Woofus: A (Justifiably) Forgotten Children’s Book

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Cover of Woofus

As part of our bedtime ritual, I read about four short children’s books to my son, whose online nickname is Kung Fu Panda. Last week, I wanted some variety, so I grabbed a book off the “special” shelf, which is off-limits for KFP, reserved for books that we’d like to keep in good condition (signed by the author, delicate, antique, and the like). The book I selected was “Woofus” by Florence Sarah Winship, illustrated by Jane Curry (Whitman Publishing, Racine, Wisconsin, 1944). My dad owned it as a child, and he gave it to us after KFP was born, along with a couple of other vintage books too delicate to be manhandled by a toddler. Inside the front cover, there’s a hand-written dedication to my father from his aunt, who gave it to him for “Xmas 1948.”

What a lovely piece of family history, I thought, as I turned the page and began reading the story. Keep in mind, this book was published just four years after the classic children’s book, “Pat the Bunny” by Dorothy Kunhardt. I looked forward to a delightful combination of 1940s artwork and a quaint story. Well, I was half right.

Title page

The title page announces: “This is the story of Woofus, a smooth little black-haired puppy who grew up to be a great, big, woolly dog.” A rather misshapen puppy with large eyes and a round, shiny nose sits in front of (naturally) a white picket fence. He has a red ball that is so small  it looks about the size of a large strawberry. His ears protrude oddly from his head, as if they’re just tacked on. But perhaps that’s what puppies looked like in the 1940s.

Woofus's litter

On the next page, we’re introduced to the litter mates of Woofus, who are all “golden-brown puppies,” They are also all wearing red bows around their necks, while Woofus conspicuously lacked one on the previous page. Apparently, only blonde puppies get bows. More strikingly, it doesn’t seem the least bit possible that they come from the same litter as the puppy on the previous page. Perhaps someone ought to tell Woofus he’s adopted?

The rather lengthy text on the facing page reveals that, when visitors come to see the litter, they say, “Aren’t those cute little puppies! But oh, look at that funny little black one.” Woofus is a little sensitive about this, because he realizes they are laughing at him because he is black and not brown like the others. Hrmm. OK. Well, I’m sure I’m just reading too much into that, right? Of course, all the golden-brown puppies get adopted, while the kids are stuck with that “funny black” puppy, whom they name Woofus because he says “Woof-woof” while the other puppies say “Bow-wow.” I guess black puppies speak in a different dialect…

Woolly Woofus

Woofus is smart enough to realize that nobody wants him, but he tells himself that he will be a “great, big, brave dog” and that his family will be glad they kept him. They still, however, give him balls to play with that are small enough to be choking hazards. Purely accidental, I’m sure.

As Woofus gets bigger, the book relates, his black coat gets “longer and woollier.” Again, I’m sure we’re not supposed to read anything into the fact that the texture of his fur is so different from that of the little blonde puppies. Of course, his family finds his fur to be freaking hilarious: “One day when Bobbie and Jean came down to the kennel with their mother, they laughed and laughed and laughed because Woofus looked as though he had on a woolly bonnet and woolly stockings.”

Again, Woofus realizes they’re laughing at him and tells himself, “People laugh at me now, but some day I will not only be a big brave dog, but I will be a big handsome woolly dog.” You go, Woofus. Say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud.

White folks

White folks laughing at Woofus

The book continues: “Woofus was right. He did grow up to be a great big wooly dog. But still people laughed at him.” As is evident from the picture above, they would put on their Sunday best to peer over the fence at him and laugh and laugh with their oddly identical mouths.

Still, our optimistic hero dreams of the day that he will prove himself to be a brave dog and “Bobbie and Jean and their mother and daddy [will] be proud of me.” Makes you want to pat him softly on the head, doesn’t it?

When the story continues, Woofus gets a chance to prove himself by rescuing a teeny-tiny cat from a tree… who happens to be black. Go ahead. Tell yourself this book couldn’t possibly get any more offensive. You will be wrong.

