I am not sure what it says about us that we have taken to ordering toothpaste off the internet, in bulk. I have mentioned before that I live above a Safeway, where there are any number of delectable toothpastes on offer (Berry Bubble, Fruit Blast, Bubble Mint), but instead of hopping on the elevator when the toothpaste runs low, we log onto AmazonPrime and wait two days for the Grape Sparkle to come.
Actually, the latest incarnation is Groovy Grape, which doesn’t have artificial colors or Disney characters on the tube, because we’re all organic like that, apparently. But who am I kidding? Really, it’s the grape we’re after, and if you told me that the grape was laced with drugs I would probably still give it serious consideration. LittleMan hates fruit and all its derivatives, including fruit-flavored candy and fruit gummies and Fruit Blast, but somehow we managed after many, many tooth-brushing battles, to convert him to the grape. (If I really wanted to make it big, I would patent a chocolate-flavored toothpaste. Who decided that artificial fruit flavor is somehow more wholesome or freshening than artificial chocolate flavor, anyway? The toothpaste market needs a shakeup. If cupcakes and cronuts can have a place in the Zeitgeist, why not chocolate toothpaste?)
Obviously, I am over-thinking the toothpaste. I would tell you that it’s only because I have nothing else to do, but that would be profoundly untrue. So there are several ways to evaluate this behavior, depending on which parenting book you’re into. I’ll let you decide.
- I am over-indulgent. I am ruled by my child’s tyranny. Who is the boss around here?
- I am a wise and well-resourced woman who has been around the block a few times and made the educated decision that the introduction of BubbleMint is really not a battle I choose to fight. Grape Sparkle is available in a warehouse somewhere. These are modern times, Mommy is clever, and the interweb is amazing and makes everything easy.
- The interweb has made everything too easy.
- Oh shut up, Jaime. You’re over-thinking the toothpaste.
I’ll tell you what: I’m over-thinking the toothpaste because it’s something I can control.
As Babygirl gets taller and more…curious, the livingroom battle lines have been drawn. Her Duplos on one side, behind the polka-dot chair; his Lego Star Wars/Ninjago/City on the other, at the far end of the dining room table. Her dollhouse on one side, next to the TV; his Teenage Mutant Nina Turtle city map on the other, by the bookshelf. The children are thus largely kept separate from one another, which is to say on opposite sides of the one room in our apartment that serves as den, formal dining room, livingroom, and office.
She has a most winning smile, to be sure, but inside Babygirl beats the heart of a warrior-child, itching to get into the fight. Turn your back to say, answer the phone or toss some pasta into boiling water, and she will make her move: a belly-first sashay across enemy lines, up to LittleMan’s Lego empire; a wasplike snatching of the only minifigure he cares about on earth (at that moment); followed by flight, the minifigure now safely lodged in her mouth. Disadvantaged on strategy but decidedly favored in speed, height, and weight, he will respond by chasing her down and wrestling her to the floor in the back bedroom. She will then bite him. Both will cry.
I oscillate between intervening (“I am putting you in separate rooms! We don’t hit/bite/pinch in this house!”) and hollering from the kitchen (“Figure it out. I cannot be your referee every minute of the day.”) and nothing works particularly well, unless you count time-outs and no TV, which usually result in me having to come up with Totally Stimulating Entertainment that spans the three-year age and attention divide between my children, and means I forget the pasta and no one eats dinner until really late.
It’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure: The Mommy Edition. Sadly, sometimes I feel like no matter which adventure I choose, we’ll always wind up perishing from dehydration in the desert, having never found the dinosaur bones. You know?
(As an aside, Babygirl is really into adventures these days. She packs up her keys and her plastic phone and her Ariel shoes and a few teacups and spoons, gathers her dollies with blankets to spare, then shepherds me onto the couch (“We’re going on a ‘VENTURE. You have to get your feet off the foor.”). We wrap the baby dolls in blankets to soothe them, then scout for imaginary sharks and crocodiles, which attack us from all sides, but ultimately get a serious Babygirl-style whipping with her pink purse. LittleMan recently looked up from his Ninjago village to declare that he hates it when we play adventure, because he doesn’t want to play, but he also doesn’t want us to play anything without him. Seriously, these two: they cannot live together in peace for the life of them, yet they cannot be apart.)
All this to say: you get it about the Grape Sparkle, right? I mean, sure we’re catering to a Foible-with-a-capital-F, but first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, it makes for one less battle. Spoiling or sanity? Wine or weight loss? Doc McStuffins or Lego Chima? Well kids, there’s only one TV.
Choices: we make them every day.
Leave a Comment