Phone A Friend

Max, like many kids, has an imaginary friend.  Unlike many kids, her friend Stacie is only on the other end of her pink Barbie cell phone.  Most of the time, she chatters away on the phone like a teenager, but the other day, things weren’t going her way with Stacie.

Overheard:

“Stacie, hey, Stacie.  Are you listening to me?  I’m talking to you!”  Pause.  “Yeah….yeah….yeah…”  She paces around the living room.  “It’s boring here.  Stacie!  I said, it’s boring here!  You aren’t listening to me! Ugh!  That’s it.  Bye.”

She slams the cell phone shut, then opens it again and “dials.”

“Hello, Jerk?    Are you there, Jerk?  It’s boring today. When are you going to start my soccer game, Jerk?  Listen to me, Jerk!   Hey!  Jerk!  Uh huh…Uh huh…No.”  More pacing.   “Do you hear me, Jerk?  I want to go to my soccer game! Fine.”  Slams the phone shut and stomps into her room.

After relaying the conversations I just heard to my husband, I said, “Not only would her imaginary friend Stacie not talk to her, neither would this new imaginary phone friend named Jerk.”

“Of course not,” he says.  “She spent the whole time calling them Jerk!”

Not-So-Silly Putty

It should be listed among the rites of passage in childhood.  Getting Silly Putty in your hair.  Most children fall asleep with it in the bed and wind up with their hair matted in the stuff.  Not Max.  Max just thought it would look lovely in her long dark locks, so she carefully placed three blobs of it exactly where she wanted it.

Now, knowing Max, I did not purchase the Silly Putty.  He sister had apparently got it from school and Max inevitably found her hiding place.

My husband is much better at getting her hair washed.  Being 6′4″, he has the height and wing span that makes bathing a squirmy toddler easier than my 5′0″ frame.  So, the job of Putty removal was given to him.  I looked online for possible removal techniques and left him in the bathroom supplied with a variety of remedies from nail polish remover to baby oil.

One hour, three tub-fulls of water, half a bottle of baby oil, a third of a bottle of nail polish remover, and  four shampoos later, Max emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel.  Shortly, Daddy walks into the living room, drenched.  “I never want to see Silly Putty again.”

The next day, after her hair was completely dry, I realized that it was still full of baby oil.  “Come on, you little grease ball.  Let’s go wash your hair,” I tell her.  She follows me into the bathroom and we get started.

On the third shampoo, she stands up in the tub and says,” No more washing, Mommy.  I want to be a grease ball!”

Key

It’s time to go get a spare key made.  Max walks out of her room and announces that she is ready to go.  I notice her feet.  She has on one pink Croc and one pink plastic sequined dress up shoe.  “Um, your shoes don’t match.”  “Yes, they do.  They are both pink.”  Pick your battles, Mom.  So, off we go in the rain to Home Depot.

We arrive in the pouring rain.  I get out the umbrella and we make our way into the store.  The nice lady at the front greets us and asks Max if she can help us find anything.  “I need a key.” Max answers.  So, the lady crouches down and explains to her where she needs to go get the key.

As we walk through the store, her shoes make a thud, click, thud, click, thud click sound as she steps from the soft Crock to the dress up high heel shoe on the concrete floor.  There are so few people there mid-morning on a weekday, so she really stands out.  People are chuckling and whispering to each other, “Look at her shoes!” as though I can’t hear them.  Grins and giggles follow us to the key counter.

Thud, click, thud, click, thud, click.

We get to the key counter and the man shows us our options.  There are plain keys, and keys with everything from skulls to flowers on them.  Then she saw it.  The Holy Grail of spare keys.  Tinkerbell.  She had to have it.  She jumped up and down giggling like a goofball.  So, the man at the counter gets it down.     He puts it in the key grinder and gets to work.  Max had a million questions.  “What is he doing with my Tinkerbell key?  Why is that loud?  Why is that thing working?  Why are there ABC’s all over this store?”  She was adorable and sweet, especially for Max.  He took the key out and checked it against the original.  “Why is that guy looking at my key like that?’

