I'm No Tiger Mom

I'm no Tiger Mom; in fact, I'm a sort of Hostess Suzy Q sort of Mom, all soft filling inside, and, well, pretty soft on the outside, too.

Yesterday I sat next to a whiny nearly-9-year-old on the piano bench. This son hadn't practiced his piano for three days, much less for hours a day without being allowed to have a drink of water or take a pee break. He struggled with his review pieces in his second-level book. He said "You see, Mom, I'm no good at anything."

No, I don't see. I see that you haven't looked at these pieces in weeks or months in some cases, and your teacher asked that you review them before moving on to the next book. That's why we are sitting here together, reviewing pieces you had once mastered. I thought but didn't share: this is no picnic for me, either, buddy.

The whining was deafening and annoying, and I probably shouldn't tolerate it, but when a child tells me "I'm no good at anything," it is not in my nature to berate him and yell. Instead, I coddle and hug.

If that means I'm a soft, Western sort of parent and that my son's chances of playing at Carnegie Hall are nil, well, then I'm guilty as charged.

Hugs.

It Doesn't all Suck

Today I was on a filled-to-capacity, three-to-a-seat school bus, representing just a fraction of my son's entire third grade class. We were off to a Chicago Wolves game, a brilliant marketing coup by the hockey league to lure young children into the lair of professional hockey.

Everyone was given a Legoland-sponsored "Get Schooled By Skates" (the Wolves' mascot, who made a personal appearance to the class last week ... very cool) 'workbook' and encouraged to study Wolves Geography (Boris Valabik comes from Slovakia ... is that in Europe, Asia, Africa ... etc.) as well as math (what is the volume of the puck?) and other clever exercises to make hockey an educational experience. Sharp marketing.

The group of 140-plus children was really amazingly well mannered. Not that I was surprised. My kid's a good kid, and all his friends are good kids, so why wouldn't the class as a whole be, well, good kids, right?

But a couple of things put me off-kilter. One was the fact that most of these kids could recite the words to every Katy Perry and Beyonce and Black Eyed Peas and Brittney Spears song ever aired. I asked one cherubic little girl, "What radio station should I listen to in order to hear these songs?", because, in fact, most of them I'd never heard in my life. "B-96 or Kiss-FM," she replied. So I did, on my drive home. Yikes! I do realize that they have no idea what the lyrics to these songs mean, but I had to be at least 14 or 15 before the music I listened to made my parents cringe.

Times, they are a-changing.

The more disturbing development was the use of the word "suck" and the general unsportsmanlike behavior at the stadium. On the bus, a few boys around me started a "Chicago Wolves Suck" chant, until I, in my best Wicked Witch of the East Side of Prospect voice, told them that their choice of language was highly inappropriate.

Then there was the booing at the stadium when the opposing team took the ice. Granted, I don't get out much, and maybe that's the way it's played these days, or the way it's played at hockey games, but booing, I thought, should be reserved to gross misconduct by a player or official? And it was the entire stadium, which was filled with elementary and middle school children from the entire metropolitan area, not just to our group of third graders.

It was just eye-opening to me. That's all I'm saying. Not judging.

But two truths made my day. The first was when a few students seated behind me reacted to some very rough play against the glass. "Well, he's just being a bully, isn't he?" one said while the others agreed.

The other truth was when at home later I asked Luke what he liked best about the field trip. His answer: the mechanical pencil he received from his teacher to fill out the workbook.

Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

The Princess and the Pee

The turning of the calendar is always a good time to think about what I might want to do differently in the new year, but I don't make official new year resolutions. I just quietly file away my self-improvement ideas deep in my consciousness and hope to do a little better this year than last, no matter what the topic (money, diet, patience).

I made one of those un-official resolutions on January 1st with my boys: mark my words, we are going to try our best to not rack up library late fines in 2011. Our municipal library could create The Burkum Brothers Reading Nook after the fines it collected from us last year.

So I hopped on the library website to check what was due and when. Immediately, I thought there must be some mistake; this can't be my account. Among the expected Goosebumps for Luke and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series for Kevin & me, I saw:

Tales of friendship [videorecording (DVD)
Snow White and the seven dwarfs [videorecording (DVD)]
Beauty shines from within [videorecording (DVD)
Enchanted tales. Follow your dreams [videorecording (DVD)
Disney princess. Enchanted journey [electronic resource (Wii)

But I don't have any daughters, I thought. Then I remembered, ah, yes, TJ is in his Princess Stage. And he's holding on to it with dear life.

