A Day In The Life

Ok, not even a WHOLE day, but man, I am ready for bed already.

It has been a tough week or so at the ol’ homestead. Cliff has an infected wisdom tooth that is causing him some pain and therefore making him cranky like a wounded bear. Drew as developed a horrific, bleeding diaper rash that makes him walk like John Wayne and resist diaper changes. Have you ever seen someone try and catch a greased pig at the rodeo? It’s a lot like that. He also developed a nighttime cough that has been keeping him (and thus me!) awake for the past several nights. As for me, I am roughly 67 months pregnant, giant and unwieldy, have heartburn that could strip the chrome off a bumper, have not slept in weeks, and umm……….am mildly hormonal. And when I say “mild” I mean “cries or rages every 8.9 seconds, whether needed or not”.

So……last night started out well. Got Drew into a baking soda bath for his poor bum, then let him have some naked TV time in an attempt to help it dry out a bit. Bedtime was a breeze – a huge thunderstorm rolled in right when we layed down, so we listened to the rain together and I got to hear his awesome commentary about rain and lightning. He has always had an affinity for thunderstorms – I wonder if it is just an inheritance from his weather obsessed father or if it has anything to do with the fact that he was born in the middle of a violent storm. His cough was a little less persistent, and I had great hopes that he’d sleep through the night. And he did!

Alas………….I was up most of the night struggling with pregnancy induced stomach tempests. How totally unfair is THAT!? 2:15 am found me crying, begging, and asking the Universe “WHY??!? The Kid is SLEEPING!!!!! Why won’t you let me sleep, too!???!” There was no answer, but I swear I heard an evil, otherworldly chuckle or two.

This morning, I gathered Drew’s clothes and a clean diaper and prepared for Diaper Dash IIV. I gathered my baby washclothes (softer than disposable wipes), my diaper area cleansing spray (theoretically less stingy than the wipes on a sore bum, and for $15 it has freaking better be downright soothing!), my diaper disposal bag (capable of containing a Level 4 nuclear rated pair of poopy pants), and a $13 tube of organic, environmentally friendly, probably edible diaper rash cream for The Slather manuever necesary to coat the rash. As I approached him (from the rear, you don’t want to spook them!), I noticed with increasing horror that there appeared to be a………river? stream? ooze? of poop coming out of the back of his pants and headed down his leg for the floor.

  RED ALERT! RED ALERT! POOPAGE UNCONTAINED!!!

In a move considered by many to be impossible for a 67 month pregnant lady (in a skirt!) to pull off, I grabbed a wipe and launched myself at his ass, simultaneously wiping the chunk of poop about to head for the floor. Frankly, I was impressed with myself, both for getting there in time and for the sheer physicality of the move. I felt like Kerrie Strug pulling off that vault on one leg, albeit larger and more out of breath. Drew, on the other hand, was alarmed. Hard to blame him, I think I’d probably be scared by both the visual of my huge mother launching herself at me and her exuberant “Boo-YA!” of victory as she sat up holding a wipe full of poop if I were a toddler, too. It was also the first time he realized there was something leaking from his pants, so he reached back and grabbed………two handfuls of poop. He then brought his hands to his face and realized there was POOP on them. Utter and total panic set in. He began to cry and shake his hands about, flinging poop all over the place. My only alternative, as both a mother concerned about the bacterial properties of fecal matter AND the owner of a relatively new set of living room furniture concerned about upholstery, was to tackle him and contain the biohazard.

Once he was down, the diaper change that took place can only be described as “barbaric”. He wailed, he cried, he thrashed, his father held him down and I pried his buttcheeks apart to make sure I was getting all the irritating poop out, then slathered about $5 of cream on his bum. New diaper thus installed, we held each other and cried. Then a hand wash, a banana, and out the door to school. God bless the automatic garage door opener (“Hey, Drew! Do you want to press the button to open the big door!?!?!”) and the theme song from Higglytown Heroes. Drop off was easy, breezy, beautiful………not quite Cover Girl, as Mama looks like hell, but at least there was no Drop Off Drama.
……………….and that brings us to about 8:15. What else does the day have in store? Hopefully (mostly pregnancy safe) pharmeceuticals. Please?!??!

A Day In The Life: Part 2: But wait! There's more!!!

That’s right. I have reduced the entirety of yesterday into a ginsu knife infomercial.

