Just Call Me "Mommy"

Why is it that little people always try and grow up too fast? I vaguely remember that feeling, that rushing when-will-I-be-able-to-eat-candy-for-breakfast sentiment that comes with the irresponsibility and ignorance of youth. When one is young, one wants to be able to make every decision (and then one becomes an adult and making decisions isn't always as much fun as it's cracked up to be).

My four-year-old son recently had the following discussion with me.

R: "Mom, when I was three, I called you "Mommy." Now, when I'm four, I call you "Mom."
Me: "What about Daddy?"
R: "When I was three I called him, "Daddy." Now that I'm four I call him "Dad."

The next day he went on to tell me that when he's five he's calling me "Faith."

Seriously, I know there is a certain amount of independence that comes along with knowing how to read, the ability to state the difference between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores, and being able to discern the particular type of a dozen different dinosaurs and sharks by sight, but I want to be "Mommy" for at least a few more years. Indefinitely would be better.

GPS Mommy

In our house Mommy knows where everything is. Well, mostly anyway. There is that once in a while when Mommy doesn’t know where something is, but usually she does.

It has been that way for me even before I became Mommy. Back when I was just, Wife, it was that way, too. My husband constantly asks me where things are. Things that belong to him, stuff that I never touch, belongings that sometimes aren’t seen for months at a time.

“Do you know where my gray socks are? The ones with the hole in the big left toe?”

“They’re in your top drawer, Dear, underneath your Luchador mask, in the front on the left.”

Not only do I generally know where his stuff is, but I can also give detailed directions and even draw a map if necessary.

I seriously do not know if the man has major problems with keeping tabs on his stuff, or if he simply takes advantage of my talent for remembering everything for him. He had better get a grip in either case because my capacity for preserving any information for longer than thirty seconds is diminishing.

Perhaps his inability to recollect where he keeps his undergarments and such is due to the fact that he belongs to the gender known as MALE. As of late I have been leaning toward this as the likely explanation. The reason being that, as my son gets older I have been able to observe some of the following tendencies in him.

Number One: He can’t focus long enough to follow simple directions.

That little man can ask me where a particular book is, and upon looking down I locate it lying on the floor touching his foot.

“It’s on the floor, next to your foot,” I’ll say.

“Where?”

“Right next to your foot.”

“Huh?”
“LOOK DOWN!”

He still won’t see it. Really. He’s four. He speaks English better than some forty-year-olds I know. This shouldn’t be that hard.

Number Two: He’ll put something down and immediately forget where he put it.

See Number One.

Now, if that is all part of being a person of the male persuasion, then it would seem that being FEMALE would entail certain peculiarities. Peculiarities like maintaining a detailed catalogue of where everything in the entire house was last seen.

I already see potential in my older daughter for following very successfully in my footsteps. Considering the current state of decline in my mental faculties, this is a very good thing. She is only two-and-a-half, but if she puts her cup down on the living room floor behind the Christmas tree in the corner and drops a blanket on top of it she’ll still remember where she put it. If one asks her where her cup is an hour later she will point in the general direction of it and say, “It’s over dare.”

If one says, “Honey Buns, can you bring me the baby’s rattle from the couch?” She will go and get it. Ask Daddy or her brother to get it and they’d walk around in circles for ten minutes and then say, “Huh?”

In conclusion, it is my opinion, from years of observation and experience, that boys will be boys. And whether or not this is something that they’re born with or that they develop out of a deep liking for being taken care of by competent women, I don’t know. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I'm Still Mommy, Even When I'm Alone

I found myself childless and without a husband Saturday afternoon: Daddy was at work and the kids had gone to the pool with their Nana and Auntie B. Being eight months pregnant and unable to stand/walk for long periods of time without having extremely uncomfortable pains in my child-bearing regions, I could not go anywhere to meander and window shop at my leisure; I couldn’t even go to the fabric store and touch the bolts and admire the wonderful texture of linens. In other words, I was alone in the house.

It’s kind of an awkward feeling, being in a place that is so often filled with the sound of singing children, arguing children, children running around in circles. A place that was silenced suddenly and now held the sound of a clock ticking, the hum of the refrigerator, the tumble of some clothes in the dryer.

