I thought I’d show y’all this picture of Sean when he was about a year old so that you might realize that letting him ride his bike on the front lawn without a helmet is not even close to the most questionable of my parenting practices.

And now you can say, “Well at least I never let my baby hang off the front of the oven!” and go away feeling better about your own parenting. I am here to serve. My gift to you.

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Note: Creative cropping people, creative cropping. And, the oven is not ON because, Hello!? Safety first.

One of the many many delicious things about having a four-year-old about the house is that you can really get away with yankin’ their little chain, because, you know, they are only four and they’ll believe almost anything you tell them.

I know. I know. It really says something about you when you can trick a four-year-old.

On the other hand, I once convinced my Cousin Cheryl that I had won a trip to Zimbabwe in a random drawing when I purchased some luggage at Foley’s. None of it was true – no luggage, no drawing, no trip to Zimbabwe. I don’t even know why I brought it up. At that moment, it just seemed like fun to yank Cheryl around a little and luggage came to mind. It almost made me sad when I had to tell her the truth a day or so later. She used to live in Africa and I think she was trying to figure out how she was going to go with me.

It’s kind of thrilling to see if you can come up with just the right detail and insert it in just the right spot with just the right amount of nonchalance to convince the victim and then gauge their expression to see if they are buying into it.

I also once convinced AD for more than a week that Rhode Island was named after my mother’s ancestors who came to America in the 1700s. My mother’s ancestors did come to America in the 1700s but so far as we know, no one named a state after them, even a small one. (He just reminded me that he recently convinced me the remote control was voice activated. For a full five minutes I was talking into the TV remote saying, “Volume up! Volume up!”  So you see, it works both ways.)

Be that as it may – story telling or chain-yankin’ as the case may be is one of my many non-income producing talents and makes me very popular and well-loved among family and friends as you might well imagine.

And now I have a four-year-old to mess with (rubbing hands gleefully).

This morning, Sean slept in a little later than usual and so I took the opportunity to make some muffins. When he finally got up and followed his nose to the kitchen they were done and sitting on the stove cooling.

“Oh mommy, did you make muffins?” he asked.

And I could not stop myself.

“These? No I didn’t make these.”

“Well, who did?”

“Well, funny you should ask,” I said with just the right degree of nonchalance.

“I was here in the kitchen working on my computer at my desk, when I heard a little bell in the distance. Sounded just like an ice cream truck and I thought, ‘That’s weird, an ice cream truck this time of day?’ but I didn’t think anything more about it and I went right back to my computer.

Well, the next thing you know, I heard a little tap tap tap at the kitchen window and I looked up and there was a little round man wearing a white hat standing in the shrubs and motioning me to the window. I raised the window just a bit and oh my goodness, the sweet smell of something filled the air, like cake or cookies or something. ‘Yes?’ I asked him, ‘Are you here to check the meter?’ ‘No ma’am’ he said ‘I’m the muffin man and I was wondering if you’d like some muffins.’ ‘Why yes!’ I told him, ‘My little boy loves muffins! What kind do you have?’ He said he had blueberry and bran and so I said we would take six of each.

Well, he walked down the driveway to his little white truck and when he opened up the two little doors in the back – oh my! The aroma of fresh baked muffins filled the entire neighborhood! The smell was so captivating that the birds fell right off the telephone lines. He had a little bitty bakery right in the back of his truck! Can you imagine such a thing?! Well, he came back with the muffins and I handed him some money through the window. I turned to set them down and when I looked up to thank him he was gone but for the sound of a little bell in the distance.”

Sean cocked his head and squinched one eye shut. “Are you teasin’ me?” he asked skeptically.

“Sean,” I said, “I would not tease about something as serious as muffins.”

“I think you’re teasing,” he said.

Then he got up and looked out the front window.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, I scooped Sean out of the barstool he was sitting in at the breakfast bar and spirited him off to the kitchen counter to wipe blueberry goo from his face and hands and legs before he ran off to spread blueberry goo throughout the kingdom. 

As I carried him around the breakfast bar, he clasped his sticky blue hands behind my neck and wrapped his long legs around my waist and tried to plant  bluberry kisses on my nose which I pretended to rebuff. 

I looked into his blueberry blue eyes and thought about how I used to sit him on the counter in a blue feeding chair and sing silly made-up songs to him to get him to eat.  He would laugh a toothless laugh and then open his mouth wide like a hungry baby bird.  My spirit would float up to the ceiling as light as a feather to think that I had made him laugh.

Now he feeds himself and my made-up silly songs annoy him more than amuse him. 

At that moment I was hit by that invisible chest crushing blow that I sometimes get when I realize that I am no longer a new mom and he is no longer a new boy.  That season of our lives is over.

I plopped him down on the counter and began rubbing blue residue off his hands and face and legs with a wet washcloth.

“Oh Sean,” I sighed, “I’d like to put you back in my tummy and do it all over again.  Only this time I’d do it better,” I said.  “I know what I’m doing now.”  I allowed myself to retreat to a quiet place in my mind as I scrubbed and imagine the joy of doing it all again and the mistakes I wouldn’t make.

