Defining Moments

Husband: Did you notice on that show we were watching last night that the baby had the exact same sippy cup as our baby does?

Wife: No, but it's a Platex cup. They're pretty much everywhere.

Husband: Really? I was thinking it made us kind of cool.

Unfair Kharma

Sick child wakes us up at 5 a.m. with mild vomiting. After this is dealt with, husband immediately goes back to sleep with that extremely enviable talent he has for attaining a state of complete unconsciousness no matter what the circumstances. I lay there, wakeful, until I hear the baby at 6:30, because if I have to do anything more complicated than go to the bathroom I can never again achieve sleep on the night in question. I have crashing headache by 10 a.m.. I call husband and inform him that I will be going to bed early -- lights off at 10 -- and he'd better comply. He informs me that it's the NCAA final and the only way he's going to bed before it's over is if aliens land on our deck, break in, and forcibly sedate him.

I know this is not going to turn out well, but I accuse him of being mentally ill. Choosing basketball over sleep? Definitely not right in the head. He advises me to take a nap in the afternoon.

I laugh. Take a nap? With a sick child on the couch who has inherited her father's propensity for moaning? Fat chance. Still, I will give it the old college try. Pip pip and all that.

Older child falls asleep on couch at 1 p.m. I lie down on floor (we only have one couch and the bedroom is too far away for me to hear her) but cannot get comfy. Just has I am starting to feel relaxed, baby wakes up after what can only be described as a really bad nap.

Middle child comes home and begins yelling at the top of his lungs. Because he is a boy and this is what he does. Baby is cranky. Older child is feverish. I am starting to feel desperately tired.

I make dinner amid total chaos. It's a wash: all three kids reject it as poison, when in fact it's a lovely egg and cheese concoction that literally melts in the mouth. Whatever. They won't eat it. Bedtimes start rolling around beginning at 6:30 (baby) and continuing until 7:45 (oldest child). Finally everyone is in bed. NCAA game starts and husband immediately loses all contact with his environment. I go upstairs and realize that if I want to sleep, I have to fold and put away about 5 loads of laundry which are currently residing on my bed.

I finally get into bed at nine and watch an hour of TV alone. It is the only hour of the day in which I have not had someone to take care of or something to finish. Naturally, this is when husband comes up and decides to have a conversation with me. So what if he interrupts my program? -- geez, it's not like I'm watching BASKETBALL, for pity's sake.

Husband realizes that halftime is over and bolts back downstairs. I lay in bed from 10 to almost 11, reading and trying to achieve maximum sleepiness. I am almost there, so I turn off the light. This is when husband comes to bed. He is very quiet, almost considerate, but as I am lying there, I realize he has neglected to take the middle child to the potty, something we do every night because middle child has been known to get up and potty in the night, but not necessarily in the bathroom so we try to make sure he does it in a toilet before we sleep so we don't find it in the hallway (bedroom, stairs) in the morning. His father does this chore because his mother can no longer lift him. But tonight, being dazzled by BASKETBALL, husband decides to avoid this duty.

Now, I could let this go, but since I will be the one to have to clean it up in the morning should middle child have an incident, I decide to remind husband of his job. He gets up and does it, but unfortunately, this starts a cycle of extreme annoyance which eventually gets so strong I can't lie still anymore. Instead, I get up and pick a fight with said husband and end up storming off downstairs to cool off.

About 30 minutes later, he comes down and apologizes for being a basketball-watching freak with absolutely no sense of human decency. All is well, but it's now midnight of the day that began at 5 a.m. (Okay, technically it's 12 a.m. of the following day. So sue me.)

This seems to be the way my life goes -- wake up extra early, get kicked in the can by BASKETBALL, stay up extra late, feel rotten.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

There are certain times as a parent when you are confronted with behavior so outside the realm of your experience that your brain becomes temporarily paralyzed. I had one of these moments this morning.

When I took my shower, I made sure all the doors were closed upstairs. I particularly made sure the kids' bathroom door was closed. For good measure, I even turned off the light and the fan.

When I came out of my shower, the kids' bathroom door was open, the light was on, and Maggie was playing in the toilet which someone had forgotten to flush. She was soaked in urine, there were puddles of urine on the floor, a soggy roll of toilet paper was resting next to the toilet, also soaked in pee, and the whole place smelled like a public men's room. There was even pee in the trash can.

Let me hasten to say that while it certainly could have been worse (i.e. poo poo) it was just as certainly bad enough and my brain quite literally seized up with the effort of taking it all in.

Naturally, all of this happened at the precise moment that we needed to load up for the drive to school.

I stripped and washed the baby, redressed her and shepherded all three kids into the van, bravely ignoring the damp pee stains on my jeans in an effort to get child #1 to school on time. When we got home, I quarantined the area and gave it a thorough disinfecting. You may point out to me that urine is sterile. This I will allow, but no one will convince me that there weren't some germ parties happening in that toilet, where far grosser things happen than pee pee. The bathroom is now mopped, wiped and smelling like Lysol. Clothes and rugs are in the wash and my jeans have been swapped for a clean pair. Two things are now clear:

1) I will never know who the true culprit is. I have my suspicions, but no one is fessing up, probably because of the brilliant Demented Harpy impersonation I did earlier. and

2) I may need counseling for post traumatic stress

This is one of the essential functions of children, to open up the world to their parents in mind-blowing ways; ways that simply would not occur to us. Often these are beautiful and touching, but occasionally they're just revolting. I'm hoping since we've got the disgusting out of the way, I'll be due for the other kind of parenting moment fairly soon.

