Fun. I can do fun. Really. Okay. Maybe not.

"Are you the fun parent?"

The neighbor's child, the one that always asks the pointed questions around here, was in my living room, asking me the one question I never wanted to answer.

But, like a smart lawyer who knows the answers to every question before asking them, she knew the truth.

No. I am not the fun parent. Daddy is the fun parent.

How did this happen? I had such plans. When I was in high school, I always figured I would be the coolest mom ever. Even my friends, as I got into my twenties, said "Boy, you are going to be a really fun mom."

And in that wonderfully blissful assumption of youth I thought, "Darn straight, I am."

As I grew up I had all the requisite background for being the fun parent. I was once a professional clown. I could twist balloons into dogs or giraffes (dogs with longer necks) or bunnies (dogs with longer ears). I remembered countless knock-knock jokes.

I even, at one time, collected comic books and could name all the members of the X-men – classic and new. My nephews were in awe.

I can't even blame it on being the stay at home parent who has to lay down the law, because for a time I was the after 6 pm parent and I STILL was not the fun parent.

Don't get me wrong. I have my moments. There was the night where we had sports caster bath time where every action in the bathtub was described in detail by the mommy-play-by-play announcer. And let's not forget opera day where we sang all our conversations in big, high voices (which went on for two hours before Daddy begged for mercy).

Yet motherhood has brought out the In-Charge-Marge in me. I confuse productivity with play. We must finish our rice painting! Let's color ALL the macaroni!

I plan complex outdoor activities when really all anyone seems to want to do is run screaming from the tickle monster. For four hours.

And I don't want to watch a movie 700 times so I can recite every line by heart. (Except for the Princess Bride. I love that movie.) Instead want all movies to teach something, anything. The capital of Uganda. The habitat needs of salamanders. The names of all the planets in the solar system.

I am so not fun.

Now that I've faced it, I find myself sneaking in fun. Last week it was green pancakes. Then there was a brief moment of pirouettes in the parking lot.

If I can't be the fun parent, I can at least have my moments.

Bare Inspiration

Sometimes people will ask me if it's hard to keep writing a column every week.

Not with this cast of characters.

In fact, there are weekends where my column just writes itself - like one particularly memorable weekend. I'd just dropped off my grandmother after we'd been out for twice as long as anticipated.

It's never good at my house for Mommy to be gone twice as long as anyone expects. This is how we end up with pet lizards that require live crickets for lunch and captured tarantulas that everyone is too scared to look at, let alone release back into the wild. So I was anticipating trouble.

When I pulled into the driveway, I came upon my husband and two daughters sitting outside in that unmistakable posture of people who have narrowly avoided complete mental breakdowns.

Apparently, while I was out (for once, my timing was perfect), my husband had released the girls to playing in the backyard while he vacuumed out his truck. A fairly picky guy about the condition of his vehicle, he was soon lost in the task of master detailer. He didn't notice the long stretch of relative silence that is a sure sign of impending disaster until it was too late.

Suddenly there was a cry from the back yard. He ran over to find that our youngest had been knocked over by the dog, bumped her head on a rock, and while fine for the most part, was quite upset.

And naked.

I believe I deserve some sort of award for not bursting out laughing at that point in the story. In fact I may have given myself a hernia in the process.

Everyone involved, including the four year old, denied any knowledge of exactly how or why she came to be naked. When I asked her point blank, she just looked at me as if the question itself made no sense.

So like the mystery of lost socks, the Bermuda Triangle, and why bumble bees can fly, the day Mireya decided to play in the buff is just one of those episodes in our life that will remain shrouded in obscurity.

Maybe shrouded isn't the right word. But you get the idea.

Hopefully the next time I'm delayed coming home I'll get another column out of it – as long as I can avoid getting a hernia in the process.

..

When dogs dream

Thanks to island princess for this one...

Bizkit, the Sleepwalking Dog @ Yahoo! Video

(You know, this stuff happens to me all the time. I wake up hitting the wall right before I catch up to Johnny Depp.)

Child of the Volcano
Recently we temporarily adopted a little girl, sort of. She knocked on the wall of the hallway and informed me that she was here to live with us because she had lost her entire family in a tragic volcano eruption.

"It was the lava," she said solemnly, looking remarkably like our four year old, right down to the curls.

"I imagine it was very dangerous," I said, noting her serious demeanor, appropriate for a recent orphan.

“Yes, it was. There was a fire.” She looked up, either checking for a smoke alarm or recalling the eruption.

Mireya, who was now the orphan named Sophie (which, incidentally is the name of our real daughter's real best friend), came with an imaginary small bag of belongings which she dutifully unpacked.

"Well," I said, "let me show you around."

We toured the house and I pointed out where the bathroom, kitchen, snacks and playground were. She noted each location politely, nodding and clearly committing the strange environment to memory. We talked a little about the rules. Where to put your dirty clothes. Where the shoes go. The "scrape your dish" rule.

Then I introduced her to our two dogs, whom she agreed were very nice. She asked me to repeat their names twice, because she wasn't sure who was who.

I have to say, she was so exceedingly pleasant that I wondered, briefly, if we could make this arrangement permanent.

For about 24 hours we adopted the child of the volcano, introducing her to Grammy, her adopted sister and her adopted father. In fact, Daddy, when he heard the story of the volcano, insisted it was simply too sad and he just couldn't bear hearing about it ever again.

Periodically we'd all slip up, forgetting that she wasn't Mireya, hadn't lived here forever, and had no idea where she might find a fork for her dinner. She'd smile and remind us that she was the orphan who came to live with us, and naturally needed some extra assistance.

This year we've seen many incarnations of our four year old. She's been a princess, a secret agent, a finishing school student, a new girl in school, and a very scary monster. As the spotlight shifts onto a new character, I find myself wishing for an encore of the child of the volcano.

That kid even picked up her socks. Try to get a princess to do that.