Pishew You!

Even though Hot Guy grew up around guns and hunting, we’ve avoided the gun issue as parents of young children. Why teach them about guns before they were ready to learn gun safety? In fact, my kids didn’t know what guns were until they went to preschool.

Then Lovebug came home shooting things.

He points his arm out and says, “Pishew! Pishew!” to indicate that he’s gotten us. He doesn’t call it shooting, he calls it , “Pishewing”. He calls the things he makes out of Legos his “Pishewers”. And we avoid the “g” word, because I don’t think guns should be thought of as toys. But I also don’t want to stop what appears to be some sort of instinctive male tendency.

Then we met the boys with guns.

Not much older than Lovebug’s 3, the boys carried water guns as tall as they were. They carried them into my parents’ town pool after the following directions from their mothers, “Shoot away from people, boys.” One boy found that boring and put the gun by his mother’s chair. The other also found that boring, but his solution was to shoot at people. People like my Lovebug.

Lovebug, being a lover and not a fighter – as well as no fan of the water, came running to me in tears. I said the boy was mean and to stay away from him. Lovebug, Ironflower and my mom built a sandcastle. The boy came over to shoot it with his water gun. Why? I don’t know. I loudly told him to stop and go away. I had to stand up and loom over him for it to work.

His mother did not notice. She did not notice a strange woman practically yelling at her son. She did not notice when he shot other kids in the face. She did not notice when he tripped over the large gun. She did not notice anything until he blasted her with water. Then she told him to stop. Twenty times.

And I stood there wondering, do toy guns make kids aggressive? Or do aggressive kids want toy guns? And what kind of IDIOT lets her son loose with a giant water gun at the crowded kiddie pool? And should I go say something to her?

What are your thoughts about toy guns?

It’s Been Such A Long Time Since I Whined

There’s just not enough chocolate in the world for this shit. I think I need some Percocet or something.

I’m sick. The big kids are sick. Aunt Flo has dropped in and she seems to have brought extra luggage. Hot Guy and my parents, aka the only other people who watch my children, are out of town. I’m so behind in writing assignments that I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. I’m getting three hours of sleep a night. I’ve developed a Lexulous addiction (that’s Facebook Scrabble for those of you smart people who avoid Facebook). I have six loads of laundry to fold. The baby is teething. All of which I might be able to handle if….

Lovebug has lost his mind. He’s keeping himself awake at night (after a week where all my other schedule and sleep tweaks had him sleeping well) and demanding that I come in to his room during the night – ignoring him results in tantrums, which wake the baby and result in me going in there anyway. He’s crying and screaming every time he doesn’t get his way or is told how to behave. Consequences make him even more crazy, but half the time he calms down immediately when I tell him the tantrum will get him in even more trouble. And no matter how immediately the consequences happen or how many times I explain WHY he got in trouble, he seems to make no link between his behavior and consequences. I know he’s only three, but he understands other kinds of cause and effect and quite well. I just don’t know what to do with him. He has so many moments of sweetness and kindness that I’m reasonably sure he isn’t a lost cause, though he may well be if I keep yelling at him.

Any ideas? Or good drugs?

Because I Don’t Do Sappy Very Well

They tell you that motherhood profoundly changes you. They tell you that you’ve never imagined love that deep. They tell you that you will become more selfless than you’d ever imagined. They tell you that your life will never be the same.

And you realize it quickly, as you stare into that little face. As you function on two hours of sleep. As you read the same story for the 1,000th time. As you try to give your friend advice on what to wear to a formal event and realize you haven’t been to one yourself since 2002. As you physically miss your children when they spend the night at grandma’s.

What they don’t tell you is how your capacity for grossness will change. Sure, they mention dirty diapers. But I was a nanny. I baby-sat. Dirty diapers hadn’t fazed me in the first place. But it wasn’t until I was a parent until I realized that dirty diapers are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Ironflower had gastric reflux for the first 8 months of her life. She threw up everywhere, all the time. We told each friend she threw up on that could call themselves aunt or uncle. And I, I whose stomach had retched so easily at just the thought of vomit, was totally calm. In fact, I became rather scientific as I cleaned up each round of vomit – what color would it be this time? Hot Guy was even more impressive, though. Once, as he held her over his head, she threw up. Into his open mouth. The fact that he didn’t run screaming out the front door then has always made me a bit complacent about our family.

