Signs of Motherhood

Motherhood has its badges of courage like any other great endeavor. Stretch marks, extra tummy skin, bags under the eyes. Those permanent, physical changes that you have given life to another human being.
Sometimes we obtain a few that are luckily of a more temporary nature but more visible to the outside world.

The cliché about spit up on the shoulder has happened to every mother now and again (I had one friend that used this as the reason for not returning to work, her rationale being that by the time you get yourself ready – clearly she took more than the 20 minutes I do- and the baby dressed that invariably it would puke on you and you would have to get dressed again that what was the point of going to work at all. I don’t know what kind of pea soup spewing kid she had, but this happened to me exactly never. Sure, I walked around for like two months once with dried formula on my winter coat, but the Mud Puddle never covered me in vomit so badly that I had to change).

I have walked around at work all day with a fish, Dora, or star sticker fixed to my shirt. Either I work with a bunch of jerks or they weren’t as noticeable as I had worried. I have worn elastics as rings for days at a time. I have spent the day with a variety of flowers, leaves, and twigs in my hair (lovingly placed there by the Mud Puddle of course).

I have to say that the funniest Mommy badge came this weekend. We spent the holiday with my parents (the Mud Puddle’s favorite people) at our family camp in “Moosehead” (the Mud Puddle’s favorite place).
My mom had decided we should have a dinosaur theme for the weekend and along with the dinosaur books, napkins and outfits came some temporary tattoos. I put mine on my arm and let it go for the whole weekend. When you are camp you are allowed to wear pjs all day and bust out the temporary tats. Ice cream for breakfast is pushing it but I will that slide this time.

I removed it Monday morning in the shower and really didn’t give it another thought. I had on a long sleeve shirt and trackies (Brit speak for sweatpants) for a comfy ride in the car.
When we stopped for lunch it was pretty toasty outside so I changed into a short sleeved shirt in the loo. As I was getting ready to pay the teenager behind the counter at Arby’s I glimpsed something on my arm. I burst out laughing when I realized that the dinosaur had left a mark on my skin. Rest of my arm a healthy pink/tan color from an unusually warm and sunny weekend in Northern Maine – where the tat had been, my native translucent flesh tone.

I kept my arm on the window sill the rest of the way home to try and even it out. I can still see it as I am typing this but I don’t think anyone else could. It is a day brightener and slightly silly reminder of how great it is to be a Mommy.

The Games We Play

The Mud Puddle has hit that age where he is all about the games. Whether it is Dora and Nemo on our computer (he still doesn’t close down before shutting off, much to my horror since it is on our computer at home) or a board game on the living room rug, he loves to get right into the competition.

Scott and I have been pretty much on the same page when it comes to parenting – what he eats, when he sleeps, what he watches on tv. But on the issue of games we have two very different views. I let him win, pretty much every time He is THREE and I maintain that it won’t hurt to let him win now. Sure, when he is seven I am not going to be throwing games of SkipBo but for now I don’t seem the harm.

Scott on the other hand plays to win. The first time he beat the Mud Puddle at HiHo Cherrios there were some tears, but Scott taught him that he has to be a gracious winner and a loser so after every game they shake hands and say good game.

This divide in our parenting styles is not surprising because it exists (please, we were bound to disagree on SOMETHING) but because of the views that we wound up taking. I am ultra-competitive and a hard core cheater.
Seriously, I come from a long line of cheaters – my grandmother taught me how to cheat at solitaire for goodness sake, it doesn’t get more cheater-ific than that.
You would think I would be the one going after the win at any cost. But I feel like when he is trying something new that he should have the opportunity to have a positive experience with it.

This weekend the Mud Puddle picked up a Dora dominoes game. I LOVE dominoes, and we were having a pretty good time. He was winning (with some poorly thrown moves from me) and we got to a point in the game where I couldn’t NOT win. He had like 12 dominoes in front of him and I had one and there were not enough left for me to even pretend to need. So I won. And he was fine with it, shook my hand and said good game. It was great.

