Kids will be just kids - right? RIGHT?! Tell me I'm right.

I have a slight aversion to kids' spit, slobber, boogers, germs, cooties, pee, poop and throw up. Unless it's Mateo's. Well, except for his throw up. I still have a hard time with his throw up, especially when it's cottage cheesy and smells funkalicious. Okay, now that I've gotten everyone all grossed out, I'll proceed with my story.

I dropped Mateo off a bit later than normal due to him waking up at 3am and not wanting to go back to sleep until he had a belly full of milk, which was at 4:30am, and then he slept a luxurious additional 2 hours after that while I tried to get ready and start working.

When we got there, there were three other toddlers already sitting at the “food” table, eating various snacks. Mateo is used to being dropped off when there are either no other kids or one or two wandering around, so he acted a bit shy at first, then he walked over to the table. There was one empty chair so I grabbed his snacks and poured him some on a paper towel.

While he was quietly eating, like the innocent child he is who never ever stands on top of tables, bookcases or toys, or pushes or hits other children for that matter, I went over to the desk to fill out his day form. I turned myself so I could see what the innocent one was up to.

Right when I turned, a little girl sitting next to him reached over, grabbed a puff from Mateo’s pile, and put it in her mouth. He got upset because he’s too young to get that sort of thing, and gestured at her mouth like, “Hey!!! You stupid girl! Give me that back!!!! MINE!!!” The little girl saw me eyeballing her.

What did she do?

That’s right, because no one will ever notice this move; she reached into her mouth, pulled out the soggy, wet puff and put it back on Mateo’s paper towel, next to the pile of dry, fresh, untampered puffs. Mateo, being the 16-month old that he is, reached toward the wet, soggy puff. I was rushing in slow motion, saying, “Noooooooououououououoouuou...
….ddddddoooonnnnn’tttttttt doooooo tttthhhhhhaaaattttt!” without trying to look too crazy.

I got to the table faster than Mateo could pick up the soggy puff and put it in his mouth. The little girl looked at me all innocent-like. She was told by a teacher to move her puff-stealing butt and go play. She refused. I said that she took one of Mateo’s puffs and he’s a bit weirded out now (Okay, maybe I was. He seemed perfectly content eating a soggy puff like the little baby bird he is.).

The teacher then said that she thinks she can do anything she wants because her mom lets her do anything she wants.

Ahhhh, I replied.

While this may sound like a mean thing to say to another parent, I happen to really like this teacher because she tells it like it is to the correct people (my husband and I). As long as she’s not saying mean things about Mateo, or as long as I never hear them, then I’m good.

The little girl was then removed from the table. She ran off in a crying huff while Mateo sat innocently (he’s an angel, really, he is), fearing that some other brut of a toddler was going to come along and steal his puffs, eat them, regurgitate the puffs and plop the soggy mess back on his paper towel.

I plunked a puff in his mouth, kissed him goodbye and left before he flipped out over my departure.

Kids Shows: An Expose. Boohbahs!

So we're watching more and more kid shows because of Mateo. Let me fix that statement (I've yet to learn how to do the fancy cross out the words and add new words thing that fancy bloggers do - I'm sure there is some HTML thing I could be doing, but I'm lazy and don't want to look it up): Mateo watches about 5-15 minutes of whatever show and then crawls around, throws himself on the ground and whines or tries to get into corners he's not allowed to go into, and I end up watching the whole stupid show for some reason.

Let's start with Boohbahs. The first 5 minutes of this show is the intro and it seems to go on and on and on and on. But Mateo really likes it. I'm over it after 30 seconds. The Boohbahs are these teardrop pipe cleaner penises. They live in a pack of birth control pills. The story people are the only adults, however, there are kids who bring them presents by going down a spiral walkway in the middle of the psychedelic dancing space of the Boohbahs. The story people are supposedly related, but they really aren't unless they are all adopted. I know this because there is an Indian lady, a black man, white people and Asian people.

