Warm lump of motherly love
Turns out there is no good way to photograph an injury on your rear end that you intend to post on the internet. There is no angle, no camera setting, that does not immediately say HEINIE!
So I’ll have to tell you, instead, with my powerful words of … telling stuff.
I can’t sleep right now, because I have a throbbing, heart-shaped bruise on my left hip. I’ve been thinking of it as my heart-shaped bruise of love, because it’s an injury I sustained while mucking around on the rocks in the creek at Double Rock Park. And I was mucking around on the rocks in the creek at Double Rock Park because that is what Owen loves dearly to do, and I dearly love him, so I do what I can to see that squinty, happy smile he does.
You may be able to tell, from my hockey-player’s toothless grin, that I am less graceful than most people. I have a strong tendency to meet the ground with body parts other than my feet. Between the moment I lose my balance and the moment I hit the earth, my body also forgets how to brace itself for impact. So I usually land pretty hard. Today I was following my little explorer up the banks of the creek when I stepped on a slime-covered rock and landed on my endside in three inches of orange-ish, germy, foamy water, watching my right Birkenstock sail downstream and hoping I caught it before it hit the pool with the dead worm in it (having already reconnoitered the area, I knew what horrors lay below). In that regard, at least, luck was in my corner. Sandal was retrieved in short order; with wet shorts, though, dignity was much harder to reclaim.
But later this evening, as I stared, fascinated, over my shoulder at my tangible proof of maternal sacrifice, I understood that river-smelly sandals and an alarmingly hot-to-the-touch butt bruise are a small price to pay for the mental photograph I captured today. My little brave son, standing with his chest thrust out on a smooth rock precipice 15 feet above me, dappled by leaf shade, shading his eyes against the glare and surveying his conquered territory. Seeing him as I knew he wanted to be seen — not as a preschooler in galoshes, but as a strong, clever swashbuckler, able to leap from rock to rock, outsmart his enemies and protect his loved ones from danger.
He loves the river, and I love him, therefore I love the river. Even when it bites me in the ass.
That’s unheard-of in this house.
I’m going to tell you this, but you have to promise you won’t get jealous.
You know how the kids always wake up between 6:09 and 6:15? Usually screaming their fool heads off about something, so that your dreams are pierced by a sound far worse than any clock-radio could produce?
Yeah. This morning I didn’t get out of bed until — and please notice the excited italics here — 7:45 in the a.m. And then only because I figured somebody had to be hungry.
I first awoke at five after seven, which is itself a luxury, of course. What met my ears were not cries of “Ma! I want my cereal!” or “Waaaaaah!” but the hushed giggles of two hooligans in cahoots. I waited patiently, eyes closed, buried nose-deep under the quilt, praying to the Almighty that I could stay there just a little longer. I was certain, because history had evidence to back me up, that it would be a matter of sheer seconds before the wailing set in.
It did not.
The unmistakable thump of the crib hitting the wall issued forth. Springs bounced. The giggles escalated into shrieks of laughter. I peeped one eye open; surely something awful was happening. Perhaps an early-bird intruder, hopped up on some Colombian joe and reeking of McMuffin, had just broken in with kidnapping on his mind. But then: why the giggles? Even a bacon-bearing burglar would surely arouse some sort of suspicion in these kids.
The laughter subsided to whispers and giggles again. I could hear pages turning. Presumably some other stuff happened but I believe I dozed off for half an hour then.
Next thing I know it’s twenty to eight, and I’m still warm and cozy in my bed, and further emanances from the children’s room seemed to indicate their continued safe presence. I realized that the goobers must be starving for their Apple Jacks and YoBaby, so I reluctantly left my nest and opened their door.
Two bright, smiling heads popped up above the crib rail. A more beautiful sight I have never, ever seen. My sons, my two sons, playing together. By themselves. In the morning.
It’s enough to make a girl give up complaining altogether.
