The Taming of the Shrew...

Well nothing says Christmas like a need to lock down the behavior of your erstwhile wellish behaved eldest child.  She has been showing more and more signs of spoiled rotten brat syndrome and something had to be done.  I hate as a feminist to invoke the title of a most misogynistic play by Shakespeare, with the title shrew being finally tamed by her husband in the end, but it just fits.  (I know her sister plays foil to her by NOT being subservient to her husband in the end it is still  a parody of the attitudinal climate towards women of that time and is ahead of it's day..blah, blah blah...don't worry...)

Mackenzie is now 6 and displays the typical kid tendency to be great unless she is home with me.  I get the eye rolls, the "Mo-ommm" the constant demands for servitude, this is pretty par for the course.  Lately however she has reached a new pinnacle of rude behavior with me.  She has started to want to show off for her friends..."look, I shall make my mother jump nay high...."  or showing up in front of me suddenly at Gymnastics practise saying, "Mom, DRINK!"  Like some kind of pre-adolescent football player cro-magnon in a cute blonde 6 year-old girl package.

I do not respond to these attempts at tyranny. I'm usually pretty good at ignoring this kind of behavior (or disassociating... as the case may be)  I usually respond with a whispered hiss..."So then you want me to start yelling at you in front of your friends then, is that where we're going with this??"  I can keep up a remarkable outward appearance of calm while quietly battling back with weapons of my own, mostly the threat of social embarrassment.  Then I get the subsequent eye roll and obligatory "Pahleeze......." (subtext, I soooo DO NOT  mean this...)  Fine, I will weather this pissy missy storm with you....riding the waves of your moodiness until someday you realize everything I've ever done and said has been RIGHT...probably when you have kids of your own who are making you turn yourself inside out wondering where, WHERE in your genetic code they have managed to unlock SUCH behavior.

I had reached the end however when she tried to hand me her water bottle in the parking lot after gymnastics, with a derisive, "Here..." bored sounding, looking away, like, "I can't even be bothered making eye contact with you as I'm giving you a command, peon.....

I of course, graciously decline the proffered item, indicating that she is more than capable of carrying it to the car, parked not more than 6 feet away.

"HERE!...she persists, refusing to acknowledge my previous indication that I was not willing to play her pack mule that day.

"You can carry it yourself," I say.

"Fine" she shoots back, "I'll just drop it on the ground..."

Then reality as I knew it imploded.  All I could hear was a giant buzzing noise, (which was probably all of the screaming in my head coalescing into a face twitching, ear bleeding crescendo..) and the temperature of the earth suddenly rocketed upwards, with the speed of a pre-tween eye roll.

I somehow got home, driving in a dissociative state, and when I walked through the door, Chris knew something was wrong, it might have been the speaking in tongues, I'm not really sure.....

After some messy tear stained yelling about gratitude, I decided that it was my fault, that how could someone possible possess gratitude when they have everything they need or want served up on a silver platter?

After 4 1/2 hours in her room she finally came down and tried to help herself to a platter of Christmas brownies on the counter.

"Step away from the brownies...." I spit out through clenched teeth.  I level my best John Wayne gaze at her, "lemme tell ya how it's gonna work for the next week in these parts, pilgrim"

Then I go on to explain the list of chores that she will be required to to everyday... (gasp, one...)
And the week long embargo on sweets...not even in her lunch.  Her snacks will consist of fruit, yogurt or cheese ....I know, cruel and unusual but it has to be done.

And the best... Mother is on strike, that's right, talk to my union.  They say I don't actually have to do anything for you unless it involved keeping you alive, so for the next week don't ask me to get you a cookie/download you some music/reach you a cup/.  If it ain't provided in a Japanese POW camp, you ain't gettin' it from me, got it?  Oh, except hugs, I'll still give you those, cause I love you which is why I'm doing this...

Her suitably contrite response to this was, "I'm DEFINITELY not asking for any of those!" then she stomped up the stairs, and SA-LAMMED the door to her bedroom.

Oh, I thought, I AM going to break your spirit, child.    Ah, they could have made a Christmas special out of it all, it was beautiful.

