Category Archives: Mommydom

A Hair Affair

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This is about hair. My hair. But allow me to begin with a parable.

I was going through my husband’s closet not too long ago and found his beloved USA pullover hanging there, awaiting the moment when 1995 would become retro-chic. I loved that pullover like I loved Bruce Willis. It was first-generation fleece—the kind Grandma uses to sew you a knock-off Snuggie. It had “USA” embroidered across the chest in big white letters, but the fleece was as flaming red as my husband’s Geo Tracker (yes, you read that right). I was always borrowing it because it smelled like Hugo Boss and Head & Shoulders. But like milk and “Party of Five,” most things have an expiration date. USA’s was past due.

“Honey, let it go,” I said, trying to pull USA from his grip.

“It’s Ralph Lauren!”

“It’s ugly.”

He considered this for a moment. Then held USA out in front of him and studied it. Then, suddenly, he saw the truth. He saw the light. He saw a sweatshirt my mother would kill to wear at the annual 4th of July party.

So what does a 90s pullover have to do with my hair? Hopefully nothing. But I’m going to let you be the judge of that.

See, I’ve been growing my hair out for over a year. And through this long, arduous process, I’ve gotten a little attached. I run my fingers through it constantly, I bathe it in Moroccan oil. I get it “trimmed” but never “cut.” But I’m worried that I’m turning into the Heidi Montag of hair and I won’t know when enough is enough. I’m worried that I’m wearing the USA pullover and no one has the decency to run interference.

Or maybe they have.

“Your hair—it’s so long.” I’ve heard it a lot lately. Not “beautiful.” Not “pretty.” It’s a statement of fact rather than quality. When you can’t ignore the elephant in the room, but you can’t say something nice, you simply state what is: “Now that’s a dress,” or “I see you colored your hair.”

So let me ask you this: is my hair too long? And how long is too long for a mom in her mid thirties? But let’s stay away from actual measurements because, one, I can’t measure, and two, I appear to have an extra vertebra or three in my neck. A 5” bob on the averaged-necked woman would look like a crew cut on me, so measurements don’t really translate. But where on the body does Kardashian glamour end and Crystal Gale kitsch begin? I look through magazines filled with long-locked women, their hair extending far past their shoulder blades. Then again, I also see adult onesies cut from zebra print.

And while I appreciate the spirit of “do whatever makes you happy,” that’s not the kind of advice I’m seeking. This isn’t about self-esteem; I feel good about myself with or without this much hair. I’m asking the equivalent of “ballet flats” or “platform heel,” “skinny” or “flared.” I’m asking because I don’t want to be the girl driving a Geo Tracker in 2011.

Is it the equivalent of an adult onesie?

Picture Day

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I don’t take good pictures. I’ve always been told I have a nice smile, but as soon as I sense a camera pointed in my direction, I turn all robotic. My mouth tenses, my eyes bug and I end up looking as if I’m being poked in the butt. I’ve tried all the tricks, like tilting my head, turning my chin down, applying Vaseline to my teeth. Nothing works. I’m like Bigfoot—the only good photo on record is a blurry one taken from a distance when I didn’t expect it.

My child sometimes shares my special gift, but only when it counts. And today is Picture Day at her school.

“Okay, smile!” I command her on our way out the door.

Cue the square-mouth, clenched-teeth, bug-eyed grin. She looks like a badger. A cute badger with a little beauty mark.

“Um, try to relax.”

Her face droops, her mouth and eyes leading the way. To my horror she even pulls her chin to her neck making her look as if she has a severe overbite.

“Okay, not that relaxed.”

She settles somewhere in between, which also isn’t pretty. But at least I’ll know what her mug shot will look like when she gets arrested at 3 AM in Hollywood after a 36-hour bender.

I give up and decide to focus my efforts elsewhere: on her hair. I have hair, but I know very little about hairstyling. I do know that a portrait with our usual go-to ponytail will make Ava look hairless. So I try a side ponytail to the left. Then to the right. Then I scrap it and go for some hair pulled up with a bow.  We drive to school and I stare at her in the rearview mirror wondering what the hell was I thinking.

