mothermayi

Le Beach

We went to the beach over the weekend, and get this, it was sunny.  Yes, the Oregon coast was sunny, and, this is the biggie, not so very windy that you get your face skin sand blasted off while you build a sand castle.  It was relaxing and fun in every way.  The cherry on top; I will tell you, ready?  Tennessee decided to POOP ON THE FREAKIN’ POTTY!  It is like I won the lottery.  He just got a little board book and padded in there and did it.  He has continued to do it ever since.  I felt so lucky that I did indeed buy a lottery ticket.  Three in fact.  One of which was a big $5.00 winner.  So I am up $2.00 not including the diaper budget bonanza.  Now, as promised, I will get a dog.

Summer

There has not been a spring and early summer as rainy and dreary as this one since Duran Duran had a song on the Top 40.  Record rain fall for May and June.  It seemed like it would slog on, grey and bleak forever.  There would be a tease, a day of limp watery sun, then more monsooning.  The kids wanted to know when summer was going to start.  Out of desperation and lack of imagination, I pointed out the day on the calender that is marked as The First Day of Summer.  The kids pined for it like it was a trip to Disneyland. 

As of yesterday, it feels like summer is really here.  The kids are properly grubby and sweaty at the end of the day.  Popsicles have been consumed.  The sprinkler has been run through.  There has been hole digging and worm finding.  Things are really looking up around here.  Rain, rain, stay away, come again after Labor Day.

Potty...again

Just yesterday I was belly aching about Tennessee being dead set against The Potty.  After lunch yesterday, he decided that he didn’t want to wear a diaper.  He had a little accident in the kitchen, but he persevered.  He woke up today and took off his diaper and spent the rest of the day working it out with the potty.  I am trying my best to act blasé about the whole thing.  I have been down this road before.  I have had my heart broken.

 Every day I am reminded that my kids have feeling and thoughts of their very own, most of which I will never know.  Tennessee has been thinking about this potty thing for a while.  He wants to know where his pee and poop are headed when they hit the ol’ pot.  Do they get lost?  If he goes on the potty does he get to go to kindergarten tomorrow?  Did Lucy ever have an accident?  Did Lucy cry about it?  My urge answer his questions in a skewed manner to encourage using the potty are strong.  Give them the proper potty spin, if you will.  I am so very, very done changing his diaper.

I answered all of his questions truthfully-ish.  Poop and pee go down a pipe under the house and are carried away to a cloud filled heaven to play in the sunshine with all their poop and pee friends.  Lucy did have accidents honey, but then she started using the potty all the time and Santa came to her birthday party and brought his best friend the Easter Bunny.  As a matter of fact, did you know that kids that poop on the potty get to ride in Santa’s sleigh?  Which is made from peppermint sticks and marshmallows?  You get to eat chunks of it the whole time you ride around the world being pulled by reindeer, it’s great!  Kindergarten?  Tomorrow?  Well, if you decide to get off the diapers, I will see what I can do.

More Potty Talk

Tennessee is having an on again off again relationship with the potty.  He gets very excited to wear underpants.  He struts around the house telling everyone and everything about his big boy underwear.  He pees in the potty a few times and crows about it.  Then, there might be an accident, maybe a bit of pee down the leg…and he is completely over underwear.  He must have a diaper!  NOW!  I use all of my Perry Mason style skills of persuasion to convince him that a little pee in a shoe among friends is no big deal, don’t worry little guy, you’ll get it, come on, relax, who need diapers?  Then he storms off to put on his own diaper. 

The other day we were reading some books and chatting and I brought up The Potty.  I told him that everybody has accidents when they are learning.  He asked me if Santa Claus could have a sleep-over at our house.  Subject officially changed.  I am thinking that when we get home from vacation, we will run out of diapers.  Forever.

 

Tennessee the Menacee

I was filled with joy when my son arrived in this world, joy and stitches.  Lucy was pretty excited too.  An older sibling’s reaction to the end of their era is varies wildly, but Lucy was generally really excited and sweet to her brother.  Tennessee was so cute, she got to “help” dress and diaper him.  It was like having a real live baby doll that cooed when she smooched him. 

Fast forward three years: Lucy and her friend are presently in her room with the door closed while Tennessee stands in the hall yelling “let me in dere now girlth!”  Things have changed a lot since the good old real live baby days.  He doesn’t let her dress him, his diapers are decidedly un-cute, and he can mess up a tea party in two seconds flat.  He doesn’t care about the No Boys Allowed rule in her club house.  He knows the words “stupid” and “head” and he flings them around liberally anytime he is crossed. 

I too was plagued by a younger brother.  I feel Lucy’s pain, I really do.  But I feel like she is going to be better for having someone to mix it up with in her kidhood.  Maybe, or maybe she is going to hone her exclusion and emotional blackmail skills to ninja sword sharpness.  Either way, if I have to listen to this for three whole months, I may need to get my own place.

Bitch Hut

When I was in college, I took an anthropology class.  It focused on the native cultures of the Pacific Northwest.  I don’t remember all of the details of the tradition, but it entailed menstruating women leaving the home to stay in a hut away from the rest of the family until she was done with her special lady moon time, or whatever.  At the time I thought this was horrible, casting a poor girl out for something she had no control over.  How cruel, how uncivilized! 

Many years, a husband, and two small children later, I am dreaming of a hut of my very own.  I would just need a bed and some snacks, maybe a pile of magazines.  Peace, sweet peace is what I would find in my little family-less hut.  I could be an over sensitive meany without hurting my husband’s feelings.  I wouldn’t have to break up squabbles while feeling swollen and crabby.  Those Indians had it all figured out, and we had to come and mess it all up, ruining special lady hut time forever.  Colonialism sucks people.

