No writing allowed

So I've been hoping to get back in the routine of blogging and it's just not happening. I turn on the computer and get sucked into checking email, IMing, shopping for bunk beds and random other things and never get around to updating my blog. So I thought maybe writing in a notebook would be a better idea. Fewer distractions.

Every writing book I've ever read has hyped up the idea of writing on paper versus typing on a keyboard. Some say there's a connection between your brain and your hand and you shouldn't let a keyboard get in the way of it. Some say that it's far too easy to continually edit your thoughts on a computer which isn't nearly as simple on paper. Some say there's a certain flow or rhythm that happens when you're writing by hand that is harder to come by on a keyboard. There are various reasons but at the beginning of every writing book or class you're told to go out and buy a notebook.

Some suggest beautiful leather-bound ones, others push cheap spiral bound ones so you're not afraid to mess them up, but they all tout notebooks as being a very necessary tool if you want to write. So maybe that's why I’ve always had a mild obsession with notebooks especially empty ones. You can't be a real writer without notebooks.

I love new notebooks. I love flipping through the blank pages and I love the way they smell. Some people like the new car smell, I love the smell of new notebooks. (I’ve occasionally wondered if the first kid to sniff glue was just happily inhaling the scent of creative possibilities instead of trying to get high) For me, new notebooks have always represented a fresh start. Endless possibilities. Perhaps I would write something truly brilliant in this notebook. Yes maybe this would be the notebook that inspired me to greatness. Unfortunately I haven’t run across that notebook yet.

(1:38 pm Amanda attempts to take the pen out of my hand and asks, “Can I write something?” No.)

When I started working and was able to spend my money any way I wanted, I remember going completely nuts when I found a great sale on notebooks and I bought ten of them and then went back the next day and bought ten more. I felt like I’d scored the mother load. I could have a brand new notebook any time I wanted which was good because once I started writing in them, the shiny newness started to wear away. The thrill of a brand new notebook only lasted a short while before I began filling it with mindless drivel, the kind that I would be horrified to have anyone read.

It never occurred to me that having children meant that I would give up the option to freely write with pen and paper. For some reason, if my children see me writing they will do everything within their power to stop me. I still remember when Amanda was only a year old and I actually sat on top of my dining room table with all the chairs stacked on top of each other so she couldn't climb up with me while I handwrote a card for a baby shower gift.

Yes, my children have done their very best to cure me of my notebook addiction. Now the excitement I feel when I see a display full of fresh new notebooks for sale is tempered by frustration. Lessened by the knowledge that the newness of any one of those notebooks might last all of 3.2 minutes at our house. The newness, in fact might not even make it intact all the way to the check-out counter if Alyssa spies me attempting to place it into our shopping cart. “Me want book. Me daw Mommy?” NO! Once she gets a notebook in her hands it’s like setting her loose in a house built of cards. Certain destruction will follow.

In some ways I feel like on the day I gave birth to Amanda I gave up ownership to… well, pretty much everything… my body, my thoughts, my time, my energy, my love, my money, my food, my future plans, my devotion, my sleep, my home and everything in it, my privacy, even my dignity on occasion. I’m not complaining. I have to admit that it has been a good trade. Completely worth it considering what I’ve gotten in exchange. I willingly share most everything with my children, including chocolate. But when it comes to my notebooks I have all the maturity of a two-year-old. I want them to be mine-mine-MINE!

(1:46 pm Alyssa notices I’m writing. “Want pen! You done, Mommy?” No!)

I need to have at least this one thing all to myself. Each time I get a notebook I tell myself that this will be the one that the girls won’t touch. I will keep this one up high. I will only write in this one when they are asleep. Or tied to a tree.

But eventually – and it usually doesn’t take me too long – I slip up. I fall asleep after setting it on the nightstand or I set it on the table when I go to the bathroom. And then I forget about it. It never takes long before the Deserted Mommy Notebook sensor goes off causing my children to come skittering from wherever they may be to descend on my untainted notebook.

I’ve set them both loose with notebooks more than once hoping it would cure their fascination but apparently that only fed the monster. Now they think that ALL notebooks should be theirs to destroy in any way they see fit. Santa brought notebooks for each of them, which they loved but nothing is as good as MY notebooks. The fact that I don’t want them to touch them makes them just all the more intriguing. But I don’t want to share.

Alyssa can destroy an 80-page college-ruled notebook in less time than it takes her to sprinkle sand from one end of the house to the other after a particularly good session of playing in the sandbox. That’s under 48 seconds for those who haven’t been paying attention. She crumbles, she tears, she “washes” it with apple juice. She manages to leave a permanent mark of some kind on nearly every single page. It’s truly impressive.

