Stop and smell the roses (but first organize the seeds, give each one a name, write a story about the flowers’ hopes and dreams…)

Since the day Ryan learned how to propel his fat little baby body forward in some approximation of a crawl, he has been a perpetual motion machine. This is not a child content to sit his ass down and draw a picture or read a book or put together a puzzle, no sir. This is a man of action. In fact, one day when he was four years old I implored him to take a break and play on his iPad — begged! Pleaded! — and he said, appalled: “but Mom, that’s not active!”

From the moment he wakes up til the glorious conclusion of what is always an excruciatingly protracted bedtime routine, he’s got shit to do. He needs to ride his bike. Flips must be performed on the trampoline. There’s a bucket of wiffle balls just begging to be hit over neighbors’ fences. Oooooh wait! He’s going to play with Legos like one of those nice quiet kids I’ve heard about! Hahahaha just kidding, he’s building a giant block with 200 pieces, wrapping it in duct tape, and seeing if it can survive a drop from the second story window¹. 

He is, as the hip youths say, extra. 

Simply preventing him from breaking bones or getting lost in public is a truly daunting task. God bless us all when we leave the house:

He was excited because he saw a pigeon while setting up to take this selfie, and no that is not a joke.

He is an objectively exhausting child to keep up with. I have lost track of him in public at least a dozen times. There are no fewer than three items in my home right now that are broken on account of wayward baseballs. And do you want to know how many times I’ve been asked to record a slow motion video of him hitting a water balloon with a baseball bat? Unfortunately I cannot tell you, because it is not possible for human beings to count that high. 

This is who he is, though, and the truth is that it’s all in good fun; he suffers not from bad behavior or poor impulse control but rather…excessive enthusiasm. I’ve learned to accept my fate and simply not buy too many breakable items. At times I’ve even smugly considered myself to be some kind of paragon of composure in the face of insanity: behold this child and admire my patience and tolerance for his energy and heart attack-inducing antics! I’M INCREDIBLE!

But then Graffin brought me back to earth by developing a personality absolutely nothing like Ryan’s and yet somehow requiring more patience in a single hour than his brother does in a week. 

Graffin is not a tree climber, nor a trampoline flipper, nor a person incapable of resisting the urge to pick up a large stick while on a walk and whack every tree we subsequently pass (ahem). He likes books! And board games! He could spend hours playing video games! He’s creative and independent and never lacks ideas or the ambition to bring them to fruition. He’s amazing. He’s brilliant! He’s…fucking exhausting. 

Nothing with this kid is straightforward or expeditious. There’s no such thing as a “quick game of Candy Land” or a “mindless hour of video games.” Everything is “big picture” with Graffin. You have to organize game pieces into themed teams. Every possible setting and option on a video game must be explored and tested prior to playing. Each and every piece of a Lego construction has a specific purpose and possibly its own personality, and no you cannot simply substitute this brick for that one. Yes, we can play pirates but first we need to don costumes and transform our living room into an authentic 17th century trading vessel!

He may be the only person in history to seek out and read the credits for a video game. I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW VIDEO GAMES HAD CREDITS. 

It’s like he’s operating on a different level than the rest of us idiots – we’re over here pushing checkers around the board, and he’s the only one with access to the real rule book which apparently contains 500 pages of additional instructions that makes the game twice as complicated and way less boring. 

Ryan may forever be running four blocks ahead of me trying to simultaneously chase a bird, pick up an interesting-looking rock, and land a perfect cartwheel, but Graffin’s intensity is unrivaled. It’s not even close. 

Last month we took a red eye to New York² for a little vacation, and when Ryan and I collapsed into bed at the hotel for a desperately needed nap many hours later, Graffin stayed up by himself and built a store. There were toys on display. Price tags (where did he even get paper?!). A snack section. An employee wearing a mask; very conscientious. Shopping bags were even available for your convenience. 

I woke up to a paper “credit card” being shoved into my hand so I could “shop”. NO STONE UNTURNED.

This is what I’m dealing with, and I’d be lying if I claimed to love every second of it. It’s one thing to agree to play a good old fashioned game of Life, quite another to discover you’ve inadvertently committed to a two hour exercise in method acting as all players are now required to really live the game. Think long and hard about which job to pick, and make sure you give your tiny plastic babies great names!³

It’s easy to be impatient in these situations, and I was, for a long time. That hard-won patience I’d honed watching Ryan turn my home into a Ninja Warrior course was no match for this kid. I can’t tell you how many times I encouraged Graffin to “move things along,” with varying degrees of annoyance creeping into my voice, feeling awful as I said it because let’s face it, it’s not like I had anything better to do, it’s just that Graffin’s way of doing things really is a lot of work. 

And then one day, as we reached the twentieth minute of a detailed demonstration of every special ability of every character (of which there were approximately 50) of a video game he was ostensibly teaching me how to play, I said it again: “Bud, can we please move this along?”

To which he replied, justifiably frustrated: “I’m just trying to give you all the information or you won’t have as much fun!”

