Smack Fest
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: mommyhood

Tomorrow, being July 1, is the Third Mark: That point of summer vacation when the first month is over and you have two to go.  One third down.  It is amazing to me the difference in feeling between the Third Mark and Second-Third Mark, the latter of which being distinguished by the sense of dread - dread that simultaneously, and strangely, comes from both the sense that summer is ending too soon, and not soon enough.  That is August 1st.  Thankfully, we're still stationed at the onset of July. 

That my children, then, are spending the week slapping each other silly is still somewhat tolerable.  The torch of blame is passing now from the camp of "They are still adjusting to the summer togetherness" to the "They are sick and tired and bored to tears of each other" team.  (This team was sweetly interrupted with Tobey's endearing comment about the birthday sleepover.  So, it goes to show that this camp is mercifully inconsistent.  It is my saving grace.)

The slapping, though, is troubling.  No mother can turn completely the other way to blatant hitting, not even we hands-off (lazy) ones.  That it hurts is half the problem; that it quickly becomes habit is the real concern.  I had a reminder of that recently when the neighbor kid pushed Tobey in the sandbox.  If an innocent chipmunk is worth his abuse, imagine a pushy little girl messing on his turf.  But, then, that brings to light the complexity at work: There is satisfaction in seeing my child defend himself.  And, the obvious:  Somewhere, the neighbor kid got in the habit of pushing.  It is, after all, what three-year-olds do well. 

And so here is where the lines blur:  At what point is my child defending himself from my other children?  Because the eyes of this hands-off (lazy) mom can't be everywhere, often I am relying on the skewed perspectives of my children.  Who was the victim, and who the perpetrator, are wildly arbitrary in almost every instance.  Thus, it is all a grand set-up for favoring one over the other, for the ousting of one at the support of the other, for the line that made the Smothers Brothers famous:  "Mom likes you best." 

Unfortunately, and ironcially, the jealousy and hurt feelings that can result from deciphering (accurately or not) who started/deserved/participated in the violence, can often lead to more slapping.

And there we have it, Dear Readers.  My full-scale justification for my typical Third Mark behavior: When the screams begin, I hide in the closet.  Which is exactly where I keep a stash of Little Debbies.  Call it cheap (lazy) therapy, for us all.  The sacrifices we moms make are astounding.

Laundry List
Mood:  silly
Topic: mommyhood

Here is a list of all I found, aside from clothing, in ONE DAY's worth of laundry (which equates to four loads):

• one sharpened #2 pencil
• one package of fruity snacks
• one swiss army knife
• three separate packages of gum, 2 Juicy Fruit and 1 Orbitz
• a shredded Kleen-ex
• $0.26 in change
• about 400 white athletic socks, each slightly different and without a match

 

Parenting 101: The Garbage, Snot, and Poop Chapter
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: mommyhood

When I was pregnant with my first, I remember reading What to Expect When You're Expecting.  It was a sweet read, full of warm fuzzies meant to reassure and gently guide the first-time mommy-to-be.  After Hunter arrived, I then read What to Expect the First Year, followed by What to Expect in the Toddler Years.  Again, I found the series to be a lulling, endearing fairy tale of every anticipated milestone in those dewy-sweet early years of parenting.  (Note:  Hunter was a freakishly advanced child even from birth, and when he started walking four months before the book said he would, the book officially failed as a foretaste of what was ahead.  When Hunter potty trained at 23 months and knew all his colors at two, I gave up on the books as informative and intead began to read them as a comical parody of what the stupid babies were finally getting around to.  So, the warm fuzzies were morbidly skewed anyhow.)  (I should also note that Audrey was the same as Hunter.  Tobey would've been my What To Expect baby, but by the time he came along I already knew too well what to expect.  And besides, the books were buried in storage between the boxes of boy clothes and the Christmas ornaments.)