Will Woofus prove himself brave enough to make up for being black?

Will the family be more accepting of a wee black kitten?

Could they possibly pick a worse name for an animal than Woofus? 

… to be continued…

Mommy Files: Flying New Skies

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Fun on the Slide
My son at the Aviation Play Center

I swore I wasn’t going to be that mother: the one with the screaming toddler who whined and cried during the entire flight. And yet there I was, with a shrieking nearly-3-year-old yelling, “I want to go home. I want Daddy!”

We’d prepared for this trip: We’d read books about flying on planes, and we’d talked for weeks beforehand about the stages of the trip. We’d even bought my son his own Spider-Man backpack, which he helped pack with toys and activities for the plane.

Everything went smoothly at first. My son was interested in everything we saw as we walked through the airport to get our boarding pass. My husband, who was dropping us off, saw us to the security checkpoint, and my little guy was cheerfully kissing him bye-bye when my husband observed, “He has a diaper.”

As we backtracked to the bathrooms, our son began to object. He insisted he wanted Daddy to change his diaper, but my husband didn’t feel comfortable doing it in the men’s room, since the little guy is now too big to change on the changing tables, and my husband wasn’t as comfortable changing him on the floor as I was.

So over his objections, I pulled my son into the women’s room, while he was shouting, “I want Daddy! I want Daddy to change me!” I worried I’d be confused for a kidnapper, so I talked gently to him the whole time, assuring him that Daddy was waiting outside but that I had to change his diaper first.

Then, my son freshly changed, we returned to the security checkpoint, said our “bye-byes” without tears, and proceeded through security. But my son cried again when I took off his light-up Spider-Man shoes, until a TSA agent dashed over and told us that children under 12 could keep their shoes on. If only I’d thought to check on that ahead of time.

If I had it to do over, I’d also think twice about what we did next. It seemed like a blessing: an Aviation Play Center where little ones could blow off steam before boarding their flights. There should have been a warning: May be addictive to toddlers. Within minutes, my outgoing boy had made friends with a slightly older boy, and they were following each other around the play area: alternately climbing the steps into the play control tower, sliding down, and then running across to the kid-sized plane — complete with passenger seats — to pretend to be co-pilots. The other boy wore Batman shoes, and I giggled at the instant bonding between two would-be superheroes.

He sure did seem to be having fun for a while. I’ve even got photographs to prove it, showing him sliding happily down the red plastic slide.

Fast-forward 15 or 20 minutes, and the scene was drastically different. First, his newfound friend left to board a plane with his family. Then, I told my son gently it was time to head towards ours. The whole time we were walking to the gate and the whole time we waited in line, he was caught up in the sort of crying he does whenever we leave someplace he associates with fun: whether it’s a swimming pool or a park or, in this case, an indoor playground. If I’d known that was coming, I would have skipped the playground and headed straight for the gates.

I also would have bought a bottle of water in one of the airport shops before we got on the plane. I didn’t realize at the time that, while you can’t take liquids through security, they will gladly allow you to carry on a water bottle purchased in one of the stores after clearing security. So after my son’s tears had dried, and we were boarding the plane, he asked me for a drink of water. But I could only tell him we’d have to wait a little. Waiting is not in an 3-year-old’s vocabulary.

As we squeezed by the other person in our row, a kindly older woman, I explained the reason behind my son’s renewed tears. Without hesitation, she offered me the unopened bottle she herself had brought onto the plane. Grateful beyond words, I opened the bottle and poured it into my son’s sippy cup, only to hear him complain that the water was too cold. I told him that it would warm up soon and that he needed to be grateful, because somebody had given him her water. He seemed about to cry again but then took another sip and quieted instead.

For most of the first leg of our journey to Detroit, he was relatively content, until he tired of the toys, books and stickers I’d brought to entertain him. I made another mistake, promising him train videos, after learning we could get Internet on the flight. This was before I realized how time-consuming it would be to actually deliver on such a promise.