It was a lightbulb moment for me. All the extra steps, all of the elaborate setup and immersion into everything he does, big and small…he really is operating on a different level. It’s not just that he’s a detail-oriented individual, or that he likes things to be “complete,” although those things may be true as well. He just wants to have the full experience, no matter what he’s doing. There’s all this information available and he’d be selling himself short to ignore it and just mash buttons on a game controller blindly or set up Lego figures with mismatching pants. Why go halfway when you can use the information and maximize your enjoyment?!

So I learned all the moves. And then I spent ten minutes creating an avatar that looked just like me. And then I played in “practice mode” while he gave me tips to improve my skills. And THEN we played the game, and it was pretty goddamn amazing, even though I lost miserably.

I’ve vowed to banish “move this along” from my vocabulary. Just as I have accepted Ryan’s zest for action, I’m embracing Graffin’s unique appreciation for the big picture. Who wouldn’t want to live life with all the information at hand?!

Setting up a stadium audience for a Hot Wheels tournament.
BONUS: please note the missing picture frame on the shelf, a victim of one of the aforementioned wayward baseballs.

Research for a geography-themed game.

Emulating an all-blue character from Just Dance. Yes, we went to the mall like this.

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹It survived that as well as 24 other methods of destruction. In other news, I have a lot of smashed legos embedded in my lawn.

²Perhaps don’t come to me for “traveling with kids” tips.

³In fairness, I should confess that my cousin and I played Life like this as kids and it really is a blast. Don’t buy the Victorian house, it’s falling apart!!

Injuries my children have sustained as a direct result of my idiocy (alternate title: “I’m a terrible parent; don’t call CPS pls”)

Listen. All children get injured every now and then, whether due to clumsiness, overestimation of one’s ability to do shit like swing from monkey bars, or just plain bad luck. It doesn’t matter if the kid is Tarzan incarnate or the meekest little rule follower known to man — blood shall be shed. I was the most cautious child on the planet and I still managed to nearly slice my finger off in an ill-fated attempt to microwave a frozen dinner¹, so trust me on this one. 

In most cases, there’s really no one to blame for these injuries. As parents, we may bear a little bit of responsibility in some cases if our lack of diligent oversight contributed to the scrape, bruise, split chin courtesy of a glass coffee table², or broken elbow caused by driving an electric scooter over a pile of slippery leaves³, but in general, we all know this shit happens with kids and it’s nothing to feel guilty about.

Unless, of course, said injury was directly caused by you not just permitting but endorsing, encouraging, and facilitating dangerous activities. In that case, you should definitely feel bad.

For instance, I felt quite bad when I let Ryan, then 6 years old and categorically not qualified for the job at hand, participate in the demolition of our fireplace during a remodel. Was he wielding a giant sledgehammer to smash heavy ceramic tiles? Yes. Was he wearing protective gear, or even, say, shoes? No, he most certainly was not, and the scar that remains visible on his arm to this day tells the tale of what happens when chunks of ceramic go flying through the air at high velocity. 

Do I get any points for making him wear googles, at least?

Then there was the time I decided I was some kind of scientist and procured some dry ice for us to experiment with, an activity I knew was potentially dangerous and thus implemented stringent safety precautions including a “no one but Mom handles the dry ice” rule. Man, I’m smart! Or I was, until I left the open bag of dry ice on the floor and Graffin had the misfortune to slip nearby it and extend his bare hand right onto it in an attempt to break his fall. Or the day I set up a fun “foam painting” activity that utilized an incredibly slippery amalgamation of shaving cream and glue, then watched and laughed heartily as the activity devolved into my children coating themselves and the garage floor with the mixture, in essence creating a filthy pseudo ice rink in which to glide around. Why was I surprised when they inevitably fell…repeatedly…and sustained a number of colorful bruises?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!

Believe it or not, these alarming manifestations of my abject ineptitude probably wouldn’t even rate a mention on a list of my most egregious offenses (sidenote: please don’t actually make a list of my failures). No, the top spots are all reserved for the myriad disasters that have occured in service of these nutcases’ most beloved pastime, Destroying Old Electronics. As the name suggests, this activity involves Destroying Old Electronics: ancient laptops, broken stereos, and obsolete cellphones are no match for my children’s insatiable desire to determine how many horrifying methods of destruction a poor innocent technological relic can withstand. COMPLETELY HARMLESS GOOD TIMES! Just kidding, it’s a disaster waiting to happen every time but they’ll spend literal hours destroying one $5 garage sale piece of junk and so it is my favorite of all of their hobbies. 

Recently, Ryan discovered the joys of eBay shopping and found that for just a few chores’ worth of handouts from ol’ Mom over here, he could afford an outdated but operable smartphone. This is the crown jewel of Shit to Destroy, as the fact that it still works means the kids can validate the effects of their destruction attempts as the melee ensues (this is all very scientific, clearly). The downside, of course, is that working phones contain a little something called a lithium ion battery — ever heard of it? Oh, you have? And I suppose if you were in my position, you totally would have acknowledged the existence of said battery, and perhaps even recalled all those news stories from a couple years back exposing smartphone batteries expanding and catching fire? And there’s NO CHANCE that would have just slipped your mind entirely and you would have signed off on letting small children hack away at said smartphone with the express intent of damaging it as much as possible, with little to no supervision whatsoever?

