Category Archives: parenting highlights

On the mend

Amoxycillin is a wonderful thing. Took the Hatchling to urgent care and only one ear was infected but it had also ruptured – OUCH – and she had a lot of lovely congestion to boot. She haaaaaaaates the medicine (can’t blame her: it’s “orange dreamsicle” flavored) but we’ve been getting it down her gullet twice a day and she’s already feeling much, much better. Last night she only woke up once, a drastic improvement over the past three days. We’re lying low today but I think we’ll actually make it.

I have to say, I did not handle this sickness well. Usually I’m pretty good with the coddling and cuddling that goes with a sick kid, but for some reason – I’m guessing because I’m already low on energy reserves due to my fetal enhancement – I was going OUT OF MY MIND this weekend. I don’t think the Hatchling picked up on it (though poor Mr. Squab did) but by last night I was just losing it left and right. Part of it was the lack of sleep, but even more than that was the feeling of no escape from the sick kiddo. She was literally attached to me for 85% of the weekend – couldn’t sleep unless she was in bed with me, couldn’t be awake unless she was right up next to me on the sofa, and if I had to get up to, you know, pee or get something to eat, she would start mournfully moaning “oh, no … OH, no … OH, NOOOO!” in escalating tones until I came back. I could not get anything done, and even if I could have gotten away for a moment I was too damn tired to accomplish anything. It was just making me totally nuts – and, like, how churlish is that? Christ, it’s not her fault she’s sick. And as Mr. Squab truthfully observed, in a few years I’ll WISH she’d snuggle with me on the sofa for the whole day. But it wasn’t helping this weekend. And then I started thinking, crap, she’s basically just behaving like a little baby … and we’re having one of those soon … and what if THAT makes me crazy like this is? ACKKKKK. Because, you know, that kind of worst-case-scenario thinking is so incredibly helpful at all times. Ahem.

Anyway, I got some sleep last night and Mr. Squab put up some Christmas decorations and cleaned up the kitchen and rubbed my back and tried not to laugh at me for bursting into tears whenever anyone looked at me crosseyed. So today things are better. Onwards and upwards, right?

June Cleaver and Donna Reed would be SHOCKED.

Tonight we were too tired to cook, so we went to a local diner for a quick meal as part of our comprehensive socialize-the-Hatchling-to-behave-in-public-spaces campaign. She did pretty well (for a 2.5 year old), but what was truly impressive was the dinner she ate, which was a nutritious combination of:

a) french fries
b) ketchup
c) apple juice
d) ginormous chocolate chip cookie

After which, she went home and was bouncing off the walls from her sugar + carb high. There was dancing, there was singing, there was a lot of random spastic movement. THAT, my friends = good damn parenting.

… really?!?!?

Did I mention that Mr. Squab has been out of town for business since the wee hours of Friday morning? Not getting back until late tonight?

And that the Hatchling came down with a really bad cold this morning, and just barfed all over my bed after an extremely abbreviated nap?

And that I’ve run out of my nausea medicine because my clinic didn’t call in the renewal soon enough?

Yah. AWESOME weekend.

(I swear, I will try to post something positive tomorrow.)

This isn’t exactly how I pictured motherhood

Today the Hatchling and I were driving home from a playdate. Just before getting into the car, the Hatchling had tripped and scraped her knees and hands a little, so she’d been crying. She quickly calmed down, though, and was sitting calmly in her seat when I heard her say “Thank you!” in the tone that means she’s handing me something she no longer wants. I figured she was done with her water bottle, so I reached my hand back to grab it, and she placed something in the palm of my hand. I pulled my hand back to find … a booger. From her nose. In the palm of my hand. “Thank you!” she said politely, and I found myself saying “You’re welcome!” right back. As I was trying to dig in my purse for a tissue without running off the road, she handed me another one. “Thank you!”

At least she has manners. I guess.

We are not enjoying two and a half

I remember at the first ECFE class I took with the Hatchling, the parent coordinator talked to us about how babies and toddlers go through regular fluctuations between equilibrium (when their brains are relatively calm, their skills are somewhat in synch with their desires, etc.) and disequilibrium (when their brains are on fire with learning new things and their desires outpace their skills, etc.) Apparently for most kids, the equilibrium is strongest around birthdays, and the disequilibrium is strongest around half birthdays.

