Blanching with something akin to, oh, I don’t know, extreme dread, I chuckled and shook my head. “Nope, I’m pretty sure we’re just going to stay a family of four, sweetie.”

Aura furrowed her brow and looked at me pityingly.

“But you grow a baby when you LOVE someone and you and Daddy are IN LOVE and you’re not going to stop BEING IN LOVE, so you’ll just grow more babies!” she explained, looking mildly astounded by my dimness.

I for one suddenly became very astounded by my dimness. First of all, her father had just told me the night before that the new fish recipe I had tried was “kind of dry” and “maybe needed to be reevaluated,” so the whole staying-in-love thing wasn’t looking like a slam dunk at the moment. Second, perhaps my sweetness/light/looooove approach to explaining how babies are made was backfiring.

Somewhere out there, my good friend Becca is cackling at this comeuppance. She has been telling me for years to get Aura the below book, since her son started loving it. But I couldn’t, and I still can’t. Maybe when Aura’s older, like six, or seven, or…thirty-one. Maybe then we’ll begin using terms other than, er, “peephole” and “down there.” Come on. She’s my baby. BABIES DO NOT “GET SMART ABOUT THEIR OHGOD PRIVATE PARTS.”

Alyssa at Near Normalcy recently wrote a seriously fantastic post about this very subject—explaining sex to a child around Aura’s age. I nodded my way right through the post, thought approvingly of how Alyssa described a very mature approach to parenting, then proceeded to edit the entire babymaking chapter of Double Fudge when we read it before bed that night, because it seems pretty obvious that Judy Blume was a sex maniac.

I just…can’t do it. It’s not that I won’t do it, or that I’m not prepared to do it. It’s just that, for us, it hasn’t gotten to that point yet. I do sense  “that point” rapidly approaching, what with a little brother on his way with his little penis and all.

It’s just that there are so many years stretching ahead of five-year-old Aura, so much time when so much of what she’ll do and hear and think about will be tinged with the concept of body parts and what they can do and what people can do with them. Hazy though the memories are, I remember elementary school. I remember “liking” a boy as early as third grade (oh, Tommy D.; how I kicked him often and repeatedly on the playground to show my love, which is how we western Mass girls used to do it, Springfield UNIIIITE).

So. It’s coming, and there’s no way around It, and soon enough Aura, our baby, will be thinking differently about the clothes she wears and how people perceive her and how all that translates into non-let’s-play-with-Polly-Pockets! relationships. She’ll be kicking boys on the playground and giggling about it on the phone with her best friend and OH GOD SHE MIGHT WEAR A BRA SOMEDAY.

Nah.

So, for now, we’re waiting her out. We’re sticking with the Babies Are Made From Love concept, and I’ll kind of gloss over the part where her father is actually in danger of having the locks changed on him because he also said something a tad derisive about my baked chicken the other night (DAMN YOU, ALLRECIPES.COM AND YOUR TOO-LIGHT HAND WITH SAVORY FLAVORS).

Either that or we’ll just kick the entire thing into high gear by throwing in some fairies. I figure you can’t go wrong with baby-making fairies. Elusive little suckers and very, very easy to blame.

The other day, during swim class (the last one for a while, thank all that is fully holy, semi-holy, and even just a little holy), I noticed that Aura was giving her teacher a bit of a hard time about going under water. After it had gone on for a few minutes, I stood up, walked over to the edge of the pool, and told Aura that I expected her to listen to her teacher and put her head under the water at least once. When she protested, I repeated what I had just said.

When I returned to my seat, another mother leaned over and said, “Look at you, getting all Tiger Mom over there!”

This woman is a close friend of mine, so I know she meant it as a joke, but the remark has resonated with me the past few days and I’ve come to a conclusion: She’s totally and completely correct.

Now, now. I’m no Amy Chua, not that I’m sure Amy Chua was even quite Amy Chua, given the mythic proportions of the fallout from her book. I lavish Aura with love and positive reinforcement, I would never insult her to inspire her to do better, yada yada yada. But I’m all about the high expectations. If I know that Aura is capable of doing something, be it finally putting her nose under water (after months of lessons, keep in mind) or moving on to the next level of the math problems we write out for her on her playroom easel almost every day (first grade seems like an excellent time for trigonometry, as I like to say when I’m good and inebriated; I’m a big hit at holiday parties).

