Tag Archives: children

Winning Parenting Moments

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We all have those moments. (Don’t we??) You know, the times when you’re glad you’re not overheard or observed because you absolutely suck as a parent. Being the mom who makes you feel better about your parenting, I can assure you that I have lots of these moments. Here are a couple from just the last week:

me: L, you choose how to behave. Think about what you’re about to do. Think about your choices. (<—- Good parenting)

L: No! YOU think about YOUR choices! (<—- Bad child)

me: Trust me, I am. Right now I’m thinking about my choice to have kids! (<— Bad parenting)

Yup, that’s right. In a moment of anger I told my 5-year-old that I’m rethinking things, and in retrospect, I think that maybe I won’t go off the pill after all. Instead, I choose to be thin, well-rested and rich. I wiggled my nose but nothing happened.

I’m not the only crappy parent in my house. Here’s one for the menfolk:

L: (bouncing a ball in the house after being told not to) See? I didn’t break anything, so HA! (<—- Obnoxious child)

T: If you bounce that ball in here again you will have to sleep outside for the rest of your life. (<—- Bad parenting)

There’s something about one’s own children that can bring a person to his/her worst self in a matter of seconds. I can be a totally happy, reasonable grown-up one minute and with the smallest of efforts, one of my kids can transform me into my 3-year-old self. I’ve stomped feet. I’ve cried. I’ve yelled. I’ve threatened ridiculous things that no one believes.

How do they do it? Why are they so freaking good at it?

As an adult I have a multitude of jobs and responsibilities, some I’m pretty good at, some passable, and some not so good. As kids, my children only have one job: to find our buttons and push them. It’s all they work on day and night and they are brilliant at it. Truly, they have extraordinary innate talent and unflappable dedication to practicing their craft and sharpening their knives skills. I can try to keep a poker face, even succeed once in a while, but eventually they will get to me. They win every.single.time. Each win strengthens their resolve and their little hearts get just a little blacker.

So, if you don’t think your sweet little children have evil in their hearts, if you haven’t threatened to turn them out of your home forever, and if you haven’t tried to use witchcraft to make it all disappear, then you are doing better than at least one other mother. Congratulations.

Imaginative or Just Nuts?

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I’ve decided that imagination is nothing more than a euphemism for freaking crazy. As parents we want our kids to be as crazy as possible, and then suddenly, when they become adults, we want them to stop being crazy. Crazy to the core, right now my kids are obsessed with magic balls.

These balls are invisible, naturally, and magical. They are apparently great fun to play with, but get lost easily. As they are siblings and therefore able to fight about anything, my kids have come to blows and melted down into tears over these balls. How do you referee a fight where one kid takes and hides the other’s magic ball without destroying the crazy imagination we’re trying to foster? What about helping a child recover a lost magic ball?

The other night L had a complete breakdown. I’m talking a good half hour of sobbing despondence over a lost magic ball. Apparently S snatched it out of his hand and threw it aside. We all know that objects she throws go in any direction except the expected direction, so there was no telling where the magic ball may have landed and rolled to. I tried to tempt him with a new magic ball that I happened to have in my pocket. (I’m always prepared.) This would not do. He wanted his magic ball.

It was not until the next time we encountered the problem of lost magic balls that I came up with an infallible solution. Magic balls, in case you didn’t know, always return to their owner if said owner sings a song. The tune doesn’t matter, but the words need to roughly be “magic ball, magic ball, come back to me, come back to me…” 

I now have videos of both kids walking around the lawn singing individual variations of this song and happily reuniting with their errant magic balls. I told you they were crazy.

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We’re Ba-ack!