I know it’s just a picture. I know she’s only five. But I also know that those dumb headshots float around in overstuffed drawers mixed with phonebooks, cap-less pens and foreign coins for years until one day you become famous and your one-time friend from sixth grade pulls out the class photo of you in a tie-dyed cat sweater, pink-foil lipstick and braces—which also happens to be the only proof that you once sported a perm—and sells it to E! for $1.2 million.

Who’s the crazy mom now, huh?

I adjust her collar, slick her eyebrows with spit and remind her to “be relaxed, just not too relaxed,” and send her own her way. She bops happily along oblivious to the fact that I want to chase her down and try hog-tying her into some pigtails. But it’s too late. My “Mommy Dearest” opportunity has passed. Now it’s up to the guy behind the counter, whom I’ll later learn had my child pose like a pinup and give a “sparkle smile!”

After school, she shows me her “sparkle smile.” It doesn’t sparkle. It doesn’t even flicker. A perfect combination of relaxed, but not too relaxed. It’s a straight-mouthed, deadpan look well suited for any terminator.

Oh well, . . . I’ll be back.

In case you didn't believe me...

The New PTA

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My parents belonged to my elementary school’s PTA. Them and about five others. I don’t what they actually did at the PTA meetings because they were held behind the closed doors of the faculty lounge that reeked of stale coffee, cigarettes and boredom. Kids weren’t allowed; we were sent to roam the dark halls of our tiny school, vandalizing the bathrooms by tossing the gritty pink soap around like fairy dust. Eventually we’d find our way to the gym where we’d swing plastic beaded jump ropes around like a helicopter blades until it inevitably wrapped around someone’s neck.

Those were the good old days. Those were the days when PTA involvement meant something—namely that your child had a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I vandalized my fifth-grade classroom during a PTA meeting. I switched the contents of my fellow classmates’ desks. I powered the room with chalk dust. I may have even “borrowed” my teacher’s oversized Disneyland pencil—the kind so long, that the eraser end beat against your forehead as you wrote. I was called into the Principal’s office the next morning and I admitted everything. It was perhaps the greatest crime ever committed during my tenure at Sunnyland Elementary and I got off with a warning.

My dad built the playground. He hand carved the school’s sign. My mom owned and operated the cotton candy machine that was the highlight of the school’s annual Halloween party. Owning that machine was equivalent to having a Ferris wheel in your backyard.

My point is, I realized at a young age what the PTA really stood for: Protecting The Assets. So this year I promptly handed over $5 to Ava’s elementary school to secure my membership in a club that I thought would guarantee my pig-tailed asset special treatment.

Yeah, me and 1,400 other people.

“Were we supposed to dress up?” Ray lamented as we pulled into the school parking lot bustling with families looking as if they came directly from a SEARS portrait sitting.

Dress up? In 1982, all you had to do was show up.

Yes, times have changed. Today numerous letters and emails are sent home, inviting parents to the meeting. In the good ol’ days you invited only the people you liked and you did so by untraceable means: word-of-mouth. And now there’s an itinerary, a guest speaker, a Powerpoint presentation with clip art from Windows 95 and, worst of all, the use of parliamentary procedure. Nothing seems more out of place than parliamentary procedure conducted in an overcrowded gymnasium that looks and sounds like the mall softplay on a Furlough day. See, parents are “encouraged” to bring their children to the meeting, but their children are not encouraged to roam freely, set fires in garbage cans or stuff paper towels into the sink drains. Instead, children are encouraged to sit quietly in a roomful of their peers and endure sixty minutes of parentspeak.  Needless to say, only those placated by smart-phone technology succeed.

