Lesson #25: Sitting Through A Meal Is A Thing Of The Past

You know how people are always saying to appreciate the little things in life? Once you have offspring, you start appreciating the things you used to have (privacy! a clean house! sleeping in!) and celebrating the microscopic things, like not having to wipe pee off the toilet seat before you sit down.

The thing that I find myself missing most is sitting down to eat. My husband and I both grew up having family dinners, and sitting down all together to have dinner is something we do with our children as much as possible. It sounds all idyllic and quaint all-American: the family meal where everyone eats together and shares all the wonderful things that happened that day. The reality is more Roseanne Barr than June Cleaver. 

I seem to be constantly getting up for one reason or another. Most of the time it involves my 4-year old having to use the bathroom even though he was JUST in there washing hands five minutes ago. This is typically followed by my 19 month old throwing food on the dog before launching his plate and cup as far as possible juuust as I reach out to take them away. The kid's got lightning fast reflexes. The thing is, he hasn't quite figured out the whole cause and effect thing and typically cries (this kid doesn't do anything halfway; when he cries he SCREAMS) because now he doesn't have his plate, or now he wants to get down and wreak havoc while we're all still at the table. 

Easter brought about a prime example of the sort of meal interruption that seems to always find me. We were celebrating with my mom's side of the family-she's one of 9 so there are typically a LOT of people at our family gatherings. We had just sat down to eat when my 4 year old announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Of course. I glanced at hubster but he was trapped at the end of the table up against a wall and couldn't get out (good strategy, I'm trying that one next year). I took ole potty pants to the bathroom and lemme just tell ya- he let out a doozy of a poo. I was pretty excited that he'd made it to the bathroom and I didn't have to clean out pooey underwear (definitely appreciating the littlest of things there). The situation went downhill a bit from there though. The little dude flushed the toilet several times in a row, then said, "Mama the water's getting really high". Oh yes. Clogged the toilet right in the middle of Easter dinner. Everyone else was chowing down on ham and there I was playing Roto Rooter in the bathroom. Most of the family found it amusing when I went out and asked where the plunger was kept. I'm pretty sure they all laughed when my son came running out shouting, 'The water's going down! My green poop went down now!" 

Maybe we should just eat in the bathroom. It has pretty much everything we'd need: the toilet is right there for the older one; the tub is in close proximity for those who are in splatter range of baby Babe Ruth; the sink is also right there for rinsing dropped cups and forks; heck, there's even towels to sop up those spills! I think I might be onto something here... 

Whether it's a potty trip, sopping up a spill, rinsing off dropped silverware, or pouring more milk, my job is never done- and neither is my meal. I just keep reminding myself that one day my babies won't need me to pour their milk or cut their meat, and I'll miss these days when they still needed me. That, and one day they'll be changing MY diapers muahhahahaha! 

Lesson #24: Perspective is a Funny Thing

As you know, my babies were both preemies requiring stays in the NICU. The NICU is housed on the 7^th floor of the hospital where they were born. The 7^th floor is the maternity floor. When you get on the elevator and push 7, people give you little smiles, and sometimes even say congratulations if they see the hospital id bracelet on your wrist. Going to 7 means you’re a new mommy or auntie or grandma; that you or someone you love is anxiously awaiting the arrival of a new little life. What those elevator congratulators probably don’t know is that amidst all the joy and excitement of Grant 7, there is a place no parent wants to find themselves; a place where fear and the unknown abound. Of course I’m talking about the NICU. No parent wants to leave the hospital without their baby, only to return, day after day, having to push number 7 and receive those smiles and nods before walking past the anxiously waiting families, the rooms where babies and mothers cuddle and nurse, and the newborn nursery, only to ring a doorbell and gain entrance to the land of no guarantees.

