Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Can I Get a Witness?

One day my daughter will be really angry about this post...

I don't know what it is about the bathroom in my house that inspires the kids to want to be in it all the time. It's probably the smallest bathroom I've ever been in; we can't close the door while standing by the tub - we have to get out of the way first. I've already written about never getting to be alone in the bathroom when I need to use it. Unfortunately, the public display does not stop there.

I don't know why this is but whenever my daughter needs to poop, she wants one of us to sit or stand outside the bathroom door to watch her. She will call to one of us - usually me - to please stop whatever it is that I'm doing to come watch. You can hear her call out through the house, "I need to poop!" in her sweet little singsong. Then we are expected to witness the whole ordeal, which for some reason seems to take an inordinate amount of time. The most common time for this event is when I have just laid dinner on the table, I'm ravenous, and I'm just about to take a bite of something while it's still at the intended temperature. Then, I hear the poop call and am required to stand by as things come out.

If I should happen to leave my post at the bathroom door to do something - perhaps stop the baby from choking on a piece of my dinner that she's stolen from my plate while I'm on poop duty - the kid will call out from the bathroom, "Mama, you're missing the whole poop time!" And I suppose I'm meant to be disappointed and also to hurry right back. Another thing, while she is working on her output, she will take a length of toilet paper and lay it in her lap, begin to poke holes in it with her fingers and then she'll tell me, "I'm knitting this toilet paper." I don't knit. I have no idea where this ritual came from.

It's all cute in it's own bizarre way or I suppose that I have to think it is since this is how my kid is and I'm programmed to find her wackiness adorable and amusing.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Kids' Eye View

I do try to see the world through the eyes of my children - if only to stop getting annoyed when they do things that slow me down. I forget that they are sometimes seeing things for the first time.

Over the fourth of July weekend, we went to the local fireworks display and met up with some friends and their 3 year old and 3 month old. We sat on blankets on the ground in the dark with hundreds of other people. My 4 year old daughter, who was afraid of fireworks last year, had such a great time. She sat in her dad's lap, sometimes covering her ears but watching each explosion intently - with her mouth hanging open. It was fun to watch her. She told me that the fireworks looked like dandelions and I really got what she meant - right when the dandelions go to seed and haven't lost any of their florets they really do resemble fireworks.

Meanwhile, my 16 month old, who is newly walking, didn't pay attention to the fireworks at all. She just wanted to walk around on the blanket and would have preferred to be allowed to walk all around the grounds in the dark where the hundreds of strangers were - every parent's nightmare. But, I managed to corral her and she stayed wide awake through the fireworks.

Our friends' three year old spent the entire show hiding under one or both of his parents. He was terrified of the noise and wouldn't watch the display at all but after the last firework faded and it was clear there would be no more, he jumped up and announced, "That was awesome!" Who knew?