I've Met My Match

We made it an entire year. AN ENTIRE YEAR. I had twelve whole months of not fighting waves of nausea as Alexis wiggled a flappy tooth in my face.

And then my fun ended.

We're back in the loose tooth zone. There are two flappy little nubs of disgustingness precariously balanced in Alexis' mouth. She knows the power they hold now, so she uses them against me.

"Guess what, momma!" she will cheerfully declare after school.

"What?" I reply because I AM STUPID AND NEVER LEARN.

"My tooth is woosss!" she'll whistle as she shoves her hand in her mouth to wiggle that thing in my face.

I don't know what to do. If I pretend to not care, she wiggles harder. If I puke all over her shoes, she falls over laughing. There is only one winner in this game, and it's not me.

With that year of respite, Alexis gained a year of experience. She learned that teeth are a valuable commodity. She learned to negotiate. She learned the art of blackmail.

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There is this thing that happens in our house where people don't know how to close doors. I don't know why it happens, I just know that I could spend my every waking moment walking room-to-room closing doors that have no business being open. Bathroom doors, playroom doors, closet doors, pantry doors ... all of the doors.

The pantry door in particular is the source of much aggravation for those of us who were not born in a barn. Our pantry is a ridiculously large walk-in closet type of place. It's large enough to house cleaning supplies and vacuums and, of course, food. Lots and lots of food.

It turns out that furry creatures who look like wookies are big fans of food. Those furry creatures are also big fans of open doors because when the pantry door is left open, Penny sees it as an open invitation to help herself to whatever she can reach. I keep moving the food higher and higher up the shelves, but she just figures out new ways of getting to things. Crackers and bread and whatever will fit in her face gets stolen all because there are people in this house who don't know how to close doors.

And that is how Alexis and I found ourselves making an emergency stop at the grocery store. She needed to pack a lunch, which is only possible when there is actual food in the house. Given that Penny had cleaned out a bag of chips, several packs of crackers, and every last crumb of bread during one of her middle-of-the-night pantry raids, food was in short supply.

Alexis and I dashed up and down the aisles of the grocery store, me grabbing essentials and her asking for everything we don't need. Oreos, ice cream, Goldfish crackers -- I nixed every idea that crossed her mind. Over and over I told her no, often asking her if I needed to rewind time and replay that "No" I said just said half a second ago.

Alexis was just throwing darts with her requests. She was trying to throw out as many things as she could, thinking eventually she would hit the bullseye and I would cave. I didn't, though, because I am me. I am stubborn. I am the boss, applesauce.

Dart after dart was thrown and shot down. Over and over again. This thing and that thing and the answer was still "No." But then Alexis set eyes on the mini donuts. She stopped for a second, her face contorting as she pondered if it was worth making the request. She looked up and locked eyes with me.

"Momma, if you don't buy the donuts, I'm going to wiggle my tooth all the way home," she said.

She didn't get the donuts, but I did figure out that I can drive from the grocery store to our house just fine without a rearview mirror.

On Villages

The running joke is that we need to move into a commune. We've got a chef, a nurse, people who love to clean, people who can entertain kids for hours, teachers ... everything. We have every skill covered. If you took the entire group of people I consider friends and rolled us all into a castle hidden behind very tall walls, we could absolutely live happily ever after without any help from the outside world.

The "happily ever after" thing is a little odd, for what it's worth. It shouldn't be possible, but it definitely is.

We're just all so ... different. I marvel at it sometimes. I wonder how it is that so many people who are from such different backgrounds and have such varying interests can end up getting along as well as we do. But, well, we do. We go at life in very unique ways, but we all end up in the same place.

And Alexis adores every single one of us.

I don't know if it's normal for a kid to consider her mom's friends her own friends, but there it is. She does. Alexis asks about my friends, looks forward to seeing them, and legitimately likes hanging out with them. Sometimes she's a jerk and steals them from me for a few minutes, but mostly it's a good thing.

They are her village.

Alexis knows who she can ask for expert advice on cooking. She knows who is best equipped to deal with her many (imaginary) injuries. She depends on different people for different things. It's pretty spectacular, if we're being honest.

That's how it came to be that I didn't sit with my own kid at a baseball game this past Sunday. Before the game began, Alexis paged through the program and found the score page. She leaned over and asked me to explain how it all worked to her, but I was useless. I've played softball plenty and can read a score card, but I have absolutely no idea what goes in which square and why.

Upon learning I know nothing about how to score a baseball game, Alexis pondered her options. It took her about 3.5 seconds to come up with a solution -- she would ask her village. In a flash, she  made a whole bunch of people switch seats so she could huddle up with the baseball scoring expert in our village. She spent the majority of the game learning how to record a fly out to left field and a base hit and all of that good stuff.

It takes a village to raise a kid, and I'm so very glad we have one.

A Different Kind of Helpful

She looked like a spring-themed Target ad come to life. Alexis stood in the yard wearing her bright pink gardening gloves while she dug at the dirt with her bear-adorned garden rake. She was surrounded by every garden tool imaginable, most of them cuted-up and mini-sized for small hands. Behind her the tulips smiled and the hyacinths filled the air with their honey-sweet scent.

"I want to help!" Alexis said.

"Help" is a very relative term, so I asked her to pull out the sod that I had loosened. She heaved and she pulled and eventually a clump of grass came loose. She struggled to pick it up and place it in the wheelbarrow, but was victorious in the end.

She beamed as she declared, "I did it!"

She turned to find her next project just as the group of girls began to walk past our house. They giggled as they mocked someone or other, exactly as you'd expect when you come across five or six teen girls spending time together. I hope it's not an inevitable state of being, but I suspect it is. Or, at least, it's a phase that can't be ignored.

Alexis paid no attention to the girls who made me cringe as I thought of the future. She was busy moving mulch from one place to another. "Momma, I covered the tree roots!" she reported.

As the girls walked away, I glanced down at my little "helper." It's not really all that helpful when she works in the yard with me, but it sure is fantastic. The days when she willingly works by my side are probably numbered, but I'm going to make sure every last one of them counts.