Amanda’s method is slower, sneakier, and far more insidious.

“Mommy, can I draw in that book?”

"No Sweetie, this is Mommy’s. Use your own paper."

"How ‘bout just one page?”

“Amanda this is my notebook. Why don’t you go get one of YOUR notebooks? Do you want me to help you find one?”

“I want to write in THAT notebook.”

“I know Sweetie. I understand. But this is Mommy’s notebook. You know how you have some things that you don’t want Alyssa or anyone to touch? Well that’s how I feel about this notebook. I want it to be just for me.”

Unfortunately Amanda can spot a sucker from ten miles away.

“Okay Mommy, it’s just that I wanted to draw a picture for you. So when you look at it you remember how much I love you. But it’s okay if you don’t want me to.” (ding – ding – ding. We have a winner!)

“Okay, but only ONE page.”

“No, that’s okay Mommy. I don’t want to wreck your notebook.”

“Oh Amanda, I never said you were going to wreck it. It’s just a notebook. And I like your pictures. Here, draw one for me.”

Once she’s in all she has to do is wait 'til I’m distracted (and we all know I’m easily distracted), maybe on the phone or in the middle of doing laundry, trying to get Alyssa down for a nap or just smoking crack and all she has to do is flash me the page she’s already drawn on, “Mommy can I draw in this?” Sure!

And before I know it she has filled the entire book with drawings and stories (which are only somewhat legible at this point but getting better every week.) “Mommy, I wrote a book for you!” Great!

(1:53 pm I succumb to Alyssa's pressure and draw a picture of a baby in the margin of my notebook.)

The pen situation is even worse. There was a time in my life, pre-motherhood, when on any given day if I were to dump out my purse I would have found 10-15 pens. I was a pen hoarder to the worst degree. But now? I can never seem to find a single working pen.

Yesterday in an effort to fill out an extremely short permission slip and write yet another check to Amanda’s school, I hunted down, swore at and eventually threw away three non-working pens. More times than I care to admit I’ve been reduced to writing notes, grocery lists and phone messages with crayon stubs. The lack of pens in our house drives Scott crazy too.

Alyssa on the other hand, always seem to have a working pen in her hands leading Scott to announce, “She has another pen. Dione!!! She has another pen! Go give that to Mommy.”

Where does she get so many pens? I have No Idea. I seriously have wondered if she is squirreling them away somewhere and maybe one day I’ll stumble upon some hidden room where there is an intricate sculpture of the Taj Mahal built to scale entirely out of ballpoint pens and, well probably notebook paper.

Which leads me to another issue: creativity. I always thought I’d be the kind of parent to encourage and nurture creativity in my kids no matter what. I always pictured that my children would have round-the-clock access to all the art supplies their hearts could desire. Paint, play-doh, huge spools full of drawing paper, glitter, glue-sticks and crayons as far as the eye could see.

But then Real Life happened. Real Life with crayon on the walls, silly putty ground into the carpet, my grandma’s leather chair autographed with ball-point pen. And with Real Life came a Real Miserliness with the art supplies.

Of course Amanda can use the crayons. But she must first provide me with two forms of photo ID and some kind of highly valued collateral before I let her “check out” three colors of my choosing with the promise that she will return them before she gets three more. If Alyssa gets ahold of one of the crayons I get to keep the collateral, and Amanda, I’m sorry that you can’t sleep without your lullabye rabbit but next time you’ll be more careful, won't you?

Kindergarten Assessment

Amanda’s going to Kindergarten! Well at the end of August, that is. I know, it’s hard for me to believe too. Feels like we just brought her home from the hospital a few weeks ago instead of almost FIVE YEARS AGO. Somebody hand me a Kleenex, please.

Amanda went to Kindergarten Assessment a couple of weeks ago and I was a WRECK. That’s right, Amanda: totally fine. Me: complete WRECK. I remember my own Kindergarten Assessment and how stressed out I was about it because I did NOT want to go to school.

My brother went to school and didn’t like it so I wanted no part of it. I was perfectly happy staying at home playing Little People, watching Mighty Mouse and All My Children and having the toys, crayons and my mom all to myself for hours at a time. I think I wanted to fail my Kindergarten Assessment but when Mrs. Reynolds promised a treat afterwards I performed like a well-trained monkey. I got a fabulous piece of chocolate and a ticket to Kindergarten. D’oh!

For months I’ve been talking about how exciting and fun Kindergarten will be. There will be paste to eat, big vats of paint to spill on the carpet, boys to kiss, brown rolls of paper towels so hard you’ll get splinters when you dry your hands, games of I’ll show you my belly button if you show me yours with Tim Smith during naptime… Or maybe that was just my Kindergarten experience. But my point is that Amanda had no fears about the assessment or going to Kindergarten, which is how it should be.