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We’re home! We made it. A little worse for wear and without our luggage, but home nonetheless. How to write a post that encompasses the last 3 weeks? It’s impossible. So, here are some random things:

  • New Zealand is awesome. Getting there is not.
  • Right now in NZ the summer is waning into autumn, which means that we had perfectly perfect weather. The kind of weather where you can be outside all day in a t-shirt without being too hot or too cold. I can’t tell you the temperatures, because they’re in Celsius and therefore meaningless to me. It was warm enough for the beach, but not quite warm enough to swim, which did not stop the male members of my family from doing so.
  • We spent a lot of our time on the road visiting with old friends and family. New Zealand is breathtakingly beautiful and the kids couldn’t possibly give a smaller crap about the scenery. They can’t be bothered to look up from their Leapsters to take in the view, no matter that the view may be from a death-defying perch on a twisty narrow road overlooking the sea, sheep-dotted hills, and snow-capped mountains.
  • For us, driving in New Zealand is a 2-man job. 1 person actually operates the vehicle, and the other sits shotgun reminding the driver to stay on the left-hand side of the road.
  • On long haul flights children do not sleep. On short flights those same children fall into the soundest sleep possible and need to be roused upon landing. Of course, this sleep pattern is unexpected, no matter how many times it happens, so the children are not outfitted with the necessary pull-up on those short flights. Did S pee a full bladder’s worth on two separate occasions in her plane’s seat? Yes, yes she did.
  • Children will ask “are we there yet?” and “are we in the sky yet?” before the plane has taxied away from the terminal.
  • When asked what his favorite part of New Zealand was, L will say that it was playing on my iPad on the planes.
  • Thanks to my mother-in-law, T and I were able to spend more time alone together than we have in years.
  • Despite being told prior to our sea kayaking outing that we will either encounter a hundred dolphins or none, T and I saw one dolphin. Considering that dolphins are social creatures and generally are not found alone, we figured this dolphin is probably a real jackass.
  • Unlike their sleepy adult counterparts, when children experience jet lag, they want to be awake. They act like crazy amped-up maniacs and cry every 5-10 minutes from 11:30 PM to 3:30 AM. In related news, I experienced no small joy when I got to wake my sleeping cherubs up this morning. It was a lights on, blankets ripped off kind of experience for them.

So there you have it. I’m back online and happy to be here. I’m exhausted and in Xanax detox. I still don’t have my luggage.

 

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My Stress, Their Fun

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I’m going to New Zealand in 11 days. The mere thought of it makes my heart race and my palms sweat. I know that complaining about travelling to New Zealand seems like a major no-no, but please consider this: 2 hours in airport A; 6 hour flight; 5 hours in airport B; 14 hour flight; 2 hours in airport C; 2 hour flight. This actually adds up to 31 hours of travel time. Insert 2-year-old and nearly 5-year-old. Insert jet lag. Insert airport waits that go past bed time. Insert my anxiety about flying in general. And that brings us to panic attacks.

My anxiety over my upcoming trip has an unexpected side effect: I can’t handle sitting around idly because my mind starts racing with all I have to bring/endure for the extraordinarily long trip with 2 small kids in tow.

So, I’ve been keeping busy. Which is great for my kids. Today, instead of trying to entertain ourselves at home or with tired activities like errands and the library, I decided to give them a great day out. I took them here:

So many ways to get tired, so little time

Only one of them responds to "1, 2, 3, jump!"

In another room I even forked up the cash for the merry-go-round. It was 11 seconds of pure adrenaline and bliss for a mere $0.50.

When the kids got cranky, I took them out to lunch where I downed more coffee and they had grilled cheese and strawberry milk. (Holy shit strawberry milk is delicious!) Did we head straight home? Nope. We went back to play some more. I’m that awesome.

All in all, it was a good day out and now I feel like I deserve a medal. Is this what you good moms do all the time? It’s totally exhausting. Don’t get me wrong; I wanted it to be totally exhausting, but I was hoping this would be the effect on them, not me.

