My Wish Came True. Damn.

There was a time not so long ago when all I wanted was for S to talk. I worried, fretted and blogged about it. As everyone promised, she eventually did start talking. Now I have a different, somewhat predictable problem: I can’t get her to stop! She chatters constant nonsense from the second she opens her eyes until she finally falls asleep.

She is loud and has nothing interesting to say.

The unceasing high-pitched noise has me overstimulated at all times. I can’t think straight. I swear we could replace water-boarding with 24-hour recordings of her and prisoners would confess everything.

She does say cute things. My favorite is that she calls animals by the sounds they make. When she sees a monkey she calls it “ah-ah-hoo-hoo.” Obviously, I show her monkeys all the time. She thinks the happy birthday song is actually “happy cake,” but she can’t pronounce cake very well. She proudly belted out her version at my father’s birthday recently:

Happy cock is Papa! Happy cock is Papa! Happy co-ock is Papa, Happy cock is Papa!

What drives me crazy is the noise she fills all quiet space with. The talking for no reason, with nothing to say. We can drive for 20 minutes with her repeating, “Go home, Mommy? Me in? Go home, Mommy? Me in? Go home, Mommy? Me in?” The fact that I answer her has no impact on her continuing to question if we are in fact going home, and if I’m going to let her inside rather than leave her out in the car. (WTF?) Worse is when we’re not going home, then we have this conversation:

S: Go home, Mommy?

me: No, S. We’re going to the market, then we’re going to pick up L, then home.

S: Go home, Mommy?

me: No. First the market, then L, then home.

S: Pick up Unna? [Her name for L]

me: Yes. First the market, then L, then home.

S: Go home Mommy?

me: $#%&*@!

This can go on forever. Nothing makes it stop, except one thing that is even more loathsome than this conversation – playing a certain children’s CD, but only repeating an irritatingly chipper version of “If You’re Happy and You Know it.” I try not to do that until I’m considering driving into a lake.

So, be careful what you wish for. I wanted her to talk and I got it. Apparently she’s making up for lost time. God willing, her neck will grow soon and her vocal chords with it and the pitch of her voice will come down a bit. I’m not even going to bother hoping for the volume to come down. She and her brother have 2 volumes: shouting and screaming.

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WTF Tapas

Conversation over dinner the day after I came home from my spa weekend, proof that T watched hours Food TV with the kids while I was away:

L: Mommy, this is so good!

me: Thanks, L, glad you like it.

L: The pasta is cooked perfectly. And I love how the sauce is sweet and peppery at the same time. It tastes really good in my mouth. (This is all said with utmost seriousness, like a bona-fide food critic.)

me: Wow, thanks, L. That’s a really nice complement.

L: Yes. The sauce is very complemented.

On another night:

“All this flavorment is so great and awesome! I love the flavors and the, like, YUM.”

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S is fully potty trained. Yay! She now drops trou wherever and whenever she needs to pee. I have to keep a steady eye on this. Middle of the playground? In the library? Supermarket? Some places are better than others for this. Also, she is very independent and doesn’t always tell me when she’s going to go. I was outside with both kids and naturally paying attention only to my iPhone. I look up and S is running around with pants around her ankles. Soaking wet pants around her ankles. She’s not good at aiming, or pulling pants up apparently, but she’s perfectly willing to pee on the grass. Atta girl!

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Conversation in the car:

L: Mommy, did you know that peregrine falcons eat their own poop?

me: Really? Is that true? Did you learn that on Wild Kratts?

L: Yep. They eat it because they don’t have any other food.

me: Huh.

L: I mean, they have food. But they don’t have any money.

me: Peregrine falcons don’t have any money?

L: In their whole country there’s not enough money to buy a car to get the food home from the store.

me: And that’s why they eat their own poop?

L: It’s to survive.

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The fact that S blows kisses to me when she says goodbye has lost a little bit of its meaning ever since I saw her saying “bye-bye pee-pee” and blowing kisses towards the toilet as she flushed.

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I’ve mentioned before L’s favoring T over me. Nothing has changed on this front. On a recent Friday night L said to me at bedtime, “Daddy’s getting me up tomorrow. Can you please sleep or just stay in your room for a long long time?”

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S is proudly showing L all of her “artwork.” Instead of ignoring her and paying attention to the movie he’s watching. He hops off the couch and sits down in front of S. With each piece she displays, he exclaims, “It’s wonderful! That’s so beautiful! You made that?”

Heart melts. In moments like these I can almost (almost) forgive him for teaching S to say “Mommy is a stupid idiot.”