Get off your high horse. This could happen to anyone: 

He’s fine, guys. Everything’s fine. A couple very minor burns, some PTSD, perhaps an ecological disaster of some kind…no big deal. 

Why do I keep letting these things happen?! Is it because I’m a “Yes Mom,” stubbornly bound by some bizarre internal pledge to say yes to as many requests as humanly possible? Am I just an idiot who lacks foresight? Do I get swept up in the moment and develop selective blindness to danger, seeing only fun and excitement? Am I so desperate to occupy these people that I let all common sense fly out the window? 

Let’s not analyze it. See you in the ER!

(After I finish my dry ice White Claw.)

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹Lean Cuisine should be sued for making their cardboard packaging so impenetrable I had to bust out a boxcutter to make any headway. 

²Graffin

³Ryan

The Crazy Files, Vol VII: I Probably Ruined Bubba’s Life By Not Breastfeeding

As I imagine is the case with most new mothers, the first months of Bubba’s life were all about survival. It only took a few sleepless nights for me to abandon virtually all of my preconceived notions about parenting and to start making decisions based on only two factors: will my kid survive, and, presuming so, is it the easiest possible option available. Sure, I had assumed that I’d breastfeed with ease and that baby would sleep in his crib and wear cute outfits and I’d probably shower from time to time or something, but within weeks I had that kid sleeping with me, drinking bottles, and both his outfits and mine were perpetually covered in layers of spitup I simply could not be bothered to remedy.

The sleep deprivation hit me hard, and everything about taking care of a newborn was so much more difficult than I had ever imagined — especially breastfeeding. Prior to having Bubba, I barely gave a passing thought to what nursing would be like, so convinced was I that it would be effortless. But when he arrived and I discovered that breastfeeding required endless patience along with every last ounce of my extremely limited energy supply, and that it could be totally uncomfortable, and that the use of what amounts to a torture device just to pump milk for him while I worked would get old real fast, I quickly determined that it was more than I had bargained for. When Daddy offered to give the baby some formula at three weeks so I could get a little sleep, I agreed without a second thought, and by the time Bubba was seven weeks old the ease of formula feeding had won me over and I gave up on the boobs entirely.

Months later, once the haze of the sleepless newborn days had finally worn off and I had some time to reflect on Bubba’s infancy, I felt a twinge of regret about my decision. Was I an awful person for choosing comfort and sleep over nourishing my child? Could I have done more and tried harder? But Bubba was perfectly fine! He was happy and healthy and smart and clearly no worse for the wear, so I let that assuage my guilt and moved on.

Then I had Baby G, and with him came the opportunity to learn from the mistakes I made with Bubba and do things differently. I decided to give breastfeeding another try, and as it turns out, everything is easier the second time around! My body is already used to reduced sleep, and just knowing what to expect makes a world of difference. To my great surprise, the breastfeeding experience this time around has been a breeze — Baby G is a champion eater, my milk supply is stellar, and other than a couple of clogged ducts (TMI? Gross) things really couldn’t be going any smoother.

And I feel so, so terrible about it. 

Not for Baby G, of course. No, I feel horribly guilty that I couldn’t do it for dear Bubba! I was okay with my decision for three years, but now that I’ve had success with Baby G, I am plagued with guilt and regret and am kicking myself daily for not having had just a little bit more patience with my firstborn. How could I have been so selfish?

And of course my brain doesn’t stop with just a little regret. No, I go further off the rails: what if Bubba only seems fine to me because I had nothing to compare him to? What if this kid grows up to be way smarter or more athletic and it’s totally because of the breastfeeding?! And poor Bubba is left watching his little brother thrive while he withers away due to some as of yet unknown deficiency and he never achieves his dreams and then he finds out it’s all because I let him drink FORMULA and then he HATES ME FOREVER and I can’t even blame him for hating me because it’s ALL MY FAULT?!

On the other hand, I’m surely ruining this baby’s life by never being able to offer him my undivided attention because his big brother is always around and by taking selfies while he nurses, so perhaps I can take comfort in the fact that both of my children will grow to hate me in due time.

MOM I’M EATING THIS IS PRIVATE STOP WITH THE CAMERA

Silver linings!

This Post is Not Sponsored by Dream Lite

Dream Lite, sleep tight, starry night with Dreeeeeam Lite
Dream Lite, all night, keep dreaming on with DREAM LITE!!!¹

If you’re a parent whose child watches even ten seconds of television per year, you know exactly what I’m talking about and I sincerely apologize for reminding you of that godawful commercial and dooming you to hum it to yourself all day or until you smash your head into the wall, whichever comes first. For those of you fortunate to have somehow escaped the reaches of Dream Lite’s impressively pervasive marketing, allow me to fill you in: a Dream Lite is a nightlight/stuffed animal amalgamation that combines busted-looking plush toys with LED lights to beam multicolored moons and stars onto the ceiling, and it is apparently compulsory for all children under six years of age to own one. They bear little resemblance to the animals they purport to represent and the lights are so bright they are more likely to keep your child awake all night than soothe them to sleep. Best of all, the dizzying light show they project is liable to nauseate anyone with a propensity for motion sickness if stared at for more than ten consecutive seconds.

