November 5th, 2009 by Alicia
In other Expenses We Totally Can’t Afford or Control news, one of our cats is sick. I don’t know WHY he’s sick or what to do to make him better, because although I thought that by throwing away over two hundred bucks at the vet for antibiotics and bloodwork and an x-ray and whatever else, we might get an answer – apparently that isn’t the case. Nope. Looks like you can do that and still be at square one, which involves the cat hiding out under the couch and leaving regurgitated stomach bile in random spots around the house.
It’s been fun, can’t you tell?
And of course, leave it to my kids to put things into perspective. I asked each boy what he was thankful for, expecting the typical Mommy Daddy Grandma House answer.
Wrong.
Sawyer is thankful for “quesadillas, balloons and dandelions that float in the air.” While Beckett’s list wasn’t quite as whimsical or profound (eating food, crackers, burgers and dinner), it too left me refreshed and a little less gloom and doom.
Like, really, how can you be depressed when there is a plant right outside in your front yard that, with a simple breath, sends dozens of tiny magical puffs of awesomeness floating into the sky? You can’t, mom. Now make yourself a dang caysa-dilla and get happy.
So. My thankful list this week? Cheap mailboxes at Menards. Cool neighbors. No cavities. An extra third bathroom to contain a pukey cat. Burger King’s cupcake shake (you sweet, sinful thing, you).
And also, indoor cats that don’t eat a mouse and then hurl it back up, whole, on my basement floor. (Sorry about that, Mom.)
Yeah, it could be worse.
October 13th, 2009 by Alicia
I would like to say right now that if I’m being punked, you can all STOP IT. Stop it right now. Because I totally won’t give you the comedy you’re looking for, I’ll probably just throw myself on the floor sobbing and screaming KILL MEEEE and you’ll all start backing up slowly towards the nearest exit. And then you’ll just have to pack your cameras up and trash all the footage and find another victim because it will be that sad and pathetic. I also might punch Ashton in donkey omelets and then you’d want to sue me but I’m really not worth anything. So yeah. NOT WORTH YOUR TIME.
And if that’s the case, don’t you have enough footage by now? I mean really. It’s only a half-hour show.
Telling the cats to piss in the rice box I made for the boys? Really not all that hilarious, sorry to say. Especially since I didn’t realize that’s what had taken place until I was absentmindedly running my hands through the box, discovered it was damp, and SMELLED MY FREAKIN’ HAND. Yeah, that was really awesome, as was the struggle to hold down the vomit as I furiously scrubbed the skin off my fingers. I can’t remember if this was before or after I had a kid poop his pants while the other kid was flipping a full-size mattress on its side in order to use the box spring as a trampoline.
The kid’s reoccurring ear infection? Not quite sure how you pulled that one off. Pretty brill. And excellent timing – you know, making him sick on a Saturday, plus a 5-day course of antibiotics, equals getting sick again shortly after they run out. Which is, OH, another Saturday. Fantastic. Now we get to do ear drops. Twice a day, for ten days. Which is totally my favorite activity ever, what with the bucking and the kicking and the screaming at an ungodly volume. I can’t wait to repeat that highly enjoyable task TWENTY TIMES.
And the four-year-old. Can’t leave him out, right? It was awesome being confronted by his teacher yesterday after class to learn that he had yelled maniacally and thrown a pair of scissors at her head. That’s not at all humiliating. And over what? Ah. Not wanting to do the art project. Completely valid reason for a violent tantrum.
The same day that happened, he also came up to me and was all “Mom, look at my hair!” and I was like what could you possibly have put in it now and he goes “It’s water!” and I’m all please don’t tell me from where and he says “It’s from the toilet!” And I was like, hell no, I did not have a child ripped from my vagina just so he could go and dunk his head in turd water. Do-over, please.
But the cruelest part of all? Dealing with the pee rice and the ear goop and the scissor-throwing while also having a baby who DOES NOT SLEEP. I am not lying when I say I would rather have hot needles stabbed under my fingernails than deal with an infant who is fighting sleep to the death and winning. ‘Cause see, too much of that leads to tweeting things like this:
So in closing. I’ll take these kids back and these ones too and also this perfect baby please. Now get out of my house.
September 8th, 2009 by Alicia
Warning: this post contains poop. Lots and lots and LOTS of poop. I say poop several times. Pretty much every other word is going to be poop. So if poop offends you, turn away now. Poop.
