Dead Womb Walking?

So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my uterus.

For most of my life I have taken my uterus for granted and haven’t thought about it much at all. During my two pregnancies I thought about it A LOT, of course, but once my babies joined us on this side of my cervix, I kind of forgot about it again. But now I feel bad, like I haven’t appreciated it enough. It grew two healthy babies and helped usher them into this world just as it should. (And one of those babies was 9 pounds, 10 ounces and almost two weeks late—that’s above and beyond the call of duty, uterus-wise.) If uterus-having were an Olympic sport, I’d at least qualify for the finals, I think. (No medal, though—those would go to the Super Uteruses, like the ones in surrogate mothers and Michelle Duggar.)

So why am I now suddenly all, “How great is my uterus?”

See, I had a birthday recently. The First Annual Celebration of My 39^th Birthday, to be precise.  And as the big 4-0 looms ever larger, I can’t help but wonder if my uterus’s time is up.

If it’s not just a dead womb walking.

I have always said that I want to be done having kids by age 40. I’m not sure why I drew the line at 40—I guess it was all the talk about how your fertility decreases around then, at the same time that your chances of having problems with your pregnancy increase. For whatever reason, for me and many of my friends who put off having kids until our 30s, 40 is the big cutoff date. Last call at the fertility saloon, if you will.

Well, 40 is just one year away. And if you do the math, given a nine-month pregnancy (HA!), that means we have just 3 more months to decide if I’m retiring the old uterus or calling it back into baby-making action one last time.

And I just don’t know.

There are some days when I KNOW, unequivocally, that my two darling boys are enough for me. It’s not just the days when they fight like rabid badgers, though that certainly helps. But it’s also the days when they are just wonderful; when we are lying in a heap on the couch reading a book together, or sitting on the floor at the airport eating a McDonald’s picnic and watching planes take off as we wait out a 2-hour delay. And I think, “How can I ask for more than this? Why rock this happy little boat?”

But, then… Then I remember being pregnant. Feeling those first kicks and hiccups and even the right hooks to the bladder. Somehow the balloon ankles, sciatica, and crippling nighttime carpal tunnel pain are forgotten. Instead I think about that delicious anticipation that comes before you meet your newest little one, the nine months of wondering what he or she will be like, and then the slow process of getting to know the precious little human you helped create.

(If a mom with a new baby happens to walk by as I’m having all these thoughts, there’s a good chance my ovaries will just explode.)

Ovaries exploding in 3, 2, 1...

It doesn’t help that every time I turn around or log onto facebook someone in my real or online life is announcing their third pregnancy. I can’t even read my favorite celebrity gossip magazine without hearing about Jennifer Garner’s new (third) baby or Tori Spelling getting pregnant just one month after her second baby with her current husband was born. (By the way, that’s a whole ‘nother blog post, am I right? ONE MONTH? We all know what that means, and that is completely cray cray. Good lord, give your poor lady parts a break, Tori!)

Of course, everyone assumes that if we tried for a third, I’d want a girl. And sure, there are times when I think, “Wow, everyone in this family farts a whole lot,” and then I think it might be nice to have a daughter to hide in the corner with, fanning ourselves and spraying Febreze at anyone who gets close. And, I have to admit I kind of want to see what would happen if my husband ever had to deal with little-girl hair. THAT would make for some entertaining facebook photos, I’m sure.

But truthfully, when I think about having another child, I don’t secretly wish for a certain gender. I just think about holding a squishy little newborn and smelling his or her wonderful little head. (What is it about newborns’ heads that make them smell so good?) I think about another round of first smiles, first steps, first words. I think about the amazing, addictive, indescribable feeling of love I have for my sons.

But still, I just don’t know.

I wish that the decision to have a third child were as cut-and-dried as the decision to have a first or second. With our first baby, the question my husband and I had was relatively easy to answer: Did we want kids or not? The answer was yes, the timing was right, so we moved on to the fun part. Sure we were a little scared and not entirely sure what to expect from parenthood, but we forged ahead anyway. The decision to have a second child was also easy. We asked ourselves,  “Do we want our child to have a sibling?” The answer again was yes, and though it was a little more difficult to find time for the fun part with a toddler in the house, we managed to make it happen.

It's Ryan Gosling holding a baby. *Drool*

But, a third? Not so easy. Right now, we are so lucky. My two boys are healthy. They are active, happy, little beasts who, sure, tend to break things and whine a lot and refuse to eat most vegetables, but who also, for the most part, get along with others and follow most social norms (you know, just not the ones involving nudity). They are by no means perfect, but they are perfect for US. How do I know if we are meant to have another?

So. My husband and I have some thinking to do in the next month or so. There’s a lot to consider—even more than what I’ve laid out here. My uterus is looking for answers, and I can’t keep her waiting much longer. (Uteruses are female, right? It would be weird otherwise, I think.)

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you—how did you know when you were done having children? And how did you know how many you wanted to have?

My Son Called Me A Whore

Yes.

It’s true.

A few months ago, my then-3 ½-year-old son called me a whore.

Well, sort of.

No, we weren’t on some godawful tabloid-y talk show like Maury or some equally horrible reality show like “Toddlers and Tiaras.” (“Toddlers and Tantrums” is more like it. Now THAT they could film at my house for sure.) And this wasn’t even an insult hurled mid-meltdown or hissed through gritted teeth during a timeout.

