Compare and Contrast

Nothing worse than a maternal pissing-contest. Nobody gets very far and more than likely, you just end up with your own legs getting wet. Alas, they are common and sometimes unavoidable.

I found myself at the table with a competitive mother the other night. Everything I said was met with an attempt to one up. I am an odd mom, though, as my co-blogger Amanda would certainly attest. I am a workaholic in all things while at the same time leaning toward the hippy side of life. Thus, my dear daughter used organic cloth diapers, breast fed (less and less, of course) until 17 months, and ate home made baby food. And I worked full time from the time she was 2 weeks old (luckily, at home for much of the time).

My antagonist at the table, however, thinks breastfeeding is icky, didn’t know they even made cloth diapers anymore, and when I said I made my own baby food almost stabbed me with a fork. I would have pointed out that the trade off was that she is thin and tan, where I am bloated and pasty, but I’m guessing only her date would have laughed. (Honestly, I repeatedly said every mom is different and all kinds of kids are great.)

Interestingly, she asked how my daughter was with tantrums. Now, as we know, I am not unscathed when it comes to this charming aspect of toddler behavior. Oh no. I told her we use the time out chair method and she said that didn’t work for her. I said I had to modify it with social-deprivation (put her in a separate room, facing the wall or she liked being the center of attention in the chair), but my fellow mom said that wouldn’t work either. Her son, as it turns out, mocks her when she scolds him. She said everything she does in terms of discipline inspires him to laugh outright. I will say that while my girl defies me, my mad-mommy voice inspires fear. I would say it is just that I have a meaner mad-mommy voice than my new, uh, friend, but having heard her mad-at-another-mommy voice, I knew she could inspire ill will with her tone.

So I suggested “laying it down hard”: I said, with a dominant dog (do I always come back to dog training? yes, I guess it is my fall back position; I recommended Mother Knows Best, by the way), y0u make the animal earn everything. Food, toys, a walk are all earned through good behavior. I said, take every toy he has away. Stuff ‘em into garbage bags and put them in the garage. Every hour or day or meal he is good, let him pick a toy or book to have back. I could tell she thought I was quite mad. But hey: I never let things get as far as she did with her boy and desperate times call for desperate measures. And since another mom at the table who heard how disrespectful the toddler boy was to his mom, suggested the wooden spoon technique…

Traveling (Wo)Man

I am sitting on the terrace of my room at the Camelback Spa & Resort, 7:30 a.m., 71 degrees with a gentle breeze stirring up the scent of dessert flowers. Days rarely come lovelier. Only I ache for my little one and her father, my husband. Mine is a challenging, satisfying career with perks like working trips to beautiful places like this. Yet mornings like these perfectly capture the dichotomy of the working mom. I spoke with a woman yesterday who “wouldn’t miss this show for anything,” as it is essential for her to make the connections she need to be a successful media representative of one of the largest publishing companies around. Yet this same woman took a read-eye last night, and planned to rush off the plane, head to Dunkin’ Donuts for Munchkins to take to her six year old son’s class birthday party. Wouldn’t miss that for the world either.  

And perhaps even more telling of the difficulty of this balancing act: my conversation with a lovely, female, executive vice president at a company everyone would know. She has battled her way up the ladder with style, finesse, and yes, compromise. She doesn’t have any children but has an almost uncanny knack for recalling the names and ages of everyone else’s kids. I’ve never asked if not having kids was a conscious choice, but when I talked to her over a drink, she moved me in her belief that we must work to bolster the confidence of every teen girl we meet, to help them see their potential, that we must be “good aunties.” I can’t help think she’d have made a pretty great mom, too.

And perhaps even more telling of the difficulty of this balancing act: my conversation with a lovely, female, executive vice president at a company everyone would know. She has battled her way up the ladder with style, finesse, and yes, compromise. She doesn’t have any children but has an almost uncanny knack for recalling the names and ages of everyone else’s kids. I’ve never asked if not having kids was a conscious choice, but when I talked to her over a drink, she moved me in her belief that we must work to bolster the confidence of every teen girl we meet, to help them see their potential, that we must be “good aunties.” I can’t help think she’d have made a pretty great mom, too.

Performance “Art”

Many things change when you have children.  Waistlines, bank accounts, responsibilities, and patience levels all get turned upside down when those little bundles of joy arrive.  One thing however, has not changed for me though, I still can’t stand children who perform.  Those kids parents dress up like cute little cherubs or make up to look like 45 year old street walkers and send on stage to sing, dance or god forbid rap.  I can  not take it.  There is nothing more repulsive to me than when a mom or dad wants their child to sing for you. 

I once went to a dinner party when the proud parents made thier guests watch a home movie of their little angel at a talent show.  Yes, the little tike was shuffling of to Buffalo in a tu tu and stage make up suited for a drag queen.  It was enough to make me want to jab my eyeballs out with a shrimp fork. 