(Side note: I was wondering where the story people part was filmed, so I looked it up (I tend to do this with anything that interests me, so if you watch kid shows, you'll find out some interesting things if you keep reading my next posts), and all the story people skits are filmed in Spain. The studio stuff is filmed in England. I was betting on South Africa. I was wrong.)

(Another side note: I just learned how to strike out words. Total coincidence too. And yes, I do have to use HTML, but it's really not that big a deal.)

After the story people, the show quickly moves onto the fun "Look what I can do!" segment, where kids repeatedly do some simple movement. This usually looses Mateo completely, and since we watch these shows on Comcast's On Demand feature, I usually fast forward through it because I'm not too impressed with the kids' skills.

The final segment is some fancy Boohbah dancing, and Mateo definitely stops watching at this point. I'm usually chasing after him or trying to distract him at this poinnt, so I let the show keep running until it's over.

And yes, in case you were wondering, you two can own your own teardrop shaped pipe cleaner penises! Or just visit their lovely web site and get totally confused like I did. I guess you have to have a kid's brain and not an adult's brain that thinks its a kid's brain.

Next: My thoughts on Teletubbies!

Jack's Big Music Show.

I've thought about posting about Jack's Big Music Show a bazillion times, but never have. I love this show, and luckily, so does Mateo. He can watch this endlessly. Well, okay, he really can't because his attention span isn't the greatest, but once he hears the theme song starting, he will stop whatever it is he's doing, army man crawl himself towards that TV and start chatting away to Jack, Melsie Boy (really Mel) and Mary.

I discovered this show because of Comcast's "On Demand" feature, oh, some time when Mateo was 4 months old and could care less about what he was watching on TV. I loved the show for three main reason:

1. It is completely centered around all kinds of music and musical instruments, and one thing I want Mateo to love as he grows up is music. Ideally, I would like him to learn several musical instruments, but that's really up to him.

2. The puppets and set design are the best. I think if I could change anything about myself and life, I would have gone into puppetry and puppet design.

3. The conversations and words used are great -- lots of spiffys and swells, and well, that's just spiffy and swell with me.

One day when I had the show on in our bedroom, a new character came on to fix an instrument, Dr. Strings, and I was thinking to myself, that guy sounds just like Andrew Bird, who just happens to be one of my favorite artists of all time. But how weird would that be, I thought. Just too weird. But as the credits rolled, Andrew Bird was listed. Not only was I surprised to realize how skinny he was, but that he wasn't British. Not sure why I thought he would be British, but he I did, and well, he's not. He's also not very good looking. Sorry Andrew Bird, if you ever google yourself and my blog posting is listed and you just happen to read this.

So now we watch Jack's Big Music Show all the time. We're just starting to watch Little Einsteins, but I don't like it that much. Actually, I'm not really liking many kid's shows and I'm not really looking forward to Mateo wanting to watch shows that I find totally annoying.

If anyone out there knows where to get official Jack's Big Music Show merchandise (besides the DVD and CD), then please let me know! So far, I can't find anything, and I would love a set of Jack characters for my desk at work. Oops, I meant for Mateo.

Parents

You know you're a parent (well, okay, I'm trying to be one, but someone isn't cooperating with me) when your amazon fiction suggestions are full of baby/kid books.

And you know you're a parent when your husband brings home this:




















And you say, "Oh, Toddworld!"

Your husband, who has been at work and not watching TV all day, answers, "I don't know what that is?"

You respond, "Oh, you will...."

Santa Claus

Now I'll give a Santa Claus snippet. On xmas eve, I would hear jingle bells while laying in bed, envisioning the fat man inside our house. Oh! It must be Santa!

Nope -- dog tags. That took me a few years to figure out.

Tooth Fairy

I just started reading Augusten Burroughs' Possible Side Effects yesterday. The first story was about his first encounter with the tooth fairy at age 7. He had never heard of the tooth fairy, and his eccentric and wealthy grandmother was kind enough to explain to him about how the tooth fairy will come into his room and take his tooth, when it falls out, and leave him some money. He didn't want anything to do with this scenario.

