the boy

Next week is spring break, which is not news to most mamas in LR. Since my son goes to daycare in a public school, he’s out, too. Fine by me, it’s a welcome excuse  to take a spring break, which I haven’t done since college. I’m over-the-moon giddy and have begun preparations in earnest. My husband received this dorky email from me this morning. I was basically doing herkies while I wrote it. The excitement cannot be contained.

Subject: agenda for spring break 2010

Rodney,

Feel free to add, delete, debate. I can handle some of this on my own except the Memphis part, if you’re game for coming along for that. And also Hibachi. That’s all you.

Saturday: Barbecue contest in NLR, with hot-air balloon rides, a carnival with midway and a classic car and motorcycle show.

Sunday: relaxation, a trip to the riverfront park, super special make-your-own-pizza party with fun toppings!!!

Monday: Doodle and mama go to Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs, trip includes a romantic picnic among the tulips and maybe a ride in those duck things, although I don’t know about this since one sank a few years back. Back at home for supper, dad puts on a Hibachi show!!!

Tuesday/Wednesday: overnight trip to Memphis to see the zoo, eat barbecue, other fun stuff

Thursday: campout under the stars with Sam and mama. Marshmallow roasting in the fire pit?

Friday: Hiking or trip to Heifer Ranch

Saturday, Sunday: WILDCARD!!!

Nerdville, but Amos doesn’t know yet and won’t protest these things for at least another few years. I’m certain there will be crazy baby dance parties scattered throughout, along with lots of hoops-shooting and watching Dinosaur Train. Please, God, don’t let it rain.

Yesterday Amos and I got impossibly stuck in a deadly and disgusting mud pit at Macarthur Park and had to be rescued by a terrified Asian man who spoke hardly any English. Well, he didn’t seem to when he met us, but he walked away knowing the words “help us please,” “big stick” and “PULL!”

The terrible scene unfolded before an apathetic audience of incapacitated crackheads, a criminally negligent dog-walker, and about a hundred of those disgusting geese with warty Chernobyl faces. But it’s not their fault. It all transpired after I made a series of terrible decisions. I made bad choices, okay?

Let’s blame it on springtime and sunshine. Amos and I drive by Macarthur Park pretty much every day on our way home, and yesterday a gnarly rooster-faced goose (a gooster?) waddled out in front of us on the road, refusing to let us pass. I took that, along with the beckoning daffodils, as signs that we should get out and see some sights.

Amos and I scraped and scooped all the crushed goldfish crackers up from the car seat and floorboards and threw handfuls to our adoring, honking crowd. We pretended everything was dandy despite a pack of elementary-aged kids a few feet away that was chasing the ducks and hissing at them in a threatening and terrifying way. Sadly, I couldn’t come to the ducks’ defense because the kids’ mother was there, egging them on. Seriously. Between our salvaged snack offerings and the Jeffrey Dahmer training camp going on next to us, it was already the most ghetto trip to the park ever.

The ducks eventually scooted away when the snack supply dried up, so Amos zipped over to a gigantic hole that must have once been a pond but is now nothing but a death trap. Before I could grab him back he was trucking across the slick but seemingly solid mud slab. “Oh no…Oh, Amos, be careful…Oh, oh…” My strategy at this point was to cajole him back to solid ground, and it was working fine. Until his shoe fell off and he started crying. Then he fell and his hand got dirty. Then he refused to move. Folks, I had to go in.

Amos was not sinking in any way, so perhaps I was overconfident. The problem, of course, is that there’s an enormous difference between Amos’ spritely little 28-pound body and my own. As soon as I had Amos snatched up safely in my arms, the mud pit chomped down on my feet, sucking me in up to my knees. And I couldn’t move. Moment of terror, cue foreboding music here.

My first priority was to keep cool so Amos didn’t sense that I was freaking out. There was no choice but to pull out the weird mommy maneuver of plastering a psycho wide-eyed grin on my face and singing, “We’re okaaaaay, we’re okaaaay. Ha ha ha! We’re stuck in the mud! Wheee!”