Next came Lovebug. He seemed so clean, comparatively speaking. Rarely threw up. Had lots of little poops instead of big explosive ones. Wouldn’t eat baby food, so he didn’t really eat solid food until he was old enough to keep it in his mouth. I should have known that he’d get back at me eventually. He STILL won’t poop on the potty, you know. He waits until bedtime when he’s wearing his training pants and then goes for it (Although the other day he went up to his room in the afternoon, changed into training pants, pooped, then changed back into his underwear. Quite a kid, my Lovebug.). Then takes off the training pants and drops them on the floor. The carpeted floor of his room. So now I’ve been an expert at scrubbing shit.

Now the bodily functions of my children don’t bother me at all. I don’t even have a moment of nausea, or repulsion. Which is why – and I can’t believe I’m admitting this, except that I’m kinda hoping that someone else will admit to doing the same thing – I watched as ChunkyMonkey pooped this morning. He’s just started having solid ones. Thinking he was done, I started to change him. But he had more and I watched it come out. I was kinda fascinated. I have never seen that much poop come out of a baby. Seriously, it was impressive.

If anyone had told me five years ago that I would just sit there and watch my baby’s poop come out, I would have thrown a drink at them.

So yeah, there’s deep love and fierce protectiveness that comes along with motherhood. And, apparently, also an ability to appreciate a big poop.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Totally Hypothetical. Really.

Is it bad to think about slipping your children Benadryl so that they’ll sleep at night? Is it bad to actually do it? Or is it worse to tell your three old that he’s ruining the family’s well-being because he won’t go to sleep until 10pm, he wakes up at 2am to play with his trains and then wakes again at 5am, each time waking his baby brother and mother in the process?

Uh, this is all hypothetical, of course.

Two boys have been sharing a room for a while now. The three year old used to at least go to sleep on time. Now he stays up. . .disturbing his six month old brother. He gets up all the time. . .disturbing his brother. He plays with his trains .. .waking his brother. Then his brother wakes up close enough to three year old’s version of morning that they’re both up by 6am.

And, uh, the mother is starting to lose her shit become concerned. She knows their horrible behavior is coming from lack of sleep. She keeps the room dark. She has a bedtime routine with relaxation techniques. She’s been reluctant to take away the trains, as they are security for the three year old. But he also has a stuffed animal that he loves and doesn’t play with. And he thrives on any kind of attention, being three. So when his mother yells in frustration discusses the situation, he doesn’t care. He also doesn’t seem to relate consequences from behavior the night before to punishments the next day.

Does anyone PLEASE have suggestions for this poor woman? She is actually losing short term memory skills from lack of sleep. Really. Between this and her red eyes from crying in frustration, people are starting to think she’s a stoner.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Lovebug!

Dear Lovebug,

I can’t believe you are three. You are growing up so fast. I’m so proud that you have learned to put your own sneakers and coat on. And you are so polite with people, asking their names and introducing yourself. And to think I was so worried about your speech!

Watching you become a big brother has been amazing. You are so gentle and sweet with your baby brother, even using “mother-ese” to talk to him. For a kiddo who still loves the word “no”, you are always willing to help with your brother. I love watching you give him a kiss every morning.

Sometimes your passion wears me out – sometimes I’m not sure why you are SO upset for no apparent reason. But as I listen to you play – I love how you act out stories with all of your Thomas trains – I realize that there’s a lot more going on in your head than you’re telling me. I can’t wait until you’re ready to tell me everything.

And Thomas. I’m not sure what you’d do without trains. You play with them so well – for so long. But you’re also interested in them, beyond just the Thomas stories. You pick out non-fiction books to learn about trains and cheerfully watch specials on the Discovery Channel about them. That’s pretty cool for a three year old.

You are my little Lovebug, filled with kisses and hugs and tackles. I love you so much and I’m so proud to be your Mommy.

Love,
Mommy

Evidence of My GROSS* Incompetence

*Emphasis on the gross.

I should have known that things were going too well. We had a good morning. Increasingly rare these days, what with all the being cooped up in the house. I took Ironflower and Lovebug to a lovely birthday party. We got home well after nap/quiet time usually starts, so we resolved to just have them “rest” for half an hour or so.

Hot Guy went to the grocery store. I secured Chunkymonkey with my nanny (the cradle swing) and went up to free the children. Ironflower bounced out of her room as Lovebug threw open to the door to his.

“Mom, I went poop on the potty!” exclaimed my son.

We keep a potty in his room. It’s the only one he uses, and that’s only when no one is watching. And only pee.

Until today.

