Tag: chaos

children, humor, mommyhood

Oh. No.

WFAM

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I made the mistake of mentioning to T.Puzzle that he was going to have a bath before I was actually ready to give it to him. I was cleaning up dinner and had a few more things to organize before I headed upstairs to start the water. Since Full Speed’s eye is still in a delicate state, I am only doing one boy per bath. Full Speed is content knowing he will have a solo bath tomorrow while T.Puzzle is at school.

As soon as T.Puzzle hears the word ‘bath’ he’s off like a shot-put and zips upstairs. Full Speed and I laugh because we can hear his little feet running from one end of our second level to the other. It’s funny because he’s so fast and it sounds like he is overly caffeinated (which he wasn’t).

I work hard to make sure my boys know their routines and are full participants in said routines. Having boys that know what needs to be done before a bath (i.e.- get undressed, go potty, dirty clothes in hamper) is a mostly wonderful thing. It helps to tone down a highly charged situation (boys love their baths and demonstrate this love through extreme physical motion that can easily spiral out of control). Routines can become a thing of fright when an unsupervised two year old attempts to go it alone.

I tie up my loose ends in the kitchen and Full Speed and I go upstairs. Awaiting us at the top of the stairs is a half-naked T.Puzzle.  He is without pants and is diaper-free. He is also grinning from ear to ear. I grab him quick as can be and place him on the potty.  He doesn’t go of course and when I lift him up I notice a small, brown smudge on the seat. Oh. No.

I examine his hindquarters to find that there is a stain of poop, not a full-blown messy butt situation, but a smear of poop just the same. After I take some wipes and clean him up a feeling of dread washes over me. I run to his room to his diaper pail praying I find the remnants of a poopy diaper in there. There is none to be found. I can’t even imagine the poop-destruction to be uncovered and where it will be discovered.

Ninety percent of the time the boys are bathed in my and Mad Dog’s bathroom. Even though I feel a distinct pit of fear, I hold my nose and bravely enter this bathroom.

The good news is I’ve seen worse (there was an unfortunate runny poop/bath situation when T.Puzzle was about a year old that will forever be known as ‘the poop soup’ incident of ’08). The bad news is that T.Puzzle has pooped all over one of our bath mats and partially on our floor. I have this moment where I feel that I’m not the mother of a child, but a pet owner with a poorly trained dog (I had one those, poorly trained and all, back in the day). I’m relieved that most of it ended up on the bath mat and scold myself for letting him go upstairs in a bath frame of mind unattended. Apparently, I need better training, too.

eyesight, health, life in pictures, parenting, terrible twos

Margaritaville

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walk at the mall part twoWe went back to the outdoor mall to go on the notorious train. It was actually my idea. I know it’s shocking. Since Full Speed’s surgery we are limited to what we can do for outings. We want to avoid communal play areas because they are breeding grounds for bacteria and he isn’t allowed to jump and run as it may jeopardize the stability of his retina. A train ride seemed to be a contained and calm option. Because I was choosing to do it for Full Speed’s sake, I embraced it fully. The strangest thing happened; we ended up having a fantastic time.

We arrived before the train rides began and made our way down to a Mexican restaurant with outdoor seating. The boys were well-behaved and the food was the best Mexican food I have ever ingested (I may have been slightly biased by the additional best margarita I’ve ever ingested but who knows?).

After lunch we make our way to the train (it went so much more smoothly now that we actually know its point of origin). On our way there we randomly run into the boys’ eye doctor. She spots us immediately (we are hard to miss with one kid in a taped on shield and another in glasses) and we chit-chat for a moment or two. She comments on the train (T.Puzzle at this point is jumping all over yelling, “Choo! Choo!”) and that she had never seen it before. The way she references it reminds me of a person who is at a mall to actually shop or meet with other adults for adult conversation. I vaguely remember what that used to be like (again, my memory is a bit fuzzed at the edges as I am still walking off my delicious margarita).

walk at the mall

We say our goodbyes and go our separate ways. The boys get along marvelously during the ride and Mad Dog and I are peacefully coexisting. It was virtually pain-free. The boys are doing so well they actually hold each other’s hands for a while without fighting. We reward them by going to the train table at the bookstore. We are having a perfect outing. There are a plethora of engines to choose from, no one else is utilizing the table and T.Puzzle and Full Speed have cooperatively constructed a train made of four cars. They are pushing this train in nonviolent unity. Mad Dog and I sort of forget the time and let them play at length.

We end up pushing T.Puzzle’s naptime. Even though he doesn’t always nap, some days he absolutely needs one. Today was one of those days. He does not handle the news well that it is time to leave the train table. I have to take him outside and place him in time-out. It doesn’t help that he is undeniably cute and that every passer-by stops to say ‘hi’ or comment on how sweet he is. He loves the limelight. He refuses to apologize to me which is standard procedure to get out of jail (you know the Supernanny credo and all). Mad Dog has to manhandle T.Puzzle to get him to comply and he slumps against Mad Dog’s chest in defeat.