One day when my baby was finally healthy enough to be moved to the Continuing Care Nursery on the 8^th floor, I stepped onto the elevator and pushed 8 with what can only be described as a giddy sort of relief. NICU babies who have graduated to the 8^th floor mostly just need to grow and learn how to eat; they are generally not in critical condition. In some ways, it means the storm has passed, or at least the worst of it. The CCN has private rooms and families on the 8^th floor enjoy a sort of privacy not afforded to the families who are still “downstairs”. I was so excited to get on that elevator and push 8. That day as I pushed 8, a man looked at me with a sympathetic smile and nodded knowingly. “Got a sick kid?” he asked. You see, 8 is the Peds floor. People going to 8 have a sick child. In that moment I was struck by how subjective perspective is. I felt a sense of triumph in being able to push 8, while he saw a mother with a sick child; someone to feel sorry for.

The power of perspective hit me again last Friday. That morning the “Washer Fluid Low” message came on in my car. I immediately began fretting about it: did we have any washer fluid in the garage, what if I ran out, when would I have time to stop and get more? That afternoon my 17 month old woke up from his nap with blue lips and a 105.4 degree fever. We spent 6 hours in the ER while doctors and nurses worked on restoring his oxygen and bringing down his fever; getting chest x-rays and trying unsuccessfully to get an IV into his dehydrated veins; administering lab tests and blood cultures and breathing treatments. After six hours he was doing better and we were free to go. As we pulled out of the parking garage that “Washer Fluid Low” message popped up again, and this time I laughed. How absurd that I’d fretted so about something that, in the grand scheme of things is so trivial. Children have a way of putting things in perspective. 


In her book, "Half Baked: The Story of My Nerves, My Newborn, and How We Both Learned to Breathe", Alexa Stevenson says, "Being a mother in the NICU is a painful crash course...like learning to swim by being dropped into the ocean by a helicopter". She's right. That experience is what gives me perspective. It's what allows me to laugh about and share with you the many mishaps of parenting that I experience. As my family gears up for our 5th March for Babies event to benefit the March of Dimes, I reflect on that experience and am reminded of how lucky we are, and of the many others who are not. 

Austin, born at 29 weeks and weighing 2lbs 10oz, 56 days in the NICU. Benjamin, born at 30 weeks, weighing 3lbs 5oz, 36 days in NICU. They are our miracles. We walk for them. 


We would greatly appreciate it if you would consider making a donation to our March for Babies team. You can learn more or make a donation at www.marchforbabies.org/apate. Thank you for your support. 

Lesson #23: Meltdowns Happen

I considered many titles for this lesson. Some of my favorite possibilities were "Four Year Olds Are The Devil", "If This Is Four, I Want My Three Year Old Back", "You Thought Two Was Bad??!! JUST WAIT", and my personal favorite (drumroll please): "Good Lord I Don't Know If I Will Live To This Child's Fifth Birthday And He Hasn't Even Been Four For A Month Yet!" Ok so that last one wasn't actually in the running but it's totally what I've found myself muttering lately.

You see, my child has never really had a meltdown of epic proportions before. I guess things had gone well for so long I started to think I was exempt from the public meltdown. Surely MY child would never do such a thing. Yet suddenly there I was, standing in Hannaford with a whining puddle of four year old at my feet.

It all started when he wanted his OWN cart to push. Dude, you can’t even see over the cart, you’re not pushing your own. I told him his choices were to help me push the cart or get into the cart. Of course, he jumped onto the end of the cart. Now, I have spent many a shopping trip balanced on the end of a shopping cart, so it’s not like I don’t get the draw. However, my kid isn’t exactly graceful and he JUST turned four so the odds are good that it would have ended in him getting run over by the shopping cart. I told him that it wasn’t safe to ride that way and he’d have to choose to get into the car or help me push. You know what he said? “But Mommy the big kids ride this way, I see them all the time!” Really. If the big kids jumped off a bridge would you do it too? No, I didn’t actually say that but it did cross my mind. I simply repeated his choices which resulted in him LAYING DOWN on the floor of the grocery store. I knelt down beside him and said, very calmly, “Get. Off. The. Floor. Right. Now. Or. We. Are. Leaving.”  I was all proud of myself for keeping my cool. I’d just read some Brazeltonian wisdom and was feeling like SUCH a great parent, all understanding and empathetic. He quickly jumped up and when I repeated his choices, he said, “I just want to get a basket.” Ok fine, whatever. We were only getting a few things: some chocolate chips so we could make cookies together and a couple ingredients for dinner since all we had at home were half meals: spaghetti but no sauce, bread but no cheese- you get the idea. Of course, he wanted to get his OWN basket. I didn’t care, I just needed to get the stuff and get out of there so we could pick up his little brother before childcare closed.

