Early morning entertainment

Every so often, a mother has a morning when she just needs a few extra minutes to get around. West coast ball game, sick kid in the night, terrorizing dreams of being swallowed by piles of dirty laundry--whatever the cause, sometimes it just takes more than the typical 36-seconds to get the job done.

It seems these slow-moving mornings are the ones when the kids need us for everything. The independent one who needs no help doing anything suddenly can’t eat, drink, dress or pee alone. He can’t pick out his shoes, find his glove, or look at a book without complete mommy supervision.

These are the mornings, I have decided, that have led millions of parents to introduce their children to the big, purple dinosaur. However, since we don’t allow that annoying old bag of bones in our house, this week, our youngest child was forced to turn to something a little more modern: my ipod.

After the third attempt to wash my face with a rag that I couldn’t seem to get past lukewarm, Brisco, yet again, snuck around the corner between my bedroom and bathroom begging for my undivided attention. He looked up at me with his brown eyes wide. He had his hands behind his back, holding the one, personal, only-for-momma techno-gadget that I own, and a grin on his face that told me he either needed to be squeezed or spanked. And after my fifth deep breath of the morning, I said, “What have you got now?”

Again with the grinning, and viola, my little red music machine appeared, wadded up in his four-year old hands. “I wanna put these in my ears.”

Despite my better judgment, I caved. “OK, get up on my bed, and I’ll find you something good.” I of course, had no idea what I’d find that would keep him contained for longer than it would take me to actually find something to keep him contained. Little did I know what a great form of easy entertainment this device would prove to be.

I started him out on something I knew he’d love: “Yankee Mambo”. I could hear him from the bathroom trying to keep up with a song he’d never heard before. “A little bit of na na na na na. A little bit of Jeter na na na.” It was classic, but it didn’t last long. The song ended, and three minutes and 51 seconds later, he was standing at my feet, again, with the grin.

“OK,” I said. “Let me find you something else.” I knew I had a play list saved that I used for working out, and I figured he’d like the upbeat tempo. Boy was I right. I heard him singing from the other room and had to stop what I was doing to check him out. “Let’s get ready to rumble!” he said as he moved his shoulders up and down to the funky beat. He’d see me looking at him and he’d stop moving and start grinning.

Suddenly I’d hear, “I like to move it move it!” Thank goodness for Madagascar and those crazy, dancing lemurs. The next time I looked in, he was down in the floor doing some kind of fast footwork that I haven’t seen since Electric Boogaloo. As he popped and locked his way past “Space Jam” and the choo choo train song, I could hear him chanting, “I think I can. I think I can.” right on the beat. I think this little music gizmo may have just saved my sanity. In fact, it had bought me so much time that I decided to actually brush my hair before tying it back into a pony tail. Wow. Who knew.

I wanted to see if I could really get a bang for my buck, so I snuck out of the bathroom to throw in a load of laundry. I closed the lid and crept back to the bedroom just in time to hear him ask me a question. “Mom, what does it mean when they are clapping?” I explained what a live recording was and then started wracking my brain to figure out what song he was listening to now.

“What’s it saying?” I asked. “Boots,” he said. “Boots?” I asked. “One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you!” And then he burst into hysterical laughter. Like I said. Easy entertainment--for us both.

As I continued my morning regimen, I heard him again, alone in my bedroom, talking--rather, singing to himself. “What are you lookin’ at?” With the perfect rhythm and rhyme, complete with the Madonna whisper and attitude. I asked him a minute or so later what he was listening to now and he said, “Come on, Pose!”

I guess a mother never really knows where she’s going to get her next big laugh. I didn’t think it would come on a morning when my face was swelled up like a watermelon, and my neck was aching from trying to share two lousy feet of a king-sized bed with a four year old boy.

But that’s just one of the joys of motherhood: A miserable night’s sleep, followed by the realization that my body has aged years ahead of my mind, topped off with one of the most fulfilling belly laughs I’ve had in a long time. Early morning entertainment. Courtesy of the one and only.

And that’s All in a day’s work!