First, I had to ask our very accommodating seatmate to stand up so that I could grab my laptop from the overhead compartment. Then I had to start the computer and seek out the information I needed to sign on. I had just completed the credit card payment and was waiting for the computer to connect when the announcement came over the PA, telling us we had to power down all of our electronic devices. And while I don’t think the resulting disappointment is why my son threw up on the way back down, it certainly didn’t help that he was crying bitterly and gulping so much air.

I was immediately grateful for the fact that he had rejected all efforts that day to feed him, sticking entirely to water. Coming back up, it was practically the same, just a little warmer. As I clutched my crying boy to me, he and I were soon soaked. Only after we’d landed, and I could be sure he was done, I did a quick change on the seat, putting him into the emergency change of clothes tucked into my diaper bag. This meant, of course, we stopped at the first store selling T-shirts to buy something clean, just in case we needed another backup shirt (I’d brought two pairs of emergency pants in my carry-on, but only one emergency shirt). That is why, on this October afternoon so many months later, he is wearing that Navy blue Detroit T-shirt as we bump along sidewalks, heading home from the park.

The trip, or at least that first leg of it, was a real learning experience. I thought that, after having endured the “baby boot camp” of our first few weeks with a newborn, that after helping him learn to walk and pick up things, that after teaching him language so that he could express his desires, that things would suddenly get easier. This experience taught me you can never sit back, never relax, because there’s always going to be new challenges.

I also learned that, no matter how much time you spend looking up information on how to plan a trip with a toddler; no matter how many people you ask for advice; and no matter how many people offer unsolicited advice, you will always run into challenges you could not anticipate. You will always have to make decisions on the fly. And they will not always be wise decisions or well-thought-out. A lot of times, they will be emotional and wrong. And then, you’ll have to find a way to turn things around.

Ultimately, that is a mother’s job: to make the hard decisions, to suck up disappointment and embarrassment like a used sponge, to keep pushing forward, whether covered in your child’s stomach contents or simply trying to shush him in a crowded airport. And if, like me, you are writer raised by a family of storytellers, you have one consolation: at least you’ll have a story to tell.

 

Mommy Files: Confessions of a Work-at-Home Mom

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After getting up late (my Kung Fu Panda let me sleep until 10:30 while he played and looked at books quietly), I spent the morning and early afternoon writing a query letter to Parents magazine. Then, with an air of triumph, I announced we were going for a walk. When KFP asked me where, I told him we were going to mail a letter and then play in the park. I figured we’d have plenty of time to kick a ball around before we needed to head back so I could make dinner.

But every parent knows: You don’t simply walk out the door, just grabbing your purse and keys like in the old days. That’s madness! No, getting out of the house is a complicated process involving filling water bottles; checking the status of KFP’s diaper; packing a small backpack with diaper-changing materials, a change of clothes, and a snack; putting on shoes and hat; checking the weather; and carrying the stroller down the stairs from the porch to the sidewalk (curse the 1920s and their non-ADA-compliant homes). This process takes at least 30 minutes, and that’s if it all goes smoothly.

On the move at last, after handing KFP his water and an apple slice, I felt good. I felt accomplished. Here I was, balancing my writing career and parenting: about to mail a query letter and then enjoy quality time with my boy. He kept up a steady stream of chatter all the way to the post office, remarking on everything we passed: “The stop sign is an octagon! The tree has a shadow!” Sometime in those last three blocks, however, he conked out.

So now I’m sitting under the shade of a sycamore in our favorite little park, watching him sleep and wondering what to do. Waking him would violate my “Don’t wake a sleeping child unless absolutely necessary” rule. However, if I let him sleep, we’ll run out of time for fun, and the last time I did that, skipping the park and wheeling him home while he slept, he cried for a whole hour.

I guess if I let him sleep a little longer, I’ll still have time to cook and eat dinner before starting my night’s transcription work. It will be a little tight, and we may only have 10-15 minutes to kick the ball, but it’s the best I can do.

