"You're weird, Mom."

“NOOO!!!!!! Tribbles don’t go for walks! What are you thinking? You have to CARRY it! I can’t believe you did that!” *insert massive wailing*

"But I can't go to sleep! I don't have The Flu!" *insert frantic searching under the bed for a stuffed flu virus*

Or another example, the other day I was sitting on the couch, silently minding my own business, ignoring my children, when the older one walked over and yelled, “Mommy!” I responded calmly, “um, what?” to which she yelled back, “I don’t want to talk to you right now!” *insert confused blinking*

Recently we had relatives over and during some down time, the girls were playing in the dining room area while the adults relaxed on the couch and I puttered around the kitchen. The girls were being their usual selves, playing their normal imaginary games. I was only half listening, just catching stray sentences about coronations, brain eating amoebas, vampires, time travel, etc. Then I looked at our guest sitting on the couch who apparently had been listening in.

“Is this what you listen to all day?” she asked.

“Yup.”

To my girls, all this is completely, totally, 100% serious stuff. To me, it is hard to not bust out laughing sometimes (a lot of the time). There are times it gets annoying and I did have to make a “No Fighting About Imaginary Stuff” rule, but it is usually so random that it is hard to not just go, “wait, what did you just say?”

My mom says, among other things, kids need humor and heroes. I totally agree.  The heroes part I’ll talk about later. The humor part seems to be one sided a lot of the time, however, sadly. The girls are hilarious to me. What they say and do and how they dress. I love it. I often step out of the room to laugh so they won’t think I am laughing at them (which I am). They don’t see the humor in what they are doing, though, which makes sense. They don’t always see humor in what I am doing either. A lot of what I have to do is not funny. Cooking, cleaning, paying bills, driving, laundry, and kitty litter are not especially entertaining. Especially the bill paying. Not funny at all. And kitty litter is literally poopy. So what do we do? How do we teach our kids that there is humor in the world and that they don’t have to take everything so seriously? Even though being a grown-up is blechily serious. Ugh. This is an important lesson, so it requires extra effort no matter how serious and grown-up we feel. Here’s what the girls’ dad and I try to do:

1. Goofy selfies. Trite, right? But it never fails to make them laugh and shows them we don’t take ourselves so seriously we are afraid to look ridiculous. Their dad is extra good at this.

   

   They stole my phone and I got it back
   FULL of pictures like this.

2. Horrible dancing. This is not hard. Good dancing is hard. Horrible dancing is just fun. All we have to do is, again, not take ourselves super seriously. I have a really bad back, so sometimes this one is actually painful, but the pay off is worth it when the girls join in and relax. Enjoying being alive is a good thing.
3. Decorate however we want.

   

   Watching some tv with Pillow Nana

   We do like HGTV and decorating magazines, books, and blogs. My older daughter stole my copy of Young House Love and has already planned her own first house. But when it comes to decorating our own home, we don’t mind mixing walruses, dinosaurs, and skulls. Those things make us happy, so that is what we put out. All year. We tell the girls we decorate to make ourselves smile. And we do. It is hard to not smile when I look around my living room and see a crazy blend of Polish folk art, Ukrainian embroidery, a giant robotic triceratops, a life size stuffed version of my mom (not taxidermy . . .  like a rag doll . . . slightly less creepy), my Jane Austen action figure, a sparkly purple skull, etc. To others I’m sure it is a random clutter of things that make them say, “um, what’s that?” (I’m sure because they do say that when they come here and see Pillow Nana), but to us it is our home.
4. Sing along with songs we like. We can’t sing. Really. We’re not musically talented at all. A lot of the time it is just lip syncing. But it’s fun. And often drives the girls nuts. Which is just extra fun. So when we hear a song we like, we go along with it. I admit, whenever I hear Eye of the Tiger, I bust out not only my best lip syncing but also my super awesome horrible dancing. Actually, I have pretty much these same dance moves (although my car isn’t as cool):

Our end goal is simple. We want the girls to be happy. Life is full of bad stuff. There is disease and war and natural disasters. There are also all the little things that drain us day to day like bullies, annoying people, boring tasks, stresses, etc. We need to learn how to focus on the joy whenever we can. They can’t always see how funny and silly their little lives our, so as grown-ups we have to show them it is ok to laugh and give them things to laugh at.

We have to show them not everything has to be super serious because there are enough serious things already. So put that goofy hat on for no reason other than to make a kid smile. Don’t worry about looking like a doofus.

Dance like Elaine. Go on. Right now. Or when you pick your kids up from school. Or in the grocery store.

