phoenix

i've never been to phoenix. i'm pretty sure chris hasn't either. we have no family who lives in phoenix. and yet, the first thing i hear every day when i wake up is the phoenix weather forecast, delivered by my four-year old.

as i've posted before, liam and chris enjoy breakfast together every weekday morning while susanna and i catch a bit more sleep. they chat and eat, and while chris peruses the rest of the newspaper, liam studies the national weather map on the back page of the metro section. as soon as chris departs for work, liam bounds up the stairs at a volume only a young boy can create, plowing through my bedroom door with an excited, "mommy! mommy!" after i sit up and give him a kiss, he follows up with, "guess what the high is today in phoenix?!" i always throw out some random number, like, oh, 42. and he'll laugh and say, "no! today in phoenix it is going to be 98 degrees!" and then, just like that, his work is done, and he scampers off to his room to get dressed. it's been like this every single day for the past few months. i really have no idea why he's chosen phoenix. his uncle is in st. louis, his aunt is in california -- both places that are easily found on the weather map. but phoenix, for whatever reason, is the current shining star.

two fridays ago, however, i had a feeling the morning routine might take a detour. i heard the same herd of elephants him clomping up the steps, and i smiled, anticipating a different entrance. "mommy! mommy!" he yelled. and then -- no mention of weather whatsoever. instead, he said breathlessly, "i'm in the paper, mommy! look! it's a picture of ME!"

and sure enough, clutched in his proud outstretched fist was page 2B, and on it was his photograph, printed in black and white, for all the world to see. there was no story or column to accompany the picture; just a caption identifying him and what he was doing. (see the picture below.) a few days a week, the news & observer will fill extra space with a cute picture of children or pets or artwork or, really, whatever they receive from readers that they deem interesting. i had taken a few shots of liam blowing bubbles in the front yard one day the previous week, and on a whim, e-mailed one to the section editor. he kindly replied that he would indeed be using it that friday.

so there you have it -- liam's first brush with celebrity. but why stop here? i'm thinking we need to go national. global, even! so my next step is to contact other major newspapers and see if they'll run it too. maybe i'll start with phoenix.

birth stories

i think we all enjoy a good birth story. especially our own birth story. now that i'm a mother, i love hearing my parents recount how i was born. how i was a month late (truly!) ... how drawn-out and never-ending my mom's labor was ... and how, after waiting as long as he could, my father went home to feed the dogs and when he returned, i had arrived. (yes, you read that right. my father missed the birth of his first child because he was feeding the dogs.) so on sunday, as we four ate our dinner together as we do almost every evening, i asked liam and susanna if they wanted to hear a story. a story that unfolded on the same night three years ago, when our family of three turned into a family of four. we told them how we had put liam to bed the night of may 17, mommy's belly huge as she leaned down to give him a kiss goodnight, and then how he woke up the next morning and found out from his grandmother that he suddenly had a new little sister. a crazy whirlwind of a night, that was, involving a lightning-fast labor, three pushes, and a hearty wail as chris and i learned we were now parents to a daughter. and i realized that this is how family histories are woven -- over a meal at the kitchen table, with a mesmerized three year old girl and her big brother, listening raptly as their parents took a trip down memory lane. while liam kept peppering us with questions about himself: "where was i?", "what did i do?", "who took care of me?", susanna was content soaking it all in, since it was all about her. a generation from now, this story will assuredly be part of our history, after having been told and re-told and owned and adored by our children. susanna will share with her kids how she was almost born in the hospital bathtub. liam will laugh about the fact that the only thing remotely interesting to him when he arrived to meet his sister for the first time was the reclining button on the hospital bed. i'm sure chris will exaggerate about how tightly i gripped his knee as i suffered contraction after contraction on the ten-minute ride to the hospital at three o'clock in the morning. other people have far more spectacular stories, of course, like my friend liz, who brought home a son to a wall-to-wall pink nursery after having multiple ultrasounds confirm she was carrying a girl. (surprise!) or my friend mary beth, whose baby had open-heart surgery performed on her in the womb. or my friend laura, who was born on the bathroom floor, delivered by her father when her mom realized she was just not going to make it to the hospital. so, no, susanna's birth is really not a spectacular story. but to us, our little family of four, it's where our history begins. it's our genesis as a family. it's when we became us. i guess it's pretty spectacular after all.

party pointers

susanna turns three on monday! thinking back on the seven birthdays we've now celebrated between our two children, including the one we just hosted yesterday, i've learned a few things.

The Top Ten Lessons I've Learned From Children's Birthday Parties

1) take full advantage of warm weather birthdays, and plan parties outdoors. (i learned this after liam's first birthday, when i had 45 people in my house and found icing encrusted on the bottom of my couch a month later.)

