Mean Mommy

I was just at Wal-Mart in less than ideal circumstances.  It is a very windy, freezing day and Eli, Marina and I are all sick with a nasty cold.  Eli has the worst of it, which is very sad for my sickly little boy.  Since he is coughing like an old man with pneumonia, I decided to keep him from going to school today so he doesn't spread his germs to all the other little ones in the class.  I did not, however, have any qualms about taking him to the store to share the sickness with the other deal-seeking shoppers (tip: always wash your hands after touching a shopping cart, particularly if my son was just next to it).

Since Eli was sick and still wanted to ride in the shopping cart (though he is right at the max of 35 pounds allowed in the tiny front seat), I was forced to get one of the carts with the extra two seats attached to the front.  This doubles the size and weight of the cart and limits the turning capacity.  In short, it is a huge pain the butt.  These are just the things you have to do when you have a long list of things to buy from the store and you have to bring two kids there with you.

So, the shopping trip dragged on as I went from aisle to aisle with my cart that was like driving a semi.  Of course since it was early morning, the employees were all stocking shelves and making my maneuvering ability even more cumbersome.  I might also mention that with this cold, I have lost the ability to hear anything so I feel like I am walking around in a bubble and probably talking way too loudly.  At the store, my mission was clear:  just get through the list, diffuse Eli's whining complaints and ignore Marina's wimpering from the back of the cart, where her car seat was being surrounded by more and more food items.  Lucky for me (though not so for the other shoppers), all these sounds were muffled.  I did, however, clearly see Eli trying to reach out of the side of our giant cart and grab things off the shelves.  My fuse is running a little shorter these days since I have literally not slept more than 3 or 4 hours a night in weeks.  Marina might have some sort of sleep allergy that prevents her from ever being able to nap or sleep at night.

We finally made it to the check-out line where it took me forever to unload the cart for the impatiently waiting cashier.  Then there was the matter of packing all the plastic bags back in the cart around Marina's car seat.  This is my least favorite part of shopping with an infant.  After, we slowly pulled out of line to make our way out of the store.  Just in front of us was a woman with her two children (who should have been in school, now that I think about it...).  For some reason, it occurred to her to say (very loudly) in my direction, "Look, there's a baby all covered up with groceries!"  I wasn't sure what her purpose was in saying this, but I did know that it annoyed the crap out of me.  Then her daughter started laughing and instead of walking on with her mom, stood in my way saying, "Ha ha!  That baby is covered in groceries!"  Apparently it is the hobby of this woman to find a distressed, very tired-looking mom in the grocery store and make fun of her.  To put an end to this, I yelled back, "Hey look, there's a woman with two really ugly kids!"  Well, actually that last part only happened in my head.  Instead I think I just stood there, looking at the woman like she was the crazy one until her dumb daughter moved out of my way.

Right about then, Marina started full-on crying and Eli started yelling that he was cold so we moved our slow butts right out to the car for a noisy car ride home, where I got mad at the woman again, but this time for all the things that are going wrong with the world.

But right now, as I type this, for one blessed moment both children are sleeping, so I can feel my sanity creeping back in and I realize (not for the first time) how dumb I am.  Wait, Marina just woke up so now I'm mad at that lady again.

Dangerous Information

The following conversation took place on Tuesday morning during breakfast, before I had to take Eli to school.

Eli (singing):  We are the pirates that don't do anything, we just stay home and lie around... I've never licked a chipmunk and I've never gotten Head Lights ...
Mommy:  You know they say 'head lice', not head lights.
Eli:  No, it's head lights.
Mommy:  Nope.
Eli:  What's head lice?
Mommy:  Little bugs that live in people's hair.
Eli (looking a bit perplexed): Do they eat people's hair?
Mommy:  No, they eat their heads and make people's heads itch a lot.
Eli (scratching his head):  My neck is itching.
Mommy:  You don't have head lice, Eli.
Eli:  Why not?
Mommy:  Because your hair is too short for them to live in it.  It's only people with long hair.
Eli:  You have long hair, Mommy.
Mommy:  Eli, I do not have head lice!
Eli:  Why not?
Mommy:  Because it is only for dirty people (sorry for the offense).
Eli:  But I'm dirty.
Mommy:  No you are not. 

