This is What Dinner is Like With a Sick Toddler

As a wonderful parent (ahem), I treasure every moment with my child. I miss him all day while he’s at school, and every afternoon I count down the minutes until it’s time to pick him up and spend some quality time together. I take great joy in all the cute little things he does and says, am in awe at how quickly he changes and learns and grows, and feel my heart fill with joy whenever he says my name. I truly love him more than I can even describe.

As a normal human being, sometimes I am driven to the brink of insanity by his toddler antics and want to smash my face into a wall, toss him into bed early, and calm my nerves in a bathtub full of vodka.

Last night I was a normal human being.

It’s been a rough week around here. The dear lad has been struck with yet another ear infection (number six thousand of the year, if you’re keeping count), which of course means that he’s cranky and out of sorts (is there anything sadder than a teary-eyed toddler pointing at his ear and saying “hurt, hurt”? The answer is no), and thanks to all the doctor’s visits and requisite childcare shuffling that accompany every ear infection, I too am feeling out of sorts. (Yes, I’m complaining that my child’s painful illness is a hassle for me. I’m the worst.) After four days of middle-of-the-night Tylenol, driving to the most inconveniently-located doctor’s office in the world (WHY DOES IT ALWAYS TAKE 45 MINUTES TO DRIVE 3 MILES DOWN LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD? AND WHY DON’T THEY ALLOW RIGHT TURNS WHEN YOU EXIT THEIR STUPID PARKING LOT?! WHYYYYYY?!), and scrambling to find a last-minute babysitter who doesn’t mind watching a sick kid, by the time I picked him up from my backup babysitter’s house yesterday evening I was exhausted.

Of course, despite his boogery nose and my irritation at having my week upended by this child’s uncooperative (and seemingly spiteful) eustachian tubes, I still had to proceed with our evening routine. I briefly considered throwing a box of cookies at him and and shutting him in his room so I could lay down on the couch and watch Disappeared on Netflix, but responsibility won out and I set out to make him dinner. Here’s how the next 20 minutes of my life went:

5:30pm: I realize that the dining room table is completely inaccessible thanks to a scrapbooking project I started the day before (and likely will not finish for weeks) and determine that Bubba will have to eat dinner in the living room at his little table instead. I realize that he will probably want to eat all of his meals in front of the TV from now on and accept my fate because that’s easier than trying to move the scrapbooking mess to an alternate location.

5:31: At his request, I give Bubba some cheese to munch on while dinner is in the works. Because it’s FUN and I’m a FUN mom, I give it to him in one of those little plastic helmets in which ice cream is served at Dodger Stadium. (OK, fine: I was just out of clean plastic bowls.)

5:32: “Mama! HAT!!!!” Bubba has placed the helmet on his head and the cheese is now all over the carpet, coated in dog hair (sidenote: I swear we don’t live in filth; I vacuum regularly but my dog sheds a LOT). I can’t even blame him since it was, in fact, a hat.

5:33: “More?”

5:34: More cheese is delivered, this time on a plate. I get back to working on his dinner, i.e. microwaving some leftover chicken. (Just call me Martha Stewart!)

5:35: “ALL DONE!” Bubba has decided he’s done with the cheese and helpfully attempts to bring me the plate. Obviously, every single piece of cheese winds up on the floor.

5:36: “More?” ARE YOU F*&@ING KIDDING ME?!

5:37: I ignore his cheese request and bring him the chicken. ON A PLATE.

5:38: One bite of chicken has been consumed. I hop up to get the dishwasher going.

5:39: “ALL DONE!” I turn around just in time to see a third round of food hit the floor.

5:42: “Bagel?”

5:43: I know I shouldn’t just give him whatever he wants, but the kid hasn’t eaten any dinner and he’s sick and at least he’s requesting something specific (and easy), so I put a bagel in the toaster. Also, I’m a pushover.

5:46: I deliver the bagel (complete with cream cheese, of course) and wisely remain at the table with him this time. He happily shoves a piece into his mouth.

5:47: Bubba stands up, plate in hand. Since I am right there this time, I grab it from him and ask where he’s going. Without saying a word, he makes his way over to his Elmo couch and lays down. “Bagel?” He asks hopefully.