I just won the gold in Feeling Sorry For Myself
Things are kind of difficult these days. Cormac was up five times last night — 10, 11, 1, 4, 5. Screaming his adorably irritating fool head off for no discernible reason. Then my day starts and it’s pretty much child-wrangling for nine hours, at which point I change clothes and go to work in a night office (very unlike the night kitchen, understand). Then I come home and read for an hour and go to bed, praying to get a few hours’ uninterrupted sleep before waking up and doing it again tomorrow.
I can barely keep up with the laundry or the dishes. My children are woefully under-entertained. I cant’ really write about my feelings here or anything more than superficial “I went to the dentist” crap because I would like at some point to secure a new job, if we ever move to Pennsylvania, and I know I’m quite Googlable and, despite being and excellent worker and knowledgable in my field, nobody wants to hire (or insure, healthwise) a visual journalist who writes about her chronic bowel disorder or introversion or how she hates snobby rich women at J.Crew standing around blocking the aisles as she tries to maneuver her chain-store suburbo-stroller (GOD how rude). Blogging used to be a great outlet for me, but these days the drowning economy has me terrified to write anything controversial or revealing or less-than-self-complementary for fear of never getting hired again. Are all the blogging mothers out there full-time SAHM-ers? Or otherwise disconnected from the corporate world? How can this be? Perhaps I just need a college-ruled notebook and a mechanical pencil instead of the internet.
I think most (all? a lot?) of it is A.) taking care of two kids under three is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and I have taught high school, and B.) ongoing, maddening sleep-deprivation. I feel trapped at home with the children and unable to pee in private, much less spend time working on hobbies or yoga, and — well, I’m feeling rather sorry for myself. I know that there are things I should be doing to foster my support network, but instead I have let friendships lapse or wilt because I can’t bring myself to try to have a phone conversation with two monkeys screaming in my ear. I can barely get the house tidy enough to invite our friends over. Thinking of hiring a baby-sitter makes me practically narcoleptic. There’s a church right up the street that is probably crawling with youngish moms, but then I’d have to overcome my blazing atheism and pretend to believe in the Good Book.
And to top it off, I feel like a failure at failing because my own mother did this stay-at-home mom thing six times over. Six kids. I only have two and I want to put my head in a blender.
I love the little buggers, obviously. I hear they are quite cute and entertaining from an outsider’s perspective. But nine hours a day (only nine! some moms do much more) with just a high-pitched screeching for company has me in tears every night at 2 a.m. for that last head-patting trip to the kids’ room.
I have so many things I want to do. I know I could make some really great sewn objects if I only had a half-a-tick to myself.
And this doesn’t even address the larger and more pervasive late-quarterlife crisis, in which I ponder the uselessness of humanity’s short time on earth (i.e, “What’s It All About”) and my own particular brand of uselessness in particular. It’s coming to terms with the fact that I am never going to write a book, because somebody else has already written a book. What’s the point. I do not have the Type A personality needed to translate blogging into a lucrative career. In fact, I might as well be Type Z, and that doesn’t translate into much of anything except feeling exquisitely put-upon and wishing to retire, hermetlike, with a cup of coffee and a Do Not Disturb sign on my sewing-room door.
I think that’s my curse in life. To be able to see greatness from a distance (other people’s greatness, I mean) and appreciate it and all the hard work it entails and enjoy its fruits but with the full, depressing knowledge that I could never duplicate it, either through inertia or because a certain somebody needs to have his bottom wiped AGAIN, wtf.
Plus, his smiles make the world sing
Reprinted from another, private online forum in which I was ruminating on my youngest:
breakthrough Duh moment over the weekend. We were at the grocery store, shopping, waiting in line. Iain had taken Owen to the truck to pull up and wait for Mac and I, who were waiting to pay for the groceries. Checker was all up in Mac’s face. But he was all up in hers, too — grabbing at her plastic bags, talking at her, trying to type on the keypad, trying to take things from her — no stranger danger at all, whereas his brother would have been studiously avoiding eye contact and turning red. I was reminded of an instance a week or two ago, when I was vacuuming. Mac came right up and started yelling at the vacuum. It was messing his shit up and so he got up at the vac to tell it so. Suddenly, I realized — the character traits that I had been seeing as ornery, exhausting, difficult, just plain loud, could be spun in a different way. He stands up for himself, he is assertive. Here is a kid, unlike Owen, who takes no guff from anyone — not his mama, not the vacuum, and not the checker at the grocery store. He’s exactly the way I wish I was.