The real problems started when he had trouble carrying the basket because it was about as big as he was. He got frustrated with it and, long story short, ended up throwing it down on the floor before he ran over to the flower display and latched onto a yellow pot of flowers that he insisted we buy. I was still feeling pretty great about my parenting as I calmly and quietly told him we were not there to buy flowers. It went downhill from there and, needless to say, this little shopping excursion ended with me carrying him out of the store as he screamed, “I don’t wanna leave Hannaford” the entire way. Awesome.

We got to the car and he refused to get into his car seat, instead falling into a heap on the floor as he cried and shouted about going back into the store. The following conversation went something like this:

Him: I WANNA GO BACK IN HANNAFORD!
Me: We are not going back in Hannaford. You are not calm enough to go in the store.
Him: I AM calm! I just wanna be CALM!
Me: Yelling and crying is not calm behavior.
Him: I WILL have calm behavior and I WILL stop yelling! I want to go in Hannaford!
Me: I’m sorry buddy, we’re not going back today. We’ll have to go another time.
Him: [Unintelligible crying and screaming]

And on it went. I couldn’t get him into the car seat and wasn’t quite sure what else to do, so I simply closed the car door and stood there like an idiot in the parking lot, hoping to God people didn't think I was tying to kidnap the kid. He totally freaked out and pounded his fists on the window, screaming “Mommy! No! Don’t close the door, don’t close the door!” I openend the door and instructed him-very calmly- to get into the car seat. He refused. I closed the door. He pounded and screamed. This happened a couple more times before I just got in the driver’s seat and started the car. Apparently I should have thought of that first, because he immediately panicked at the thought of me driving off before he was buckled, and jumped right into his car seat. 

Leaving the store, however, did not end the meltdown. He started ranting and raving about how he was "Just going to HIT the baby room teacher and HIT the babies" when we got to the childcare center to pick up my other son. I was still totally rockin' the stoicism and said, "Hitting people won't solve your problem. Hitting them won't make us be at Hannaford." (See? Don't I totally rock?) 

We finally got to the childcare enter but he was still ranting and raving so I thought I should try and defuse the situation before going inside where his little display would have an audience. I knelt down in front of him and said in my best soothing voice, "Buddy I think you better calm your body before we go in. Let's try and get your anger out before we go into B's school." Wrong move. It was pretty much the equivalent of poking an angry bull with a hot poker. The kid went absolutely bat shit crazy. He started jumping up and down angrily, shaking his fists into the air and screaming "I JUST WANT TO GO IN HANNAFORRRRRRD!!!!" At this point my confidence might have wavered, just a little. That is, until he fell into me, sobbing, and said, "I just want to make cookies with you Mama." Insert heartbreak here. I explained that if his behavior got better, then maybe we could make a different kind of cookies that we wouldn't need the chocolate chips for. Wrong answer. This set him off again and he repeated the whole spectacle all over again. I could feel the eyes of other mothers and children on us as they came and went from the center. I was at a complete loss. 

We eventually picked up the little man, but unfortunately we had to drive back by Hannaford to get home. I gotta give him credit, he was really holding onto the hope that we just might stop on our way back by. When we didn't, a whole new wave of tears and anger came pouring out. Part of me wanted to give him another chance but there was no way in H-E double hockey sticks I was going to give him the message that having a huge fit is the way to get what he wants. 

Fast forward to the pb&j and yogurt supper we had since we hadn't gotten any food at the grocery store. I slapped the kids' sandwiches together on regular wheat bread, then made mine on multigrain, only to hear "I DON'T LIKE SEED BREAD!" I turned around just in time to see him THROW his sandwich on the floor. Right about then is when my awesome parenting went out the window. "Go to your room right now!" Of course he didn't, instead opting to lay on the floor. If you've been there, you totally understand how freaking maddening it is when they simply won't do what you say. Luckily, I've still got a good 2 feet and quite a few pounds on this kid so it was no thang to sling him over my shoulder and carry him upstairs myself. 