Anyway, she served her week, which was actually last week.  She got off her grounding last weekend, displaying much better behavior.  She's smart enough to know that she deserved it.

Oh, boy, I can't wait until she's 16!

God Bless us, everyone!

So last week Marcus wakes up and tells me his leg is broken.  "Yeah, right kid", I think," this is some master ploy to get something out of me right?  You think you can get workers comp in this place?  I don't think so....I'll have private investigators getting photos of you dancing down the street before you can say free money...."

What's that you say?  My point...oh yes, I did go a little off there...

So I take him down to the couch in the toyroom, thinking his leg was asleep and rushed around to get ready.  After about 20 minutes I call him to the door to put his coat on and he slides off the couch and collapses on the floor.

Oh, so he REALLY can't walk...sign me up for the parent of the year award, once again..

Long story short we get to the emergency room and we wait for 6 hours to see a doctor.  Then we wait another 3 while they test him for all kinds of nasty things that could cause spontaneous lack of leg function, and I know from my medical education (mostly Grey's Anatomy and House) that this could be any number of things: cancer, meningitis, maybe lupus?  It's always lupis isn't it?

But seriously, I had rising moments of panic sitting in the ER waiting for the test results to come back.  I had thoughts of "you are being punished for venting dramatically on that blog of yours..."

After consultation with the doctor on call, the paediatrician and the orthopedic surgeon they figured out that it was something called "toxic synosis" where the cold virus that he has had for the last week has actually attacked the synovial fluid in his knee, causing inflammation and an inabilityt to walk.  Treatment?  2 junior ibuprofen...  I gave them to him at 6 pm and he was walking (after scooting around on the floor for 2 hours) by 8pm.

I can't tell you how if feels to hear,  "Look Mommy I can walk!"

We had our own little tiny Tim there for a while.....

I got gratitude for Christmas.

Scooby and Shaggy would be proud......

It turns out I'm not as tough as I thought I was.  Every teenage girl and young woman likes to think that they are tough...we are women hear us roar and all of that.  When I was in graduate school to become a psychologist, I thought, "I'm going to be a forensic psychologist, I'm going to work in a PRISON!!  I am TOUGH!.  I took my first forensic class (an elective), read my first victim statement and I realized, whoa...not cut out for this.  Then I thought, I will work with trauma victims, I am tough, I can handle it.  Nope, sorry, that made you cry too,  do you want your money back for your degree???

So now I do research..

(disclaimer...I did clinical work for 8 years with addicted teenagers, but they were tough, so I didn't have to be.....but I digress)

Back to me not being tough....

So last night my 6 y.o. girl, Kenzie wakes me up at 2 am because the wind is blowing.  We are having a late fall windstorm and it's really noisy.  The fact that she has totally regressed and will not sleep by herself (along with her brother...) is a post for another day....

So I crawl into her bed and try to sleep.  Around 4 am, the fan in her room and the nightlight go out at the same time and we are plunged into darkness.  So far, I'm OK...the power is just out, no big deal.  Except that her nightlight comes back on and starts flickering madly and chaotically.  I think, hmmm, maybe there's some residual electricity left in the circuit and the night light is small enought to be lit by it.  Surely there is no ghostly presence trying to send me morse code messages from the great beyond...surely not, heh, heh, that would be ridiculous right??

I get up out of the bed and unplug the nightlight and notice that the lamp down the hall in the boys room is still lit.  Hmmmm, this is strange, how can there be a power outage in just one room in the house?  I touch her lamp and it comes on...ok...must just be this outlet.  No morse code from ghosts, just a faulty electrical outlet that's acting wonky in the middle of the night, nothing to worry about there...

I crawl back into bed and suddenly, the lamp that I just turned on,  goes out, plunging us into darkness again.  I can still see from the faint glow down the hall that this is only happening in this room.

I begin to take it personally.....I also begin to try to talk myself out of the bed to investigate, which sounds like this....

Me: Ok, get out of bed, just go and turn on the hall light and check to make sure the house isn't on fire.