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The are times when, as a parent, I feel I’m doing a pretty okay job. My kids are all clean, well-dressed, somewhat well-behaved in public, they don’t hit me or call me names, and they aren’t that weird kid in the grocery store with the filthy face that tries to poke your newborn in the face and keeps staring at you with big beady eyes. (You all know what I’m talking about.) They can count, write letters and tell knock knock jokes. And, look! I even managed to get my kid enrolled in preschool, and got him there on time on his first day.
Aren’t they cute? Innocent? Unassuming?
I’m doing a decent job, right?
Or so I think, until Thing 1 decides to completely destroy any confidence I had in my parenting skills by, get this – taking a giant dump in a toy box. For reasons I can only assume are to get back at me or his father for what he feels is some sort of injustice to his 4-year-old rights.
Picture the scene with me for a second. Starting a month or two ago, we began randomly finding small toy bins filled with pee in the playroom. Abso-fricking-lutely disgusting. BUT, never once did I assume it was one of the kids. I placed the blame on the cats, moved them up one more rung on the ladder of I Will Murder You With My Bare Hands So Help Me God (along with many other acts of cat disobedience, including putting holes in the leather recliner and chewing up a knitting project OMGDEAD) and went about my business.
This happened two or three times, and then just stopped. The buckets o’ urine hadn’t even crossed my mind in weeks, until six days ago, when this tweet spewed forth from my fingertips with much more fury than I was able to convey:
Oh, how I’d love for that statement to be a misprint. But it’s true. Horrifyingly, disgustingly true. I had been on the couch trying to shush and sway the baby to sleep, and Sawyer kept kicking my foot rest and chattering loudly (because kids only have one volume and that volume is VERY FREAKING LOUD) and every time he did, her eyes would pop open and I’d have to start the swaying shushing process all over again. MADDENING. So, I made what I did not thing was an unreasonable request: go upstairs and play with your cars until I get your sister to sleep.
You’d have thought I had asked him to position his head behind the back tire of Uncle Rico’s van so I could test his skull’s durability, because he WAS. NOT. HAPPY. with my request. He stomped upstairs angrily and slammed his door. (Lord help me when I have a teenage girl, if this is how 4-year-old boys are.)
I got the baby to sleep in less than five minutes once I had some peace and quiet, and when I went upstairs to put her in her bed, Sawyer came creeping out of his room all guilty like and told me he’d pooped in his underwear. SIGH. He handed me a pair of Big Dogs boxers and there was just a smidge of a skid mark inside. I figured he’d been the victim of a.. well.. ya know. Shart. Hey, it happens to the best of us. (Doesn’t it? Lie to me.) So anyway, I sent him downstairs to the bathroom while I went into his room to find a clean pair of underwear.
And that is when I found it. Well, technically, first I smelled it. Then I saw it. And I really didn’t want to believe I had seen it, but there it was. Plopped strategically in the center of a small rectangular plastic bin was a giant fresh pile of dook. And obviously of the human variety, not feline. With some pee trickling around it like a moat circling a castle for good measure. OH. MY. GAWD.
I marched the defiled toy receptacle downstairs to my son who was still perched on the toilet (although I’m unsure WHY because he was obviously empty) and had to fight the urge to dump it on his head, or holler maniacally, or rub his nose in it like a naughty puppy. My teeth were clenched together so tightly I thought they might shatter, and I might suddenly be choking on a mouth full of tooth dust, and I kept picturing my mom and the way she’d get up in our face and talk to us through gritted teeth and pursed lips when we’d acted like assholes. And I always hated it when she did that but now I get it, I TOTALLY get it, because I now know that clenching your teeth into an enamel vice grip like that is the only way you can contain the infernal rage that wants to explode from your lips.
In short, I was stumped. Completely and totally clueless on how to handle the situation. No one warns you about this sort of behavior. Or hell, maybe no one else’s kid is as poop-obsessed as mine so no one would even know to warn me about this. Seriously, this child is obsessed with poop. I remember back when he was six months old, and our very first poop incident involved him chomping into some when he was sans diaper after a bath. I can still see his four little turd-caked teeth grinning back at me as I was frozen in horror. (Yes, it was as gross as it sounds.) And later, when we began to attempt potty-training, it wasn’t unusual for me to go to retrieve him from a nap and find him naked and painting a poop Picasso all over his walls. POOP. OBSESSED.