Oy.  Point was... there were other things seriously lacking in the What to Expect books.  Here, I intend to remedy that gap of information.  Throw out your warm fuzzies, people.  This is Parenting, Reality Style:

Garbage.  No cute little mommy book I ever read told me that I would spend much of my parenting life digging in garbage.  Blankies, pacifiers, missing homework, toy packaging after you realize the toy doesn't work and you need to return it...it doesn't quit as the child gets older.  In fact, the only thing different between digging in garbage now versus then:  Now we create more garbage.  So in addition to coffee grounds and ketchupy hot dog remnants, I'm also digging through younger siblings' candy wrappers and potty training accidents to get to the missing item.  Yay.

Snot.  Is a constant.  There is never a day when our household is sans mucous membrane excretions.  And not just the runny stuff; I'm talking goopy green syrup.  Parents find that their baby's first real trick is accidental bubbles blown from the nostrils.  In the beginning it made me afraid to touch potential germ bed - friends, family, Wal Mart shopping carts (ok, those still gross me out).  The only thing worse than dodging the germs at daycare became navigating our way through the disease-ridden school year.  Don't believe me?  Walk down any hallway at any public school.  (Ok, only do this if you are actually blood-related to one of the students, because I'm pretty sure they'll call the police.)  I am here to tell you that in the last ten years, I have not gone to church without at least one blob of some child's snot hanging from my "good" clothes.  You ought to see my bad clothes. 

Poop.  I was not prepared for how comfortable I was going to get with human excrement.  People, I can just about pick it up bare-handed.  I KNOW.  Not only am I exceptionally experienced with washing it out of underwear, peeling it out of red-rashed butt cracks, and picking it out of carpet, but I have developed an uncanny knack for identifying it.  Oh sure, anyone can look in a toilet and say, yep, it's poop.  But from a hundred yards I can catch a faint whiff and instantly calculate the exact location, consistency, and time of arrival of Number Two.  In other words, I can walk half-way up the stairs and suddenly have it dawn on me that there are brown smears on the wall in the form of handprints, that it happened 11.2 minutes prior, and that the child had been eating corn flakes.  And fruity snacks.  Probably the Winnie The Pooh ones.  No wait....Dora the Explorer.  And then I can waltz in to the offender's room, whisk him into the bathroom, and in five minutes have the entire area sanitized and the situation under control.

But that's poop from my own spawn, Dear Readers.  That's practically as familiar to me as my own tears.  What the books don't tell you is that, because you are a parent, you will be dealing with poop not of your own kin.  Such as, the time we had young guests (with, shall we say, slightly less developed bathroom manners), and then we caught Tobey scooping into the toilet with a plastic cup to retrieve what they didn't flush.  I kid you not.  He threw it into the bathtub.  Others would have had to call Haz-Mat.  But!  I am a mom.  Therefore, I handled it.  Tell me about it.

That other stuff.  Puke, pee, blood....my goodness, why bother?  They are like NOTHING by now.  Audrey puked last week in the hallway at school as I was herding her out the door of the school nurse's office.  Before she completed a second heave, I had run to the nurse's room, grabbed the puke bucket, dashed back, and had it under Audrey's chin BEFORE THE NEXT HURL FELL.  Damn, I am good.  As for the pile on the floor that was making the secretary turn nine shades of green?  I rolled up my sleeves and used the flimsy paper towels by the sink to mop it up.  They had to remind me to wash my hands afterward.  Ok, I'm exaggerating a little:  They saw me roll up my sleeves and told me to leave it for the janitor, because (and I quote), "He does this every day."  What do you know, there's someone with a job even worse than parenthood.

Which basically means that what the baby books don't tell you?  Is that parenting is essentially janitoring.  But, you know.  With perks.  Like not sleeping well and spending a bazillion dollars on fuel, college savings, and Scholastic book orders.  Oh great, that reminds me:  I need to go through the garbage to find that book order.  Excuse me, Dear Readers...

Things That Go Thump.
Topic: mommyhood

As a general rule, there are certain sounds that make me jolt alert.  Sure, there are the screeches and squawks of life that make me cringe; the majority of these tend to imitate sounds of the body.  But I'm talking about the kind of noise that brings a mother from the dead of sleep, the depth of concentration, or possibly even from outside of realistic earshot, causing her to run, breathless, toward the sound's source.  It has been my experience that the most startling noise any mother can hear is deafening silence.  It is in these moments that a mother becomes suddenly aware that her child 1) has stuffed the toilet full of socks, 2) just fed the goldfish to the cat, or 3) is running down the middle of the road.  Don't ask me how I know this.

