Category Archives: Antics and Adventures

Even Before the Coffee: Treasure!

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Ever wake up to find a treasure map in your bed? It happens around here.  Piper and Sissy planned it with their Nana  during our date night. We’d been out late being crazy kids and were woken up at the crack of dawn by two squealing little girls who couldn’t wait to send us on another adventure.

A treasure hunt pre-coffee early Sunday morning? Maps to read and clues to unravel before the New York Times? Sounds uncivilized. I’m game.

So we stumbled off in search of our first clue. Piper was bouncing up and down like a squirrel on crack. It took all the self-control she could muster and her Sissy holding Piper’s hands behind her back to stop her from tearing open the envelopes and giving it all away.

I’m guessing you know how this went. Clue 1 led to my underwear drawer where we found Clue 2 which led to my makeup drawer which led to Clue 3 in the play kitchen in Piper’s room (They tricked us on that one! We went to the wrong kitchen, of course). Clue 4 led us to the bookshelves in the basement which led which led to:

The suspense is killing you isn’t? Finally, the treasure! I was secretly hoping it was a latte. Did I mention I hadn’t had coffee yet and Piper was doing her best imitation of a ping pong ball? Ah, treasure!

The long-awaited and hard-earned treasure was the ceramic butterfly Piper and I painted together last week. My heart melted just a little, I have to admit. It is pretty darn cute. Like most things, the hunt with Sissy and Piper in tow was the real prize. Everyone wins.

A Blessing in Disguise

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How is that your kids always figure out your weakest spots and exploit them? Piper spent most of yesterday speaking only in cliches and idioms. I teach college writing; it’s like rubbing salt in my wounds.

“Mommy, will you watch my balloon Lucy while I’m at school? She feels like she doesn’t have a friend in the world,” Piper asked, handing over the ribbon tied to her purple foil love child.

“Of course I will. You can trust me,” I assured her.

“I do. I trust you with all of my heart.” Lucy and I spent the day boxing and bobbing around each other as she trailed me through the house from room to room. Darn helium.

My strategy with cliches and idioms is simply to provide an alternative. It’s not that they are the devil; it’s that there is always a better way to express yourself than relying on pat phrases.

When Piper returned from preschool, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.

“How was Lucy?” Piper asked. “Did she have the time of her life?”

“Do you mean was our day successful? Did we get along? Did Lucy behave herself and have fun? Yes, Lucy the balloon did very well.”

“Thanks, Mom. You’re the best mom in the whole world.”

I suppose not all pat phrases are terrible. I can make some exceptions.

Power Corrupts

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The problem with piperism is its intoxicating power. She knows she almost has 30,000 hits. It’s gone to her head. It’s given the Piper a kind of swag previously unseen. If you were in Whole Foods today and you saw a haggard mom and an adorable little blond girl dressed in her crushed velvet emerald green holiday dress (I probably don’t need to explain Piper’s fashion choices at this point, dear reader), you probably witnessed the true corruption of a power like piperism. She knows we find her funny. She can make strangers in the aisle bust a gut. No one can keep a straight face in her presence. It all just encourages her more. Here’s a run down, aisle by aisle, of Piper’s abuse of power.

Fruit and Vegetables: “Mom, those apples look like your boobs!”

Bread Aisle: “Want me to sing the naked song Dad sings every night at bathtime?”

Frozen Foods: “Ice cream! Let’s get ALL of it.”

Dairy: “Jingle bells. Batman smells. Robin laid an egg…”

Canned Foods: “Come on, Mom. You don’t need sauce in a jar. You cook just fine.”

Grains: “Ooh. Let’s get some of that whole wheat pasta that helps me poop.”

You get the idea. She’s completely inappropriate. I have no power against it.

I beg you to stop encouraging her. It’s the only way to bring down the dictator.

The Case of the Absent-Minded Professor

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Piper thinks her dad is a vampire. Here is her evidence:

Dad has black hair and wears a lot of black clothing.

He is kind of pale.

Dad likes to stay up late and sleep in.

He is allergic to garlic.

When I assess Piper’s list, I have to admit it seems rather incriminating. He is an academic (thus the pasty) who takes her to the park in the afternoon (thus staying up late to catch up on work), and he does wear a lot of black (suits, that is, it’s DC folks). The garlic thing is a severe allergy, entirely not his fault.

“You know how I really know Daddy is a vampire?” Piper asked.

I was going to ignore the line of questioning because I’ve been trying to dissuade the topic, but I knew her readers would want to know.

“Ok. How come?”

“Because he’s not a very good rememberer. He forgets his keys, his wallet, his lunch. A vampire doesn’t need those things. He just needs blood. You can’t forget your blood.”

Color Me Pluto or Rosy

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Did you know Pluto is no longer considered a planet? Pluto didn’t actually change much. It’s still a bit of a dwarf. The definition of ‘planet’ simply changed to exclude the poor dwarf. I smell a conspiracy.

Anyway, Piper has been learning about the planets. The planet number controversy didn’t interest her at all. Her planet isn’t a dwarf. It’s paper maiche. Or paper machete, as she calls it. Arts and crafts can be a dangerous business.

Her homework today was to paint her planet. Here is a before shot:

She named her planet Rosy.

It’s a planet of rainbow flowers, of course.

Wash. Dry. Fold. Repeat.

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Last week on vacation Piper and I spent a lot of time at a local children’s museum. On a rainy day, it was exactly what we needed. (In case you’re ever in Harrisonburg, Virginia, here it is: http://www.iexploremore.com/cms/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx. I highly recommend it.)

Nobody does a children’s museum like Piper. There isn’t a toy she won’t play with. Upon arrival, she runs around touching and examining everything until she decides on the one spot where she will spend the next six hours. This time it was the kitchen.