5:48: I give him the stupid plate so he can eat the stupid bagel while laying down on his stupid Elmo couch while watching Elmo on the stupid TV. You guys, I was just over it, ok?

5:50: “All done!” Bagel, meet floor.

5:51: Vodka.

The Time a Crazed Lunatic Tried to Break into My House

Prior to last week, the scariest thing that had ever happened to me was the time some random nutjob held a knife to my throat on the train in New York, and that really wasn’t that scary. It was alarming and certainly shook me up at the time, but I never even had time to feel truly threatened — it was a crowded train and the the whole incident lasted about six seconds before some fellow passengers hopped up to my defense. It was almost comically un-dramatic: the dude just walked away and I got off at the next stop as if nothing had happened. Ah, New York.

What happened last Wednesday blew that experience out of the water.

Now, as you may or may not know, I live in a part of Los Angeles that you might consider sketchy-adjacent. My immediate neighborhood is full of nice families and well-kept homes, but I wouldn’t advise taking a stroll over to the 7/11 down the road after dark, and you might want to roll up your windows and lock your car doors as you head towards the freeway on-ramp a mile away. We also hear a disturbingly high number of police sirens screaming by our nearest major cross-street every day, which I suppose does raise a few red flags about the overall safety of this area. That said, I’ve lived here for nearly three years and I’ve never felt un-safe in my home or while out walking the dog, taking Bubba to daycare around the corner, or jogging by myself (even past the aforementioned 7/11…in the daylight hours, anyway).

So when someone knocked on the door last Wednesday evening, my dear husband didn’t even bother to take a gander out the window to see whether it was a salesperson or a neighbor or a crazed lunatic — he just went ahead and opened the door like any normal person would do.

Big mistake!

It was indeed a Certified Crazed Lunatic, and he proceeded to attempt to BARGE INTO THE HOUSE.

Fortunately, my strapping husband was able to slam the door in his face before he could make his way into our home, and the Crazed Lunatic turned tail and headed back down our driveway.

Unfortunately, I was in the other room at the time and wasn’t privy to what had just transpired — all I’d heard was a knock at the door, followed by my husband opening and shutting the door without communicating with whomever had knocked. Equally unfortunate is that my wonderful, handsome, brilliant spouse can be kind of an idiot when it comes to communication, so when I asked him who was at the door, he failed to convey the fact that A CRAZED LUNATIC HAD JUST TRIED TO ENTER OUR HOME; instead, he just said something vague about the person being a weirdo. Not understanding that A CRAZED LUNATIC HAD JUST TRIED TO ENTER OUR HOME, I assumed he meant that the man was confused, or that my brilliant/idiotic husband just hadn’t understood what the guy wanted…so I opened the door a crack and inquired, “hey, did you need something?”

Big mistake #2!

Crazed Lunatic took my query as an invitation to come back up to our door and again attempt to enter our humble abode, and it was at this point that TFW finally decided to inform me that THE CRAZED LUNATIC HAD ACTUALLY TRIED TO ENTER OUR HOME a few moments prior. Luckily, I had the door closed and locked by the time he made his way back to the door, but the Crazed Lunatic wasn’t going to let that stop him! He began a valiant effort to enter our home by banging on the door, rattling the knob so hard I thought for sure it would fly off, and shouting incoherently.

Obviously, it was time to call the police. I dialed 911 and frantically explained that someone was trying to break into my house and had in fact almost made his way in, and that I was very very frightened and had a baby in the house and to PLEASE HURRY because who knows what this maniac is capable of?

The dispatcher was not impressed. Despite the fact that she could HEAR the man hollering and certainly should have picked up on the obvious fear in my voice, she was in no hurry to send any officers out. She asked me about fives times whether I knew the man, and at one point asked (in the most condescending sneer she could muster) if it was my landlord and I just didn’t want to let him in.

Yes, really.

I was eventually able to convince her that this was indeed a CRAZED LUNATIC to whom I had no relation and that he was indeed still attempting to ENTER MY HOME, and she assured me that police were on the way. I stayed on the line with her to keep her apprised of the situation, and after about ten minutes I reported that the shouting and banging and rattling had suddenly stopped. I assumed the Crazed Lunatic had decided to depart, but I certainly wasn’t about to peer out the window and confirm, so I stayed put in the back room where my darling husband (now helpfully wielding a kitchen knife!) and I were hiding and continued to ask my sassy dispatcher when the hell the cops would be arriving.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the dispatcher told me that the police had arrived and that I should go let them in. HOORAY! SAVED AT LAST! I raced to the front door and threw it open.