The other Most Important Noise, then, is the thump.  Nevermind that the sound of a baseball colliding with a Nerf bat is a benign thump.  Don't be fooled by the gentle thump of little footsteps making their way to the bathroom in the night.  These are thumps, to be sure, but they are missing an important element that would otherwise place them in the danger category:  rhythmic repitition.  It is probably fairer to state that the second Most Important Noise is actually a thump, thump.

You doubt?  What is the sound of a toddler throwing rocks at the side of the house?  Thump..(one Mississippi)..thump..(two Mississippi)..thump.  The sound of a child throwing toys off the top bunk bed?  Thump...thump, thump...thump, thump, thump.  Of the cat being thrown down the stairs:  Thump, meow!  Thump, meow!  (Shut up.  It's not funny.  Especially to the cat.) 

The sound of siblings wrestling will take on a muted thump if heard from one house level removed.  Kids rifling through our closet just prior to Christmas will result in a hastened series of thumps as shoes and suitcases and, unfortunately, new toys are clumsily moved around in the dark.  The use of any outside toy within the house will often produce telltale thumps: a bouncy ball, a pogo stick, a child jumping with a jump rope, a BB gun.  The sound of a bike being run over by a minivan is an unmistakable thump.  Even a kid sneaking a snake into the house will be betrayed by the thump, thump that comes from the panicky footsteps of a child who has lost a snake in the house.  Sneaking cookies from the cookie jar?  Yeah, well, screeeeech, thump, thud, clammer clammer, thump, hee hee, thump, thump, thump  are easily translated into a chair being pushed up to the counter and climbed upon, the jar lid being discarded, and the child dismounting and merrily running off.  The screech could've been dismissed, the clammer and thud ignored as potential good deeds (sliding a chair up to the table, placing a dish in the sink) or slight misdemeanors (dropping a sippy cup, running into the open dishwasher door).  But those thumps interspersed in there?  BUSTED.

You non-parents or parents of children who have grown and left the nest, you are immune.  Lucky ducks.  Those thumps don't leave your pulse racing.  In fact, I'm guessing you sleep/think/breathe/live through most of them without even noticing.  As for the Blond Kid household, things that go thump don't just do so in the night.  But whatever time it happens to be, when thump happens, you can bet we're not just listening.  We're running.

There's a frog in my tea cup.
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: mommyhood
You know you're a mom of little boys when you go to fill your tea cup with hot water, and just before the spout begins to pour you snap the cup back in order to pick out the little green rubber frog that somehow came to be there.  And then you shrug your shoulders and go back to your tea.

Cough, cough. Wheeze, wheeze.
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Theme song from "Sesame Street"
Topic: mommyhood

For Thanksgiving, my family is getting....sick.  Told ya.  Damn you, Winter.

Last night, I went to bed at 10:28.  Tobey got up, coughing, at 10:33.  Very funny.

At 10:45, my husband got a phone call, then left to treat a sick horse.  (Hey, they have cold and flu season too.)

At 11:50 I was up with Tobey again.  I put him back to bed about 12:15.  Shortly after, Audrey stumbled into my bed with fever and coughing and general discomfort.  She proceeded to sleep fitfully next to me.

At...I don't even know what time....Tobey got up again as Jason was returning home.  Jason took him to Audrey's (empty) bed with him...

...Until Jason got yet another sick animal phone call and left the house again.  Hearing all as a mother does in the night, I was then up at the sound of his departure, with an uncomfortable Tobey, and with a restless Audrey.

Any other day, Audrey would be impossible to wake for school.  At 6:30 she woke up before the alarm.  I told her she wasn't going to school.

Then I awoke Hunter, the only one of us who had gotten a decent night's rest, as Jason was coming back home.

Today I will be breaking out the Triaminic, the vitamins...and the strongly caffeinated coffee. 

How it is with Moms and Dads
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Tori Amos - "Silent After All These Years"
Topic: mommyhood

How it is with Mom. 
     In September, I went away overnight to a college reunion/concert.  Upon my departure, the kids tearfully waved from the doorway.  They called me and cried for my return.  When I arrived back home, they were beside themselves with excitement.