Picking up at 8:15, where our little melodrama left off, the Universe amped up the stress at work. Imagine sitting in your little cube, whilst whispers of your Little Boss, his Big Boss, and his BigBig Boss swirl around you. You hear references to an account you manage, a failed audit, and most incriminatingly, your name. No one addresses you directly, but it seems clear that there is a problem, and someone (who!?!?) thinks it is because of something you did or failed to do. Makes you feel confident and secure, particularly in this stellar economy, no? (By the end of the day all is well, the problem is linked to a software error, I was exonerated and there were many apologies for freaking me the hell out, but it was quite a workday nonetheless!)

So I bail. I have to pee like mad, but frankly am just thinking about getting the hell out of the building, so I just get in the car and drive off. Tooling down the highway at 65ish MPH (perhaps faster, though I cannot commit to that here because I will not confirm my alleged lead-footedness in writing), I felt a quick shimmy of the steering wheel, then feel and hear a huge explosion, and then lose control of the car. I slowed down and wrestled the car over to the shoulder to compose myself and take stock. Well, that was the plan, but I soon realize that the shoulder of a highway at the beginning edge of rush hour isn’t exactly the safest place for that sort of thing. I can’t even get out of the car safely, much less do anything about the situation. So I flip on the hazards, gingerly head across the divider to the exit ramp, and limp the car over to a shopping center under construction and pull off to the side. Have I mentioned my abject fear of car problems and my terror of driving a somehow disabled car yet? Or that I spent the entire drive shouting “DO you not SEE that my car is BROKEN!” at the cars whizzing by me?

I start to call…………well, everyone. Cliff? No answer. My sister and mom are working out, so no answer. Cliff again, no answer. Text him with an admittedly dramatic “Tire exploded. Call ASAP” in an effort to spur action on his part. Yeah, it was ridiculously over the top, but I didn’t go with the heartstopper “Think I am in labor” so I’m giving myself a pass on it. Call my other sister, who works across the highway, to see if she can send a coworker to help me with the spare. She is headed into some mandatory meeting with all her officemates, so no luck there. Call Cliff again, no response. (Yeah, the incessant calls probably were obnoxious. But typically I am more than capable of throwing on the spare tire and was frustrated to need to rely on rescue, plus I was more than a little freaked out by the whole event, plus I STILL had to pee, plus with everything else going on, I felt like the sheer fact that I wasn’t crying in a heap on the side of the road a real accomplishment.)

BTW, where are the Good Samaritans, you are probably asking yourself. Umm, the WHO? I was on the side of the road for about an hour, near a busy construction site where probably 100 (presumably handy, mechanically able bodied) men drove past me, slowing down to gawk at the gigantic pregnant person and her obviously disabled car, and the ONLY person who stopped was some sort of foreman or something who came by on his little golf cart to ask me to move the car. Not to offer aid, not to change the tire, not even to offer to call someone for me. Just “Hey, can you move the car.” He’s damn lucky he was too big for me to stuff his body in the wheel well where the spare was. Damn lucky. Do people just not care anymore? Do they just assume someone else helped? Was it the cankles that scared them off? Do I even want to know?

Cliff finally returns my call(s). He gets me hooked up with the number to roadside assistance, and assures me he’s on his way. It will be about an hour because he’s across town, but he’s coming. I call Geico, and I have to say, they could not have been nicer. First things first they made sure I was ok.

“Ma’am, are you injured? Are you medically stable?”

“Well, I am 8 months pregnant and stranded and I have to pee, so I wouldn’t say stable.”

That poor 17 year old boy working the call center. He took that in stride, dear boy, and got me hooked up with Pop A Lock to change the tire instead of making me wait like 2 hours for a tow truck, which was his original plan. They show up in like 30 minutes, were wonderful, and leave me to drive on the freaking donut (have I mentioned my loathing of driving disabled vehicles?) to the tire place where I get some bladder relief, Cliff meets me and takes over the car situation and I grab his keys to get Drew from school.

Get Drew, get Cliff, pay $500 for 4 new tires, meet Cliff’s cousin and her son for dinner (yeah, on top of everything, wrestling a 3 year old in a restaurant! Yay!), get home, pass out.

Cha-cha-cha changes.......