So even though I’m quite the veteran when it comes to excrement escapades, I still didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about this one. All I could think to say was “WHY?? Why would you do that?” And of course he said he didn’t know, which even further infuriated me. So time outs were doled out and threats of no school were made and lots of “You are a BIG BOY, you poop in the TOILET”s were thrown in for good measure. What else is there to do, really? Many have suggested I make him clean it up, but 1) That just makes a bigger mess for me and 2) I really don’t think it would phase him. He’d think it was fun, because poop isn’t gross to him.
I was hanging on to the hope that the no school threat would cure him of this behavior, because he was extremely excited about school and his face crumpled into a silent sob when I told him he couldn’t go if he did it again. Sah-weet, that was easy! I am a parenting genius. Or, you know, NOT. Because he did it again a few nights later, after getting angry with us for *gasp* making him go to bed at the normal time. The husband and I had just given the baby a bath, and I went in to check on Sawyer because his light was still on. The foul smell hit me as soon as I walked through the door and there it was, in the same spot in his closet. This time I said nothing, just handed the poop box to Shelby and motioned as if to say, “Your turn. Good luck with that.” He broke out his bag of tricks behind the closed bedroom door while I got the baby to sleep, and when I came out, Sawyer was happily in bed and said he was “happy again!” Great. As long as happy means not crapping in your toy box, I’m happy too.
Fast forward to last night. Shelby had been wrestling with the boys all afternoon, and was trying to get them to wind down with a break from the WWE stunts. This, as usual, pissed Sawyer off and he threw one of his regular fits in the playroom while Shelby came downstairs to throw away a diaper. Upon going back upstairs and peeking quietly around the corner, he caught our once innocent son in the act – standing on the couch, toy bin placed below him on the floor, weapon of choice cocked and ready to fire. Oh boy.
He knew we knew what he was planning to do and didn’t protest to a time out. I had another talk with him, and all I can do is hope he understands why leaving his digested lunch for Mommy and Daddy to find later is totally not okay. I suggested drawing an angry picture when he’s mad instead, and then we can discuss it afterward. I’m kind of wishing I had thought of that the first time around, but it’s kinda like middle school – it takes a few days of getting juice dumped down your shirt at lunch before you figure out that if you throw some back, you’ll both get sent to the principal and since he likes you better, you won’t get in trouble. Well, not quite like that. But, true story.
The main issue I keep coming back to in this whole mess is, how does a kid even learn to do something like this? What teaches him that a good method of dealing with his anger is to plot revenge on those who he feels have wronged him? And how in the WORLD did he decide on revenge by poo and pee, of all things? I’m pretty confident that we haven’t taught him this sort of behavior, as we’re usually pretty diligent in watching the way we speak and act around our children. We put a lot of importance on talking to our children in a grown up and respectable manner and try to teach them that the best way to deal with a problem is to talk about it. We give them lots of opportunities to talk to us, and we try to make sure they feel that what they have to say is important.
All that to say that sometimes, despite your best efforts, shit just.. happens.
If you’ve dealt with anything like this before, I’d love to hear your story and any suggestions I may not have thought of.
My crazy intelligent, passionate, sensitive, inquisitive first born. Always making sure I don’t get too comfortable on my throne.
September 2nd, 2009 by Alicia
Let me first set the scene for you. Monday, I needed to go to the bank. I had approximately fourteen checks as well as a stack of cash that needed to be deposited before I gave in to temptation and bought ten Route 44 Diet Dr Peppers from Sonic with it. Anyone who has three or more children knows that leaving the house with them should be an Olympic sport. I thought it was hard when I had one baby. No. NO. That is cake, trust me. With three, there’s the outfit choosing and the diaper wrestling and the cup filling and the potty reminders and the bag packing and three sets of carseat straps and the shoe finding OH MY GOD THE SHOE FINDING. I cannot comprehend why the little people shoes in our house always seem to disappear, but they do, and when I can’t find them I come thisclose to losing my MIND. It’s like I expend enough energy to change, dress and pack three children and the one thing holding me up is the shoes? THE SHOES? Come on now.
