As if there was ever really any doubt.
Nonetheless, I have secured the hardcopy evidence and now I submit it into the loving care of the internets, who will be sure to NEVER FORGET that in fact, I rate.
This also illustrates how cool I am to not only be palindromic (!!) but also up-side-down-ic. Any which way you spin me, I am clearly the wow-est mom ever.
WoWMoM rulez. (Thanks, IceMage, for the lovely certificate.) (Which I deserve.)
Congratulations to The Maker, age 10, the boy who is first out into the first snow of the season.
(I’m only barely remembering snow from earlier this year.)
At least this year he didn’t put all the snow he could scrape up (which in NC, isn’t all that much) into my freezer. I know I took photos of that, but for whatever reason I couldn’t find them. Probably tagged them with “Wha–?” instead of “snow.” Any rate, these particular snowballs were launched joyfully outside at other people, and thus dispersed in an immediately effective and much more freezer-space-saving way.
Oh, and the glasses are pretty wonderful, don’t you agree? I want me summa those.
This is how they look, isn’t it? This is the Ubiquitous Suburban Teen Pose.
I mean, not all USTs are quite so gorgeous as the ones I particularly have given birth to, but still. This is how they walk from place to place, clean their rooms, dispense reports on their day, and feed the cats. It is their natural posture, evolutionarily adapted over the 14 minutes it took for the texting phenomenon to grab each child by the scruff and shove a wireless device into their deft hands.
Amazingly, you don’t see many contusions on these USTs. Are they developing virtual rubber bumper car pads, as has been postulated by certain scientific parenting organizations?
Dunno.
But I can tell you that if you want their attention you’ll need to text them, even if you’re standing smack in front of their faces in the kitchen, taking their photograph.
Beware children! See how easy it is to slip from an ordinary good boyhood into shudder-inducing nightmarish-ness. Nightmarish-osity. Something dark that involves hissing and a small amount of drool, anyway.
I was surfing through some of my recent pictures and came across these two from earlier this year — taken on demand from the Maker, who relishes a pair or five of those cheap plastic Halloween vampire teeth. I always purchase a “Party Pack” of these (the name makes me snort) and then I’m exceedingly careful never to touch the myriad pairs I see laying around the house for the next month or so.
After about six weeks I don’t have to worry about them anymore since they’ve all been shared with friends and left at their houses, sliced and diced by the lawnmower, run through the wash and thrown out by me, or carried off by the cats. Tidy, huh?
Nobody ever talks about who cleans up after Darkness.
The Maker is regularly given an hour in school to read, write, draw, or nap. (I know, you miss 5th grade. I do, too.) At some point recently he decided to write a story during his free hour, which I later found folded into quarters, floating around on a kitchen counter.
I’m publishing it here because I think it’s interesting to see what a 10 year old boy keeps inside his head. In this case: new adventures, favorite foods, not cleaning up after himself, useless stuff, prominent fears, doing things he shouldn’t do, and superhero leanings.
So little changes, huh?
• • • •
As I walk down the street, birds are cherping People are talking. I notes [notice] a house that I havent seen in the Past! I walk up to it, the cars arnt there so I look trouw [through] the broken window and evorything is dusty, it looks like there hasent been someone in there for years! Why havent I notised this yet? I check the door, lockt, I climb in throu the window. I smell somthing good, at that moment I notis that I just happen to be hungry so I go in to the kitchen and one the stove theres a pot of boiled eggs, my favorit. I take one out, knowing that no one is here and eat it, yuk! It is filled with salt. I imidiotly sit it out on the table. I notis a key on the table. I pick it up thinking I might need it I walk up a winding starecase in to a room and see some uesles stuf. On the bed I see a copol of books, on of the titles are “THE MOST FAMOS ROBORIES” at that moment I hear a clock in the next room I go in hoping to find something uesful. in side is a man chaned to the wall! he says to me “hey kid could you help me get out of hear” I knew I shouldent of because when he was free he lafed at me and ran out of the hous. I chased him untill I lost my breath. I found a newspaper and on the front page I saw a the same man that was chaind to the wall it said man caut robbing bank.
This is my genetic material at work.
When I was in college I highlighted about one-third of each of my textbooks, even if they were already highlighted by the generations of students who had the book before me. The Husband, on the other hand, comes from the Minimalist School of Bookmarking/Highlighting. If the book was already highlighted, he would rarely add anything, and if he was the first one into a pristine textbook, you would have to hunt carefully to find his notations. If I had to guess, I’d say he highlighted no more than one or two sentences per chapter. Weird, right?
