Two and tantrums go together like cats and dogs

He’s making the face. His nose is crinkled, his mouth askew, his eyes are so small there’s no light reflecting in them. He crosses his arms and tips his head down.

That’s when The Champ announces his alter ego has arrived.

He says it just so: “I. AM. MAD. BOY. I. AM. NOT. HAPPY.”

This would be the point where, were we reading along with a comic book, the lightning would CRACK in the sky panel and the masked villain with the initials “MB” on a billowing cape would take up the rest of the cell space on the page.

I can even imagine a cyclone to rival Dorothy’s might open the roof and slurp each one of us out as payment for the laughter than ensues.

I really feel bad for the kid. It’s taken him so long to reach his terrible twos and no one really takes him seriously.

Even the dog yawns and goes back to snoring when he tries to rile her.

Probably doesn’t help that his tiny protest over whatever it was that stepped on his independence -- maybe we started the waffles without him … or we put away the miles of train tracks as he slept … or maybe we just took the scissors-markers-knives-blowtorch away from his sticky little grasp — is so easily squelched.

It’s difficult for a little squirt to stand one’s ground when the big people in his life can still pick him up and whisk him away from it.

Of course being difficult doesn’t mean the endeavor is impossible.

In his developmental fishing expeditions The Champ has become an expert in baiting his big sister.

For instance, he has become fond of telling his sister that he is bigger — one of only two statements that will reel in her ire hook, line and sinker. The other, of course, is insisting that he is older, too.

“He is not older than me. Tell him mom. YOU ARE NOT BIGGER, AND YOU ARE NOT OLDER!

“I am the one who gets to use the blender. NOT YOU.

“I know how to use scissors. NOT YOU.

“I can get my own drinks. YOU CAN’T.

“I don’t have diapers … YOU DO!

“YOU. ARE. A. BABY!”

He just smiles at her with is signature sideways grin. He’s gotten the exact reaction he was after.

“NO! YOU ARE BABY. I AM BIG, MAD BOY!”

The house is in an uproar. His sister’s eyes have gotten smaller than his. Her mouth has almost completely disappeared.

It has also turned us into referees.

I try to hold each of them at arm’s length as they circle my legs in this antagonistic dance.

“Tell him he’s little.”

“I not little. I am big. You are little.”

I next try to reason with the big kid:

“You know you are older. You know he’s just a little kid. Why can’t you just ignore it?”

“Because it is just not fair,” she screeches.

“No. You not fair,” he echoes at the same decibel, one that threatens shattering windows.

I wish only the dog could hear this. I glance over at her bed and realize her selective hearing is allowing her to sleep through the din. I take it back. I don’t really wish this torture on a defenseless animal.

“TIME. OUT.”

I send them to their separate corners, wherein they stare angrily at each other from across the room.

“I do not want to hear one more peep from either of you until your moods have changed for the better. …

When you’ve calmed down we can make cookies,” I add hoping to speed the process.

I poke my head in when I hear a gravely dragon growl answered by a low monster roar.

“Not a peep.”

In a few minutes, I hear the older one chirping happily. Her brother peeps back.

“Peep …peep … peep …peep. We’re ready to make cookies, mom.”

“How about you. Are you ready, Mad Boy?”

“I’n ready. I’n not Mad Boy anymore. I’n just a boy.”

Ittybit's 'Other Mother' would never approve

"He just smacked me on the head. He needs a time out. If you don’t give him one I will."

She may only be six, but she’s already a better mom than I’ll probably ever be.

Even on the rare occasions when she and her brother disappear happily into a world of make believe, she’s the loving mother who knows just what to do … usually the opposite of what she thinks I might do.

It occurs to me that when it comes to parenting failures, I don't just get to the brink of bad and teeter on the edge or even fall over its cliff unable to stop forward momentum. I sense impending doom and plunder right ahead as if getting to the other side will redeem me.

Case in point:

Sunday afternoon Ittybit wanted to watch a movie. So we HBO Anytimed "Coraline."

Now, I had previously watched about two-thirds of the film and thought it was tame enough for Ittybit, who, as a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, LOVES all things scary. ... How scary could the ending be?

Turns out the answer is: Pretty freaking scary.

The story itself is kind of a parable of modern life: A family has recently moved to a new and strange place. The daughter is struggling with the transition, but her parents are too engaged in their own lives — chained as it were to their computers and work deadlines — to have much tolerance for her needs, be they real or whims.

One night Coraline crawls through a mystical passageway into a world that is a mirror image of her own life. Only here, her parents seem happy, loving and normal, save for their button eyes. Her Other Mother cooks wonderful meals. Her Other Father sings sweet and charming songs.

One might think the sewing needles, and the creepy doll doppelganger of Coraline that shows up in the opening sequence would be enough to have me switch the channel.

... Or when the Other Mother slides a box with a sharp needle, thread and two buttons, and tells Coraline she can stay in the alternate world if she agrees to the switch.

... Or when the Other Mother, once so seemingly wonderful, turns into a gaunt horror and comes at the daughter with darning needle hands that resemble a spider.

So when Ittybit’s hands came up to her eyes and she tells me she's ready to move on to watching grass grow or paint dry, instead of turning off the TV then and there as a sane parent would have, I convinced her to just hold out to the end.

"Why are you letting me watch this," she asks. "This isn’t appropriate for children. This is NOT good parenting."

The twisted hunk of matter that passes for my brain rationalized she'd already seen the worst part. She'd see Coraline as the heroine of her own story, and then the color would return to the Pink Palace and all would be right with the world again. The End.

"I'll be right here. I promise nothing bad will happen to Coraline. ... It's just a movie. She is an amazingly brave girl, and amazingly brave children always prevail in movies."

And that’s what we did.

I held my hands over her eyes, and told her what was happening.

When the credits rolled, we both sighed in relief.

I thought it was over. We’d made it to the light at the end of the tunnel — the credits.

However, such thinking only works until the lights go out at bedtime and the shadows of innocuous things dance in menacing ways across her pretty pink walls.

The only thing a parent can do after that is settle in under the covers and wait for her breathing to deepen and become steady. Then slip out and cross your fingers the shadows stay at bay until sunrise.

Widgets, gizmos and big blue 'pills'

It’s been years since I’ve been to a first-run movie theater. You know, the kind where you save for weeks, get a sitter, wait in line with your home-computer printed tickets and your $30-worth of snacks that could arguably feed and saturate Rhode Island?

I can sense you are rolling your eyes.

Go right ahead and roll ‘em whilst I complain about something that a majority of planetary humans (including myself) find enjoyable — "the movies."

There we were, on a Saturday evening, herded into a line that snaked around the lobby of the multiplex like an errant garden hose, waiting to see James Cameron’s Avatar in 3-D.

It was my husband’s turn to choose the movie.

I, after all, made the final decision for "Up in the Air" at the $6 per-ticket theater as a Valentine’s Day treat. Now, while I would argue Jason Reitman’s comedy drama offered a far better (albeit depressing) story for less than half the price of Cameron’s predictable, epic sci-fi adventure, it wasn’t what anyone could rightly call romantic.

I know you probably don’t believe me right now, but I really do hate to complain about things I love.

And I love seeing movies in movie theaters. I love sitting next to people I don’t know and having a shared experience without ever having to speak. I love the hours of chat it can provide later, should the movie prove either interesting or insipid. I really do.

