Mommy Boo Boos

I am a klutz. Last week, while rearranging our office at work, I dropped a giant white board squarely on my flip-flop clad toe. It does appear I may keep the toenail, despite a lovely black circle in its center and a bloom of purple and red radiating out to cover the tip of my big toe. Injuring myself in such a lame and decorative fashion is nothing new. What is new is the realization that 1) my daughter steps on my feet a lot and 2) I no longer warrant any sympathy whatsoever.When my girl stepped on my big toe for the fourth or fifth time, I started to pay attention to every time she stepped on either of my feet. I would point it out and she’d look at me reproachfully with a whined, “sorry, mom.” Fact is, it seemed like several of the foot-stomps were intentional. Oh, I know I sound paranoid, but you would too if your big toe was throbbing like mine! After a day of this, I asked her if she knew why she stepped on my feet so often and, in the sweetest tone she replied, “to be close to you, mommy.” I admit it, I’m confused. I can decipher a couple of possibilities, though, which might make sense in her curly little head: a desire for proximity leading her to stand on my feet like a bad prom date or a need for contact unconsciously triggering her wee toes to travel to mine. So I accept it, she will step on my feet and, for the next month or so, I must adopt a toe-defensive stance.

Discovery 2 is something I’ve had inklings of before, but yesterday it struck like a lightening bolt (to the toe). My dear sweet child stomped down on my toe with all the force possible from a 30ish pound child. Reflexively, I pushed her off my toe and she landed on her butt. Oh the tears, the drama, the trauma! One look at her wee sodden face and another reflex had me reaching out to comfort her. But, being the dreadful human I am, I stopped this auto-response. My husband swooped in to explain to our daughter that mommy didn’t mean to push her and that it was important to realize my toe hurts and to try not to step on it… but I was frozen there in the hallway, with the sensation of blood pounding in my toe and sharp pains shooting up my leg. Ah ha. When these little ones hurt us, we comfort them. Then again, I probably would have scolded her for not wearing sensible shoes to moving day at the office.

Ground Hog Day

Long ago, before I had children, life was easy.  I went to work and entertained myself however I saw fit.  My husband and I ate meals whenever and wherever the mood struck us.  If we felt like sleeping in, we did.  If we wanted to go somewhere, we went.  If I didn’t feel like doing the laundry, it didn’t matter. 

Fast forward two children later.  Now my life is dictated by them.  I have to serve dinner by 6:00 or the children will turn cannibal.  If I want to go out, it has to be somewhere that serves “kid food.”  I don’t remember a time when I slept past 7:00 am.  And if I don’t do laundry daily, piles of it chase me around the house like slee stacks.  If I don’t keep the floor mopped, my youngest gets stuck to it.  God forbid I don’t go to the grocery store every few days or I would run out of bread, or milk, or both.  I have to go to the mall at least every two weeks because someone has surely grown out of something.  And I find myself staying up past my bedtime (yes, I have one of those now) to pack school lunches.  I am not guaranteed a shower every day, but, I am guaranteed no fewer than 76 messes to clean up and countless fights to breakup. 

I knew that when I had children my life would no longer be mine, but I did think I would at least be able to recognize myself.  I’ve found that my life seems to be an endless loop of work.  I find myself putting in all the work and waiting for my real life to begin.  Only this is real life, it just feel a  lot like the movie Groundhog Day.  Who is it that lied to all of us and told us we could have it all? 

To Nap or Not to Nap

To nap or not to nap, that is the question. A friend of my daughter, who is exactly 10 days older than she is (3.5) came over for a couple of days last week while daycare was closed for vacation. His grandparents picked him up after lunchtime and my daughter asked his grandma if he was going home to take a nap. His grandmother gave me an exasperated look and confided that the young lad doesn’t nap anymore because it wasn’t “convenient for his mother.”

It is a fact: naps are not always convenient. While the fact that my girl still takes an afternoon nap is really the only reason I can have her come home at lunch the three days I work from home–knowing I’ll get a minimum of two more hours of uninterrupted work after she and I have an hour together around lunch time. So in a way, naps are convenient for me (and I’m sure most moms welcome a couple of peaceful hours a day).

At the same time, I totally get how inconvenient they are. When we’re trying to plan our weekends, we always have to factor in naptime in the early afternoon or be prepared to reap the aftermath of a grumpy child. I’m actually thrilled we’re to a point where our girl can occasionally skip a nap and not necessarily be downright evil as a result.

