Potty Humor

Last night we had a brand new parenting experience.  One would think that five years and two children in, we might have exhausted the opportunity for poop-based new experiences, but I assure you; No.

The family went for a chiropractic visit that was scheduled for the children's bedtime.  Not ideal, but necessary.  We arrived to a packed waiting room and many families there for family visits so the kid's area was filled with smalls.  And soon, filled with smells.  One of whom came to find us loudly announcing "Imaydapoop!"  Mr. and I looked at each other doing a non-verbal rock-paper-scissors, which he generously let me win.  At the same moment we realized the diaper bag was still on the counter at home.  (Insert fecal expletive.)

The Mr. went off with the odoriferous child to try to salvage the diaper currently in-use.  A LONG time passes and he arrives looking quite red in the face and barely holding back laughter  and/or tears.  I start to ask and he says "Not now.", still barely containing himself.    Little One loudly announces to the entire toy room "Imaydapoop and Daddy fush it day-own."  I sneak a look at my fuschia-faced husband.  He is shaking with silent laughter.  "He 'tuffed toyet paper in ma diaper."

So the back story goes something like this.  Mr., at 6'6", took the Little One to the closet size bathroom and opened the diaper to discover there was no redemption.    In the small space he managed to clean the child, but was left with a toddler who is not "housebroken" and one used diaper.  Using his best MacGyver skills he washed the (disposable) diaper.  It immediately became the size of  Macy's parade balloon.  Upon wringing it out, (many, many times), he reupholstered it with toilet paper and paper towels, strapped it back on and tried to reenter the waiting area with some discretion.  Not so for the toddler with a parade float on her rump.  Everyone heard about it.

You know that laughter you tried to contain in high school when you had in inside joke with a friend?  Throughout the visit I couldn't make eye contact with the Mr. without one of us bursting into red-faced hysteria.  I'm sure the staff thought we were self-medicating, but honestly, it was the best night of the week.  So for those of you who have said at the end of a long, stressful week, "I don't need anymore of this  (fecal expletive)!", you might be wrong.  Maybe it is exactly what you need.  An hour of giggling later, we all felt better. 

Well, except the swampy-pantsed Little One.  But she has a good story for her therapist someday.   Throw some change in the therapy jar!

Visions of Sugarplums

Christmas.  What a heck of a lot of pressure I put myself under every year.  It has to be "perfect".  The kind of perfect that Martha Stewart and Norman Rockwell would create if they had produced a holiday.  This is whole-heartedly my doing.  I do this to myself.  No one calls me on Thanksgiving night and says "Now get busy making every weekend memorable.  Pack your free time with cookie-making, decorating, kid crafts, and most of all, [drumroll]… MEMORIES YOUR CHILDREN WILL TREASURE FOREVER.

So, we have been on a crazy roller-coaster of Christmas joyfulness of my own making, resulting in this morning's cookie debacle.  Yes, I know that there are pre-made sugar cookies that I could have sliced or placed and baked.  Santa wouldn't know the difference.  Having been raised on black and white Hollywood visions of holiday perfection however, this simply wouldn't do.  Don we now our 50's style aprons, fa-la-la, la, la, la, LA, LA, LA.

Stand mixer at the ready, ingredients for a double batch of sugar cookies ready to roll, I have eggs, sugar and butter whizzing festively 'round the bowl when I say to my elf-y helper "Now we need two whole eggs…"  (Notice my wording…Do you see what's coming?)  With a groan heard at least two streets up, I watched as my four year old threw two WHOLE (i.e. in the shell) eggs into the bowl, right into the maw of the KitchenAid. 

CRACK, slop, crunchety-OH NO!

Round two went slightly more smoothly until Little One got into the mix, pinching up the dough every time I turned my back and gobbling sugar and raw eggs and butter in a ratio that fast out-paced  her body weight. 

This is where perfect came in and bit me.   The memories my children will have of this particular Christmas Eve morning, should they not repress them  fully, are of Mommy sobbing hysterically;  egg shells and butter on two cabinet doors; a few Santa cookies with bizarre two year old fingernail tracks across  the abdomen, looking something like a holiday attack by Wolverine, and finally, if I'm lucky, they'll remember that we did start a second batch and we did spend the morning baking together and we did sing Christmas carols before and after the crying jag.

Time always renders our memories more bright and shiny…right?

Merry Christmas my friends.  Happy Holidays.  Best wishes for a bright and healthy, happy and certainly imperfect New Year.

XO

Just Do It

Right now I am in a sleep deprived funk.  Oh yeah, it has also rained for at least a week straight.  That isn't helping.  So, after slogging through rain, being glared at by someone who felt I wasn't walking my girls fast enough in the BJ's parking lot in the pouring rain while wearing a walking cast, the final straw was my four year old, who has refused to nap,  climbing me and screaming that I am not getting her a "squeezy yogurt" fast enough.  Really, I just lost it.  I'm not proud, but I will admit to quite sarcastically calling her "your highness" while handing her the entire box of 12 and going to the nearest bathroom to count VERY slowly. 

I am clever enough to know this one moment isn't going to ruin her life, (I'm not even putting change in the therapy jar), but it does kind of smart to realize that I can be undone by a four year old.  I am normally a calm and patient person.   I am, dare I say it, really, really good at working with kids professionally.  I just need some sleep. 

In answer to the Barenaked Ladies call "Who Needs Sleep?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP67E0AfhAI, (Waving hand frantically, i.e. Arnold Horshack)."Me!  Right here!  Oh, Me!  Please, oh please, dear God, me!"

