Category: Motherhood

. . . and I don’t even have a license.

The Myth of Sleeping In

At heart, I’m a pessimist . . . except on Saturday mornings.  On Saturday mornings, I somehow trick myself into believing that I will get extra sleep, even on days when my husband leaves the house early, as he did this morning.  My daughter wakes up at 6:55 a.m. and I barely open my eyes as I pluck her from her crib and run bath water.

As the water runs, I return to bed and precisely four minutes later, return to the bathroom to turn off the water.  I am still mostly asleep, convinced I will be sleeping in this bright Saturday morning.  I am a Saturday morning optimist.  I crawl back under the covers.  

Six minutes later, she beckons me and I stumble back to the bathroom to answer her nonsensical question (ie. “can I have a cloth-cloth?”).  She has very few made-up words in her vocabulary, but she calls a “washcloth” a “cloth-cloth,” which I find very charming.  But I still would rather sleep.  So back to bed I go.

Ten minutes later, she’s finished with the bath.  I wrap her in a towel, turn on her television, bring her a bowl of dry Cheerios and a drink and stubbornly return to bed.  I am sleeping in!  It’s Saturday! 

Soon, she appears at my bedside.  “Can I sleep with you?” she asks.  So, I scoot over and she climbs in.  Moments later:  “Will you turn on a show, please?”  I turn on Nickelodeon and plump up my pillow.  I am sleeping in!

She’s eating saltine crackers in bed.  She turns on the light.  She’s in.  She’s out.  She’s up.  She’s down.  She’s talking to me, even though I AM SLEEPING IN!  It’s Saturday!

At 9:15 a.m., I’m still in bed.  “Sleeping.”  Lights are all on, so I’m suffocating under the covers.  The television is loud.  How did it get so loud?  And then the alarm begins to ring in the bathroom.  This alarm clock almost outsmarted me, but one day I read the instruction booklet three times in a row and figured out how to turn it off.  Only, somehow, now it’s beeping.  I say to my daughter, “Hey, can you go push the buttons on that clock and turn it off?” 

She goes, but can’t get on the counter because she’s wearing her 8-year old brother’s pajamas and her feet swim in grievously long pajama legs.  She keeps slipping.  I say, “Can’t you push the buttons?”  She says, “I can’t!  I’m slipping!”  Finally, I throw off the covers with a mad flourish and stomp to the bathroom.  I say crazy things like, “FINE!  WHY WON’T YOU LET ME SLEEP IN?!  IT’S SATURDAY!”

And so the day begins.

Goodbye, Expectations! Hello, Reality.

I locked my son out of the house today.  I did.  He’d run outside to make a dramatic point about the horrors of repeating a failed spelling test.  When I saw the door ajar, I closed it, locked it and then made sure the other doors were locked, too.  Ha!  (I, myself, am the model of maturity, to be sure.)

And when he knocked at the front door, I leaned in close to the door jam and said with mean glee, “Enjoy your time outdoors because I don’t allow children who are disrespectful into my house!”  And then I checked to make sure the deadbolt was still turned and stomped upstairs where my daughter was taking her third bath of the day and was vying for my attention.  (“WHAT?!”  “Um, I need a stick to put in his mouth,” she said, indicating a plastic shark.  At which point, I died from a heart attack.  The end.)

I never, ever, not one time in my whole adolescence sassed my parents.  (At least not out loud.)  I never set out to annoy them, to displease them, to make them want to lock me out of the house.  Never.  I was a pleaser, a good girl who wanted only to get perfect grades.  I volunteered my time at a hospital, at a 4-H group, at church and more.  If you needed help, I was your girl.

And how has all my goodness been repaid?  With stinky boys who feel free to complain and whine and slide off their chairs onto the floor in protest when I expect them to take a spelling test.  With sons who don’t hesitate to tell me in no uncertain terms what they will not do.  (“I will NOT take that assessment!”)  With kids who break pencils to protest the injustice of my expectations.

Karma-schmarma!  Phooey on karma, I say!  I deserve a child who yearns to read the captions and the footnotes, in addition to the regular text.  I deserve a child who is utterly grateful for the sacrifice that schooling-at-home is for me.  I deserve a child who displays some maturity and some respect.  I deserve a child who loves to read more than play Nintendo.

And I get mouthiness and stubbornness and kids who are like giant anchors needing to be dragged up from the sea bottom.  And they are tangled up in seaweed, just to make matters worse.

