Those College Classes Come Back

I learned a great deal in college.  I was one of those students who sat in the second row and took notes and turned in my homework, so I paid attention.  In my psychology classes, we discussed the great Sigmund Freud and his stages of childhood psychosexual development.   Problems in one of these stages led to issues in later life, said Freud.  I dutifully wrote down the stages--oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital--and I can remember thinking that Freud seemed to think that everything was about sex.  (And most of what he posited has been deemed faulty, but Freud was swimming in uncharted territory at the time. Nobody had done what he did before.)  The phallic stage is the stage of development where we have the Oedipus Complex brewing, which has received a great deal of negative publicity for obvious reasons.  

Last weekend Zane and I were left to our own devices while Larry went off to do soccer stuff.  We were playing with cars, and I was admiring the little Shelby Cobra, when Zane put both hands on either side of my face, so he and I would be eye to eye.

"I love you, Mama."  He smiled so sweetly. 

"Awww!" I hugged him tightly.  "So sweet!  I love you, too."

"I'm going to marry you."  Zane was still smiling angelically, and so was I.

Inside my head was a different story.  At first I was confused, and then I panicked, because I wasn't sure how the heck to respond. What do you say to that, that isn't going to completely screw up a kid's head?  Even if you don't say anything, your silence could be misinterpreted. Then I remembered my child development classes. Statements like this are developmentally appropriate, I realized, as a boy begins to figure out his place in the world.  Apparently, I was paying attention in that college class.  I immediately noted that Zane was in the phallic stage, according to the age ranges. Not that I agreed with Herr Freud.  The boy is figuring out the boundaries, I decided. There was nothing to be concerned about.  After all, I thought, Zane will grow up and be an adult, he'll get married and have a family of his own.  No reason to freak out, no reason at...Holy cow!  My child is going to grow up!  He's going to be an actual adult!  He's going to be married and have kids of his own!  I took a deep, calming breath so I wouldn't hyperventilate.  I remembered my promise to myself, to try and live in the now.

"No son," I kept my voice neutral.  "When you are older, you will meet a nice girl and marry her.  Then you will get your own house and live there."

There. That was pretty benign, right?  No.  

"Noooooo!  I want to marry YOU and live with YOU and Daddy!"  Zane threw himself down on the floor, signaling the beginning of a major hysterical conniption.  I just laughed. This was the drama that I know and love--Oscar winning material, for sure.  I went for the distraction, knowing my son's love of chocolate chip cookies. 

"Hey, let's go make cookies, okay?"

"Okay."  He was down the stairs before I knew it, the little toot.

Monday is Momday

I have unofficially declared Mondays to be the day that I talk the most about my life as a mom.  It's sort of on purpose.  Mondays are usually a grind for me, and my mood is not always cheerful.  What better way for me to perk up and smile than to talk about the adorable boy who calls me Mama?   I could talk about my kid all day long, and I'm not a bit sorry about it.  He's such an interesting creature, he was a long time in coming, and the fact that I carried him in my belly for seven months just plain amazes me.  All the things I've done in my life, and I still get to be someone's mom?  Bonus!

Having come lately to the Mom-table, however, I have an awareness that other people want to talk about their babies, and other topics, as well.  After all, reciprocity is the heart of friendship, and since I'm a person who takes a bit to warm up to someone, I treasure the friends that I do have.  If I'm having lunch with a friend, I make a point to ask about things that I know she is interested in, like her job, pets or her latest shopping expedition.  And yes, her kids, or grandkids. Some of my coworkers have been men, and we mostly talked sports, television shows, movies, and pets.  I try to keep up with what's going on around me and stay grounded to keep myself from being so mom-centered. Because it's a slippery slope, having such a narrow focus on your life.  Mama is only one of the names I respond to.  

So if you were to meet me in public, or talk to me on the phone, I would likely keep my mom-chatter to a minimum.   Or try to, anyway.  Sometimes I need reminders. I get carried away, especially after a long weekend.  If a person mentions that I've been talking about my son for a bit, I'll apologize.  Not because I'm embarrassed by my child, or embarrassed to be a mom.  Never, ever think that.  I'll apologize for being a conversation hog.  I'll apologize for being selfish and thoughtless.  I'll apologize for monopolizing my friend's attention.  I'll apologize for being rude.  But I'll never apologize for being Zane's Mama.

Besides, he's a better cook than I am!

Larry is worse than me about going on and on about Zane. He's a geek, and geeks tend to immerse themselves in what interests them.   He can't help it--he loves being a daddy, and he's not ashamed to talk about it.  Occasionally, I have to kick him under the table, or give him the "Look", and he always says the same thing:  "WHAT???!!!"  Because Larry doesn't even realize that he's been going on and on about his child, so much so that his audience has passed out because he's sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.  Larry also doesn't pick up on subtle social cues when he's in his "Zone of Zane", and so I must resort to Level 2 social cues, such as the kicking and the glaring.  There have been times when I have had to lean over and whisper in his ear that he needs to start asking other people about their children(Level 3), but Larry's getting better at reining himself in a bit. 

We are all works in progress.

So if you like, feel free to share a story about YOUR little bundle(s) of joy, be it of the two- or the four-legged variety.  Or post a link in the comments to your blog post, and I'll read it. Maybe one of these days when I have some free time(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!) I'll figure out how to do that linky-thingy and come up with a meme.  But don't wait on my limited interweb skills, because I'd still want to hear some good, wholesome bragging on your precious angels.  Dish it up!

Creativity With Words

When my son was younger, we were concerned about his language.  He was a preemie, and preemies have a higher likelihood of learning issues.  We are watching him, just in case.  When Zane was around fifteen months, he got sick, and the few words he knew went away.  We were concerned about it, enough to take him to see someone about it.  Once he hit the daycare, his language took off running, and he's never looked back.  Since then, I have had fun listening to him acquire words and begin to use them in sentences.  He's got a hellacious auditory memory--he seems to remember songs after only one hearing, and he can recite almost verbatim what he hears other people saying(hence my concern about profanity!).  He certainly has been exposed to an expansive vocabulary. 

Zane isn't waiting for us to tell him words, however.  He's made a few of them up all on his own.  It took my husband and I a little while to catch on.  We are a bit slow.  But once we realized that our child was playing with language, that he was creating his own version, we couldn't be prouder.   He seems to be fond of onomatopoeia.  When a video game character causes an explosion of some sort,  Zane says that the character got "boomed" up.  When a character on the show Ninjago gets attacked with a sword, Zane says that he was "shinged", which is the sound effect that the sword makes when it is pulled from the scabbard.    Zane says "last day" instead of  "yesterday", which is our clue that he hasn't quite got the full concept of elapsed time.  Lots of things have happened "last day" in Zaneworld!

We have tried to expose Zane to as many words as we can, and we will continue to do that.  As long as he's interested in what we have to teach him, we will keep trying.  My husband always tells Zane the definitions of the words he uses around Zane, which is better than telling him to "look it up."  I have been tempted to ask Zane what he thinks the word means based on how it was used, but I am not sure that it is developmentally appropriate.  I do wait for Zane to ask me about the word, because I know that if he asks me about the word, he is attending.  But the words sink in either way, and that is the point. The vocabulary expands, reading skills improve, and teachers write nice notes home for that sort of stuff.