Awkward yes, but also peaceful because at least I knew that the children would be back to fill it with noise again and to tug at my dress, mommy I need a drink; the toys that now lied undisturbed would soon be grasped by two sets of little hands, that’s my car!; sweet little mouths would again pucker up to my own, I love you mommy.

But there is still something strange about lying down for a nap without another warm body, something unnerving about the absence of small bodies climbing on mine. I knew that it would be foolish to deny my tired and very pregnant body a chance to rest, so I forced my busy hands to stop and I stretched out on the couch. After a few minutes I called one of the cats over to lie with me.

Empty house and all, I was still Mommy and that spot in my chest that craves the comfort of something small and warm was crying out to be satisfied. The cat couldn’t quite fulfill that need, but he would have to do. He would just have to do.

Words.

There are some phrases that come out of the mouths of my children, and I wonder where it is that they have picked them up. Because, really, I have never heard them come out of my mouth, or their father’s mouth. I can’t remember hearing them uttered from the television by anyone or anything in any of their videos. Perhaps these phrases just come from the deepest depths of their little imaginations.

So it happens that Big Brother is following Little Sister around, squeezing her cheeks and saying, “My little weeny, weeny,” in that smooshy voice we all save for things that are cute and edible. It seems to me that this wouldn’t be so bad if he would at least once say, “My little teeny weeny,” but he is forever insistent on two “weeny”s and no “teeny”s. My sense of propriety is only slightly wounded though because it’s just so darn funny. And in actuality, she is a little weeny, weeny. She’s just that cute.

And because she is just so cute, adorable and squeezable, she too walks about saying cute and adorable things herself. She knows her name, and she of course knows mine since I am the one she needs to talk to when hungry or in need of something. However, more than anything else, she is called “honey” by us all because she’s such a sweetie pie (when she’s not throwing temper tantrums or making herself otherwise disagreeable). That word has bored itself into her little head to such a degree that I have graduated from simply “mommy” to “honey-mama”. I have to admit that I rather like it.

Nor do I complain when my little man looks me in the eyes and tells me, “Mama, you’re so pretty.” I know he’s just throwing compliments at me because I set up the Wii for him; even so, it’s nice to hear his toddler voice petting me with appreciatory comments while he runs a savage racing campaign in the world of MarioKart.

Words for All of Your Two Thousand Parts

I sometimes find myself very fearful of what may come out of my child’s mouth in the presence of strangers. Or in his Sunday school classroom. Most parents, I’m sure, suffer from this same fear. It’s bad enough that kids pick up on things so deviously in the first place, but my husband sometimes forgets to use the child-friendly filter that I am attempting to install in his head.

Don’t misunderstand me, neither of us is in the habit of using coarse language or anything like that, but I find that my sensitive woman/mommyness can be easily offended. Words like “butt” and “fart” only sound funny the first time they make their exit from a three-year-old’s mouth.

My husband was gone last week on a business trip, so I cannot blame the following on him. Sometime during the middle of the week my son betook himself from the bathroom, where he had taken himself to the potty, and brought his pants and underwear to me for assistance. All smiles, he handed me these articles of clothing and said, “Look at my butt crack!”

Now, really, I must draw some sort of line here! I felt badly because he was so proud that his command of the English language enabled him to articulate this phrase, but I didn’t feel good about encouraging his use of it.

Awhile back he punctuated his sentences with “fossil poop” after perusing a dinosaur book with Daddy. That went on for some time. Much to my dismay he had no scruples about sharing his knowledge of dinosaur droppings with persons he had just met. After that phase passed the age of “blubber fat” began. (This time after reading a book about whales; I begin to think that learning is overrated).

Most of these phrase-related issues become issues because a certain grown-up boy in our house laughs like a madman when he hears them uttered in the singsong voice of our little Blank Slate. Thankfully Daddy wasn’t home to witness the declaration of a cloven rear-end, and I’m confident that another potential word-sharing crises has been averted.

Fear from Inflection

There are three words, uttered in the pudgy voice of my nineteen-month-old stick-child that instantly summons fear and trembling into my heart. I can survive the tumbling sound as she bumps down a couple of stairs, but when she says, “Make a mess!” the life just about goes out of me as I stagger toward the sound of her voice with at least one eye squeezed shut.