And yet I know why it takes a production going totally over the top to get us out from behind the small screens in our own isolated little lives.

Even without the excuse of children and limited leisure time, "dinner and a movie" is so far from being an affordable night of entertainment that even the phrase "Dinner and a Movie" should have already become a relic of a bygone era.

Now that a person pays the equivalent of two days’ worth of groceries for snacks and drinks, and is then held captive by advertisements we’ve successfully (thanks to TiVO and DVR) eradicated from our small screen lives, the movie experience doesn’t hold the same appeal.

Nothing short of epic will cajole us out of our cocoons.

I would not have dragged myself from the house if it weren’t for the nine-foot-tall blue creatures sticking it to the imperialist marauders, and the optical illusion that the miraculous mayhem was all happening from the seats next to me … for that one can be sure.

And yet, as I sat there in the packed house, seemingly a part of the movie itself, all I wanted to do was take off the stupid glasses and just watch.

It wasn’t just that the offending set of specs were at once slipping off my face AND digging into my head, but they seemed to act as a barrier between me and the film.

Sure, I supposed it was cool for a minute that it felt as if *spoiler alert* the ashes from the devastated world were floating over my head and into my hair, but after a short while the scenes just played out like expensive parlor tricks. My own imagination was obsolete.

As we were leaving the theater there was only silence between us.

"You hated it didn’t you?"

"I didn’t hate it. … I just think of it as an epic music video. After a while it’s not really that special it’s just three hours of special effects."

My husband, poor guy, just wanted to see the widgets and gizmos and watch the technical marvels, and NOT think about real life for a while.

"There’s nothing wrong with that."

I hate when they are right … for all the wrong reasons

A report last month in the Detroit Free Press that Detroit Public Schools have teamed up with Walmart to provide job training in four inner-city high schools has angered critics who say the relationship between the beleaguered school district and the behemoth discount store amounts to an attack on education.

Some also believe the plan — described as an 11-week, credit-bearing program intended to pair about 60 inner-city students with access to entry-level, after-school jobs in suburban stores — does nothing more than funnel cheap labor to the corporation and plant underprivileged youth in dead-end jobs.

Unidentified students from one of the schools, Frederick Douglass Academy, wrote of their outrage on a teacher-posted Web site:

"We the students of Frederick Douglass Academy are not going to accept the attack on our education! Allowing Walmart to come into our school, set up elective ‘classes,’ and the (sic) offer 30 Walmart jobs, is an insult. … The Frederick Douglass Affirmation proudly states ‘We are determined to get the root of success, not just the fruit of success.’ When we decided to come to this school, we were deciding to make our dreams and aspirations a reality. We came here to learn and grow. We wanted our lives to have meaning, and we were going to be somebody. Frederick Douglass Academy was built to create leaders. Its purpose is to give students the opportunity to get a real education and get into schools like U of M. Frederick Douglass Academy is a beacon of hope for many Detroiters. We cannot let our hopes be trampled. We deserve MUCH more than Walmart.”

As I read the statement I was livid: “What have they done to deserve anything?” I railed. “These kids are leaving school thinking the world owes them their dreams. The world owes them nothing. It was here first.”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was only against the hubris of youth and their perception of the situation, not their position on the situation.

I don’t shop at Walmart for reasons that include my opinions of its history and its employment practices. But I have to admit the reasons also include unpleasant shopping experiences, such as dirty stores, long lines and poor customer service.

On the whole, I would agree with the students that being trained to stock shelves at Walmart isn’t what anyone should call education. Nor is it appropriate for such a course to be on the taxpayers’ dime.

When students graduate completely unprepared for higher education, Walmart will train them anyway. And they should train their employees on their own dime.

Learning how to be a cashier at Walmart isn't the same thing as learning how the supply chain works in the retail industry.

Had this plan included other retailers and various industries, I might not be as inclined to object. Students may get their first work experience in the stockrooms, perhaps, but if we want to call it an education they should also be in the board rooms and the buying rooms as well. They should meet the deal makers. They should see exactly what goes into buying and selling an entire spectrum of products from the high-end to the dirt cheap.

And yet, as I read the students’ words about hopes and dreams and aspirations I couldn’t help but think that they’ve missed an important understanding of success. Schools don't create leaders, leaders create themselves. The students have to find their own way.

The “root of success” is rhetoric concerning an ethos of stability and perseverance, which requires a network of small, unseen fibers to support a larger structure. No single experience should topple that structure. What these children are plucking from education is bitter fruit. There should be no shame in starting at the bottom. There is no shame in honest work.

If these deserving scholars really believe the people who work in Walmart are nobodies, what they still have to learn only life can teach them.

The world IS their oyster.

But they must come to understand what that metaphor's message really means: An oyster that opens on its own isn’t worth eating.

Without the right tools -- without a work ethic, without usable experience, without some real understanding of how society actually works as opposed to how we think it should work – we’d never be able to claw our way into that oyster, we’d just throw it away.

On the Web

http://detroitteacher2.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/students-speak-out-against-walmart-work-program/

When theater of the absurd stops being funny

"You will NOT believe what happened," Ittybit says emphatically as she dumps her coat and boots on the entryway floor and runs toward the refrigerator.

"Melanie’s mom SHOT her," she says, rummaging through the crisper.

"What? Where?"

"On the balcony. ... It was an accident," she says, crunching a celery stalk. "She had just gotten married and they didn’t even have a honeymoon! Melanie didn’t even know her mother WAS Carly."

"See, more effective gun control would keep those accidents from happening," I say, closing the door she left open.

She watches "Days of Our Lives," with her babysitter.

I don’t really see much wrong with it, to be honest. My mom watched daytime dramas, too. We always laughed at how Salem must be the amnesia capital of the world.

I still laugh about how my husband found out the twists and turns of naptime adventure, for a non-napping kindergartener anyway, had nothing to do with blankets in a playpen.

"I think the babysitter might be pregnant," my husband whispers to me one night before dinner.

"I don’t think so," I say a little confused. "That’s something I’m sure she would have told me. What makes you think that?"

"Oh … It was something Ittybit said to her as we were leaving … something about seeing a doctor about a baby."

"Oh that. Tat’s just Greenlea ... or Melanie ... or Gormley ... or somebody-E ...

"Who?"

"Characters on the soaps she watches."

He starts to laugh. The television addict in him knows what serial plots can do to a person home during prime daytime hours.

At least there’s humor in the absurd.

Since Ittybit started school, however, real-life plot twists and heartaches have encroached upon her little corner of the world. Illness, death, divorce are all words we’ve started to define. She’s having trouble understanding the concept of two moms or two dads, despite knowing kids who have them.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why anyone would want to get married.

I know there’s a bunch of folks out there who think in narrow and sanctimonious terms: "Marriage is between man and a woman. Period. End of discussion."

They talk about the children and families as if homosexuals don’t have either.

I don’t think that way.

I usually object to the kind of thinking that is drawn with such straight and narrow lines. For that matter, I usually object to any line of thinking that locks out other thought.

Thoughts, in my opinion, shouldn’t be set in stone. Thoughts have to be free to roam, and they should keep their bags packed.