I might mention that I have an abnormal fear of contracting head lice.  All my life this has been my fear, though I've never had them.  Now, at too young of an age, Eli might have that same fear.  I was hoping I wouldn't get a note from school because Eli went in and told him he had head lice or something.  I really should do a little considering before I pass on information to my impressionable young son with a ridiculous memory. 

War of the Wills

Today, I'm in a state of delirium due to a lack of sleep.  My little 4-1/2 month old Marina has been routinely waking up many times a night to fuss until I put her pacifier back in and she can be lulled back to sleep.  I have been perpetuating this problem by obliging her for the sake of a quick return to my bed.  At her last doctor appointment, he assured me that at almost 12 pounds (15th percentile, baby!) she is perfectly capable of sleeping all night and the best option might be to sleep train her (let her cry).  So last night was to be the big night when everything would change and she would be a miraculously improved sleeping munchkin.

Marina and I installed ourselves in the living room for the sake of the neighbors, a working father, and a sleeping toddler.  I prepared myself mentally to go to war.  And war we did.

Marina slept beautifully from 10:00 pm to 2:30 am.  But then the floodgates opened.  I tried to follow the instructions and comfort her but not pick her up and then stay away for increasingly long amounts of time but she never calmed down.  Also, in an effort to multi-task, I also removed her swaddle last night.  Perhaps this was all too sudden for my change-resistant child.  Finally at 4 am, I felt guilty and started to think she was starving, so I fed her, but when she got back in her crib the protests continued.  I kept wanting to pull her out of there but I was telling myself that we have come this far, don't turn back now, Lily.  So, in order to occupy my time and mind, I browsed the internet on my phone and ended up looking up possible illnesses that I may have.  Sometime in the middle of the night, in a storm of crying baby sounds, I diagnosed myself with a thyroid disorder.  I also read that the sleep training doesn't work as well on "high-maintenance, strong-willed" children.  Dang, they are calling our number.

At about 6 am, an hour before I had to wake up to get Eli ready for school, Marina cut through my last defense and defeated me.  I picked her up out of the crib.  She cried for a moment longer until I threatened to put her back.  Then she fell into a deep, snoring sleep for the next hour.  I blame my weak defeat on my thyroid.

Tonight, round two is set to wage.  I will be victorious, even with a bum thyroid...

Fat Chance

I just want to share a bit about what I consider to be a humorous day. Today, after I pulled my sleep deprived butt out of bed and got my kids ready for the day, I decided that we should go to breakfast at Panera. This is one of Eli's favorite places to go. We sit across from each other and eat bagels and talk about life. We haven't been since Marina was born so today we introduced her to our special time (though she was asleep for all of it). Of course when we got to Panera at 10 am, there were masses of people there and every table was taken. I had to wander around with a car seat, food, coffee cup, and toddler until a nice gentleman give us his table. Then I noticed we were sitting right next to my third grade teacher, Mrs. Chapman. I considered telling her that I was the little girl she sent to the principal's office 22 years ago for calling another teacher's butt fat, but I thought better of it and let her eat in peace.

After our breakfast, we ran 5 errands (poor kids!) and finally ended up at the post office to pick up a package. After waiting 10 minutes at a window for no one to show up, we finally had to stand in line with the rest of the people for a chance to talk to the scary post office employees. At this point both kids were fidgety and I was a bit frazzled. As I observed the government employees, my eyes fell on a familiar face. One of them was the same man that has scolded me every Christmas when I show up unprepared with a box to mail (I believe I have a post about him from a few years back). I was hoping that the numbers would work out so I wouldn't have to be helped by him. But of course, no such luck. He gave me the signal to come to his line. I handed him the slip I had and about that time, Marina decided that she had enough of all of this and started to wail. Then Eli was jumping around, kicking things and loudly telling me he wanted the box now because he knew there was Christmas presents in it. I was looking crazy in my new nice jacket over a pair of sweats (like I told Mark I wouldn't do) and air-dried hair that was frizzing around my head like a halo. Of course I wasn't wearing make-up (I can't be bothered with that nonsense these days) and I literally have not had a full night's sleep in over 5 months, so you can imagine the bags under my eyes.

