Category Archives: Child Wrangling

Sigh.

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“Okay, sweetpea. Now that your brother is in school, let’s head this way and we’ll…
Oh, you’d rather go this way. Oh, for the light. Okay, let’s go look at the…
Hmmm. That looks like a pine cone. You’re right. A pine cone. Seeds for new trees. Interesting. Can we…
Sure. Hold the pine cone. Okay, sure, throw the pine cone. And now get it to throw again. Mmmm-hmmm. And again. Honey, can we…
A dog. Yes, that’s a dog. Woof. Want to say hi to the dog? Okay, first we ask it’s papa. Slowly, bugbutt. We want the dog to know we’re gentle. That’s right, gentle…
Okay, now we’re going, huh? Let’s…
Oh, I see, we’re going the other way. That’s an interesting choice.
Um, yes, that’s gravel. Tiny rocks. Mmmm-hmmm. Gravel. You may tough it, sure. Okay, but…oh, please keep the gravel in the yard. Not on the path. People could slip and fall.
Come on, sweets. Let’s walk to the…
Yes, I see the tree. Mmmm-hmmm. Tree. Can you walk, please? You need to touch the bark. Okay. Bark of the tree. Bark. Like skin for the tree. People skin is soft, but tree skin is rough. Rough bark. Okay, can we go now?
Uh-oh, go around, butterbug. Not for touching, please. Not for touching.
Wow, you’re fast. Running! We’re runn…
And now we’re stopping. Stopping and lying down in the dirt. Do you like the dirt? Hmmm. Dirt. Does that feel nice? Okay, let’s go, please.
Butterbean, let’s walk, please.
Do you need me to carry or can you walk? Okay, thank you.
Let’s walk this way and…
Oh, for the love of Peet’s, would you please walk this way so we can…
Mmmm-hmmm. More gravel. Yes, different. But gravel is all the…of course you need to feel the difference. Yes, sure, by all means lie down in the gravel. Gravel. Does that feel bumpy?
Okay. Let’s please go walking. Bugbean, walking. Please walk. Please.”

That recap was 3 minutes of our unceasing day. One-quarter of a block of the 3 miles we travel round trip to and from Peanut’s school each day.

I do love these moments, sweets. I really do. But I genuinely feel like I’m living on Mars. Things look slightly similar, but nothing is the same.

And I wonder if I will ever sit down again. I want to sit down and rest. I’m beginning to feel old and tired and I want to sit down. When may I do that? Oh, I see. Here in the gravel.
Okay. Sold.

Scientific review of literature

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It’s been a while since I did formal reviews of scientific literature, but I’m pretty sure this says that because I’m a spaz, I’m killing my children.

No, really. High strung parent trying her best guarantees asthmatic children. It says so in the abstract. That I skimmed. Briefly. Because I have to go do 1 billion things for small children who don’t know any better.

Please, please learn to talk

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Butter at 19 months has about 10 spoken words and maybe 75 ASL signs. So I generally have some idea what he’s saying. Some.

But the past three nights he’s cried in his sleep, off and on, from 11-12, then awoke, screaming at midnight. And nothing consoles him. He cries loud enough to wake Peanut, who really needs sleep lately. It’s not pain, I know from the cry and from his answers to questions.

Nothing I do gets Butter back to sleep. Quiet supportive presence? Nope. Cuddling and rocking? No. Bringing him to bed with me? Nothing but screaming and climbing and flopping around. Being close is my default during the day because of a de-light-ful separation anxiety phase.

nothing works until 2am when he gets tired of being incoherent.

And as always, he’s up at 4am to scream and wake his brother unless I nurse him and put him back down. And then he’s up for good at 6am.

We’re all dragging around here.

No ear infection. No teething. No freaking idea what this baby needs. But I really really hope he learns to say it soon so we can all sleep.

