Bottom Burps and Other Ways I Shelter My Children

MJ and her kids were over the other day. MJ is one of my closest friends and a real mentor when it comes to mom-things.

All of our kids were sitting around a little picnic table when a familiar sound erupted from Milo's bottom. All the kids laughed and Annabella said, "Milo, say 'excuse me' when you do a bottom burp, please!"

MJ looked at me and mouthed the words "bottom burp?"

"I can't stand the word 'fart,'" I whispered back to her.

It's true. I can't stand saying it. I can't stand hearing it and I can't stand my kids saying it, so when they asked what it was, I just called it a bottom burp and it stuck. "I'm actually surprised it's lasted this long," I tell her, with a hint of pride in my voice.

"Yeah, but if they say that in elementary school, they'll get killed!"

I'd honestly never thought of it this way, but ever since MJ said this I couldn't stop thinking about the other ways I've sheltered my children that could prove dangerous in their school years. Take this conversation, for example:

ANNABELLA: Sophie was sad at camp today because her mom wouldn't let her bring her Webkinz.

ME: What are Webkinz? (Of course, I know what Webkinz are, but I don't want her to know that.)

ANNABELLA: Oh, they're like regular animals. But with spikes.

Annabella is five and the boys are three and they've played with their cousins' Gameboy a few times, but other than that, they know as much about video games as they know about sex. Annabella has heard her friends talk about Hannah Montana, but I'm pretty sure she also thinks that a Hannah Montana is like a regular animal, but with spikes.

I know this innocence won't last forever and I think it's OK for me to keep some things away from my kids at this stage in their life.

<cue "Sex and the City" music>

I couldn't help but wonder, should we feel guilty about purposely keeping things from our children?

Jumping Monkeys Episode 56: A Guy Named Dave

Today we talk to Dave Bruno of Guy Named Dave about his 100 Thing Challenge, a personal goal to have only 100 things in his life by November, 2008. Join the 100 Thing Challenge conversation on FriendFeed. 

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Unhappy Camper

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

These are perhaps the eight most frightening words that a mother can hear at preschool pick-up.

I heard these words on Monday from the teacher at the week-long "camp" at a local preschool where we'd enrolled Milo and Huck. (Their regular preschool is closed in the summer.)

The camp goes from 9 AM until 2 PM, which is two hours longer than their regular preschool. And even though they've been much better around other kids lately, I was worried that my boys might get overtired and misbehave. I tried to explain this to the teacher when I had dropped them off, but things were a bit chaotic and as I talked to her I could see from her face that she saw me as just another mother who was giving her too much unecessary information about her children.

Huck said, "Mommy, go now," and ran off to play. I watched the group of children gathered around a pile of toys and suddenly I realized that there was a reason that Milo and Huck thrived in the ultra-organized Montessori school they attended. This was not their scene.

Against my better judgement, I turned and went home.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. The teacher reported that Milo put a hula hoop around another child and pulled him down. On the walk home, I asked Milo why he did this and Huck answered, "Milo didn't do that. I did!"

"I don't know what the rules are where they go to school," the teacher also said, "But here they have to listen to us. They can't run away when we're talking to them and if they do they'll get time outs. They both got a lot of time outs."

I realized later that the teacher was probably implying that lax rules at their school were to blame to avoid implying that it was my own parenting skills that were to blame. Still, it seemed like a strange thing to say. What preschool functions without those kinds of basic rules?

She went on to say that she would have to call me to pick them up if they continued to act that way, even though they'd "never" had to do that since the preschool opened.

The next day they returned and during drop off I assured the teacher that we'd had many discussions about listening to the teacher and following the rules. And when Marco picked them up in the afternoon, the teacher said nothing to him. Then on Wednesday I got a call about halfway through the day from the teacher asking me to come pick up Huck. He was having a "bad morning" and most recently had thrown sand in another boy's face and then run away from the teachers.

All day I felt a combination of sadness, embarrassment, failure, and most of all fear that there is something really wrong with my child, beyond just being three.

And then late that afternoon I stopped by the library to find that my copy of Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka had finally come in. I'm only a few chapters in, but already I feel so much better. Kurcinka describes spirited children as "normal, but 'more'".  They have difficulty with transitions, are sensitive to light, and are often loud. Check. Check. Check.

If you've been following along, you know that I've already seen the temperament specialist. Kurcinka talks alot about how there's nothing that a parent can do to change a child's temperament, but there are things a parent can do to make things easier. In retrospect, camp probably wasn't a good idea for either of my boys. The environment was too unstable, the transition too abrupt.

Both boys went back to camp today and the teacher said that Huck had a "much better" today. We'll take them back tomorrow too and after that I think we'll all (especially the teachers) breathe a sigh of relief to know that we'll never be back there again.

