Are kids psychic?

How do they know the ONE behavior that will drive you up the frigging wall.
I do a good job with most of the behavior stuff. I’d go so far as to say I am a really patient parent. I keep my cool, I stay calm, I’m not a shouter or a hitter or a name caller. I can address the behavior without targeting the child, I try and understand that most of these foibles are perfectly developmentally appropriate and respond accordingly. Hitting, throwing things, general defiance…………..I’m pretty much ok with those. I can redirect, I can take toys away, I can put him in timeout for egregious offenses. What can I not handle without going crosseyed and seeing RED?

Spitting. OhSweetBabyJesus, SPITTING. Not even spitting-spitting, just blowing raspberries spitting, but it make me absolutley bonkers. I’d rather he just haul off and smack me in the head, honestly. Because that I can at last handle calmly. Sometimes it’s innocent and he’s playing, and I can blow it off, even while secretly being totally grossed out. Because toddlers are, well, excessively MOIST, and while a grown up can stick his tongue out and blow relatively dryly, a toddler raspberry is as best a little like a summer rainshower. At worst, you feel like you are on the front row at a Gallagher show. Only it’s SPIT, the worlds most revolting substance. Even writing this, I am grossed out by the spit in my own mouth. I have not shared a beverage with another person (even my husband!) since middle school. I can’t even eat lollypops or hard candy or gum – it’s just swallowing flavored spit! EEWWWWW!!
So, with my saliva issues, it’s no wonder that when he spits aggressively, to show his displeasure or defiance, it takes every ounce of control in my body not to just come undone. Last night he was in a benign spitting mode, playing games, and while it was generally annoying it was not vindictive and I just bit my tongue, ducked and diverted, and was sorry nursing was preventing me from a nice big glass of merlot. Later, though, he was angry because it was bedtime and I crouched down on his level and was telling him “Sorry, but it’s time for books and then bed.” Little demon blew a big ol’ wet raspberry right in my face. I have never in his whole life even been tempted to spank or strike him, honestly. But there were a few fleeting seconds there where I could see myself smacking him, and I could see it feeling satisfying to be making him as unhappy as I was right in that moment. It would have been totally counterproductive, and it absolutely would have been out of line with my general parenting philosophy, but the vision was there. I suspect he saw it, too, as I found myself adopting the dead calm, flat voice I heard from my father as a child when I had *really* crossed the line.
“Books. Bed. NOW.”
He scrambled to bed with no further incident. But I know it’s a momentary reprieve. No toddler would ever give up such a sure way to get a rise out of a parent. Hell, I am 37 and I still have a few in my pocket in case my folks get out of line!

Like the Nestea plunge in your pants

So potty training was a dismal failure. Oh, well. I went out and bought some more Pull Ups. We usually get a combo pack at costco that has night time ones and daytime ones. The learning design kind that has a picture that fades when it gets wet. I went to Target this time, and saw the cool ones that get cold when they get wet instead. Fantastic!, I thought. He’ll be able to feel when he wets, and maybe that will help.

So I put one on him. An hour or so later I see him grabbing his, ahem, area and notice the design is different, so I ask if he peed. He says yes. I say “Oh, Drew, did it get all cold? Doesn’t that feel yucky?”

“Oh, no, Mama! I LIKE it! It feels niiiiiiiice.”

Crap. They shouldn’t sell those in Texas. Apparently, they just feel refreshing.

What does that even MEAN!?!?!?

From the “certified fitter” at the specialty nursing clothing store:

“Well, I don’t know what to try. That bra is the right size, but your breasts seem to be the wrong shape for it.”

 

Crap. I suppose I have to take her at her word. She’s a professional.

Florence Nightengale I am not.

Cliff has the flu.

I should point out that I have a sort of weird fear of sickness in the best of times. The word “paranoia” is probably appropriate. Thirty eight weeks pregnant is NOT the best of times, so that paranoia is kicking into overdrive.

My abject fear of sickness is something I have always had, and while having a child tempers it somewhat (Hello, daycare, festering swamp of Germiness!), it remains. I think it is partially just that, hey, duh, no one likes to be sick, but that fact coupled with some bizarre work ethic that means that I am incapable of slowing down until my body actually begins to crumple to the floor on it’s own accord means that I am doubly wary. In the three years since I have had the adorable germ fest we call our Drew, I have called in sick for ME being sick exactly three times. All involving grotesque stomach bugs that rendered me literally physically unable to move off of the bathroom floor. All the colds and sniffles and various other ailments I contracted courtesy of all the kids in his daycare preferring to chew on toys some other runny nosed kid had already chewed on? Miserable, for sure, but I was still trucking it up to work, keepin’ on keepin’ on. No leisurely afternoons on the couch watching reruns of Ellen and bad Lifetime movies for me.

