Tag: chaos

humor, life in pictures, marital blissishness, parenting

A Chili Day for Football

WFAM

It was late in our day and we made the unfortunate decision to take the boys to Chili’s for dinner. It’s not that they were being bad, they were being themselves. I wasn’t tolerating their normal hyper state as well as I usually do. I mean by this point, I know full well what I am getting myself into when we are dining out with the boys. I couldn’t blame it on not knowing what to expect. I just wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes I’m like that. Lucky, lucky Mad Dog.

When I married Mad Dog, I also had full disclosure. I knew that realistically our weekends during football season would revolve around Buckeye games. I can’t complain about it or wish it away. It is what it is.

The part that trips me up is that not only do we have to watch the Buckeyes (and dress in Buckeye jerseys every time they have a game) but we have to watch a bunch of other meaningless (my opinion) games. I don’t understand why we have to watch the Arizona Cardinals simply because the former Buckeye, Beanie Wells, is on their roster. Or why we have to make sure USC is trampled so the Buckeyes reputation can be redeemable in the land of the BCS (I don’t even know what the BCS stands for, all I know is where the Buckeyes rank in the BCS determines the mood of my husband). Can’t we only watch a nice, tidy re-cap of all these other games when it is convenient? Granted, nothing is ever convenient when raising a family. Still, I am holding out for that dream.

So, there we were. Eating our incredibly healthy fried and cheese covered meals, and I’m not having it.  T.Puzzle is especially over-the-top. He keeps running his car along the wooden blinds which I tell him not to about forty-seven times. The blinds are dusty and unstable and I keep picturing the whole of them crashing on our table and the table behind us. He keeps on doing it. Then he grabs his napkin and puts it on my head and says, “Hat, Mommy, hat.” Yes, yes, I understand it’s adorable. Again, I just wasn’t in the mood.

Almost on cue as my frustration with T.Puzzle is rising, Full Speed announces he has to use the bathroom. Mad Dog and I knew this was coming. How, you may wonder? Well, Full Speed did ask us once we were seated and strapped in our car on our way to the restaurant if they had bathrooms at Chili’s. We tried to convince him to try to go at home. He said, no, he was just WONDERING if they had bathrooms. It was no wonder to us when he needed to use them.

As Mad Dog and Full Speed leave the table, T.Puzzle is upset. He wants to go with them and dives over me and lunges towards the floor. I manage to redirect him and again, he starts with the gross blinds and the car.

When Mad Dog and Full Speed return, I am now silently praying that our waitress will bring us our check. It’s clear the boys are on the edge. So am I. I feel pretty confident Mad Dog is clued in to the situation and I am relieved when he leaps up from the table. Good, he must be going to track down our waitress and the check.

Oh, no. Oh no he is not. He is animatedly jumping up because he can see the USC game and apparently something great is happening (as if I give a damn!). He does this to me two more times. Each time he jumps a tiny part of my heart is hoping he gets the check instead of the score. Never happened. Instead, I am forced to not so gracefully escort T.Puzzle  from Chili’s as he has reached a point of no return. Ah, football and tantrums, they apparently never go out of style.

humor, mommyhood, parenting

Chick-Fil-HEY!

WFAM

p8132941I realize as I begin this post, Mad Dog read my sad post yesterday and is doing what he can to help with the boys. I couldn’t understand why he was being so attuned to my needs and swooping in to save me from chaos. I think he is afraid I might break. He doesn’t know that I am unbreakable.

How do I know this? What is my proof? Sitting with my Mom in her last days, holding her hand, helping her face death with grace and dignity are my first clues. That has been the secret gem that I have acquired from this somewhat harrowing experience. If I need to be, I am absolutely fearless. You can put anything in my way, it will not knock me down. I am unbreakable.

When I came through the door today with half-crazed boys at my feet, the look of total exasperation alerted Mad Dog that he needed to swiftly intervene (while I may be unbreakable, I do have a limit of patience that had been fully attained). He said he would take the boys to Home Depot (we had some furnace leakage and such, you know the joys of homeownership and all). I looked at him and said in all sincerity, “It’s suicide, the boys are insane, you don’t have to take them.” At least, don’t take both of them; you don’t know what you are getting yourself into.”

“No, no, I can do it,” he insisted, again believing me to be on the brink of sanity, fearing I may never return.

“Okay,” I said with resignation. His sinking ship I suppose.

