Recently in Karenna Category

Karenna does.

I was knee-deep in laundry.  Karenna had to eat a late dinner after ballet, so I kept her company.  Chris said he was going to put away some laundry.  There was a basket of his clothes and a basket of kids' laundry

At this point I must admit to being a recovering control-freak.  Or I'd like to think of myself as one, anyway.  There are still some things I can't let go.  And when I try to tell Chris he needs let go, he can zero in exactly which things of which I haven't been able to relinquish my control.  Like picking home decor.  Or putting away the kids' laundry (I have a system; I need to be able to find things.)

So as Chris started to walk away with a basket I said in terror, "Noooo! You're not going to put away the kids' laundry!"

He pretended to act innocent but had a devilish grin on his face and said, "But I'm helping you,"  then scampered off.  I could see a basked in his hand.  I tried calling to him, but it was futile.  I was torn between leaving my daughter to eat he dinner without someone to talk to and stopping him from this heresy.

Of course I chose quality time with my daughter, but sensing the disturbed look on my face, Karenna put her little hand on mine, looked me in the eye and said, "You know he's only kidding you, right?"

(He took his own basket back and left the kids' basket for me, just like I like it.)

This weekend Karenna had a ballet perfomance, which means she gets to wear a bit of make-up.  She used to be very excited about the idea, but this time she was in a particularly silly mood.

I tried to round her up from outside play to get her costume and make up and she complained, or rather overacted, "Oh, the torture!"

As I tried to make up her face, she kept up the accusations of torture, alternately looking into the mirror and expressing her dissatisfaction by proclaiming, "I look like a duck."  (I'm not quite sure why she thinks ducks where make-up and to be honest, I forgot to ask.)

Further into my torture techniques, I decided to add a bit of my black eyeliner, so that her eyes could be seen from farther away, and used some steel blue eye color with the eyeliner brush over top of it to lighten it. Apparently, this is what finally broke my subject:

She looked int to the mirror, and in her best imitation of an outraged teenager, told me, "You made me look like I'm from the 70s!"

Where does a five-year-old learn about 70s blue eye shadow anyway?

So I have this running joke where I like to tell the kids I'm going to trade them in on monkeys.  As in, "Let's go to the zoo, so I can trade you guys in on a couple of monkeys?" Or, more recently, after the circus...

Me: Hey, did you see those cute little monkeys.  There were four of them.  I bet I could get a good trade for you guys.
Karenna: No you wouldn't.
Me: I could probably get like two monkeys per kid by weight.
Chris: Monkeys are pretty smart. Maybe you would have to trade in two kids for one monkey.
Me: I thought I'd have to exchange by weight.
Karenna: You can't trade me!

Later this week...

Me: You know I could still trade you in on a monkey if you don't listen.
Karenna: And I could trade you in a gorilla!

When did I get a kid who keeps a chapter book in her desk at school to read when she finishes her schoolwork?  When did I get a kid who reads to me from a book by looking up a story in the Table of Contents? Where did my baby go? Sigh.

Karenna is on the threshold of seeing through the whole Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy/Lottery Fairy¹ charade.

Right before we got our Easter pictures taken she nearly broke my heart--or at least momentarily took my breath away--by telling me the Easter bunny was just a man in a suit.

"What do you mean?" I pretended to play dumb. I always knew the Easter Bunny was the weak link in the bunch.  A man in a red suit was believable, but the bunny suit does look kind of fake.

"It's a guy in a suit," she said.  "Bunnies aren't as tall as people."

I then explained the helper concept.  A man in a suit helps the Easter Bunny fill orders.  I also said the Easter Bunny is a large breed bunny, like there are large and small breed dogs.  She looked at me incredulously.  I tried to rattle off large rabbit movies as examples like Harvey and Donnie Darko, but the only one a kid would have seen is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

When she and he brother got to the mall, they sat on the bunny's lap.  Jude loved the bunny.  He touched his glasses.  He pet the bunny and hugged him.  As we left, Karenna attempted to wink a very obvious wink at me and then whispered, "His glasses were very fake."

Fast-forward to tonight at bedtime: Karenna told me about this friend of hers who said the Easter bunny lives at his house. And another friend who has a kid in his class that said the Easter bunny wasn't real; it was the parents who get the toys and candy.

"Well that's silly," I said. I asked her when I would have had time to do all that shopping.  Then I continued, "Also, who would go hide the eggs in our yard in the dark?  Do you think Mommy would do that in the cold in her jammies?² I want to be in a warm bed asleep when the bunny comes."

Karenna agreed, "Yeah, and Daddy wouldn't be out there in in his underpants..."

---

1. What, your family doesn't have a Lottery Fairy? While my kindergartner might not believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for much longer, members of the gambling contingent of my family (many years her senior) believe in a ficticious being they call the Lottery Fairy.  The Lottery Fairy does bestow occasional blessings upon the Massaros, but I'm not an expert on how much goes "under the pillow" so to speak to the Lottery Fairy until she pays out.
2. Yes, Mommy would. She has.  In the snow. I had pictures and a cold to prove it. 
   

I was talking to Karenna last night and I mentioned that my friend's daughter was asking about her.  My friends kids are older, so when she asked about the son, I explained that he moved out and is at college now.

"I don't ever want to move out," she told me, "so I'm not going to college."

"You have to go to college," I told her, "I'm already paying for you to go.  Plus you need to get a job."

"I don't want a job."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because you have to go to stupid meetings."

"What are you going to do?" I wondered what kind of answer I'd get this time.

"I'm going to be a fighter instead."

"So you want to be in the military like your Uncle Matt? He'd be proud of you." I said.

"No!" she said, "I want my job to be a fighter that works for them."

"She wants to work for Blackwater," Chris added after she walked away.

"I bet they have meetings," I said reminded of Grosse Point Blank, a movie Karenna is not allowed to see.  Okay so it was not the same type of job, but you can see where my mind was going...

Mr. Grocer: [Marty and Grocer are shooting eachother] Comrade! Comrade!
Marty: What?
Mr. Grocer: Why don't you just join the union, we'll go upstairs together and cap daddy!
Marty: This union, there's gonna be meetings?
Mr. Grocer: Of course!
Marty: No meetings.
[Shoots.]

"She wants to be Zena," he reasoned.  (Thanks, Chris for making Zena available to the kids via our Roku player. I hope you can explain to her that there is no real employment being an Amazon.)

I was pregnant with Karenna while I was still teaching high school English classes.  Perhaps some of that rubbed off.  After all, I hadn't expected my kindergartner to observe the following...

Karenna (while watching Doctor Who): Did you ever notice how all stories have problems in them?
Me (getting very proud and excited): Yes! That's called conflict.  Some are problems with one person and another person; that's called man versus man.  Others are problems with the earth or the weather: man versus nature.  Then people have problems with themselves: man versus himself.  And the last one is one person has to prove himself against everyone else: man versus society.  Which one is this?
Karenna: Man versus man.
[I tweeted the event.]
Chris: Mommy, will you get off the computer and watch the show with the rest of the family?
Me: I will, but first I had to share this moment with the whole Internet.

And now I did it again.