I was nervous enough for both of us anyway. Because, let's be honest, I figured that if she didn’t do well it would be my fault. Oh and Scott’s of course, because he’s the one who vetoed pre-school. But I’m the one who didn’t demand it. I'm her mom and I should have fought harder for it.

Apparently that commercial about how going to preschool means you’ll do better for the rest of your life has not had quite the same impact on Scott that it has had on me. Some days it plays in an endless loop in my head followed by this nightmarish vision of Amanda out behind her third grade classroom smoking cigarettes and tossing beer cans onto the hopscotch field with all the other little thugs who didn’t go to preschool. These moments brought to you by: Mommy Guilt.

So back to the big assessment... we practiced for weeks: her letters, numbers, shapes, writing her name, basic math, anthropology, Latin, physics. Okay maybe not all that, but we studied and practiced. I took it as a good sign that her appointment was with a Mrs. Starr. Not only is star a happy shiny name, but it’s also the name of one of my very favorite teachers, Mr. Starr, my 6th grade teacher who is probably at least partially responsible for the fact that this blog even exists but I’ll write about him another time. My point is that I panicked a tiny bit when they told me, first thing, that Mrs. Starr was unavailable and that we would be meeting with the other teacher whose name I had a bit of trouble pronouncing. What? Uh oh.

But the teacher was wonderful and her classroom was happy and fun and Amanda marched right in there and… well I don’t want to say that she was trying to make me look bad. But she was. Yeah she was definitely trying to make me look bad. For instance the teacher asked her if she could count and Amanda said, "Of course," and then she proceeded to count to ten. The teacher then asked if she knew what came after ten and Amanda said, “Eight?”

You know how one minute you think you know exactly who you are and then something happens to show you that you’re somebody you don’t really recognize? Well that’s what Kindergarten Assessment did to me. One minute I was this totally laid back, low pressure, non-competitive you’ll get there when you get there kind of mom and the next minute I was - well, a crazy woman.

There I was sitting in a tiny little chair in the corner pretending to read a tiny little book while inside I was screaming, “Eight? Eight? EIGHT?!?” It was all I could do to just sit there and force myself not to turn into some obnoxious stage mother off to the side motioning like a lunatic to Amanda or loudly coughing “ELEVEN” into my hand… And then Amanda pulled the same routine with recognizing the letters of the alphabet and reversed the N & D in her name. While I’m thinking, “She KNOWS this stuff…I halfway expected Amanda to just whisper to the teacher, “Look, Mrs. P, my mommy didn’t send me to pre-school and my daddy doesn’t let me play with play-doh. I think we both know the direction my life is heading. Do you think I could take a quick smoke break to clear my head?”

Despite everything I’ve said to the contrary, the truth is Amanda did a great job at her assessment and the teacher said she had absolutely no doubt that she is ready for kindergarten. Highly questionable whether I am ready for kindergarten, but Amanda should do just fine.

As soon as we got outside I told Amanda what a great job she’d done, but couldn't resist asking her, “How do you spell your name?” “A-M-A-N-D-A“ Right, and what comes after ten?” “Eleven.” “And after eleven?” “Twelve.” “And after twelve?” “Thirteen.” “And…” “Mommy, can we go out for doughnuts?” “Okay.”

The Great Debate

When you start thinking about having kids there are all kinds of things you’re supposed to discuss and come to agreement on. How will you pay for them? How will you discipline them? What about religion? Education? Childcare?

What’s the one topic nobody ever warns you about?

Play-Doh.

At our house we’ve been arguing about Play-Doh. Here’s the thing… I LOVE Play-Doh. I love how it smells. I love how it feels. I love that it comes in so many fun colors. For me Play-Doh represents fun, creativity and endless possibilities. In my mind Play-Doh is critical to the childhood experience.

Scott, on the other hand, HATES Play-Doh. Play-Doh is messy. Play-Doh is stinky. Play-Doh is a choking hazard to the baby. Play-Doh is evil.

Huh? What? How can we possibly be talking about the same thing?

Did you know that it is difficult to argue about Play-Doh in an adult manner? They say one whiff of Play-Doh can make you feel like you’re right back in Kindergarten. In our case this seems to be true. When Scott said he didn’t want Play-Doh in the house I kept wanting to say: “Oh yeah? Well you’re not the boss of me!” And when I asked why he didn’t like Play-Doh he said, “Because, just because,” to which I wanted to respond: “Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna tell my mommy on you!”

Of course I can’t actually tell my mom. Because I know if I called her right now she would say, “I HATE Play-Doh.” It’s true that I might be in need of intense therapy regarding my Play-Doh issues. And of course I blame that on my mom and try to make her feel guilty about it whenever the opportunity arises. This seems like a good one so bear with me.