This is what he is going to be up against. I had taken Full Speed for his second pre-op physical (all clear so surgery will be a go this Tuesday) and he was beyond hyper. There is a balance of being silly and being out-of-control. He clearly was out-of-control.

We went back to school to pick up T.Puzzle. I thought because of Full Speed’s extreme intensity, I needed to run it out of him, so we headed to the park. The boys played like wild animals for forty-five minutes. I was still unwilling to bring them home, they were too amped up. So, we headed to Chik-Fil-A. For those of my readers from up north, Chik-Fil-A’s are a fast food franchise specializing, in yep you guessed it, chicken. Full Speed walks directly to the order counter and says “I want a cheeseburger!”. This makes the staff chuckle (the whole point is they don’t serve beef). Oh well, whatever, I managed to direct them to a table and get them their food (which did not go smoothly). They ate quickly and loudly. Then, they were off to the play area.

The play area is small. It was not containing Full Speed’s energy very well. He was doing mock Karate moves on unsuspecting children. At one point, I sternly announced that he needed to pull it together and knock off his Karate chops and kicks. I was so severe in my delivery, the roughly ten other children surrounding us stopped in mid-play and looked at me with fear in their eyes. I can be very scary. I started to crack a smile at the thought that I scared the Chik-Fil-A play area straight. You could have heard a pin drop. Too bad I don’t scare my own children as much as I scare everyone else’s.

At another point in this adventure, T.Puzzle is daring and climbs up farther on the climbing apparatus than he ever has before. I cheer him on and he proceeds to lose it. Big time.

Of course, it’s too tiny for me to maneuver where he is and I have to practically wrench Full Speed’s (who is off to the side pretending to drive an imaginary race car) arm off to get him to focus and help me. Sometimes, if it’s not directly in front of Full Speed or if he is not directly involved, he can be kind of oblivious to the distress of others. Fortunately, he was willing to help when he realized what was happening.

Enlisting Full Speed’s help backfires tremendously. T.Puzzle is angered that Full Speed is coming near him and not me (because all he really wants is his Mommy!), so he elevates his screaming another notch (which I knew to be possible but silently prayed it would not). At this point, the entire restaurant, because the play area is surrounded by a clear wall, is staring trying to find the source of the hysteria. I finally managed to pretzel myself into a position that I’m able to grab one of T.Puzzle’s ankles. This sets him screaming to a whole other level as he is feeling frightened that he might fall. I have to do what is necessary. I grab him and pull him down in the most ungraceful way imaginable. He crashes to my level in a heap of dismay and I want to crawl to the top of this monstrosity and never, ever come down.

I’m not even going to tell you what happened when we stopped at Grandma’s for a few minutes on the way home. Our intent was to cheer up Nan, instead I think we added stress instead of relieving any. So when I finally walked in the door of my own home and Mad Dog said, “I got it,” all I could think was he may very well be the bravest soul I have ever known.

humor, mommyhood, parenting

Schizophrenia in the Parking Lot

WFAM

If you give your child (T.Puzzle) an Elmo sippy cup against his will (as he clearly was in the mood for one with Lightning McQueen) is that considered child abuse or are you digging your own grave? Well, I guess after a ten minute screaming meltdown (on T.Puzzle’s part not mine to be clear), I had my answer. My hole was dug. It was dug deep.

Yesterday as I prepared for Tae Kwon Do, I approached it as how I could make the situation easier. I was all about streamlining. I consolidated everything we would need into one bag and had the boys snacks and drinks ready to go in the back of the truck. I was no longer going to bring food in to the gym because it’s not allowed and it was hard to make T.Puzzle understand to leave it in the diaper bag. Therefore, I was going to allow them a quick drink and snack on the way there and that was it (T.Puzzle didn’t particularly care for this new way of thinking).

I did my best to relieve my stress. After I had picked the boys up from school, I placed them in the car feeling hopeful this was going to be the easiest Tae Kwon Do class yet. I successfully get T.Puzzle strapped in and he is munching away on his snack. Full Speed is indignant because I strapped his brother in first. “Well, if you learn to strap yourself in on your own, you could be strapped in first EVERY day,” I try to make it sound as enticing as possible. He informs me he can only strap himself in when in Daddy’s car but it’s too hard in Mommy’s (of course!).

I get ready to strap Full Speed in and a look of panic fills his face.