But they are my anchors.  And so I unbolted the door, accepted his apology, gave the spelling test again.  For whatever reason, God thought these were the kids for me, so away with you, Expectations! Hello, Reality!  I’m not quite ready to hug you yet, Reality, but I guess you can sit over there in the comfortable chair for now while I say farewell to my fond Expectations.

(“Buh-bye!” she says, weeping.)

I Am No Mother Duck

A few days ago, while driving down the road with my youngest two in the back of the 1987 Chevy Astro, I noticed a car slowing in front of me. Two women standing at a bus stop were pointing and laughing and so, I slowed, too. The car in front of me sped up and so I could clearly see the spectacle slowing traffic. A mother duck and her four ducklings waddled from the middle of the busy residential street to the edge, as I waited with my foot pressed to the brake while frantically digging in my purse for my camera.

I pulled out the camera just as the little procession reached safety.

The image of that mama duck and her babies has remained in my mind, though. Her ducklings followed, hovered close to her feathered sides, didn’t run off, didn’t fight with their brothers, didn’t refuse to do grammar because it is so boring.

I’m nothing like that duck mom. Today, as a matter of fact, I would have thrown my letter of resignation at my boss, only, uh, I don’t have a boss and I can’t resign. Instead, I slammed the door and strode outside, first to the driveway where I stood by the lilacs, and then up the street a few houses where I noticed a gentle spring breeze and wondered if the neighbors were looking at the wild-haired lady in her moccasin slippers wandering the neighborhood. All the windows really did seem like eyeballs behind sunglasses, staring at me.

I didn’t go far, of course, because I was keenly aware of the littler ones in my house and also cognizant of the fact that my teenagers would keep an eye on the little kids even though those very same teenagers, well, one of those teenagers, had caused me to flee into the street, question my very status of a competent mother and resolve to turn in my Homeschooling Mother Card once and for all.

I CAN’T DO THIS! I shrieked to myself, as loudly as one can shriek inside one’s head on the street in the middle of the morning while worrying about neighbors calling the police to report a raving lunatic strolling the streets.

My son, The Reluctant Student, has some issues, some undiagnosed issues having to do with paying attention and retaining information and organization. I don’t need a label to know that he struggles with what comes naturally and easily to me and his twin brother. He sometimes stays focused and tries, but this week he’s been derailed. The picture of him as a railroad car literally off the rails, unable to move forward or backward, blocking the rest of the train from moving fills me with pity and understanding, but also frustration because we need to keep moving. Moving forward, heading toward the finish line, hurry, hurry, hurry!

When I hurry him, he resists.

I used to think that raising children was all about nurturing them properly and creating the right environment. I see now how much genetic predisposition influences and even controls behavior. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, like a salmon swimming upstream who finally encounters an impassable dam.

So, between a difficult morning of grammar (adverbial phrases, anyone?) and my daughter who spends every waking moment either changing her clothes or interrupting me or demanding Cheetos, I really did decide I am not cut out for this mothering gig. Really. I quit. DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M NOT COMING IN TOMORROW! I QUIT!

Blink. Blink-blink. Okay, fine. In two weeks, I’m outta here, for sure. I’m going to get a job cleaning chimneys or muck-raking cow stalls or deep-sea fishing on an Alaskan fishing boat . . . something easy like that.

If I were a mother duck and my kids were those ducklings, today they totally would have been squished by a car. Tomorrow, maybe they will be all fluffy and yellow and quiet and cute. One can hope.

(My son just sent me this instant-message: “GOING TO TRUN OFF NOW MOM GOOD NIGHT I HEART U =) AND ALSO SORRY FOR TODAY.” Okay. Fine. Whatever. I’m in for one more day.)

Two for the Price of One, Lucky Me

First, an admission. I’m not big on Easter baskets and I’ve never mentioned the mythical Easter bunny to my children, not even to blackmail them into behaving better. A couple of years ago, I forgot to give the children their chocolate Easter bunnies and over a year passed before I removed the stale chocolates and threw them in the trash. No one noticed or remarked.

This year, I prepared ahead of time. I gathered four baskets, suspended small stuffed bunnies in plush eggs from each handle, nestled paper Easter grass into the baskets and place a chocolate bunny and some lollipops in each one. Then I stashed them in the front closet, right behind the vacuum cleaner.

And that’s where they remain.

They children never noticed on Sunday–which could be because the younger children had candy from the church Easter egg hunt and one of the twins was ill. Today, two days after Easter, my daughter remembered the chocolate Easter bunny one of the baby’s moms gave her. First, I gave her the dismembered bunny head (she nibbled one bite) and later, handed over the whole bunny body which rests in peace on the coffee table, looking like a cadaver picked over by a vulture.

