by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 16, 2010 . 12:19AM
Yesterday, AJ and I were sitting on the couch and I heard him singing. He loves to sing, but rarely does it in front of people. I remember when he was in the womb and he’d bounce to certain songs when they’d come on the radio. He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you his favorite song was “Lucky” by Britney Spears. No joke. The kid would bounce like a fiend when it came on, as it was popular at the time, and you could see the outline of two little fists coming out of my stomach like little Alien movie wannabes. It was both frightening and exhilarating for me as a mother-to-be to recognize that my son had a personality even at that stage.
I’m really glad he has no idea where this blog is, nor does he read it, or he’d likely never speak to me again for telling you what I just told you.
Anyway, the boy loves music. He’ll sing in front of people when we play Rock Band but only because it’s “for the music.” I told you he has personality. When I tell people my kid is cool they don’t really believe me and they don’t really understand until they meet him and realize that he actually does seem to process things differently than other kids his age. There’s a 36-year-old hair band member in that 9-year-old body. At 3, his favorite song was by Bon Jovi.
I digress, I digress. I have no idea why anyone reads this blog because all I do is digress. I’ve turned into my 80-something grandmother.
So, AJ loves music. Yes, that was like 4 paragraphs ago. Get off my lawn. I heard him humming on the couch. Wait, that’s not true. It wasn’t just humming. It was full out song. “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she commmmmmmmmmmes, when she comes. She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.” I’m sure they learned the whole song. This was the part that was stuck in his head, though. For an hour I heard this until finally I looked at him, made sure he saw me, gave him my most charming grin and sang loudly, “She’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes!”
He couldn’t stop laughing. The giggles overtook him, then me. We laughed loud and long together. He gasped at me, “Ma-Ma-Mama, I couldn’t help it! It just got stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away!” We sang it a couple more times and laughed louder and longer. We often sing together in the car. Lately it’s been songs from Glee. Yesterday it was songs from elementary school.
Now if I can just get the theme song for Veronica Mars out of my own head, I’ll be set.
Comments Off
by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 30, 2010 . 7:51PM
During the summer months, there are some days where I have so few clients that AJ doesn’t have to attend his summer program and he is allowed to come hang out with me at the office. My friend Meggan is doing her practicum with us and he thinks Meggan hung the moon. He hangs out with Meggan or plays his Nintendo DS and I see clients while he avoids going to the summer program he claims is boring him and rotting his brains out. Hardly. The summer program does cool things like going to Jump Zone and swimming and playing games. But AJ is a momma’s boy and that little guy would rather be in close proximity to me than most anything in the whole world. When asked what he’d liked to do for vacation if he had one week, with the thought of Disney World being an option and anything else in the whole United States being the other option, he replied “Go to NeeNee’s because we PARTY.” He has no idea what he’s passing up and we love family time.
I’m veering off topic by a lot. I’m just going to say that my son is not worldly in the slightest and move on.
We were in the car on the way to my office when AJ asks, out of nowhere as per the norm, “Why do we celebrate 4th of July?” I’m not good with history, but I did my very best to explain our declaration of independence from England and why we chose to do so. He took this to mean that “we’re at war with England!” I explained that this was a long time ago and we are fine with England now. In fact, we’re pretty good friends. We like them. We do tea without tossing it over boats.
No. This is unacceptable. They were bad. They must pay. Grudges must be held.
I could feel the stewing going on in the back seat…and I chose to ignore it.
Until trivia night last night. There was a question regarding the back of the new quarters and the design on the back of one of them. The question had nothing to do with England, nor did it have to do with 4th of July or our war with England. But AJ chose to answer the question as “Florida. Because it has a direct line from England.”
I may not be strong in history. He’s not strong in geography. We’re both strong in grudge holding, but I think he’s got me beat. He mutters “England” in the same voice I utter “Derek Jeter.”
That’s my kid.
England, you better watch your back.
by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . April 10, 2010 . 1:28PM
99% of the time I am certain that I do not want more children. I do not have the patience and my career is at a point where it doesn’t feel like a feasible option. And then, something like this happens.
Yesterday, my son spilled an entire 10 oz glass of Mountain dew on my end table. The end table was full of stuff, including my usb modem. It made everything sticky and ruined a highly valued pair of noise-cancelling headphones that they no longer make. To say I was upset and disappointed was an understatement.
What made the situation worse was that AJ tried to clean it up without telling me and also without the understanding that Mt. Dew makes everything sticky and nasty. When cleaning it up, you must wipe everything down with a damp cloth in order to avoid what I term “Sticky, nasty mess.” He did not do this, so when I went to pick up the remote control, my hand was covered in nasty slime.
I got angry, told him to get the baby wipes (of which I still keep in this house even though my kid is 9) and wiped everything down. The headphones were not salvageable. Once the end table was clean, I found a cheapie pair of headphones, sighed at not being able to have nice things, and promptly forgot the incident.
When I woke up this morning, I found this note and these pink flowers. And my heart melted.
If you can’t read it, it says:
Dear Mom,
Please take this as a present.
Love,
AJ
I Know you love these flowers on a video game and I’m sorry I messed up your head phones. I’m really sorry so take it. Please. I love you so much.”
