Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I start celebrating, so to speak, the day after Thanksgiving. If my husband only knew how many times I’ve sang Charles’ Brown’s song Please Come Home for Christmas. I love that song, especially the first four words, “Bells will be ringing….” which I sing over and over and for some reason and continue to find amusing. : ) More
There are some people that have what I’m calling a “creative mommy gene.” These are creative skills that I lack but really appreciate in others.
For example, yesterday, when I went to pick up my daughter from the day care at my gym, she greeted me with a fabulous hairdo- a pony tail to the side with about eight small hair clips arranged diagonally in the direction of her pony tail. (I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t have a camera.)
I’ve known for a while that Stella, one of the day care workers, has a talent for doing kids’ hair. When Stella is working, Polina comes out looking glamorous. Her hair is tight and the lines on her scalp are perfect. She looks like she is ready for a photo shoot. Stella says she does it for fun, but she definitely has talent for designing kids’ hair.
Stella said Polina asks to get her hair done with her. She was kind enough to offer to share with me her secrets next time. Polina’s hair is so perfect after day care I feel a bit sad when she takes a nap afterward because I have to undo Stella’s beautiful masterpiece.
I am not creative in that way. In fact, I have difficulty keeping my daughter still to make her pigtails. Polina likes to lean backward and smile, or lean forward and stick her butt up in the air. (That is her new thing now- sticking her butt up in the air in a “downward dog” pose when she doesn’t want to do something- brush her teeth, go to the bathroom, get her hair brushed, etc.) Even if I manage (or more accurately, Polina allows me) to fix her hair, I have difficulty making the pigtails neat without the rubber bands breaking. The result? Loose pigtails that come apart by midday, or sometimes, no pigtails at all if Polina doesn’t cooperate.
Now, a two year old’s hair may not be important for most people, but as I’ve learned in mommy world, people actually pay attention to this stuff. Polina’s hair is wavy, so even when I brush it and let it be au natural, it can look unkempt. That’s when I started borrowing ideas from Stella for fancy pigtails and ponytails. I haven’t gotten to decorating hair with clips yet.
Compared to my childhood, Polina is lightyears ahead. After all, I didn’t get a professional haircut until I was a teenager, much less had my “hair done.”
Hairdos isn’t the only reason why I started to write this story. Polina picked out a dress yesterday that is big on her, so big that one of the straps falls off her shoulder. Polina loves that dress, so I let her wear it. I noticed when Polina and I got home that the dress fit tighter and neither one of the straps was falling off. I looked closer and saw that someone in the day care fixed it with scotch tape.
Now that’s ingenuity. Why didn’t I think of that?
There are so many things I haven’t mastered as a mother. I know people say nobody has, but there are definitely people that have, shall we say, more skill in the area?
Yesterday was the first time I had my daughter beside me and completely lost awareness of her existence. I was watching Call the Midwife on PBS, the premiere of season 2. I eagerly anticipated season 2. My husband even set up the DVD recorder for good measure, so I wouldn’t miss a word. He was occupied with an Amazon purchase on the computer, which is also in the living room where I was watching TV. My daughter was beside me, sitting on the futon. Normally if I try to watch television, I try to occupy her at the same time, either by watching her as she plays with her toys or nursing her when she’s hungry. Yesterday, she was seated beside me with her toys, and at 8 pm, I became so engrossed with a TV show that I did not notice that she was beside me. An entire hour passed without me being aware. What was she doing during this time? I asked my husband, whose back was turned away from us most of the time because he was occupied with Amazon. He said that when he did turn around, he saw our daughter looking at me and looking at the TV. Damn. I felt bad, and I should have felt bad. How could I allow myself to be engrossed by this TV show at the expense of my daughter? And what lessons am I teaching my daughter? How to watch television? How to be mesmerized by moving pictures? I must admit, I’m a big fan of the show. I don’t watch many shows on TV, but Call the Midwife is one of my favorites. I think it is fantastic that home births and alternatives to hospital births are being shown and talked about on TV. I view these women as heroines. (I’m waiting for someone to comment why the midwives are riding bicycles while the doctor arrives in a fancy car.) It’s amazing to me that an entire hour passed when I didn’t think about my daughter’s existence. Maybe it’s because I’m with her almost all the time. (“Full-time” doesn’t do justice. With a few exceptions, I’m her 24 hour/day caretaker and entertainer.) Maybe my mind wanted to wander somewhere else, and somewhere else it did. Boy it felt great to be entertained. But the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under 2 years of age. I don’t want my daughter’s neurons rewired to put her at risk of getting ADD or turning into a TV addict. What this experience taught me is that maybe I do need some time to myself on a regular basis. The hubby has been busy with his stuff, some of it pretty serious, when he gets home from work. So I hope we can work something out, because I sure have been asking for some time “off.”