Entries from March 2006 ↓

I belong to a mothers group that meets monthly. These meetings are to discuss various aspects of parenting. It’s also a great reason to head to the local wateringhole after the “meeting.” It’s one of the rare occasions I get out of the house alone. I haven’t taken advantage of this excuse since the Christmas party and recently received an e-mail from the leader.

Long story somewhat shorter, I just volunteered to put together a presentation on cooking. Anyone who really knows me will understand I’d rather put a fork in my eye than get up in front of a group and speak.

What did I just do?

Warning: This post contains descriptions of bodily fluids (and none of them are the ‘exciting ones.’)

As a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) my days are pretty routine and boring. Mostly I just keep the boys entertained and do all the things I’d like to pay someone else for, but am just too tightwad to ever really give that any thought. I spend a lot of my time on alert, waiting for Sir Thousand Hands to find a new way to try and off himself. Thankfully, as he gets older the monkey inside finds less destructive ways to be entertained.

Then there are days, like yesterday, where my day can go from relatively peaceful to craptastic (Thanks Ivy) in less than ten hellish minutes. The baby was fussy, not for any apparent reason, but if he wasn’t in my arms he had to be wiggling around on our bed, or else. I haven’t quite figured out what it is about your own infant’s screech of rage, but no other sound, in my experience, is quite as capable as climbing inside your spine and tightening every nerve in your body until it is just singing with tension. I swear, that sound could be marketed for use by hostage negotiators, it is an instant blinding headache. So, that being noted, we were on the bed, surrounded by a pillow barricade, that the wigglebutt really just laughs at.

Sometimes, all it takes to start an exhausting chain reaction of events is a simple, “Mama?! Go poop!” You see, STH is completely potty trained. Yes, I’m very proud of him. Anyhow, a case of diarrhea took him a little off guard, but together we still made it to the toilet before any major damage was done. I put Mark on the floor and the screech of rage began, as did the headache. I did the ever popular toilet swish of STH’s underwear in the other bathroom, scrubbed my hands, and put the baby back on the bed, where he began to channel a whirling dervish. STH is potty trained, but very impatient. I have yet to figure out how to make it absolutely clear that you finish before dismounting.

So, let’s set the scene shall we? Baby Mark is whirling around on the bed and my nerves are sizzling. I’m attempting to monitor STH’s progress by where he is in Hop on Pop. Mark makes a play for the edge and I pull him back to the middle. In the split second it takes to perform that manuever, STH calls out “All done, Mama!” and I hear his feet hit the floor. I run in and of course, he had not been completely done before he slid off the toilet booster thingy. I will sum it up with, “ICK.” STH assumes the position (down dog, for you yoga fanatics); it is not pretty. A quick glance ensures that Mark is still safe, in the middle of the bed.

Toilet paper isn’t going to be even close to effective, in this clean up. Of course, the wipes are in the other bathroom, because STH likes to vary his routine and I keep forgetting to stock up. Praying STH holds his pose, I begin to head to the other bathroom, when I hear the sound that every dog owner knows and fears.

“Vlu-urp. . . VLU-urp”

“Noooooo!” I scream as I head toward the sound and my sixty-six pound basset hound. “Not on the carpet!” He has come into the only carpeted room on this floor. I begin trying to push him off the carpet, in time. Vomiting dogs must be like sleeping children, the inertia seems to triple their body mass. Through serious gymnastics and peril at ignoring the two children, I do manage to get him to the deck before he erupts. As an aside to Wallace, why do you think you need to eat the weeds? I really am trying to clean up the yard, I don’t need your help, they are not a doggy buffet, and you are not a cow.

I dash back into my room, where Mark is making a play for the edge. STH is walking on all fours around the bathroom, dirty butt in the air. I make another play for the wipes. As my hands are certainly not even close to sanitary, Mark decides it’s time to not be content and to let me know, in no uncertain terms.

I try to reason with him as I clean up STH. “You woke up cranky, Mark, I fed you ten minutes ago. Yes, you did burp, and I changed you, just after that. I’ve played with you all day. It’s your own fault you’re crabby.” Meanwhile, STH, who has never seen Spiderman as anything other than a character on his underwear cries about how he pooped on Spiderman and Mark refuses to be comforted by my words and returns to the edge of the bed, contemplating his certain demise.

As quickly as possible, the bathroom is sanitized, STH is dressed in clean Spiderman underwear, and Mark is rescued from the edge of the bed. I console Mark and he erupts in tremendous yawns. The little traitor was ready for a nap. It seems his sole purpose in waking up from the previous one was to be a part of the madness. They are already conspiring against me, aren’t they?