Compromises and flexibility are the only way to go when you’re a WAHM. Getting up a little earlier probably would have also helped, but there’s no need to go to extremes.

Mommy Files: My Son the Sponge

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As anyone who knows me can attest, I’m a talker. According to my family, this is a long-time habit. In fact, I suspect I probably tried to talk while still in the womb, which accounts for the fact that I inhaled amniotic fluid and caused my mom more stress than necessary when I was born.

My habit has led to me raising a long line of loud pets. From the family cat, Ginger, who used to wait for me in my bedroom when I returned from school, crying, “Hiiiii!” to a very expressive doggie who made noises to fit every emotion, to my current cat, who is constantly mewing me his complaints and commentary, I’ve always talked to my pets, and my pets talk back. Why should I be surprised I have a chatty child?

Unlike my parade of pets, however, my boy is gaining language and communication skills daily. Ever since he was born, I’ve been pointing things out to him; explaining and defining the world around him. His vocabulary and understanding, at age 3, are impressive. However, he’s still working on enunciation, meaning that I often have to “translate” his remarks to other adults.

My husband, who cares for our son in the evenings so that I can do my transcription work, came into my office earlier this week and said, “Do you know he knows the word ‘jug’?”

“Yes,” I told him. “We were talking about the milk container while waiting in line at the grocery store, and I told him it’s called a jug. That jugs are containers with handles that carry liquid. Then we talked about what liquids are.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime soon he brings liquids into the conversation.

Last night, he apparently impressed my husband by looking at the opening of a space-based video game and declared it was on the moon. The landscape did, indeed, resemble a lunar landscape. I attributed this to the planet stickers we’ve been using as rewards whenever he does something we’re trying to encourage. I’ve been talking to him about the planets every time I reward him with one.

I’d heard that talking to your child about things that you see in your travels together can help him to build his vocabulary and understanding of the world. It’s a lot of fun finally reaching the time when he’s demonstrating that learning.

Pluses and Minuses of Starting Older

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Everywhere you look, magazines, TV ads and billboards extol the virtues of youth. We should all lament growing older, these voices tell us. For sure, we should attempt to erase any signs of the toll the years have paid on our bodies.

Here’s a shocking idea: Growing older isn’t just an inevitable fall into decline. Growing older actually has some advantages. As an older mom, I’ve discovered quite a few.

Now to be sure, there are some negatives, and since they’re the ones that people usually focus on, let’s get them out of the way quickly.

As an older mom (and medical practitioners define this as 35 years and older), you’ll be classified as a high-risk pregnancy and will be urged to take a battery of stress-inducing tests to ensure the health of your baby. Discuss those options carefully with your obstetrician and your network of support and decide if the information they can provide will be worthwhile.

As an older mom, who is considered high-risk, you will be unlikely to have as many birthing options. While it’s not impossible to find ob-gyns and midwives who will work with you, if you’re giving birth for the first time, you’ll most likely be encouraged to have the baby in a traditional hospital setting, with all of the monitors possible. Of course, this is a small price to pay for a healthy baby, as I think we’d all agree.

You might find that your resilience and healing process are slower than they would be for younger women. This can mean healing from the birth as well as losing baby weight.

If you’re an older adoptive mom, the previous points won’t apply to you, but the rest will. As an older mom, you might have a harder time dealing with the erratic schedule that your child brings. If, like me, you’ve been accumulating aches and pains since your 20s, it might be harder to get down on the carpet and play for extended periods of time.

And of course, as an older mom, you’ll have to put up with misguided comments: everything from people asking you if you’re the grandma to rude personal questions about whether you’re going to have another child and why you waited so long. Having talked to moms who started earlier, though, I can tell you that you’re not alone. Nothing brings out the nosiness in neighbors and strangers, it seems, quite like being a mom. Younger mothers also deal with invasive questions: just different ones.

Now for the positives, and there are plenty.