In fact, it probably wasn’t even intentional.

Probably.

Here’s what happened:

Matthew had become occasionally interested in drawing things other than scribbles. He moved into straight lines and circles, then decided he wanted to try writing letters. My husband and I were a bit wary of this. Matthew is, yes, of course, a genius and FAR advanced for his age in all areas—much like your kid, I’m sure. (*ahem*) But he also has a very low tolerance for frustration, and writing letters seemed like an activity RICH with potential frustrations. So we started slow. We taught him ‘O,’ which he pretty much already knew, then ‘M,’ because it’s the first letter of his name. Over a few days we taught him just a few more letters, mostly ones with straight lines.

One day, he came to me with a piece of paper and an insanely proud grin. “Mommy! I wrote something for you!” he exclaimed, as he handed me his masterpiece. Here’s what he gave me:

I oohed and aahed and tried to hide the fact that I was crying just a little bit. My son wrote a word! And not only that, he wrote “MOM!” Together we found some tape and hung the paper up on the kitchen wall where everyone could see it. I went back to trolling facebook, er, researching recipes online, and he went back to the playroom for more writing.

A few minutes later he returned. Same triumphant grin, another piece of paper. “Mommy!” he shouted. “I wrote you another word!” I looked down eagerly. What lovely sentimental message would my son bestow upon me this time? Here it is:

After my initial moment of shock, I oohed and aahed (though without the tears), then I tentatively asked, “Um, Matthew? What made you decide to write this word?”

“Mommy,” he said, “It says ‘ho.’” (That’s what his voice said. His face added, “DUH.”)

“I see that,” I said. “Why ‘ho?’”

“Mommy!’ (another “DUH” look) “That’s what Santa says!”

[Did I mention this happened around Christmas? Kind of a key detail in retrospect, I suppose.]

Before I could respond, he handed me the tape. “Hang it up! Hang it up!” he begged. How could I say no? So, Matthew’s second official written word joined his first in the place of honor on our kitchen wall, where everyone could see it.

. . .

And now, to apologize for using the word “whore” in this post’s title, I give you Matthew’s latest masterpiece.

Hubby and I secretly call it "Mutant Bird" because of the googly eyes.

What’s the latest cute thing your child genius has said to you?

How to Make "The World's Easiest Banana Bread"--the Hard Way

Recently I learned how to make the “World’s Easiest Banana Bread.” Then I learned how to make it the hard way:

Let your four-year-old help you.

 (Photo: Steve Hopson, www.stevehopson.com)

We had three bananas getting brown on the counter, which is a rarity around here. We are serious about our bananas, and they never last long. If my husband or I are at a grocery store—even if the only things on the list are tampons and light bulbs—we will always buy bananas because, well, we always need them or are about to need them.

So. Somehow, these three bananas had been allowed to exist long enough to get a little brown. And the only thing I hate more than mushy bananas is throwing out food, so I decided we would make banana bread. According to the clock we had just under 2 hours until we had to leave for Matthew’s T-ball “practice” (have you ever seen 3- and 4-year-olds play T-ball? If so, you get the need for quotes just there). I figured we had lots of time. No problem, right?

Right.

I Googled “banana bread recipe” and got about 1,000 recipes for banana bread that all included goofy ingredients like buttermilk or rum that would require a trip to the store. Taking two kids to the grocery store was NOT what I had in mind when I imagined making banana bread. (Taking two kids to the grocery store is pretty much NEVER what I have in mind. Ever.) So I refined my search to “EASY banana bread recipe,” and I hit the jackpot. The very first hit, from simplyrecipes.com, required only ingredients I already had! I hit “print” and headed for the kitchen.

I gathered my ingredients and my 4-year-old and soon realized how this was going to go. Matthew was interested ONLY in cracking the eggs. As I squinted at the recipe, he badgered me, “NOW do I crack the eggs? NOW? When, Mommy? Mommy, when? Mommy, WHEN DO I GET TO CRACK THE EGGS??”

I thought that smushing up bananas would be a good distraction, so I pulled a dining room chair up to the counter for him to stand on and told him to go for it. This was a special privilege because standing on chairs is usually not allowed. This is a tough rule for Matthew to follow. Pretty much every time I do something like, I don’t know, clean the cat box or go to the bathroom alone, I emerge to find him standing on a dining room chair. Not doing anything, usually, except gleefully breaking the we-do-not-stand-on-chairs rule. But today? Today he was being a stickler for the rules. And he refused to stand on that chair.

So, as Matthew attempted to mush bananas that he could not see because he was kneeling instead of standing on the chair, I got out some yogurt to substitute for the butter in the recipe. Why? I don’t know exactly. Yogurt is not in the original recipe, but someone in the comments had said that if you replace the butter with yogurt, the bread would be “healthier.” And since I had a feeling that I was going to be eating a LOT of this banana bread, I decided to blindly follow that advice. Now, measuring yogurt shouldn’t be hard. But measuring yogurt with a 4-year-old’s help is very hard. First the yogurt has to be spooned from its container into a measuring cup, then dumped from the measuring cup into a bowl. The result? Some yogurt in the bowl and lots of yogurt everywhere else.

