Category Archives: Child Wrangling

Roller coaster ride

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Know what I don’t like about parenting? That even the awesome stuff lasts about 12.5 seconds before it pivots violently and bashes you in the nose.

Know what I like about revisiting Infinite Jest this summer? The AA aphorisms about one day at a time and one minute at a time and that it’s okay to want and that any moment no matter how unbearable, is really only one moment and is, actually, bearable.

Is there a 12-step program for parenting? Other than getting a nanny or day care sitch or stun gun?

Ow! Not in the eye!

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Sweetie? Pumpkin butter? Love? Mommy doesn’t want to talk about this right now.

Why?

Well, first of all, Mommy is driving. We are hurling at 70 miles an hour toward home after a long day of doing everything you want, and the only thing keeping us from smashing this steel cage into a cement barricade or another car full of humans is Mommy’s ability to keep her brain in control of her hands and feet. And honestly, the neurons are firing quite a bit slowly since you were born.

Mommy is trying to concentrate. Also confounding us just a bit, honey, just a tad in our quest to keep Mommy’s thoughts and actions on the same basic page, is the fact that, while rolling my eyes at your question, the same question you’ve been asking all day, and the same freaking question I’ve answered, I swear to Aphrodite, twelve times already, during that process I managed to lodge a contact lens somewhere deep in my barely functioning brain. Okay, honey? So not only am I operating a motor vehicle hurling down the highway, limbs dead with “when-do-I-get-ten-seconds-of-time-to-myself?” fatigue, and a brain hobbled by your awesome attempts to understand the world, I am also gouging my eye out trying to get to the lens, to relieve the pain and fix the fauceting from my eye and potentially restore the level of vision usually required for the tasks in which I am engaged.

So, sweetheart, it all comes down to this: there is a thin piece of precisely machined plastic wedged into the Why Is Harold with the Purple Crayon Happy When He Gets in the Boat part of my brain. It’s unfortunately inaccessible at present, lovekin. I also can’t freaking see anything, doodlebug. Mommy is blind, Mommy is tired, Mommy is flying home HOPING TO MAUD that Daddy is there so she can drop your adorable little body into his arms for the five minute break that is bathtime.

I know it’s been a long day, pumpkin, but that’s not my fault. Traffic is not my fault. The sun in your eyes is not my fault. My not being willing to answer the same emotive question thirteen times in one day is, I swear to all that is holy, not my fault. You see, I was only given enough patience to give twelve remarkably similar answers to the same question. Blame your grandparents. I can guarantee you they only answered eleven times, because they roll their eyes at your Mom now every time she answers you twelve times in a row.

So please. I’ll say this again, politely. Please put a sock in the exploring-the-emotions-of-cartoon-characters part of your darling, kissable little mouth while I try to get us home safely. There are, like, fourteen freeway interchanges between us and home, buddy, and I think we’re gonna wind up in the wrong county if I don’t pay attention right now.

Ah, dammit, now we’re on the bridge.

Did you just ask why is there water? Because we’re on a bridge.

Why is it a bridge? Because I made a mistake.

Why did I make a mistake? Honey, mistakes are…

Tell you what. You take your purple crayon and think fast and soon we can be climbing aboard a trim little boat, too, and you can tell me why that makes you happy.
Because I’m all out of answers today, bug. I really am.

Thank dog for small favors

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Dear Universe,

Thank you, thank you for making fruit that does not need to be peeled or cut.  Washed, sure, mostly. Thank you for berries and grapes; they make my life so much easier I might actually cry. (All you chocking-hazard types can just get bent because I’m having a freaking moment here, and I sit with him when he eats, and I haven’t cut grapes since he was a year, and I’m bending over backwards here not letting him cry and respecting him so if I want to endanger his life a little it’s my business since I’m the one whose given up almost everything I know as happy and good in the world to give him things that are happy and good so just back the hell up and choose another blog to safetyvangelize.)

Thank you, Universe, for screwcap wine being okay now instead of all box winey.

Thank you Universe for my son’s perspective. On our hike I saw a deer and three wild turkey (not the former because of the latter, though that might be a good story, too) and he showed me a hawk, about 20 feet across a gorge, in a tree. I see stuff that’s moving and blow past things that are still. He sees everything. I’ve never before seen a hawk sitting still, watching.