I took notes. I smiled and nodded attentively at the guest speaker hoping he would see me from the nosebleed section and later ask my name, write it down and pass it up the chain. The woman in front of me played on her phone. Some yelled at their children to give their phones back so they could play Angry Birds. Most talked amongst themselves. I wanted to revoke their membership rights then and there. I wanted to take back the PTA night—directly back to 1982.

Mostly I wanted to run to the closet and pull out a beaded jump rope and hang myself with it, but I’m sure like everything else those ropes have been replaced by better and safer cloth versions that feel warm and fuzzy around your neck. I don’t want warm and fuzzy. I want cutthroat.

PTA today is like Facebook. Anybody can join. This parental over-saturation only means one thing: my child is one of many. A pleb. A cog in the machine. A part of a—gasp!—democracy.

Where’s the favoritism? The bias? Is nepotism really dead?

No, in spite of what I’ve seen, I still believe it is alive and well. And it comes in the form of a cotton candy machine.

 

The Answer to the PTA Problem

 

“Car-Riders” Cluster

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While our elementary-school children are still in the throes of gluing macaroni to paper and counting dried beans, cars line up two-by-two in “Car-Riders” to wait for the last bell of the day, which won’t happen for another 55 minutes. In that time, the children will master that day’s “sight words” and fill up on their share of paste while I stare mindlessly into the ass of the car in front of me with a bumper sticker that reads, “If you’re not the lead dog, the view doesn’t change.”

When Ava started kindergarten I had no idea that I’d be spending approximately 9,000 minutes waiting in my car. I hate waiting, and I’ve never been good at it. I clench my molars, breathe rapidly and scrunch my shoulders up to my ears. I know psychosis has set in when I start to do math equations (I’m an English major). The other mid-pack parents (parents in cars 30 through 60) look as anxious as I do, their hands gripping the wheel and their eyes darting wildly to anticipate the moves of the worst kind of parent: the illegal jumper/merger.

I don’t see waiting as an opportunity to slow down and enjoy feeling “present” in my day. I don’t want to be present while trapped in a car calculating the gallons of gas I’m burning up. I want to be present while lying by the pool with a dewy glass of sangria in my hand.

I cleaned my glove compartment on the first day. I organized my CDs on the second and my parking change on the third. By day four, I was so desperate for something to do, I strung together a necklace from the Cheerios stuck to the back of my seat. All I can really do is obsess about how stupid it is that I’m sitting in line—again.

The first day of school I got in line too late and was one of the last parents to pick up her kindergartner. I know because my daughter said so in between her sobs. So I vowed that I would do better, which means getting to Car-Riders before Ava’s friend, Gabrielle, is picked up. I’ve tried at least six different routes. I’ve tried the left line. I’ve tried the right. Her mom lives down the street, so I can see when she leaves. Inevitably, I’m always behind Gabrielle’s mom even when I leave five minutes before her.

I am a mutant. One of the X-Men. My power is the ability to pick the slowest line on the planet.

I will choose the shortest checkout line in Target and without fail the person in front of me will need to get a price, exchange a faulty item, or worst of all, write a check. You know the kind—the woman who waits until all her merchandise is rung up and then she acts surprised when she hears the total as if she wasn’t sure if she’d have to pay this time. She then digs for a pen in the pharmacy she calls a purse. But of course she doesn’t have ID, because in the past—where she is from—you didn’t need it. So unless you arrived at Target in a Delorean, step aside.

But she doesn’t. She appears before me in every line I ever stand in. Like she is stalking me from 1985.

Today was different, however. By some act of God (a lady with cash and exact change!), I found myself in the coveted position of car #15. I took a minute to survey the landscape from my new vantage point. The finish line was already within sight. There was no threat of jumpers or mergers. We were like thoroughbreds lined up in the stall just waiting for the gates to fly open. The other parents had content, Zen-like expressions on their faces.

Sure getting there early cost me an extra ten minutes, but not once did I calculate how that extra time would figure into the year’s total. Instead, I rolled down the window, turned off the car and began to write.

