Kiddie Ambien
Posted by admin | Filed under Motherhood, Preschoolers, parenting, sleep
I know what you’re thinking: WHAT? WHERE? Do I need a prescription??? If so, can I use my meth lab to make some?
Relax. It’s Children’s Benadryl. God, I love that shit.
Anyone who has a three-year-old will agree with me, I promise. Because bedtime has become a horrible, terrible, drawn-out nightmare that won’t end, even when I go to bed myself. I have never seen a human being fight sleep so vehemently, so desperately. It’s one of God’s little jokes: Just when you get to an age where sleep is this heavenly escape from the daily grind, you have a baby. And that baby sleeps poorly at first, then really well, then… becomes a three-year-old, this demonic, sleepless, talking thing that won’t shut up. Ever. I’ve had to shut the door while Nora was mid-sentence, talking about every single thing she has ever learned in her short life. It’s constant, nonsensical, and will drive you mad if you listen to it long enough.
During the day, I think Nora’s motor mouth is cute. It’s adorable. Most of the time. Her voice is high-pitched and chipmunk-like, as is her cherubic face. It only really gets to me when it cuts into my downtime. If she is still blabbing past eight at night, I stop thinking it’s cute. Because that is an almost-solid 13 hours of hearing about ballerinas, swimming pools, hearts, butterflies, princesses, unicorns and Wow Wow Wubbzy.
And THEN begins the struggle to keep Nora in bed long enough to fall asleep. Every five minutes, she’s calling. “Mommy, I need to go potty.” (She doesn’t). “Mommy, I need my bunny. The one with the pink nose.” (She knows damn well we haven’t seen that thing in months).
“Mommy, I need socks, my feet are cold.”
“Mommy, my fan isn’t on.”
“Mommy, I’m thirsty. And hungry.”
“Mommy, there’s a bat in my room with red eyes.” (This one is particularly hard to deal with, because I’ve watched too many horror flicks and am far too impressionable. What if there IS a bat with red eyes in there? Fuck, I’m sleeping with the lights on).
And God forbid TH and I go to bed before she’s asleep. She sees that living room light go off and goes nuts. And wakes up Ava. And then we’re all fucked.
So night after night, we increasingly become overtired, because no one is sleeping, not me, not Nora, not TH. (I should give TH major props here, because he is the one who deals with Nora in the middle of the night. TH, you are an amazing father. And there’s no punch line… You’re just an amazing father).
Enter Baby Ambien. I was at the end of my rope, and so I called Nora’s pediatrician, who is this hip, young mom herself, and begged her to help me. She told me to buy some Children’s Benadryl and give it to Nora for a few nights, until she got caught up on her sleep. I didn’t think it would work. The first night, I gave her the appropriate dose and tucked her in as she rambled on and on and on about her friends, her favorite TV shows, what she was going to say tomorrow… And then started to slur her words, her eyelids slowly dragging shut. I watched, a big smile on my face and waving bye-bye, as she tried to fight off the effects of the Benadryl… to no avail. She was in La-La Land in under ten minutes.
And slept through the whole night.
Oh, shit.
So now, my question is this: how many is “a few” nights? Are we talking like five days? Two weeks? Until she’s ten?
I have to talk myself out of giving her the Bendryl 90% of the time. Because it truly is amazing: No Benadryl, up until way past MY bedtime and every two hours until morning, or Yes Benadryl, down at eight and asleep until seven – at a minimum.
I am a terrible person that I even think about knocking my kid out with drugs every night, I know. But seriously. Spend a week with Nora and you’ll be ready to give her bourbon, if that’s what it takes.
Fine: Rum. Yes, I’m obsessed with pirates, and would give her rum. Now shut up.
Tags: Ambien, Benadryl, Nora, sleep, talking, Wow Wow Wubbzy
I Wish I Made This Stuff Up
Posted by admin | Filed under Insane in the MOMbrane, Just plain funny, Motherhood, Preschoolers, Uncategorized, parenting, sleep
Nora is not sleeping. Ipso facto, neither am I.
