Tech talk

Some of my favorite comments from my 5-year-old relate to his thorough understanding of the modern conveniences that I never had as a child.

Such as my iPod.

My Nano is a familiar part of our daily drives, so much so that I actually made a particular mix of his favorite songs, ready to play at his request.

Sometimes, I'm in the mood for my own music, but that got me in trouble a week ago.

I played what I call my "Mellow Mama" playlist, a long mix of music that includes, among others, several songs by Poe.

Her song, "Angry Johnny," started, with its familiar, slow beat that I often find comforting during my drive. But the lyrics caught my son's attention.

Johnny, angry Johnny. This is Jezebel in Hell.
I'm gonna kill ya. I'm gonna blow you.
Away
Suddenly, the boy started squealing, in laughter, "I'm gonna kill ya?"

I quickly turned the volume off and pulled over so I could change the playlist.
Bad Mommy, I thought. Now I'm never going to hear the end of this.

"I'm sorry, honey. That was a bad song. Mommy will take that off the iPod."
"Why did you have the song on there?"
"I like her voice. But that's a bad thing to say."
"Yeah, it's bad."

I think I stammered something about the importance of life and how killing is bad before I could continue driving. I started playing the Frida soundtrack - lots of upbeat mariachi numbers and even if the lyrics are trouble, it's in Spanish so he would never know.

That night, I dumped Angry Johnny from that playlist and thumbed through my iTunes to weed out any other potential lyrical disasters. Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails. I guess my listening tastes aren't PG enough.

Perhaps someone would fault me for getting into the situation into the first place, but I guess I've never been the type of parent that tries to set a 24/7 perfect world for him. I do limit his TV choices, but he also watches football and the TV news sometimes and he listens to NPR with me, as well as the jazz or Depeche Mode that I chose on some days. We read the papers in front of him and we have kept most of the same books and magazines on the shelves, in the same places they were before he was born.

Still I hoped he wouldn't repeat the episode to anyone. With my luck, he would tell the teacher about my song choice and I'd have state investigators at my door that afternoon.

So the kicker was yesterday, as we were driving I set the tunes up on an improved playlist.
And I quote:
"So, Mommy, did you remove the I'll kill ya song on your iPod?"

Sign of the times

You know things have changed when one of your favorite childhood shows is now completely inappropriate for your child.

If you haven't yet, you must read this NY Times story about how the DVD of the first year of Sesame Street is being sold with a warning label.

Anatomical correctness

I miss the privacy I once had, before I became a Mom.

For me, one of the biggest challenges of motherhood was accepting that my private moments in the bathroom were no longer private. The choice was either keep the door closed and listen to their crawling baby scream at the door until you're done, or to allow him in, just so that he doesn't know you've run away.

I tried the screaming bit. I couldn't deal.

When he grew older, I tried to reason with him that Mommy need a moment to herself. But then he'd figure out how to open the door and barge in anyway.

And it's inevitable that when we have to go to a public restroom, I simply have to let him watch me, or risk having him run around a strange bathroom while I'm in the stall. And there is no way that is happening yet.

Now, understand, I breastfed this child and I'm not a hyper-modest person. But I have really had a hard time with this part.

Lately, I've tried to make an effort to re-establish some privacy, in that I don't let him watch me change or I don't let him come in when I'm showering.

But he loves walking in while I'm in my underwear, and he'll yell: "I see your boobies!"

Frankly, he is a bit booby-obsessed. He screams about seeing my boobies any time I have on a camisole, or if my neckline is even a little low. It doesn't matter if he sees the nipples or not - just my minor cleavage is enough for him. He has asked me several times, about why do I have boobies, why don't boys have boobies, what are boobies for, do all women have boobies, etc. etc.

Tonight, I had one of those moments which left me speechless. We were drawing pictures and he likes to draw things in family units. So when we went through a shark phase, he would draw Daddy Shark, Mommy Shark and Boy shark.
At the moment, he is fascinated by mermaids. So we were drawing a mermaid family and I was assigned to draw the mommy mermaid. I was drawing the tail when my son reached over.

He added two curves to the mommy mermaid chest and said, "Don't forget the boobies. A hump and a hump."