For all the times I’ve sighed and called him difficult, I’m posting this, to remember that “difficult” is nothing but a transitory experience, five minutes’ confrontation between distinct personalities and objectives, and that perspective is everything.
And, just for a change of pace, Cormac was as golden, warm and fuzzy as a Retriever puppy today. He played with his brother, rode sidesaddle on my hip this afternoon, silently taking in our guests, and obligingly ate most of his dinner.
There is also this:
It’s also a good reminder to me not to judge a kid solely on his louder qualities, but on his good ones, too — he is a total dream to take places, never throws a fuss in public but stares wide-eyed at everything going on. He throws himself into me for hugs and kisses, still likes to chomp on my chin, and I even saw him today trying to wear Owen’s pirate hat [which was so cute I wanted to die]. In fact, today was such a good day that I’m trying to remember what the heck I’ve been complaining about before.
I like to joke about my little Gemini baby running hot or cold and never in between, and he does — that’s what I love about him so fiercely. He, at ten months old, has strength of character to a degree I can only dream of attaining. I’m proud he’s mine.
I didn’t forget your list
Via Mamaneena, the girl who gave me rides to school in 10th grade, I stumbled upon I Invented Motherhood, who linked to Three Beautiful Things: “Every day I want to record three things that have given me pleasure.” Nice idea.
- Seeing Owen’s grinning face peering out of the front window of our house as I retrieved his pirate spyglass (a paper towel tube) from the back seat of my car. You’d think I’d fetched him actual buried treasure, such was his glee.
- Watching Cormac, 9 months, sitting on his rump a few paces away from his big brother, trying to color in a coloring book and glancing up at Owen now and then for pointers on technique.
- Peanut butter eggs. At this rate there will be nothing left for the Easter Bunny to get credit for.
Reasons I dislike story hour
- Other people’s kids
- Other people’s kids’ moms
- wondering how to hit on the one cool mom for a mommy date* without seeming, you know, too desperate
- the clapping
- the singing
- not doing the clapping or the singing and feeling like an ogre
- trying to get there on time
- trying to get out of there without incident or accident
And yet, I feel it’s my motherly duty to my preschooler to get him out of the house and in the company of other kids his age. The sacrifices we make …
*mommy dating: the process whereby one mom tries to pick up another mom at a mom-like location (library, tot lot, story hour) for future friendly activities with the children. I suck at it, way more than I sucked at regular straight-people dating, and that was pretty bad.
Second shift
Much like clockwork, on the nights I work at the office, I can count on:
- One or both children waking at 1 or 3 a.m.
- One or both children waking at 5 a.m.
- One or both children having a leaky diaper/pullup
- One or both children having a:
- cow
- conniption or
- fit
- my husband wearing an expression of:
- grim determination
- sad contemplation (ships passing, etc)
- bitter resignation or
- defeat
It keeps us in carseats, but never let it be said that this is the easy way to have a two-income household.
Never take your babies to the mall.
Oy! I always think it will be an enjoyable capitalist experience but it always makes me nauseated in some form or another. So last week, at my wit’s end, I remembered that the Murder Mall (where that professor guy was shot in the parking lot) has an indoor playground called Tiny Tot Town or somesuch saccharine swill. I promptly readied my offspring for the trip and, two hours later, when everyone finally had no urine stains on their pants (I’m not naming names, here, PRESCHOOLER), we set off.
