Mmmmm

I always feel the need to eat chocolate when I watch Oprah.

....Does that make me racist...?

My Wonderful Day

Waking up in the morning with nothing to look forward to but a dentist appointment is never enjoyable, but if I thought that was a bad way to start the week I was sadly mistaken.

Ammon had gone in to work early, but was planning on coming home to watch the kids while I went to get fitted for my implant. (That's dental, not breast.) On the way home, he rear ended an enormous pick-up in his itty-bitty sedan, totaling his car and barely scratching the truck. I received a call from him coughing and sputtering, telling me his car was totaled and asking me to come pick him up. Panicking, I thrust the half-dressed children in the car, intending to race to the scene as fast as my '98 minivan mom-mobile will take me... Only it won't start. Battery's dead. Seriously, could there have been worse timing? It was if the giant finger of God had come down and squashed us both right where we were, preventing us from going any further.

Luckily, the teenager my husband rear-ended was a cool kid and dropped him off a mile or so from our house. Being (thankfully!) un-injured my husband was able to walk the rest of the way home, and helped a neighbor jump-start the van. My dental appointment was long-missed, so we rescheduled it for later, and headed into town to our next appointment of the day, E--'s doctor. Where we found out she has a viral infection. Or a bladder infection. Or roseola. Told to wait it out. Wonderful.

Back home, and then off again to the dentist. Apparently I must have said a terrible thing about the hygienist’s momma in some former life, because she set about trying to murder me in subtle, dentist-y ways. First, a huge metal rod was placed in my mouth and left there without anyone telling me, so when I tried to close my mouth I almost stabbed myself in the face. Then, while the dentist was messing around with the screw, the hygienist leaned over me and I felt a drop of something (poison?) on my tongue. It began burning and stinging like crazy, and my eyes were watering so much I couldn't see. I was able to pull through that one, but at the end of the appointment she shoved a huge gob of goo in my mouth under the pretense of making an impression of my teeth. She had put SO MUCH goo in the mold that it squeezed up the roof of my mouth into my throat, almost completely blocking my airway. Forcing myself to breathe very slowly, I managed to not freak out, and she finally yanked the mold out of my mouth. She looked a little disappointed as I walked, dazed and shaken, out of the office, but I guess she knows she can have another go at me when I come back to have the implant put in. Otherwise I'm sure she would have tackled me and dragged me back to the break room to bludgeon me to death.

I came home to find a salesman with his arm in a sling trying to sell my husband yard products. I really wanted to take out all my frustration from the entire day on him, maybe putting his other arm in a sling, but I resisted the urge to bash him with our flower pot and went inside.

Frankly, I am very surprised that we made it through this day. Hopefully no one will wake up requiring parental attention tonight, and I can get a nice, long rest before starting all over again tomorrow. Whoopee.

Filthy Child

When A~ was a baby, part of our "bedtime routine" was giving her a bath. Every night. We held fast to our routine, whether at home or away, and the security and consistency was extremely comforting for her. We could put her to bed anywhere, as long as we bathed her, read to her, nursed her, and snuggled her up with her blanket. Enter baby number two, and all routine goes out the window. A~'s bedtime routine had to be modified to include only one parent (usually Daddy) and as the months went by, bath time went from every day to every other day, and now down to twice a week. On good weeks.

Poor E--. She's never experienced nightly bathing like A~ did. Not only does she have to wait three or four days between baths that she loves so much, but she has to stink too. Seriously folks, day three rolls around and all that food smashed in her hair really gets quite pungent. Day four, forget about it. You start checking every half hour or so thinking she has a poopy diaper, even when you've just changed her. The sad part is, if I can manage to bathe her twice a week I'm patting myself on the back for a job well done. Twice a week is a STRUGGLE. Don't even get me started on the difficulties in remembering to brush A~'s teeth.

Maybe this goes along with the potty training thing... Perhaps basic toileting just isn't my strong point as a mother. It takes all of my energy to deal with the persistent "MOOOOOMMMEEEEEE!" and "MaMaMaMaMaMa!" that I hear all day long. Getting through the day without one of the three of us breaking down mentally is my goal, and if they're also fed and in clean clothes I consider myself ahead.

Who knew being a mom would be so COMPLICATED?

Poop-1, Mommy-0

So there I was, poop everywhere, and we were out of Clorox Bleach Wipes.

(Sorry, but I thought it would be best to just dunk you in head first and get it over with. Since my blog will most likely be devoted to my Adventures in Motherhood, it seems fitting to have my first entry be about poop. The first of many such stories, to be sure.)

Anyway, poop everywhere. This is because my three-year-old has declared that she won’t poop on the potty until she’s four. We have to take off her big girl panties and put on a wretched diaper every time she has to go. Number one is a breeze, it’s number two that’s causing all the problems. So today, out of sheer desperation I told her that if she poops in the potty we’ll take her to see “Madagascar.” She loves the “big TV,” and was very excited about the idea, so she ran into the bathroom to give it a whirl. The girl tried, she really did. There was a lot of straining, grunting, and frustrated exclamations involved. But it just didn’t happen. Predictably, she asked for a diaper about an hour later. When she was done, she took it into the bathroom and emptied it in the toilet. With poop smeared all over her butt, she hoisted herself onto the seat. It usually takes her a minute to get adjusted, and by the time she was comfortable, the poop had migrated from her sweet little bottom to cover the toilet seat and the back of her left leg. It is at this point I enter the bathroom, give a horrified shriek, and rush to find the Clorox wipes. They were gone, all gone! Like an idiot I had used them on our KITCHEN COUNTER instead of saving them for a real emergency! Luckily, we still had an enormous box of diaper wipes, so Huggies saved the day. (Although I didn’t have any of those later in the day, when E-- pooped at the exercise club, but we’ll save that for another time.)

The saddest part was that A~ was so darn proud of herself for figuring out a way to get the promised reward without actually pooping directly in the potty. She was absolutely convinced she had done her part, and that I must now pay up.

I’m so frustrated. Teaching one’s child to direct their bodily waste into the toilet has been done for generations. Indeed, since the toilet was invented. We have successfully taught her to speak, feed herself, and get dressed. Where have we gone wrong here?

(Okay, maybe the getting dressed part was a little too hopeful seeing as she is currently dancing naked to Laurie Berkner.)