You have your hands full: Two!
Bless your heart: One! I know it! In the north!
Damage Control: Lowell threw his passy once and Kenneth tried to climb out without help, but fortunately, he didn't hurt himself, the groceries, or his baby brother.
Dirty looks: One woman who must not have any tolerance for children, especially ones who decide to dance in the aisle.

My actual trip was all right, all things considered. Therefore, I am hijacking my own post:

I love cable television shows. I really, really, love cable shows. My husband and I started this during the graduate school years, when we could stay up all night on weekends watching Sopranos episodes from Blockbuster while other twenty somethings were out getting trashed. The only non-cable show I enjoy right now is the Office. I have heard great things about many programs, but there is just something a little better about the quality of writing in a cable show. Who knows exactly why?

Sunday night, Showtime aired their season finale of Dexter. I am not going into details on that show, because people love or hate it. I will say that John Lithgow had a one season role and he will be missed and never forgotten. As a tribute to him and a way to say "Thank you" for a wonderful season of Dexter, I am linking the grocery store scene from Terms of Endearment for everyone's viewing pleasure. Take a moment to watch and then keep reading, but the bad language was not edited from the clip.

I am not a big Terms of Endearment fan. Deborah Winger and Shirley Maclaine drive me crazy with their obnoxious fighting. The husband makes professors look like scum. Jack Nicholson will be Jack Nicholson. I am dumbfounded as to how Deborah's character could stay at home with three kids while her husband was still working on the PHD, but maybe that was just Reaganomics. Someone should explain it to me later.

As much as I can not stand that movie, I love that scene. It's a grocery store diary! I have never run out of money at a grocery store, but I always have this fear I'll open my purse and my wallet will be sitting on the kitchen counter. I have snapped at my children in public. Usually it involves keeping one of them from doing something dangerous or finally deciding I am not buying three boxes of cheerios just so that they can each have their own. I have given in and bought junk food that I shouldn't have. I'm sure that people have changed check out aisles or rolled their eyes when they have seen us coming. There is only so much crying, begging, and dragging of boxes that childless people should have to take. Deborah Winger's Emma is taking criticism not only from the annoyed cashier, but her older son is old enough to know what is going on. How much worse could it get? Don't answer that.

Then in the middle of her humiliation, John Lithgow comes out of nowhere to save the day (and help her get even with her idiot husband later, but that isn't the point). The right people fairy came in the form of John Lithgow-and he let the cashier have it with a little more control. Nice.

This grocery store diary is dedicated to John Lithgow as Sam from Terms of Endearment, because to give him a Dexter post would be way too morbid for my readership. I hope that all moms out there who have a bad grocery store day have a "Sam" to help them out.

Keep up the good work Mr. Lithgow. Be it saving the day in the grocery store, preaching the gospel to teenagers that just want to have a prom, or killing somebody's wife in a bath tub, you do it well!!!
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My daughter has not cared about a single princess in the six years she has been on this Earth. I remember when she was about eight months old I bought her Disney Princess sippy cups. She didn’t touch them. The only time she was slightly interested in a princess was Fiona the Ogre from Shrek. Lovely. We own three princess DVDs, and they have been ignored in order for us to get our fill of the Imagination Movers. I get all kinds of protests if I suggest we watch one.

Cinderella and all her princess buddies get more mud thrown at them than a politician. I myself am guilty of this. She cleans and cooks for the sisters and the only goal is to have this big beautiful wedding and live happily ever after while everyone cries that they aren’t her? I wanted to teach my daughter not to be a “princess.” She would be a strong, intelligent, independent woman. Then she didn’t develop in the normal way. I told myself that I would be a good mom, and that I wouldn’t “expect” anything. I knew not to have high expectations before I brought her home from the hospital. I was in therapy and self-help groups growing up and I knew better. It was the little things that got me. I expected that my daughter would walk and talk, and it didn’t happen. Were my expectations too high when my 18 month old was still crawling? I didn’t know; she was my first.

About a month ago, we were going for a long drive in the car and the only DVD I could reach quickly was Cinderella. Cinderella is pretty tame. No dragons, no sharks, and no beasts being attacked by wolves. Nobody's mama is shot by a hunter. You only have to deal with a dysfunctional family, kind of pre-Harry Potter if you think about, just a nasty step-mother doting on two ugly daughters and forcing the beautiful worthy one to do their bidding. The minute I started the video the older two threw a fit, but I told them it was that or actually just stare out the windows like I had to do when I was their age. About twenty minutes into it the baby starts cracking up. I mean the kid was cackling over the mice. There is nothing more adorable than a toddler's belly laugh. Then I started laughing and the other two children start laughing, and then they loved Cinderella.

With the discovery of Cinderella, her girly girl side took over with a vengeance. She had to have the gowns and the shoes, she had to have the backpack, she wanted the dolls and she started brushing her hair. She chases her brothers around the house begging them to dance with her or help her try shoes on to see if they fit. Kenneth can fight her off but Lowell gets dragged around the playroom.

I guess I should be glad it’s Cinderella and not a different princess. Cinderella isn’t perfect, she managed to lose a shoe at a dance, I lose my keys and my glasses three times a day. Now we line up the Barbies and the Cinderella doll for “snack time,” and Kenneth the know-it-all yells at his sister that it must be tea.