Have you guys noticed that there’s a bit of eye-rolling and a touch of social ostracization associated with pushing your kid a little? In my severely limited view of the world, I have this understanding (and keep in mind that I came up with this one while in the throes of Diet Coke withdrawal, since I am once again trying to give it up, making me the World’s Least Bearable Person with Whom to Live Except for the Time I Gave Up Chocolate and Was Locked in the Closet Fairly Regularly):

Mid-twentieth century: DO YOUR HOMEWORK OR ELSE AND SCREW YOU ALL CREATIVITY

Late-twentieth century: I’M BFFs WITH MY KID AND WE EVEN WEAR EACH OTHER’S JEANS AND THIS BIG A HOMEWORK LOAD IS TOO CHALLENGING SQUEEE

So, I’m just going to bust out of the Tiger Mom closet and be done with it. My name is Kate and I hold my kid to high standards. She does workbooks. She is expected to read aloud to us every day. She’s starting an afterschool math enrichment program soon, and city birthday deadlines be damned, I’m petitioning for her to go to first grade in the public schools next year.

Which brings us to the following:

Um, is there any educational value in these things? If not, I’m thinking of disappearing them in the middle of the night. Or introducing really BIG place value stuff. For example:

1,322 Squinkies – 1 woman’s sanity  + 1 nearby recycling bin = ?

Take that, Mensa.

There have been afternoons and evenings lately, with trying to build our business and meet unrelated, on-the-side work obligations, when I look at the clock and think, My god, I haven’t played with a Littlest Pet Shop creature for three days. Normally, this would be cause for great celebration and a really super parade, but right now it smacks a little of guilt.

Then again, guilt is as guilt does. We do still play. We still read. We still undertake large coloring/book-writing projects that involve several crayons being broken (it’s those House genes; Crayolas, much like stick figures, don’t stand a chance in our muscular yet remarkably feminine hands) and a flabbergasting number of plots involving aliens. We chat on the way to and from half-day kindergarten and swim class and dance lessons.

I guess the guilt stems from the fact that, lately, my laptop is constantly open, my phone is ever-present, my mind is almost always churning away with work-related thoughts, rather than Very Enthralling Beach Scenarios for Build-A-Bears. (Of which there is a shocking overabundance in this household, along with Build-A-Bear sandals, natty Build-A-Bear button-down shirts, and rather skimpy Build-A-Bear swimwear. Zebra-print swimwear.)

Sure, there are a few babysitter days here and there, chunks of hours when I dash off with my computer and pound away at breakneck speed. And over the past few years, after I’ve turned down yet another job offer or project because there just isn’t enough childcare in our current situation to make it happen, Adam has floated the possibility of a nanny, someone who would play for lengthy periods of time without taking breaks to check her e-mail while I sat upstairs checking mine. Someone who would play pretend for whole afternoons while I worked more hours, made more money, established more of the career that was once doing pretty well.

Nah, I always say. Maybe when she’s older, but not now, I say. Maybe, when she’s three, we can think about it. Or maybe when she’s four. Maybe then. 

So, for the past several years, paid work has been squeezed in during naps, and during those precious two or three school-time hours, and during TV shows, and after bedtime. On weeks like the past few, work has been crammed in during Aura-please-go-play-more-by-yourself time, too. There has been fatigue. There has been some disappointment.

Today Aura turns five. And as I sit here, stroking her silky hair, laughing at her jokes, and wiping pink frosting off her suddenly five-year-old chin, I realize, as I should remember to do more often, that there has never, ever been regret.

Case in point:

Yes, sirree. She up and left me for kindergarten, she did. Just like that. One day she’s born and the next it’s all BYE MOM and I KNOW YOU HATE CATS BUT I REALLY NEED TO HAVE THIS VERY SPECIFIC BACKPACK.

In the interest of fairness, which we all know typically doesn’t interest me all that much, Aura didn’t have to go to kindergarten this year. With her dratted October birthday, she misses the September 1 deadline for public kindergarten. We thought about sending her to yet another year of preschool, but two years seems like enough and plus we prefer being those pushy, MY KID CAN READ WHERE’S THE TOLSTOY AND THE CALCULUS parents. So we opted for a private half-day kindergarten in the next town over.