Play-Doh wasn’t allowed in our house when I was a kid. I longed for it; begged for it; put it on every Dear Santa list I ever wrote. But Play-Doh was off-limits until the day my friend, Stephanie Lysett, showed up to my sixth birthday party with the gift to top all other gifts, the Play-Doh Fuzzy Pumper Play Set. Yes!!! Mine, it was all mine, the best toy in the world! Or it would have been the best toy, if my mom had ever allowed me to play with it, that is. But I had these shelves in my room that went right up to the ceiling. And the very top shelf is where my Play-Doh lived, taunting me, torturing me from its cellophane wrapped box.

I’m sure I asked the question “Can I play with the Play-Doh today, Mom?” at least a billion times and I’m sure I risked breaking an arm or leg more than once to climb up and fetch the box so I could drool over it up close. But I was a goody-two-shoes and never dared to actually tear off the cellophane and play with it because I knew I’d be in big trouble. I don’t remember playing with that Play-Doh even once. Clearly I’ve been permanently scarred too. Hear that, Mom? Scarred. Permanently.

So fast-forward 30 years or so to when I hear my darling husband say things like, “NO Play-Doh. I don’t want to see it in the house ever again.” And my inner 6-year-old starts twitching. “Umm. ‘Scuse me? You’re kidding me right? Am I on Candid Camera? You can’t be serious. Did my mother put you up to this?”

But he was indeed serious and when I realized how much it bothered him I tried hard to be reasonable. I thought I would compromise and not let Amanda play with it in the house (well umm, at least not when he was around) but I brought it with us on our last camping trip and again, he flipped out. I responded with, “Yeah… you said no more Play-Doh in the house. We are not in the house.” But then I figured he was worried about the precious Eurovan. He can be kind of weird about The Van and I try to be sensitive. Because I suppose I’d get a little tense if he tried to use one of my scrapbooks as a coaster. So I put the Play-Doh away.

But the other day when I was desperately searching for something, I made the mistake of opening The Cabinet. The Cabinet is where all of the off-limit (and therefore most strongly-desired) toys are kept: the slippery high-heel princess shoes I’m afraid they’ll break their necks wearing, the washable paints that aren’t as washable as I would like, the annoying whistle, the toys that come with a hundred teeny-tiny choking hazard pieces, the toy hammer used mostly to bang on the furniture or each others' heads… and, of course, the Play-Doh.

I’m starting to think that when I open The Cabinet it emits some kind of low-decibel sound that only my children can hear. I honestly think that even if they were in a deep sleep the sound of The Cabinet would awaken them and bring them scampering as fast as they can to throw their little bodies in between the open door and The Cabinet making it impossible for me to close The Cabinet until they’ve made several emphatic requests. Alyssa starts pointing at the ball and chanting, “Bah, bah, BAH!” and Amanda screeches, “PLAY-DOH!!! Mommy, can I play with the Play-Doh, pleeeeeeeease Mommy?”

Since I can totally relate to the intense longing to play with Play-Doh and since I don't want Amanda to be Permanently Scarred like I am and since Scott was gone for a while I let Amanda play with some Play-Doh outside on the patio. I honestly didn’t think he would care since it was outside. But I was wrong.

She was still playing when he got home and… did I already mention that we seem to have a difficult time acting like grown-ups when it comes to this subject? Well I’m not even going to tell you about how he marched out to the table and picked up the tray of Play-Doh and unceremoniously dumped the entire thing into the trash while Amanda and I looked on in horror. I also won’t tell you about the tantrums that followed, except to say that Amanda was not the only one who had one.

We talked about it later and finally agreed that we would put the Play Doh on hold for a while since I can’t really argue the fact that it could be a choking hazard for Alyssa. Even though I didn’t let her near it… wait, I said I wouldn’t argue… So anyway, have to tell you my favorite part of the story…

While Amanda was playing with her Play-Doh I said, "Hey, what are you making?" and she said,

"I'm building a toilet for the birds because I'm so sick of them pooping on my slide!"

If you ask me, this is exactly the kind of creative thinking that our world needs more of...The kind of thinking that is encouraged and nurtured by a lump of fragrant, neon-colored, moldable dough. Just think, maybe 30 years down the line Amanda will be telling her children, "You'll never believe this but when I was young, birds pooped anywhere they wanted! Thank goodness for Play-Doh."

If anyone is actually reading this blog I would love to hear your comments. Especially if you have any persuasive arguments for why the Play-Doh ban should be lifted. Come on people, help save the Play-Doh!

*Photo of Amanda taken in November, before the start of the Great Play-Doh Ban