My Name is Kris and I Blah-g

Pearls of wisdom…that’s what they call those little things that people say. When it comes from a child it’s “Out of the mouths of babes”… Michaela certainly knows what she’s talking about and it’s usually when I need to hear something the most she puts me in my place. This morning the following conversation took place.To set the scene, we were in the kitchen. I had just fixed Michaela her breakfast and packed her lunch. I decided to have a bowl of Cheerios. I poured myself a bowl and proceeded to pour milk. As I did so, the Cheerios rose rapidly to the top with many of them spilling over the edge and tumbling to the counter.Giggling, Michaela exclaimed, “Fail!”Oh, shush up! I said with a smile. I plopped my spoon into my bowl to take a bite. More Cheerios tumbled to the counter.”DOUBLE FAIL!” Michaela squealed.”Knock it off,” I said as even MORE Cheerios fell out of the bowl.Michaela howled with laughter.”That would be an epic fail,” I said.”What’s epic?”"Something that is really big…something major. See? This is what happens when you get old!”"You’re NOT old! Look at Rick Springfield. He’s 60! That’s old. Are you 60? No!”"No. I’m not 60,” I replied thinking that for a 60 year old guy he’s in much better shape that I have ever been!”When you’re 49 how old will he be?”I thought for a moment…”I dunno… in his 70s. He’s 22 years older than me.”"See?! He was 22 when you were born!!”Like that matters now, I thought…“Yeah,” she continued. “People start to fail when they’re 40.”Great.

I think it’s inevitable that as a Mom, I want to be COOL. I mean, who doesn’t? I guess there is a fine line between being your child’s friend and being MOM. You can only go so far in the friend department because well, friends don’t tell other friends what to do, where to go and they usually don’t issue punishments for bad behavior. So, being MOM can be a hard job. But that’s not what this post is about. I would say that I do pretty okay being a mom although I am the first to admit that I still have much to learn in the patience department. I am quickly learning that I suck at 2nd grade math. I apparently do it wrong.  I am not quite sure when 2nd grade math got so complicated or when it became politically incorrect to “borrow or carry the one” but that is a big no-no these days. Ugh. Don’t get me started. So I am not a math genius. I never have been. One thing I know that I am good at are trips to Disneyland. Yeah yeah…this blog is all about the Mouse House and I have certainly created a monster in my kid who not only shares my love of all things Disney but Rick Springfield, too. What can I say? Taste CAN be taught. A sense of humor is important. I would say that mine has gotten me out of some tough spots in my lifetime. I was always a chubby kid. I was teased consistently in school. But thanks to my ability to laugh I think I survived well. I don’t know if I would want to relive any of that but if I could knowing what I know now, I think I would have kicked a little more butt. But all that aside…I have my sense of humor to thank for getting me through childhood and most of all, for helping me through this past year and a half. Nothing about my life these almost 2 years now is FUNNY. But…. I still like to laugh. I yearn for laughter and most of all, I seek it out in my daughter. My biggest fear after Mike died was how losing her dad would affect my little girl. This kind of thing can do lots of damage and I just worry that she’ll one day look back on her childhood with regret that it was all taken from her at such an early age. I’m mom. I’m a pretty ok Mom. But I’m not super-Mom no matter how hard I try. I can’t be all things least of all a Dad. But I can try to keep male influences in my daughter’s life, keep her father’s memory alive and encourage that wicked sense of humor that she not only inherited from me but from her jokester father! Mike loved a good prank. I mean, he LOVED it. Somewhere there is a tape with recordings his nephews and him making prank phone calls. They are classic. I wish I could relay in words how funny they are but you just have to listen to them to appreciate the effort he went into making them. I hope I find that tape some day. There was the time that he and my brother spent an evening sending pizzas to one unsuspecting neighbor in our apartment complex – both of them hiding in the shadows of our bedroom staring out the window with glee as every 15 minutes a different pizza delivery guy tried in vain to deliver pizza to this poor woman. Now, I won’t encourage this type of behavior in Michaela but already at 7 she has an unrelenting evil streak in her. She’ll tickle you until you pee if she could. Her latest effort is the squirrel bomb. And yeah..I am to blame for this one. I squirrel bombed a picture of my parents from our cruise this past summer and then again, a picture of our family this fall. We just spent 3 days in California. Every time I pulled out the camera or we found ourselves on a ride at Disneyland that took pictures, I was asked, “can we put squirrel in the picture too?”So here you have it…the beginning of the Squirrel Bomb Gallery courtesy of my kid. I fear the joke may get old but to a 7 year old, this one will live on for a while and she thinks it’s funnier than anything! Enjoy…