He rallies for the ride home but it all hits the fan again when we pull in the drive-way. He refuses to enter the house. Instead, he books it as fast as he can down towards the street. Mad Dog and I collectively had to drop the hammer. Mad Dog brings him in, takes off T.Puzzle’s socks and crocs (he is steadfastly attached to both these entities) and takes away his Lightning McQueen car.

I swoop in and carry his screaming self up to his room. He wails and flails about during his diaper change. I place him in his crib and remove anything else he is attached to. He has no blankets or stuffed animals to speak of. All he has is his pillow and his thoughts as I shut the door behind me.

He tantrums on for about thirty or so minutes and finally gives into the surrender of sleep. We are thankful for the interlude of quiet. It doesn’t last long. Maybe forty or so minutes pass and we can hear him begin to whimper on the monitor. We bring him downstairs and he tries futilely to put his socks and crocs back on. We are allowing him to have them back but we are not helping him put them on. He is feeling wholly misunderstood.

His suitcase is still out by the front door from the night he spent at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s while we were getting Full Speed ready for surgery. He grabs his suitcase, leans against the door and pleads, “I go to Grandpa/Grandpa’s house (he calls Grandma, Grandpa for some reason)!”

If I had my way, he already would have been packed and gone.

I know that seems harsh but believe me, our evening with T.Puzzle did not get any easier. Does it ever get easier? Please, if you are a Mom, don’t tell me your answer. Denial and margaritas are the only things keeping me sane (slightly).

humor, marital blissishness, mommyhood, self-discovery

Loose Change

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We are on our way out the door and Full Speed says, “I’ll hold the door for you, Mommy.” As I pass through he follows and I close the door behind us.

“Don’t forget to lock the door, Mom. We don’t want anyone to sneak in except for the Easter Bunny.” Then he proceeds to recount his glorious memories of Easter and how that magical bunny made his way into our home and left him lots of cool stuff.

I love the random things that come out of his mouth. twenty eight

When I picked up the boys from school they were wild with enthusiasm and not behaving in a calm manner (no surprise there!). We get to that door (oh, that darn, alarmed door) and Full Speed cocks back his leg and lets a swift kick go. Fortunately, his kick wasn’t strong enough to budge it open and everyone’s ears were saved from the piercing alarm sound.

I look down at him and say in my most exasperated Mommy-voice, “How many times do I need to tell you NOT to touch the door until I push the green button?”

He pauses and looks at me. “Twenty-eight.”

He says it like I’m suppose to know this number. Apparently, I was only at twenty-seven even though it feels like I have to remind him every single time NOT to touch the door. I hope we hit twenty-eight soon.

I decide to take them to Wendy’s for drive-thru cuisine (somehow it makes me feel like less of a slacker if I refer to it as cuisine) because Mad Dog is away on business and I am tired. When Mad Dog told me a few weeks back he would be gone for the four days leading up to Full Speed’s second surgery I was mostly calm. I told him that even though I was taking this bit of information calmly, that I would most likely be passively aggressive as his departure date approached. Then I said, who am I kidding? I’m going to be overtly aggressive. And true to form, I was (your welcome, my dear).

We get to the speaker-thing you order your stuff at and I tell the boys to stop fighting or Wendy’s won’t be able to hear me. This shuts T.Puzzle right up because the only thing he loves more than his Mommy are chicken nuggets.

I end up sounding like I have a screw loose. I awkwardly stumble through our order like it’s a complex math equation as opposed to a simple, fast food order. The man taking my order seems slightly perturbed as he has to ask several, qualifying questions because I’m not making a whole lot of sense. I’m frazzled. I have Full Speed asking me a million meaningless questions, I have about forty-seven more things to accomplish before bedtime and I wish my husband was home to lighten the load. The man tells me the total and I pull around to the second window to pay my $12.08. I thought to save the patient, Wendy’s employee some time that I will make exact change for him. So I hand him two tens and exactly eight cents. I’m proud of myself for doing it, too.

He returns shortly with my food and then hands me some cash and a heaping pile of change. I have no idea what the true total was but I know I had it totally wrong. This guy must think I’m an idiot to only give him eight cents towards whatever the amount was (which clearly was a whole lot more). So I’m making trouble instead of saving trouble. Now I see where my boys get it from.

health, humor, life in pictures, mommyhood, terrible twos

I Like to Move It

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Today is all about T.Puzzle. It’s his turn for some serious one-on-one time with Mommy. This special treatment is because he has been quite allergy-prone in the past. When he was eighteen months old we found out he was allergic to eggs and a couple months later learned of his severe, dog allergy (we had to remove our beloved dog, White Fluffy Dog  from our house it was so bad).

