ever-fixed mark

Last week, my desire to go for a morning run coincided with Dog’s, Husband’s, and Minor’s respective desires to pee, sleep, and be awake at the crack of dawn. So I hitched up the dog to the baby carriage and took one half of the household out to do a quick three miles.

I was the recipient of kind smiles and thumbs-up from the other runners in recognition of my accomplishment, and I felt like I deserved them. It is no mean feat to run so encumbered, not to mention serving drinks and snacks from my convenient rolling cart to my crabby companions like some kind of sweaty stewardess. My triumph was a bit marred by the knowledge, though, that I could never earn the gold medal in the Parental Multi-tasking Triathlon (running, dog walking, and child-minding). That spot is permanently reserved for my friend L., who runs with her dog AND her twins. Unlike the Chinese, though, I am content with the silver.

The next day, however, I went out with Dog alone and saw a man running with a triplet stroller. While I may be content with the silver, I’m not crazy about the bronze. I crossed the street to check it out and saw that only two of the three spots in the carriage were occupied. “You know, you don’t get points for that unless all three of them are in there,” I told him.

“The third one’s with her mother,” he said sheepishly.

My silver medal is safe for now, unless he gets a dog.

My friend, C., asked if I could dog-sit a few evenings this week. For reasons that are too complicated to go into here, the person who is taking care of her dog could not watch her overnight, so the plan was that the day-care person would walk her over to our house in the evening, and we would walk her back in the morning.

The dog arrived on schedule this evening with her harness and a three-ring binder with “care and feeding” instructions inside. A full-color picture of the dog with her first, middle, last, and nicknames was displayed on the front, and inside was the following information:

I’m laughing my ass off trying to think of a situation where I would need even a tenth of this information. I suppose if the dog were kidnapped by the Russian mafia and I was forced to wire money from C.’s bank accounts for the ransom, but the bank refused to release the money unless I could answer C.’s security questions, two of which were “mother’s maiden name” and “address of hospital of birth,” then it would really come in handy, and I would be laughing out the other side of my mouth.

But for now, C., I’m not laughing WITH you; I’m decidedly laughing AT you.

Aitch is good with adults. I have already described how, at parties, he schmoozes all the men, learning their names and bonding with them over fart jokes and tickle contests. I sometimes worry about his seemingly insatiable need to win over grown-ups. We were warned that this kind of over-pleasing behavior could be a sign of an attachment problem in an adopted child. We’ve consulted a few experts, though, and the consensus seems to be that since he shows positive signs of attachment to us, we shouldn’t worry about it.

(Recently, though, he’s started talking to homeless men. I don’t mean he responds to them when they talk to him; I mean, he goes out of his way to engage them in conversation even when they are trying to ignore him. Should I be worried?)

Anyway, in a big gathering, Aitch gravitates toward the men, but in smaller social setting, he is very, very charming with women. He really tailors his approach to his audience. To wit:

To me, dressed for work and kissing him as he wakes up: “You look so pretty, Mommy. I like your polka-dot shirt.”

At Starbucks, to the woman at the next table: “I really like your purse.”

To my visiting friend: “Your toes are red. They’re really pretty.”

Almost any adult in Aitch’s orbit makes the same prediction about his future career: “He’s going to be a salesman, eh?”

Overheard:

Minor: “Funny?”

Husband: “No, it’s not funny. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. Hitting is not funny. Biting is not funny. You know what’s funny? Pratfalls are funny. Can you do any pratfalls?”

It’s not often that the pharmaceutical and mommy domains of my life intersect, but here you go: Placebo pills for kids.

I think if it’s unethical to give placebos to adults, then it’s unethical to give them to kids, too — not to mention that it’s unhealthy to model taking unnecessary drugs.

Husband says it’s harmless, like a kiss on a boo-boo.

What do you think?

When the boys were babies, they were terrible sleepers, and Husband and I spent hours and hours singing them to sleep. Naturally, we chose songs that we liked and to which we knew all the words: Springsteen, Dylan, and Tull for Husband, and Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and Ben Folds Five for me. (Sample inappropriate sleepytime lyric: “Give me my money back, you bitch.”)

The boys are older now, though, and their tolerance for a capella has diminished. Aitch doesn’t like us to sing to him at all, and gets especially wiggy when Husband and I sing in unison. Minor only likes songs he already has heard a thousand times, which creates a Catch-22 situation that sounds an awful lot like “The Wheels on the Bus (Go Round and Round).” If I sing a song that’s not on his mental set list he complains about it, in his very Minor-like way of letting you know when every little detail in his world is not precisely to his liking.

A few weeks ago, I slipped a new song into my nighttime repertoire: “Rubber Ducky.” At first, Minor put up with it, probably because he had heard it on “Sesame Street.” But when I got to the part that goes, “Every day when I make my way to my tubby…” he didn’t recognize it as part of the same song and started whining: “No not that song other song Mommy other song Mommy OTHER SONG!”

“Relax, honey, it’s just the bridge,” I told him, and started the familiar part again.