There’s no doubt that kids need a lot of sleep. At 3.5, most kids need between 11.5 – 12.5 hours of sleep a day, which can be at night or split between nighttime and a nap. This knowledge (and the reality of our child’s behavioral issues if she’s sleep deprived) has kept the nap part of our life for one other big reason, simple familial math: My husband would only see our daughter for a couple of minutes a day if she didn’t nap. He’s gone from 7:20-5:50 every day. If she slept 12 hours a night from say, 7-7, uh, he’d glimpse her on the way out the door and get to gaze at her across the dinner table before tucking her in. So despite some hard spells in which naptime have been a battle of wills, and a few short spells in which naptime was really an hour quietly reading in her bed, the nap remains part of our lives–convenient or not.

Mars Needs Moms

I previously posted a brief list of our top books at the moment and know that my #1 choice is one most moms haven’t heard of. However, those among you that are, uh, “my age” may well remember a cartoonist named Berkeley Breathed, who wrote the comic strips Bloom County and Opus and won a Pulitzer way back when I was in college.  For a while, my husband and I were on a dog-book-buying-binge and it was then that we bought “Flawed Dogs” by Berkeley. Once we started reading books to our daughter (over and over again), we found that this one had a lovely message to go along with some silly rhymes and gorgeous illustrations.  Well, Berkeley strikes again: This year, he released “Mars Needs Moms.” The illustrations alone merit the book’s price, but once again Berkeley finds fun in the mundane and ultimately aims his pen right at the heart, and hits dead on.

Surfing Moms’ Club

Nothing like a bit of retail therapy. Particularly if your three year old isn’t throwing a fit or telling you they “need” every item you pass in the store. (But I need a toy chainsaw. No I need an 80-inch plasma. Oh wait, that was my husband.) So since the olden days–of not having to share a fitting room with a three foot human who thinks it is fun to open the door when mommy is finding that yet another pair of jeans doesn’t fit–are gone, I frequently find myself doing a bit of therapeutic web surfing.

Turns out I’m not alone. Most Mom’s Research Products on the Web, according to recent research done by DoubleClick (an online ad metrics company) and Microsoft.

I do love the euphemism “research,” which classes the whole thing up a bit. But seriously folks, I don’t know how I’d shop for my child without it! Pre-web I relied on a network of friends to test products for me and faithfully report on their worthiness. Post-web, I find myself living in the middle of the woods, only commuting to a job two days a week in an office populated almost entirely by childless youths. Praise-be for Amazon’s user-reviews. I swear that every product I have purchased based on the reviews of fellow mom’s has turned out to be a good one. Viva the virtual mommy network!

Supers

Do you know what really irritates me?  I mean besides people who insert y’s and i’s in names that don’t require them.  Super moms.  Super moms really piss me off.  The only thing worse than the Super mom is the Super Kid.  Unfortunately they usually travel in packs and are therefore impossible to avoid.  A new pair of Supers just started going to my son’s preschool.  Whithin moments of meeting them, I slinked away with my inferior tail between my stubby, chubby, inferior legs.

You all know the type.  Supermom looks like Barbie and returned to her size 0 pants immediately after giving birth.  She never feeds her kid junk food and never has ketchup stains on her shirt.  Super kid has never seen a millisecond of television and can write her name even though she just turned 3.  Not only that, but she can also spell most short words in perfect penmanship.  In case of emergency Super Kid can dial 911 on both rotary and touch tone phones.  She can also perform rescue breathing until the proper authorities arrive, who by the way, she can flag in from the street. 

Meanwhile, as I am hearing about all of the super things Super Kid can do, my kids are picking thier noses. And if emergency ever struck and I was somehow incapacitated, they would devour my body and pillage the house like the tiny jackals they are.   So, I went home feeling defeated and like a lousy mom.  However, what I should’ve been thinking was that at least my kids were allowed to be kids.  Super kid was micro-managed and deprived a carefree childhood.  If Super kid was ever given the opportunity, I’m sure she would enjoy watching a movie and eating a few chips. 

Furthermore, I think that perhaps it would help all of us if blinders were given out in the baby bags they pass out at the hospital right along with formula samples and breast pads.  Wouldn’t we all be so much happier with what we are,  if we weren’t constantly looking at what we aren’t? 