He had pooped ON the potty, but not quite in it. In fact, he’d pooped ALL OVER the potty, the carpet and a diaper. I tried not to freak out. . .but all I could see was SHIT EVERYWHERE. So I told the kids to go downstairs out of the contaminated zone. I began cleaning.

Hot Guy arrived a few minutes later. I yelled down and asked him to wash Lovebug’s hands. Just to be on the safe side. Because surely I would have noticed if he had especially messy hands.

Then Hot Guy said, “Oh MY GOD, look at your hands boy! Ironflower, what else has he touched?”
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Shit, I thought. In every way possible. I began prowling the room, checking for other things that I had missed. Because any idiot who forgot to check her son’s hands has got to have missed other stuff, right?

Like the fact there were poops lined up in one of his Matchbox car bins.

Which at least explained why his hands were dirty, if nothing else.

We are now down a Matchbox car bin.

The Weaning Stops The Whining From Waning

Lovebug never took a pacifier. I can count on one hand the times he put up with a bottle. And after a few exploratory bites on his fingers, he decided that thumb sucking was awful too. To be honest, I was disappointed that he didn’t want to suck his thumb – I was convinced that Ironflower’s thumb sucking had made her an easy baby (And in the subsequent years, I can tell you that as she’s sucked her thumb less and less, she’s also become more and more challenging. Coincidence? I think not.). Lovebug was not an easy baby.

But life did get better when he embraced the sippy cup. I had assumed he would hate that too. The only thing he liked to drink from (besides my boobs) was a straw, but only if the straw was in my can of Diet Pepsi. I envisioned a life of pouring out Diet Pepsi can contents, replacing them with apple juice and pretending they were mine. But for whatever reason Lovebug embraced the sippy cup.

We moved to the “sports cup” style with the straw last spring, after the speech therapist told me how much regular sippy cups had ruined his tongue placement (though, oddly, they never affected Ironflower’s at all), but otherwise things remain the same: Lovebug loves him some sippy cup.

With juice.

In our defense I must say that the juice is always cut with water and it’s always a healthy juice and he never has it at nap time or bed time and he needs the calcium because he won’t drink milk. But still, the child drinks more than the recommended amount.

And I’ve kind of ignored it, because he does eat.

And because Lovebug is very, very, passionate. His motto is: “Why talk when a scream would do? Why cry when a full blown temper tantrum can get my point across? Why ask when I could whine repetitively?” So I didn’t want another battle, back when they were two and one and we were moving and I was just overwhelmed all the time. So Lovebug turned into a juicehead because we were more concerned about other issues.

Sometimes I feel like one of those parents who spends years bugging her kid about his grades only to find out that he’s a meth addict.

Anyway, Lovebug’s solution to the once cup of juice per meal – and only water in between – was to scream every time I offered the water bottle. He started asking whining for lunch at 10:30 am, mentioning the juice first. Then he tried drinking his sister’s juice, but since she uses a regular cup that didn’t work (he refuses to learn how to drink from a regular cup. I haven’t started that battle yet either). Then he just refused to drink all morning.

I swear to God I’m never even going to give Chunkymonkey juice.

But since it’s too late for that option with Lovebug, I guess I’ll just have to deal with the extra tantrums.

Oh well, at least they usually mean extra hugs, too.

An Actual Dirty Little Secret

I’ve hardly ever had a job that didn’t involve kids. Babysitter, nanny, teacher, tutor. . .MOM. I like kids. I do.

But, um, I don’t really like playing with them.

I love watching them play while I also watch TV or check my email. I love teaching them new things. I love reading to them. I love cuddle time. I’ll play active games, or sing songs willingly. I like going to the park and story time and other outings.

But playing princess dolls and trains? Not so much.

I feel like I just came out or admitted an addiction. “Hi, my name is Jerseygirl and I don’t like playing.”

“Hi Jerseygirl!”

It’s not so much that I DISlike playing with my kids. It’s that I get bored. I’m the kind of person who likes to read and watch TV at the same time. I like to check my email when I’m on the phone. I also like to read and/or watch TV and/or check Facebook while I play princess dolls. Because making the appropriate responses during Ironflower’s stories? Not so interesting. While she’s very creative artistically and when she’s telling a story, the princesses tend to do the same thing. Over and over. And over and over again.

Once Hot Guy asked me who had taught Lovebug to crash his trains and cars. Because we don’t let him see violent stuff and because this was before he’d started preschool, Hot Guy wondered how his little boy had learned to stage crashes.

I hated telling him that I had taught our innocent little boy to crash things because I got bored pushing them around and around. Strangely enough, Lovebug no longer wants me to play trains with him. It’s almost like he doesn’t trust me with all of his expensive Thomas toys.