Cinderella can be viewed as a girl cleaning and being a slave to her sisters and then just becoming a “slave” to a man. I don’t watch it that way now. Cinderella has given me some wonderful lessons the last few weeks. She has also helped me remember things I already knew. The first one, she “Stuck it to the bitches.” She didn’t fight or scream or make a fool out of herself. She played it cool and everyone got what they deserved in the end. The second? That magic doesn’t last forever. I remember little things, like when Frances finally walked, but then I had to get her to run. I remember two nights before Kenneth was born, she asked for “Barney” and Kevin wanted to run out and buy up every Barney in the store. Magic happens a little every day, and like Cinderella says to the Fairy Godmother, even until midnight is more than she could have asked for. In your time of need, the right people and the right things will come to you when you need them. It also gives a new spin to the idea of, “He’s just not that into you.” If that prince had his people take the shoe out and make every girl in town try it on, he definitely wanted to find her. My husband would have sold it on Ebay.

So now we have moved on to the Disney Princesses in all their glory, glamor, and commercialism. I did plan to raise my daughter on Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Ani DiFranco. But now, after six years of waiting for a little girl to come out, I’ll let her do it just a little longer. I am just not ready to squash it out of her yet. She can always figure out that monarchies have no real power later…..
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Please forgive the week without any posts. We moved, Kevin is out of town, and I have had a lot of work to catch up on. Since I stayed one night in a hotel and just changed houses, I haven’t really had a grocery store diary either, except maybe taking the baby to the 7-11 for whole milk while he ran up and down the aisles touching everything and laughing.

I thought I would talk about another toy that has a special function in our house. I’m talking Miss Thing herself, Barbie. Barbie and I go back, I had the mansion in 1978. Maybe it was in Greenwich. No, it couldn’t have been with those pulley elevators. I remember I got in big trouble for taking a chapstick and smearing it all over the Barbie doll’s hair. I had Western Barbie, and if you pressed her back she would wink. My aunts were only eight and thirteen at the time, and their bathroom was full of Barbie perfumes and make up that I wasn’t allowed to touch. I bet if I went over to my grandparent’s house tomorrow it would still be in the medicine cabinet upstairs.

Yes, yes, we can debate the importance of Barbie in pop culture and what she means to little girls. I googled it and got all kinds of crap. Feminism Friday had a good one, The Body Shop had a poster about ten years ago, and did you know what her real life measurements are? I remember that fact being flashed at Lollapalooza back in 1992. Don’t knock her, she has had so many different careers she is ready for anything. I have a Spanish Teacher Barbie the nieces gave me a good eleven years ago one Christmas. I love that thing. I would go back and forth between wanting a convertible like Barbie or a jeep like Barbie, and then I remembered I can’t drive worth a crap no matter what it is.

So let me bring this back down to today. I have a little girl, and that little girl doesn’t play like other children. I also have a mother with four grandsons and wants to give my daughter dolls. My daughter has about six Barbies and a Ken in counting. They sat there for three years. The poor little Barbies, if they were played with at all they were lined up in front of mirrors to be left alone to stare at their beautiful reflections. Then last year, during Pre-K, something happened, and you will never, ever, hear a harsh, sassy word come from my mouth about that doll again. (Well, ok, maybe one.)

Frances comes home from school and tells us nothing. She couldn’t re-tell a story, or sequence events. If I ask her how her day is she says, “fine.” If I ask her what she does, she says “Nothing.” Now I know that all kids do this, but you can talk a kid into a story with the right bribes. But I still got nothing. Frances also comes home and plays alone. This is part of her autism, some might call it her “stem” but I am not good on terminology, I leave that to the experts.

One day last year, she was in the playroom and I heard her talking to the Barbie doll, she had named it, “Maddie,” then she had another Barbie named, “Bella” (I’m making these up). She named each Barbie and Ken for a student in her class and they kept the same names all year. Then each day she came home and re-enacted the entire preschool day with the Barbies. I knew who answered a question, what was said at circle time, who went to OT and who had speech. She could tell me through the Barbies what each kid had for snack. She would sing songs and do the weather.

Her brain rocks and her memory blows me away. I can’t remember what snarky comment I made to the woman at the library that handed me her mommy business card. This also means I have to be careful what I say around her. Once “Mommy Barbie” was on a toy telephone like this: “Uh huh uh huh, ok. Bye bye (hang up toy phone) Idiot,” and then “Mommy Barbie” rolled her eyes and shook her head.

A couple of other moms in our groups tell me this is wonderful pretend play. I go back and forth on this being pretend play. She is acting out her day using dolls that look like people, which according to Barbie History, is what she was originally designed to do. It is a start but not exactly there. Barbie is giving me hope though.

I am always searching for toys and games and the educational stores to find things to get my daughter to talk and sequence. Who would have thought that I would just need more Barbies? Now I’m looking for Barbie everywhere. Yard sales, consignment stores, I am searching toy bins at Wal-Mart. We must have a Barbie or Ken for each member of the class. Thanks Barbie, you might have made me feel like shit about my breast size, but you have given my daughter an outlet and a way for me to spy on her day.
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