Whatever it takes

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For your consideration:

Item #1 At 9 months Butter discovered the jars of spices and was smitten.
Item #2 He requests several times a day to have someone hold him and open all the spices so he can sniff them.
Item #3 He did, anyway, until he could open jars himself.
Item #4 And work the stepstool.
Item #5 He regularly pads over to the far end of the kitchen, drags the stepstool over to the spice counter/drawer, and has at it.
Item #6 if not closely supervised he will pour them all over the floor.
Item #7 Lack of close supervision includes blinking during the close supervision of spice sniffing.
Item #8 He opens the jars, sniffs, then recaps nicely unless he smells weakness with the herbs d’provence. Then he speeds to the cinnamon.
Item #9 The cinnamon is the only rat bastard spice to have a flip top.
Item #10 Today I decided I can’t fight this anymore.

I grabbed the cinnamon and the small child. I asked him, “Cinnamon sprinkle, cinnamon shake, you like cinnamon?”

“YEAH” came the resounding answer.

“Let’s sprinkle the cinnamon outside, okay?”

“Tookatooka!” he agreed.

So we spend a half hour outside, him meandering through the backyard and announcing each tablespoon of cinnamon with a crashing wet cement on metal sound, the likes of which only small truck-lovers can make.

On paper I might appear to be an awesome mom. I let my kid shake $2.50 worth of cinnamon all over the patio and lawn. In reality I just take whatever drives me nuts and give it a positive outlet. Outside.

Always with the outside.

Coming soon to our backyard, a whining contest and an indirect-wood-carving-by-drawing-on-thin-paper extravaganza.

Blood and gore

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Good gravy. We’ve had my first real week of “Welcome to the World of Having Two Boys.”

I mean, we’ve had five and a half years of whirlwind that doesn’t stop and that plays only cackling, destructive games.

And we’ve had four years of banging things with sticks and picking gross stuff out of the street.

And two years of shooting at everything with imaginary guns.

And a year and a half of trucks and trucks and trucks. Good gawd with the trucks.

But this was the week of multiple calls to the doctor to ask “does this need stitches?”

The older one found a barnacled mollusk shell, put it on a board, stood in front of it, and stomped. Shell embedded for a moment, then fell off, leaving a one inch horizontal and one inch vertical cut in his forehead. Stitches? Probably needed it, but it was Saturday at 5pm, there’s no urgent care here, and I have iodine, skin glue, and butterfly bandages. No stitches.

The younger one climbed on a dining room chair after a long day with no nap (don’t blame me; I tried everything to get that boy to sleep). Fell off and bit through his lip. Two beautiful, hard-won teeth made two nasty cuts into his beautiful lower lip. Nasty. Deep. Blood everywhere. Stitches? Doc says we don’t stitch lips unless there’s a flap hanging or the hole on the inside of his mouth is so big food will get caught in it. I wiped away my tears, threw up in my mouth a little at the description of how it would heal, and agreed: no stitches.

So I guess, it was a good week? Oh, wait. It’s Tuesday. Gulp. Four days, four gashes, no stitches. Seems like I’m doing a good job? [Grins like the cat that threw a seashell at a canary then pushed it off a chair.]

Note to the concierge

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Peanut and I had a date today to see a marvelous puppeteer and his marionette vignettes. I found out that P has a 55 minute sit-still threshhold, for at 56 minutes he discreetly stood up and wiggled in place for a few minutes while he watched the puppeteer’s penultimate story. We had terrible seats on the right margin and nobody behind us, so I just watched and smiled.

But that’s not the point, cute though I find it. We have business to attend to. A marketable idea. Make note:

Walking to the will call window, I explained that we were going to pick up our tickets then go to the theater.

P: Do they have little bags there?
M: [confused] There where? The ticket place or the stage place?
P: The stage place. The theater. Do they have little bags?
M: What kind?
P: The kind you need in case someone loses a tooth.
M: Bug, are you worried you’re going to lose a tooth during the performance?
P: [annoyed] No, of course not. My tooth is barely wobbly. I mean for someone else if they lose their tooth.
M: Well, people who are ready to lose a tooth are usually with a grownup, and grownups are good at finding safe places for teeth that fall out. Purses, pockets…
P: No. Not good. They need something tiny. Like a little bag.

