Mary Jane and the Panties

If dogs were eligible for sainthood, I would nominate Mary Jane, a three year old Jack Russell terrier. She understands well her familial responsibilities, and carries them out whatever the cost, enduring martyrdom for the love of Emmalee. 

Emmalee is being potty trained, and is doing pretty well. To encourage her, Mommy and Daddy bought her several packages of soft, colorful, pretty little girl panties, an incentive for her to make it to the potty in time to avoid soiling them.

This morning Emmalee was playing quietly in her room with Mary Jane keeping her company, while Mommy worked at her desk. Usually it is very hard to get anything done with Emmalee around, especially on the computer, but this morning was a nice exception. Time passed, and Mommy had become very focused on her task, when she sensed a presence beside her. Looking down, she saw two eyes staring up intently. The eyes pleaded, "Help me... help me!"

Mary Jane was wearing Emmalee's panties - over her head! (And do you see the string of beads?!)

 

Then Mommy noticed that Mary Jane was also wearing a pair of panties on the other end of her body. The little elastic waistband hung appropriately on the dog's even tinier waist, and her little hind feet had been placed correctly through the leg openings. There was no itty-bitty hole in the panties for her tail, nevertheless the little stump wiggled hopefully under the silky material as she gazed imploringly up at Mommy.

When she was finally able to stop laughing, Mommy grabbed her camera and took pictures. Too bad for us (but happily, I'm sure, for Mary Jane), the second pair of panties had slipped down enabling her to step out of them.

The Tah-Heinie Girl

My third daughter, along with my new son-in-law, invited me out for Mother's Day lunch today. Dad was driving home from Amarillo at the end of an exhausting weekend business trip, and with perfect timing, we all converged on the restaurant to share soup, salad, pizza, and strawberry shortcake and, of course, a lot of memories.

Appropriately, I donned my mother-of-the-bride dress, the one she had made me especially for her wedding, but which I didn't get to wear. Instead, there was a frantic last-minute switch to a store-bought navy blue knit dress after the bridesmaids changed their minds about their dresses - we would've clashed. Anyway, I was happy to finally wear my special dress today on a special outing with my special seamstress.

A wise woman (my own mother) used to say that a mother of one knows all there is to know about children and child-rearing, and the mother with two is almost as certain, but the mother of three or more will say that no two are the same. (She also said that the only woman who knows better about raising children than the mother of one is an old maid. I do not know to whom she referred!) Today I indulged in one of my pleasures as the mother of four - I thrilled in the uniqueness of this child, how different she is from her sisters, and indeed how perfect and lovely yet completely unalike are the four of them. I am so blessed! 

When this child was very small and was given her bath, she loved to climb out of the tub and race through the house wet and naked. This led to a game started by one of her older sisters when she reached with one hand to grasp the two little butt cheeks and say, "Tiny heinie! Tiny heinie!" The evening bath quickly became a fun time anticipated by all.

Another favorite memory is taking her grocery shopping. Dad pushed the cart, and she toddled along just in front of him, holding onto the cross bar of the rack beneath the basket. While they handled that end of the business, I carried my list and made our selections. Well, actually I grabbed the stuff off the shelves and threw it in the basket as I raced to keep a few steps ahead of my helpers. Sometimes I just wasn't fast enough, and they would have to circle around through the next aisle and come back to me. She marched and pushed - she never stopped!

With one exception: there was a part of the store we tried to avoid, the one with the tall cage full of play balls. There she would abandon her cart-pushing responsibilities to pull out one ball after another from the bottom and gleefully throw them! We would have balls bouncing and rolling all over the store until we finally got them gathered up and tossed back into the bin. These were the days we bought a new ball, so she would stop grabbing and throwing in order to choose one.

One day she and Dad were hurrying past the canned fruits and vegetables, when they came to a necessary halt to avoid hitting another shopper. A woman of ample proportions was standing in their way as she considered the fruit. She leaned over to reach a can of peaches, read the label, then replaced it and picked up another one, remaining bent over in kind of a half squat while she pondered. My child gazed intently at the woman and then walked up behind her, spreading her arms wide and declaring loud and clear, "BIG tah-heinie!"

It was just one of many magical moments. I've had a wonderful Mother's Day.

The Birth of Judyism

I was born in the local Food Basket, probably somewhere back in the produce department.

It always amused me to say this when, at the beginning of the school term, children were pressed to share their basic information in a get-acquainted sort of activity. It was true enough, although at the time of my birth, the building was still the small Osteopathic Hospital in our small town. Then I liked to follow it up with another tidbit: I was born at 9:00 o'clock in the morning, but I didn't breathe until noon. Also true. Taken prematurely by C-section from a mother with the dangerous and dramatic symptoms of eclampsia, I refused to breathe on my own for three hours, till the doctor cried, "Oh, if I only had a resuscitator!" My father the mayor immediately called the Fire Chief, and mine became the first tiny life saved with the new resuscitator just acquired by the city's Fire Department. Even so, it was a chore to keep me alive, as I also refused to eat. I only wanted to sleep, and had to be forced to stay awake and swallow every tiny drop of my formula.

So there are three things you can learn about me from my birth and childhood: I'm stubborn, I have a habit of using "shock" statements to get attention, and I might be a little brain damaged. Feel free to point out any or all of these possible flaws when coming here to study Judyism.