Bubba, of course, loves his Dream Lite, a sad-looking turtle who looks none too pleased to be responsible for his obnoxious behavior. Mr. Dream Lite has been a nightly staple in Bubba’s room since he arrived from Amazon a few months ago; Bubba has even hollered for me to turn the damn thing on at 2am more than once. While I do find the stupid thing annoying (I wasn’t kidding about the nausea), I can see the appeal it holds and I continue to indulge Bubba’s fascination with it night in and night out.

A couple weeks ago, the usually dependable Mr. Dream Lite started showing signs of malfunction or perhaps drug use — his typically uber-bright lights were so dim we could barely see them, and sometimes it took several clicks of the power button along with a good shake to get him going at all. After a few days of this troubling behavior, he refused be roused for his duties altogether and I finally accepted that I’d have to get off my ass and change the damn batteries, a process that involves removing the world’s tiniest and most tightly-secured screw to access the battery compartment. With Bubba watching intently, I swapped out the batteries and re-secured the Fort Knox battery door, then clicked the power button to enjoy a performance from our freshly rejuvenated Dream Lite friend.

To our collective dismay, nothing happened. The batteries had failed to revive poor Mr. Dream Lite! Bubba politely asked me to “fix it pwease,” and when I told him that I wasn’t sure how, he asked me again, less politely this time. He eventually gave up and we forgot all about it until the next night when we had the exact same conversation, a pattern that repeated itself for about 10 days until I finally accepted that I’d have to get off my ass and change the damn LEDs (because what else could it be, now that we know fresh batteries weren’t the cure?). I promised Bubba we could buy some new lightbulbs at Target the very next day, then consulted Google to locate instructions for swapping out the lights.

It was at this point that I discovered that the good folks over at Dream Lite either hate their customers or assume we are all mechanical engineers with a fully-stocked toolshed at our disposal, because the instructions for changing the LEDs require, I kid you not, a SOLDERING IRON. Based on my reaction to having to remove one screw to access the battery compartment, it should not surprise you to learn that I have never even seen a soldering iron, much less own one or know how to operate one. Supremely irritated at this latest development in The Great Dream Lite Saga of 2014, I tossed the stupid turtle aside and resigned myself to buying a new one, all the while cursing the nightlight gods that had so cruelly chosen to smite me.

Luckily, I happened to mention my dismay on Facebook and my wonderful sister kindly offered to give me her daughters’ Dream Lite. I believe the exact words of her generous offer were “please, take this stupid thing out of my house.” Unfortunately for Bubba, this replacement Dream Lite was a pink unicorn instead of a manly green turtle, but Dream Lite beggars can’t be Dream Lite choosers, so we trekked out to my sister’s house to pick up the newest addition to our overflowing collection of ridiculous toys. She warned me that it would need fresh batteries and off we went, eager to put him to work keeping Bubba awake all night with flashing stars and moons.

Obviously, the story doesn’t stop here — that would be way too easy. If you think we got home and fired up that godforsaken pink unicorn with no further issues, you’re adorably naive and optimistic and clearly unfamiliar with the law of children’s toys, which dictates that whichever toy your child most loves will inevitably cause the most trouble for the parent.

No, the unicorn did NOT work, even with brand new batteries. Of course not. WHAT THE HELL, DREAM LITE?! WHY DO YOU HATE ME AND WANT ME TO SUFFER SO TERRIBLY?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME????

I was about two seconds from throwing both of these hideous creatures across the room when I remembered that I had another pack of batteries in the house² and decided to think like a scientist for a moment³ before giving up all hope. Is it possible, I pondered, that the batteries are to blame, even though they are brand new? Perhaps I should try these other batteries just in case I got unlucky with that other batch? Could it be that simple?

Yes, yes it could.

Thanks to my brilliant critical thinking skills, I am now the proud owner of two fully functional Dream Lites (and a bunch of dead Energizer batteries). I was pretty pleased with myself and couldn’t wait to show off the double light show to Bubba…

So of course he chose last night to fall asleep on the floor before I could so much as get a diaper onto his naked booty, much less demonstrate the fruits of my labor.

Keep dreaming on with DREEEAM LIIIITE!

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹I’m actually not 100% confident in my recollection of that second line, but I was not willing to look up the commercial on YouTube to verify.

²Do you ever forget that you already bought something at Target the week prior and re-buy it and then wind up with a giant stash of something weird like AAA batteries? Oh, just me?

³Or even just a smart person in general.

The Time I Cried Because My 2-Year-Old Son is a Jerkface

I have always been a highly sensitive individual: I’m easily embarrassed, feel emotions very deeply, and am prone to crying in times of sadness, frustration, and stress. In my thirty years as a Certified Sensitive Sally, I’ve been moved to tears by everything from a loose thread on my precious baby blanket (and no, I wasn’t an actual baby at the time) to a less than perfect employee evaluation, and virtually everything in between. I’ve cried tears of shame over forgotten homework assignments, sobbed while reading Chicken Soup for the Soul, and teared up at the very thought of the Holocaust. I’ve cried after inadvertently hurting someone’s feelings, then cried again years later at the memory of my past transgression. In second grade, I had a meltdown when a classmate described me as a “crybaby” (how smug she must have felt when I immediately proved her right!), and a few years ago I choked up when my new boyfriend tried to convince me to eat a Vietnamese delicacy that struck me as incontrovertibly unpalatable.

