Boundaries

While riding in the car this evening...

Lucy: "OW, MY SHIRT IS UP HIGH! IT'S STUCK! OW!"
Me, reaching to fix it: "Okay, let me fix it."
Lucy: "DON'T TOUCH ME. NO, OFF!" Frantically brushes off my mere touch.
Me: "Babe, I was just fixing your shirt. I was helping you. It's not nice to yell."
Lucy: "No, Mama, it's not nice to touch people!"
Me, patting Jason nicely on his arm: "Yes, it is, it's nice to touch, see?"
Lucy: "No, Mom. It's not nice to touch me when I don't want you to."
Me: "Well, that is true."

Me, in my own head: "It's true...except you are not even three years old and although you have a burgeoning sense of personal space, you don't get to have any personal space from me. Your mother. Just like I didn't get to have any from you during the 9 months you occupied my womb and the 12 months you ate food from my body pretty much whenever you wanted. But okay, if you insist on being all WELL-ADJUSTED and HAVING A SEPARATE IDENTITY FROM ME, then fine."

Straightjacket?

As Maggie and I returned home from our annual Christmas tree hunt, we were greeted in the driveway by a bemused Jason. "You're gonna love this," he said.

Lucy had been quietly in her room for more than an hour, when he heard her yell, "DAD! I TOOK OFF MY SHIRT." So he went in there to find her naked and drawing on herself with the special marker from one of her books. Upon seeing him, she returned the marker and book to the bookshelf. He dressed her and put her back to bed.

This nighttime business of ours is feeling more like the state hospital every day.

Night-night. Bed.

The nighttime ritual with Lu has been pretty consistent. Bath, watch a few minutes of TV in our bedroom, books, a few songs including "Who Knows How Long I've Loved You" ("I Will" by the Beatles), "When You're Down and Troubled" ("You've Got a Friend," by James Taylor), "Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night" ("Blackbird," by the Beatles). Ater singing we say "Now I Lay me Down to Sleep," minus the morbid bit about "my soul to take," then she blesses various people, then she says "Night-night. Crib." You have to put her in her crib in just the right way, pat her back a couple of times, then she says, "Good ni-ight." And you are dismissed. And she goes to sleep. And it's a little miracle, every single night.

I only now appreciate what a miracle our routine was (namely the part about how she goes to sleep), because...it's gone. She decided during last Sunday's nap that she was done with the crib. She climbed out eight times, finally falling asleep with me next to her on a palette on the floor. We blew up a twin air mattress for her to sleep on that night, which she did, quite well.

But the novelty of that first night has worn off, replaced by the realization that she can leave the bed whenever she wants. And so she does. As I write this post, I am sitting guard outside her door.

Relativity

At the mall today, after some hysterics over a "flushy" toilet at Nordstrom, Lu was acting like a whiny little baby before we went into California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. In response, I acted like a whiny little baby. Nini diffused the situation, luckily, so we were able to enter the restaurant, order and eat like CIVILIZED PEOPLE.

Not so civilized: the people sitting next to us. Where do I start? This little family was a study in "Not How I Would Do It" — a useful phrase coined by the Stephens, a coy little judgment you won't be able to stop using (my granny's version of it was "I'm not on that committee.") The toddler, a month older than Lu, was screaming, banging her plate, standing on a chair, jumping on the booth, crawling on the ground, meowing, and acting in so uncivil a manner I really can't even describe it. The people next to us, an entire table away from the kid, asked to move. She was acting like a complete freak.

Which I realize makes my use of the word freak to describe Lu...unfair. She sat in her chair. She ate her dinner. She whined over a few lost crayons, but then shared her sundae. All the while, her crazed neighbor was acting so bad as to make Lu look perfect. Little Miss Crazy's Mama (mother of four, plastic-surgeried to the hilt, "none of my kids ever sat in a high chair or slept in a crib") kept praising Lu as though to set an example for her daughter, despite the fact that she's raising her like an animal. One that meows at the CPK.

