In response to Pass me a beer - please! at Blooming Marvelous, I found myself writing a blog entry of my own in Annie's comments. Wrong place, chicky. Annie doesn't want your blather over there. So, with a hefty chunk pulled from said comment, the blather continues here.
Annie and I were chatting yesterday on IM about her having discovered her daughter "painting" with toothpaste in the bathroom. In the middle of a more-than-hectic day, her sweet mother was considering turning off the sweet in response to this artistic, uh, expression. Before I get into how I totally understood, I admit that the response I sent her was that toothpaste experiments were one thing on my "free pass" list for my sons. It's not because I am a "funner" mom, as Annie (quoting her daughter) put it, but rather a mom with a promise to keep. A promise made to myself about two decades ago.
When I was little, I was mad about chapter books. This was before the coming of Barnes & Noble, et al., so I got most of mine from little book fairs at my elementary school. One of my favorites was Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Her Mother. On the cover was a picture of Ramona squeezing out an entire tube of toothpaste into the bathroom sink.
The toothpaste-squeezing episode in the book shot straight to the heart of me. This was something that I dearly wanted to do. Why couldn't I be as wild and crazy as Ramona? I think at this point in my young life, the most reckless thing I had done was mix a bottle of my Cabbage Patch perfume with a brand new bottle of my mom's Giorgio perfume... together, in a snow boot. Lord bless the mother. Whatever her response to that must have been, it made me hesitant to do the toothpaste thing. Well, damn.
I swore to myself then and there that when I was a mom, I would be cooler than my own mother (by my elementary school standards) and would therefore let my kids squeeze out a tube of toothpaste whenever they damn well pleased. This would be, in my estimation, the epitome of cool mom things to do. It never occurred to me that letting them do it would take the fun out of it, but nevertheless.
My boys aren't up to chapter books, yet, but when they are, I will buy them a copy of Ramona and Her Mother. I will also buy a cheap tube of toothpaste and be sure to leave it out for little hands to find. When they decide to squeeze it out into my purse rather than the sink, I will remember the promise I made to myself so long ago, and remind myself that this is one small thing not worth sweating.
Other small things not worth sweating this week: (cont'd)