How it is with Dad.
     This weekend, Jason went away hunting with some buddies.  He was gone from Friday afternoon until Saturday night.  When he got home, he walked into the kids' bedroom, where everyone was awake but parked in front of a movie.  The kids' response:  "Hi, Dad.  Were you gone?"

Down and out at the Pizza Hut
Mood:  down
Topic: mommyhood

It all started so beautifully planned.  That was both my strength, and my downfall. 

The evening was expected to be long:  I would take Hunter to Beginner Belts karate class at 4:30 and Audrey to her Little Dragons at 6:30, leaving an hour-and-twenty-minute gap to kill with three kids. 

So I brought the DVD player, and while Hunter was kicking away at karate class, I waited in line at the bank's drive-up window, pumped gas, and perused the "Now Playing" list at Cinemagic, with the other two kids peacefully glued to Madagascar in the back seats.  The best part?  Tobey was too absorbed into the plot to give himself up to a late nap, the kind that so often dooms our bedtime.  And so I thought to myself, Self?  You've so got it made.  Ha.  Fool.

Upon picking Hunter up from his class, and with our awkward chunk of time to fill, we closed the gap with Pizza Hut.  In theory, it was a great idea:  The kids get these "Book It" coupons from school entitling them to free peronal pizzas, complete with key chain and sticker.  That kind of junk is always up their alley.  And I was brilliant enough to bring the coupons along.  What a smart little mom am I!

Smug woman?  Not so fast.  Because we didn't even make it to our seats before Audrey threw the kind of fit that made heads turn around us.  Not just heads turning, but tongues clucking.  So I hauled her ass to the van for a cool down, which actually fueled her fire and turned the attempt into an escalation of the same.  Humbly and bitterly defeated, I brought her back to the table.  We ordered.  Our drinks came.  Tobey, beyond tired from lack of nap, frantically leapt across the table, upsetting my water in such a way as to send it flying across the room.  After apologizing to the room in general, we summoned the waitress for napkins.

When the food came, Tobey was restless.  Jason and I took turns holding him/walking him about the restaurant/chasing him back to our table.  Audrey, still stinging from her earlier mood swing, was weepy and whiny.  Hunter got up from his seat and started doing THE DISCO - I'm talking John Travolta with the finger pointing - to the restaurant's muzak.  And we had this delirious toddler. 

CHECK FUCKING PLEASE.

We divided the kids between our two vehicles, and while Jason drove the boys home*, I steered Audrey toward the 6:30 Little Dragons class.

Which, it turns out, actually starts at 5:50 on Monday nights.  Excuse me, can I get a copy of the schedule?  Because I can't keep it all straight anymore.

And so I brought Audrey and most of a Pizza Hut pizza home. 

*Jason and the boys at home...began wrestling in the mud room, which is a slightly sunken descent from our living room.   While Jason had Hunter pinned, Tobey took the golden opportunity to send his extra-large Tonka dump truck down the two steps on to Hunter's forehead.  The fun just never ends.

See for yourself
Mood:  energetic
Topic: mommyhood

While I'm steeped in nostalgia already, here's my baby photo alongside Audrey's.  You do the math.  We definitely have an eye thing going on.  Can we say "alert"?

In hiding
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: mommyhood

You know that scene in Jurassic Park, when the two kids are hiding in the kitchen from the velociraptors?  The sit stalk-still, unwilling to breathe or make any movement for fear of being picked up on the dinos' super-radar.

Well...

There was me in the pantry, about to bite into the last Little Debbie zebra cake.  You know, the ones with the white gooey cream inside?  And I heard the tell-tale searching "MOM?"...so I turned off the light, shut the door, and devoured the cake in the dark.

Or the time I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, after a particularly long day of clingy baby and whiny children, in which I stood with lights off and door closed, not daring to breathe for fear of being detected.

Or sitting down here in the dark, trying to make my keystrokes as silent as possible, to get in one complete thought before the onslaught of Mommy Seekers. 

This is life with the Blond Kids.  I won't even tell you what they do to me in the bathroom.