Mom & Pop Home School

Sunshine takes considerable time brushing her teeth before bed. She evidently likes to use that time to a) admire her reflection in the mirror*, and b) ponder the deep things of the universe. Last night she popped out of the bathroom after a good half hour of “tooth brushing”, and stopped on her way to bed to inform us that she’d figured out which person in a family is the “most important”.

The most important person in the family, she said, is clearly the mother. She offered these three points as evidence:

1. Kids grow inside the mom’s body until they are big enough to live on their own. Without the mom, the kids would not get borned.
2. After the kids are born, when they are babies, the mom’s body makes milk and that is what the babies eat. Without the mom, the babies would not live.
3.  The mom is the one who does the laundry.

As an afterthought, she added that the mom is also the one who cooks the meals.

I found her observations intriguing in light of a recent article from the Wall Street Journal titled “Who Wears The Pants”.  Megan Basham opens her article thusly:

In the past few years, stay-at-home moms have come under fire from some of feminism’s most hard-line mouthpieces. These mothers have been told that they’re letting down the sisterhood, endangering the economy and — most important — undermining their own position. By failing to bring in at least half the family income, it is claimed, they have rendered themselves powerless in their own homes.

I am not certain what she means by “the past few years”. Perhaps she is referring to the past few decades, because I can certainly remember these and similar charges being leveled against my mother, a “stay-at-home mom”, about as far back as I can remember–which would be sometime in the mid 70’s. This sort of commentary, ingested over a long period of time, and contrasted with my own observations in “the real world” has certainly had an influence on my own views of feminism and women’s issues.

I am grateful for the contributions made by the feminist movement toward equality for women. I absolutely assert and sustain a woman’s rights to vote, to own property, to hold public office, to be educated the same as men, and to be paid the same as a man would be for doing the same work. I take pride in the fact that my Mormon heritage is one of support for these rights for women. Much progress has been made for women over the years, and I fully acknowledge the indisputable fact that I and my family are beneficiaries.

However.

There are some things about the perspectives of today’s feminist movement with which I vehemently take issue (that’s a nice way of saying they drive me stark raving bonkers), and this article touches on one of them. (more…)

For the afternoon session of conference today, which we were fortunate enough to watch live in the comfort of our own home, there was a choir made up of children from two Utah cities. They were spit-and-polished to within an inch of their lives, and they sang and behaved beautifully. My own children were quite impressed with the children in the choir and shared these observations:

Sunshine (Pop had pointed out to Sunshine that there was a little girl who was missing a front tooth, just like Sunshine, who lotht one yesthterday.)” “Hey, you’re right, Dad! She looks just like ME! …..I wonder if I’m  there….” 

Cricket (During the closing hymn): “You mean those kids sat in those chairs for two HOURS?! Mom, are you sure those are really kids and not robots who just LOOK like kids?”

This morning as I was measuring Sunshine’s dose of laxative to go in her juice, a large clump of powder slid out of the bottle, overflowing the measuring cup and spilling on the table. Attempting to pour the extra back into the bottle resulted in an even bigger mess. While I stirred the stuff into Sunshine’s juice, Pop came to our rescue with the little hand vacuum, slurping up the spill. Sunshine’s eyes twinkled as she announced, “Now the vaccum has to go to the bathroom!”

This morning Pop and Cricket were off at oh-my-goodness in the morning to attend a Webelos “thing”, leaving just us girls at home. She was a good “helper” for some laundry, but then I was trying to work in the kitchen and she was underfoot to a frustrating degree so I got out the watercolor box and a big ol’ piece of freezer paper (which I like because it’s waxed on the back, preventing bleed-through messes). Then I turned on some nice calm music to encourage a more subdued mood (ok, she was bouncing off the walls; I couldn’t take it anymore), and settled her down with the paintbrush and a quart of rinse water. Sunshine’s artwork still tends to be rather “abstract” rather than symbolically representational. She started on one end of the paper with an enthusiastic painting of what she said was a picture of a sandwich with lots of toppings (yes, it was close to lunchtime), and off I went to clear off the kitchen countertops. She said she LOVED the music. It was her FAVORITE radio station (it was a disk, but Cricket has a favorite radio station, and therefore so must Sunshine). Each song that came on was her FAVORITE. After a while I noticed her painting to the slow rhythms of the music in a cool, calm peacock blue, and slow, swooping brushstrokes. I went over and complimented her on her picture. I told her I thought it looked like she was painting the music. “Nope,” she replied, “it’s not music, it’s an ant.” I squinched up my eyes and looked at it again, searching for any sign of something resembling antishness. Nothing.
“An ant?” I asked, thinking maybe I’d misunderstood.
“Yep, it’s a QUEEN ant.” She replied.
“Oh,” says I, a QUEEN ant.” Still scrutinizing…still nothing.
“Yeah,” says my happy, serene, peaceful little Sunshiney girl, continuing to make graceful, languid, blue strokes with the brush. “She got SMOOSHED all OVER the place.”

You just never can tell what’s going on in those little craniums, can you?

