The Price of Luxury

I have had an amazing stroke of luck. March break has coincided with the best phase ever. Skylar has taken a liking to playing restaurant. Specifically, she wants to bring me breakfast in bed. Every day. How cool is that? She made a menu, with options such as: cerel, toast, waffles, watr, milk and juos. Sure, improvements could be made. Perhaps the toast could be topped with something besides air, or the waffle could maybe not be floating in a bowl of syrup, but hey, if I get to stay in bed an extra half hour, it's all good.

Yesterday, Adam was off work so he was looking forward to partaking along with me. We lounged in bed, listening to the kids fight downstairs until Eden was banished from Skylar's kitchen and came upstairs to crawl into bed between us where things might have gone on being peaceful if only Adam wore a shirt to bed.

Eden: Daddy, what's dat?

Adam: Armpit hair.

Eden: I don't got armpit hair?

Adam: Nope.

Eden: Mommy got's armpit hair?

Me: Nope.

Adam: Liar.

Eden: Daddy, what's dat?

Adam: My nipple.

Eden: I got's nipples, too!

Adam: Yep, so does Mommy.

Eden: No, Mommy have boobies. You have boobies too Daddy!

Adam: No, I don't!

Eden: Ya, you do have boobies right d'ere. See? Biiig boobies!

*Adam rolls onto his stomach to discourage further remarks*

Eden: Daddy, you got spots on your back. See? I count dem for you. One...Two...Free...Seven...Eight...Nine...

Adam: Hey, hey, hey what are you doing?

Eden: I moving da blanket. I gotta count da spots on your bum too!

Adam: No, you don't!

Eden: D'ere are spots Daddy! Spots!

Adam: I don't need my spots counted!

Eden: What dat hair is d'ere for?

Me: It's not there for anything, it's just a big mutant hair on Daddy's back.

Eden: I get it off. *much pinching and pulling ensues* I can't geddit! Da hair is stuck! Mommy you get it!

Sorry, Adam. I should have warned you. You get either breakfast in bed OR personal boundaries. Not both.

Have I mentioned my hatred of winter?

I was a good mom today, if I do say so myself. This is worth mentioning because lately I honestly have not been.

It's winter up here in the godforsaken North and that really brings out the worst in me. I abhor cold. I loathe cold. I can't think of a word vile enough to express my dislike of cold. Cold makes my bones hurt. Cold makes me tired. Cold makes me a hateful bitch. I hate having to wear bulky layers of clothes. I hate wet socks and snowsuits and toddlers screaming because their fingers are cold and they won't keep their damned mittens on. I hate the pissy grey sunshine. I hate the wind whistling through the cracks in my house. I hate being afraid to drive. I hate getting out of my warm bed in the mornings so much that my kid is late for school pretty much every single day. I hate walking the dog. I hate the noisy squirrels living in my roof, I hate the dead, black skeletal trees. I hate the filthy slushy mud. I hate the dark that seems to fall just after noon. I hate scraping ice off of my car, but not as much as I hate dragging a sled or wrestling a stroller over snowbanks or carrying a 30 pound child in 50 pounds worth of outerwear or trying to coax that same child to please for the love of god walk faster, and straighter, and without stopping to climb every mound and taste every clump so that we can get wherever the hell we're going and get inside again. I hate lying awake all night because my feet are frozen and I can't sleep until they thaw out and they won't thaw out for hours.

I remember being excited about snow when I was a kid. I know I used to have fun building snowmen and forts and going tobogganning, but there is not a single trace of those feelings left. I have played outside with my children exactly 3 times since November. Instead I stay inside and lay on the couch drifting in and out of sleep all day. I let my kids watch entirely too much television and I yell at them constantly to be quiet, or calm down, or go play somewhere else, or stop making a mess, or quit bugging the dog, or stop fighting, or close the frigging door, or get their own damn juice or...