This episode also brings into focus my huge anxiety that my kids don't sleep through the night with any regularity; that my four year old can only fall asleep with an adult settling her in and staying with her until she's out; and that on most nights of the week, there are at least three, if not four family members in my bed by morning.  I love their little toddler and preschool presence.  I love snuggling them and smelling their little kid-ness when they first wake up.  I just want it to be closer to 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning and preferably after 6-8 hours of my own sleep.

I am apparently not alone.  This week seventeen Mama-friends sent me a link to a spoofy children's book called "Go the F*** to Sleep".  http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/new-childrens-book-go-the-f-to-sleep/   Why does it seem so hard to get little people, (who do have a routine- let me spare someone the time of suggesting it), to just go to sleep?  I'm exhausted.  They're exhausted and glassy-eyed.  Please, dear ones, just do it?

Mama CrankyPants and another quarter for the therapy jar

Little One has just enough hair now that, with some imagination, one can see the makings of a ponytail....well to be honest, it's more like the rat-tail thing that kind of caught on in the mid- to late-80's.  So why is this important?  Because I'm tired of this conversation:

Stranger:  "What a handsome little boy.  What's his name/How old is he?"
Me:  "Her name is .../ She's 18 months."
Stranger:  Was he named after someone in your family?  That's an unusual name."

Mind you, most of Little One's clothes are pink, floral, frilly, girly, cute, feminine...I know it shouldn't bother me, and I honestly don't know why it does, but please, can we just keep comments on stranger's children more ambiguous so that neurotic Mamas like myself can stop worrying about the whole gender thing at 18 months? 

And, I know I'm a stickler for this kind of thing, but if you are going to stop me in the middle of the store and ask me about my child, please know that I expect you to listen to the air flow I have effortfully forced through vocalic folds while simultaneously producing alternate voicing and devoicing and moving rapidly those articulators which shape the airstream into specific sounds at specific formants and frequencies to answer your question.  In other words; you asked and I want you to listen to what I've said.  "SHE is 18 months old.  HER name is..."

This recent episode coincides with Miss 4 informing me that a peer recently told her she needed to wear "tighter clothes" if she wanted to be pretty.  I still don't have a rational argument or response to this because I am so thrown off by the fact that four and five year-old girls are having this conversation.  I am secretly pleased that my daughter was more concerned that her friend "didn't know she was wrong.  Pretty clothes have sparkles.  Tight clothes go to your little sister."  So for a few brief moments I am relieved that the world has yet to define my daughter completely by her external self. 

And yet I feel like I am part of the problem.  On some level when a stranger comments on my "little boy", (and I react from a place that I am ashamed to admit is more about that stranger thinking my toddler is "handsome" rather than "pretty"), I know I am perpetuating the practice that looks are of some primary importance.  And I wonder, would I be pondering things the same way if I were raising boys?

This one might deserve an extra quarter for the therapy jar.  One for the kids, one for Me.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

My four-year-old has a STRONG fashion identity.  This is not surprising really.  She has made her desires known loudly clearly since she was about four months old when it came to clothing.  There were sleepers she would, well, ...sleep in... and those that would create such a tempest of unrest that they were kept in the closet for sheer decoration and cuteness factor.  She had a penchant for shoes as soon as she could reach over the shopping cart side and snag them with her own two hands.  If Sex and the City staged a toddler revue, my daughter would be a contender based on sheer shoe volume.

Now given this, you might assume she is a Toddler and Tiara's kinda girl.  Well....in a word, no.  Is her hair brushed and neatly coiffed?  Rarely.  It still bothers me but I have to content myself for now with it being clean.  I could poke at the lion in her cage every morning by insisting that she can't leave until it is tangle free, but for now, I'm erring on the side of maturity to help me with that battle.  And, to my relief, I am slowly seeing signs of her caring that her hair is taken care of.  Praise Be!

All Miss 4 wants to be right now is a pink witch.  She saw a rather, shall we say, "provocative", Halloween costume last year and has not forgotten it.  Clearly, the sparkly bustier and thigh-high tights are emblazoned on her brain.   I am hanging on tightly to the notion that my being totally unbudging about her donning a bustier at four will not scar her for life.  Or at least I am banking on it not being as detrimental as perhaps letting the blatant sexualization of little girls not begin in my house at four.  Can she be a witch for Halloween?  Sure!  I'll help paint her face, buy the pointy hat, even find her some stripedy tights.  Will they come with garters?  Not so much.  If I'm wrong, I'll put the extra quarter in the therapy jar.  She'll have a nice tidy sum by adulthood.

...Stepping slowly off the soapbox...

Long ago, I decided that barring frostbite and sheer negligence, Miss 4's attire was not a reflection of my parenting and not something I wanted to battle daily.  So I no longer offer "She dressed herself." with a nervous and apologetic giggle when we go out in public.  I assume you will look at her red glitter shoes, floral leggings, camo skirt and neon green fleece and either get it, or not.  So, given my total acceptance of all but the most illogical and unsafe of attire, I expected something similar in return.  This week I donned a rather exceptional podiatric appliance.  I now have a walking cast.  Upon seeing me, Miss 4 immediately stated "I hate the color of your boot!"  She is unfailing in her criticism.  Because she is four, it is hard to separate her fashion sense from her fear of the unknown.  So daily, I get to hear that she "hates" the color of the boot.  We'll work on empathy as we go.  For now, at least she's stepped away from criticizing my "brars".