It may merely mean that she has dumped the plastic bin of dinosaurs and sea-creatures all over the floor, or it could signify the emptying of a box of crackers onto the floor. Drawing on walls constitutes this exclamation, as well as upending the entire contents of the humidifier onto the bedroom floor where it will inevitably soak into the carpet and cause much mold and general rot. There is also a chance that all of my clean, nicely folded laundry has found its way onto the floor, and is now unfolded.

I believe that it is actually the force with which she shouts the word “mess” that stirs such dread into my bowels. Generally, said mess can be cleaned up without too much ado. Alas, simply knowing this to be true does not alleviate much (if any) anxiety of my part.

We See Turkeys on the Road

Through out this past spring and summer I always became a little nervous whenever we would motor past a slain animal lying in the road, its fur a shambles and smeared with blood, internal organs peeking out from beneath the burst flesh.

At times I would find myself engaging my forward facing car-seat bound toddler in conversation in order to distract him from the roadway and the carnage that was heaped upon it. I felt some apprehension that he should take notice and ask me what it was; I feared emotional confusion on his part should he associate it with one of his pet cats.

There came a day, somewhere during the fall, when I had to stop at a red octagonal road sign and wait for a break in the passing traffic in order to pull onto the road and continue the trek to Nana’s house. Directly to my left, and a few yards in front of my son’s window, lay a mangled mess that used to be some sort of medium-sized mammal.

The voice of a little boy spoke up from the back seat. My anxiety was quickly calmed when I heard what followed:

“Look, Mommy,” he shouted, “a turkey on the road!”

He’d only ever seen turkeys in books, but something about the squashed carcass on the road resembled poultry. He sounded pretty excited. Let us count our blessings.

Christmas Trees and Flying Babies

A person would think that a child of eighteen months would begin to understand that a fall from great heights has the potential of pretty big ouchies. Perhaps when she reaches the mature age of nineteen months she will start to show a little more caution and reverence for things like chairs and big, tall beds.

About two weeks ago I was overcome by an attack of Christmas spirit. I decided it was high time our artificial tree made its appearance, even though I would have to put it up and direct toddler traffic in the general vicinity all by myself.

Last year the thing was put down in the basement instead of the attic, and the box has accumulated too much dust and web to be brought up into our living space. So there I was, getting some great aerobic exercise by hiking tree limbs up the stair and coming back down empty-handed to retrieve more, over and over, up and down, again and again.

I finally managed to bring up most of the pieces, and I started to “build” that tree. I don’t know how long it took me to fluff up all the branches. Nor do I know how many glaring scratches I received in the process. I do know that it took a little finagling, but I think the tree is positioned in a better spot than it was last year. The only problem is the loss of space in the corner. Lost or wasted space makes me sad.

















We have a smallish house. When we bought this tree our budget dictated that we find it at a thrift store. We didn’t have a whole lot of options. We would have liked to get a slim tree (even though they aren’t fat and jolly like bigger trees), but we couldn’t find one. So we got this tree, which is in good shape but has a five-foot diameter.

When my husband brought the tree home last year it was quickly discovered that the fir was a bit too wide for our smallish house. After some finagling we removed select branches and stuffed it into the space between the end of our couch and the front windows. It was a little ridiculous, but it worked.

This year I choose to give the tree only three sides and thrust it in front of the windows. When the sky isn’t overcast and the sun shines through it kind of makes the tree look a little thin and haggard. However, the construction paper garland helps to fill it out a bit.




































In order to place the tree in front of the windows, I needed to do a bit of reorganizing. The play kitchen set had to be moved to the dining room, which meant that the extra chair had to relinquish its spot and relocate to the kitchen.

And here we are back at my first point. A person would think that a toddler who has taken many a fall would stop climbing chairs! But it would seem that the chair that transferred to the kitchen is in a great spot for climbing in order to reach the light switch. Flipping switches is great fun. Lights go on. They go off. Great fun.

Not for the first time, the chair took a dive with the toddler atop yesterday. Toddler and chair took with them half a box of Clementines that were sitting peacefully on the table minding their own business. One of the fruits didn’t fair so well: it was squashed flat beneath the weight of the chair. Never before had I seen a citrus fruit in the shape of a pancake.

And then this morning, head groggy with the fog of just waking up, the little girl teetered on the edge of my three or four foot tall bed, instead of climbing down, and said “A-morning, Mommy,” twice or thrice over until I came to rescue her from her precarious position. When I glanced her there, wobbling to and fro in the dark of early morning, I had visions.