Worst parts:

  1. L complaining that he was bored;
  2. L begging for every scrap of junk food the snack area offered;
  3. S playing with the “tiny, tiny garbage cans” in the ladies’ bathroom stalls;
  4. L noticing same cans and also playing with them;
  5. Having to climb into the climbing structure to haul the kids out when it was time to go.
But the very, very, very worst part? That would be the kids complaining about the long, boring (30 minute) drive. If sitting in a car for 30 minutes is that painful for them, how in the world are any of us going to survive our trip to New Zealand? And here we go with the panic attacks again…

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I Suck More Than You Do

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I imagine that the relationships between other mothers and their young (toddler-preschooler) children remain pretty consistently good. Sure there are challenges along the way, but the actual relationship is warm, loving, supportive, not-strained. For some reason, my relationship with L has never been like this. We go through periods where we get along OK, but inevitably every few months we end up back to butting heads over everything.

This is all a surprise to me. I fully expected to need to work on my relationship with my husband, that my relationships with friends would go through ebbs and flows, that my relationships with my siblings and parents would change over time, that my relationships with my kids as they progressed through the teen years into adulthood would have challenges and need extra work. But I never imagined that my biggest struggle would be my relationship with a 4-year-old. What does this say about me?

This is the stuff that’s supposed to just come naturally, right? I’m the mom, therefore my feelings towards my son should involve things like overwhelming love, an overwhelming desire to support him, help him learn and grow, overwhelming wonderment, blah, blah, blah. He’s the child so his feelings towards me should involve things like love, thinking I’m kind of a superhero, thinking I’m the best thing since sliced bread, (despite his overwhelming desire to push boundaries,) etc. I don’t expect a nearly 5-year-old and his mom to never have disagreements, but I would expect the relationship to be straightforward. Ours is not. None of this comes naturally to me. This is all a reflection of my ineptitude. I feel like he is not a child I can parent properly. I am always irritated with him just being him. That can’t be how a mom is supposed to feel.

My “dislike” of all things L isn’t a one way street. He clearly dislikes all things mom too. He always has. He has always worshiped T and somewhat tolerated me. His first sentence was “No Mommy, Daddy!” He used to cry when it was me who came into his room to fetch him from his crib in the morning. And it was me every damn day. He’d throw his toys at me and tell me to go away that he wanted Daddy. Seriously. This started around 10 months of age. Not cool. This preference was supposed to be a phase, but it hasn’t changed one bit.

None of this is right. None of it is how it’s supposed to be. Since he’s the kid, clearly I’m the one doing something wrong. This isn’t a parenting issue that can be solved with trying a new discipline or parenting technique from a book, this is a basic thing that should be natural that I’ve got all wrong. And it’s highlighted daily by the fact that he has a sister who adores me (as she rightly should!) and who I properly adore right back. Even when she’s doing her 2-year-old gig, I “get” her in a way I’ve never gotten L.

I do not want my son to grow up with the constant message that he’s annoying me. But he is annoying me. This whole post makes me sounds like a monster. And I feel like a monster for thinking and feeling this stuff. I feel like it can’t be right. I must be missing some part of me that would make me a good mom for him. I’m hoping there are others out there feeling this! I hope there are others who went through this and now have a wonderful 20-something son to show for it. I just don’t want to ruin this child and I feel like I am.

Family Quality Time, or, Why I Have a Headache

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I’ve had many of rude awakenings on this whole motherhood journey. Most of my lovely images and excited anticipation have been bashed with the hammer of reality. One of these mega-disappointments has been cooking with my kids. I imagined flour smears across cherubic faces, giggles, a few stray egg shells and a bit of a mess but all worth it for the quality family time. Nice image, right? Reality involves much more pushing, crying, illegal knife wielding, disinterest, fingers in noses, and whining to make any of it worth it. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s Saturday. Saturdays are loooooooooong days that need filling. This Saturday’s project: pick a recipe, buy ingredients, cook, eat.