Me. Nope, uh-uh.  There is clearly a monster under the bed just waiting to slither it's tentacles out and drag me screaming under there with him.

Me.  Stop being a baby, you are a PARENT....get up!

Me:  Did you not hear the part about the monster, my feet are BARE for God's sake, that is the universal beacon to monsters.  Bare feet....yummy!  Listen, if I had socks on, I may be able to deal  with the situation, my hands are tied here.

Me: Listen, in the unlikely event that there IS a monster, and ye DOES love bare feet and he DRAGS you under the bed, don't you realize what that would mean?

Me: I sense you're trying to trick me here, go on....

Me:  You wouldn't have to do the morning routine with the boys......

So I LEAP out of bed, across the room and run to the hallway.  The light there is working.  I hesitate, not sure what to do now.   The hall light is too bright to leave on...I know, I'll turn on the linen closet light off the hall.  OK, done, back to bed with Kenzie.

I get in, pull the covers up and , you guessed it, THE LINEN CLOSET LIGHT GOES OUT.

Ok, now I'm getting a little freaked out.  I run down the hall to our room where my husband is sleeping (with the boy who refuses to stay in his own bed....) I LEAP onto his prone body, landing on all fours like a cat who has had his rest disturbed by a rocket launch.  I hiss, WAKE UP. " The lights are doing crazy things....I'm really freaked out....  I keep the monsters to myself, even at 4 am, I know that will make me sound a little loony and he won't take me seriously.

"Where's Kenzie, is she awake too?" he asks"  

Oh.  Right.  The Child.

Well it seems as I was running for my life, I may have, umm, left her behind.   Fear not, she was covered by the blanket.  That is the universal forcefield of protection.  Just ask anyone...

Anyway, as it turns out, the wind downed a tree branch with left us with partial power in that end of the house.  The timing of the lights going off?  Well I guess that's just a coincidence, right?

So I call the power company this morning to report the problem.  As I'm getting off the phone with the agent, I say, "So is there anything we should do in the meantime, while we're waiting for the line to be fixed?"

She pauses and says, "Well, I mean, if it catches on fire, definitely call us back."

I feel safer with the monsters......

Mission Impossible

I have had to wait a while before I wrote this post...my head felt like it was going to blow off from the stress of getting two boys off to the sitter who are currently playing the game..let's drive mom around the bend once and for all!!!  I feel like I'm trapped inside of a Gordian knot....They are entering the phase that parenting experts call contrariness...you know,

 "I want this, not that, now I changed my mind, what? You're still trying to reason with me?  Take THAT peon, I just changed my mind again, but inside of my head this time, and I didn't tell you, HA!  What, you want me to spoonfeed you here.... don't give me the crying face, why are you crying too?  If you can't take the heat, get out of the toyroom...."

So this morning I'm trying to rush around and get the boys something to eat so I can go and get ready for work.  I pour them some cereal, with CHOCOLATE MILK AND WHITE MILK ALL MIXED TOGETHER!!  Fine, I can do that,  you're being a bit of a putz but nothing I can't handle.  So I go to hand the bowl to Zac and his face gets all crumply and the morning tears start springing forth.....  he wails..., are you ready for this....."  NO!!! I want the chocolate milk on the TOP and the white milk on the BOTTOM!

What's that now.....?

You want me to bend the laws of Newtonian Physics?  Make up new rules of how matter comes together in the universe so you can properly enjoy your breakfast?  I mean, is that such an unreasonable thing to ask...  Wait, I'll check with God.

HE SAYS NO!

Sorry Buddy, God says you are being a poopface and I don't have to play this game with you.  You may commence the screaming now.

Now we turn to the brother.  It takes a Herculean effort and 20 full minutes to go from standing in the porch to getting in the car.  Something that I can usually accomplish in, oh, say about 17 seconds on my own.  Enter the second half of the Mission Impossible Team.  Tom Cruise has nothing on these cutie pies, believe me.

I go to strap Marcus into his car seat, he has a juice box in one hand and a granola bar in the other and he cries, "I cannnnn'tttt doooooo iiiiitttt,    Hellllppp......" Whaa, whaa, whaa......"

