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You Can't Be Serious

You Can’t Be Serious

Keeping your sense of humor during the ups and downs of parenting.

by Carol Kando-Pineda

Sketchy

For me, two of the most endearing things about motherhood are my kids' artwork and getting a glimpse of how they see me. But it can be a little daunting when those things collide -- when their creations don't match how we might see ourselves. Not always so much fun to see them take artistic license with your face.

Many years ago, Teen Spirit drew quivering bubble-like blobs balanced on wobbly stick legs. This snowwoman with gams sported a head of unruly dark hair. Not so far from the truth but I really didn't need to be reminded of my blob-dom.

One day as a joke, Daddy-0 taped up a photo from the newspaper: a woman accused of destruction of property, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, her face bearing equal parts anger and derangement. Her hair was wilder than the look in her eyes. Teen Spirit -- a toddler -- stopped to look, broke into a huge smile and blurted out "Mommy!" Great -- my preschooler thought that was me. In. A. Mugshot. Drunk and disorderly.

Not long after that, he labored over a detailed sketch of me. I asked him to identify the various elements of the drawing. That large dark dot on the smaller blog. "Oh, mommy, that's the..hmm, what do you call it? Your mole. And that's your face." I had always been under the impression that I had a small bump on my neck, not Mount Pinatubo erupting from my cheek. So then I asked about the tiny plane that appeared to be landing in the background behind my head. Although it was hard to tell with my wiry wig getting in the way. As I was praising his advanced understanding of visual perspective with his depiction of that plane, he corrected me. No, it was an eagle making a home in my hair-nest.

As he grew older, Teen Spirit memorialized me Manga-style. Just ponder that frizz with dinner plate eyes. At least the mole was gone.

La Principessa is quite the artiste herself. I've been rendered many times during her Blob phase. The door of my refrigerator has been colonized by a commune of Humpty Dumpties. This is a recent one. Check out the static near the mouth. Apparently whenever I speak, she hears fuzzy white noise a la Charlie Brown's teacher. Wahw, wahw, Wahw, wahw....

sophia-drawing-mommy-static-mouth copy

Here's one where I look a little like Amy Winehouse, don't ya think? Again with the drunk and disorderly.

sophia-drawing-mommy-amy-winehouse copy

My favorite is the one she did this week -- I'm a smiling pink blob with curly hair. I'll cop to that, proudly.

sophia-drawing-pink-mommy copy

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A Crushing Eggs-perience

In my early days of parenthood -- before I had begun to fetishize every holiday in the hazy glow of happily "kidded" bliss, I wasn't so eggs-acting in my search for ways to make a holiday special. Take Easter. Lots of religious significance, fun secular traditions. More substance than Thanksgiving without the pressure of Christmas. Count me in. Decorating eggs was enough for me and Teen Spirit. This was before we had succumbed to the elaborately mounted scavenger hunts, egg rolls and "Spring Flings" around town. No, back in the day, Teen Spirit (then Doodle Bug) and I would talk for days about coloring eggs. First, we dug out the Paas generic egg-coloring kit, bought the year before, heavily discounted after the holiday. We mixed up the dye in paper cups and daintily soaked hard-boiled eggs like we were steeping tea. They'd teeter in their cartons and we'd admire them in a basket for a few days. After a few years all that boiling and bobbing seemed a little anticlimactic. I blame Martha Stewart. Because after a few years of perfectly acceptable yet dull eggs, I craved indigo, chartreuse, and golden ochre. I wanted a spectacular display. Again, because of Martha, II tried the natural route first, boiling onion skins and beets in an attempt to conjure up sophisticated hues. Sadly, instead of sophisticated, I got sallow, watery stains that looked more like a compost heap than a holiday basket.

After that, I didn't even want to hard boil the eggs -- I had taken to blowing the guts out of the center of the uncooked egg. I suppose I fancied myself the keeper of ancient craft tradition. I also wanted a more permanent rememberance of making them with Teen Spirit. I'd start about a month before Easter, pricking little holes in either end of the egg and practically blowing a gasket puffing the innards out. I'd gingerly lather, bleach and rinse each shell, then tuck it into a carton hidden at the top of the fridge. Yes, for years, it never occurred to me to use a straw or syringe -- I was getting light headed from the regular intervals forcing air through that little hole. Like I had been blowing up a beach ball for a month.

He and I carefully applied wax markings to make patterns that would emerge when we colored the background. We slathered little gems and stickers on them. We glued the larger end of each egg to a penny, so they would stand up. We arts-and-crafted the heck out of those shells, stopping just short of pulling a full-on Faberge. We used them as table decorations for Easter dinner, then packaged them up as gifts for out-of-town family.

So you can imagine the happy memories we were hoping to recreate when La Principessa became egg-decorating age. She watched me and Teen Spirit for a few years before it was her turn to try. She tried to warn me that this was less than egg-citing for her, really she did. But I wouldn't listen. We sat down with a pile of shells I had painstaking evacuated, scrubbed and dried. I readied the paints and mini-appliques and searched for the gold glitter pen. As I turned to her to described all the blingy choices laid before her, she ...crunch..crunch..crunch. She was methodically crushing an egg in each hand, the tiny shards falling through her fat fingers like sand in an hourglass. She had made it through about six of them already. I yelled, "Nooo" and made a dive to rescue the survivors. Too late. She replied, "Yes." and finished off the lot, as if to say, "Time for a new tradition, Mom." Eggs-actly.

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Lepre-conned?

During most of my life, our family rituals were distinctly Mediterranean. But on St. Patrick's Day, my Nana (who's maiden name was O'Leary) made sure we all wore the green. So after all these years -- and having steered Teen Spirit through many St. Paddy's Days -- I thought I knew the lay of the land. This year brought a new twist. How did I not know about leprechaun traps? I mean, how did I miss that?

