“Mom, want to hear what I learned on the playground today?”
“Sure.”
“Whatcha eatin’? Piece of chocolate. Where dya get it? Doggie dropped it. Get it? Get it?”
“Unfortunately, Piper. I do.”
Everything I Need to Know I Learned on the Playground
5
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Parenting Plots
We caught Sissy reading a parenting magazine at breakfast yesterday. “Anything good in there?” I asked.
Sissy glanced over the top of the magazine. “You really should be teaching me this stuff, you know.” Which is probably true. But why bother when I can just have her read it herself? She doesn’t seem to need fixing to me.
Piper, too, got into the unsolicited parenting advice business tonight.
“Mom,” she began, “if I wrote a parenting book, I’d say…Step One: Be nice to your kid. Step Two: If they’re hurt, just hold them. Step Three: If they want something, give it to them after dinner. Step Eight: If they break something or ruin your favorite things and you get mad, pat them on the head and say you’re sorry. Step Five: If they want books, say yes.”
Whew. That’s a rather clear and concise parenting manual. I have to wonder if Step Four, Six, and Seven were key, though.
A few minutes later, Piper’s parenting plot was revealed. “Did I mention that there was a book fair at school next week?”
UnWacky Your Tacky
It’s Spirit Week at Sissy and Piper’s school. Every day they are supposed to dress up. Monday was sports team day. Tuesday was hat day. Wednesday is Wacky Tacky. You get the idea. It’s been a fun week, but last night, dress up hit a speed bump.
“What’s Wacky Tacky?” Piper asked.
“You wear mismatched clothes. Crazy stuff. Fun stuff. You know. Like a costume,” Sissy explained. “Here. I’ll show you.” Sissy took Piper into her room to share the outfit she’d picked out: tie dye shirt, floral scarf as a belt, mismatched socks, two different earrings, silver shift, day glow belts, etc.
Piper went to her own closet and started pulling out accessories. The rainbow dress, of course, polka dot socks, silver strands of beads, a blue tutu, rainbow sunglasses, and two different sparkly shoes. “That’s perfect, P. Very wacky tacky,” I said. “You’ll look great.”
Piper looked over her outfit one last time. I assumed she was trying to work in one more rainbow something. “But that’s not wacky tacky,” she said. “That looks like what I wear every day.”
Braiding
Piper likes braids. Except when she doesn’t. Then she wants pigtails. And rainbow hair accessories. Or glittery headbands. Mismatched barrettes. Silver bows. Purple ribbons.
Piper has a hair agenda for each day. She sits in my lap or on the floor beside me and directs. She knows exactly what she wants. It’s her hair, after all.
Lately, Piper wants me to braid her hair wet before bed so that she wakes up with wavy locks. I take her golden brown strands, that look remarkably like mine, and comb and part and straighten and braid Piper into the person she wants to be.
Popping Popcorn Pops
Piper went on her first kindergarten field trip last week. They travelled by school bus to a local farm. This was Piper’s take home haul.
She was quite proud of how much she learned. When I asked her if she’d had fun, she unpacked her goods onto the floor and Professor Piper delivered the following lecture:
“First we’re going to discuss this cotton. See, it’s a pod. This will bloom. There’s cotton in there. They grow it in the fields on the farm. That’s how we get clothes. You’ll see.”
Then Piper picked up her pumpkin and demonstrated how you properly pick a pumpkin from the patch. It’s not as easy as it looks. It takes strategy.
“Finally, this is an ear of corn. We’ll be making popcorn from this. You’ll be helping me, Mom. You’ll need to be patient. Popcorn popping takes time. Then we’ll eat it.”
So, we did, of course. I’d never popped popcorn from the cob. It’s remarkably easy. Piper and I watched a demo on YouTube before we began. We took the corn and put it in a brown bag. Then we closed the bag and put it in the microwave. Then Piper climbed up on the counter and pushed the “popcorn” button. Then we did a popcorn dance while we waited for the popcorn to pop. “It makes it taste better,” Piper reassured me while we listened to the kernels burst. Then we dumped out the fluffy white popcorn into a bowl and ate our feast. Professor Piper gave it an A+.
If Dancing Doesn’t Work…Dance More
Piper got stuck again. This was a little different than my last stuck post “Stuck in a Compromising Position.” This one had an extra element of danger and intrigue.