In the evening, when my husband comes home, he’ll inevitably ask, “How was your day?”
“Fine. Yours?”

Wait until your child is out of the room. Then, decide a cookie would be the perfect treat. Quietly lift the lid of the jar. If they come screaming into the room, “MAMA! I’m coming! Cookie please!” their hearing is perfect!

I’d say the tubes have been a success.

Spring is here! It might not be everywhere, but it has certainly arrived, in my corner of the world. I’ve got the urge to skip; the trees are budding. My neighbor has gorgeous daffodils that tempt Sir Thousand Hands. I am learning how hard it is to teach a two year old that it is OK to pick the dandelions, but the neigbhor’s flowers are only for smelling.

STH has a book Worm Smells where the main character, worm, sniffs things and makes such astute comments as “Smells Nice!” That has become a household phrase. If you come in the house and supper is cooking, “Smells nice says worm!” If a nasty diaper is being changed, “Smells bad!”

We are going to try to make it to playgroup, today. I feel like such a yuppie saying that. However, it is so nice to get out of the house and tag team children, rather than being the only responsible one. I believe we are headed to the park. Hopefully, baby Mark cooperates and I can pull out my camera.

Thank God I don’t live in Minnesota, anymore.

I hate more than being trendy for the sake of being trendy. Could the powers that be PLEASE do away with the term “Baby Bump.” I hadn’t even had my coffee yet and my brain was accosted with “Britney Back on Bump Watch.”

Sometimes I wish I could put a filter on my Internet connection and radio that would eliminate all mention of Hollywood figures. There have been a few times I’ve looked up favorite actors to make sure I haven’t missed any movies. However, I really could not possibly give a rat’s ass as to what they do in their spare time. Their lives are not a reflection of my own. They can play idealist all day long; I’m just tired of hearing about it.

While I’m bitching, could we, general we, also stop overusing the word ‘issues.’ The fake psychobabble makes my ears bleed. You do not have ‘issues’ with cheese; cheese constipates you and no one cares.

is not golden when you have a two year old that wants to be read to and a baby who likes to be sung to.

I’ve lost my voice.

And yes, you mother hens you, I’m gargling, drinking lots of fluids, and trying hot tea with honey.

I mentioned a while ago that my two year old just wasn’t getting better. Yesterday, I think we fixed the problem, at least I hope we have.

My two year old, if he wasn’t the world’s most angry baby, he was certainly an honorable mention. It didn’t matter what we did, he just wasn’t happy. He began to calm down when we taught him some sign language, the most effective sign was “help.” (right hand grasps the left wrist) When he mastered this, it was like someone flipped a lightswitch and he began to mellow out. The poor kid just hated being trapped in a baby’s body and was frustrated. Once he could ask us to help him do the things he wanted he improved.

Over the past year, we had watched him blossom into an amazing kid. His personality changed and as his vocabulary exploded he was on top of the world. The tantrums practically disappeared. Over the past two months I watched this in reverse. I couldn’t understand what was happening to my son. His pronunciation became garbled and he began pitching fits, constantly. This was on top of being sick, so at first I chalked it up to illness. When he began to get better and the tantrums just increased, I became more worried.

I would ask acquaintences and would hear, “He speaks so well for a two year old.” Well, that may have been true, but he was speaking terribly compared to just a month or so ago. Thankfully, we have a great family doctor. He didn’t just chalk my concerns up to paranoia and referred us to an ENT. We saw the ENT within the week and were scheduled for tubes.

Aidan had the surgery, yesterday. He was absolutely miserable coming out of the anesthesia, but once he shook that his old self came back. The doctor told us that there was a large amount of fluid trapped in his ears and it was very thick and they’d had to suction it out; it probably would not have resolved on its own. His hearing had probably suffered greatly with the fluid. The doctor had said we should see immediate improvement. He wasn’t kidding.

My little man zoomed all over yesterday. He went with my husband on several errands and behaved better than he has in a long time. He came home and just played his little heart out. The whining disappeared. We had one tantrum while I was preparing dinner, but hey, he’s two! He attacked his dinner and slept through the night.

Look our world; Sir Thousand Hands is back.

I must confess, I forgot about your peas. Le Suer peas are OK, but they are also not the sneaky ones who slip into my shopping basket. It is the Green Giant and off brand peas that camouflage themselves as green beans.

Speaking of green beans, I do prefer canned over frozen but fresh is best.

Now, on a completely different note, it seems the store manager read my blog. (right) While he didn’t quit carrying canned peas, he did finally stock Better Than Bouillon. I resisted the urge to buy a bunch and only purchased two. I think I will purchase one per shopping trip for a while and hope it looks like other people are buying them.

