Tag Archives: piperism

In Sickness and In Health

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Piper can’t decide if she’s sick today. Her head hurts. Her tummy hurts. She may or may not have strep throat. She has no actual discernible symptoms. No fever. No runny nose. At least not that I can tell. It’s hard to check her temperature when she’s dancing around the living room as Daddy plays the guitar. She’s insisting on only soft foods: homemade waffles, strawberries, mac n cheese. Those happen to be her favorites anyway. How convenient.

“Mom, what’s it mean to faint?”

“Well, you kind of fall over like you’re sleeping. You aren’t really awake.”

“I feel like I’m going to faint,” Piper says, curling up in my lap. I take the opportunity to look down her throat. Nothing. “I need some orange spice tea.”

Then Piper finds a beach ball among the bags at the front door.  Sissy and her friends are throwing a going away party for one of their Dancing Queens. Piper digs deeper in the bags. There’s confetti, water balloons, and cookies.

“Party?” Piper says, “Beach balls? Thank goodness I’m feeling better!”

Beach Balls Mini Inflatable Beach Ball 5'approx. Inflated and 7'approx.deflated 12/Pkg

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.”

To Cut or Not to Cut

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Piper and I were reading a book last night in which a little girl cut her own hair.

“I would never do that, Mommy,” Piper promised.

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “People who cut hair have special training so they know how to do it.”

“Anna said her mom cuts her hair.”

“Well, maybe she has special training.”

“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “It doesn’t look so good. My teacher said Anna should go to a barbecue next time instead.”

 

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.”

Go Take a Hike

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We took Piper hiking in the Shenandoah Valley yesterday. It was her first hike. She wasn’t that excited. “So, you just go walk around in the woods? Boring.” She complained in the car most of the drive up the mountain. I let her wear her tutu and bring her favorite stuffed animal. These are essential components for forest exploration.

Piper’s dad gave a brief lecture on poison ivy. This led to her favorite new game called “Is this poison ivy?” in which she touched every leaf in the woods and asked…you guessed it: “Is this poison ivy?”  Half of the hike went like this.

“Is this poison ivy?”

“No. Put that down.”

“How about this? Poison ivy?”

“I hope not, especially since you just rubbed it all over your cheek.”

“Hey. Look at this leaf. Is it poison ivy? Huh?

“Stop!”

Luckily, Sissy pulled Piper close to enjoy the view.

Then they explored flora and fauna together by poking unknown things with sticks.

Piper took a brief tumble on the steep part of the trail. I cleaned up her wounds the best I could and she said, “Mommy, you make everything better.”

At the end of our hike, Piper declared it a moderate success. She agreed to do it again anyway. “I liked the hiking part,” she said, as we emerged from the woods, “just not the falling down part.”

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.

I Wear My Sunglasses at Night. And During the Day. Afternoon, Too.

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I know what you’ve been thinking. As much as the Piper loves all things rainbow, I’ve been neglecting one very important accessory.

You’ve heard from Sissy in “A Rainbow of Fruit Flavors” about Piper’s love of rainbow dresses.

You know that Piper’s parachute would be rainbow colored.

You may even remember, dear reader, that Sissy wanted to name Piper after a rainbow. Refresh yourself in “What’s in a Name? Guts.”

And don’t forget Piper’s plethora of rainbow tutus in “When in Doubt, Tutu.”

In fact, just for fun, I typed in “rainbow” in the little search engine at the top of the blog to see how many times I’ve written about Piper’s obsession with all things rainbow. It’s too embarrassing to reveal. You’ll just have to do it yourself.

But still, something was missing, wasn’t?

You’ll probably sleep better tonight knowing that the rainbow sunglasses have been procured. Whew.