She spills so often due to her theatrics that I generally don’t get that sinking feeling in my stomach when I see her go over. But on the opposite side of “generally” is “sometimes.” Sometimes I still get that sinking feeling. Especially when she falls from a high place with her head leading the way to the floor.

Where's the Rewind Button?

I have begun to notice little nuances in my son’s behavior that may hail the beginning of the end of his completely dependent toddlerhood. I’m fervently hoping that these things are just flukes and that I actually have at least one more year of his being my baby instead of a person too quickly on his way to adulthood (or worse- that period of time that comes between baby and adult- teenager).

The little guy was experimenting with referring to my husband and I by our first names for a bit. After it became apparent that he meant to carry on with that for some time we tried to make him understand that it was rude to do so, after which he insisted on calling me “mom” instead of “mommy.” It would seem that a three-year-old is much too old to go around calling the person who practically saw the door of heaven during childbirth “mommy.” When he’s not paying attention or when he’s tired the “mommy”s still slip out.

Now that he has been fully potty-trained for about four months he has started to order me out of the bathroom. He’ll point to some innocuous place on the way to the toilet and command, “stay there, mommy.” I wait and stand in my spot for about ten seconds before heading into the bathroom to save the toilet paper from being dropped into the bowl.

It could just be my imagination, but I feel as though he tends to avoid holding my hand as much as possible when we’re out running errands. I suppose that means I’ll have to stop smothering him with kisses in the grocery store soon. Speaking of kisses, he has greatly offended his father by refusing to kiss him. The man is really upset. I don’t think it helps that the child will then come and kiss me until I practically shine with spit.

"No" Should be a One-Way Street

It’s hard being Mommy to the most beautiful little girl in the world. It really is. When she was first born it wasn’t so difficult; she slept a lot, she stayed where she was put- she spent most of her time simply being cute.

Now she hardly sleeps, she never stays still, and she spends most of her time getting into trouble. There are just too many buttons on the microwave that need to be pushed. Too many books that need to be washed in toilet water. So many high places to climb that double as good places to practice ladder-building skills in order to reach.

How quickly babies go from being innocent well-behaved people to world-menacing toddlers. Whoever decided that the word “no” should be a simple two-letter word must have been an illicit drug user or had no experience with parenting. Children learn the word much too quickly. I suppose it is possible that if the word were pronounced “imneptabulous” children could still learn to say it rather young.

As much as toddlers and babies alike love to say “no,” they tend to become completely and utterly offended if the word should be directed toward them, and they wail and scream as though their very life is at an end. “No, you can’t juggle the cleaver.” “No, you may not put your finger in the electrical outlet.” “No, you may not hang from the chandelier.” It’s all very dramatic.

In the last couple of weeks, the baby has begun to put on her most pathetic face and whimper “come here, come here,” as she lifts her arms to be picked up and skooshes her fingers open and closed. She especially loves to pour on the ooey-gooey cuteness after she gets in trouble. I need to work on my stern face.

Has Anyone Seen My (fill in the blank)...?

My daughter is a trash monger. She delights in dragging food wrappers and coffee grinds from the depths of the can. I have noticed that certain items belonging to her that I had recently seen in her possession are finding their way into the trash. Yesterday I had to remove her socks from amongst the cucumber peels no less than two times. I fear that I may lose items important to me, such as bills and books, to the city dump.

When she became tired of hearing “no touch,” she would take a break from that bit of mischief to toss handfuls of cat food around the kitchen floor so that her brother could frolic through the piles, like so many rain puddles, and spatter it to even father reaches of the kitchen, i.e. under the stove and refrigerator where it will rot for months until Mommy feels the urge to pull the appliances out from the wall in order to vacuum underneath them.

This morning she uncovered a hidden ant trap. To her credit, she picked it up and toddled across the room with it and handed it over to me instead of procuring tools and attempting to open it up to see what was inside. I was also very thankful the other day that she had enough sense to throw one of her own books into the toilet instead of a book that belongs to the library. Mothers must be grateful for these sorts of things.

Paintbrush+Power Drill=Baseball

It may be because my body is getting older, it may be because I don’t exercise enough, but after spending a few hours over the last couple of days painting the floor of the porch my body is feeling it. Not in the "I can’t move my legs and I’m going to be paralized for the rest of my life" kind of way, more in a "please don’t make me climb the stairs again" fearful sort of manner.