Luke went through his Princess Stage around the same age rather quietly and without incident. Now that TJ is in his, Luke is not making it easy for him. The more Luke says, "that's for girls," the more TJ says "NO IT'S NOT. I LIKE PRINCESSES. THEY ARE NICE. YOU ARE NOT NICE. YOU ARE NOT A PRINCESS."

Like Luke at the same age, TJ is challenged with staying dry at night, so even though he's been in underpants since a few months after he turned two (although lately he has chosen to go commando most days), he wears pullups at night, just in case.

So of course he is wearing princess pullups.

That doesn't bother me. What bothers me are these princess DVDs. Not that he wants to watch them; but I watched one with him, and I was appalled. I thought I'd time-travelled back to 1953. This is what we're still feeding little girls, and the occasional boy in touch with his princess side? I thought we dropped that whole "prince saves the day" fairy tale soon after Prince Charles and Princess Diana called it quits? I had no idea they still made these stories, and that girls still watched them. Someone should be ashamed.

Our DVDs are on their way back to the library, on time I might add. While TJ's princess stage continues (remarkably longer than Luke's), he'll just have to settle for his princess coloring books.

Oh, and the pullups. Of course, the pullups. A diaper-free house is the real fairy tale here.

Where Traditions Go to Die

I wouldn't call my Christmas dinner a complete fiasco. I mean, people ate, drank and, with the exception of one son who thought he could eat a bowl of M&Ms for dinner, were merry.

But it wasn't the Norman Rockwellian picture I'd painted in my mind.

It came down to drunken carrots and deviled eggs. They sure sound like a pair made for each other, don't they? Drunk veggies and evil protein. The nectar of Lex Luther and his kin, most likely.

I'd worried for a week, unable to find my mother's recipe for brandied carrots, or what we'd called, drunken carrots -- carrots cooked with brown sugar, brandy and butter. My mother made them for every holiday meal I can remember. And my cousin, Eric, who was joining us for the very first time since my Mother died, always raved about them.

He didn't just say he liked them; he talked up these alcohol-soaked carotene-rich root veggies so much, I wondered if I was making a mistake by hating them.

But he had a rare Christmas day off from policing the mean streets of the big city, and he and his wife of only a year were coming to our home to celebrate the holiday. I had to make the carrots.

I found a recipe online that sounded a lot like what I remember my Mother following, so off to the liquor store we went to buy brandy. Wine and whiskey we have. Brandy, not so much.

Then as we all stood around, not eating the buffet of too-many appetizers for just 10 people, Eric confessed he never liked those carrots. He was just being polite all those years. I'd been hoodwinked.

Back to the appetizer table. No one was eating the deviled eggs I'd painstakingly prepared. I'd polish silver for four hours before having to peel a dozen hard-boiled eggs. Deviled eggs flew off the table at my Mother's dinners. Turns out, no one really likes those either.

Next year, Kevin & I will cook the dinner we want. I'm glad the truth came to light. Some traditions are just meant to die. R.I.P.

Visited by the Ghost of Christmas Cookies Past

Here we are, Christmas Eve, dawn, and I sit in my kitchen not baking Christmas cookies.

My mother is up in a heavenly kitchen waiving her heavy, browned krumkaka iron in the air in a threatening manner and cussing me out.

Christmas cookies were always a highlight of her year. I can't even name all the varieties she baked. Thankfully, I have her old, yellowed, framed copy of the Beverly Review, which did a full-page feature story of her back in 1972 that tells me she used to prepare 15 different types of cookies for Christmas.

Krumkaka (pictured), sandbakelser, pepparkakor, sugar, rosettes, forgotten kisses (merangue), sprut (spritze); those are the seven I remember because they were the seven I liked. There were others I remember that had jam in them, and then others that have completely left my memory altogether.

Come to my house today, just hours away from our Norwegian-styled Christmas Eve festivities (although we'll thankfully skip the lutefisk until we celebrate with Kevin's more traditional Norwegian family), and you'll find a few varieties given to us in decorative tins from friends.

I've hidden a few sugar cookies that my friend Nancy and I baked a few weeks ago. But that baking venture was more of a social call as I hadn't seen her in ages, and the cookies not hidden or given away to Nancy to share with her husband were quickly devoured by the four boys who live in this house. (I'm including my husband in that count, mind you.)

