A Jen Too Many

Oldest Girl Child has announced that she is too old to call me Mommy anymore. Her friends all call their mothers Mom, and she has decided it is time for her to do the same. She let me know this yesterday, and has been working on it ever since. At first, she kept slipping up, but now she is calling me Mom fairly reliably.

It's a shock every time I hear the word Mom coming out of her. There's a little flash of pain that deafens me for a moment and grays out my vision. I'm losing something precious here, even more than when she made the change from baby to toddler. This is as big as when she went off to her first full day of school.

I remember when I made that change. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember that same feeling OGC describes - the feeling that I was much too old to call my mother Mommy; that it was time for me to start calling her Mom. I was so proud of myself. I felt so mature and grown up. I understand how OGC feels right now; I wonder if my mother felt as sad as I do.

Youngest Girl Child is not happy with the change. This morning she made it clear that she has no intention of ever doing the same thing - she will call me Mommy forever. OGC told her (in that smug big sister way) that she would change her mind when she got to be OGC's age. YGC indignantly denied it. OGC insisted she would. I had to separate them at that point.

Recently I was teaching my Sunday class of five year olds about the importance of obeying your parents. "I know my mommy's name!" one little boy burst out. "It's Mommy!"

"Good-bye, Mom!" OGC called this morning as she headed out the door to the bus.

My name is Mom now. I'd rather be Mommy.

Yes! The oven is still working! The house has not burned down! The turkey cooked faster than I expected!

OK, so maybe that last isn't such good news. But it's amazing how much better the oven works now that it has a new bake element. I hadn't realized just how much the temperatures were off with the old element. The Love of My Life tells me that next time I will know what is happening when the oven starts to heat erratically and I just replace the element before it melts all over the interior. I told him that next time that happens I would rather just buy a new oven ...

We had a nice Thanksgiving. I hope you all did, too! And now I can say:

I'm back!

A big Thank You to my baby brother (who is considerably taller than me, but who's measuring?) who suggested that I check the monitor. Yes! It was broken!

Unfortunately, that was not the only thing that was broken.

Another big Thank You to the geeky guy at Geek Squad! When I brought my computer in he told me to call the company that made my computer to order a new recovery disk. He saved me lots of money!

Gateway does not get a thank you. They make you order recovery disks online, a place that is hard to get to when your computer insists on rebooting every time it tries to run Windows. If you happen to be lucky enough to find a phone number for them, you will get sent to various places, told by everyone that they cannot help you because your computer is out of warranty, and then finally told that you have to go online to order the disk because ... your computer is out of warranty.

Thank You to my sister who patiently went through the Gateway website with me, reading to me, typing in as I directed, and who has faithfully promised she forgot my credit card number faster than I read it off to her.

Nothing was lost permanently, thanks to Mozy Backup. Seriously, if you don't have a backup in place, take care of it now! I would have been fine losing most of our stuff, but not the family photos. The very thought makes me hyperventilate.

I have also fixed the oven, just in time for Thanksgiving. It was scary! Very, very scary! I don't like working with wires, which is what you have to do when you replace your bake element. I unscrewed a panel at the back of the oven, pulled the wires forward and then spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to detach the blasted element from the wires. Then the new element was a little too lose and I had to try to clamp everything tighter. I am now living in terror that I did something wrong and will wake up to a fire fighter beating at my door some dark night.

Oh - when working with electricity, always remember to TURN IT OFF FIRST. I almost didn't. I was carefully placing the flashlight so the light would shine in the right place. I idly thought how it was a good thing the element was in several different pieces, so that it couldn't come on and melt the plastic flashlight. And then I thought, "Oh. Right. I should turn off the electricity." And then the magnitude of my goof really hit me, and I panicked and became obsessive about making sure the electricity was off. I flipped the breaker for the range off, then turned on all the burners and the broiler element and watched them carefully for 10 or 15 minutes to make sure nothing was heating up.

But I did it! And it worked! Watching the oven element heat up (after I turned the electricity back on) was quite the moment of triumph for me. It feel as competent as my mother.

That's right! The vacuum is a major appliance, too. Silly me. I guess it felt left out? That makes three broken appliances this week. Who cursed me?

We'll see if this works.

Posting through my phone because the computer is not currently working. Neither is the oven, which needs a new element.

I am seriously considering replacing the water heater as a preemptive strike, as it is the only major household appliance we have not had to repair in the last year, and it is probably only a matter of time.

(I do NOT like trying to type on a cell phone keyboard.)

We will be offline for an indefinite period.

I am living in terror. Now that everything from the car to the fridge has gone kaput, what's next? An alien invasion?

The fat little guy on the left grew up to be the father of my children (who looked very much like this when they were babies.) No idea who the other baby is. A cousin? A friend? I'd also love to know whose hand that is he's holding. I'm guessing his mother.

Judging from what I saw the girls do when they were babies, that lopsided grin on his face means he's concentrating on something very interesting. He also looks like they did when they were still learning to sit up - I can just see him getting all side to side wobbly like babies do just before they fall backward.

I've been trying to see if I can see a trace of the adult in the baby, but nope. All I see is a baby, completely interchangeable with any one of his children.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

The context: Driving past the local high school and the technical institute next door.

Oldest Girl Child: (pointing to technical institute) When will I go to that school?

Mommy: Well, that depends on what classes you take in high school. Some classes are over there, like if you want to learn to be a mechanic.

OGC: What school do you go to if you want to cut hair?

Mommy: (firmly) First you have to graduate from high school. Then you can go to a beauty college.

YGC: What school do you go to be a princess?

Mommy: Oh, you don't go to school for that, sweetie. You have to be born a princess. Or marry a prince.

YGC: (extreme disappointment)