Treat Your Children With Tenderizer
My little partner Azul and I recently went to a casual happy hour ping pong tournament to do some much-needed visiting and mingling with other adults. And yes, of course I took him, I take him everywhere with me, plus he really is a good little date and is now six years old. On the way home I said, “Thanks for being my date this evening.”
He replied in his high-pitched little kid voice, “You need to pay me.”
I said, “What? I need to pay you for taking you out? I’ll pay you with love and caring and tenderness.”
“I’d rather have a hundred dollars,” he announced.
“Yeah?” I said giggling and scrunching up my face in the rearview mirror so he could see my displeasure with his reaction.
Azul decided to change his tune and said, “Okay, I’ll take the love, and what else?”
“Caring and tenderness,” I answered in the sweetest mommy tone I could muster up.
All of a sudden he shuddered in his booster chair in the back and grabbed on to his seat belt as if it was the only thing he could find that would save him. “Ahhhhhh! No!” he said through his teeth and smiled fearfully.
“Why not?” I asked in confusion, while I turned around to look at my cowering child.
Still holding on to the “belt of life” (a.k.a. seat belt), he asked, “Doesn’t that mean to eat someone?”
“No, Babies” (I call him that sometimes), “not to tenderize in order to eat you. To be tender, which is to be soft and gentle.” And I touched his knee that was closest to the driver’s seat.
He relaxed, laughed and agreed, “Okay, love, caring and tenderness.”
The Big 6
Now that the party, presents and celebratory eating out is over, reality is setting in — I am the mother of a six year-old. Whaaat?!
Getting used to saying I was someone’s mom in the first place was surreal to me. I was a first time mom at thirty-six and up to that point I was just “me.” For years there was no other title I held which connected me to anyone else other than myself.
I am convinced the reason we keep track of babies ages in months is so parents can slowly get used to being a parent, month by month. Once I was familiar with responding to being “Azul’s mom,” it was easy, I was his and he was mine, and like most parents, I wore my title with pride. I had no problem admitting I was a mom, not to mention I had an infant on my teat most of the day, so that kind of gave it away.
The transition from being a parent of an infant to toddler is an easy one, saying “my one year-old” is just as easy as saying “my two year-old” or “my three year-old.” Then there is four. This is the point where you realize that your baby is a little person and a personality starts to show (or rears its ugly head). Personality warps into budding independence and all of a sudden you have a “five year-old.” Looking back, this all seems to happen in the blink of an eye, but the fact remains, your connection to your child is still there, they are still just little guys who need you and you need them.
Your parenting grows with your child and both of you are still experiencing something new together. When you are five years into parenting, that’s exactly what it is, five years, a parent of a five year-old, and you think, “not bad, I’ve done this for five years,” with some sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure if it is the number or age or both, but at six something changes. Your baby is going to Kindergarten and is SIX! And the real kicker, not only is your child now six years old, you are six years older too. Ugh!
Azul is six and in school all day and I am forty-two! What happened? Is this what a mid-life or mid-parenting crisis feels like? Where did the time go?
I am sure there are more mid-parenting (although “mid” is deceiving) crises to come, but right now all I can do is let it sink in…I am the mother of a six year-old.
First Things First
Azul has officially finished his first full week of all-day Kindergarten and experienced a lot of firsts.
The first of the “firsts” was getting worked. The first day of school, when I picked up my exhausted, smiley-faced big boy, the first thing he said to me was, “Man, they really work you there.”
Of course this is after months of being on Summer Break and a year of a pre-school, where their moto was “learning through play,” which actually meant, “we just play.” Azul has three years of experience in pre-school and knows the difference between working and not. And now he is getting worked! He has no idea.
Second, eating in the cafeteria. He is very excited about this and I am very excited not to have to make lunch for him anymore. The day he was talking about his cafeteria ritual with euphoria in his eyes, I knew he was in love. He had his very first Sloppy Joe. I know, he is almost six years old and never had a Sloppy Joe, but I just don’t cook like that. I guess the Red Rice and Organic Beans with Roasted Beets and Broccoli is no Sloppy Joe.
“What did you guys have for lunch?” I asked
“Sloppy Joes!” he excitedly answered.
I repeated, “Sloppy Joes?” more as a question than a statement.
“I loved that sweet meat!” he said with his eyes slightly closed and his head tilted back.
I can’t compete with “sweet meat.”
Third, how to behave on the playground. He’s familiar with playing at the playground and already experienced lots of playground time, but now he is a big Kindergartener.
“Guess what I did today?” he asked me, and I had visions of him counting to one hundred, forward and backward in front of the class, or reciting the Preamble to the Constitution when no one else could (he doesn’t really know the Preamble, it was just my parental fantasy).
“What?” I responded.
“I had a wicked fall!” He continued, “I felt like I was punched in the stomach, but I didn’t tell the teacher or anything, it wasn’t an emergency like bleeding or like that. I didn’t cry, I just played through the pain.” He was talking non-stop with some sense of pride.
“Oh, my!” was all I could think to say without bursting his bubble or ruining his story.
“Yeah, like you know that, like rock climbing wall? I slipped.”
I guess we all, like, have a wicked fall in school.
Finally for the week, bribery. Making friends is a hard thing to do, and some of us go to great lengths for friendship, but this is one had to be stopped before it got out of control and too expensive.
Azul talked about his new friends, although he couldn’t remember anyone’s name, and one boy in particular (again, the boy has a name he just doesn’t remember it) who is his best friend. As the conversation continued, I began to feel uncomfortable as it took a turn for the worse. Apparently, Azul asked this boy if he wanted to play and the boy said no, so Azul promised him twenty bucks to be his friend. Well, the monetary offer worked and they played and had the time of their lives.
I didn’t pay out the “gentleman’s agreement!”
“Firsts” are awesome, they are the moments you always remember, or at least the things others remember when all you want to do is forget.
I can’t wait for next week…
Carmelina Hart 