Over the years, I’ve learned that while I can’t do much to stop myself from crying at these myriad provocations (it’s truly a curse), I at least have a good grasp on the triggers. I can generally anticipate the types of situations that have the potential to set me off — I knew there was a non-refundable one-way ticket to Cry Town with my name on it within minutes of arriving at that godforsaken Vietnamese restaurant — and I’m rarely surprised by my tears at this point. Every once in a while, though, my tender heart will be blindsided by some fresh variety of emotional terrorism and I find myself in tears over something so ridiculous I never would have thought to file it in my mental Rolodex of potential aggressors. Something, like, say, some sassy backtalk from a cranky toddler.

Yes, I admit it: my two-year-old child brought me to tears last night, and I’m not talking about the “I’m so happy and fulfilled by this wonderful creature that sprung from my loins!” type of crying. Nor am I referring to any other reasonable classification of mommy-tears, like the tears of exhaustion you might find yourself experiencing after spending all night awake with a sick child, or worry-tears you might shed while thinking about their future or something — no, this is far stupider. I literally cried because my son was mean to me and it hurt my feelings.

It was a new low for me, knocking the Vietnamese restaurant debacle out of the top spot for the first time in over nine years.

In my defense (if being moved to tears by a toddler’s bad attitude is at all defensible), I was on day four of what had been a really rough week. I don’t know if Bubba is coming down with something, or if the weather is getting him down (it’s a blistering 62 degrees over here), or if he’s not sleeping well, or if he just woke up on Monday and decided to try something new and act like a little shit, but something has been different this week. He’s cranky, sour, and I can’t seem to do anything right. He whines. He kicks me. He tells me to STOOOOPPPPP when I try to sing. Anything I suggest, be it a snack or a TV show or an activity, is bound to be wrong.

And it hurts.

It feels like a rejection, and it’s leaps and bounds more painful than one of the romantic sort since the chances of me tempering my love for him and not caring what he thinks are precisely zero. I love him with all of my ridiculously delicate heart, and to feel that go unreciprocated after more than two years of mommy-and-me bliss is devastating.

I know logically that this is almost certainly just a phase, one that will probably be in the rear view by the next time I sit down to blog (let us pray), and crying because a toddler didn’t want to play racecars with you is patently absurd. But in the meantime, I am tearfully longing for this:

I can only hope there’s a good tearjerker on Lifetime tonight to redirect my sobs. Cross your fingers.

Me Time

It’s easy to complain about the hardships of having a newborn — you’re fat, you’re exhausted, and there’s only so much crying a person can take before they just start crying themselves¹. But now that I’m long past that stage and deep into the toddler years, I can say with authority that the aforementioned newborn-related complaints are mere nuisances when compared to the trials of parenting a toddler.

Now, don’t get me wrong — toddlers are infinitely more interesting, exciting, fun, entertaining, and (dare I say?) fulfilling than infants. They just take up an awful lot of your time. Like, ALL OF IT. They require endless attention, and you can forget about doing anything for yourself, because if it’s not about them, they’re not happy.

Despite the fatness and the exhaustion and the crying, Bubba really didn’t really cramp my style too much when he was a baby. If I wanted to go to the mall, I just strapped him in the Baby Bjorn and off we went. He had no qualms about me watching American Idol while feeding him, I ate whatever I wanted and didn’t have to worry about sharing or setting a bad example², and I had plenty of time to cook, clean, blog, read, and stalk people on Facebook while he slept. When I really needed a break, I was able to leave him with a babysitter and rest assured that he didn’t really miss me, because he was just a baby and didn’t know what the hell was going on anyway.

Those days, apparently and tragically, are over. My life is all Bubba all the time, and it never stops. He can’t just play with his toys, Mama has to play with him. Same goes for TV-watching — Mama needs to “cuddle da couch” (read: cuddle up on the couch) and enjoy endless episodes of Curious George by his side. I can’t get any reading in because he wants to look at the books with me (and then is sorely disappointed by their lack of pictures), and god forbid I try to watch a television program of my choosing! Blogging is out of the question since he has a strong conviction that computers should only be used to watch YouTube videos of superheroes and construction vehicles. I can still take him to the mall, but nowadays any mall time is spent drooling over Spider-Man toys:

Or scoping out the indoor play area:

Even getting a run in is tricky, since he doesn’t like the jogging stroller anymore and won’t move out of the way to let me hop on the treadmill:

He rarely naps anymore and goes to bed later and later with each passing month, so I can’t even use that precious time to get things done! And as for hiring a babysitter? His pitiful wails of “DON’T LEAVE, MAMA! MAMA STAY HERE!” are enough to convince me to forgo the whole idea and resign myself to more Curious George.

So if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been blogging much lately, you can blame this guy:

The most demanding, attention-craving, Mama-obsessed little creature to ever walk the planet…also known as my best pal and center of my universe, for whom I would do literally anything, including sacrificing any and all “me time” with no regrets whatsoever.

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹Just me?

²So far I’ve got him convinced that soda is yucky and only for grown-ups, but eventually he’s going to taste it, and then what am I going to do?!

