Make Someone Happy

Sometimes, very small things can make the whole day brighter. Take this, for example:

These belong to my baby; my itty bitty baby who has never had her fingernails painted before. How I managed to neglect this critical aspect of girlie parenting, I know not. My older daughter was begging for full manicures on a weekly basis at this age. I can only say in my own defense that my brain just ain't what it used to be, full stop.I can no longer remember what I did with everyone in their toddlerhood (though I'm pretty sure I didn't do my son's nails more than once).

But yesterday, the little lightbulb went off in my head -- nail polish! We raced upstairs, Baby giggling the whole way in the same tone she uses when she's discovered the sugar bowl is unsupervised. We sat right down in Mommy's bathroom and had us a little spa moment.

The sun came out, the angels sang, and I am back in the running for Mother of the Year.

Death by Candy

See these cute faces?

Don't be fooled. They're addicts -- all three of them. They'll do absolutely anything for a hit. They're slaves to the sugar-god.

The little one is the worst.

We spent the weekend after Halloween in a crazed candy orgy the likes of which have seldom been seen outside of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Even Mom and Dad dipped a little heavily into the sugar sauce, but eventually our poor, overloaded, elderly pancreases just said "Enough!" and we quit to seek other, more nourishing food.

But the little ones, oh the little ones...

They're pancreases (pancrei?) are young and strong and they knew no limits. When the boy lay groaning in pain, muttering "Mom, why does my tummy hurt?" and his mother lovingly answered, "Too much candy, son," he shook his head in disbelief -- that couldn't be it. Yeesh, Mom, get a clue. By Sunday evening, the baby actually refused dinner and crawled around seeing what sugar she could glean from the floor. We gave up trying to make her eat and just fed her M&Ms until bedtime.

But here's the great part. The candy is now gone.

Candy. Gone.

And no, in case you're wondering, they didn't actually manage to eat all of it. That would fall under the heading of child cruelty, to allow 3 children to consume 9 pounds of candy in 2 days. NINE POUNDS. I know, I weighed it.

I have only a hazy recollection of how much candy I brought home on Halloween, but I know it never lasted very long, no matter how zealously I hoarded it. And I have a very clear, sharp memory of people handing me one piece of candy at each house -- even the houses that had the holy grail of Halloween, Pixy Stix. Remember these babies? Just a li'l tube of sugar. Wish I'd thought of that.But seriously, these are record hauls my kids are bringing in -- if I could figure out a way to preserve it all until next year, I could easily forgo buying candy to hand out and my kids would still be able to eat themselves sick on the remains.

Anyway, Daddy took the last of the candy to work so that people there can have fat tushies and cavities, too. And really, the kids don't seem that upset about it, although the baby is still on a half-hearted hunger strike because she just knows there are chocolate chips in the house somewhere. The other two asked me briefly whether the candy was, in fact, gone this morning and when I said yes, they nodded sagely and went back to writing on themselves with magic marker.

And hey, in the absence of candy, they can always go back to sniffing pumpkins.

Feeling Defeated

I have been teaching Sunday School for approximately 5 years now, with one short break after my third baby was born. I have mostly been following my children up the grades, always in the kindergarten and under classes until last year when I stepped up to the 1st-5th classes which are led by a different coordinator than K and under. This year I moved back down to the Kindergarteners because my son asked me to teach his class and am back working under a coordinator who I have come to loathe.

Yes, loathe.

It's hard to say this about someone who is obviously dedicated, obviously sincere, obviously a Christ-follower, but she absolutely rubs me the wrong way. And I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual.

I have never been overwhelmed with love for her, but I never gave much thought to whether I liked her or not since it wasn't like I was marrying her, or even spending much time with her -- the sum total of my relationship with her was an hour a week in which I might see her for a grand total of 10 minutes, most of them non-consecutive.