When he came back with the box, my jaw dropped. It was a little bigger than I expected and immediately started to assess my situation to plan how to get this box, car seat and Eli out of the post office and into my car. I signed a million things and then the man seemed to size me up. He said, "I tell you what, why don't I carry this out to your car for you." I started to tell him I thought I could handle it because I felt bad about my poor planning but he just said, "No you can't" and came out from behind his desk. As usual, I felt embarrassed for the inconvenience I was causing and tried to look away from the dirty looks of the people in the line who just wanted to get out of the post office quickly. So off we went to my far away parking spot. I had to explain to him that the box couldn't go in the trunk, but in the passenger seat because I had just been to Sam's and it was full of cat litter and giant boxes. He told me to just get my kids in the car and he would take care of the box. I hurriedly threw all the junk off the front seat (embarrassed again!). Then I overheard what Eli had been saying over and over since we left the building. It registered just then. "Boy this guy sure is big." and "He sure is huge (pronounced kuge), Mommy." and "How did he get so big?", "Why does he have that mustache?" The man was indeed huge, in fact, he was Santa Claus-looking. He also was not deaf so he undoubtedly heard what Eli was saying and also when I told him to be quiet. I thanked the man over and over for helping me. I probably looked like one of those poor people that is totally overwhelmed, like a woman who has ten screaming kids at the grocery store.


So, now I have changed my opinion of the post office staff, though he now probably hates me and my rude son and my crying baby. It is really nice when people are generous to you. It always surprises me. And it is especially nice when you can repay them by having your son call them fat.

Brag Rag

I think I am starting to consider 3 as one of my favorite ages for kids. Right now, Eli is 3-1/2 and he is delightful. I'm not saying that he is the perfect child, often he is far from it, but so much of what he does is entertaining to me. He is constantly saying something that I find remarkable or ridiculous. I can't wait for Marina to get to this age. I know everyone says enjoy your baby and all, which I do, but I love when they get to be more interactive. She is just starting to pick up a little personality which makes every day a little better (when her personality isn't throwing a fit because of a change she can't seem to adjust to).

Because of Eli's various skills, I often think he is a genius, until someone tells me of a skill that their child has that trumps the one mine has. For instance, he has learned to distinguish his right from his left. When my sister was bragging about this skill recently to some friends, she was told that was great but that at 3, her child was adding by 99s. Eli has been trumped. My poor kid has barely even heard of addition (this could be the fault of his remedial math mother).

Eli is also fiercely protective of his mother. I didn't show him how to be this way, it just developed. If someone is wearing an article of my clothing, he freaks out because it belongs to his mommy. I have to give him the "OK" to make him relent from his attack on them. Recently, I took a bottle of pumped breast milk over to my mom's house and left it in the fridge. A few days later, my mom, thinking it was old, threw the milk out. When I asked about the milk later, she told me she threw it out and I brow beat her since I hate pumping. Eli witnessed the exchange and was very impacted by the fact that someone would throw my milk away. He could not let the issue go. He unleashed a verbal attack on grandma several times, asking her why she threw away "Mommy's boobie milk". He still brings it up all the time, and it has been more than a month or two. If I am having a discussion with someone else, he will also agree with me, no matter what I say. He is my little teammate.

I have related to you in the past some of the funny things that Eli is always saying. He has a quotable sentence just about every day. One thing he has been doing for about 6 months is hitting things with his toy hammer and saying "Damn". Now I don't mean he says it in the way most people use it, instead he says it to describe the sound that the hammer makes as it hits something; much like "Bam". So he will walk around hitting things and saying, "I'm going to damn this nail down. Damn. Damn." I have often tried to correct him without making a big deal out of it, so he won't start using it for the attention. But alas, the word has stuck. Damn.

