The Joys of Motherhood
updated 07/18/05
Some days it's easier than others to remember the reasons I love being a mom. For those difficult days, I've gathered some of my favorite anecdotes of the girls, especially Thea, when they were very young. Most of these were originally posted to my moms' email list. Here they are in no particular order.
When Thea was two she loved to go through my purse, and she always pulled out a sanitary napkin and said "This is Thea's pad!" Finally the thing pretty much fell apart and I threw it away.
Thea heard me yell at Spot, the cat, early one Saturday morning. So as soon as Rick got downstairs, she announced: "Mommy saw a damn cat! It was Spotty!" Later that day she said the same thing to a little boy we met in the neighborhood.
I had yelled at Spot because he decided to pee outside the litter box. On Sunday evening I was scrubbing the area with a stiff brush, and Thea said "Daddy, someone pissed over there!"
Rick loved to get Thea to repeat things. He told her, "Thea, say 'You are a swell dad!'" She tried, but it came out "You smell bad!"
After her bath one night, Rick was teasing Thea, saying "I'm Thea, and you're Daddy!" Thea countered, "No, no, no!! *I'm* Thea. She's the best!"
Faith loved baby dolls from an early age. One particular doll had eyes that open and close. One day Faith was playing with "Lisa" for a while, and I noticed that one of Lisa's eyes had only a few eyelashes left! Faith had being pulling off the lashes and eating them! We actually had to take the baby away, and she was very pissed off.
Thea said that Granddad was her friend, and Grandmom, and Mommy and Daddy. When asked if Faith was her friend, Thea said "No, she's just my sister. She lives at my house."
On the way to Georgia one spring we stopped at a motel in South Carolina. When we got there, Thea asked if it had a swimming pool. Rick told her it didn't. "Daddy," said Thea, "Is this motel called 'suck?'"
Thea was playing in this play area at The Children's Place (a store in the mall) and a little girl maybe five years old started talking to her. The little girl was holding a Hello Kitty stuffed doll. "I have this Hello Kitty," she said haughtily. "I bought it at the store." Thea responded, "I have some underpants."
One time Faith got out of the tub and was running around naked. I caught her standing in front of a full-length mirror, smacking herself on the butt and saying "Butt! Butt!"
Thea and Faith both got birthday cards in the mail from their grandparents, and we let them open them. When Thea opened her card, a ten-dollar bill fell out. "A dollar!" she shouted. Faith opened her card, and also got a ten-dollar bill. She yelled, "A penny!"
A baseball commercial came on TV and the words "Play ball" appeared. Thea said, "That says 'Play ball.'" "You're right," I said. "How did you know that?" She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "I know everything!"
Faith put some barrettes in her hair and showed Rick. "Oh, you're so cute!" he said, to which she replied, "Yes, I am!" (Ah, such humble children I have.)
In Target, Thea looked down an aisle and then said to Rick (very loudly, according to him): "Daddy! That lady has a bigger butt than YOU do!"
A conversation in the van one day:
Becky: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Thea: The egg.
Becky: But where did the egg come from?
Thea: A chicken.
Becky: And where did THAT chicken come from?
Thea: A farm.
Becky: <laughs> How did it get to the farm?
Thea: <thinks>
Faith: <completely bewildered> What chicken???
After a minute Thea asked me what the answer was, and I explained that there was no right answer, that it's a question that people like to just think about. She wass interested, so I asked her a few more.
Becky: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Thea: <definitively> Yes.
Becky: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Thea: <does a bunch of different things with her hand>
Becky: What is the meaning of life?
Thea: Huh?
Becky: What are we alive for?
Thea: <thinks for a while> For thinking.
Becky: Great answer!
Faith: <claps> That's two hands clapping!
<everyone laughs>
Thea: <slaps her knee> That's the sound of my hand hitting my knee!
<everyone laughs again>
Thea: I can smack my own butt, too!
<conversation has thus degenerated from philosophy into potty jokes...>
I was about to get in the shower one night when Thea came into the bathroom. Thea patted my rear and said, "Mommy, I see you have a big soft cushion if you fall down!" I smiled but wasn't too pleased that she noticed and commented on my big butt. But then, she cocked her head and said, "I wish my butt was like that. Mommy, when I grow up, do you think I'll have a butt like yours?"
This took place one night while the girls were putting pajamas on after bath. Apparently they had seen me wearing thong underwear.
Thea, putting on her underpants: Mommy, sometimes when we see you in your underpants, your butt is sticking out.
Me: Yep.
Faith is practically rolling on the floor laughing at the word "butt."
Thea: Why is your butt sticking out?
Me: That's the way some underpants are made.
Thea: They're butt-sticking-out-underpants?