Despite My Best Efforts

Scene: Mom has just returned from preschool conference, where she is all a-glow from the fabulous report she's received on her 4 year old. Said 4 year old is coloring at the table and Mom decides to spread the joy.

M: Grant, I just went to your preschool conference.

G: Why?

M: To hear how you're doing. Miss Cheri says you are an awesome friend and that you share really well.

G: Yeah.

M: I'm really proud of you. It makes Mommy feel really good to know that you're being a good friend and that you are doing such a great job sharing and using your words and asking questions. I think you're an awesome kid. (hugs him)

G: (somewhat muffled) Can I have some money?

Why I Love PBS

Our local PBS station is about to embark on its annual pledge drive and the program guide reminds us to "Tune in for another year of live quilting thrills!" Oh yes. I will definitely be watching that. Needle in, needle out, red square to yellow diamond, pin the facing sides -- I'm all a-tingle.

My 6 year old wanted to know if she could stay up during the pledge drive (which around here is called Festival! 'cause there's nothing that says party like begging people for money) to watch Daniel O'Donnell performing Home in Ireland, a program I am almost certain has a demographic of 60-80 year olds. I have got to start cutting back on her t.v. watching. Either that or we've got to get cable so she can watch Hannah Montana like normal kids.

Still, it would make a nice change from the countless Dora the Explorer videos I've had to endure.

Surfing today while the munchkin naps. Visited Pioneer Woman Cooks! and gained weight just from reading the recipes. I am feeling mildly inspired to make something new which the kids will refuse to eat (as opposed to all the stuff I already make which they refuse to eat). Inspired enough to venture out in the snow to the grocery store? Not really. But I think I'll add a few things to my shopping list and give them a try next week sometime.

It's snowing again. Still trying to remember why I live here.

Random Blathering

No real direction today; just a collection of widely scattered thoughts that I felt like getting out there in a meaningful way. Since I can't actually do that, I'll just put them in my blog instead.

Grant is growing again. I know this because for lunch he ate 6 pieces of lunch meat, a whole pbj sandwich, a granola bar, a bagel, a cup of applesauce and all of his milk. I think when he hits junior high and really starts eating, we'll have to purchase him some kind of membership at Old Country Buffet so we can be sure he gets enough chow.

We arrived home from Arizona to -30 windchills and I am trying to remember why we live here. Jobs, family -- something like that, but pretty meaningless in light of the vile weather.

Which, I've noticed, the weather people on local tv are fond of giving perky names like "Canadian Clipper," I guess on the theory that the sheer jauntiness of the name will cause us to forget that our skin freezes when we walk out to get the mail.

Skin. I have ignored it for a very long time, but now that I am over (f-word), I find that it can no longer be neglected. I have to make time to slather it with lotion after showering -- no small chore, finding an extra 3 minutes in my already abbreviated, kid-attuned shower routine -- or I risk developing nasty, scaly patches, or worse, cracks and splits. These, let me tell you, hurt like the worst paper cut you can imagine, and they refuse to heal without even more attention, like antibiotic cream and bandaids on all the affected areas. I have gone to bed with nearly every finger swathed in a bandage of some sort, like some sort of refugee from a cartoon piano accident.

This morning, the kids let me have a pee in peace. This is remarkable because of its rarity. Normally, I have an actual audience in the bathroom, often an audience that asks uncomfortably frank questions about whatever they may have noticed about the Potty Experience a la Mom. If I don't have a peanut gallery (or is it peenut?) then I have people standing right outside either tattling (Abby Kate), asking for snacks (Grant), or flinging themselves bodily against the door with much wailing and gnashing of teeth (Maggie). Every mother in the world knows what I'm talking about.

I always swore as a parent I would never be a total sucker and buy all that tie-in merchandise that is put out by every children's program out there, be it Nickelodeon or PBS. I was so, so wrong. I have embraced my inner Elmo now and purchased not one, but two Dora the Explorer Valentine books -- not just tie-in merchandise; seasonal tie-in merchandise. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

My 4 Year Old, The Lawyer

Scene: the van, on the way to school. It is early morning and I have only had half my coffee. I am understandably somewhat foggy.

Abby Kate: Mom, I don't even know why A-S-S is a bad word. Why is A-S-S a bad word?

Me: (startled) Where did you hear that word?

Abby Kate: Lydia at school. She said it and said it's a bad word. But why is ass a bad word?

Me: Um....if you're talking about a donkey -- 'cause it is an old fashioned word for donkey -- then it's okay, but it's also a very rude word for rear end. Then it's not okay.

Grant: Mom, you have to put a nickel in my piggy bank now.

Me: What? Why? I didn't say a bad word (and for the record here, let me state that the "bad word" I occasionally have to pony up for is "gosh")

Grant: Uh, Mom, you did. You said "butt."

Me: No, I didn't. I said "rear end."

Grant: Uh, Mom, "rear end" means the same thing. You have to pay me a nickel.


You know I can't win; I'm outnumbered.