On Being An Un-Fun Mother

Cold and sunny today. Streets getting that bleach-stained look from the de-icing chemicals finally drying up.

I am letting you "help" more and more in the kitchen. At lunchtime you helped me slide the raw eggs into the warm water for hard boiling. Then you got to mash the cooked and peeled eggs in your bowl. In the mornings and evenings, you bring us Luxy's bowl and then help to dump scoops of dog food into it. Often, you like to tip the scoop as slowly as you possibly can so that only one or two pellets of dog food slide into the bowl at a time. You are either enjoying the tinny sound they make falling into the bowl or you are experimenting with the art of pouring or you know it drives me batshit crazy to stand there for FOREVER while you dump a single scoop into the bowl.

Similarly, when I ask you to put your hand into a sleeve, you immediately draw your elbow and wrist as close to your chest as possible as though touching the sleeve will force you to re-live a particularly traumatic event from childhood. You will then outstretch the pointer finger on your hand, little by little, until it is almost touching the opening of the sleeve before quickly yanking it back to the warmth of your chest. You repeat this process a few times until either you finally put your arm into the sleeve or I shove it in.

I realize that my lack of patience combined with my unwillingness to clean up mess after mess combined with my fear that you will do great bodily harm to yourself sometimes makes me a really un-fun parent. Now, at times, I feel like I'm also stunting your growth.

Sometimes I try to be more creative about playthings. A few days ago I let you play with our spice rack, a contraption that consists of about fifteen glass jars mounted on a lazy susan. This was fun until you figured out that you could open some of the jars and spill the contents all over the place. Then I got all un-fun. "Spices are expensive and you might get cayenne in your eye!" I explained as I put the spices back into the cupboard and you shrieked as though you had been basted in hot oil.

Another example of creativity curtailed by my control-freak nature is the garbanzo beans. I read an on line article about creating a "Play Box" by placing treasures of various sorts in a tupperware bin and then adding barley or oats or popcorn kernels and then letting the child dig for treasures while exploring the textures of the barley or oats or popcorn kernels. I thought this sounded like something a loving and creative parent would do and plus we had a bag of uncooked garbanzo beans in the cupboard that was NEVER going to get used so--I proceeded with the Play Box. And you proceeded to sort the beans, pour the beans, dump the beans, throw the beans, and kick the beans. You really loved the beans. I did not love picking the taupe beans off of our taupe carpet. Now the beans sit in a pan on top of the dryer. When you point to them and grunt I say "how about a puzzle? or a book? or another nap?"

Or maybe it's not so much that I'm un-fun or that you're always in need of amusement, maybe we've just reached the point in the winter where all the inside toys look dull and old and all of our outside toys (the sidewalks, the parks, the grass) are still covered by snow. When we got out of the car yesterday I pointed to the ceiling of the garage where Daddy wedged your wading pool above the rafters for storage. You pointed at the pool and looked at it for a long time before looking at me with a stare that I can only describe as "WTF?" I feel the same way, darling girl.