sarcastic fringehead

As some of you will have read, my official nickname, bestowed by my young son, is “Mommy of the Future.”

Or rather – it was.

We were at a park in Beverly Hills, perhaps fittingly, when he informed me that I was no longer the Mommy of the Future.

Because I have a new nickname.

You may have to steel yourself for this one.

Do you have a snack? A stiff drink?

At least take a few deep breaths.

It’s…

“King of Heaven.”

I was going to stress that I did not make this up, but I think you probably know I am not capable of making this up.

The only explanation I can get is that I’m taller than him, even when he stands on things. That’s not really sufficient, is it?

Anyway, if you have anything you need or want, let me know. I might consider it.

There is wailing. There is screaming. There are time outs. And then, there is the explaining.

“You know, Daddy, Mommy was being really nice to me, and we were just talking about this nicely, then you came in here and started this big argument!”

[Bzzzt!]

“But it was mostly Mommy’s fault, because she was being mean and not listening to me!”

[Bzzzt!]

The sobbing ramps up dramatically.

“It was all my fault! I’m so sorry!”

[It's OK, sweetie, I forgive you.]

“Well, try not to! Because I did it all on purpose!”

[Hugs and temporary calming down.]

“Mommy, I really did do it all on purpose. It was all my fault, and I’m so very sorry!”

[It's OK, honey.]

“But it was you and Daddy’s fault, too.”

[sad trombone]

It must kinda suck to be five.

It always comes around at this time of year; my determination to get this blog going by posting short, off-the-cuff entries instead of starting on mammoth essays that get edited and edited and never published. I’m beginning to think I suffer from a strangely specific version of seasonal affective disorder. Other than the Januariness of it all, I sort of get my dilemma; short, off-the-cuff things make outstanding Facebook status updates.

That notwithstanding, it is January, and so I am determined. This year will be the year I get back to posting regularly and making jewelry out of all those sparkly and stringy things I acquired before I had a baby and the tremors took my hands (unrelated but complementary obstacles).

Maybe I’ll figure out why you can’t post links in my comments. And why I only get notified about comments from first-time posters. This is sounding like “uninstall all your plugins” territory, isn’t it?

I don’t know if this will turn out as well as I think it might, but I might have the kid live-blog (I mean, through me) American Idol once it gets past Hollywood week. His commentary was astonishing last year, but of course he’s now 5 and possibly too mature and/or jaded to have the same effect. We’ll see.

I am going to post this now without even proofing it. Such is my dedication. You’re welcome.

If you have small children, I fervently hope you are already familiar with Sandra Boynton’s Belly Button Book. It’s a very funny board book about hippopotamuses and their deep love of belly buttons, and it’s been in our bedtime rotation since before W. could walk.

And when I say “our,” I mean that specifically, as I have recently learned  that nobody else gets to read this one to him because nobody does it as well as I do. YES! I RULE!

Naturally, upon learning this, my first instinct was to create a YouTube video of myself reading it so other parents could try to learn to be as awesome as I am. Because I am always selfless. Sadly, I was distracted from this shiny object when my actual son asked me to read him the actual book.

This would be the first time I’d read it with the knowledge that I was the preeminent Belly Button Book reader in the household and possibly – PROBABLY – the world. Naturally, half of me was all, “YES! I’m gonna nail this!” and the other “But what if I choke?”

But as so often happens in parenthood, this turned out not to be a story about me at all. I did perfectly fine, but the show will now be stolen by the little dude.

In this book, there is a baby hippo. The baby’s role is mostly repeating one phrase again and again, so it’s an excellent role to assign to a child. It goes something like this:

Usually Wes is an excellent Bee-Bo deliverer, but today when we got to his first line, instead he sang:

“We are the Village Green Preservation Society…”

While a Sandra Boynton/early Kinks collaboration has long been a dream of many, the time travel involved has put lesser mortals off trying. Not my boy, though. He continued to sing that line every time “Bee Bo” came up.

Then the one different piece of baby-hippo dialogue came around. (“Boon” for balloon, for the record.) I delivered his cue and game him an “OK, smart guy, let’s hear it” look.

“Waterloo sunset’s fi-i-ine…”

Having a child who mostly likes to listen to the Kinks, David Bowie, Richard Thompson, the Old 97’s and the Divine Comedy is not, I have to say, the heaviest burden in the world.