Today was the first day. I’ve been dreading it in my own way, of course, but golly GEE have I talked it up to Aura, trying to tread the line between Not Too Animated As to Make You Nervous and Enthusiastically Optimistic But Dying Inside About Your First Step Into Leaving Me Forever. This morning, as we walked into the new school, she gripped my hand extra tightly and asked, “Are you proud of me?” A few minutes later, as we hung her new backpack with its new pencil box on her new hook, she gripped my fingers even more tightly and whispered, “I’m afraid.”

I think we’re both a little afraid this week, but I know that will pass. But as for how proud I am of her? Well, let’s call that forever and ever times infinity.

(You see what I did there, yes? I used the word “deliverables” and I implied that our business has grown important enough for an actual trip. Give me another six months and I will be wearing suits with shoulder pads and issuing directives on SYNERGY and STAKEHOLDERS and those DAMN FRAMEWORK DISCONNECTS. All while eating puppies for breakfast. I loves you, Internet.)

(It is entirely possible that I saw Working Girl too many times too many decades after it came out.)

(On second thought: Nah.)

Yet instead I am sitting down to write about a much more pressing issue.

It is this:

You see it, don’t you? It is impossible that you don’t see it, because you must see it.  Here:

Uh huh. YES. It is a GRAY HAIR.

Well, to be precise and this blog is nothing if not precise, wherein precise means “an authority on pet action figures and age-inappropriate mall walking,” it’s not actually gray. It’s more a silvery…silver. A touch of the metallic in otherwise very dark hair.

I’m fairly certain that it is also the beginning of the end. Actually, I thought the beginning of the end was when I first purchased anti-aging cream, but bam! wrong! it’s the gray hair (about seven strands in the past two months, not that I’m counting or charting it or, you know, making some crazy line graph nope). Wrinkle cream is apparently the almost-there beginning of the end, whereas a gray hair is the end-all, death’s door, just-get-it-over-with-and-become-incontinent-and-die beginning of the end. Just to be clear.

For now, my only plan of action is to alternate between panic and frantic bouts of finger-combing and peering. I’ve yanked a couple on my own, but by far the most successful degraying was done by Adam and Aura, when I forced them to stand over me while I crouched on the living room floor, yelling, “IF IT CATCHES THE LIGHT, PLUCK THE SUCKER.”

Back to the deliverables. Can you wear deliverables on your head, like a hat? A big, hair-hiding hat? Sigourney Weaver would, I bet.

Ah, togetherness. Constant togetherness.

The most astounding thing? I made it back alive, something I am 91% convinced will not be the case every time I step onto a plane. I am what some kindhearted folks might call a “nervous flyer” and what less kindhearted husbands might call a “THAT’S JUST THE LANDING GEAR FOR GOD’S SAKE.”

Actually, I thought I handled both flights with rather mesmerizing aplomb, a fact helped along by my desire to hide my fear of flying from Aura, who had never flown before but showed not a trace of anxiety. God listened: She got my brains and beauty but missed my compulsive need to be on the ground. TWELVE YEARS OF CATHOLIC SCHOOL PAYS OFF, PEOPLE.

But I also need to give credit where credit is due. For it turns out that the best antidote to paralyzing fear is something at which I have scoffed for months now. Something at which I turned up my nose. Something…amazing.

Jersey Shore.

Thank the skies above for JetBlue, who saw fit to have satellite TV and therefore this reality-show goodness, right as I was about to start hyperventilating into the barf bag in my seat pocket. (Turbulence? Such a stupid, stupid word for something that feels precisely like imminent death. Next thing you know, they’ll be calling “fiery crash” something like fluffy bunnies.)

For nearly three straight hours, I watched in mouth-agape, delighted horror as Snooki and Sammi and other people whose names ended unnaturally in i stumbled and gyrated and completely ruined the English language forever. From time to time, Aura would try to harness my attention by pointing to her television or toy or, I don’t know, a cloud (first-time flyers are such bores), but for the most part it was an airborne oasis of mindlessness.

Of course, Adam saw fit to make fun of me once we landed, but I know he was relieved. For once, he didn’t have to hold my hand or pretend that he was a Jew who knew Christian prayers.