So if you run front of house for a theater, or are looking into operating a theater…heck, if you stage manage or operate concessions at all…I’d like to send out a thought that you might want to stock little bags. For the teeth. All the falling teeth.

And a bag of chips

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Things I learned while I was deathly ill last week:

9. I’m a very patient person.
Stop laughing and listen.
I didn’t think so either. I thought I was fair-to-middling in the patient parent category. But during the first 6 hours of the fever-and-puke-and-sore-throat-fest I like to call The Painful Beginning to Losing the Baby Fat, every time my kids balked about, whined about, or snapped at one of my requests, I burst into tears. It was eye-opening for all of us. And I have a new way to make them do stuff. Ask once, wait not at all, then fall down whimpering softly.
Try it. It works.

8. Hot showers were created for people with fevers. (Sorry, developing world. I’m sure blankets and herbal treatments are nice, too?) I used to think, thanks to an ex-boyfriend, that showers were invented for people in Boston who just couldn’t get warm in the winter. (Sorry, again, developing world and residents of steppes and deserts; we really do suck as a culture.) And hot showers are really, really good for restoring warm bloodedness to the chilled, it’s true. But those with multi-day fevers get stiff necks and headaches from muscle tension, and showers are muy bueno for melting muscle tension.

7. The false hope of recovery given by a shower lasts exactly 7 minutes when you have the early-October public school creeping crud.

6. Old people stay sick way longer than young people. Peanut had a one-day fever and a half-day recovery. I got the four-day version. He kept telling me it was a different germ. I kept looking at him, loopy with pain and disorientation, not caring whether I ever regained my will to form speech sounds but thinking something like, “Nuh-uh.”

5. Children are loud.

4. October in Northern California, with its 80 degree weeks, really sucks when you’re sick. Briiiiiiight. Hhhhhhhhhhot. Dryyyyyyy.

3. Children move very, very quickly. Like hyena.

2. Spouses who can leave work after their really important meetings and blow off their kind-of-important meetings to take over 100% for ailing parenting-partners are worth their weight in chocolate, syrah, or Ricola (pick your fever-poison). Spouses who do not even once ask you what to cook for the children or where to take the children while you writhe and whimper on the couch are worth their weight in quiet, solo vacation time.

1. And yet somehow I know this four days of decrepitude is going to count as a vacation in later debates when I trot out the old, “when was the last time I got a break?!”

That’s okay, I guess. He can win every debate for the next month at least.

Hope you’re all well, readers!

And now we have ants.

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Today? One for the baby book.

The ants go marching through our house, hurrah, hurrah
The eldest has some kind of flu, hurrah, hurrah
But I can’t stop to clean his hurls
Because his brother’s demon spawn in curls
And we all go marching
to bed, in their room
despite the claims of “too soon.”
[Next time please nap…]

The ants come marching from the rain, hurrah, hurrah.
The eldest’s head is in such pain, hurrah, hurrah.
But I can’t spend one second there
Because his brother’s climbed a chair
and is throwing all the trash
on the floor
scales the counter,
for some more.
[Just please get down…]

The ants come marching toward our food, hurrah, hurrah.
It’s easy given the toddler’s mood, hurrah, hurrah.
He throws his breakfast, lunch, and snack
His brother whimpers for some slack
As the mini-dude blows through
the whole place, scaling walls
like it’s space.
[Dear gawd the mess…]

The ants come marching in my house, hurrah, hurrah.
As a parent I feel like a louse, hurrah, hurrah.
Because the sick one needs me, sure,
But we had our first real tantrum here
And I now know that Two’s going
to be great for exactly
none of our fates.
[Run for your lives.]

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled…

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Taking a rare shower this morning, I forgot where I was and got lost in the warm rainfall.

Then the door banged open and the toddler (whose father was watching, perched on crutches, just out of view) padded into the bathroom over to the stepstool by the sink.

“Tookatookatooka,” he said, pointing at the empty playdough container and Green Toys tea-set bowl full of mutil-colored fist prints he had just put there. Then he marched back out.

