Lately Ruby has railed against her car seat. She is four, and finds the crazy constraints of her harness beyond tolerance. So, I figured it was maybe time to start looking into the next phase up. Whilst browsing for booster seats I found a great deal via online ads for a in-box one, and went to the apartment complex to make the deal. Unfortunately, the seller wanted to meet by the complex playground, which meant letting the girls out to play because, hey, we were at a playground.

So I let the girls run around the playground while I set up the booster seat and it was pretty  nice. Except for the other kids on the playground. All began well enough, with the local kids interacting with mine.

Then the local kid saw me. The boring 30-something mom. Forget the small children, there’s an adult! And two kids wound up coming by to talk to me.

Perhaps my role during the school year as a teacher has warped my reasoning. I’m a teacher. Nice enough to share an amusing anecdote with, but no purely social interaction is meant between student and teacher, kid and adult. It’s not the I’m opposed to healthy social relationships between all ages, but I do draw the line when fellow children are passed up in favor of an adult.

I like kids, love them even. Childhood is magical.

But I am not and probably never will be one of those moms or teachers who spends a significant amount of time playing with kids.

Reason No. 1: Playing with kids seems to be a new shiny badge for modern moms.

I have no memory of my parents playing elaborate games with me. Oh, there was fun stuff here and there and my childhood was happy, but I was playing with my brothers or neighborhood kids. I do not feel slighted or ruined because my mother didn’t play games with me. She was the mom, I was the kid.

But these days, every other commercial promises this product will allow you to perform lively acrobatics with your offspring. While such health giving the option of doing so is certainly desirable, should that be the only goal? A good mom gives her all to entertaining her kids?

Some time ago, Ruby kept pulling me into cycling imaginary games to the point I could hardly function. I couldn’t do anything, think anything, just be sucked into a kiddie game. I asked for advice and sympathy on a forum, and one response stuck in my mind. To paraphrase, my job as mom wasn’t to be their entertainment, but to raise them to responsible, sane adulthood. Oh, and to do my other household family duties. Like cook and clean and whatnot.

I have heard of social media debates over how clean houses versus kids. Some moms decry messy houses while others proudly announce their messy homes signify all the hours spent playing with their children. My house is hardly super-tidy, but my heart lies with the former. I don’t think I’m a bad, uncaring mom for not playing with my kids.

Reason No. 2: Kiddie games are so boring.

To resume the aforementioned story of Ruby’s irritating game, I was miserable. She is four, and her games are fairly simplistic, often variations of the theme of the day. Cute for five or ten minutes, but hardly something an adult can sustain true interest in long-term.

I have things to do, things I have to do and things I want to do. My life does not revolve around playing boring games. It revolves around caring for my children and raising them. That means homemaking, money-earning, and showing them how responsible adults act.

Reason No. 3: I shouldn’t have to be my kid’s playmate.

This reason speaks of a frustration of mine: the difficulty of making playdates. We have a kid next door, a cute little girl who attends Sunbeams at church with Ruby, but she always seems to be at one activity or another. The fact she has two teacher parents doesn’t help. Our ward being full of teacher moms and even a few dads, summertime seems to be major family activity time and who could blame us?

The Free-Range parent in me wants to send her on her way to just knock on doors and find other kids, but we do live on a busy street and once again, Ruby is four. In a year or so, sure, but not now. May Lenore Skenazy forgive me.

But I digress. Why should the difficulty of finding regular playmates fall on me by making me the playmate?

Kids are meant to play with other kids. The choice to play with my kid when I want to does not trump the importance of kids forging friendships and alliances with other kids.

Kids understand each other in a way adults don’t. They appreciate each other’s games, imagination. They fall almost seamlessly into sync with each other as they create awesome games, maybe fight, and find and solve problems.

Those fights and problem-solving don’t play out the same way with a child and an adult. Being a teacher has made me stand back even more from minor-to-moderate childhood disputes. Oh, I may moderate, I may even step in–but not every time. I firmly believe the adult tendency to jump in to “rescue” kids from childhood social disputes ruins the building of important social skills. As an adult, I can teach many fine social skills and that’s part of being a parent and a teacher, but I can’t replace the lessons of peer interaction.

When those kids came up to me to find me more interesting than my daughters, was it because modern parenting had programmed them to seek adults rather than the awesome kids around them? I don’t know, but I do worry modern ways may have contributed.

I will continue to say, Go, child, go play with other children. I’m a boring adult.

It’s not that I don’t think you’re awesome. It’s not that I don’t love my own daughters, care for my own students.

It’s that I just don’t want to play with you. It might be better for you if I don’t.

And now I excuse myself, because Ruby wants to play Puppies are Lost in the Forest and Princesses Find Them. I’ll play for a few minutes, then I’m cleaning the kitchen.