But I’m just one person who can’t help noticing that the people making a mockery of marriage aren’t characters on television. They aren’t even people who can’t or won’t buy in to the rite of passage. Marriage is hurt by the folks who enter it so poorly prepared to handle difficult times.

I thought about all of this when Ittybit came home from school, kicked off her boots, rummaged through the refrigerator, and announced that the police had visited one of her friends’ houses.

A real friend.

"So-and-So’s dad put his hands around So-and-So’s mom’s neck," she said, matter-of-factly. "Now he can’t go to their house anymore."

We’re always telling her the difference between real and fiction. This is

"That won’t happen to us, will it?"

"This won’t happen to us," I say as calmly as possible, trying to be reassuring.

I don’t know what else to say. This isn’t theater of the absurd. This is the just the beginning of one child’s awareness that everything is not always fine.

And it’s the story of another little girl, who came to school with a heart-wrenching tale to tell, that illustrates the sad truth behind heightened security measures in our schools: The most common danger to children isn’t a stranger, or a character on a television screen. The most likely source of harm comes from the people already in their lives, even their own parents.

Have glue gun, will fix ... anything

There will come a day, probably sooner than I'd like, when I will remind Ittybit of the love she once had for hand-me-downs.

Whenever we receive a bag of new-to-her things, it musters the same excitement as Christmas morning. She combs through the piles, sniffing the duds and commenting about the scent of another family's detergent. "Oh ... It even smells like her," she’ll swoon with a soft sweater pressed next to her face.

Having togs worn previously by some of our friends’ daughters - girls she would have loved to have as big sisters – is, to her, akin to wearing the sweat-stained, cast-away t-shirt of a rock star.

Major. Rock Star.

Sometimes I can’t believe she allows me to wash them.

The only problem comes when an item meets the end of its useful life before she's ready to let it go.

She slipped her foot in the pretty pink boots, and she spoke in warm tones about the cozy faux fur. They were the perfect size for her to slip her already-ballet-slippered feet into so she could be the first one ready for dance class. I noticed the broken bit on the boot's toe as she was shuffle-ball-changing around the dance studio in taps.

For some reason the evil spirit that is alive and well in the promise of shopping forced me to mention her need for new boots aloud.

Big mistake.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You. Have. To. Fix. It. You. Have. To. Fix. It.”

“ThesearethebestbootsI'veeverhad. These were Anna's Boots! You. Have. To. Fix. It.”

I frown and look back down at the boots.

She doesn't understand that we don't live in an age where cobblers or tinkers hang out shingles.

Things aren't made to last. They're made to be replaced ... usually long before the ink on their warrantee has dried. We generally don't even bother to force manufacturers to abide by their promises because replacement items are so cheap it's not worth the effort or the return shipping fees.

She doesn’t care. She wants THOSE boots and not NEW boots, not even if they looked like THOSE boots.

Snow is coming and we are at an impasse.

"Maybe we can put a patch in there ..." my mother suggests.

"Maybe we can coat it in some kind of adhesive ..." my husband ponders.

"Yes! YES! A patch. A hesive. Anything so that I can still wear my boots," trumpets my daughter.

I leave it for tomorrow. It's late and I still have hope I can get to the store before snow hits the ground. Perhaps she'll see the beauty in a brand new pair if I can find a similar style or something with razzmatazz, as my dad would say.

But in the morning there is snow on the ground and her boots are still waiting for the elves of yesteryear to mend them.

My husband plugs in the hot melt glue gun and gets to work.

"Oh ... thank-you-thank-you-thank-you," she gushes as he helps her on with the boots.

"The fix is not going to last," he warns her. "You will have to get new boots before long."

"Are you trying to break my heart?" she asks playfully.

"No. But you are going to break mine," he replies, and then tousles her hair as she runs for the bus.

"Good thing we have hot glue, dad. We can always fix it."

Ode to a man who brought the world to Chatham

Although the words I’ve shared with Tony Quirino, for the most part, were exchanged through the ticket window as I slid a few dollars toward him and he slid my single ticket toward me, when I read the news of his untimely death last month it felt as if I had lost a family member.

I only vaguely remember the first movie I saw at Quirino’s Crandell Theatre, Chatham’s historic, family-owned film house for more than five decades. It was either "Snow White" or "Cinderella," and my parents had fought a quiet battle over which of them would take us. Disney was always a favorite of theirs.

Back in the 1970s Tony’s father, Anthony, was behind the tiny window in the theater’s entry hall. His mother, Minnie, stood smiling behind the concessions counter. I always got popcorn: salt, no butter. My sister always got Good n’ Plenty.

I saw so many movies at the rural cinema it would be easier to name the ones I didn’t see from its lever seats. And even some of those — the scary ones I’d watched through my fingers or while looking into the faces of the folks behind me — were there as well.

My window to the world came through that big dark room. In it I always sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the big clock near the screen to strike the end of the previews. The lights would go down, and the place would seem to melt away.

Those of us old enough to remember the release of Star Wars can tell you where we were when we’d seen it. I can tell you where I sat. I was fifth row, 12th seat. I was jealous of my sister, who’d gotten to sit in the balcony, opened special for the overflow crowd. I have no idea where my parents ended up. It was the first time we’d ever been separated for a film. I felt big.

In the dark, in that place, I traveled the nation and the world. I got to see glimpses of outer space — not to mention puzzle at alien languages and actor hairdon’ts -- from a seat in the balcony eventually. But the tiny theater brought more than mere locations to me it brought me to my generation visiting the nowhere towns of Hill Valley and Shermer, Illinois.

Over the years I’ve come to understand most places and people through sitting in the dark of a theater.

In Chatham, it seemed, no one ever laughed when a movie was funny. By the same token, no one seemed to mind a bad movie when the price was only a few bucks per ticket.

Still, walkouts would be offered their money back, or so my mom once told me. She laughed and told him she wouldn’t hear of it. The fault was hers for not reading the previews for a movie called "Porkies."

When Tony took over the family business I was graduating high school and moving on to college. I still came back for shows. I brought my friends, and we laughed and talked, and got shushed from time to time … though never by Tony.

I didn’t know then, nor until I read his obituary, of his life outside that small window. I didn’t know he’d served in Vietnam, or that he’d been decorated in the war. I didn’t know he had once owned a repair shop or that he could fix just about anything.

All I knew was his face and its far-away smile.

Even though the years passed quickly, time stood still at that ticket window. My single admission turned into four tickets two adults, two children. His hair had turned silver, but his smile was unchanged.

He always seemed to be enjoying the show.

On friends and friction

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it: I don’t like Olivia.

She’s got some very nice qualities, but aside from being inquisitive, intelligent and assertive, she’s also smug, self-centered and greedy. And just because she’s a pig doesn’t mean she gets a pass.

Yet, saying “I don’t like her” — or Caillou or Junie B. or Baby Bear for that matter — feels akin to saying the unspeakable: that I don’t like one of Ittybit’s real-life friends.

We all have our pet peeves. Mine, when it comes to fictional children, are bratty behavior, whining and speech impediments.

Many educators think children’s programming that focuses on how real kids feel, and that depicts adults taking a child’s feelings seriously, helps kids handle real-life situations by teaching empathy, tolerance, coping methods as well as basic social skills.

But I can’t help but think there’s something wrong with a kid (I mean pig) who, night after night, is tucked into bed with an “I love you anyway.”