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A Morality Tale

L really doesn’t need as much sleep as we need him to have. We need the full 12 hours of rest from him and that’s why we put him to bed at 7. His natural time to sleep isn’t until about 8:30. That’s problematic because his parents’ natural time to sleep is 9:30. One hour of wakeful reprieve is simply not enough. So, we put S down at 6:30 and tell L he’s staying up late when he gets that extra 1/2 hour until 7. Then we slog through a bedtime routine full of more manipulations, chases, battles and tears than I care to think about. By 8:00 we’re ready to be on our own, relaxing. We expect our fully wakeful son to just stay in his room relatively quietly until he’s ready to go to sleep on his own. He does not do as we expect. (Which, really, is what we expect.)

All this is a long way of saying that when he comes out of his room every 22 seconds to tell us of an urgent need for water, a last hug, a toy he forgot downstairs, a band-aid, some itchy cream, etfuckingcetera, we are displeased. Instead of hearing a cute little voice in that annoying fake-sweet voice he puts on, we hear the manipulative little devil that he is.

But last night, I had a decent amount of wine. I was in a good mood. Also, yesterday I had 7 full child-free hours! So, I was in a really excellent mood. Instead of just yelling upstairs, I went upstairs. Instead of just unceremoniously marching him back into his room, I smiled at him, held his hand, and sat on his bed.

He then explained to me that he and his two teddy bears are lions. The big teddy bear is his brother lion and the little teddy bear is his baby son who he has to take care of. And they are a family. But they had no food to eat. And they already ate all the sticks. But they were still hungry. So they ate his brother, the big bear. They cut him right here and here and drank up all his blood, because that is what some people do. He then lovingly set up a bed at the foot of his own bed in which he tucked the small bear, his son. He sang a lullaby, kissed him, and gently covered him with one of his own lovies. His own lovey, people! 

After this whole strange scene I left thinking, “What a loving, caring and imaginative son I have!” Normally, I’d leave a scene like this fretting about my blood-sucking-sociopath 4-year-old. But like I said, I had a decent amount of wine.

Moral of the story? I think the moral is that I should drink more, but that seems like a weird moral. I’ll have to look further to see if there might be some other moral in there somewhere.

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Cyber-Punished

Today I was banned from Facebook. Don’t panic! My Facebook rights should be reinstated tomorrow. As this was my first offense, I only got a 24 hour ban. I guess that repeat offenders get banned for good.

So, what did I do that was so wrong? I posted this photo:

Clearly scandalous, no?

My reprimand and subsequent time-out from Facebook has put me through a range of emotions today not dissimilar to the 5 Stages of Grief:

1. Denial: What? I’m banned? Can’t be. Let me update my status about that. WTF? I can’t update my status?? Can’t be. Let me try again.
2. Anger: WTF? I didn’t do anything wrong! Who is the idiot in charge of this ridiculous process? Did someone actually report this picture as inappropriate? What kind of sick person would think that way? This is not fair! I have something to say about it! But I’ve been muted! ARRRGGGH!
3. Bargaining: Maybe I can send an email to someone explaining the misunderstanding. Obviously the carefully crafted rules and regulations regarding offensive or nude photos did not have this photo in mind. There’s been a mistake. We can work this out, surely!
4. Depression: There is no way to contact an actual person at Facebook. Figures. What about all the funny stuff that keeps popping in my head? These are gems that are just going to be lost to my own poor memory. What should I do now? Hmmm. I have nothing to do. My life is empty. Wow. I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I’m pathetic.
5. Acceptance: OK, deep breaths. The rules are there to protect my very own naked children against pervs. Yes, I think banning me for this is an overreaction, but it is what it is. It’s just a day. Do I have a Facebook habit? Sure. But it could be worse. I could be doing meth.

What did I learn about myself today? That I actually grieved the loss of my ability to post on Facebook as ‘Motherhood, WTF?’ for 24 hours. I’m going to go ahead and call this a First-World Problem. My takeaway is that I’m fortunate enough for this to be my biggest problem today.

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WTF Tapas

S finally said her first sentence! As a reprieve from her usual pointing, shouting a word and screeching, she said, “There’s bubbles in the bath!” We’re all very happy. She followed this up with pointing, shouting “bubbles” and screeching.

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In the car L suddenly exclaims: “Mommy, I saw 2 bears!”

me: mm-hmmm. (clearly I pay a lot of attention.)

L: No, not bears. Um, what are those things?

me: dogs?

L: No. I know. Bullies. I saw two bullies!

me: Bullies?

L: Yeah. But not the people kind. The other kind. With horns.

This is when I died of cuteness as I realized L calls bulls “bullies.”

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My kids drop things like cereal and gold fish on the floor like it’s their job. S is great about helping clean up. I’m always torn whether to make L clean up though. On one hand, he should because he dropped them, on the other hand, if he’s anywhere near them he is guaranteed to step on 5 and kneel on 8 making what was once an easy object to pick up into crumbs crushed into carpet. No amount of telling him to look where he steps and kneels helps. What is up with that?