Lu was no angel, but she did not crawl or meow. Comparison suited her today.

Snot

It sounds like a TB ward at our house: the coughing, the phlegm, the complaints. I am not sure if it's TB or consumption. Either way, a doctor visit tomorrow will tell us for sure. Maybe we will have to go to a sanitorium and get saunas and massages. Or move to the country where we can relax and breathe fresh air and be healed by boredom.

One odd symptom that does not match our TB/consumption angle: Lu has an itchy butt. This seems like it might exclude one from the steam room. For the record, my butt does NOT itch.

My So-Called Youth

It is both thriliing and dismaying to have all the angst of your adolescence bundled neatly into one TV show. "My So-Called Life" was not so much life-altering as life-defining for me. In high school, I was dorky-cool. I made bad friend choices. My best friend was gay. I didn't dye my hair red, and my parents weren't married, but so much of the rest...

So you can imagine that seeing this show — THE SHOW I CAMPAIGNED PASSIONATELY TO KEEP OVER THAT RANCID "TOOL TIME" — on Noggin weirds me out. When I loved this show, I was 21, remembering being 15. Seeing it now, at 33, I am startled to find myself this old. Ew. I am a parent. A suit. The Man. I need to closely manage my use of "like" as a pause word. People call me ma'am and think I am cool "for a mom." I AM VERY CLOSE TO THE AGE OF THE PARENTS PORTRAYED ON THIS SHOW.

The So-Called Truth seems inevtitable:
• Lu will hate me.
• I will be so lame, the words I speak will make little lame fumes.
• Lu will be bored and put upon and better than me.
• Lu will love someone with good hair and bad grades...OMG, Jordan Catalano just walked in! Quotes from Angela after that:

"I can't believe that Jordan Catalano was actually trying to diagram my sentences. His sentences were really short."

"You know how sometimes the last thing you said just keeps echoing in your brain? And it just keeps sounding stupider, so you have to say something else to make it stop?"

That last bit of insight is still a defining force in my life. That's reassuring. You can be 15 or 33, and still say a bunch of dumb stuff all the time.

10 Things I Like about Lu

1. The way she chews. She eats with her mouth open, but she has tiny teeth, so it's not smacky and gross.
2. Her tiny hands. Yesterday, she made me pretend to sleep, and as she patted my face, I wanted to eat her dumpling hands.
3. Her scratchy voice. It's deep for a 2.5-year-old, and sometimes very fierce.
4. Her facial expressions. That sounds like too broad a thing to love, but she purses her lips, furrows her brow, deeply sadly frowns, lights up, cheesily smiles. She has no poker face — and she shouldn't as a two-year-old, but it seems clear to me she never will.
5. Her grammar. She is the classic demonstration of primitive verb conjugation: gets the regular verbs ("I walked"), struggles with the irregulars ("I go-ed"). And when you correct her, she scrunches her eyes a little, trying to understand the pattern.
6. Her butt. Today, I grabbed her square, Jason-like, pantied butt and said, "I like your booty," and she said, "I like your booty, too." I asked where my booty was, and she said, "On your butt!" Duh.
7. Her observance. Today on our run she noticed a train, a plane, dogs of every size, "faster" people, "slowly" people, the sunset, ducks, kayaks, and a bearded homeless man I couldn't even begin to explain ("What's he doing, Mama?").
8. Her thumb. It's an unmistakable sign of tiredness, vulnerability, softness. When she is sucking her thumb, she will put her head on my shoulder and settle into me in a way she is normally too busy for.
9. Her singing. She can sing "Blackbird" and "I Will" by the Beatles, "You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor, various interpretations of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and other classic kid songs, as well as many made-up tunes that are flat and sincere.
10. Her contrary nature. On Sunday, we were all snuggled in bed, and she decided she wanted to go outside. Jason protested, lying, "It's raining, we can't." She stomped to the window and looked outside. "Nooo, Dada, it's not raining, we can too go outside."