In fact, I was never conscious of any antipathy until I told her I was taking a year off when baby #3 came, which decision I defend by explaining that a) I breastfed all my babies, who b) never took bottles no matter how hard I tried to get them to do so, so c) I had to be on call for feedings until they were about 6 months old, and d) they invariably needed to eat right in the middle of church and/or Sunday school. And of course e) I just don't adjust to change and increased responsibility with great ease and needed to reduce everything outside my very immediate sphere.

When I told her, this look crossed her face and I knew she thought I was pretty paltry, taking a year off just because I was having a baby. I mean, what sort of pansy was I, to be overwhelmed by major surgery and round the clock feedings of a colicky infant? Never mind that I couldn't even remember my name those first few months after the baby came -- certainly I could plan, prep and conduct a measly little Sunday school lesson?

No, I could not.

I have never pretended to be superwoman. In point of fact, I am often at great pains to demonstrate that I am the poster child for chaos theory. Organization is a painstaking labor for me and anytime my organizational routines are overset it takes me forever to recover. After this last episode it took me a year to feel like I wasn't drowning. I knew that this would be the case, so I took some steps to limit the damage caused by my complete meltdown and the subsequent reconstruction era.

And I think she has never forgiven me.

Had I not taught under the other coordinator, I would never have known how difficult this woman is to work for. The 1st-5th coordinator was encouraging without being stifling; she let me teach and trusted that I knew what I was doing (and since I was a teacher in my former life, I kind of do).

Now I'm back with a person who is as irritated by me as I am by her.

I have to consider whether it's worth teaching any of my baby's Sunday school classes in the next year or two --can I overcome my annoyance and frustration to participate in my daughter's Christian education, or will I take the easy road and teach the older grades until she's out of kindergarten? I have 10 more weeks of contact with the benevolent despot before this little soap opera is over.

I am trying not to whine.
I am trying not to lose my temper.
I am trying to be understanding -- I know she has a difficult job and I am trying to care about that.

But man, am I annoyed.

Blog Post #101

Wow, I am so glad Blogger keeps track of my posts. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known how historic this particular entry was/is/shall be. Let's hope I can live up to my own hype.

Two events which were small in seismic terms but large in effect occurred this week. The first was a long overdue Mommy Makeover, wherein I went to the Salon (and by a total quirk of fate, I go to a Salon, capital S, where I almost always feel under-dressed and generally out of step with the world of fashion) and Dave-Who-Is-Not-Gay gave me a badly needed cut and highlight combo which was so expensive that one of the children is now going to have to go to trade school.

BUT, I look fabulous.

My stylist, Dave-Who-Is-Not-Gay, always spends at least a third of my appointment regaling me with stories of his girl-chasing days before he finally settled down with wife #3 and decided to raise a family. I find this amusing, because my mother, who also goes to Dave-Who-Is-Not-Gay, has never heard these stories, so either he thinks that I think he is gay or he doesn't think that my mother thinks he is gay or someone somewhere wondered if he was gay and now he is not going to let anyone under 50 out of that chair without completely affirming his not-gay status in as many puerile ways as possible.

Or possibly he's hitting on me a little. I did wonder about the backrub before the haircut...

Whatever. He does a great job on my hair and whether he's carrying a purse like Tinky Winky or goosing waitresses at a biker bar, I don't care as long as my highlights come out right.

I'd so neglected myself for so many months that a simple cut and glow made me feel like a supermodel. I've been walking around all week swinging my hair around and smiling and nodding at myself in the mirror ("How you doin'?") a la Joey Tribiani. Some of us mom-types get really good at self-denial when we really need a little more self-respect. I've been in that rut for a while and it suddenly occurred to me that I'm not really taking one for the team, I'm just not taking care of myself. And taking care of me in this small way makes me feel more like taking care of everyone else.

The other small-but-significant event was the arrival of a book.