I take him under the arms and hoist him into his car seat....and try to buckle him in, then he starts,  "NO! I WANT TO DO IT MYSELF!!!!"

Oh, do you mean you want to do the thing yourself that you just whined about not being able to do yourself?

 I just need to clarify here....

This is after a giant tantrum because I had to put the plastic bird back into the house because the full 5 minutes I gave him to do it was clearly not enough time to place an object on a horizontal surface to his liking.

So now I'm trying to wrestle him into his car seat, despite the cirque du soleil full body contortions he is pulling.  My blood pressure is rising and by blood sugar is dropping, not a good combination.... I finally get him in an slam car door to drown out the screaming.  I scream out a few choice words beginning with the letter F, the neighbors are probably wondering by now if I have a very driveway specific form of Tourette's.....

So I finally start to drive them to the sitters, and Marcus notices that the zipper on his boot is down about 1/8 of an inch...  He starts screaming..."MYYYYY BOOOOOOOT!!  You have to ZIP IT UPPPPPPPP!"  I listen to this until I get to the sitters and get out of the car in the driveway to calm him down.   I offer to zip up his boot, but no go people.

"GOOO  BACK HOOOMMME, I WANT TO ZIP IT UP AT HHHOOOOMMMMMEEE!!!

So, what you need then,  is for me to find the time to drive back home, to the point where the zipper issue originated to rectify the situation.  Well let me check my blackberry to see if it fits with my schedule....

COMPUTER SAYS NO!


I throw them into the sitter's house and run for it, swearing all way to my car.  Turns out my Tourette's is not just specific to my driveway.....

Rules are there for a reason...

Ok so I'm going to write a little about myself here today, the blog is  usually about my blood sucking energy vampires darling children and the general decline in mental function that I experience when trying to play the role of zookeeper responsible parent.

But...there is more to me than just my relationship to the ankle biting set...I have other stuff in my life too.    I belong to a community Theatre group with my BFF's Dawn and CO.  Being shameless attention whores and general exhibitionists, this is a good fit for us, and gives me an outlet for some real drama, not just the cascades of screamy thoughts that rises to crashing crecendos of catastrophe inside of my head.  A little alliteration anyone??

So anyway, Our group has just finished a production of a play. It was a blast.  The thing is, I have this co-star that plays opposite of me, my love interest in the play.  The guy is a bit of a narcissist and for some reason had been bragging all week about how good of a dancer he was.

So after the show we hit a club to do some dancing and shooting pool and the like.  We hit the floor where the guy proceeds to break the cardinal rules of guy dancing:

1.  DO NOT back your butt up against the girl with your arms in the air in the "raise the roof" position. This is never attractive, it is a typical girl move, typically done by too drunk 20 somethings in  a desperate bid for male attention, not attractive in any case.  Do not offer your wildly contorting body to me in some sort of a "behold, you may now lay hands on me" offering.  I'll take the head of a chicken, thankyou.

2.  DO NOT raise your hands past chest level, at any point during the dancing.  Possible exceptions: A. Punjabi wedding B. Rock concert fist pumping C.Songs like  "Jump Around"D by House of Pain or other old school early nineties hip hop..hip hip HORRAY...OOHHHH ...AAAYYY...OHHHH... You get the picture.

3. DO NOT lead with your shoulders.  Men, move your hips in small movements, do not make big lunging movements with your jangley legs, having just had the path cleared with your shaking shoulders.

4. DO NOT dance with Jangly legs....big steps, legs wide apart.  Think, white boys at a barn dance.

5. DO NOT do the side-clap while wildly bobbing your head.  I mean the "I really want to be a spanish Matator, Ole!" side clapping hands up high by the side of the head, or like your a rich guy at a long table in a Carol Burnett skit, summoning the butler to take away the butter.

6.  DO NOT try to garner more attention than the girl that you are dancing with.  Men, you are there to be accessories to us on the dancefloor.  Keep your movements small and your eyes on us, don't look around the room to see who may be watching you.

7.  Most of all, if you are trying to impress someone with your dancing, DO NOT come up to them casually afterward and say, "So, how's my dancing?"

