LIFE'S A BEACH...

Before I had a child, I swore that I would always be honest. I'd speak the truth to him. I'd teach him things without covering up or rewriting the facts. I'd wear my heart on my sleeve and with patience and loving kindness, share the world with him.... one answer at a time.

Then he started talking.

A lot.

And because of this, and the fact that I am an advocate of encouraging childhood imagination and literacy, I have a confession that I'm not proud of:

I am so happy that Baby-Ko cannot read.

Take for example our trip to the beach a few weeks ago.... It was a lovely day... a beautiful day... a sunny day. Despite the fact that Baby-Ko developed an insane fear of seaweed leaving me no choice but to hold him for close to 2.5 hours, (truthfully, there was so much seaweed on the shore, I was expecting for Daryl Hannah to appear at any moment), all seemed perfect at Paradise Cove..... until we had to leave.

"Time to go, Baby-Ko. Help mommy, please. Carry your pale and shovel."

"NO," he protested. "I want to go look at the seaweed."

"What?! The seaweed? You didn't want to go near the seaweed...."

"I DO want to go see the seaweed. Let's go, mommy," he said taking my hand.

Baffled and still holding on to that "let's build his imagination" BS, I walked with him back to the water, half knowing that this was all a stalling tactic.

"Okay, here's the seaweed!" I said.

"I don't want to touch the seaweed! No! Pick my up!" (That's not a typo. He actually says "my" instead of "ME.").

"What?! Baby-Ko, you said you wanted to see the seaweed. So Mommy took you to the seaweed..."

"No! I don't like it! I too scared."

"Fine. Okaaaaay. Let's go. It's time to go."

"Noooooooooooooooo!" He screamed and squirmed out of my arms.

"Sorry, sweetheart. Time to go," I said trying to hold on to him and our belongings.

"I don't want tooooooooooooo!" He screamed louder as I started to drag him through the sand. I felt people staring.

"BABY. KO. That is enough. It is time to go. We had a fun day. It. Is. Time. To. GO."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Now everyone WAS staring. That's when IT HAPPENED:

"SHH! Do. You. See. That. Sign?!" I said sternly.

"What sign?"

"THAT sign." He turned. "It says: 'Children under the age of 3 have to leave at 5 o'clock.'"

"Or what will happen?"

"What will happen if we don't leave?"

"Yeah..."

"They'll take away your paci's."

"Who will take them away?"

"The man."

"What man?" He said looking around.

"The beach man. Let's go."

He started to walk and I started to feel the judgement of the tourists happily perched under this quaint little sign rip my parenting skills, or lack thereof, apart.

Whatever. Have a nice trip, A-holes.

Sadly, my sorry you can't read sucka! attitude didn't end there.... He gets too wild at a restaurant? The menu says "Your blankie will get taken away." He starts to scream while we're driving? The street signs say "no TV before bed." He whines for more marshmallows, the ingredients say, "little boys may only have 10.... or their teeth will fall out."

Obviously, my blame it on someone or something else tactic works now and will, at some point, need to be retooled. Of course, if I continue to tell him on P. 6 of 14 that it says "this book is over and it's time for bed. The end," then it may be a while before I need to come up with something better.... Oy.

ZEN MOMMY

It seemed like any other night... I was singing to Baby-Ko as he drank his "baba." Just as I was about to utter "Goodnight Noises Everywhere....," Baby-Ko sat forward. He burped and looked at me and BLAAAAAAAH. VOMIT. All over me. All over the chair. All ovr the floor. 

"Oh no!" I said, "Are you OKA-" 

BLAAAAAAAH. VOMIT, AGAIN. All over me. All over the chair. All over the three cows jumping over the moon.

I was shocked. He was shocked. T-Ko was at the store getting more milk so I had to think fast ON MY OWN... Not wanting to rouse him more (as he was on the verge of "night night"), I quickly stripped off my foul smelling clothes, (which happened to be perfectly spotless work clothes that I had just gotten out of the dry cleaners), and threw them into a pile in the hallway Within a minute and a half, I had calmly and peacefully managed to also get Baby-Ko's dirty PJ's off and a new fresh pair on. (Okay,  I lied. I was just about to do laundry, so the "new" pajamas were actually "old" pajamas, but at least they didn't have throw up on them).  

As I read to Baby-Ko for the second and final time, I couldn't help but feel so proud of myself. Here I was, sitting in my bra and underwear, managing to stay calm despite vomit crusted in my hair and something that resembles split pea soup on a recently washed throw rug. I followed through with our night time routine and within minutes, my baby, completely unaffected by the whole ordeal, was fast asleep.  I felt like a total pro. Crisis averted.

One thing's for sure though, motherhood is NOT for the squeamish... Or for those that expect to have time to take a shower when things start to get a little dirty....

ANOTHER PURIM, ANOTHER GOLDFISH

As I was searching through Baby-Ko's book shelf today, trying to find something to read to him other than Goodnight Moon and US Weekly (shut up, he loves it), I stumbled upon a series of Jewish Books for children that someone gave to him at his bris (as if he really felt like reading that day). They're called Sammy the Spider's First _____ (Passover, Hanukkah, Sukkot, etc). Despite the fact that Purim was two weeks ago, I thought a little story about Queen Esther and Mordechai might be a bit more exciting than The Runaway-slit-my-wrists-crying-Bunny.

There are obviously reasons why Purim is an important holiday for the Jews, but because I didn't pay very much attention in Hebrew school, you will not be privy to that information in this post. Besides, for me, Purim was, and will always be about one thing and one thing only: GOLDFISH. Winning a goldfish at a Purim Carnival for a Jewish child is seriously like a rite of passage. You go to the carnival not to see who is wearing the best costume, you go to dunk your fat Hebrew teacher in the tank and win a shitty Goldfish. Then you come home with the shitty goldfish in the shitty plastic bag and dump it into the shitty bowl with shitty rocks that you had already from the Goldfish you won the year before (and the year before that).

I was never very good at taking care of my fish. I hated to clean the bowl and forgot to feed them on a regular basis. They always died a few weeks or months after I brought them home, but year after year, I would make it my goal to win one. Finally, one Purim though, I walked into the house with the fish in the plastic bag and my mom looked at me and said, "Oy, not again!"
"I know, I know, " I said and walked straight into the bathroom and dumped the goldfish into the toilet and FLUSHED.

That was the last Goldfish I ever owned. Fortunately, in a few years the tradition will start all over again and Baby-Ko will come marching in one day with his Purim prize. Hopefully, he'll have a better sense of responsibility than I did, but I'll leave
the toilet lid up for him just in case...