My Darling Motorola

We went to our friend's son's third birthday party on Saturday and it was really lovely. Just a bunch of friends and their kids running around eating cake and chatting. At one point I was sitting on the sofa with my friend and another girlfriend of ours who also has a three year old and is pregnant with number two. As we were chatting their two sons started fighting about who got to play with Thomas, or was it Percy? One of those stupid trains. The boys were in tears and the friend who's pregnant told me, you see? I told her not to start up with those trains because they just become obsessed! It consumes their every thought. Trains and more trains! And Thomas and Percy and Clarabelle and this one and that one! Uch! Shut-up already with the trains! Then the mother of the birthday boy said, I know, but he loves them. I just bought him one video and now he lives and breathes these ridiculous trains!

Now thank god, Thomas is one thing that my kid is NOT obsessed with so I don't have to suffer through those inane storybooks and videos. I mean who writes this stuff? Winnie the Pooh kicks Thomas' ass any day of the week as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile, as I'm thinking this to myself I hear my son, who's sitting next to us on the couch, singing "Motorola" over and over to the tune of "My Darling Clementine."

Try it with me:
Motorola Motorola
Motorola Motorola
Motorola Motorola
Motorola Motorola

Ladies, at least your kids are obsessed with something that befits a three year old. I mean, kids grow out of Thomas with time while I have at least a decade of listening to the Motorola song before my kid may actually have his own phone. Thomas isn't looking half bad after all.

Shit or get off the pot

I was an hour late for work this morning. Why, you ask? Because my son was sitting on the toilet.

My husband usually takes the kids to school and I pick them up but today he wanted to take his parents to the airport so we switched. Big mistake. They're just used to him dropping off and me picking up so when it's reversed, it's like the earth is suddenly spinning in the other direction. All is undone.

It didn't help that my son woke up late since he was up half the night for various reasons. He had to go poo poo. He lost his kitty. The stickers came off his hands. At one point I literally told him to get a grip (in response to the stickers coming off his hands). That actually seemed to work and he went back to his room and fell back asleep.

So he woke up late and my daughter's been a little unwell. It started when we switched her to milk a week before her first birthday (which was Friday!) and she started having a little bit of the runs. It was just half milk half formula, but something was not quite right. And then she spent half the night barfing after her first birthday party, likely having to do with the yellow cake and chocolate frosting cupcake she gobbled. We finally decided to take her off milk for a little while to see if her stomach would settle before we reintroduce. She may also have a stomach bug. Who the hell knows because my mother-in-law was also barfing the day before she left. Maybe it's my cooking? Nah.

And as much as I could I hurried my son along so that I could get to work by 9:00. But he wasn't much interested in breakfast and kept complaining that he had a tummy ache. So I sat him on the toilet and he spent about twenty minutes taking a dump. Indeed he got a lot of it out. So I wiped him, washed hands, flushed and got him into his clothes. My daughter by now is beside herself. She's also teething which doesn't help but she just could not stop crying, even when I was holding her. So my policy is that if they cry even when you're rocking and holding them, then why bother? Put 'em down. So I did and she went back to sleep. My son then asked again to sit on the potty. So he sat for another twenty minutes, this time with no output. I was starting to get annoyed because it was clear that I was going to be late for work. He finally hopped off, I woke up the baby and just as we were all ready to go, he grimaced and told me his belly hurt him and he needed to make a poo poo. So back he went on the potty. By now my daughter is awake and disoriented. She was gnawing on her own hand when, transformed into a rabid dog, she took a big bite out of my shoulder. Easy Dracula! I jumped and yelled NO! which totally startled her so she made the boo boo face and started crying again. And still my son is sitting dangle-footed on the pot. I told him to hurry it up but that made him cry. So I apologized. By the end of his session he'd been sitting on the toilet for 45 minutes. I mean, put me on a toilet for 45 minutes and I'll show you a hemorrhoid the size of a lemon. I have a feeling he had a sour belly and was just nervous about going to school for fear of having to do his business there. I totally get that, except that the toilets at his school are tiny and adorable. For toilets I mean.