Wes doesn’t usually watch prime time TV because it’s right at his bedtime. The past few weeks, though, I’ve let him watch American Idol. Regulars will not be surprised to hear that he instantly had an understanding of the goings-on that, I believe, would qualify him to replace almost any of the judges. To “pitchy,” “artistry,” “magical,” and “indulgent,” add Wesley’s judging criterion: Rock Star.

We started out with the fabulous Adam Lambert’s Whole Lotta Love. Wes refused to give an assessment of Adam’s standing in the competition, as he was positive Adam was not a contestant but had just come in with his bandmate Slash [that night's mentor]. Rock star +++.

Next was whiskey-voiced teen Allison Iraheta wailing on some Janis Joplin. “Mommy, she’s a rock star too!”

Third, we have mellow laid-back cute boy Kris Allen singing Revolution. Wes watched this one much longer before opining. “I think he’s just pretending to be a rock star.”

This is when I began to suspect he was a genius.

(We missed the smarmy and unmusical Danny Gokey’s evisceration of Aerosmith somehow, but did see Adam & Allison duet on “Slow Ride,” an event that has caused Wes to take up writing preschool fan fiction. He calls them Adison. Just like crazy internet people with the smushing together of names. Don’t go feeling all justified, crazy internet people, he’s FOUR.)

This week, he finally got the Gokey experience. During “You Are So Beautiful,” he turned to me and said, “I think he could be a rock star.”

What? Could my kid not be a genius after all? Doesn’t he have any comprehension of pitch or phrasing or breath control? (By “he” I meant Wes, but one might ask the same about Gokey.) How can he like this? You’re almost in kindergarten, dude, step it up!

But out loud I said:

“He could?”

Wes nodded sagely. Did that eye-roll/head-loll he does when about to state the obvious.

“Yes. He just has to learn to sing like a rock star.”

Oh, is that it? Just the singing that’s the problem? Genius status regranted.

Also, I’m totally letting him watch all my shows with me from now on.

This weekend was one for (theoretically) tough questions from the small child. My Facebook peeps may have read one of these already, but not the second one.

“Mommy, marriage is one girl & one guy, right?”

(Why does my 4-year-old know Republican talking points?) “Well… most of the time.”

“Right, or it can be two guys.”

“Or two girls, right. You marry the person you love the most and want as your partner for life.”

“Oh! OK!” (Leaves room to blow bubbles.)

Memo to Prop 8 people: It’s really not that freaking complicated.

The other conversation that began yesterday started out being pretty predictable.

“Mommy, what does ‘black person’ mean?”

“You know [list some people he knows]? They’re black people.”

“What? They’re brown!”

“I know, that’s just a word people use for some reason. Like, they call people who look like us white, and we’re not actually the color white, are we?”

“No, we’re kind of pink.”

Today, we were watching Wow Wow Wubbzy and the Wubb Girls made an appearance.

“Mommy, what kind of people are they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they’re blue. So they’re blue… no wait. I can’t think of the word, but it’s a color that’s close to blue.”

“Green? Turquoise? Aqua?”

“Yes! You got it, Mommy – aquamarine. They’re aquamarine folks. Because they’re blue.”

My first thought: “‘Aquamarine folks’? That rules!”

Second thought: Can’t wait to hear about how he’s assigning slightly inaccurate skin colors to all his friends at school.

This evening, Wes and I were talking about one of his school friends, who had told Wes he couldn’t have a certain TV character as a favorite because she was a girl. Wes was pretty clear without my having to offer counsel that that was dumb and you could like anyone you want, but wanted an explanation as to why someone would say that. “He’s a 4-year-old misogynist” seemed harsh, so I stalled for time.

“Isn’t he friends with girls at your school?”

“Yeah! We play with girls every day! We pretend we’re monsters and chase the girls around. Then when we catch them we say [regretful voice] ‘Oh, I put your sister in the lover.’”

“You say WHAT?”

“I put your sister in the lover.”

“In the…”

“…lover.”

“Lover?”

“Lover.”

[World's longest "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."]

“Mommy! The stuff that comes out of volcanoes!”

“OH! That… actually makes sense.”