Thankfully, my gene is dominant, as you can see from the photo.
The Maker loves poetry, and he’s a huge fan of Shel Silverstein in particular. He gets hours of enjoyment trying to puzzle out Runny Babbit (which we purchased as soon as it came out), and he recently brought home Falling Up from the local library.
His bookmarks are color-coded (blue = favorites, pink = most favorites) and systematically laid out in ever-increasing height so that they are easily accessed. (That’s his father’s genetic material.)
I actually counted the bookmarks — there are 47 of them, in a book that only has 170 pages total.
Post-its are awesome. But just wait ’til he discovers Delicious.
The Maker and I were having lunch together and I was telling him this fairly long, drawn-out story about how his father and I are so different. He was utterly still and listening to my every word.
I explained how I was the bubbly social one and his dad was the reserved, quiet one (rock bands notwithstanding — c’mon, he’s the bass player, that counts as reserved). I recounted numerous examples then closed my rambling monologue with pithy sentiment tired old cliché:
“And that’s why they say,” I finished triumphantly, “‘Opposites attract’!”
The Maker considered this a moment, then crinkled up his brow. “Oh,” he commented. “I thought it was ‘No taxation without representation.”
I feel like I probably deserved that.
Image by dwulff (Awesome photo, huh? Cracks me all up.)
This is a photo of the First (left, still asleep) and his friend Jake, who has just spent the night at our house.
Because I am such an incredible mom (and because Jake is one of my all-time favorites), I often cook a big family breakfast on Saturday mornings for all my guys to enjoy. Pancakes, fresh fruit from the roadside stand, bacon or sausage, the works. I generally count on my three early birds at breakfast time, then the First and his friends much, much, much later.
Here’s how the conversation went this time:
Me (upon seeing the First finally descending the stairs for the first time at 1 pm): The dead do walk! I thought you would never get out of bed. I made breakfast for you!
The First (all grouchy): I know. The smell of bacon woke me up at like, 9 am.
Me (cheerfully): Sorry!
The First: Is there anything left?
Me: Now you know I always make enough and save some for you. I wouldn’t let your brothers eat your breakfast! Although they did want to dig into it around lunchtime. But I threatened to give them a taste of my left hook and they showed me the respect I naturally command.
The First: (grunts)
I made him hold the clock up so I could prove just how late he has his breakfast. As you can see he was quite cheerful about it, morning person that he is.
He can’t fool me, though. I happen to know for a fact that he loves it when I make him a big breakfast, ’cause he eats every last bit. And he thinks I’m the greatest mom ever in the history of greatest moms. And he’s right.
I know I just posted about her, but I got a chuckle out of this picture of Olive in her accustomed seat at the counter.
The main reason she sits here is not, in fact, because she might secure a tasty tidbit. She has been known to hook things off the counter with her sneaky little paw, but she’s doesn’t necessarily go for something you would consider a kitty treat (a giant hock of ham, etc.). Instead, she likes anything shiny (fork!), and sometimes she swipes things off just because they are within her reach.
But what she really loves is when someone wipes down the counter. Her ears get all swiveled forward and every hair is on high alert. Her eyes are glued to the slow-moving hand and water-slopping washcloth. Oh, now that is heaven to one little messed-up Olive kitteh.
So she’ll sit there through an entire session of food prep in hopes of getting to watch the clean-up. What a weirdo, huh?
PS: That’s the rarely-seen First in the background, glancing up from his texting to take in the scene. His feet are huge, aren’t they?
The Maker made me this super-awesome pop-up card and I know you’re all jealous.
He has recently been enamored of the nifty way you can play with words, and he particularly adores palindromes. However, in the case of my name (which is, of course, “Mom”) he likes that I sign my notes with “WOW MOM”. This is practically theater in the round, and he enjoys spinning it every which way and delights in the fact that it works upside-down and rightside-up.
I invented this, of course. I am a gee-nee-us.
In this particular card, he played with WOW MOM, shortening it to WOM.
Which just proves brilliance is genetic, wouldn’t you agree? I had to create a new tag (“smartysmart”– see below) just to celebrate our combined brainy-licious-ness.
Yours truly, Wom.