Big mistake #3!

The police were not there, but the Crazed Lunatic sure was. He had passed out (he looked dead, actually) and was slumped against the door, meaning he pretty much FELL INTO MY HOUSE when I opened the door. It was, without a doubt, the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my entire life. I’ve included an artist’s rendering of this horrific moment below so you can really visualize the moment:

Don’t ask why my legs are so misshapen. And yes, the Crazed Lunatic did have fingers in real life. Also, rest assured that this drawing is not to scale (I’m pretty sure I’m more than just a few inches taller than my doorknob, and the CL was definitely taller than 4′ himself). Everything else depicted here is 100% accurate, at least according to how I remember the scene unfolding (he totally had X’s instead of eyeballs).

I screamed and slammed that door shut as if my life depended on it, although the fact that he was clearly incapacitated as opposed to, say, standing there with a gun waiting to murder me, was admittedly a relief. “The police are NOT here,” I corrected the dispatcher. “But the intruder still is, and he’s passed out on my doorstep.”

Thankfully, the Crazed Lunatic remained passed out until the police actually did arrive (another five minutes later!), at which point he resumed his hollering until the police led him away. Once he was gone, I spoke briefly with the police, who helpfully laughed at the situation (“ah, drunk lunatics trying to break into people’s homes! HILARIOUS!”) and told me that the guy lived around the corner and that they’d dealt with him before. They collected my info and were gone within 90 seconds of arriving, long before I had a chance to put my thoughts together and ask them a few key questions, like, say, if this individual is known to be violent and whether I need to now live in fear that he’s going to come back.

If you’ve made it this far (and I do apologize for the lengthy account; at least you got to see an awesome drawing in the middle!), allow me to reward you by sharing what I learned from this exhilarating adventure:

1. If you think landlines are useless, you’re wrong. Had I called 911 from a landline instead of from my cell phone, I could have cut out the first 2 minutes of my interaction with the dispatcher when she made me repeat my address sixty-five times. We got a landline installed the next day.
2. If your 911 dispatcher tells you to open the door because the police are there, don’t be an idiot like me. Look out the damn window and confirm, especially if said dispatcher had previously tried to convince you that the intruder might really just be your landlord, even though your landlord is a different gender and race entirely.
3. Have a little talk with your husband and reiterate the importance of taking a quick peek out the window before opening the door. You know, just in case.
4. If you know that your husband is prone to leaving out pertinent details when relaying a story…don’t open the door a second time. Just…don’t.

I hope you’ve all learned something from this cautionary tale. May your days be free of Crazed Lunatics and your nights devoid of police sirens!

Throwback Thursday: 4th Grade Mo Still Likes Laughing At People

It took me a while to get on board, but look at me now: I am officially 100% on the #TBT bandwagon!

(Primarily because I have a lot of funny old photos of myself wearing parrot earrings that need to be shared, but no matter.)

Last week I shared the survey I filled out at the end of second grade, a treasure that exposed my love for math, reading, and laughing at the misfortune of others. I’m happy to report that, like my second grade teacher, my fourth grade teacher also foresaw the potential entertainment that a book full of questionnaires could provide decades in the future! I’m similarly pleased that my mother was wise enough to preserve these fine memories — such blessed prescience. Let’s check in on Fourth Grade Mo and see if her nerdiness (or her spelling) improved:

Doesn’t look like it. Let’s examine further:

1) Favorite sport to play: soft-ball

Favorite punctuation mark: hy-phen.

probably a strike-out…

2) Favorite book this year: Mandy

A fantastic book that I truly loved and re-read countless times (and is in fact sitting on my book shelf to this very day!), but I’m honestly surprised that I didn’t mention The Babysitters Club. Maybe I thought Mandy sounded smarter, which is silly since we all know that the girls in the BSC were the most brilliant and resourceful middle schoolers in literary history!

3) Book(s) I plan to read this summer: The Phantom Tolbooth [sic], The battle for the castle

I can confirm that I followed through on my promise to read the former, but I have no recollection of the latter and am going to hazard a guess that I opted for some more BSC instead.