“Mommy! I have to pee!” he blurts out.

I start to weigh my options. I already have T.Puzzle strapped in and it might take too much time to get him undone, “Could you hold it until we get to Tae Kwon Do?” I ask already sensing that we are reaching emergency status.

“No! I have to go NOW!” he looks like he is on the brink of a panic attack.

“Okay, okay. Let’s get you inside,” I say with an air of calm I did not feel.

This is where it gets tricky. All I wanted to do was get Full Speed to a toilet as soon as I could. The way the bathrooms are set up in his school, you have to get buzzed in and it can get kind of harried as the lobby is filled with kids and parents being it’s the end of the day. I make the split-second decision to grab Full Speed and run inside. I manage to kick the truck door shut and trigger the remote lock over my shoulder as I know I have to leave T.Puzzle behind. I do this all while running at a breakneck pace across a busy parking lot carrying a thirty-eight pound Full Speed. Yeah, it’s all in a day’s work.

I manage to get Full Speed buzzed in and tell him I have to run out and make sure T.Puzzle  is okay. I’m imagining that T.Puzzle is upset at being left alone and sweating to death because even at four o’clock, it is 92 degrees and in the truck it is even hotter. So I frantically run as fast as humanly possible, pop open the door only to find him contentedly ingesting his snack. He looks up and says “Hi, Mommy!” I determine it’s probably in everyone’s best interest to keep him where he is and then lock him back in and run back to find Full Speed. I realize I must appear slightly schizo to the parents who are milling about. I am running (sweating my heart out) back and forth like a crazy person trying to meet the needs of my boys and keep them happy and safe. Schizophrenia in the parking lot, …. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

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PS- I have to give a shout-out to Mad Dog, he surprised us and met us at Tae Kwon Do, so it was the easiest class yet. I thank you and appreciate you!

humor, mommyhood, parenting

The Doorway to Defiance

WFAM

Am I the only Mom who hates to give their children peas? I have to be in the proper frame of mind and have absolutely no other frozen veggies on hand to bust out the peas. Oh, how they roll. Those tiny suckers end up EVERYWHERE. You can find them for days and days long after a pea-based meal is complete. I am in desperate need to grocery shop…

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All peas aside, I must mention that my boys are prolific poopers. I know that can’t actually be considered a talent. However, if there was an American Idol of Pooping, they would be crowned first runner-up and the winner respectively.

Since Full Speed has been successfully potty-trained for well over a year, it has helped tremendously in our ability to get out of our home in a timely manner. I have come to accept T.Puzzle where he is on his journey to being potty-trained. It still doesn’t always excuse the frustration I feel when he poops at the most inopportune times.

Like today, for example. I am rushing around in overdrive because I need to drop T.Puzzle off at Grandma’s so I can visit Nan in the hospital (she had a little fall and is being held to have a bunch of precautionary and in my opinion because she seems so healthy, mostly unnecessary testing). Of course I have this feeling that T.Puzzle is about to poop so I check his diaper seventy-seven times. Each time he is free and clear. While I am running about throwing laundry here and there and putting dishes in the washer, he proceeds to go in the formal living room. I’m guessing it’s because he is modest and he likes to be alone when he poops in his pants. I mean, wouldn’t we all? So I rush to grab him and check his pants. Still free and clear. Whatever, I have things to accomplish.

T.Puzzle is being very accommodating. He is waiting patiently for me to wrap up all my chores so we can get out the door. When I finally focus my full attention on him, he has climbed over the couch to our front window and is walking the length of the window-sill. Back and forth, back and forth. He is having a ball and is laughing up a storm. Meanwhile, I try not to have a conniption.

I manage to get us out the door and put him in his seat (still unstrapped at this point). I suddenly remember the baggie of pull-ups and eggless cookies (as T.Puzzle is allergic to eggs) that I left on the counter. In the twenty-two seconds it takes me to run back in to grab the baggie, I return to find the overwhelming scent of poop accost me as I open up the truck. There he sits, full diaper and all, smiling from ear to ear.