It just seems as if these characters never break character. Olivia hates her “Little Bother;” Caillou whines whether he’s happy or sad; Junie B. never apologizes for being mean … and no one is helping Baby Bear pronounce his Rs.

So that’s my dilemma.

As a parent, I know all kids have moments of bratty-ness. I know they have tons of difficult emotions from anger and fear to jealousy and disappointment. I’ve even learned, to my great chagrin, that happiness — in any number of over-exuberant presentations — can have an annoyance factor that is off the charts.

And as a parent I would never restrict my child’s access to someone with speech impairment, but Baby Bear is a television character geared toward preschoolers, a set that I would assume is more needing of accurate pronunciation than tolerance training.

I’ve known my alphabet for ages, yet by the end of the little bruin’s segment, I’m even asking the kids to “Pwease tuwn off Seasame Stweet and come in for wunch.”

The idea that we’re educating our children through bedtime reading and “quality television,” though, seems to make those otherwise unspeakable decisions a moral imperative.

And that’s the rub. WE are educating our children, not the books or television programs. When we read we intone how we feel. We ask how it makes them feel. Sometimes we lead our kids and sometimes they lead us.

I don’t want my child to speak in whine. I don’t want her to strong-arm her friends or treat every new situation with resistance and scorn. Each word I read at bedtime about the “Stupid Smelly Bus” or “that May,” has me fearful that I might be kissing Ittybit goodnight for the last time, and that Junie B. will be joining us for breakfast.

I’m choosing to hope for the best. Junie B. is likely to join us from time to time. When she does I’ll be ready for her. At least I know the ending.

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com or read more online at www.troyrecord.com, click on “Blogs.”

It’s a ‘January Tree’ this year, hoping for hearts next

The brown needles were needling me. They were also stabbing anyone who walked in stocking feet on any floor in our house. Needles have a tendency to travel.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to take down the Christmas tree.

It was a tiny defeat, for sure. I don’t remember any tree of mine — artificial, live or in some middling phase of its demise — being dismantled before February.

It has become a something of a family joke: "How long is their tree going to stay around? We have a Christmas Tree but they have a January Tree, and Valentine’s Tree and soon my guess is they’ll be working on a Mother’s Day Tree … that’s if the house doesn’t burn down first."

It’s not funny, I know. It could happen. And as someone who unplugs the toaster oven when not in use, I should know better … or at least know enough not to tempt fate.

I often tell people that I’m lazy. But that’s not really true. Sure, everyone is keen on decorating the tree when the spirit of the season is fresh and new but once the bow is off the package, few (compulsive folks not withstanding) are as eager to painstakingly re-wrap the trappings and pack them away.

But I’ve given up on the careful storing of holiday artifacts years ago. Sure, I started out meticulously wrapping each ornament in tissue and separating them with sheets of cardboard, be they delicate glass orbs or layers of felt glued together with pom-poms and sequins.

However, with each progressive year I shave off a few minutes more on my takedown time. This year I broke down and bought an enormous plastic tub – the kind with a snapping lid and festive holiday colors -- and recycled the myriad cardboard boxes, marked "X-Mas" in Sharpie, that have been chasing me from apartment to apartment, home to home, during the last two decades.

I had condensed all the breakables into three smaller boxes within 27 minutes, then jammed the boxes into the storage tub and padded them with the soft, stuffed or impossible to destroy curios.

A few more minutes and the three strands of tiny twinkle lights that had been wrapped around the pine were wrapped (wrist-to-coil action) and stowed with room to spare.

No, it’s not the chore.

It’s just the idea of going to all the trouble — knowing at the outset that the thing you tethered to the top of your car had been happily living a farm-fed life for five to seven years — of dragging a living tree in from the outdoors spending an hour (or seven) getting it positioned straight in the stand (even if you give up and accept its crookedness as a natural quirk) and then putting on it every piece of glitter you’ve collected since your preschool days, forcing you to walk down memory lane for the *mumbles-a-number* time. ... All to have it wither and die in the span of three weeks’ time.

After having gone through all that, I want to HAVE this tree for longer than a few weeks. I want to read by its light on the Epiphany and hang hearts on its limbs for Valentine’s.

It seems so simple to me: I just want to enjoy every brown, crinkling sap-oozing day for as long as I can.

I want to vacuum up needles for an eternity.

No one really wants TV to take them away

On weekend mornings I have a hard time getting off the couch. Even for coffee.

The kids play around me in a low growl that is a mix of fighting and fidgeting over various tiny toys. Any one of which is destined to puncture my sole if I were to venture into the kitchen for a warm-up. I stay put drinking cold dark roast and hoping the caffeine will start to do its work soon.

Every so often Ittybit ventures over to the place where I’m entrenched and tries to coax me out of my imposing quiet.

"Will you put the wings on my Angel Polly Pockets doll for me?" she asks.

"Do you have a ‘please’ for that request?"

"Please?" she says sweetly.

I reiterate my long-standing mantra -- Moms Don’t Play -- but I take the doll and try to affix the wings.

It’s not working, they won’t stay put.

I hand her pocket doll back with an apology and a recommendation. "I think you might have to hold your thumb on her back when you play with her to keep her wings stable."

She narrows her eyes at my idea, a look I know to be questioning my sanity, but disappears upstairs.

Small objects have a tendency to disappear around her brother, who is heading over to the couch full-speed ahead in his too-big shoes.

"Mommeee! Want watch ‘Diego GO!’"

My head hurts at the temples.

I click on the T.V.

I want them to play quietly. Be invisible. I want to finish my coffee. "Television … take them away."

But instead of the colorful ’toons they are used to, pictures of real suffering fill the screen.

What is this? Ittybit asks, lured back into the living room by the sound of television voices.

"This is a news story about a disaster that happened in a place called Haiti," I tell her.

My husband comes in from his desk and sits next to me. The Champ climbs into his lap, bringing with him a car he’s dismantled and packed its trunk with pilfered parts of Lego sets and other toys he’s gleaned. Ittybit sits in mine, forgetting her brother’s recent trespasses.

They don’t ask me to change the channel. No one can look away.

"What happened?," she asks. "Why are those people living outside? Why can’t they go home?"

We answer as best we can. There was an earthquake. Their homes are destroyed. Places nearby that could help them were destroyed, too. They have to wait for help from elsewhere. Help from elsewhere takes time.

The announcements from the broadcast keeps coming as I try to explain: No water. No food. Survivors still buried in rubble. Hope diminishing by the day.

A doctor talks about the suffering, the lack of supplies and infrastructure. The numbers are hard to picture.

On the screen a little boy screams in agony and shock, "why me," as he lays gripping a stranger’s hand in a make-shift triage center. He is waiting for someone he recognizes to comfort him. His parents are gone.

That was too much for ittybit, who understood the sentiment and urgency if not the boy’s words. It was too much for me, too. In that moment, that boy was my child, too.

They cut to a commercial. … A woman talks about dessert cups.

Ittybit brightens as her brain switches deftly from the confusion of what she’s just seen to a familiar game she plays with her father.

"What are they trying to sell me," daddy, she asks?

"Crazy, isn’t it?" He answers. "People are suffering in Haiti and here in America we’re trying to figure out what pudding choice is best."