4) Vacation and activity plans for summer: go to disneyland, stay at a cabin in Lake Arrowhead

That sounds fun and all, but I’m getting concerned about my obviously tenuous grasp on the rules of capitalization at this point. I committed to capitals on The Phantom Tollbooth above, but lost it on the second book. Then I knew that Lake Arrowhead should be capitalized, but didn’t think Disneyland qualified? Come on, Fourth Grade Mo!

5) Favorite Movie: A League Of Their Own. (The Mighty Ducks)

I cannot express how giddy with glee this response makes me. ALOTO is written in cursive and was clearly my initial reply to this query, but then it appears that I gave the question further consideration and went back to show “The Mighty Ducks” some love. The fact that I enjoyed TMD enough to call it one of my favorite movies (second only to ALOTO!) is amusing in and of itself, but the way it’s written — as if “The Mighty Ducks” was the subtitle of an epic softball (soft-ball)/hockey mash-up — makes me cackle heartily every time I think of it.

6) My greatest challenge this year was: Doing those Dumb bartering comics for social studies.

Tell us how you really feel, Fourth Grade Mo! I actually remember this assignment vividly, and to say that it was my greatest challenge of the year was sadly not an exaggeration. The assignment was simple enough — to create a little comic strip that illustrated the concept of bartering — but despite understanding exactly what needed to be done, I agonized over it as if it were the SATs¹. I am not good with open-ended creative-type things and I stymied myself by overthinking it. I drove myself into a tearful tizzy trying to come up with the perfect example of bartering (made more difficult by the fact that for some reason I felt that the storyline needed to be believable, i.e. a tale of bartering that I myself had actually participated in) and then trying to make the little stick figure drawings look exactly how I thought a real comic should look (a goal that was doomed from the start considering my known lack of artistic skill). I ended up drawing a story about my neighbor and I trading baseball cards and I cried when I turned it in because I never actually traded baseball cards with anyone and plus the damn thing looked godawful.

Fourth Grade Mo had some issues, mmmkay?

(And again with the random capital letters! I suppose I felt that the aforementioned comic assignment was so dumb that it needed to stand out a bit more.)

7) Some of my accomplishments this year: Being Old King Cole, being Jennifer, reading over 80 books.

That’s right, I played Old King Cole in a class play. I believe there was a crown involved. I also played the role of Jennifer in a play whose name and plot I cannot recall, but I do remember that my costume consisted of pajamas, and that was pretty cool.

8) Some things I really enjoyed this year: both of our plays, reading, going to Lazy W. ranch, writing, and (I don’t know why) doing pentominos.

OK, first of all, Petonimos are awesome — not sure why I felt the need to act coy about my love for those little slices of math heaven. Second, pretending that I enjoyed our class trip to Lazy W. Ranch was a bald-faced lie and I’m shocked at my audacious attempt to re-write history. As has been discussed on this blog numerous times, I was the most sensitive and homesick-prone child to have ever walked the planet, and obviously I hated that overnight adventure! Nice try, Fourth Grade Mo.

Hanging out in a fort in my own house was as much traveling as I could tolerate².

9) A funny thing that happened this year was: When Julie was coming in from the computar [sic] lab and fell over a chair and landed flat on her face.

What is wrong with me?! When I cited Alberto’s puke-fest as the funniest moment of second grade I figured we could chalk that up to second graders being immature, but apparently I was no better two years later. Poor Julie. To be fair, she was my friend (it’s not like I was mocking her; it’s just funny when people fall down!) and she wasn’t injured in the fall. But still. Come on.

10) Advice to future fourth graders: If you get sick you could miss something funny.

YOU GUYS. This is the EXACT same advice I gave to future second graders two years prior! I must have missed something truly hilarious while out sick one time and wanted to make sure such a tragedy would never befall me, or anyone else, again.

11) What I am looking forward to in fifth grade: switching classes.

I suppose I thought going to different classes for math, science, etc would spice things up a bit. I learned quickly that having to lug your backpack around to different classrooms all day was just a pain in the ass.

12) Any further remarks: If you get Mrs. apRoberts, you’ll have the funnest school year of your life!

As long as you don’t get sick and miss someone falling on their face, of course!

