Dirty Little Secret

Free day at play space

so many kids and their moms

I am exhausted

Ironflower smiles

Lovebug cannot stop grinning

ball pit so much fun

Most other kids nice

Except for that one kicker

You handled it so well

I am so so proud

you two are great in public

should we go out more?

Dear Ironflower and Lovebug,

I love you two more than I ever thought it was possible to love anyone. You are beautiful, brilliant and funny.

But sometimes I want to send you to boarding school. I know that you are only three and not quite two, but just hear me out. Every time you have a baby-sitter (be it grandparents or family friend), I hear about what amazingly well-behaved children you are. Ironflower, your teacher says you NEVER whine at school. She was genuinely surprised when I picked you up yesterday and you started whining. And Lovebug, you NEVER do your screaming thing in public anymore. You only do it for me - you’re already up to four screaming fits this morning. And well, children, I’m getting kind of tired of the tantrums, whining, screaming and general defiance.

Sometimes I think I must be doing something wrong and that’s why all of your unpleasantness is saved for me. And that’s where I got the boarding school idea. At boarding school, you wouldn’t have to assert your independence - you’d already be independent! Isn’t that what you want? At boarding school you would be able to be your INCREDIBLE public selves ALL THE TIME.

And I would get to spend a day or two free from screaming, tantrums and defiance.

Because kiddos, I would probably only make it without you for about two days. And then I’d have to rush up to your boarding school for hugs. And there’s also the fact that you MIGHT have some separation anxiety without me for a couple of days. Especially at bedtime

So maybe the boarding school idea won’t work.

So I guess that means we’re going to have to improve your behavior right here at home. Got any ideas?

All my love,

Mommy

Lovebug is really starting to talk. Even if he often leaves out challenging syllables. But at least now his tantrums only stem from being told “no” instead of also stemming from my inability to understand him. I think it’s cut down on tantrums by at least one third. And when a child’s tantrums consist of tears and screaming for extended periods AND kicking AND head-butting, even one less per day is nice.

I think I’m discovering a lot about Lovebug’s personality through how his language is developing. For example, the child eschews all adjectives - even colors. I think this means he’s not going to be detail-oriented. This prediction was brought home at yesterday’s playdate, where Lovebug ran up to another brown-haired mom in tears. He clung to her legs until he realized that I was standing NEXT to her. We were even wearing different colored pants. The child doesn’t notice even obvious details.

I also think Lovebug is going to be the type to take action. Every verb he utters is preceded by the phrase, “I do.” As in, “I do help, I do clean, I do play.” He’s very sure of what he’s doing and he’s always doing something. The only time he doesn’t use the “I do” is when he’s saying, “kiss” or “hug”.

Which brings me to my third personality insight. He’s so affectionate. “Hug” was one of his first ten words. I really hope that this stays part of his personality. Otherwise I think he’s doomed to become an action-hero or something. And then what would we talk about?

Well, duh, I know he’s weird. He’s mine, after all. And he uses headbanging to show frustration as well as affection.

But he’s showing a new form of weirdness and I’m not sure what to make of it. One of the neighbors and her granddaughter just came by. Granddaughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, much to my joy (and my hips’ dismay). While our transaction is going down, Ironflower and Lovebug proceed to show my neighbor their new trains.

Lovebug correctly identifies all the numbers on the trains! Granted, they were nice diverse numbers like 1, 5 and 4, but still. The boy also recognizes some letters. Considering that he will not be two until March, I think this is odd.

But he can’t identify colors appropriately. If you hold up something green, he says, “blue.” If you hold up something red, he says, “yellow”. He sees that things are different colors but he rarely uses the correct term to describe an object’s color. And he always laughs the whole time.

So is my son:

A. Color-blind?
B. Able to understand shapes better than colors?
C. Messing with me on the whole color thing?

It’s not that I’d be that worried about him not knowing his colors under normal circumstances. It’s just that I don’t get how he could recognize numbers and letters but not colors. That’s not developmentally normal.

The Binky Bitch wrote a post about how she found out she was pregnant. So did Karly at Wiping Up Snot. They were both inspired (or was it ordered?) to do so by Swistle (somehow I had never read her blog before, unfortunately). Anyway, since I am nothing if not a bandwagon jumper (except for Uggs, of course) I decided to share my story too.

When I got pregnant with Ironflower, Hubby and I were living together. We had just gotten engaged but had no intention of doing the whole formal wedding thing, so we hadn’t bothered announcing the engagement yet. We got lax about birth control, but I figured that as a thirty-two year old smoker my chances of getting pregnant were very slim at best.

So three months after the birth control rule relaxation, imagine my shock at my late period. Not-Hubby-Yet hardly reacted. He calmly suggested that a buy a test. I bought a two pack. I did it one morning before work, as Not-Hubby-Yet slept upstairs. It was positive.

I did the other one just to be sure. I didn’t know what to do. When we talked about it theoretically, he’d been excited. When I’d told him my period was late, he’d seemed pretty reserved. I left the tests in the trash and went to work. I spent the day trying not to cry tears of joy and terror. I wondered if he’d noticed the tests. I wondered what his reaction would be.

I came home to a clean house and a lovely dinner. Apparently, he knew exactly when it happened and hadn’t been at all surprised. Unlike me, for example. I was flabbergasted. I went to Borders that night, hoping some reading material would turn me from a thirty-two year old party girl into a responsible mom-to-be. Sometimes I think I must have skipped a few chapters.

