Tag: parenthood

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).

p9133265

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.

humor, mommyhood, parenting, terrible twos

Members of the Academy…

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It’s the morning and Mad Dog and I have already done the intricate dance of ‘who will rise with the children’. It’s sort of like pulling straws and the short straw must get out of bed and get them breakfast. I lost.

I got the boys dressed and gathered a load of laundry in a basket to take downstairs with us. As we reach the top of the stairs, T.Puzzle insists on holding my hand. He has this demand daily. Normally, I can easily accommodate him and we all head peacefully downstairs to start our day. Well, since I had both hands occupied with a basket of laundry, I had no hand available. T.Puzzle could not believe that his Mommy could be so cruel. He kept crying out, “Mommy! Hand! Hand!” Now mind you, this kid is perfectly capable of walking up and downstairs unassisted. He is almost three years old. He needs to get over himself.

I give him two choices (you know I am a Mommy who believes in choices). First, stay at the top of the stairs and cry or second, be a big boy and walk down the stairs with out a ‘hand’. This sets him off to about a level seven. I ignore him and Full Speed and I leave him where he is. I suppose it doesn’t help that Full Speed keeps shouting, “I have no hands to give you, T.Puzzle. None. None what-so-ever (or something like that).” T.Puzzle continues his dramatic plea for ‘hands’ and throws himself to the floor.

I proceed with the morning routine unphased. I can hear him clearly and I hope that eventually the call of breakfast sausage will shake him from his theatrics.

I hear a door open upstairs. It’s gets quiet. Too quiet. You know that quiet before all hell breaks loose? That’s what it was like.

It lasts a couple of eerie moments and then I hear him stumble back to his perch at the top of the stairs and start all over with his wailing and crying. It is only the completed preparation of his sausage that breaks his spell and he becomes a reasonable human again. He walks quickly down the stairs (may I point out unassisted) and jumps up in his chair. He is chatty and happy and ready for some grub.
I'd like to thank the academy
Poor Mad Dog comes down shortly thereafter. My intent, although it was a little begrudgingly, was to let Mad Dog get some extra sleep. I realize that T.Puzzle’s outburst made that impossible. This is where it became humorous. Mad Dog’s first person account of what happened in those quiet moments upstairs were something along the lines of crazy cuteness. Mad Dog did not realize why T.Puzzle was causing such a ruckus. So when T.Puzzle let himself in our room and climbed up into bed with Dad, all he knew was that he had been hysterical. Then, in an instant, T.Puzzle is calm and happy proceeds to say things like, “Hi, Daddy. I a’wake. I get up. Hi.” He then tackles/snuggles Mad Dog, has a fantastic time and then leaves. No sooner did his foot hit outside the door he starts screaming again. “Hand, Mommy! Hand! I come downstairs! Hand!” And the tears turn on again in full force.

It’s apparent to me that we have a future actor on our hands. He can turn a mood in the blink of an eye. When the time comes, I just hope he remembers to thank his Mom in his Academy Award acceptance speech.

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

Walk and Roll

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It’s growing later with each passing moment and I am trying to get through what I fondly refer to as the Armageddon of our day (a.k.a. – late day/early evening with small children). This is the time in our day when we are still far enough (too far!) away from bedtime that monotony and anarchy have set in. This is also the time in our day that we wait for Mad Dog to come home.

After dinner I tried to mix things up. We have this red, push car with a long blue handle that T.Puzzle likes to ride in. I asked Full Speed if he would be willing to help me push his little brother in it on a walk. I told him not to give me any nonsense (bad attitude, pouting). Full Speed is kind of difficult to keep focused on a walk. It’s because we are not moving a hundred miles an hour so he quickly loses interest. T.Puzzle on the other hand has a little more of what I like to call the-stop-and-smell-the-roses temperament but because he is currently so tantrum-prone, he is difficult on walks for other reasons.

I knew the odds were stacked against me. It was such a beautiful evening, I couldn’t justify staying indoors and since parks and the like are still out of the question as Full Speed recovers from his surgery, a walk was my best option.

We get to the garage and Full Speed climbs in and demands that T.Puzzle push him. I thought T.Puzzle would have none of it. Somehow he manages to think it’s cool to push his big brother. I, on the other hand, think it is ridiculous that a two year old has to push his four year old brother around in a babyish toy. I also think it’s fitting because Full Speed  is clearly the dominating force in their relationship (although T.Puzzle has recently begun to hold his own and he can taunt with the best of them).

We head to the sidewalk and while T.Puzzle is strong enough to push Full Speed, he isn’t strong enough to maintain control over the ‘vehicle’. Periodically I am forced to grab the handle and line it back up on the sidewalk. This makes T.Puzzle beyond angry. “No, Mommy! I do it! I do it!” He says this over and over again.

I keep thinking, no you can’t kid but don’t say anything and put up with his persistent, defiant spouting. At some point in this walk, Full Speed decides he would like a turn to push. T.Puzzle wants nothing to do with it. Eventually after two very serious threats from me topped off with time-outs and meltdowns, he acquiesces. Of course he cries almost the entire time Full Speed pushes him.

We get to the end of the sidewalk and I say it’s time to turn around. The boys switch again and T.Puzzle cries because he wants to continue on down to the main path. Since I had already had enough of a showdown with him, I am forced to negotiate with Full Speed to continue on to the main road for a bit. At this point Full Speed is beyond bored (the devil’s playground and all that) and he doesn’t care if that’s what T.Puzzle wants. Eventually, he agrees but he is angry about it. We cross the main, busy street and start on the big path and the whole time T.Puzzle is swerving the car and getting angry every time I correct. I am having a GREAT time.