It felt like only seconds before I saw Ava walk out to the curb and wave to me. I guess that’s all I really wanted—to get my baby back in my arms. To know that she wasn’t put in the wrong car and shipped down to Florida. It’s not a bad system, but I also think a retina-scan is a reasonable means for identification. I need a photo ID to buy Sudafed, but all I need to pick my kid up from school is a piece of card stock with her name written with a Sharpie.

But being up front felt good. Like flying first-class and getting stuck on the tarmac. You don’t care because there’s an open bar. I imagined I was surrounded by parents who have it all figured out. They’re the ones who remember to cut the crust off the bread and put their kids in tennis shoes rather than ballet flats on gym day. Their children have spots reserved for them at Harvard or Yale. It feels good to be in the presence of greatness—so good that waiting suddenly doesn’t feel so bad.

Mom’s First Day of Kindergarten

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Ava has spent the last six months assuring me that she will hate kindergarten. I’ve spent just as long trying to convince her otherwise.

“You’ll have a new playground!”

“I’ll get hurt.”

“You’ll meet new friends!”

“I hate new friends.”

“You’ll have so much fun.”

“I’m gonna cry my eyes out every day.”

This past Monday was the first day of school and you can imagine my panic. I was prepared to watch my child collapse into hysterics when I handed her over to the strangers who never signed a contract in blood promising they will do everything in their power to love and protect my child.

She woke up in a great mood. Like, Christmas morning good mood. For the first time in her bi-pedal years she got dressed without complaining that her outfit—a uniform—was itchy, too hot, or “boy colors.” On the way to school she said, “I’m nervous about school. But I want to go.”

Praise God.

She never looked back. And it was a good thing because if she had, she would’ve seen the tears in my eyes and the gaping hole where my heart used to be.

I hate kindergarten.

I drop my child off at a building filled with 700 students. All I really know about her teacher is that she wears colored contacts. All she really knows about me is that I’m a crazy person. Take Day 3 for example. Ava had about ten mosquito bites. She doesn’t react well to them; she claws at her skin like a cat with tape on its back. I told her that I’d send her to school with some “StingEze” but she said I couldn’t because it was against the rules.

“What’s against the rules? Feeling better?”

Apparently. I had put a Band-Aid in Ava’s bag in case she got a blister from her new shoes, but her teacher told her she couldn’t get it; she’d be fine without it. She was “fine” in the sense that we didn’t need to amputate a gangrenous foot, but I’m pretty sure she was uncomfortable. What kind of place is this anyway? I imagined a room full of 5-year-olds, hot, hungry and hovering over dangerous machines, stitching together soccer balls.

But my baby has bug bites. So, armed with maternal madness and a tiny bottle of StingEze, I faced Cerberus.

“I just have a quick question…”

She was nice about it. Too nice. She instructed me to give “the medicine” to the school nurse. If Ava needs it, she’ll have to go see the nurse. I wanted to explain that toothpaste is more toxic than StingEze, but decided not to push my luck.

So I went to the nurse’s office and filled out a lengthy form about StingEze. As I was looking for the emergency number to Ava’s pediatrician, another parent walked in. Before I could explain the possible uses and application procedures for Stingeze, the nurse asked the other parent in line what he needed.

“My son is allergic to strawberries and shellfish. Here’s an Epi-Pen in case he goes into anaphylactic shock.”

It took me an hour to realize the error of my ways: that a bug bite and certain death were not comparable. Yes, in a mere three days, I had become that mom. Maybe I always was. My child has been a bit sheltered. My husband tells her not to run on cement because he’s afraid she’ll fall. She wakes in the middle of the night, asking me to put the covers back on her. Maybe some independence is good for her.

Actually, it’s great for her. She likes school. She likes the rules and the organization. I can see that her newfound independence gives her confidence. She’s proud of what she can endure—blisters and bug bites—and proud of what she can do. Which happens to be all the things I used to do for her.

I didn’t expect kindergarten to be this hard—on me, that is. But, it’s also not really about me anymore. And I suppose that’s the hardest part.