This got me thinking about my perceptions of the tooth fairy, whom I was desperately scared of as a kid, and also Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (less frightful, but still bothered me). For most kids, I think, the tooth fairy is envisioned as a small, Tinkerbellish thing that somehow yanks teeth out from under pillows and puts money in its place. I, for some reason, envisioned the tooth fairy as this large woman dressed as a princess who would come into my room in the middle of the night and scare the crap out of me while she tried to do her tooth fairy job.

I was always afraid that I'd wake up right when her face was in my face, because of course the creepy tooth fairy would have to peer at me while I slept. And then I'd scream and flip out and probably be traumatized for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how the solution came about, like if I freaked out the first time a tooth fell out (mom -- please enlighten us all) so my mom came up with her ingenious solution or if my mom tried to be the tooth fairy and I did wake up and freaked out, but regardless, I made my mom's life really easy because of my fear of the tooth fairy: I put my tooth in an envelope and then stuck it outside my closed bedroom door. Voila! in the morning, my tooth was gone and I had some money.

One time I put the envelope in my closet, thinking the tooth fairy would know it was in the there, but when I checked the next morning, it was still there. I'm not sure how close this incident was to the time I found out there was no tooth fairy, and knowing me, it may have even happened after I found out there was no tooth fairy. I'm a bit lame like that. I need to test things out.

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny freaked me out, but since they didn't have to come into my room and take something from me, I dealt with my irrational fears better. I did, however, get absolutely no sleep the night before Christmas or Easter because I was thinking about a fat man in a bright red costume and a giant bunny wandering around our house while we all slept. You'd think my lack of sleep was out of excitement, and there was probably a bit of that as well, but it was mostly from the fear of the unknown.

So I told my husband yesterday that I didn't want to put Mateo through the tooth fairy business because it's creepy and scary. He said that maybe, just maybe, Mateo wouldn't think it was scary and would be okay with it. I said I couldn't put my child through that frightening situation. I just couldn't.

So I think my husband will have to be the tooth fairy while I hide in the bathroom, waiting for him (tooth fairy him) to be done with his tooth fairy business. I'm sure I can entice a cat or two to hang out with me so I don't feel so alone.

Getting A Life

I just finished the book Getting a Life: Stories by Helen Simpson. I bought this book at Borders (I know this because of the Borders sticker on the back, but honestly, I don't remember when I bought this book) and I randomly picked it to read after finishing the last book I read.

So by now anyone who knows me knows that I'm pregnant. And anyone who knows me knows that I wish I could work at home so that Mateo doesn't have to be in daycare. Then I read this book, written by a British author who doesn't have much of a fun sense of humor although re-reading the back of the book synopsis over and over states she does, and I wanted to throw it away or stomp on it or fling it out into the wildness like the frisbee it should be.

Why?

Well, every single story is about women who have 3 or more kids and who have either decided to stay home and raise them or who work and decided to have a nanny raise them. And neither way is particular pleasant, according to the author. It made me very sad. It made me wonder if life is really that terribly dull and painful and marriages just crumble to nothing because a couple introduces a child into the world. Plus, it just was not funny at all. It was more depressing than funny, so once again I'm left feeling I just don't get British humor at all.

It took me a long time to get through this book (checking stats....3 weeks! WAY too long for a bookworm like myself and for a book that doesn't have many difficult thoughts to it), and as I was nearing the end, I was getting rather excited at the prospect of finishing it and moving onto something else. Then I got to a story that features a character named Janine. Yes, that's right. Janine. Spelled the same way as mine name. Janine was a sad wife and mother who loved operas. But didn't much like her husband or the people her husband had to work with. Basically she was the same character as all the others, but her name was Janine. My heart sunk. Coincidental, yes, but still annoying.

I finally finished the book today, and it's immediately going to be donated to the "take a book, leave a book" table at work because I don't want anything to do with it anymore. Curses to you Getting a Life! Curses!!!!