The kids’ interest waned long before any ingredients reached our kitchen. And yet we persevered. Once again, I snapped photos which capture what the experience should be because I know that one day my memory will falter just like everyone’s does. I can show these photos to my future daughter-in-law and prove that I really did treasure every moment. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

My kids are not 6 feet tall. They are standing on a wooden bench.

See S in the corner there? She’s screaming. Nothing is fair. Those shallots in the pan? Burning.

Now I’m holding S. She’s hitting me. And screaming. I wanted L to keep his hat on for the pictures. He threw a fit. “I don’t even care what you want! You don’t even matter anyway!” WTF? Oh well, look how cute the photo is!

S was just beyond miserable by this point. So we offered to turn on the TV for her. L thought that wasn’t fair. He wanted to watch TV. He no longer gave a flying chef’s hat about the sauce. TV! TV! TV! So, in order to have him come back and finish the final steps, which involved a blender for goodness sake, poor S had to just suck it up and cry more.

So, we did it. The kid made tomato sauce that came out great. There was yelling done by all four members of the family. Tears from two. Some wine consumed. A couple of promises of “never again!” got thrown out, and a couple of assurances of “I don’t even care!” thrown right back. When L got overly fresh over dinner T reminded him that I had just done this super nice thing with him. L’s response? “Who cares? Mommy didn’t even do anything. I cooked dinner.” Ah, quality family time on a Saturday afternoon.

 

 

 

 

S-isms Solved

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OK, so here’s the answer key. There were a lot of creative answers and a couple of you got some right. Everyone was stumped by the first and last ones though.

Me eek keys in the boo-koo-montney?

“Me eat cheese in the supermarket?” Can’t go to the market without stopping by the deli for a slice of cheese. Luckily, even if I’m not buying cheese the folks at the deli counter are always willing to give S a slice. Try to get the girl to eat a slice of cheese at home? She’ll have none of it.

Me want more bup in my cup!

“Me want more milk in my cup!” Bup has always been her word for milk. I tried to teach her to say it correctly by having her copy me saying “mmmmm” and then “mmmmm-milk.” But she says “mmmmmm-bup.” Oh well.

Me all done beeking!

“Me all done sleeping!” Naturally, beeking = sleeping. She shouts this over and over again when she wakes up.

(singing) Cakey car ish kittniss!

This one is S singing along to the radio, and I had the pleasure of hearing it for the entire length of a song, and most of the rest of the day. “Taking care of business!” You would have known it if you heard it because girl’s got rhythm.

This was fun. I might add S-isms as a regular feature along with my WTF Tapas. What do you think?

Why 24 Hours Feels Like 30, and Still Isn’t Enough Time

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Here’s the thing about motherhood that I didn’t fully appreciate until at least several months into it (ie: when it was waaaaay too late): it never, ever, ever ends. I mean, of course I knew that, but I didn’t know it. Let’s take last Friday afternoon as an example:

I’m home with just S as L is in school. I get a bunch of things done early in the day and plan on folding 4 loads of laundry and watching my DVR’d episode of Parenthood while she naps. But she doesn’t nap. By 2:30 I knew she wasn’t going to nap but up until that point she just hadn’t napped yet. Therefore, instead of giving up on it and doing anything else, I spent 2 solid hours going upstairs every 10,15, 20 minutes to bring her to the potty, find her lovey, give her a beloved book, rub her back, sing one last song, tell her that she just has to lie there and shut her mouth for long enough to fall asleep…. By the end of it I was exhausted and she was as wide awake as ever. But grumpy. (You and me both, Kid.)

This is when I’d like a break please. No dice.

