On Turning Forty

The unthinkable has happened: the dawn of my fortieth birthday.

I've tried ignoring it, pooh-poohing it, working through the psychology of it, and even re-naming it (a fellow author taught me to call each subsequent birthday the "Nth" anniversary of my thirtieth birthday). But it just won't go away.

So, in the spirit of having joyfully stayed at home with my children all these years, and of looking ahead at what is supposed to be my prime (assuming I have anything left), I thought I'd make a list of all the "good" things about turning forty. You are welcomed to laugh at me, commmiserate with me, or save the list for your own fortieth birthday when it rolls around (if it hasn't already).

Turning forty means:

1. I am officially too old to be labeled a "twit." I was definitely a "twit" when I married Eric. I spent years moving in and out of twitdom as I matured (too slowly). There might be other labels that now apply, but "twit" doesn't work anymore.

2. I'm that much closer to not having to buy tampons anymore.

3. The stretchmarks of childbirth no longer phase me. Nobody expects a forty-year-old woman to worry about tiny cosmetic details like stretchmarks. Crow's feet, yes, but not stretchmarks.

4. I will no longer wake up in the morning and realize that I've got poop under my fingernails from a middle-of-the-night diaper change.

5. Nobody will assume that it's my child who is screaming at the top of his lungs in the toddler class at church. I will appear far too mature and "together" to have a screaming child of that particular size and age. It's far more likely that it's my not-quite-teenaged child who has climbed one of the trees in the parking lot and is frightening the old ladies.

6. I can smirk at all the eighties fashions that have reappeared on the store racks, in full confidence of knowing that, twenty years after the fact, I would not be caught dead wearing any of them.

7. I can go to the mall without a stroller, diaper bag, box of wipies, band-aide supply, sippy cup, or Baby Gap clothing size card.

8. I no longer have to worry about young men in grocery stores, gas stations, and the post office mistaking my friendliness for flirtation. They will automatically assume that I'm old enough to be their mother and won't give me another thought.

9. I can give advice to young mommies and they will actually listen to me because, after all, "She's over forty and must know SOMETHING about raising kids."

10. I have made peace with my boobs. If they want to rest somewhere around the level of my navel, so be it. They've worked hard nourishing four babies, and I'm too old to obsess about them anymore. Besides, that's what push-up bras are for.

11. I no longer have to peel grapes, slice raisins, de-crust bread, crush peas, or cut peanut butter sandwiches into microscopic squares. In fact, I can pretty much throw food at my children and they will catch it and eat it. (Okay, not really -- but almost.)

12. My vocabulary no longer consists of ridiculous sentences like, "We don't go pee-pee in the tub," "Let Mommy wipe that boogie off of your face," and "Mommy is going to bite those piggies, yes she is! She's going to bite those stinky, little piggies and eat them for lunch! Ready? Here she goes! Here goes Mommy biting your stinky piggies!"

13. I no longer have any hang-ups about sex. Seriously. There's something about the "been there, done that" factor that renders it all rather irreverent and matter-of-fact. Well, most of the time, anyway.

14. People have stopped asking me if I'm going to have any more children. And I've stopped crying about having to say, "No."

15. My husband still calls me "beautiful," and now I know that it has a far deeper meaning than simply what's on the surface.

16. I haven't had a real zit in over six months. For someone who's struggled with her complexion since the age of thirteen, that is quite remarkable.

17. I don't step on Legos in the middle of the night anymore. There's nothing that brings me one step away from sudden murder as quickly as stepping on a Lego. Of course, I haven't bought any Legos for my younger son. I may never buy any Legos for him. I've done my time with the Legos.

18. When I go out alone, nobody knows whether or not I have any children. I don't have that deer-in-the-headlights, spit-up soaked, where-did-my-IQ-go look about me anymore. I don't have watermelon breasts that scream to the world, "This woman has to rush home and nurse her baby before she explodes before your eyes," either.

19. I haven't engaged in a frantic, pre-bedtime search for a three-inch strip of "blankie" for ages. In fact, all four of my children are actually capable of tucking themselves in. I kiss them good-night because I want to, not because it's part of an elaborate, nightly ritual.

20. I am officially entering the "prime of my life," which many say falls between the ages of forty and seventy. That makes me a mere babe in the grand scheme of things! I am married to the Love of my Life, I have four of the neatest kids I've ever laid eyes on, and I weigh less now than I did before I was pregnant with my first child. When all is said and done, I've come to this place in my life with a smile on my face and a song in my heart (the gray hairs on my head have been conveniently hidden with coloring and highlights).

If I can just manage to get carded when Eric takes me out for my birthday dinner, I'll be set for life. The last time I was carded, I was thirty-six. Surely four years haven't made THAT much of a difference, have they? (Please don't answer that.)

I feel much better now. Forty, here I come!