Today, on Day 4, she brought home a picture she drew in art class.

“It’s a picture of me sitting on a bench thinking about you.”

Well, I guess it’s still a little bit about me.

When Words Fall Short

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“A little girl and her family are coming to stay with the neighbors,” my mother-in-law announced to Ava. “She’s from another country and doesn’t speak English.”

Ava has had one other experience with a non-English speaker. She was 3 at the time. His name was Alexander and he lived in the South of France. At first Ava spoke to him as if he were deaf and when that failed, she found success using the international language of mime.

“Where’s she from?” Ava asked.

“Sweden, I think.”

As it turns out, the little girl is from Denmark, not Sweden, which is a little like confusing Valveeta for Brie de Meaux , but more culturally insensitive. I know less about Denmark than I do about Sweden (for the longest time I thought “Sweden” was an abbreviation for “Switzerland”). I’m pretty the country produces finely crafted chairs, highly functional if not always fashionable shoes and, I’m assuming, a damn good jelly-filled pastry.

Turns out, they also make really cute kids.

Sarah has long brown hair, a wide, easy smile and dimples that are so deep they seem tethered to her heart.

“Hi,” she greeted Ava, blushing.

“Hey, she speaks the same language I do!” my child said, visibly disappointed.

Sarah’s father explained to me that she can say “hello” and count to 10 in English. I guess at 5 years old that’s the minimum requirement to start a conversation because from that moment on it appeared as if our two little girls did in fact speak the same language. Except that they didn’t.

I’m not really surprised. See, Ava has this embarrassing habit of thinking she’s multilingual. Once while grocery shopping, she overheard another family speaking Spanish. So she began to speak Spanish, perhaps in hopes that this other family would hear her and be impressed. I do not know Spanish, but I’m pretty sure, “Shiska munna moy katatay,” is not it. Needless to say, the family was not impressed.

I knew it was just a matter of time before Ava tested out her Danish. The two girls had been playing in the other room for some time when Ava came to me whining that she wanted the crown Sarah was wearing. When I informed Ava that our guest was welcome to any of the 30 crowns she pleased, my daughter responded, “Fine. Then I’ll just ask her for it myself.”

Yeah, you do that.

“Shushka mona ma fa,” Ava declared to Sarah in all seriousness.

And damn if that kid didn’t hand over the crown.

International Friends

Later, Ava and Sarah reappeared to perform a song and dance for the parents. Sarah sang a song that her father translated as being “something about an impolite horse.” Then Ava broke into song, but it wasn’t in English. In fact, it sounded downright Danish.

“Furshka munschka fah treh la!”

“Wow, that’s good!” Sarah’s father said.

It is? I hadn’t mentioned the crown situation, thinking it absurd that Ava could speak Danish. But if she could, I was positioned to put Ava’s hair into two braids, throw suspenders on her and rename her “Heidi.” (Oh, wrong country?)

“She’s actually speaking Danish?” I asked, though I admit it sounded more like a statement than a question.

Sarah’s father smiled at me and I felt the slightest (and probably deserving) sting of mockery.

“Not so much.”

Right. Okay. But the point is my little girl doesn’t let a little thing like language stand in the way of what is clearly a perfect friendship. Too often we use perceived differences as an excuse to keep ourselves isolated from others. Age, ethnicity, education, language—sure, these differences may pose difficulties. But sometimes these difficulties might be worth pushing past in order to see what else is there. For all intents and purposes, the two girls were separated at birth. They both love princesses, butterflies, singing and changing their clothes 3,000 times. With so many similarities, it makes sense that they could communicate without a shared language. Besides, Ava’s worldly. She has international tastes. She’s one hell of a mime.

Food Fight

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Parents with kids who eat anything that’s served to them pat themselves on the back for teaching their kids to be “good eaters.” I, however, find myself constantly apologizing for my “bad eater”—a child with very specific culinary tastes.