The Hatchling is two years and five months old.

Gone are the days when her brief forays into tantrum-land could be interrupted with the distraction of a toy, a treat, a silly dance, or, god help me, the TV. Now, the most we can hope for is prevention, because once she goes to that tantrumy place, there is nothing on this earth that can snap her out of it before it has run its course. Don’t even bother talking to her: the only response you’ll get is “NOOOOOOOOO!” whether or not that’s an appropriate answer to whatever you’ve just said. This evening, which was a gorgeous preview of early autumn weather, we went to meet some friends at the Lake Harriet bandshell for a picnic dinner at the pops concert. It had all the makings of a perfect evening – and most of it was really, really nice – but then the Hatchling decided she was done with the picnic a little earlier than the rest of us, and that was it: we had to go. Well, that, or subject several hundred people to the ear-splitting cries of rage that only a 2.5 year old can produce. So Mr. Squab hauled her bodily off to the car, and I packed up our picnic stuff, apologizing to everyone all the while. Major drag, dude.

Of course, once we’d gotten her home and bathed, she was at her most adorable for the rest of the evening, singing along with songs before bed and telling us all about everything in her largely incomprehensible babble. Almost like she KNEW she’d pushed us almost to our limits …

This, they didn’t cover in the parenting books.

So, today being Monday, my lovely friend J watches the Hatchling in the morning so I can get some writing done. Friends like these = awesome. I brought lunch back for us when I went to pick the Hatchling up, and we sat in the backyard while the kids ran around in their swim diapers and nothing else, making little stops at the wading pool, the slide, the sandbox, the water table – generally being the adorable wee kidlets that they are. We finished lunch and I took the Hatchling inside to get her dressed before going home. I went to peel off her swim diaper, not bothering to check it first because there were no external signs – smell, look, feel – that I needed to. WHY AM I SO STUPID, INTERNETS? We’re standing on J’s nice wool rug, I’m peeling down the diaper, and WHAMMO, my hand is suddenly full of poop. MY BARE HAND. FUUUUULLLLLL of it. OMG SO GROSS.

“Ack! Poop!” is all I can manage to sputter out, trying to hold the Hatchling still with my non poopful hand. J, valiantly trying to suppress her gag reflex, comes running with wipes and paper towels, and tries to get the Hatchling down onto a changing pad without spreading fecal matter over the entire living room. I am frantically wrapping my handful in 270 layers of paper towel and scrubbing my hands as if in preparation for surgery. I am suddenly struck by the thought that I should not throw my paper-wrapped poo in her kitchen garbage. I run around her kitchen like a headless chicken looking for somewhere more appropriate to stow it. “I don’t know where to put the poop!” I yell. “Just stick it in the garbage – I’ll take it out right away” J yells back. I pitch the poo and run back into the living room where J, helpless with laughter, is trying to wrestle the damn swim diaper off the Hatchling’s legs, which are covered with poo. Finally, god knows how, we get the diaper off and I clean the Hatchling’s poopy limbs with the aid of approximately twelvety billion wipes. Fortunately, she was not in one of her squirmy moods, or I’d still be at J’s house hosing the area down with Lysol. This is, without a doubt, the grossest parenting moment I have had to date.

Moral of the story: ALWAYS CHECK FOR POOP. Christ.

Random Tidbits on a Tuesday

1. My hair is driving me crazy. It’s at that in-between stage where it’s not long enough to really do anything with but it’s too long to leave alone. I have to decide if I want to leave it for another month, at which point it will be long enough to put up or back, or chop it all off. I’m leaning towards the CHOP.

2. The Hatchling has two new words that I find extremely cute. #1: for hummus (one of her all-time favorite foods) she says “hummy” which is an excellent combination of hummus and yummy, if you ask me. #2: All wheeled, pedaled, manually (pedually?) propelled vehicles are now known as “whysicles.” This kills me every time she says it.