“I want to make sure it matches.  You would be mad at me if it didn’t work when you get home,” he explains, grinning.  “I have a one year old,” he says to me.  “I can’t wait for her to be like this.”  Yes, you can.

We are finally finished and get checked out.   Umbrella goes up as we head back out into the rain.  Thud, click, thud, click , thud, click to the car.  Just then, Max spots a man huddled into his rain jacket with his hood pulled over his head making his way to the store.  Max cheerily says, “It’s okay, Man.  It’s just the rain.” and hops happily into the car.

Beauty and the Beads

“Hi, I’m Pam.  Come on back and we’ll get started.”  I rose to follow my smiling college admissions counselor back to her office.  Going back to school as an adult is exciting and scary all at the same time.  I was anxious to hear what Pam had to say about my old college credits and the exams I was about to take.

We walked in to her small office and sat down.  She began going over the list of credits that would transfer and other things.  Then, I could hear the buzzing of my cell phone in my purse.  Pam asks me if I need to take the call.

“No, it’s my husband.   He has my little one at home.  He’s her daddy.  He should be able to manage without me.”  One would think.

We laughed and went on with the meeting.  Buzz.  Buzz.  Buzz.

“Better take it.  Sorry.”  No problem, she says.

I answer to the panicked voice of my husband.  “She’s shoved beads up her nose!”

“Slow down,” I say.  “She shoved what up her nose?”  Pam’s eyes across the desk get huge.

“Beads! She got into Gracie’s beads.  She has them way up her nose!  What do I do?” he asks, completely frantic and talking a hundred miles an hour.

“You could take her to the hospital.  It’s practically across the street,” I suggest calmly.  As Max’s mom, nothing surprises me or alarms me anymore.

“You have the car seat!” he reminds me loudly.

“Okay, then call the doctor.  They can tell you what to do.”

“What’s the number?”  I rattle it off like any mother can do with a doctor’s phone number.  “Do they know her?” he asks.

“Do they know her?” I repeat.  Pam grins and shrugs.  “Of course they know her.  It’s her doctor.  I don’t just memorize random physician phone numbers.”  I am sarcastic and not panicking because I can hear Max chattering away happily in the background.  She can obviously breathe and he is panicking enough for the both of us.  “Just call them.  Kids do this all the time.  They probably know some great tricks.”

“Okay, I’ll call them.  Bye.”  He hangs up.

I calmly go back to my meeting.  Pam says she could never be that calm.  I remind her that I have three kids so this isn’t the first time one of them stuck something up their nose.  I also give her a little background on the infamous Max.  She just laughs and shakes her head.  “Okay, then.  I guess we can get back to academics!” she says.

“Yes.”

Buzz.  Buzz.  Buzz.  “Or not.  Hello?”  The voice on the other end of the phone is much calmer now, having managed to get the beads out of Max’s nose all by himself.

“He got them out,” I tell Pam, who has leaned across her desk grinning, interested to know what’s going on.

“How?” she asks.

I grin and tell her: “He said he popped her nose like a zit and they came shooting out!”  We lost it and died laughing.

Leave it to Max to make a spectacle of herself even from miles away.  Something tells me that is an admissions interview that Pam will remember for a long time.

Rock Out

Max was in rare form this particular afternoon.  She had been in more trouble than usual and had managed to spend half the afternoon in time out.  Needless to say, I was a bit frazzled.  So, I turned to my favorite relaxation technique – my acoustic guitar, Pearl.  I sat down on the couch to play (badly) while Max was sitting in the middle of her bedroom floor in time out pouting.

Or, so I thought.

I sat picking quietly as my husband putted around the information super highway.  Peace at last.

Then, in came Max.  She had her sister’s diva sunglasses a-la Paris Hilton on.  Upside down.  She strutted into the room, pausing by her dad.  She tossed her little head and said, “Hello, Daddy.  Nice to see you again.”

Daddy choked back a laugh and said, “You, too.”

She strolled, in true unhurried diva fashion, over to the sofa where I sat with the guitar in my lap.  “Nice to see you, Mommy.”