Instead, I put on my extra-good-mommy-hat and bundle her up in snowpants, boots, hat and gloves – each item met with absolute refusal on her behalf – and take her out to play in the snow. She has a great time, except when snow got in her glove (47 times), when her hat got itchy (18 times), when she fell down (88 times), and each time she was told that if she absolutely had to eat it, to please eat the snow off the lawn and not off the driveway (122 times – seriously, why not go for the fresh white stuff instead of the brown, driven-over crap?). Finally, she had a complaint I just couldn’t fix for her – she wanted to sit in the snow but the snow was cold on her “gushie” (sic). But she wanted to sit in the snow. But it was cold on her gushie. But she wanted to sit… (It’s like she took lessons on How To Be a 2-Year-Old.) So we came back inside where she did not want to take off her boots or snowpants or all the other stuff that she had not wanted to put on just 20 minutes earlier. (She apparently aced those lessons.)

This is where I’d really like to insert a break. Again, no dice. Instead, right after taking off all that stuff, I need to put some of it back on so we can go out and pick up L. Naturally, S falls asleep in the car only to be awoken when we arrive back home. And now she’s pissed. She’s perfected the underfoot cry attack. This is staying just out of sight, but right in your way so that no matter how you move you bump into her and knock her down, which will propel her into a fit of hysterical crying which is simultaneously pathetic and totally annoying. She does this primarily while I’m cooking dinner in a hurry. Her favorite time for the underfoot cry attack is when I’m carrying a pot full of boiling water and pasta to the sink.

Naturally, the food I put down, which I prepared within 10 minutes of arriving home, does not meet my children’s standards. They just don’t want chicken, broccoli and spaghetti - their favorite things. No, you can’t have dessert. Break time? Nope.

Bed time.

Stop running around and let me brush your teeth.
Stop squirming and let me put your PJs on.
Stop jumping on the bed if you want a story.
Lights out.
Lights out.
Seriously, lights out.
Potty? OK.
Now lights out.
I said lights out.
I already hugged you.
I kissed you too.
Is there a fire? Then you should be back in bed.
Lights out.

Break time? Not exactly. I finally “get to” fold the 4 loads of laundry I did earlier today. Then fall into bed exhausted. It all starts again bright an early, if not intermittently overnight.

See, there is no break. No calling in sick. No vacation time, personal days, or long weekends. Your job is right outside your bedroom door; it’s trying to get into your lap while you are on the toilet; it’s touching you with sticky hands no matter what kind of mood you’re in. This is the never-ending part. I just wanted to sit down and relax so many times that day and it just wasn’t in the cards. Even this recap of my day skips over a million other little needs that I tended to every minute. No matter how much effort I put into one moment, it doesn’t buy me any kind of break the next moment. There is no time off, no end date.

Today? I kind of want to call in sick.

 

Marital Bliss, Except at Bedtime

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I’m struggling with something that I imagine is pretty common, especially for couples where one partner is a stay-at-home parent. So, I want to put it out there and hear what you all do to keep your marriages copacetic. Here’s the scenario:

I’ve been home all day with the kids, or even part of the day with some of the kids if it’s a school day. I’ve made dinner, gotten them fed, lived through the first half of the witching hour (which, in my house, is actually 2 hours – from 5-7,) and then my husband comes home at 6ish. The kids get all wild and wound up to see him and immediately start acting like jack-holes. I’m DONE. I need to walk away from these small people. T also feels like he is done. He’s tired from a long day at work. He’s hungry. He doesn’t think that it’s fair for me to just pass the kids off to him when he walks in the door.

Our kids go to bed early. By 6:30 S is asking to go to bed, and L just gets wilder and wilder the longer he stays up so we try to put him down around 7-7:30. That doesn’t leave any time for T to come home, get some unwind time, and then face the kids. Basically, he walks in, gets to eat if he’s lucky, and then it’s bedtime routine time.

We just can’t agree on this. What do you do? I imagine that this scenario plays out in millions of homes every night. We both end up feeling frustrated, under-appreciated, and aggravated.

 

If You Were Good, I Wouldn’t Be Mad

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Lately my temper has been a little short. Like, for the last 35 years or so. I come from a long line of short-tempered people. It’s in the genes and I’ve passed those genes on, unfortunately, to both of my children. When I tell you that we are all borderline crazy, you should believe me.