In the future, maybe I'll just pull an Erma Bombeck: "When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished I climb out." I think she was onto something there, don't you? 

Lesson #22: You Will Never Sleep Again, Ever.

When you have a baby, you expect to be up at all hours and to be completely exhausted. What you don’t realize until much, much later is that you will never recover. You will never get a full night’s sleep again, ever.

I have often felt like my children are participating in some kind of twisted conspiracy to ensure that I never sleep again. It’s like some kind of modern day torture; a parental initiation. I think they communicate telepathically. It must go something like this:

“Ok tonight you get out of bed 17 times, keeping her up til the wee hours. Then, just when she’s finally drifted off for a few hours, I’ll sneak attack with the 5am wake up poop!”

God forbid I should go to bed late. That pretty much guarantees that I will be woken up in the middle of the night or at the crack of dawn. Or both. 

When my second child was born, our plan was for him to sleep in his pack and play in our room until he was a little older, and then share the room across the hall with his brother. I naively thought this would occur much, much sooner. The child is almost 16 months old and there’s no end in sight. It feels like he will never vacate our bedroom. It’s definitely not that I don’t want him out of our room, and not so much that I think he would mind sleeping elsewhere, but most certainly due to the fact that there's a fairly good chance his brother would injure him. His big brother (almost 4-holy where did that time go?) has a penchant for pushing, poking, and throwing blankets over his little bro. I do not trust them in the room alone together all night long. Besides the threat of injury, there is also the possibility of complete and utter mayhem, because I’m pretty sure they would find a way to get the little guy out of the pack and play and initiate destruction of everything in sight.

It’s gotten to the point that my husband and I are afraid to enter our room once the baby’s sleeping. We creep up our stairs (not an easy feat since our stairs make more noise than a freight train on crack), gently push the door open, and tiptoe into the “danger zone”. He’s sleeping soundly-win! We silently signal to each other to fix the bedding. The whooshing of the comforter echoes through the stillness and the baby begins to stir. We freeze, then slooooowwwwllllyyyyy climb into bed. CREAK goes the mattress. The little dude’s head pops up like a gopher out of a hole. “WAAAHHHHHH!!!!!” Fail.

One night we even tried sleeping “college style”-that is, squished into the twin sized bed in our downstairs office/spare room. That might work when you're 10 years younger and 40 lbs thinner but these days it's a recipe for a stiff neck and numb arms. 

Last night I fell into bed at 9pm, exhausted from the previous day's late night/early morning combo. I was almost asleep when my cell phone started shreiking and vibrating like it was warning the end of mankind. I scrambled to silence it as the baby began to stir and make "num num num" sounds as he sucked on his thumb. Phew! Crisis averted. I fell asleep only to be awakened at 12:30 by the sound of my older child going downstairs. Hmmm.... Should I get up? I heard the bathroom fan turn on. Ok, maybe he just has to go to the bathroom. He'll come back. Right? Maybe I should get up. Then I heard the sound of running feet and crying. Ok, ok, I'm getting up. I went down the stairs to find him running into the kitchen with just his pj top on, completely naked from the waist down. "Mommy I just had to go pee but the toilet is too cold! Will you warm it up for me?" Holy cripes this kid has GOT to learn how to pee standing up. We got the potty situation taken care of and I tucked him back into bed. 

Just when I was certain I would need to invent a caffeine drip stocked with coffee if I was going to make it through the next 5 years of my life, a Christmas miracle occurred. I knew something was up when I woke up and it wasn't dark outside. I had a moment of panic, wondering if everyone was ok. I peeked over the covers to see the little dude standing in the pack n play smiling at me. I looked at my clock and almost passed out when I saw the time: 7:52!!!! I swear I heard angels singing the halleluja chorus right there in my bedroom. I just might make it through another day. Amen to that!