The South has been pretty accommodating. There’s always French fries or white bread with butter to fall back on. But it’s been particularly hard spending the summer in the Pacific Northwest—a place that requires an advanced degree in environmental science just to figure out the recycling bins. Sure the restaurants offer the classics on their kids’ menu, but they’re always messing with success.

The other day, I found myself asking, “Do you have anything other than all-natural peanut butter? And what about bread without nuts or green flakes?”

The server looked at me as if I’d just stabbed a baby seal with a non-compostable straw. “Our peanut butter is very healthy and those ‘green flakes’ are rosemary.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll eat just about anything. In fact, I personally love my bread nutted and herbed and I’ve offered it to my child many times. To which Ava politely responds, “No thank you, Mommy.”

Her finicky food issues give my farm-raised father an embolism.

“Just try it!” he yelled tonight at dinner, shaking a coconut-encrusted prawn in her face.

“No thank you, Papa,” she said, happily drenching her dinosaur-shaped nugget in ketchup.

“How do you know you don’t like it if you don’t try it?!”

I asked my husband—another “safe” eater—the same thing many years ago, to which he responded: “I don’t have to taste a turd to know I don’t like it.”

He has a point. I don’t have to try jeggins on to know they weren’t made for me. I don’t have to get a bob to know that my head is shaped like a pin. I should take comfort in the fact that my daughter knows what she likes, even if that means she believes she’s “allergic” to salad. I should, but I can’t, because every time my child requests a second cup of ketchup or screams “Ickies!!!” whenever she spots a speck of onion discernable only to her or a microscope, some mom of a kid who probably eats soft-boiled eggs and stinky cheese tisk-tisks in disapproval.

I wish everyone would just lay off the force feeding. Ava’s not malnourished. She’s not overweight. She knows the difference between healthy foods and unhealthy foods and she usually makes the right choice. In fact, unlike me, she has a very healthy relationship with food. Growing up, I was told I had to eat everything on my plate—and I did, with enthusiasm. I still do, regardless of my appetite. I learned to eat what was served to me, rather than listen my body’s cues. It was considered impolite to do otherwise. Even tonight, I grabbed a few grapes an hour before dinner and Dad said, “If you eat all that and you aren’t going to eat your dinner.”

All that? I wanted to say I’m hungry. I wanted to say I’m 34. But instead I just said, “Dad, if grapes actually filled me up, I’d be a lot skinnier.”

Ava, on the other hand, is incredibly in tune with her body and her appetite. Rarely will she clean her dinner plate—she stops when she’s had enough. But the same goes for dessert. Let her loose on an entire carton of ice cream and she’ll take a few bites and then announce she’s full. So restrained! So self-aware! So French!

Sure, she only eats the frosting, but it's better than the whole cupcake, right?

Granted, she’s a little high maintenance. She knows what she wants and those wants are often very specific. If she asks for “pasta and parmesan with just a little bit of sauce —and leave the noodles long, please,” she will eat it. Sometimes the nuggets need to be cut, sometimes left whole. Sometimes the ketchup goes under the hot dog; sometimes it goes on top.

Look, at some point we need to honor each other’s particular likes and dislikes. My dad likes his broccoli firm but not crunchy—a distinction only he understands. When he eats fish and chips, he requires two vats of tartar sauce and a lemon tree.

Hey pot, I’d like you to meet my little kettle.

In Remeberance of the 4th of July

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The Loot

Over the past week, I’ve been reflecting on the Fourth of July. With each passing year, Ava seems to enjoy the celebration more and more. This year I even tried to explain what all the hoopla was about—and subsequently realized that I need a refresher in American history.

“The holiday celebrates the birth of our country,” I said.

“But how does he know it’s his birthday?” Ava asked.

“Our country isn’t a person. It’s a place.”

“Then how can it have a birthday?”

It only got worse from there. See, in Ava’s mind, we live in a global village. Seemingly arbitrary boundaries don’t make sense. For example, drawing a line in the ground between the monkey bars and the teeter-totter doesn’t hold much water in a 5-year-old’s mind. “Home” is a little red house at the end of a cul-de-sac; anything bigger than that is simply outer space.

