Space Girl

Ever since my daughter discovered that not only is there such a thing as outer space, but some people actually go there, she has wanted to become an astronaut. It's not something she talks about all the time, but she has said on more than one occasion that she wants to be a "Space Girl" when she grows up.

Based on her still-ongoing obsession with bodily functions, I've nurtured a small hope that perhaps one day she will go to medical school.

Last week, we were talking about bodily functions (read: normal conversation for us) and I asked her if she might ever want to be a doctor. She replied, "No, I want to be a Space Girl!"

Then I had a brilliant idea. I said, "What if you went to medical school, then entered astronaut training and became a Space Doctor?"

I could see the wheels turning as she considered my scenario. "Yeah!" was her enthusiastic response.

My kid is awesomesauce.

Man, I can't believe I haven't updated this in over a month. Not that Mommy's Little Monster hasn't been performing blog-worthy antics, I've just been a slacker. However, I have an awesome story to share.

Lately, Evelyn has been minorly obssessed with growing up and all that that entails. We have the "enjoy being a kid" discussion at least a few times a week (keep in mind that she will be 5 in May). There are only so many ways I can say, "I felt the same way at your age, pleasepleaseplease appreciate the benefit of my perspective." I hate saying "you'll understand when you're older," and I do my best to not say it. What I try to do instead is to make my adult responsibilities sound as boring as humanly possible and cast a fun, magical light on the joys of childhood.

I guess I'm not so much setting up the story as giving basic background information here. Let me just skip to the good part.

Last night, my precocious preschooler was telling me that she didn't want to grow up because she didn't want to have her period (yes, she knows what that is, and yes, we have many discussions about the basic functions of the human body. No, we have *not* had "The Talk"). While attempting to walk the line between body-acceptance and childhood-appreciation, I told her, "there are a lot of parts about being a grownup that are no fun, but you just have to accept them and move on."

~*The best part*~

Her reply: "But you're a fun grownup!"

I wish I'd had some kind of audio recorder handy. Not just so I could hear my child tell me I'm fun over and over, but also so I could play it back for her every time she says, "you're a mean mommy!"

It's all about appreciating the little things, right?

Baby's First F-Bomb

My four year old just screamed the "F" word. Yeah, the four-letter one that rhymes with "duck."

She likes to experiment with sounds, start words with different letters, and basically just play with language. Today she's been coming up with words that rhyme with "Lucky" (one of our cats). Just a few minutes ago, I hear something along the lines of: "Lucky, pucky, ducky, mucky...luck, suck, nuck...FUCK" (yeah, she kinda yelled it).

I don't want to make a big deal out of it; I don't want it to become something she does to push my buttons (she's really good at that). I also don't want her dropping F-bombs. So I told her that when that sound starts with an "F," it makes a word that's not nice and I don't want to hear her say it again. Fingers crossed that that's it and I don't hear it again until after she hits puberty and decides she hates me.

Enfant Terrible

For two days last week, my 4-year-old was insanely disruptive during quiet time at school (the kids don't have to sleep, but they do have to rest quietly). Wednesday, she was screaming. Not crying-screaming, screaming as loudly and shrilly as possible and then laughing when everyone covered their ears. If someone asked (or told) her to stop, she'd laugh and do it again. Oh, and she was hitting other kids. Also, at some point during all this, she somehow got ahold of a pair of scissors and was snipping them at a classmate. I had to pick her up early.

Some background: my daughter is a peer model in a special needs preschool class. This means that she is NOT special needs herself (every time I tell someone about her class, they're all like "oh, so she's delayed or something?" NO! She's too damn smart for her own good. No, YOU'RE being defensive.) Being a peer model means that she's there to set the developmental bar for the kids with delays. Except that with this recent behavior, the teachers are having to spend more time and energy dealing with her than working with the kids who actually have IEP's (Individual Education Plans). Which means that she needs to get it together soon or she's going to be dismissed from the class, and how bad does that sound?

"It all started when she got kicked out of special-needs preschool, it was a downward spiral after that. She started smoking, knocked over liquor store and killed a man. Yeah, she's the youngest felon ever."

No, YOU'RE overreacting.

So it was pretty much the same thing on Thursday. I had to leave class early to go pick her up because she was out of control. When we got home, I took away all of her toys. All of them. I left her books, that's it (because, you know, literacy). No stuffed animals, no puzzles, no dress-up clothes, no musical instruments, etc. For each day that she listens and behaves, she gets one toy back. If she has a bad day, those toys go right back in the closet. No more Miss Nice Mommy.

On Friday, she was an angel. Coincidence?

Clog

So after the Baby Alive poopfest (see previous post), I made the mistake of leaving a package of baby wipes in the bathroom. I'm constantly bitching at my daughter for using too much toilet paper. Can you guess where this is going?

Dingdingding, we have a winner! She decided to use wipes instead of tp and, of course, used too many. I've been able to get away with flushing one or two wipes in the past, but when a good quarter of the package goes into the S-bend, it can create some drainage problems.

It backed up Tuesday night, and I (not realizing what was causing the clog) tried plunging it. That seemed to work, so I went to bed without giving it another thought. When I flushed it Wednesday morning, it almost overflowed. Again with the not-what-I-wanted-to-deal-with-first-thing-in-the-morning. Of course, with her potty chair gone and the toilet filled to the brim with raw sewage, the girl had to hold her morning pee until she got to school. She actually made it without having an accident. Yay for small victories.

