28 posts tagged “motherhood”
Forgot to post this one from a couple days ago...
The kids were unusually quiet up in their bedroom (read: they weren't trying to actively kill each other with their bare hands). I would hear this short period of silence, followed by the two of them giggling and laughing hysterically. After about the third time, I decided I had better go investigate. Surely they were up to no damn good.
And this is what I found:
Yes, those are panties. PANTIES. ON. THE. CEILING FAN!!!. And my children, standing on the top bunk. Katie would stop the fan, load up the panties, then let 'er rip. Jon would then shimmy down the ladder and fetch the panties that had flown off, both of them giggling hysterically.
I suppose it could be worse. They could have pretended they were astronauts and tried to take a ride in the dryer, like me and my brother and sister did when we were kids. A ceiling fan is a helluva cheaper replacement than a new dryer! (Sorry, Mom and Dad)
1. We leave for Mexico next Friday. First trip ever without the kids. I'm
excited/nervous/excited/nervous. Repeat ad nauseum. Depending on how next
week goes, I will either run on to the plane like a crazy person just giddy
at the prospect of spending five days in paradise with her hubby sans
kiddos, or someone will have to shove two klonopin down my throat and drag
me on to the plane by my hair. You just never know how it'll be. Why? Cuz
part of me can't wait to go, and the other part is worried about leaving her
kids for five whole days. Gulp.
2. Speaking of hair, I got my hair cut. Like, really cut. It is up to the
nape of my neck in a cool 80s hipster stacked bob thingy. It is presently
thrown up in a cheap plastic headband but when I actually take (have) the
time to do blow it out, flat-iron, shine and spritz it up, it looks quite
schnazzy. Additionally, my hairdresser foiled it with three different
tones: a rich brown, an auburn and golden blonde for highlights. She deemed
this little work of art "autumn harvest." Given my complete lack of
consistency and follow up re: my hair, I wonder how long before my roots get
so bad from neglect, the blonde highlights are ashy and dirty looking, such
that I go from "autumn harvest" to "white trash ho-bag in need of a dye
job"? I should take a picture before it gets like that, huh?
3. Katie and her pee issues. Her urinalysis came back from the lab totally
clean. So, we've been referred to the Dove
Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The problem is still a
problem. During her party Wednesday at school, she went to the bathroom
four times. Before school each morning, she goes at least four to five times before we
even get out the door. I try to talk to her about it, but she doesn't seem
to be able to articulate what, if anything, might be causing her to go. I
am not going to push the issue anymore. We see them on the 27th, and I hope
then we'll get some further guidance.
4. Last I heard, my BIL and future SIL have set a date for their wedding:
July 11, 2009. I am so damn excited, and also thrilled because that date is
special for Shawn and I as well. We will be together 17 years on that
date. Weddings are so much fun. And this one is particularly special since
the four of us are in it. Should be interesting to see what Jon does in a
tux.
5. I register for spring classes today. Litigation and Civil Procedure and
Business Law I. Woo-freakin-hoo. Actually the former should be a
breeze--spent the early part of my adulthood as a litigation secretary. I'm
excited about Bus Law, tho. That's one area I'm not all that acquainted
with, so hopefully I'll get a lot out of it.
Ba dee ba dee ba dee, dat's all folks!
10. I get to listen to Raffi and Laurie Berkner and sing along without
looking like a total dork.
9. Remembering all the special moments -- that first cry, their first
smile, first day of school. Feeling a bittersweet pang knowing of what has
past, and excitement for what is yet to come.
8. Finally have two really good reasons to go to Disney World and the
motivation to actually save for and plan the trip just so I can relish in
their delight.
7. Christmas. It totally rocks with kids. You get to relive all the
wonder and excitement of the season through your own children. It's beyond
words.
6. Making my kids laugh. Especially Jonathan when I do the Tigger laugh
for him. He always says "Do Again." It cracks me up.
5. Watching them sleep. Then being there when they wake up in the morning
to say "good morning, sunshine" just like our mother said to us each
morning.
4. Finally being able to truly understand that my mother was NOT crazy as I
had always believed. She was merely reacting to the insanity that we
propagated on a daily basis.
3. Knowing that I have that special mommy power -- the one that can kiss
all the boo boos away and make my child feel safe and secure with just a
small gesture or a kind word of reassurance. Daddy has it to some degree,
but we all know it's not the same as mommy.
2. When my babies crawl into bed with me (and Papa Bear) early in the
morning (EVERY morning), asking for snuggles (or "nuggles", as Jon likes to
call them).
1. Feeling confident in the knowledge that this motherhood gig is exactly
what I was born to do, and never having second guess or regret for one
second my choice to become a mother, or ever search for fulfillment or
satisfaction in this job. It is always there, even on the toughest of days.
