Is There A Band-Aid In The House?

My son has figured out that he can open the refrigerator door all by himself. He will go in to get his cup of milk all by himself or to unwrap some leftover pancakes from yesterday’s breakfast. Thankfully he hasn’t tried to play catch with any of the eggs yet. This afternoon he came into the dining room and plunked down a container of Spaghettios to eat for a snack.

I had another moment the other day when I marveled at the fact that I can still behave like a brand-new mommy. The kids and I were out shopping; when we left the store I looked down at BoBeans and noticed that he had blood smeared all over his face and also his left hand. “For Heaven’s sake!” my mind screamed, “What is going on? He isn’t crying and he’s acting perfectly normal! Is he delirious?!” (I’m not generally this insane at the sight of blood, but I was so startled that I misplaced my proper reaction. To my credit, I did stay outwardly calm). I first examined his head to make sure the blood wasn’t originating there. It was much more concentrated on his hand, and I quickly saw the reason for the mess.

He had chewed on a hangnail. A person wouldn’t think that a little finger-chewing could produce so much blood, but there it was. One would also think that someone who has been doing this mommy thing for over two-and-a-half years would carry Band-Aids. Especially when the toddler is a boy. Think again. The poor kid continued to bleed while I stood there applying pressure to his boo-boo with a baby wipe.

After a few minutes I gave up and we made our way to another store in the promenade that I hoped would have some type of bandage simply because it sold children’s clothing. While the store did not keep Band-Aids on hand one of the employees happened to have bandages in her purse that were left over from a recent trip she had taken.

I guess I’m going to have to buy a larger bag in order to keep everything on hand that I seem to find myself in need of these days. Perhaps I can just take a class and learn how to fold things into tiny little squares: that way I can just fold up the whole house and take it with me everywhere I go.

Check, Please!

When I wake up in the middle of the night with a dry mouth I generally lie there for a while trying to go back to sleep. Some of the time I succeed and other times I know that the only way to fall back into a peaceful slumber is to get up and quench my dehydrated tongue. We don’t keep a cup in the upstairs bathroom because the water in our town is undrinkable without first being filtered so I drag my stumbling feet out of bed and lumber along the hall and down the stairs into the kitchen.

I don’t generally have a problem weaving my way through the obstacle course made up of toys and baby gear in the dark thanks to the streetlight on our corner. But then, in the almost pitch blackness of four a.m., I open the refrigerator door and blind myself with the bright and glaring light that comes on in order to allow me to see the jugs of milk, the grapefruits and last week’s spaghetti that has been shoved into the back recesses of the bottom shelf.

Once the door to the fridge is swung shut I’m left with that bright spot across my field of vision that renders me completely blind and incapable of returning to my bed in the darkness in which I left it. So I turn on the some lights along the way in order to return to my bedroom in relative safety, without fear for life and limb, and wonder why I didn’t just turn on a light in the first place. I climb under the covers and snuggle down into my still-warm spot on the bed and speculate about how long it will be before I’m awakened again by my body in an urgent plea to relieve myself of the liquid I just put into it.

My husband and I went out to dinner last night for the first time since the baby has been born; she has been left with Nana a few times during the day so that I could go to doctors’ appointments, but she has never been left with anyone during the evening. Of course she decided not to take her late afternoon nap, so by the time seven o’clock rolled around she was starting to get pretty tuckered and cranky.

My poor sister is a trooper. We were gone for a little over two hours and the baby cried hysterically and inconsolably for the second hour that we were gone; my son obviously thought that his auntie didn’t have her hands full enough and he decided it would be a good time to try out some new, previously unused vocabulary. When his auntie told him not to jump off the arm of the couch he spread his arms wide and asked, “why not?” Ugh. I’m sure the next time my husband and I want to go out my sister will be busy shampooing her cat.

It's 9pm- Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Both of the kids napped yesterday at the same time for two and a half hours or so. Instead of cleaning the bathroom or picking up after the tornado that swept through our living room prior to the nap I decided that life is too short and kids grow up too quickly and I snuggled on the couch with my son and read a book. It was wonderful.

Fast-forward to seven in the evening. A parent wanting their child to be in bed before the wee hours of the morning knows that a napping child at 7pm is a bad omen. I knew that I shouldn’t have let him sleep this late because bedtime would be a fight, but a trip to the grocery store was in order and I hoped that running up and down the aisles would tire him out and that he would be in bed before midnight. My husband and I thought that since all four of us would be making the trip to Wegman’s it might be nice to stop across the street at Applebee’s on the way home (they serve half priced appetizers after 9pm) for a treat since it is so rare for us to be out and about together at this time of the night.

The reason that it is usual for us to be out after 9pm is because, traditionally speaking, that is the bedtime hour. That is the time when most responsible parents have their kiddos in bed on their way to sleepy-time land. Not only was it approaching half past nine when we finally made our way into the restaurant, but it was also drizzling outside. It’s the middle of the winter, just barely warm enough to rain instead of snow and there we were ushering our bundled up children into a restaurant full of people who either have no small children, or if they do have them the children are at home being put to bed by a baby-sitter.

It can be awkward being the only people in a place with children even though the kids behaved exceptionally well for being of the verge of tired. I couldn’t help but wonder why I felt so anxious about what everyone else was thinking about these two young people bringing their babies out so late on a cold rainy night; of course these strangers couldn’t possibly know that the kids had woken from their naps only a couple of short hours previous, or what our intentions were in taking them out to do the grocery shopping.

Oh well. I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. However uniformed it may be. It is always a good policy to keep these moments in mind for the time when the shoe is on the other foot and you find yourself wondering why in the world that person is walking through a windy parking lot with their baby’s head uncovered. Perhaps they are retracing their steps in the hope of finding the spot where the baby stealthily removed its hat and threw it on the ground.