My neighbor, Val, (whom you might remember) invited me to lunch on Saturday with her father and her five year old daughter. Being around Val and her father is always a good time because Val spends most of her time being completely embarrassed by her father. He’s an odd duck, to be sure, but also a nice guy who means no harm. The degree to which Val is embarrassed by him is clearly related to the fact that he is her father and nothing else.

So there we were at lunch, and her father was being his natural, odd, nice self, and Val was being her embarrassed, squirmy self, looking many a time like she’d just like to crawl under the table. And her father explained to me about how children start to become embarrassed by their parents around 12 or 13 and how this waxes and wanes as the years go by, but never completely goes away, and I smiled, thinking about how embarrassed I am by my mother, and then it hit me: ONE DAY I WILL EMBARRASS MY CHILDREN.

I was filled with warmth and happiness! Oh yes, my dear little ones, the tables will turn, AND THEY WILL TURN FOREVER. Oh, glorious day! I will welcome you! Just knowing that you are coming makes it all easier!

Like when we were potty-training the girls, and I had to walk around in public with a potty seat hanging off of my backpack. Or, during that same time, when one of them would just go ahead and pee right on the floor in the middle of a store. Good times, good times.

Elsie is currently going through a nose-picking phase. Her finger spends most of its time obscured from view inside of her nostril. At home, we don’t fight it, but in public, I try to convince her to keep her finger out of her nose. She tries to convince me, with a nice volume to her voice and very clear diction, that BOOGIES TASTE GOOD.

It’s also great when one or the other of them explains to complete strangers that, when they cry, they must go into “the back room.”

But really, the pièce de résistance thus far has got to be when we were hanging out at our friends house, and Quinn lay down on the ground on her back, spread her legs, put her heels up in the air, and said, “Mommy, can we play this game?” To which our friends, understandably, asked with some trepidation, “Um, what is she talking about?”*

I feel better about all of these things now. Much better. In fewer than ten years, it will be my turn. I know Val’s father doesn’t try to embarrass Val, yet he does. I, too, will be able to embarrass my children through no effort of my own. And just imagine the degree to which I will be able to embarrass them if I just try! I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned here the dozens AND DOZENS of pictures I have of both girls grinning proudly while standing beside a potty featuring their very own poop. But you can be sure I won’t forget to mention these lovely pictures to their prospective romantic interests. Which reminds me, I really need to buy a photo album…

*For the record, Quinn was referring to the game where I (or Majka) lie on the ground on my back, with my legs together, and Quinn lies down with her body along my shins, and I raise my feet up and down in the air, bouncing and swaying her around while holding onto her hands. Now, of course, we call this activity The Let’s Call Child Protective Services on Our Friends Game.

I read about a Japanese anime movie called My Neighbor Totoro, and I decided to give it a try. It was a wonderful, sweet movie about two sisters, ages 8 and 4, who move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their mother, who has been in a hospital for a year. No one dies in this movie, and there are no near death experiences. If you have seen a couple of “kids” movies, you realize just how rare this is. (You might also remember how much I appreciate this when I find it.) I was so excited by seeing such a sweet, well made, interesting kids movie, that I wanted more like this. I was delighted to find that Totoro’s creator and director, Hayao Miyazaki, has made quite a number of anime movies, virtually all of which feature a girl as the main character and/or hero of the movie. I couldn’t wait to see more! So when I saw another of Miyazaki’s movies at Barnes and Noble, I bought it. It was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

As it turns out, Nausicaa is a movie for an older audience – adults, maybe teens. But I didn’t realize this at first. And it has a princess in it. Two princesses in it, actually. One of the princesses is Nausicaa. Nausicaa is all kinds of awesome. While Nausicaa can fight well, her main emphasis is peace, and I don’t mean that in the way it’s usually portrayed in movies, i.e. “In order to have peace, I must kill all of you now.” I mean that she actually hates fighting and does very little of it. She also has an amazing, almost extrasensory ability to feel empathy for other creatures, and she believes in humane treatment for all beings, human and otherwise. And she’s got this cool little “jet assisted glider craft” so she flies all over the place and is, like I said, all kinds of awesome.

In summation, Princess Nausicaa is a peace-loving adventurer, and because of her adventures in nature and on her jet-glider, she dresses sensibly in a nice pair of pants, boots, and a shirt. Like so:

A little ways into the movie, we meet another princess, Kushana. Kushana wears a little white dress and a crown. She’s also evil. Princess Kushana wants world domination, and she doesn’t care who she steps on to get it. In fact, I think she rather enjoys the stepping on part. She looks like so:

When Kushana came on screen, Quinn lit up and said, “Oh I like her! She’s so beautiful!” When she wasn’t on screen, Quinn asked, “Where is the princess?”

I pointed to Princess Nausicaa on the TV.

“No, not her. I want the pretty princess!”

On screen, Kushana reappeared, saying, “Incinerate them! What are you waiting for? Were you not designed to be the most evil creature on the face of the earth?”

I looked at Quinn. “This is the one you like?”

Quinn smiled. “Look at her dress and her crown! She’s sparkly!”

On screen, Nausicaa positioned herself to save all the people of the valley.

I said, “What about Princess Nausicaa? Don’t you like her?”

“No,” Quinn explained to me again. “I like the other princess.”

On screen, Kushana yelled angrily, “Hit them again!”