Sometimes I imagine Ironflower on the therapist’s couch lamenting, “And every time my mom played with me, she had to watch Ugly Betty or Top Chef too. Now I think I’m boring and that’s why I have 87 piercings.” But then I think about how much therapy she’ll need if I starting banging my head against a wall while we’re playing, so I’m reasonably sure that I’m doing the lesser of the two evils.

What do you think?

Expletive Not Deleted

I would like to be able to tell you that I don’t swear in front of my children. I would like to be able to tell you that Hot Guy doesn’t either. But I would be lying.

I can tell you that we’ve taught Ironflower to dismiss our swears. She always reminds us that our choice of words isn’t nice. And then she brags that kids never say them (I love how naive my daughter is). But Lovebug is another matter.

Months ago he started saying, “Oh shit!” whenever he dropped something. Which was COMPLETELY my fault, since Hot Guy never says that. Months ago we started trying to talk him out of saying it, if for no other reason than I would have been mortified if his teacher had to call me about it. So naturally I too have tried to stop saying, “Oh shit.” I tried replacing shit with sugar and shoot like I used to do when I was teaching, but for some reason it didn’t take. Instead I found myself using my other favorite exclamation even more often.

And so now I have a two and a half year old who exclaims, “Oh, Cheezits Christ!” whenever something goes wrong. No matter what kind of crisis we’re having, I laugh every time he says it. It’s less blasphemous than what I actually say and he says it so earnestly ….I haven’t even tried to correct him.

It’s better than “Oh shit”, right?

Cheetos Are Bad For Me

When I had Ironflower, I planned to feed her a nutritious and organic diet as well as breastfeeding her for at least a year. The first crack showed up when she chose to wean herself at ten months. Then she swiped a french fry. And then she had chocolate cake at her first birthday. It was downhill from there. With Lovebug, I managed to at least breastfeed longer. He developed a penchant for his sister’s Cheetos at a very young age.

And now I’m being punished for it. I made the mistake of buying Cheetos at the grocery store yesterday. And I let Lovebug hold them. I suppose my second mistake was bragging to everyone about how easy it is to get my shopping done when one kid or the other is in preschool. Anyway, between my bragging and allowing a small child to eat Cheetos, I guess I deserved what happened next.

As I was paying, Lovebug demanded to hold the Cheetos again. I had forgotten to separate them, so the bagger had put them somewhere. Somewhere I couldn’t immediately locate. I explained he would have to wait until we got outside and out of the way. Lovebug’s demands grew louder – the kind of louder that told me he was overtired and we were due for a meltdown. The tears flowed. The yells grew louder. I tried to calmly explain that we don’t scream to get what we want as I pushed the full cart past all the people staring at me. I had barely taken two steps when I nearly collided with the person in front of me.

Lovebug and I were perhaps twenty feet from the door. I was sweating, since stress does that to me when I’m super pregnant. Lovebug was throwing a huge tantrum. We were quite a sight. And in front of us, in the too narrow for two carts to pass aisle, was an elderly couple. If they had been going any slower they would have been going backwards. Normally this would not have bothered me, but with sweat dripping down my face and a screaming two year old, I was in a bit of a hurry. Instead it took us five minutes to get to the door. I’m not exaggerating. I think the poor couple may have been deaf as well, since they never seemed to notice the huge tantrum going on behind them.

In our five minute trudge to the door, I tried not to have evil thoughts about them. I distracted myself by listing all the mistakes I had made that led to the tantrum – allowing Cheetos into my home, buying some that day, letting Lovebug hold them, not removing them from the bagger’s clutches, getting behind this couple. This didn’t really improve my mood.

Finally we made it to the car. Lovebug began to calm down. I wiped the sweat away. But then Lovebug decided he didn’t want to climb into his car seat. I loaded the groceries in. Still no luck. I told him he needed to climb in or I would have to put him in, because we had to go. Still no luck. So I put him in his seat – and the tantrum began again. I was tempted to let him get down and do it himself, but then I thought I’d be rewarding the tantrum. And I’m pretty sure that’s what got me into this tantrum mess in the first place. So I strapped his struggling body into the seat and got into the driver’s seat.

I blotted the sweat. I took a few deep breaths. Lovebug screamed. The shopping cart guy glared at me. I had visions of other grocery store workers surrounding my car and I quickly drove away.

Moral of the story? Cheetos are bad. And life isn’t necessarily easier when you only have one kid to deal with at the grocery story.