Category: Mommying

Can we skip ahead?

NO. I will NOT put on my pants.

Lunchbox is undoubtedly, unequivocally turning into a two-year-old. I am beginning to remember this age with Turbo. The thing is that Turbo has been the teensiest bit on the far right hand side of the difficult spectrum for so long that I sort of just eke along from phase to phase, suffering in some way through them all. And until we got a refresher on what two was really like, I’d forgotten that it really did stand high and above all the rest of the difficult times. In fact, Lunchbox has become so difficult that Turbo is a shining example of wonderfulness in comparison. And actually, Lunchbox’s recent turnaround into tantrumy toddlerhood has made me realize that, really, Turbo has turned himself into a really awesome little guy.

I’m sure I sound like an uncaring and mean mommy when I talk about Turbo being tough pretty much forever… and a lot of my perception probably has to do with the fact that he’s the first kid I’ve had to personally deal with. I mean, I’d had lots of experience with other kids, but this was the first of THIS kind of kid for me (you know, the kind that live at your house and expect food and attention and clothing and stuff?) Anyway, I’m sure that all the “firsts” had a lot to do with my expectations for happy babyhood being dashed on the jagged rocks of reality, but I’ve also had a good deal of outside confirmation that Turbo may have been attempting to break some records in the areas of stubbornness, aggression and anger in the last few years.

Unfortunately, I understand him a bit too well because he is basically a tiny male version of me. And life as me was not super easy until I realized that I made a choice every day to be happy or sad (or in my case, mad) and that the world was not really conspiring against me. Turbo hasn’t made that realization yet, and seeing a four year old struggle with serious angst is not a fun thing. But I talk to him a lot about making choices about how we see things and how others react to the choices that we make. And it actually seems to be working.

But this is not a Turbo post. This is a response to my frustration at having to deal with the worst of Turbo’s phases again, embodied this time in my tiny, usually jolly little lunchmonkey. Lunchbox has always been an easygoing little guy. He was always smiley and cheerful, easy to laugh, very silly. And that’s all still in there somewhere… I hope. Right now he’s just disagreeable. About everything. All the time. Anything that was once just a normal part of our routine is now something to be fought tooth and nail. 

When I went into their room this morning to wake them up for school, singing my little “good morning, good morning” song, Turbo jumped out of bed (literally. He scared the crap out of me), and Lunchbox greeted me with “NO.” He repeated the word at least six times in the three feet I carried him from his crib to the changing table, where he proceeded to fight me taking off his diaper, putting on a new one, and flat out refused to put on pants. I let him pick out his own pants and things were going well — we got them on! But then came the time where we needed to take off the PJ shirt. After 15 minutes, he was wearing half of the shirt he’d chosen for school (one arm and the head were in), and I left him on the floor of his room, wailing and protesting. 

We got through that eventually, and he went on to protest putting on socks, then shoes. Then breakfast. Then walking. I hope he doesn’t decide that it’s me who is making him breathe and quit doing that.

I thought they were going to call child protective services when I picked him up from school yesterday because I had to bodily force his limbs into the car seat (after 15 minutes of blocking up the curb waiting for him to climb in because lawd forbid I try to help him) and he paired this effort with a soundtrack full of sounds that even I didn’t know he was capable of. At a very high volume. Which continued ALL. The. Way. Home.

He turns two next month. Does anyone remember when this phase ends? Anyone?

Even Wronger.

I. Am. an Idiot.

For anyone capable of reciting the months of the year, it was probably clear in my last post that Turbo will certainly be Kindergarten-eligible next fall unless you are using the Mongolian Trinomial calendar, and really — who uses that old thing anymore? I was. confused. And really, that’s nothing new.

We celebrated Columbus Day at our house by visiting the hospital. The Major had some surgery to correct a gym-related accident he had a few weeks ago. In retrospect, this was a fairly major (no pun intended) event, but I managed to downplay it until this afternoon, largely because he wasn’t making a big deal out of it. But when I considered how to pick his recently-under-anesthesia’d ass up from the hospital and get him home, it occurred to me that doing this with two small kids in tow was not going to work. Thus began the scramble. Through a combination of a very good friend (who deserves a post all her own … not sure how we’d be doing living here if she hadn’t moved her family here 6 months before us) and her awesome babysitter, I got that handled. But it was a stressful and tiring day, and I’m expecting it to be a rough night and probably a tough day tomorrow too, with pain, etc. And that’s not even figuring on how to explain to the the tiny guys that Daddy can’t pick them up or hug them, and that they can’t jump on him… Wish us luck!

I do! ME!

Don't even think about trying to help him.

The title refers to Lunchbox’s new mantra. This combination of words (or some close approximation of this) is shouted at me any time I dare to set foot into the ever-expanding territory of “things Lunchbox believes he can do for himself” (but mostly cannot.) This is a frustrating stage — with Turbo it lasted from like 4 months until, oh, nowish… Hopefully Lunchbox will soon see that some things are still outside his abilities. These things — like opening the front door, tying his shoes, carrying a ridiculously heavy bag out to the car, fastening his seatbelt, etc., etc., — are the newest source of time vaccuuming in our world. These are all the things that used to take mere seconds to accomplish, but now they take upwards of five minutes each because we must all wait while Lunchbox tries to do the task himself. There is no stepping in until he says, “hepp peeze.” If you dare try to “hepp” before “hepp” is requested, you will have limp screaming baby, stiff screaming baby, screaming baby writhing on the ground or some nasty combination of the three. The only thing certain will be the screaming. I actually have started getting up ten minutes earlier to allow for two instances of “I do” every morning before we manage to get the car moving to school… Growing up! Fun, right? It’s fun. I will keep telling myself that. Fun.

