Little Miss Homemaker

Posted: April 20th, 2009 | Author: kristen from motherload | Filed under: Miss Kate, Other Mothers, Parenting | 1 Comment »

Last night Kate had a few minutes after her bath before she had to go to bed. Where most children might fill the time, say, assembling a puzzle or drawing a picture, Kate brought a paper and pencil over to Mark and asked him to help her write her shopping list.

Here’s what she needs:

• Carrots
• Beans
• Rice
• Noodles
• Chicken
• Dora cup
• Princess cup
• Baby stroller
• Video
• Computer
• New shoes
• Pet duck
• Baby carrier

Damn if she’s not comprehensive.

Which, honestly, is starting to make me look bad.

Last week we went for a what-the-hell-should-we-have-for-dinner late afternoon foraging walk. I tossed on flip flops, grabbed my sunglasses, wallet, and keys, stuck Paigey in the carrier, and was ready to roll. But, of course, nothing’s that easy. It takes far longer for Kate to ready her troops for a simple stroll through the ‘hood.

She had to change her baby’s diaper, strap and restrap him into his stroller, then collect and/or pack a few of the myriad purses, backpacks, paper and tote bags that she regularly rotates most of the loose smaller contents of our house through on a daily basis.

Kate’s bag-lady-like lifestyle is a bit quirky, sure, but generally doesn’t bother me unless I realize I can’t find something like my contact lens case. It means that it’s likely buried away deep in one of Kate’s overstuffed sacks, underneath a yellow rubber LIVESTRONG bracelet, a wooden toy orange juice container, a Diesel Bookstore bookmark, a hopefully-clean handkerchief of Mark’s, a reminder card from the dentist, a calico doll quilt, one or other of the small weird Beatrix Potter books, a baby shoe, two fake hundred dollar bills folded over and over and over into tiny squares, and a pair of Paige’s blue cotton tights.

Sometimes I need to ferret through three or four such bags until I make contact with my lost item. And although it feels good to find whatever’d gone missing, the whole experiene leaves me vaguely unsettled, like a mother cleaning up a long-neglected teen’s room—fearful of what I might see along the way.

I wish that game show Let’s Make a Deal was still on, where audience members could come down to play if they had things on them like a golf tee or a Dixie cup that the host would call out for. Katie would rock that show hard.

So aaaanyway, we were heading out on a walk. And as Paige and I waited by the open door, me tapping my foot My Three Sons-opening-credits-style, Kate—who insisted I called her Another Mama, not Kate—was  bustling about the house collecting her crazy lady crap, and hanging her overstuffed bags off the pink handles of her doll stroller.

Once we finally blessedly set off, we rounded a corner and Paige started squinting and squirming, getting a direct blast of sun in her eyes.

Kate: “Other Mama? Does Paigey need a sun hat?”

Me: “Yeah. Why… Do you have one?”

Kate: “Yes!”

And so we stopped in the middle of the sidewalk so she could untether a small calico purse, reach down to the bottom past a square of yellow fleece fabric and God knows what else, and extract Paige’s floppy pink and orange sun hat.

Perfect.

I’m not sure whether I should feel threatened by Kate often being more on top of this mother thing than I am, or just run with it and reap its benefits.

Someday maybe I’ll have wipes handy when her baby has one of its seemingly incessant “big stinky poops.” Then we can even the score.

---