Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Letters to AJ
More 'You know you're a mommy when...'" You make your phone calls in the car 'cause that's the only place it's socially acceptable to strap your kids down.
Letters to AJ
More "You might be a mommy if..." You finally get a night out with "The girls" and you spend most of it wondering why you ever liked doing this crap, and wishing you were home in your pajamas snuggling with your sweet little baby.
May, 2005
More "You know you're a mommy when..."
The only reason it looks like you've had a french manicure is 'cause you've got diaper cream under your fingernails.
You figure your crunchy kitchen floor isn't actually dirty 'cause it's just cheerios flung about by your infant.
You've redefined "Good Sex" as when your husband watches the kids long enough for you to have a happy encounter with your shower massage.
You develop your own ratings for poop outs. Mine are based on movie titles. "Indiana Poop and the Diaper of Doom!" "A River Runs through it."
You know that you have exactly 1.8 seconds after you hand her a new toy to get a diaper on your crawler before she twists out of your grasp again.
You know you're on your second (or subsequent) child when you hear the baby crying* and you and your husband pause to do "Rock Paper Scissors" to see who'll respond. (*and you know it's just the frustrated cry, not the urgent I've-hurt-myself cry)
So I've been trying to find ways to motivate my temperature-sensitive daughter toward toilet training. Thus far not much has worked well. I've bribed with stickers and chocolate, but I think I've finally hit on a possible solution -- I'm going to start putting the wipes in the fridge! Of course even at room temperature she hollers at the top of her lungs "NO, MOMMY! NO MAKE MY PUSSY COLD!" I knew I'd regret using that word, particularly on a lovely sunny day when I have the windows open and her screaming can be heard up the block.
And while we're on the pussy theme. We took at trip to Disneyland and one night in the hotel, Doug went over to the other room to check and see if the kids were out. He was in his usual pajamas, i.e. his birthday suit. Not only was Angelina not asleep, but she asked, "Daddy? Where's YOUR pussy?" Not the kind of question he was expecting. His response? "I don't have a pussy, I have a pee pee. Now go to sleep!"
Of course his sister had the worst of it when she took her daughter to one of the HUGE public restrooms at Disneyland. Kristina had the good sense not to teach her daughter the word "pussy" but might have been wishing she had. Delana caught a good look at my sister in law and asked in that innocently loud voice only a 5 year old can muster "Mommy, how come you have hair on your butt?" Laughter arose throughout the restroom from all who had heard. Kris waited about 10 minutes before emerging. Then the question arose, did the other women think she actually had hair on her butt or did they recognize that Delana didn't know a better word to communicate pubic hair?
This brings up the question of language. I think we bring it on ourselves some times. At a playgroup of mostly girls recently one mom was changing her infant son's diaper. This became quite a spectator event for us moms of only daughters. I mentioned that I wouldn't have the first idea of what one does to get a boy clean. Another mom mentioned that it was actually easier to keep a little penis cleaned. The topic of foreskin removal came up. Someone was saying that it was actually easier to keep clean than the little labia. The little boy's mom gently grabbed his penis, pulled it up and pointed at his little scrotum and said, "Yeah, but you've got to get into the little wrinkles in his ball S-A-C-K." Now WHY after saying penis, foreskin, circumcision, labia and ball, did we need to spell sack????
Maybe it's a phenomenon of the firstborn or that I've become a bit more jaded now that I have two. Angelina will occasionally melt into a puddle of dramatic sobbing over some minor issue. I realized my fundamental attitude had changed when I'd picked her up and was dutifully consoling her and realized that if I patted her back just a little bit faster her wails kinda sounded like a motor boat. I'm still a neurotic mom, just a little less so. Sometimes I wonder if I'm caught in the parenting version of a Far Side cartoon.
She loves playing pretend. "You be Kiki, and I'll be Finn." (Two baby dragons from "Dragon Tails.") Then we'll baby talk each other and just be silly for a while. Then she changes the players and we assume the new roles. I realized she's pretty good at thinking outside the box when she told me "You be the cookie monster and I'll be the cookies!"