My son noticed and said, “HEY! You didn’t give us our chocolate Easter bunnies!” His indignant attitude annoyed me, so I just said, “Huh.” And he carried on a little, but I thought, I can’t, I won’t present Easter baskets now because then she will have two chocolate bunnies and really, now is a bad time. Maybe later. Plus, I won’t reward his stinky behavior.

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll get out those baskets, but please, Son, don’t ask me again or I’ll have to leave them in the closet.

* * *

My daughter has had an uneasy relationship with nap time. When she was a year old, she boycotted nap time for four straight months. Oh, she might doze in my arms while I nursed her, but if I shifted in my chair or placed her in her crib, she screamed as if a swarm of bees flew into her diaper. She’d be awake for twelve hours and sleep for twelve hours.

Then, she napped again. And so it went for some time until she stopped napping again. I began laying down with her on my bed and she’d fall asleep, quite against her will. For a long stretch, I may have napped more than she did, but the day came when she started napping alone again.

Lately, though, she has stopped napping. Sometimes, she falls asleep inadvertently, but mostly, no naps.

I do, however, insist on a quiet time. The rest of the kids take naps and while they do, she lies on my bed and watches PBS. She’s allowed to come downstairs when Clifford the Big Red Dog ends.

Today she did not want to abide by our agreement. I had to insist. She shrieked and stomped and snot ran down her darling little face, but I stood firm. In fact, I plopped her into her crib and went downstairs for two minute intervals, returning upstairs to ask, “Do you want to watch The Berenstain Bears now? And when she’d shout, “I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!” I’d say, “Do you want to stay in your crib or watch t.v.?” and when she’d scream, “I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!” again, I’d close the door and return downstairs for two minutes.

This battle of wills lasted approximately twenty minutes, when she decided she did want to watch t.v. after all.

After dinner, I took her to the local park and she frolicked for almost forty-five minutes before I told her it was time to go. She walked to the van, no complaints, then climbed in and passed her car seat and sat in her brother’s seat. I pointed out that she needed to sit in her car seat. She refused.

I insisted.
She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I explained, then exited the van, locked the doors and walked thirty feet away where I sat on a bench for one minute exactly before returning and insisting she sit in her car seat.

She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I returned to the bench where I watched her pound the van windows and scream like she was being burned alive inside the van.
I waited two minutes, then returned.

At one point, I forced her into her car seat (“You may get into your seat by yourself or I will put you in your seat.”) but she unbuckled her belt and stood up, sobbing wildly.

A different parent, the kind who keeps a wooden spoon in her purse, would have beat her scrawny little butt at this point, but I don’t spank anymore. I was determined to outlast this thirty-two pound human being. Outwit, outsmart and outlast.

We did this for, oh, about thirty minutes, before she decided she wanted me to hold her. (To that point, all she’d said was, “I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!”) I held her, explained where she needed to sit so we could go home and she agreed.

I put her in her seat, buckled her up and sped home while she worked herself into a lathered frenzy, yelling all the way home, “I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT! MOMMY! I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!”

When we were within sight of our house, she unbuckled and clambered out of her car seat. Fine. When I parked, she refused to leave the van, so I carried her out. She struggled to get down, so I strode into the house, telling my husband, “She’s throwing a fit.” She trailed after me, weeping.

I put on her pajamas.
She stopped crying.
We rocked and watched Spongebob together.
And finally, bedtime.

I hope that tomorrow she remembers that she cannot win. I am a formidable foe and I cannot be beat. I am fortified with eleven vitamins and minerals and Diet Coke with Lime. Beware.

Root Beer Man

My left eye won’t stop twitching which is a sign that I have not had enough beauty sleep. I’m all squinty and head-achey and lethargic, deaf to the pleas of my chores to “Pick me! Pick me!”

This picture shows what happens when you leave an almost-13 year old boy to do his literature assessment without direct supervision. You see the eye holes he cut out with scissors? I ought to count that as an art project and take credit somehow.

At 3:00 a.m., I was roused from a deep sleep by my husband who heard the cries of my 3-year old. She needed to use the bathroom and then, of course, have a bath, because don’t we all want that extra special clean feeling after we use the toilet? She cried that her tummy hurt.

Yesterday afternoon, she was in the bath right after she asked for some medicine. She has an aversion to medicine of all kinds, so I knew she must be desperate.