At the ripe old age of 3, Nora's developed a healthy fear of the dark, being alone, and her bedroom. Now, as you all know, I am an avid supporter of sleep training. Of babies. Who can't talk and make you feel bad for being a terrible, horrible mother and human being. And who may end up psychologically scarred but won't have a long enough memory to know why. (What?) Nora remembers everything, and Nora knows exactly what to say to make me cave in to her desires. For instance, "Mama, I need you! Mama, don't leave me! I'm so scared! I LOVE YOU!"
Damn it all to hell. Who can resist that?
It all started with a pathetic bout of swine flu, that landed her in Mama and Dada's room. Since then, she's been terrified of the rain, of the "creature" in her room, of pretty much everything and anything that keeps her out of our bedroom at bedtime.
So now. I'm sleep deprived, Mommy-time deprived, and have what I think is the beginning of the swine flu. Remind me again, why do people have kids?
Today I had an eye exam with the guy who did my LASIK, just a run-of-the-mill check-up to make sure my eyeballs are still functioning properly. So I packed the girls and my sleep-deprived, tentatively-swine-flu-ridden ass to the doc, wearing sweats, not a smudge of makeup, and no deodorant. (For the record, I usually wear deodorant. It's just that today I forgot. What? As if you never forget to put deodorant on. What. EVER.)
Murphy's Law. It's the single most important law to remember when you become a parent, because it is the one that will rule your life. So the girls are having meltdowns, I look like shit, and lo and behold, I'm given the "new doctor" at the clinic to see, who, I kid you not, looks like Tom Cruise. And not the psycho, Scientology, PPD-bashing Cruise, but the young, hot, before-fame-went-to-his-head Tom Cruise. As a matter of fact, this guy looked better than Tom Cruise, because he was tall and really well-built.
I have one thing to say: WTF???
I think that clinic has some sort of policy, that it won't hire a male doctor or nurse that doesn't score at least an "eight" on the sorority girl Hotness Scale. So I'm sitting there, no deodorant, Ethiopian-faced children in tow, trying my best to sound in control of… well, my life? And as Tom Cruise asks me about my now-bloodshot eyeballs, Nora wanders over to the lever that control the chair I'm sitting in and WAP! the back of my seat moves out from behind me and I'm suddenly lying completely flat on my back.
Oh, Tom Cruise laughed. Shit, I couldn't STOP laughing. It was all just too… convenient. Like something out of a Ben Stiller comedy, where you sit there thinking, "Come ON, can't that guy get a single break? If I had his sort of luck I'd just shoot myself."
The day has not gotten better – naturally. I just spilled a glass of water on my beloved Macbook, and I think it's official: Today is NOT a good day. Fuck you, today. You suck ass.
Tags: hot doctor, LASIK, Murphy's Law, Nora, sleep deprivation, Tom Cruise
Reset Button
Posted by admin | Filed under Motherhood, Preschoolers, sleep
Am I the only parent who feels that their child’s bedtime and naptime are punishment for all the naughty things we did as kids?
While I am not struggling with it as much as I did a couple months ago, I still consider it a horrific job that requires a dose of Xanax and a glass of wine. Does Xanax come in suppository form, you think? That would be awesome. Doesn’t it get into your bloodstream faster that way? No? Am I totally off base here? Whatever, just go along with it. You’ll get a good laugh when I try to cram a chocolate bar up my ass.
Anyhoo, I’ve noticed that if something – ANYTHING – throws Nora off her bedtime routine, I have to start over. Or let me rephrase that: She tries to get me to start over. See, this routine goes something like this: Bath, run around naked (her, not me), pajamas, two books, caress, I try to kiss her goodnight and she begs for “one more minute” of caressing, I caress for one more minute and then go to the door, blow her a kiss, she blows me a kiss back, I catch it, tell her I love her, she tells me she loves me too, and then I can leave. This MUST occur in the same order, without interruption, or Nora’s reset button is triggered, and I have to start over. To be fair, there really are two phases to her routine, and when things are interrupted, she only makes me go back to the beginning of whatever phase we were in. So, for example, if we’ve started the “caress” phase, she won’t make me go back to re-bathing her or anything. But I could be at the very end of the caressing phase when, say, Dada will come home and make a lot of noise in the kitchen, and I have to start over. Or Ava will start crying. Or, God forbid, I do something in the wrong order.
