Me Time

Sam is in the shower.

Me: You doin' all right in there, kiddo?

Sam: I'm fine mom. I'm just we-waxing (relaxing).

Me: Are you ready to get out yet?

Sam: Mom, how 'bout you go read a book or something. Sam needs some "me" time.

Guess everyone needs some sometimes.

Thankful

With the holidays rapidly approaching, I find myself at a bit of a loss about how to explain certain holiday traditions and ideas to my incessantly curious two year old. 

Being thankful wasn't hard, we've been working on that one for some time.  She woke up yesterday morning and hugged my neck and said "I'm thankful for you, mother!"  (She's been calling me "mother" lately.  I don't pretend to understand why.)  She even mentioned her gratitude toward her father in spite of his stench.  He said it was something to the effect of:

     "Daddy, I'm thankful for you.  I can smell you."
     "Oh.  Well, thank you.  What do I smell like?"
     "You smell like gross."

I really feel like we've got the concept of being thankful in the bag, along with the fallacies of judging someone based on their aroma.  Luckily for me, she hasn't asked why we don't celebrate being thankful year round.

But there are some other traditions she doesn't quite get.  Like, why can't we have chicken for Thanksgiving supper?  What is "football"?  Who is Uncle David?  Can we go see the Pilgrims?  Does baby Jesus need a bottle for supper?  The list goes on.  She thinks of questions that I never could have imagined myself trying to answer.  The more I talk to her about it, the more questions she asks.  I'm so glad she hasn't discovered the "why" loop yet.  I'm just not ready for that.

But Seriously...

How am I supposed to get anything done around here with these two laughing at me?  Eh, cleaning and scrubbing and babies don't keep and all that jazz...

Motorcycle Butterfly Fairy Princess Tea Party

Somewhere deep inside the mind of a child is a world where everything is pink.  Everything has wings.  Everything glows in the dark.  The constellations are Jupiter's dreams.  Meteor showers are falling candy.  Robots sing and dance.  There's a swimming pool on Miranda.  And a motorcycle butterfly fairy princess can have a tea party with Mommy.

Its my favorite place.

Never

Yesterday, I heard myself saying, "There is not any time of day I have left to work out.  All my time is taken!"  Of course, this isn't true.  I just had to do the same thing everyone else does and sacrifice one of my lazy activities.  I chose sleep instead of WoW because, lets face it, Catacalysm is coming out.  For those of you that don't know, that's a big deal. 

So at 4 am my alarm went off.  I shut it off and said to myself, "This is stupid" and almost went back to bed.  But I convinced myself I could do this for one day, at least.  Then I looked outside and saw it was raining and cold.  If that's not an excuse to go back to bed, I don't know what is.  And I said to myself, "It always rains every time I want to do something!"  But I put on my shoes, sweatered and leashed the dog, and set out on my morning adventure.  It was everything I had hoped it would be.

Last night, just before supper, my daughter walked into my kitchen, looked around, gave a long sigh, and said "There is never anything to eat in this house."  She's so dramatic!  Where does she get that?

The Apocolypse

This is Tuesday!  Time for my post about the amazing catastrophes I came home to yesterday.  There's just one problem...

...I haven't found them yet.  The house was not clean but not trashed.  My son was bathed, fed, and asleep.  My daughter was having desert, her bath was run and her pajamas laid out.  My husband was sane.  My laundry is not pink.  Nothing exploded in my kitchen.  Both of my children and both of my dogs still have the same amount of hair I left them with.  (The dogs were even bathed.)

I'm at a loss.  Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel.....fine.

More Potty Adventures

Most of you know I have been trying to potty train Sam since before Caius was born.  She was mildly responsive until after his birth, when she was completely resistant.  Now that she's back to showing some interest, I really feel like we are starting to make some progress.  Only one accident yesterday.  I was so proud.  I think I have been approaching this whole thing the wrong way for her.  She's very independent, but I think she might be very private about this as well.  She still needs help, but the most successful attempts on the potty have been the ones when I find her in the bathroom trying to do it herself.  I help her a bit, then leave her alone.

Yesterday, I was feeding Caius in the living room.  Sam ran off down the hall and was very quiet for .... well ... too long.  So I started off down the hall saying as I went, "Samantha Davis, exactly what are you doing?"  By the time I finished the statement I had reached the bathroom.  I found her sitting on the potty with a book in hand.  She looked at me and said, "I'm peepin on the potty, obbiuss-wee (obviously)!"

Most days I try to make a big deal about these kinds of successes with her.  I get so excited about them.  But I just told her that was really good and let her finish.  We mentioned it to dad when he got home and left it at that.  (Honestly, I probably still would have made a big deal about it if she hadn't been so sick.  Our attention was slightly diverted)  And I think maybe she prefers it that way. 

So I learned more about Sam using the potty yesterday than she did, and we possibly came further in one day than we have in months.  Today, I'm going to learn how to not freak out about this fever that is plaguing her.  God, let her survive all the things I have yet to learn.

You're Driving Me Crazy

I have found myself more than a little distracted by the much deserved bite in my ass from karma these last several weeks.  The small chores that kept my days organized have become almost overwhelming tasks, and some days just haven't gotten done at all.  I watch my life slip more and more into chaos and the more it does the more helpless I feel against it.  What I need is a distraction from the distraction, something to snap me out of this funk.....