Also, those who live in glass houses, and all that:

Luckily, there’s nothing better for defrosting a dormant blog than a healthy dose of letting-off-steamishness. Extra luckily, I have just the subject. And her name is Suzy, or it wouldn’t be if I was foolhardy enough to use her real name, which may or may not rhyme with littleshit.

Suzy, Presented in Three Stages

Suzy is a little girl in Aura’s preschool class. Since she was in another classroom last year, Aura only just met her in September, and what a meeting it was. Suzy was pronounced a GREAT GIRL. Also, SO FUN. Also also, VERY FUN TO PLAY WITH.

I examined Suzy and I agreed: She looked like an absolute doll. I watched her run around the school’s front yard with Aura and I got all non-Kate-like mushy. They would be each other’s closest confidante! There would be sleepovers and yearbook co-editorships and eventually weddings, or at least Suzy’s, since Aura would have been locked in her room permanently once she reached pubescence! But still! Videoconferencing!

One day, Aura announced that Suzy was one of her Best Friends. I smiled and said I was glad. Plus I maybe picked up a bridesmaid dress catalog, just, you know, in case.

By December, there seemed to be less talk of Suzy. On the drive home from school, if I asked Aura who she played with, it was only sometimes Suzy. Apparently, Suzy was often busy playing with “the boys,” in the “toy couch area,” thus proving that YES, THEY REALLY DO START THAT YOUNG.

One unseasonably warm afternoon before Christmas, I once again watched the kids running on the front lawn. My eyes narrowed and my heart broke a little as I watched Suzy pair off with another child, Aura halfheartedly chasing her around before giving up entirely.

Then one day Aura announced, “I was lucky today, because Suzy sat next to me at snacktime.”

“No, sweetie,” I replied. “Suzy was lucky to sit next to YOU!”

That night, I repeated the story to Adam. He started drumming his fingers on the counter and glaring at random things. (The poor wall clock. It was fixed with the Icy Stare of Paternal Displeasure. It has never told time the same way again.) (Actually, it hasn’t told time correctly since 2005. However. The look. It was icy.)

“Don’t worry yet,” I said comfortingly. “I’m sure Suzy will come around.”

I think you see where I’m going here. The Suzy situation has not greatly improved with the advent of a new year. To be fair, this does not seem to bother Aura all that much anymore. She plays with the other kids and she amuses herself and she didn’t even appear that offended when explaining that “Suzy was playing with the castle and I tried to play with her but she said no, not now, it was her turn and that she was the only one who gets to play with the princess.”

“Oh, taking turns!” I chirped, diverting her attention with candy and lavish toys or maybe a pony, one can’t be expected to remember every such thing. “Nothing wrong with that! I’m glad you were so patient.”

“ONLY SHE GETS TO PLAY WITH THE PRINCESS?” I roared to Adam that night. “WHO DOES THAT LITTLE NO-GOOD PIECE OF PRESCHOOL BOY-BAIT THINK SHE IS, TALKING TO OUR DAUGHTER THAT WAY?”

He nodded, looking slightly taken aback.

“SO WHAT IF THERE IS ONLY ONE PRINCESS IN THE CASTLE?” I continued at top volume, spitting a little in my indignation. “PLUS. SHE LOOKS MORE LIKE THE PRINCE TYPE, ANYWAY.”

I’m not sure what that last bit was about, but I do know it made crystal-clear maternal sense when I screamed it.

I’ve calmed down a bit since then, and recording my thoughts here has helped immensely. In fact, it’s even given me insight.

Tomorrow? I’m tripping Suzy with my Uggs. There is more than one way to use sheepskin, you know.

Considering this is her second year of preschool, one might think that I would have wrapped my brain around the concept of having a kid and then watching that kid go to school. But it still seems a tad foreign to me. For years, all I’ve been hearing is KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR CHILD and FEED HER ORGANICS and BEWARE BAD INFLUENCES.

Yet here I am, releasing her into a classroom run by almost-strangers, where she will nosh on undoubtedly pesticide-laced goldfish crackers and learn all about the seedy underbelly of Yo Gabba Gabba, the one show that creeps me out too much to TiVo.