Just then the air was pierced with a jarring yelp.

“Ow!” he screamed. “Stop rubbin’ Mom! That’s not blueberries!  That’s my boo boo!”

I had rubbed a little scab off his ankle and it was bleeding.

Huh. Whadya know. Looked like blueberry goo to me.

Or then again, maybe I still don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s a particular little boy that Sean plays with sometimes who I would describe as “all boy”.  He is a bit more rough and tumble than Sean and uses language that we don’t use  try not to use don’t approve of at our house.

Periodically, Sean will tell me he doesn’t like playing with Billy and then gives me an earful of what kinds of things this little guy says.  With great judgment and condemnation Sean reports that Billy calls him a poo poo head and says idiot and butt and that he doesn’t like that.

He looks to me for agreement.

I can see in his face he wants me to jump on his bandwagon and say, “Yeah! That Billy!”  But I don’t say it. Out loud.  He then folds his arms across his chest with a harrumph, furrows his brow and pokes out his bottom lip to demonstrate the disdain he has for Billy.

I stop what I’m doing and look into his face.  “Well Sean, some people use those kinds of words, but we don’t.  We don’t think those are nice words,” I tell him.

“Well I’m not going to play with him anymore!” he says and harrumphs his arms to his chest again, this time adding a little foot stomp for effect.

“You know Sean, sometimes it’s better to continue to play with someone and just try to be a good example by being kind and not using ugly words,” I tell him.  As I say this, I realize it’s asking a lot of a four-year-old.  

And then I add, “But sometimes, you just have to find someone else to play with.”

He considers this for a moment.

“Well the next time he calls me a poo poo head, I’m just going to strut away!”

The mental image of Sean Travolta strutting across the playground made me laugh.

And then the mental image of a strutting Christian made me queasy.

When I was growing up, my mother fixed my brothers and me a hot breakfast every day before school — usually an egg and toast, sometimes a bowl of oatmeal. Never cold cereal.   Breakfast bars hadn’t been invented yet.

My mother isn’t one to look down upon or feel superior to others, but she definitely frowned upon women who sent their kids to school on an empty stomach.  Still does.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Then happy hour.

Consequently, I am in the 50% of the population who likes to eat something of a morning.  Consequently, I try to get my child to eat something of a morning. Unfortunately, he seems to be in the 50% of the population, along with Antique Daddy, who don’t want to eat anything before noon.  Weirdos.

Yet, every morning I get up, I make eggs and toast, or pancakes, or sometimes I even offer him a cereal bar, trying to get him to eat breakfast, trying to squish him into the me-shaped box.  Then after breakfast, I scrape the untouched eggs and toast into the trash and pour his cold coffee down the drain.

And then I frown upon myself for sending my kid to school without breakfast.

Late last fall, my friend Jennifer signed up Sean and her little girl for Soccer Tots and last night was his first time to go.

You might wonder why someone else signed up my child for soccer and the reason is simple. Jennifer is a young and energetic mother and I am not. Jennifer is hip to the mothering scene and knows about this kind of stuff and I do not.  Plus, she is tall and I am intimidated by tall people, so I am powerless to say no to her.

Prior to this soccer tots thing, I have not involved Sean in any organized sports. I didn’t know I was supposed to involve my child in involvement type activities.  They didn’t mention anything about soccer at the hospital when they handed him over, so how was I to know?

So for the past four years, I have been perfectly happy leading a soccer-free existence and just playing Legos with him at home in the den.  Apparently this is bad.  A number of other mothers with whom I have shared this information retracted in horror that I would disadvantage my child in such a way!  If he ends up in jail, clearly it’s my fault.  Exhibit A will feature a picture of me in my pink chenille robe looking like Lindsay Lohan on a bender with the following bullet points:

•  Didn’t care enough to sign him up for soccer until he was four.
•  Let him play with fungicide and prescription medication. 
•  Lied to him about ugly rugs. 

His only hope is a jury of soccer moms. 

Perhaps subconsciously I have been avoiding the organized sports thing and I don’t really know why.  I just have the feeling that I am not really soccer mom material. For one thing, I don’t have a minivan.

For another thing, my generation was not driven across town to play with other children. My generation was sent outside to play and told not to come back before dark. We didn’t play soccer. We played with firecrackers and jumped our bikes off of homemade ramps without wearing helmets. Good wholesome activities.

Having said all that, we took Sean to soccer and he had a great time.  All the little children ran up and down the field chasing the ball like a little school of clueless gold fish.  It was adorable.  And he really seemed to enjoy playing with people who do not have AARP subscriptions, so there was that.

He was so happy it nearly made me weep.  But not nearly as much as writing out a check for $217 for something that my generation used to do for free.

You know, you might think that as older parents of an only child, that we would go all out and give Sean one of those over the top birthday parties.  If you think that, you would be wrong.  So very wrong.  And not for the reasons you might think. It’s not because we are taking a stand on rampant materialism and the message it sends or because our ideals are so high.  It’s because our energy level is so low.