Fast forward 10 years, now I have my own children.  Every now and then, they like to dance or sing for me.  Do you know what I have discovered?  It is darling coming from my own kids.  Yes, there is nothing that brings me more joy than when my toddler sings  ”Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn.  If your girl starts acting up, then you take her friend.”  In his tiny falsetto, it some how makes my heart swell with pride.  Perhaps it is because I won’t let him sing standard cutesy songs, or maybe it is because seeing a three year old sing a classic pimp song brings joy to all, or maybe, I have a new perspective on the whole thing.  Either way, when he breaks out a little old school Grandmaster Flash, I become a bigger hypocrite than even I knew possible. 

Sit Ubu, Sit

The life of our dog overlapped that of our daughter’s for two short years. She loved that dog. She also took a great deal of pleasure in our daily training sessions. She loved to repeat the commands: Sit, Down, Stay. Needless to say, her wee falsetto didn’t command a great deal of respect from our 150lb behemoth. Training the behemoth, however, gave me a great deal of respect for the benefit of dog training experience for new mothers.

I can hear the gasps. No, not metaphorically, I have actually heard people gasp when I’ve said this out loud. My girl potty-trained early (22-24 months), and relatively fast. No one really thinks all kids potty train alike or that one method fits all, but her success has caused a couple of moms to ask about my technique. I always try to be sure they are serious about wanting me to answer because another thing no one thinks is that someone else should tell them how to raise their kids. Anyhow, one mom said she really wanted to know so I say, “[Name Deleted], how many dogs have you trained?” “Four,” she replied. “And how many shit on the floor?” “None,” she replied. “Okay then, you know how to potty train a child: Be consistent, firm, but caring. Never mean, just keep a schedule and keep constant with your expectations.” She left (and did, in fact, have a dramatic improvement with her son over the next two weeks, though I haven’t asked what did the trick), and another mom said, aghast, “Did I hear you right? Did you compare child-rearing to dog-training?” Oh the appalled look on her face. Well, she has a two year old and a baby due any month now. We’ll see how serious she gets—and what tactics she may turn to in her hour of need—when she’s got a newborn and a terrible-two in the house at once. I hear that it is frowned upon to crate train the little ones…

It’s all in a name

So, I was watching some Maury Povitch durring a recent bout of insomnia.  On this charming episode Maury was revealing “shocking paternity results.”  I don’t really know where to begin with this one, the paternity of your baby should never come as a shock, and if it does I would suggest keeping that to yourself, no sense in letting the world know what a tramp you are.  Eventually your kid will find out what a slut you were.  Some day the child in question will have insomnia and see Mommy testing the cast of a gang bang porn to find Daddy.  However, this is all beside the point, I am merely off on a tangent.  At the center of this charming family reunion was a baby named Nevaeh.  I thought, what an odd name. (okay, so instead of odd I said dumb)  Anyway, Mommy Whorest went on to explain that Nevaeh was named so because it is Heaven spelled backwards.  I suppose that name would have held with my own children for a while.  However, now that I have toddlers, I wonder if I should have called them Elohssa.  I bet that some days the mom on Maury thinks so too. 

Eggs-actly

My husband and daughter are vegetarians. I am not. Though, in her almost-three-year-old world view, this means “mommy eats animals; daddy and I don’t eat animals,” I actually eat a completely rounded diet including a great many grains and vegetables. I, in fact, boarder on healthy-nutty. However, my husband and I made a joint decision to raise HQ a vegetarian until she is old enough to understand what it means to eat meat–in terms of ones health, but also the impact on the environment and the darling living things themselves.

We disagree on one foodstuff: eggs. I think eggs are among the healthiest foods on earth. They are replete with protein and omega 3s and they can be gotten from antibiotic-free, free range, rather humanly raised poultry that don’t have to die for us to gain from their efforts. This week, another child at HQ’s daycare had a birthday and the charming Connecticut-raised Martha Stewart-esque mommy brought in cupcakes. She was nice enough to also bring in an egg-free pastry for HQ, but all the other kids got darling little candy-covered cupcakes and HQ came home and told me all about it. She said “I don’t eat cupcakes.” Well, not exactly true, I replied, you don’t eat eggs. Most cupcakes are made with eggs. “Why I don’t eat eggs? Are eggs animals?” No, but if an egg is fertilized, a baby chicken will hatch from the egg. “Mommy eats baby chickens?” Okay, you get the idea. Mommy is a bit sick of being viewed by her precious daughter as a carnivorous beast, much less now being painted as one that is trolling chicken coops and mauling newborns. So, like any modern mom, I turned to You Tube. I found this charming video of some boys watching chicks hatch. And you know what? She hasn’t asked to eat an egg since. But her birthday is next week and her crummy mommy is bringing in mini carrot muffins (okay, with cream cheese frosting). We’ll see.