Ah, Fourth Grade Mo. If only I could go back and tell her not to stress so much about that damn bartering comic, or that she should have pretended to be sick to get out of going to the Lazy W. Ranch! Also, I could have warned her that those dangly parrot earrings were a bit much:

On second thought, no: the earrings are timeless and serve as a welcome distraction from the comically large buckteeth.

……………………………………

Footnotes:

¹Ironically, by the time I got to high school I no longer cared about such things and didn’t spend so much as thirty seconds preparing for the SATs.

²Also note that I am reading a book here — all that talk about reading was no joke! Who builds a super-cool fort and then just sits there and reads in it?! Fourth Grade Mo, that’s who.

The Great Moon Deception (Alternate Title: I Lie to My Kid and I’m Proud)

The other night, despite him being thoroughly exhausted and it being plenty late, Bubba did not want to go to sleep. Once he’s in bed for the night, I try not to let him back out (that way I can tell myself that even though I’ve done a very very bad thing by letting him drink bottles in bed, at least I haven’t set up a precedent for getting out of bed whenever he wants!), but on this particular night it became clear that unless I was willing to listen to the shrill screams of a persistent and angry toddler, I was going to have to try something different. I decided to compromise by taking him out of the crib and snuggling up on the rocking chair in his room, at which point I began a valiant but ultimately failed effort to calm him with gentle shooshing and quiet singing.

He was not having it. He gestured desperately for the door and pitifully whimpered “out, oooouuuuuut!” while furiously attempting to flee my lap.

Eventually, I gave up on the soothing crap and started jabbering in an attempt to distract him from his plight. I chattered away, reminding him about all the fun stuff we’d done that day and tossing out ideas for what we would do in the morning. It worked, and soon enough he was as happy as a clam and babbling away with me about busses or some nonsense I could only half understand.

But he still wasn’t ready for bed. I had succeeded in cheering him up, but I was no closer to getting him to accept his fate and go the fuck to sleep.

I was just about to give up and take him back out into the living room when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Through the tiny gap in between the two sides of his curtains, I could see the white glow of my neighbor’s entirely-too-bright porch light.

Inspiration struck.

“Bubba, look!” I said excitedly, pointing at his window. “It’s the moon!”

He saw it immediately and shared my enthusiasm. “MOOOON! Da moon!”

“Now Bubba,” I continued sagely, lowering my voice back to bedtime quiet levels. “The moon only comes out at nighttime, when it’s dark outside¹. That means it’s time for sleep. Mama’s going to sleep², Dad’s going to sleep³, the doggie is going to sleep…and Bubba has to go to sleep too.”

He considered this for a while. “Moon,” he finally agreed. “Nighttime.”

We stared at the “moon” for a few more moments, and then I put him back in his crib. He grabbed his bear, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and was asleep before I made it out the door.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been more proud of my parenting skills. Sure, I lied to my child and convinced him that a 100-watt light bulb was a celestial body. And sure, I reinforced it the next morning by pointing to the window again and reminiscing about how we saw the moon last night. And yeah, sure, I’ve repeated this charade nightly ever since. But this kid has got to sleep, or he might not be as cute and cheerful in the morning…and that would be a far bigger crime than my wee little fib about the moon.

above: what mornings look like around here after a good night’s sleep. not pictured: the whine-fest we enjoy on mornings following a rough night.

……………………………………

Footnotes:

¹And now I have to distract him every time the moon makes an appearance while it’s still light out to keep up this facade.

²Lie. Mama was going to play Ascension on her iPad.

³Lie. Dad was going to watch baseball and eat pita chips.

Throwback Thursday: Second Grade Survey

Like most trends, I’m about a year late to the “Throwback Thursday” party. The good news is that I’ve got a doozy here that totally makes up for the fact that I didn’t even put together why people were typing #TBT next to old photos of themselves until like a week ago.

What we have here is a questionnaire I filled out at the end of second grade, which was compiled in a cute little memory book along with surveys and photos from the rest of my class:

(Sorry about the wonkiness of the scan; the page is part of a spiral-bound book and I couldn’t be bothered to spend more than eight seconds setting it up in the scanner. Remember, this is a half-assed blog I’m running over here.)

Let’s dive in, shall we?

1) The best thing that happened during second grade was: The Get hoppin play

Solid answer, second grade Mo. Get Hoppin’ was an extremely professional theatrical production put on by our class in the school cafeteria. It enjoyed a run of precisely one performance, which I believe took place at 10am (which thespians everywhere know is the prime time for live theatre).