We are silent again switch off the television, get off the couch. I can’t keep them away from the world or its suffering forever. But I really don’t want the television to take them away.

Love, marriage and Greek tragedy

"Mommy? Will you play wit me? Mommy, come here! Mommy, where’s the DEE? Want to watch race cars on Dee. Mommy, where’s superboy cape? Mommy, where’s cat? Mommy! dog toots! Mommy? mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy … MOM Eeeeeeee!

Mommy? Where AH you?!

Mommy? Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy mommy mommy-mommy-mommy mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy … mooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

He can’t find me.

He can’t find me because I am sitting on a stepstool with my knees up to my neck, wedged under the kitchen counter, sipping a warm beverage as I hide from him.

It’s not as if we’re alone in the house. His father is sitting right beside him as the little king yells for his cape, and he yells for his bowl and he yells for his superheroes three.

But dad isn’t mom. For all The Champ cares at this moment in his wee little life, dad is merely a part of the décor that cooks dinner.

This developmental foible of childhood weighs on the man.

FATHER: "What am I? Chopped meat?"

OEDIPUS REX: "Yes."

MOTHER: "Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t even know what chopped meat is."

It seems as though I spend a lot of my family time reassuring the man that the small folks love him at the same instant the small people announce, loudly and without qualification, that they don’t want him to make their lunch, or play in the snow, or do a craft, or change a diaper …

Well, that last one he’s grateful for, but the other things make him feel as if I am the rock star and he is just a wad of gum waiting to be scrapped off an old shoe.

The books never mentioned this. Hollywood never lets on that Mom Love actually competes with Dad Love, and Mom Love has an early advantage.

Such is the case when the little lord font-le-boy toddles into my office, picks up our framed wedding picture from the bookshelf and starts describing what he sees: This is you. This is daddy. HEY! You married? I not want you married."

Sometimes dads are an acquired taste.

I try not to smile, though some small part in my cold, black heart thumps wildly at the idea that the kids want me to read books, and make crafts, and watch them play … and change diapers.

Well, not that last part.

I know this preference is just part of some developmental blueprint that in some previous era would ensure their survival. Such as way back in the 1950s, when fathers knew where babies came from but had not likely seen the event first hand.

Of course, I think about that and wonder how mid-century moms survived if all dad did when he came home from work was bellow for his slippers from children he could see but not hear.

It may be a different show, but I bet the sound effects are pretty much the same.

“Mommymommymommmymommy.”

"This, too, shall pass," I tell myself. I tell him.

"It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. He cries when you leave, but then he’s ok. He even has fun."

Now it’s my turn to feel like something stuck to a sore spot.

"A Band-Aid?"

"Or a Buzz Lightyear sticker? Take your pick."

Maybe rocket science isn’t out of reach

Experience — often lack of it — really is the hobgoblin of all life pursuits, isn’t it?

There are times when a person’s complete familiarity with a particular skill can undermine their focus, therefore putting them at risk of a stunning failure, sometimes even bodily harm. ... Picture someone working with a chainsaw … No. Don’t. Don’t want anyone having nightmares.

Suffice it to say that for the most part we don’t worry about what we know, we worry about what we don’t know.

I was thinking about this as I stood at the sewing counter of a local fabric store, asking the ladies what supplies a beginner might need … you know, seeing as how I bought my six-year-old a real sewing machine for Christmas … and seeing as how I don’t know the first thing about sewing anything besides replacement buttons (and even then the results aren’t pretty).

I could see from the expressions on their faces, they thought I was in way over my head.

Of course, I might have been projecting just a bit with my built-in facial expression read-o-meter. After all, it was the biggest shopping season of the year, and they are, in fact, sales folks. Just because they offered Mom–and-Me sewing classes and tried to sell me an $80 sewing kit doesn’t mean they think I’m a dolt who will sew my own fingers to a pillow project.

I thanked them and asked them to point me in the direction of thread.

I’ve muddled through before. It’s not the worst thing in the world for a person to do.

Not that muddling through hasn’t been mortifying at times. I’ve been critiqued for the way I’ve dug holes in the garden the way I’ve hammered a nail and even the way I mop floors. I’m been shown the proper way to bowl, the best way to stir batter and which side of the roll the bath tissue should face.

Yet sometimes winging it is a gratifying experience.

For instance ... the time I stood saucer-eyed in the tile aisle at Home Depot, discussing supplies with an equally clueless friend who had graciously offered to help me tackle a tiling project. Tile, check mastic, check grout? One box? Two? What about a tile cutter? Our conversation didn’t seem so out of left field until I felt a tap on my shoulder and some smirking woman thrust her card in my hand … "just in case your DIY project didn’t work out."

I didn’t give that woman or her card a second thought until I was standing with my friend outside of the finished job. She’d cut. I’d placed. It wasn’t perfect, but we’d done it ourselves and we’d done it together.

But I gave the fabric store ladies some extra thought. My finished craft projects always look like something the cat coughed up. Sewing may as well be rocket science.

And yet Christmas morning came, and the sewing machine made its way out of its wrapping paper to the dinning room table.

The reckoning was at hand.

I read and follow the instructions. Soon we had the thing humming along.

Without following a pattern, without measuring or cutting straight lines, we spent the afternoon putting it all together.

The designs we came up with were certainly imperfect. Our seams were crooked, prints didn’t match, our structures were lopsided. But when ittybit hugged her new pillow — an under stuffed patchwork of an indeterminate geometric shape — it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com

Wii wish you a happy, healthy New Year

I stepped on the "Balance Board" and a mechanical voice protested: "Oh!"

The games hadn’t even begun and I had the distinct feeling I’d already failed by hurting the machine.

"Stand still" the voice admonished as I tried to center my feet in the rectangles. "We can’t find you … please step off and we will reboot the system."

Nintendo’s tiny army of virtual trainers mean business.

I try again. Another protest emanates from the console as I step up. "Oh!?" it says with increasing alarm.

Can I be getting worse at this? I shift my weight again.

I half expect the voice to become shrill: "What is wrong with you? STAND STILL ALREADY, WILL YOU?!"

Bling, the machine chimes with my first success. "OK. Got you."

"Measuring …"

Bling. The voice happily tells me my weight and my body mass index as I try to lower the volume (Shush — let’s not tell the whole house, huh?) It then insults me a few more times as it leads me through a routine of basic balancing games.

"You’re pretty shaky, aren’t you? Do you trip a lot when you walk?"

Then, from nowhere, there is a drum roll and spotlights. The Wii Fit Plus is getting ready to tell me my Wii Fit Age.

Bling. "57."

"It is mocking me.

"People like you are the reason I don’t go to the gym," I tell the voice.

My husband laughs. I shush him, too.

I run through more preliminaries: I choose an avatar with little difficulty. (I say "little difficulty" because I didn’t bother to personalize "Figure F.") In fact, I consider the consumer satisfaction I would have had were I able to make my character look less human. "Too bad they don’t let you pick animals," I grouse.

"Oh, I could totally see your avatar being a cougar," my husband laughs as I contemplate throwing the nunchuk at his head. I decide it’s not a good idea. This hateful thing was expensive, the last thing I want to do is replace it.

He disappears, realizing he’s better off wrestling the kids into their pajamas than jabbing at me from the peanut gallery. (Men have been eviscerated by women for lesser transgressions.)

