Kids Jammin To Apple Bottom Jeans

This mom is cool letting her kids dance to a little rap, too! Check it out...

Rap Music Makes Parenting Cooler

My nine years of parenting has been riddled with exciting triumphs of coolness - but I realized something a couples days ago about how rap music has elavated the cool.

I let Deondre sit in the front seat of the truck (he really LOVES him some "butt warmers" and it WAS cold... I didn't see the harm in going a short distance with toasty buns). We had on "KISS FM", which is our local cool station that plays all the newest music - pop, R&B, rap. There was this Jay Sean/'Lil Wayne song on and after a minute, I noticed both Deondre and I half booty shaking our warm buns, nodding our heads and smoothly rolling out the lyrics. I drive this great black Jeep Commander with great bass and tinted windows and I realized this was a COOL moment.

I got to thinking once we got home how important rap music has been not only in my life, but in my parenting. I grew up in a very homogenous, suburban town where a lot of country and James Taylor was played, but in 8th grade discovered LL Cool J, Public Enemy and Rob Base. I learned all the lyrics. I choreographed cheerleading routines to it. I recorded them off of my ginormous boom box from the NYC station that I could juuuuust get in at my house if the attenna was just right.

Fast forward like 12 years. Infant Deondre is strapped in his car seat and the Hyundai I had at the time was crappily crankin' out Jay Z's "Izza". My one parenting claim to fame from this is that surrounding a little one with (relatively) loud rap music will make them sleep through anything for the rest of their days. Trust me on this. Maybe vaccuum cleaners work too, but rap music = gold.

Another few years go by and iTunes explodes. (So fun for a girl who used to own that ginormous boom box with ONE tape deck). I get to show Deondre how we can hear a song on the radio and own it in like 5 seconds. He learns how to click around and he learns what "explict" means. We make sure to buy only the "clean" versions of our favorite rap songs. I explain censorship and how what you hear on the radio isn't always how the song was originally recorded. I also take the opportunity to talk about Will Smith and how he vows not to swear in ANY of his songs. Good impression. Good manners. Inappropriateness. It's all gone over as we download, sing along and practice dance moves.

Let me inject here that there ARE certain words and phrases that will inevitably sneak through into the ears of children. I mean there just is. But as anyone who caught that "dirty ho" line in the Cat in the Hat movie... it happens... you suck in your breath... you slowwwwly look at your kid to see if they caught it... and then address it accordingly. I personally would MUCH rather be the first person that my son hears that word in front of so I can break it down for him. If I left it in the hands of his elementary school peers, he might feel pressured to use it all the time because everyone else is doing it. I notice now that he'll TELL kids not to use that type of language (I work from home and when it's nice out and the windows are open... I HEAR things...). I have yet to hear him swear anywhere - amazing, ANYwhere. And he talks about it with me.

Now that he's getting older and really into the songs and the singers/rappers, we'll try to study up on their bios - learn how they grew up, where they're from and I hope particularly that they overcame some sort of adversity or worked their way up to fame in some unique way. Then D can see that it's important to support friends with dreams, give people opportunity AND learn about what's behind the person before judging them. That's the goal. I'll let you know how that goes.

Until next time, if you see a black Jeep Commander rolling down the street with a mom and kid rocking out, that's probably us.

Thanks Jay-Z, Drake, 'Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Akon and the rest... keep sending us the good stuff!

The Kid d'Art Project

Introducing Kid d'Art -- an ongoing project where we ask/make/bribe/beg Deondre to pose like public art that we see along our travels. This is a selection of them so far - the collection will grow - or I'll go broke trying!!!

Crab Spray!

This is a story of how $2.79 and a little apple cinnamon scent can overcome crabs.

Meaning, of course, bad crabs invading the dreams of a 3-year old Deondre. This kid could watch Snakes on a Plane and not have a problem. Alien vs. Predator (at his dad's on that one... not my house!). No nightmares. No nothing. But for some reason, this kid woke up in a frenzy one night screaming that there were crabs in the bed. He clawed at me, climbed on my head to get away from them, and screamed so bad that I swore for a groggy minute that there WAS in fact little snappy critters invading our bedroom. It was 5 am and it was some scary crap. So we ended up sleeping on the couch for the night, him completely on top of me. In the morning, he was hesitant to even put his feet on the ground because MAYBE the crabs made their way out to the living room and were just waaaaaiting for him....

I knew that the next night would be awful and that I might never have the opportunity to see my comfy old bed again if I didn't do something.

And it hit me. Again, he was only 3, and that lead to two important conclusions: 1) he would believe almost anything I told him and 2) he couldn't read yet. When I picked him up from day care that next day, I told him that I had did some research and found out that they had "crab spray" that we could get that would make them go away. I told him we'd make a special trip to the store to pick it up and spray it right away when we got home.

So supermarket-bound we were --- heading to the cleaning aisle. I told him that the crab spray had a red cap. And it sure did! Renuzit Apple Cinnamon home fragrance spray definitely has a RED cap. I told him that we'd be able to spray it and poof! No more crabs. He looked at me with a little face trickled with fright and hope all at once. Like magic was in that aerosol can. He believed me... he trusted me.

So we took it home and together we doused the bedroom with the scented goodness. He pointed where he thought they might go, and I sprayed. And he looked at me with huge relieved eyes and we high fived. He went hestitantly to bed that night, but no nightmares. In the morning, he sprung up and jumped all over the darn room and shouted halllujahs that they were GONE! Never again was there a crab incident in our house. True story.