You have experience and perspective that younger mothers may lack. While you may not have personally been a mother until now, chances are you’ve watched from the sidelines as friends and family members raised their children. You may have been taking silent notes on what parenting practices you would want to adopt, and you’ve been in a unique position to benefit from watching their mistakes and successes.

Plus, you’ve gained life experience that younger mothers haven’t had. Many older moms start later because of having focused for years on their career or on hobbies. Chances are, you’ve got enough experience in your field to be able to make intelligent choices when it comes to whether you want to balance work and career or simply take some time to focus on family. Coming at motherhood later, you’re less likely to feel as if you got sidetracked by motherhood before you ever got a chance to see what you might achieve.

In addition, you’ve probably built a network of coworkers and friends who can provide you with a broad variety of perspectives and support.

While it’s not true for everyone, many older moms are more financially secure than they were in their younger years. That can help alleviate some of the stress produced by all those new bills for everything from pediatrician visits to diapers, clothes, and baby food.

You have lived longer and had more time to gain the sort of useful knowledge that will benefit your child. Kids are little sponges: they’ll appreciate it.

I’m sure there are many other benefits, as well, but this is a good start to consider, whenever you start to doubt yourself. Celebrate yourself and all you have to offer.

What other advantages do you think go along with being an older mom? Share them in the comments.

Why I Waited

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Sharing Miso
My son and I sharing some miso soup

If life had gone a different way, I would have a teenager by now, instead of the 3-year-old who is currently on the couch next to me, wrapped up a teddy bear blanket and claiming he needs a nap. For now, I will resist the urge to tell him, “So nap already” and instead appreciate where I am and where I could have been.

My first marriage ended 15 years ago, but if it hadn’t ended, I’m fairly certain we would have had a baby soon. Back then, I figured that not only was it the next logical stage in our relationship but also that it could, somehow, repair the marriage that had grown as stale as the freezer-burned wedding cake we had only recently eaten on our first anniversary.

That would have been a very different parenting situation, I know. Without going into detail about his issues, my first husband was definitely not suited to be a supportive partner during pregnancy and childbirth or, for that matter, a reliable dad.

In all likelihood, I would have found myself coping with a new set of troubles: how to care for a baby, and then a child, while still dealing with a host of marital issues. If it had kept the marriage alive, I would never have learned all the things that being independent of that relationship taught me about myself. If the marriage had still ended, I would have remained tied to my first husband; obligated to keep him in my life to some degree, for the sake of the child.

When I think of that bleak parallel universe, I give praise that my life took me in another direction. I would much rather be an older mom, raising a child with the help of a supportive husband and father, than a single mom still tied to her child’s troubled dad.

There was a time, however, when I wondered if I would ever reach this stage. I’d gotten married at age 26, just like my mom before me. Taking her as a role model, I figured I could have two — or even three — children before age 35, the time when fertility is known to drop and obstetricians begin recommending additional prenatal tests to assess the health of the baby.

But it was not to be. My destiny lay elsewhere, and my carefully laid plans went awry. I often joke with my husband that I wish I’d met him 20 years ago, but who knows if things would have worked out with us then? At that time, I was still leaning towards the wrong kind of guy. While I probably would have been attracted to him, I would have put him in the “friend” category. After all, he was too stable, kind and responsible for me to see him as a boyfriend until I got some self-esteem issues worked out.

Sometimes I want to have a serious talk with Past Me. Not just to ask her “What were you thinking?” but to assure her that, really, if she just believed in herself and kept trying, Things Would Work Out.

I needed to hear that message at 26, just to gain some assurance that Husband No. 1 wasn’t my only shot at a family. That I didn’t need to even worry that the invitations had already been sent out; I could follow my instincts and cut things short. While I don’t regret the lessons I learned then, I wish I hadn’t needed to learn them.

I needed to hear that message at 31, when a long-distance relationship ended and I worried that now I was officially too old to start all over again and hope to be a mommy.

I needed to hear that message at 34, when I was dating my second husband and spending Christmas Day with my family. My brother made an innocent comment about what sort of children we might have, and I broke down in tears, fearing that somehow, my dreams might not happen. What if, after all this waiting, we wouldn’t even conceive when we did finally try?