Here’s what you do. You got to park on the fourth level, because that’s the level the Apple store is on, and you cannot go to the mall without stopping to lay some drool on Steve Jobs’ babies. Unload the stroller that is almost as big as your sedan. Do it without injuring yourself this time. Unbuckle the preschooler from his car seat and force him into the stroller. Walk around to unbuckle the baby and realize that he’s finally fallen asleep in the seven minutes it took to drive here. Do you: resign yourself, fold your child, your stroller and yourself back into the car and drive around aimlessly for two hours so he will remain asleep? No. You are out of gas. Also, peckish. The baby will survive.
So you unbuckle the baby as gently as humanly possible and carefully set him in the stroller, which, by the way, is not a double stroller, because you are a cheap bastard and those things are like $200. It is a stroller meant for one kid but you always fold the seat back so you can squash both of them in there and no one has arrested you yet. So you gently, carefully, quietly lay the baby in the back of the stroller, with each leg gently resting against the preschooler occupying the forward space, and thank God that he didn’t wake up. Lock the car so that no one will steal your cheerios and mismatched mittens. Turn around and see that your preschooler is plonking his Star Wars Sand Trooper against the baby’s (red, wailing) face.
Restrain yourself. You may wish to leave the parking lot for this, but you should probably stay near the kids.
Still with me? Now you have to get into the mall. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and hoodlums with a conscience will be smoking near the entrance, ready and willing to hold the double doors for you and your Continental of a child-moving device. But usually it is hairstylists on a smoke break, and they don’t hold doors. Fortunately you are lithe. Bend backwards, grasp the door with your left hand, push the stroller with your right, and tell your children to keep their legs, arms and heads inside the vehicle until the ride comes to a complete stop. Inevitably, someone will be mildly injured, but it is nothing that several Gerber Puffs won’t amnesiate.
Amnesiate.
OK! Onward! It’s 12 noon and you are famished, and you promised the preschooler a hotdog, and the baby doesn’t understand why he’s being jostled about. Head to the food court. But brave the Elevator Button Tantrum you know is coming — it’s best just to let him push it a few times, and then, when he’s distracted, push it firmly yourself so the car actually arrives. Head on down to Boardwalk Fries. Order the hotdog, and some french fries. And a coke. And for dog’s sake, get the nacho cheese for dipping. I would recommend ordering a beverage for the kid, too, because once you’re seated and have the baby in the high chair and the preschooler half-undressed with a napkin tucked into his t-shirt, there is no getting back in line.
Feeding children at a food court is no more difficult than feeding them at home. Mind the adolescent girls, though. They will make funny faces and talk in pipsqueaked voices to the kids, flirting and cooing. They will ignore you completely but your children? They love. Which works out because they keep the kids occupied while you wolf down your fries. Here’s a tip: Make sure your lunch is not the same color as your baby’s baby food. Otherwise you will, without fail, dip your french fry into Gerber Stage Two Sweet Potato Casserole rather than the nacho cheese God intended. You can’t spit it out, either, because you are in public. At a food court. Where teenagers and security guards are. Also, I suppose that would be gross. I guess.
Make sure you take three times as many napkins as you feel comfortable taking. Take an embarrassing amount of napkins. You will use them all and want to steal more.
When everyone is fed, it’s time to wander aimlessly along the third level, hoping for an elevator that will take you to floors one and two. Hint: It’s by Nordstrom. This will let you out near H&M, where you can laugh at the skinny young people buying fashionable clothes that will remain unbarfed upon for hours, and then only receiving barf that has a high Jack and Coke content. On the inside, they are jealous of you and your sturdy hips, and your practical shoes. It’s best not to remind them of what they are missing. No, press onward: cock your ear for the headsplitting shrieks that herald the open doors of Tiny Tot Town and its Tiny Community Association. Park your stroller, but don’t leave anything of value underneath it, because frankly, I don’t trust the kind of people who take their children to a mall playground. They’d probably get fake cheese on your Graco, maybe steal your diaper bag. I realize that I consume fake cheese and take my own children to a mall playground but at least I am not conducting cold calls to international residents like the ponytailed man sitting in the corner, taking notes on a clipboard and not even pretending to be watching over a kid. He must rack up some kind of minutes on that phone of his. (“Is this Maria? Maria? Is there a Maria there? Maria. Is there one? I’m trying to reach a Maria?”) Don’t sit next to that guy.