You might just get the attention you were looking for as the crowd watches me vomit all over your shoes.

Girls, Girls, Girls....

I think when ZZ top expressed this sentiment, it may have been a little different than the one that I scream to myself inside of my head.

My oldest is Mackenzie (Kenzie for short).  She is a beautiful, brilliant and verbal child with precocious tendencies.  When she was a baby she slept for 12 hour stretches at night, didn't cry much and preferred not to be carried around.  When she was a toddler, she never threw tantrums and would calm from a fit of crying when I simply said, "Can you calm down?".  People used to credit me with her good behavior and I had a sneaky suspicion that I had nothing to do with it...that it was just the way she was.

I used to watch my good friend with her boys, who were a little more high maintenance at the time and think, "That looks hard, Kenzie doesn't do any of that..."  Turns out I was a Smug Mother of a Girl.....

Smug mothers of girls can be identified by the slightly confused look of sympathy given to mothers of toddler boys, like "Why are they doing that?, don't they know just to ask them to calm down and they'll stop biting/whining/screaming/jumping off the bedroom dressers...."   My poor friend Dawn bore this unconscious attitude from me with grace, only saying "I can't wait until you experience parenting boys..." as her only indication that she knew what I was in for, and that it would be a whole different ball game.  Then BLAMMO, my twin boys were born and they haven't slept through the night or stopped screaming yet and they're three!

So now Kenzie is 6.  I heard when she was younger and  I only had the one that girls were easier when they were babies but harder when they were older. "Surely not.. I thought, Kenzie is a reasonalble human being and will continue to be so."

Then reality bitch-slapped me at age 4.  There was a new sheriff in town, and her name was ATTITUDE, she was flanked closely by her twin deputies, Passive Aggression and Demandingness.  Now when I wake her up in the morning, the first words out of her mouth are "Am I getting my allowance today..I really need Skwinkies, I'm the ONLY one at school who doesn't have them." and MOM, this and MOM that, peppered liberally with eye rolls and sighs.

So now the boys are at their worst/hardest age and the girl is as her worst/hardest age.

The smugness has gotten SO smacked off my face, thanks for the foreshadowing Dawn!

The Devil is Throwing Snowballs

It has happend.  I know, hold on to your hats, it's BIG NEWS.  Are you ready for this???

I had a lovely weekend.

I know...... it's a lot to take in at once. Pace yourself with the absorbtion of this material...

Usually I detest the weekends, long stretches of parenting alone, pulling out my hair at the screaming, the fighting, whining, oh and did I mention the SCREAMING?  In twin boy STEREO?  With a side of six-year old girl indignant, guilt inducing attention seeking.

But, this weekend, I had a very relaxing overnight in the city.  I attended a roast/dinner in honour of a great guy who had a great accomplishment, then I went back to my friends house, drank tea and watched "What not to wear" and slept.  Oh, bliss!!!!  Got up at 11:00 am the next morning and went for brunch, a bit of shopping and coffee.  On the way home, I get a text, "drive carefully, don't hurry,  all under control here"  Talk about foreplay!!!!!!

Sounds delightful huh?  Wait there's more.  When I got home, Chris (my husband) had the kids OUT!.  As in out of the house, as in did not bowl me over, and try to crawl inside my skin and take up residence like a pack of parasitic worms.  (albeit, cute parasitic worms....see how generous I can be?)  They stayed out for two whole hours!  Then we had a peaceful supper which they all ate ( a miracle in and of itself...).

After that we watched Toy Story 3 as a family and get this, for the first time in their lives the boys paid attention to the movie for a whole 90 minutes.  The little faces, transfixed; and lit by the flickering light of the TV screen....oh, I just choke up thinking about it.  The silence!  

The next day I was busy out of the house with the girl, gymnastics, ballet and then 3 whole hours of play rehearsal just for me!

They must be reading the blog and feeling guilty!

PEWKs....