Jumping Monkeys Episode 55: Saving For College

Today we talk to Jeff Frese of the Freshman Fund about saving for college. Thinking about getting pregnant? Start saving now.

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Mad Mom

Have you seen Mad Men yet?

In case you haven't heard, it's a show on AMC about advertising executives in Manhattan in 1960. But mostly it's a show about the sixties, where pregnant women smoke and drink wine in the afternoon, kids roll around in the back seats of cars with nary a car seat in sight, and a mother is more concerned about the clothes that her daughter took out of her dry cleaning bag than she is about the fact that her daughter is walking around with the plastic dry cleaning bag over her head.

The men in Mad Men spend most of the afternoon drinking cocktails in the office and when they're not secretly ogling the secretaries through one way mirrors, they're treating them like toys or having a lot hotter sex with them than they do their wives.

The office scenes and commentary about the rise of advertising in our culture are certainly interesting and having worked in television for a few years I'm not a stranger to being objectified in the workplace. (i.e. When I was eight months pregnant my boss told me that he'd gotten complaints from viewers who said it looked like I'd stopped washing my hair. I hadn't.) But it's Mad Men's domestic scenes that are really fascinating to me. Yes, the sixties infantalized women, but there's something to be said about the fact that women completely controlled what happened at home. Marco and I have often discuss the difficulties of what today is called co-parenting. We agree that sometimes it's nice for both of us to be with the kids on our own so we can make a decision about something and have that be the end of it.

I wouldn't trade the equal parenting that Marco and I share, and I prefer my daily addictions of e-mail and green tea to cigarettes and martinis, but sometimes I long for those Mad Men days. Plus, the clothes are awesome.

You can rent the first season of Mad Men on DVD from Netflix or buy it at iTunes.

Here's the pilot, if you're interested.

The Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help

If you live on the East Coast and you want to make a huge difference in a child's life this summer, consider applying to be a host family for the Fresh Air Fund. The Fresh Air Fund has provided free summer vacations to New York City children from disadvantaged communities since 1877.This summer they're in desperate need of families, especially families who will host older children (ages 9-11) and boys.

For more information, visit The Fresh Air Fund.

To sign up, e-mail angie@freshair.org and she'll speed you through the process.

Jumping Monkeys Episode 54: Carseat Safety

Today we interview carseat tech, Kate O'Connell, about carseat safety. Kate recommends SafeKids. Kate also has an online store where she's offering Jumping Monkeys listeners 10%. Use the coupon code TENOFF1ST.

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Tony tells us about 101 Uses for Baby Wipes and the Daddy Cast.

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Thankful

Here in the Morrone camp we've been feeling very thankful today, thankful for our friend Haley. Haley is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We met in 1987 when we were in 9th grade geometry class together. She sat in front of me. I was new to the school and had no friends. Even though she was already friends with everyone, she befriended me. That's just the way she was. And still is.

Haley and I were close all through high school. We were two members of a quartet of girls whom I still call my best friends over twenty years later. Haley and I married our husbands within six months of each other and we were in each other's weddings. We were pregnant at the same time...twice. She was pregnant a third time and now we both have two boys and a girl. She lives across the country, but we still see each other every few years. We disagree on some things, but have had several long wonderful talks about them that have opened both of our minds a little wider. I'm inspired by her and her dedication to the things that are important in her life.

I bring this up because Haley has been having weird symptoms like headaches and tremors and was diagnosed with a mass above her heart. At first the doctor thought it might be a tumor, but yesterday they ruled it out and ruled out cancer. She's still not feeling great and I wish I lived closer so I could take her kids for the day or so that Marco could make her family a huge vat of tomato sauce that would last a week, or that I could just give her a giant hug and look in her face and tell her I love her.

Jumping Monkeys Episode 53: Mamalogues

By popular demand, today we discuss homeschooling and Blogher with Dana Loesch, author of Mamalogues and host of The Dana Show. Dana recommends Usborne Books and John Holt. (Photo credit: Raquita)

I also review the toys we received from BabyPlays.

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Grandpa Celebration

We just returned from a big family trip to Cape Cod with my parents, my sister and her family, my aunts and their families, my cousins and their families. We went to celebrate the life of my grandfather who died back in November and asked that his ashes be spread on Nauset Beach and Skatet Beach where he had spread my grandmother's ashes over twenty years ago.

It was a wonderful week together and it was very special to hear everyone's memories of grandpa. Grandpa would have loved to be there cracking lobsters, shucking oysters, watching sunsets, kayaking at Baker's Pond, lifting great grandchildren on shoulders, sitting in the pews at the Federated Church of Orleans, and laughing, laughing, laughing with family. I know that as each of us mourned our loss of him in our way, we also felt that in so many different ways he was there with us. And still is.