“I have hives! I have hives!” I ran screaming from the bathroom, on the first morning of shooting. My husband gave me the signature “So what’s the big deal?” look from the kitchen, where he was making waffles. The kids were all decked out in logo free, plain colored outfits that had been painstakingly selected the night before. Do you know how hard it is to find nine logo free, plain colored, wardrobes…without holes? That is 63 outfits, all meeting the guidelines laid out by the production company. No wonder thousands of itchy, red bumps had taken up residence on my face and neck. The hunt for appropriate wardrobes, alone, had been a royal pain in the ass. I knew that our wardrobe quest was just the beginning of a very long and stressful two weeks. I slumped over on the bathroom floor, hives covering my skin, wondering if I was even going to make it to the point where Jo Frost knocked on our door. I kept repeating, “It’s for the kids, it’s for the kids,” every mother’s mantra.

Sure, everything we mothers do is for our kids. We live for our kids. We sacrifice without with little complaint, so that they will have a better childhood than we had. I have always tried to make choices that reflected the best interest of my children, since the day my first daughter was born. This experience, however, was testing the limits of my will to be the best parent I could. I was knowingly throwing myself and my spouse into the lion’s den. We were about to allow the nation to see every flaw, every mistake and every moment of our lives, edited at the discretion of a television production company. I had survived some extreme situations, all in the name of motherhood. Deciding to film an episode for Supernanny, trumped every other parenting trial I had encountered. If I survived the whole two weeks, I would feel an indescribable sense of accomplishment and pride. That “If” was heavily loaded.

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After watching this I immediately became 6 years old again, sitting on the shag carpet in the family room in front of the TV, eating a half box of Apple Jacks out of a big mixing bowl:

Why don’t they show little uplifting snippets like this between kid shows anymore? Now all we get is Miley Cyrus talking about the favorite thing in her bedroom.

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My munchkin has had an adventurous morning. After filling up a sketchpad with pictures of all the important people in her life (Auntie Lissa, Pizza Lady, Mommy, Daddy, MeeMaw, PaPa Boo, and Miss Nora, in that order—I’m happy to report that she works in accurate color representation; every picture has brown hair, except for “Mommy”, which is crowned by blue scribbles), she’s dug into the mountain of stuffed animals and dolls in her room and emerged with her two current favorites, which happen to be from my own pre-mommyhood collection.

The first is an Amish (or maybe Mennonite) doll, beautifully hand-crafted and clutching a scrap of antique patchwork quilt. And of course, no face. Well, there’s a patch of muslin where a face would be, but no features. Or at least, no features until she became quite distressed about that fact last night and I dug out the embroidery floss.

The second is much cuter in my opinion, although many may disagree. Anyone out there remember the old-school flash animation “Radiskull and Devil Doll”? (Click “view Linux version”, it’s the only one that works.) Long before I met my husband, a gentleman in pursuit of my affections gave me the plush Devil Doll from their long-defunct merchandise page.

So now Penny’s made a playhouse behind the sofa, where Devil Doll is feeding Mostly Faceless Amish Baby a bottle and singing it songs about frogs. Yes, I have let her watch the cartoons, which she found highly amusing, so every now and then that indescribably cute three-year-old voice can be heard to coo, “I love you, Devil Doll.” Still, I’d much rather have her playing with stuffed representations of mythological demons than a Bratz doll. I’ll buy her the complete “Venereals” set of GIANTmicrobes before I let her get her grubby hands on one of those slut-indoctrination tools.

Speaking of which, how freaking hard is it to find a simple coloring book at WalMart? Impossible, apparently. I usually limit her to blank paper, but lately she’s been working (and succeeding) at coloring within lines, and is also obsessed with SpiderMan (although thanks to her uncle, she sings the theme song with the “Spider Pig” lyrics, and the hell if I’m gonna correct her), so I figured we’d take a jaunt to pick up a few coloring books and a new set of markers. And since we needed a new water filter and bubble bath (which Target doesn’t sell, the asshats), we went to Big Box Hell.

Doesn’t anyone buy their children coloring books anymore? Not if they’re relying on WalMart for their shopping experience, they don’t. We left without the water filter, because I was getting trailed by employees for my outbursts, which were along the lines of, “Well, Penny, I guess ‘artist’ is out of the question, you’re going to have to be either a prostitute or a mechanized battle unit when you grown up.”

We’ve also been working on correcting a bit of vocabulary she’s picked up from me. Since having her, I’ve worked seriously hard at limiting my severe case of guttermouth, and succeeding, for the most part. Hell, it’s even bled over into my writing. But the last ones to go are always your exasperated exclamations, which means that for a few weeks, when Penny was angry or frustrated at me, she’d let out with a “G-ddammit, Mommy!” Yeah, color me chagrined. We’ve got it mostly licked, though—the offending phrase has been replaced with a heavily-coached, Shirley Temple-reminiscent “Oh my goodness gracious!”

And lastly, since we cut out almost all television (in the evening she *sometimes* gets to watch something like Blue Planet or Man vs. Wild with us–she seriously digs watching Bear eat snakes and bugs), we listen to a lot more music during the day. And I’ve discovered that she enjoys my music at *least* as much the few bits of “child-oriented” music we’ve collected for her. She’ll choose The Dead Milkmen over The Laurie Berkner Band any day, and I’m cool with that. She really digs Frank Zappa, and as I type she’s dancing around the living room to Tori Amos’ “Happy Phantom”.

All in all, I think we’re doing a pretty good job, which is reassuring since we’re planning on getting knocked up again within the year. Keep your fingers crossed for a boy, because the name Vinny Nuckolls is just too perfect *not* to be used, you know?

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My kids were nine and six on September 11, 2001.?�? They stayed at school that day, and heard appropriate dribs and drabs of what what was going on.?�? At home, their father and I, who were still married at the time, told them that terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and they collapsed, killing thousands of people.?�? How sad it was.?�? How wrong it was.?�? How sad we were. How wronged we felt. I was outwardly distraught, inwardly panic-stricken.?�? I sat riveted to the television watching the unimaginable events come to life before my eyes. But my kids, safe in a Midwestern suburb, with their parents safe not far away, continued watching watching Sponge Bob, Power Rangers and Arthur.

Now, on September 11, 2006, my kids are 14 and 11. They?�? are much better equipped to handle some of the images that will be replayed today. They’re politically aware and they’re savvy.?�? But, I’m still going to choose what they see today, and how they see it.?�? At their ages, five years is a lifetime.?�?

They remember nothing?�? but growing up in a world when homeland?�? security is?�? familiar terminology?�? and the war on terror is a known entity.?�? They will live their most formative and memorable years at a time where we do not take safety for granted.?�? They instinctively?�? take off their shoes before going through airport security.?�? ?�? Their trips?�? to New York City will only ever include visits to a changing Ground Zero and pointing fingers to where the towers once stood, and then fell.

While I believe it’s my job to convey the seriousness of the events that enveloped our nation that day, I also believe in allowing?�? my children to continue to exist in the safety of their world that was untouched.?�? While it feels like yesterday to me, it feels like history to them.?�?

I don’t want my?�? kids completely shielded from reality,?�? I just want them to be kids.?�? I want to help them understand, at?�? an age-appropriate level,?�? what happened then as well as what is happening now.?�? What I?�? don’t want is for this information to color the world they know - which is good - albeit with its own inherent flaws.?�? ?�?

I usually encourage my kids to hunker down next to me and watch the news.

Not today.?�?

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