It’s weird, this compulsion to do everything in the same order every night. I guess we, as adults, do the same thing. It’s part of feeling secure. I, for instance, MUST have my wine (bottle) before I start writing. Or, I MUST cram my chocolate bar up my ass BEFORE I can read in bed. Calm down, I’m kidding. I don’t read in bed.
So does your kid have a reset button, or is mine just as crazy as her mother?
Tags: bedtime, bedtime routines, chocolate, wine, xanax
Mommy CAN SEE!!!
Posted by admin | Filed under FYI, sleep
So I had LASIK yesterday. And can I just say, if you ever want people to throw drugs at you and INSIST you take them, this is the surgery to have. Valium before the surgery, Xanax after the surgery, Tylenol PM… Doctor's orders: Go to sleep IMMEDIATELY. Man, I was in hog heaven. Aside from the whole slicing my eyeballs open thing.
The Valium they gave me beforehand made me so trippy I was probably saying all kinds of inappropriate things to the doctors. Not to mention the doctor, who was kinda hot. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I do remember that I was making everyone laugh.
After sleeping for God knows how long, I woke up and could SEE. Sort of. Talk about trippy. Seriously, one day after the surgery, I can see pretty much everything with just a bit of fogginess. You know, like adding the soft focus filter to a picture in Photoshop. (Jesus Christ on a cracker, I'm a flaming dork.) I still have to wear these Mad Max sunglasses when I go outside and administer no less than 3 million eye drops, but I can tell you guys, this was sooooooooo worth every penny.
And now, for your viewing pleasure, what my doctor looked like (immediately after surgery when I was pumped full of drugs and couldn't see shit for shit):
Tags: eyeballs, LASIK, Mad Max, male nurse, Valium, xanax
My Daughter, the Con Artist
Posted by admin | Filed under Insane in the MOMbrane, Motherhood, Preschoolers, Uncategorized, parenting, sleep
I've come to realize an important truth: Things don't necessarily get easier as kids get older – they just get different.
Actually, I would argue that Nora's bedtime has become considerably more difficult in the past few months. Like shoot-me-in-the-face more difficult. Like I'm-going-to-sell-my-children-on-the-black-market more difficult. Like fuck-it-I'll-just-give-them-away more difficult. You get the point, no?
Once upon a time, not too long ago, I was able to convince Nora that bedtime was bedtime. Our routine was simple: bath, read books in bed, lights out, goodnight kiss. And for a while there, she accepted it; she knew that after the third book, the lights would go off and Mama (or Dada) would leave. I'd shut her door and know that TH and I could enjoy a quiet evening to ourselves.
Well, all good things must come to end. At some point, Nora figured out that Mama and Dada were LYING when they said that they were going to bed too, because she could hear them clattering around in the kitchen. Moreover, she developed enough self-awareness to be afraid of things, and that just opened up a whole new can of worms. Nowadays, her bedtime routine is stretched out indefinitely as she tries her damnedest to keep me in her room – or convince me that she, too, needs to go back downstairs. Perhaps the most painful aspect of this whole process is that she REFUSES to let TH put her down. (And when I say "put her down" I don't mean in a Old Yeller kind of way. My father-in-law HATES it when I use that phrase.) And while her wanting only me is touching and all, by the time nine o'clock rolls around, I'm dead on my feet. And if I'm still pleading with Nora to GO TO SLEEP, well, let's just say calm, rational parenting goes out the window. I'm ready to duct-tape her to her mattress.
In the dark silence of her room, Nora will suddenly stiffen and ask me, "Mama, what dat?"
ME: "That's the sound of the cars outside."
Nora: "What dat?"
ME: "Those are the crickets chirping."
Nora: "What DAT?"
ME: "I don't know, but it's nothing scary, I SWEAR."
Or alternatively, the conversation will go like this:
Nora: "Mama, I have to potty."
ME: "You just went potty."
Nora: "I need Cheerios."
ME: "No Cheerios now."
Nora: "Mama, I left Doggy downstairs!"
After losing it on TH one night, crying that I was just soooooo tired, TH and I decided that she simply had to accept that Dada would do her bedtime routine with her, at least a few nights a week. Nora did not take this well, as she spent those nights wailing for me at the top of her lungs. And even me, cold, heartless bitch that I am, would feel myself weaken until I was on the verge of tears. What started off as painful actually become quite amusing as I would listen the the exchange between TH and Nora:
Nora, sitting on the potty for the third time in under ten minutes: "Dada, I like your shirt."