I want to have a beautiful buffet of cookies to serve tonight and tomorrow and to give to my patient neighbors and loving friends. I've crowded a corner of my kitchen counter for a month with my cookie sheets, flower, sugar, cardamon (a popular Norwegian spice), chocolate, sugar sprinles, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, my Kitchenaid mixer, mixing bowls, wax paper, parchment paper, as if having all my materials out in plain sight would somehow help me carve a few afternoons or evenings of baking into my month.

But it hasn't happened. I have no idea how my mother did it all. I know I was a perfect angel as a child, so I'm sure that helped. But she did have my two trouble-making brothers to handle, too.

I hope to get at least one variety baked today, maybe two, and while the boys all play tomorrow with their new whatevers that Santa brings them, maybe I can get another done.

Next year will be different. This year, well, I'll just have to deal with that angry ghost who haunts me. Sorry, Mom.

Keeping the Faith

My almost-8-year-old had asked his dad earlier this month about Santa Claus. From Kevin's report, it went something like, "Dad, Santa is really you and mom, right?" I'm not sure what Kevin said to him, but my experience with Luke since Kevin told me about his query, has been 100% faith, no doubts; so whatever he said, it worked.

I know the day is coming, but just like his "Mom, what does 'sex' mean?", I am unprepared to handle these questions. I thought I had a little more time to overthink it all.

What I could not have anticipated was a precocious 3-year-old son-of-an-over-the-top-granola pair at The Choo Choo Restaurant tonight point-blank informing my son that "Santa is not real."

My two younger boys were too busy admiring the model trains to notice the conversation, but Luke heard them, and me, not possessing a poker face, reacted in horror. It was Luke who went for the save, saying, "Oh, he must mean the plastic Santa over there by the train."

But did little Malcolm (yep, that's the guilty guy's name), or his mother, leave it at that? NO!

Little Malcolm wanted to make sure we understood what he was saying. He continued, "No, my Mom told me that Santa is not real." I remind you, the kid is 3!

Still off balance, I turn to the mom, begging as only a mom's eyes can beg, to make this right.

But what did she say? In a louder-than-necessary voice, she said, "Oh, Malcolm, not every Mommy has had the conversation with her children about Santa not being real. We'd better talk about not bringing up our little conversation with everyone."

Luke and my eyes filled with tears, for different reasons, of course. I slid back into my booth and pulled myself together. Luke whispered, "What do you think he's talking about?"

Clearly, whatever information he received that brought him to question Kevin on the topic was mixing with this new 411, and from the looks of it, he really wanted to believe. I know that he needs to believe just a little longer.

So I punted, again, and answered, "Oh, you know, it's like in Elf, where not everyone has Christmas Spirit, and Santa needs Christmas Spirit for his sleigh to fly and for the magic to happen next Friday night."

Then the train came into the station with our diner fare, and the topic turned back to Luke accusing me of being an ogre for not letting him and his brothers drink soda.

But there's no erasing what happened tonight. I know Luke is up there, on the top bunk, tossing and turning and worried.

I know not everyone believes, and I know that if you don't, this time of year could get quite annoying. But this was just plain mean. Malcolm and his mom don't just lack Christmas spirit, but a human spirit that keeps us exchanging "Good mornings" to complete strangers, even when our mornings are anything but good.

In my house, we're keeping the faith.

Santa, Got Disco Balls?

Dear Santa,

Apparently my boys want disco balls for Christmas. Yep, I'm talking about the shiny, reflective glass balls that hang from the ceiling at weddings and class reunions and that can be viewed in movies from my youth, such as Saturday Night Fever.

Sure, they want some other, more typical goods -- DSI games, books, pillow pets, Ariel underpants (ok, so middle guy's going through his princess stage), a puppy. But this disco ball thing keeps coming up. It made it onto their letters to you, which I confiscated today only temporarily to help with my own recon before I shop.

Just one disco ball should do it, as they share a room. But, you know, anything the older boys have, the 'baby,' wants now too, even though he still can't say much more than "shoe," "more" and "night night." But if the Geico folks need someone to voice over the caveman grunts, this guy's their man!

So I guess I'm saying, we'll need at least two disco balls. One for the older boys' room and one for the playroom. Luke said when he gets his disco balls, he's going to blast his music and dance. I'm sure while slapping his butt, as is his style.

Oh, and about that puppy. I'd like a medium-sized one that I can run with, doesn't bark much and won't shed. I've been good, really.

Love,
Me