Man oh man do kids see through us! Angelina was doing her usual bed time routine: hop out of bed and sneak down the hall. Doug finally had had enough and went in to make good on his threat of spanking her. She offered up her heinie with resignation and Doug smacked it at about the level of polite applause. He realized she wasn't getting any effect from this and smacked her just enough to sting at which time she screamed dramatically "NO DADDY, not a REAL spanking!!!!" So what have all the others been in her mind, I wonder? I can just see that somewhere in her head she realized that we had this little social contract going. We parents used this lame form of spanking to convince her we were serious, but she knew we're both softies and wouldn't want to actually cause pain. She therefore dutifully offered up her little ass as part of this social contract, understanding that we parents just had to go through this ritual. If there's any reason to be consistent it's cause THEY'RE WATCHING US!
Angelina was sick a while ago. General malaise and something in her tummy. Doug and I have been blessedly well. This means, however that Angelina learned how to be sick from the cats; wanders around inexplicably agitated for a little while, then pukes on the carpet.
If you have a baby, fair warning, Angelina's obsessed with their ears. We started calling Lexie "Our little Ferengi." Of course it fits on a multitude of levels, 'cause all trekkies know that Ferengis didn't allow their womenfolk to wear clothes. Angelina would rather be naked than clothed any day of the week. Me? Naked? Let's just not go there.
Doug's been trying to encourage Angelina to undertake more challenging things. He'll tell her "I have full faith and confidence in your abilities!" That she didn't understand this, as if she would, was evidenced by her stomping one little foot and hollering back at him "I'm NOT a Billibees!" That rapidly became "Wildebeast," so for a while our conversations were "I need to nurse the Ferengi." Or "Could you get the Wildebeast a sippycup?"
Nicknames come and go, of course. Lexie's been waking up VERY early, and has been obviously done with sleeping. She's so perky it's painful to see when I'm that stoned with lack of sleep. She grins that brilliant toothless grin that involves her whole face and causes her to flap her arms with glee. Her new nickname has become Princess Sparky Sweetbuttons, but we just call her Sparky for short.
Toilet training has been an adventure. It's interesting to see how they reverse-engineer these things and don't always get it right. On those occasions when Angelina decides she has to go potty, she'll suddenly stop in the middle of what she's doing, announce that she has to go potty, pull her pants down to her ankles and THEN run to the bathroom in this hobbled shuffling step that makes me SURE she's going to fall and irrigate the carpet. In a couple weeks we'll get that sequence down. FIRST run to the bathroom, THEN pull the pants down.
I decided I needed to get on the toilet training. I'd been giving myself a pass since I had a newborn, but since Lexie's crawling backwards everywhere (and quite frustrated that she keeps getting farther and farther from the object of her desire) I just don't have that excuse anymore. Angelina brought this home to me when I knew she'd gone to hide and poop, but had forgotten and insisted that she sit down and eat her lunch. Of course her full diaper came back to me immediately when she said "Oooooh, that's squishy!" Okay Ev, (says I to myself) if she has the language abilities to say "that's squishy!" I think I better get on it. Since then I've tried stickers and chocolate as motivators. We'll have to see how the refrigerated wipes work.
There are days when I feel like all I do is clean up. I couldn't quite figure out why I was always having to pick up the hand towels from the bathroom which migrated to other parts of the house. I painstakingly re hung them on the towel racks repeatedly. I later solved the mystery when I discovered Angelina on one of her toilet-training, run-around-naked days wiping her pussy with the hand towel. Imagine my horror at realizing how many times I'd painstakingly re hung those. To everyone who's been to my house, I apologize and assure you it was mostly her "Hello Kitty" hand towel. We've since solved this problem and restored our house to its usual haphazard hygiene levels.
Doug keeps getting blow after blow to his ego. We like to cuddle with Angelina before she goes to sleep. It's just a time to leave the dishes in the sink and our cares at the door and really enjoy her. She always asks "How was your day?" and we discuss that. Her response to the same question is always "Pretty nice!" Doug was cuddling on a Friday night and told Angelina he was going to be home tomorrow, what would she like to do? "Spend some time with Mommy," she said with a wistful sigh.
Where do they get these things... Doug and I were spatting slightly as we regularly do, when Angelina hollered between us at Doug "STOP PISSING MOMMY OFF!!!!" Well THERE'S a conversation stopper!