So while my little boy is extremely resistant to change (he can't even accept a pair of black socks when he has been wearing white for years) and has recently started to talk using a very nasally inflection, I am very much enjoying who he is. And once Marina starts rolling over and crawling (and not waking me up at night!), I will start telling you how advanced she is, and better than all the other babies.

Yes, I have issues. I blindly believe the people I love are better than everyone else... Sorry about your kid, I'm sure he/she is very nice.

Here is a picture of Eli being advanced and hoarding all the cars at the Children's Museum. He can box another kid out very nicely if he or she tries to play with him. He will play at this table for 2 hours if I let him.

And here is Marina looking very advanced in her Bumbo chair. This is a rare moment when she is not arching her back and trying to catapult herself out of the chair and face first onto the floor. Yes, she does have a neck, it is just not visible in this picture. It is probably the best neck of any child's her age (:

Toilet Tellings

Now that we seem to have completely conquered potty training, I can say that my son has developed some rather unusual potty habits. In the past, I have mentioned Eli's insistence on wiping after he pees, though that is a rather unacceptable behavior for men to do (though I still think it is more sanitary this way). But now, every time Eli goes to the bathroom, he hollers for someone to come in the bathroom and observe what he has done. It goes something like, "Look how much pee-pee I made, Mommy!" or perhaps more offensive to some (though not to us) is his habit of showing you his poop and then describing what he thinks it looks like. "Look at the size of this poop, Mommy! It's kuge (this is how he pronounces 'huge' for some reason). It looks like a giant cucumber (or a pickle, or a submarine, or banana, take your pick)." Then he will ponder whether it will even fit down the toilet or will it clog (even though some times it is like pebbles in there).

It used to be that he took great delight in flushing after he was done, but now since our toilets are so bunk and we have no skills in fixing broken things, the toilet runs forever after it's flushed. Since he is not adept at the handle jiggle that stops the forever run, one of his parents will have to stop what we were doing and solve the toilet-running problem. Because this can be an inconvenience when you are feeding or holding a rarely sleeping baby, Mark has instructed him to not flush and that we will take care of it later (turns out this is a bad decision). While this was the instruction for only one day, it seems to have stuck like molasses because now every time I open a toilet, I find evidence of the workings of a little boy. If anyone ever visits us and uses our toilet, they will be unpleasantly surprised by the situation they will find waiting for them, not to mention having to flush the ever-running toilets. I also have a terrible fear that if he leaves the toilet seat up, that our cats will jump up and drink his pee. This is probably an irrational fear but it wouldn't surprise me with the nasty, rapscallion cats that we own.

I am left to wonder if Eli brings his bad bathroom habits to school with him. Does he call his teachers in to show them the mass amounts of pee he just made? Or does he realize this is not appropriate public behavior? How will I break him of this? Or will Eli be doing this for life? I wonder if this poor kid will be cursed for years because his mom allowed him to do and say things that are humorous now but may not be so in the future.

Maybe someone will call that Super Nanny lady on me and she can fix all these problems I'm making... it's always nice to be able to pass the buck (: Until then, I will laugh at farts and songs he makes up with words like "wiener and turd" in them.

Laugh Through the Strain

The past month or so has been really long and somewhat draining. Without boring you with too many details, suffice it to say that it has included multiple rounds of sickness, a hospital stay, a missed vacation, very little sleep, holidays, and much anxiety for this mom.

But during this trying time, there have been some sparks of humor, particularly from the mouth of Eli Clinton. Here have been some of the highlights:

In the middle of a nasty stomach virus that Eli had where he was so sick he could only lie on the bathroom floor on a towel and stand up every 20 minutes to puke in the toilet, I hear a little voice call out. I was in the middle of feeding struggle with Marina that he must have overheard, because he said, "This isn't a snack bar, Marina". This is something I said to her once that Eli thought was super funny and he has been repeating ever since. It made me smile even though I was so sad for his vomitous state.

