Virtual Coffee {8}

Too bad Tuesday comes around but once a week cause I really enjoy this virtual coffee date. Well, actually maybe it’s not so bad as Tuesday is the Nanny’s day off and my life runs significantly less smoothly without her.  Anyway, now that I can finally sit down with my lovely Nespresso Coffee, I would tell you that my house looks like a train wreck (just without all the blood and gore of course).

You see spring is finally, officially here and I can no longer ignore my bi-yearly duty of the “seasonal closet rearrange” (about which I wrote extensively here, if you’re interested). This year I totally lucked out because my MIL and the husband’s aunt are visiting so not only do I have two extra sets of hands to move four people’s clothes, bags and shoes around, my MIL is also an organizational genius and she’s rearranging all my closets so I will never have to go throw this massive pain in the behind again. Ever. I am beyond thrilled. Also, I have someone with a very critical eye going through all my crap with me and constantly going “are you sure you want to keep that?”. Now, I realize I may sound sarcastic right now, but I swear I’m not. Most of my friends would want to kill their MILs for sticking their nose so far into their business, but I am genuinely, seriously relieved and happy to have someone help me put order in my life. I love order, I’m simply missing the gene necessary to achieve it independently.

Also, if we were really having coffee today I would tell you that the boy seems to have potty trained himself all on his own this week, with really minimal intervention from me. I’ll be dedicating a post to this (isn’t my content grand?!) but I don’t want to jinx it, so for now I’m just sharing the news with a sigh of relief and the rest of my thoughts on this thoroughly interesting subject shall be forthcoming. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats in anticipation.

I would also tell you that I’m beyond thrilled (again) because the husband is showing signs of having GVHD (graft versus host disease) which sounds truly horrible and means that his immune system attacks certain cells on his body, in this case his skin, but is really, actually, wonderfully amazing news because it means that the immune system is starting to work and therefor should take care of the few random cancer cells that always remain after chemo. Basically, the husband has a rash that itches and stings and is a ginormous pain but we’re all thrilled to pieces cause it’s a sign the transplant worked and this time his immune system is doing it’s damn job. It doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods or anything but it’s a positive sign and frankly at this point we are happy to celebrate even the smallest victories.

Ok, finished my cup and hope you enjoyed yours! I’m off to stare in wonderment at my halfway finished closet and try to get the rest of the mess under control.

Oh, but one last thing, I have an extra special, super duper guest post tomorrow that you absolutely cannot miss because this girl’s writing is amazing. So please come back to check her out and say hello.

Now go say hi to our hostess Amy!

For my Italian readers: MIL sta per mother in law (suocera)

Why Mama, why?

The boy is almost three.  A few months ago he started in with the occasionally “why, mama, why”. We thought it was cute, plus I had always said that I was really going to make an effort to answer all my kids’ questions and really pay attention to them. So the other day we were watching some show on tv with pirate ships and the ships’ cannons were shooting at another ship, so he asks “why shooting, mama, why?” and of course I answer that that’s what pirates do, they have cannons on their ships to protect themselves (he gets PG answers, of course) and they navigate the seas to rob other ships and fight, cause… that’s what pirates do. He nodded like it all made perfect sense and went on with his life. The next day, we’re in the middle of his naptime routine and he starts asking me about the cannons again. “Why cannons, mama, why?” So I repeat the above answer and move on to “why shooting, mama, why?” well, I answer, because that’s how pirates defend themselves, with guns and swords and cannons, you remember when you dressed as a pirate you had a gun and a sword, right? “why boom, mama, why?” well, I answered, because cannons have a ball inside them that shoots out and goes boom and breaks the other ship. And so on and so forth for quite a while. And then somehow I hear myself answering the 34^th question about the cannons with: they’re like big guns, except cannons shoot at ships and guns shoot at people, and the boy: guns break people, mama? At this point, I had an out of body experience whereby I was looking at myself sitting on the armchair with my almost three year old in my lap, wondering how the heck I had gotten myself into this conversation that I had no idea how to handle and I was yelling at myself, shut up, shut up, shut up!

But of course I didn’t shut up, shut up, shut up… I went on to explain how guns shoot a little ball (cannons shoot a big ball) and if the little ball hits a person they get a really bad owie and bleed and can even die, as in they go to heaven with the angels.
And I swear to you, out of body me was staring at me, shaking her head in horror and going change the freaking subject you moron! But, well, I wasn’t paying attention to out of body me, so the conversation continued for quite a while.

So this little event, in which I did a truly horrible job of both explaining and avoiding what I consider a really sticky subject for such a small kid has got me thinking about what I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve done.

I mean, how do I explain violence, and firearms, and death to a toddler. And really, should I be explaining it at all or should I have changed the subject and left him wondering about it, albeit for a really short time considering the average toddler’s attention span. I honestly don’t know.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know how I feel about the subject myself, so I don’t know exactly how I want to handle it with the kids.

Obviously, having grown up in Texas gun use and gun ownership was pretty common. Most people I know had some sort of firearm in their house. I mean, even my extremely liberal Dad, who I’d be hard pressed to believe ever shot at anything in his life (and he was a young man during WWII) had a rifle at home, he even went so far as to have cartridges.  I’m pretty certain I have the basic knowledge to load and shoot a gun or rifle myself. (whether I actually hit the target is another story!) But I live in Italy, where guns are the devil and rifles are only used for hunting by those fanatics, plus you’re not allowed to shoot at an intruder in your house anyway so what would be the point of owning one? And so my own view of firearms has changed over time. I still think that my kids will need to learn about firearm safety, and I’ll probably take them to a shooting range at some point so they know what they’re dealing with (hey, you never know, what if the world ends and we have to go back to hunting and gathering?), but do I really want my toddler to understand that the real version of that toy he’s playing with will actually kill someone? How do we keep our children innocent, when we’re surrounded by violence? And, no, I’m not judging it, though I don’t like it this is the world we live in. So what do I tell him when he asks about these things? Cause if I avoid the questions I’m afraid he’ll read in my reticence that it’s a forbidden, therefore interesting, subject, but I don’t want to fall in the too much information trap either, I mean he’s not even three yet. And also, there’s a lot of violence in the history of mankind, do I simplify history or change it to explain away some of the unsavory things that happened. Cause what if we watch “The Sword in the Stone” and get into a whole drawn out “why” sequence there, I mean, how am I supposed to explain the middle ages?

And all this leaves me wondering, I have many, many years of “why mama, why” ahead of me and this includes conversations that are possibly even scarier than death and violence, like sex, should I just start implementing a no question policy at my house?
But seriously, how do you deal with the tough questions?