The time had come for his periodic allergy check-in at the Children’s Clinic. We arrive and Madagascar (the animated kids’ flick) is playing in the waiting room. He looks at it a nanosecond and promptly starts to sing ‘move it, move it” and shake his booty from side to side. It’s his favorite song in the whole movie. Maybe his favorite song in the whole universe the way he has committed so passionately to singing it. He also says it in two-year-old speak so it sounds more like ‘mow it, mow it’. Any way you slice it, it’s freakin’ adorable.

The nurse calls us back after a few moments and asks that T.Puzzle remove his shoes. The happy part is that Mommy had actually found his missing spidey croc so his shoes matched today. The unhappy part was that T.Puzzle was less than pleased to part with them. He was pretty miffed at the nurse for requesting such an unreasonable thing of him.

She then asks him to step up onto the scale. It’s only an inch off the floor. You would think the way T.Puzzle is teetering on it back-and-forth in fear that it was hundreds of feet from the floor. Yeah, I get that he has some depth perception issues but an inch? Really?

I can’t get him to stand still and he is fast approaching a level 7 meltdown. The nurse is not offering anything except judgment and we are getting nowhere. Eventually, there is a loud, curious noise that escapes from one of the other exam rooms. I have no idea what it was, but its sudden strangeness was enough to make T.Puzzle freeze. We were able to get his weight and cut our losses at that. The nurse didn’t feel like attempting to get his height. Five minutes with T.Puzzle in all his glory and I could tell that was more than enough for her.

We are shown to the exam room and the nurse quickly exits as if there is a fire never to return. When the doctor, who is kind and caring, arrives I warn him that T.Puzzle is two and that ‘defiance’ is his middle name. I told him that T.Puzzle’s ever changing mood might make him difficult to examine. The doctor said he could handle it (he has a three year old son who apparently puts him through the wringer, too).

I place T.Puzzle on my lap and proceed to hold my breath. I hope that whatever level tantrum he reaches at least it stays under a five.

The doctor moves in with his stethoscope and…..,

T.Puzzle let him. He let him look in his ears. He let him look in his eyes with a bright light. He even sat calm as could be when the doc tilted his head back and stuck that long, skinny looky-in-your-nose thing up of each of T.Puzzle’s tiny, tender nostrils.  T.Puzzle didn’t even bat one of his extremely long, extremely gorgeous eyelashes.

I had a realization. Not only does T.Puzzle like to play with the truth as it pertains to the details of his life, he likes to manipulate his behavior so that I am forced to do the same. He behaved like an angel because I said he was going to act like a devil. Now Mommy is the liar.

Frick, 2 – Mommy, 0

humor, life in pictures, mommyhood, parenting, potty training

Three Strikes

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Lil’ Superman came for a visit. lil superman You think I exaggerate when I reference him as a superhero but he has an outfit that clearly says otherwise (I mean he even has a cape to match!).

My boys adore when their cousin visits and there are ebbs and flows of peace and frenzy. Someone usually ends up being hurt whether it be their pride or some type of physical complaint (i.e.- he shoved me, he hit me, he pushed me – you get the idea).

In mid-play Lil’ Superman abruptly stops and shimmies quickly behind the couch. I suspect he is pooping and that he, like T.Puzzle, prefers privacy when doing the deed. I ask him if he needs to use the bathroom. The odor coming from him gives me my answer even before I cross the room. No big deal, I’ll change him and then get T.Puzzle in a clean pull-up, too.

What is it about clean drawers that make a kid poop? Is there some sort of secret, magnetic lining in a fresh pull-up that draws the poop out? Should they instead be called pull-outs? In less than five minutes after the new pull-up is on him, T.Puzzle aromatically fills it and I’m off changing diaper number two (bad pun intended).

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After the cleaning of the hineys, I am about to round-up the little men to head to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Before we head out I ask Full Speed to go potty for me. I figure at least one, fully potty-trained boy in the bunch is nothing to sneeze at. I counted my blessings (see, I do that too).

He gets indignant for some strange reason. “I don’t have to go. I already went at school.” He’s acting like I am criminally insane for suggesting that he use the bathroom.

I say, “I’m sure at some point during your day you did in fact use the facilities at school, however, I would like you to ‘try’ to go before we all get in the car.”

“No, I don’t have to,” he replies curtly.

I had to resort to the counting. “One! Two!…..,” I start. Before I come anywhere near three he darts to the bathroom in a huffy little puff. He’s afraid when Mommy hits three. Everyone is (just ask Mad Dog).

Then after a couple minutes I hear, “MOOOOOOOM! I’m done pooping (hence he needs help with the cleaning of the behind)!”

I walk in the bathroom completely baffled. I look at him and say, “Are you the same kid who just announced to me that he did not need to go potty while he actually needed to and badly at that?”

He gets kind of sheepish. “Yeah,” he admits. A slow smile begins to curl the corners of his mouth. We both look at each other and burst into laughter.

One, two, three poops I’m out.