Being a mom is hard work, but I must admit that my kiddo made it pretty easy on me. I’ll share our “origin” story someday, it’s not horrible but I may have gone into the role super skeptical that I could pull the whole mom thing off.
I made a pact with her when she was a wee one that I would not share every lil thing or photo on social media. Mostly because I’m a paranoid psycho, but also because nothing is safe online – and whatever I shared would be there in her future, for good or bad. She wasn’t allowed to use The Facebook until it was legal on their platform for her to make an account. I couldn’t really enforce that without also placing restrictions on myself 🙄.
I’m going to share some of the little things that made being a mum and life growing up with her simply awesome, silly and wonderful….
She was the master of chilling and just hanging out. Our bottle fed fur baby Puma was more vocal and pesty than this girl as a baby.
That girl would go go go until she crashed, which often happened in the funniest places.
To be annoying I added The before names like The Facebook or The Walmart. This always got an eye roll and now I just can’t help myself – the habit has stuck 😂.
Olives don’t cure hiccups but the reaction to her trying one was priceless! This may be why she doesn’t trust any natural cures I tell her actually work. Oops.
Pokeyballs and Mindcrap were big games for the kiddo, I just liked to pick on her by calling them that. Truthfully, I was just happy she found some games she enjoyed finally – and she did some pretty amazing things with those squares.
Her favorite thing to do on the Wii was to create Mii characters, I swear she spent so many hours doing it that I have the background music stuck in my head for life 😭. I got her back when she was older by adding Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie to my in the car playlist 🤣.
Making her watch Dora and the Lost City of Gold when it came out because I’m pretty sure I know every early episode of Dora and Blues Clues by heart because that’s all she wanted to watch between the ages of 2 and 4. The movie was actually pretty good 🙃.
I have the most awesome crabby face pictures 🤣. The annual photo shoot by the dragon’s head at Ren Fest always seemed to start off crabby and then devolve into making the goofiest faces and poses possible. What a lil poo.
Pretty sure the kiddo figured out I was the least smart person she knew pretty early because at the age of 3, when her bubbles ran out I told her we could make some more and she said “You don’t know how to make bubbles.” Wow 🤪
One night, my sister and I wanted to watch a scary movie so I set the kiddo up with some paper and finger paints at the kitchen table… Super epic, I love this photo 😁. Art lives strong in this one!
At her college gallery show in 12th Grade:
This gal loved getting up close to the camera and that has stayed with her, she is my exact opposite in that way 😂. She is an amazing photographer and has been taking photos most of her life.
1st year of high school at the Art Awards show she had to go up on stage for almost every category in her grade – she was just looping the stage. She’d almost make it back to her chair when she’d have to stand up to make another loop 🤣. The next year they just kept the kiddos on stage. I’ll admit to cheering super loud and crazy every time that girl had to be on a stage-she won a couple big awards at the local Art Festival as well. She’d get SOO embarrassed and it was AWESOME!
2020 messed up her big Artist of the Year award (she got the award but didn’t get the stage experience). That was a bummer but I can tell you that I cried like a baby during the last minute senior car parade that was held – I was pretty amazed at how much of the community were out on sidewalks to cheer the kiddos on as we drove through town.
Her favorite band as a lil one was Sublime. When she got to be about 4 years old I started censoring all my music (note I said my music, she has always listened to what she wanted 🤪) and had separate playlists for me time. You really don’t want kiddos singing Guttermouth lyrics out in public 😂, sometimes what they play on the radio is bad enough.
Not too long ago I wasn’t paying attention to the cd that was playing in the car and she heard Sublime’s Date Rape song for the first time. Talk about awkward 🤣. By this time she was already taking classes at college and listening to some pretty strange stuff of her own, so it’s not like it was horrible. She’d just been censored from my crazy taste in music for so long I think that it mostly startled me… she thought it was hilarious.
For a while she had to share me with an army of kids… but getting to spend my working days with her made it all worthwhile to me 🥰.
True Stories from an American Misfit, [she/her/hers/trying to be humanish, maybe]
xoxo
-DH
Journal Entry for TTBH; Topic: Mother, #2