“You too.  What are you doing out of your room?”

“I have to play the mootar.”  She moved my hand away so she could strum.

Max then proceeded to count herself into the song. “A-one!  A-two! A-three four five!  I’M BRINGIN’ HOOOOOOME A BAAAAABY BUM-BLE BEEEEEEEEEEEEE” (if I could use a bigger font here, I would use the biggest one I had.)

The words were accented by loud dischord thwangs on the strings on the down beat as she head-banged.  “WON’T MYYYYY MOMMIEEEEEEE BE SO PROUD-A MEEEEEEE?”  THWANG!

Rock out, sister. Watch out Joan Jett.  This girl loves rock-n-roll.

Say What?

Max is known for strange and funny sleepy ramblings.  Often the things she says make no sense at all.  Sometimes there is a flash of profoundness in what she says.  Mostly, though, she talks to keep herself awake.

After her bath,  Max was tucked under a blanket on the living room sofa smelling clean and fresh (if you’ve read other Max stories, you know this is something to mention) and was warm and snuggly.  Her eyelids were starting to droop a bit which meant the babbling would soon commence.  We were watching tv and a commercial for Breathe Right nasal strips came on.  Max was mesmerized.  Slowly one of her little fingers went to her nose.

“Look at dat on da tv.” she said quietly, not taking her eyes off the screen.

“What is that, Beth?” I asked.

“Those are band-aids that keep your nose on while you are sleepin’.” she answers matter-of-factly.

Works for me.

Of course this is the same kid that told me during another sleepy rambling session in the car that she wanted to go play on the “jumpy catch” that we passed (a trampoline with nets around it.)  And that Swiper (the fox from Dora the Explorer) “is in that car over there trying to sneaky us.”

Mess

We were enjoying our budget al fresco dinner of pizza straight out of the box on my mom’s front steps.  It had been a long day of working in the yard and that’s all we had the energy to do for dinner.  Max sat happily on the steps covered in dirt and ice cream sticky.  (My mom’s house is the fun house.)  She started chowing on some pizza adding red sauce to the nastiness that was covering her face.

For reasons only known to her, Max decided to stand up with her plate and move to a different spot.  On the way to the new location (three steps away) her slice of pizza slid off of her plate and landed on the step.  She started sobbing with big crocodile tears.  “My pizza!  It’s yucky!”

“It’s ok, Beth.  You can have another piece.  There’s more in the box.  Here.”  Mom gave her another piece of pizza and Max sat back down.

She put her greasy little fingers to her face feeling around her sticky cheeks.  “I need a napkin,” she said.  “There’s crying all over me.”

Among other things.

Parental Advisory

It happens.  We say things we shouldn’t within earshot of little sponges.  We try to censor ourselves, substituting one word for a lesser evil.  My husband has even taken to muting himself on certain words, a vast improvement.  What caused the extreme personal censorship?  You guessed it.   Max.

Max was gathering up toys she wanted to take on the ride to the grocery store.  In one hand was a toy princess video camera that played a short movie of Cinderella dancing at the ball.  On a good day.  Sometimes, it was just a black screen and lots of ticking noises as it struggled to work.  In the other hand was her purple sippy cup.

“Come on, Squirt.  Time to go,” announced Daddy.

“Gotta close da door,” she said coming out of her room with her hands full.

She tried to grab the knob with the hand holding the video camera.  It just pushed further open.  She walked around the door, scooted it closed some, came around to the outside and tried to grab the knob again.  Same result.  Round and round she went, scooting to the door, trying to close it, pushing it back open.

Then she had a flash of inspiration.  She woould switch the two items around.  So now, she has each thing in the opposite hands, but still actually in her hands.  No better.  She huffed and puffed.

Daddy and I stood patiently at the end of the hallway waiting on her to work her way out of the pickle or give up entirely.  No, we didn’t help.  It was too much fun to watch her try and she didn’t ask.