A few moments later he was back, with another empty playdough container. He poured the contents of the bowl into the canister. Then from one trademark yellow cup to another. Then he grabbed the lavender, recycled milk jug bowl and scooped some water from the cat’s dish. He poured that water into the playdough sculptures. Seven tiny, newly competent scoops, seven dumps. In silence.

And then he was gone.

Come on, now. How can I long for solitude when there’s that much cuteness in my house?

One and a Half

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Dearest Butter,

It will come as no surprise to you, sweet one, that Mama wants to talk with you for a moment….”Hair”? Oh, Butterbean…yes, you’re right, we don’t pull hair. Pulling hair hurts. What I want to…”Bang”? Yes, Butternut, hitting hurts. We don’t bang people. Thank you for remembering this time. I hope you remember next time your brother is in the room….But we’ve already talked about that and the past is past and I love you and…

What I really want to say…”Go”? Yes, honey. We can go for a walk…What’s that sign—tomatoes? To look for tomatoes? Okay…”ground”? Of course, yes, if there’s one on the ground you can squish it. But tomatoes in the neighbors’ yards are just for looking….Yes, like that. Looking. Mmmm-hmmm.

Butterpat, Mama wants to tell you…”Go.” Uh-huh. Yes. Peanut did go. He went to school. Yes…”Cry”? You’re sad? You miss him. You like Peanut. Me, too….Love, the crayons are for coloring, like this….Yes, throwing them sounds interesting. It sure does. Can we try coloring with them?…No, of course not. Silly suggestion.

Butterbug? Can we….Yes, throwing markers sounds different than crayons. Yes. Different. You signed “different.” Markers are different. But babe, can we…Yes, I will help you open that….Here you go….”Grrr.” Yes. Frustrating. You feel frustrated…Yes. Would you like help? Okay. Here are the words: “Mama help.” No? you don’t have to say it, Butterbutton. Okay. Here you go. Lid off.

Now. Buttersmoosh. Mama wants to say…yes, darling, we can go outside. “Outside.” Right. I see you signing “outside.” Do you want shoes? “Na-na-na,” of course not. I should have known better.

Butterbud, please, just looking at tomatoes. Just looking….”Ick”? Yes, dirt. Dirt feels nice. Oh, nice on your toes? Mmm-hmmm….Nice on your whole body, huh? You like to lie down in dirt….Okay…Honey, can we go inside….
Uh-oh. Yes dirt in hands, no dirt in mouth….”Ick.” Yes, that’s yucky. Yucky. Blech…Yes. That’s right. May I tell you….Sign for banana? You want a banana? Okay. Let’s go inside…Oh, honey, why do you have sadness? I just meant for a banana. Bananas are inside. We are outside. If you want to eat a banana, we have to go inside…Oh, sadness. You want outside, not inside. Sad.

Butterbear, chairs are for sitting. I don’t want you to get hurt. Please sit down….Thank you….Butterbutt, please sit so I can get your banana….Okay. Mama’s going to turn and get the banana on the counter…Butterbug, that’s not safe. The dishwasher does look like a ladder, but it’s not. We don’t climb onto counters….Yes, the knives look interesting but they are no touch. Not safe. Hurt baby….Yes, getting down is frustrating. Butter’s angry with Mama. Say, Mama! I want up! I don’t want down!…I know, sweetness….Here’s a bite of banana, and I’d like to tell you…Oh. You didn’t want banana? You throw banana, banana is all done….”Trash”? Yes, it goes to the trash….Wait a minute, did you do that just so you could throw something in the trash?…Butterybubba, we don’t throw food. We eat food. Banana is for mouth, not floor….Sure you can have a bite….Butter. Banana is for mouth. Not for floor….Yes, now it’s trash. No, you may not throw it in the trash….Because I’m going to make Daddy eat it later….”Ick.” Yes, yucky. Yes, germy. Yes, trash….Not right now.