I’ve been known to blow a gasket if T doesn’t hear whatever random thing I just mumbled. An innocuous “what?” or “sorry?” can send me over the edge if I’m feeling stressed. Luckily, I only feel stressed when I’m awake. I try to balance this particular personality characteristic with lots of charm and humor, but sometimes I know the scales tip the wrong way and T deserves some sort of official recognition for surviving (so far) his marriage to me.

L’s temper isn’t news to anyone. His is a hair-trigger, tripped by the tiniest perceived infraction. Just last night he flew into a rage because he didn’t like the shrimp he already put in his mouth and I didn’t jump right up and get him a paper towel to spit it into when he yelled, “GET ME A PAPER TOWEL RIGHT NOW!!!” The kid had a whole fit and then a time out, and then surprised me when he still had the shrimp in his mouth. Seriously, it was maybe 7 minutes of storing half-chewed, unpleasant shrimp in his cheek. (The shrimp thing has nothing really to do with his temper, but c’mon! 7 minutes of shrimp in his mouth? If nothing else, the kid doesn’t give in easily. He eventually got his paper towel from me.)

And then there’s little S, my darling daughter. She is so sweet, affectionate, and adorable that the temper is always a bit of a surprise to other people. But it’s there! “No, you can’t play with the stapler,” is met with screaming, throwing stuff, hitting, and huge pathetic tears. She’s only 2, so her ability to think rationally, listen rationally, do anything at all rationally is a big fat naught. When she gets pissed, which she does a lot, she gets physically violent. “Me hit L!” She’ll walk up to him with her arm cocked and ready to deploy her worst. Generally, the hitting doesn’t hurt him, so she pulls hair. Poor L *usually* doesn’t hit back but just cries for help and cowers while she has two handfuls of his hair, laughing maniacally. I’ve tried pulling her hair back, to show her that it hurts, but she knows it hurts. That’s why she’s doing it.

A WTF family outing goes something like this:

  • I get flustered and mad getting everything ready;
  • T points out that I’m mad for a fun family outing;
  • I calm down;
  • I ask L to go potty before we leave;
  • he throws a tantrum completely out of scope with a simple potty request – you’d think I asked him to amputate his leg for me;
  • 20 minutes go by while L throws his fit;
  • I get SUPER pissed and scream at him;
  • he pees;
  • we load into the car;
  • S demands a particular song;
  • we say no because if we hear If You’re Happy and You Know it one more time we will drive ourselves straight into a lake;
  • she then throws her lovey and pacifier and screams for their return;
  • they’re returned;
  • she throws them and screams again;
  • repeat last 2 steps several times;
  • I get pissed and yell at her;
  • L gets pissed at me for yelling at his sister;
  • T finally gets pissed because everyone is pissed.

You totally want to come hang out with my family, right?

This cycle is completely destructive, stupid, unnecessary and all my fault. I’m aware of that. I know that I am the one who has to change first, blah, blah, blah. I really do know it. And I try. But The Mad always comes back. It might creep up, or it might jump out of nowhere, but it always finds me.

Every night I promise tomorrow will be better. Every day I break that promise.

It’s just that these people are so damned annoying!

Really? You’re going to throw a fit because I’m asking you to pee as we’re on our way out the door to go to happy-child-run-and-play-and-toys-and-candy-and-funfunfun-land?

And you? You’re going to cry because I took the blender away that you got out of the cabinet and set up and PLUGGED IN during the 1.5 minutes I was in the bathroom?

And what about you? Are you seriously asking me what’s taking me so long while you’re standing there after putting on your own coat but I’m breaking a sweat because I’ve wrestled 2 unwilling children into shoes, coats, hats and gloves and I still haven’t had a chance to pee since I woke up this morning??

Sigh. Is there any hope? Will we ever have an actually fun family outing?