Doodle

Caroline and Bops were visiting in his front yard the other day.

Caroline: Bops, is that your chimney?

Bops: “Yes, that’s the chimney.”

Caroline: “If raccoons lived in your chimney, could you trap them?”

Bops: “Yes, we could set a trap, catch them and then take them to the ranch and let them go.”

Caroline: “Yes, or we could shoot them and throw them in the ocean and let sharks eat them.”

Bops: “Well yes, that would certainly be another way to go.”

Caroline woke up in the middle of the night the other night and when I went in her room to see what was wrong, she was sitting up in bed, crying.

I picked her up and asked, “Sweetie, what’s wrong, why are you crying?”

She said, “Mama, I’m sad. I’m just so sad.”

“Why baby? Why are you sad?”

“Because I don’t like my hair long. I want to go to the beauty shop and get it cut.”

I’d like to say that I have never, myself, cried over my hair in the darkest hours of the night, but that would be a lie.

As I crawled back in bed, P woke up and asked what Caroline was crying about, when I told him, he just shook his head, rolled over and said, “And so it begins.”

I realize that some of y’all may be concerned that we are so busy teaching Caroline how to hunt wild animals, that we may be overlooking some of the more important aspects of grace and decorum.

So, just to ease your mind, here is a picture of her eating her dinner with chopsticks.

And by the way, those are fish sticks she’s eating.

We are nothing if not sophisticated here at the house of Big Mama.

This morning after church, I decided to go ahead and get the beating that is going to the grocery store out of the way. We were running low on the majority of essential items, including milk and paper plates. The milk, I personally could do without, but let’s just say that disposable dishware is crucial to my housekeeping regimen, and I’m using the words housekeeping and regimen lightly.

I changed into my Mama uniform of black yoga pants and running shoes, but left Caroline in her cute Valentines’ dress that she wore to church, that way other shoppers could point and talk about that sad woman who just lives vicariously through dressing up her child. I just can’t go to HEB in high heels, it goes against every law of nature and you’re just asking to wipe out on some kid’s spilled grape juice. Not that it’s ever happened to me but you know…it could. And then I’d just be that Mama who’s dressed really cute, but is limping through the store with a big, wet spot on the back of her pants.

Hypothetically speaking, that would just be embarrassing.

Anyway, before we left the house, I told Caroline to go potty. She asked (as she always does), “Why?”. I told her, “Because I don’t want to get to HEB and have to take you to the bathroom there” and she replied, “But Mama, I love the bathroom there because it smells like cucumbers”.

So obviously, something is horribly wrong with her olfactory sensing abilities because while the HEB bathroom smells like many things I can think of, cucumbers would not make the list.

We got to the store and she immediately begins scanning the crowd for Dwayne, the manager. She knows that Dwayne is the key to mass quantities of Buddy Bucks and therefore also the key to Mama losing her mind in HEB. It was a sad day when she realized that Dwayne wasn’t there to shower her with Buddy Buck goodness.

Fortunately all was not lost because she did get to make a trip to the bathroom and smell the cucumbers.

One day this week, I walked Caroline into her class at school and as I hugged her goodbye, she noticed the necklace I had on. She kept her arm around me, turned to her friends sitting at the table and said with pride, “This is my Mama, she wears beautiful jewelry”.

Ironically, when I wore my houseshoes to her ballet class the next day, she didn’t feel the need to introduce me.

She’s such an accessories snob.

Yesterday, Caroline went running into the bathroom and pretty soon, I heard her calling my name. I know exactly what that means. Mama only gets called in for heavy duty, toxic cleanup.

It’s always a pleasure.

We took care of the business and she went back in the living room to finish watching Max and Ruby.

A few minutes later, nature and Caroline called again. Loudly.

I ran into the living room to see her standing in a very bow legged position and saying “Oh Mama, I have poo-poo”. That will go down as the understatement of the century. The only blessing in the whole scenario was that she had on tights, which helped keep the situation fairly contained.

I carried her very carefully into the bathroom and stripped her down. All I can say is it was legendary.

Later on, the phone rang and when I saw on Caller ID that it was Bops, I let Caroline answer the phone. Here’s the side of the conversation I heard.

“Hi Bops!”

“I’m wearing my new My Little Pony panties and they’re purple!”

“We’re just hanging out and I had a huge blowout”.