“Mom, please, can I watch Queen now? You know, the fun one?”

Fandoms are fun!

OK, I admit inside I did do a Mommy Victory Dance of Joy when my daughter reqested I put on the Bohemian Rhapsody music video. As much as I want my girls to be themselves, have their own tastes, explore their personalities and feel free to have opinions which differ from mine or my husband’s, part of me really dreads the idea of them crying and screaming over pop singers like Justin Bieber or whoever else is out there (I’m really trying to not know). I remember thinking the girls around me who were losing their minds over New Kids on the Block were slightly nuts, and then as a mom hearing about girls physically harming themselves over that Bieber kid just made me eeek a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I love fun fandoms and being enthusiastic about stuff (this Simon Pegg quote is on our fridge), but I think enthusiasm and obsession are two very different things. And I think there is a difference between blind adoration and gleeful admiration.

So what do I do to try to counter the strangely obsessive pop culture stuff the girls encounter when they get to school? On weekends and in the mornings, I blast MY music at them (insert evil laugh). They do have their own CD player in their room and their own CDs – older one’s fave is her Taylor Swift Red CD and younger one loves her Everly Brothers – and they do have their own playlist on my phone which includes the Frozen soundtrack, but I admit to trying to teach them there is more music out there. When I was a kid, I listened to my parents’ favorites which was a lot of Beatles. I think that’s a great place to start. In Ukraine, that was all I played on my phone during our down time, and my daughter learned a lot of their songs. I also listened to Guns and Roses, Amy Grant, and Dead Milkmen when I was in elementary school. A bit of an eclectic mix, and I’m really not sure Dead Milkmen are entirely appropriate, so I might hold off on them (although I do still listen to them as a guilty pleasure occasionally).

In the mornings, while we are getting ready, I put on Pandora. Last year it was the Cat Stevens station.

So nice and chill! What a nice way to start the day. This year, I decided to boost the energy level a bit, so we switched to the Queen station. The girls LOVED it. I like to use weekends to push my own agendas (also known as parenting), so I spent a day just playing Queen songs and watching Queen videos on YouTube and talking about why Freddie Mercury was awesome. It was a really fun day. The girls were learning life lessons and how to head bang and insulting my hair (my hair naturally looks like Brian May's at its fluffiest), and I was getting bounce around like a doof and giggle and play with my kids. So what are the great lessons that can be learned from spending a day with Queen?

1. If you are passionate about something, do that. Queen had a passion for music and creating new, cool songs together. Freddie Mercury had a passion for writing and singing. When the girls learned that he was singing right up until he died, they were impressed.
2. If you have a talent, use it ALL. One of the girls favorite songs is Bohemian Rhapsody. They love how it sounds like so many pieces all in one. They also thought it was cool how not all the Queen songs over the years sounded alike. There is a variety of sounds and styles. When they learned the songs were written by the band members and they each had different tastes, but they agreed to use and appreciate the talents of everyone, the girls thought that was really cool. Talent wasn’t wasted. It was stretched.
3. You don’t have to like everything about someone or know every detail to listen to or like their music. Ok, so this isn’t strictly Queen related, but it is important. Do I want my girls to imitate everything Queen or any other rock band did? Of course not! Although, the part about getting a degree in physics like Brian May can be imitated with my blessing. Liking a band does not mean memorizing every fact about them and shouldn’t. I like Ani DiFranco, but I have no idea when her birthday is. How does that change how her music makes me feel? Also, fans don’t need to prove themselves by trying to become in every way the people they are listening to. The girls can bounce around to Radio Ga Ga without needing to also get drunk in a bar in London. I like when there are some admirable qualities, of course, and those are what I focus on when I talk to the girls (physics degree, use of talent, camaraderie, creativity, etc), but everyone has flaws and makes mistakes. We talk about the flaws and learn from them, too, so we DON’T imitate those parts. Mostly, though, we talk about the music and enjoy it and live our own lives, because frankly we are awesome as is. The girls know the name of Freddie Mercury and that is pretty much all the Queen trivia they can give you. Everything else was broad strokes: they wrote their own songs, there were four of them, Freddie died after he got HIV, Crazy Little Thing Called Love was written in the bath tub (ok, that's specific, but funny so totally worth knowing).
4. It’s ok to get pumped up about yourself. I love listening to Queen in the morning because I like the idea of sending my girls to school singing “We will ROCK YOU!” I want them pumped up about themselves and about life. I want them to celebrate their successes and be proud of themselves. I want them to feel like they can conquer the world. One thing we talked about was the difference in the messages of the songs. They weren’t all about dating or hooking up or breaking up. There were songs about simply kicking butt and being awesome. That, I think, is a good thing to have as a background soundtrack for a fourth grader.

