Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (21 page)

PTA people,
stop this
! This instant! My child goes to public school for a reason! If I could afford to take a family of five out to dinner every night and had friends who didn’t buy all their wrapping paper half-price at K-Mart after Christmas every year — my kids would go to private school. And how am I supposed to get three kids dressed and out the door by 6:30 to get in line for the Spirit Night buffet at Cici’s Pizza if you won’t stop calling me? So
stop it.
Now.

I mean For The Love, I just sold fifteen lobsters in the middle of a recession. Oh, you don’t have to go back and read that last sentence again — you read it right the first time… LOBSTERS. I sold
fifteen
lobsters in the midst of the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. For $12.50 a pop.

I’ll give credit where credit is due. The lobsters were a pretty good idea. We had a lobster party with a bunch of our friends, everyone bought their own lobster and I cooked side dishes and we had a great time. But I’m not asking
anybody
to pay $9.99 for a 4x4 square of foil wrapping paper.

My sister taught second grade in Alabama and her PTA was smart, they gave you the option of volunteering
or
writing a check for fifty dollars. Sign me up. I’d pay the PTA fifty dollars to quit programming my child to peddle their wares on the streets of Mount Pleasant for some stupid plastic monkey that I could buy her for a buck at any Dollar General — but NO. She didn’t want
my crap
, she wanted
their crap
and she wanted to
earn it
. What kind of values are they trying to teach our kids anyway?

A
s my children have gotten older I have realized I must teach them the value of a dollar and instill in them a strong work ethic. No child of mine is going to be walking around with a sense of entitlement. No way. No how. Even if it means I have to say no nine times out of ten and make them work their way through preschool, flipping burgers at Burger King. My children will learn to value a dollar and the satisfaction that can only be gained through hard work and perseverance. But, well… it’s a process.

At first, I tried to praise and reward good behavior, but this usually just lead to Aubrey asking me for something every time she picked up a toy. The upside of this particular method was that every time I cleaned the house I had two little cheerleaders who followed me around saying, “Dat’s such a good job, Mommy! You ah such a big gull!” And when they came home from preschool to a spotless house, they would occasionally say, “Oh, Momma! Thank you sooo much for cleaning my house!” Their house? What? Last time I checked my last name was
not
Gosselin. This is
my
house, they only live here. Apparently, it was time to reevaluate.

I realized the tactics I was employing left something to be desired, so when Aubrey was four-years-old we instituted an allowance system. Aubrey could earn a dollar a day for obedience, good behavior and cleaning up after herself without being told. Obedience is a pretty all-encompassing rule for a preschooler. It included everything from putting her dishes in the sink, and placing her shoes on the shelf by the front door, to stopping the
very
first time I told her to leave her sister alone.

The idea was that she would do her “chores” and follow the rules and hopefully by the end of the week she would have seven dollars. (Who am I kidding, right?) We would save ten percent, give ten percent to our church and the rest could be used at her discretion.

Her first week on this system was extremely effective, she “yes ma’am-ed” until she was blue in the face and was busy all day long looking for something to clean or some way to help me. I paid her in change, at her request (she prefers “the little metal monies” to cold hard cash) and at the end of the week we sat down to count it all up.

After counting everything in her piggy bank, including stray coins she had picked up around the house she had a little over six dollars. In the past Aubrey had always been so excited about taking money with her to church and seemed to understand that somehow her money was going to benefit someone other than herself.

“Alright, Aubrey it looks like you have about sixty-five cents you need to take to church tomorrow,” I told her.

She was
horrified
. Her chin began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears as she exclaimed, “But Momma, this is MY money and I don’t want to give it to God!”

“Hold on a second,” I said as I quickly pulled sixty-five cents out of her pile of coins. I made a small stack with “God’s money” and a large one with hers.

“This is your money,” I said pointing to the larger pile. “And THIS, is God’s money,” gesturing towards the small stack of coins.

“OH!” She giggled she was so relieved, “I guess He can have a little more,” she said as she kicked in an extra six cents.

As she got older the temptation of doing what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it, began to outweigh the promise of a dollar at the end of a day and Aubrey hit a dry spell. The economy was bad and my four-year-old was feeling it in her pink Disney Princess pocketbook. It took her about a month to collect eight dollars and it was burning a hole in her pocket.

I was excited to take her to the store so she could see how far her money would actually stretch and tried not to smile too broadly as I told her that eight dollars would not be enough to buy the Barbie House-o-Skanks or Barbie’s Skank-Mobile.

We moved to a section of toys that were within her budget and shock of all shocks, she chose yet
another
Barbie doll to add to her already extensive collection. I assured her she had plenty of money to buy it and we made our way to the register.

She placed the Barbie on the turnstile and held her wallet in her still chubby baby fingers. The cashier gave us the total and I said, “Okay honey, time to fork it over.”

Aubrey reached in her wallet and grabbed a handful of cash and coins, and placed them in my hands, with her strawberry blond eyebrows raised, leaving several dollars behind.

“Nope, I gotta have all of it,” I told her.