So I was a bit confused when La Principessa brought her marching orders from school -- create your own individualized device to tempt and capture one of the "wee folk." People trapping -- how horrifying! So this teacher was just a little more diabolical than her talented, calm and kind exterior had indicated. How did she think this one up? I was ready to shout, "Wake up, people! Next they'll be coming for the unicorns!" alt

Thereby worked up into a froth, I did what we do these days -- I googled it. And the torrent began: a parade of grade school traps lovingly crafted and documented. Clearly I had missed a major developmental milestone with Teen Spirit. Who because of this oversight hopefully won't veer off the grid, take up residence in the woods, scratching out a manifesto from home-brewed ink.

No, probably not.

But still I wanted to do better for La Principessa. As I prepped a small box and bent some cardboard into a rainbow, I flashed back to my Catholic school days. Specifically to that spring I needed to make a miniature Shrine to Mary. At the time it seemed wise to torture a small strawberry pint into a pedestal. Except the ceramic statuette I was going to mount on it --ever so wisely using a glue stick and Scotch tape --- was 5 times its size. The contraption wobbled right off the table unceremoniously chipping the halo from Holy Mary's head. That can't be good.

Lost in my reverie, I missed LaPrincipessa assaulting the as yet undecorated trap with crayons, pencil stabs, google eyes, letter stickers and a small stuffed iridescent frog. The trap had become an abstract collage. One that was surrounded by mounds of shredded green construction paper, sticker remnants, pencil tips and broken crayons. Truly a pile of blarney rubble!

But she was happy to do it on her own. And I was happy that I'd been able to restrain myself long enough to let her do it. That's a win-win whether we catch a magical creature or not.

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Stupider Cupid

More of the Valentine saga. So in a panic I broke down and ordered photo cards from Costco, meant for family and friends out of town. I've managed to address and mail a little more than half of them. Fingers crossed, they won't be stuck in postal purgatory -- they stand a chance of arriving as Valentines and not sad little reminders of my inability to make a holiday deadline.

Still on tap: sweet little homemade notes for classroom friends. So many minutes spent stalking DIY sites. At this point, getting ready to pop a creative gasket. So cute, so little time. No more pink and red -- please make it stop.

Obsessing on lollipops. Also known as "valentine's sucks." Do you know how many lollilops feature prominently in make-it-yourself cards? According to Family Fun, I'm supposed to cut a small paper triangle and insert the stick. then glue on a teeny weeny mask and boom. You've got the Caped Cute-Sader.

A veritable Tootsie Pop Justice League. Other sites advice taking a Dum Dum and shoving the stick through paper hearts, arranged to look like petals -- a candy garden. Or I could wrap the pop in a tissue, secured with orange yarn. Oh, look a Valentine ghost. Whoops, wrong holiday -- I'll save that for Halloween.

Here's something new -- a photo of your kid, taken so their hand is way up a the front of the screen and appears larger. Print them on heavy paper and insert the lolly so it looks like your precious one is holding the candy out to you. Too much advanced planning. I could never persuade La Principessa to cooperate long enough to pose --- we'd end up with something that looked like her hocking that sucker in your face. Or other hand gestures that do not make a parent proud. Not what I'm going for. Still looking for ideas and the clock's ticking....stay tuned.

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Stupid Cupid

So here we are less than a week away from February 14 and it just occurred to me that I never ordered the Valentine photo cards. You know, the ones that are in lieu of sending Christmas cards because it's so hectic and rushed and overstimulated. I went with Valentine's Day because February is almost two months after when I would be stressing about those Yuletide greetings. That would give me plenty of time to get through the holidays AND our three birthdays in January. Except somehow I ended up with a February that's still hectic, rushed and overstimulated.

Couple that with the now familiar maternal humiliation of sending La Principessa to her classroom with boxed Disney valentines that Daddy-O scored from Target last March. Not even Disney Princesses or Mickey and Minnie in this pack. No this is a random assortment of Goofy, Pluto and Pete, the grouchy guy. I'm flashing back to unpleasant memories of sorting through Teen Spirit's Valentine shoe box and feeling shamed at my meager efforts. Pencils spearing heavy card stock, hearts festooned with sequins and feathers. Elaborately folded foam paper ornaments with a candy surprise inside. Each year I'd convince myself that it was no big deal -- as long as he participated with a card, it was all in good childhood fun. I didn't need to engage in Valentine-making as a competitive sport. Except every year I'd glare with envy at the ever more creative offerings he received.

The ante has been upped with La Principessa, the girliest of girlie girls. So it would seem Cupid's arrow --- and all of my maternal neuroses --- are pointing towards lovingly handmade valentines for family and friends. I'll come clean -- I'm still swept up in the spirit of kiddie bento box fever and now I want to give the same fetishistic slicing/dicing/artfully arranging treatment to poor innocent paper. I'll decoratively cut, photoshop, glue, modpodge, paint and embroider those cards into submission. I have dreams of origami swans offering up an edible golddust-flecked homemade salted caramel. Yes, my dreams are scary places.

I will snap out of that delusion. But still, it's not even Friday yet, so my standards are still fairly high. I'm beginning by looking for examples of something elegant. Ahh. 3-D paper sculptures that pop-out when the card is opened. Can you even make those by hand? Yeah, those little cardinals perched on a wire, spring up, tilt and kiss beaks when you open the card. Adorable -- unfortunately I'm a little time-pressed and I don't have time to complete that engineering degree from MIT to figure out how to rig the whole thing up.

Clearly, this is a process. But I've got an entire weekend and a very game little girl who wants in. I'll be posting over the next few days to let you know how it goes. Any favorite suggestions for homemade valentine cards and treats?

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