Category Archives: ParentPants

Trying to prevent my child from self-destructing

She Rests Her Giant Heed on Her Wee Pillah

Posted on February 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

When you have a kid going through a growth spurt the first thing you think in the morning when you see their smiling face hungrily gnawing on the side of their crib is, “Good lawd that’s one giant head!” as you are slowly pulled into their enormous noggin’s gravitational force.

That gigantic head has a life of it’s own: slamming into and splitting your delicate lips that are just trying to survive the winter, landing square on the bridge of your nose when you (and your language censor) least expect it, and colliding with floors/furniture/major appliances for no apparent reason.

And it only takes a few days of healthy head growth and sub-par hair sprouting until your precious baby goes from a baby skullet to this…

Good gah! She has a bad baby toupee!

As Boogie approaches the big second birthday, a milestone wherein the doctor will actually measure her head and give us an accurate idea of how it compares to normal heads her age, she now rests her giant heed on her wee pillah with a baby toupee that makes Gene Simmons’ toupee look convincing.

It’s a challenge having a baby with an ever increasing cranial circumference. What, with all the tugging that it takes to get her sweaters (all open in the back might I add) over her head each morning, and then prying them off her head each night. And having to constantly clear the air space when she gets to excited and that thing starts whipping around.

We’re just hoping that the rest of her body catches up before she starts looking to much like a Blythe doll, or before it turns into something like this…

(Also, I am tagging this post with big headed baby.)

devil horns | melody

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When I Realized My CD Collection Could Run an Oldies Station

Posted on January 31, 2012 | Leave a comment
St Louis Mom Blog Mrs SmartyPant

First Birthdays the Mister (left), Boogie (center), Me (right).

They say a foggy memory is the first sign that you are aging, but I’m here to tell you that it’s more likely that you’ll be driving along (during the day of course because you can’t see so well at night) when you flip to a radio station and find that your music collection has been hijacked and turned into an oldies station.

Perhaps there were musical harbingers of oldness that I had chosen to ignore: the fact that I own vinyl and not in that hipster cool way but in the you can borrow my copy of “Chipmunk Punk” way, the fact that I have a massive collection of tapes (one being a recording of when Q 106.5 went off the air here in St Louis because at my age for whatever reason I thought that would be something worth documenting), and the fact I spent a very long summer afternoon sipping margaritas and moving my tomes of high school music into my iTunes library. That’s right, I have been alive long enough to legitimately own three different types of music storage media. Three because I am just on this side of 8-tracks.

A couple of weekends ago as my thirty-second birthday (yes, I am not old enough to have to lie about it yet) approached, a local alt-rock station-the one that took me from Seattle-grunge virgin to progressive rock woman-was having what they call a “Way Back Weekend.” Now mind you this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this, but it was the first time that it occurred to me that I knew the words to every.single.song. Songs I learned in a pre-Google-era, when you would pray for lyrics on the CD insert or get creative with your EQ to isolate lyrics because it was crucial you knew every word. An era when life was so easy that you actually had time to devote to learning Nirvana’s entire library-which in all their random glory requires a higher level of functioning that even four years of college level lit classes hasn’t helped me figure out. My high school CD collection is now considered a throwback.

During said “wayback weekend” I found myself singing along to a Stabbing Westward song that I has considered a favorite, a song that was so passionate and resonated so well with my love-torn 18-year-old heart. As the song ended, without having forgotten a single word mind you, I turned to the Mister and said, “God that song is way melodramatic.”

Also, get off my lawn.

devil horns | mel

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Music Is Everywhere

Posted on November 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

Boogie has recently began singing. A lot. I can probably claim responsibility because I have written a special song for everything in this household. In fact, she may be convinced she is one of the VonTrapp children minus all of that really uncomfortable Nazi stuff and the pitch pipe (…oh how we need a pitch pipe).

Since she is also becoming increasingly enamored of electronics, a love that started some time ago with licking outlets and hanging on floor lamps, it is nearly impossible to capture her musical styling on video. Instead of beautiful baby music all you would see is an extreme closeup of her mouth and incessantly running nasal cavities, maybe a few teeth, and sea-sickness inducing panning and swooping view of our home as I avoid her desperately clawing, sticky, pudgy fingers.

But never fear, there is an exact rendering of her vocal prowess that can be found right here on the interwebz. You need only close your eyes, press play and be magically transported to Chez Meiners and Boogie’s skillz…it’s like living here without the poopy diaper smell or having your white sweater smeared with tomato sauce.

taste teh awesome | melody

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A Dark Place

Posted on November 16, 2011 | 1 Comment

I am the type of person who always wants the believe in the good in other people. I have been bitten by that hard many times in my life, but I continue to believe it. But at the same time finding out that Baby Tyler’s mother was responsible for his murder is one of those things that tries that piece of me in a way that is hard to recover from.

As a human we all have our dark moments, but it has to be one of the darkest places a person can go to be able to look at their own child and be able to beat them with such force, so often that their little life slips from them.

My gut reaction to hearing his mother had done this was tears. Tears that would not stop all day today. They caught my breath and surprised me. I cannot fathom that the last moments of that poor baby’s short life-one that had not had enough time to develop a callous, one that didn’t have time to become jaded-were spent scared and afraid of the person he loved the most in this world. A person he trusted.

And I can’t fathom just how dark of a place his mother could have been in to watch his fear, pain and suffering without being able to have one joyful memory call her back and make it stop.

I heard many people say they weren’t surprised to hear today’s news. That the Casey Anthonies of this world have become so much a part of our American psyche that they knew his mother was responsible before she was arrested today. What a sad mark upon the face of this world that is. I don’t blame them though, and they were right.

But as a mother it is so far from my comprehension and belief in people to be able to fathom that a person is capable of murdering their own child. And so many times this has happened lately. It tries a person’s resolve, and it is haunting.

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Never Will I Ever…

Posted on November 15, 2011 | 7 Comments

Today at 3:15pm my heart stopped beating for a moment. Not only my heart, but the hearts of hundreds of mothers around the St. Louis area stopped, too. That’s when many of us began hearing that 18-month-old* Tyler Dasher, a little boy the same age as my Boogie, was taken from his crib in the middle of the night and the police were searching for him.

Bits of information, the color of his pajamas, his blanket, anything that might help the search began furiously circulating on social media and local news outlets.

I can’t tell you how many times I have awoken in a panic to find the clock reading 9:30am, realizing I didn’t wake up to Boogie’s special brand of  morning screeches.  It’s a parent’s worst nightmare-something happens in those few, vulnerable hours when you aren’t there to stop it. Call it new parent panic, or just being a parent, it’s the kind of thing that keeps you up at night.

Tears burned my eyes just a few hours later when I noticed updates about the case had stopped scrolling across the bottom of my screen. The SARAA alert had been called off. I dreaded every second I watched the screen as I hit rewind, finally seeing those last few scrolling sentences say they had identified the body found near the boy’s home as Tyler’s.

I grabbed Boogie tight, gave her as many kisses as I could until she head-butted the bridge of my nose nice and good, and decided this…

Never will I ever feel sorry for myself because I had to clean up your spilled cup of milk.

Never will I ever take for granted that you will be there when my work is through.

Never will I ever promise a moment to someone who won’t appreciate it the way you would.

Never will I ever feel it can’t get any worse when I can hear your giggles.

Never will I ever take one smile, one moment, one day for granted. Not as long as I am your mommy and you are my Boogie.

My gratitude mixes with pain as my heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the mother and family who are today facing their worst nightmare.

**Updated at 10:02pm, Tyler was actually 13-months-old at the time of his murder, not 18 months as I had originally read.

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