I came downstairs and found some anti-nausea medicine (similar to something someone posted here the other day–the main ingredient is fructose) and brought her a teaspoon. She looked at it suspiciously and sipped a microscopic amount and announced she was done. I left the little cup on the edge of the tub, thinking maybe she’d reconsider.

Later, when I checked on her, the cup was floating in the water. I said, “Oh, did you drink it?” She said, “No. I don’t like red medicine. I only like pink.” And so she dumped it in the tub and bathed in it, instead.

But back to last night/this morning. She was back in bed at 3:40 a.m. Then awake at 4:30 a.m. At 5:40 a.m., when I heard her cry out again, I said to my husband, “Will you check on her?” My head was weighted to the pillow like a stone and I simply couldn’t move. I think he gave her pretzels and saltines and turned on a video for her. At some point, she came into bed with us and we all slept until 7:00 a.m. when she woke up, asked for a drink, begged to get up, then said, “Just one more minute,” and fell to sleep again.

I woke with a start at 8:10 a.m. and rushed to shower and get my son off to school. My older boys’ school day has been haphazard because my daughter has wanted me to hold her constantly and because my head has come loose from its neck and is dangling precariously by a frayed ligament.

But tonight, my colorist will arrive and vanquish my roots and mow my boys’ raggedy hair.

This probably wasn’t such a great week to give up caffeine. Although Root Beer Man is cute and all, I really need Diet Coke Man to swoop in here and pour me an icy 32-ounce glass. Posted by Picasa

A Puzzling Question for the Day

When two adults are asleep at 3:11 a.m. and one of the adults wakes up and hears a child crying, why does said adult wake up the other blissfully snoring slumbering adult and say, “Hey, I hear crying?” causing the second adult to also wake up and therefore, become responsible for tending to child?

I’m just asking.

America’s Next Top Model Cuts With Scissors

My daughter wore her pajamas to church this morning. Saturday night, she’d mentioned that she intended to wear them, the Carter’s footie-jammies with horizontal lavender and baby blue stripes, but I didn’t really believe her. (Actual pajamas not pictured, but boy, what an outfit that is, huh?) She’d also picked out a yellow and blue dress with gauzy ruffles around the hem.

But this morning, when she woke at 8:35 a.m. (which in her uninformed brain was only 7:35 a.m., but now it’s Daylight Savings Time, SURPRISE!), she told me she would wear her pajamas. And I said, “Okay.” We had to leave by 8:45 a.m. . . . well, really, we should have been at church at 8:45 a.m., but let’s not quibble over details. I tucked her dress, tights, shoes and sweater into my bag, just in case.

I taught Sunday School to three preschoolers and then my daughter and I headed upstairs to claim our rightful position in the second pew on the left side, right behind my boys who, judging from the greasiness of their pre-teen heads of hair, failed to use shampoo again last night during their showers. A lady behind me noted my daughter’s unusual attire and said, “You’re a more relaxed mom than I was!” and in the pause between that and her next statement, I wondered if I should take offense, but then she said, “Good for you!” I said, “Well, I figured, what does it matter, really?” As I said to my husband tonight, if you can’t wear your pajamas to church when you are three years old, when can you?

We lasted through all the stuff that happens before the sermon begins, then headed to the fellowship hall where we could see Daddy preaching on closed-circuit television while also running around in circles (her, not me). My daughter is seemingly ravenous on Sunday mornings . . . but the truth is, she knows that the kitchen holds loot, desirable loot like cookies and brownies and sometimes, cake. This morning, she feasted on Hostess “donettes,” those small chocolate covered ones. She also brought a cookie to our table, a snickerdoodlish cookie.

The cookie sat. I sat. My daughter sat. Then my daughter, wanting to shake things up and shake things out, asked if she could put pepper on the cookie.

“No,” I said.
She asked again.
“No.”
She said, “But I want to put pepper on the cookie.”
“I said NO!”
She asked again.
I enunciated very carefully, “Look . . . at . . . me. I . . . said . . . NO.”
She added a little whine to her request and asked again.
“Listen to me. The answer is NO!” I used my most stern voice, the one just short of screaming my head off, because after all, I was wearing pantyhose, sitting in the fellowship hall at church.

She paused, smiled sweetly and said, “I love your dress.”

* * *

(These tiny cut-out pictures are her handiwork. They are the actual size . . . my daughter is good with scissors. I’m thinking she’ll either be a hair stylist, a surgeon or, maybe she’ll operate first, then style her patient’s hair.)