2) does any one-year old really need 45 people singing them "happy birthday"? why do all first-time parents do this to themselves?

3) avoid hosting on your own turf if at all possible. playgrounds and parks were invented for a reason. use them. (i learned this after an overzealous three-year old guest trucked inside our house from the party in the back yard and somehow caused our toilet to overflow, which we did not notice until we had cleaned up the back yard and returned inside to find water seeping out of the powder room.)

4) plan B? who needs a plan B? having absolutely no alternate rain plan is what i call living on the edge. a life filled with danger makes me feel alive.

5) cake is overrated. not only is it a pain to slice and serve, but you've then got small children wielding sharp plastic forks in close proximity to other small children's eyeballs. not to mention the fact that these small children have often not quite mastered the art of blowing out candles, and let's face it, there's nothing appetizing about seeing a small arc of saliva being sprayed all over the food you're about to eat. cupcakes are the way to go -- unless you opt for another kind of individual pastry (see #10).

6) no gifts, please. we need another toy with 30 tiny parts like we need a hole in the head. little kids don't really give a flying flip if they received presents or not; they're just excited to see their friends and have their own special day. (however, i will acknowledge that this can't last forever. marketing and greed take over about when they hit five. sigh.)

7) if you're going to hire a balloon artist, make sure he knows what he's doing. i dredged this photo up from our archives, from a little boy's fourth birthday party in our neighborhood in asheville. (i think it's supposed to be a sword. )

8) i'm not a fan of fill-in-the-blank thank you notes. seriously, how long does it take you to write your own, "thank you for the lego set. i love it! i'm glad you came to my party." ? how lazy can we possibly be? *

9) rise and shine. we hosted a morning party for the first time yesterday, and i don't think we'll ever have one in the afternoon again. it wasn't yet hot, we didn't have to deal with scheduling around late naps, and everyone had the rest of the day ahead of them. not quite sure why it took me this long to figure that out. coffee for the adults, doughnuts for the kids. easy.

10) and last but not least ... never underestimate how snooty us north carolinians can be about our doughnuts. you wouldn't have believed the backlash we got when we mentioned the possibility of serving dunkin donuts. around here, it's krispy kreme or bust, baby.

* i have many more lessons i've learned over the years, but i must stop. i really need to get started on last year's christmas thank you notes.

hit & run

4-year old t-ball league registration: $85.00 t-ball glove: $11.99 t-ball bat: $26.50 t-ball tee: $15.49 watching your son compete in his first-ever sporting event with a huge smile on his face: priceless first hit ...

... and crossing home plate!

all this proud momma has to add is this: by the time the preceding footage is included in the forthcoming 2025 ESPN special entitled "Liam Mann: The Beginnings of a Superstar", he will hopefully not need a reminder to run.

About My Mom

liam presented me with a few gifts he had made for me for mother's day at preschool. one was an adorable flower pot with his thumbprints turned into ladybugs, containing flowers he had planted. one was a placemat with his picture and handprints. and the third was a list entitled "About My Mom". halfway down the list was the sentence, "my mom weighs", followed by my actual weight. i was mortified.

the back story ... liam is currently so enamored by addition and subtraction that one afternoon last week, i thought i'd turn his interest into something fun on the bathroom scale. i had him stand on it, and then i joined him, and we watched the needle spring forward to the sum of our two weights. we then determined that if he were 45 pounds, and our sum was x pounds (won't say it here), how much must mommy weigh? he counted on his fingers in increments of 10, just like the scale, and figured it out. fun and educational, right? well, you know what they say about good intentions. i grimaced, imagining his teachers asking him an open-ended, "what can you tell me about your mom?" and him immediately replying with, "ooh! i know her weight! and what size clothes she wears! tonight i'll work on calculating her body mass index! anything else you'd like to know?"

but in talking with some of the other moms, my fears were partially put to rest. i learned that the kids were fed specific questions, including "how much does your mom weigh?" to elicit funny, off-the-wall responses. apparently most 4-year old children have no idea, and their answers reflect that. the group was laughing, sharing their child's answers. "my son thought i was 10 years old and weighed 50 pounds!" said one mom. another, "my daughter said i was 2 pounds and liked to cook soup! i never cook soup!" but liam's answers were all pretty much reasonable -- unless you consider the age question, and you can't really blame him for that, since i've kind of misled him in that department. at least i have now learned that i need to refrain from divulging any personal numerical data with him, because he will certainly remember it, and make sure the rest of the world knows it too.

here's liam's list (minus the weight part):

About My Mom

My mom's name is Mommy.

She is 26 years old.

She loves me because she hugs me.

Mom likes to cook potatoes.

Mom likes to play Chutes and Ladders with me.

She is special because she loves me.