I needed to hear that message at 37, when I married my second husband and wanted to start a family right away, only to get the rude news, barely out of our honeymoon, that he’d been laid off from his long-time office job. With no medical insurance, we had to wait another year for him to find another position before beginning to try.

I needed to hear that message at 39, pregnant with the son I now know came out perfectly healthy, when we faced a very scary prenatal test result. An ultrasound showed he had more than the desired amount of fluid desired on the back of his neck, which could indicate either retardation or heart troubles. For several weeks, over Thanksgiving, we had no idea what to expect, as we waited for the results of a follow-up procedure which would give us information from a genetic level.

Both that and a heart exam showed our boy — for yes, this confirmed he was a boy — was developing normally. Until that point, I’d been convinced I was having a girl. So much for the predictive power of dreams!

I’d also dreamed our child would have my husband’s dark hair and my blue-gray eyes (which my son believes are green). Naturally, this predestined he would have dark blonde hair and his daddy’s large, warm, honey-brown eyes. I find this to be a delightful irony, since it was those eyes that first made me fall for him.

Despite the fact that both of my grandmothers were 40 when they had my parents, it’s still not unusual for my age to inspire questions amongst both friends and strangers. Rather than going through the whole long saga, I usually sum it up by saying that I was married once before but didn’t see him as a possible father, so I waited until the time felt right.

The time is right now. Much better than any previous time could have been, in my life so far. I don’t doubt it. I just need to remember to celebrate it.

 

Celebrity-Inspired Celebrations for Real-Life Moms

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I am pleased to introduce my first guest blogger. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: to provide new perspectives. Arianna Pierce is an energetic writer and mom with some terrific ideas, which she shares on her blog, Arianna Knows Best. I hope you enjoy her post.

Nick Cannon, Mariah Carey and children in royal gear

Nick Cannon, wife Mariah Carey and
their kids in royal regalia at Disneyland

If your life is anything like mine, summers are probably far from a vacation. Lately, with rising temperatures and bored kids to entertain, all I’ve wanted to do is jet off to an island and find some peace and quiet. However, since I’m not rich enough to be a jet setter, my girlfriends and I have decided that this summer, we are going to figure out how to live the luxurious life right here at home, using our favorite celebrities as inspiration!

Celebrity summer: Sailing to St. Tropez on a Yacht

St. Tropez is known as a hot spot for celebrity sightings. Fans of this gorgeous coastal town include Rihanna, Leonardo Dicaprio, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, among many others. Leo was recently seen arriving by a chartered private jet and boarding his private yacht with a large group of supermodels.

Reality summer: Sailing at the Lake

We may not be able to make it to St. Tropez, but my girlfriends and I can certainly strap life vests on our kids and spend a day on the water! If you don’t own a boat, check out your local waterfront, as many offer sailboat, kayak and canoe rentals. Pack up a few sand toys to keep the fun going during breaks from the waves on shore.

Celebrity summer: Partying at the MTV Video Music Awards

The Video Music Awards are a huge event, bringing out the best and worst in all of our favorite celebrities. Whether we are talking about Britney’s not so innocent striptease or Lady Gaga’s meat dress, the Video Music Awards always leave the viewers wanting more and gossip magazines with something to discuss.

Reality summer: Organizing Your Own Award Show Party

None of us are likely to ever make an appearance on MTV, but we can still host our own award show parties at home. You can ask your guests to dress like their favorite artists and have a karaoke jam based on all your favorite award show performances. Then, at the end of the night, have everyone vote for their favorite artists and hand out prizes, such as iTunes gift cards or funky colored headphones to the winners. Funny acceptance speeches are required!

Celebrity summer: Shutting Down Disneyland for an Anniversary

When Mariah Carey and husband Nick Cannon celebrate their love, they follow one simple motto: Go big or go home! After they renewed their vows, the pair took over Disneyland for the day, shutting it down to the general public and ensuring that their family would get the royal treatment!