She worked a little longer.  Finally, she stopped.  She threw the princess camera and the sippy cup to the floor, grabbed the doorknob, yanked the door shut and growled, “Freakin’ door!“

And then there was the night of a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party.  (A story in itself.  Watch for it.)  Before we even made it inside, we met up with other family members in the parking lot.  Everyone was getting presents out of the cars.  Daddy carried her over to a grassy island next to Aunt Terry’s car.

He set her down and she looked at all the stuff and said, “Hey!  What the hell is going on?“

Aunt Terry lost it.

Then, there was the afternoon we worked in my mom’s garden.  Some bugs had eaten up her roses.  Max was playing by the rocking chairs out of earshot from my mom.  Or so she thought.  Turns out Max is never out of earshot.

“Look at these roses.  They used to be so pretty and pink.  Now they just look like shit.  I’m cutting them to the ground,” Mom said wielding her pruning sheers and chopping at the sticks and eaten up leaves.

Max wandered over to see.  “Look at dat pink shit.”  Oy vey.

Do they make Parental Advisory stickers for toddlers?

Happy Birthday To Who?

Birthdays are much more fun when the birthday kid is old enough to “get it.”  This was the the first year that Bethany understood that it was a special day just for her.  She made sure everyone knew it too.  Her party was over the weekend, a lovely brunch with the family.  Her actual birthday was a Monday, so I had cupcakes for her class at daycare. They were a hit, as expected.

Snack time had just ended when I arrived to pick up my birthday girl.  All of her friends showed off their little princess rings that had adorned the tops of the cupcakes only moments before.   I asked Beth if she had a fun birthday with her class.  She bounced up and down saying “yes, yes, yes!”  Sugar high.

“How old are you Bethany?” asked the daycare director, Miss Tonya.

“Three and a half,” answered Beth holding up five fingers.

“Are you three?” Miss Tonya  asked.

“Um, yes,” answered Bethany wrinkling her brow.

“Did Bethany have a birthday party?”

“Yes, I did.  And I had a pink cake with sugar hearts on it!”  Beth answered grinning and proud.  Sugar hearts were a big deal.  She asked for them for months.  Having no idea what she really meant, I improvised and happened to be right.

“Wow!” said Miss Tonya playing right along with her enthusiasm.  “Did Max have a birthday?”

The smile vanished from Bethany’s face.  She put her hands squarely on her hips, looked Tonya in the eye, and said firmly:  “Completely NOT!“

Bethany was not sharing her birthday with anybody.  Not even Max.

Mirror

There are countless articles about how children mimic what they see in their parents.  You would think that armed with this information, we parents would make sure that all our children could imitate are good and wonderful things.  Then again, we are indeed human after all.  Often we see things we may not even know they are picking up.  Even more often, these things are pointed out to us by others.

This was one of those times.

My usual time to pick up Bethany from daycare tends to coincide with playground time.  I called her down off the playset and announced it was time to go home.  Her teacher, Miss Shelly handed me her paper listing everything she did that day, from nap time, eating, and potty times.  (My husband has always thought it was funny that they feel they must report on potty times.)  There is also usually a note about the day’s activities and lessons.  I glanced over it as Shelly gave me a summary of the day.

“There was one thing that really got me today,” she said grinning.  Max is new in Miss Shelly’s class and she’s just started getting the idea of what to expect with her.

“Oh?”  I asked.

“Apparently, one of the boys did something she didn’t like,” she paused and I feared the worst.  Great, she’s pummeled one of her little friends or something equally heinous.

“Uh oh, what did she do?”

“She walked right up to him, pointed at her chin and said, ‘Look at my face!  Do I look happy?‘”

I winced.  I could just see Max, nose to nose with the offending toddler sporting her best angry face, one hand on her hip, her tiny finger pointed at her chin.  I would have paid to see that.

Shelly went on, “So, I started thinking, she obviously hears this a lot.  Maybe it’s me.  I don’t think I say that, but maybe I do!”

“Um…..no….” I say meekly.  “That would be me.”  And yes, Max hears this a lot.  Gotta find a new catch phrase.  Time to go.