Hello, My Name is Laura, and I am a Potty Mouth

Let’s get right to the heart of the issue. I swear. I swear a lot. And I enjoy swearing. It has been years since I embraced my inner sailor and in that time I have become quite skilled at the art of cursing. I mix words in new and unique ways that grab attention, elicit chuckles and sometimes gasps. I know when to switch up my words of choice to maximize their impact and when to drop a classic F-bomb. In the years I have cultivated an extensive vocabulary of profanity and use it like a true scholar of potty talk. While this was well and good when I was childless, my salty language has now become problem. I first recognized this as an issue when Big Dog, at the tender age of 2 began imitating his bad mommy. And I laughed. I know that was the wrong thing to do, really. But when a rather angelic looking child, with his sparkling blue eyes looks up and says “fuck”, the absolute contradiction of word and speaker is hilarious. I try to hide my face so he doesn’t see my amusement, but it is difficult to be the voice of parental authority when giggles invade your stern admonishments.
Earlier this year, one of his daycare teachers took a moment to let me know Big Dog had been using “not for daycare words” on occasion. This particular teacher has a knack for making me feel less like an accomplished career woman and more like a naughty unwed teenage mother. Quite a feat considering I am married and far from teenage (no comment on the "naughty"). I had a momentary panic, oh God, which word? Lists of explicatives rolled through my mind. Turns out his choice was “Damn it.” In my book this is so mild it is almost not swearing. But my world is not a daycare, so I listened. It appears that my little man has picked up mommy’s bad habit of exclaiming “Damn it” when dropping something. I promised the teacher we’d work on it, but at the same time I felt vaguely proud that he was using it in a correct context! Nice one kid, you may have a future in this after all. I have been trying to tone down my propensity for obscenities. I have replaced a few words of my more choice words with their more benign and accepted kin. And even as I do this, I realize profanities are sprinkled liberally thorough out many aspect of my daily life. While many of these word in context slip right past Big Dog’s ears without notice, others are immediately pounced upon. For example, in the car a few months ago we were listening to my current favorite CD. (Lily Allen’s Alright Now) Well, I was listening to it, and it turns out my underage passenger was attentively listening as well. One of the song contains the line “well it’s very funny cos I got your fuckin’ money”. Big Dog immediately repeated back part of that line, and it sure wasn’t the “it’s very funny” part. Being that this happened within days of the daycare incident, I swung into full mommy mode. I told him that wasn’t a nice phrase, and that he shouldn’t repeat it. In fact it was bad that mommy was listening to this while he was in the car. To which he replied “fuckin’ money”, with an impish smile. As futile as my attempts to figuratively wash out my mouth with kid friendly soap may be, I will forge on. If not because it is the “right” thing to do, then out of the fear of being forced to explain my child’s unique and varied vocabulary in many future parent-teacher conferences.

Let's Go Skating...then again

I decided to take Big Dog ice skating. No, I do not ice skate. We had been watching ice skating at Grandma and Grandpa's and my sweet boy turned to me and said, "I want to do that mommy" How do you refuse? "You want to ice skate?" I asked. "Yes" he said "I want to do that with you" So it had to happen. When the sweet voice of a preschooler asks you to ice skate, it is impossible to turn him down. I have never ice skated. Actually, I have never successfully ice skated. I tried once, fell down a lot and gave up. Why I thought I'd be fit to take a child on the ice is beyond me. I invited our sitter to come along and watch Little Dog while Big Dog and I tried our skates out. She has skated before, actually did a lot of it as a child. If worse came to worst and I was too clumsy on ice to take him out, she could help him out. It never even came to that. We arrived at the ice rink, rented our skates, suited up and teetered to the ice. Big Dog stepped into the rink and slipped, I caught him and set him back on his feet before he fell, but that was enough. He was done. I tried to get him to give it a try, I got on the ice and helped him stay upright despite his best efforts to return to the safety of the padded floors. After a few minutes, I gave in and went back to the seating where our sitter was watching...and laughing. She decided to take a spin on the ice to show him how fun it was. After one lap around the rink she checked in. Was he going to join her, hell no. But he did demand that she skate again and praised for for being a "very good skater!". One other highlight of the trip was meeting a chatty 5 year-old at the next table. He could burp the alphabet. He likes pizza. He has his Christmas tree up already. Did I mention he could burp the alphabet? When our sitter returned from her third lap around the rink, she sat down with us for a bit. Big Dog asked her to do one more for him. She replied that she needed to rest and commented to me "A little ice skating shows how out of shape I am" to which our friendly 5 year-old piped in "maybe you should go to a gym...you know...get more exercise" Nice kid. I'd hate to meet his parents.