So, poor Cliff. He is really sick. This is, for once, no man cold. But because of my girth and other circumstances – -like Drew’s asthma meaning I am doubly fearful HE will get the flu, my total lack of patience, the fact that I could go into labor at literally any second and then have to deal with thorny questions about exposing a newborn and the rest of the maternity ward to FluDaddy — he’s not getting much by way of tea and sympathy. Instead he gets conversations from across the room, nagging about whether or not he’s on top of his medicine and staying hydrated, and some crazy ass giant pregnant lady following him around with Lysol wipes, swabbing down everything he touches. Sometimes before he even puts it down. If we had Hazmat suits, I feel certain I would be employing them.

I am feeling very pressured. For the flu, it’s best if the Little Man stays put until at least after the weekend. But then we get into a weird place with Drew — he was going to stay at my sisters for the 3 or so days I am in the hospital, but she leaves town Thursday for a week. So if the baby doesn’t come by Monday-ish, then I am going to be hoping he stays put until she gets back and after Drew’s birthday, which is the 19th. Do you sense my controlfreaky side threatening to take over? Yeah, I do, too.

So, zen……………ZEN, dammit! Babies come when they come. Right?

What do those words mean?

The words I am referring to are “It’s just too sweet.”

Hmm? What? Come again?

It’s almost Easter. The most glorious candy holiday of the year. Why do I make this claim? Well………Peeps! Marshmallow Hiding Eggs! Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Eggs! Peeps! (worthy of a second mention!) Jelly Beans! Malted Milk Robins Eggs! Reeses Eggs (with a far superior chocolate to peanut butter ration than any other Reeses item)! Cadbury eggs? Thank you, Easter Bunny, Bawk, Bawk!

I say that there is NO better Calgon moment than sneaking away into a room without a begging child grasping your ankles to slowly savor a row of Pink Bunny Peeps that have been left on the counter to get stale for a few days. Chewy but not fluffy. Sweet, but with the ever so slight bitter aftertaste of red dye #40 (which is why, by the way, PINK is the best peep color, unless you are eating chicks, which have an inferior sugar to mallow ratio and can only be eaten in chicky yellow). Don’t even get me started on the blasphemy of the blue, purple, white, and GREEN?!?!?! Peep nuance is something my family takes damn seriously, in case you hadn’t noticed. 

I admittedly have a sweet tooth. I think I am going to blame it on evolution – humans are wired to like sweets. Rationalization out of the way, I just like sugar. It’s a tough mistress, what with the calories and the risk tooth decay, trust me. But people who claim to not like sweets, or who use that inexplicable “It’s too sweet”………..can they be trusted? Have they lost some essence of humanity in rejecting the life sustaining calories of a Reeses Egg?

ii don't like it

That’s right, I hate the Wii.

To be fair, I don’t hate it any more or less than I hate any other video game device. But people’s reactions to my distaste seem to indicate that my dislike of this Revolution in Gaming means that the terrorists are winning.

Now, my distaste is two fold. Part one: I just plain suck at video games. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not enjoy doing things I cannot show at least some passable skill at. I don’t want to be the best, I just don’t want to be the worst. I feel awkward and self conscious, and it kicks off some internal conversation in my brain that makes me feel MORE awkward, which pisses me off, which makes it harder to concentrate, which makes me suck even more. Now, given that hand-only video games make me visibly angry and prove my digital incompetence quite obviously (stupid Frogger frog! Always running into traffic!), how on earth would a video game platform that actually requires full body movement be considered an upgrade to me personally? No. Please don’t call 9-1-1. I’m not having some sort of full body convulsion. I am simply trying to hit the soccer ball and avoid the freaking panda head. (Panda head? This is fun family entertainment? The severed heads of cuddly zoo animals flying at me?) So yeah, I suck. I can cop to that.

The secondary part of my distaste is a general ‘ick’ about video games in general. I grew up in an adamantly non-video game household. My parents were of the “Go read a book! Go outside!” hippie bent, so my only exposure was at friends houses, and my friends all wanted to go play outside when we went over to play since they had 24/7 access to video games when they were by themselves with nothing better to do like play kickball with friends. I did internalize that message, though, which was “Go DO something. Don’t sit in front of a screen and pretend to do something.” I am mature enough (ha!) at this point in my life to see that there is nothing inherently Evil about moderate gametime, that it can be nothing more than just mindless fun, but there is a part of me that still internally cringes to see my not-yet 3 year old ‘bowling’ with his father. Because, you see, he’s not really bowling. He’s standing in front of the couch. The first time he played, I thought “A whole generation of pasty white kids is going to grow up thinking they are good bowlers, but the first time they get to an actual bowling alley, they are not going to have the physical strength to pick up the damn ball!” Yeah, yeah. It’s overdramatic. (Hi, I’m Julie. Nice to meet you.) So I keep my mouth shut, I enjoy that my kid and his dad have a ‘thing’ they do together and enjoy, I run over to watch when Drew comes to get me, shouting “ook, me, mama! Ook! I boowing!” and I cheer him on when his daddy helps his get a strike, cause that’s just freaking adorable. I even play when asked. I can enjoy his enjoyment. But I’d be a liar if I said it was the most fun I ever had.

