What’s My Line?

(Sisterly love in action)

There’s been a great deal of talk at our house about careers. Sierra, who will turn 10 soon, had settled on an animal training track. Mireya, nearly 6, was still focused on being a veterinarian, as long as she could run her vet clinic out of our house since she’s never going to move out.
But a few days ago at lunch, things changed.

“Mom,” said Sierra, contemplating her sandwich. “Do you know what I’m going to be when I grow up?”

“An animal trainer?”

She shook her head. “I think I could be a librarian. Because I’m really good at alphabetical order.”

I gave that some thought. “You know, I have noticed that you are good at alphabetical order.”

It was that moment that Mireya, who has been trying to convince her sister that they should find jobs where they could work together for their entire lives, saw her opening.
“Sierra! We could…” she bit her lip. “Um, could we work at the same school?”

Sierra rolled her eyes. The very idea of working with her pesky little sister is enough to trigger the gagging reflex, but I’ve encouraged her to be diplomatic. “If we are going to work at the same school, I’M going to be the principal.”

“Okay! Okay! Then I can be your … Assistant!”

Sierra sighed. “VICE principal. You can be the vice principal.”

Mireya jumped to her feet. “Yes! Yes! I can be the VICE principal.” She smiled broadly for a moment, then her face fell. She was back to chewing her lip. “Does that mean I have to… see the bad kids?”

“Yes,” said Sierra with principal-esque authority. “YOU have to see the bad kids. Especially when I’m out of the office.”

It’s nice to know they’ve already gotten such a good grasp of administrative dynamics in their first year at the same school.

Still the goal of having a job in the same place as her sister was apparently worth having to deal with the “bad kids,” because Mireya reluctantly agreed.

Who knows what the future holds for these sisters. No matter where they decide to spend their working lives, they will have the trials and tribulations of officedom down pat.

My baby is a Bidj.

(this is an old crib notes, but one of my favorites)

"Mommy! I'm a bidj! I'm a bidj!"

She's smiling and giggling, squirming excitedly in her car seat.

"What?" I ask her, trying to buckle her in while she's squirming.

"I'm a bidj!"

Right then I stop what I'm doing and mentally play back what she just said. Did my darling little curly haired 2 and half year old just refer to herself as a female dog?

"You're a what?" I ask her, plastering on my patient mommy smile.

"A BIDJ" she shouts with great enthusiasm.

"What did she say?" my husband stops putting things away in the garage and comes around, having over heard her. He had a look of grave concern. "She can't mean that, right?"

Of course instantly we are mentally blaming the other for our daughter's sudden language acquisition. I'm thinking this is his fault—no doubt he's called our own female dog this in front of her. He's thinking my recent outbursts of an occasional "s" word lately indicate that I've been slipping in the forbidden language department. None of this do we speak out loud, we merely shake our head.

We decide against addressing the word with our youngest directly since we've learned that any strong response would most likely result in the word being shouted out at every inopportune moment. I could just see her proclaiming herself "a bidj" every time I dropped her off at the church's mother's day out program, her pre-K teacher's smile fading as the rest of the two year olds in her class promptly shouting that they too are "bidjes." No, I'd just smile and pray that this was only a car seat declaration.

This goes on for a week, until our six-year-old solves the mystery. We're on our way out for a day of errands.

"I'm a bidj!" she tells her big sister with great delight.

"That's right, you're a bridge," her sister replies with a bored air.

"What? What did she say?" I almost leap out of my seat.

"She's a bridge. See?" Her sister gestures to our toddlers socks.

Sure enough, my two-year-old's little chubby legs are perched on the console in front of her car seat, toes stretching out to reach it, forming a bridge.

I am definitely looking forward to her acquiring that R sound. The subtle nuances of language acquisition are not easy to explain to perfect strangers in the grocery store who look like they've got Child Protective Services on their speed dial.

I Get Summer. Finally.

Here we are, midway through the never never land of Summer vacation. Once you get out of school yourself and enter the work world, it’s easy to forget what summer vacation is supposed to be like. Pretty soon you’re talking like a government official, saying that schools should go to a year round schedule and that kids forget too much over the Summer.

That’s because you’ve been all funned out. You have gotten trapped into the “everyone has to work all the time” song and you are singing it along with everyone else. Trust me, I know. I used to be the soprano on the second row, near the back.

You just may have forgotten what summer is like when you’re a kid. I had. I think this is the first year I really got it. Last year I was busy making Summer too much like the school year with so many planned activities the word vacation had pretty much disappeared in favor of “development.” Ick.

This year I’ve seen the light. I finally get “summer.” The amnesia of adulthood has lifted and I’m back to remembering what makes summer, well, SUMMER.

Summer is 10 to 10. Go to sleep at 10 pm, wake up at 10 am.