The next few times I sang it, he did the same thing. I tried to head him off at the pass by distracting him during that section. I would put my head close to his and then rub noses when we got to “Rub-a-dub-dubby.” Eventually he twigged to the fact that it was part of the song. Now as soon as I begin to sing “Rubber ducky, you’re the one…” he begins chanting, “Every day Mommy every day mommy EVERY DAY.” When we get to the bridge he rubs my nose and laughs.

I don’t know that it’s that great of a story, but it’s one of those little fleeting things that gets replaced by other routines pretty quickly, and I wanted to remember it.

The other day, Minor asked me for a fruit cup. That’s right, fruit cup: Single-serving, individually-packaged, environment-killing, high-fructose drenched death snack. Get DSS on speed dial and conference in Al Gore, because I’m the worst mother in the world. I opened it and placed it on the kitchen table for him. “TV room?” he asked hopefully.

I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule about eating in the TV room or anywhere else in the house; it’s just not something I can get too exercised about. I usually ask myself two questions: How much of a mess would it be if they spilled it? And, how likely is the dog to eat it off the couch and, subsequently, throw it up? If the answer to either of those questions is, “Ewwwww,” then the answer is no, it must be eaten in the kitchen.

“No, honey, you have to eat it in the kitchen,” I said.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Daddy yes fruit cup in TV room,” he said.

“Well, I don’t care if Daddy lets you eat fruit cup in the TV room. I’m saying you have to eat it in the kitchen.”

He took a minute to parse that. “Daddy yes, Mommy no.”

If that’s not a concise summation of the difference in our parenting styles, I don’t know what is. It’s also a convenient shorthand for Minor to rat out his father’s overly permissive decisions.

“No, you can’t play with that electrical cord.”

“Daddy yes, Mommy no.”

“Honey! What the hell?”

“Gee thanks, Minor.”

Husband and I took the kids to my sister-in-law’s wedding last weekend. The bridegroom is called “Slammer”; this probably gives you a better mental picture of the nuptials than any word-portrait I could produce. (Me: “Why is he called ‘Slammer’? Was he in prison?” Husband: “His real nickname is ‘Slam-Bam.’ Slammer is just sort of…a diminutive of his nickname.”)

It was actually a really fun wedding, being sort of boozy and informal. The children were in their element, particularly Aitch. I barely saw him the whole evening, he was so busy partying, but at one point he asked me to escort him to the bathroom. As we walked through the crowd, he was hailed by children and adults alike: “Aitch! What’s up, buddy! Give me five!” I felt like I was on the arm of the fraternity social chair during Rush Week.

Before the fun reception, though, we were forced to endure a full-court Mass, and I was a bit worried that the boys’ behavior would give away the fact that it was their first appearance at a church service. As I was fretting about that, another worry occurred to me: Would it be better, under the circumstances, to take Communion, or to refuse it?

If it were only a matter of politeness vs. principles, I would definitely vote for taking Communion, both to be sociable and to avoid offense to my mother-in-law, who would be distressed by having our apostasy on display. This was the course that Husband advocated. Catholics, however, have very strict requirements for Communion, and I was concerned that if my mother-in-law was aware of the rules she would be even more offended by our taking Communion when we were not in a state of grace, particularly since neither of us have gone to Confession since contracting our invalid marriage, a mortal sin.

(By the way, how lame is it that our marrying outside the church is an offense on par with murder? What a pathetic cautionary tale we are: “Sin is a slippery slope, kids, and once you stray from the church you could end up like them — hard-working, tax-paying degenerates with two illegitimate but yet legally adopted children, a mortgage, and a dog!”)

About ten years ago, I was in a wedding party where the Communion question came up. All the bridesmaids were Catholic, so I determined that I would take Communion just so I wouldn’t cause any comment by refusing. Before the sacrament, though, the priest specifically disinvited all the non-Catholics and the non-practicing Catholics from Communion. As it happened, the bridegroom and his family were Protestant, and they were pretty offended by the priest’s words. I’ve never heard any other priest lay down the law for Communion since then, though.

What was the right thing to do, in your opinion?

The use of “brick wall” iconography in band photos is a phenomenon well-documented on the Internets.

The photo above is just the sort of poor-quality, oddly-cropped snapshot that might adorn Minor’s self-produced record of “Four Freshmen” covers.

Yesterday I took the only direct flight from Boston to Salt Lake City. I was in the second row of coach, so I mingled with the first-class passengers as I was deplaning. As I left through the jetway I bumped into a man who had stopped short. He turned around and gave me a big smile, the kind of smile the CEO of your company wears when he is going through the hallways and knows that people will recognize him and expect him to be gracious in return. It was Mitt Romney.

I knew I should take this historic opportunity to speak to a recent candidate for the presidency of our country, but what could I say? “I would really like to wipe that smirk off your face” might be considered unacceptably confrontational. I thought about it all the way through the terminal as I heard him chatting to some young men about his family (Ann is in Simi Valley, one of the boys is at Tufts, etc.) Then he left the terminal while I went to baggage claim, and the moment was gone.

Then I realized what I should have said, a question that’s been bothering me for some time: Governor Romney, what do you have against the French?