Dancing Girl: Part 2

So we have now gone to Ballet class 4 times and Audrey refuses to dance every time.  She likes to watch the other girls dancing, but she WILL NOT get up and do it with the rest of the class.  Finally on the fourth time, I told her we couldn't just sit there, and it was time to go home.  She was okay with this until about half way home, she realized what she had done and started bawling.  Later, in her broken 2/3 year old English, she told me "I like dancing, but girls scare me."  I thought that was hilarious.

Anyway, we are taking a break, and I am thinking about trying to start her in another class maybe after the summer to see if she is ready...but who needs class when you have Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses??? Try to watch her and the screen at the same time...it is kind of ridiculous a) how many times she must have watched this show and b) that she has pretty much memorized all the moves.  I like how she uses the entertainment center as her bar.

Like Mother Like Son: Part 2

So as if the lost shoe episode wasn't evidence enough of how much Clark is like me, we had another fun little experience today that took me down memory lane from my days of yore.

Ahem...another story my family likes to torment me with is about when I was about Clark's age (I know I knew how to read!), my parents bought me a new pair of shoes.  When I got them home, I was in the bathroom putting them on, and when I looked back into the box, there was an extra little present in there...just for me!  Except that when I picked it up, the outside packaging read "Do Not Eat".  I remember actually having the thought that I really could eat it, but whoever put that little treat in there probably just wanted me to ask my mom and dad first.  I felt the little pouch and I thought for sure it was Pop Rocks.  Score!    Yeah right I was going to bother to ask mom and dad...these were my Pop Rocks and no one else was going to eat them but me!  So I opened them and tried a couple.  They didn't taste like Pop Rocks, and I immediately had this feeling of dread and fear wash over my whole body.  WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING???!!!  It said "DO NOT EAT"!!!

Of course I quickly ran and found my mom and confessed what I had done, and I remember she gave me this look like "You CAN read, can't you?"  My little 6 or 7 year old brain couldn't fully express why I had done what I did, but I just knew I needed my mom to make it better...fast.  I don't know if she called Poison Control or not, but thankfully, I did not die, and I learned the important lesson that if something says "Do Not Eat" on it, it probably means that it is more likely to be ummmm...Silica Gel and not some awesome candy like Pop Rocks.

Just in case any of you are interested...Silica Gel really isn't harmful to eat.  

Moving on...ohhhhh almost 25 years later...Clark asks to go over to a friends house after school.  That friend lives in our neighborhood like 6 houses down.  He had only been gone for about 10 minutes and I was on the phone upstairs when suddenly I hear the friends mom downstairs calling my name...in THAT tone.  You know, the one where you immediately drop the phone and run (more like trip and fall) down the stairs because you think your kid must be bleeding something fierce?  Yeah, that one.  When I got downstairs however, Clark was teary eyed, but there was no blood that I could see.  My brain then immediately thought he must have done something horrible to someone else, but before I could get out the words "WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?"  My neighbor starts frantically telling me about how Clark came over and she heard the boys in the kitchen getting snacks when she heard her 10 year old say "No Clark, don't eat the crystals!"  She jumped up and ran in just in time to see Clark take a bite and swallow some  home grown science kit crystals they had made.  All she knew was that it had chemicals in it and they used gloves when they were mixing it all together so she was kind of freaking out a bit about what Clark had just ingested.  I looked down at the remnants of the piece of crystal she was holding and then I looked at Clark and said "Why did you eat this??!"  He responded "I thought it looked like a cookie with sugar candy on top".  And then he burst into tears.  We quickly got online and found the instruction booklet for this particular science crystal kit and sure enough it said "May be harmful if ingested or misused.  If ingested, contact your physician immediately".  Well, that didn't sound good.  So I quickly got the guts to call Poison Control and the man was very nice and let me know that Ammonium Phospate MonoBasic is apparently not dangerous at all in those quantities.

So my child will live.  Bonus!