It takes energy to put on a shindig, energy that could be better spent trying to remember where we put the remote control.

Therefore, Sean got a generic birthday cake upon which I smooshed a small Lightning McQueen car and the “4” candle that was left over from my birthday cake last year. And he was thrilled. And then the next week, when we had to do the cake thing again – I used the same car and the same candle. And he was thrilled again.

That there folks, is the beauty of being four.

Last year, Gigi bought Sean a pair of cowboy boots for his birthday and he was thrilled with them.  They just fit. But they wouldn’t for long. So the next week I took them back and exchanged them for the next size. By then he had forgotten about them, so I wrapped them up for Christmas. And guess what?  On Christmas morning, he was thrilled with his new boots.  Short term memory is cute when you are four. When you are in your forties? Not so cute.

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If I can get the icing off the wheels, I think the Lightning McQueen car will make a nice stocking stuffer. 

When Sean expressed an interest in my camera the other day, I briefly showed him how to use it and then I handed it to him and told him to take off, go crazy, go take some pictures and then come back and we’d take a look at them. 

When I looked at his pictures, I noticed Mr. Monkey wore a disapproving expression, much like the Disapproving Rabbits, thus inspiring Sean’s first photography show:

“Mr. Monkey Disapproves – A Retrospective”

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Mr. Monkey disapproves of other toys.

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Mr. Moneky disapproves of baseball.

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Mr. Monkey disapproves of stripes.

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Mr. Monkey disapproves of old lady with washing machine.

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Mr. Monkey disapproves of blog readers.

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Mr. Monkey disapproves of bearded guys who read the newspaper on the sofa.

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The artist and his muse.

Anytime Sean wants to do something knowingly forbidden, he will deem it a “special b’ccasion” thereby officially suspending all rules, regulations and common sense.

The morning after Halloween, he bounces out of bed and announces, “Mom, I’m going to have M&Ms for breakfast today because it’s a special b’cassion!”  And then he cocked his head and wrinkled his nose making it seem like a completely reasonable thing to do.  And nearly impossible to say no.

And then I had to explain that no, a special b’cassion is like a birthday or out of town visitors or PMS — not Thursday.  But being the total pushover-spineless-jellyfish-wrapped-around-his-finger mother that I am, I let him have a few M&Ms after he ate breakfast.  Life is short people, you have to take a calculated risk once in a while and by my calculations chasing a bowl of oatmeal with a few M&Ms was a risk worth taking.

Last night we were lying in his bed reading books before bedtime and he asked me if I would sleep in his bed with him.

I told him no, that he has his own bed and mommy and daddy have their own bed and that everyone sleeps in their own bed.

“But it’s a special b’ccasion,” he pleaded.

“No, it’s not a special b’ccasion, it’s just Sunday,” I countered.

“But Mommy, every day with you is a special b’ccasion!” he enthused, channeling Eddie Haskell.   

“And might I just say those are lovely sweats you are wearing mother and I would hasten to add that you’ve never looked younger,” he declared.

No, not really. He didn’t say that. He didn’t actually use the word hasten.

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To mark this very special b’ccasion, why not go here and vote! For me! (Their pages are loading verrry slowly today – probably all the Amalah readers hogging up the bandwidth.)

There are two things as a parent that I don’t tolerate very well.  Well actually there are many more than two, but in the interest of my short attention span, let’s just go with two for now.

The first thing is disobedience of the willful variety and the other is disrespect of any variety.  There is just something about a smart-mouthed rude child that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me and I must make it stop before my head explodes and boy what a mess of confetti that would be.

So far, Sean has been a pretty good boy in that regard, but as he approaches his fourth birthday, he is daily testing the boundaries, to see if they are the same as yesterday. And every day I am required to prove to him that indeed I have not given up, although about once a day it does cross my mind. Giving up and going out for happy hour instead.

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At any rate, now that Sean is potty trained – yes, that’s right, completely potty trained — we have been shopping for the bunk beds and the Corvette that I had promised him.   So just recently we found ourselves at the local furniture store where there was an antique truck parked in the lobby. He asked if he could go look at it and I agreed.  As he was standing on the running board and looking in the window, I called to him to turn around so I could take his picture.  He is in the anti-picture taking phase and what I thought I heard him say was “Oh be quiet!”

So I marched over to the truck and gave him a swat on his itty bitty behind and said in my stern don’t-mess-with-me mommy voice, “What did you say to me?”  And oh, the look of surprise on his face.  And hurt. With big round blue eyes, tears puddling up to the brim, he whispered, “I said can we buy it.”

Gulp!

Antique Schmuck.

I got down on one knee and I hugged him and told him that I had made a terrible mistake and that I was very very VERY sorry.  And then I asked him to please forgive me. He squeezed me tight around the neck and said, “That’s okay Mommy. I forgive you. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

Oh he has no idea how true that is.