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_bread/

A quick check of the clock told me this was taking a bit longer than planned, what with pleading with my kid to break rules and cleaning yogurt off of my shoes, but we should still have plenty of time to finish up and get it baked before T-ball. I mean, how long could making banana bread take?

Next was sugar.  Once again, I deviated from the original recipe, cutting the sugar down to ¾ cup and using brown sugar instead of white sugar. I couldn’t begin to tell you the difference between brown and white sugar (other than the obvious), but, again, someone in the recipe’s comments said it was a good idea, and who am I to argue with the internet? Though we still hadn’t cracked any eggs, the sight of sugar caught Matthew’s attention. He finally stood up on the chair and offered to help measure and pour, which went about as well as the yogurt. I turned away to grab a sponge to wipe up, and when I turned back I found Matthew, literally up to his elbows in brown sugar, licking his arm, hand, and fingers like a starving wild animal.

I put a stop to the sugar feast, handed him a wooden spoon, and told him to stir. Matthew went for it with gusto, though his speed at mixing far exceeded his effectiveness. “Look at me! I’m an agitator in a washing machine!” he yelled. Before I could ask him where exactly he learned that, he went on, “I’m a tornado! A mixing tornado!” He paused long enough to grab the second spoon that I was holding, stuck it in the sugary, yogurt-y banana goo and yelled, “DOUBLE AGITATOR!”

Apparently, all that sugar was kicking in.

Finally, FINALLY, it was time to crack the egg. Just one, it turns out, which was lucky because that’s all we had. I gave it to Matthew and stood back. Matthew has a strange method of cracking eggs that absolutely demolishes the egg, but somehow lands very little shell in the bowl. There’s also a whole stab-the-yolk-until-it-“pops” thing that can be kind of disturbing if you think about it too much. Once all that was done, it was back to the agitator-tornado for more stirring, and we moved on through the recipe.

When it was time for the flour, I knew I had to proceed with caution. Flour is a pain in the butt to clean up, and we didn’t have a lot of extra time. But of course it went everywhere, leading Matthew to tell me triumphantly, “Mommy! I have flour on my nipples!” (Yes, he was wearing nothing but underpants, his favorite outfit.) The situation didn’t improve as he began his crazy stirring again, which somehow didn’t incorporate the flour into the batter at all but did manage to incorporate it into his hair.

I looked at the clock with dread. At this point, we would be late to T-ball if the bread took a full hour to cook, so I did some damage control. I gave Matthew a spoon to lick while I quickly mixed in the flour, poured the batter into the pan, and put it into the oven. The kitchen was a mess, and I knew that I should enlist Matthew’s help in cleaning it up—you know, teach him that cleaning up is part of the process of baking and all that—but I still had to get us both dressed and sunscreened and get a snack together. So I did what any parent would do (right? RIGHT?). I turned on “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

And then, as I tried to clean brown sugar and flour out of the fruit bowl, the dish drainer, the silverware drawer (???), I heard a question that I would hear at least 40 more times in the next 50 minutes: “Is the banana bread done yet?”

We were NOT going to make it to T-ball on time.

Like A Herd of Turtles

“Off like a herd of turtles” is what my dad always used to say as my family climbed into our green Dodge Dart and headed off to wherever we were going. I always just assumed it was some annoying things grownups say—until I had kids. And tried to go somewhere.

I’m not sure what it is about kids that makes it so HARD to get out the freakin’ door everyday. They could whine all morning about wanting to go to the park, but when it’s actually time to GO TO THE PARK, they turn into, well, a herd of turtles.

Here’s what happened one day this week when we decided to go to the park:

Me: “OK, guys! Time to go to the park!”

Boys: (nothing. Suddenly playing happily with matchbox cars, even though they had spent the last 40 minutes arguing and writhing around on the floor complaining of acute boredom).

Getting out of the house should be easy. I have a simple mental checklist to follow, and once it’s all done, we’re on our way. Here it is:

·      Diaper/Potty

·      Clothes

·      Shoes

·      Sunscreen

·      Bag(s)

·      Out the door

It’s really not much. It really should be quick. Sure, at times there are complications—like the 5 days a year that it rains, for example, when we’ll need umbrellas—but it’s not like I’m putting these kids in snow pants and boots and mittens and all that. (I’m pretty sure if we lived somewhere with snow we wouldn’t leave the house all winter. We would try, but we’d spend all our time putting on and taking off our winter gear instead.)

So, here’s how it went the other day:

Now THIS turtle knows how to get places.

Diaper/Potty: I cornered William and carried him like a football toward the bedroom. Over his loud protests (“NO DIAPER! NO DIAPER! NOOOOOO!”), I told Matthew to go potty. But just hearing the word “potty” set off some 4-year-old obsession with all things toilet-related, and he began stomping around the living room chanting, “You are a poopy stinky butt! You are a poopy stinky butt!” I decided to assume that he’d find his way to the potty eventually and focused on the task at hand—the diaper change.

Sometimes changing William is easy. And sometimes it’s like wrestling an angry alligator. Generally, if I’m trying to get out of the house, it’s ‘gator time. Since reasoning with a two-year-old is only somewhat more effective than reasoning with a houseplant, I resorted to the usual: I pinned him down with one elbow and strapped that diaper on as fast as possible. The results weren’t pretty, but it would do the job.