* * *
A Note to Clarify:
She had rejected the cookie already. She merely wanted to make a huge pepper and salt mess on the table, using the cookie as an excuse. I did not want to clean up a big mess, so I told her no. I have no objection to peppering cookies under other circumstances. (What? I personally do not pepper my cookies.)

Untitled Due to Lack of Creativity

Hi.

Do you sense that yawning chasm in my brain? Because I have been digging around in there and find that it’s pretty much empty. Just echoes in the air and foil wrappers from chocolate Easter candy littering the floor.

I would like to point out that if you arrive on my doorstep around 3:00 p.m., you will find my house in a state of complete disarray. I don’t bother picking up toys or straightening up the kitchen or doing much of anything between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. These are the sacred hours, the Nap Hours, the house during which I try to trick my 3 year old into staying upstairs, watching television. These are the hours in which my almost-13-year old boys disappear into their room, wandering out only to find a snack. If they speak to me, I say, “Please, do NOT talk to me!” I suppose they’ll discuss my behavior with their therapist in years to come.

And from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., I am doing school-at-home with the boys while keeping an eye on my daughter, her 3-year old buddy and the 16-month old baby boy. You can imagine the utter devastation occurring moment by moment.

My daughter woke up at 4:45 a.m. She was hysterical over a bad dream she’d had. In her dream, a spider licked and licked a bee, then ate it and spit it out. Apparently, this is terrifying if you are three and a half. She insisted on watching a video, so I pushed in “Blue’s Clues” and warned her not to wake me and abandoned her in her room. Because I am self-centered like that and completely delirious in the dark hours of pre-dawn.

She woke me once to ask for a cookie. (“No, you can’t have a cookie. Go back to your room.”) Then at 6:00 a.m., she crawled into my bed and slept. Problem was, I had trouble falling back asleep and so this morning at 8:00 a.m., I was not ready to face the day. I’m still not really ready, but the day is moving forward anyway.

And now, my bladder pleads with me to heed its call and I hear a baby crying somewhere in the distance. (Oh wait. Too much information?)

Bye.

Worse Than Interruptions: Pepperoni Pizza

What’s worse than being constantly interrupted? What’s worse than never being alone in the bathroom? What’s worse than constant noise when only silence will do? What’s worse than chatting on the phone while peering into the eyes of a 3-year old who chants, “I want to talk! I want to talk! I want to talk!”? What’s worse than reading the same sentence in a book three times, no four times–no, make that a half dozen times–because you’re being paged by the girl in the bathtub? What’s worse than walking into a room and forgetting what you’re doing because you were sidetracked by an “urgent” matter?

I’ll tell you. Pepperoni pizza.

That’s right. Pepperoni pizza. Had I known during those feverish days of baby-lust that the day would come when pepperoni pizza would trump my craving for black olives and mushrooms and onions and–oh, just give me everything on it, yes, even pineapple–I might have reconsidered. All I want now is a decent pizza, one loaded up with all the things my kids refuse to eat.

But I don’t order the pizza of my dreams because:

1) I don’t want to spend that much money on a pizza just for myself.
2) I don’t want to tempt myself to eat that much pizza myself.
3) Too many leftovers.
4) I’m ridiculous.

How many things have I sacrificed for my children? Long bubblebaths, nights of reading until the wee hours, days spent browsing in antique shops, the last cookie, watching a grown-up show at 8 p.m. downstairs in the comfortable recliner, sleeping in on Saturday mornings and sitting all through the service on Sunday . . . let me count the ways.

You see where this is leading, don’t you? Papa Murphy’s, of course. If I had a working vehicle and three fewer children in my house at this very moment, I would be in the car RIGHT NOW, heading for my beloved Papa Murphy’s franchise, coupon clutched in my sandpapery hand. I would throw all caution to the wind–to the wind, I tell you!–and order a combination pizza for me and a pepperoni for the picky kids.

A girl can dream.

(For the record, I’d pay the price over and over again, but first, I need sustenance. And a day off and a maid.)

Update: So, I called my husband and asked if he’d go pick up pizza from Papa Murphy’s for me. “Sure,” he said. I told him to let me know when he’d have time and I’d call the order in.

A few minutes ago, he called me. He was so pleased with himself. He reported that he happened to speak with a friend of ours who was shopping at Costco at that very minute and he’d asked her to bring home a pizza for us. Saves him time going to the pizza place and all. Cool, right?

Guess what kind of pizza she’s bringing?

Yeah.

Pepperoni.

Tomorrow? I will buy myself a combination pizza . . . or die trying!