Flat Tires and other fun

Yesterday totally sucked. And the weird thing was how surprised I was to have a day completely suck. I’ve been in such a good mood (which is a new phenomenon because really, I think I’ve been in a bad mood for, like, 30 years or so). But I’ve been in such a good mood that I almost didn’t realize that the day was sucking as one little thing after another didn’t go quite right, and finally the universe (which must have been pissed to realize that I hadn’t noticed that my day was totally blowing monkey balls) finally had to do something really crappy to be sure that it had my attention.

First, I ripped a contact lens while I was rubbing it clean. I took this as a good thing, actually… see, I’m not supposed to be wearing contacts at all right now because I’m having my eyes evaluated for laser surgery in a couple weeks and they must return to their native “no contact” shape. I normally wear rigid gas permeable lenses (hard), and if that’s the case you have to have them out for 3 weeks prior to evaluation. But I have a pair of soft lenses which I don’t usually wear because the vision isn’t as good, and if you wear soft lenses, they only make you go without for 2 weeks prior. So I kind of just “stepped down” from hard to soft for that first week because I hate wearing my glasses in public. Anyway, Monday of the second week should’ve been the first day that I just sucked it up and wore NO contacts as suggested. I was breaking a rule by planning to put in that soft lens, you see, so it was probably good that it got ripped before I could put it in.

Some other random things went wrong in the morning — I suppose all put together, I should have seen a trend… but I still wasn’t getting it. So the Universe decided to get my attention. By blowing out my tire. Luckily, I didn’t even notice. 🙂 I was sitting at my desk, sipping my coffee, when “the owner of a blue..” was paged to the front. I quickly started feeling guilty about something that I must’ve done without realizing it. “Did I hit someone’s car and not even notice? Did I park diagonally and just walk away? Did I leave my door open (this has happened before)?” I really don’t see all that well with my glasses in, and am not super confident driving with them since I wear them so infrequently… but it turns out I was paged because someone heard air hissing from my rear tire. I called AAA to put on my spare, and the tread had totally detaced from the sidewalls. I was lucky it didn’t completely detach while driving with my tiny people in the car. That would have been scary. Luckily we have a car with this Frankenstein-style motley assortment of features, including speed rated tires that only Dale Earnhardt Jr. would really appreciate while driving two kids to the grocery store on a daily basis. Replacing them with anything normal is next to impossible. So I’m driving on my tiny spare for a couple more days until we get it figured out.

I also got some fantastic news at the dentist yesterday… I’ve always had crappy teeth. They look okay, but they’re like an optical illusion. They’re all crowned and now it seems that I’m just one misbitten apple away from having one of my front teeth fracture and crumble, as a result of my stress-induced grinding on my misaligned bite. Braces, the dentist tells me, are a necessity.

Eye surgery… braces… ? What the hell is wrong with me?? I am supposed to be having to worry about this stuff with my kids! Now it looks like I will be choosing between fixing my eyes and fixing my teeth, if we can afford to do either. I’m not even going to go into the jaw popping issue that the dentist brought up, where my jaw locks open if I open my mouth too wide… He thinks that will cause long term problems too and that it will somehow need to be ‘treated.’ Maybe we can treat it with hypnosis. Or by simply ignoring it as I’ve done for thirty-some years now…

Here’s to a better Tuesday!

Screw it

Tonight I took Lunchbox up for a stinky diaper change. He is a jovial little fellow, always smiling on the changing table. In our new house, we keep the wipes and diapers on a shelf above the table. I was mid-diaper change tonight when I was reminded — in the most horrifying way possible — that I had thrown a couple extra screws up on that shelf when I hung a curtain in the boys room this weekend. They were right in front of the wipe box, and when I was scrambling to get a wipe out while trying to avoid the classic poop smear all over the changing table situation, I pulled the box forward and knocked one of the screws off the shelf. Directly into my baby’s open, smiling mouth. He immediately began gagging and choking, and I immediately sat him up and then turned him completely upside down. He’s not big enough for the Heimlich, and I remembered how to rescue a choking infant from the CPR certifications I take every two years. But usually you’re worried about a chunk of food, not a sharp pointy screw. I didn’t feel that I had the benefit of time to go look up a best practice, so I just went with instinct. Lunchbox started screaming, which I actually took as a good sign (he could breathe at least), so I righted him. One look in his terrified face had me wondering if he was more upset about the screw or about Mommy whipping him off the changing table and upside down while smacking his back. All I knew was that the screw was still in there. I turned him over once more, gave him one more tap, and — thank Heavens — the screw came out. I’ve read plenty of stories about kids passing these things, but he’s pretty little still and this was a biggish screw. Very pointy. Very… well, dammit, it was a screw. Not made to be swallowed by an 18 month old.

Anyway, I watched him like a hawk all night for any crying, difficulty swallowing, choking, etc. I think he’s fine. I am reminded how easily things can go wrong and how delicate these tiny lives that I’m responsible for can really be. Hug your kids tonight and revow to keep them safe.