Then I started screaming for help.

A man in a windsuit walking by with his miniature Doberman showed no interest in being a superhero. He initially refused to even come close, but the young girl he was walking with put in a good word for us. “Why’d you get in there for?” he yelled at me. “It’s not my fault you let your kid get in the mud.” He came a bit closer and looked like he was considering lending a hand, but it was clear he was going to wuss when his feet got wet. Thank you, sir. I hope you drown in a septic tank.

At least now I had a legitimate reason to call 911. Guaranteed embarrassment, but also the promise of handsome firemen coming to my rescue. I’d pressed the 9 when I spotted that poor, poor man strolling by, only about 15 feet away.

“Can you help me!?!? Please?” By now I am a swamp creature, a shrieking monster with two heads, four arms and only two legs, all of it covered in mud.

“Okay.” He said okay! He looks unsure, possibly terrified, but he doesn’t scold me or scamper away. I am saved.

Luckily there was a long tree branch within my reach, and Mr. Fantastic Rescue Man grabbed one end while I clutched Amos with one arm and pulled with the other. My right elbow dug into the mud as I held Amos on my left hip and tried with all my might to escape. There were two giant sluuuuuurrps and we were free! Free! Free! As I thanked my mysterious and silent guardian angel, I noticed his docksiders were still clean and dry. Was he even real? He walked away without a word.

Amos and I beelined back to the car, shedding shoes and socks along the way. I swabbed Amos head to toe with all the baby wipes I could find, while he provided running commentary. “Dirty! Dirty! Stuck in the mud!”

We are alive, I thought. Thank God I didn’t have to throw Amos to safety and bid farewell to this planet in such a horrendous and humiliating way.

Survival firmly in hand, I looked to the future. The very near future when I could dump these ruined clothes in the garbage. A future of making better choices. A future free of goosters and sticky mud pits, because we will never, ever set foot in that park again.

Then I called my husband.

“Um, could you run us a bath?”

Amos cries every single morning when I drop him off at daycare. Every morning, guaranteed. He’s 2, and he’s done this for oh, about 2 years now.

Was it always so? There have been blissful days, weeks even, when he rolled out of my arms and went straight for the blocks or a favorite teacher, giving me a chance to slip out without incident. We had a brief but glorious stint of drama-free mornings when Ms. Croom was around. She’s our fave teacher of all-time, a Lena Horne lookalike whom Amos adores. He hardly ever cried when she was there, but she’s moved on now and we’re back to square one.

You’re all probably thinking I’m a terrible mother who leaves her son at one of those awful daycares with purposely misspelled names like Kiddy Kollege or Luv to Lern, one of those places where they leave kids behind in the vans or serve them 409 instead of kool-aid. But I don’t! Amos has been at two daycares, both of them highly recommended. And he’s finally gotten to that point where he doesn’t want to leave in the afternoons, proof to me that he’s fairly happy with our choice.

But the mornings. They’re rough. And it’s gotten so that dropping Amos off peacefully each day has become a team effort. The other parents dropping their kids off at the same time give it their all too, singing, dancing, begging, whatever they can think of to stave off Amos’ tears. This morning one of the dads practically did back flips when we walked in. “Hey, Amos! Give me five!” Other parents say things like, “Amos, Rachel wants to play chase with you. Go get her!” in very sweet attempts to waylay the hysterics. It hasn’t worked yet, but I so appreciate their efforts. I guess it’s upsetting for everyone. Babies are like beagles. If one starts howling, the others are likely to chime in.

The internet is the enemy in these situations, sucking me into terrifying mommy chat rooms where other parents lament a two-week jag of weepy morning drop-offs. A mere two weeks is a non-event to me, so it gets my nerves jangling when I read the other parents’ advice to them to quit work and stay home with your baby, or switch daycares immediately, or hire a Swedish nanny (my husband isn’t into blondes, anyway). Your advice sucks. Do you hear me, Berkeley Parents Network?