Meanwhile, back in the toilet bowl, things were draining slowly and finally reached a point that made plunging possible. Unfortunately, my toilet and my plunger don't get along very well. They just don't fit together, and the lack of a firm seal means things can get messy. I'll leave it at that.

I still tried (very carefully) to plunge it for about an hour before admitting defeat. Since it says in my lease that my landlord is not responsible for damage/maintenance emergencies caused by tenants, I started searching plumbers online, hoping to find a bargain price and wondering how the hell I was going to pay for even a bargain price (because, you know, welfare). My friend The Physicist had sent me a facebook message asking how my morning was going, and I shared all the shitty details of my situation with him (ha, see what I did there? Hardy har har.) He offered to come over after work (doing physics stuff, of course) and snake my toilet. I graciously accepted his offer.

When he got there, he tried plunging it himself, because with me not being a physicist or an engineer (did I mention he's technically a mechanical engineer? He just works in the physics department at the university), I was probably doing it wrong. When that didn't work, he tried the snake. When that didn't work, we made a run to Home Depot and he bought a toilet auger. Within a minute or so of working with the auger, he pulled up a clump of wipes that was about as big as my fist, successfully unclogging my toilet. For now.

Baby Alive

Last Monday morning I was awoken by my four year old laying her baby doll on the bed next to me an hour before the alarm was set to go off, saying "Mommy, Baby Alive pooped in her diaper." Baby Alive was a Christmas gift from her great grandmother this past year, and my daughter is in love with it. She is especially in love with the fact that she can give the baby water in a tiny sippy cup and the doll then wets her diaper. She has also become obsessed with anything diaper-related, and that means both forms of human waste.

My first thought when she did this was, Why do I smell real poop? Oh, no. She had pooped in her potty chair and put her own (very real) poop in the doll's diaper. Totally not something I wanted to deal with first thing on a Monday morning, especially when I was supposed to have a full hour more of sleep. I ripped the girl a new one. I think I may have lectured her for a full hour straight, taking short breaks when the smell got to be too much for me. I also gave her potty chair to her two year old cousin and took away all of her baby dolls and accessories. Then I lectured her some more and told her grandma (my mom) the whole story while lecturing her still more, just in case she didn't get the message that what she did was Really. Really. Gross.

Still, I'm a sucker. As much as I wanted to be a hardass and throw the thing directly in the garbage, I couldn't do it.

I wiped the poop off the surface of the doll, scrubbed it, and flushed the fluid tract with disinfectant in an attempt to save it because it was a gift from my grandma (her great grandma). That didn't work. I swallowed my sentimentality and put the doll in the trash can. Luckily I'd just taken the trash out and it was a clean bag, because it wasn't long before I rescued the poor thing, whose only crime was having a poo-obsessed preschooler for an owner. It is now soaking in a five-gallon bucket of oxiclean solution mixed to saturation point. I have no idea what I'll do if that doesn't work. I'll keep you posted.

Broccoli vs. Trees

I used to read articles by parents who struggled to get their kids to eat vegetables and think, “You’re doing it wrong!” I, in my infinite wisdom, knew better than them. The trick is early and frequent exposure; everyone knows that! Silly parents, I thought, get with the program.

Then my veggie-eater decided she didn’t like broccoli.

Broccoli is one of my personal favorites. I like it raw, plain, dipped in dressing, steamed, smothered with cheese, stir-fried, baked on pizza…I could go on. My daughter shared my love of broccoli until she was three and a half. One evening at the dinner table, she looked at her bowl of pasta-with-uber-veggie-sauce and spoke four words I never thought I'd hear from her: “I don’t like broccoli!”

I was stunned. I insisted she eat it anyway; of course she liked broccoli, she’d always liked it. This resulted in a battle of wills (for anyone who has never entered a battle of wills with a preschooler, it's like arguing with a brick wall...one that can scream and throw things).

I’d heard many times the tip of calling broccoli “tiny trees” to trick kids into wanting to eat it. I was horrified by the idea of lying to my child; I also flat-out refused to call anything by an incorrect name. Broccoli is broccoli, it is delicious, she’d always eaten it before and she WILL eat it again, I stubbornly thought to myself. I continued to serve it every day, prepared differently each time but still calling it broccoli. She continued to refuse to eat it.

After a while I gave up. I stopped serving it. I bemoaned my failure as a parent. I had several more people suggest the “call-it-tiny-trees” method. Still I resisted.

Then, in the aftermath of a family crisis, my aunt repeated the suggestion when we were discussing the issue. For some reason, hearing it from her was different than hearing it from anyone else. I decided to finally give it a try.

The next time we were somewhere with a veggie tray that contained broccoli, I pointed to it and said, “Oh, look! They have trees!” My daughter looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Mom, that’s broccoli and I don’t like it.”
“No, it’s trees! I know it looks like broccoli, but it’s actually trees. They’re really yummy, you should try some.” To my surprise, she took a bite.
“Mmmm, I like trees!” she said, as she finished her first piece and reached for a second.

Mission accomplished.