A few days ago, I noticed that on my dresser stood a cute little square pink
frame with ballerina slippers that my mother-in-law purchased for Katie
around the time of her dance recital, with the intention that I would take a
darling photo and put it in the frame. That was June. Up until Friday,
what it contained was the promotional photo that came with the frame. And
this one was particularly strange -- a girl dressed up like Dorothy from the
Wizard of Oz and a large dog -- a giant version of Toto, I suppose --
sitting dutifully by her side. And there the frame sat, for almost six
months, with nary a recognizable image. Realizing this, I located a picture
from Katie's recital. Well, not her recital, her dress rehearsal, because
the actual recital was such a mess with graduation and all, that I actually
forgot to take any pictures. So I printed it out and cropped it and voila,
bye bye stranger Dorothy and SuperToto.
As I positioned the frame on my dresser, I took a glance at the other two
photos artfully framed atop my dresser. Both contained images of Katie. I
spun around the room, looking frantically to see where I had put that photo
of Jonathan. You know -- that photo -- the one where he was . . . hmmm. I
then realized that there was not a single photo of our son anywhere in our
bedroom, yet there was THREE photos of his older sister.
In a pass through our living room, I took a brief inventory of our
pictures. On the television -- three Katies, no Jonathans. On the end
table, a collage of Katie and Jonathan. On the wall, a portrait of the both
of them taken when he was not quite a year old.
I said I wouldn't do it, but I have. I've allowed my son to sadly slip into
the vortex of second child syndrome. Ask me when Katie first rolled over:
4 1/2 months. Jonathan? Couldn't tell you -- but I know it was before the
time when it would be considered a delay if he had not rolled over. First
steps? Katie: 10 1/2 months. Jonathan? Not sure. I know he was walking
before his first birthday. That's about all the detail I can provide.
Sad. Just sad.
It then comes as no surprise why my son is so inherently different from my
daughter. Where Katie is timid and cautious, Jonathan is like a raging bull
with no fear. Where Katie is fearful of disappointing anyone and cries at
the thought of hurting any one's feelings, Jonathan relishes in doing
anything that is contrary to what is right, and savors any opportunity to
irritate his sister. Because that would mean he can get attention and annoy
the living shit out of you at the same time -- two of his favorite things to
do in this world.
Really, though, I am exaggerating. Just a tiny bit. Except for the
contrariness and the aggravation. Those are his specialities.
But now I think I understand him a little more. I used to think he lived to
torture his sister (and, in turn, me), but really, it's all about the
struggle for attention. Funny how when his sister is at school all day, I
rarely have to put him in time out or correct him for anything. But the
moment his sister is off the bus and home. WATCH. OUT. Some days are
better than others, but for the most part, you can time it. 3:30 -- Katie
off bus. 3:50 -- Jon pulls Katie's hair, slaps, bites, whatever -- whatever
he can do to piss her off and assert (badly) his authority.
I do feel bad about the lack of pics on display. Second child syndrome or
whatever, he's still my baby boy and equal in importance to his older
sister. But, noticing this oversight, and thinking about what it is he's
really going through in his role as second born AND the baby of the family,
helps me understand his actions with greater insight. And any insight you
can have with a two-almost-three-year-old is always a good thing.
Picture this:
A mother and her young son are at the local library of a bucolic New Jersey suburb. After the weekly storytime hour, mother and son retreat to children's area to play with puzzles together. The boy, a lad not quite 34 months old, selects a particularly adorable Melissa and Doug puzzle of farm animals. Mother decides to utilize the play to enrich the boy's verbal expression and development.
"So, honey, what is this animal?" (picking up the little wooden pink pig)
"That's a piggy!" says the boy, with all the enthusiasm and excitement typical of the age.
"Very good! That's right! It is a pig. It is a pink pig. And how does the pig go?" says the mother
"He poops," says the boy, in a voice a couple hundred decibels higher than normal. "Ewwww! It's stinky!"
My girlie and fellow Voxer Kathi P posted this hilarious blog about the oh-so-common problem motherhood, that being the problem of never getting to use the facilities or dress in private. It's a must read. Don't drink anything because you may spit it all over your 'puter.
I often wonder why this phenomenon occurs. Are they trying to see the area from whence they came? Do they think perhaps they can go back, or do they merely want to pay homage to the portal of life? I used to think it was a security issue for my kids, but it's funny how they can go off and play FOR HOURS, but the minute I have to go to the bathroom, they appear, right there, wanting to get the TP for me or play in the sink or ask "what's that?"