So we are looking at roughly 5 to 10 weeks until Baby 2 makes his debut. A huge variance? Sure. Drew was 3 weeks early, if this baby comes at that same time, then we have 5 weeks to do……………well, EVERYTHING. We have done a sum total of absolutely NADA in terms of getting ready for this baby. We set up Drew’s Big Boy room, freeing up the nursery furniture, which remains stuffed in the nursery, unassembled, and totally unaccessible because there are so many boxes of various junk we don’t use but for some reason can’t get rid of in there.

If the baby decides to hang in there, the doctor will let me go two weeks overdue, putting us at the 10 week mark. Honestly, I have no idea how that would work. I am already unwieldy and massive, in 10 weeks I may have reached “They had to use cranes to get her out of the house to the hospital” proportions. Even though I am steadily LOSING weight at each visit, I do not appear to be getting any smaller. I’m no physics guru, but that seems wrong.

But, this isn’t about my impressive girth or even the new baby, really. It’s just that the closer we get to the birth, the more I notice how many littel things in Drew’s life will change. I really totally believe that siblings are an amazing gift to a child, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I want another child. My experience so far with Drew has been the most amazing, humbling, gratifying time of my life. I have discovered wells of patience and love that I never dreamed existed within me.

 But I am so afraid of the inevitable moments where Drew feel supplanted by the shinynewbaby, and feels left out or less loved. There will, no doubt, be moments where both kids need me and I have to choose, and thus someone has to cry. How much will the simple limitation that I can only be in one place at one time change how I choose to parent? I hope not at all, or at least very little, but I also understand that there is a certain inevitablility in the evolution of my mad parenting skillz.

In the meantime, while we wait, I find myself treasuring more and more the moments I have with Drew alone. When we lay down to go to sleep at night and he whispers to me and pats my face. When I watch him read a book and can just admire the sweetness of his face and the charming way his hair sweeps across his forehead. Those moments where he seems so much like a kid and then swiftly morphs back into my baby once more.

 Please forgive me in advance, Little Man, for turning your world upside down soon. Please find the patience to wait and see — see that someday your sibling will be one of those people in life that you can always turn to, you just have to hang tough with mommy during the initial storm of adjustment. I love you more than words can ever say.

Rock a bye, baby

Not that Drew’s a baby anymore. Not really. At almost three, glimpses of ‘baby’ are harder and harder to find.

I do lay down with him for bedtime every night, still. He only just stopped nursing to sleep a few weeks ago. That transition seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, I am really thrilled with how natural and gentle and beautifully it all wound down. So now we turn on our blue lamp, we turn on our “moona” (moon night light) and we crawl into bed together. Some nights Drew talks about the moon or his day, some nights he plays with his Dora or Diego doll, and some nights he just immediately cuddles up to me and rests his head on my arm and whispers, in that warm, wet toddler whisper, “go seep, mommy. go seep.” and his eyes close and he drifts off, my baby once more, if only for a fleeting minute.

I get a lot of “he has to learn to go to sleep on his own!” and similar warnings, all with dire consequences should we fail to teach him to sleep “properly”. And I am just going to call it all Bunk. There is little in my day more precious than those minutes I spend with him, hearing about his day, him dragging my arm around him just so, right beneath his ribs, his arranging my head so that we lay together, cheek to cheek, when every other thing in life seems so small, so insignificant. When the new baby arrives, I know I will treasure those moments even more, and when he grows out of the need and desire to have me there with him as he finds slumber, I will not for one second regret that we didn’t force him to think that his days had to end all alone in a big bed by himself.

One of these things is NOT like the other

Sarah Palin.

Whaaaa??????

Let’s forget her absolute lack of credible experience. The fact that she was forced to hire an administrator when she was “mayor” of Wasilla, and was STILL almost recalled from the post. The fact that she is a passionate advocate of abstinence education and voted against funding that would have helped teen mothers in her state (ironic, no?). The fact that she thinks Creationism should be taught in schools, that she thinks we shouldn’t put polar bears on the endangered species list, and she thinks drilling in ANWAR is a peachy keen idea. That she dragged her vulnerable, pregnant teenage daughter into the spotlight and threw her to the wolves of the media and public opinion. That she claims to be against corruption with her words, but still has her hand out for suspect campaign contributions and pork spending. That she used her influence to fire people she didn’t like. At least twice – once as Mayor and once as governor. She is under investigation for one of these firings. The government is paying a lawyer $95,000 to defend her. Nice work if you can get it.

