One Perfect Mess

Archive for September, 2009

“He is ALL boy”

I saw that phrase every now and again before I had my son but it has a whole new meaning to me now. I just can’t even imagine what I am in for when he gets a little older. The Weebles was slow to move about, endlessly fascinated with details and manipulating objects. Not my Peanut. He wants to GO GO GO. He spent weeks consumed with learning to crawl, trying to move himself across the floor on sheer will alone. Once he got the hang of that he didn’t even pause to enjoy the triumph, he immediately went on to figuring out how to pull up. Now he spends the majority of his waking hours, and there’s lots of those on account of the fact he doesn’t nap, standing up. Even at three in the morning when he wakes to nurse he’s standing up waiting for me. I can finally get him to play with a few things if his sister is also playing alongside him but he still has most of his focus on motion with very little regard for his well being.

Today he climbed into his sister’s Anywhere Chair and then used it to climb up on the sofa. I also caught him in his bouncy seat standing up with no hands bouncing. It looked like some sort of odd baby chair surfing experiment. I didn’t anticipate this kind of recklessness until at least three or four. At the rate he is going he’ll be wrecking the family car before he gets to middle school. I foresee meeting a lot of deductibles in the future….

The kind my kids dole out to me on a daily basis… I have never encountered anything so physically demanding as parenting two small children. Even totally discounting what pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding do to you it is a tough gig. I have had my eyes and faced scratched, multiple times, by those razor sharp little nails. I have been kicked and smacked every imaginable place. And the head butts… oh my goodness my children have hard heads. It never seems to faze them in the least which I don’t understand. I will be on the floor seeing stars after getting a thrashing head to the nose and they just go right on like they didn’t even notice.

I think the most challenging part though is the baby wrangling. Holding a wildly flailing child still while I desperately try to put on clothes or a diaper really takes it out of me. And on a good day I get to repeat this two dozen times. With my son it is still just a flip and crawl maneuver. But when he wants to roll over it takes every big of strength I can muster to keep him from doing so. I don’t know how that kid got so strong. (Yes, I’ve tried giving him a toy to hold. He gladly takes it, then flips over to look at it.) With my daughter she just gets up and runs off. Her favorite it to get on our bed and jump up and down going “Look at me mommy! Look at me!” She knows I can’t reach her on the other side of the bed. So I’ll have to go around and by that time she’s gone out of reach again. Sigh. Then there’s carrying them around. That is a whole different breed of wrangling. Peanut really isn’t into being carried. He’ll tolerate it for a few minutes but then he starts pushing off with his arms and legs and occasionally just throwing his head forward toward the floor with no warning trying to get down. I often wonder how it is I don’t have bodybuilder arms by now as much lifting and carrying as I do. How many activity points do I get for hauling a two year old out of Target mid-tantrum?

So how’s that 9 month sleep regression treating you? I am feeling pretty darn tired. The Peanut has been waking up at four in the morning the last few days. It is a little hard not to break down in tears at four in the morning when you realize that chances are pretty good you won’t get any more sleep until bedtime. Then once you finally wrangle both kids down to bed it ends up being 8:30-9 and hell you kinda want a few minutes to zone out online or just exist in general without a small person demanding your attention. So no matter how many times throughout the day I swear “I am going to bed just as soon as the Weebles does and catch up on sleep…” I just never do.

Exhaustion makes me very very cranky. I found myself snapping at the kids today and if they were behaving the way I was they would’ve gotten time outs for sure. I’m hoping to catch up on some sleep this weekend. This cool rainy night is the perfect start!

* This is the second day in a row both kids have taken a significant nap at the same time. I would think it was just a dream, but I don’t sleep long enough at a stretch to have those.

* I have to take the Weebles to the allergist this afternoon. They conveniently moved their office since last year so now it is a good 45 minutes away. Not looking forward to that drive in rush hour traffic. I’m really hoping that she’s outgrown her egg allergy but for some reason I doubt it. It will really suck if she has to go through her whole life avoiding foods without egg in them. It makes ordering pasta, baked goods, hell even a sandwich risky business.

* Dear Cats, You are walking on thin ice here. You know I love you.. but the pee in my basket of clean laundry this morning coupled with the fact that three of you got in a cat fight right outside the nursery during aforementioned naptime has me rethinking this whole arrangement. Get your act together, mmmkay? Love, me

* I bought my first Christmas present today. It is hard to believe it is already the first day of fall. I am so ready for the cooler weather so I can take the kids outside more. I always love the summer for about the first week… after that I’m ready for the heat and humidity to go away.

* I found out this weekend that the Type A Mom Conference is in Asheville. I knew it was coming up but had no idea where it was being held. My father in law said “hey I think there’s some big mommy blogger thing coming to town” and handed me an article on it. It’s way too short notice for this year, but I will definitely put it on my calendar for next year. Would love to see some of my favorite bloggers speak.

* I think I’m going to like this random Tuesday thing. See you next week!

It has become evident to me, yet again, that there were a few things I didn’t consider when having kids. One of them became clear to me this weekend when we took the kids to the park. Weebles is really getting into the spirit of the playground. After a couple of minutes getting her bearings she’ll climb right on up and start playing. She especially loves all the other kids.