Butterplum, Mama was going to say Happy Half Birthday. Mama was going to say sweet words about loving you. And I will say those things later. But would you please, please, please eat something and nap? You are a whirlwind, you delicious little pat of butter. And Mama needs to sit down.

I bow to you

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Ladies and Gentlemen: let me begin with a nod to all humans who do their best—child-free or parental, gainfully employed or working your bum off for free—I acknowledge your hard work. I know life’s not easy. But I have a special something to say to a few of you…

Dear Mothers with Three Children:
I bow to you. I have recently gone from just-barely-hanging-in-there Mother of Two to no-way-I’m-going-to-make-it Mother of Two plus an immobile Spouse who eats WAY more than a child, but uses his words and can be trusted not to damage any of the stuff in his room if left alone for extended periods of time. Which he isn’t, with the ice and the food and the meds and the requests for a change of Netflix streaming to “I don’t know…what is there?” Three children must be more work, but I don’t know how it’s possible to actually do all that work without losing a limb or a child or your sanity or something. And I therefore bow to you. Namaste.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Mothers of Three Children:
[I reject the stay-at-home designation because it’s code for “easy job” amongst the uninitiated, and because you don’t actually stay at home.] I bow to you and fall over with exhaustion now that I’ve glimpsed one iota of what you do. But three inept people 24-hours with no break and I would. Break. Especially if they were all under 7 or so. Email for a quote of how far back into my head my eyes roll thinking about how you can possibly still stand at the end of the day if your Three are either very young or teenagers.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Single Mothers of Three Children:
I hereby elect you President of the United States. Because being the sole source of everything for three inept creatures with no other adult support IS HANDS DOWN harder than being the leader of the free world. [If you have a chef and a housekeeper and a Cabinet like POTUS does, I disqualify you from this election. Cuz you know nothing about anything and I resent that you tricked me into bowing and then voting for you.]

So I suppose that this is my way of telling the rest of the world that there is a Bermuda Triangle whose delineating points are:
Three Dependent Dependents
plus
No Breaks
plus
No After-Bedtime Partner
that equals the trifecta of Everyone Should Repeatedly Bow to You and Give You Their Spare Chocolate.

And if you live in that Triangle for more than a week, your local bottler and brewer should sponsor your evenings right here, right now. I know the first three drinks are on me.

P.S. Full-time Mothers of Four or More Children: I just passed out from trying to imagine. I’d like to give you all a cyber-nap because without one I’m guessing you’re all dead right now.

P.P.S. Full-time care givers of both small children and an aging parent: I did not forget you, but your situation is not at all funny, and no matter how I wrote this I couldn’t make it funny and I’m sorry that all I can offer you is deep empathy and wishes for all the best. And chocolate. I wish you chocolate, too. But keep it quiet because the Moms of Three think they’re all deserving and whatnot, and who am I to burst their bubble at how easy their lives are, relatively, since I just told them they have me glimpsing how easy my normal life really is, relatively. “Really” and “relatively.” I’ll bet your life doesn’t even allow for words of that many syllables, simple thought they are.

P.P.P.S. I must now go weep that the best modifiers I can conjure are “really” and “relatively.” Seriously.

Flummoxed

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And wangdoodled. And flabbergasted.

Let me ‘splain.

Peanut had a playdate with a friend at the park. They promptly went to their “secret place,” a hedge behind which he and all his other friends hide to pretend they don’t have younger siblings or parents, but do have swords, moats, and dragons.

I kept my eye on them, and they were talking and spying on people.

Fine. So I take Butter down the slide a few times. I overhear something about “and no grownups” and I overhear something about “castles” and I overhear something about “soda.” I’m only concerned his fantasies involve soda, and only because it’s not on my list of approved play time topics.

Kidding.

Kind of.

So Butter and I plant ourselves in the sandbox a few yards from Peanut (okay, 20 yards, but he’s 5 and we can kind of see him). The friend’s mom is hailed by another woman we know, and she heads to the secret place.

And returns, laughing, holding a box. As she gets closer I see it’s a case of Budweiser.

“They found this and were opening the cans and squirting them all over and I tried to take it but Peanut told me it was his and he brought it from home.”