As I let William go, I could hear from the THREE successive flushes that something—maybe potty, I hoped it was potty—was going on in the bathroom. By the time I poked my head in, Matthew was at the sink, pumping hand soap all over the counter and finger painting with it (or, as he calls it, “washing his hands”). I got him back on track and moved on to…

Clothes: I had managed to wrestle William into his clothes during the diaper fight so I headed for Matthew, who was wearing his favorite outfit: just underpants. I got his pants on, but in the time it took me to lean over and pick up his shirt he wandered off declaring, “I’m going to touch the cat’s eyes!” I rescued the cat (again) and got Matthew’s shirt on. Great. Now it’s time for…

Shoes: I scooped William into my lap and got started. Matthew looked at us, saw an easy target, and before I could stop him hit William gently on the head yelling, “BOP!” William laughed, but I was getting annoyed at this point (WHY WHY WHY was it taking so long to get ready??!! WHY???) so I ordered Matthew to time out. “But Mommy!” he whined. “I didn’t hit him! I bopped him! You never said no bopping!” I’m not proud of it, but then I did that thing where you get crazy eyes and hiss/whisper dire threats through clenched teeth, and he grumbled his way into time out.

Couldn't help it. I just love this.

As he sat there, I decided to move on to…

Sunscreen: I hate this part. My husband and I have been known to fight over who has to do it. I will put my kids in long-sleeved shirts in 80-degree weather just so there is less skin to protect with the evil lotion. Why do kids hate sunscreen so much? Why do they act like you are trying to spread acid all over their faces? Is it because they know I will bribe them into doing it peacefully?

So. Time out finished, sunscreen applied, bribes delivered, we moved on to finding our…

Bags: I grabbed my diaper bag and leaned over to grab the monstrous bag of sand toys we bring to the park. As I did, Matthew yelled, “Show off your tushie! Time for stickers!” and I felt several little pokes to my rear end. I sighed, knowing that my hands were too full to remove the stickers he had just placed there and that I would inevitably forget about them and spend the rest of the day with motivational sayings like “Gr8 job!” and “Way 2 go!” all over my butt.

But that was ok, because we were about to make it…

Out the door: The easiest step, right? Just walk out the door and to the car parked right there in the driveway. Ten glorious feet, and then both kids would be strapped into their car seats, unable to poke, hit, or bop each other for 5-10 glorious minutes. Easy-peasy.

You would think.

Instead, Matthew opened the screen door, took one step out onto the porch and stopped to check out the neighborhood, I guess. I’m not sure exactly what he was doing, but there he stood. Just behind him in the doorway stood William, his tiny fingers placed in the exact spot where they would get pinched if I let the screen door close. One step behind him was me, looking like a hobo Irish step dancer as I juggled my two bags and did a crazy jig designed to keep the cats from darting out to the lawn to eat grass, which they would then just barf up inside the house.

Trying to stay positive (we are SO CLOSE), I chirped, “OK! Let’s go to the car!” No one moved except the cat, who tried to slip between my feet. I danced a little faster and said (not quite so chirpy this time), “COME ON, boys! Let’s start walking to the car!” They were frozen in place. WHAT WERE THEY WAITING FOR? WHAT WERE THEY LOOKING AT?? The cat feinted left and my jig turned into more of a drunken ju-jitsu thing. I dropped all pretense of friendliness. “GO GET IN THAT CAR RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME I WILL LOSE. MY. FREAKIN. MIND!” I yelled. They both looked at me like I’d already lost it, then ambled over to the car while I tackled the cat and threw, I mean, placed him in the house and slammed the door. I smiled and waved at my lovely and childless neighbor, who was obviously thinking she made the right decision at that point. I gathered the sand toys from where they landed all over the porch (why I even bothered I don’t know—they only like to play with the old empty yogurt cups I threw in there once).

And we were off. Like a herd of turtles.

Entourage: The Preschool Years

You know how sometimes your kids do things that are cute? And sometimes they do things that drive you crazy? And—once in a great while—they do something that is both cute AND drives you crazy? Well, this is about one of those things. One of those Cute-Crazy things.

My four-year-old son travels with an entourage. No, he doesn’t have an assistant or stylist or bodyguard. I’m not even talking about myself and his little brother, though he is forced to spend a good portion of his waking moments with us. Rather, Matthew has collected a motley crew of stuffed lovies that must accompany him around the house at all times. One day I made a tiny little joke about his (insert silent swear word here) entourage, and the label stuck.

Here’s how a typical conversation goes around here:

Me: Matthew! Do you want to do a puzzle with me in the playroom?

Matthew: YES! Wait! Let me get my entourage! (Aww…isn’t that cute? He wants his stuffed animals to join us!)

(He begins scurrying around the house, gathering his entourage.)

Me (from the playroom, where the puzzle is almost done): Matthew, what’s going on out there? What’s taking so long?

Matthew (super-whine time): I can’t find my whole entouraaaaage!!! (Holy hell, this kid is going to drive me crazy!)

Like I said. Cute-Crazy.

The problem is not so much that Matthew wants to bring his lovies wherever he goes, it’s that the entourage has gotten so BIG lately. Our house is not big, and only has one floor, but the finding, gathering, and transporting of his entourage still manages to take up a good bit of his day.