Lesson #21: Puke Always Wins

I was at work on Monday when my husband sent me a text saying that my almost 4-year old had puked. This text was accompanied by a most appetizing photograph of the offending vomit. Only after I got home did I learn that he had, in fact, puked all over the couch. As soon as I walked in the door I was assaulted by the warring scents of a "Red Apple Wreath" Yankee candle fighting a losing battle with vomit. Yummmm. Our couch has super puffy non-removable cushions so you can imagine how much fun that was to clean up. Luckily that duty fell to the hubster.  Three more washings and a Febreezing later, and the smell is mostly gone.

Puke-1, Mama-0

Fast forward to Thursday evening. I was sitting in the recliner (Lord knows I'm not sitting on that couch for awhile!) giving my younger boy a nebulizer treatment when the older one came over to tell me he'd finished all the yogurt in the fridge (greeeaaaaat) and show me the empty tub. All of a sudden he started coughing uncontrollably for no apparent reason. He coughed so hard his face turned red and he kind of shuddered. I reached out towards him with my free hand to make sure he was ok when SPLAT! He coughed so hard he upchucked yogurt into my outstretched hand. Hmm... What to do here?

Puke-2, Mama-0.

Today is Friday. My husband dropped the kids off at child care before heading into work. I worked some extra hours earlier in the week so I was planning to leave work at 11:30 today. I was really looking forward to spending a little "me" time at home before jumping into the belly of the beast known as Super WalMart to get some groceries. I pictured myself finishing my book over a leisurely lunch of  leftovers ( hey, it's the little things), going grocery shopping all by myself in the middle of a weekday when WalMart *MIGHT* not be jam packed with lunatics, and getting supper started before heading to pick up the boys a full 2 hours earlier than I would have if I'd worked a full day. Sweet! Wins all around! At 11:15 I got the message on my office phone: "Hi this is L at Child Care. I wanted to let you know that B threw up and needs to be picked up. I'll try your cell phone too. Thanks."

Puke-3, Mama-0

When you think about it, there really is no way to win when it's you vs. the puke monster. When it rears its ugly head the best we can do is don our armor of cleaning products and Febreeze and hope for the best. Hey, if three separate puke attacks in one week is the worst we have to endure, then I think we're doing pretty well, don't you?

Lesson #20: Sippy Cups Multiply Faster Than Rabbits

My house is being overtaken by sippy cups. At any given moment I can walk into my living room and find no less than 3 of them strewn around the floor, in the toy bins, and (usually dripping) on the furniture. This is largely the fault of my almost 4-year old. He has a terrible habit of leaving his cup wherever he was playing and walking away. Every day I tell myself that he is only going to get ONE cup for the day and that if he wants a drink he's going to have to find his cup first. The problem with that is that when he wants a drink the cup is nowhere to be found. Literally. I send him to every room of the house looking for it, to no avail. Then I usually end up looking for it myself and can't find the thing either! After half an hour of looking for the freaking cup that appears to have fallen off the end of the earth, I inevitably give up and hand him a new cup. Then, without fail, about five minutes later I'll walk into the living room and suddenly there are six sippy cups laying all over the place. What the heck?! I don't understand this phenomenon any more than I understand why there are never any clean towels no matter how much laundry we do.

Speaking of sippy cups, I keep telling my husband that he has GOT to check the floor when he's cleaning up a meal. One side of our kitchen table is against the wall and the floor on the wall side is a repository for lost toys, dog hair, and dishes the baby has thrown that my husband "didn't see" (aka: didn't look for). Maybe it's a guy thing, but he seems to only be able to focus on one thing at any given time, and when cleaning up a meal that one thing is the baby himself. The booster seat tray might get wiped down, but the bib is never cleaned out and the cup is alllllways left wherever it fell when the kid chucked it off the side of the tray. The other day I found not one but TWO sippy cups of milk under the chair. Does he not look down at any point during the day or what? How does he miss TWO cups of milk under there? Last night I found one dangling haphazardly between the table and the wall. The worst, however, was when I was Swiffering (side note: LOVE the Swiffer Sweeper Vac so much I wanna marry IT) I made the appetizing discovery of a sippy cup of milk that had been under there for a while. I'm talking at least a week, maybe more. The milk inside was so far gone, I swore it was yogurt. *shudders* It was allllll kinds a nasty.