As soon as it was all over and we had decompressed, I asked Clark what he learned from the experience and he said in true boy fashion "DO NOT EAT that!"  We had to flesh that out a little bit and talk about how you never just eat something without asking when you are at a friends house, and in addition, if you are not quite sure what something is, don't eat it until you find out exactly what it is.  I was more annoyed at his manners than anything else, but how could I, Silica Gel girl, be really mad in this instance?  I couldn't, not if I didn't want to be a hypocrite anyway.  I want to tell Clark my Silica Gel story...but I know what will happen...he will say something awesome like "What the heck mom?  Why would you EVER eat something that says DO NOT EAT all over it?"

And I am just not sure if I can take that kind of judgment from my 7 year old. 

The Lost Shoe

My family can attest, as they like to do on numerous occasions, that I was a disorganized mess when I was younger (don't even get them started on how we found a hand-mixer beater in my underwear drawer).  Tanner may attest that I am a disorganized mess when I got older too, but let's not go there.  I managed to lose practically everything when I was little.  My first memories of it began when we moved to England when I was nine.  Looking back on it now, I think the stress of moving and living in a hotel for like three months may have had something to do with it (thanks mom and dad!  yes I blame you.  I should have called child-line. ;-)).  I managed in quite a short period of time to lose my shoes, my textbooks, my fountain pens (at least 3 but if you ask my dad, it's like 15), my cardigan,  my backpack, and most famously, my track and field underwear.  To add insult to injury, said underwear was found by my sister outside on the track at school.  I don't quite know how it got there, but whoever said there is no down side to labeling your clothes with your name, hasn't talked to me.

23 years later, my 7 year-old comes home from school while I am out running errands.  When I get home, my maid tells me Clark came home with only one shoe.

Me:  "How did he come home with only one shoe?"  "What happened to his other shoe?"

Siti:  "I don't know...but he only had one shoe."

I go find Clark.

Me:  "Clark, how was your day at school?"

Clark:  "Fine."

Me:  "Did you come home with only one shoe today?"

Clark:  "Yeah, I lost the other one."

Me:  "How did you lose your shoe?"

Clark:  "Well, when I went to Tae Kwon Do (his after school activity), I took my shoes off, but when I went to get them back on when it was time to go, I could only find one shoe and one sock."

Me:  "Did you look around the gym for it?"

Clark (getting upset):  "YES!!!  IT WASN'T ANYWHERE!"

Me:  "Okay, that's okay.  So did you just walk barefoot from the gym to the bus and then to the house?"

Clark (sounding very proud of himself):  "OH NO OF COURSE NOT!  I put my one shoe on one foot and the one sock on the other.  So both of my feet were totally covered mom!"

Awesome.

It's been a week and he says he can't find it in the lost and found.  I think I am going to have to go over to the school and look myself.

Maybe I will find it on the track.

Dancing Girl

 

 

When I was little, I lived in my bathing suit.  I actually remember going on errands with my dad in my bathing suit.  I remember thinking that if I dressed in my bathing suit in the morning then at some point that would mean I would HAVE to go swimming...which was my purpose all along...not to mention the time I would save not having to get undressed from regular clothes into my bathing suit.  I was all about efficiency back then.  ;-)

Fast forward 28 years, and now I have a daughter who is 2 going on 3, and guess what, she is all about efficiency too!  She pretty much demands to wear her "dancing dress" every morning complete with her ballet shoes.  Princess crown is optional.  I know she is thinking, "If I get dressed like this, it means I am going to get to dance all day long!"  She is also very particular about making sure the little elastic ties on her ballet slippers stay in a bow...all the time...and I am here to tell you, those things come untied...all the time.  She prances down the stairs, puts on the 12 Dancing Princesses Barbie movie (not a huge fan of barbie, but I am a fan of this movie, mostly because of the classical music).  She has the beginning memorized and pretty much copies the ballet moves as they happen on the screen.  She tells me that I have to come dance with her, but a lot of times when I do, she proceeds to correct my every move.  "No no Mom, not that way...thiiiiiiiiiis way."

I always told my mom that if I had a girl, I would make her be a tomboy like I was, and I would make sure that she was dressed in track suits every day.  *Cue look of horror on my mom's face*.  And maybe if she had come first in the family, I might have done that, but after two boys, I was ready for my own little princessy, pink skirt twirling, crown wearing, dancing girl.  Thank goodness that is what I got.  I am starting her in ballet class beginning next week.