TH, waiting impatiently for her to finish: "Thank you."
Nora: "Where did you get it?"
TH, sounding unsure of how to respond: "Uh, I got it at Academy."
Nora: "A. Ca. Dem. Eeee?"
TH: "You know, the store with all the bicycles. Where you always have a meltdown."
Nora: "Oh, yeeeeeeaaaaah…."
It hasn't gotten easier yet. I'm still waiting for it to. SURELY at some point she'll get the idea, right? RIGHT?
Tags: bedtime, bedtime routines, Nora, parenting, Preschoolers, sleep, TH
Cry It Out, Baby
Posted by admin | Filed under Babies, Uncategorized, parenting, sleep
I am in a foul, foul mood today. I wouldn't call myself an unbelievably patient person, but normally I'm pretty good about keeping cool during bad motherhood-related situations. Public meltdown? I can usually stay calm and laugh about it (after the fact). Defiant preschooler? Whatever. Napless baby? I can roll with the punches.
But today? I feel like screaming "SHUT UP, SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP" every time one of the girls starts whining. I feel like locking them in a padded room for the day, occasionally slipping a bottle, sippy cup, and bag of Cheez-Its under the door. And you're right, bottles and sippy cups won't fit under the door, so my kids would be shit out of luck. Because I just don't feel like opening the door and taking the chance that one of them will get out.
Why do I feel this way, you ask? Good question. Not that I need a reason, but it just so happens that I have one. A couple days ago, Ava decided to stop napping. And then last night, she decided she'd stop sleeping through the night as well. I think she figured that since screeching like one possessed gets her out of napping during the day, it might work at night too. Darling Ava, you thought wrong.
I started out giving her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she's teething. Maybe she has a dirty diaper. Maybe she has a stuffy nose and can't breathe. Maybe she's scared, maybe she's lonely. But every time I went to check on her, she'd look from me to the door impatiently. She'd smile devilishly, reach out her chubby arms, and flash her dimples beseechingly. I started to believe that there was nothing wrong with her at all, except that she was becoming desperately, intolerably exhausted. "Overtired" is not extreme enough to describe her at this point. She's become akin to a raving lunatic. I set her down, she screams. I pick her up, she fights to get down. I try to feed her, she slaps the food out of my hand. I try to eat something myself, she starts wailing for my food. Clearly, she has no idea what she wants, and while I become increasingly frustrated, I also become increasingly certain that what she needs is the exact same thing I so severely need – SLEEP.
So last night at two in the morning, after making sure she was fine – clean diaper, no fever, not thirsty or hungry – I went back to my room and, just as she started screaming again, I turned the volume on the monitor all the way down. I am fortunate in that the master bedroom is far enough away from the girls' rooms that I can't hear anything without the monitor. Not being entirely heartless, however, I bought one of those Fisher-Price "Sounds n Lights" monitors so that I could tell when she stopped screaming her little head off. I watched as every single red light lit up and STAYED lit (Jesus, doesn't she need to get a breath in once in a while?) for extended periods of time. I should mention here that my monitor is old school (from 2006) and came in a box that I wish to God I had taken a picture of: It showed three pictures, one of a sleeping baby, one of a baby sitting quietly in in his crib, and one of a baby laughing. And it said something to the effect of, "Hear and see your baby's every call!" Yeah, because you know, I'm afraid my baby might start LAUGHING in the middle of the night.
Dear God, child, take a fucking breath! Photo by BenSpark via Flickr.
I must have lay awake for a good twenty minutes, staring at those unwavering lights. The fact that her screaming didn't wake Nora up is a wonder. At some point, I fell asleep (because my eyelids wouldn't hold up any longer), and then awoke with a start some time later. The little red bulbs were finally dark. When, the following morning (or is it the same morning?) she awoke for the day at seven-thirty, I rushed in to find a smiling, happy baby who was no worse for the wear.
Babies learn very quickly that crying, particularly the more shrill, piercing cries, tend to get them what they want (not necessarily NEED) in a hurry. And in the middle of the night, being rocked to sleep is preferable to having to figure out how to fall asleep on your own. Problem is, no one ends up getting any sleep. And what's worse than a cranky baby? A cranky baby whose mother is ALSO cranky. Not to mention weepy, clumsy, and hormonal. (Hormonal was not a very popular dwarf. Poor little Hormonal. Can you tell I'm tired?)