Since Matthew recently asked me to photograph his entourage (why? They are with him ALL THE TIME! If he wants to know what they look like couldn’t he just, I don’t know, look down?), I figured I might as well share.

So, here it is—an introduction to my four-year-old’s entourage.

The founding member is a stuffed doggie with whom Matthew fell in love early on. Not being very creative with stuffed animal names, my husband and I called the doggie “Doggie,” and Matthew followed suit.

The earliest known picture of Matthew (20 months) and Doggie

                       

Doggie has a companion Blankie, which at one point Matthew liked me to drape over his face before he fell asleep.

Who in their right mind takes a photo--with FLASH--of a sleeping child?

                       

But then things changed. One day not long after his second birthday, Matthew made an announcement. Doggie’s name had changed. She would now be known as “Baby Missy.” If my husband or I slipped up and said “Doggie,” Matthew gently reminded us by saying, “I’m sorry, BABY MISSY.” This drove my husband completely batty as “Missy” just happens to be the nickname of my horribly bitchy cat who hisses at him if he so much as looks at her from across the room. He is not fond of this cat. He pretty much hates this cat. And now his son’s most precious possession—his best friend, even—had been named after this cat.

We resisted, figuring that Matthew—being only two years old at the time, after all—would forget this folly and go back to using the much more sensible moniker “Doggie” for his BFF. But Matthew beat us into submission and within a few months we stopped calling the doggie “Doggie-I-mean-BABY-MISSY” and started calling her simply “Baby Missy.”

Here is what happened when I tried to photograph Baby Missy and Blankie.

Matthew, get out of the picture.

*sigh*

          

There it is.

For over a year, Matthew was very reasonable about Baby Missy and Blankie. They went with him everywhere IN the house, but they never LEFT the house (please, like I wanted to go through the horror of accidently leaving one of them at the McDonald’s play place, er, I mean, the library). The other stuffed animals in the house were mostly ignored, and he never even noticed when 95% of them happened to disappear when we moved.

So I don’t know what happened around the time he turned 3 ½. We went to the zoo, where we were given a (free) tiny, stuffed elephant. I handed it to Matthew, thinking he would hold onto it for a while before it made its way to Goodwill with its predecessor reject stuffies. But something had changed. This elephant was special. This elephant needed to be with him (and Baby Missy and Blankie) at all times. And this elephant needed a name.

I give you…

"Baby"

Yes, he named the elephant “Baby.” And from that moment on, when he got out of bed in the morning and until he went to sleep at night, Blankie, Baby Missy and now Baby went with him everywhere (in the house. I’m still not crazy enough to let them go anywhere else).

A few weeks later, Matthew was invited to a friend’s birthday party. After 2 hours of hardcore jumping, climbing, and sliding at an indoor play place, he guzzled two juice boxes and barfed all over the lunchroom floor. As we were hurriedly ushered out of the place, his friend’s mom flung a goody bag at us before going off to try to clean her shoes (oops). What was in the bag? A teeny, tiny, stuffed bear:

Hmmm...I wonder what he named it?

After thinking about it for a nanosecond, Matthew declared, “I will call her Baby Bear!” And a new member of the entourage was born.

[Quick entourage recap: We now have Blankie, Baby Missy, Baby, and Baby Bear. And they all must go everywhere around the house with Matthew. All the time.]

So what exactly was I thinking just a few weeks later, during a trip to the local Aquarium, when I let Matthew pick one reasonably priced toy to bring home? I guess I was thinking that he would buy his usual—fish tattoos or a little ball with dolphins all over it, something practical that he could use to taunt or bonk his little brother. What did he choose?

I believe it's a tiger shark.

It took him 25 long minutes to settle on this shark, but it took him again about a nanosecond to name her…Shark Baby. And the entourage grew yet again.

[Entourage Roll Call!! Now we have Blankie, Baby Missy, Baby, Baby Bear, and Shark Baby. Try saying THAT 10 times fast.]

So then what exactly was SANTA thinking just a bit later at Christmas when he gave Matthew these six lovely orange towels that just so happen to look exactly like the freebies they give out at a certain Southern California pro hockey team’s games?

Orange, so they're easy to find.

Well, he was thinking that Matthew would like to have a hand towel of his very own and that having such a hand towel would encourage him to WASH HIS HANDS after using the bathroom—something Matthew did not seem to see as important. (And, given the volume of pee I find on the floor next to the toilet, it seems that maybe he’s right—his hands don’t seem to be involved in whatever aiming method he’s using.) And, because Santa is a smart guy who knows about kids, he figured Matthew would go through about a towel a day—so having six would mean less pressure on Mommy to get laundry done daily.

(Or maybe Santa just knows how ridiculous it is to expect Mommy to do laundry daily. That would seriously cut into her facebook time, after all.)

Anyway, it is safe to say that NO ONE quite expected Matthew to get as attached to those dumb towels as he did. While he didn’t give them each a name (Baby Towel? Towel Baby?), they joined his entourage and now go with him wherever he goes. (IN THE HOUSE. I seriously do a pat down at the front door whenever we leave.)

So, if you are one of those “lucky” people who happens to know me in real life and wonders why I can’t ever, EVER get to our play dates on time, now you know one of the reasons. We’re looking for Matthew’s entourage.

And my sanity.

The gang's all here.