Farting Putty

You know, one would think that, as the journey of motherhood proceeds, one would eventually learn what to give -- and what NOT to give -- one's son to play with. Yet despite a long list of "What-was-I-thinking-when-I-gave-him-that's," I still manage to make really stupid purchases from time to time. Then I spend the next series of days -- or weeks -- or even months -- regretting it.

Take, for example, the farting putty.

No, I'm not making this up. It's called "Flarp," and it comes in a small, clear plastic container that's a bit smaller than your average Play-Doh cannister. Basically, it's a soft, semi-gooey dough that comes in several fluorescent colors (and fluorescent scents). And it farts.

Now, granted, I love to laugh at funny sounds, and when I saw this strange goo on the shelves of Walgreen, it seemed like the perfect birthday favor for my not-quite-thirteen-but-definitely-too-old-for-tiny-cars son. Heck, he's the Fart King around here, so it seemed rather apropos to give him putty that farts when you sqoosh it. So I chose the laser yellow (banana-scented) and grinned to myself at the kick I was sure Jonathan would get out of his new container of Flarp.

Oh, he got a kick out of it, all right. His face lit up with a sly, devilish, "did you actually just give this to me?" grin as he pulled off the lid to see if the "Flarp" lived up to its promises. His first, tentative poke at the stuff didn't produce any gastric results, but a second, more aggressive squish released the most realistic fart sound I've ever heard from a non-organic source.

Naturally, we all laughed. And that's all the fodder Jonathan needed to continue making his putty fart through the rest of Spencer's birthday party.

Imagine, if you will, the videos I took of Spencer's special day. Here comes the cake -- FART! Spencer is blowing out the candles one by one -- FART! Hey, let's go open the presents -- FART! What a cool bike helmet -- FART!

What, what, what, WHAT was I thinking??

Yes, it was funny -- for about two minutes. And I have no idea how it actually farts like that! As if yellow goo isn't disgusting enough in and of itself, the sounds that come out of this stuff rival the worst bathroom symphony you can imagine. I mean -- it's so REAL! So utterly fart-like.

And so annoying.

I know, I know -- it's my fault for buying the stuff. I guess I'll be thankful enough to never find it smeared on my new sofa or melted onto an entire dryer-load of laundry.

Spencer's birthday is only three months after Christmas, which is when I made my last dumb purchase (I suppose three months was just enough time for it to slip completely from my mind). In an attempt to spice up Jonathan's stocking with something other than hooks and fishing tackle, I bought him a cool motion-detector at The Gap. "Wow," thought I. "Jonathan is going to have fun with this!"

Oh, yeah. First of all, the siren on the thing is enough to drive the most phlegmatic person off of the nearest cliff. Secondly, by the time I had been startled for the twelfth time (on the same day) and suffered through having to sit completely still because "someone" had just balanced a motion-detector on the top of my head, I was ready to lob the contraption into the microwave and nuke it until it exploded.

The booby-traps went on for weeks. I'd walk into the family room to start our morning lessons: "WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh!" I'd get up from the sofa because someone had just called me upstairs: WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh! WEE-oh!"

You get the idea.

I was absolutely certain that I couldn't possibly have regretted a purchase more than I regretted this one. Of course, then I bought the Flarp.

This is all very ironic, too, because here sits a mom who vehemently refused to purchase -- or to allow any grandparents to purchase -- noisy, blinky, beepy baby toys. Our wee tots contented themselves with old fashioned blocks, acoustic xylophones, and a crib toy that played a melody from "The Toy Symphony" by Mozart's father. Ours was not an electronic-sounds-oriented house, and my sanity level was consequently a bit better off than my fellow moms who buckled to the lure of the beeping toys.

Of course, I did break down and buy Jonathan a really neat fire engine several Christmases ago, complete with sounds, flashing lights, and a cool extension ladder. This didn't cause noise pollution for very long, though, because my budding engineer took the whole thing apart to see how it worked -- and never quite put it back together again.

Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to make up for lost time. Perhaps I'm feeling as though I missed out on all the "Noise, noise, noise, NOISE" that might have been a part of my children's tiny years.

Then again, maybe I've just been desperate to find SOMETHING that my almost-teenaged son will want to PLAY with -- before he doesn't want to "play" at all anymore.

It sounds cliched, but he's growing so fast. In a few more years he'll be driving, and then it will be the sound of the engine revving up instead of the sound of putty farting at a birthday party. And instead of the siren of a motion-detector, I'll hear the warm buzz of an electric razor as he shaves his face in the morning.

I think that, when those days have arrived, I will give anything to listen to him squooshing some farting putty in his not-so-little hands.

I'm almost positive that I'll come up with something completely annoying to give him for his birthday in a couple of months. It'll do something stupid like fart or beep or self-destruct or shoot sticky pellets in my face, and I'll spend weeks ruing the day that I purchased it. But in the end, it'll be worth it, because it will afford my ever-growing son a few more opportunities simply to BE A BOY, even as his mind and body reach ever forward toward manhood.

Yep. I love the kid to pieces -- farting putty and all.