So you may have ascertained from the flavor of some of my posts that life can be a bit stressful, that I do not find the job of parenting to be as easy as it looks in the TV commercials for Skippy Peanut butter.  My childhood was a bit... how should I say, dysfunctional and I always vowed that I would have a better relationship with my kids than I had with my mother.   

Having said that, it would be a whole separate world in the blogosphere to write about my mommy issues.  Suffice to say they are still there but have mellowed to the extent that I am driven crazy by them, not deeply emotionally affected by them.  My mother is and always has been a loving and kind person, just a little obsessed with control..and not allowing us to have our own feelings...

ANYWAY...

So before I became a parent I was a PEWK....Parenting Expert WITHOUT Kids.  PEWK's can be identified by the frequent use of words like, "Always" and "Never" in conjunction with their parenting plans.  Like,  "my kids will ALWAYS talk to me, I will ALWAYS  listen to them, they will NEVER eat junk, watch tv, throw tantrums"...etc.  The word JUST is also thrown into the mix, especially when criticizing the observed behaviors of other parents WITH kids.  " Just put him in time out..." "Just talk to him in a reasonable manner and he'll listen"  "Just walk away and cool down instead of yelling".    Sound familiar to your pre-kid self?

So here's the thing that surprised me the most about kids.  I used to think, "they don't have to watch TV or eat junk food, if I never give it to them they'll never know the difference right?"  Laugh at me now, I deserve it, I mock myself on an almost daily basis.  The thing they don't tell you in the Skippy peanut butter commercials is how UNHAPPY kids are most of the time!  The whining, the attention seeking,  the needing every scrap of your attention all of the time until you are a walking shell of your former self (ok bit dramatic there, but I mean really,  check the name of this blog...)  Neither the Skippy commercials, nor the Cosby Show (my only reference to a "normal family") never made reference to the fact that you are in an almost constant state of scanning your environment to find anything, ANYTHING that will make it stop for just a few minutes, that will allow you to go to the bathroom, call the cable company, make a grocery list,  to BREATHE !  And guess what works for a couple of minutes?  Tv, junk food and that damn toy at the checkout that you swore you'd never buy.  It's survival,  PEWKS!

Oh, dear PEWK, just wait until you have kids, until they reach inside of you with their Skippy Peanut Butter covered fingers and yank every smug, self-satisfied preconception out into the light, where they'll stomp all over it and watch you crumple to the ground......begging for them to "JUST  GO AND WATCH SPONGEBOB, ALREADY!"

Wherein I succumb to my foot in mouth disease

So there is something that you should know about me, I suffer from a virulent form of open mouth insert foot disorder.  It's a common source of amusement to my friends and I hope it will continue to be for you too.

Some examples:

1. Performing my Mike Myers "old Jewish lady"  impression for a group of new coworkers, one of which,  unbeknownst to me at the time was herself and oldish Jewish Lady... (who is rather SENSITIVE about such things as it turns out...)

2.  Arriving at an Eating Disorders clinical conference and joking about the abundance of food, "Thank God there's food, I thought I might starve at an Eating Disorders Conference"  only to be pointedly told by the young skinny women behind the registration counter..."Yes, SOME of us are in recovery...)  oops. Hungry people are cranky....

3.  Flippantly asking the group of young, overdressed strangers at a large regional staff meeting, "What, are you here for a job interview or something?" and when they looked at me blankly I followed up with a sarcastic, "Ok, never mind, I just WORK here, maybe could have helped you out..."  Only then to realize (I cringe when I think about it...) that they were here for the ceremonial planting of a tree that our agency had arranged in  honour of their recently deceased  father, a past employee with our service.  Many profuse apologies followed, and I hid in the back during the group photo....not my best day.   My only consolation is that their father, a really great guy named Bill, was probably laughing his ass off at me from the great beyond...he was that type of guy.

4.  Asking the same Jewish lady if she was knitting socks for Christmas presents... (withering look, "No, maybe for HANUKKAH....)  Oh, right.....

