10 posts tagged “maria”

Dear Barack Obama:

Will you please promise me that you will have a rally in Indianapolis, so that I don't have to kick myself for not going down to Bloomington tonight for the rest of my life? 

I just don't think my wee one will handle the one-hour drive and the waiting in line very well.  And, we are already scheduled to help out at your Washington Township Volunteer office tonight. 

So, please ... pretty please with organic cherries on top ... will you come to Indy??!!  (Except not this Sunday - we have to go to a birthday party ... with ponies!).  There are many accommodating spaces downtown (e.g., nobody is using Conseco Fieldhouse these days), and the high school down the street from me has a nice gym!

Signed,

Maria's Mama for Obama

Maria loves The Upside Down Show.  But, instead of Shane and David, she refers to the stars as Shame and David.  Apparently, she likes "Shame" so much that she named her new imaginary friend after him.  (Her other imaginary friend is "Um").

Last night, while sitting at the dinner table, she turned to the empty seat next to her and commenced a conversation with her new, corporeal-disadvantaged friend.  So, I asked her, "Who are you talking to?"  "I'm talking to Shame," she said.  

Woah, I thought ... that's deep!  Then I remembered, she's only 3.

Maria with Flowers

Here you see Barack Obama standing in front of a building that I drive past almost every freakin' day, except apparently when the next president of the U.S. is standing outside.  S**t!

28obama_3371

I do believe Maria and I will be canvassing this week and maybe this weekend.  We'll see.  Her demeanor dictates my schedule these days!  Did you know that she can do everything by herself and she doesn't ever need any help? Oy!

Well, so much for female empowerment!  According to this article, the goal of some is to feed little girls' insecurities so that they'll shovel money into their local hair salons! 

A snippet:

In his seminars, [Goodman] now addresses how to market to preteens and even discusses how to keep them entertained in the chair (a wireless laptop or DVD player). “I tell stylists to get more involved in school and community events to reach out to these younger girls,” he said, adding, “they may not want to think in those terms, but these girls are our future business.”

So, add another category to my constantly expanding list of parenting anxieties ...  Not only do I need to worry about schools brimming with junk food, sugary beverages, Channel One and standardized tests.  But now my daughter is going to come home from elementary school one day and ask for highlights?

Too Young for Highlights

Last night Maria drew this picture of me:

Mommy

Dudes!  It's like I'm looking in a MIRROR!

Last night, Maria and I met some of my former co-workers for dinner at Buca di Beppo.  I started preparing Maria for this outing weeks ago so that she wouldn't be too freaked out by the break in her normal routine, even showing her pictures of the place.  And, it worked.  She talked very excitedly about how we were going to "Boo-key di Beppo" or sometimes she would just say "the restaurant."  I, however, suffered all sorts of needless anxiety about how the night would go.  Would we be hastily tossing our pasta into doggie bags while Maria dissolved into multiple tantrums?  Or would I be able to sip a decent glass of Pinot Grigio while my sweet, gregarious little girl offered her crackers to each of our dinner companions?  Happily, it was the latter.  We had a wonderful time and she was just a perfect little angel. 

After dinner, we walked around Monument Circle en route to the parking garage.  The Circle was thrilling to Maria because it is all lit up and decked out for the holidays.  And, quite unexpectedly, we bumped into Santa Claus!  What a night! 

Even before Maria was born I had all kinds of ideas about how we would enjoy evenings just like this. It's so nice when reality is even better than the fantasy.

Where's my Spaghetti, Mom?

Potty training

You come home from work and your husband guides you to the bathroom where he happily lifts the lid on the toilet to show you your daughter's massive poo and you both marvel at it as if he just lifted the lid off a pot of gold doubloons.

Yesterday when I picked Maria up from school her teacher excitedly told me that Maria had used the potty ALL DAY!  (Hoo-freakin’-Ray!)

Mall Scene 1962

So, after she ate dinner, I took Maria over to Macy’s to buy some underpants.  Maria was naturally confused as to how we could go to “Macy’s” and not bump into anyone named Macy.  The whole time we were there she wondered aloud where Macy was.  She would say things like, “We HAVE to find Macy.”  Um, we never found her (but I was ever so glad we weren't at this store). 

