Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (19 page)

As I was cooking dinner Aubrey came running into the kitchen with her little, purple finned-skank, pointed at the dolls abnormally small waistline and asked, “Mommy, your belly gonna get that little?”

I heaved a big sigh as I replied, “Sure, baby.”

“Well, it's going to take a LOOONG, LOOOONG, LOOOOOOONG time! Huh, Mommy?”

“Go get back in the tub, Aubrey.”

My efforts in the area of my children’s self-esteem have not been limited to their body images, though. I continued to try and assure them that they are valuable simply being who God made them to be and being kind to others.

One particular conversation I had with Aubrey left me wondering if I had been going about this all wrong. I was breastfeeding Sadie when she was only a few months old and Aubrey was leaning over my lap to look at her baby sister and snuggle close to her face.

Aubrey looked at me with love in her eyes, “Momma, I love her so much. You love me so much, too. Right, Momma?”

“Of course I do.”

“You love me the most. Right, Momma? Cause God made me so special. Huh, Momma?” she continued.

“Aubrey, I love you all the most. You are ALL so special to me and to God.”

“Uh-uh!” Aubrey screamed outraged, “God made ME special! And nobody else!”

Wait a minute, what? This is
not
what I had been working toward for the past five years.

“Aubrey, God made us all equal. He loves everybody in the world the same. He thinks we are all special.” I struggled to come up with terms Aubrey could process in her young mind. “You don’t love one of your sisters more than the other one, do you?”

Aubrey folded her arms across her chest and began tapping her foot and scowling at me. She puckered her lips up in a full pout and pointed at Sadie.

“What? Why are you pointing at her?” I asked.

“I love Sadie the best. She is my best sister in the whole world. Her doesn’t pull my hair, or bite me OR snatch my toys like Emma does!”

For the love.

“No she doesn’t. But does she swim, dance, and play ska — um, I mean, Barbies or Play-Doh with you?”

“No.” She answered abruptly.

“Does she sing with you, go to school with you or play hide-and-seek with you?”

“Noooooo.” Aubrey said, this time not as adamantly.

“Who does all those things with you?”

She sighed in disgust, “Emma.”

“I guess that makes Emma a pretty special sister, too. Huh?”

“I guess so,” Aubrey said as she rolled her four-year-old eyes and walked away.

And while Aubrey often delights in Emma’s punishments, Emma cannot imagine a fate worse than seeing her big sister get into trouble.

On another afternoon spent playing outside, the big girls were having a blast making “soup” full of sticks, rocks and dirt in a large pot they had borrowed from my kitchen. It was all fun and games until Aubrey decided to pick up the ginormous glass and stainless-steel lid and bash Emma’s head with it like she was crashing cymbals together. The attack was totally unprovoked; I had witnessed the entire thing as I sat on a bench feeding Sadie her bottle.

Aubrey was immediately exiled to timeout. I set the kitchen timer for five minutes and told her I didn't want to hear one
word
out of her until the timer went off or we would start over. After approximately forty-five seconds, Emma came into the den crying and said, “Momma, can my sister come pway wif me? Her is sooo sobby.”

“Honey, she is in timeout for hitting you.”

There was still complete silence radiating from the timeout corner.

Emma began crying, “But Momma, I wub her, and I want to pway wif her...”

I sighed as I hefted her into my lap and wondered when Emma would finally have enough of her sister’s brutalities that she would welcome Aubrey’s timeout as a ceasefire of sorts. A time to take refuge, to run around the house and touch all of Aubrey’s favorite toys while her older sister watched helplessly from the corner — that day wasn’t as far away as I thought it might be.

The very next morning I walked in on a heated argument over a Barbie doll (stupid little
skanks
, they are nothing but trouble in this house). I came in just in time to see Aubrey shove Emma. She looked up and saw me and said, “Oops! I’m sorry Momma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it! It was just an accident… I uh, I was just giving her a ‘Good Game’.”

We have a family tradition going back to my childhood of giving family members a “Good Game.” You know how athletes are always patting each other on the butt and saying, “Good Game?” Except at our house it’s not about the act the person is actually performing but more about the element of surprise. Emma loves to give me a “Good Game” as I unload the dishwasher, fill the bathtub up with water, or as I bend over to pull clothes out of the dryer. The "Good Game"
must
come out of the blue and be totally random to actually be funny. And it's always funny.

I didn't say a word to Aubrey, but simply pointed to the timeout corner. Shoving someone definitely did not qualify as a “Good Game.”

Aubrey quietly assumed the position as I set the kitchen timer. Emma marched into the kitchen and I sighed as I mentally prepared myself for another round of consoling the victim as her tormentor sat unimpressed in the naughty spot.

Emma walked right past me and up to her sister, stomped on her toes and
flexed
her tiny little arms a la Hulk Hogan, right in Aubrey’s face, in a very “You want some of THIS?!” move.

Aubrey held her toes and cried. It was all I could do to keep from slapping Emma on her tiny heinie and giving her a “Good Game” for finally standing up to her big sister. I tried to wipe the smile off my face as I assigned Emma her own corner.

W
hen Aubrey was four, she caught the tiniest frog I’ve ever seen right outside our front door. I put the penny-sized frog in a Mason jar and poked holes in the lid and wondered if we could keep him alive for twenty-four hours. Aubrey’s class just happened to be learning about the letter “F” and the following day was Show and Tell. If we could keep this frog alive Aubrey would be the most popular kid in her class and I could finally secure my Mother of the Year nomination.