5.Reaching out to touch the Turban of a Sikh man that I work with, right after I missed the table conversation about how it is the highest insult to touch the turban of a Sikh.  Made worse by the Meep Meep sound I made as I pinched it, made worse by the follow-up: Oh, shit,  now what happens....do you have to do some kind of cleanse now?  Is there livestock, light of the moon, blood or stabbing me with our ceremonial dagger involved???  Is this going to take up my weekend?   (They guy is a good sport and loves to laugh, which only egged me on to engage in the highly inappropriate  follow-up)

6.  The old, insult someone to someone else and send the insultee an email by mistake with that conversational thread in it....she totally deserved it.  She was a cold skinny big haired be-otch and  I stand behind calling her "the unfriendly duck"  harsh I know....

7.  Are you still reading or are you rolling on the floor, stomach clenched in  vicarious cringe-cramps?  Well here's the latest.....

Remember the rather sensitive Jewish woman?  Well we were all having a group conversation about her name, which is very similar to another co-worker's name (think Lydia and Lynda). People confuse them all of the time an Lynda remarked on this fact.  So Lydia (the Jewish woman) states that she could go by her Hebrew name of Pescha (pronounced Pesh-a).  I said "Cool, it rhymes with the singer (it's a stretch to call her that I know...) Kei$ha (pronounced Kesh-a for those of us who are slightly south of cool...)  You could go on tour, Pescha and Keisha, you could put a dollar sign in your name...."

Now,  it took one maybe two seconds for the full impact of suggesting to an extremely touchy Jewish woman that she put a dollar sign in her HEBREW name...  I had a quick thought of  "Surely to God, she knows that Keisha has a dollar sign in her name, she can't possibly thing that I've suggested that based on the stereotype of Jewish people being tight-fisted and preoccupied with money"  Wait, she's leaving the room looking angry, muttering something about "Golden Haired SHISKAS" , which we actually  established earlier in the day was a derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman..

I have to stop writing now, I'm on day two of the apology that will last 40 days and 40 nights.

Oy, Vey, I'm getting all  VERKLEMPT!

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just an oncoming train....

Not that I mean to sound pessimistic or too overly dramatic.  I mean I should be grateful, whenever I complain about how hard motherhood is in general, especially with parenting twins on top of a pretty demanding singleton girl, with a husband that is away most weekends,  I have to stop and remind myself that things could be worse....I watch Jon and Kate plus 8 and think.....

I could have that haircut......

That being said.  I keep waiting for the magic time when I can stop holding my breath for the next scream, and prematurely tensing my entire body waiting for the next crisis down the line (they come in 30 second intervals). Just when things start getting better and I think I can breathe,  another strain of mutant behavior comes along.  

This is the hardest thing I've ever done, for such a prolonged period of time (see first post).  Believe me, I felt like giving up after 1.5 days.  Turns out I can stick with things if they live in my house and won't go away on their own....

I have to watch myself when I tell people that yes, I have twins, and yes they are boys and yes they are toddlers. I usually see the flash of horror, quickly replaced with a look of sympathy and then I get a polite, "Well, you must be sooo busy".  I do not want to unleash the following diatribe, spewing verbal vomitus like some crazy parental homage to the exorcist.  .  I nod and smile politely, while the following is ramping up in my head:

Busy???

Busy is when you are whistling your way through the day, hustling and bustling about, checking off tasks on your to do list and being productive.  I like busy, I'm busy at work it's lovely.

This is not busy.  This is, oh, how should I put it..... emotionally draining and physically exhausting.  It pushes you to the limits of your mental well being and sometimes sends you to the ugly place inside of your head where all of the very bad words live.  Rationality does not exist, traditional ways of coping do not work.  The crying, the "I'm on the top and your on the bottom!, no I'M ON THE TOP AND YOU'RE ON THE BOTTOM" fight (actual excerpt from the car ride to the baby sitter's this morning). The walking them up to the swing and forgetting the lawn chair and realizing that there is no way I'm making it back to get it, that if I try, the screaming and clinging and fighting over which hand they will hold, and dropping to the ground meltdown that would ensue if I tried to walk two steps away from them.  GO ON WITHOUT ME, I'M NOT GONNA MAKE IT BACK....SAVE YOURSELVES...

Breathe.....