Now I do realize that there are two structures for a reason. One is for little kids like her and the other is geared more towards the bigger kids. So when she insists on going over to the big kid side I do understand that we are the ones that are out of place. That being said… I still think that children should be taught to be careful of others. Ten year olds that insist on running up the slides and then jumping from the top of the 12 foot high structure really should be given a warning by their parents that they could hurt the children trying to use the slide properly and they also could very well break their own leg in the process. Watching my tiny child way up there with some of her new tiny friends try to jump out of the way of the onslaught of large children going the wrong way as they were trying to slide down the slide brought out the mama bear in me. I didn’t say anything… I didn’t even give the one particular offender the look. At least not at first. This little jerk at one point nearly knocked my daughter over and she was leaning down to sit on the slide. He ran down the slide totally out of control and nearly ran into me where I had been waiting to greet my girlie after her ride down. He then looked me right in the eye and said “I’m gonna kill you!” before running off.

Now… ahem. You have to give me credit here because I didn’t say a word to him. But I very nearly said “I’d like to see you try you little fucker…” and I’m not really sure what stopped me. Clearly I’m glad I didn’t because he’s just a kid, even if he IS a little fucker and his parents should teach him better. But I realized that I’m going to be spending a lot of time with children that aren’t mine and some of them I’m just plain not going to like. How do YOU handle the insane out of control kids at the playground?

So today I took a shower. You SAHM’s know where I’m comin’ from right? Yeah. So today was shower day. My son naps like twelve minutes at a time so you can forget about trying to gather my toddler and get downstairs and wait for the water to heat up (don’t get me started on that…) and take a shower before he wakes up. So the upshot is I have to find a way to take a shower with two small mobile children in the bathroom with me. They keep me young…

Anyhoo, so I closed the closet doors and tried to secure things the best I could and hopped in. Of course the Weebles’ instantly was all about getting in too. I’ve found it is far easier to just comply with this request so trying not to drip all over the carpet I yanked her pajamas off. But she couldn’t just get in. Noooo, she must first gather all manner of bath toys to throw in too. Because, hey! rubber duckies are fun in the shower too right? Right? **crickets** As I was waiting for her to finally get in, cold air pouring in through the open door, Peanut hauls it over and tries to crawl in too. This is where I draw the line. So I’m balancing on one foot using the other to hold him back and while encouraging the Weebs to hurry up. Finally she gets in and I shut the door. Peanut takes up his spot pressed up against the doors banging with his little hands to get in. Finally. I get to the business of trying to wash my hair while the daily chorus of “Mommy doonee?” (Mommy what are you doing?) starts up.

“Mommy doonee?” – Weebles
“Washing my hair honey” – me
“Mommy doonee? – Weebles
“Washing my hair” – me
“Mommy…” – Weebles
“Hey! What is duckie doing??” – me

Ahhh she’s diverted. So where was I… oh yeah where’s the shampoo? Hmm wait where’d the Peanut go? I open the door to see my EIGHT MONTH OLD pretending he’s really fourteen months or so climbing the little staircase that we have so that Weeb’s can reach the sink. He was STANDING ON THE TOP STEP holding onto the counter. HOLY MOTHER OF #$(#$)(*#)$ I jump out of the shower and run across the room to grab him. Whew… still alive. Better hurry up I think. Just as I’m getting back in I see the Weebles’ making a horrible face and batting at her tongue going Mommy, Mommy, Mommy… there was blue stuff all over her tongue. What the hell is blue in here?? I start frantically looking at bottles. Andrew’s body wash. I see. Weebs is freaking out and wants out of the shower. So I carefully opened the door so as not to knock the poor Peanut over who had resumed his spot at the door and out she went. As I was hastily rinsing my hair I heard the bathroom door open. Oh great. I reach out to grab my towel only to realize it is gone. Dripping wet I chased my crawling (who knew you could crawl so darn fast?) infant out of the bathroom. I found my towel discarded in the middle of the living room. By that time both kids were sitting in front of the big screen watching Pinky Dinky Doo. Why didn’t I think to put them in front of the TV in the first place???

It seems my two year old has decided she no longer wants to take a nap in the middle of the day. Please excuse me while I wipe the tears in my eyes… seriously. I am praying this is just a temporary thing because mama NEEDS that nap like a fish needs water. She really needs it too. The days she hasn’t napped she has gone down hard after dinner and most of the late afternoon/evening she is a beast to deal with. Another change I suppose is that I have stopped trying everything in my power to get her to sleep. I used to would lie down with her as long as it took but with a much more active baby in the house I just can’t justify leaving him strapped into his bouncy seat watching TV any longer than necessary. So a few stories and a few minutes of cuddles and that’s it. I’m up with a promise to come check on her. That actually worked one day but it hasn’t worked since. I’m sort of at a loss. Until then I’ve been making her stay in the bed for at least an hour even if she is reading books and singing. It certainly isn’t the same for me as having her asleep, but at least it is something.