The plot surrounded an obnoxious little bunny named Bunny Sue who, for reasons unknown, refused to hop. Her bunny siblings were pissed at her bad attitude, and I can’t say I blame them. Get your shit together, Sue! I don’t remember the specifics, but after being yelled at by her siblings and coddled by her parents (on whom the blame for Sue’s spoiled antics should really lie), there was an encounter with a wise bird or something and eventually the little bitch started hopping.

I was Bunny Sue:

2) The worst thing was: waiting for our play

Obviously.

3) One of the funniest things that happened this year is: when Alberto threw up

I REMEMBER THIS VIVIDLY! Poor Alberto puked right on his desk in the middle of class. I can’t remember the name of the kid who was sitting next to him, but I do remember the priceless look on his face as he jumped up and tried to escape the onslaught.

The BEST part of this, though, is that almost every single other kid in the class also reported this as the funniest moment of the year! Even Alberto himself answered “when I threw up.” It’s the highlight of this memory book, no doubt.

4) One of the saddest things was: being sick and missing school.

Mo, you’re a loser.

5) My favorite subject was….because….: Math, becouse I like working with numbers.

Well, we can see that I did not like working with spelling.

6) The hardest thing that I had to do this year was: learning division

But it was very rewarding, apparently?

7) The easiest thing was: learning how to do sudtraction.

Suck it, division. And spelling.

8) I’ll never forget the time that: Alberto threw up

I haven’t!

9) Some advice I’d like to pass on to future second graders is: don’t get sick becouse you might miss something funny.

Who cares about all the learning you might miss, or your health, for that matter? No, the biggest problem with getting sick is that you might miss something funny, like Alberto throwing up again.

(And man, I really wanted “because” to be spelled with an “o”!)

10) What I am looking forward to in third grade is: doing million minuts of reading

All year long in second grade, I watched the third graders rack up stickers as part of this “Million Minutes of Reading” program. I was a big reader and I was certain that when my time to participate finally came, I could read more than any other third grader. There was a contest element to it (prizes were involved, I believe) and I literally looked forward to it all year, convinced I would be victorious.

I’m bitter to this day that I wound up finishing in second place by a margin of, like, three stickers (which represented the number of books read, or possibly the number of pages). IF ONLY I HAD MADE IT TO THE LIBRARY TO CHECK OUT BABYSITTERS CLUB BOOKS JUST ONE MORE TIME!!!!!

 

And there you have it, folks: my seven-year-old self was a math-lovin’, poor-spellin’, book-readin’ nerd who enjoyed nothing more than laughing at people who throw up in public.

Just for good #TBT measure, here are two more photos from second grade to complete your visual:

If You Wake Up The Baby, I Will Kill You

For the first twenty months of his life, Bubba lived like a rooster. As soon as so much as a glimmer of sunlight twinkled into his room, he was up and raring to go. With the exception of a few glorious days when the daylight savings time switch temporarily confused him, 6:00am was our default wake-up time for ages. It was unpleasant and I’ve been dreaming of the day that he’d sleep in a little longer for nearly two years now.

At long last, in recent weeks he has been sleeping till 7:00 or even later! This is likely because he wakes up asking for a bottle every morning at 3am and instead of training him not to do that I just take 30 seconds to chuck a bottle into his crib before running back into my own bed and diving back under the covers, but let’s not analyze it. I really don’t care why he’s sleeping later (we’ll deal with that bottle addiction and certain tooth decay…later), I just know that I love it and don’t want it to end.

The situation is tenuous, though. There’s a part of him that still wants to be a rooster, and he will take any opportunity to wake up once the sun has risen. I could throw a dance party right outside his bedroom at 4am and he most likely would not notice, but after 6am even the slightest whisper is liable to wake him. Morning breeze making your room a little too chilly? Don’t even think about shutting the window — Bubba will wake up immediately. Hankering for a drink of water? You best wait it out, because he’s definitely going to hear the faucet. And don’t even think about getting up to pee: between walking to the bathroom, shutting the door, peeing, and then flushing the toilet, there’s only about a 5% chance of him sleeping through that cacophony.