Maybe Tomorrow (and other lies I tell my son)

I like to think I’m a good, ethical person. I’m constantly waving people in on the freeway, and when I try clothes on at the mall, I always hang them back up before I leave. As far as I’m concerned, that alone puts me in the top 2% of all humanity in terms of overall decency.

Having said that, I will admit that I am a bit of a liar. In fact, I lie all the time. Multiple times per day, no less! And even still, I maintain that I truly am a good person, because I’m only telling lies to a toddler, and that doesn’t really count…right? It’s like justifiable homicide. Consider the alternatives: actually reasoning with a toddler is obviously no more than a ridiculous pipe dream, and I certainly don’t want to deal with the heartbreak of disappointing him by saying “no” to something like a good parent. So I lie!

It works great, guys.

Below are just a few of the lies I find myself telling Bubba on a regular basis:

“Maybe tomorrow!” This works for virtually any request. Park? Candy? Caillou? MAYBE TOMORROW!

(Spoiler: it probably ain’t happening tomorrow.)

“We’ll do that a little bit later.” Maybe tomorrow’s little brother.

“We don’t have [fill in the blank] right now.” Of course we have cookies — you’re just not getting them.

“Maybe Shaunte has some!” Shaunte is our wonderful daycare provider. When I have no intention of fulfilling his ridiculous candy-related requests but I don’t want to be the one to crush his dreams, I just tell him to ask her for the chocolate or lollipops or whatever.

“You don’t like this; it’s yucky.” HA! Soda is delicious.

“Everybody’s sleeping.” Yes, literally everyone in the world is in bed at 7:30pm. Don’t worry, Bubba, you’re not missing out on any fun.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Whether I’m heading out for a short jog or leaving for a night out with a friend, it’s always “a few minutes.” I wonder when they teach kids how to read clocks and tell time these days?

“We don’t need to buy any Hot Wheels today.” I always cave. Always.

Time will tell how long these deceptive tactics will continue to be effective…he’s starting to look a bit skeptical:

Where’s Mama’s Penis?!

Ah, motherhood. Just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, and that you’re really in the groove, your kid asks where your penis is.

Yeah, that happened.

You see, dear Bubba likes to take showers with me. This is just fine in my book, since it saves both time and water and ensures that I actually get to take a shower on a regular basis (god forbid the child be content to hang out with his father for ten minutes so I can bathe in private). Obviously, both of us are naked during these showers, because I’m a normal human being. I can’t claim to be a child development expert, but I’m fairly certain there’s nothing wrong with this arrangement — he’s only two! There’s nothing weird about it, right?!

Well, there wasn’t anything weird about until yesterday, anyway, when he asked me where my penis was.

We were doing our usual shower routine, talking about washing our hair and watching the bubbles go down the drain and whatnot (good times, folks), when he decided it was time to take stock of his body. “Dis my arm,” he began, “and dis my stomach. Dese my ears. Dis my nose. Dis my leg. And dis my penis!”

And then a pause, followed by a question as he realized that something was amiss:

“Where’s Mama’s penis?!”

To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that he’d never noticed my distinct lack of penis in the past, considering we have showered together no fewer than one hundred times. But no matter — I decided long ago that I would always answer such questions with honestly and ease so as not to make any subject taboo, because I’m a hip, open, modern mom. I laid down the facts: “Mama doesn’t have a penis, Bud. Boys have penises, and girls have vaginas instead.”

And his face was like:

And then it was like:

I could just see the little gears whirring in his mind as he tried to reconcile this new information with everything he thought he knew about life. MIND = BLOWN. Of course we had to discuss this exciting development thoroughly for the next ten minutes or so, breaking down exactly who had which parts and re-confirming the names of said parts and then double and triple checking his own equipment to verify which camp he fell into, and I had no problem with this at all since I am so awesome and modern, and did I mention awesome?

…and then he forgot all about it and ran off to pretend to be Spider-Man (“I spinnin’ webs!”), and I breathed a huge sigh of relief because we all know that I’m really a giant prude and all this pretending to be open and relaxed is just heinous.

Who can I pay to explain to him how babies are made in a few years?

Five Fun Ways to Make Bedtime Last Forever (as Told by a Toddler)

I’ve been super busy lately with work, marathon training¹, and compulsively watching The Wire², so I enlisted Bubba to fill in for me today. As usual, he was thrilled to use this public forum to contribute another dose of his patented life advice. Take it away, Bubba:

As my mom shared a couple weeks ago, I am officially a Certified Big Boy. That’s right, folks: no more bottles, no more crib, and no more waking up in the middle of the night demanding to join Mom in her luxurious sleeping quarters³. I have my very own bed, complete with awesome construction bedding (THERE’S A DUMP TRUCK ON MY PILLOW!!! This is very, very exciting and I never miss an opportunity to point this out), and I have to say that I don’t miss that baby stuff one bit. My bed is quite cozy, and even I knew that those bottles were just a crutch upon which I could not rely forever. Best of all, though, is something I really don’t think my mom anticipated when she initiated this whole Big Boy Bed thing:

I can’t be trusted to be alone in there while awake (just think of the trouble I could stir up!), so my mom has to lay down in bed with me until I’m almost 100% asleep⁴. EVERY NIGHT! No matter how long it takes!!!