Out of the Rat Race and Into the Poop Race

Two years ago I took a leave of absence from my full-time job teaching 3^rd grade. No more papers to grade, administrators to impress, lessons to plan. I could—and often did—spend all day in my jammies (and by “jammies” I mean “crappy old flannel pants and spit-up-covered t-shirt because SOMEONE around here forgot to do laundry again. Oh wait, that was me.”) My commute went from 18 miles each way to a slow crawl to the coffee pot each morning. In a lot of ways, life became less hectic. But it took me just a few weeks at home with a newborn and an almost-two-year-old to realize I had left the Rat Race—and entered the Poop Race.

Ryan Gosling pix make it ok to blog about poop.

I knew that being a stay-at-home mom would mean that I would end up taking on most of the poop duty (heh heh, I said doody). At first I embraced my role as Head Diaperer. I spent hours and hours researching cloth diapers, and I organized all our diapering supplies in cute little baskets. I had two boys in diapers at that time—and, as it turned out, would for almost another whole year—so keeping track of diapers both clean and dirty took up a decent amount of my waking hours.

(Probably no one needs to know that I have, on occasion, dreamed about those cloth diapers at night—right?)

Anyway, fast forward two years and, yes, my kids are older, but I’m still in the thick of the Poop Race. In fact, I realized not long ago that I am the Primary Butt-Wiper for FOUR out of the six living creatures in our house (4 human, 2 feline). Do the math and you may get worried—do my hubby and I have one of THOSE relationships? No. No no no no no no no no no no. And no. But me and one of my cats apparently do, because she is either too fat or too lazy to take care of business herself and so I have been instructed by my possibly-crazy vet to go after her tushie with a baby wipe once a day.

(Um, that has actually happened maybe three times in the three months that have passed since he suggested it. It just almost never makes it to the top of my priority list, for some reason. Things I would rather do than wipe my cat’s ass: as many loads of laundry as I can possibly find in the house, scrub the kitchen sink with bleach and a toothbrush, read Goodnight Moon 3985239854798 more times—you get the picture.)

One more...

And the thing about poop in our house is that it always seems to happen in a when-it-rains-

it-pours kind of way—one enormous, awful Poop Storm. Here’s how a typical day goes: At some point, my 2-year-old informs me that he has a poopy diaper. This sets off some sort of physiological trigger in my 4-year-old, who then races for the bathroom. Before I can even finish changing William’s diaper, Matthew is yelling from the bathroom, “Mooooooommmmmyyyy!! I poooooooooped!” Translation: “I will sit here screaming about it until the neighbors call the cops or you come wipe me!” I finish up with William, and head for Matthew. As I’m finishing up with him, one of my cats saunters into the bathroom and heads for the litter box—he might as well have a freakin’ newspaper tucked under his arm! That means that within minutes I’ll be scooping HIS poop too if I don’t want all of us to live in a foul cloud of stink.

So. Much. Poop.

The good news is that we have avoided many of the more awful-sounding poop problems that parents of young kids often face. Neither of my children has so much as dabbled in the poop-as-art-on-the-wall movement, and no one poops in the tub anymore. We have so far avoided the stomach flu altogether in our house (though I probably just jinxed it, right?), and…

Special bonus George/Ryan double treat. You're welcome.

And…

Crap. I can’t think of another example. I’m too caught up in worrying that writing about how we’ve never had the stomach flu means we’re now all going to get the stomach flu. And what that will mean for me in terms of cleaning and laundry and my beloved cloth diapers.

Better go. Time to stock up on Clorox wipes and Pedialyte!

All By Myself...

A little less than a week ago, I left my husband and kids.

Well, ok, the truth is somewhat less dramatic: A little less than a week ago, I kissed my hubby and boys goodbye and left for a vacation. Without them.

And, as I sit here on day 2 of my Florida vacation, full of pancakes and coffee made by someone else (the best kind!) and coming off two full nights of uninterrupted sleep (the best kind!), I am struck by the fact that I have managed to pull off the ultimate Mommy stunt—a truly relaxing vacation without my kids.

But no child-free vacation is complete without a little (or a lot of) mommy guilt. The lovely beach that lies before me is peppered with kids of all ages, digging happily in the sand, jumping in the waves, and chasing hapless seabirds. My kids would have loved it. The beach, the pools, the adoring grandparents…how could I deprive my darlings of such delight?

Can't. Stop. Reading.

I thought about bringing them, really I did. But my husband and I priced airfare, and it wasn’t pretty. And the logistics weren’t easy, either: I was flying into one city, staying with relatives who didn’t have children, then driving 2 hours to the beach and a lovely but not-so-child-friendly rental condo with my dad and stepmom. They would have loved to see my kids, of course, but I couldn’t help but think that their vacation would become a little less play and a little more work if all of us showed up. We’re not always an easy crew. Some of us don’t sleep well (Rascal), some of us don’t eat well (Stinker), and some of us realllllly wanted some time to herself to read “The Hunger Games” (um, that would be me).