So I did what any professor backed into a corner would do: I redirected.

“We get to have fireworks and fireworks are awesome!”

“And snakes too?!”

Ava adores those black sulfur-smelling pellets that grow into smoldering tubes of ash. Ray shelled out $5 to the Kiwanis fireworks stand. Back in the day when we bought illegal fireworks on the Reservation, a $5 box of fireworks would get your hand blown off.

Growing up, I learned to respect explosives. Unfortunately, I garnered this information by watching my father make a number of potentially fatal (or at least dismembering) errors. Rules like alcohol and fireworks don’t mix (namely because alcohol is flammable) and what goes up must come down (and at the same velocity) have really helped me out over the years.

My ample experience with explosives should have better prepared me for last week, but I think it just made me cocky. And subsequently, stupid.

Ava and I were cuddled up on a bench about 5-feet from where my husband placed little bombs into a tube and lit them, launching them at 200 mph into a beautiful spray of light. I figured we had the best seats in the house until I remembered the time my dad ignited a 100-shot firework ON ITS SIDE. Screeching red rockets chased my sister and me like a swarm of angry hornets . Mom wouldn’t talk to Dad until the welts on our arms healed.

So Ava and I moved to safety. From our perch I watched the fireworks display while she danced with a flashlight. Five hundred dollars worth of explosives and my kid prefers a AA battery-operated mini-light . I guess I should count myself lucky that she doesn’t want to fire a rocket from between her teeth “just to see.”

Me, singing the praises of fireworks

Unlike Dad, my husband—a.k.a. Captain America—is all about safety. He won’t hold a roman candle in his hand just because there’s a sticker on it that says, “Do not hold.”

“We need to keep a bucket of water nearby,” he explained. “Just in case.”

We shoot fireworks off the dock at his parents’ house. “In case the lake dries up?”

Inevitably, something went wrong. An errant rocket ignited a multi-shot brick that sat on the top of our 2-ton stack of unlit fireworks. Everyone screamed. Captain American froze. But the girl who has grown up dodging death in the form of an over-sized, non-regulation sparkler (if you’re paying attention, you’ll know that’s me) came to the rescue. I snatched the firing brick from the top of the stack and placed it a safe distance away.

I saved the Fourth of July. Or so I thought. It took all night to set off those fireworks. We eventually had to stop because the sun was coming up. Ava was so exhausted, she cried herself to sleep. We could’ve enjoyed one fantastic minute of explosive beauty. Instead, we endured six hours of active labor.

Ava with her "safe and sane" sparker

Spoiling on a Dime

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Not too long ago, one of Ava’s little friends shared a secret with me, “My mommy says that Ava gets whatever she wants.”

Some parents may take offense to this, but it’s not exactly untrue.

Ava has a lot of stuff. She has a complete drum set, three guitars and a keyboard. She has enough Superheroes to end the war and she could hold a fairytale rodeo with the amount of unicorns she possesses. They come in a variety of sizes; the smallest one accommodates Batgirl whereas Ava can ride the largest (and most freakish) one. Not kidding. My favorite is her recently acquired Build-A-Bear unicorn. It wears a kimono, strap-on wings and pink, high-topped roller skates, which makes perfect sense in the Build-A-Bear world of infinite excess.

Ava and her bounty

But it’s easy to spoil Ava with a herd of unicorns when I’m not shelling out hundreds of dollars to do it. That’s right, I buy stuffed animals second (third and sometimes fourth) hand at yard sales. My sister thinks it’s disgusting. I think it’s recycling.

“Aren’t you worried about bugs?” she asks.