Otherwise, it doesn’t matter quite where you sit, because this place has zero visibility. Kids are hanging from the rafters but you can’t see them. There’s some sort of bend in time-space, maybe a mirage/light refraction thing going on, because no matter where you sit you will not be able to see more than three feet on either side of you. It might be better if you remember to bring a bell to tie around your preschooler’s neck. If you don’t hear it jingling, you’ll know to alert mall security.
Oh, and just when you remove your kid’s shoes and shove him off into the jungle of strange, germy, strangey kids, your other child, the baby, will just … how can I euphemize this? He will drop one. A big one. The smell alone will alienate other parents from your bench.
You have two choices: Pretend it didn’t happen, leaving your precious infant to stew in rash-causing matter. Gross. Or, change him right there, knowing the risk of getting diaper-blowout poop everywhere. Also gross. You could call that diaper Morton’s Fork. I leave the decision up to you, as an individual, and your public-poop comfort level.
Once you’ve made peace with your decision, try to find your kid so you can take a cameraphone shot of him having a good time. You’ll be able to wield it as proof, later, when your spouse wonders why you let the kids watch so much TV — because getting them out of the house is a motherfucker, that’s why. Only, guess what? You can’t find the kid! I told you to bring a bell.
This portion will get your heart racing and really test your reflexes, because you’ll need to hang on to your baby as you run around the Greater Metropolitan Tiny Tot Area, panicked. Don’t worry, your kid is safe. He is laying on his back at the foot of the slide, having some sort of moody, adolescent crisis because the boy in the cool Ravens jersey isn’t playing with him. Tip: Never let them see you sweat. Kids can smell fear, as you know. Pretend you were just going to remind him of how much fun he’s having; otherwise, be prepared for a meltdown. Actually, prepare for a meltdown, regardless. In T-minus three minutes, your baby is going to finally vocalize his opinion of a napless afternoon, and you are going to have to convince a preschooler at the zenith of a good time to put his shoes on and go home.
It’s time to withdraw the troops before further casualties occur. Once the screaming subsides, package the kids up in the stroller and aim for the elevator. Kick yourself for parking near the Apple store, which will taunt you with teeny, glossy, touch-screened sirens. Kick yourself for spilling the last of your Coke. Kick yourself for — oh, any number of things. But the kicking can wait until you’ve figured out a way to get you and your precious cargo up three floors and out the double doors without causing harm to innocent bystanders. If you can manage that, I’ve got a country for you to run.
Or at the very least, two precious children for you to baby-sit.
I will refrain from going into any further detail
Today’s list: Colors of Poop I have witnessed.
If you are a parent, you will understand. If you are not: I know, it’s gross. But that’s motherhood for you. You have been warned.
- green
- yellow
- orange
- red
- teal
- white
Save my brain
I have definitely emerged from the post-partum cloud, that mist that decends in the later half of the third trimester and persists well after the baby is born, the fog that keeps you microscopically attuned to your offspring’s output, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else happening in the outside world.
But now I fear: is it gone, that brain I once had? Will I ever be able to correctly string together an articulate sentence again? (Case in point: the preceding sentence.) Or am I, to my children’s peril, doomed to forever making up words and discussing nothing more perplexing than the plot of Disney’s Aladdin?
I’m asking you: what’s the number one thing I should be doing so this mushroom between my ears doesn’t atrophy? What should I be doing to ensure my kids are getting some sort of neurological stimulation as well? Save me from myself. All my news comes from watercooler scuttlebutt or the mangled grammar of a three-year-old Pixar devotee. I feel as though I owe my children a bit more than a mummy who, on her best day, lets her kids make muffins from a boxed mix and takes them to the Tiny Tot Town at the mall. Help me.
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