The computer tells me I need to pick a trainer. Do you want a woman or a man? "Definitely a woman," I say aloud as I try aiming the controller at the screen. "I don’t want any man, not even a computer generated one, commenting on my posterior."

Like magic the Barbie-esque figure appears on the screen, her hands on her waist and her hip jutting slightly outward.

"Wait? Did Santa bring us Wii Fit Pole Dancing or something?" I grumble, thinking of the programmers, in their geeky glasses and pocket protectors, designing the girl of their dreams instead of one that might actually exist.

I follow along as the perky trainer twists, bends, reaches and balances.

In between each exercise she takes time to critique my performance. She contradicts herself with each assessment. She tells me balance isn’t my strong suit, then tells my I have excellent balance. She tells me I’m weak and strong.

I hate her.

But I keep going.

Side twists.

Plank.

Sit ups.

Push ups, side plank, push ups.

Lunges.

And then my husband hands me a wet towel containing my screaming, flailing boy.

"He didn’t want to get dressed for bed," he says, dusting his hands of the chore.

The woman on the television notices I’m just standing on the balance board. She doesn’t see that I am trying to calm a grumpy lump of terry cloth.

"You have to do the exercises to get the benefit. …

"These exercises won’t do themselves you know."

I step off the Balance Board and head upstairs.

"Where do you think you are going?" chides the voice.

A few minutes later both kids are asleep and I go back to the workout. I turn on the machine and it welcomes me back. I return to lunges, where I left off.

The male trainer appears on the screen.

"I hope you don’t mind. We’ve had to substitute trainers for this exercise. Your regular trainer is unavailable."

I stand there blinking.

"How can a computer-generated trainer be unavailable? Did she go out for a virtual latte?"

"Now that is impressive!" my husband whistles. "Even your imaginary trainer is avoiding you."

Ghosts of Christmas past, present, future

Lap, lap, lap …

"The cat is drinking out of the tree water again," shouts Ittybit in mock exasperation.

"CAT! Dinking! War! Gan," yells her tiny echo.

It is kitty’s first Christmas, and because of this each day when I get home I take the low-hung ornaments from the floor and position them higher on our evergreen.

"Trees like to share," I say, thanking a higher power for the fact that I haven’t come home to find the Frasier fir upended, ornaments smashed and littered like landmines in the family room.

It is enough work to wrestle the thing into its stand and a straight position. Having to secure it in place with fishing line and duct tape would just dampen the joy of the season.

"Lap, lap, lap."

Our dear, old, incontinent dog, who has been selectively feigning deafness for the past 15 years, perks up.

She loves the cat.

I shouldn’t tell you this, because it goes against the natural order of her sensibilities as a life-long dog’s dog, but she REALLY loves the cat.

She would knock the kids over to protect the little black feline.

She also loves cat toys and cat food and all manner of cat antics that are surprisingly fun to watch.

Ok … watching the cat all hunkered down in front of the cabinet of the kitchen sink waiting for mice to emerge is similar to watching paint dry, but the other things … the misjudging distances as the feline flies across the room, from one ledge and *almost* to another, makes the dog giggle just a tiny bit. I can tell.

It’s also a hoot when the furry little beast ping-pongs off the window in a failed attempt to catch a bird in the yard.

Not that I’m laughing.

It’s hard to laugh when I look at the old girl these days.

Not long after we decorated the tree, her hind legs gave up their efforts to make the nightly trek upstairs.

Her incessant barking, however, let us know she was hostile and that she considered these appendages traitors. I know she’s feeling her age, and that this very well may be her last Christmas with us.

My eyes sting just typing that out.

This is a dog, you see, that exemplifies my life. She wasn’t the cutest in the litter. She wasn’t particularly friendly or social. But she was sensitive and loyal. And smart.

She could open doors, steal food without jingling her collar, she always figured things out.

She never really seemed like a dog so much as an annoying little brother who had diabolical plans for your best toys … And who always made it up to you.

"Lap, lap, lap."

In a flash, the dog is on her feet and chasing the cat from under the tree. Around the dining table they go. The dog as fast as she can, the cat slower than usual. Soon the dog has the cat pinned — neck to floor — in the living room. An imaginary referee counts to 10, and she releases the now soggy cat.

There’s no barking, no hissing, no hard feelings.

In a few minutes, when I look at the tree, the two of them are laying underneath it, looking up.

Lions and tires and kitten hats, oh my

The phone rang at 6 a.m.

I bolted upright in bed and immediately thought of Olympia Dukakis.

"Who’s Dead?" I growled in my best Brooklyneese.

Robocall.

Turns out the school day was killed by six inches of snow.

When I was a little kid, a person had to listen to the radio for what seemed like hours before they knew for sure whether they’d have to get out of their pajamas and slog to the bus.

"I think they closed the school … but there was static around the Es … I have to listen as it loops around again."

Television stations got into the school closing game when I was a tweenager, and we fixed our eyes on the ticker that traveled across the bottom of the screen as the names of the districts whizzed past faster than credits on a Disney animated movie.

It occurs to me that the death of this particular school day harbors another tiny demise: My kid will probably never bound into my room whooping and hollering that school is cancelled (YIPPEE!!).

I’ll be telling her about her time off once I get my breathing in check after the shock of a pre-dawn phone call.

It also occurs to me that being an adult on the first snow day of the season is about as fun as shoveling heavy, wet snow uphill in bare feet.

Not only do you have to dig yourself out and get to work, but now you have to get a sitter, fight your way through snow drifts the school bus wouldn’t risk AND then wait in long lines to get your winter tires changed over with the others who had bet Climate Change would make that little chore obsolete this year.

While the kids are eating snow off the car (DON’T EAT SNOW OFF THE CAR) you stand there with your snow brush dusting the windshield off into your shoes.

You think you should maybe wear boots, but then you’d just have to go back in the house.

"GO BACK AND GET YOUR BOOTS" your mom-voice chastises you. But as an adult, you ignore it.

Your kids however, look a few feet up from the footwear and wonder at what’s not on your cranium.

"Mommy? Where’s your hat?"

"Oh … I don’t know. … No time for that now. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go."

She hands you a black, fleece hat with pink ears and tells you can wear it. She’s got an extra one.

You thank her and take it, putting it into your pocket "for later," you tell her.

It will be alright. You’ll get the snows, you’ll have greater traction. It will be warm in the car and you will just go from there into a warm building. Everything will be fine.

Your car tire won’t blow out on the highway right after you get the tires changed.

You won’t be stuck by the side of an interstate in foot-high drifts as you wait for your husband to come and rescue you your Knight in Carhart coverall armor.

No. That NEVER happens.

But as you are standing by the side of that road with snow seeping into your shoes, you can be assured that when the police cruiser arrives to make sure your are OK (and that you have assistance on the way) you may not have the proper footwear but you will have a stylish hat.

In sibling rivalry, batteries always included

I don’t care what implements of torture you use — squeaky mice, feather ticklers, New Bark Times — no one is going to get me to buy Christmas presents for our pooch.

Likewise, I will not cave to the pressure of pet parenthood and procure Chi-chi-chi-chia Cat Grass as a yuletide gift for our resident kitten, either.

Ok. Ok. So I bought her a holiday costume that will make our furry Felion look like a tiny reindeer (should she retract her claws long enough for me to Velcro the thing around her noggin and snap a picture) but that’s really a present for me. I draw the line at presents for pets.