So some people think letting your baby "cry it out" is criminal, and will lead to maladjusted adults who have trust issues. I quote some expert or another on BabyCenter (God, I fucking HATE BabyCenter and their alarmist newsletters entitled, "What You SHOULD Be Worrying About (You Self-Absorbed Bitch)"):
The problem is that when infants are left to cry themselves to sleep, they are forced to conclude that they are not lovable enough to engage their parents' desires to comfort them. If they actually stop crying, it is because they have abandoned all hope that help will come. The meaningful question, then, is not, "What will make my baby go to sleep with the least attention?" but "What will enable my baby to put himself to sleep with the self-confidence that comes from feeling happy and cared about?"
Now I personally believe this is some of the biggest horse feces I've ever heard, and let me tell you, I've read up and down on the topic. Perhaps the most untrue bit of this "expert" advice is this line: "Over time, as your baby learns that his cries will be responded to, he will need less input from you to feel comforted and sleep." NOT. TRUE. As a matter of fact, the opposite is actually true – they will always need help falling and staying asleep. Take it from someone (me) whose mother sacrificed her physical and emotional well-being to perpetually rock and soothe her children to sleep, from someone who grew up having night terrors into her late teens AND has nighttime anxiety and raging insomnia as a mother herself.
What do you guys think? Lemme have it.
Tags: "cry it out", baby monitor, baby sleep, baby sleep methods, BabyCenter, Fisher Price, horse feces, sleep, sleep expert
Dearest Ava
Posted by admin | Filed under Babies, Insane in the MOMbrane, sleep
I love you dearly, my littlest girl. Really, you are a living doll, with your generous smiles and oh-so-cute dimples. HOWEVER. If you continue to wake up at midnight EVERY NIGHT and scream for two hours simply because you WANT TO PLAY, realize that I WILL NOT HESITATE to leave you on a complete stranger's doorstep with a big-ass bow on your head and a card that reads "Accept this deceptively cute gift at your own risk."
Your loving (but so beyond fucking exhausted) Mama
Tags: Ava, exhaustion, sleep
Sleep and Revenge
Posted by admin | Filed under Babies, Motherhood, Preschoolers, Uncategorized, parenting, sleep
When I was school-aged, I began to believe my mom had a sadistic streak. Starting when I was about six or seven, my mother would take great pleasure in waking me up for school in the mornings. She'd burst into my room, telling me (in an unnecessarily loud voice) to get up, yank open the blinds, and then turn the radio on as she walked out.
I am not the only person with such stories – my friends have shared similar anecdotes, in which otherwise loving, gentle parents wake their blissfully sleeping children in cruel, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you ways. For instance, one friend tells how her mother used to burst into her room singing at the top of her lungs (and no, she did not have a glorious singing voice). Another friend tells of how her mother would yank the sheets off of her if she wasn't up within a couple minutes. Yet ANOTHER friend tells how his dad would give him five minutes to get out of bed, or he would get a glass of water poured on his head. I mean, really, people, is this necessary?
Until recently I didn't understand all the malice associated with waking children up for school. But recent developments (read: I had kids) have shed light on the reasons for this hostile behavior on the parts of our parents.
Oh, I cannot fucking WAIT to wake Nora and Ava up for school.
In a word: Revenge. For almost three years, I have been in the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Sleep Deprivation Hell. I would beg for just five more minutes of sleep, please, dear God in heaven, but instead would get a howling baby who was stubbornly set on sleeping all day and crying all night. Or a toddler who thought five in the morning was a perfectly acceptable time to start the day.
TH and I long for the days when we could, at the very least, sleep in on a Saturday or Sunday, or take a spontaneous nap in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Our weekends are now desperate attempts at sleeping – TH lets me sleep in and I grant him a nap. We flop on the living room floor at ungodly hours in the morning as our spawn run / crawl circles around us. I manage to drag my sorry ass into the kitchen and muster just enough energy to dump a few scoops of ground coffee into the coffee maker and then proceed to stare at it until it beeps. I will not even grunt at my children until I've had at least one cup. And I gaze in wonder (annoyance) as they chatter vivaciously, their eyes bright and faces clear.