Last week, out of no where Eli said to me, "Remember when I pooped in the bathtub?" I asked him to repeat himself and clarify a time frame (fearing that we had regressed). He told me it happened yesterday with Daddy. I reminded him that wasn't yesterday but more than two years ago. Then he told me it wasn't yesterday, it was millions of years ago when the dinosaurs were extinct, that's when he pooped the tub. We've been watching and reading a lot of dinosaur information lately...

A few days ago, someone (who will remain nameless for the sake of anonymity) loudly passed gas in front of Eli. He paused for a minute and then asked if someone was playing the tuba. There must have been some power behind that sound!

So, yes, it has been a rough go lately but moments like these help keep me laughing and sane.

Bag Lady

When we were growing up, we always used to make fun of my mom for the giant purses she would carry around. These things could store a town in them (now of course, we make fun of her for the fanny packs she routinely sports).

But now that I am a mother of many, I can understand the need for such a giant fixture. I always have diapers, extra clothes, pacifiers, toys and more in there just in case. It is not uncommon for me to be searching for something and dig out a bunch of cars or crayons that Eli has tossed in for me to tote for him too. The solution for any problem in our house seems to be found in my purse. The untrained person generally finds it impossible to locate anything in my "Mary Poppins" bag but I can feel around and blindly find anything.

To put in perspective just how ridiculous my purse is, let me relay to you some details from this morning. I took Eli and Marina to Wal-Mart with me to buy a new "big-boy" car seat (an idea which has been protested by Eli all day - he is not big on change). As usual, my purse was banging into things and falling off of my arm for the entire hour-long excursion. During this time, I had to access my wallet and multiple other things in the giant bag and nothing struck me as odd. Then, when I got home, I remembered that last night, I had borrowed a metal caulk gun from my mom's house (do you know how big and heavy those things are??). I searched my purse for it and what do you know, there it was hidden in my purse under the loads of crap. So, as you can see, it has gotten so bad that I don't even notice a big metal tool floating around in there.

I am a mom and I've got all kinds of problems, including a sore shoulder.

Dirty Cycle

In my house, there is a war of laundry that is always waging. It used to be that we had this tiny little stackable washer and dryer (that came with the town house) and I had to be doing a few loads every day just to keep up. Then last year for Christmas, Mark gave me a great set of front-loaders that I can jam full and ease my burden of constantly having to do small loads.

But these days, a vicious cycle has started and it is affecting everyone in the house, including the cats. As I am a master of multi-tasking, I toss a load of laundry in while I'm making breakfast or trying to clean up (clearly by the look of my home, this happens only rarely). But the only real time there is for folding it is while Eli is napping. Since over half of the load belongs to Eli and Marina, I can't put it away during nap time, so it gets stacked up on floor until I have a minute to go into their room. Unfortunately, when Eli gets up, I get caught up with snacks and toilet time, the clothes still do not get put away. Since Eli is awake and always extremely active, he finds it amusing to run through my piles and distribute them around the room in an effort to "help" Mommy. Then, after the clothes have been redistributed, the cats make their beds on a shirt or pair of pants here or there and fill them with hair. At this point, I usually pick them back up and fold them again and this time set them on the stairs or the landing in an attempt to remind myself to grab them the next time I go upstairs. But the day moves on and either I have a baby in my arms or I'm chasing Eli around so the clothes just clutter up the stairs, making a fire hazard. Then, because I am usually behind on my house tasks, another load of laundry goes in and out and the stacks grow and fall and ultimately get added to the stairs. Since we eventually run out of clothes, we resort to grabbing them from the stairs and make an even bigger mess. Yes, the clothes do eventually find their way back home to our closets, or on a bad day, they get thrown around and get re-washed, folded, thrown around, stacked, etc...

This is our own personal "laundry cycle". It never seems to end. And since there is no hope for a solution to this situation, it is likely to continue on until the day I die, or hire a cleaning lady that enjoys hard labor for a quarter a day.