I frown a bit. “I usually give him a 24-pack early in the week, but I doubt he’d have that much left at this point. It’s probably not his.”

She’s amused that I’m playing along. I’m amused that I’m playing along, too. Because by the time she hands off the beer to the rec center staff, eight thoughts have occurred to me.

One, my kid found beer and opened it without my noticing.
Two, he is completely slipping away from me.
Three, it’s all kindergarten’s fault.
Four, it could have been a needle or broken glass or drugs or a gun.
Five, I can’t believe I didn’t check behind that bush before I let them play.
Six, oh my gawd he’s gonna be the kid who gets killed playing with another kid’s gun.
Seven, wow the teenagers around here are stupid.
Eight, and they have really crappy taste in beer.

Clearly, that day we had talks about not touching things you find. And about asking grownups if an unknown something is safe. And about not doing something just because your friends do.
And about what makes a beer worth drinking versus spraying all over the playground.

Oooh, they learn early.

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Me: Peanut! Time for dinner. Please go wash.
P: In a minute.
M: No, sweetie. It’s time to eat.
P: I’m not ready.
M: I am, the food is, the post-food bath is, and bedtime is. We’re all ready. So it’s time to eat.
P: But Mom, I’m reading a book!
M: [fights the parenting kryptonite…and loses] Okay, but come when you’ve finished that page, okay?
P: Maybe.

I really have only myself to blame for this one. I checked into the whole “how do you create readers” and “how do you interest your kids in books” and it turns out that damned habit I have of reading to him, and of staging Spouse with reading material whenever possible has taught the little whippersnapper that we value reading.

Curses! I mean, yay?
Yes. Yay.
Definitely yay.
Except he now wins every debate that ends “but I’m reading.”

Dagnabbit dadburnit daggumit! Outwitted by my own bookish spawn.

It’s almost midnight and not much is well

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Long day, fair readers. Long day. And I can briefly say that Peanut is handling kindergarten well, that he was reasonably eager the first few days of school.

Things are a bit stressful over here, between kindergarten and sibling asshattery and a mountain of freelance work (which I really wanted but which is piling up in my eagerness for work and inability to admit that two very active people demand almost all of my time).

So today I offer you this: someone else’s post. On keeping your cool. On seemingly insurmountable parenting anger and how to manage it. How to keep from sitting up at midnight worried that you’re making horrible, terrible, awful parenting choices. (Actually, that’s not in there. I really wish it were.)

Here. Enjoy. Identify your triggers, let the little stuff go, remember you’re teaching, and don’t take it personally. Thanks, www.mothering.com.

‘Twas the Night Before Kindergarten

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‘Twas the night before kindergarten
and all through the place
not a creature was stirring
except the frenetic author of this space.

The children were tucked haphazardly in bed
because they fight going to sleep
like most resist the undead.

Preparations were made and concoctions couldn’t lag
sweet potato waffles for breakfast
and tortellini for your lunch bag.
When in the kitchen there arose such a clatter
Spouse ran to the room to see what was the matter.
Homemade honey ice cream was whirring around
and the tea kettle was making a delightful whistley sound.

For what to my addled brain did become clear
was that the family needed enough chamomile
to tranquilize a deer.
So I brewed and I chilled and I diluted in safe steel
that magical herb that would make us all feel
that your first day of school would be more than okay
though nothing in your young life had ever gone quite that way.

You’re wonderful, clever, funny, and dear
and you’re stubborn, persistent, intense, and I fear
that one or the other of these will transpire:
you’ll fall apart in this new school
or make me seem quite a liar.
For I have foretold how you’d be slow to warm and shy
but just to prove me wrong I bet you’ll be the school’s
sunniest guy.

I love you too much and I hope it’s all fine
because if kindergarten’s hard for you
we can’t afford enough wine.

But of course once you warm, about you they’ll rave
because what you deserve most is to skate through unscathed.

[I love love love you little boy. Good luck. I hope against hope school’s everything that makes you love learning forever.]