My Target Hell

I love Target. Really, I love it. If I could, as the childish taunt goes, "marry it", Mr. Dog would have had a harder time getting me to commit. In the past Target has never done me wrong. If I needed something, they had it. If I decided I didn't need it after all, they took it back. Easy. And don't get me started on the One Spot! Until this Friday, I can't imagine any situation that would make me hesitate to head to Target if I needed diapers, or what not. I can't imagine ever being truly anxious to get away from my mecca of bargains. Now, I take partial responsibility for our falling out. I knew I was venturing into the realm of retail in the holiday season, but I thought I'd be safe. It was a Friday afternoon, people would be at work. I just needed to pick up a prescription for my son. Really, I'd be in and out. Granted, there was a flaw in my thinking. The only reason I was at home this Friday was because a freak storm had knocked out power in large areas of Seattle. While Big Dog's daycare was open, Little Dog's was closed, so I was working from home. I failed to think this through, if I was home due to the power outage, probably others were in the same situation. And the only reason I had the prescription for Little Dog called into Target was that our local Walgreen's was closed due to the power outage. Sure I should have considered this, but I thought I was smart when I called ahead to make sure the pharmacy was open. Well, I wasn't as smart as I thought. I packed Little Dog into the car and headed off to Target. On the way over I noticed several intersections were still blacked out. Nothing major, just a few traffic lights dark. It wasn't until I was ready to back my wagon out of my parking spot that I realized just how bad my judgement was. traffic in the parking structure was at a complete stand still. I'm not exaggerating. I sat in my spot for 15 minutes before I was able to back out. I spent a total of 50 minutes in the parking structure before I even saw outside pavement. During this time I realized I wouldn't make it to Big Dog's daycare before it closed. I did the polite thing and called to let them know I was running late. When I called I thought it would be a few minutes, maybe 15 minutes or so past closing when I'd finally get there. I had no idea. Outside of the structure, parking was so backed up surrounding the shopping center, it became obvious that Seattle Christmas shoppers are not daunted at all by a few non-functioning traffic lights, but become paralized when asked to treat them as 4-way stops. It was another hour before I was able to get to my friend's house to pick up Big Dog who would have been stranded at his preschool if it wasn't for the kindness of my friend A who did me the favor of russeling up another carseat and taking him home with her son. All I can say is thank heavens for cell phones and the kindness of sympathetic parents. A, I don't know what I would have done without you!

From bar hopping to breastfeeding

How the hell did I end up singing along to Ralph Covert, driving a messy Passat station wagon with two, count em, two carseats? I used to be cool. I used to listen to the best emerging music, watch the latest in independent film, wear the hip new styles, be up on the who’s who and what’s what. Now I count myself lucky if I make it out of the house without spit up in my hair. Ok, it isn’t really that extreme. I do drive a wagon and spend a lot of time, probably too much, shopping for organic kid-friendly foods and mind-expanding play things. I change diapers, call the toilet the “potty”, and shop for pull-ups with Cars on them, not Spiderman. I can whip up a mean Macaroni and Cheese (never called mac and cheese in our house without correction by our little dictator). I plan exciting outings for an informal playgroup of my preschooler’s buddies. I know all of the good kid music, and can sing along without missing a lyric. I can name all of the Teletubbies and most of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains. I know that Curious George band aids are inherently better than Sesame Street band aids, but that a good Nemo band aid trumps them both. I guess that makes me cool in the realm of 3 year-old boys, but it is a world apart from who I used to think I was. To be honest, for most of my adult life I wasn’t all that sure I even wanted kids. I was a rough kid to raise and I wasn’t sure I would be up for that challenge. I still find myself surprised by the total life change I’ve made after picking up these two tiny hitch hikers, trading my Karman Ghia for the trusty Passat. Don’t get me wrong, I like my life very much, it is just a far cry from the girl who knew the bartenders and used to close down the bars. And then again, at the ripe old age of 34, that sort of behavior would be a little depressing and bar fly-ish. I guess part of it is that I have a hard time with the concept of me, Laura, as an adult. A real tax-paying, property-owning, 401K-having, childbearing, responsible-for-the-lives-of-others adult. I don’t know if that will ever really catch up with my sense of self. I still feel like I’m pulling something over on someone when I do the parent-y stuff with the kids. Almost like I’m pretending to be a grown up, hoping the other parents won’t see through my disguise and oust me from the club. And yet there isn’t much about my life I’d change. Sure I’d like to be a bit thinner, a bit more stylishly put together, and it would be nice if my house had central heat, better yet a housekeeper. But I have a family that loves me, two amazing boys, a husband who is my best friend and I think is sexy as all get out. Life is sweet, a bit sticky and covered in fingerprints, but sweet.

A point of clarification

First off let me fess up. I was never a stage diver. I caught stage divers, had them land on my head at shows, punched them as they passed overhead if they were rude enough to kick, but never made the crazy leap to the sea of hands myself. It just sounds better to say “stage dives to station wagons” than “from getting kicked in the head by stage divers to station wagons”. That kind of lacks something. No ring to it. I guess I could have named this blog “From Mosh Pits to Motherhood”, but I didn’t think of that at the time. So excuse the poetic license and read on understanding the spirit in which it was intended.