I keep a well stocked pantry and would normally wait for it to be on sale, but I want him to keep carrying the product.

I took my sons to the grocery store, just the other day. Typically, I try to wait until my husband is home, but somehow Friday had arrived and I was not going to face the evening payday crowd. We went straight from the gym and I shamelessly bribed my two year old with a promise of a cookie. In the ‘aisle of junk’ I came across an innocent package of butter cookies, a kind I hadn’t had in years. We eventually made it home. I sorted, repackaged, and put away the groceries while Sir Thousand Hands had a snack. When I was through I asked him to point and ceremoniously placed two butter cookies on his small finger. They no longer fit on my own.

It only took that first small bite and I was back in the dirt lot of Tall Pines Baptist Church. Seven years old, grubby, and clutching a paper cup of kool-aid. The volunteers all herded the children out to the fenced play yard with the lure of “snack time.” Even though I grew up Catholic, Vacation Bible School was the official start to summer. Even at nine in the morning, the heat would be shimmering over the pavement. Eagerly, I’d stand with my sisters and friends on the corner, waiting for Preacher Pye to come around in the deathtrap bus. It had once been painted a bright green and white, but even that was tired by now. It was an old school bus that had been rescued from the junkyard and had seen better days. It was designed to hold sixty, but I’ll never know just how many kids were packed on. Most vividly, I remember the struggle to claim the bench seat in the way back. I may not have been one of the cool kids, but I wasn’t enough of an outcast to ruin the seat by staking a claim. In my mind it’s all a jumble of sandals, knees, and elbows. Kids sitting on laps chattering and singing; we’d often circle the neighborhood several times.

We would unload from the bus and seperate into our classes, set by the grade we had just completed. I still remember the scratchy upholstery and the way the sunlight hit the stained glass of the sanctuary, blessedly air conditioned. I remember singing unfamiliar hymns and being jealous of the kids who were selected to hold the flags for the pledges of allegiance. Even though the service was completely foreign to my Catholic upbringing, the short sermons didn’t fail to stir my blood and made me want to be a good missionary serving in a foreign land. The years of cynicism were still dim and distant.

The daily classes often befuddled me, I had never heard of Jesus referred to as the Prince of peas and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why that was a special name for Him. I memorized the books of the Bible and verses, too. It was so different from my Catechism classes that never seemed to actually require a Bible to be opened. To be honest, memorizing the books and verses were only another task to excel at. Each year we made our pine cone bird feeders with peanutbutter and bird seed. I imagine we left quite a mess on that poor old bus.

I have now returned to my roots and live within twenty miles of that small church. When I visit my sister, I smile as I pass. I heard somewhere that Preacher Pye passed away a few years ago. To me, he will never be gone. I will forever remember him driving that old bus. I now understand why the pastor kept circling and picking up stragglers. The pandemonium of kids excited about Bible school was a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Do you ever have a time where you make connections you never thought of? I’m not sure what’s going on, but all of a sudden things have been clicking. Granted, it is nothing profound in the great scheme of things, but all of a sudden things seem a little clearer.

1. I was messing around on the computer, when I realized the music folder we keep our Beatles’ tunes in was misspelled, like the actual bug. The light went on: Beat-les.
Ugh. I was actually disgusted with myself for overlooking that one for so long.

2. My husband and I were talking during dinner. Yes, I know, that’s positively archaic. We were both raised Catholic/Lutheran and the subject of Lent* came up. I had another epiphany**. I made the assumption that the calendar as we know it today was decided after the papacy was moved to Rome. It makes far more sense to ask believers to fast when food is most scarce, late winter and early spring. I have the feeling, if the forty days of Lent fell during the autumn when food is most plentiful, it would have been much harder to sell the general populace the idea.

3. This one only pertains to me and my younger son. When you are nursing and take up an exercise regime, you must increase the amount of food in your diet. I never gave it any thought and the poor boy was constantly nursing, fussy, and just generally irritable. He’d gone from sleeping through the night, to up every 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Yesterday, it dawned on me what might be happening. I increased my caloric intake and drank an obscene amount of water. He slept from 7:30pm until 2:00am! Today, I am positively floating on air. I feel like a brand new person.

Are there any recent revelations you’d like to share?

* I might have been raised Catholic, but I’m still pretty ignorant. I also recently learned that Lent used to mean Spring.

**Oh, how I loathe thee, James Joyce^.
^My English I professor was in love with the man. She insisted he was the
greatest writer, of all time. Between the two of them, they nearly
extinguished my great love of reading.