So I’m packing a bag, putting on my pants and buckling the baby in her carseat all at the same time and finally, YES! We are ready! Or not. I can’t find two stupid pairs of those ugly as sin Crocs my boys are obsessed with. Sawyer finds a pair, slaps them on the wrong feet (every time! Why is this? Shouldn’t they at least average 50/50 on getting it right?) and runs to the car. But I can’t find another pair, and Beckett is LOSING IT. He has to have Crocs like his brother and he has to have them right then or he will explode and I can’t find them. So he’s screaming and writhing on the floor over the stupid shoes and I’m beyond frustrated because IT’S ALWAYS THE DAMN SHOES and I go to grab my iPhone to stick it in the diaper bag when It Happens.
I grabbed at the phone a little too angrily and vigorously and it slipped from my fingers onto the kitchen floor with a loud smack. I grumbled and grabbed it off the floor, pushing the home button to make sure it was okay. I’ve dropped it plenty of times before and it was always fine, but this time? When I’m already going mental over the shoes? Nothing happened. Black screen staring me in the face. Oh, the battery is just dead I think and plug it into the charger. Still nothing. Attempt a hard restore. Nothing. At this point Beckett is still having Freakout of the Century and I had to tackle him into his carseat, so I stuffed the phone and charger in my bag to deal with when I got back, still thinking it must just be dead or something. Har har har.
So we go to the bank and I send my eleventy one items up the chute, and as I’m waiting I notice the tellers looking through the window a little strangely at me. What, bitches? Never seen a frazzled woman with three kids who has decided to wear her pajamas to the bank? MYOB. I get my receipt and we drive off, and as I turn the corner, Sawyer goes, “Whoa, Mommy! Too fast!” I glance at him in the rear view mirror and smile as he hangs over the seat in front of him and bounces around laughing.
Um, wait. WHAT?
OMG, internet. In my frustration with the shoes (UGH THE SHOES) and the phone and the child who had to flail his arms and legs like octopus tentacles while I was buckling him in, I forgot to go to the other side of the car and strap Sawyer in. All the things that could happen right that second to send him hurtling through the windshield instantly flashed through my mind. And a little of OMG, I might blog this, and the internet will think I’m a horrible mother but I’ll probably just blog it anyway as I pulled the car over to strap him down.
Okay. So there was that whole saga, and that’s how the phone got dropped and why I was already a hot mess by the time I got home to mess with it some more. I thought I’d try syncing it with my computer to at least save the data, thinking maybe the screen was just out. iTunes made me wait and wait and then finally just spit out an error message about not having a SIM card. Except, it DID have a SIM card. I pulled the card out and stuck it back in a few times, but it wasn’t registering. Tried throwing it on the floor again (because maybe it would unbreak it? I don’t friggin’ know) but nothing worked. And at this point, all I can see are dollar signs. Lots and lots of dollar signs and a husband cutting up my credit cards and taking my name off the bank account because this is the third phone I’ve had in the past 18 months.
Hooookay, so now I get to make an appointment at the Apple Store an hour away. Which eventually turns into Shelby having to take the day off work to stay home with the boys, because I have a midwife appointment as well and we can’t get in touch with my brother to come watch them. And you know, the vision of them spinning tornado style through the nice displays of shiny new Macbooks and widescreen monitors? Would pretty much prefer for that not to become a reality.
So (I wonder how many times I can start a paragraph with so?) yesterday after our appointment, the baby and I met with a Genius who, after attempting to “fix” the phone with a can of compressed air and a bristly brush (which I could have jut done myself at home), basically told me I had killed my phone. Bye bye iPhone, rest in peace, OH but we can replace it with the exact same model for the bargain price of $199! Yeah, probably not. No Apple Care plan to save me since I’d bought the phone used from a friend, so my next option was to beg and plead with AT&T to have a little mercy on me for just this once and let me upgrade early.
As it turns out, no begging OR pleading was necessary. In fact, the good folks at AT&T were – dare I say – helpful. That’s definitely a first. I went into the store, told the girl who greeted me my predicament and she escorted me straight to a manager to see what he could do for me. This guy, George, was a lifesaver. He pulled up my account, saw that one of the lines on our account (Shelby’s) was up for upgrade in October, and with a “That’s close enough!” he had another employee at his side who he gave instructions to override the date and “make sure the customer was 100% satisfied today, wink wink.” As it turned out, satisfying me included selling me a brand new iPhone 3G for half the price the Apple Store offered. In less than 20 minutes, I was leaving the store with my new phone nestled into a pink and purple case with the Apple Care angels watching over it. This one has to last me awhile.
So, big love to AT&T for now. Until they screw up my bill again.