parenting

I surfed over to Sundays With Stretchy Pants today to read her latest blog entry and was in the middle of leaving a smart-assed remark (my specialty) when the marvelous phrase in the title came tumbling out of my fingertips. Eureka! It seemed to illustrate some ideas that I've been mulling over (we ENFPs and our internal processing; there's all sorts of things percolating in the dark recesses of my subconscious.) I promptly called dibs on it, and hereby lay claim to all rights and privileges thereof. As my friends at The Stranger say, "the internet is a race" and this time I won, 'cause there was no such phrase on Google. (I just checked.) You may use the phrase as long as you credit/link me. (My internal language police made me change the spelling here to reflect a Spanish adverb, but what's an 'L' between friends?)

But I digress. So, the following wasn't supposed to be part of the original vida intelectual, but a few exchanges I just had with the Boy illustrated the concept, and more importantly overcame my writer's inertia. So, I'll save the redux for another time when I have time AND can overcome inertia (aka a blue moon). There's a lengthy set-up, because that's how I write. If you want brevity, go find a paid journalist.

So the Boy is writing some sentences due to an incident last night. Perhaps the sentences themselves will be the best descriptor:

"Spitting at someone is a nasty, gross & violent thing to do. It could cause someone to do something violent and hurtful to me."

This is what passes for banter in our house:
Boy: "Dad, choose a number between 1 and 10."
'Savant: "4.7853629105"
Boy: "I said choose one number between 1 and 10."
'Savant: "I did. There's an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 10"

(The Boy was trying to sandbag his dad into talking about his new favorite obsession, Ben 10, and gets hit with a math lecture---another example of Machiavellian Homeschooling at its finest. But it goes on:)

So, I've been pondering on this Palin birth buareadh. It's just chock full of issues for me, no matter which way I look at it. Here's the best, most charitable angle from which I can view it: that the baby was indeed Palin's daughter's child, and Palin acted from a (misguided from my perspective) fear that having an illegitimate child would indeed ruin her daughter's life and created the charade pregnancy to save her daughter. (Yes, I know that it would also save her OWN reputation, and there were several degrees of self-interest involved. However, as I said previously, this is the MOST charitable reading I can give this situation.)

How can this be the best of all possible perspectives? Well, as per the title, I have judgement issues regarding Palin's parenting choices. I've had them ever since I heard that she was boasting about going back to work three days after having the baby. I know that economic necessity faced by some moms who indeed MUST return to work prematurely postpartum; I've been at some of their births. And, indeed, most postpartum mothers who have older children return to work prematurely as well, but that gets into a whole 'nuther rant re women and unpaid work. However, when I'm thinking about Palin, it's hard for me to imagine that the state of Alaska medical benefits forced her to return to work that soon. And, considering that our supposed President regularly takes a couple weeks off to go vacation at his ranch, I can't imagine that there would be such pressing matters in Alaska that Gov. Palin couldn't have handled them by doing a little work from home via the phone or with administrative aides shuttling back and forth a bit.

Okay, so I was giving the Boy a writing diagnostic yesterday in preparation for purchasing curricula for this 'school year'. He wasn't happy at all about writing and was having quite the snit fit, so I decided I'd try to reason with him on his level:

Me: Listen, my friend, you have to be able to write to take over the world. How will you be able to issue commands to your minions if you can't write?
Him: I will have a scribe!!!!!! (emphasis his)

So, I found a vastly appealing blog by an author who calls herself "Attila the Mom" last night and stayed up too late reading it. I particularly loved this:

which I showed the kids this morning, much to their glee, esp. the Boy who ran around chanting "I will whup your narrow ass!" so much that he forgot to pack clothes for the piano lessons he had after swim team practice. (So I got to say it to him in somewhat earnest when I discovered this lack of preparation when we got to swim practice.)

Then I went to Too Tight Pony Girl's blog and read this, thinking to myself that the summer vacation honeymoon was wearing off for moms of traditional schoolers. Ima gonna have to look sharp iffen I wanna keep up my title of "World's Meanest Mama".

Finally, as Steph was getting Her Girl to try on a dress that Steph was making for her, I overheard a snippet which took me back to my younger self standing by my mom's sewing machine.

"Ouch! This has pins in it!"
"Oh, quit whining. Getting stuck by pins has never killed anyone." Then, "Wait! Pull the dress down. The pins like it better that way."

Tough love, I tell you. Moderate it with a gentler tone and a wicked sense of humor and what do you get? A kid that reminds you (with a smart-assed grin) "Remember, I get to pick your nursing home." What else could a mother ask for?