Tragically, since my body became so accustomed to rising at 6am every day, I now wake up needing to pee every morning at 6am on the dot. Each morning is my own personal Sophie’s Choice: do I ignore the urgings of my bladder and stay in bed so Bubba doesn’t wake up, or do I go the bathroom, knowing full well I will almost certainly be dooming myself to spend the next hour watching Sesame Street with a toddler and approximately sixty-five stuffed animals instead of snuggled up in my bed?

While the latter option is pretty freakin’ cute, I’d still prefer the sleep, even if it is uncomfortable half-sleep on account of my distended bladder. If the price of an extra hour of rest in the morning is a kidney infection, I’m willing to pay that price, and I expect the same of anyone else sleeping in my house. Consider this your warning, dear husband of mine and any future houseguests: plan accordingly, because if you get up to pee at 6:01am and wake the damn baby up, your next move better be to go get me fountain Dr Pepper to make up for your treason. Forgiveness does not come easy when I am tired.

Even if the damn baby in question is the cutest human on the planet.

A Vocabulary Lesson In Case I Die

At 21 months, Bubba is a talking machine. It’s downright adorable: he points out exciting things he wants us to see, expresses his opinions, asks questions, and even tells stories!

The bad news is that only about one out of every one hundred words he says is even remotely intelligible to the untrained ear.

As his mother, I have developed some pretty keen interpretation skills, and more often than not I am able to suss out what the hell the kid is trying to tell us without too much confusion. Others, though, including my dear husband, are not as linguistically talented as I. This is all fine and dandy as long as I’m around to translate, but what if I were to die of heat exhaustion tomorrow (our house is really, really hot) or fall into a diabetic coma courtesy of all the fountain Dr Pepper I drink (never mind that I don’t have diabetes)?! The poor child would be left with no one in the world who understands his pleas for “onk” or why he’s babbling about “berries” while playing with his tractor.

I cannot allow such a tragedy befall my sweet lad.

So in the same vein as my list of requirements for TFW’s second wife and the helpful childcare pointers I compiled in the event of my untimely demise, I’ve created a vocabulary list for my husband to reference in my absence:

What Bubba says: “be-bus”
What Bubba means: “speed bus” (Yes, I know there is no such thing as a speed bus. I think he got confused because I showed him a YouTube video of a speedboat one time.)
What Bubba REALLY means: “STOP EVERYTHING AND LOOK AT THAT BUS OVER THERE!!!!”

A speed bus is in the vicinity!

What he says: “anunner nun”
What he means: “another one”
What he REALLY means: He could mean that he sees another of whatever item he was previously discussing (if two be-buses go by, the sighting of the second will warrant an enthusiastic proclamation of “anunner nun!”), but it might just be wishful thinking, i.e. he hopes for additional be-buses to appear. Either way, the correct response from you is “yeah!”

What he says: “hurse” (rhymes with “purse”)
What he means: “hairs”
What he REALLY means: “One of the dog’s hairs is stuck on my hand or in my mouth and I really don’t like it! Get it off!”

What he says: “gug”
What he means: “bug”
What he REALLY means: He might be alerting you to an actual insect on the premises, or he might just be telling you a story about a bug he saw in that location the previous day/week/month. Regardless, you should be grossed out because bugs are gross.

there’s gugs in them thar mud.

What he says: “onk”
What he means: “milk” (hey, at least he got the “k” sound at the end)
What he REALLY means: “You have nine seconds to give me a bottle or I will make your life miserable.”

What he says: “beedeos”
What he means: “videos”
What he REALLY means: “Get your phone out and show me some videos of myself doing cute and funny stuff, please!” (He is his own biggest fan.)

What he says: “be-pull”
What he means: “be careful!”
What he REALLY means: “I’m doing something dangerous! I don’t know what be-pull means, but Mom says it all the time and I think it has something to do with me falling down, so prepare yourself accordingly!”

BE-PULL!!!!

What he says: “berries”
What he means: “berries” (duh)
What he REALLY means: There’s a slight chance he might actually be talking about berries, but it is more likely that he is reminiscing about a YouTube video we watched about tractors, during which I explained to him that the tractor was digging up the dirt so the farmers could plant some berries. Were there any berries involved in the video? No. Did I totally make that up? Yes. Does my son now think that the sole purpose of a tractor is to plant berries? Yes. Just go with it and fire up a video about tractors when he starts talking about berries, and everyone will be happy.

