Tonight we were at friends’ house for our weekly dinner together. Ruthie came up from downstairs where all the kids were playing, and asked if they could play with the Dominoes.
Not tonight, my friend responded.
Okay! Says Ruthie. I’ll put them away then!
Every morning when Ruthie wakes up, I remind her to throw her pull-up into the trash and put on her underwear. I didn’t think this task needed to be clarified any further – it seemed straightforward enough for a rational person like myself. But apparently it did, because today I found about two weeks worth of used pull-ups stashed in a pile in the back of her closet.
When Bryan found out, this is what he says…
Bryan: Ruthie, the next time we find hordes of used diapers in your closet, I’m going to give you 50 million spankings, a time out for ten years, and withhold food and water. You’ll have to eat grasshoppers.
Ruthie, after considering this for a moment: Nah!!! You’re joking!
Bryan: Okay I’m joking, but that’s REALLY GROSS.
Jen: We’re listening to U2, Ruthie. Do you like this music?
Ruthie, after blinking at me for a moment: You mean, it’s me and Thomas?
Ruthie: I want to wear my WHITE shoes to church this morning!
Jen: Hmmm… I think it might be kind of late in the season for white shoes.
Bryan: You let her out of the house wearing a plaid skirt with striped tights, but you’re worried about seasonal shoes?
Jen: A girl can explore her fashion boundaries, but certain lines should never be crossed.
Every morning, or at some point in the night, I wake up with a third person in bed between me and Bryan. It’s usually Ruthie, who often comes in after Bryan has already vacated his side of the bed for the morning. She sneaks in quietly, and I don’t even know she’s there until I try to escape undetected for a quiet morning cup of coffee.
Thomas is another story. From Day 3 of being alive that kid has thrashed and snorted and gagged in his sleep. When Ruthie was born, she slept quietly in a bassinet by my bed for at least three months. But Thomas? I kicked him out the first week, relegating him to his cavernous crib, because even at 8 lbs that kid could wake a heard of elephants with that snore. Whenever Thomas lumbers into bed with us, he gets an immediate boot back to his own bed, as he ALWAYS ends up whacking me in the head or kicking Bryan in the face.
Sunday morning, after a hard night of partying the day before, I went upstairs to wake the kids for church and found both their beds vacated. This is how I found them, in our bed.
I’m sure they will adore this photo when they are teenagers, don’t you think?
Ruthie, as the teacher, holding up a My Little Pony: Who can tell me what’s this?
Thomas, sitting attentively on the floor, as the student: What’s this!
R: No – Who can tell me what’s this?
T: What’s this!
Ruthie (visibly frustrated and shaking the horse): NO! Say what this is!
T: What this is!
Exasperated, Ruthie whacks Thomas on the head with the My Little Pony, and marches away to sulk in the corner. Meanwhile, I am doubled over in laughter as I try to comfort one wounded child and one angry child. I explain to Ruthie how Thomas thinks he is supposed to say whatever she says after the word ‘say.’ Surprisingly, she picks up on this quickly, but still doesn’t quite formulate the right question.
Ruthie (with a different voice inflection): Thomas, can you tell me what this is?
T: What this is!
Ruthie huffs, but sees me laughing and lightens up. I suggest a question.
R: Thomas, what is this?
T: ISS A HORSE!
Yea! We are all now cheering that this lesson is finally over.
The other day I let the kids use their blunt scissors to make beautiful creations with paper. Later on, as I was cleaning the kitchen after lunch, they both went up stairs to get ready for naps. I could hear them up there, screaming as they played catch with a ball – then silence.
Thomas wandered downstairs asking for milk. I asked where his sister was, and went up to investigate. She was nowhere to be found. I called her name, and she answered me… from under Thomas’ bed.
I noticed that she had a pair of scissors in her hand, and I noticed that she was hiding under the bed.
“What are you cutting under there?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re cutting something, and you’re hiding it from me. Confess it to me now, because if I have to figure it out on my own you’ll be in worse trouble” [translate: spanking].
“…my hair.”
She crawled out from under the bed and I saw her poor, chopped, hair. It was so, so, sad. Fortunately, it fixed up pretty nice, but I miss her cute little Ruthie haircut. This one is growing on me, but it makes her look so much older, and I’m not ready for older.
We all took it in stride, though, especially me. It is, after all, only hair.
The other morning Thomas tumbled down the front steps at my friend’s house, scraping his chin, lip, and nose, and he had an impressive splash of blood across his face to initiate him officially into boyhood. Ruthie was extremely helpful during this fiasco, running back up to the front door just like I asked her to, knocking, and getting something from my friend to clean his face. She was very cooperative and concerned, which impressed me, because when she is in an obstinate mood it is just these kinds of moments I imagine will be a disaster: me comforting one bloody child while the other runs screaming into the middle of the street.
It proved my theory that Ruthie is capable of following directions.
In the car on the way home, Ruthie – who had been obsessing over her need to have candy all morning – says to me, “But MOM! Jesus says in our heart that we should have a treat because I was a great helper!”
I like that, appealing to Jesus as her intercessor. Even if her works-based theology needs a little tweaking, at least she’s getting it on some level!
I just gave Ruthie a time out for ignoring me (a frequent happening in our relationship). After her time out, when I spoke to her about what she’d done, she seemed flippant and more concerned about getting back to Dora than she was about repenting and telling me she is sorry.
So I sent her to her room.
