Friday, May 6, 2011

Conversations With Kayla

I love talking to my kid. She is endlessly entertaining. I am fascinated by the conversations in which I find myself with her. Here is one we seem to have frequently. As a matter of fact, we pretty much had this conversation three minutes ago:

Kayla: Mommy, where's my (blah blah blah, I can't hear her because I'm on the treadmill, which is loud, and the TV is on, which is also loud, in spite of the fact I have the captions on).
Me: Honey, can you talk louder, please, I can't hear you.
Kayla: Where's my (blah blah blah, she has the cutest little voice which is very soft usually, especially when I'm really trying to hear her and the treadmill is loud).
Me: (Turning off the treadmill) Okay, what are you looking for?
Kayla: Where's my table?
Me: What table?
Kayla: The table for the Littlest Pet Shop toys?
Me: (pause, looking at her and thinking how cute she is and wondering how many times a day do we have conversations like this) Honey, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Kayla: Where is it?
Me: Honey, I don't know what it is. How would I know where it was?
Kayla: It's a REAL thing.
Me: I believe you, I just don't know what it is. (Pause) I need to go write this down before I forget.

So I hopped off the treadmill and came to write this down. This morning she wanted to know where her red scissors were. Who uses her red scissors? Just her. She's the only one who uses them, unless she hands them to me and asks me to cut something out. Right now she's into cutting out paper animals or people, and then cutting out food for them (like the blueberries she cut out of blue foam yesterday). But some things she wants help with... for example, circles are hard, according to Kayla. This is true.

So the point of all of this? There is no point. I'm just entertained by my kid and I'm not making fun of her. Because just this morning I called my mother to ask her where my calendar is. That's right, my calendar. That I use for writing down my stuff. But I had no idea where it was, and I figured she'd seen it when she'd been here taking care of Kayla. And sure enough, she had.


Me: (on the phone) Mom, have you seen my calendar?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Okay... do you know where it is?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Are you going to tell me?
Mom: You're the one who told me where it was the other day.
Me: And where was that?
Mom: Where are you?
Me: In the office.
Mom: Oh, you're really cold.

I'm not kidding. We had this conversation this morning. I also do that to my ex-husband, call him up and say, "Hey, while you were here, did you see such and such laying around?"


But really, this is such a mom thing, I guess. I don't mind Kayla coming to me to ask me where something is, even though I might not know what it is or have any clue regarding its whereabouts. It's just like, Mommy will know. And if she doesn't know, she'll help me find it (or go write about it). And I like that.

She just asked me, "Mommy, where's the white kitty?" I said, "I don't know... " "Oh, there it is!" It's so great when she finds stuff all by herself. And if she asks me first before she goes looking, that's okay with me.





Happy Mother's Day, to all of you mommies who constantly help your kids find their stuff.

2 comments:

Vanessa Vichit-Vadakan said...

happy mama's day! and will you let me know if you've seen my lucky socks?

Kimberly Gallagher-Wright said...

You are SO patient, Jen. No...seroiusly, you are. When my kid asks me where something is, my whole body clenches because I'm sick to death of the same questions...Difference being is that she doesn't look for it...she just wants ME to look for it. She doesn't want to be bothered with getting up, etc. Does that still make me a good mommy? Even though it makes me sick?