He’s right. I do love pink flowers on a video game we play. The kid is a charmer. And so thoughtful and sweet. He is going to make some woman very, very happy.
Another baby? Maybe not out of the question after all. If I had a guarantee that every child I had would be just like this one, I’d have a million.
by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . November 11, 2009 . 10:49AM
When AJ was little, he had mad empathy. When other babies would cry, he would wail like crazy. This has never left him and I’m inclined to believe it’s part of his temperament. He’s always been the caretaker in this house, and I think it’s because he sees that when one of us is sick, we all take care of that person. It is how we handle sickness or sadness or stress. Since he was very tiny, he would play the nursemaid when Leon or I was sick. I still remember him fetching me lukewarm water in the bathroom cup when I was nursing a migraine because he’d seen Leon bring me water for my aspirin. I believe he was as young as 3 when he started.
When Leon or I am sick, he hates to go to school and when he is here, he will bring ice packs, aspirin, wet washcloths and as many hugs, kisses and cuddles as we will take. There are many nights that he went to bed on a Friday night at 7:30 because I was sick with a migraine and laying there. He would lay next to me, patting my hand, and would eventually drift off.
There is a certain sense of guilt that comes with having chronic pain–that burden that you place on the people around you. The feelings that you may have of feeling like less of a person some days often express themselves at the weakest moments and not always in the best of ways. They often present in anger, misery or irritability. AJ is immune to that when someone is sick.
This isn’t to say that he doesn’t have his egocentric “me me me” side, because he certainly does, but it has never been as strong as I expected. And I’m watching him shed it rapidly and sooner than the developmental scales predict and I wonder about the kind of man he’ll become, and how quickly it will happen. Will I ever be ready for it? People keep telling me to have more children. My guess is that they recognize that there is so much love within me for this little guy that it breaks me.
I worry less about it when I see that I haven’t done an awful job and that my health issues haven’t affected him so dramatically. As he was going to bed tonight, he kissed my cheek, hugged me tightly and said, “I hope you feel better tomorrow, mama.” Then, he gave me the dimpled grin that melts my heart and he and his hoppy little weiner dog went to sleep.
Somehow, I think we’re all going to be alright…
Filed under:
A.J.,child development,children,Families,happiness,Me,moving on,My family,nostalgia,parenting,personality | Tags:
aj,
development,
empathy,
growing up,
little boys,
motherhood,
parenthood,
parenting,
personality
by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . November 5, 2009 . 10:11AM
Please welcome my guest blogger, LEON!
____________________________________________________________
Until recently, I have never really been a Beatles fan. I always associated The Beatles with the bee bop music they did in the late 50s, and I disliked it. Then recently we got Rock Band: The Beatles and that all changed. I realized that I knew dozens of good songs from the 60s (mostly from movies and the like) that were Beatles songs and I just never knew it.
As a consequence of my not being a fan of the Beatles, and my wife not listening to them very much, AJ was also never really exposed to The Beatles until Rock Band came along. Instantly, he was hooked. He bee bopped along with the music and shook his groove thang all night long while we played. Eventually, he asked something he’s never asked about a band before: “Dad, can we go see the Beatles play?” The following conversation then ensued:
Me: “No, buddy, they’re not making music anymore.”
AJ: “Why not?”
Me: “Well, two of them are dead now, but before that, they broke up.”
AJ: “How did they die?”
Me: (Not exactly remembering at that moment how George Harrison died) “Well, one of them got shot.”
AJ: (in horror) “WHY WOULD SOMEONE SHOOT ONE OF BEATLES?! THEY’RE SO NICE!!”
Me: :blank stare: “Honestly, I have no idea.”
I will tell you that since that conversation, I have had to learn about the history of The Beatles, because there has been a neverending blitz of questions from AJ about The Beatles: which ones are alive, which ones are dead, how they died, whether the ones who are still alive are still singing, and most importantly whehter we will ever get to meet any of The Beatles. I’ve had to repeat most of this information four or five times; AJ wanted to learn it well enough so that he could tell other people all about The Beatles as well, and I have caught him more than once telling other people “did you know” facts about the Beatles.
Now here is how I know AJ will have good musical taste for the rest of his life: on Saturday, we went out trick-or-treating on a street here in town where all the houses were decked out in Halloween garb. One of them had a KISS cover band, complete with costumes and make-up. We stopped to watch them for a couple minutes, then proceeded down the street. As we were walking away, AJ turned to me in disgust and said, “Why do people dress up like KISS?? They’re not popular.” Then he shrugged and said dismissively, “They’re dead anyway.” I informed him that they were not dead, and he shrugged again and walked off. I haven’t heard a question about KISS since.
That’s my boy.
Home
Yesterday, AJ and I were sitting on the couch and I heard him singing. He loves to sing, but rarely does it in front of people. I remember when he was in the womb and he’d bounce to certain songs when they’d come on the radio. He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you his favorite song was “Lucky” by Britney Spears. No joke. The kid would bounce like a fiend when it came on, as it was popular at the time, and you could see the outline of two little fists coming out of my stomach like little Alien movie wannabes. It was both frightening and exhilarating for me as a mother-to-be to recognize that my son had a personality even at that stage. 
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