“Um… Okay,” I said.

All in all, I’d say that Quinn is coming along pretty nicely, but we’re going to have to put in a bit more work on the finer points.

Sometimes, when you’re stuck in the house, day after day after day with sick children, your mind gets a little funny. Then you create Mr. Poopy-peey and you decide that you should write a post featuring him. So without further ado, here’s Mr. Poopy-peey!

Mr. Poopy-peey is not just a name. Oh no. Mr. Poopy-peey doesn’t just talk the talk, he poops the poop:

And he pees the pee:

And he even has an offspring:

And the children LOVE him. Especially when you accompany his pooping and peeing with realistic sounds of straining.

Now that you have the template, feel free to make your own! You’re welcome!

9:00am

A FedEx truck parks outside, and a nice delivery woman gives me a very large box.

Quinn: What is that? What is THAT?! Is it a present FOR ME?

Sonja: Yes, but it’s a Christmas present, so you have to wait for Christmas to open it.

Quinn: Is it Christmas now?

Sonja: No, it’s not going to be Christmas for a long time.

9:05am

Quinn: Is it Christmas now?

Sonja: Not yet.

9:45am

Quinn: Is it Christmas now?

Sonja: No, it won’t be Christmas for [swears under breath] 24 more days.

10:15am

Quinn: Is it Christmas now?

Sonja: No. One way you’ll know that it’s Christmas is that Ima will be home all day that day.

11:00am

Quinn: Is it Christmas now?

Sonja: No.

The end, but not really.

And what’s this? Wait, it’s a…

Bonus example!

A commercial comes on for a Dora the Explorer Christmas special.

Elsie: Can we watch that one now? Can we watch it now?

Sonja: Sorry, sweetie. We have to wait until Sunday for that to come on.

Elsie: Let me check. [She runs to the window and looks out] I think it’s a sunny day, Mom.

Well, let’s just get right to it. I grabbed my 3 year old’s forearm in one hand, her upper arm in my other, then I slammed her elbow down on my knee, and you’re never going to believe this, but this innocent little experiment broke her elbow! Huh!

Okay, okay, it didn’t happen quite like that.

We were playing the game where we were walking and holding hands, and Quinn falls down to the ground, except she doesn’t fall, because we’re holding hands. I stop her from falling by dragging her back up. By her hand. This game always makes me nervous, because it always escalates. Quinn flings herself down as spectacularly as she can, often swinging from side to side, and encouraging me to swing her and fling her more than she can swing and fling herself. (Hey, I got three flings and three swings into that last sentence. Gotta be some sort of record.) If I were being dragged along by my hand, up and down in the air, and around and around, I’m pretty sure my arm would be wrenched out of its socket. But I guess kids are resilient, or stretchy, or who knows what, but we’ve played this game many a time without any negative repercussions.

Until… da da da DUM!

We were almost home. Just about to turn the corner to our house. When Quinn flung herself down and around behind me, and I dragged her up by her arm, and she started crying. But, you know, kids cry about stuff.

Sidebar:
For instance, Elsie fell down today and scraped her knee. Like a tiny bit. Like no blood. Just a dime sized, single layer of skin gently slid off of her knee, like what might happen if a unicorn licked it. However, the hysterics that issued from her, you would have thought she went down under enemy fire on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. Just saying.

As it was 8pm at night, we decided to see if she recovered. And, well, given the title of this post, you can guess that she didn’t. Well, she did. She’s not still crying now, a week later. But that night, after about an hour, it was pretty clear to me that her arm was broken. We propped it up on a blanket, and if she didn’t move it, she was fine. If it moved, even a little tiny bit, she cried sad, sad tears of pain. In order to make sure that we don’t miss it when she cries, Quinn likes to say to us, “Do you see the tears that are coming out of my eyes???????”

That night, I had no choice but to answer her with, “Kind of. But all this alcohol I’ve been drinking is making everything sort of blurry.” Because, oh yes, when I realized that her arm was broken and that I had been the one who broke it – innocent game or not, I was holding her hand when she flung back and it happened – I started pouring myself one drink after another.

Another Sidebar:
As it so happened, that very same night, my neighbor across the street was walking her dog, off leash, and her dog ran across the street and got hit by a car. The dog ended up being okay, but at the time, my neighbor thought that her dog was going to die and naturally felt very guilty, being that the dog was off leash. I found out about this the next morning, and when I saw my neighbor, I said, “I heard about what happened last night,” and she said, “I can’t even talk about it. I feel sick,” and I said, “It’s okay! Really! I broke my baby’s arm last night!” And we ran forward and embraced, and we’re not huggy people. I said, “Let’s get drunk tonight! Really drunk!” and she said, “Sounds great.” However, not sure that her guilt could keep pace with mine, I started drinking hours before we met up. At least, I think we met up. I don’t remember much about that night, now that I think about it. Hmm.

The next morning, we talked to our doctor, who told us to go to the hospital to get x-rays, and I won’t go through the entire, boring story, but basically I hid in shame at home while Majka dragged Quinn around, and in the end, it was determined that there was a fracture in her elbow, and Quinn got to pick out a pink cast.

With her cast on, Quinn is back to her old self, tearing around the house and clubbing innocent bystanders with her new, pink weapon. And she only has to wear it for two weeks, so not so bad. And at least I got a couple of drunken nights out of it and another reason to find fault with myself. Huzzah!