Enter Sam.  My own personal distraction for life.  No matter what has happened in the last several weeks, my daughter is still two.  No matter what is to come over the next several months, she will still be two.  And I don't think it entirely unusual that I've said to her (on more than one occasion) "Goodness gracious Sam, you're driving me crazy!"  Of course we laugh about it and go on about our day.  But it never occurred to me how a two year old sees that statement.

Today we built a fort with a blanket and some chairs and a laundry basket.  We filled it with toys, and when it was time to clean up, used the laundry basket to deliver the toys back to Sam's room.  Once the basket was empty, Sam jumped inside and sat down and I pushed her around the house, accelerating and stopping with much intensity and spinning wildly.  We were both laughing so hard we could hardly breathe, but she managed to get out "Wow mommy!  You're driving me crazy!"  And she was right.  I was.

Try Again

My daughter loves graham crackers.  She really does.  Every afternoon either my husband or I give her half a graham cracker and sometimes its the biggest smile we get all day.  But today was a little different.  She didn't ask for the cracker until it was much later in the afternoon, almost supper time, in fact.  I felt I should still give it to her, but I wanted her to be hungry for supper as well.  So, I gave her half of what she usually gets.  I handed her the sliver of crunchy sweetness, and she looked at it with a very confused little face.  Then she resolved herself and looked back up at me and said, "That's not right, mommy.  Try again."

After I got over how adorable the moment was, I realized it wasn't just a funny moment.  It was a victory.  For several months I've been trying to teach her to use her words to voice her opinion about something rather than scream and throw a fit.  And she just did it!  I was so excited I wanted to hand her the whole pack of graham crackers.  I know, I know.  And I didn't cave.  I just wanted to.

I ended up explaining to her that we were going to be eating supper very soon so she would be having a smaller portion of graham cracker for her snack today (which, of course, she found completely unacceptable), but I was so proud of her for using her "big girl" words that she could have a Dora sticker (which made her forget about the graham cracker incident entirely).  I don't know that I did the right thing.  Honestly, I'm not so much concerned about always doing the right thing as I am about trying not to do the most wrong thing. 

But, my daughter was upset about something and did not throw a fit.  I'm sure that Hell has completely frozen over and I keep looking out my window for flying monkeys.  I hope I need more Dora stickers.

Time Out

sam:  mommy, baby Caius is flipping out.
me:  yes, sweetheart.  he is.
sam:  is he throwing a fit?
me:  yes, sweetheart.  he is.
sam:  does he need a time-out?
me:  um, he can't sit yet.
sam:  hmmm.
exit sam.

a few seconds later....
enter sam with pillow in hand.
sam places pillow on time-out stool.
sam:  here ya go caius.  nobody wants to hear it.

I find myself continuously amazed at my daughter's ability to reason and apply those things I have taught her to situations that are actually appropriate.  What makes this truly fascinating is its juxtaposition to her randomness and rebellions.  The same child that counts to 63 before getting bored dreams about "monkey kites".  The little girl who was having tea on the windowsill with Thomas Jefferson and Gumby at 18 months is refusing to toilet train at 2 1/2 years.   The child that practices her letters and spelling on the front porch will pretend she can't speak when company arrives.

And then, there's bedtime.

sam:  mommy, I'm a sister!
me:  yes, and I'm a mother.
sam:  you're not a mother, you're a mommy.
me:  well, a mother is the same thing as a mommy; so I'm a mother AND a mommy -- Just like your dad is a father AND a daddy.
sam:  no, he's not.  he's just dad.

Goodnight Miss Mommy

There's nothing like being away for a whole Monday after being sick for a whole weekend while your husband takes the children to the farm to visit his parents to ensure you'll have presents awaiting your arrival on Monday evening.  My husband is a great father, but he's pretty clueless when it comes to being a mom.  He finds himself sorely lacking laundry, housekeeping, balanced diet, and other general organization skills required to keep the daisies spaced properly.  While he swears he always appreciates what I do as a mother and doesn't need reminders, I always hear these affirmations on Monday evening. 

This last weekend, I was too ill to travel, so he took it upon himself to pack, drive the kids out to the farm, take care of them overnight, and travel back the next day.  We had planned the trip for some time, and he felt it was really important not to miss it.  When he returned on Sunday, the kids were fine (maybe a little mis-matched and dirty, but fine) and he was as frazzled as I've ever seen him.  He filled me with stories of crying babes and inconvenient diaper emergencies.  Stories of stained clothes and scraped knees.  Stories about how little other people understood how necessary it was for him to keep his schedule with these two kids.  I listened, all the while laughing inside.  He knew these events crafted a normal day for me.  That did not change the fact that he had no idea how to handle them.  So I cleaned up the kids, fed them, and put them snuggly in their beds.

And, as usual, he was with the kids all day Monday.  I knew it was going to be rough for him, but it couldn't be helped.  On Monday evening, I walked through the door of my home to find my economy pack of 112 feminine products opened and stuck to everything in the house within reach of a two year old.  My husband was sitting on our bed giving the baby a bottle with a look that left Sunday's frazzled face far behind.  I put my hand on his face and kissed his eyes, took the baby in my arms, and balanced the bottle under my chin.  I asked Sam to come to the kitchen with me.  We got a trash bag out of the cabinet and began to fill it together with the mess she had created.  We finished the evening routine only slightly behind schedule.  We didn't talk about it, but we both knew. 

As I was putting Caius to sleep, he looked up at me and said, "mamma".  I almost cried.  As I was reading to Sam, she wrapped her hands around my neck and rested her cheek on my shoulder.  I kissed her on her head as i pulled up the covers and she said, "Goodnight Miss Mommy."  And it was.