Is It Christmas Or a Case of Self-Inflicted Child Abuse?

From as near as a few feet, my daughter looks like she's taken marker to her face and created a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer mask.
Hold up. It isn't even Halloween; we aren't calling Christmas into the Sager household just yet.
Get close enough, and the odd reddish brown marks on her nose and forehead take on the unmistakable look of giant scabby mess.
That mess arrived on Saturday, courtesy of scene play-acted in every house in America at one point or another.
Parent to child: "Stop bouncing the ball in the house."
Child (rolling eyes): "But it bounces when it hits the floor. It's not me."
Parent to child: "Well stop letting it hit the floor. And stop chasing it."
Child (with withering stare): "I have to get it."
Parent to child: "We don't run in the house."
Child: Loud sigh . . . "OK."
Five minutes of silence.
Child screams.
She bounced the ball. And chased it. And ran in the house.
And ended up slip sliding on the rug, her face stopped from planting itself on the floor by a garbage can.
Blood spurting everywhere, tears running down her face, I was too busy cuddling her to say I told you so.
But I should have seen it coming.
Like every parent who's said "no running in the house" before me, I saw the end and it wasn't good. But this case was especially fraught with disaster.
It was Saturday.
Sunday was picture day at soccer.
Doesn't look like this one will make the Christmas card. Even if she's got the Rudolph look down pat.

And Then She Was A Kindergartner

She handed over the bag of Duplo blocks without a second glance.
She's a LEGO girl now, officially old enough to both connect the small bricks with ease and to be trusted with toys dubbed chocking hazards for the 3 and under set.
She didn't have to say goodbye so willingly.
It's been that kind of summer.
First kindergarten registration.
Then a 5th birthday.
Followed up with a dose of pre-school graduation, and a summer of following her 14-year-old babysitter around, soaking up "big kid" like a sponge.
It's a recipe that's aged us both, and the helpings are heaping in the last few weeks.
I sat at what may well be the last playdate of the summer last Friday afternoon. Add one month.
I watched my 5-year-old rescue my keys from her friend's 1 1/2-year-old brother like a concerned older sister. Add one year.
I spent Sunday's rainy morning in my attic, loading a hand-me-down box with sundresses that started the summer just right and have moved into the stage of indecent. Add six months.
Is it time for Botox yet?
I can feel it settling in my joints.
While a dear friend welcomed a new child into this world this weekend, I was cleaning my office/playroom of the vestiges of toddlerhood. The Duplo blocks. The cloth books. The stuffed animals with rattles bouncing around inside.
Up and down.
Dragging out garbage bags.
Loading up the recycling bins.
The muscles reminding me: you don't run after a toddler anymore. Time for a new exercise routine. Add five two years.
And then I looked at pictures of the baby. Add five years.
I have an almost kindergartner.
It's the almost I'm clinging too. I just wish she would too.

Sorry, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Biz Has Got You Beat

The kids saw Yo Gabba Gabba!
I saw Biz Markie.
Never heard of him? Neither had my 14-year-old babysitter.
To my 5-year-old he's just the guy who teaches kids to "beat box," making music with their mouths, on morning cartoons on Nick Jr.
But my husband took one look at my pictures from Friday's concert for kids at Bethel Woods and he started singing, "baby you, you got what I neeeeeeed."
His was the music of our childhoods, and there he was onstage at the inaugural children's show in Bethel, teaching kids the "beat of the day."
He was there "for the kids."
The oversized ones who laughed when guest star Tracey Bonham popped out in a sparkly purple and announced "some of your parents might remember my song."
No, the 14-year-old babysitter hadn't heard of her either.
Having her in my home this summer has been an education in what's "old," and what's new again.
Biz Markie is famous to the 5 and under set.
He was famous to the 25 and over set first.
Like the awful neon resurgence and the return of the too-tight pants.
My generation is finally getting a taste of our own medicine. We thought our parents knew nothing about being cool.
Now it's our turn to groan at our kids wearing everything we were glad to shed 20 years ago.
Well, some of it.
Because thousands of parents showed up to treat their children to Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! at Bethel Woods on Friday with that old-fashioned desire to give their kids every experience out there -- to give even better than we got.
It's what's forced us to go rooting around in our closets and pull out the comforts of childhood and pass them on to our kids -- the retro toys, the favorite cartoon characters and, yes, the musicians that can't help making Mom whip out her camera and saying "can I get a picture with you?"
We came for Yo Gabba Gabba! But my kid got her picture with Biz too.

More Yo Gabba Gabba! Buzz:

DJ Lance Rock Has No Butt and More Yo Gabba Gabba! Secrets Revealed