…and bless our food, and bless Dad, and bless Cricket, and bless me, and bless Mom, and—Heavenly Father, tonight is Mom’s night off. You hafta make it go back ON again, okay? And bless…

At lunch today, Sunshine declared that Cricket was smarter than Mom. (She currently thinks EVERYONE is smarter than Mom, the rotten little soul.) Cricket liked that notion, and to prove it, he asked me, “Whats a hundred times a hundred?” I promptly replied, “Ten thousand.” “What?!” he exclaimed, “How did YOU know that.” “I know lots of things,” I said, “Can you tell me what is eight times nine?” (I picked that one because I know he can never remember it.) He looked stumped. I informed him that it was seventy-two, and see, he did still have a few things he could learn from me.

Sunshine, not to be outdone, started quizzing me (as if she knows anything about multiplication). “Mom, what’s two times seven?” “Fourteen,” says I. ”Oh yeah, Mom, what’s two times eighteen?” (She clearly had picked what she considers a BIG number—she’s still working on counting past twelve.) “Thirty-six,” says I. She furrowed up her little brow, determined to stump me with a REALLY big number. “What’s two times a HUNDRED!” “Two hundred.” Now she was GOING to stump me if it was the last thing she did (before finishing her sandwich)! “Mom,” she announced triumphantly after a moment’s thought, “what’s two times TREE?” Ok, I did hesitate at that one a little….two times tree? (Does she mean three? No, she never says three that way…) ”Uh….” I said after a moment, “Two trees?” She looked crestfallen. “Correct,” she declared. Then wonderingly, “How did YOU know?”

Today I took Sunshine to the grocery with me; she LOVES to drive around in the race car shopping carts. There was another mom there with a little boy about her age, also driving a race car. We seemed to be doing the aisles in the same direction but from opposite ends, so we kept meeting up in the middle. Each time we passed, the little boy would grin and wave at Sunshine, and she’d lean back in her seat and smile at him. When we were picking up the last few things in frozen foods, Sunshine leaned back and commented to me under her breath, “I think that boy likes me.”

“Yes,” I whispered back, “I think he does. He must think you look friendly.”

After they’d gone around the bend she added, “He thinks I’m his girlfriend.”

SAY WHAT? What the heck does she know about girlfriends and boyfriends? She’s only four fer cryin’ in the dark! I put on my best Smug Mom Voice. “Well, sweetheart,” I said, said I, “if he says you’re his girlfriend, you just tell him you’re still much too young to have a boyfriend.”

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes popped. Her hands went to her hips, and she hissed huffily at me, the very picture of indignance, “BUT Moooom! I NEEED another boyfriend for my COLLECTION!” 

……uuuuuhhhhh…….

 It’s times like that I wish I could blame it on daycare…..

This cracks me up.

This evening at the restaurant Sunshine needed to use the restroom. (Sometimes this is just due to the fact that she likes to know what color of soap they have in there, but this time it was legit.) I took her in, and (after checking the soap color–pink, her favorite) she announced that she would use the “big bathroom” (translation: handicap accessible stall) so it would be big enough for me to come in too. I suggested that maybe she could manage on her own this time like she does most of the time at home. But oh, no. She NEEDED my HELP. So in I went.

As soon as she had closed and locked the door, she pointed at the wall farthest from the toilet and ordered, “Mom, you stand over there.” I backed up a few steps toward the wall. She put her hands on her hips and demanded, “All the way by the wall, Mom. You need to be touching it.” So I backed up another step and leaned against the wall. She walked over and checked out the toilet, then turned around and as she dropped her drawers to do the deed, she announced, “Now, Mom. Close your eyes so you can NOT see my underpants.” I closed my eyes. (Ok, I peeked a little. I was curious, and after all I see her underpants regularly both on and off her backside–which I also see on occasion.) She took care of business, wiped, flushed, pulled up her pants, and told me I could open my eyes, which I did. As I was following her out of the stall she turned with a big grin on her face and said, “Thanks for helping me, Mom!”

But as we were employing the pink soap and COLD water (which, in case you haven’t been lectured on the subject recently, “starts wif a blue letter ‘C’ which says /K/, but ’snake’ starts wif a letter ’s’ even though sometimes ‘c’ also says ’ssssssss’, but “hot” starts wif a red letter ‘H’ for ‘hhhhhuh’ and is there a blower or a paper towel and look at how the trash can lid spins around!!!) I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth standing in a corner with my eyes closed constitutes “helping”. If it does, though, I know exactly what to do the next time someone wants me to “help” with hard labor…..heh…heh….heh…..

YummyinmytummyDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-LISH! (And that’s all there is to say.)

This morning I was reviewing my lesson for church and Sunshine wandered in with a sad, slightly horrified look on her face.

“Oh no, Mom!” she moaned.
I asked her what was the matter.

“My mind!” She exclaimed. “It fell out!” Then suddenly her face lit up, she smiled and looked relieved, as if she’d just realized something. “That’s ok,” she declared confidently, “I don’t need it anymore.” And she scampered off to play.

And you know, she’s probably right. I lost my mind years ago, and nobody has noticed.