Hello, everyone!
Welcome to Mom and Machine Mondays. I thought I'd start this second blog entry with a little introduction, since I'm still new to The Lounging Room and most of you are probably new to me, too. My name is Amber Benoit Dubois and I'm the mom of two sweet little girls, Charlotte and Peyton. Peyton is five--she just started Kindergarten this year, so we're all working on getting used to that. It's an interesting transition, but so far she's loving it and we're settling in. I will say that not all the transitions are great and wonderful--having a school-aged child can definitely change your perspective on Federal holidays. Suddenly they don't seem quite as much like a break anymore. Break time for Mom and Dad is when they're AT school, not out of it. As I write this, I'm looking down the barrel of a district-wide day off school and I'm already sweating what to do to keep this kid occupied for an entire day, without being able to schlep her off to Mrs. Sharp this afternoon. The weather is starting out cruddy, so I'm guessing we're going to have a Craft Day. I write this in capital letters to give it the depth and import it deserves--any parent who's earned their stripes knows that Craft Day is not something one enters into lightly, because even with just SAYING the words "Craft" and "Day" in conjunction, I've insured myself one fantastic and immense cleanup job at some point in my very near future.
Charlotte is my baby--she just turned one. She's an exceptionally happy and easy to please baby--except when she's cutting teeth. She's got two on the bottom and another THREE coming in on top. I'm not sure who she irritated enough to get the privilege of cutting three teeth at once, but she is one cranky, cranky munchkin lately. Right now she's also trying really hard to walk on her own, which is a milestone I'm not encouraging at all. I made that mistake with Peyton and now that she can walk, she never wants to stop.
Mama needs a nap, y'all. A loooooooooong nap.
At any rate, I have two beautiful girls whose names we labored long and hard to agree upon, yet we spend most of our time calling them by anything BUT their first names.
We call Peyton a whole list of things...
Peyt, Peytypants, Butterfly, Princess, Stinkbug, Nosy, Rosy Temper, Tessa, Sunshine, Thundercloud, Tulip (her middle name is Holland), Holly dolly
You get the idea.
It's not like it's any different with Charlotte...we have a list for her, too.
Charley, Chuck, Stinka-bo-binka, Beeka (she crawls around and says "beeka-beeka-beeka" all the time), Bug, Princess, Monkey, Snugglebug, Rabbit (her middle name is Alice, so this started out as a White Rabbit reference), Bubba
In fact, most of my friends/family have their own nicknames for my girls--and for their own kids. My brother is fond of calling Charlotte "Charles" and walks around moaning "Get out of my head, Charles!" all the time (that's an X-men reference right there, folks. I promise not to bust those out too often.). He calls his own son "Budgence von Wudgence", "Ethonjulay" and my favorite, "Ethonjuliasis", which I think sounds like some difficult-to-treat fungal infection. He's one solidly built little man, so I call him "Tank" or "Moose" or "Tank Full of Moose".
We even have nicknames for people who aren't children--Peyton has called my Mom "Nano" from the time she was old enough to make her first sounds, and it stuck! She now has a Grandmother (my Mother-in-law insisted that her grandkids would call her Grandmother from the time I was pregnant with Peyton. I think she was half joking, but it's too late now!) and a Nano. She calls my step-Dad Poppo, so I think she was going for a matched set.
I love how every family has their own dialect of whatever their native language is.
We all do it--we come up with new words for things that already have names--we call bottles "ba-ba" and pacifiers "binky" or "paci"--I even know a family that calls them "bites". We have traditions we grow out of stories we read to our kids or things that we try once and love so much we do it over and over again. And we have dinners that we cobble together at the last minute and name things like "Mommy Glop".
That's from my childhood. We were POOR, so once or twice a week we'd have a dish my Mom concocted out of white rice, spaghetti sauce, ground beef and cheddar cheese. We only got the cheese if we were especially flush that week. We ate it on the floor in our living room, on top of a trash bag, because it was a long time before my Mom was able to afford furniture for our apartment. Even now, just hearing the phrase "Mommy Glop" brings back a flood of happy memories for me. We might have been poor, but those were some of my absolute favorite times as a kid.
It's amazing how powerful language can be--it's no wonder we all encourage our children's first words, hoping it'll be "Mama" or "Dada". My oldest's first word was "Hi", and I remember being so thrilled that she'd chosen something so outgoing and friendly. And then I read somewhere that "Hi" is one of the most common first words in our country.
Shoot.
It's not just the fact of language that's fascinating, though...it's how we come into this world knowing literally nothing and in just the span of a year (maybe a little more for some kiddos), we've got this stuff on lock. We've figured out that Mama is Mama and Dada is Dada and the microwave is not a lion. This stuff all gets hard-wired into our brains, too! It's not just that we learn words, it's that the capacity to learn words grows as we do. We know this because kids who are deprived of language for those first two years of life can frequently never develop the ability to learn to speak and use expressive language.
This wasn't what I intended to blog about today. I had a whole witty bit cobbled together from my experiences with the Parent/Teacher organization at Peyt's school. It was funny and concise and brilliant, and maybe someday you'll get to read it, too. But something happened last week that's been sitting on my head for a while now and, well, if I get it out here, maybe it'll leave me alone for a bit.
So, there's a little girl in Peyt's class, and I'm going to call her Sally, even though that's not her real name (Woah. Unintentional tie-in to the beginning of my post. My creative writing prof would be so proud!). I think Sally is adorable. She has the sweetest little face and I just want to hug the stuffin' out of her every time I see her. Last week, Sally had an accident at school--not like she fell down or anything, but she had an ACCIDENT. A potty kind of accident.
I guess at some point there were some mean things said by other kids, and some teasing that happened. Sally was kind of upset (I would be, too!) because nobody wants to be that kid, you know? Anyway, my kid (who I sometimes feel might have been better off if I really HAD let her be raised by wolves), my sweet little Peyton who I adore beyond all reason, walked up to Sally, took her hand and said "It's OK. I have accidents too. It's no big deal."
Seriously, if that didn't make you all melty and "Awwww!", you're dead inside. I'll bet you kick puppies and step on butterflies, too. Hrmpf. OK, so yeah, I'm sharing the story because clearly I just got an "A+" on my Mommy report card, but also...Sally's Mommy told me that these simple words given freely from my Peytypants made all the difference in how Sally felt about the situation--and about herself. All it took was a few little words from a friend to change the situation for the better.
I guess that's why it makes me sad when I hear the way some parents talk to their children. Or even just how some caretakers (older siblings, babysitters, whatever) talk to children. They really do learn from example--and it's so easy to make or break someone's day with just a sentence or two, especially when that someone is a child.
Maybe that's the take-home lesson for today, dear readers. The old playground chant: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"--it's really not true. It's so easy to think that what you say in any given moment doesn't much matter, but it does. When you're a parent, someone is always there, watching what you do and making it part of who they are. At the end of the day, if you're not using what you say to make someone's life better, easier or happier...what's the point? Anyone can demolish, tear down, take apart...but it takes a true artist to build and sculpt--the skill is in the crafting of something beautiful.
I'll leave that as a challenge to you today. Head out into your lives and find a way to use what you say to make a masterpiece. I'm going to do the same.
Let me know how your masterpiece turns out in the comments section!
Vaya con Queso! (which, of course, means "Go with Cheese")
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Amber Dubois is the mother of two small girls who are the light of her life, and the wife of one husband who is occasionally the bane of her existence. In her free time (the little there is), she enjoys using humor as a coping mechanism and replacement for binge chocolate consumption.
