Category: Motherhood

The Mean Mommy

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I will admit I was sometimes “mean” to my kids. Sometimes it was funny. Oh, I don’t mean I physically abused them, or even (I hope) mentally tortured them. But once in a while . . .

One morning when X-Chromo was about 6-years old, she asked me, “What does no Pablo espanol  mean?”

Without missing a beat, I answered her. Literally. “No Spanish Paul.”

She did not like that answer. At all.

I could have asked, “Do you mean no hablo espanol?”  and translated that for her. (I don’t speak Spanish.)  But I didn’t. Because Mean Mommy was alive and well that morning.

But the beautiful part was when my husband came downstairs to join us for breakfast, unaware of the ongoing drama.

“Daddy! Mommy won’t tell me what no Pablo espanol means. What does it mean?”

My husband, without missing a beat, replied: “No Spanish Paul.”

 

 

 

 

Mommy Files: Birthday Cake Fiasco

My husband and I grew up in different cultures. He’s from a high-rise in the Bronx. My roots are in rural upstate New York. His mother bought his birthday cakes at the corner bakery. My mom baked mine from scratch.

When our children were young, I decided it would be fun for the three of us to bake my husband a birthday cake ourselves. Y & X-Chromos enthusiastically agreed. From scratch! We had such fun, measuring, stirring, tiptoeing around so the cake wouldn’t fall in the oven.

But Mommy made two mistakes. It had been so long since I’d baked and frosted/decorated a cake, I forgot one important thing, and didn’t consider a second important thing.

  • We didn’t wait for the cake to completely cool before we frosted and decorated it. Oops.
  • Even worse, we needed a place to hide the cake so TV Stevie wouldn’t see it. So we put it in the oven. Which also hadn’t completely cooled. Double-oops.

The next day, TV’s birthday, I discovered those errors. Oh, the cake was edible. But the decorations had melted into the frosting, making a pastel tie-die effect.

I think that was the last time I attempted to bake cake. The Chromos and I settled for a future of baking quick breads and cookies. X-Chromo spent many hours in college perfecting the art of molasses cookies.

At least I didn’t traumatize the children.

 

 

The Mommy Files: Names

When X-Chromo was very first learning to talk, we discovered something interesting. We played the standard game with her: point at something and ask her, “What’s that?” or at a person and ask, “Who’s that?” The latter was quite common at the dinner table every night.

I would point at my husband. “Who’s that?”

“Dada.”

He would point at me. “Who’s that?”

“Mama.”

One of us would point at her older brother. “Who’s that?”

“Hmph.”

Y-Chromo’s given name is nowhere near “Hmph” in sound. Neither were his many nicknames. But night after night, she would respond: “Dada, Mama, Hmph.”

If you look up the definition of “hmph” you’ll see that the sound indicates annoyance or indignation. Traits that set the tone of their relationship for next several years.

The Mommy Files: Green Grandma

Green is TV Stevie’s least favorite color. I’ve always been partial to it, but after we married, I limited green to foodstuffs. TV is partial to vegetables, so he was content.

Along came the children, who, being green deprived in the house and in their closets, both declared green to be their favorite color.

X-Chromo, I think, rebelled against all the pink and purple in which I swathed her.  Her love of green morphed into a preference for what I call turquoise.  Which TV Stevie insists is green. Men, however, have fewer color rods in their eyes, so he clearly knows not of what he speaks.

Y-Chromo took it one step further.  He invented his “Green Grandma.”

One evening at dinner, Y informed us he wanted to visit his Green Grandma. So I asked him about this person. “Oh, she lives in a green house. Her kitchen is green. Her curtains are green. The stove and refrigerator a green. There are green walls and green floors. All her furniture is green. I love it there.”

The kids wasn’t talking about environmentally correct stuff. He meant the color.

 

 

The Mommy Files: Yum Yums

Friday nights at our house have always been pizza night. After a long work week, it is nice not to have to think about what I’m going to cook for supper.  When the Chromos were young, I did cook. Every night. Except Friday.

We go through phases with our pizza toppings. TV likes green peppers and mushrooms, two things I cannot abide. I like Italian sausage, something he considers extremely unhealthy. Two things we’ve always agreed on are black olives and onions. So for a while, our weekly pizza was topped with onions.

Y-Chromo was old enough to eat a slice on his own, but I had to cut up X-Chromos pizza into tiny pieces for her to handle.  “Yum yum,” she would say. And thus began what would be come a weekly game.

X-Chromo would reach over to my plate and pluck the onions off my slice. “Hey!” I would chide her. “What do you think you’re doing? Those are my onions.”

She would smile and reply, “Yum yums!”

It became a weekly game.