Tag: motherhood lessons

How My Baby (a Teenager) Taught Me that Puppies Are Like Babies

Published on by Laura Nicole DiamondLeave a comment

When I tell someone we have two new puppies, the reaction goes, “Puppies are so cute! Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!” Followed immediately by, “It’s like having babies.”

I grant that there are many similarities. They are crazy cute. I am more housebound than I would like to be. And they pee in inappropriate places. But that’s where the similarities end for me. I feed them from a bag not my body, baby wipes are only for their ears, and I can leave them in a crate in a pinch.

Last week, my 15-year-old echoed the “puppies are like babies” sentiment, saying that raising puppies will help prepare him for being a father. (Awww…!) There’s some truth there: caring for puppies exercises your patience, love, and forgiveness. It requires you to do or say the same thing over and over and over before they “get” it. And at setbacks and joys alike, you must remind yourself “this too shall pass.”

One moment with the puppies recently reminded me of a feeling I had in my early days with an infant. About 15 and a half years ago, in the wee dark hours of the night I sat in a rocker with my baby in my lap for a middle-of-the-night feeding. He was asleep in my arms, finished with his milk, and the crib loomed a mere four feet away from us. I had never yet managed to get this love out of my arms and into his crib without him waking and crying (I would later discover co-sleeping, Praise Be). Hoping this would be the first time, that I would soon return my groggy self to my own bed, I slowly rose, glided soundlessly across the room, leaned my body over the crib with his body against mine until the mattress accepted his weight, I ever sooooooo slooooowly stood up. I waited. YES! I had done it! He was still sleeping! I was ebullient! I felt like I’d scaled a mountain! Cured cancer! Could do anything!

My comparable puppies moment: that same son and I gave them a bath.

The puppies had been playing in the yard after the sprinklers had been on, digging a hole in wet soil. They were filthy. White paws were dark brown. We couldn’t let them in the house. A bath was mandatory.

We had never done this before. There was no special puppy tub, and the kitchen sink seemed too big for these guys. How would we accomplish this? Where to begin? We retrieved a towel, a bucket, and put two inches of warm water and soap in it. Good enough start. My son stood ready with the towel while I put the first dog in. With a little rubbing, the dirt came off. I handed the surprised, wet pup to the waiting, towel-holding arms of my son, and repeated. These two baths lasted less than 30 seconds, and we had two clean, dry puppies!

We were so inordinately proud of ourselves we high ten‘ed.

That was no small thing. My son is a great kid, wonderful to be around. But I’m the mom, the one who asks about homework and reminds about appointments, so sometimes it feels like we are moving in opposite directions, like friction is our default. Joining forces to give the puppies their first bath, exulting together in that new-parent feeling of accomplishment, reminding ourselves of our bond, was a priceless moment that made every other little puppy mess well worth it.

A lot like having a baby.

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I Need A Hero: The Family Room Scene

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond1 Comment

The setting:

A family room in California. Late September, 5pm. A smattering of worn socks are strewn on the floor, alongside a sneaker and a flip flop. Lego pieces, the small ones perfect for inadvertently stepping on, hide in the carpet’s pattern. A throw blanket that had been strategically placed by the mother on the dirt-stained arm of the sofa is strewn on the floor, next to last week’s classwork spilling out of a backpack. A licked-clean popsicle stick takes up company on the floor with an empty plate that looks like Nutella may have been consumed there. We hope it was Nutella.

A child reclines on the sofa, absorbed in Volume 4 of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. He folds the page where the next chapter begins, and lumbers over to a stool next to his mother, who is just now reading the newspaper.

Kid: (Sighing) I think I want to join the Army. Or Something.

Mom: Well, that’s two different things. The Army, and Something. What’s Something?

Kid: I don’t know. I want to be a hero. Like Percy Jackson.

Mom: There are a lot of ways to be a hero that don’t involve bullets.

Kid: Like a fireman?

Mom: Uh huh…Actually, I was thinking of something else. I was reading about MacArthur Geniuses, and one hero who’s an environmental engineer, who learned how to take wastewater and turn it into energy.

Kid: I just like to fight.

Mom: I have an idea.

Kid: What is it?

Mom: You’ll be my hero when you pick up your socks, Legos, and dirty dishes.

Kid: #&$%#

And…SCENE!

 

Embarrass Your Kids Now, They’ll Thank You Later

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond9 Comments

My kids keep telling me to stop embarrassing them.

There are three general categories of embarrassing incidents about which they complain:

1) Being friendly and talking to “everyone” (e.g. “anyone” in public who is not in our immediate family);

2) Singing loudly in public places, like the local Rec Center parking lot, for no apparent reason;

3) Shouting “I LOVE YOU, HONEY” when I drop them off at school.

Okay, the last one I have to own. That is embarrassing. And it may have been on purpose to embarrass them. Embarrassing one’s children is not only a family rite of passage, it is an important life lesson: I learned at a young age not to let other people’s choices embarrass me. I am responsible only for my own.

As my father’s daughter, I learned this as a matter of survival. My father, an anti-smoking zealot since the 1950’s (e.g. before it was cool), would bring a squirt gun or handheld fan with him to public places — movie theater, sports venue, restaurant, party. Recall, if you can, the typical smoker’s posture: wrist tilted back, cancer-stick burning between second and third fingers, smoke spiraling away from their own face. A flick of the fan’s button blew secondhand smoke back into the offending smoker’s face. That seemed fair.

The squirt gun, however, was a different level of combat. Its purpose was to extinguish a burning cigarette from a distance. Squirt guns having notoriously unreliable aim, my father’s life was in more immediate danger from the smoker than from the smoke.

I recall the defining moment in my adolescence when I had an epiphany about not being embarrassed by my parents. At my 8th grade graduation, as I lined up with one hundred fourteen-year-olds to enter the auditorium, my father approached me and said in his loudest voice for all to hear, “LAURA, DON’T WORRY. I WON’T EMBARRASS YOU. I PROMISE, NO MATTER WHAT, LAURA DIAMOND, EMBARRASSING YOU WOULD BE THE LAST THING I WOULD DO.” He grinned his I-crack-myself-up grin, I shook my head and smiled, and I realized in that moment that he could not embarrass me. He was him. I was me. (It couldn’t have hurt that he was, and is, a wonderful father.)

Still, I have promised my kids that I would stop the intentional embarrassments — the “I love you’s” in front of school are now always private, quiet affairs.

But there will remain embarrassments, the ones that are expressions of who I am — the spontaneous singing, the talking to strangers. When my kids ask me to stop these, I now borrow a response I heard my friend tell his child: “I will always be who I am, and I am not going to change that.”

I gotta be me. And I hope they learn the freedom to be who they are.

I think it’s working. My younger son offered this a few days ago: “I think it’s better to be unique than to be like everyone else.”

Full heart balloons of YES! floated through my body, out my ears, through the open windows and high above the house, popping in the spring sky, raining down a resounding prayer of “please always feel this way.”

I’m not saying this is an easy attitude to achieve or maintain, as it runs contrary to the adolescent condition. But for better or worse, my kids will get plenty of practice not taking personally my embarrassing ways. I feel a song coming on…