But today I was good. Today we made crafts together (paper snowflakes of all things) and I pulled my girls around the living room by the hands while they each stood on one roller skate. I got 7 loads of laundry done and cleaned the floor and did 2 loads of dishes and still had time to build a stable out of Mega Blocks and read a story and tickle them until they turned purple. I sent them out to play in the yard and watched them having fun through the window. Maybe tomorrow I'll go out with them. I didn't yell or order a single time-out. I laughed and I smiled and I stayed awake all day long.

See, my eldest daughter is 6 now and somehow she's become literate. She loves to read and write all the time and the phrase she writes most often is "I love mom." I want to deserve that. I want her to remember a mom who played with her and listened to her and enjoyed spending time with her instead of a mom who yelled and bitched and was lazy as hell. So I'm trying. I have to work hard at it, because some days it seems as though every single thing that child does or says is calculated specifically to annoy the living crap out of me. But I am trying, and I was good today.

That's what sisters are for

Overheard via the baby monitor after putting my 6 and 2 year old girls to bed:

thump thump thump...

Eden: My want snuggle, Sky'yer.

Skylar: OK, get in. I'll tell you a story.

aww, how sweet!

Skylar: You know, when you're four I won't let you sleep with me anymore. Well, not all the time. Maybe when you're scared.

Eden: My not scared.

Skylar: I know you're not scared right now, but someday you might get scared that there's monsters under your bed.

Eden: Monsters? In my bed?

Uh Oh

Big Sisters: Always there to comfort you...but probably the reason you were scared in the first place.

Terrible Two-year-old Terrifies Thoughtless Tmama (best I could do, I'm still recovering)

When I put Eden down for her nap this afternoon I was sure she'd sleep for a good two hours or more, because she's a kick-ass napper. I knew I had plenty of time to go next door to my mom's place for a cup of tea. Our apartments are connected through an upstairs bathroom and Eden's room is right above my mom's kitchen, so I would be able to hear her if she woke up. But of course she didn't make a sound. I knew she was still asleep when I went back to my side an hour later.

I began to suspect she was not asleep when I saw the sofa, covered with disassembled tampons. My suspicion grew stronger when I found the cat's water dish filled with a congealed mass of kitty litter and biscuits (stirred with yet another tampon) and this theory was proven correct when I looked in her bed and found it vacant. So where the hell was she? Did she crawl into my bed? Yes, I could tell because my bed was covered in kitty litter (and tampons!) but she wasn't there anymore. Was she in the toy room? Of course not. Who wants to play with toys when there's kitty litter and tampons available? The storage room? No. The laundry room? No. I called my mom and asked if Eden had gone down the stairs to her place, but no. So now the both of us are searching, calling Eden's name, checking under beds and inside closets. No kid.

I'm getting desperate now. There's no way she could have opened the doors and gotten outside right? The screen doors, yes, but certainly not the big heavy wooden doors that adults have to slam with their shoulders to shove through their swollen frames, right? Please God?
So she's got to be in the house. But we've been yelling and shoving furniture and slamming doors and yelling louder for fifteen interminable minutes now and she hasn't made a sound. If you're playing hide and seek child I'm going to kill you. But shit, what if she crawled under a bed and choked on a marble? Omygodomygod!

I'm running around frantically now, rechecking places I've already checked twice, when I see two little legs hanging out the door of an old wardrobe shoved back in the corner of the storage room. Not moving. Not so much as a twitch when I called her name or crashed through the boxes in the middle of the room. OMYGODOMYGODOMYGOD She was climbing the shelves and she fell and broke her neck and when I pull back this door her face is going to be purple and I was sitting downstairs doing a crossword puzzle and drinking tea and why didn't I take the monitor over and ohmyfuckinggod she's dead! I yanked back the door, while reviewing CPR steps in my head (shit, is she an infant or a child?) and there she was, out cold on the floor of the wardrobe, head pillowed on an old bridesmaid dress. Her eyes popped open and she mumbled "Mama, I seepin' in da dra'wer." And I picked her up and ran to tell my mom that I'd found her, and hugged her and then put her on time out for playing in the kitty litter, 'cause that shit's gross and should be corrected, no matter how glad I am that she's alive.