Not when the pair we harbor will have spent the majority of the month of December ransacking the house, toppling the tree and unwrapping the presents they find underneath.

Ingrates.

Sure, pets are an important part of our household, but I’m not showing my love for them by hanging a tiny red mittens or faux fur green paws next to the kids’ stockings and filling them with raw hide and catnip mice. It’s just too dangerous. One might end up mixing human and animal treats.

I kid you not, there are dog treats out there dressed up as chocolates and gingerbread people that would fool any dedicated sweet tooth.

Don't believe me? Check out pamperedpawgifts.com and get a load of their "Wolfhound Clusters."

I am the grinch. I know.

My sister, on the other hand, is the kind-hearted animal lover who, as Santa Claws, has been known to wake up early on Christmas morning and brave icy temperatures just to bring horses at her favorite riding stable a few Christmas carrots. Not to mention shelling out big bucks to bring our dog a raw hide bone that would choke a brontosaurus.

She would also be the one who is genetically programmed to seek out and purchase the most annoying toys for the non-furry creatures in our household for whom she plays Auntie Claus. Since she has no children of her own she has the advantage of ineffective retaliation.

I'd especially like to thank her for the sweet little cheer leading doll that mechanically bleats out something I can't quite understand but think may be a little “blue,” if you know what I mean.

I don't know.

I DO know, however, that as The ParentTM, not to mention Younger Sister, it is my job to complain bitterly about the gifts and to try and persuade her to seek out educational toys. ... Quiet, non-messy educational toys.

You know. ... To make my life easier.

Of course I roll my eyes a little when I see the full-sized keyboard, complete with disco, hip-hop and a-tonal jazz presets.

You would, too, if for the next six months or until the batteries prematurely stop working (or inexplicably disappear all together) the only noise you hear will be wafting out from the toy synthesizer.

She never fails. As the kids unwrap the precious contraband, I can see on my sister's face that she's thinking the same thing.

All season long she plots. All season long I ponder what she's plotting.

But all that's on the outside. On the inside I'm thinking ... I would have bought that nightmare of a gift, too, if I were Auntie Claus.

We all have our roles to play. Mine, until the sun shines on our Christmas morning, anyway, will be practicing my game face for what she'll come up with next. I'm pretty sure I'm ready.

But if the gift du jour turns out to be a pipe organ for cats that plays 'Who Let The Dog's Out," she's toast next year.

I may even have to offer her a delightful little truffle, strangely named "Wolfhound Clusters."

Sleeping, awakening through the night

I vaguely remember the last time I slept through the night.

It was the last Saturday in November.

It was a fluke made possible by a stomach bug and my husband’s pity.

Prior to that, the last time I recall sleeping six consecutive hours was a few weeks before The Champ was born.

Lately my state of sleep deprivation has been so horrible, I've actually begun to miss the real baby baby-days of maternity leave. Back then naps just seemed constant and an appropriate amount of sleep could be achieved by collecting it throughout a 24-hour cycle.

The night routine these days, however, goes something like this:

6 p.m. Dinner.

7 p.m. Bath. Act out a pre-apocalyptic version of Waterworld using two wooden salad bowl "boats" and three bendy straws. Brush Teeth. Dress for bed. (No one is really sure which chore is done in which order as most of the time pajamas are wet).

8 p.m. Reading.

8:30 p.m. Bed.

8:30 until ? Mom (sometimes dad) sleeps in toddler bed until sleep sets in. Could be five minutes could be an hour and five minutes. It's a crapshoot.

10 p.m. (regardless of when child fell asleep) Parent will unpretzel them self from the sleep position made famous by a sloth in the Movie Ice Age, and tiptoe downstairs to finish one of 3,000 ordinary household chores that have piled up.

10 p.m. and two seconds Itty-bitty will awake and ask for water ... or why the parent trying to sneak away down the stairs didn't stop in and say a final "good night."

10:30 p.m. Parent who may (or may not) have finished washing the dishes will tiptoe back upstairs and go to bed.

10:35 p.m. Dog will bark at the bottom of the stairs until one of two adult humans gets out of bed and shows the dog that the gate HAS, in fact, been left open.

11 p.m. Dog will finally settle down after walking around the second floor, looking for toilets to drink out of and food to eat.

11:05 p.m. Dog will bolt up for no reason and run to the other side of the room.

11:30 p.m. Dog will resettle.

Between midnight and 1 a.m. The Champ will wake up and start crying. He will not be consoled.

1:15 a.m. The parent who tried to get him back to sleep will bring him to bed.

1:30 a.m. The Champ will sleep.

2 a.m., 2:30 a.m., 2:45 a.m., 3 a.m., 3:15 a.m. The Champ will want to nurse.

On alternating days of the week, which might potentially line up with the tides of the moon, the dog will become incontinent and require the work of a Haz-Mat team during the above-mentioned hours as well. (Last night was one such occasion. I'll spare you the details*.)

*You are welcome.*

4 a.m. The cat will crawl into the mom's hair and lay down.

4:01 a.m. through 5:30 a.m. Mom will try to get the cat to sleep on the dad while simultaneously trying to get The Champ to fall asleep.

She will lose.

5:30 a.m. through 6 a.m. The boy will want to nurse.

6:30 a.m. until 7 a.m. The non-sleeping boy will want to sleep.

7 a.m. The mother - who no longer understands herself when she speaks — will get up, untangle the cat from her hair and try to take a shower.

7:05 a.m. The hot shower and warm suds will make the mother feel somewhat human again. She may even sing.

7:08 a.m. Ittybit — all tousle-haired and unintending – will sneak into the bathroom and sit quietly on the commode. She will say 'Good morning, mommy' and then will flush the toilet. Singing will stop.

And thus begins another day.

Tooth fairy has toughest job of all magical beings

I couldn’t look at her.

Just the sight of Ittybit wiggling her loose tooth made my stomach flip on end.

With the crooked tooth dangling mid-mouth, she resembled Tow Mater from the movie "Cars" as she gazed into the bathroom mirror. She sounded Muppet-like when she asked me to pull it.

It had been hanging by a proverbial thread for days and she was ready for it to come out.

"Please?" she begged, hoping to expedite the process as well as add to her already bloated bank account. Three previous teeth have greatly inflated the piggy bank.

Our Tooth Fairy — thanks to the combination of poor financial forethought and a surprise tooth loss — set a payment precedent with a five-dollar bill.

(Had it not been for the Tooth Fairy’s desire for a chi-chi coffee drink the day Ittybit’s first central incisor came out, the damage could have been worse).

"Let’s just let it fall out naturally," I said to her stocking feet, thinking about the dust in my wallet and my desire NOT to think about the tiny bit of flesh tethering the tooth.

It also reminds the squeamish me about all those dreams I’ve had in which I spit out every tooth, one by one.

I’m told I shouldn’t worry about loose tooth dreams. It’s just the mind’s way of dealing with anxiety and aging and saving face. Perfectly natural.

I mean, it’s not as if I fear my twice annual cleanings.

I like my dentist. He calls my teeth perfect, even though I have the tell-tale coffee stains of adulthood and an acquired lower-tooth overlap. He has a similar smile.