I finally purchased curtains for the bathroom. The blinds just weren’t cutting it for me anymore. So, I busted out the power tools to install the window hardware. I was feeling pretty manly until I had to drop my arms to pick up the phone. Then I just felt like a bowl of Jell-O; my arms were so wobbly that it took me a while to regain enough control over them to press the call button on the phone. But the curtain looks great! It is amazing what a piece of fabric hung over a window can do to make a room seem more homey and less gross.

The feelings of manliness must have gone to my head when I had the drill in my hands because while the baby was napping my son and I played baseball in the living room. With a foam bat and ball, granted, but I generally discourage this type of play in the house. We were both very careful and nothing was broken, which was good; I can just see myself trying to explain a smashed light fixture to my husband who is constantly told that outside toys don’t belong inside. I’ll have to do a lot of sewing and toilet scrubbing tomorrow to set my equilibrium to rights and regain my femininity.

They Call Me Mommy

Last weekend, my husband stepped on an old nail and it bit into his foot; now his jaw is bothering him. The baby has had a cold all week, and will occasionally paw at her left ear. Tonight my son took a spectacular dive off of the curb with his forehead and grew a lump the size of a golf ball.

I fear that my life the next few days will consist of watching for signs of concussion in the toddler, ear infection in the baby and tetanus in the man who seems to enjoy causing me extra stress by going up into the attic without shoes on so that he can impale his heel with any available implement of sharpness.

Can’t a mother get any rest in this house? I can only imagine the level of non-rest in a home where there are more than two children (and a husband). When it comes to large families, I am quite sure that there is always someone getting sick, spilling Cheerios all over the couch or attempting to leap tall buildings in a single bound; I would think that getting one’s turn in the bathroom would be a monumental undertaking, forgetting a child at the grocery store the norm, and someone somewhere would always be bleeding.

Yes, motherhood is not for the faint of heart or the queasy. A mother must be strong, able to handle constant decision-making and, above all, she must learn how to spot all of the symptoms of every disease that ever befell mankind in the history of the world. The next time you ask your mother a question and she looks at you blankly it is not because she is getting old or stupid, but more likely it is because she has more information stored in her head than a number even exists for and it takes time to sort through it all to find the answer.

Who Decided Outside is a Fun Place to Go?

Ever since the episode two weeks ago, I’m a little leery to take the kids outside, especially without another set of eyes. As it is, my eyes are constantly roving across the lawn, looking for tall mushrooms, short mushrooms, fat ones and little ones, ones that grow under rocks. Little Sister is always on the go, go, go, so it can be a bit of a challenge to keep Big Brother out of trouble. The poor boy wanders around from toy to toy; the only thing that keeps his interest almost indefinitely is his Matchbox cars, and he doesn’t take them outside.

So, there’s good old Mom, being led around the yard by the baby who is learning to walk. If Mommy lets go of one of the baby’s hands to scratch her face or push the glasses back up onto her nose, the baby’s beautiful face contorts into a scream and she throws herself down into the dirt and despairs of ever being able to learn how to walk on her own. What is a child to do with a mother who has to take a break just to scratch herself? Up and down they go; back and forth, and around the yard.

Meanwhile the toddler has gotten tired of putting sand from the box onto the top of his head and has moved on to the garbage cans. After prying off the lid and looking into each one he settles for splashing around in the water that collected on the top of the can after the last rain storm; while doing this he notices a piece of his fingernail that he missed on his last gnawing and decides to take a break from the garbage and put his hands in his mouth.

What was that noise? Probably just Mom telling me to get my fingers out of my mouth… something about them being dirty… whatever.

Oh, look! A piece of old wood from the gate that Daddy is fixing with some sharp rusty nails sticking out of it. That’s new and exciting!

There’s Mom again… I hear her talking but I’ll just pretend I don’t understand what she’s saying.

I’m bored. It seems to get Mom’s attention when the baby picks stuff up off of the ground and puts it in her mouth…I wonder what grass tastes like?