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I’ve mentioned before how much L prefers T over me. T is like a rock star around here, and I’m like, uh, well I guess a servant that you really need around but don’t like that much. Anyway, the other night two things happened to illustrate this. First, L had a complete meltdown because he wants to marry T and he’s upset that T married me instead. (WTF?) Second, L comes out of his room after bedtime and says to me from the top of the stairs, “Mommy, can you please tell Daddy a message for me? Can you tell him that I love him more than you? I mean, that I love him more than I love you. OK? Can you tell him that?” Nice.

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WTF Tapas

Talking to L about a pair of identical twin girls:

me: Can you tell them apart?

L: Yes, it’s easy.

me: How? Which is which?

L: G is the one with the beaver.

me: The what?

L: Beaver. She has one and showed it to me.

I just chalked this up to a misunderstanding and ended the conversation there. 

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L: Smells good. What’s for dinner?

me: Chicken.

L: Chicken on the cobb?

me: Yup.

L: My favorite! You know those are dinosaur bones.

Chicken on the cobb is what L calls a chicken drumstick. I will never correct this.

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Discovery: I was talking to T about how I hate toys with multiple pieces. I hate cleaning them up, I hate trying to play and discovering missing pieces etc. I jokingly said, “I just want to throw all the puzzles away.”

He said, to my surprise, “You might as well. Whenever I’m cleaning up and I find a puzzle piece I just chuck it.”

“What???”

“I’m not going to go through all the puzzles and find which one it goes to. So I throw it away.”

No wonder we don’t have a single complete puzzle in this house. And here I was blaming the kids!

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S is the best person to share a sandwich cream cookie with. This is because she’s stupid unworldly. I twist the top off and hand it to her. I get the bottom with all the cream. We’re both happy.

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In the car the morning of S’s birthday, on the way to buy balloons:

me: L, when you were little you couldn’t say balloon so you said “babloon.” It was so cute.

L: (exaggerated, head thrown back laughter) That’s so funny. Now I can say things much better. I can even say ‘hostible’ [sic]. See, ‘hostible, ha-ha-hostible. ha-sta-bull.'”

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A Letter to S For Her 2nd Birthday

Dear S,

It’s hard for me to write a letter to you because most of my thoughts and feelings about you aren’t really expressible as words, only as sickeningly saccharine pet names, squeezes and snuggles. I can’t figure out how to describe the sentiment behind nuzzling your belly, play-eating your haunches, and tickling your toes. How do I express your giggles as I toss you into the air, flip you upside down and spin you around? Or what it’s like just walking with your tiny hand in mine? It’s impossible. You are not a thing of words; you are a thing of visceral, devastating, hopeless love and attachment. It’s all I can do on a daily basis not to eat you. (I know that sounds weird. When you have a baby of your own, you’ll get it.)

S sitting in a chair 2 days old. I had so much fun in the hospital with her. Best 4 days of my life.

You’ve become such a big girl in so many ways and I’ve been lucky enough to witness you grow. You are easily the most affectionate person I’ve ever known in my life. And for the most part, you are unflappably happy. Unless you’re not. And when you’re not you let us know. For a person so small in stature, your volume is alarming.

Mmmmm, puzzle....

Your vocabulary grows by the day, but it’s still quite limited. You have some of the important words, and several words I wouldn’t have pegged as obvious first words:

Your best words are the 2-year-old trifecta: no, mine and me.

You can’t say L’s name, so you just call him “Unna,” which is the same word you use for “other.” As in, he’s the other one. (Trust me, you’re not saying brother. You can say that too, but it sounds more like “budda.”)

Many of your words are only meaningful to me, like “boo” for “shoe” and “boop” for “milk,” but some other words are said with perfect clarity. These are a surprising bunch like “money,” “elbow,” “hot cocoa,” and “goggles.”

Except when you use that tone of voice which is the exact perfect pitch to reverberate in my head and drive me clinically insane, you are seriously the most adorable thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. (Except L when he was your age, who was also impossibly cute, but harder to see because he was always a blur of motion.) It takes all of my restraint to stop myself from constantly picking you up, squeezing you, and smothering you in kisses, tickles and nuzzles.

I love that you are happy to play by yourself. I love that you are happy to play with me. I love that you are laid back about transitions from one activity to another. I love that you smile and say hello to everyone you see. I love the way you giggle. I love the way you run. I love the way you jump.

I do not love that you still hate the car and spend most of your time in it screaming.

I love that you go to bed so easily. I love that you wake up happy. I love that you eat just about anything I put in front of you. I love how much you love your big brother. You find him hilarious and you try to copy everything he does. Most of the time, I wish you wouldn’t.

Fashionista

S, my sweet 2-year-old, I’ve said a thousand times over the last two years that I want to stop time to freeze you where you are because you are at the height of your cuteness and sweetness. But you just keep getting better. (I am aware that the age of 3 looms ahead of me, but I prefer to live in denial.)

I love love love love love you impossibly much.

Love,

Mommy

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