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I found an old floppy disc with my initials. I was curious, so I put it in the floppy drive and looked through some of my old writings. Most were from 1999-2001. It is fascinating to read about my older kids when they were babies and toddlers. You think you won’t forget, but you do. I found the following thoughts about my now-third-grader. According to the disc, this mini-essay was created Tuesday, November 9th, 1999.
She is wearing a pair of white socks on her hands and she is eating a peeled banana. Sticky yellow film covers the socks, and tiny white cotton bits cover the banana. She is my daughter and she is two. As I watch her, I realize I am angry, amused, annoyed, and charmed, all at the same time. Only a toddler can inspire such conflicting emotions in an adult. I am pleased that she is happily eating something nutritious. Her socks are filthy, but they are pulled up to her elbows like thick white opera gloves. I sigh at her cuteness.
She has taught me that birthday candles can double as crayons, especially when the artist is using a black dishwasher door as their canvas. She has tried to convince me margarine and Coke make a delicious, satisfying breakfast. Since she discovered her love for margarine, I no longer have cubes in my butter dish—I have relief maps of the Grand Canyon where her little finger has carved trenches and rivulets.
My daughter’s hands are works of art in themselves. They are chubby and dimpled and just right for nibbling. Yes, they destroy potted plants and wield errant lipsticks over the coffee table. They have been known to hit her little brother and flush the unflushable down the toilet. But her hands have been known to pat my face lovingly as she says, “You are my cutie-mommy.†Her hands have pet soft puppies, felt daddy’s scratchy whisker face, and opened nearly every present under our Christmas trees. She learns so much everyday through her little fingers and her pink palms that I wonder where they will take her…
Will she be a healer, a nurse or doctor, tending to and comforting the sick with the cool touch of her palm on hot, worried foreheads? Will she create music on a piano that makes those listening catch their breath at her expressiveness? Maybe she will knead bread in a bakery, or eliminate bad hair days with the snip of her scissors. She could hold a firehose, drive a race car, write a story, milk a cow, or tend her garden. All of these things are possibilities—if I do my job and my hands do theirs.
One of the benefits of having a large family is that we are practically guaranteed to win at least one cake at a cake walk.
A week ago, the kids’ school had its annual Fall Family Dance. I had never heard of an elementary school hosting a dance, but the kids’ school is clearly not your average elementary school. A large laminated poster of Tom Selleck hangs in the main office.
Part of the Family Fall Dance was a cake walk, set up in the kindergarten room. We arrived at the dance about the time it started, unfashionably early. We had to walk by the kindergarten room on our way to the gym and noticed tables full of cakes but not many cake-walkers. It looked like a good time to participate.
The kids positioned themselves on a number. When the music started, seven kids walked around the circle of fifteen numbers. Five of those kids were ours. The music stopped and the teenage girl running the show pulled out a number. Nobody was standing on it. She pulled out another. Everyone held their breath. “Four?”
It was Sam. Sam, who hates cake. Sam, who hates cookies. Sam, Crown Prince of Salty Food, sworn enemy of all sweet baked goods except for an uneasy alliance with Lamar’s plain glazed donuts. Sam won a cake.
I knew I needed to provide guidance.
All the kids were genuinely happy for Sam, until we approached the cake, cookie, and pie covered tables. There were homemade brownies on paper plates, covered with Saran Wrap. Cupcakes and cakes in plastic carriers from the grocery store seemed to be the most abundant. A few cardboard cake boxes with gold embossed stickers signifying the more pricey and elaborate cakes drew my attention.
Sam, pick this one! Sam, a gingerbread cake! Gingerbread! Brownies, look, there’s brownies! Ooohhh, vanilla cupcakes. They have sprinkles, Sam! Sprinkles! Blue and orange Bronco sprinkles! Sam! Each child lobbied for their own #1 choice, the cake they would have picked had they been lucky enough to stop on #4.
Sam ignored everyone. He knew what he wanted. On the corner of a table was a bundle of Reddi-Wip, round sponge “dessert cups”, and fresh strawberries. Someone had donated a kit to make strawberry shortcakes. He ignored the sponge cakes and strawberries, completely enchanted with the can of whipped cream. “I want the whipped cream!”
It isn’t every day a kid wins a can of whipped cream at a cake walk. Sam was very happy and celebrated by dancing wildly in the gym to Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.” I think they had Sam in mind when they released it back in 1980, twenty years before his birth. It’s the only explanation for how he wore that song after winning his whipped cream.
Last night I noticed the strawberries were losing their vitality and the little cakes were about to expire, so I sliced and sugared and shook and sprayed and presented strawberry shortcakes for dessert. Sam ate his minus strawberries, minus cake. He said it was the best strawberry shortcake he ever had in his life. It was the best I ever made.
 This past Tuesday night we visited the Grossology exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We explored the grosser aspects of the human body, through hands-on, nose-on, interactive learning. Nothing was taboo—farting, burping, vomiting, pooping, sneezing, peeing, and general oozing were given the regal treatment. I learned more about the mechanics of burping than the most talented boy in an elementary school cafeteria could ever teach. 
The kids launched boogers with air cannons into a giant nose. They entered an enormous red-lipsticked Mick Jaggerian mouth and slid down the esophagus into a large stomach. They crawled through an intestinal tunnel and emerged where Mick’s lunch would eventually emerge. The landing mat was brown.
They listened to a giant, faucet shaped talking nose. Gears, pulleys, and handles were manipulated to make a stomach vomit. A giant slab of skin served as a climbing wall. The kids made their way across the wall with the help of protruding zits, cysts, blackheads, and hair follicles. Meanwhile, scientists in lab coats were happily explaining carnivores have stinky poo while herbivores don’t. Clearly, none of these scientists have driven by a feedlot recently or been in the bathroom at any vegan restaurant in Boulder, Colorado.
 The giftshop, aptly called The Gross-ery Store, was well stocked with Whoopie Cushions and stuffed microbes. We could have bought athlete’s foot, streptococcus, an adorable yellow ulcer, bad breath, stomach flu, or dust mites. My favorite was the stuffed pimple. It’s big, saucer-shaped eyes made it look like it deserved hugs and sympathy, not scorn and Oxy-10. Pimples have feelings too.
The night was a success. I now understand the sound of farts to be controlled by the diameter, pressure, and speed of vibration as it escapes. In the future I won’t blame it on barking spiders or the dog.
It’s science.
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