If my daughters don’t like my same music, that’s fine. I assume they won’t like all the same things as me, but I can still expose them to it and talk to them about it. I can still try to teach them there is a world bigger than what they see and hear at the lunch table. And I can explain that they will most likely never marry a pop star, so devoting all their time, energy, and money to obsessing over one is not healthy. It is much healthier to just rock out and be awesome for themselves. So this is how I’m parenting in the mornings, and I’m having a good time empowering my girls, so don’t stop me now. (And, yes, this is my personal Mom Theme Song.)

People are Annoying.

Me: How was school, Yasya?
Yasya: People are annoying and they are killing my brain. 

I know I should discourage the negativity, but, good grief it is so true. And so hard to deny. And probably my biggest challenge as a mom. Deep down inside, I am Wednesday Addams. As a kid, I identified with her more than anyone else. I didn't like socializing or people. I made sure there was at least some bit of black in my clothes everyday even if it was just Mickey Mouse’s ears. My inner monologue is still all in her voice. Or if you want to get more modern, you can put in April Ludgate. Either way, it is not a bubbly voice. And I have been accused of being too sarcastic. As an adult who moves around in society and used to work with teens, that wasn’t always so good. I mean, to a certain extent, it worked (teens and kids in general usually prefer honest people who are a little dark to overly bubbly people who are clearly trying too hard), but at some point it is good to stop and try to be cheerful. *sigh*

So I have tried to grow and adapt. Here comes the debate. Does trying to act nice and cheerful even though I am Wednesday Ludgate inside make me a phony? Or does it mean I am trying to evolve as a person and adapt to different situations as needed? When I was a retreat leader, this topic would come up periodically. Not that we were talking about me, but we would talk about how we acted in different situations. Do people act differently at school than at home or work, for example. If we think about all the environments we pass through in a week – home with kids, home with spouse, playdates, school, work, church, grocery shopping, library, etc – it is pretty clear that identical behavior in each of those environments would not be appropriate. If I talked to my husband the same way I talked to my daughters, he’d get pretty annoyed (I know this from experience). Similarly, if I acted the same now in my thirties as a mom as I did as a dark teen hating everyone, that would be . . . sad. Ideally, people grow as they age. And I don't mean fatter.

Also, as a parent, I need to think about the long term affect of my actions. How I talk to my children and how they see me interacting with others will to some extent shape how they interact with others. I want my children to be slightly less dark and gloomy, so I do try to focus on the positive with them. Normally, I avoid asking, “how was school?” It leaves the door open for negative answers. Normally I ask for best things of the day or who the girls played with or what was the most interesting thing they learned. At dinner, all of us have to say what the best thing of the day was. On my super grumpy days, that is really hard for me. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue to avoid saying, “I didn’t stab anyone today.” For my older daughter, the sunshiney stuff seems much more natural. For my younger daughter and myself, it is a skill we have to practice daily and really work on consciously. That's part of why I named my Etsy shop HAPPY Walrus instead of Morose Walrus. There is joy around me as long as I keep looking for it (and sometimes the joy comes in the shape of The Addams Family or Tim Burton movies or super dark humor shared with my younger daughter). On bad days, like the day my daughter said the annoying people were killing her brain, we did talk about all that negative stuff. I want to be clear about that. Focusing on the positive does NOT mean ignoring the negative or shoving it in a closet. She vented and ate Oreos, and we talked about actions to take in the future.

I am still true to myself and have my pretty little skulls and bats decorating our apartment, my sarcasm does show up sporadically (though not to the point of making people cry), and I still have a mostly black wardrobe including skeleton boots I wear all year, however it isn’t overwhelming. My hope is that by focusing on the positive, I can gradually shift my own inner monologue a bit, too. People are annoying, but I do have to live around them and interact with them. I can choose to be constantly annoyed by them, or I can – reluctantly – try to change my attitude. When I go out, I have some friends who are my Wednesday Ludgate friends, but my other friends are needed to balance that out and remind me that sometimes talking to people about things isn’t so bad. The world needs Leslie Knopes, too. Hopefully my kids will be able to grow into Leslie Ludgates. The annoying people won’t stop asking, “are you a boy? Are you sure?” or “Where did you get her from?” (referring to my daughter who I got from my uterus and what kind of normal person asks that question, seriously?) or refusing to use turn signals, but we can learn to smile despite – or in spite of -  them. Then paint our nails black and eat some waffles.

What can I say? We look good in black.