Posts filed under 'Tattletales. (Mouths of babes)'
Sophie is bouncing on her bed.
“Watch me!” she says. “Watch how high I can jump!”
“Wow,” I say, “that’s really something. You’re good at jumping.”
“Yeah.”
“And you run really fast.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why did all your friends say you did in your ‘I AM SPECIAL’ book from school? They said you ran really fast and that you were great on the monkey bars.”
She thinks about this and smiles. “Oh, yeah.”
“Maybe you’ll be in the Olympics someday,” I say.
She sighs and slumps on her bed. “Do I have to be an Olympicker? I’m already going to be a dressmaker and a veterinarian.”
“No, you don’t have to be an Olympian.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be that.”
Okay, then.
May 15th, 2006
Very noisy mornings here the past two days, as a work crew’s been digging up the sidewalk across the street to put in a gas line. Sophie has pretty much ignored the whole production, but Hannah is riveted. She is majorly digging the digging.
Yesterday, glued to my bedroom window, she watched one of the big construction vehicles (a bulldozer? an excavator? if only I had a Bob the Builder–obsessed son to explain) finish up and leave the scene.
Gazing mournfully out the window, she said quietly, I love it so much and now it’s going away.
April 18th, 2006
An afterschool special on the sad state of American ballet.
Sophie: (pretending to be a trembling impoverished waif, panhandling) Please, mister, I’m a poor girl, can I have money for a tutu?
March 26th, 2006
I want to like weekends. I try to like them. But my children expect me to take them outside or play with them or something.
But our kitchen was in bad shape. Not just bad from my pathological and completely pitiful attempts at remodeling, but crusted crockpot and four-day-old blender residue and spilled potting soil and unidentifiable gunk on the floor bad. So I snapped on the rubber gloves and began scrubbing and pouring Clorox on everything. I told the girls to go play, something I was under the impression mothers were entitled to say once in a while. I thought it was a reasonable request, the kind of thing that even Ma Ingalls or Coretta Scott King might have said from time to time, while wiping their hands on their aprons and looking sturdy and respectable and fine.
Sophie was having none of it. She sat under a table alternately hollering and weeping: “You never do anything fun with me! I hate this house! I don’t like anybody who lives in this house! I want to be adopted by somebody and go live somewhere else!”
I told her that wasn’t going to happen, because Angelina and Brad have a lot on their plate right now.
“WHAT? WHY NOT?”
“Because Daddy and I would have to agree to let somebody adopt you. And there’s no way we would do that. We’re keeping you. So you’re stuck with us.”
She followed me into the bleach-reeking kitchen. “Why are you talking nicer to Hannah? You ALWAYS talk in a nice voice to her and in a mad voice to me!”
“Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Hannah is not yelling in my face and telling me she wants to live with somebody else.”
Soph flopped miserably against the counter.
“Don’t!” I bellowed. “Bleach! Chemicals! Don’t lean against the chemicals!”
She yelled, “THEN WHAT CAN I DO IN THIS LIFE?”
“You can do a lot of things in this life! You can go into any other room in this house! You can play with all of the toys you have, and that is a LOT OF TOYS! You can go to the bathroom! You can draw a picture! You can read a book! You can do all of these things RIGHT NOW!”
She stomped out of the room and immediately began fighting with her sister over a deflated soccer ball. Because this is also something she can do in this life.
I kept on scrubbing and greedily inhaling Clorox fumes, hoping for chemical-induced transcendence.
The day continued skiing poorly downhill. When I asked Soph to clean up her room before bed: “WHY DO I HAVE TO CLEAN UP MY ROOM BY MYSELF BUT YOU ALWAYS HELP HANNAH? YOU NEVER HELP ME! YOU NEVER HELP ME DO ANYTHING!”
“I never help you with anything? I help you all the time! I am your mother! HELPING YOU IS ALL I DO!”
As I huffed off to the bathroom with her cheerful little sister (who gets really really really sunny and serene when everyone else is grumpy), I heard Soph mutter under her breath, “THIS IS THE BADDEST LIFE I EVER HAD.”
March 19th, 2006
I like studies, particularly those nice European ones that say that pregnant women should eat lots of chocolate if they want happy, mellow, endorphin-loaded babies. I don’t know where those studies were when I was pregnant, but hot dang, those are some good studies! Those studies are my homeys! Those studies got my back!
But people keep telling me about some new bad scary studies! Have you heard of these studies? These studies say that siblings who share a room as kids tend to be much closer as adults. Which would suggest that siblings who do not share a room will hate each other for the rest of their lives and spit upon each other’s offspring.
Now, I never shared a room with my brother, and I’m crazy about him. I think my brother is the TOPS, plus he delivers babies, so he is ALL THAT and a BAG OF CHIPS and a HEAD FULL OF APGAR SCORES.
But I never had a sister.
I decided to broach the topic with Sophie. In her room. The room that she does not share with her sister and has no plans of ever sharing with her sister. Believe me, I know it would make a great home office. Don’t think I don’t know it would make a great home office.
Me: What if you and Hattie shared her big room?
Sophie: (firmly) Then she would cry and cry and yell and cry all night and hurt my ears and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. [playing with Calico Critters]
Me: But what if you and Hannah shared a room when she was older and she didn’t cry at night anymore?
Sophie: [still playing with Calico Critters and pretending I do not really exist] Then she would get on my bed and roll around in my bed and knock me out of bed onto the floor and I wouldn’t get any sleep.
Me: But what if you and Hannah shared a room and it was a lot of fun?
Sophie: (immediately) Then we would laugh and laugh and talk all night and I wouldn’t get any sleep and in the morning I would be so tired my head would fall in my cereal.
Me: Your head would fall in your cereal.
Sophie: YES.
Me: Some grownups I know told me that kids like sharing a room and that it might make you feel a lot closer to your sister. I told them I was pretty sure you wouldn’t like that very much.
Sophie: (definitively, forever and ever, amen) NO.
March 15th, 2006
David: Sit down on your bum-bum.
Sophie: You shouldn’t say bum-bum. Bum-bum is a bad word.
David: Okay, then sit down on your tushie.
Sophie: Tushie is a bad word.
David: Okay, then sit on your behind.
Sophie: Behind is a bad word. You should just say penis.
March 12th, 2006
Sophie: (pretending to be an infant) Baby wants a foot massage! Baby wants a Diet Coke!
March 10th, 2006
Me: What’s up with that light hair? Hannah, is your daddy the milkman?
Hannah: No, the Muffin Man.
(As you can see, light hair is a relative term in our brunette household. To us, she’s platinum blonde.)
March 8th, 2006
My ugly nose and I love you in spite of the fact that you stink like wet swimsuits and have tushies in the front and rear. Thank you.
Continue Reading February 27th, 2006
I’m sure somebody likes my nose. Well, I like it.
Continue Reading February 25th, 2006
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