Posts Tagged Under Anjie Reynolds
A Thing of Beauty
Slipping into my warm morning bed, Aubrey wraps herself in the afghan her great-grandmother made and sucks her thumb.
Once settled, she studies my face.
After awhile, she reaches for the bridge of my nose and points: “You have a dot here; it’s brown.” Moving her finger lower, next to my nose, she says, “And a dot here above your lips; that one’s almost the same color as your skin.”
By Anjie ReynoldsMom is a Coffee Junkie, Her Son Is Addicted to Dinosaurs
Dane, my 5-year-old, is sitting on the couch watching Prehistoric Planet, his favorite DVD about dinosaurs.
Leiopleurodon—an ancient whale-like sea creature whose jagged-tooth jaws have been likened to a giant car-crusher—has eaten, well, a dolphin thing.
Dane’s cozy under his afghan, but his hands are cold. He woke up too early so I sit and watch the video with him. I hold a homemade hot latte in my hands. It feels so good I think Dane will like holding it too.
By Anjie ReynoldsSing It, Pre-School Sister
My daughter has started singing with vibrato. She’s four. So, it’s not a quick and snappy “Mary had a little lamb,” it’s slow and pensive: “Ma-a-ary ha-a-a-ad uh-uh-uh li-i-i-it-uh-uh-uhl la-a-a-amb”
It’s pre-schooler sings the blues.
I’m not sure where she picked this up, but I will say it seemed to start after a two-week visit from her Grammy, who, if I may be so bold, utilizes a wee bit of the vibrato herself.
By Anjie ReynoldsOh, Shit
My son, Dane, came home from kindergarten and told me his classmate Nadia got in trouble at school. She’d said the “S-H-” word.
Nadia’s from Romania and she’s a little older than her classmates. She’s also a bit rough-and-tumble, but harmless enough. I asked him what kind of trouble she got in and he said she had to run a lap.
Aubrey, my younger child, yelled from the other room, “What’s the S-H- word?”
By Anjie ReynoldsMoustache Mamas
The concept: Women shouldn’t be ashamed of shaving – their upper lips.
I’m sure this has been conceived before, by some hairy Betty, in some by-gone era that had a few faithful Sallys offering timid support, but it looks like Betty tucked that Bic away when the rest of her friends quit inviting her to bowling night.
But this hairy Betty wants to resurrect the movement. Here’s what I’d really love doing – no, let me be more honest than that: here’s what I really love doing:
Shaving my moustache.
By Anjie ReynoldsChildren Sleep Under the Cover of Night
It’s seven-fifteen and pitch black outside. We’ve had a long, busy day and we’re ready for the kids to go to bed.
“Time for bed,” my husband says. “It’s late.”
It’s actually still an hour before their usual bedtime, but our kids can’t tell time yet – at least not on our dining room clock with the Roman numerals, and they don’t think to look at the other clocks – so they don’t catch us in the lie.
By Anjie ReynoldsFear for the Unknown
A middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper bobbed hair and a nylon jacket staggered to my apartment playground clutching her chest.
I ran across the lot to her, thinking she was having a heart attack. But in limited English and desperate body language, she conveyed she’d been mugged: her purse, grocery bags, and head scarf had just been stolen from her.
With my heart racing, I looked back at my girlfriends to make sure they were watching my children, and used my cell phone to call 911.
By Anjie ReynoldsWhen a Mother Is Most Needed
“Hold me?” my four-year-old daughter whispers from a pile of blankets in the middle of the hide-a-bed.
She’s been out here in the living room for twenty-four hours now with a flu bug.
First, she’d been pale and stoic, retching so often over a seven-hour period that I quit counting after she hit the double digits.
By Anjie ReynoldsDaddy Stays IN the Picture
“I’m drawing you, but Daddy’s not going to be in the picture.”
An innocent enough statement made by my four-year-old daughter, but it’s one, I suddenly realize, that cuts to the quick, articulating my deepest sense of childhood loss.
She’s lucky. Her statement is indeed harmless. Her daddy’s here. And he’s good.
By adminMugged
Mugged
A middle-aged, olive-skinned woman with salt-and-pepper bobbed hair and a nylon jacket staggered to my apartment playground clutching her chest.
I ran across the lot to her, thinking she was having a heart attack. But in limited English and desperate body language, she conveyed she’d been mugged: her purse, grocery bags, and head scarf had just been stolen from her.
With my heart racing, I looked back at my girlfriends to make sure they were watching my children, and used my cell phone to call 911. Wishing I could speak any foreign language at all, I tried to understand her English. At first I thought her son had robbed her, but eventually I figured out that by saying a “son” had grabbed her things from her – she’d actually meant “boy.”
By Anjie Reynolds