mothermayi

R and R

A couple of my mother friends and I went to the beach for the weekend.  We were all feeling a bit run down after the holiday hullabaloo and what felt like a millennium of icky sick kids.  I needed to carouse and bitch with some other humans that feel my pain.  It is amazing what getting away from work for a day or two does for morale. 

 Somehow taking a break made me feel less resentful about my position in life, Executive Ass Wiper.  It may have been all of the exotic cheese and vodka tonics, it may have been that someone else made my bed, or not having to do a single load of laundry.  Whatever it was, taking a break really put me in the proper frame of mind for a new year of mothering.  We will be working on some big ones this year. 

Tennessee will be leaving the comfort and containment of his good ol' baby bed.  He will also be moving on to the next phase of life I refer fondly to as "pooping on the potty" (hope hope hope hope).  Lucy is on the road to being the type of girl that ties her own shoes.  She is also contemplating taking up tee ball.  Me, I am planning on doing fifty million pounds of laundry, wiping thirty two hundred snotty noses, and reading some good books.  Sweet K. P. is going to open another doughnut shop and continue on his campaign to get me to read directions.  I will pretend to read them out of love. 

The Tub

Saturday night, around bath time, Lucy was enjoying a relaxing bath with her fancy new Christmas Polly Pocket.  The little bather had taken off Ms. Pocket's sparkly green ball gown and rested it on a mattress of carefully folded toilet tissue squares, atop the toilet tank.  After getting all her toes, her ears, and her nose, Lucy got out of the bath and put on her pink towel with the hood that makes her cute head look like a big silly flower.  She began carefully drying Polly, before dressing her.  Unfortunately a younger brother distracted her, forcing Lucy to stand in the hall to shout at Tennessee.  After the all shouting was done, Lucy forgot about Polly perched on the tissue divan.

Polly Pocket stayed atop the toilet for four days until this afternoon, when I was rushing around the house doing a spot clean and I tossed Polly in the tub toy bucket.  Lucy's classmate was coming over to play after school.  I have only chatted with her mother in the hall at pick up time, and I kind of feel weird having people see my house in it's lived in state until we have been drunk together.  So there was Polly all dressed for a ball and she was having to fend off sloppy passes from a wind up seal while a rubber duck leered at her.  Just when she was getting her bearings, a chubby little blond guy got his mitts on her and threw her in the tub with her dress on. 

This is how we got where we are now.  Here in this house with the wailing little girl upstairs.  Her moaning sounds like the sound some tiny whale makes.  A tiny whale with a pony tail that takes Polly Pocket garment care seriously, and can not believe she was not permitted to stomp in and demand the tiny doll from her brothers pruny little paw.  Attacking a man in the bath will get him defensive.  Tennessee kept lifting his arms up and saying "It was in the tub!  I found it in the bucket!"  He repeated himself, and Lucy yelled louder and louder, until it became apparent that they were not going to "work it out".  I busted in and told Lucy that she had to back off as she had failed to put the toy away for four days, thus making it fair game.  I did make Tennessee fork over the little ball gown so Lucy could dry it off and fuss over it.  She was just too worked up to compromise though.  She stomped her loudest stomp up the stairs, where she started wailing, then moaning.  Now groaning.  Will Green Peace come for me if I take away her TV privileges for the night?

Poor Old Mama

I haven't posted anything for a while.  Oh, I have written plenty, but then I get to the editing part, (some of you may doubt I edit with all of the typos I let slide)  read what I have written and that is where it ends.  I have been in a self pity death spiral of the worst sort.  I know, I know, you all say; "how could you, the prettiest housewife ever, mother of the cutest kids to bless this big blue planet, wife of a handsome evil genius, have anything to feel bad about?"  Well, you have a good point,, especially about the pretty part, but being this pretty does exact a price.  It seems that  my pretty-ness must have triggered a part of my brain that made me act as though I was living the life of a refugee from a  war torn country.  Here is how it all went down...

I was ready for Christmas.  I sent cards, I had shopped, and even though we, the Pogson/Allen family where traveling to Memphis for the holiday to beat all holidays, I bought and decorated a tree.  You know, just to get in the mood.  With five days before our flight was scheduled to leave, I had wrapped and packed special presents for the kids to open on the plane, I had lists of tasty treats to bring along.  I just couldn't fail at this flying with small children thing.  Ready the ominous cello music...Lucy began barfing.  She barfed for 24 hours.  I took it in stride, surely just a wee virus.  It was bound to clear up before we left.  Then Tennessee started with the diarrhea.  Sweet Jesus, my planning and optimism were beginning to look pathetic.  But wait!  The day before flying, both kids seemed bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Little happy squirrels, ready for a Christmas odyssey across the nation.  We made sure to send Santa a letter reminding him that we would be out of town, and could he please deliver any toys he was thinking about delivering to Memphis.  Please and thank you Santa dear. 

The morning of our flight, Lucy looked a little green around the gills.  More ominous cellos.  Just like in the movies, I failed to see the proverbial ax murderer in the closet.  We just couldn't stay home, we had packed, I had purchased all of our gifts via the internet, so everything was already there at "Poggie's" house awaiting our arrival.  We had spent a stupid amount of money on plane tickets.  Maybe Lucy was just a little tired...oh and Tennessee was acting very wimpy and his nose had begun to run profusely.  Surely that would clear right up.

It didn't clear up.  None of it.  It just got worse.  By the time we reached Memphis, they both had those awful barky dry coughs, the kind you are supposed to see a doctor about.  People stared and clucked their tongues, some offered up advice regarding steamy bathrooms, vicks vaporub and the like.  I wasn't feeling too great either.  We spent the next six day sick as dogs in my father in laws home. Poggie's house is warm and cozy, but it is not my home.  When I am sick like a dog with two small sick like dog children, I want to be in my house.  I needed the chicken broth I made for emergencies and had stowed my my freezer, I wanted my cozy warm bed.  My bed and broth were an eight hour flight away.  Poopy, poop, poop. 

All of the things that make it hard to travel with little kids were amplified.  The lack of schedule left them pouty and crabby.  The lack of their normal diet made them skinny and crabbier still.  My over-all pouty demeanor made the whole thing even harder.  Just an FYI; it is hard to get things done when you can't see out your own pouty face.  The "Why Me!" sound track in my head left me deaf to anything positive that might be happening around me.  This went on even after we made it home. 

Home, where I have all the food, clothes, running water, and heat I need to take care of my family.  I own two televisions and more shoes than there are days before Christmas.  My husband is funny, helpful, supportive and foxy.  My kids are generally healthy and developing at a normal rate.  I have great friends and family that support my endeavors.  I have nothing to complain about.  Not a single thing.  But I did, I complained, and moaned, and resented my husband.  Not that he had done anything wrong, but he was the only obvious choice as resenting one's children has long lasting nasty effects (secretly, I might have done a little of that too).

We are all healthy again.  School has started too.  (Surprise, surprise, mommy needs a break from the babies now and then to prevent the evil resenting monster from rearing her ugly head.) Writing this confession of sorts should help me to remember that I am not a refugee from a war torn country, but a fat sassy lady with everything in the world to be happy about.  I am pretty sure I won't remember though.  I am pretty sure I will succumb to the "why me?!" again in the future.  Maybe it won't last as long next time.  Maybe every year I will get ever so slightly better at counting my blessings.  Maybe.