Not so much. As a general rule, I buy the freshest fare, free of boogers and visible lice. There has been a time or two when Ava has latched on to a particularly well loved and deeply stained creature with matted hair (a sure sign of disease). In that instance I give the animal a Tide with Bleach bubble bath as soon as possible. But for the most part, I don’t consider a child’s stuffed animal to be a harbinger of pinkeye. Besides, there are bigger things to worry about in life, like classroom bullies and Sarah Palin. Furthermore, if you’ve every seen Ava’s lovey—a balding, spit-covered monkey named “Muh” who has been an active participant in every runny nose and stomach virus Ava has ever experienced—you wouldn’t worry about a handed-down unicorn.

Taking my child to yard sales also has its advantages. I have her ask the price of items, which usually gets us the best price. If not, I’ll make a big show out of it, saying to her, “Oh, that’s way too expensive,” which is her cue to produce the most forlorn, someone-just-shot-Bambi look. Sellers who catch on to our act retaliate by giving Ava things for free—you know, the crappy stuff that no one in their right mind would buy, like a Barbie with ballpoint pen tattoos and hair matted into a mohawk. Needless to say, we travel with hand sanitizer.

Ava has been at this so long she knows how to spot a deal.

“Mom! Pyrex!” Something I never thought I’d hear a 5-year old say. (Yes, I have a strange addiction to vintage Pyrex that rivals my daughter’s infatuation with all things Pegasus.)

Scouring yard sales has become a Saturday morning family tradition. But I’m starting to see the downside. For every $60 Build-A-Bear I get for $3 there are 20 free pen-faced Barbies. And in the name of recycling, my daughter is starting to acquire too much, which only means one thing: it’s time for a yard sale of our own.

Bye Bye Baby (Tooth)

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5

I can do bruises and bile. But I can’t do dismemberment, which is how I regard baby teeth when they fall from a child’s head.

Hangin' on a thread

Ava’s bottom tooth was, as they say, “hanging by a thread”—a phrase that makes my knees warm and wobbly like overcooked spaghetti. It had been loose for two weeks. Five days ago it flopped forward and when Ava would talk, the tooth would wave at me, taunting. Through it all, that tooth remained staunchly anchored to its “thread,” that would bleed out like a main vein if severed.

I know how these things go because my mom pulled every last one of my still-tethered teeth from my head. Sometimes they weren’t always ripe for the pickin’ and she’d pull as if uprooting a tree. But I asked for it. The overwhelming fear of ingesting my tooth was enough for me to allow her acrylic, French-tipped spears into my mouth so they could callously pluck the tooth from its bed. Cue the blood rush.

I vowed that Ava wouldn’t have the same experience. Her tooth would have to jump from the ledge. I wasn’t going to push it. Better yet, she could swallow it, so I wouldn’t have to see my beloved baby’s first tooth—a sign of her innocence—falling away like a shingle from my childhood home.

While I was out, I got a text from my husband that said, “The tooth is gone.” I rushed home and my gap-toothed daughter greeted me by screaming, “I ate my tooth for dinner!”

Awesome. Until . . .

“But tomorrow you have to find it in my poop.”

Let’s add poop sifting to the list of things I don’t do.

“I’ll buy you gloves,” she offered, seeing the sweat start to bead on my forehead.

We wrote the Tooth Fairy a note, explaining the situation and put it under Ava’s pillow. Ava’s biggest concern was how a little Fairy could carry such a big note. I had bigger issues to consider.

My husband and father-in-law enthusiastically offered all sorts of suggestions for the retrieval mission none of which seemed plausible to me.

“I just can’t do it,” I said, knowing full well that no matter what, I would have to do it.

Around 10 pm, my husband announced, “Hey! I just Found Ava’s tooth!” It was sitting on her placemat, so small no one noticed its quiet death.

I said a prayer of thanks to the Tooth Fairy, to God, to Santa Claus—to whoever would listen. Then I held that tiny tooth in my hand and sadly stroked it. It had been a good, clean tooth, but it left us much too soon. I didn’t get sentimental over Ava’s first haircut. I didn’t save her nail clippings. But this tooth represented something different—something permanent that was peeking out just beneath the surface of her gums: my baby is growing up too fast.