Vignette Vinagrette

As the majority of you pack up your holiday decorations, you are ready to put the festive season behind you, start that new diet or gym membership, and hope to stick to your New Year’s resolutions. It was all fun and games, but now it is time for a return to the daily routine. Moms everywhere are glad for the start of school and the opportunity once more to have a daily slice of peace and quiet.

Well, I have one more week to go. My youngest daughter’s birthday is this week, exactly two fast weeks after Christmas. While most people are glad to get rid of the leftovers, stash the wrapping paper, and find homes for all the new stuff, I am still shopping, cooking, cleaning, and party planning. It is hardly S’s fault that she was born three weeks early and so soon after Jesus’ celebration that her birthday becomes the last thing on my exhausting to-do list of the holiday season. So, rather than bitch and moan about the eleven girls coming over for her birthday party, or the fact that I have to figure out what to get for the girl who literally got everything she ever wanted two weeks ago, I will instead treat you to a few of my favorite recent stories featuring S.

S wanted two Webkinz for Christmas. Webkinz are stuffed animals with a special code included for the Webkinz website, where your child can spend more sedentary hours in front of a computer screen playing with a virtual version of the stuffed animal you just paid $14.95 for her to ignore. Luckily, S doesn’t give a crap about the website; she prefers to sleep with the Webkinzes, dress them like hobos and gypsies in old rags, and talk for them, which is cute for a child to do, but scary when it’s the adult next to you on some form of public transportation.

Anyway, the two Webkinz she got were a llama and a walrus, which S refers to as a “sea pig.” We saw a walrus last year at Sea World, and it resembled Jabba the Hutt more than a creature from our planet. She was fascinated by it, but couldn’t remember what it was called. So she renamed it sea pig, and now she is in love with them. I am sure that love will last until she catches a National Geographic documentary that involves a walrus hunting, killing, and eat a baby seal, or possibly even walrus coitus. She named the walrus Whiskers, which makes him sound like the town drunk.

The llama she named Spray, for obvious reasons. It is currently sporting a jaunty scarf crocheted by E, my other daughter, and has two barrettes on its ears for earrings. If you get to close to Spray, S will stick it in your face and make a spitty hissing sound.

Clearly, this is not a child who is into all things Hannah Montana.

S has been channeling my dead grandmother lately.

For starters, she refers to all sorts of things as “good-looking.” She came downstairs after getting dressed and announced she was wearing a “good-looking” outfit. She called the neighbor’s Labradoodle a “good-looking” dog. I made a “good-looking” turkey for Christmas dinner. The only thing missing from her delivery is a finger gun pointed at you when she says it.

S was in the Nutcracker before the holidays and had to wear tights and a leotard before changing into her costume. On the first night of stage rehearsal, every girl in the theatre came up to her one at a time to let her know they could see her underwear peeking out of the leotard. So, like my grandmother used to do, S decided to go bare back. Muby (that was what we called our grandma, a combination of Mom-mom and Bubby) used to wear her nude and suntan reinforced toe pantyhose with nothing underneath, because she believed the panty was built in. Watching S pull her pink tights up to her armpits with everything cleaved brought back childhood memories of my grandmother waltzing around her bathroom in a fresh pair of L’eggs, dabbing some brown Estee Lauder on her pulse points. I am still haunted by that sight.

The other morning, on the way to school, S and I were stopped at the red light near Chick-Fil-A. Chick-Fil-A is without a doubt her favorite fast food, and pretty much the only place we will pick up from when I don’t feel like cooking. She can put away a whole chicken sandwich by herself, as long as you remove the limp pickle slices, because she doesn’t like pickles, but likes the way the pickle juice makes the bun soggy. She eats Chick-Fil-A often, so I was surprised when S said to me, “I finally get that Chick-Fil-A sign.” You know, the one with the large fancy C that looks like a chicken? “What did you think it was before?” I asked her. “A big squiggle with some weird blobs,” she answered. “Maybe that’s the Polynesian sauce,” I said.

We had friends over to celebrate New Year’s Eve. All the kids went upstairs to hang out, but they couldn’t decide what to play. What began as a discussion dissolved into a big argument. S tried to separate her friends to stop the fighting. One of the girls came downstairs and reported, “S is putting everyone in time out.” We had to think of another solution other than S disciplining her peers. I think it involved a DVD and some chocolate.


S turns eight this week, and I expect she will continue to treat me to delightful stories for the next year as well. She is easy with a smile and a laugh, prefers skipping to running, and still wants hugs and kisses. And I always know that no matter what I think about something, S is guaranteed to have a perspective I never would have thought of, which is a great reminder that she is her own person. Happy birthday, baby!