Unfortunately, this only covers about 2% of the nonsense this kid spews, but it ought to get you started. For everything else…just smile and say stuff like “yeah!” or “oh, really?”

This is What Happens When You Don’t Care About Your Birthday

I am not one of those people who makes a big deal about her birthday. I’m not begrudging you birthday-loving fools and your monthlong birthday countdowns and blowout celebrations (as long as you invite me), but I just never have it in me to care about my own. Sure, I looked forward to and enjoyed my birthday as a child — I’m not a psychopath — but since celebrating my birthday as an adult requires me to do all the things I hate most in life, i.e. spending money, leaving the house, and asking other people to do things for me, it is no surprise that I prefer to lay low on August 30th each year.

The problem with not caring about your birthday is that it can lead to some very pathetic birthdays.

Take, for example, my sixteenth birthday. My firstborn nephew was born the day before I turned 15, meaning his first birthday, obviously, fell on the day before my 16th. Because I didn’t really care, my “sweet sixteen” party became a “HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY TO CHUCKIE!!! oh and it’s mo’s birthday or something too” party, and thus this is literally the only photo of me from that event:

I’m the one holding the birthday boy¹. And yes, we are sitting on a motorcycle that, incidentally, was driven to the party by my octogenarian great-uncle. This shindig was a rager!

This example of birthday half-assery was not an isolated incident. Just last year, about a week before my birthday, my mom kindly offered to host a little family barbeque in my honor. The day before said barbeque, my mom called me and we had the following conversation²:

Mom: “So, are you guys coming to Chuck’s party tomorrow? What time are you arriving?”

Mo: “Wait, what?”

Mom: “Chuck’s birthday party! It’s at 2pm.”

Mo: “Do you mean the party you offered to have for me last week?”

Mom: “Huh? [genuine confusion!] Oh! That’s right. Yes, are you coming to ‘your’ party?”

After so many half-assed and last-minute birthday celebrations, I decided that my birthday this year should be different. It was my thirtieth, so I felt compelled to celebrate the milestone. TFW and I made plans to go to Las Vegas, even convincing my mom to come along with us so she could help watch the baby in the hotel while we went out and lost money betting on the Yankees. (And no, leaving my precious lad behind and going to Vegas alone with my husband was not an option for me, because I am, first and foremost, insane.) It sounded like a fabulous way to ring in my thirties, and I was quite excited about this plan…until we took Bubba to my sister’s wedding last month and realized that taking care of a toddler in a hotel kind of sucks.

And then I started thinking about how much money we’d spend in Las Vegas.

And how hot it would be there.

And how long the drive would be.

And how I really don’t care about my birthday anyway.

Can you see where this is going?

All of the above concerns led to me eschewing Vegas in favor of spending my 30th birthday right here at home doing absolutely nothing. We went on a thrilling adventure to the mall in the afternoon because it was too hot to sit around our hellhole of a house, then ate dinner on the couch³ and rounded out the celebration by watching Wedding Crashers because I’ve been meaning to get hip to all those oft-quoted one-liners for oh, 7 or 8 years now. I was in bed by 10pm.

So be forewarned, fellow birthday-dismissers: it’s a slippery slope! One minute you’re sharing your sixteenth birthday party with a toddler, and the next thing you know you’re spending your thirtieth birthday trying to figure out what aspects of Luke Wilson’s clearly mentally disturbed character in an eight-year-old rom-com were supposed to be at all redeemable, and you don’t even care because you’re old and cheap and lazy and celebrating your birthday is just way too much work.

……………………………………

Footnotes:

¹That’s my BFF/cousin, Cara, next to me on the chopper. I found a myriad of photos of the two of us while looking for this gem, and I was both amused and horrified to discover that in virtually every photo of us from this era, at least one of us is rocking a tube top; the photos also proved that the next year, our mutual trend of choice turned to thick black eyeliner.

²This is verbatim! It was truly a classic “Mom” moment.

³Lest you start feeling too bad for me and my pathetic birthday, allow me to assure you that my husband made jambalaya for dinner and it was spectacular.

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Thanks to Mama Kat‘s writer’s workshop prompt (“You know you’re getting old because…”) for the inspiration!