Fast forward 6 years to a couple days ago. Deondre was helping me make the bed and out of the blue laughs and says "Hey mom - remember that crab spray - do we still have that?" I looked at him for a bit and broke down. I told him the real deal, that is was apple cinnamon Renuzit spray and it was a big fat lie concocted by his trusting mom.

There was a big pause as he stared me down... his eyes grew big... a smirk started out of one corner of his mouth and then BURST into laughter. YESSS! He wasn't mad. He didn't glare or yell or hit or loose faith in humanity. Lord I hope that breaking down Santa Claus will be as easy.

If anyone needs crab spray, please try your local grocery market, aisle 6 next to the Swiffers and the dishwashing liquid. It works like magic.

Who needs knee caps to be cool?

Today was the first day out snowboarding for the season. I started 3 years ago - juuuust over the age of 30 - for the sole motivation to have Deondre think of me as the absolute coolest. Otherwise, I would NEVER have ventured out on a slippery 5' piece of plastic that's STRAPPED to your feet and go flying down a mountain. It just doesn't make much sense otherwise.

So we did a lesson today – me and D – to learn how to better go on our "toe side" and link our turns. I've been a chicken since we started - staying on my heel side ensures that I will fall squarely on my ass... which last time I checked has MUCH more cushion than my face, knees, wrists and other body parts on the front of me. On toe side, if you fall, there goes your knees. Again and again and again. We had a very compasionate 16 year old instructor with braces with little pink rubber bands on them telling us "good job!" "there you go!" "you almost had it!" Yeah, little miss - I ALMOST just had it. If you're talking about a trip to the damn chiropractor.

Deondre was "breezin'" past me, which I learned from him means "blew by you wicked fast, mom!!!". Cool - I'll use that in a sentence this week as I fly by a tractor trailer on the highway or something and shock the snot out of him.

We finished our lesson successfully and said a "peace out" to our sophmoric mentor. We had one of D's friends with us who was out for the very first time ever, so we took turns going down "Easy Acres" with him (hell - that's really where I needed to be anyway). He kept saying things like "this is the BEST DAY of my life!" and "this is the BEST birthday party ever" (Which, BTW, this snowboard trip was a clever substitute to throwing an actual birthday party for Deondre, who turned 9 two days ago). The temperature was a horrifying 4 degrees, but we went up and down those hills until we couldn't feel our faces, toes, arms, fingers OR our knee caps.

But you know, I'm still happy as heck that I can make it down the hill and that I'm getting better and better so that sooner or later, I'll hang with D on the bigger hills and maybe "breeze" past him. (Which, make a note, I managed to do ONCE today. And only once.)

But now that we're all home and toasty and fed --- the day is summed up as physically cold and infamously "cool".

Peanut Buttah Birthday

This kid won't eat cake. I don't know where he came from honestly! But he can eat him some peanut butter cups, so there is born a whole new kind of birthday tradition.

Funky awesome candles that I've used for the past 5 years - courtesy of Parkleigh in Rochester, NY - an incredible little store off of Goodman.

Happy Birthday D-man! Kick butt being 9!

The Ultimate Birthday Gift Plot

Deondre's having a little trouble with reading in school, but he's really enjoying and starting to plow through the "My Weird School" Series by Dan Gutman. Mainly because the main character wants to hit a girl in the head with a dodgeball. Or see an asteroid fall on her head. Hell - if it'll make him read, I'm not so concerned.

So his birthday pops up out of nowhere a week after New Year's. It always seems to do that... pop up. Mad close to Christmas as it is and all.

I sitting there the day before thinking that I'll go get him a gift card because he thinks that plastic is "magic money" and likes spending it like he owns the store. And then I think how lame and unprepared I am - THAT'S not creative. That has no twist. You suck as a mom. We do COOL stuff in our house for gifts. Get it together.

And then it came. A mixture of bribery (a.k.a. "incentive"), responsibility and creativity. I was so proud. All my Facebook friends gave me virtual high fives and "daaaaaamns!!!!" I think dozens of people are out right now doing this for their own kids.

Check it:

Three $10 gift cards - one to Target, one to Toys-R-Us and one to Zumiez - all favorites. Three My Weird School Books. I taped the gifts cards (or used the sticky junk on the back of them if I could salvage it) and put them on the back inside cover of each book. The deal BEING that he could only to use the gifts cards AFTER he finished reading the book it was in.

Pure brilliance! I thought it all through... he'd read faster than EVER and would want to read ALL the time to get to those little plastic goodies. I mean, seriously - the Zumiez one was die cut to look like a slice of cheese. How could he NOT want to get the the "cheddah?" Then I thought - wait - he could turn on me and think it was the lamest, most awful trick EVER played on a newly nine year old. He could give me that glaring stare that all mothers dread - the one where their 9 year old looks he loathes you and wants to steal your lunch money. I had to try. I was out of bloody time.

The big day comes. He opens the gifts.

"Thanks for the books ma!" He says excited. (Note: uh... crap?! I could have gotten away with JUST books and he would have been friggin elated?)

So I let him in on the secret and the rule and he eagerly ripped open each book to see what cheese shaped, hologrammed monetary plastic awaited him in each. And he paused, holding the last one open for a fleeting moment. He got this half smile/smirk/deep in thought look on his face and then said to me....

"That's pretty darn cool, mom."

Yessssssss. Success. Pretty darn cool indeed.