Speaking of asking "what's that," Jon barged in to the bathroom just as I was, well, you know, changing my feminine sanitary napkin. Grrrr. I was mid-stick when he asks "Mommy, whatchu got?" I didn't want to launch into a truthful explanation of the true purposes of feminine products, so I just said "oh, it's a little diaper for mommies." He's like "oh." I didn't think he was really paying attention anyway, so I figured it would just fly over his wee head. Whew. Uncomfortable convo #1 avoided.
A moment later he says "Mommy, you poopy you pants?"
"Yup. Sometimes I do, buddy. Let's go find your Daddy." Which isn't a total lie. I do have poop issues. Obviously that answer isn't the whole truth, but it sure beats trying to figure out how to explain the birds and the bees to an almost three-year-old.
Oy ve. I'm looking forward to the day when I can do my toilet duties in private. Doesn't look like it's gonna happen anytime soon, though.
I'm so disappointed in myself. I realize I've been making exactly ONE post per week since I started back to school. Unfortunately, these last few weeks have been busy in all domains of my life -- work, home, kids, school. And, in regard to going back to school, I had conjured up in my mind it would be a fraction of the amount of effort it took to survive my final coursework at Drexel, especially considering I was doing two three-credit courses in six weeks' time, plus selling out every Saturday for two years to attend classes. It was intense. Kinda like doing step aerobics with a medicine ball strapped to your ass. I had expected these two little classes I enrolled in at GCC would sort of be like taking a long, leisurely walk, without kids, with camera in hand for stimulating interest.
Unfortunately, it hasn't quite been that, especially since both kids have come down with illness, work has been totally batshit every night for the last two weeks, and we've had some stuff happening at home. Stuff like, oh, forgetting to pay the water bill and having the water shut off (DOH!). This little PITA, along with other little snafus, the sum total of which have seemingly happened right at the moment when I'm entering into what I've lovingly come to term as "Carley's monthly crazy time." And that, as you may have guessed, is the premenstrual phase, when even the most trivial of mishaps suddenly feel like the apocalypse is imminent.
I mentioned before that Jon had pneumonia two weeks ago. This week it was Katie's turn. Tuesday night she complained of a headache, and a little while after that she started running a temperature. It turned out that she had come down with some virus that I SWORE was the same pneumonia Jon contracted two weeks ago. But, after a trip to the ped, it was determined to be a virus after a listen to her lungs proved clear. Her tonsils were huge and red with those lovely white patches, but a throat culture proved negative for Strep. The throat culture was pretty intense and not something I'll want to endure again anytime soon. I had to hold her in my lap and cross my arms over her to restrain her while the nurse practitioner swabbed her throat with those super-sized q-tips. She gagged, kicked the nurse square in the thigh, and reared her head back and almost took my nose out in the process.
Thankfully, she's all better today and will be returning to school tomorrow. I had class this morning, so I dropped Jon off at his school and my neighbor agreed to keep Katie while I went to class. She had a lot of fun over there -- made a cute halloween craft and my neighbor went through some of her teenage daughter's old toys and gave Katie this gigantic bag of Barbie dolls, increasing our household Barbie population to greater than 20. Only problem is we don't have enough clothes to dress them all, so what we have here is essentially a plastic nudist colony of Barbies and Kens. I just trekked through the family room where Katie has her new colony all spread out and it looks like Hedonism down there. I just chuckled and made a mental note to add "Barbie Clothes" to the Christmas list.
When I awoke this morning to the ear piercing sound of Katie screaming "NOOOOOO JON!!! THAT'S MINE!!!!!!!!!! DON'T!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKK!!!" followed by "NO KATIE, THAT'S MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I should've known better than to take these two hellions of mine to Target today. But, I live in denial, and believed that somehow the passage through the gates of Target would somehow magically turn my heathens into saints. Yeah, right.
I swear, from the minute we hit the door until we left, they acted as if they had been kept in cages for weeks and this was their first time out in a public place ever in their existence. Making the trip all the more enjoyable, they wanted to sit in the big two-seater 18-wheeler semi cart. You mamas know the one. The one that requries a CDL and super-human strength to steer. The same one that can knock over entire displays in the children's section, and also barely fits down the checkout aisle.
I went in there with a list and a plan, hoping I could stave off any bad behavior with the promise of a hot dog and slushie at the end of the trip. And I suppose they did ok, if you don't count the moment when Jonathan almost got steamrolled by another shopper and her cart, or if you don't count pulling over an entire rack of shirts in the children's section. Or the big bag of Doritos Katie popped open in the snack bar area. Or the fact that it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for them to sit in a swivel chair and NOT swivel it.