It’s almost unbelievable, you guys! The first few nights, I just asked for a couple songs and poked her in the eye a few times (SO fun), but when I realized that there really didn’t appear to be any limits to how long she’d stick around, I started upping the ante. Can you blame me? Why bother going to sleep when you don’t really have to?

Of course, being an active toddler, sometimes I am pretty tired at night, and trying to stay awake can be a challenge — god forbid I fall asleep quickly and quietly! Luckily, I have developed a few tricks to keep up my sleeve that are guaranteed to keep both my mom AND me awake for as long as humanly possible:

1) Insist on bringing a bunch of stupid shit to bed with you. I’m not talking about a couple of teddy bears — think outside the box! I like to have a variety of accoutrements at my disposal, from Hot Wheels to baseball bats to footballs. Not only will this devious little plan necessitate about sixteen trips out to the living room to gather all your goodies, but you can also play with them once you’re finally forced to lay down! I like to zoom my cars around on Mom’s head and back, for instance. Just don’t get too cocky: if you try to start a game of catch by throwing a football at your half-asleep mother’s face, she will take said football away and you will not get it back till morning. Trust me.

I have not yet concocted a scheme to get that wagon into bed with me, but I’m working on it. Check back in a few weeks and I’ll let you know if I’ve made any progress.

2) Create a sleepy-time ritual that has no foreseeable end. While trying (desperately, I might add) to convince me to close my eyes a few weeks ago, my mom made the adorable mistake of telling me that “everyone else was sleeping.” Everyone, you say? Do you mean…Grandma? And Auntie Jamie? And Ethan from school? And the mailman? And the dog? And my teddy bear? You guys, the possibilities are literally endless. I can easily spend a solid ten minutes confirming that every person, place, and thing in my vocabulary is indeed fast asleep. TV sleeping? Check. Basketball hoop sleeping? You better believe it.

3) Reminisce about old (or not-so-old) times. One of my absolute favorite tactics is to ask my mom if she remembers something. “Remember puke?” I’ll ask, referring to the time I had pneumonia and vomited Motrin all over her. When she confirms that she does indeed remember the incident in question, I proceed to recollect the whole story, sparing no detail. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that pneumonia story: Two shots! Puke got on Gokey! Doctors! Ah, good times. And again, this one has limitless potential! There’s no law dictating that a memory must be old before it can be a topic for reminiscence — ask her if she remembers eating hot dogs for dinner two hours ago! Or if she remembers the Spider-Man pajamas you are wearing right now!

4) Be sweet and adorable. After thirty minutes or so, when I can sense my mom growing a little impatient, I drop the obnoxiousness and dial up the charm. “Mama,” I’ll whisper quietly, gently stroking her face with an angelic smile upon my own, “I love you.” Like she’s gonna leave me alone in there after that, right?!

5) If all else fails, be pathetic. If the other tactics lose their effectiveness and she decides to leave before you’re ready to go to sleep, it’s time to swallow your pride and dig deep: puppy-dog eyes and a teary plea of “Mama lay down too??” or “Mama stay with Bubba pwease!!!” almost always does the trick. Guilt-tripping is an underrated tool, really.

See? With the right techniques, staying up until all hours of the night is easy, and it’s great fun for all involved⁵. And as evidenced by the above screen-capture from the baby cam, I do, eventually, fall asleep. When I’m good and ready.

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹Yes, I’m torturing myself with this nonsense again. Maybe this time I’ll eat enough to stave off the debilitating hunger that had me fantasizing about flashing my boobs in exchange for a single unsalted pretzel by mile 18.

²I’m only 10 years behind on my TV watching now! Someday I’ll get around to checking out that Friends show everyone talks about.

³If you don’t have a thick, fluffy mattress topper, I implore you to stop everything that you’re doing and go to Target to procure one IMMEDIATELY. Your life will never be the same.

⁴Before you chastise me, let me clarify that I do know that I could leave him in there to fall asleep on his own; I have both a monitor and a camera to keep tabs on him and could no doubt run in there at the first sign of danger and/or naughtiness. But alas, I am more than just a little insane, and the thought of him roaming about in his room alone — in the dark, no less! — is too much to bear.

⁵This is a lie. Except for #4, that one is pretty fun.

How I Cured My Son’s Bottle Addiction Via Procrastination, Lies, and Bribery

I’m the first to admit that I am not a perfect parent. To list just a few of my myriad shortcomings, I regularly bribe my child with M&Ms to get him to behave in public¹, I make no effort to stop him from watching WWE (and subsequently attempting some WWE-style divebombs off the sofa), and judging by the outfits he wears and the ridiculous array of toys he carries with him everywhere he goes, I am perhaps a wee bit too indulgent². My most grievous offense to date, however, is undoubtedly the fact that I allowed — nay, encouraged — my son to drink bottles until he was two years old.

I know, I know. It’s bad. I’m cringing.