March Break Madness

My arm hurts. So does my back, and my neck, and my side. How did I injure myself? I played 20 minutes of Wii sports.
Apparently bowling without a ball, batting without a bat, swinging without a club and tennising without a racket is hard damn work. Oh, and my fitness age?....80!
Yup, I have all the fitness and coordination of the average octogenarian. Nice.

I'm spending this March break babysitting Adam's sister's kids, and I'm thinking I should NOT have more kids. It's not that they're bad kids or anything. It's just that I now have twice the diapers to change, twice the noses to wipe, twice the mouths to feed (and in one case to remove dead flies from. Jesus, the child is like that nut job in Dracula: Bottle-No, dead bugs-Yes!) Nap-times to orchestrate, hands to wash, boots to find, and so on and so forth. And Eden is siiiiick, and Skylar is boooored, and Evan won't shaaaaare, and Jasmine...has another fucking fly, Dammit! Open, come on, spit it out! and...I'm going to bed.

Let mommy sleep, or everyone dies!

I haven't slept through the night in weeks. I've always been a night owl, but blessed as I was with "good sleepers" for kids I was in the habit of getting a solid 5-6 hours of shut-eye between 1 am and 7am. Not anymore.

It started a few weeks ago when Mooch developed a cough. She'd be fine all day, but cough herself awake 2-3 times a night. We have tried everything from Vicks vapo rub to homeopathic remedies to humidifiers to to honey to baby Triaminic but nothing seems to be helping. As the responsible parent (aka the one who is roused by the slightest sound rather than the one who would not be disturbed by his children screaming bloody murder while the smoke alarm blared, ahem.) I would go to her anytime before 2 am, at which time I was unlikely to be sleeping yet anyway, and viciously kick Daddy in the back for his turn any time later. The system was not perfect, but we were hoping it would be short-lived.

Then Goober got an earache. She took to waking me up at least once between 3-4 am to tell me her ear still hurt and I would dope her with Tylenol and send her back to bed. We went to the doctor, who assured us that she did NOT have an ear infection, just a build up of fluid in her ear. He advised me to spray salt-water up her nose twice a day to help clear it out. Boy does she ever not like this! He did not warn me, however that the result of this action would be to cause snot to come oozing out of her ear after a couple of days to cake in her hair and befoul her pillow. Gross does not begin to describe it.

Then they both caught a cold, on top of the stubborn cough and sore ear. Add stuffy, runny noses to the fact that both sooth themselves to sleep by sucking their thumbs and you can see we have a problem- when your nose is blocked and your mouth is full of thumb you can't breath. So I started spraying the solution up both of their noses, causing fits of combined hysterics, but undeniable results. I tried to reason with them about how it wasn't really that bad, and didn't they feel better all nice and clear after it was done? Eventually they began to get used to it and let me do it without sitting on them and chaining back their arms first.

Then I caught the cold, now I can't breath either. So I sprayed the stuff up my own nose. OH MY FREAKING GOD! That's the most horrible thing anyone has ever experienced in the history of ever! Oh well, more for the kids!

Then my recurrent insomnia kicked in.

Then Mooch started cutting 2 new teeth, including her first molar.

Then Daddy got sick.

Then Goober started having nightmares.

My past weeks sleep schedule has looked something like this:
11:30-12:00= Go to bed and read.
1:30= Try to sleep, toss and turn unsuccessfully.
2:30ish=Drift off.
3:30=Mooch wakes up coughing. Go get her some sort of remedy.
4:30=Goober wakes me up to complain that she "had a bad, scary thought" and needs to sleep in my bed. For the love of God child why do you always have to get in on MY side? Go curl up next to Daddy, he'd never notice!
5:00=Get tired of being kicked and jarred by restless kid who is no more able to sleep here than I am able to sleep with her here so why does she even bother anyway? Put her back in her bed. Return to my own bed and continue to toss and turn because once thoroughly woken up I have to start the whole 2 hour getting to sleep process all over again.
6:00=Mooch wakes up crying. Kick (literally) Daddy out of bed to give her teething tablets.
6:30ish= Finally fall into a deep sleep
7:30= alarm goes off.

Why the hell am I writing this during nap time when I should be sleeping?