Barf on the Road

 Yesterday the kids, Kenneth and I drove to Eugene and back for my cousin’s graduation from University of Oregon; my cousin that I held when she was a baby, the very same cousin that I used to babysit while her parents went on vacation.   I am officially 1 million years old.  I cannot imagine what it is like to be the parent of an adult.  It must be nerve racking to have someone you made with your own body driving around and voting.  Not to disparage my cousins ability to take care of herself and function as an adult, but cheese Louise!  That sounds frightening.

Lucy and Tennessee were little troopers.  A whole day on the road is never pretty, but they kept the hollering to a dull roar.  We rewarded ourselves with a trip to Dickey Jo’s for burgers and milkshakes.  If you have a reason to visit Eugene, and you enjoy a tasty burger, I highly recommend.  They were so good in the restaurant, all the while watching a little girl put her poor sainted mommy through H-E-double hockey sticks with the tantrum to beat all tantrums.  Lucy and Wally stared like big mouth bass.  I complimented them on the fact that they weren’t throwing tantrums, but reminded them that staring isn’t nice.  After all, those who live in glass houses should not blah blah blah.  They were good none the less, and we rewarded them with a yummy strawberry shake, because rewarding kids with food is the mother of all good parenting choices. 

On the way home, Lucy displayed a milestone of her own.  No, she didn’t graduate from college, but she did yell “I have to frow up NOW”; then held it while I pulled off the I5 so she could barf out the door.  Maybe a girl her size doesn’t need a hot dog, fries and a strawberry shake.  I was impressed with her control and excellent communication skills.   My little girl is growing up so fast…

Sleep Sweet Sleep

Alright, I mean it this time.  That little boy of mine is going to quite climbing in my bed in the middle of the night.  My eyes are baggy and saggy as is my personality.  The trouble with ending the midnight forced snuggle, is that it takes me getting out of bed and parenting in the middle of the night, or more accurately, the obscenely early morning.  Lucy did this same thing, around the same age.  She would paddle on in betwixt 3 and 4 o’clock in the morn.  Mole eyed at my bedside with cold tootsies, looking for a kidney to kick. 

With Lucy all it took was a few or 6 nights of me taking by her little hand and putting her back in bed.  A few rounds of Twinkle Twinkle and she would sleep the rest of the morning away.  I presume Tennessee will be the same story; but actually doing that, walking around on the cold, cold floor when I am so, so tired, that is the tricky bit.  That is what has kept the current situation current.  But I have officially had it.  Maybe I will sleep in my socks tonight.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Lucy and I celebrated her first day of Summer Vacation by heading out of town together for a day of girl fun.  She did some art with her Aunt Annie and Uncle Rog, we looked around for birds, and she got the poop scared out of her by a donkey looking for a snack.  His nibbley lips did not impress our girl.  After our donkey scare, we visited with Grampa Rod.  He beat her soundly at Go-Fish.   On our way home we stopped for some dinner and a quick game of shuffle puck.  Truly a good day with my sweet girl.

After that, we drove home in some of Oregon’s "spring rain".  By that I mean a heinous monsoon style deluge in which the car hydroplaned twice.  In order to see out my windshield, I was reduced to below speed limit driving.  Boo.  All the while Lucy grilled me about my parents being divorced.  “Why doesn’t Grampa Rod live with Gramma Carole?  Is Gramma Terry your real mom too?  Can I have a step-mom too?  How much did they fight?  A lot?  All the time?  Or just sometimes?  If you and Daddy fight, will you get a divorce?”  I know to her it is interesting and curious and she is just trying to figure out how the whole thing works, but rehashing that period of my early years sucks. 

It almost feels like she is trying to get some sort of formula for how it happened.  She will ask a question about my parents, and apply it to Kenneth and me.  Today she asked me where I would move if I got “too tired of being married to Daddy”.  I told her I wouldn’t get tired of Daddy.  She pressed on, “Okay, but what if you did get tired.  Would you go to California like Gramma Carole?”  I should have put it into bird terms for her.  “I am not a migratory mommy dear.”  I didn’t think of that though.  There is always next time…

I tried my best to get her to move on to another subject.  Birthday party planning usually works, but not when she is on one of her divorce info mining expeditions.  I should have asked her if she knew where babies come from, but she probably would have found a way to weave divorce or “diborce” back into the conversation.    After a while, I just stopped answering and she fell asleep.  Maybe not my best parenting, but I was in the weeds. 

Job Skills

I have acquired many specialized skills (so specialized that they will never apply to a job I could get paid for, ever) since becoming a mother.  I can change sheets half asleep in the middle of the night while a small pee covered child hangs on my leg in less than two minutes.  I can tell the difference between chewed up banana mashed into the rug and actual snot at three paces (my eyesight is exceptional, feel free to oh and ah now).  I can eat a meal one handed while breast feeding a child without showing a single nipple.  I can care for, as in feed and keep clean, a family of four with a full blown case of the flu.  I am practically bionic. 

As of four this morning, I realized that I have a new skill for which I have yet to pat myself on the back.  I can sleep; dreams and everything, on a 10 inch precipice.  If someone had a position available that required an employee to sleep on a ledge above a freeway; they could count on me to get the job done.  Tennessee likes to rise before the rooster crows and do a patrol of the stairs.  Then his feet are cold, so he climbs into bed with me and kicks his flappy little paws around until he falls back to sleep.  I put Tennessee in between his dad and me and put a pillow in between the wriggling boy and me.  This is referred to as the Pillow Wall.  It prevents kicks to the guts and bladder.  After that, I make myself cozy on what is left of the bed; about 10 inches.  I tuck my left arm under my bottom and tense up real good then go right back to sleep.  I have an ongoing head and neck ache, but I haven’t fallen off yet.  If there was such a thing and going pro in sleeping on skinny spots, pro I would go.