Too Old for Toys and Spongebob Underwear

After a week long celebration of Allison's birthday this year, I asked Michael if there was anything he was thinking about that he wanted for his birthday.  He sighed, and basically expressed that he was kind of getting too old for Legos and was not old enough for "an iTunes gift card or whatever comes next."  We came up with a few intangibles, like rock climbing sessions, or dinner out.  Response? Shrug. I also suggested prescription sports goggles, as he has mangled his glasses a few times at soccer games and practices.  He kind of got excited about these, which for some reason made me feel a little twinge of guilt.

I remember taking a good look at Michael's hands several years ago and suddenly noticing that his baby dimples had disappeared.  I don't normally get nostalgic about things, but something in me wailed, "NOOOOOOO!  My little boy!"  The iTunes gift card conversation was remniscent of this. I ended up getting him some gag gifts, and The Philosophy Book, which he actually really likes (I know this because he reads it all the time- I don't make this stuff up. He's weird.), even though he can't pronounce any of the philosophers' names correctly.

Michael, it's pronounced SOCK-ruh-tees.

No, Mom, it's sew-CRATES. 

Uh, no. It's SOCK-ruh-tees. Ask your father if you don't believe me.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when he commented on the clean Lightning McQueen Sheets on his bed tonight. "Mom, those ones with the green stripes? Those are fine.  I don't know about these Lightening McQueen sheets.  I mean, they're fine, I guess."  Yeah, okay, I guess I should have known better.  Like when I noticed he was purging his underwear drawer of all his Spongebob Squarepants boxers.

What are you doing?

I'm getting rid of my old underwear. They're too small.

Seriously?

Yeah, these all leave red marks on my waist, plus I'll be in middle school soon and I'm pretty sure middle schoolers don't wear Spongebob Underwear.

(Feeling another twinge of guilt for not noticing the red marks) Middle school? You're in 3rd grade!

Yeah, and next year I'll be in 4th grade, and 5th grade after that. Middle school is only 2 years away. 

My husband pointed out that I will have had my fill of baby hand dimples by the time the twins lose theirs, and I'm sure he's right about that.  In the meantime, with the twins still under two, I am reluctantly transitioning into tween-dom, even though he's not even in double digits yet. I even asked him about a DS, but thankfully he wasn't interested in that. "Mom.  Kids are always losing their DSs, and plus I prefer to read."  Not that I was going to get him one anyway. Hopefully the optometrist will call this week to let us know the prescription sports goggles have arrived.

Alternatively, maybe these will still fit him.

Halloween Again?

Our little Allison has never been one to go for the traditional pink glitter girls' costumes.  Don't get me wrong, she loves to dress up in princess costumes and little sparkle fairy skirts when she's playing, but her Halloween costume choices have always been a little bit out of the mainstream.   When she was 2, she wanted to be Darth Vader. I guess that sort of counts as mainstream, in that I was actually able to find a costume for her.  I had to make her a lightsaber, though. It turned out really well.  She immediately used it to pretend to cut off her big brother's arm.  When she was 3, she wanted to be Captain Picard.  Disclosing that costume choice implies that we, her parents, might be closet Trekkies, or Trekkers, rather, since Picard was a ST:TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation) character and not from the original cast.

Note the Barbie doll she is
casually swinging by the hair.

Because I'm trying to achieve a certain level of honesty, I will refrain from deleting that last possibly overly revealing sentence.  Just because we let the kids watch a Star Trek episode if they get ready for bed efficiently, and just because a friend of mine permanently loaned us his entire ST:TNG DVD library does not make us Star Trek nerds. We didn't BUY them, after all. I graciously took them as a favor to his wife.  My point:  very few, if any, 3 year old girls would choose to be Captain Picard for Halloween.  A bald Star Fleet captain from a show that hit its heyday 20 plus years ago. Yes, that's correct. If you think it's more recent than than, think really hard and don't forget to ask the computer to carry the one. Twenty. Plus. Years. Ago.  Imagine my surprise when I was unable to find a Captain Picard costume online for her size, which was 2T at the time.  I even looked for bald wigs, but I guess not that many 3 year olds want to pretend they're bald. I thought about making one for her, because I'm that insane, and actually had a few prototype patterns sketched out, but finally talked her into going as Dr. Beverly Crusher instead, since I was able to locate a blue uniform online. As it turns out, it's much easier to buy a costume online than it is to sew one together.  Plus I couldn't figure out how to thread my serger.