Summer is going swimming when it’s hot, dressing your dogs in t-shirts for fun, and lying around the house like lizards, blinking only during commercials.

Summer is a new set of goggles, a new bathing suit and new tan lines that are helpful when your mom is lining up your suit for the 5th time that week and it’s only Tuesday.

Summer is ice cream, cereal for dinner, and melons, melons, melons.

Summer is having adventures, sometimes in your room, sometimes flying away from home for the first time, sometimes on the diving board.

Summer is learning how to swim in the deep end, stand up for yourself, and learning how to pretend to cry so well during a video shoot with your sister that you have adults from around the house running to your aid. Which makes you cry for real.

Summer is scraped toes from rough pool bottoms, suntanned noses and golden highlights in dark hair.

Summer is over too soon, and well worth the month it takes to catch back up in school.

At least at our house it is. But check with me in August, I may be desperately circling the grade school by then.

Fashion Takes a Holiday


(When you live with a fashionista, no one is safe)

We’ve had a rash of fashion melt downs lately. It always happens like this:
We should have left five minutes ago for the store/doctor/movie. Everyone is ready, and was ready 10 minutes ago. Then Mireya says she’ll be right back.

Never, never let her go back in the house. I know this. But somehow she’s like an eel and before I click the seatbelt around her she’s running in for one last thing. Which always involves a wardrobe change.

She’s five and already she’s staring in her drawer in horror and saying “I don’t have anything to wear!”

I used to get involved in the selection process only to be firmly rebuked. And, to be fair, for good reason. My fashion sense is restricted to jeans and travel related t-shirts. Still, I’M dressed when it’s time to go.

Besides, there’s plenty to wear. I can’t even close Mireya’s drawers half the time. Fifty percent of our laundry items are hers due to the three outfit a day rule. I end up standing in the doorway to her room about to pull my hair out, thinking “who are you?” and “are we related?”
The last time this happened I had to physically carry her out of her room while she screamed her head off and I grabbed what I thought was a perfectly rational fashion choice for her to get dressed in once we arrived the gift store.

She stomped into Miss Mellie’s store, took one look at Miss Mellie and said “I did not want to wear this. I hate these pants.”

Miss Mellie gave me an arched eyebrow and I shrugged in my Grand Tetons t-shirt.

So it was a bit of an eye opener when we were at the family reunion and I was telling this story to the gathered moms. Everyone laughed and was sympathetic with my side. Except for my aunt and my own mother.

“I know just how she feels,” my aunt said, adjusting a beautiful earring. “The same thing happens to me all the time.”

There it was. The gene. This intense fashion gene was passed through undiluted from my aunt, whom I’ve called the Mexican Martha Stewart, and my mother, who wears heels to the hardware store.

Fine. Next time we’re in front of the overflowing drawer of “no clothes to wear,” I’m calling them on the cell phone. Maybe they’ll be able to talk her into wearing something. Anything.

After all, I can’t have her wearing the wrong pants again. She may disown me.

The Family Reunion Disaster

Our family reunion was exactly what I expected. Utter chaos surrounded by love, high pitch screams, too much food, and one disaster.

I imagine everyone who has been to a family reunion has a similar experience. Kids you haven’t seen in two years have shot up like NBA recruits. Several cousins have gone through different hairstyles. Small children find the best moments to completely embarrass their parents by doing what they do at home, like disrobing in public, despite all the bribes on the trip up. People who irritate each other over email, still irritate each other in person, but pretend not to be irritated until the last day.

Every night we all gathered around my grandmother – the one to blame for all of us, joked my uncle – and compared notes on our kids, our lives, and, of course, our mothers. Just like our kids will do in a few years.

It was going great, except for one little thing. My kids discovered I write this column.

Of course they’ve known about the column from the start, but somehow a little bell went off in their heads.

Surely this is not how Hannah Montana got started. Or, God forbid, Jessica Simpson.

Possibly it was because a few relatives asked if I was going to write about this or that during the trip, possibly because someone said “I read that in your mommy’s column,” but whatever the reason, the trap has been sprung and now my leg is good and caught.

For five days my daughters have looked up from every single activity and asked “are you going to write about this in your column?” At one point I thought it had faded away, then Mireya sunk a remarkable putt during putt putt and turned around and exclaimed, “Mommy! You can write about this in your column!”

Sierra suggested I include something about her whitewater rafting just as we were getting nailed by a bucket of ice cold water from the raft filled with “those boy cousins.”

Yikes. Sure, I’m used to my daughters mugging for the camera, but mugging for the keyboard?

Well, it looks like I’ll have to write about some other kids for a while until mine drop their guard and return to being their regular crazy selves. So if you see me taking notes in Landa Park, please, don’t call the sheriff.

That would be way too funny.