music

Odd and Curious Thoughts (about what my kids learned today)

December 4, 2013 By AmandaBeth

(1) The Alka Seltzer jingle. What fun, the kids running around plopping and fizzing with wild abandon over and over at dinner AND later in the bathtub AND streaking across the house shrieking WHAT A RELIEF IT IS! until finally I’m like “it’s not even a song. It doesn’t work that well. Stop it with the plop plop because it’s starting to sound nasty up in here.”

(2) After an episode of Wild Kratts on PBS, my son was talking about lizards and what rhymes with lizards is skizzards (hee hee) and I was like “I can top that, kid, because there’s a band actually called Lynyrd Skynyrd” and his face like was like “yeah right, and I wasn’t born three years ago” but I showed him how sweet Alabama was on my ipod and he thought everything about that was JUST BRILLIANT.

(3) When mommy’s boss calls in the evening, you get pushed into the living room, mom ignores you for about fifteen minutes, and you get to watch a surprise television show. Hooray for bosses! See also: can I have a piece of candy while you’re on the phone and I know you’re sound asleep but can I just crawl in bed with you because I’m cold.

(4) Broccoli Stems are Disgusting. The rule involving eating your broccoli to get dessert does not include the hard stringy stalks on which the delicious parts of vegetables happen to grow. I’m a pushover on this.

(5) If there’s an chance for everyone to sit at the piano wearing plastic crowns singing Christmas songs while children make shaky hand-held music videos on the iphone, regardless of the fact that it’s five minutes past bedtime, such opportunities should always be taken.

(6) When mom comes barreling into your school wearing a pencil skirt to read during second-grade library hour and she busts out into song in the middle of a book (because it says in the book that the person was singing – what else was she supposed to do?) this is not normal and parents really just usually read. Huh.

(7) So joy to the world – my daughter now longs for even more American Girl trinkets like a volkswagon, swiss chalet, hot air balloon, competitive gymnastics set, sailboat, and other first-world playthings that cost more than a mortgage payment because the ELEVEN MILLIONTH CATALOG has finally arrived. Thank you Mattel. I hate you.

(8) But it was Laura Engles Wilder’s Christmas in the Big Woods and Pa was playing the fiddle and there were lyrics literally written into the text. It wasn’t like I could just talk that part.

(9) If you leave your scooter behind mom’s large vehicle and it gets run over in the morning before school she will show zero sympathy and will tell you to put away your things with disgust and will drink coffee and tweet at red lights like she just don’t care about your little ruined scooter problem.

(10) For Christmas, don’t waste your time asking for a new scooter from Santa because without shoes and if you are okay with veering slightly to the left and don’t mind a bit of a wobble, this thing TOTALLY WORKS

(11) Mom gets super mad if you say things like “Santa’s not real/ prove it then” when a certain three-year-old brother is in the car and for some reason nonverbal clues like winking, wincing, eyebrow raising, and fake coughing simply don’t work to curtail anything and things similar to “DON’T RUIN THE MAGIC FOR EVERYONE” are screamed out loud. Geez.

(12) Before bed, let’s all talk about the length of a small intestine, that an esophagus carries food from the throat to the stomach, red blood cells, and umbilical cords. Thanks a lot, Magic School Bus’ traveling circus through the human body, for causing all kinds of late-night discussions on topics too advanced for children. What happened to Good Night Moon? Why are we talking about bile?

(13) Mom’s a total nerd. This won’t fully set in for another few years, but a seed was firmly planted with all the singing, wincing, discussion of umbilical cords, and acceptance of crowns. Just wait until high school, kids, when your dates come over and I introduce Viking Night whereby we tear into turkey legs without silverware. You’ll love me to the moon and back. See? I’m glad we did all that reading.

photo:

karaoke

January 30, 2012 By AmandaBeth

During the week, my husband and I pass each other in the house as if we’re both servants in Downton Abbey. We give commands and trade off duties and bargain. You give baths and I’ll read bedtime stories. You change the boy’s diaper and I’ll get a hot stone massage. Okay, so I made that last one up.

But we’re busy folks, raising two kids and working and trying to keep our house free of small cars and doll clothes underfoot. And we both loathe cockroaches, which means we actually have to do dishes and wipe off the crusty food from my son’s chair after dinner and take out trash. It’s exhausting. So this weekend, we sent the kids to grandparents. I’m thinking great wine and late nights and crunchy tacos at 2 am and lots of rated-R movies. I’m planning on sleeping late and catching up on laundry and taking a hot bath.

On Saturday afternoon, my husband went outside to mow the lawn and I went whistling inside to do some laundry. No snacks and naps and fits and messes. No one to unfold my sheets and streak up the glass and whine about eating broccoli. Freedom at last! A clean sparkling house!

I went inside and stared at the pile of dirty clothes. That is so extremely dull. I walked into the kitchen and looked at a dirty pan in the sink. Yawn. I’ll do that later.

So I went upstairs and did what normal, healthy, well-adjusted, people-above-the-age-of-twelve do. Watched music videos. I was having such a fabulous time downloading lyrics and memorizing songs and watching Adele belt out ballads that I stood up in front of my computer with my iphone as a microphone and busted out a great rendition of “Set Fire to the Rain” in my pajamas. I lowered it a bit so I didn’t squeak out the high notes. I felt strong. Powerful. I could so totally rock this in a bar somewhere. Maybe I should record a CD and rat my hair up four inches.

Then I heard the back door open. I felt like a kid caught with a sugar soda and came crashing back to reality. I cleared my throat, minimized the screen on my computer, and went rushing downstairs to throw some clean clothes from the dryer onto the bed. Suddenly I had a sullen look on my face as I started to fold them. My husband walked in, crazy tired from pruning and mowing and cutting down some cedar and washing off the driveway. I’m not sure why I felt I needed to hide the karaoke session, except for the fact that I’m a grown woman trying to memorize song lyrics in elastic-wasted yoga pants while he was out there working.

“Whatcha doin?” he asked.

“Oh, just laundry,” I said. I rolled my eyes like I was bored to death. I think I sighed a little bit. Shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“All afternoon?” he asked.

“Well, you know, that and other stuff. Boring house stuff.” Like singing Rolling in the Deep at the top of my lungs. Dancing. Eating some leftover Christmas candy. Putting on lip gloss. Drinking a beer at 3 pm for no apparent reason.

He shrugged as he headed to the shower, probably because the dirty laundry was still piled up high.

When my kids get home, I’ll be thrown back into reality. We’ll all eat our vegetables and read bedtime stories and change poopy diapers. But for a moment – just a blip in time – I was young again, with no worries in the world, closing my eyes and getting lost in the music.