Reality summer: Booking an Evening at a Great Local Restaurant

Unfortunately, when my family goes to Disneyland, we have to wait in line just like everyone else. However, it seems much more realistic to scrape together enough cash to book a private room at a restaurant for a special occasion. Not only does this allow you to celebrate in private, but many restaurants will also offer you a custom menu, discounts on drinks and even a special cake, just for you!

Arianna is a full-time mom and a fashion-lover, world traveler, animal lover, and family woman extraordinaire. She loves to cook and bake, travel to new places, share great fashion finds, and spend time doing crafts and projects at home with her kids. She’s got a crazy busy life, but she wouldn’t have it any other way! Follow her blog at http://ariannaknowsbest.blogspot.com/!

The Mommy Files: Busy Mommy, Not Busy Grandma

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It’s been way too long since I posted anything here, and for that I truly apologize. I’ve been very busy working on a number of projects, including an ebook version of Dedicated Idiocy: A Personal History of the Penn State Monty Python Society, and putting together a rough rundown for my upcoming book, Now with Kung Fu Action Grip, a collection of poetry and writings about my son, age 2.

I’ll make more of an effort to post something here, even if it’s just about my everyday parenting challenges. This morning, for example, I was thrilled to run into one of my son’s little friends at the YMCA. She was waiting in a hallway with two older children (possibly siblings, though I don’t know for sure). As my Kung Fu Panda and his friend exchanged shy pleasantries (you’d never know the two of them had been holding hands while running through the park just last Thursday), the older girl asked me, “Is he your son or your grandson?”

If I had $1 for every time someone had asked me that, I could be building quite the college fund.

This time, I had to remind myself that she was only about 8. It’s entirely possible that she knows a lot of 40-year-old grandmothers. After all, if I’d had a kid at 20, and my child had done the same, I would indeed be a grandmother. It’s just not the sort of thing you want to hear — ever, really, but especially when you’re sweaty and walking around in exercise gear. Only five minutes previously, I’d been smiling silly after an invigorating Zumba class with a guest instructor who kept us all on our toes.

So I reminded myself not to take it personally, and I just smiled brightly. My son bid his friend bye-bye, and we walked away, still smiling. After a short while, I didn’t even have to force it anymore.

Mommy Files: Caught Being a Cat

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Ever have one of those moments when you’re making loud cat sounds with your toddler and you turn around and see the cat, watching you quietly? Awkward.

I encourage silliness as a way for both of us to blow off steam, and I’m proud of my son’s wacky sense of humor. The cat, however, sees things differently. In fact, he’s not so sure what to make of the two of us, especially when we start dancing around the room, making silly noises. Almost against his better judgment, he finds us fascinating. You know that Monty Python sketch where they have to hire a company called Confuse-A-Cat Ltd. to get their bored cat out of a rut? No danger of that in this household.

Since my son was born, nearly three years ago, I’ve had a complicated relationship with our cat. At first, bringing home a newborn who was — let’s face it — smaller than the cat, I regarded him suspiciously. In those days, he seemed more of a threat than a companion. Confined to bed rest in the days after giving birth, I kept a water bottle next to the bed, in case the cat should overstep his bounds and try to snuggle with the sleeping baby.

Although I’ve been a cat lover since I remember, my feelings towards the cat took a long time to return to anything resembling normal. Only about a year ago, when my son was finally big enough and independent enough to be able to defend himself against a (admittedly rather smallish) cat, did I finally come to a realization that the cat was… cute! Yes, cute and fluffy and soft and dying for attention. He’d had just as difficult a time with “Baby Boot Camp” as I had. Perhaps harder, since cats are so sensitive.

These days, we have settled into a routine, of sorts. In the morning, my toddler wakes me up: “Mommy, it’s day.” Immediately, with a happy mew-purr, our kitty, Luke, is by my side, demanding morning pets. My son and I pet him together — my son a little clumsily but as gently as he can muster. Luke tolerates it, even seems to like it, and lately there’s even a playful kittenish spirit about him. He’s been very understanding about the fact that my son has claimed his first precious toy — a little blue plush cow — because he knows I always defend him when he bats around my son’s plush baseball.