Thank you, capitalism, for making pipe cleaners so cheap. Seriously. That’s like an hour of free thinking time while we quietly make fake flowers together for the house’s many vases. (Cat bastards make sure no real plant goes unmolested. For those keeping score, cats are more trouble than a fetus; newborns and infants and toddlers are more trouble than cats. Now cats are back on top, causing way more headaches than a three-year-old, even one without child care or preschool or any time away from me god help me don’t know how to make it through tomorrow or the next day.)

Thank you, Universe, for hummus. I would thank you more for avocado if my kid would eat it, because it’s an even more complete meal than hummus. But, we play the hand we’re dealt, and I appreciate hummus.

Thank you, youtube. Just for being you. Except all the creepy parts. I don’t appreciate having to prescreen searches to make sure some Plushy doesn’t pop up when I search for aardwark vids. But, still.

Thank you, England, for losing. We totally dig our fireworks. And the kazoo parade at the Russian River. I’m a total Yankee Doodle Dandy, macaroni and all. Seriously, how would we make it from Memorial Day to Labor Day without an excuse for outdoor cooking and excessive desserts? Thanks, British Empire. Most of the other colonies got totally scrod, but we did okay.

And thank you, Spouse, for the help yesterday. Your willingness to move the dust mop AND the whole pile of dirt about four feet out of the way when shrieks from our child interrupted my progress really helped. I was able to pick up my mopping again the next day, almost as if nothing had happened. You’re a peach.

And thank you Universe, for continuing to throw a freaking bone to the family you keep tossing about like a plaything. Thank goodness the illnesses (times thrity-two, by now, I think) and the car accident and the spitballs of bullshit you keep hurling at them just miss. There, CB. I’m grateful for you.

Consider this

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Item one: Peanut walked at least 3 miles and ran on half mile of today’s 4.5 mile hike in my favorite of all places to find early blackberries, Tilden Regional Park.

Item two: I had counted on a two hour workout with 35 lbs in a backpack but settled for a glorious four hour blackberry and poison oak extravaganza.

Item three: Peanut took a full hour to eat his pudding (yes, it’s Tuesday!) and PB&LC before acquiescing to nap.  I almost clawed my own eyes out.

Item four: But I didn’t. I read Infinite Jest instead.

Item five: Spouse came home early for Tennis Tuesday and we all ate crackers and hummus in between sets. And by sets I mean whenever Peanut decided he was done playing hockey with my old tennis racquet and the pink tennis ball he picked out. I’ve been playing tennis since I could walk. And I think I found out today that I’m really a lefty.

Item six: We walked the half block home and played one round of Candyland. Ask The Kitchen Witch how I feel about Candyland.

Item seven: Peanut and Spouse screamed at each other through another bath. And teeth. And new mouthwash because, my  god, that kid’s breath stinks for someone who brushes twice a day. Damn.

Item eight: After his timeout for kicking Daddy, Peanut and I had a lovely talk and two books.

Item nine: Peanut then screamed and cried for an extra song after stories and songs.

I need an item ten. Because today is all ping-pongy between phenomenal and crappy. And though the day was great overall, I’m left on a slight aftertaste of crappy. So I’m breaking all this week’s rules about refined sugar and dairy and wine and such (long story, different post, fourteen alien pounds dragging me down as though they need to be the straw that f—ing poked the camel in the eye then laughed as it tried to cry but couldn’t because it lives in a desert and even a camel’s body knows not to waste tears on something so stupid, but mine doesn’t) to have a South African shiraz and some mediocre soy ice crap with coffee and chocolate in it. And pizza. And some pistachios  I just found. And maybe some heirloom tomatoes with balsamic and olive oil and grey salt. For fiber.

on that note…

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This week’s Peanutisms:

“Mommy. Don’t EVER give me plain goat cheese again. I only want my cheese without herbs.”

“I want something really new that we haven’t had in long time.”

“Mommy, Daddy. ‘P’ peanut. ‘P’ pee. ‘P’ punkin. ‘P’ pree. ‘P’ I don’t want to do this game anymore.”

“I just don’t want one baby. They’re too little.”

“Mommy, you picked me so many blackberries that I need to go poop.”

Blue, cloudless sky

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You wanna know how lucky I am? (Since I mostly post snark about loathing parenthood despite loving my kid, i figure today is the perfect reason to tell you why I totally lucked out, in spite of the whole “not  cut out for this job and seriously considering running away from home” technicality.)