Note to the sleep-deprived parent with young children: Fear not, your time is coming. In the words of Edmond Dantes, "And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude… may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked."
Mooooooo-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw! * wringing hands mischievously *
Now, I chose this photo for a couple reasons: 1) One could assume he was sleep deprived and not necessarily lamenting a one-night stand, and 2) He's HOT. Photo by becon via iStock.
Tags: coffee, hell, school, sleep, sleep deprivation
Road Trip Hell
Posted by admin | Filed under Feces, Insane in the MOMbrane, Just plain funny, Uncategorized, parenting, sleep
It's funny how the word “holiday” once, not too long ago, inspired joy and excitement in my heart. Now? I fucking dread it. Ok, “dread” is a bit much. I certainly don't look forward to it. I learned a little while ago not to look forward to holidays anymore – no, everyone will not be happy. No, Nora and Ava won't enjoy it, and yes, they will make sure I don't enjoy it either. Everyone will lose sleep, because they are not in their own beds and their routines have been messed with. Everyone will be cranky and high-strung, having meltdowns at every turn and throwing tantrums over nothing. And that's just TH. Throw Nora and Ava into the equation, and you've got the closest thing to hell on earth. It will be fucking MISERABLE. That Sandals commercial with families enjoying themselves? Total fabrication.
My advice? If you want a relaxing vacation / holiday, go without your husband. Better yet, go without the kids AND your husband.
So my parents live three hours away from us, and often I make the trip with the girls alone. TH is rarely able to get away for more than one night, and it simply isn't worth it to me if it's for less than three nights. So I go ahead, and he joins us if he can. The problem with this plan is that I spend three hours in a car with a baby and a preschooler. Alone. If you have done this before, you are cringing at the thought, I know you are.
Where to begin? Packing. I know I'm a flaming nerd, but I HAVE to make a list of things to bring, otherwise something critical, like say, oh, DIAPERS, will be forgotten. And even when I make a list, I have to type it up, print it out, and make sure to cross things out as I pack them. Just to show you how far up my ass my head is. Not to mention, Nora has a number of items that, if left behind, could make my life hell. Her blanket. Bear. Bunny. Hippo. Big Bunny. Bigger Bunny. Sandra Boynton books. Etc, etc. I drive an SUV, and by the time I'm done packing, the car is filled to the brim. Pack 'n Play. Bouncy chair. Clothes for both cold and hot weather (Texas winters, for ya). All of Nora's “friends.”
When I've finally gotten everything checked off my list and packed, the girls dressed and fed, we get in the car and drive away. Only to have to drive back because someone forgot something. Usually it's me, thinking I forgot to turn something off. Usually I'm right. I'm surprised TH hasn't come home to a burnt pile of sticks yet.
By the time we've gotten on the highway, we've already sung “Jingle Bells,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and “Happy Birthday” (to everyone in the family), and the girls have had their fill of riding in the car. Which is unfortunate, since the trip has just begun. Usually within 30 minutes of getting on the highway, someone poops. I'm amazed at how inevitable this is. I can (almost) set my watch by it. And we're not talking big, I-have-completely-evacuated-my-bowels poops, we're talking tiny I'm-suddenly-constipated poop pellets that stink to high heaven and continue THROUGHOUT the trip. If all I had to do was change one massive, dirty diaper, I'd be fine. But these stinky poopballs that strike every 20-30 minutes and roll out of the diaper when you change it? I can do without those. Just FYI.
And speaking of evacuation, I stopped drinking anything 24 hours prior to the trip, because God FORBID I have to go pee-pee at some point while we're on the road. Imagine this: I have to go so badly I want to cry, so I pull over at some shady gas station in some podunk town named “Wiener” or something (ok, the town's name is “Weimar,” but I call it “wiener.” Can you blame me?) I have to either put both girls in the stroller or carry one and guide the other, or Bjorn one and drag the other… No matter how you turn it, it's disastrous. And this is all before we get into the shit-splattered restroom, where I have to figure out a way to pee while standing up while keeping the girls from touching anything. Then I have to strap them back into the car, and usually when they realize the trip isn't over yet, they start screeching.