How did it happen that every department store is now a Macy’s?  Even Marshall Fields, so highly steeped in history and tradition, is now Macy’s.  My neighborhood Macy’s used to be an L.S. Ayres, and then it became Lazarus until Lazarus was absorbed into Macy’s.  And it is one of the older department store buildings in Indianapolis, an original anchor to the Glendale Shopping Center, built in 1958.  (Glendale was a "shopping center" and then a "mall," and now it is undergoing major renovations in order to become "Glendale Town Center").  So, we made the three-block trek to Macy’s went up to the Girls’ Department and purchased a mass of underpants.  As we made our way out, I stopped and looked at various things and the scattered sales clerks seemed surprised if not frightened by our presence.  Then, I looked around and realized we were the only customers in the store!  Can you believe it?  That is just sad.

I have such fondness, not for Macy’s, but for this particular department store building because, throughout all of Glendale Shopping Center's changes, it has been relatively preserved.  Before our downtown mall opened, Glendale was the closest place to shop for downtown denizens like me.  In addition to what is now Macy’s, there was a Lazarus (formerly William H. Block’s), The Gap, The Limited, Express, Victoria’s Secret, Casual Corner, Paul Harris and one of only two Hot Sam’s in town (Sal-oot!).  This store has the aura of an old timey department store where ladies shopped carrying pocket books instead of “hobo bags.” Oh!  And it probably had a candy counter, back when many department stores had such things.  - - Oh man, how I loved the department store candy counter when I was a kid.  My mom would buy me exactly one piece of candy, but it was always a VERY good piece of candy.

My generation has seen shopping centers go from open-air to enclosed and now back to open-air.  Out of a sense of nostalgia and an appreciation for aesthetics, I’m glad to see the open-air shopping center coming back into vogue, but sad to see the continuing trend of tearing down to build anew –or building anew and just leaving the old businesses and buildings to crumble - in stead of investing in our current structures.

Our 11-year-old downtown mall includes the historic building space once occupied by the downtown location of L.S. Ayres (built in 1905), but it is just the exterior.  The interior was pretty much gutted, there is no sense of the original store.  When the downtown mall opened, Glendale became sort of geographically sandwiched between the sparkly new mall and the stylish Fashion Mall.  So business suffered, tenants pulled out and it has gone through various reincarnations in attempt to breathe new life back into the mall.  This latest one seems to be a “last hope” sort of endeavor.  I think they’re on the right track and I hope for its great success.  Not only because it affects my property value, but because there still is that one department store, that connection to the past, that one foot in the history of the place that makes it so much more authentic than any old mega mall.  I would hate to see it left to crumble. 

Like most kids, Maria loves to go to playgrounds.  One day, she picked up this book in the back seat of my car and pretended to read it to me.  "It says, 'Go to the playground!'" she said.  (Pretty clever - if not omniscient - of her to invoke the Dalai Lama in her quest to go to the playground).  

When Maria first started going to playgrounds, I confess, it was a terrifying experience for me.  My instinct was to follow her everywhere, to hold onto her as she climbed every rung up the ladder to the slide, to be right there to catch her just in case she slipped and fell.  According to MetroDad, I was a Hoverer.  My husband, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.  He was much more relaxed about it.  He would constantly urge me to let her do things on her own, that it helped her build confidence, and he was right.  But it’s so hard for a mom to do that since, from the date of conception, that little being has been reliant on you for everything.  You’ve nurtured this little person from a mass of cells into a curious, walking, climbing toddler and it’s hard to sit back, take inventory of each and every potential danger and not spring into action to protect your child.  I mean, until then, your role in your child’s life has been all about protection.  That’s why we don’t drink alcohol or eat raw fish or soft cheeses during pregnancy.  That’s why we put impossible contraptions on our cabinets, plug up all of our electrical outlets and barricade the stairs to the basement!  Right?  It's the most natural of instincts:  protecting our young. 

These days, I’m not so clingy with Maria on the playgrounds, but there are times that I’ve had to restrain myself when other kids are pushing and shoving their way past others or when they just somehow seem unkind.  When I notice any type of aggression from other kids, this raises a different red flag.  And again, my hovering instincts burn hot. 