So we’re just going to carry on. Maybe in another two years he’ll dash into daycare all smiles and roll his eyes when I ask for a goodbye kiss. I think in the meantime I should bake cookies for all the other parents, a little thank you. Because man, it’s so nice to have back-up when the you’re already crashing and burning and it’s only 7:30 in the morning.

With Amos’ entrance into the terrible twos, Rodney and I decided we needed a strategy for dealing with the discipline issues that are pretty much guaranteed to escalate from here on out. Time-outs aren’t a cure-all, and I knew there were more sophisticated tactics out there for us to try.

Ever since Amos was born my sister in Colorado has been telling me about this “Love and Logic” book, and every time I’ve tried to find it at the library it’s been checked out. Both good omens, so I ordered the “Love and Logic” for toddlers from Amazon. When it got in last week I zipped through the first few chapters to get the gist. All of these baby how-tos are the same, they front-load with the good stuff and the rest is filler, so I felt prepared to launch Operation Love and Logic straight away.

The main idea makes a lot of sense: give your child choices whenever possible to help him build a high self-concept and give him a small sense of control. Do you want to wear the red shirt or the green one? Do you want to eat broccoli or peas for supper? That sort of thing.

This strategy sounds really great when it comes to bedtimes and other squirrely situations. Do you want to stop throwing rocks or leave the park? Do you want to go to bed now or in 15 minutes? The book authors promised me that Amos would be so delighted at having a choice here that he would jump on the plum option of delaying bedtime for a bit. So I tried it.

“Amos, do you want to brush your teeth first or put on your jammies first?”

“No.”

Okay, let’s try this again.

“Amos, do you want to go to bed now, or in 10 minutes?”

“No.”

So I rushed back to the book, hoping more secrets would be revealed. So far, nothing.

“Amos, do you want to go inside now or when ‘Bob the Builder’ starts?”

“No.”

So anyway, does anybody want this stupid book?

For the few days leading up to Amos’ 2-year check-up, we practiced a lot. Rodney and I played the doctor role and had Amos sit still while we looked into his ears and up his nose. We held a make-believe stethescope to his chest and told him to breathe. We taught him to say “aah” so the doctor could check out his tonsils.

This turned out to be an amazingly effective trick, and he did great when his time came to shine. We forgot to practice climbing up on the scale and standing still, though, so we only know that he weighs somewhere between 27 and 29 lbs. He was too wriggly to get more specific. We also forgot to practice that part where he lies down and they mark the paper at his head and feet to see how tall he is. That went completely awry and required all hands to hold him down.

My main concern was his hearing, which I’ve been fretting over ever since an assessment at Amos’ daycare revealed his speech is a bit delayed and there are concerns that all the ear infections he’s had are the cause.

As usual, the fantastic Dr. Ledbetter was completely pragmatic about these concerns and put me at ease. Amos wouldn’t stop saying, “Hi, doctor! Hi, doctor! Aah!” which Dr. Ledbetter said was proof enough that he’s a social little boy who can certainly express himself. Amos got really excited about the elephant sticker he won for being so good, and repeated “Eff-in! Eff-in” over and over. I seized on the opportunity to show Dr. Ledbetter what I was worried about. “See, this is typical. He doesn’t say ‘elephant’ right.” Dr. Ledbetter was very patient. “No 2-year-old says ‘elephant’ right.”

We were hoping for no shots on this visit, but there was one. We hadn’t practiced at all. We tried a frantic, last-minute dress rehearsal while the nurse stepped out to prepare the syringe. It didn’t help that much.

My parents live hundreds of miles away and don’t see Amos very much, but they often send boxes of goodies to let him know they’re thinking about him. One arrived last Tuesday. There was a set of wooden toys inside, which Amos completely ignored at first because he was absolutely obsessed with the styrofoam peanuts. I thought, fine, he’s into these things and surely they won’t be hard to sweep up, so go for it.

digging in

These little peanuts kept Amos busy for minutes and minutes, giving me hope that all those commercials we let him watch on TV haven’t obliterated his attention span after all. He was very happy.

hurrah!