Reality is an ugly place, I don’t think I want to live in it

So, here it is, the awful truth, children make you ugly.  They always say that your outside reflects who you are on the inside, but nothing has brought out the ugly nature of my black soul quite like my children.  Sure, maybe I wasn’t exactly a supermodel before this whole motherhood thing took a hold of me, but I was hardly the haggus troll that now stares back at me from the mirror. 

After surviving nine gruelling months of waist expanding pregnancy and hormone induced acne, the horror is not over.  Once undergoing child birth you can expect to be rewarded with stretch marks.  But that is just the start, you can also expect your once perky funbags to be masquerading as a fanny pack worn fashionably up front.  What used to be my greatest assests now need to be flipped aside so that I can cross my legs or type. 

Then you will be faced with many, many sleeepless nights.  Infact I don’t recall the last time I slept a whole night.  And don’t think that won’t show up on your face.  Years with out an uninterupted nights sleep will have you looking like your own mother in no time.  Speaking of your mother, guess where all that gray hair came from? 

So once I came to terms with these physical changes, I thought my deterioration was over.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Maybe I was being vain when this whole thing started, maybe flat abs and firm boobs meant too much to me.  The love of my children was enough for me to be comfortable with saying goodbye to the small amount of hotness I once had.  I was okay with never being atractive with out the aid of spandex, undereye concealer,  underwires, girdles, levers, pulleys and other industrial hardware tools.  Then my angelic little newborn grew.  He grew and he grew and he grew, until now he stands as the baby Goliath.  (picture Bill Romanowski in a onesy) 

The baby Goliath is completely oblivious to his own strength.  While other babies his age inocently frolic and play, the baby Goliath leave a trail of injury and destruction.  Thus far, my little cherub has given me hundreds of bruises, a black eye, a broken finger, made one whole fingernail fall off, given me a bloody nose and most recently broken my glasses.  So, while many of the injuries I have mentioned have adversely affected my appearance as most of the injuries were to to face and head, this last injury has had the most adverse effect on my looks.  This last one not only costs a tidy sum, it also killed what ever style I had going for my self.  You see, I can not drive or function properly with out my glasses.  Being that I can not fully be productive with out my vision I went to the eye doctor to see if they could be fixed.  “What happened to these?”  the ocular assistant asked.  When I explained, she asked how old my child was.  When I told her he was only a baby, she gasped at the fact that such a young infant would have the strength to pulverize my spectacles.  Once we ironed out all of the details of the destruction, she was able to give me a “loner” pair of frames until my real glasses could be replaced. 

While I am greatful for the loan, I understand why these would be given out for free durring times of need.  No one would ever forget to return them, because no one would actually want to have to pay for them.  They are a lovely pair of square framed royal blue g

IrRationalizing

Ah yes, the tantrums. I may be flogging this horse a bit, but better than flogging the tantrum-thrower, yes?
It is my feeling that a tantrum is best ignored. If it occurs in a situation in which there might be a “reasonable” cause, then trying to ascertain that cause for say, 30 seconds, seems worthwhile. However, prolonged attempts to figure out the cause of a tantrum strikes me as quite futile. In fact, it seems to actually fuel the fire “Look, I’m getting all this focused attention! Woo Hoo!” (Or boo hoo as the case may be.). Unfortunately, my dear husband is still in complete denial over our precious flower entering this phase and just this morning went on and on, “are you sick, honey? does something hurt, honey? what is wrong, honey?” Frankly, other than the goo oozing from her nose, little about this child brings to mind Honey at times like these. But hey, I’m just her mom. And she is, after all, daddy’s little girl.

Non-Verbalizing

Just when my child developed an effective ability to speak, she entered what are colloquially known as “the terrible twos.” This charming moniker is apt, within its limitations. For example, it implies that this alarming phase of random apoplectic behavior would be limited to the age of two (and also that if you make it to say, 2 1/2 without onset that you have dodged this bullet… oh, your precious angel would never…). But I digress. At about 2 years, six months–when H had just developed the ability to recount her days, describe a boo-boo and its origins, and request that the stems be removed from her broccoli–she abandoned language in favor of the tantrum.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in mother land in that, while asking me to select the orange skull and cross bones socks rather than the adorable bow-bearing ones may not make sense to me, it is vastly more effective than a complete atomic meltdown during which I can’t decipher a single word. So today, when she asked if possum Crash could pick her up at school (and don’t I wish the little free loading stuffed animal would!), I asked her if she thought Crash was more likely to pick her up if she 1) asked him nicely or 2) cried and bellowed. I know this will come as a shock, but she had no reply. At least she didn’t throw a fit.