Now I fear my competitor-monster will be out in full force and I will be taking the W from him in all manner of Old Maid, Slap SpongeBob (a home grown game and not nearly as violent as it sounds) and Connect Four.

WE’RE GOING STREAKING!!

Will Ferrell. Old School. That scene. The Mud Puddle acts it out every night before his bath lately. Doing this crazy head shaking, foot flopping dance around the living room, whooping it up whilst we wait for the tub to fill.

Now, I will openly admit I was a streaking freak as a child. Nothing I loved more than being naked screeching through the house. But as the years have passed I have been more conservative in my attire. I prefer to have everything covered, several layers if possible.

It isn’t upsetting or shocking that he is so liberal with his nakedness (that is liberal in the hippy sense, not the John Kerry sense) it is that he doesn’t understand that the ENTIRE neighborhood doesn’t care to see his naked butt on display.

He gets out of the bath, heads for the large picture window in the living room and jumps up and down naked in front of it. I don’t know what the age minimum is for indecent exposure but I am worried we will find out the hard way.

In addition to liking it au natural the Mud Puddle also has an issue with wearing pants. I don’t know how many pictures I have him bombing around in just a diaper, and since giving up the padded bottom for Big Boy pants his aversion to the bottom half attire has not diminished.

One of the first things he does after getting home from a long day at school is drop his pants. You would think I dressed him in medieval armor or something.
He is so tiny around the waist and short-legged that most of his pants are nice and roomy (seriously, they need to make mommy pants the way they make toddler pants), but he wants nothing to do with them once we walk through the front door: He drops trou and demands juice in about five seconds flat.

I assume it is a passing phase and he won’t go to college without any pants. But boys are a little freer than girls – any football season now he and Scott are going to start spending their Sundays sit on the couch, eating cheesy poofs in their boxer shorts while watching games all day long. You can bet your pants on that.

TattleTale

Back in my day, my grandmother was fond of telling me “No one likes a tattletale.” And she would tell me stories about how when she was little, if she ratted out one of her siblings she would have to pin a fake tail on her backside and wear it around all day.

Nowadays we prefer that our children tell us everything. If someone picks on the Mud Puddle, the daycare rule is that you tell them “No Thank You” and make sure to report it to the closest teacher.
I am all in favor of this policy. Sure no one likes a tattletale but no one likes getting tossed headlong off the slide by the ‘special’ kid with no recourse either.

I would LOVE to be able to teach him to retaliate, to kick a little toddler booty when he is being pushed around but alas, that is no longer the world we live in. Gone are the days of ‘eye for an eye’, ‘punch for a punch’. So tattling it is!

Now, this is all well and good when he is commenting on how he was maligned by a peer, but when he starts ratting ME out, that is another story entirely.

Monday night I picked him up from daycare and he had spent the better part of the day outside playing. It looked like he had spent the day smearing dirt all over himself and seeing how far he could imbed it under his fingernails.
When we got settled and had dinner I told him it was time for a bath. I JOKINGLY said to him (probably more than once) that I should have Daddy hook up the hose and just clean him off in the driveway as he was probably going to leave a ring in the bathtub (which he did).
He giggled and found that pretty funny.
I spent five minutes cleaning his fingernails and tell him he would probably have to soak over night to come clean. Teehee. He found that pretty funny as well.

So Tuesday morning we head to daycare and I sit with him while he has his breakfast (his second breakfast of the day, the old Goose Gut). He informs the teacher that I was going to “hose him down.”
I nearly fell off my toddler sized chair. I blush, stammer and try and explain that it was a joke and he was very dirty last night and at the time we all thought it was funny (all the while thinking ‘don’t call DHS, don’t call DHS’).
Luckily, the teacher found it amusing – she had seen him the previous day after all – and we all giggled together, the Mud Puddle reiterating ‘hose me down’ for effect.

Apparently I am going to have to watch what I say a little more (I already edit out like 12% of the expletives). I am too funny sometimes for my own good.