 

 

Several years ago, my water-loving Ruby had something of an accident in the tub involving a waste process a blind eye is not easily turned to. I texted my mom, referring to my child as “your precious bubbergirl” and how she relieved herself in the tub.

If only Ruby’s ways had carried on.

Little Jade poops in the tub more often than not. We keep meaning to make a shower her default cleansing ritual, but it hasn’t happened yet. I notice Jade is filthy, I fill up the tub, I plop her in, the 75% chance of her pooping erased from my mind. Jade has psychic powers that way, I’m sure of it.

Ever since she had meningitis, she has been eating us out of house and home to the point that her last well-baby had her announced at 21 pounds and 19th percentile for weight/length. Yeah, she’s a big one, and perhaps it’s that love of food that is creating a little extra waste, I don’t know. Or perhaps that soothing warm bath water just relaxes her so…

Whatever the reason, it’s gross. I have built up a tolerance to the nightmare, but when I stop to think about it the disgust wells right up. Poop. Baby poop. Right there on my porcelain tub. Ruby had nothing on her little sister.

So I developed a cleaning method. I would rinse what I could down the drain (because pipes), a block-up not unheard of. I would wipe away what I could. I would then scrub the tub clean, sanitize bath toys, only to have it happen one or two nights later. Unfortunately she still shows no interest in potty-training.

Then, this spring, I partook of the grossness myself. The lawn was coming in, plants needed to be watered, and I just so hated having to scrub the remnants of my daughter’s filth away. I decided I had to find a better way of dealing with my baby pooping in the tub.

I grabbed an old plastic bucket from the garage and began bailing. Bucketful by  bucketful I carried poop water out to the lawn, to the flower beds, even, I confess, to the compost bin.

Now with summer well underway, I can’t go back. I am able to spot water needed areas of the lawn. I am able to regularly soak my compost bin. I feel that, in a way, I am conserving water. By the time this baby poop has made it outside it has been dispersed and diluted to the point there’s no nitrate attack waiting to happen but even perhaps a fertilizer effect. As is stands, I’ve only seen good things for my flowers and lawns, particularly in this conscious spot flooding and the benefit of pouring a bucket of poopy water all over a dry spot and watching it come back to life.

As for the tub? It is much easier to clean when the vast majority of the poop is removed. Not nearly as much sinking down to the bottom of the tub to cling in its ickiness. I bail, rinse a little, spray a little cleaner and all is forgotten until next time.

Jade pooping in the tub is still not a good thing in my book, but at least it gives me an opportunity to do some specific lawn care.

Bananas do not fare well in hot Utah summers.

Some months ago, I pleasantly accepted the reality that Jade enjoyed a banana each morning at breakfast. Considering that my school year breakfast is not uncommonly a Rock Star and a raspberry fritter from the 7-11, I can’t harden my heart to a cute toddler expecting a banana. Plus, they’re cheap. What’s not to love? I can buy a bunch once or twice a week and she’s a happy girl.

Then summer hit. The darn things went bad as soon as they landed in the fruit bowl, leaving me to buy fewer bananas more often.

And occasionally making banana-based substances.

I have been fiddling with this basic recipe for some time now. A couple of years ago my grandmother-in-law gave me this old southern cake recipe book. This book is beloved. Only three recipes have seen the light of day, but the book is warm and friendly and full of tips. My favorite recipe was that of “banana-nut cake”, which I gradually tweaked a little bit to my own tastes and what was getting a good response from the family.

Then today, on a lark, I added lavender in two forms: mixing in a couple of drops of lavender essential oil with my eggs and using for part of my chocolate a lavender chocolate bar.

The bread already has a magnificent crust and the molasses makes it rich. But the lavender? There’s something a little wondrous about it, a subtle richness particularly in the chocolate.

Perhaps I’m in a lavender mood. I am attempting to grow some out in my garden and whilst at the farmers’ market today I found myself at the stand of Blue Canyon Farm with their awesome lavender. Lavender… sigh. It’s just so summery!

Here we go, then… Banana-nut Bread with Lavender:

1 stick of butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 tbsp.  molasses

2 eggs, room temperature

2 medium ripe bananas, mashed

2-3 drops lavender essential oil

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 bar of lavender chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat sugar, molasses and butter together until fluffy. Obviously, you can substitute the sugar and molasses for actual brown sugar, but I like being able to control it. I can’t go back to packaged brown sugar anymore.

Add the eggs, bananas and essential oil, beat well.

Combine the flour, salt, powder, and soda together and slooowly combine with the wet stuff. Mix until it is just mixed. Apparently overbeating things is bad. I try to avoid this.

Then, add nuts and chocolate. Pour into a greased bread pan and pop into the oven. Bake it for 1 hour, 15 minutes.