When I grow up I will buy her yogurt.

Happy Mother's Day 2009!
Love, LIAM

restraint

i can already tell my children's teenage years are going to be especially challenging for me as a parent. our kids are undoubtedly going to make as many mistakes as i did when i was younger, and it's going to take every ounce of my strength to refrain from commenting and just let them go. and then they can look back a few years later and marvel at how their mother didn't insist on removing the aqua net hairspray can from the bathroom to prevent the huge birdnest bangs from being constructed on their forehead let them learn from their mistakes. thankfully, that time has not yet come, because my parenting experience only goes back four and a half years, and i still have much to learn. and on saturday, in the middle of the toy store, i just couldn't hold back. i had to weigh in on a grave error my son was about to make. liam has been earning a daily allowance for a few months now. he has seven chores he must do every day, and we pay him a whopping nickel for each one. and after we dole out the coins to him, he's required to put one immediately in a special box for the church offering plate the following sunday. which really means that he nets a maximum of $2.10 a week. needless to say, it's taken him quite a while to save up enough to make a trip to the toy store worthwhile. but on saturday, the time had arrived. he had informed everyone he saw last week -- teachers, classmates, neighbors -- that he was taking his cash and going on a shopping spree at tookie's toys. the four of us piled in the car and headed over, unsure of what we might be returning with, but excited all the same. he walked in, wide-eyed at the world of possibility. when liam talks about the abstract concept of heaven, i'm pretty sure that he's conjuring up the image of tookie's toys, this independently-owned toy store in a fun shopping center near us. but amidst all the wonderful items in there ... he bypassed it all and headed straight to the dadgum car section. now, before i go any further, let me just say that we could open up our own toy store that specializes solely in cars. he has almost 100 matchbox cars. a parking garage with its own type of car. a racetrack with its own type of car. big ones, small ones. ones that make noise, ones that don't. i could go on but i find the whole subject rather boring, so i won't. and yet, there he was, in a sea of enticing prospects, and he snatches up yet another police cruiser and starts heading to the cash register. he had enough money and he seemed quite sure of himself. chris shrugged; he seemed to be drawing from some impressive supply of restraint. i do not have such a supply. "don't you want to look for something different?" i encouraged. "ooh -- look here! some cool bubble tools. those would be neat out in the yard. or ... wow! what a fun balloon toy! we don't have anything like that." with each suggestion, he'd clutch the police cruiser even tighter, steadfast in his choice. and i just couldn't do it. i couldn't let my son, fresh off three months of hard work, drop his life savings (literally) on yet another toy vehicle. and so i turned into I Have Your Best Interests In Mind Mommy. i put the cruiser back on the shelf, steered him towards the outdoor toy section, and talked up a "stomp rocket" until i was hoarse. i honestly think i could be a salesperson for their company, i was so convincing. and finally, he relented. we spent two hours after we got home playing with that thing. several of our neighbors even walked over as we tested it out in the cul-de-sac, and had as much fun with it as liam did. four days later, he's still racing to it as soon as we get home, eager to play with it some more. far better than some dumb police car, don't you think? in one actual action of restraint, i have managed not to utter the words, "i told you so" to my son. but i think just by virtue of being a mother, that's implied.

accessorizing

the front door burst open. i looked up from cooking to see Tornado Susanna standing in the foyer, her hands on her hips. "i need my bus," she informed me. i had no idea what bus she was referring to, but she seemed quite sure of herself (as she always does) so i left it to her to get it. she clomped upstairs in her pink and white flower sandals, her mission clear. i'm not sure if it's just our children, or if it's typical of this age in general, but neither liam nor susanna can ever find ANYTHING they're looking for. the object of their search is often right in front of their eyes, and they still require assistance. so, not surprisingly, i soon heard susanna calling for my help from her bedroom. "i can't find my bus anywhere!" she wailed. i stood at the bottom of the stairs, patting my hands dry on my apron, as she stared down at me from the top. in my mind i inventoried our endless supply of toys and still came up short. "honey," i said, "i have no idea what bus you're talking about." she sighed. "not a bus, mommy. my BUUUUUUUUUUUUUS." as the over-enunciation didn't help, i asked her to describe it. "it's black. with sequins! i put my treasures in it," she explained. and suddenly, i understood. it was no bus she desired; it was her purse. (her difficulty with the "r" sound often makes things a tad tricky.) as soon as we finally located it in the playroom under her pink ballerina costume, she headed back out the door. she beelined it to liam's hand-me-down big wheel, looped the straps over the handlebars, and then straddled the plastic seat with a gleam in her eye. and the lesson is this: if you're going to be racing your older brother down the driveway at full speed, winding up in a giggling heap in the grass with dirt in your hair, you better darn well look fashionable doing it.