I felt a bit adrift after I walked out of Aura’s classroom, so I left the car at the preschool and went for a walk, since now and then I find myself once again falling for those scientists and their studies that say exercise has benefits. It was an okay walk, during which I stopped into the grocery store and bought Adam this wasabi-horseradish cheddar he really likes. But when I was almost back to the car, a wild turkey starting chasing me down the street and when I breathlessly threw myself into the car I tossed the cheese on top of the preschool information forms I’m supposed to return and now the forms smell like horseradish and the driver’s side door has turkey-beak pecking marks.

From now on, I’m going straight home after drop-off. I might even fire up the old laptop and research how to trap crazed wild fowl. Talk about things that should be taught in preschool. GEEZ.

Scraped knees paled in comparison. The time I got my five-year-old index finger trapped in the checkout belt at the grocery store? Couldn’t touch it. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, measured up to the searing agony of having my long hair brushed by my mother. The pulling. The tangle-trapped combs. It was…horrific. So horrific, in fact, that I swore up and down, in between sobs and threats of running away from home (forever and ever) (oh, and she would never find me) (also, she’d be SO SORRY), that I would never inflict such pain on my own little girl when I was a mother.

Yeah. So about that.

It’s not like it’s my fault. I would have truly cut it a long time ago, or at least taken her for more than the occasional split-end trimming, but nooooo. Adam is adamant that His Little Girl will have long hair, like All Little Girls Have, because that is what you are supposed to do when You Have a Little Girl. I argue. I make points and counterpoints. I reason. But it’s like logic won’t touch him, which is particularly stupefying when you consider that part of Adam’s double major in college was philosophy.

Then I went to BlogHer. And Adam and Aura had four long, tangle-drenched, tantrum-laced days alone.

We have a haircut appointment for later this week. When I actually take time to feel something other than smarmy satisfaction, I realize that I will miss the long ponytail.

But somehow we’ll all survive. Plus, I really don’t want to be the mother of a three-year-old runaway. They really look down upon you in moms’ groups for that.

On an exhaustingly regular basis, she asks me if I’d “like some lipstick,” then proceeds to rub the thing all over my general mouth area. But the other day she paused in the middle of the rubbing. “Mommy?” she asked. “How do you really put on lipstick, real lipstick?”

I paused, too. “Um,” I said. “Well, I’m not all that sure, honey. I kind of still need to learn how to use lipstick.”

Aura patted my shoulder consolingly. “We’ll learn together,” she replied, then stuck a toy curler in my hair and got out the toy crimping iron.

Yes. At 33 (freshly minted this week, thank you very much), I suppose it is about time I learned how to wear lipstick properly. It’s not as if I haven’t tried before–I have. There was a prom! And this work party of Adam’s about…let’s see…five years ago! Granted, I spent 57% of each event in the bathroom, frantically staring in the mirror to convince myself that I did not in fact have lipstick on my teeth.

Dug out the five-year-ago lipstuff. Nearly positive this brand no longer exists. FYI.

There. I admitted it: I don’t wear lipstick because it terrifies me. Some people fear heights. Others fear communicable disease, or, you know, death. Me? I fear lipstick. How do you wear it without worrying? How you know if your upper-lip-challenged (as in hardly there) lipline is not betraying you? I’ll stand there in Sephora, battling vertigo as I stare down the metallic tubes and twinkling vials and good God APPLICATORS, and it’s as if I’ve stumbled into a parallel universe. A make-up know-how universe, home to the Planet of Proper Lipstick Application, which I might be allowed to visit if I figure out how to speak the language of Matte, Glossy, and Sheer.

But I know it’s time to get with the program. It’s gotten to the point where I’m a little…sensitive about this lipstick-less existence. At our Moms’ Night Out dinners, I watch the other preschool mothers out of the corner of my (mascaraed! really!) eye, and their mouths are these gorgeous slick slashes of wonder. I mean, they line their lips AT THE TABLE. WITHOUT A MIRROR. It causes one to wonder if they also DRIVE with THEIR EYES CLOSED and it makes me feel INCOMPETENT.

Plus, the other night, as I was dressing for a rare night out, Adam looked me up and down and remarked, “You know what would make that outfit even better? If you tried a little lipstick.”

To which I retorted, “And you know what would make your outfit better? If you were STRUCK MUTE.”

See? From these long-naked lips comes vitriol. Truthful vitriol, of course, but vitriol nonetheless. Sigh. Perhaps I’ll start with a satin finish. I bet that’s what all the nice girls do.