In my defense, I didn’t plan on letting Bubba drink bottles so long, and I certainly had no intention of creating a routine in which bottles would be used to get him to fall asleep every goddamn night. It just sort of…happened. Listen, do you make the best decisions when it’s 3am and you’re half asleep and your child is crying and you know that you can make it all stop in a matter of seconds by simply chucking a bottle into his bed?! I didn’t think so. And furthermore, I did ask the doctor if she had any tips on breaking the habit when I took Bubba in for his 18 month checkup, and she told me it was perfectly fine for him to continue drinking from a bottle until age two. Granted, I didn’t specify to her that I was allowing him to use bottles as a sleep aid and she probably assumed I was referring to normal daytime bottle-drinking, but with her professional endorsement in hand, I continued enabling Bubba’s ever-worsening dependence on the bottle unfettered and figured I’d sort it all out when he was a little older.

Of course, as time marched along, the situation started seeming a bit ridiculous and I was having more and more trouble pretending that it wasn’t a major problem. When your child can open the fridge and say “milk, please!” and then carry the bottle to bed by himself and drink it with no assistance whatsoever, it’s hard to convince yourself that he’s just a baby and thus bottle drinking is only natural.

I knew I had to put a stop to this nonsense, but I had absolutely no idea how to make it happen. The obvious solution — just not giving him bottles anymore — was out of the question, thanks to my staunch refusal to deal with the epic nightly meltdowns that would surely ensue. Call me a wimp, call me a pushover, but I just do not possess the strength required to tune out the misery of my one and only child. I considered just waiting until Bubba decided for himself that he no longer cared about bottles, but when it became apparent that that day wasn’t likely to come for another decade or so, I buckled down and formulated a plan of attack that I prayed would provide the desired results without traumatizing him (or I):

Step one – planting the seed: Starting last week, I began doing a lot of talking about what a big boy Bubba was, particularly with regard to all the fun stuff he liked to do. “Those Hot Wheels are so cool, Bud,” I’d say. “big boys like you love to play with cars!”

Step two – identifying a patsy: At the same time, I talked non-stop about Baby Mia, the 8-month-old daughter of one of the daycare workers. “Baby Mia can’t play with cars like you can; she’s just a baby!” Or “Baby Mia doesn’t get to eat candy like you do, because she’s just a baby.”

Big boy stuff is awesome; babies have miserable lives and don’t get to have any fun at all. Got it so far?

Step three – a distraction: The night before The Reckoning, I took Bubba to Target and showed him some bedding options, explaining that he was going to get a Big Boy Bed the next day and we were going to say bye-bye to his “baby crib”. Just as I had hoped, he was quite intrigued by this development and happily selected a construction-themed blanket and dump truck pillowcase. I didn’t mention anything about bottles (or lack thereof) at this point — the success of my plan hinged largely upon him being so excited about the new bed that the shocking removal of his beloved bottle would be at least somewhat overshadowed.

Immediately upon picking him up from school the next afternoon, I sprung into action. I told him that his Big Boy Bed was ready and that he was going to sleep in it that very night. All evening, we talked about the bed, frequently abandoning other activities to take yet another peek at it. I nearly damaged a vocal chord with all the excited squealing I was doing (“YOUR BIG BOY BED IS SOOOOO COOL! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!”). And it was working! He was PUMPED!

Step four – bring it all together: When bedtime finally rolled around, I continued expressing excitement about the new bed until the moment I’d been dreading finally arrived: he asked for a bottle. I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and in the most casual tone I could muster considering my pounding heart, dropped the hammer: “nope, no more babas, Bud. Babas are for babies like Baby Mia, not Big Boys like you!”

Now, to be completely honest, I didn’t really expect this charade to work. In fact, I hadn’t even thrown the bottles away at this point, because I really thought I might have to give up at some point in the night and just let him have one. But to my complete and utter shock, he accepted it!!! He whimpered for a while and it took ages for him to fall asleep (this was partially due to the excitement about the new bed; he kept calling me in there to talk about the damn dump truck on his pillow), but by 9pm he was sleeping peacefully.

Step five – improvise, lie, and bribe: Obviously, that wasn’t the end of things. No, he woke up in a tizzy at 3:30am, first demanding a bottle and then, upon realizing one was not going to appear, wailing “BABY MIA!!!!! Baaaaaaaaabyyy Miiiiiiaaaaaaaa….”

Apparently, I had been unclear in my explanation of why he couldn’t have any more bottles, because he was convinced that poor Baby Mia was directly responsible for their disappearance. Over and over again, he cursed that innocent infant’s name for stealing what was rightfully his, and obviously, I decided to just go along with it:

“Shhhhhh, it’s OK, Bubba. Yes, that’s right, Baby Mia needs your babas now. You can use a cup like a big boy!”

I kept repeating this ridiculous logic until he began to calm down, at which point I switched gears and opted for some good old fashioned bribery: “Let’s go back to sleep now, and in the morning we can go to the store and get a new dinosaur book! And you can sit in the cart like a big boy and have some M&Ms!”

Guess who hasn’t asked for a bottle since?

When do they hand out the Mother Of The Year awards?

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹I also consider this strategy to be a learning tool, though, because I make him tell me the color of the M&M before I hand it over. I’m pretty sure the educational value outweighs the bribery, right?

²Do you want to fight with a toddler about why bringing six Hot Wheels, a teddy bear, and a football to the grocery store might not be necessary?