With Lovebug it was even more of a shock.

I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was four and a half months along.

No, I’m not kidding.

I breastfed Ironflower. My period didn’t return in any normal way during the months I breastfed. A GP told me that it could take a month after I stopped breastfeeding to get my period. So the lack of period didn’t clue me in.

I hit a plateau of losing baby weight. Nothing seemed to work on the last ten pounds. When I went back to teaching, I was so stressed out that I turned to one of my favorite comforts - food. Even as I gained weight, I just assumed it was because of my lack of self-control and the fact that I’d had a baby in my thirties. I even assumed the belly was because of how Ironflower had stretched me out.

I didn’t feel especially tired and I never felt nauseous.

The strange flutterings in my stomach did freak me out a few times, but I assumed they were gas - that’s what all the early movements felt like to me.

We had not been lax about birth control.

When I got pneumonia, Hubby took me to the ER. Before they took me for my X-ray, they asked if I could be pregnant. Thanks to an incident two weeks prior, I said there was a slight chance. They did a test. It was positive. Hubby and I stared at each other, panicked. Ironflower was only 11 months old.

Later they did an ultrasound to see how far along I was. And there was a twenty week old Lovebug, showing off his penis to us all. And I fell in love. When they returned me to my room at the hospital (something about making the pregnant woman with pneumonia actually rest and get lots of antibiotics), my OB-GYN was there, laughing at me.

Sometimes I want to have another baby just so I could the whole thing with INTENT.

I am so tired
How long does tryptophan work?
I was up too late

Lovebug had a dream
He was so unhappy that
he could not calm down

Poor little baby
He seems very happy now
I am relieved

Ironflower sits
enchanted by Little Bill
no bad dreams for her

Daddy is sleeping
how long should we let him rest?
He hates the morning

This morning I took the kids to get their flu shots.

As soon as the nurse called us back, Lovebug took off. Before that, he and Ironflower had been playing quite nicely in the waiting room (one of the reasons we go to this doctor is because the waiting room is so filled with toys). As we started down the hallway, Lovebug realized what was happening and took off down the hallway. Then he got distracted by the computers in the office area and ran in there. Then it was back to the door of the waiting room. I was actually pretty impressed that he remembered everything so well, we haven’t been there since July. But despite his brave attempts at escape and my joy in his smarts, I carried him to the room.

Ironflower had found the room herself by recognizing the number three. She handled the whole event like a champ. She DID NOT CRY when she got the flu shot. She did, however, remember to ask for a cookie as a reward. I am amazed that she didn’t cry. She is so tough. Lovebug cried, but not for very long. By the time we left they were both calm and happy again.

Lovebug did throw a tantrum about getting into the car but that’s pretty normal behavior these days (which is weird, since he’s usually happy once the car starts going).

I’ve had about seven blogs go through my head since I last posted, but today was a hectic day and I was busy on my other blog and so, my fabulous readers, I have forgotten them. But in the interests of the blogging commitment I’ve come to call NaBlowMe, here we go.

Tonight we had wine with dinner, as the cheap white Hubby used to make lemon caper sauce (this is the part where some other bloggers would provide you with a recipe, but since Hubby doesn’t actually use recipes I can’t help you) was not that bad. So we drank the rest of it. In doing this, I discovered that a glass of wine does make doing the dishes much more pleasant (you would think that I would have discovered this before, but usually when I have wine I do things like ignore the dishes). I have also discovered that a glass of cheap wine gives me a headache.

Today I went to the grocery store BY MYSELF. Thus I discovered that when given time to read all the labels and go slowly enough to remember all the things we need, I spend too much money. Hubby says I’m not allowed to go to the store by myself anymore, but I think he’s just jealous.

I also discovered that when Ironflower wears her shirt with the pink flowers, she looks very pretty. But when she puts on her plastic crown, seven bead necklaces and fairy wings, she looks beautiful. She told me so herself.

Finally, I discovered that Lovebug looks very handsome when he wears his cowboy hat, four bead necklaces and two rubber bracelets. Ironflower informed me about this as well. She’s a style maven, that one.

Lovebug spent most of last night screaming. He would calm down when I went into his room, but he still wasn’t happy. We asked him if anything hurt, if he wanted this or that and he always answered no. We’d cuddle him and then put him in the crib and leave the room. He would scream and instead of falling asleep as he usually does, he would grow louder and louder. So loud that I would go back in to check on him. Finally, I put him down and searched his crib to see if anything in it could be hurting him. He toddled over to his books and brought me one. Apparently my son woke up at midnight because I didn’t read him enough stories before bed.

I remember when he didn’t like stories at bed time. At six and seven months, he had no interest. Ironflower loved to be read to immediately, but I worried about Lovebug. I read to him despite his lack of interest - some nights he would only let me read while he breastfed. But about six months ago, he finally started to be interested in books. He began choosing what books we read and actually listening as I read them.

So naturally the one area where I felt like a good mom has backfired. Lovebug is now obsessed with bedtime books. At nearly twenty months he is already a bookworm. Last night I read him an extra story, then explained that it was WAY PAST bedtime and he had to go to sleep. He screamed for twenty minutes straight. But I held out because I knew all he wanted was another book. I peeked at him right after the screaming stopped. He was asleep.

I am dreading this evening.

Orange juice is cold
It stains my shirt and my jeans
I know you are mad

Your screaming is loud
But your smile is beguiling
Please smile my baby