Now, mind you, the child won’t drink juice. He won’t eat anything I cook for dinner unless it’s spaghetti. But he’ll put grass in his mouth? Grass? I mean, really, there is only so much a mother can take. On this particular day the outside fun lasted for about forty-five minutes. Then Mom was done. No more foraging. No more garbage picking. No more hissy fits. We’re going inside where it’s safe. Or safer. I’m learning that kids can get into trouble no matter where they are; lock them up in a padded room and they will find the stub of a crayon under the padding in the back left corner that was left there by the last looney, and after a period of indecision they will decide either to eat it or use it to color all over the walls.

It's My Birthday and I'll Eat What I Want To

My baby girl tried to do every fun thing that she could think of to celebrate her first birthday. She climbed onto the chair and trapped herself under the table many, many times. She put her face in the path of her brother’s back swing and was consequently hit in the face by his plastic golf iron. An attempt was made to tip over the garbage can, and she tried to eat some mulch while out in the backyard. She insisted on crawling on the sidewalk instead of in the grass, even though she didn’t have shoes on, and she scraped one of her toes all up. Tops on the list, however, was the inquisitive sampling of a piece of fungus found outside.

Every day I am more convinced that I am going to die of stress: and I am quite sure that this child is going to be the death of me. During the minute it took for me to address whatever request it was that her brother made that caused me to turn my back, she plucked a mushroom out of the ground and as I again turned in her direction she took a bite.

It is rather unfortunate that I have, as of yet, not been given the chance to purchase, steal or otherwise gain any super-powers through skill, osmosis, or freak-accident. The longer that I am a mother, the more I realize that being able to fly or have laser vision wouldn’t be the wisest choice: having stretchy elastic arms would be, that way one’s child would always be within arms reach.

Needless to say, I called my friends at Poison Control. The other two times I found myself in need of their expertise, I was instructed to give milk to the child so I thought it would be a good place to start. The baby wasn’t interested in drinking milk; she wanted to go back outside and forage some more. I spoke to a very reassuring nurse, named Mimi, who informed me that since mushrooms are so hard to identify they treat them all as poisonous, just to be on the safe side.

Since the child had enough sense to spit out the fungi, Mimi didn’t think that she needed emergency care. (If a child actually ingests a mushroom found elsewhere than the refrigerator or the produce section of the grocery store, they need to be taken to the emergency room and given activated charcoal.) Instead, she cautioned me to be on the lookout for the usual signs: nausea, vomiting, abnormal behavior. Since fungal poisoning can manifest itself in many different ways, depending on the type of mushroom, she couldn’t be any more specific. She also informed me that Poison Control would be in touch over the next twenty-four hours to help monitor the birthday girl.

I’m sure that I do not need to expound upon the tension and anxiety that plagued me over the next few hours. Every time the baby cried or fussed, a great hand clenched and twisted all the organs in my chest. It didn’t help that the picture I found on the Internet that most resembled the slimy fungal antagonist had the label poisonous underneath it. When Mimi called during the afternoon she calmed my fears and told me not to let the incident ruin the birthday: “Write it down in her baby book,” she said, “it’s just going to be a birthday to remember.” Business as usual.

Okay.

We read some books.

I killed a freaky looking cricket (or something) in the kitchen.

Both of the kids fought over toys and grabbed and screamed.

The toddler commandeered the baby’s birthday present.

We ate; I cleaned; we slept.

The twenty-four hour mark has passed now, and the baby is no worse for wear. Poison control has placed their last phone call to check up on her. Another day, another disaster averted. Thank God for that. Now, on to year number two for the little monkey. I am quite sure that it would be foolish of me to hope that it’s not too exciting.

Coffee is Supposed to be Hot?

Mommies eat last. That’s just the nature of the job. Everyone else gets fed first, and then, if no one is screaming, bleeding or otherwise needing anything, we eat. And usually we have to eat fast, if we want to finish our food while it is hot or cold or whatever temperature it should be for optimal enjoyment.

Sometimes it may appear that we actually eat first: that is only because our lunch is so late that it tends to correlate with everyone else’s dinner. I’m not really sure what hot coffee tastes like anymore. I pour it, hot and steaming, into my mug, add a couple grains of sugar, a dollop of cream and then off I go to rescue a screaming infant from the perch she has found herself unable to climb down from. On my way back to the caffeine I so desperately need, I find the toddler crouched in a corner valiantly trying not to pee in his pants.