When she was 4, she couldn't decide between Ginger from Gilligan's Island...

A movie star... (from nearly 50 years ago)

a princess, or a black cat...

So she ended up wearing all 3 costumes.

So, given that last Halloween's costume choices were all fairly mainstream, well, except for Ginger, I was a little bit surprised when she declared several times that she wanted to be Michelle Obama for Halloween.

And also, can we please put brown make-up on my arms and face, too?
Ummm, no.  We are not going to paint your face or arms brown.
Well, I want to be Michelle Obama.
(I let it go for a few days, but she brought it up again.)
I want to be Michelle Obama for Halloween.
Michelle Obama? Really?
Yes, Mommy.  And Michael can be her husband, you know, that guy Barack or something like that.

Sigh.  I feel like I owe it to her to indulge in her when she gets these awesome ideas. (Except for the brown make-up- we will not be doing that.  We also will not be dressing up one of the twins as Hitler, as Michael suggested, or letting Michael go as Gaddafi, another one of his brilliant but socially unacceptable Halloween ideas.  I seriously don't know what is wrong with my children.)  If she can keep up her independent thinking, and not be afraid or cognizant that she is going against the grain, maybe someday she can do something like that guy, Michelle Obama's husband. Not that I would wish that upon her in a million years. So I guess sometime in the next month, I will be making a sojourn to the fabric store to get some fabric for a sheath dress.  Unless she changes her mind.  Stay posted for pictures.

Financial Responsibility Fairy

One day Allison, while combing her balding Barbie's hair and carefully rearranging her hand-me-down Barbie streetwalker fashion outfit, said to me, "I wish I had fairy wings."  Standard 5 y/o girl comment, very cute, aaaw, how sweet, blah blah blah. Then she goes, "I'd fly to Trader Joe's and then I'd fly to the bank and pay some bills."

Mom!  It's not a Dunce Cap!  It's a Gnome Hat!
I made it at Fairy Camp!
(Ok, sweetie.  It looks like a Dunce Cap though.
Are you planning to wear it through dinner?)

Real Barbie Housewives of Allison's Place

That got my attention. I had been kind of worrying about letting her indulge in all the pink tutu fairy Barbie glitter sparkle vomit stuff, but also didn't see a good way around it.  My hope was that if I let her do the princess dress-up stuff while she was 4, she eventually would think of it as stuff she did as a baby 4 year old, and be less interested in it.  In my fantasy world, it would all be phased out and fascination with science, math, geography, and other nice, safe, interests. I realize that our Disney friends Britney and Lindsay started out princess glitter and went in a slightly different direction, but that was not my plan.  My plan is to tell any prospective boyfriend that her eczema is actually leprosy and that if he tries to touch her, his penis will likely fall off. She might hate me, but I've heard this happens anyway shortly after they hit double digits, so I figure I have nothing to lose.

Actually, so far I think we must be doing okay. I'm less worried about the inundation of fairy books now that I realize she's apparently been reading about how Financial Responsibility Fairy bests the Compounded Interest Imp in the Financial Section of the Happy Wall Street Meadow Journal.  Credit Card Debt Fairy and Foreclosure Fairy have valuable lessons to teach our young girls. Although truth be told, Streetwalker Barbie has a few valuable life lessons herself.

I'm sure it helps to have a big brother who maybe takes his Scottish-Chinese penny pinching ancestry a little too seriously.  We recently started giving Allison an allowance, which is 50 cents a week. She put her first two quarters on the counter, mainly because she wasn't thinking about it, and her piggy bank was upstairs. Her big brother started yelling and I mean YELLING at her.  I almost intervened, except that quite frankly, I was a little terrified of his bleak message:

YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE YOUR MONEY LAYING ON THE COUNTER!  IF YOU DON'T SAVE YOUR ALLOWANCE, YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY FOR COLLEGE, AND THEN YOU MIGHT NOT GET A GOOD JOB, AND THEN YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PAY FOR THINGS LIKE CLOTHES, FOOD, AND ELECTRICITY FOR YOUR HOUSE.  YOU NEED TO PUT YOUR MONEY IN A SAFE PLACE!!!

He's got a point.  We do have a lot of kids to send to college.

Eyes wide, and slightly teary, she scrambled upstairs to dutifully put her quarters away in her pink sparkle glitter piggy bank. If she's anything like her brother, she'll soon have enough saved up to chip in a few cents toward her share of the electricity that's powering her nighttime fairy reading light.

Tractor Fairy enjoying the county fair.