“It’s just like a real kitchen!” Piper exclaimed.

And it was. A life size refrigerator, full cabinets, a dishwasher, table for serving, and laundry facilities within an arm’s reach. What more could a domestic goddess desire? The fruit and vegetable market was just a short walk from your fake front porch. It was all pretty darn cute. It gave me a terrible itch. The last thing I want to do on my vacation is spend a day trapped in a pretend kitchen “cooking” and “cleaning.”

“You can do the laundry! Just like at home. You’re ALWAYS doing laundry there. Now you can do it here,” Piper said. “Won’t that be fun?”

I gritted my teeth and assessed my chores.

Then I began my work, just like at home. I take my linens seriously.

Then Piper discovered unchartered territory. “What’s this?” she asked, sizing up a tiny ironing board. I hesitated. She’s so young. Why force her to grow up so soon?

“It’s an ironing board,” I said. “You use the iron to take the wrinkles out of the clothes.”

Piper’s eyes were huge. I’m proud to say she’s never seen me iron. She moved so fast in her excitement I could hardly get a picture. She grabbed the pile of linens I had carefully folded and began “ironering” out their wrinkles.

“My tutu won’t need ironering, though,” Piper said.  “It’s already perfect.”

Spelling Bee Champion

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Piper is pretty proud of learning to write her name. It’s taken a tough six months of preschool. I wrote about how we almost changed her name just to avoid the name writing pressure in “A Piper by Any Other Name.” Today, she’s a name writing rockstar. She labels everything she can with her mark. Tonight at dinner, on the back of several sushi ordering sheets, she moved on to more challenging name writing.

“Mom, how do you spell ‘mom’?”

“M-O-M.”

Piper wrote W-O-W.

“Oops,” I said. “Those look like “W’s.” You wrote ‘Wow.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Piper said. I agreed. Then she wrote M-O-M.

“Do you have another name, Mom?”

“I do. It’s Melissa.”

“Whoa. How do you spell that?”

“M-E-L-”

“Slow down, please. I only have one hand.” I bit my tongue not to point out that in fact a Piper has two. She wrote M-E-L.

“Okay. What’s next?”

“I-”

“Like the ‘I’ in my name?” Piper asked.

“Yes. Same ‘I.”

“What’s next?”

“S-S-A”

“Oops. I wrote 5s instead of ‘S’.” This made Piper giggle. Combining letters and numbers is hilarious business.

“That’s okay. You can just write over the 5s. They’re pretty close to ‘S.'”

“It’s too much trouble,” Piper said. “You’ll just have to spell your name with 5s.”

That makes sense. Like mother, like daughter.

B.Y.O.B.

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Piper wants a teddy bear. Not just any teddy bear will do. It has to be a Build-A-Bear and it has to grow from birth. Piper’s birthday is coming up.  A teddy bear is entirely possible, but I fear she has something more complicated in mind.

“My bear is being born right now,” she whispered to me at nap time. “He’s three minutes old.”

“Really?  How do you know?”

Piper rolls her eyes at my question. “I’m his mother. His Build-A-Bear mother. I know.”

“So your Build-A-Bear is growing right now?” I’m actually trying to follow her logic. There may be a real question in there somewhere that I need to address.

“Only if I buy him will he actually be built and grown. It’s like a daughter. Like you grew me. With a computer.”

“I didn’t pick you out on a computer, P. I grew you in my body,” I explain.

“Right. But you chose me. I remember.”

“You remember?”

“Yes. I was on the shelf waiting to be born. Then you came in and chose me. It was exactly like at Build-A-Bear.”

Hmm. I remember it a bit differently, but I’m pretty sure arguing will be futile.

More is More

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We’re on vacation this week. Piper spent an awesome day binging on pizza, splashing in the pool, playing board games with cousins, being doted on by grandparents, and playing at a park.  Three minutes after we’d returned to our room, she began complaining, “I’m so bored!  We never have any fun! No one plays with me!”

Poor thing.

Cousin Tay saved the day and jumped in to read Piper stories. But it’s never as simple as reading a book out loud with a Piper. There are questions. Many questions. Each plot twist must be dissected. What ifs abound. Characters have to renamed. You can hardly get through a sentence without commentary. Cousin Tay was patient. She met each of Piper’s demands. As I was putting Piper to bed later she said, “Tay is the best reader in the world. She gets me.”

 

Guest Blogger: Raold Dahl a.k.a. Sissy

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Our guest blog is brought to you today by Sissy. Enjoy!

Okay. There’s no denying it. I love to read. I mean, if this were possible, I’d stop eating, sleeping, and going to school just to sit at home and read. Naturally, with a family full of academics, Piper’s should go on to be a great reader. But with a Piper, you can never tell.

Anyway, Piper’s certainly on the right track. Ever since I decided to be the author Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, and more) for a school project, she’s become semi-interested in his books. Here’s me as Roald Dahl for the project, the wax museum:

The other day I decided to introduce Piper to one of Dahl’s less famous books, The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me.

Piper was enthralled. She loved every minute of it; the singing animals, the rich duke, the singing, the diamond burglar, the sweet shop, and all the singing (did I already say that?). Strangely enough, her favorite part was the robber.

“Why would he want to steal? He’s going to get caught. Duh.”

I answered as gently as I could. “Well Pipey, some people don’t make good choices.” Evidently, I didn’t need to.

“That robber should be locked up. Why didn’t his mommy yell at him?”

Well, just FYI, our mom does not yell. Don’t know where Piper got that. But evidently, in her mind, that solves everything.

Anyway, the book was a hit. She begged for me to read it every second of my free time and we finished it in three days. She asked me to re-read it the second I finished and wanted to borrow it. I still haven’t gotten it back. I’m now starting another Dahl book with her. Wish me luck.

-Sissy