If you take away all that, it actually wasn't too bad. No major tantrums or fights. No one got hurt. I suppose it's all good.
Also, Jon decided in Target today that he wants to wear big boy underwear. I've taken him down the underwear aisle at least four times in the last three months, thinking the sight of undies would somehow inspire him to potty train, but he has had no interest whatsoever. But today, he wanted some big boy drawers, and I told him if I bought him these, that would mean he would have to put his pee pees and poopies in the potty. He thought for a moment at the notion of actually NOT sitting in his own feces, then said "Okay, Mommy. I pee potty." He's got a pair of Lightning McQueen briefs on right now, and it makes me a bit sad because this is it. This is the last shred of his babyhood.
A little while ago, he came up to me, holding his bird and says "Mommy, they don't fit no more." Puzzled, I asked, "Well, why don't they fit anymore, honey?" Then he starts tugging at the front of his drawers and I see that the reason they don't "fit" is because Mr. Man has discovered, ahem, HIMSELF. I wanted to just die. Bad enough my baby boy is starting preschool next week. I so did not need to see that my boy can give himself a boner willy-nilly now that he's wearing big boy undies.
Calgon?
My mother used many different approaches in her parenting. Among them was the artful use of scare tactics. She was an expert at instilling fear in the lives of small children. Whether it was the threat of God's wrath for having trespassed against whatever, the threat of catching an incurable disease, threat of infestation by bugs or other creatures, my mother knew exactly what to do or say to freak the living shit out of you and make you stop doing whatever undesirable behavior you were doing. I'm certain this approach would not bode well with most child psychologists. Truthfully, however, it was damn effective.
This was especially true for me. Of the three children in my family, I was the most gullible. I believed all her rhetoric, and then some, as if it were gospel. Such as "if you eat watermelon seeds, a watermelon will grow in your belly." I spent my childhood carefully spitting out every watermelon seed. By the time I had life science in junior high, I learned how physically impossible it was for this to occur.
When I became a parent, I promised that I would be more adept in my parenting and would not resort to such folklore and fallacies to manipulate my children's behavior. And, for the most part, I've managed to do that. I try to reason, even if my children are incapable of understanding.
One such quirk I had as a child was chewing on fabric. My nightgowns and shirt collars were often mauled from having chewed them to shreds. My mother would tell me "Carley! Stop that right now or you're gonna get WORMS!" Obviously, worms were a big deal for her, because apparently you could get them from just about anything: eating your boogers. Not washing your hands. Eating raw pork. Ok, now that's not bullshit -- you really can get worms from eating undercooked pork. (Sorry if you were planning on having pork for dinner).
But I digress...
Apparently Katie has inherited my goatish quirk for chewing on fabric. As she was engrossed in a television program, I witnessed her chewing on a bandanna. Without even really thinking I said "Katie! Stop chewing on that or you're going to get WORMS!" Girlfriend shrieked, threw that bandanna across the room, and hasn't touched it since.
Effective? Yes, definitely. But I still can't believe I really said such an insane thing to my child. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction. Now I wonder what fallout will come from this, given Katie is my emotionally labile, angst-ridden, worrywart clone. I'm certain there will be a nightmare in the coming days where she will wake up crying, fearful that she is dying from cloth-chewing worm infestation disease. And then I'll have to fess up and come up with a better reason why one shouldn't chew on fabric.
Cavities! Yeah--it'll give you cavities!!! That just might work...
I woke up this morning really bumming. The new a/c is going to cost $4K to replace. And we don't have enough savings to cover it, so we have to finance it -- at 22 percent interest. Ugh. It seems you climb out of debt, then one way or another, you are right back in there.
But, the good news is I'm not sitting here with my butt seared to this chair, and the kids aren't screaming "IT'S HOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTT!" 75,000 times. No, the new unit isn't here yet, but the company we're working with was so kind to recharge our existing unit for free until the new unit gets installed on July 31st.
The company is Campbell Comfort Systems. In this day and age, rare is it to find a company willing to go above and beyond to ensure customer service. Just this morning, they called my husband to advise of the install date and the credit approval terms, and also to ask how our unit was holding up, and to advise us that if we have any problems with our existing unit at all, just call them and they would come out, because they didn't want us to go without air. How nice is that? I'm just blown away by their customer service.
As I said, I woke up this morning bumming about the money. I don't know if my kids have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to sensing when mommy is worried, but they both were very cuddly and snuggly this morning, just a little more than usual. Getting some good hugs and snuggles from my babies did wonders in getting my mind off this whole mess. Also good medicine: getting some amazing shots of my sweet babies in the pretty light coming through the windows in our dining room. Enjoy the slideshow below ;)
