Category: marital blissishness

marital blissishness, mommyhood, potty training

A Mixed Bag

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I had little T.Puzzle seated on the potty because I knew a poop was coming. He hadn’t pooped the day before or all morning long. He also had just inhaled his lunch. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

He did about two, good stretches on the potty, each lasting 15 minutes or so. During the second set as it was winding down, I had given up, left the bathroom and fielded a call from Mad Dog. While chatting with Mad Dog a panicked little T.Puzzle shouts, “Mommy, I pooped on the potty!”

I screamed so loud I’m sure Mad Dog experienced hearing loss and nearly dropped the phone in my excitement. I shared the news with Mad Dog, quickly got off the phone and proceeded to make a complete fool of myself as I jumped up and down and yelled like a crazy person. It is hard to imagine living a life in which your happiness is so deeply tied to the bowel movement of another human.  This is a strange and disconcerting aspect of motherhood.

We celebrated with cookies, big boy underpants and made several, celebratory phone calls (it’s like winning an Oscar only better). Little T.Puzzle was pleased as punch. He strutted around in his Thomas the Train undies announcing to everyone and no one that he was ‘just like Full Speed’.

My excitement was short-lived because after dinner little T.Puzzle proceeds to poop in his Thomas pants and seemed unphased when I dramatically threw these pants in the trash (believe me, they were beyond repair). It was getting close to the end of the day and seemed pointless to put a new pair of undies on him. I decided to keep him pantless hoping that would prevent further accidents (many Moms swear by the pantless potty-training method) and I knew he would be in the tub for a bath in less than an hour.

The babysitter arrives as Mad Dog and I have a date nigh scheduled. I explain my potty-training adventure with little T.Puzzle and so she is prepared for the unexpected. As I’m explaining this, T.Puzzle pees all over the floor in the dining room. I clean up the mess, so much for pantless success, and help the babysitter get the boys in a bath. I look at the clock and realize that I haven’t heard from Mad Dog in a while and I should call him to check on his progress towards our date night. It usually isn’t a good sign if I don’t hear from him. That means he is caught up in work and may not be timely.

May not be timely turns into an understatement because when I call him he is still at work AND date night has slipped his mind.

My day was a mixed bag. It was full of surprise, excitement and more than one instance of disappointment. The good news is I know enough to hold on to the good stuff, realize everything is temporary (especially the bad stuff) and that in the grand scheme of things, I have life pretty darn good.

It helped that the movie Mad Dog and I saw, ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ was a ridiculous (and sometimes gross), farcical, nostalgic good time and that Mad Dog is very, very cute. Just like his boys, this saves him every, single time.

marital blissishness

Sometimes

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Sometimes all you want to do as a Mom, or for that matter, as a woman, is watch something on television that doesn’t involve sports, cars, cartoon characters, blood, guts and don’t forget my favorite,… violence.

How does a lady find her zen in a house that is dominated by the opposite gender?

I am clearly outnumbered here.

All I’m in the mood for is to eat some chocolate and watch me a show with emotional themes and gripping drama relating to these emotional themes.

Sometimes that is a really tall order in my house and sometimes I have to settle for a violent, man-show because that is what marriage and compromise is all about.

I’m not a very gracious compromiser.

And sometimes, that’s the best I can do.

marital blissishness, parenting

Teamwork

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If you and your partner have a system in place that runs like clockwork when one or your kids vomit, is that a good thing or does it mean that your children are awfully unhealthy? I’m not sure but both boys were sick again and Mad Dog and I divided and conquered the mess and emotional suffering of their illness with elemental proficiency.

Before this all happened, I had taken the boys to their Saturday morning Tae Kwon Do class. Normally on a Saturday we all attend as a family. Instead, Mad Dog was going to stay behind to wait for a service call that would hopefully fix a damaged corner on T.Puzzle’s new bed.