The two boys — kitty and human — have their moments, of course. My son has been known to yell, “No, Luke!” because the cat had the audacity to rub his kitty face on my son’s book. And Luke, for his part, occasionally tests us both: padding nonchalantly over papers I’m sorting, or playing “tag” just out of reach of my son’s grasp.

Yet, I’d like to think that Luke is teaching us both some valuable lessons: my son is learning to respect and care for a living creature, and I am learning how to perplex and amuse a cat.

Mew-mew-mew.

The Mommy Files: You’ve Been Other Mothered

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You've Been Other Mothered

Late nights on Nickelodeon, the network runs a very funny series of shows collectively called Nick Mom, with humor by and for moms. One of the best parts of it is a recurring video bumper segment called “You’ve Been Other Mothered.” In these segments, moms are talking about their kids when one of them makes a not-too-subtle remark that implies the other mother is somehow deficient in parenting skills. In one of these segments, for example, one mother offers to help prepare home-cooked meals for the other, because “those kids shouldn’t have to eat take-out all the time.”

I was stewing most of the morning because of something I happened to read in Parents magazine. It was on the page containing the parenting advice column by “baby concierge” and reality TV star Rosie Pope, but to be fair, it was in a larger font and color and wasn’t a break-out quote, so it could just be a space filler inserted by the graphics department.

The offensive quote was: “btw… It’s not okay to wear headphones while you’re with your child!”

I’d been “other mothered.” By a magazine.

Now, you could tell me that it’s my own fault for reading such a magazine in the first place, which is crammed full of tips and “how to” articles. You’d be right: If I didn’t want to receive unsought parenting advice, I probably shouldn’t be reading a magazine whose entire purpose is to provide it.

So I had to ask myself: Why did this particular quote bother me so much? Was it the bright pink font? Was it the exclamation point? Was it the lightly sarcastic tone, which made it sound like a barbed comment on a YouTube video?

Yes, it was all of those things, but it was also because it struck a nerve. I’m a work-at-home/write-at-home mom, and my main income derives from transcribing cable news shows. I do my work at night, but on nights when my husband is delayed by either work issues or transportation glitches, I have no choice but to begin my work while my son is in the room. Of course, this means wearing headphones. It also means deflecting requests to read books or play games, and I have to tell my toddler “Mommy is working.”

I never feel good about this, but I think even Rosie Pope would agree that wearing headphones is preferable to blasting my son with anchors and commentators discussing the infamous Jodi Arias sex tape, or any other details of her particularly gruesome murder trial.

OK, I’ll admit it. My use of headphones goes further than that. I have been known to plug into my portable DVD player and watch “Downton Abbey” or tune into Hulu on the computer to catch the latest episode of “Dancing with the Stars.” My son and I tend to spend our mornings and early afternoons together, running errands and getting out of the house for me to exercise and him to play. But in the late afternoons we both have a little quiet time: he plays with his trains and — yes, I’ll admit — I watch a video and catch up on e-mail or work on some writing.

Soon, we’ll be sending him to preschool, and I’ll get a few hours each week of guilt-free “Mommy time”: to write or shop or watch whatever videos I want — with sound! But until then, we have our quiet time routine, and I personally think we’re doing fine (even if my defensiveness shows that secretly, I feel a little guilty about it).

The lesson here applies not just to magazines and columnists but also to all of us mothers. Before making a blanket statement like, “You should never feed your kids frozen dinners” or “You should never give a kid your phone to play games” we should all take a step back, take a deep breath and remember how hurtful blanket statements can be.

Have you been “other mothered”? Tell me all about it in the comments!

ETA: Rereading this many months later, I realize that I probably should have included a punch line instead of getting so serious at the end. I can only blame my headphones, which must have been distracting me from being a good writer.