In Trader Joe’s, which, in addition to tasty, affordable loveliness, offers kids stickers and balloons, and P was in fine form. “May I have a bar?” Nope. Already had one today. “Okay……May I have some juice?” Nope. Yesterday was juice day and you had lemonade at the party. “Yeah. That was good lemonade.”

He helps the checker by handing over groceries. She gives him stickers. “May I have one balloon?” Sure. We ask. They’re out of helium.

“Oh, bug, I’m sorry. They’re out of helium, the special air that makes the balloons.” Breath held, calm distractions planned, explanations of world and its unfairness and yet relative goodness calculated.

“Well. Stickers are nice.” Proceeds to decorate his shirt and mine with stickers.

Seriously, does it get any better than a three year old who can shake off balloonlessness?

Seven years, almost

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Overheard in L.A.

Peanut: I love you, friend.
Friend: [whispering] I love you, too.
Peanut: [louder] I said, I love you!
Friend: I said, I love you, too!
Peanut: I didn’t hear you.
Friend: [louder] I said, I love you, too!
Peanut: Oh. I didn’t hear you.
Friend: [shouting] I said, I love you, too!

Lucy and Ethyl, ladies and gentlemen, at ages three and three and a half.

Marital hope

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According to a fluff piece over at CNN (sorry, Ms. Stinchfield, but it is pretty fluffy), marriage is better before kids and after kids leave.

My takeaway:

“A 2008 study found that marital satisfaction actually improves once children leave home. Female participants reported spending equal amounts of time with their partners both while their children lived at home and after, but they noted that the quality of that together time was better once the kids were out of the picture. “Suddenly the tyranny of the children controlling the household is relieved,” says Dr. Robbins. “You don’t have to have dinner at 6, you don’t have to spend Saturdays at the soccer field, and you don’t have to be so responsible all the time.”

So I’m putting out a call to all landlords, employers, and colleges who will take a 3 year old. Please.

And the parenting award goes to…

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Kid, in a 60 degree house, is intoning, over and over, “I’m hot. I’m hot.”

I just hollered “Stop saying that; I don’t care.” Roll out the red carpet, I know I’ve been nominated.

Come on. He’s wearing shortie jammies, he’s on top of the covers. He’s fine.

And he’s been up no fewer than three times (next time gets the door shut completely, so he won’t be up again) to tell me that his friends don’t all fit in the bed. The whole day was about how they, they being Clementine the rabbit, Oliver the dog, Pizza the zebra, Uncle Bear the bear, Madeline the monkey, and Biff the Billy Goat, don’t fit in the dining room chairs and in the small table’s benches, and in the small orifice where I crammed them all by about 5pm.

Now he’s intoning, “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?”

Man, that kid knows on which side his bread is buttered.

There are days…

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Oh, boy, here comes my most boringest post ever. But if they still don’t like me, boring or funny, serious or ruefully tongue in cheek, then f— ’em, right? Okay, then, here goes:

There are just days like this. When I’m up late worrying or grousing or fretting or frenetically doing, and when I wake up slowly and painfully at the ungodly hour my kid demands (and he read in his bed for an hour before dragging me into the kitchen today, so yay four hours instead of three).

Today’s one of those days. And we can’t go anywhere because they’re ripping out a window in Peanut’s room and making it much bigger so it’ll meet fire code. Yay fire safety.

So I made a huge pot of play dough, and we’re going to town. Because all those things I worried about last night—all those people I wanted to excise from my life—they don’t matter. This little whirlwind of learning and growing does.

Plus he kisses me when he’s been rude, which is more than I can say for the rest of the planet.**

in a big pot stir:
4 C flour
1/2 C salt
1/2 C cream of tartar
then add
4T oil
4 C water

Cook on low/medium until it’s not sticky.

**You’re damned right. I just got all perspective-y then posted a playdough recipe. I’ve gone soft in the head. So? Ya wanna fight?

Single versus Married versus Small Children

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If you’re single and have a  crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a bag while watching TV if you want. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. Early bed, late bed, it’s all the same. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities. Shrug, announce “I give up,” and actually do it.

If you’re married and have a crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a carton while watching TV if you want. Or have someone else spoon feed you. Read a book, watch a movie, paint your toenails. Alone or with someone. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities, and quit for the night. Or have someone do everything for you. Leave dishes in the sink. Ignore the laundry. Shrug, announce, “I give up,” and either get help or ignored. Either way, you can actually give up.