Backstory: Middle child has been a source of tremendous concern lately. He is prone to tantrums, prone to disobedience, prone to sass, prone to physical responses to parental control. At school he's a perfect angel. At home, he's a terror. He has moments of great sweetness, but lately he devolves into tantrum mode so quickly and so often, that we're hard pressed to see the sweet shine through. Anything that didn't go his way was a signal for him to start having a fit. We were seriously considering counseling because nothing we tried with him seemed to have any effect and the stress of dealing with him was just exhausting, particularly for me. Then my sister recommended we try reading this book called Parenting with Love and Logic.

We'd heard of it, at least the title, in various church groups we'd belonged to over the last 2 years. But it was a parenting book and we were leery of some new parenting fad that wouldn't really last over the long haul or be relevant to what we felt was becoming a serious situation. In the end we bought it to see what it had to say, not because we thought it would be the cure-all for what ails #2.

Enter the book. I've been reading it since Sunday and on Tuesday I had the chance to put some of its principles into action. I used their strategy for dealing with tantrums with my boy and for the first time in weeks -- months -- I feel like I regained some control of the situation without completely draining my own energy. There was no arguing, there was no yelling on my part, there was no loss of temper on my part, no lecture, no harping, no lingering feelings of incompetence or failure for me whatsoever.

In one instance I was able to defuse the tantrum altogether, in two other instances we went through with the whole tantrum protocol and he emerged from it calmer and more in control of himself. That right there is a big step for both of us. Today we backslid a bit, mainly because I handled the situation improperly. This method is going to take some practice, mostly in how I phrase my responses, since some words are triggers for kids (certainly the word "no" for my son either sends him into a tailspin or sends his brain racing to find a way to do what he wants to anyway -- either way he stops listening as soon as it's out of my mouth).

Baby steps, baby steps. I'll post more as I get more into the book.

Our Playlist

Here's what we've been watching on You Tube lately. This is a big hit with the under 2 crowd. And hey, 1 million viewers can't be wrong.




Doncha just wanna hug some puppies?

Ahhhhh Silence...

School started last week.

I sent my middle baby to kindergarten and while I had a few moments of reservation the night before, when the actual day arrived and I saw how fired-up he was to go, the last of my worries melted away. He got on the bus like a pro, found his classroom with only a tiny bit of help, boldly ordered chocolate milk in the lunchroom, and ran all the way home from the bus stop. And, he saucily informed me, he didn't miss me at all.

Hmmph.

I, of course, spent that first day wandering around like an idiot -- what should I do with myself? When the baby went down for her nap, I had 2 full hours to kill and the swirling galaxy of possibilities was so overwhelming that I did what anyone would have done in my position.

I took a nap.

What's in a Cupcake?

A whole lotta nasty goodness. And these little babies are all that and more. I got this recipe/idea from Bakerella, who is the goddess of these little yummies. Mine aren't quite as polished looking as hers, but this was my first attempt. Even still, the dipping was easier than I expected and it was a very do-able project, if a little time consuming. The results made it absolutely worth it. You eat these rich little treats and you just know that they are bad for your waistline, arteries, overburdened pancreas, whatever...and you just don't care.

That's how good they are.

These were for my daughter's 7th birthday in lieu of the traditional cake. They were a lifesaver because she didn't have a "theme" for her birthday this year, other than kind of a loose Hannah Montana/I want to be a Rock Star/Libby Lu vibe that she was trying to convey. We could have gone with the edible cake topper thing, but I didn't find Miley Cyrus on a cake all that appetizing. We went this route instead and YUM I am glad we did.

Even though the whole dipping process (and the cake making/altering) took about 3 hours, it was so fun to do something creative like this. Everybody at both parties (kid and family) clamored for more and my husband is trying to hoard the 5 leftover pops for himself.

In other news, my 7 year old took a couple friends to Libby Lu for her birthday and got all dolled-up (to the tune of $25 per kid -- how do people afford whole parties of this stuff? Three kids nearly broke me.) and here's a picture of her in all her glory. Note the world-weary it's-another-day-of-glamour look on her face. It's so hard to be famous.