We have the Wii Fit, too, and I hope that after this baby comes I can find some use for it to get back into prebaby shape (which would mean ever-so slightly less round than I am right now :P) and maybe that will warm me up to it. Hell, if it got me into better than pre baby shape, I’d recant this entire diatribe and marry the damn thing.

What IS awesome about the Wii, specifically? That little song they play when a bowling game is finished. Drew loves that song, and immediately hops up to dance his funky little stomping dance, arms held out behind him like non-flapping chicken wings, circling the living room with a most determined look on his face. That’s almost worth the money.

Almost.

Ashes, ashes, we all spontaneously combust

Someone at work today made a joke about spontaneous human combustion . It totally freaked me out.

When I was a kid, probably 10 or 11, I got a book from who-knows-where that was based on stories from the then-current TV show, Ripley’s Believe It…….or NOT!! You read that correctly. As if the world needed further concrete, scientific proof that I was the uber-nerd, I didn’t even watch the dorky show. I read the even dorkier book they based the dorky show on.

The book was full of people who did crazy-ass things, but it also had paranormal stories in it. There was an entire chapter on spontaneous human combustion. That’s SHC for those in the know, by the way. The stories always were about people who lived alone, hadn’t been seen in a few days, and when neighbors or family searched for them, all they found was a pile of ashes and some personal effect that was miraculously untouched by flame. Usually a cane tip or the soles of the poor victims shoes, sometimes the very chair the poor victim had been sitting in. There was always some quote along the lines of “My God! It was as if he just burned up where he sat!”

Holy. Crap.

Look, I was well aware at the time that the world was a dangerous place. I was in FIFTH mother effing grade. I had seen some shit, you know? But now, in addition to worrying about the fact that next year I was going to have to manage a locker and changing classrooms at school and that my training bra technically had nothing to train, I had to worry about my body turning on me entirely — to the point of bursting into uncontrollable flame?? I fretted about it for weeks. I took extra special care not to get overheated. I worried it, as my mother is so fond of saying, to death. Since I was a pretty anxious kid in general and prone to worrying about random things, they generally left me alone to obsess over things for a while, but apparently eventually I set off even their blunted “What the hell?” meters and they were compelled to ask me what was up. So I told them.

My poor parents. Every parent prepares themselves for the moment their kids asks “Where do babies come from?”……….a precious, unlucky few have to be faced with “I am afraid I am going to burst into flames in the middle of the night and the only thing you will find in my bed come morning is the plastic-y decor left over from the decals on my Wonder Woman Underoos.” (Whatever! You had some, too! You know you did!) Well, my parents tried to blow it off. It’s all legend, it’s silly, that doesn’t really happen. Unfortunately for them, even at the age of 10 I was going to need something more than their lame platitudes and reassurances. After about a week or so, where my position was firmly backed up by a book compiled by interns who worked on a crappy late night TV show while my dads position was backed up by………..his word and nothing more, my dad got serious. Now, this was looooong before the internet, wikipedia, or anything that allowed you to research things instantaneously. My dad, a very rational man of science and an engineer, had to go to the local library, ask a stranger for help, and look up books and articles on a subject he knew was bunk. I assume there was probably even microfiche involved. But he doggedly compiled his own dossier on SHC, and brought it home to me to look over. It appears that, long story short, the victims are almost always long term alcoholics and the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that they were all smoking at the time of the incidents. Umm, yeah, even at 10 I was able to make the connection between a pickled human being and an open flame. Mostly. I won’t say I was totally convinced (hello! I read it in a BOOK! Books don’t lie!), but it reassured me enough to get a good night sleep without being afraid my blanket would overheat me.

So far, Drew is a happy go lucky sort of kid. Then again, I am not certain I was showing an awful lot of evidence of my worry at that age, beyond needing to know my Weebles were taped down at night so they could get a good night’s rest. Which, incidently, still seems pretty reasonable. I was feeling pretty good about that, that Drew might manage to escape the not alltogether fun burden of a mind with the ability to ruminate and obsess over Potential Doom. It only occurred to me today, when my coworker said those words, that this baby will be a whole new ball of wax. If this kids a worrier like I was, will I be able to handle it like my parents — for the most part calmly and rationally? Or will Cliff come home one day to find us both curled up in the corner, worried and anxious about………….oh, hell. Really almost anything. High fructose corn syrup, melamine in food, moldy peanuts, chemicals leaching out of plastic into our hot chocolate?

Wait………..