cat named pig

Does anyone else’s three-year-old call them “Salmon?” Because Siena has started calling me that; sometimes “Salmon Mama,” or “Salmon Mammen” (which rhymes, but doesn’t otherwise make any kind of sense) and I’m not totally sure it’s meant as a compliment.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it is not a compliment, but rather one of those ingenious preschool insults that doesn’t get anyone in trouble because it doesn’t use any words that have been specifically forbidden, like stupid or poopy.

(It’s a lot safer to call someone the name of a food you would never deign to eat, expressing your frustration but carefully veiling the insult in goofiness, so the person being insulted just shakes their head and smiles at how silly you are. Which was what I did the first few times, until I noticed that I hear a lot more “you Salmon Mama” when Siena has just heard something from me like “You need to go put your clothes back on — it’s too cold to run around naked in the wintertime.”)

[Percentage of this post nestled in the loving arms of my favorite form of punctuation, the parentheses: approximately 50%.]  

While I was making dinner the other night, Siena was “very busy” (her words) hanging out with Santa Claus and her twin babies. I like that Santa is her friend now; he just comes over to chill with her and take the twin babies on a walk in their stroller. After a few walks to the park, they ended up going on a trip to the North Pole and then also to California — both magical places, so I guess that makes sense. 

Given her close friendship with the imaginary Santa, I expected her to be thrilled when she met a “real” Santa, in all his fake-bearded glory, at the local park’s holiday event* Saturday morning. And she was thrilled, but cautiously. I’ve seen this same pattern in her so many times: we introduce a new experience and her eyes double in size as she takes everything in; she holds back until she has observed every detail of the situation, then she cautiously tries it out and ends up having so much fun that she never wants to do anything else, ever again.

In this case she went from checking out the whole Santa scene from a distance, to tentatively approaching “just to talk to him,” to sitting on his lap and grinning for the camera, to saying good-bye at least twelve times and having me physically restrain her as he tried to leave. As we were walking to our car, she explained to us that he “had to go get his reindeer and go back to the North Pole” (with a quick stop in LA first?)

*In addition to the real live Santa, this event also included a performance by Siena’s dance class, a live jazz band, a pancake brunch, an art table, dozens of video cameras (but not ours, although we did manage to locate Siena’s paint-stained ballet slippers in time for the performance), and a partridge in a pear tree. It was total festive mayhem, and Elliot is still shaking his head in amazement from having had so many people to smile at, all in one small place.

At breakfast Friday morning: 

Siena: Did you know that Santa brings Nicole to kids that are bad?

Daddy: What was that? I couldn’t hear you because I was chewing my cereal* — Santa brings what?**

Siena: Santa brings Nicoles to kids that are bad. Isn’t that silly?   

—— 

* He could hear just fine; he just wanted her to repeat it.

** If he didn’t hear her while eating cereal, it would not be that surprising, because Matt happens to be the loudest eater of cereal ever to lift a spoon — just ask his sister, Sara. She grew up with it. We commiserate all the time.  

This is an excerpt from Siena’s on-going narration of the time from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. today, when I was in the kitchen starting dinner and she was playing, but also keeping me posted on everything that crossed her mind. This part was my favorite, when she came running into the kitchen to show me all the owies on her legs (while wearing a paint-stained leotard):

“I’m just all patched together, with all of these owies. See, I have a scratch here and a little poke here and a bump and another owie. I’m just a bummer. I’m all plummed up.” 

It turns out Anderson is a friend from work.

Which prompted me to ask, “Oh, where do you guys work?”

I wish I could type eye-rolling, as she all but said “Um, DUH,” before answering, “At the zoo, Mama. We train the animals for the shows.” 

Her frustration at my ridiculous question is understandable; she puts as much time and energy into her animal shows as I do into nagging Matt to clean the fish tank, which is to say pretty much constant time and energy (or at least that’s how he would describe it). 

Also, I learned that Anderson brought her tiny brand-new baby Sweetie Pie in to work yesterday, and she’s doing great. Thanks for asking.

Dinner, in my mind: Grilled salmon, mashed potatoes, a salad, and something chocolate for dessert. Plain spinach for Siena (she hates the very idea of dressing) but maybe she would try the salmon and realize how delicious it was; if not, maybe some tofu for her instead. And for Elliot, some kind of developmentally appropriate combination of fruits, vegetables, grains and protein, made from scratch using locally grown organic produce. 

Dinner, in reality: Microwaved veggie burgers, ketchup, microwaved frozen vegetables (or maybe, on a really good night, plain broccoli steamed in the microwave — are your taste buds screaming in excitement?) and no dessert, since I am no longer pregnant and have stopped making special trips to the grocery store just to buy desserts. And for Elliot, a store-bought jar of baby food mixed with baby cereal, along with some Cheerios to keep him busy while the rest of us eat.