To complicate matters (as we wives tend to do on days our husbands are home) that morning I had given Mad Dog an ultimatum of sorts. In a marriage there are always going to be sticking points. Ours happens to be our Christmas tree. I won’t go into details but as of January 23rd, our lovely tree (which I had stripped of decorations weeks ago) was still standing in our living room.

I simply told him I had a date in my head. I wasn’t going to share the date but if he did not have that tree down by this date, I was either going to set it (or him) on fire (or something like that).

Lo and behold, when I return home with the boys the tree is down and the bed is fixed. I asked Mad Dog if he asked the service guys to lend a hand with the tree (it is huge and believe me, it takes a village). He is a marvelous politician. He will neither confirm or deny anything.

Turns out it was a good thing the tree was down because Mad Dog and I needed to have complete solidarity as our boys headed into their new bout of vomiting illness. If you don’t have teamwork within a marriage, all you are left with are year-round Christmas trees and a mess that can’t be cleaned.

children, marital blissishness, parenting

Dinner Out

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I remember a time in our early couplehood, Mad Dog and I could make plans on a moment’s notice. We could go where we pleased when we pleased and our leisure time was golden. When Full Speed entered the picture our carefree ability to make plans nearly vanished and then once we added in T.Puzzle, vanish completely it did.

This is not a complaint, it is a statement of fact. Of course early on I was so overwhelmed and shocked by the demands of motherhood that I would have complained incessantly about this loss of freedom (had I any energy). Now, I’m a little older, a little wiser and while I still get frustrated, I have slowly accepted that plans of a social nature were made to be broken.

Despite the fragile nature of plan-making, as parents you still have to make the effort. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and you can have a fun, child-free night out. Mad Dog had the brainstorm idea to go to a nice resort for New Year’s Eve as a family. We would participate in some family activities during the day and hire an on-site babysitter so Mad Dog and I could have a nice dinner to ring in the New Year. Then before plans were definitely made, T.Puzzle slimed me and all bets were off. Instead we spent the days leading up to this New Year’s Eve hoping T.Puzzle would recover (he almost has) and keeping an eye on Full Speed to make sure he wasn’t next in slime (you know what I mean and so far so good).

Since our grand plans never got off the ground, we did manage to get a short dinner out last night. We thought we may even try the movies but T.Puzzle was so over-the-top emotional arising from his afternoon nap, I had a very difficult time being away from him. It took immense will-power not to text our babysitter forty-seven times while dining. Mad Dog was patient with my anxiety and calmly assured me that T.Puzzle would be fine. He doesn’t know when he excused himself from our table for a moment it took Herculean reserve on my part not to pick up his cellphone and dial our sitter (I had made him leave it on the table so we could hear it better if she called or texted).

I never in all my life thought a dinner out would feel so complicated. We ended our night early of course and skipped the movie. That decision ended up seeming surprisingly simple. Too bad motherhood in general can’t be like that.

health, marital blissishness

Parenting 101

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Full Speed has been feeling slightly under the weather. So when Mad Dog gave his little brother a sippy cup that Full Speed had been drinking from I kind of freaked. We were getting the boys ready for a bath when this happened.

“Don’t give it to him, Full Speed’s sick!” I exclaimed.

“Hey, it happens, T.Puzzle will be fine,” says Mad Dog.

“Well, let’s at least get a different towel for T.Puzzle.” Normally I use whatever towel is on hand to wipe the soap from their eyes and faces during the hair-washing process. Since Full Speed was displaying some rosy-cheeked misery with a drippy nose, I wanted separate, clean towels for this task.

“No, T.Puzzle doesn’t need a different towel. It’s a Mad Dog Parenting 101 rule that kids need to be exposed to as many germs as possible to build their immune systems.”

At that moment, Full Speed jerks his head back and lets rip a enormous, showering sneeze.

“I see your parenting rules for immunity building worked like a charm for Full Speed,” I say with a laugh (trust me laughing is the best way to handle these situations).

As for Mad Dog and his parenting 101, let’s just say I’d fail the semester.

***No marriages were harmed during the course of these past two posts. And, he’s Mad Dog…, and he approved these messages.