“Your daughter”.

Anytime my husband refers to one of our children in this way, I can be assured that the next thought won’t be palatable.

“She left me a note by the computer.  Apparently she has an essay due TODAY and the printer is out of ink.  Damn, does she realize that I now have to go to Wal-Mart at 5:00 a.m!?!”  At this point I drag out of bed and attempt to read the hastily scribbled note by the keyboard thru half-closed eyes.  In a flash I’m in the shower and my wonderful husband/father to my babies is out the door.  He was probably gone about 10 minutes when I realized that our toilet was running….and running.  Well, he was at Wal-Mart….I called him.

“Honey, the toilet is running.  You may want to get one of those ball and flapper thingys while you are at Wally World.”  I can’t really type what he said next, so use your imagination here:  “#%$#&(#%#*&($^@*$$!”.  “Well, YOU flushed it last, so don’t blame me! Here, I’ll send you a picture.  Love you!”  I sent him a picture, cause I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at.  Don’t judge.

Ok, so in the meantime, my seven year old is planning on wearing her pajamas to school as it is Pajama Day.  I know this because on her agenda in her delightfully uneven handwriting is  PJ DAY.  “Baby, you are SURE that today is Pajama Day?  You know I don’t want you to be the only child in your pjs today”.  “Yes ma’am, cause they had to cancel it last Friday.”  (She always says ma’am when she wants something.)  Needless to say, when I put her on the bus, there were NO OTHER children in their pajamas.  Sigh.

I finally get dressed at this point, and apply my face for the day.  Hubby makes it home from the Wally World and when the door opens and shuts for the second time, I hear an exclamation from him.  “Your daughter!!”  “What now?”   “She got the bus driver to turn around and come back so she could get her Game Boy.  Apparently it’s Game Day as well as Pajama Day.”  Damn, that kid is good, I honestly don’t know where she gets it from.  Exhausted from dealing with the youngest, I wake the teenager up and inform her that her dad has gone to great lengths before dawn to ensure that her essay is turned in on time.  She mumbles her thanks and disappears into their bathroom.  Her grades are awesome, so I refrain from throwing something at the closed door.

Dressed, check, makeup on, check, hair fixed, check, our toilet is flushed…uh oh.

I’m no plumber.  I take the lid off the tank and dip my arm in the ice cold water to grab the orange flapper thingy.  Of course as I do this, my arm hits the hose that is obviously attached to something important and I am taking my second shower of the day, this time in toilet water.  Sweet.

When is going back to bed and starting over the obvious solution?  I asked this of my husband and he gave me an unsympathetic look.  Ok, so this is part of the joy of parenting, and all before 7:00 a.m.  It’s a job we’re actually happy to do, and the payoff is better than any tax exemption.  While those kids make me want to chew the tips of my fingers off at times, for the most part they are worth every aggravation.  God love ‘em.

At least it got better after I left the house. My husband fixed the toilet; the baby made it home with the Game Boy and informed us that some of the other kids had on their pjs too.  Big girl got her essay turned in on time and preserved her 4.0 average.  The day actually didn’t suck and I came home with a six-pack of Blue Moon beer.  Hubby gave me a look as I carried it in the house.  “Do we really need $8.00 beer?” he asked.  My reply?

$%@#^%*^%(&*%”>“$%@#^%*^%(&*%#!!!

I love my family.

Maybe I am a little overprotective, but I don’t care.  She’s my baby girl.  Too many parents aren’t protective enough over their children today!  Unfortunately, we don’t live in Mayberry anymore.  This world is a scary place.  If you don’t believe me, go to the sex offender registry and put in your address.  www.familywatchdog.us At my last house, we had one living RIGHT NEXT DOOR.  We moved. 

Maybe my biggest reason for being so protective is remembering what kind of kid I was.  If there was trouble to be had, I would find my way to the middle of it.  I wasn’t necessarily causing it, but was no doubt best friends with the instigators.  I loved the little trouble makers with good reason; I wanted to be a positive influence on them.  Nine months of rehab and counseling later, I saw the error of my ways.  Oh… I don’t want my kids to make the same mistakes that I did.