All of that was reason enough to leave the little guys home for some quality time with their (by now sleep-deprived) dad, but my memories of our last family trip by plane were what sealed the deal:

We were flying to Detroit, changing planes in Chicago. I sat with my then-3-year-old, while my husband and 1-year-old sat in the row ahead of us. Throughout the 4-hour flight, it appeared as if I had gotten the better deal. In front of me, Rascal flat-out refused to nap, and squawked off and on for the whole flight. Next to me, Stinker quietly watched Yo Gabba Gabba dvds for an hour, then fell asleep. I patted my husband’s shoulder sympathetically, half-heartedly offered whatever help I could possibly provide from the confines of my seat, then pulled out a magazine and relaxed for a few hours. But the tables turned as we began a bumpy descent: Rascal finally nodded off, and Stinker woke up extremely unhappy. After a couple of minutes of complaining, the worst happened.

icanhascheezburger.com

The kid began barfing. Like, everywhere. I remember, when it began, grabbing an airsickness bag from the seat pocket. I managed to get it open, then found myself waving it around the poor kid’s face, trying to catch the awfulness as it spewed out in every direction. (Apparently, a kid’s first instinct when a paper bag is shoved in his face is to dodge, leading to a substantial widening of the disaster zone.) Before it was all over, he got both of us pretty well covered in puke. Of course, we were landing and couldn’t get out of our seats for 10 minutes, so there we sat. My husband patted me sympathetically, handed me some wipes, and pulled out a magazine. (He denies it, but I SWEAR I saw him smile, just a little.)

I thought things would get better when we landed. We had packed a change of clothes for the kids in our carry-on bags, so I was able to get poor Stinker wiped off and changed before we even got off the plane. I was stuck wearing puke-y clothes, but figured I could live with it for the quick flight to Detroit, where we’d retrieve our checked bag and a clean outfit for me.

Yep, that’s what I thought. Until they cancelled our flight to Detroit and oh-so-helpfully rebooked us on a flight the NEXT DAY. When asked where we could pick up our luggage, the gate agent tapped at her computer then said brightly, “Oh! It made an earlier flight! It will be waiting for you when you arrive tomorrow!” I gritted my teeth and smiled, sort of, while I nonchalantly waved my shirt toward her, giving her a whiff of the magic that covered the only clothes I had. Lucky for us, my dad and stepmom lived nearby and we arrived on their doorstep an hour later, stinky, hungry, tired (hubby and me), and completely hyper (the kids). I borrowed some clothes, started a load of laundry, and raided the liquor cabinet. 

So. You can see why I hesitated to bring my kids on this trip. Plus, as a stay at home mom, I really looked forward to the idea of having no one to take care of for just a few days. Maybe it was selfish.  But I like to think that after a few days of relaxing I was able to come home refreshed, ready to take on the stinky litter box and the toddler with yet another cold. That is, if I can put down “Catching Fire” long enough to see what’s going on around here…

Barbie Was Right: Math IS Hard

Remember that talking Barbie doll that caused a media firestorm a while back because one of the several phrases she uttered was, “Math is hard?” I stomped around with everyone else condemning Mattel for peddling such a bad role model to young girls. But secretly, I wanted to give poor beleaguered Barbie a high five and say to her, “Rock on, sister, with your bad math self. We gorgeous, long-legged, mathematically-impaired blondes need to band together!” (Yeah, ok, so I’m not gorgeous, long-legged, or blonde. But I am bad at math. And I do lead a rich fantasy life.)

Like Barbie, I have never been a math whiz. In college I took a class that students jokingly called “Math for Trees,” because even a tree could pass it. Well, I’m proud to say that I did indeed pass “Math for Trees,” but barely. JUST barely. Since then, however, I have managed to get through life just fine with my mediocre math skills. I balanced my checkbook, back when checkbooks were a thing. I double recipes with relative ease. I even taught math to poor, unsuspecting 8-year-olds for years, and did a damn fine job at it.

T-shirt from neatoshop.com

Then I became a mom. And I discovered a secret sub-field of mathematics so tricky, so insidiously nonsensical, that I doubt even a math genius with a full night’s sleep could crack it. When I try to describe the mathematical challenges I face each day, they sound like those dreaded story problems I hated as a kid, but with a maniacal twist. For example:

·      Let’s say you have had just 3 hours of sleep, thanks to a sick toddler. And let’s say you absolutely MUST stay awake later than your children (pesky buggers have to be tucked in and all that). If you drank your first cup of coffee at 5:30 am, at what times throughout the day should you drink MORE cups of coffee so that you can be awake enough not to do something that lands you on the evening news but also tired enough to fall into a dead slumber at 8:30 pm?

·      If your child has a diaper rash that requires Desitin cream, how many times after applying the Desitin must you wash your hands to get rid of the smell?

·      A toy comes with 20 marbles. Child A takes 7 marbles into a closet (why??), loses 5 and finds 2. Child B takes 8 marbles into the bathroom (WHY???), loses 7 but finds 3. The cats chase probably 3 but maybe as many as 5 marbles under the stove. How many marbles do you have now? How long before you lose ALL your marbles completely?

·      Now let’s talk about Girl Scout cookies. If a = the number of Samoas in a box, and b = the number of people in my family, and c = the number of cookies I want to eat, and d = the number of cookies I can realistically blame my brother-in-law for eating on his last visit, then how do I calculate how many cookies I can eat with my glass of chardonnay tonight while still leaving enough for my family members to each have one and not be mad at me?