After THAT time out was done, we had another talk. Well, it was more like I lectured her. But the end of my lecture we dialogged, and she said she was sorry.
We hugged and kissed, and as she walked away she turned back and said, “Mommy, can you smile at me?”
And I did, and she skipped happily down the stairs.
I look forward to the day when I don’t have to go into robot mode while disciplining my children – when I can let my emotions run freely because they are healthy emotions, when I can switch more readily from a righteous anger to a loving forgiveness, when I can take myself less seriously and offenses less personally.
1. Said loudly on the ferry –
Ruthie: Thomas! Where’s your bus?
Thomas (thinking she said ‘butt,’ he grabs his ass): I put my butt wight hee-ah! (And grabbing his crotch) And my pee-pee’s wight hee-ah!
2. Bryan and Ruthie leave to get a table at Red Robin while Thomas and I wait ten minutes in the car at a meter (don’t ask). While I’m trying to pay the meter, Thomas continues to break loose and run straight for the teriyaki restaurant we parked in front of. Each time I drag him back to the meter he wails and throws a fit about how he’s hungry and wants to see his daddy. Despite my repeatedly telling him that daddy is at the OTHER restaurant, i still have to drag him across the street kicking and screaming, and looking looking like a child kidnapper as he screams, “NO! I WANT TO SEE DADDY! DADDY IS BACK THERE!”
3. Thomas attempting to steal an apple out of the hand of a homeless man as he eats it while panhandling on the street corner. I drag Thomas away from the homeless man as he screams, “I WANT AN APPLE! I HUNGRY!”
4. The parade of bicycles that swarmed down First Avenue toward Pioneer Square. Ruthie is mesmerized, and thankfully doesn’t notice the two men who are riding buck naked.
5. Killing time in the Magic Mouse Toy Store, hearing Thomas’ voice in the next room even though he’s standing right next to me. We discover there is a toy parrot that repeats everything you say, annoyingly, and seemingly from far away rooms and around corners. Bryan and I brainstorm who we can buy this parrot for… just for kicks.
6. Ruthie and Thomas pretending to drive the race car video machine –
Thomas: We ah home, baby!
Ruthie: Okay daddy!
7. Thomas entertaining the ferry crowd with his rousing interpretation of giving Ruthie Time Outs, which then turn into wrestling matches filled with giggles.
8. As we approach the ferry dock at Bainbridge Island, I tell the kids we are going to crash. Several heads turn, and grown ups gasp that I would scare my children so. But I know my children. And I smile smugly as they jump up and down with delight, screaming, “WE’RE GOING TO CRASH!” over and over again.
I actually have an entire slide show I’m compiling of Ruthie’s public fashion statements, but I just couldn’t resist this one from the other day. Temps were in the 70’s, but she insisted on wearing the fuzzy winter tights. Notice, also, that she is watching her feet as she walks because her shoes are ‘so beautiful.’ As we walked through town on our way to get hair cuts, at least five people commented on what great tights she was wearing. She was very proud.
Ruthie: Daddy, would you like to try on my crown?
Bryan: Sure, sweetie.
Ruthie (with dramatic pride): Oh daddy, you are beautiful. You’re my man-dancer!
I was gaining a pretty good momentum in the video department until about six months ago when Bryan switched me over from a PC to a Mac. I love my Mac – especially the part about it not randomly shutting down or taking 20 minutes to power up – but you know how it is learning new stuff. Who has the time?
I have been particularly frustrated with the movie making feature on the Mac, which I suspect is way better in theory than Windows Movie Maker… if I could just figure the damn thing out. In WMM, there was a sidebar within each video project that listed the entire process in steps for making a video, including a step that said CLICK HERE TO PUBLISH YOUR VIDEO ON THE WEB.
That’s a paraphrase, but it was something just as obvious.
iMovie has all the cool features I’m familiar with, but when it came to saving it to publish on my blog, it left too much for me to figure out. I don’t want to have to figure something out – I just want it to be obvious. I have peanut butter sandwiches that need to be made RIGHT NOW, and I don’t have time to read the ‘help’ documentation.
So this is largely why it’s been since January that I made my last video. Not that I haven’t wanted to, or that I haven’t compiled hours of footage in a To Be Published folder – but it seems whenever I sit down to troubleshoot iMovie I usually end up throwing something or screaming at my husband all the way down the stairs, which is precisely the kind of behavior I’m trying to avoid.
So here is a short video to get me started and to satisfy my need to create one without drama. I was mildly successful. The beginning and end titling is too small and moves too quickly to be able to read it, but I couldn’t figure out how to edit those clips – whenever I made changes, an entire new clip was added instead of just changing the one I thought I was editing. And there didn’t seem to be a way to stretch out the length of the titling so you actually have time to read it.
I finally gave up fiddling with it, and just decided to publish it in its imperfect, Shitty First Draft state.
For the record, the opening title reads ‘Take Another Picture, Photos by Ruthie,’ and the end title references the music: ‘Music by Bishop Allen, www.bishopallen.com.’ You should really buy this album. It’s brand new, and I love it. The song I used is called Click, Click, Click, Click off The Broken String album.
This particular video is a project I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, because I love looking at the things I see every day through Ruthie’s eyes. She loves the camera, and I love encouraging her use of it. She has a respect for it, and treats it gently and always tightens the strap around her wrist. Many grown-ups worry and fret when they see her handling such a sophisticated piece of equipment, but it’s actually one of the few things I can fully trust her with.
And I need a little more of that between us.