So now, beginning with riding the bus in Kindergarten I have realized what kind of parent I am going to be.  I only thought my mother was out of control for not letting me spend the night with families she had never met.  I’m going to make my mother look like a mad woman.

So how did the first day of bus riding go?  I’ll let the picture speak for itself:

Note that there are two little boys and THAT’S ALL.  Like a true PTA mom, I was clicking away with the camera to capture my daughter stepping proudly off the bus for the first time when, to my horror, I realized she wasn’t there.  Out loud, I shouted, “And this is why you shouldn’t let six year olds ride the bus!”  I dialed the school and took off through the neighborhood with my son in my wake. 

I met her coming up our street with a little girl she met on the bus. “Mom!  Lauren lives in our neighborhood and I wanted to see where she lives!  Can I go to her house to play???”

And so it begins…

Thankfully, she is one piece.  She doesn’t smell like cigarettes.  She doesn’t appear to be high or drunk and she hasn’t yet dropped the F-Bomb.  I hope she enjoyed her first and last ride on the school bus as there isn’t enough Xanax in the world.

The doctor excused herself to give me a moment to recollect my sanity and my mother’s wide eyes turned on me in confusion. “What’s wrong with you?”

I was still sobbing. “I can’t do pigtails! I can’t do tea parties! I want a boy who will play in dirt and try to set the woods on fire!”

What I was trying to convey – very incoherently – was that the thought of being a mother to a little girl struck fear in me that rivaled the caliber of fear I felt watching airplanes circle above my building on the morning of 9-11.  I was genuinely terrified.  A tomboy to the core, I was very ill-prepared in the ways of princess parties, EZ Bake Ovens and ballet recitals. Being a single mom was going to be difficult enough. Surely God could cut me a little slack and grant my small request of letting the baby be a boy. And yet, the three little dots on the screen sealed my fate.

Fast forward six years. One day this past summer, my little princess brought me a handful of worms out of the backyard. She was decked out in her Sleeping Beauty dress (which she promptly changes into whenever we walk in the door). Rather than holding a magic wand, she had a magic shovel. Instead of glass slippers she stomped around in bright green rain boots. Through the dirt and mud on her face, she was smiling.

You can’t tell me that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Life doesn’t always turn out how we think it should… on occasion it turns out even better.

If I thought it was possible and if I didn’t see some resemblance in her eyes to her father’s sister, I would believe that my daughter was a product of me and only me.  My friends have nicknames for her like, “Mini-Sheesha”, “Little Licita”, and “eL. 2”.  Truly, my little girl is my carbon copy, minus the sarcasm and potty mouth (for now).  She is everything good about me in a miniature package.

As a parent, you do many things for the sake of your children that you would NEVER do under any other circumstances.  I would lie, kill, and steal if necessary to protect or provide for my kids.  Recently, the test of true parental love was presented… I took my daughter to see Hannah Montana.  While I will admit that I hate Hannah far less than the likes of Dora, Barney, and the entire Wiggles troupe my attention span waned during the show.  About every twenty minutes, she would elbow me and hiss a stern, “Mom!” rolling her eyes at the texting conversation I was engaged in. 

As she grew tired, she curled up under my arm and rested her head against my chest.  She entwined her tiny fingers with my own and I noted the similarities in even the shape of our hands. 

I zoned out and began to half-heartedly talk… beg… pray to God.  Please God… don’t let her be the same pain in the ass that I was. OK… the pain in the ass that I STILL AM.  How do I teach her how to be the things that I am not?  Patient, self-controlled, organized, ladylike, a morning person…

About that time, she looked up at me with sleepy eyes as Miley Cyrus belted out another winey, overused lyric.  “Thanks Mom, for bringing me to Hannah Montana.”

And for a split second I realized maybe I’m not off to a bad start.