·      Speaking of Girl Scout cookies, how many pounds can you gain before having to buy larger jeans? How does your answer change if you give up on jeans and just wear yoga pants? What if you wear yoga pants with a long shirt tied around your waist?

·      If Child A needs to take 5 milligrams of Amoxicillin for an ear infection two times a day and Child B needs to take 7 grams of Amoxicillin for HIS ear infection one time a day, how do you keep track of who has taken how much medicine from which bottle and when? If you screw it up, what percentage chance do you have of creating a “Superbug” that is resistant to all antibiotics and will plague all the juvenile residents of your home with repeat ear infections throughout the entire winter?  If you do manage to get all the doses right, what percentage chance is there that everyone will STILL get repeat ear infections all winter?

·      And speaking of antibiotics, exactly how many doses of Amoxicillin must a two-year-old take before his digestive tract revolts and you must buy stock in Clorox wipes and laundry detergent?

·      Finally, if you and your husband want to eat Trader Joe’s Sweet and Sour Chicken that needs to cook for 20 minutes at 425 degrees, but your children insist on Trader Joe’s Breaded Chickenless Nuggets that need to cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, how on earth do you get your family fed on time and all at once without spending more than 5 minutes standing in front of the stove holding two boxes of frozen food wondering WTF you learned in Math for Trees that you still can’t figure this out?

If you know the answer to any of these questions, please let me know. I’ll be over here scraping charred Breaded Chickenless Nuggets into the trash. Again.

Did I Marry Mr. Wrong?

I came to an unsettling realization recently: I married the wrong man.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my husband. A lot. He is my best friend, my soul mate, an amazing dad, the whole package. But there’s just no denying that marrying him was a huge mistake. Another man would have been a better choice.

I should have married a pediatrician.

One of my all-time favorite pediatricians.

Think of all the worry I could have avoided! All the questions I could have had answered with no copay or waiting! Like, does my one-year-old wake up 5 times a night, every freakin’ night, because something is wrong with him OR because he’s a pain in the butt? And, is my preschooler hearing impaired or do all kids his age talk so loudly they scare the cats? If I had just married a pediatrician, the whole why-is-my-newborn’s-poop-dark-brown-instead-of-yellow-like-the-books-say-it-should-be fiasco would have just been a sentence in our parenting story, rather than a whole chapter. If I had married a pediatrician, the latest period of our lives—The Ear Infection Epoch—would have involved a lot less time watching Toy Story 2 in 20-minute increments in the doctor’s waiting room. (I think I have now technically seen the whole movie, in jumbled up bits and pieces.)

BUT…on the other hand, we are lucky to have access to good pediatricians. We have health insurance for ourselves and our kids, so seeing a doctor doesn’t necessarily break the bank. I am fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom for now, so we don’t have to rearrange work schedules to get the kids seen.

Hmmmmm….

Never mind. Forget marrying a pediatrician. I should have married a veterinarian.

Chris O'Donnell--hot vet on Grey's Anatomy

Again, think of all the worry I could have avoided! All the questions I could have had answered without paying outrageous fees or having to shove snarling balls of furry fury into the cat carriers! Like, should I worry when my cat sits in the corner staring at the blank wall like there’s something there? And, really truly what is a normal number of times for a cat to barf in a week? If I had just married a veterinarian, maybe he’d have some idea about how to deal with the girl cat—a gorgeous, long-haired calico who is also a raging b*tch who won’t let anyone but me and, inexplicably, just one of my two sisters, get near her. (Since that sister lives about 2,000 miles away, she can’t be relied upon to help with fun things like applying flea medicine and cleaning the cat’s, um, “bikini area,” which the cat is too fat to groom properly. How great is that?)

But wait. My cat hates everyone. She stares daggers at my kids and hisses at my actual husband whenever he dares to get within 10 feet of her. Who’s to say she’d be friendlier to my fantasy veterinarian-husband? He’d still probably have to use general anesthesia to so much as listen to her heart, like my actual veterinarian has to do. While I’m sure we’d get a family discount on the drugs, there’s only so much of that stuff he could give away for free. And I’d still be risking life and limb (OK, mostly just fingers) every time I had to get Her Highness into the carrier.

(Are you thinking right now, “Um, Molly? It’s the 21^st century. Why are you bemoaning the fact that you didn’t marry into all this expertise when you could just as well have become a pediatrician or veterinarian yourself?” Well, you just may have a point there…)

Hmmmmm….

Good news, everyone! It turns out I married the right man! He is funny, tall, smart, kind, and just about all-around wonderful, despite his woeful lack of medical expertise—either human or veterinarian. (Did I say handsome? I meant to say handsome. WOW, is he handsome. I should have said that first. Babe, if you’re reading this—whoo hoo! Are you a handsome devil!) I am a very lucky woman. After all, who else is married to a man who explains to our kids why our toilet clogs by making up a game called “Big Poop, Little Poop?” Who else is married to a man who—thanks to his Xbox and a fervent love of sci fi—could keep us all safe during a zombie apocalypse? Who else is married to a man who has managed to ensure that our sons’ favorite songs are by Creedence Clearwater Revival, rather than Raffi? Turns out I am very lucky, indeed.

Oh yeah. Since I’ve decided to keep him, I guess that means I need to come up with a gift for our fifth wedding anniversary later this month. Anyone have any fabulous ideas to show the man of my life how much I appreciate him?