She turned her pink princess wallet upside down on the turnstile then turned to me with a scowl and said, “That’s IT! It’s all gone.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I thought after spending some of her own allowance, Aubrey was starting to appreciate what it meant to work for your money. As far as my husband went, she seemed to understand that her Daddy’s job is to build “hostables” (hospitals.) Aubrey and Emma both love going to visit their Daddy at his work on occasion and love to play with the women who work in the office and choose a piece of candy out of the huge bowl in the reception area. They leave feeling like they are ten-feet tall and
somebody
.

My job was a bit more complicated in Aubrey’s little mind. I was working one morning, which means I was typing away on my laptop, in my pajamas, with no makeup on and stopping whenever I needed to play with or discipline my children. I was taking a break from writing to feed my kids and casually asked Aubrey as I made sandwiches, “What is Mommy’s job?”

“Ummm, puttin’ my sister in timeout…”

I laughed, “What else?”

“Writing books.”

I was a little impressed. I was, in fact, working on my first book and writing a weekly column for
The Moultrie News
in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

“What kind of books?” I asked just to see what she would say.

“Facebooks.” I went from being impressed she knew what I did to being horrified,
again
, that she actually
knew
what I did.

At the mention of her future career as a Facebooker for the second time in less than a month, I began to realize my children’s concept of work wasn’t exactly accurate. Aubrey understood that her mommy and daddy
had
jobs, but the nature of the actual work continued to be a subject matter beyond her understanding. Her little mind just couldn’t comprehend exactly what it was that her parents did to put food on the table.

Aubrey was sitting by the front door one evening waiting for her Daddy to get home from work and play with her when she looked at me and asked impatiently, “Momma, where my Daddy is?”

“He’s at work, baby. He’ll be home in just a little while. Daddy works so hard for us, so we can stay home and be together.”

“Yeah,” she replied in her most mature voice, “him is just at work chewin’ gum and eatin’ candy…”

Apparently,
I
still have some work to do.

T
he predictability and comfort of a bedtime routine is as important to parents as it is to their children. After a hectic day of disciplining your children and being busy doing whatever it is your life requires of you, it feels good to settle your children in their nice warm beds at night and reassure them of your love and adoration. That’s the idea anyway.

Bedtime at my house often brings to mind trying to force a pack of rabid dogs into a single cage. My children, exhausted and desperate for sleep, will do whatever it takes to prolong the process of going to bed as long as humanly possible. Because of this we have a routine that starts a full hour before their actual bedtime to make the transition from playtime to sleep time a predictable and comforting process.

We usually start with a bath, regardless of whether or not they need it. Aubrey and Emma love to get in the bathtub and play with their tub toys, have pretend tea parties and generally make a gigantic mess for my husband and I to clean up, but it’s a good way to signal to them that bedtime is coming.

Of course bath time at my house isn’t always calm, soothing or drama-free, and it has ended more than once with me bleaching the bathtub. Thankfully Emma’s days of pooping in the bathtub were short-lived, but Aubrey still gets nervous and bails out whenever her little sister breaks wind in the tub. I can’t blame her; we’ve both seen the “floaters” of her past.

In addition to actually getting clean and calming down before going to bed, bath time can be a time for the girls to bond and discuss the day’s events with one another. But more often than not, it is another time for me to act as a mediator between two stubborn little girls.

One evening the girls were enjoying a soak in the tub when Emma began yelling in her “OOOOO-my-sister-did-something-bad-and-I’m-going-to-get-her-in-trouble” voice.

“MOMMA, MOMMA, MOMMA!”

I went running into the bathroom to see what the problem was.

“Aub-a-rey said too-pid!”

I looked at Aubrey as she looked everywhere but at my face.

“Aubrey, did you say stupid?” I asked her.

“I didn’t! I didn’t Momma! I REALLY didn’t, I’m not even lying!”

Emma reassured me, “Her did Momma! Her said too-pid!”

“Aubrey…” I prodded.

“I didn’t Momma! I said upid-stay. Repeat after me, Momma uh-uh-upid-stay. SpongeBob says it!”

Pig Latin... at four-years-old? Really? I have a hard enough time understanding them when they are speaking
English
without the addition of the secret language of prepubescent boys across the country. Even though I was a little smug that I had a bilingual child, I heaved a big sigh and explained, “Aubrey ‘upid-stay’ IS the same thing as saying stupid and SpongeBob says a lot of things we shouldn’t say. Okay? Time to get out of the tub.”

Aubrey hopped right out and began to get ready for bed, but Emma wanted to continue to soak in the bathtub.

“Emma, honey, you have to get out.”

“I not weady yep, Momma. I not.”

“Honey, you have to get out.”

“Oh, I just do dis den Momma,” she said as she pushed up on her hands and toes, sticking her tiny little booty straight up in the air. She was in a downward dog position with most of her body out of the actual water.

“What are you doing?” I asked her a little confused.

“I'm out of da tub, Momma!” She grinned. She was so proud of her own ingenuity.

I tried to convince her that it was bedtime and regardless of how she was positioned in the tub, it was simply time to get out. She was eventually persuaded by the promise of reading books and climbed out of the bath to join her sister in their shared bedroom.