Be Nice

Ok, I'm on a little rant here. One of the things that offends me the most is when people are rude to other people in public, and especially to people in the service industry. Yes, those people are there to "serve" you, but they aren't your servants, and even if they were, what is the excuse for abuse? I say there is none, ever.

Even if someone makes a mistake, doesn't do it the way you want or as fast as you want, or doesn't properly bow down to your consumer wishes, still NO excuse. Didn't your mother teach you any manners? Maybe that's the trouble right there.

I was in Target the other day, in a line behind a woman and her two tween daughters. The girls were paying for the purchases with their own money, so they had the divider between them. The cashier, an older man, seeing that they were all together, got confused somehow. He removed a divider and continued to ring it up as one purchase.

Mommy went off on him, got super snappy and grabby, and told him repeatedly that it was "very clear" that they were making separate purchases. She was loud and rude and wouldn't let it go, which made the man rattled and go even slower.

I was disgusted by her display. From the look on the poor guy's face, she more than made her point. Even more disturbing than her humiliating an old man was the example she was setting for her young girls. Maybe she was in a bad mood or whatever, but she is teaching her kids that it is perfectly ok to abuse total strangers that are there to serve you.

Call me crazy, but I just don't believe that kind of treatment brings out the best in people. I do not look forward to the day when I'm an old lady cashier and these two girls come into my line. I just might have half a mind to give them a little lecture on human decency, although by then it will be too late to unteach the mean.

The Dog Is Back (and Other Tales)

The Dog Is Back

It's 9pm. I hear some vigorous crying coming from A's room. This is unusual these days, so I go in to investigate. She's such a great communicator that I know she'll tell me exactly what the problem is, and she does.

"Barking, the barking, the barking!" At first I can't understand because of the damn binky, but I pull that out of her mouth and it becomes clear. The dog next door was barking and it woke her up.

I don't know why that dog is out, why he's barking or why it woke her up this time, of all the times he randomly barks, but I don't like it. I imagined myself marching over to the dog's people and asking them to get control of things and stop waking up my child. But I did nothing like that. I just held her and told her things were ok. She went back to sleep easy enough.

But I tell you, if this summer is going to be like last summer, with all the dog romping around and barking after bedtime, I might have to have a friendly chat with the neighbors. That's just not cool.


Big Dead Man

We were all sitting on the couch today, talking and having a good time. All of a sudden, A points at the fireplace and says, "I see big man."

Uh, what? What big man? Because of my own experience as a kid, I immediately wonder, is she seeing a man there where we don't? That isn't an impossibility I guess, but I hope she doesn't have that kind of sensitivity, for her own sake.

"Dead man. I see dead man."

Ok, now J and I are just trying not to freak out. What the HELL is she talking about? Then, I notice the Walking Dead action figure on the mantle. J must have introduced it to her. I walk over and point to it. "Is this the man that you see?"

"Yeah. Dead man. I see dead man."

I'm trying not to make a big damn deal about this, as I silently shoot J some eye daggers. Really, dude? Does she really need to be familiar with your zombie action figure? Take that thing downstairs! Good grief. I don't need this kind of stress.


Beeping and Blinking

One of the beautiful things about babies is that they don't really know fear until they learn it. I was really enjoying this stage. She would look at the Halloween dracula that J hangs on the door and just laugh. She would could hear us making a lion sound or a dinosaur sound and think it was the greatest thing ever. She didn't know what a threat was, and that's the way it should be!

I intentionally didn't let J watch horror movies or violent shows in her presence, because I just don't think she needs those sounds and images in her mind. She will have plenty of time for the ugliness of the world, but for the time being let's just keep her experience pure, if we can, right? J thinks I'm being extreme, but I don't care.

At some point, fear seeps in anyway. I don't know when it happened. I just know that she had a total fit when I set her in her crib to nap one day. I went in to see what was up, and she was pointing at the smoke detector.

"What is that? What is that?" Crying and carrying on. Very disturbed.

"It's the smoke detector, honey. It's ok. Was it beeping?" I'm so sorry I ever introduced the idea that the thing could beep.

She talks about it all the time. "No beeping?" She eyes the thing warily every time she enters the room, and I say to her "No, it's not beeping, it just blinks sometimes. It's ok. It won't hurt you."

What happened was that she just happened to notice it blinking. She had never seen it before and didn't understand. She didn't have language for what was happening and she got worried. She's never heard it beep but she thought that beeping meant blinking.

Now she walks around the house with concern, "Beeping and blinking? Beeping and blinking?"

She's soaking it all in. Processing. So amazing and so delicate. How to teach her caution without unintentionally training her to be afraid of everything? This parenting business is like advanced Jedi training, I tell you what.

She Keeps Me Honest

As you know, I've been trying to figure out how to fit in the exercise so that I can get on the road to better health. It's a great challenge with everything that life has in store for me these days, and sometimes it seems ridiculously impossible.

Well, it seems the stars have aligned. I have dusted off my Wii Fit and gotten the Zumba DVD. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to join a gym or pay money to look like a silly fool in public, and most of all, A LOVES it!

Every single day she pulls on my arm and demands to "Wii, Mama. Wii! Exercise!". The girl is my best motivator! She thinks the graphics are hilarious and she loves to dance around with Mama. "Ski! Hooa Hoop! Run! Jump! Yoga!" She's like a mini personal trainer, and she is a task master. "Zooooooooom-ba!" she says with delight and her famous tiger smile.

This is truly awesome.

I know that eventually she will get tired of the routine, like she did with Elmo and many others, but for now, I'm running with it. Literally.