Child Labor Laws

I'm so excited to finally be entering that fun stage of motherhood--kind of like a secret club!

Yes, my firstborn is finally at the age where he can actually help me when he endeavors to help me!

It's awesome.  I'm starting out with little things.  No longer am I the envious mom on the outside who watches in total surprise as my other mom-friends nonchalantly ask their oldest to do complicated tasks like serve food to younger siblings, help out in the car, or even--now I haven't quite made it here yet, clean the kitchen.  Yes.  It is true.  Some kids actually help their moms with complex tasks that involve breakable items!

Now, my kids have their own chores, but I try to limit them to stuff that actually ends up being helpful instead of stuff that will take 5 times as long for them to do and result in frustration for both of us.  For my six year-old, I stole the chore idea of wiping down the sink and toilet with Lysol wipes and emptying the bathroom trash from one of my mom-friends.
Go figure, he loves to do it, and I love not having toothpaste caked to the sink daily.  It's win-win.

My four year-old is another story-- her one chore required of her daily is just to clean up after herself in the toys department, and that doesn't come about without lots of whining and complaining about phantom leg maladies and crippling fatigue.  It's a work in progress.

But the real corner was turned this week-- I realized that, in my big new Expedition Beast, where I have to climb in the backseat to reach the 3 year-old's seatbelt-- I can have him buckle and unbuckle her.  This was a major revelation.  This morning I hopped into the front seat and marveled.  No climbing into the back??  No twisting my clothes all around whilst hanging halfway over seats?  No bruises from contorting my body in ways it's not supposed to go??  Not even hitting my head on the ceiling, messing up my hair and breaking my sunglasses!!  I just couldn't believe how wonderful that felt.

So as I ruminate on my new ease of existence, I think greedily back to the mother of all kid-chores... the kitchen...

*Choir singing, light shining from heaven*

Perhaps someday soon.....

The Cake is Not a Lie!

Birthdays, birthdays, they come and go, and before we know it, the children do grow.

Time to plan another birthday cake! I really enjoy making my childrens' birthday cakes. I love surprising them with some special attention from Momma and a cake that's geared toward the kinds of things they like. Last year I hemmed and hawed over the choice for my newly-two year-old daughter, Emma. She wasn't talking, but she did seem to really like Winnie-the-Pooh and Sleeping Beauty, so I decided to do one of these two cakes. After much agonizing, I made a pretty cute Pooh cake that got a really enthusiastic reception:

Yep, that was kind of the extent of her excitement.

So this year, with Emma STILL not really talking all that much, and no specific cake-inspiring interests, I decided I'd just use one of the cake pans I was given and hope for the best. Here is what I am planning for this year:

I think this year I'll do chocolate. Last year she didn't even eat any. :-/

My other children have shown great excitement over their special cakes, and spend the times around their siblings' birthdays telling me what they want for THEIRS. Their cakes were oh-so-easy to decide on. Ariel and Star Wars. That's pretty much been it since I've started making them cakes, although this year it's set to change to My Little Pony and... probably still Star Wars. Maybe I'll branch out into Lego Star Wars for a change.

I don't know how on earth I could possibly make a cake cooler than this one, though:

From now on, all efforts will be compared to this.  "Yeah, it's cool, but of course not as cool as that one cake you did..."  That's OK.  The look on his face was totally worth it.

The Jabberwocky and the Foot

When I was young, the Jabberwocky embodied all that was lurking around in my imagination waiting to nab me as I went into a dark room.  My parents loved that one Alice and Wonderland with the live characters, fun music, many cameos, and the freaky, slimy, red-eyed Jabberwocky that made the lights go out and lightning flash in the movie.  They just couldn't understand why anyone would hate that movie, and pulled it out to refresh my memory regularly.

No one understood why birthdays were never the same for Alice.

Who wouldn't love that face?

So when my son saw a minuscule clip of a movie-within-a-movie that involved a dismembered foot and refused to go into any unoccupied room without someone, I was a bit more sympathetic than I would have been otherwise.  So while I was buzzing off a couple inches of his hair on the back porch, I tried to get a good idea of what exactly he was afraid of, since I hadn't seen it.

He explained the scary scene, which I suspect was meant to be comedy since the lady got kicked in the nose by the foot.  So after trying the whole, "Your imagination is only in your mind and you are the boss of your mind" tack, I asked him what a lone foot could do that was so scary, anyway.  After some speculation, we decided that a foot could only kick, a little, or wiggle, and definitely could not kill anyone like he was imagining.  Then I told him that since he was the boss he could have an imaginary hammer, or even... a feather! He thought that was hilarious.

One thing led to another and suddenly I realized that my son now had an imaginary friend that was a foot.  In keeping with strict traditions within our family, he christened his friend with a very intuitive and insightful name: "Foot."  Before I knew it, Foot was taking a shower, getting ready to leave with us, and even got his seatbelt on first.  (Foot was clearly male, since he indicated that, no, Foot wasn't wearing ANY nail polish.  Definitely boy.)

I was kept abreast of the situation with regular updates on Foot's well-being:  "Foot is happy that he has a family now."  "Foot can borrow MY shoes, so he doesn't get burned on the pavement."  "Foot will protect me from the other evil feet that are trying to kill me."

Oh.  Rats.  That was going so well.  In a weird, alarm-the-school-psychologist kind of way, anyway.