Of course, of course. I yank him from the seat (I was not very gentle and yanking kind of felt good) and rush in to clean him up. We have a stand-off at the doorway. He insists on playing with the door and puts his fingers in the crack that slivers open when you push the door in. “No, don’t do that T.Puzzle, that is dangerous,” I try not to shout but I don’t want him thinking that this is okay. Especially because him and Full Speed are always messing around and by a door that can be a very bad thing. He squares his shoulders and looks directly into my eyes. Then he begins to flicker his fingers in and out of the door crack like it’s a hot flame full well knowing he is defying me. And he is loving it. Okay, so I lose it a little bit. p9153285

“T.Puzzle!” I shout, “don’t you ever put your fingers in that door again, you fingers could BREAK!” That sufficiently freaks him out. He immediately yanks his hand out and looks at it and begins to cry. Oh well, add it to the list to tell the child psychologist I may need to call (hopefully not) in the future.

We get through the door show-down and it’s time for his diaper change. The whole time I have his legs in the air and I’m wiping his tush he yells, “Stop it! Stop it!” like I’m torturing him to death. I shout back, “Stop pooping in your drawers and I wouldn’t have to do this to you!” I realize shouting at a two year old ultimately gets you nowhere. I promise, I’m adding it to the list.

As I am packing up the messy diaper, T.Puzzle (now in fresh pants) heads to the door. “You better wait for Mommy!” I warn. As I head to the garage and toss the diaper I think I hear the front door. Guess who decides to let himself out? Oh yeah, it’s T.Puzzle. I am defeated, I can’t even argue or correct anymore. All I want is to be on my way. I grab the little imp and away we go and I don’t shout once on the five minute drive to Grandma’s. I know, it was only five minutes but I guess that’s a start.

mommyhood

Dance Party

WFAM

The world keeps moving even if you feel sad on your birthday. You turn another year older, your children need you to get them breakfast and if you live in my house, my boys are in constant motion. That’s the beauty of my life.

As I observe the commotion that surrounds me, I am reminded that joy and energy are all around. It starts as soon as they hand me my birthday card. It is has a Madagascar (an animated movie) theme and plays music when you open it (of course!). Soon, there is a veritable dance-party taking place in my living room.
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I am soon overwhelmed by the dancing intensity and I make the decision to opt for some quiet. I head to the lanai to read my book club selection for the month (unfortunately, I’m not enjoying it). Not so shockingly, I have two visitors join me. Almost immediately, Full Speed orders T.Puzzle to push him up and down the length of our lanai on a too-small-for-him push car. This is a chaotic process and soon Full Speed is flying about and T.Puzzle is tumbling all around and laughter rises up and escapes through the screens into the atmosphere (a lovely, lovely sound).

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After this activity has run its course, we are back inside. I am at the computer working on my blog and Full Speed comes up to me. He hands me a plastic ring that has a soccer ball affixed to it. He launches in to the pros and cons of wearing the ring on each finger eventually landing on the index finger as being the best (worn on this finger, you are able to form your hand into a fist with the greatest ease). He talks to me at length about this and it is hard for me to keep a straight face. He is so seriously passionate about discerning the BEST finger, that his forehead is deeply furrowed. Oh, how I love this little guy.

Mad Dog and I need to formulate our plan to get us all safely through our day until the boys’ bedtime. Mad Dog is at the table with the paper spread before him.

“How about this for an outing?” he begins. “At 1:45 they are having a showing of Thomas the Train at the cinema,” I immediately feel my heart drop to my feet (I am not in the mood, on my birthday of all days, for a train movie). Then, Mad Dog shocks me. “How about I take the boys by myself? That can be part of your birthday present.” Uh,….. yeah, you don’t have to ask me twice. All I can say is thanks Mad Dog; you’re a brave, brave soul.

Eventually, Full Speed is back in my face asking me what a Transformer that turns into a football is called. “I don’t know,” I counter, “F-Ball?” As soon as the words leave my mouth I realize that taken out of context, ‘F-Ball’ could be negatively construed. I make a mental note to tell Full Speed to only say ‘F-Ball’ in the house (or maybe not at all) and to refrain from using it at school especially in reference to his classroom’s bully (you know who you are).

All this while, T.Puzzle is by the couch trying to do a headstand (without much success) singing “Uh-oh, Cheerios!” over and over again. What in the world is going through that two year old mind of his? Why a headstand and why sing about Cheerios?

I love that on an ordinary day (because unless a birthday is their own, the day is ordinary to them) my boys bring a liveliness to everything they do. They make run of the mill days quirky and blog-worthy. That makes me feel like dancing (cue the Madagascar-card music) even at my advanced age.