A new grocery store opened in our downtown, so we decided to take a stroll through after dinner. We’re wild party animals aren’t we? I mean, who checks out a new grocery store for fun, right? Geez. Piper thought it was Christmas, though. She was so excited to run the aisles and see the goods. I had to keep reminding her “We’re just looking, P. This isn’t shopping. We just want to see what they have.”
Anyway, we went through the first set of automatic sliding glass doors together. Then the second set opened to deliver us to produce. Piper was dallying a bit behind because she wanted to see everything. And touch everything. And pick up everything. The second set of doors closed behind me and I turned around to see a wall of glass behind me and P. The first set had closed, too, so Piper was stuck in a little glass cage. I swung my arms wide on my side thinking maybe the sensors worked. They didn’t. Piper smiled through the glass. Then she swung her arms wide, too, but nothing happened. She was too short to activate the sensors. She pointed behind her to ask if she should go out the other way. I pressed my hands to the glass and mouthed “NO!” The parking lot with zooming cars was on the other side. We stared at each other a moment more. Then Piper began dancing. I’m not sure if she was actually trying to activate the motion sensors and open the door or if the moment was just ripe for dancing. You never know with P. Either way, the glass doors still didn’t budge. So she danced more and added ballet leaps. The leaps must have done it. Mid-pirouette the doors slid open and Piper danced her way in produce.
“That was cool, Mom. I like this store already,” she said.
And the Winner is…
Piper hears a lot of political talk in her average day. There is the election, of course. And we live in Washington, D.C. She’s also exposed to a wide range of opinions. The people in our house rarely agree on politics and it is always at the dinner table. Not surprisingly, Piper has come to her own conclusions about Baback Omama and McRomney, as she calls them, erroneous as they may be.
She didn’t watch the presidential debates, though. It was past her bedtime. But she did ask about their outcome. I don’t know that it matters whose team you’re on. A victor was declared. We delivered the honest truth.
“Oh no,” Piper said. She put her head down on the table in defeat. Then she popped back up. “Wait. If McRomney wins, does that mean we have to buy a bunch of guns?”
Lexicon
Piper is reading a lot these days. She’ll tell you her lexicon is expanding. Lexicon is one of her favorite words from Word Girl.
But I’ve noticed that Piper’s lexicon is limited to only those words that she likes.
She can read the regulars: to, the, it, go, I, and, etc. The little words aren’t a problem.
It’s bigger words that she struggles to sound out: work, sleep, pick up, nap. No matter how many times we repeat them, Piper doesn’t add these words to her lexicon. She won’t even try to sound them out, and she’ll often substitute a “more fun” word for those.
There are words equally as challenging that she has no problem remembering, though: play, toys, fun, park. She can also read every dog name in the book: Mudge, Biscuit, Martha. Per Piper’s request, we read a lot of dog books.
Hmm. I’m sensing a pattern. Like most things, it appears Piper’s lexicon will entirely her own.
Do You Believe in Magic?
Piper does. She made a magic wand last week at Sunday School. It can do all the stuff a normal magic wand can do. Like make you happy. Poof. Like make your green beans disappear. Poof. Like clean up your room. Poof.
Piper believes in magic. Her wand can make all things possible.
“Magic’s not the hard part, Mom. The hard part is figuring out what to ask for.”
All Teched Out and Nowhere to Go
Piper’s daddy got a new toy. It’s the IPhone 5. He knows how to share his toys, though. He likes to pass down his used ones to those less fortunate. I’m not interested, which leaves Sissy and Piper to duke it out for tech sloppy seconds. No thanks.
Tech toys is where my partner and I diverge. I’m more old school. Grab a book and read it. Grab a stuffed animal and make up a game. Go play in a sand box. Use your imagination. My partner likes to download games and buy gadgets. He gets books on the IPad that read out loud to our kids. Boo. I like to cuddle up with a book and take turns reading books out loud together. Sissy and Piper do way better voices than that IPad version.
Tonight I found our luddite and high tech worlds colliding. Piper was playing with her stuffed animals as I’d suggested, but she made them do this:
Her stuffed animals are Skyping. The elephant is also multi tasking with her phone. And that pink fox should know better than putting his soda near the laptop. Liquids near the technology never ends well. Piper has learned that lesson the hard way.
“But if they’re so close together, why do they need to Skype?” I asked.
Piper rolled her eyes. “Duh. Because they can.”
piperism 