There was a big period of my childhood during which I was apparently good fodder for the neighborhood bullies.  Older neighbor girls would say horrible things to me and I would simply cower instead of responding with a sharp retort or a kick to their shins.  It’s hard to say why I was so meek, but in raising my daughter I think about this a lot.  I wonder about how to bully-proof her, to fill her with self confidence so that she doesn’t suffer the self-doubt, stress and self-loathing that I experienced when I was young and so ripe for bullying.  And then today, I read this article on spiked-online, and - whoa!  It hadn't occurred to me before, but as the hovering parent, am I actually turning my daughter into a prime bully target?  So, with the Internet as my witness, let it be known that effective September 17, 2007, I hereby relinquish my title as Worrius Protectus.  I shall not hover again! 

climbing

Wobbly Brit

I promised myself I wouldn’t write a post about Britney Spears, but here goes:  Much to my husband’s dismay, I tuned into the first few minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards to see Britney Spears' “comeback performance.  (Let’s face it, “Britney Spears” and “comeback” go together like “Amy Winehouse” and “hygiene.”)  In a word, it was horrible.  No, I don’t like Britney Spears, I don’t admire her, I certainly don’t respect her in any way.  I do pity her because she’s obviously a victim of bad management and exploitation.  But mostly, I LOATHE her because of what she represents.  And this dates to way back before she started giving the world weekly beaver shots. 

When Britney was enjoying the peak of her popularity, she dressed like a slut.  She started an unfortunate fashion trend with belly-baring shirts, pants slung below her ass crack and generally vapid behavior.  And she seemed to kick off the "it's cool-to-be-dumb" craze that Paris Hilton now personifies.  The message she conveyed was “I’m a big, stupid slut!”  And her young fans followed suit.  When she gave a concert in Indianapolis several years ago, the town was full of little girls and their MOTHERS dressed ala Britney.  It was a scary scene, indeed.

Okay, so yes . . .  I’ll bet some of you are thinking that there was Madonna before her with her “Like a Virgin” mediocrity cloaked in slutty-ness.  And Madonna had her wannabes dressed in lace gloves and bustiers and such, but Madonna was a novelty.  Back when she was dressing that way and singing about being “touched for the very fist time,” her songs shared the Top 40 airwaves with Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel, etc.  These days, we have Jessica Simpson wondering aloud on national television whether Chicken of the Sea is chicken or tuna.  And, rumor has it, Heidi Montag is recording. 

And another thing about Madonna:  Despite her modest talents, she knew when it was time to step back, out of the limelight and come back with a new look and sound.  When Ray of Light came out in 1998, it was seriously amazing.  I remember hearing the eponymous single while at the gym and everyone sort of froze on their elliptical trainers and asked, “Who is this?”  Madonna took voice lessons at like the age of 40 or something and she learned to play the guitar.  I’ve really got no beef with her, except that her new British accent is a bit, um, silly.  And by the way, would it not have been cool for Britney to do something like put down her cigarettes and cocktails, put on some clothes and learn to play the guitar and THEN give a comeback performance that was just her sitting on a stool, playing guitar and singing?  

But I digress.  Back before Britney became Mrs. K-Fed, had two babies and charred her career, I just harrumphed my way through my utter distaste for the pop starlet.  But now I am the parent of a daughter.  And, as a parent, you spend a lot of time fretting over what your child will be like.  Will you be blessed with a studious debate team member?  Or will you regularly be on the horn with the high school principal trying to explain why your child was smoking weed in the coat closet or giving a fellow student a tattoo with a Bic pen?  Given that, it is a tad disturbing to see the trend (that originated with Britney) among our current crop of high-profile young ladies.  Where are all the good female role models?  Who will be the major pop culture icons of my daughter’s generation?  Will pop musicians continue down this path of tawdriness and lack of talent?  I hope not. 

Last week Maria experienced her first fire drill at school.  I could tell when I picked her up that something disconcerting had happened.  She seemed more emotional than usual and as I buckled her into her car seat, she started telling me in her 2.5 year old vocabulary about how the bell rang and they went outside (in the rain), but there was no fire.  The next day, I confirmed with her teacher that Maria was talking about a fire drill.  Her teacher told me all about how they prepared the wee ones for the blare of the alarm and told them how they would go outside.  Then she told me that during the fire drill, Maria held the hand of one of the other girls who was scared.  And I got the biggest lump in my throat.  This other girl, by the way, had committed an aggressive act toward Maria last spring that warranted a call from the school and left Maria with the imprint of a set of toddler teeth on her forearm.  So, the thought of my daughter giving comfort to someone who had once treated her harshly filled me with so much hope and love.  Maybe she’ll be just fine.