Ok, so I'll tell you the same thing that I lay on these other people, it's not always as bad as that, I'm just dramatic because it helps me cope.

I have to warn you, Monday posts may be a bit RANTY.  They may fall into the "I'm going to go out of my mind, I've just spent the weekend pulling out my hair" category.  Not to worry, I'll be better by Friday, when it will start all over again.

I'll just have to keep BUSY!


 

On poopy scrotums and feeling old....

So last night I'm visiting my friend Dawn, who has two boys ages 5 and 7 ish, who she refers to as the gremlins.  Add to this my twin 3 year old boys, Marcus and Zac who are LOUD LOUD LOUD and my oldest daughter Mackenzie who is 6 going on 16 (as they all are) and is DISDAINFUL of all boys.  This has the makings of a great visit huh?

Anyway, the boys are getting toilet trained, their babysitter is much better at this than I am.  I keep forgetting to remind them to go to the toilet, and they are not so good a reminding themselves, often deciding it is a good idea to go to the potty after they have gone in their pants.

Sooo, anyway, here we are drinking wine tea and cowering upstairs away from the children chatting in the kitchen when it becomes evident from the SMELL that one, no make that two of the boys have pooped in their pants, in their underwear, and that once again, I am a slackass who forgot to remind them to go.

Add to this, the boys have developed a sudden, crippling, rigid body screaming fear of Dawn's beagle who is more interested in sniffing out what is in their pants than eating them.  So amid the screaming, I look for a place to change them, I know it's going to be messy so I don't use the kitchen countertop like I usually do (slipping the diaper underneath to protect the food surface...I'm not a total barbarian...)

I decide to use the dog bed, it's on the floor, soft and cushy and already has a lingering aroma that matches the one in the boys pants.  (I flip it over for reasons of hygiene...)

So I'm changing Marcus and I'm just about to throw the diaper on him when I hear Dawn yelling, "the scrotum, you missed the scrotum!"

Now people, I do not profess to be really good at the boy diaper thing...  I started out with a girl, no wrinkly, saggy skin to wipe (no that will be me, when fate pays her back and I'm 93 and it's HER TURN to wipe my...ahem...I digress)  anyway, I say "It's fine...I'll just put him in the tub later"  She scoffs at me and proceeds to muscle me out of the way and takes her turn at the dog bed.

She says, "You have to SPREAD and WIPE"  and proceeds to stretch the poopy, wrinkly body part (with her bare fingers..I shudder.) in question and expertly cleaned it up.  She has two boys, poopy scrotums is what she knows.

I said to her,  "Oh, the internet is sooo going to hear about this tomorrow!"


So now for the feeling old,

I just emailed a younger colleague (I'm 36 she's in her 20's) with a some website changes to make to market a research project I'm working on.

When she suggested some changes to make I wrote, "Make it so,  #1" and then begged forgiveness for the geeky star trek reference.

She emailed me back and said, "Ha Ha, I'm confused, do you mean you want your info to be #1 on the scrolling menu?"

 Sigh,..... maybe scrotums aren't the only thing wrinkly around here....

On blogs and my penchant for abandoning projects.

So I've just decided to start blogging. Dear God, did I just use the word penchant?   I am feeling a little ambivalent about it, like will I actually stick with this (like the time I decided to grow my own broccoli sprouts or decided I was going to bake all of my own bread with the new bread machine...all project abandoned within 1.5 days..)  To my credit, I found out growing sprouts from seeds you get at Wal-Mart can actually be toxic..Well I guess I'll see. 

I have started reading other people's blogs and I now start framing things in my own life like "If I had a blog, I would totally write about this" 

If I thought anyone would read this (What, I'm not being passive-agressive here.)  I would say, "Hey, don't get attached, I have a committment problem, and a terrible work ethic and I'm lazy sometimes...so don't get invested in me writing a blog"  I get very excited about things in short bursts (which is why I grew up with my mother saying, "Why do you have to be SO DRAMATIC all of the time???"

You never know, I may surprise myself.   Ooh, maybe I'll stop by the greenhouse for some organic seeds.

I think I need a waffle maker