3. The other evening, during “nakey time,” the Hatchling took a crap on the stairs, stood over it asking “whassat?” until I came in from the kitchen and called her father’s attention to the fact, and then did a little poop-butted dance around the entryway while Mr. Squab and I scrambled for wipesfortheloveofgodWIPES. Her complete equanimity in the face of (butt of?) her own excrement makes me think that maybe she’s not quite ready for the toilet training.

4. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I am now the sheepish owner of a Facebook account. I believe this officially makes me a tool. (But it’s waaaaaaay better than MySpace and the scrabble application makes it all worth while! I tell myself.)

5. This weekend we had a two hour photo session with Katy to capture the Hatchling’s two-ness. This pretty much sums up the Hatchling’s attitude towards the proceedings. Fortunately, Katy is so good that I know we’ll get amazing shots anyway.

Random Tidbits on a Tuesday

1. Is there anything more annoying when you’re trying to write than having Microsoft Word repeatedly shut down on you FOR NO REASON? I hate you, Bill Gates.

2. I came *this* close to actually calling in and voting for an American Idol tonight. Does this mean I’m having a midlife crisis, or is it just continuing evidence that I’m a pop-culture slut? Discuss.

3. Yesterday, I was changing the Hatchling’s diaper and when I opened it up, I said “Oh, poop!” because I enjoy stating the obvious like that, and then the Hatchling looked at me and said, very seriously, “Stinky.” Her first time using the word. And yes. Yes, it was.

4. Speaking of which, you know how kids of a certain age get very interested in … um … exploring their nether regions? Like, especially when you’re changing their diapers? The Hatchling is no exception, and I realized recently that whenever she reaches down there before I’m done, uh, sterilizing the area, I say something like “no, no, don’t touch; dirty” which HELLO! What kind of message is that to send your daughter about her cooter? We’re all about vulvular love in this household. (I soooo need a T-shirt with that on it.) So now I’m trying to say something like “Wait a minute, honey, mommy has to finish wiping first.” You can add this to the ever-lengthening list of things I never thought I’d invest so much time thinking about, before I had a kid.

5. Raise your hand if you’re suffering from election-fatigue. I thought so. Please can primary season be over now? And please can Hillary wake up and smell the delegate counts? I *voted* for the woman, and I’d still love it if she could get the nomination, BUT SHE CAN’T. I’m sad about this, but I’m even sadder to see the increasingly desperate tactics of her campaign. Although I must say, Chelsea still rocks.

6. This post is crazy-good.

How to drive your mamala over the edge in 10 simple steps

1. Wake up at 5:15 in the morning. Refuse to go back to bed.
2. Eat next to nothing for breakfast, so you’re both tired AND hungry.
3. Ask to go down for a nap at 9:30, stay quiet in your room just long enough to convince the mamala that you’re actually sleeping, then shatter those illusions after 25 minutes by shouting “MAAA! MAA! MAAAAA!” until she comes in and get you.
4. Refuse to get out of your crib so you can get dressed and changed like a normal person.
5. When the mamala decides it’s not worth fighting over and begins changing you in your crib, pee all over the sheets in the 1.5 seconds your butt is bare between diapers.
6. When the mamala takes you out of your crib to change the sheets, run into the bathroom (foolishly left open) and throw a highlighter into the toilet.
7. While the mamala is taking the highlighter out of the toilet, run into the sunroom and start playing with the container of screws and other choking hazards daddy has left on the desk.
8. When the mamala takes the choking hazards away from you, run BACK into the bathroom (still open) and start dumping Q-tips into the toilet.
9. Once the mamala has finally gotten a grip and closed the damn doors and brought you into her room while she gets dressed, somehow find a random cough drop from god knows where (under the bed? behind the lamp?) and try to eat it, wrapper and all.
10. Insist on going downstairs all by yourself, giving your mamala several strokes as you teeter and totter all the way down.

And that was just up to 10:30 am. I’m pretty sure the mamala is going to need a beer before the day is done.

It’s not that I want to stifle her artistic impulses

Far from it. It’s just that I’d prefer she adopted a different medium:
Pollock, Jr.

Thank goodness for magic erasers and washable crayons, is what I say. Lawsy.