I'm thinking it would be nice if I could apply the sippy cup multiplication phenom to myself. Just got home with two cranky kids and no supper to speak of? No problem! I'll just multiply by two. A screaming baby that needs to be cleaned up after supper, a 3 year old with yet another poo in the pants, and a dog that's whining to go out? No problem! I'll just multiply myself by 3. Dishes to wash, laundry fold, floors to sweep, garbage to be taken out? No problem! I'll just multiply by four.

I'm pretty sure that until someone invents that technology I will forever be driving myself crazy as I clean stuff up and the three males in my house go right along behind me undoing everything I just did. On the bright side, at least I always have a cup, and from where I'm sitting, the glass is definitely half full.

Lesson #19: Wow, I'm Lame

I like to think I was kinda cool before I had kids. I wore sassy shoes with heels. I stayed up late and slept in. I read Cosmo. I went shopping just for fun. I had parties (and not of the Tupperware variety, either thankyouverymuch!)  For awhile I thought I was still cool even after I had one. Not to be shallow, but a baby is a very cool accessory these days-just pick up any gossip rag; mommyhood is all the rage. (And for the record, NO I did NOT have kids so I would have a "cool accessory". As a matter of fact, it took me over two years to finally get knocked up.)

But no matter how cool I might've once been, it is painfully clear to me that I am definitely no longer, in any way, shape or form, cool. Maybe it was turning 30 that did me in, I don't know. All I know is, I'm not wearing shoes I can't chase a kid in; if I sleep until 7am it's a miracle of God; shopping is a dreaded task that involves groceries; and the last magazine I read advertised "26 Low Cost Recipes" and "$68.55 Worth Of Coupons Inside!" on the cover.

The realization that I am pretty lame came on slowly. The thought first occurred to me when my little sister, who's pretty much half my age-13 years younger-came over. She walked in with her tight jeans and fluorescent plaid belt, all long curly hair and white teeth, looking totally cute and young and, well, hip. (Is that even a thing anymore? Do the kids say "hip" these days? See??? Lame-o!) I told myself that I was hip in an age appropriate sort of way and felt a little better.

The next inkling that I might be getting old and lame came at the grocery store. On the way in, I got distracted by the "Hardy Mums and Asters" plant display. "Wow, what a great deal-only $6.99 for that big pot," I thought as I picked one up. Hey, flowers are pretty and pretty is always cool, right? So, therefore not totally lame. Next, I passed the magazine rack and the Family Circle caught my eye- the cover advertised "Slow Cooker Recipes" , and it was only $1.99! "Oooh that will be great for fall", I thought, and picked one up. As I stood in line with my potted plant, mom magazine, and fake chicken nuggets, behind two college students buying stuff like organic cheese, tortilla chips and booze, I felt utterly, completely, lame and O.L.D. The biggest plans I had for the night were surfing the web looking for a swing set on sale for my kids.

The notion that I was definitely no longer cool became a stone cold truth when I was hanging out with my family over the holiday weekend. My young, hip sister spilled lunch on her new tank top, and I looked at it and actually said, very seriously, "Oooh, you're gonna have to use some Shout Advanced for Greasy Stains" on that!" Gawd. Of course, my 25 year old brother didn't hesitate to tell me just how lame that was, and even my MOM laughed. Yikes.

But you know what? When my babies give me hugs and kisses and tell me they love me I don't care if I'm an old fuddy duddy. Besides, kids think their parents are superheroes. In their eyes, there's nothing we can't do. When they see me and their eyes light up and they run over and throw themselves at me, there's no better feeling in the world. (You people with teenagers just shut yo mouths now! I know you're muttering "Oh just you wait!")

I might not get out much, but when I look at my life I realize I have everything that matters, and the rest is just stuff. But, seriously, if you see me in JC Penny picking up some mom jeans and a fanny pack, PLEASE stage an intervention ASAP.