We are pretty far from home at this point. I tell T.Puzzle we are going up to the next cross street and then we will turn around. He says “NO!” He sits down and refuses to move. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me in the past. Mid-walk someone refuses to budge, I am far from home and I am completely out of luck.
won't budge

I made Full Speed get out of the car, placed a more than unwillingly T.Puzzle in his place, grabbed Full Speed’s  hand with my free hand and began to run as fast as I could. My plan was that if I went fast enough, T.Puzzle  would be too scared to continue to defy me because he would need to hold on for dear life.

It worked. I got an extra interval of exercise in (which is always a plus) while T.Puzzle screamed and cried the whole way back. We made it home and I learned my lesson. Next time, I’m sending them out with the nanny (damn! that’s right, I am the nanny. I keep blocking that out). I am grossly underpaid.

humor, mommyhood, parenting, terrible twos, Uncategorized

I Wake Up

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It was time to put T.Puzzle down for his nap. He immediately begins to run away from me telling me over and over, “I wake up, Mommy. I wake up.” He means he is clearly awake and he is not having it.

I manage to carry his nearly forty pound frame upstairs. Once upstairs, I have to put a fresh pull-up on for his nap. I ask him to retrieve one from the stash in his room. He goes over to the columns of pull-ups neatly aligned in a cloth holder that is blue and plaid with a baseball motif. He proceeds to start chucking them one by one all over the floor until he finds one with a picture on it to his liking. I don’t fight that right now. At least he brings me the pull-up and is mostly willing to change into it.

I ask him if he wants a story. He shakes his head vigorously ‘no’. “I wake up, Mommy. I wake up.”

I heave him into his crib (I know he is ready for a big boy bed, I can’t fathom that change until Full Speed’s second surgery is complete). I almost break my back in the process and he thumps to the mattress. I didn’t realize that you could lie down defiantly. Somehow he achieves just that.

I head downstairs to fold up some laundry and catch some peace and quiet. It had already felt like a long day dealing with T.Puzzle’s ever-changing moods and demands. I click on the monitor and then it begins.

“I WAKE UP, MOMMY! I WAKE UP! I GET UP! I GET UP!” I can barely understand him through the screams.

All Moms face this challenge. The time when your child transitions out of napping is perilous and fraught with emotional danger. I went through this before with Full Speed. He gave up naps so early that it could make a grown woman cry (and I did). How I handled it was a couple rough months of putting him down regardless of if he slept and eventually he adapted. It became known as “quiet time”. It actually turned into something of beauty once we survived the initial shock of it. Now, it is a time where he is in his room playing quietly (as quietly as Full Speed can) with cars, Power Rangers or Transformers. I think it is good because it helps foster his ability to play independently (which for Full Speed is a very rare thing) and gives Mommy a much, much needed (and deserved) break.

I’m feeling more confident that the transition to “quiet time” will be easier with T.Puzzle because he already has such a rich, inner-world of imagination. He plays independently stupendously and he loves stuffed animals. Since stuffed animals are not really his big brother’s forte, he gets all of Full Speed’s leftovers which makes his crib a veritable zoo of play. He has every stuffed animal under the sun.

So after a good half-hour of hysterics (his, not mine I promise), he sort of gives up and I can hear him start to play. Awesome. This is great. I feel movement towards the end goal of “quiet time”.

Then, we get a delivery. Oh, you Moms out there know the horror of a poorly timed doorbell chime. T.Puzzle hears the bell ring and assumes someone has come to visit. He is beside himself that he can’t come down and see who is here. He is so distraught it sounds like a pack of hyenas is trying to drag him away. I brace myself for the next round of screaming knowing full well if I go up and try to explain the concept of ‘just a delivery’ to him, it will only increase his despair.

Fortunately, he recovers quickly and after a good five minutes, he is back to playing with his animals. Great.

I decide I’m thirsty. That was a big mistake. Not that I was thirsty, but that I wanted to have ice with it. I put my cup up to the refrigerator door and push the ice dispenser. As the ice crashes loudly into my cup, guess what T.Puzzle says?

“I WAKE UP, MOMMY! I WAKE UP!”

I gave up, I couldn’t take it anymore.

T.Puzzle, 1 – Mommy, 0

marital blissishness, parenting, self-discovery

Truthfully Speaking

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Are you technically having an argument with your husband if you are simply stating your case and it happens to be true? I was upset with Mad Dog this morning (I was going to say mad but since the word mad is part of his nickname; I felt it canceled out the meaning). He has been working a lot (no surprise) and I am wishing it could be different (no surprise). I was so steamin’ angry that I called him while he was on his way to work. My point was to give him a laundry list of reasons of why I was so upset. I’m sure he was super excited to take my phone call. To his credit, he did not respond with a counter-attack. Either he is an incredibly intelligent man (if you know him, you know this to be true) or he thought my rant was so off-base, he couldn’t dignify it with a response. I’m hoping for the former. He better hope it’s the former, too. That’s not a threat. Again, how could it be? It’s simply a statement that happens to be true.

My Mom used to say that if you always agree with your spouse then one of you isn’t necessary. Well apparently Mad Dog and I are both highly essential to this union.

Relationships are complicated. Look at my boys. One minute they are wrestling each other within an inch of their lives, the next they are side by side calmly watching a show. There is no pattern or way to figure which way they are going to be each day. Frick and Frack

Maybe I would be bored to tears if they were quiet, calm and predictable (that made me laugh out loud as I tried to imagine them as that – never, gonna happen!). Maybe I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if a simple outing to Wal-Mart with them was just that. Simple.

Simple is nice when making a recipe I suppose. Simple can bring a sense of comfort and practiced rhythm to the world. My world is a little different. It is full of unknowns, outlandish behavior and disagreements. It has spice and surprise. I’m curious to see what happens next especially for T.Puzzle and Full Speed. Aren’t you?