Curses, Cute-isms, and How Naptime Is Like An Oyster

I haven't been writing much because nobody pays me to write here and every time I have a spare moment I feel like I should use it to make money. Then I remembered that as a stay at home parent I am supposed to be honored to be paid in hugs and kisses (snort), and therefore I need to buckle down and chronicle these children.

Who, it must be said, I don't like very much right now.

Miss Margaret is on the downward slope of two, and you know what that means? It means whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiining. She can suddenly talk very clearly, which is nice, that's the part that makes two and a half much easier than two. But she's adopted her sister's teenagerly mutterings and inflection. I want to pop her on the mouth every time she does it, but even if I were a mouth-popping kind of mother, I'm afraid she'd look like Jake LaMotta by the end of one day of it. Seriously, the preschool years are so evocative of my own teenage years, it's kind of shocking. The curse came true, I really got children just like me. I make a mental note not to wish the same on them--I haven't wished it yet, may I never stoop to it.

On the sweet and tender side of things, I'm starting to worry that her command of speech is going to extend to some of my favorite cute-isms, as it eventually has for Molly. At this point my favorite is that the only first person plural pronoun Maggie uses is we, as in "Are we going to we car? And we go to we house and eat we lunch?" One day very soon she's going to bust out us or our, and an era will be over.

Speaking of such eras, last night I referred to the movie we were watching as the "moozie" and Molly turned around and said politely, "Mama, it's movie". Just recently I had a sitdown with Molly's teacher where we discussed her speech and how there just might be a problem that needs addressing, and we went into "wait and see" mode. Then Dug and I made more of an effort to help her pronounce certain words correctly and it is clicking like crazy. Not that we were ignoring the problem, we just didn't really realize there was one--she has always sounded just like her friends to me, but obviously I was just so used to her speech that I wasn't noticing where she was behind. Now she's less behind.

Incidentally, quiet time has been very successful this week. I've been separating the girls--Maggie in their room, Molly in ours. Molly gets to bring two books, one doll, her blanket and a cup of water. I turn on music in both rooms and close the doors. Maggie has napped every day this week, and Molly has napped at least twice, and possibly catnapped a few other days. It has made the evenings a lot easier to get through for everyone. Oh, I have to navigate through some pissing and moaning at the beginning, but you know, anything wonderful is usually preceeded by some sort of test of your worthiness--champagne bottles are a bitch to open, Paris smells like poop and wet dog, oysters need shucking and plus they look like loogies. But once you're past the hard part, it's fabulous, and thus with quiet time.

Comments

[Grammy]

Peace is beginning to reign in La La land? My oh, my. With Molly, didn't she use the "me" pronoun? But, then there was only one of them at the time. "We" must be the natural extention of the pronoun when you have more than one so close together. It is definitly cute. Remember how we imitated Antiquette? I am totally surprised she didn't talk like that until high school. Sometimes parents use cutisms when they need to be using plain language. I had the dickens of a time teaching you to say "M"'s. But you finally did when you were 3.

[Auntie Nancy]

I know what a blessing it is to have children that correct you all the time (I HATE IT!). You have a long way to go if they are correcting you now. You can just tell them "Mommy isn't perfect" and burst their bubble. Auntie N

[The Other Stephanie]

I'm going to miss our cute-isms, too. They're fading fast.

Four is the new thirteen. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger and all that.

Oh, and I'm so jealous of your naptime success, I'm practically weeping.