After many minutes spent coercing him away from the line of matchbox cars he is meticulously parking I take him to the bathroom. During that time, the baby has found her way atop one of the dining room chairs again and is trapped beneath the table. After liberating her, someone usually decides that a snack is in order; by the time the snack is prepared the baby is once again screeching from her roost beneath the table. At this point my coffee is only lukewarm.

I remembered that there was some rhubarb in the refrigerator, patiently awaiting my culinary prowess. In my folly, I thought I would try and end its chilly stay in the crisper by whipping up something yummy. I called my mother, the person usually responsible for cooking all things rhubarb, and got the recipe she generally uses to make rhubarb crumb.

During the short call I had to juggle a paring knife and continuously cut strawberries to feed the baby, so that she would forget that she was pinned in the highchair, while simultaneously jotting down instructions that I only heard the half of. My son employed his knowledge of the answering machine to record a new message. Instead of the comprehensible voice of my husband singing the state capitals or telling callers they have reached the city morgue or something else along those lines, callers will now be greeted by my son’s toddler voice making a single incomprehensible sound before the familiar beep.

After all of that, I decided to use a recipe from the cookbook instead. I cut a few rhubarb stalks, broke up a fight, cut a few more, told my son to stop forcing his sister to play peek-a-boo, mixed flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon, removed the baby from her brother’s stunt diving zone, beat an egg and some milk, stopped the baby from mounting the dining room table, etc.

Other than the fact that God is so totally awesome, I also believe in miracles because I was able to get the cobbler into the oven before any serious you-need-to-stop-playing-chef-and-be-mommy-right-now crying started. As if that happening alone didn’t denote that there is indeed a God, the baby took a nap and slept for over two hours instead of her customary thirty minutes! As someone somewhere in the history of the world once said, “a mother must have some compensations”.

Take It Slow

I thought it might be prudent to continue yesterday’s topic of the expected unexpected in relation to the raising of children. A subject that I had not broached was that of a new mother’s desire to hurry along the growth of her child. By this I mean the thrilled anticipation with which she awaits big milestones like baby’s first steps, first words, etc.

When my first child was born, I adored every stage he went through and looked with eagerness toward the next. The pride in being able to say that Junior is five-months-old instead of only four-months-old; counting away the days until one can safely proclaim him to be five-and-a-half-months-old. “I can’t wait for him to say ‘mama’” and “I can’t wait for him to be able to roll over” is just the beginning of the “I can’t waits”. What the mother does not realize is that once the child begins to crawl, walk, and even talk, her life will never be the same.

The baby that once stayed put in the same spot on the floor now crawls toward the pet food dishes in search of a snack, or opens all of the kitchen cabinets and drags the Tupperware out all over the floor. Once they can walk, children gravitate in the direction of the telephone or the stairs. Cute little fits of crying when the child is removed from the bathtub turn into all out tantrums when they need to be strapped into the car seat. “Mama” all too quickly becomes “no”.

It is so much easier for me the second time around to savor the present instead of being on the lookout for the next stage. Babies grow all too rapidly without any help from mom and dad. Of course I am crazy in love with my little ones no matter where they are in their developmental journey; I just don’t want to rush it or wish the time away.

Why Can't I Tap Dance On The Table?

My child has tiptoed across the line into the phase where he will go back to the thing he was just told not to touch, climb into the object he was removed from a minute ago, and resume hurling the ball he was just told to roll on the floor so as not to break any of mommy’s few remaining un-broken possessions. Really. And people honestly believe that humans are inherently good? As soon as my back is turned my toddler turns into a Mister-Sneaky-Pants.

It is the as-long-as-mommy-can’t-see-me-I-can’t-get-in-trouble mentality. Even though a mother knows to expect these things, it still garners a certain amount of disappointment when the said time arrives. Like the first time your child tells you “no”; or hears you say “no” and does whatever it was he wanted to do anyway.

Never mind trying to explain to the child that “mommy tells you ‘no’ because she doesn’t want you to hurt yourself”. That sort of reasoning only begets a blank stare, and when mommy’s back is turned the tot continues in the dangerous occupation and breaks his leg. Endeavor to recap the explanation after the accident happens and the mommy is likely to elicit the same blank stare.

My husband, God love him, has so very many talents and interests. Unfortunately, common sense is not one of them so I fear my children have a fifty-fifty chance at continuing on in their present bewilderment as to why certain things are unacceptable and, even, what those certain things are in the first place.

