to anyone but our partners that feels all other children pale in comparison, their eyes less glowing or their heart less open or their passion less evident.

As we got back to the car, Shawn Joaquin grabbed onto my arm. "Mama, I had a GREAT time with you. You're my BEST friend." Perhaps Hurricane Shawn Joaquin has finally passed, and left in its stead my loving and sweet boy after all.

This is your wake up call

Our day began at 4am with a screaming banshee that woke me by beating my head with tiny fists while yelling, "Get in the office! Get in the office!" and jumping up and down. At first I thought it was a client or coworker who had somehow sneaked either into my dreams or into my house, so dead asleep was I when the assault began. Then I realized it was my loving son, who had last seen me (at 9pm, within view of his bedroom) in Gregg's office, and he was more than a bit chagrined to find me elsewhere at 4am. Shawn Joaquin has never done well with change, but we had hit a new low as part of the I-Hate-You-For-Disrupting-My-Entire-Life-Now-Hug-Me-NOW-NOW-NOW syndrome. After 15 minutes of hysterics, including screaming like a madman when the bathroom light was turned on while groping blindly for the switch and smacking me at the same time (so much more complicated than rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time - I am, in retrospect, rather proud) we began to consider tranquilizers for either him or us. In desperation, Gregg followed him to his room and slept on the floor to placate Shawn Joaquin without feeling like a total patsy by sleeping in the bed with him. Somehow this seemed a Pyrrhic victory, as proven by his back pain later.

At dawn, we tried to discuss the situation with Shawn Joaquin.

Me, firmly: Shawn Joaquin, you can't come running into our room screaming and hitting mama - it's a terrible way for everyone to wake up.

SJ, looking up at the ceiling: And then you saw the chickens and I saw the chickens and not from my bed but in the SKY.

I was tempted to follow up with "I'm an excellent driver, and excellent driver" but hate to laugh alone so early in the morning.

Gregg decided to take a stab at it.

G: Why did you hit mama and yell this morning?

SJ: Beause I yelled and hit mama.

G: But why?

SJ: But why?

He is either a brilliant strategist or no more of a morning person than either of his parents. Either way, we decided to call it a draw and take my mother's approach — let's pretend it never happened and then bring it up in 30 years in a way that is advantageous to us and could possibly, finally, help us win an argument with him.

An uneasy truce

Hurricane Shawn Joaquin has been downgraded to a Category 4 from a Category 5, though winds may pick up tomorrow when he realizes he's being booted to the door for school again. He will no doubt suspect that in his absence Madelena and I will eat pizza and corn on the cob followed by ice cream, watch endless episodes of Diego and Dora, drink gallons of milk, never nap and miraculously never have to use the bathroom— an oh-so-annoying pit stop that prevents him from playing, eating, reading or doing any other activity non-stop. But on this day we are enjoyed fewer fits and more moments of genuine affection, and believe that perhaps he is not so much possessed as obsessed.

My first clue about his obsession with me, so inexorably and inextricably bound to his love/hate for me, was at bedtime one night last week. As I left the room I wasn't slammed with demands to tinkle, drink or straighten his rug. Instead he clung to me and wailed "don't leave me, Mama, peeeeeeeeese, peeeeeese peeeeeeeeeeeeese don't leave me! You can sleep on my rug! You can sleep on my bed! Don't leave me and use the key and lock me in!" After first doing a double take on the key mention (his door has no lock), I realized he was terrified of losing contact with me. Instead of demanding he stay in bed and start losing those things near and dear to him if he were to launch himself out of bed and screaming into the hall, I told him I would leave his door open and be just across the hall if he needed me. He still got up 10 times, but each time asked in a calm voice "What Mama doing NOW? Why she doing THAT?" and once he received his requested info, hit the bed again.

For the first night in 3 weeks he stayed in bed through the wee hours of the morning and woke us at 7am instead of dawn and with the call of "Mamaaaaa.... I’m coming to see you" instead of banshee-like screaming as he propelled his damp body down the hall. There were no thrown jars of mustard that day (sorry Rick and Anne's Cafe), no slapping of his own leg as he bellowed and sputtered "PUH-LEASE! PUH-LEASE!” and only one attempt to step on his sister's hand, four slaps to my head and six fist pounding declarations of "NO!!!!” Given that only a week before he was choking his classmates and scratching his own eyes out, this seemed to be progress.

I'm sure that part of the reason for Shawn Joaquin's dismay is the clearly false advertising — he had been told his sister would love him, think him amazing and funny and an object of adoration. Instead she screams every time he tries to hug or kiss her, though in her defense he often chooses moments when she's on the move and is thus perceived merely as an obstacle that stands between her and the remote/toy/dog/cat/bottle/bug that she has her eye on. For a year she was billed as the one-person Shawn Joaquin fan club, and here she is rebuffing him, stealing his toys, his mother and all the time that should be HIS ALL HIS AND NO ONE ELSE'S. Surely, EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.

Tomorrow he will set off for school with his new Thomas the Tank Engine lunch box, one of the many gifts he has received and will continue to receive in order to curry his favor or at least diminish the number of smacks to my head. I will breathe, albeit with guilt, a sigh of relief...knowing I can finally show affection for Madelena for at least 3.5 hours without fearing the wrath of my little stalker, the one always on the lookout for a misplaced hug, kiss or smile that clearly should have gone to HIM, not the interloper among us.