Wheee!

But then I noticed that the 5 million styrofoam peanuts were getting crushed underfoot into millions more pieces, morphing into tiny, solid hunks of static electricity. Suddenly they were climbing up the walls, stuck to the refrigerator door, colonizing the ceiling. Amos volunteered to help with cleanup.

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Once it was determined that the kitchen fit the definition of a superfund site I sent Amos away to play trains so I could sweep. It took that, plus a round of swiffering and a thorough vacuuming to clear the debris. Lesson learned, but it was lots of fun.

So if my story below about the poor man who’s consumed with guilt over his misguided search for a better life in North Korea (I know, duh) isn’t depressing enough, go over to In the Family Way and get your pants scared right off of you by the story about the deadly dangers of all of your kids’ favorite foods. Maybe it caused panic to set in only because I was already freaking about that article in the New York Times this morning about how I nearly killed my child and probably caused developmental delays because he had a walker. So this choking story is throwing me into action. No more grapes unless they’re sliced. I admit, I’m guilty of slacking on this in the past, but no more. If DHS reads this post they will take Amos away, clearly I’ve been screwing up left and right.

But I promise with all my heart, no more peanut butter unless it’s a tissue-thin layer mixed with a soggy glob of slippery jam. Peanuts, M&Ms, hot dogs=no, no, no. Not at all. None. I know it’s really good to know this stuff and it was a true public service for Heidi to provide the paralyzing statistics behind the conventional wisdom, but it got the nerves jangling overtime. Amos was having chicken nuggets for lunch. Oh my god chicken nuggets! I will likely put all his entrees in the blender first until I can calm down a bit.

Right around the second birthday. It begins with the feet.

When Mr. E the window guy got out of his truck Saturday and oozed his way toward our house, I knew he’d had a rough night. His eyes were wide and dazed, and he was moving slow. This is a look I recognize, since my husband and I usually look much the same. So I asked Mr. E if he was okay.

“My boys kept me up last night,” he said. Oh, I thought, so it IS the same look I see most days in the mirror. He must have young sons.

“How old are your boys?”

“Well, I’m 50. Ted’s 48, Bill’s—“

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought you meant you had little boys who kept you up.”

It was an awkward introduction for me and the party time window guy, but Amos was far more graceful. He doesn’t take quickly to everyone, but occasionally he falls in love at first sight. Such was the case here.

“Hi, man! Hi, man!” Amos shouted this nonstop while Mr. E circled the house, inspecting the windows and taking measurements. Amos followed him from inside, popping up at each window like a groundhog to greet him. “Hi, man!”

When Mr. E came inside, Amos snatched up his dad’s tape measure and fell in step, going behind Mr. E to make sure his window measurements were correct. Mr. E was clearly struggling, but I think Amos’ energy helped him. So much so, in fact, that Mr. E eventually serenaded Amos with a slow but heartfelt rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching in.”

Those two seemed perfectly content together so I stayed about seven paces behind, disguising my laughing with fake coughing fits and willing my weakened pelvic floor muscles to hold up so I wouldn’t wet my pants.

This isn’t Amos’ very first love. That honor goes to Uncle Jerry, a Korean War vet with the forearm tattoos to prove it. Jerry is the only member of my husband’s mainly teetotaler family with the balls to order a beer when we all meet up at the Olive Garden. When Amos’  grandparents took him by Jerry’s house a few weeks ago, Amos crawled into Jerry’s lap and the two reclined in a Lazyboy together to watch football. It was the only time in his life that Amos has been still when he wasn’t sleeping.

Surely it’s too early to label Amos as “a man’s man,” or to assume that because he’s attracted to these laid back characters he will also be a cool customer. It might just be that Mr. E is a real-life Bob the Builder, and Uncle Jerry looks like he has coloring books printed on his skin. Still, it’s so sweet for his mama to get to watch Amos get excited about these first crushes, as odd as they might be.