The other babysitter

I have come to realize that the person who first came up with Saturday morning cartoons was undoubtedly a genius.

Or he or she was a parent, who like me, don't want to get up at 6:45 a.m. on one of the few mornings when I don't have to get up that early.

I have never been a morning person. I always have been a night owl.

Yet, somehow, that hormonal magic worked during the early years of motherhood that I suddenly found the ability to wake up from a dead sleep to full alertness in 30 seconds flat when my son woke up in the wee hours of the morning. I managed to get up and get moving and do whatever I needed to do to comfort him and tend to his needs, somehow overcoming my own natural inertia and sluggishness.

5 years into motherhood, I guess the chemicals have worn off because I have become a slug again. This becomes a problem when your child, so rigidly set on his school schedule, gets up at normal time.

Then you wake up to a 35-pound weight on your back, shouting, "It's time to get up. Wake up now."

And that's when TV becomes that invaluable tool for the working parent.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of using television as a babysitter. We have always regulated my son's TV watching habits, setting up time limits and only allowing certain shows and videos. I try to make sure that of my son's play options, that TV or computer time is one of the last things he does.

But my weekend mornings have reverted back to sacred rest time and I thank whomever it is that decided to pile the kid's shows onto the Saturday morning TV schedule.

There are good people in the world.

Luckily, one of them is the stranger who found my cell phone yesterday.

Rushing out the office door, I apparently dropped the phone in my office parking lot.

Thankfully, no one ran it over.
And thankfully, the person who found it wasn't some thief who used it as a quick opportunity to rack up some long distance calls.

Instead, it was a neighborhood guy who found it and waited for me to call my own phone. And I didn't because I thought I had just left it on my desk so one of my friends was the first to chat with him.

He just dropped my phone off and from what I can see, he didn't use the phone. Amazing, isn't it?

Thank you, whoever you are, for restoring my faith in humanity.

No instant gratification

This morning, not yet fully awake, my son spotted the scattered sections of my daily newspaper and asked me, "Mommy, where is the person?"

"What person?" I asked
"The person in the newspaper."
"What person in the newspaper?"
"Mommy!" He was getting impatient. "The one with the sea turtles."

Then the conversation finally made sense to me.

The night before, I let my son tag along on an assignment where we got to watch 13 loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings released at the beach. The hatchlings had been pulled out from one of the last of the turtle nests of the season. They were the last group in the 100=plus clutch to hatch, so fresh out of the shell that they still had the remaining egg yolk sacs attached to their bellies.

So the field biologist kept them one night, hoping they'd be ready for release the next day.

As far as my work goes, I needed to witness this, so that I could add one last bit of detail for a story I'm planning to do in a week. I had already interviewed her so I wasn't going to ask any questions this time. And the timing worked out as far as my son's afternoon care schedule went. And he just LOVES sea creatures. He's a budding marine biologist, I think.

We watched the hatchlings wander in the sand, until the biologist decided to round them up and bring them into the shallows. It wasn't too long before they disappeared into the deeper surf.

Of course, my son then expected to see the sea turtle lady and the sea turtles in the newspaper the next day. He's becoming aware of my career and what it entails. But the turtles weren't a daily deadline for me. I just didn't realize that I would have to explain that part of the process to him.

Mommy's sea turtle article is coming out in a week, I told him. And you'll get to see your turtles again, then.

Look, Ma! No training wheels

More on observations

I finally figured out what is the specific trigger for my son's comments about seeing Christmas decorations at this point in the year.

There is a shopping plaza on the way between home and church where tinsel trees, candles, angels and a few other recognizable Christmas icons are hanging from the light posts, for a few weeks already.

I suppose I had resigned myself to the mass commercialization of Christmas - and its urge to start the holiday season earlier and earlier each year - that I really hadn't noticed the decorations.

But my sharp-eyed son was perplexed. Why was he seeing trees before he had a chance to go trick-or-treating? And doesn't Thanksgiving come before Christmas? He had to ask me all these questions.

All of these are, of course, perfectly logically questions, but I don't have any idea how I am supposed to explain the crass commercial impetus that makes shopping center managers put up Christmas decorations in mid October.

I must simply agree with my son when he says to me: "Mommy, they're just silly. It's not Christmas yet."