We never got back to the original question, but I think it’s best that I don’t attempt to speak with authority on any subject for at least 48 hours.

“Who’s this singing?”

“This is David Bowie. You know David Bowie, right? Oh – maybe you only know him as the Goblin King.”

“Is his goblin castle underneath us right now?”

“Well, he doesn’t really – uh – David Bowie is an actor, so sometimes he makes his hair all big and goes underground to live with goblins, and other times he’s a musician who makes his own records in a studio.”

“Like Uncle Jon?”

“EXACTLY like Uncle Jon.”

Oh, I did. Let’s just cram a few in one post, shall we?

Ta-da!

A few weeks ago, I got the sad news that one of my sister’s dogs, a Doberman named Pepsi, had died suddenly after developing a fast-growing tumor (4 pounds overnight). Since we were going to her house for Easter, I knew I had to break it to Wes. I will admit that the thought crossed my mind that a relative’s pet might be a nice gradual way to introduce death to a preschooler – and I was punished for the selfishness of that thought a few days later.

Had I spoken to my sister about this, you see, I might have known that she had somebody else’s Doberman staying in her dog run. The conversations between Wes and various relatives and party guests that began, “My mommy thought Pepsi died, but look, there she is!” were legion. The relatives and guests explained the truth, but it was not sticking in the face of concrete evidence.

Finally, most of us sitting at the dinner table watching him explain Pepsi’s resurrection to someone else, there was a collective giving up. So I’ll need a redo on this one the next time we visit, I guess.

“Well, it IS Easter.”

“Yeah… wait, did she die three days ago?”

Close enough. I like a little Jesus/Doberman humor at the holidays, don’t you?

—

As those of you with little kids doubtless know, Jack Black recently made an appearance on Noggin series Yo Gabba Gabba. The day it first aired, I picked Wes up at school and told him about this new episode with this really funny guy on it and how much he was going to love it – except I didn’t check that the DVR had picked it up. Which it hadn’t. Are you detecting a theme regarding me being a dumbass?

So naturally, my child was reduced to heaving sobs over not getting to see this awesome person he had not known existed 15 minutes earlier. It was then I remembered someone had sent me – for Wes – a DVD of School of Rock. I remembered, fuzzily, people having mentioned showing this to 4- and 5-year-old kids. Were these smart people? I do not recall.

What I should have realized, though, was that my kid, with his explosive energy, hilarious delivery and intense musicality, was primed to find Mr. Black an excellent role model. And then maybe I should have thought about whether I was ready for him to blossom in quite that way just yet.

First, it was the stage diving. My lord, the stage diving. He engaged me in an intense 20-minute discussion regarding the circumstances under which one would stage dive wearing a shirt, or shirtless (I did not actually know, so I said that maybe you kept your shirt on when wearing a jacket and tie – any stage-divers who can clear this up?). Weeks later, his tiny shirtless form is still propelling itself floorward from various items of furniture.

Then he asked to watch it again, and the quotes started, in flawless Jack-Black delivery. He’ll change them up to fit his circumstances, though. I don’t always recognize them as quotes right away, so you can imagine my WTF expressions when my kid says stuff to me like:

“So, uh, Mommy, you think I could cut out of nap a little EAR-LY?”

Or, after handing me a friend’s Guitar Hero guitar: “OK, Mommy, the blue one right there? That’s G. OK, you’ve got it! Now just keep that G coming all day long.”

I suspect his recent habit of referring to “um [eyes rolled to the side, tongue click], my GIRLFRIEND” (apologies to Zoe’s parents) is related to Mike White’s character in the movie, but will have to watch again to be sure.

Finally a few days later he realized his dream: To see Jack Black on Yo Gabba Gabba. While watching, he said this, which I believe I will leave you with:

“Mommy, he’s going crazy! He’s one of the leaders of going crazy!”

And quite possibly more than most. Being honest here. HOWEVER.

I would like to state for the record that I had NOTHING – N-O-T-H-I-N-G – to do with the fact that, when we’re outside somewhere and my child spots a smoker, this is what he does.

[freezes, points]

AHHHHHHH! OH NO! OH NO! Somebody’s smoking! What can we do, Mommy? Where can we go to be safe? QUICK! RUN!

In real life, I’m trying to settle him down on that issue. In blog life, it’s kind of hilarious.