If you have small children, there is no quitting. You can’t just sit on the couch and refuse to move. Other people, who cannot feed themselves, need to eat. Have a tendency to become agitated when ignored, and by agitated, I mean smearing feces and shaving cats. They need freaking stories and songs and negotiations and sometimes a bath and always discipline and attention before bed. And often for a while after  bed. If you have a crappy day and have small kids, too bad for you. Pick up all the spilled food or someone will fall, sweep up all the dumped flour or the cats will eat it and puke and then someone will fall, calm the terrified cats or they will claw you at night, eye the tricycle-d wall, put away the scattered toys, discuss the hitting and kicking, find the shards of glass, clean the various things painted on the walls. Or one of those small people will find the evidence tomorrow and try it all again. At the end of the day with small children, even after you’ve been working all day and haven’t been allowed to freaking sit down let alone veg, someone has to recork the bottle. Because you’re gonna need it, again, tomorrow.

Bright side Dark side

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Peanut is a great traveller. Loves new sights, sounds, places. Sits patiently in the car for long rides, behaves well in public, carries his own luggage.

But oh, the nights. He wouldn’t eat until we  got ready for bed (new things kill his appetite and he didn’t eat all day and said he was hungry at 8pm Gee, you think?) and then threw a two hour tantrum last night and, as a result, went to bed three hours late. He woke and threw a meltdown fit at 2am. Yelled and cried for about 15 minutes that he never got his stories. He woke screamingly angry at 4am and revved up for a long fit about needing to brush his teeth (but Spouse caved a few minutes in because we’re in a hotel and it was 4 am and Spouse has low tolerance for early morning tantrums. Pussy. I’ll be paying for that choice for weeks, but oh well. That’s the luxury of the weekend parent. Not that I’m bitter.)

So, of course, Peanut work promptly at his usual time. 5:00. He’s had approximately five hours sleep. He’s trapped in a hotel room with a mother who has had approximately five hours sleep. He’s mad he couldn’t go with Spouse on his little jaunt of peace and quiet this morning. Apparently most of this anger is directed at the pricier items installed in this hotel room for people with taste, rather than children.

And I am faced with a day of fun, with people we love, and highlights of my favorite LA outings and the potential of either  Dr. Jekyl Travel Dude, the happy-go-lucky go anywhere friend or Mr. Hyde Nighttime Guy, the spawn of Freddy Krueger, and my worst nightmare.

Quandry

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I’m trying to decide whether to have a full existential meltdown, or just analyze away something that’s digging away at the corners of  my mind. Let’s see where I wind up after telling you this:

A new mom, amazing person with lots of early childhood experience told me this week, “I don’t get it. This is a lot of work, but it’s just not that hard. Why do people say this is so hard?”  Cut to a few hours later, and a professional, kick-ass mom who is quite open about not finding her reason for being in parenting,  said, “There are just some women who are meant to do this. I’m not one of them.”

So I’ve been thinking, incessantly: am I cut of non-parenting cloth because I do find it hard, or are we having a difference not of opinion but of semantics? No, it’s not hard. It’s exhausting, not hard. It’s  draining, not hard. Parenting full time is more work than I’ve ever done, but it’s not, she’s right, actually hard. It is hard to do it all day every day, but the work, itself, is not hard. Hard to make it through behaving properly, but not hard to do. Fine.

A five-year veteran who doesn’t think she was  cut out for parenting has always made me feel like I’m doing okay. Now I’m rocked by a mom who has tons of pre-baby experience with children and has spent two months with her own babies and doesn’t see why people warned her it would be hard.

Maybe my phase with a newborn was different because our first four months were colored by intense breastfeeding pain. But every new family has issues that make things tough, though, so I can’t write off my lack of pleasure  as resulting from early pain.

Maybe because I start thinking, about an hour before nap and all the time after nap, every day since my child was six months old, “when are you going to sleep?!?!!!”, maybe I’m not cut out for this  work. I’ve known for a long time that my child probably deserves a more patient caregiver, but that I can’t fathom having someone else raise my child. Why have a kid, I’ve always reasoned, if someone else will spend  more time with my child than I will? But that new mom, who doesn’t think life with a newborn is hard, makes me think maybe I should have someone else do this for me. Because I don’t always like this job. In fact, I rarely like this job. Love the kid, loathe the work. The not-hard work.