There’s Always Therapy

My in-laws can’t tell me enough how wonderful our daughter is. She’s polite, she’s “easy,” she speaks so well. But they also don’t hesitate to tell me I’m too hard on her when I insist that she say “excuse me” when interrupting our conversation or that I have a zero-tolerance policy on (the first signs of) tantrums. So today I looked my father in law square in the eye when he ways saying I was being to hard on her and said “I’m a mean mom, but if I have a good kid as a result, that’s fine by me.” He actually laughed and said it should be the title of a book. I started laughing with him and said, “I have the subtitle for the book: …and if she hates me, there’s always therapy.”

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I have been reading a lot of articles lately about working mothers versus stay at home mothers.  Working mothers think stay at home moms are wrong, and vice versa.   I’m not quite sure what all of the commotion is about.  There are many rules that come with parenting.   Rule number one is: There is no perfect.  It doesn’t matter wich side of the fence your on, you don’t have the answer.  No one does, it doesn’t exist.  Let’s cut out the drama and agree that parenting is a bitch.  (and so are all moms that don’t agree with me.)

Childcare Chaos

My daycare/ preschool is good. I wouldn’t say it is perfect, but is any? Frankly, I don’t see me staying at home with my dear as the “perfect” option either. Anyhow, a lot of the preschools in my area don’t offer any before or after school care and close all summer. Mine “only” closes two weeks a year. Anyone with a toddler knows how they cling to routine; how they adore habit; and how they completely FREAK OUT if anything changes. So while a mere two week change in our habits may seem fairly insignificant–to a 3 year old, well…

Of course other than the OCD-level twitching that has gone on each morning when she asks “Am I going to school today?” and is gently rebuffed, we also must contend with the various solutions, okay, band aids I have slapped on the problem. I thought I was simply brilliant asking one of the younger teachers  if she’s like to come to my house to babysit while I work at home three days a week. My girl loves “miss Amy” but my presence in the house has caused a number of melt downs… culminating in “mommy, I want to be with you… I miss you.” Uh, ya, this is four hours with someone who plays with her the whole time, whereas I’d be mostly ignoring her, uh, I mean encouraging independent play, while I work.

The other two days, I have to make an epic commute into an office so my girl is at Grandma’s house. Yesterday, they picked berries, played on the swings, she got to watch more TV in a day then we allow in a week, and she got to wear a wiggles costume for hours. Does it get better than that if you are three? But she is already having mini panic attacks over not going to school tomorrow. Shockingly, it appears that once again my childcare solution will not be perfect.

Childrearing and the Unified Front

I’m no military theorist, but I have noticed that some parents work as a team, while others are at odds. I’ve also noticed that the behavior of the resulting offspring differs as well.

Last night, we had a couple over for dinner with two amazing teenaged daughters. That’s right, I did say amazing teenagers. In fact, their girls have been wonderful all the 9 years I’ve known them. Sure, they have dust-ups, but these are polite, charming, focused girls who I’d be proud to call my own. In fact–being not innately geared toward breeding myself–they gave me a lot of inspiration to have kids at all: You can remain coherent, interesting people AND raise decent humans.

Anyhow, there we were, mid meal, when my girl helped out a panicked “I have to go potty!” (Nothing goes better with ceviche  than graphic toilet talk.) My husband quickly scooped her up and bolted for the toilet, as she can hold it a bit long when distracted by social situations. The remaining dad at the table looked at me and said, “you guys are such great parents. You are such a team and you have a really wonderful daughter because of it.” His wife clarified this unexpected effusiveness, explaining that they’d recently dined with another couple who have a 4 and a 6 year old who are complete wild things. They said they’d actually almost left because the children were so constantly screaming that they actually just felt uncomfortable, like they were witnessing something they shouldn’t be.

On the ride home, the two had pondered the possible reasons why the kids were so out of control and they may have hit on it: Mom has one set of rules which dad completely disregards; blatantly at times saying things like “She’d kill me if she knew I was letting them do X, ha ha” while mom is in the kitchen.

I’m not saying my husband and I never disagree on what is the “right” thing to do with our daughter, but we try to do it out of her earshot. The fact is, kids are innately brilliant at the divide and conquer tactic. Even the most minor chink in the mommy-daddy front, and they charge in tantrum-guns blazing to demolish any semblance of peace or sanity. No, there’s no one way to be a parent, and no one set of rules for kids. But if mom and dad work together, at least they have consistency working for them against this, the wiliest (and most worthy) of adversaries.