Some days I find it rather tricky to keep my sense of humor when having to repeat the same admonishments over and over and over and over again. It really can be quite tiresome. There have even been phrases I have had to speak that had never occurred to me prior to being a mommy. “Don’t sit on your sister’s head,” for example, or “Do not drink the water in the bathtub- you just peed in it!” Ah, well. I suppose common sense can be overrated.

Stop The Ride, I Want To Get Off.

There is something worse than having to take a child for shots: needing to take them for blood work. My poor, sweet little girl isn’t gaining weight as fast as the doctors feel she should be. Even though she was two weeks early she still weighed in at seven pounds, four ounces at birth. Her first birthday is only one month away and she still has not passed the fourteen-pound mark. The pediatrician is fairly confident that her teeny-tiny-ness is a combination of genetics and how active she is. However, with the amount of food the child consumes it just seems odd that she gains only a few ounces every month.

Hence, the command was issued to have blood drawn to check for a reason as to the abnormal weight gain. Keeping in mind the fact that I wanted to get in and out of there as fast as humanly possible, I waited until I thought the lunch hour rush would be over. My timing was a little bit off, however, as one of the phlebotomists was at lunch. Anytime blood needs to be drawn from an infant it requires two technicians: one to do the stick and one to hold the baby’s arm down.

So there I sat, for twenty minutes, waiting in dread and wanting to be at home drinking tea or reading a book, or even plucking my eyebrows. Little Cheekers just straddled my lap and pointed out the lights and watched the cars drive by outside the window while munching an occasional Cheerio. Finally the time came to walk down the hallway of doom and sit in the horrid blue-padded chair of pain and suffering.

As infants, my kids are the type that only needs a stranger to look at them in order to start wailing, but once we were seated and the rubber band was applied to her arm the crying started in earnest. It was my job to hold her other arm down, keep her feet from kicking and to restrain her upper body. I held her tightly while she screamed and wriggled. After what seemed like an eternity the phlebotomist declared that she could not get anything out of the left arm and they would need to try the other. Oh. My. GOODNESS GRACIOUS! I had suggested they try her right arm in the first place!

Lord help me, I thought I was going to start crying myself. There are few things that are more heart wrenching than having your child cling to you in desperation and being unable to relieve their troubles. So the life-squeezing rubber band of sedition was placed on her right arm and the blood was drawn. As if the whole experience wasn’t horrific enough already, the flow was so slow that it took a ridiculous amount of time to get enough for two large and two small tubes. I tried to sing to her and kiss her head, anything to distract her. Nothing worked and by the time it was over she had practically cried herself to sleep. A full ten minutes had passed since we first sat in the chair.

It was everything I had feared it would be and more. Please believe me, I sincerely hope that all of the tests come back normal. Considering how terrible the experience was, how badly she bruised, and how traumatized she must be, I am fairly confident that it will all come to naught and that the whole incident could have been avoided. At least she still loves me.

Snuggle Buggle

The little guy has gotten into the habit of requesting to go bye-bye every morning. He will start at the top of his list, “go see Nana’s house”, and proceed to work down the list from “go the store” all the way to the bottom, “go to doctor’s”, in hopes of finding something that I will agree to do. One look at his bruisy knees and elbows would suggest that I frequently give in to requests like “goes outside” and “go to the park”. The poor kid appears destined to have his mommy’s genetics which dictate instant bruising if someone even stares too intensely in my general direction.

This morning my son started asking to go to Nana’s house before he even woke up. Unfortunately for him, mommy is just too tired to go anywhere today; I find that traipsing about with two children in tow takes a certain amount of energy. There are advantages to being tired: I tend to be more flexible about the amount of housework I feel needs to be done over the course of the day, which leaves me more time to enjoy my children.

After lunch the baby fell asleep in her highchair and my son decided he wanted to snuggle. It is not often that he wishes to snuggle during the afternoon, and considering that I felt like laying on the couch anyway the timing was swell. Although there were a lot of elbows and knees and toes digging into my organs and extremities it was still the best snuggling experience ever, with lots of kisses and chitchat and I-love-you’s. Still, all (good) things must come to an end and all little bladders need to be emptied; in this case the wetting of the blanket signaled the end of snuggle time for us and the beginning of laundry time for me.