We did finally manage to get out of the house and drop off was thankfully uneventful. But by the time I got to work I was exhausted. And depressed for having had to rush my son off the toilet, knowing that he had a belly ache, so that I could get to work. That sucks. Work sucks.

The Look Part 2

I changed my daughter's diaper this evening when I first smelled something foul wafting up from the kitchen floor where she was sorting tupperware. I scooped her up, put her on the changing table and took off her diaper to find only a tiny little poop. So, naively I thought, Super. A mini-poop. No mess. No rash. Lovely. What I didn't realize was that in fact she hadn't finished her business. She was between pushes.

I like to let her crawl around naked when possible to air out the ole vageen. So I'm putting away the laundry and she's in the hallway which thank god is hardwood and not carpet (you can see where I going with this). I glance over and she meets my eyes with, you guessed it, THE LOOK. Suddenly she's sitting on a giant poop. So I grab her and she's laughing and I'm laughing and my son is completely disgusted by this barbaric behavior since he is now civilized and craps in a toilet.

I clean her off and take off the onesie that now has poop on it and the shoes with poop and I wipe up the floor and dispose of the poop and put her down to continue playing while I go wash off the shirt and shoes. I come back two minutes later and she is sitting in another pile of poop, this time smeared all over her legs. So I pick her up and put her on the changing table to wipe her off again and she looks me straight in the eye and pees. And then it finally dawns on me. The girl wants a bath.

I don't bathe her everyday because I'm lazy and she doesn't get super dirty and it's just one extra thing that I have to do before 7:30 when I put her down. I try for 2-3 baths a week which I know would horrify some moms but it's winter and cold and her skin's dried out as it is. But she loves having a bath. She crawls into the bathroom and stands next to the tub waiting for me some evenings.

So I put her in the tub and she's as happy as can be when I hear a farty ripple noise coming from under her in the water and I think, what in the hell did I feed you? But, in fact, it was just her sitting on the rubber duckie. Situation averted.

Um, excuse me?

Going to bed has become somewhat of a burden lately. My son insists that I do the whole ritual and frankly I am too tired at the end of the day to deal with even the tiniest bit of misbehavior. Something as stupid as a random comment during a story can sometimes set me off. Well, the comments are never random because he says the same freaking comment at the same time on the same page every single night and if I don't respond with a yes or a no or whatever might be appropriate affirmation of his observation, he continues to make the comment again repeatedly until I acknowledge. Maybe that's what sets me off. Trust me, it's super annoying.

And he's kind of like a dog when he settles in because he sort of wiggles around a lot and crawls in cirlces on the bed until he gets in just the right position. I try to be patient but for the love of ginger I just want to go to bed myself so put a move on it brother! And then invariably he needs to blow his nose, or pee, or drink tea because his fwoat hurts. It just goes on and on. The last few nights were particularly annoying so I got up and left him in the middle of our ritual and he, of course, started sobbing. Today we promised that we wouldn't fight. And so far so good, although he sounds a little restless in there. At any moment he could come out and ask "are you checking you mensenges?" (My computer is right outside his room).

Tonight though I had to laugh because I was sitting in the bathroom reading a magazine when he peaked in.

Him: Um, excuse me?
Me: Yes, honey...
Him: I can't find the blanket for my baby sister.

I bought him a doll house for his third birthday and I bought a little baby and baby furniture set to go in it. He calls the little doll his baby sister and lately he's been putting her to sleep and checking to see if she's crying and nursing her (that's the best - him holding an inch long wooden doll up to his nipple). So I guess he's putting her to sleep right now. I don't really care if he's not sleeping as long as he's not bugging me and not waking up his sister. The real one - not the wooden one. This doll is actually giving us great insight into his perception of our parenting techniques. The other day I heard him scolding the doll for crying and telling her that he was going to have to put his legs on her if she didn't stop crying. That's his version of what happens when he won't put on his pajamas and we have to pin him down to do it.

He has now come out of his room nine times. His tea is yucky. And he can't feed his baby sister because his bra is stuck.

Um, excuse me?