I'll admit it: I've thought about wearing adult diapers. That astronaut chick who tried to kill her lover's girlfriend may have been on to something. Not with the whole murder idea, of course, but with the wearing diapers thing. What the fuck – I'll admit that I've been tempted to just wear one of Nora's diapers and see if it's strong enough to hold an adult piss. Of course, I'd conduct this experiment before hitting the road. Because nothings says “fun” like urinating on oneself and then having to make a pit stop to change your own urine-stained clothing while trying to keep little fingers from touching other people's feces. Not that it's happened to me or anything.
Another great joy of long road trips with two little ones is that they alternate dozing, if at all, because the second one of them falls asleep the other starts wailing. So no one really gets any sort of nap during the drive (except for me, after I've put my earplugs in. Ha.) I swear, I'm the only woman in the world with young children who don't fall asleep instantly (or ever) in a moving vehicle. They spend their entire time flinging toys and sippy cups down and begging me to retrieve them. Now, once upon a time, when I didn't drive a fucking tank, this was possible to do without careening off the road and crashing. I would just quickly lean back without taking my eyes off the road and scoop the fallen item up. However, nowadays it is not possible. Ok, let me rephrase that: It SHOULD NOT be possible. Yes, I still try, and yes, we do nearly die every time. (What I need is one of those extendable grabby hands…I agree with you – my drivers license should, unquestionably, be taken away.)
Ugh. Just writing about road trips makes my butt ache and my ears ring. Needless to say, by the time we get to Nana's house, I'm ready to sell my children on the black market and purchase a one-way ticket to Hawaii. Luckily Nana is there to talk me out of it. And she even manages to talk me into making the trip again. And again…
Welcome to Wiener. Please don't flush your adult diapers down the toilet. Photo by punkbyte via Flickr
Tags: adult diapers, astronaut chick, car, driving, Feces, meltdowns, poopie, road trips, SUV
Children = Bliss?
Posted by admin | Filed under Babies, In the News, Motherhood, Preschoolers, Stay At Home Moms, Womanhood, parenting, sleep
Holy exhaustion. Now that I have two little boogers to take care of, I wonder what the fuck I was complaining about with just one. Seriously. Having two kids makes having only one look like a cop-out. A cop-out I completely and utterly support, by the way. There is absolutely no reason to have more than one unless you're a glutton for punishment. Yes, I know, they're gifts from God, they make life worth living, blah, blah, blah… Truth is, getting enough sleep ALSO makes life worth living, and I am not getting any of that.
That being said, I can't imagine my life without both girls in it. I don't regret having more than one, and will maybe someday try again for a THIRD, because I'm batshit crazy and have some sort of disease of the mind. Truth is, if I only had myself to worry about, I'd never get anything done. I probably wouldn't be any more well-rested than I am now, I would still wonder what my purpose is in life, I wouldn't have any excuse for being out-of-shape…
I like the pressure. No, I don't have time to do everything I need to do, but I like being busy, and I work well under pressure. Okay, I work better under pressure.
And let me tell you, two kids = PRESSURE. If one is sleeping, the other isn't. If one is sick, the other is too – or will be at the same time you're sick. If one is having a meltdown, the other is certain to follow suit. (If you're in public when this happens, particularly in a quiet venue such as a bookstore, I suggest you just start laughing. I mean, think about it, the situation is so bad it's FUNNY.)
On the upside, they eventually learn to play together, and therefore keep each other busy. I'm still waiting for this to happen. So far, every time Ava tries to “play” with Nora, the following occurs:
Nora: “NO! THAT'S MINE!” (Snatches toy from Ava's hands and then chucks it to the side.)
Ava: “WAAAAAAAAAA!”
Me: Nora, give it back to Ava! You have to learn to share!”
Nora: “NO!”
Me, pissed: “Nora, you have to learn to SHARE!”
Nora: “WAAAAAAAAAA!”
This cycle continues ad nauseum, and I have a feeling this phase in the sisterly relationship is just beginning.
Awww, sibling love…er…I think?
My advice to those of you who find yourselves in a similar quandary: Learn to embrace the chaos, otherwise you end up proving these people right. And they are NOT right. Bunch of British assholes. I'm VERY happy and fulfilled, goddammit…
Tags: British people, happiness, sharing, siblings, sisters, toys, two kids