My orthodontist, however, would cringe if he saw me now. All that work to correct my bite lost because of vanity and the desire to stop wearing a retainer.

Our Tooth Fairy, I told myself, should save her money for the dental bills.

After all, the poor girl got saddled with her mother’s crowded bite and her father’s susceptibility to cavities. One look in Ittybit’s mouth revealed her future will be filled with tinsel and rubber bands. Not to mention drills and fillings.

Ittybit cares about none of that. The fact that a space will appear where her tooth is now dangling is omnipresent. She plays with her toys and wiggles her tooth. She colors a picture and wiggles her tooth. She pets her cat and wiggles her tooth. She dances around the room, and stops only to wiggle her tooth.

Nothing.

Breakfast will do it. She eats some toast, dozens of apple slices, even a bagel with butter … still the tooth hangs on.

"Why doesn’t the Tooth Fairy bring a new tooth brush and floss," I wonder aloud. "Probably for the same reason she has run out of singles," I answer under my breath.

"What?" asks Ittybit.

"Oh nothing."

"You know," she says, her tooth flapping as she talks, "I’ve always wondered how the Tooth Fairy gets into the house?"

I wonder why it doesn’t worry her that some strange sprite will break into our house in the dead of night, steal into her room while she’s sleeping and extract a tooth from under the pillow beneath her sleeping head.

I suppose the ‘loot’ is worth the looting.

"Oh," I wave, matter-of-factly, "It’s just magic," as if magic was something one could just grasp from the air whenever it is needed.

And with that Ittybit starts to scream and dance about.

In her hand is a tiny square, and her smile is filled with gaps.

It’s the best sight ever.

Before we cast stones, let’s look at science

Whenever something new challenges conventional wisdom or standard practice, sparks will fly.

That’s what happened this week after a federal panel advised against routine mammograms for women under 50.

The initial reaction was quick and explosive. The government, skeptics say, wants to save a dollar at the expense of women’s health. Some even smelled the putrid waft of insurance companies trying to keep more of their premium pie as they lurk in the shadow of health care reform.

Healthcare providers say the recommendation could set women’s healthcare back decades as those who would rather avoid the discomfort of a mammogram forego the test. Everyone predicts more women will die unnecessarily.

It’s understandable. We all know someone under 50 who was diagnosed with breast cancer. It may have been our mothers, our friends, ourselves or even our daughters.

We have been told time and time again that our best defense against disease is early detection.

Screening, the way we’ve always done it, we believe saves lives.

But what if it doesn’t?

What if instead, the amount of radiation healthy women accumulate from a decade of better-safe-than-sorry screenings, in fact, makes us more prone to cancer?

What if the type of cancer has more to do with our survival outcomes than just the size of it?

What if improving routine care was better?

While each of us has a story about a woman diagnosed with cancer after a routine mammogram, how many of us know people whose cancers the mammogram missed?

It happens, especially in younger women because their breast tissue is dense, making reading the tests more difficult.

According to a German study published in the British Journal of Cancer in 2007, while it appears more cancer cases are found within quality screening measures, the correlation to better outcomes couldn’t be made. The study also found that a similar amount of breast cancer cases are detected outside of mammographic screening.

While it seems true that highly technical and scientific standards in diagnostic mammography, including expert reading can improve detection of cancers, fully two-thirds of all cancers are found initially through standard care – namely clinical examination and self breast exams.

No one wants to think of their health in terms of risk and reward. No one wants insurance companies to start barring women from potentially life-saving screenings.

But by the same token, we should be pushing the scientific envelope and finding better diagnostic tools, not just tools that are good-enough.

After all, it’s not uncommon to find women who fall outside of all guidelines — in their 20s and 30s — being diagnosed with breast cancer. By sheer virtue of that, one might think we should roll forward the age of screening instead of shoving it back, yet we must ask ourselves what are the risks? What are the rewards?

It seems pretty clear that mammography has been a good diagnostic tool to detect breast cancer in women since its invention in the 1960s, but it shouldn’t be the only tool in the arsenal.

Would we fear this if we didn’t all picture our insurance carriers foaming at the mouth and planning their Christmas bonuses at the savings they’ll reap at our expense?

I don’t think any of us should jump to conclusions just yet. We keep asking questions and have an open mind. If we don’t we run the risk of shutting down scientific advances to keep status quo.

We all have a little ‘Max’ inside

In the dark, I sat next to my daughter, hissing a threat:

“If you DON’T calm down, I WILL take you out of this theater and we WILL go home.”

The constant motion of her anxious body continues, as does my threat:

“AND if we leave here now there will be NO MORE MOVIES until you can BE STILL.”

Her feet stop kicking the empty seat in front of her. She stops bouncing and the annoying squeak of the generations-old theater seat beneath her falls silent.

I mean business.

The irony that I want her to have self control for a screening of “Where the Wild Things Are” — Maurice Sendak’s classic tale of childhood angst and imagination, made larger than life in Spike Jonze’s latest movie — isn’t lost on me.

Nor is the fact that I’m taking my five-year-old daughter to a PG-rated movie on a school night.

I knew the movie would have tough subject matter for a kid her age.

I knew that, unlike the original book, the cinematic exploration of Max’s psyche would delve more deeply than might seem necessary for a small boy who willfully chases a dog, clashes with his mother over eating supper and disappears into a land of makebelieve.

I knew some details would go right over her head. I also suspected other details might be surprisingly different than what I had anticipated.

I knew the movie, with its larger than life characters and special effects, might be frightening.

But I also know my daughter and her love of excitement.

And I believed Maurice Sendak — who was involved in the retelling of his beautiful and lyrical allegory — would protect his work, thus protecting his readers and the audience.

I believe. I believe. I believe.

When the lights dim and the film starts, we are introduced to Max — a 12-year-old boy in a wolf suit, brandishing a fork and chasing a cairn terrier around the living room.

The hand-held camera adds terror as Max wrestles the pet.

I am quick to doubt my inner parent.

He seems too old to be in a wolf suit. He seems too angry, too violent, too frightening.

I look at my husband. I hope this wasn’t a mistake.

I am suspending disbelief. I am suspending disbelief. I am suspending disbelief.

As I expected, Ittybit is on the edge of her seat asking questions: “Why is he doing that? He didn’t hurt the dog, did he? He’s just playing, right?”

I assure her it is the story of the Max she knows from the books. I tell her Max is a boy who gets angry and frustrated just like she does. He’s a good boy who has bad moments.

Then Max is outside, having a snowball fight with his sister’s friends. He is smiling in his war effort. He becomes the child we all wanted to be, in a childhood we all wanted to have. He is joy personified.

For the next hour and a half we were unable to look away from the screen. She kept asking questions at every scene.

“What did he say? Why did he do that? Why is he so mad?”

She connects with Max as a child would while I see him the way a mother might. For a time we are both afraid for him.

“What will happen next? Why is he crying?”

There are no easy answers. “Just because” won’t cut it. You lived it, too.

“You know how it feels when you just want to play, but no one will play with you?

“Or when your brother wrecks something you worked really hard to build? How unfair it feels when people expect you to be a big girl, and not be angry? It’s frustrating.”

She nods.

“You feel invisible.”

That can make people even more frustrated.

She knows about that, too.

Like Max, she is every child. She knows what it’s like to be told to ‘Be Still.’