Not that those things aren’t all perfectly good and reasonable reasons NOT to vote for her or the party that thinks she is our best option. Any one of them is a fine reason to reject her.

But lets go with this instead: One set of breasts on the ticket does not equal another set of breasts on the ticket. It is the ultimate in pandering and so completely insulting in every single way that the McCain campaign thinks it can take advantage of voters that liked Hillary Clinton by offering up another set of knockers. A set, by the way, that in every single way represents the polar (ha!) opposite of what Hillary Clinton stood for. Do they really think women are that stupid?? Really??? If you are a woman — hell, if you KNOW a woman — you should be insulted. Even if you agree with her ultra conservative views, the mere fact that they think women are silly and stupid and shallow enough to accept a completely divergent opinion just because it comes from someone with similar anatomy to another popular candidate is an insult to women everywhere. And that is UNACCEPTABLE.

 

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Moderation: not really my bag, baby.

Ugh!

When I was younger, I had something of an anger management problem. My temper was legendary, my voice was loud, my list of grudges was endless and non-forgiving, and the list of things and relationships I damaged with my outbursts was long, indeed. I fought hard, and believe me, I fought dirty.

Over time, I realized how destructive my inability to rationally deal with my feelings was, and how much energy it took away from my life to nurture anger and fight every battle as though it were a matter of life and death. I vowed to first and foremost stop fighting dirty. And I don’t.

 The problem is that somehow I have ventured way too far into the opposite direction………….I get angry, I stifle it, I forgive too easily, and I let people I love get away with far too much. I try and rise above the fray, to fight the battles that really are important, but I feel the Monster lurking………….I am M.A.D. Way mad. Sick of Being The Bigger Person. Sick of Offering The Benefit Of The Doubt. Sick of letting bygones be bygones, tired of subjugating my anger and hurt for the Greater Good.

I fear that one day either it will all rush forth, a tsunami of pent up feelings that will wash away all the good things in my life or else I will continue to shrink under the weight of it all, and disappear.

Julie's really truly horrible awful bad day

My day:

5:00, Drew wakes up.

6:30, leave to take H to airport cause he is OOT for a week

7:30, home, breakfast, playing, I tear UP my back twisting awkwardly putting stroller in Cliff’s SUV. I am dying of pain.

9:30, go pick up grandma to go run errands. Drew sleeps in the car for over an hour while mom and I take turns running into places

11:30 Arrive at mall. Spend a half hour just walking around till damn stores open because God would be offended if I bought panties before noon. Drew refused both stroller AND a grandma carry. He wants to be carried by me or to walk with no holding hands. Ach!

12:01, complete underwear purchase (get home to find in my haste I grabbed several wrong sizes)

12:15, seated at California Pizza Kitchen, thinking food will turn the lil’ mans attitude around

12:25, request our freshly brought food be packaged TO GO.

12:30, walk out of mall struggling with my awful nack to carry my SCREAMING, kicking, bucking toddler much to the amusement of all passers by.

1:00, get home to Cliff’s phone call about his wasted business trip, our loss of $1000 (unless the DMV can help in the morning) bewcause his license is expired and if he can’t rent a car, he can’t do anything on the trip and has to just come home

3:00, run to store for dog food and necessities. Drew refuses to sit in cart seat, insists on sitting in the actual cart. I comply, which I NEVER do, as long as he sits on his bottom. I say “Sit on your bottom!” 47,548 times in the next half hour and get chewed out by an older lady (even though I never, ever stepped away or took my hand off the cart)

3:30, stuff older lady’s body in my trunk, try to decide what Tony Soprano would do with it.

5:00, make Drew dinner – grated carrots in yogurt to start. Look over to see him flinging it everywhere – my walls, my floor, the fridge door.

5:30 bathtime. Drew pees on the rug while waiting for the tub to fill, I put him in and he grabs a big stadium cup, fills it with water and dumps it OUTSIDE the tub and all over me. Then he poops in the tub.

6:00 Done with Bath 2. Go to nursery, find dog eating a poopy diaper she got from where? I have NO IDEA. Spend 15 minutes cleaing up poopy diaper remains and vaccuming up poopy gel bits.

7:30, Drew’s in bed.

I can’t decide if I should go to bed, eat a half gallon of Blue Bell, drink a bottle of Jack, or just run, run AWAY! My house looks like a tornado hit it, and I still have a body to dispose of.