Dinner tonight, when Matt took Siena to her 6:15 music class: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Matt and Siena; I’m pretty sure somebody fed Elliot something but couldn’t tell you what; and for me? Four leftover frozen samosas from Trader Joe’s, one-quarter of the quesadilla Siena didn’t finish at lunch, one “tree” of broccoli she also didn’t eat, half a Boca sausage that someone didn’t eat, sometime (hopefully recently!) and a silent prayer that the guys working in the basement don’t come upstairs and ask what I’m eating. 

Some friends of ours welcomed a baby girl into the world earlier today (congratulations, Margaret and Mike, not that we expect you are reading catnamedpig!) I showed Siena the pictures they sent out and we talked for a minute about how sweet and tiny the brand new baby was.

Interestingly, I learned later in the evening that Anderson, too, just had her baby girl today. I said, “That’s very exciting!”

“Yes, it’s very exciting. She just came out today and she’s very, very tiny.”

“What is the baby’s name?”

“Her name is Sweetie Pie.”  

Do you know what a Cheerio looks like after it has fallen down the baby’s shirt into his diaper and sat there marinating for a couple of hours?

I do, now.

Unfortunately. 

[My dad just told me he reads this site every day. Hi, Dad! Is this the kind of writing that gets people book deals? What do you mean, J.K. Rowling never wrote about Cheerios marinated in baby pee?]  

[This conversation took place in September; I just came across the notepad where Matt wrote it down.]

Siena: Daddy, that guy on the radio just said stupid.  

Daddy: Yeah, we don’t like that word, do we? He must’ve been talking about something really bad or mean.

Siena: Yeah, like a thunderstorm, or that bridge that got broken down.  

The story of this day is a tale of trust and naiveté, of trust betrayed and of mass destruction; and a tale, ultimately, of redemption. It is also a tale involving many, many tubes of brightly colored paint, and, later on, a car tire so flat and destroyed that the whole bottom half of it appeared to come completely off the rim.

Anyway, the story: Matt was volunteering at a tree lot this morning, and my friend Sara and Siena’s best friend Avery came over for a playdate. The girls wanted to watch a movie, so we set them up in front of the TV (which is upstairs in our bedroom, at least until our basement is finished). Sara and I wanted to talk to each other for five consecutive minutes, so we went back downstairs. As we sat chatting, realizing we were approaching naptime and things were likely to deteriorate soon, we even remarked to each other how well they were getting along, and how we didn’t want to disturb them when things were going so well.

Oh, the innocence of that time, those peaceful moments before they came to the top of the stairs and called to us, giggling hysterically.

Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw when we went to the stairs and looked up. They were purple, blue, and neon pink from head to toe. I noticed, through the haze of my shock, that Siena appeared to be naked and Avery was wearing nothing but her hoodie sweatshirt — she proudly turned to point out to us that her butt was fully covered in bright blue paint. 

But it gets better. Or worse, really.

We rushed upstairs to discover that, in addition to painstakingly covering each other in paint, they had coated a good 30 square feet of the wood floor, as well as part of the wall, window, and window blinds, and numerous items of laundry lying in a nearby hamper. While we were downstairs congratulating each other on raising children who could play together so nicely, they were systematically destroying everything in sight. 

The scene that greeted Matt when he arrived home? The two girls in a bathtub of purple water, a large load of laundry in the washer, and Sara and me frantically cleaning while discussing various punishment options.  

…. 

Later: After tears, apologies, and naptime, Siena and I headed my mom’s to pick up some Christmas decorations we had moved to her house when we cleared out our basement. We stayed for a while, because it was clean there and she made nachos for us, then we headed home. We made it less than a block before I pulled the car over — something was wrong with the front driver’s side tire. So wrong, in fact, that when I got out to look at it, I saw the rim of the tire touching the ground, while the black part of the tire was twisted behind it.

This is so far out of the realm of what I know how to handle that I basically flipped out. Hysterical calls to Matt and my mom resulted in a plan: she drove us home, then Matt headed out to change the tire and get the car off the street. Further phases of this plan (like getting the car out of my mom’s driveway and one day using it again) remain to be worked out.

As my mom drove us home, Siena repeated several times, “We’re so mad and frustrated. We wanted to just drive home in our silver car. But it got such a bad tire, the tire was totally off and totally broken; it was so bad. So we’re super frustrated and angry and sad. But it will be OK.”

There was my three-year-old, displaying more empathy and patience than I had been able to muster all day — trying to make me feel better because she could tell I was worried about the car.  And I was really glad I had decided not to turn her out into the snow after the paint incident, or post her on craigslist under FREE (Will Deliver Within Metro Area), like I maybe wanted to, just a tiny bit, earlier in the day.