I wanted to help her become the “It Girl” in her preschool class but was wary of my ability to sustain his little life for an entire twenty-four hours.

“Aubrey, we are going to have to let him go in a little while because he will die without food.”

“But MOMMA! I will feed him!”

“Honey, I don’t even know what he eats…”

She sighed exasperated at my ignorance, “He eats BUGS, Momma! And
his name
is Fred.”

Obviously frogs eat bugs, but where was
I
supposed to find bugs small enough to feed “Fred?” The average housefly was half his size.

As the day went on, Aubrey pushed Fred and his Mason jar in her baby doll stroller, spun him around in our office chair, and I even found her hiding under the sheets in her bed with the jar unscrewed “tickling his belly.” We have never had pets and Aubrey was overjoyed to have something to be in charge of.

She was running and jumping and being her normal, wild four-year-old self with him. After a particularly precarious jump from her bed to Emma’s bed with Fred’s jar clutched under her arm — I thought he was a goner. He was still,
very
still — maybe too still. I told her, “Aubrey, you have to be SO careful with the frog, he is just a tiny little guy and you REALLY scared him!”

I got distracted playing with Emma and looked up a few seconds later when I heard Aubrey having church with Fred. She was peering into the jar and quoting 2 Timothy 1:7 to her frog, “God hasssth not given you a ssthpirit of fear but power, love and a sssthound mind! God is with you, do not be afraid!!” We repeat this verse at night when she's scared.

“Momma he’s moving!”

Thank you, Jesus. Can I get an Amen?

The next morning we woke up to find Fred lying flat on his back with his arms and legs stretched out. He was belly up in a Mason jar and we had a serious problem.

“Shhh, he is sleeping!” Aubrey hissed at me.

Fred had in fact, entered into his eternal slumber.

Obviously, I couldn’t let her take a dead frog to school (unless Mrs. Emily was interested in having Fred’s Froggy Funeral, which I highly doubted.)

“Aubrey, Fred is… um, well, he’s not sleeping. Fred is dead. He is in froggy heaven with Jesus.”

“OH NO!” she gasped, slapping her hands to her cheeks.

I started making suggestions of other things she could take for Show and Tell that also began with the letter “F.” But she could not be dissuaded.

“Mommy, I REALLY wanted to take my tiny little frog!”

“If you hurry up and get dressed, we can look outside for another one. But listen up girly, we probably aren’t going to find another one. You’d better start praying NOW that God helps you find one.” I told her as I finished pulling her curls back from her face and fastening her hair bow.

Aubrey immediately clasped her hands together and prayed, “God will you PLEASE help me find a new frog?” She paused for a split second before yelling, “Thank you! He said YES, Momma!”

Once everyone was dressed and ready for school we marched outside to look for a frog the size of a fingernail. Aubrey, Emma and I searched the front yard to no avail, while I continued to make suggestions of other things she could take for Show and Tell.

“But, but, but, Momma, I REALLY want to take my tiny frog!”

I sighed and we soldiered on to the back yard. By this time I was getting a little antsy, we only had five minutes before we needed to be in the car on our way to school. Aubrey and Emma kept calling, “HEEEERE FROGGY, FROGGY, FROGGY!”

When suddenly, I looked down and saw a frog that made Fred look morbidly obese. I screamed “There’s one, Aubrey, get it!” (She does the catching, I don’t touch frogs.) She grabbed him in her tiny little fist and shouted, “YESSS! Thank you JESUS!” Emma pumped her fist in the air and whooped, “ALL-WHIGHT! Woo-hoo!” They were giddy with excitement.

We deposited Fred Junior into the recently vacated Mason jar and raced to the car. I quickly buckled Aubrey and Emma into their car seats, and as I was backing out of the driveway I saw Aubrey with her faced pressed against the jar whispering, “I’m sthorry about your friend!”

As we walked into school, Aubrey proudly displayed her frog to everyone she passed and made sure to tell every harried mother and still groggy child, “God gave me anudder frog!”

Her preschool class was awed by Fred Junior’s sheer cuteness and Mrs. Emily, God bless her, turned recess into an opportunity to release Junior back into the wild, lest he meet the same fate as his namesake. May he rest in peace.

W
hen Aubrey started kindergarten, I didn’t sob uncontrollably and insist on carrying her into her classroom on my hip. I didn’t have to struggle to keep my emotions in check. It was quite the opposite in fact; Aubrey had been so defiant and rebellious for the weeks leading up to school that I was relieved to have a few hours of peace and quiet.

Maybe I should’ve felt guilty about not being upset, but I didn’t. I had done my job as her mother and her teacher for the last five years, and while I enjoyed every second (well some of them, anyway) it was
time
for someone else to take a turn. Don’t get me wrong; I love my children more than anything on the face of the earth. But I was looking forward to the next chapter of our lives. Kids grow up for a reason: if they stayed any one age for too long, it would kill their parents.

I had spent the three weeks before school started in Timeout Boot Camp, trying desperately to maintain a consistent disciplinary approach with Aubrey, who had become increasingly more strong-willed and smart-mouthed. Not to mention that during the same time my children had passed around a stomach virus, a head cold
and
a sinus infection. I was exhausted.