Me, dissolving into laughter also: Yeah, pretty much!
Thea, pushing her underpants up her rear so her cheeks are bare: Look at me! I'm like Mommy!
Thea got an educational video about butterflies from the library, and after watching it she told me that "camouflage is a way that caterpillars hide from creditors."
Thea decreed one year that her favorite Christmas song was no longer Jingle Bells -- it was now Deck the Halls. She found a songbook that has Deck the Halls in it, and I overheard her singing downstairs when she thought no one was listening. She knew the first verse by heart, but here she was reading and singing the other verses. She sang:
"See the blazing yule before us, fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Strike the harp and join the circus, fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la"
I made a wrong turn while driving the girls somewhere and said, "Dammit!" Then the following ensued:
Thea: Mommy, why did you say dammit?
Becky: I shouldn't have said it. It's not a nice word. But I made a wrong turn, and I felt angry, so I said dammit.
Thea: [thinks for a while] Mommy, if the cat pisses on my blanket, I will feel like saying dammit.
Thea "embarrassed" me at Hard Times Cafe (a chili place) one night when she was two by generally behaving boorishly -- first she ate a pat of butter by sticking her finger in it and licking it up, and then halfway through the meal she actually lifted half her rearend off the booster seat, passed gas, and said "Fart!" with an evil grin.
Thea would have funny conversations with her toys or other inanimate objects. She was in the dining room one day with a Chapstick in one hand and a banana in the other. She was banging the Chapstick against a table, and she held it up and said to it "Are you banging, red Chapstick?" and then said "Yes!" while wiggling the Chapstick as if it was talking. I was trying to keep from laughing so she wouldn't know I was listening to her. She turned to her other hand, and said "Are you a banna?" "Yes!" At this point I kind of snorted out loud, and the conversation ended.
One day we came home from somewhere and Thea immediately went to hug Spot, the cat. She was talking to him, saying "I love to hug Spotty. Spotty loves you [meaning herself]. I love Spotty." Then she said, "I love you just the way you are."
At the zoo, Rick took Thea to see the tiger (the animal she most wanted to see). Well apparently while they were watching, the tiger threw up. We have seven cats, so Thea knows very well what it looks like when cats throw up. They gag and hack for a little bit before actually puking. I guess other people around weren't sure what was going on, but Thea was laughing and saying "Tiger is yakking!"
I watched "A Baby Story" on TLC whenever I could while I was pregnant and on maternity leave. Thea loved watching "the baby show," but she would get very disturbed after the baby was born and it was taken away to be weighed or scrubbed down or whatever, especially if it was crying. She'd frown and hold out her hands and say in a sad voice "Give baby back to mommy!"
When Faith was newborn, Thea loved to "help" me change her diaper. She was very concerned about the plastic clip on Faith's umbilical cord stump, and she would say, "Watch out for zipper!"
One day I had PBS on for Thea while I was straightening up, and the show "Reading Rainbow" came on. Levar Burton, the host, was saying something about how when *he* was little, *he* wasn't attached to a comfort item like a blanket. Well then they ran a little segment with a little boy who was supposed to be Levar Burton as a child, and he was playing on the floor with a blanket. His mother wanted to take the blanket and wash it, but the little boy was upset at the thought of being separated from the blanket. (They were just trying to show that Levar Burton the adult wasn't telling the truth.) The segment ended with the blanket being taken by the mom. Anyway... I didn't realize any of this was sinking into Thea until I heard her sniffing, turned around and saw tears welling up in her eyes! "What's the matter?" I asked her, and she said, with her little lip quivering, "Little boy wants blanket back!" I swear it took me like 20 minutes to convince Thea that the little boy *did* get the blanket back, that the mom was just washing it, and as soon as it came out of the dryer she gave it back.
We were in Thea's bedroom and I was nursing Faith in the rocking chair. Thea was playing with a baby doll. She was talking to herself. She started pointing to features on the doll's face. "Eyes -- for talking," she said. "Lip for talking. Nostril -- for having boogers." I laughed out loud at that! Apparently the nose's main purpose is to provide boogers.
Thea called Clifford the Big Red Dog "Clifford the Great Big Red Dog." She also referred to her great-grandparents as "Great Big Grandmom and Great Big Granddad."
When Thea was two I got a little kit with strawberry plant seeds and little pots. They came with these tiny wafers of soil that, when watered, would expand and provide all the necessary soil for the seedlings. Well, the wafers *did* look like cookies, and so Thea sampled one. Thus ended the mother-daughter gardening attempt.
Faith came home from Vacation Bible School singing the wrong words to one of the songs. Instead of saying "Just like Jesus, I wanna be just like Jesus, I wanna be," she sang "Just like Jesus, Let go of me."