I can’t get over that it’s not just the language.

Of course, I didn’t feel put out by motherhood until six or seven months. I didn’t feel completely out of my element until past a year. So maybe if I wait this out, that new mom will come over to the side of those of us who think we were probably made to do something else.

I doubt it though. She’s probably just going to be one of those who do it all well, easily, and with a smile.

Lucky babies.

Hopes and dreams and cheese

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Peanut’s list, at three years and two months, of things he would like to be when he’s big, has not changed a whit since three years and one month. So I think this is really it. I’m looking into colleges. And since he wanted some that need college and some that don’t, and he unwittingly stumbled upon the perfectly balanced list (in his order, verbatim, except for the lack of k/g and r sounds):

Fire fighter
Nurse
Worker Who Drives Big Trucks
Astronaut
Farmer
Police Officer
Tea Maker (“at one hotel because people don’t have their teapots with them at hotel”)
Cheese Maker

I told him I would totally come visit every day at work if he were a cheese maker. And I would.  I also think that’s the best freaking job I’ve ever heard, and one of only six I haven’t tried.

Yet. ‘Cuz he needs to apprentice in the family cheesemaking business before going to some Continental cheese college on scholarship, right? Right. Gotta go get a sheep, goat, and cow. And we have to move to Pt. Reyes to learn from the Cowgirl Creamery folks.

Does Cowgirl Creamery offer an internship  for three year olds? Is there a cheesemaking  magnet school nearby? Formaggio Kitchen scholarship? CheeseBoard preschool?

Nasty, ugly debate

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I happened across a really troubling blog post on spanking and keeping kids in line and it made me wonder: with all the evidence that spanking makes kids violent, self-loathing, and diminished as human beings, why are so many people still advocating spanking as a discipline solution for their children?

One blogger talks about how children these days don’t know their place, and most of the appended comments recommend spanking. The blogger and commenters make the mistake of conflating spoiling with not spanking. There are plenty of parents who spank, yet spoil; and those who don’t spank, but don’t spoil. The two are not the same issue, despite the single line in the Bible (which can be interpreted to mean gently guide as a shepherd with her crook, rather than beat as an adult with a switch).

Another blogger writes about going against her culture’s insistence on spanking, with fabulously well-adjusted results. She argues that consistent, firm, well defined boundaries work much better than barbed wire for children.

It seems that spanking versus not is being touted as a disciplined versus undisciplined debate. But  discipline means “to teach” and there are many ways to teach.

Hitting teaches people to hit. That being afraid of authority is the way to survive. That might makes right. A survey of spanking studies shows spanking hurts kids long term, but gets them to comply short-term.

Drawing clear boundaries and insisting on respect teaches boundaries and respect. Seems pretty clear what parents and children all need to grow the next generation of thoughtful and respectful citizens.

Maybe not spending enough time together is the issue. Maybe a violent culture is the problem. Maybe not understanding the future consequences of an easy choice is the heart of our problems. Maybe cultures, social, religious, and otherwise, that teach negative consequences for negative behavior instead of positive consequences for positive behavior is wherein our dilemmas lie.

I just think that needing children to do what you tell them, especially on safety issues, is vital. But spanking isn’t the only way to get there.  And wailing about  “kids these days” without looking at how adults these days behave is ridiculous. What does our culture value? Celebrity, scandal, reward with minimal work, money over happiness, good people gone bad (or wild)…if parents sing these tunes, especially while their kids are in the other room using technology in which social boundaries are exploded and consequences are few, no wonder children are out of control.

*Among the respondents without a history of physical or sexual abuse during childhood, those who reported being slapped or spanked “often” or “sometimes” had significantly higher lifetime rates of anxiety disorders (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.43, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04-1.96), alcohol abuse or dependence (adjusted OR 2.02, 95% CI 1.27-3.21) and one or more externalizing problems (adjusted OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.36-3.16), compared with those who reported “never” being slapped or spanked. There was also an association between a history of slapping or spanking and major depression, but it was not statistically significant (adjusted OR 1.64, 95% CI 0.96-2.80). INTERPRETATION: There appears to be a linear association between the frequency of slapping and spanking during childhood and a lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorder, alcohol abuse or dependence and externalizing problems.”  source Canadian Medical Association journal Oct. 1999