Another conversation stopper came as I realized my ability to creatively cuss can only be topped by my darling daughter being even more, but innocently creative. We were tracing letters in her preschool curriculum book when Lexie woke from her nap. Angelina looked at me and says "Someone's awake, Oh Criminey Shit." How the hell does one NOT laugh at that? Is there a way to completely delete expletives from my vocabulary? After 14 years as a cop where "Fuck" was used as every part of speech, the fact that I've improved as much as I have is laudable. I've been trying to switch to "Aye Caramba." Of course now someone is going to tell me that that means "Go screw your pooch" in Spanish. Great. I'll be able to offend people in THREE languages.
It's so fun to see how they express themselves with limited language abilities. Doug was reading Angelina books before bed. As usual, he was wearing his hanging-about-home uniform of shorts that he's had for 10 years. Angelina looked at him and remarked "Daddy! Your boobies have a beard!" (Doug insists I include a disclaimer that he DOES NOT have "man breasts" and that she was referring to his well-developed pectoral muscles.)
God I fall in love with my kids all over again every day. I was waking Angelina up by laying in bed and cuddling with her when it occurred to me that I LOVE her little funky morning breath. She wraps her little arms around me all sleepy and sighs some morning breath in my face and I'm in love all over again.
Lexie, at not quite 8 months is pulling herself up to standing at every opportunity. She's started to crawl forward in just the last week or so. I'm sure she'll be an early walker like Angelina was, in part because she's seeing Angelina walk all the time, and it's all Lexie wants to do. Hold her little hands and she'll be thrilled to walk until your back is breaking. After her rocky start, she's such an easy baby now. Almost to the point that I wish she were more cuddly. They're babes in arms for such a short time. At least she still smells like diaper cream and spit up.
Send me your thoughts and YOUR mommy moments. I love to hear them. I'd love to keep up my list of "You know you're a mommy when..."
The only reason it looks like you've had a french manicure is 'cause you've got diaper cream under your fingernails.
You figure your crunchy kitchen floor isn't actually dirty 'cause it's just cheerios flung about by your infant.
You've redefined "Good Sex" as when your husband watches the kids long enough for you to have a happy encounter with your shower massage.
You develop your own ratings for poop outs. Mine are based on movie titles. "Indiana Poop and the Diaper of Doom!" "A River Runs through it."
You know that you have exactly 1.8 seconds after you hand her a new toy to get a diaper on your crawler before she twists out of your grasp again.
You know you're on your second (or subsequent) child when you hear the baby crying* and you and your husband pause to do "Rock Paper Scissors" to see who'll respond. (*and you know it's just the frustrated cry, not the urgent I've-hurt-myself cry)
So I've been trying to find ways to motivate my temperature-sensitive daughter toward toilet training. Thus far not much has worked well. I've bribed with stickers and chocolate, but I think I've finally hit on a possible solution -- I'm going to start putting the wipes in the fridge! Of course even at room temperature she hollers at the top of her lungs "NO, MOMMY! NO MAKE MY PUSSY COLD!" I knew I'd regret using that word, particularly on a lovely sunny day when I have the windows open and her screaming can be heard up the block.
And while we're on the pussy theme. We took at trip to Disneyland and one night in the hotel, Doug went over to the other room to check and see if the kids were out. He was in his usual pajamas, i.e. his birthday suit. Not only was Angelina not asleep, but she asked, "Daddy? Where's YOUR pussy?" Not the kind of question he was expecting. His response? "I don't have a pussy, I have a pee pee. Now go to sleep!"
Of course his sister had the worst of it when she took her daughter to one of the HUGE public restrooms at Disneyland. Kristina had the good sense not to teach her daughter the word "pussy" but might have been wishing she had. Delana caught a good look at my sister in law and asked in that innocently loud voice only a 5 year old can muster "Mommy, how come you have hair on your butt?" Laughter arose throughout the restroom from all who had heard. Kris waited about 10 minutes before emerging. Then the question arose, did the other women think she actually had hair on her butt or did they recognize that Delana didn't know a better word to communicate pubic hair?
This brings up the question of language. I think we bring it on ourselves some times. At a playgroup of mostly girls recently one mom was changing her infant son's diaper. This became quite a spectator event for us moms of only daughters. I mentioned that I wouldn't have the first idea of what one does to get a boy clean. Another mom mentioned that it was actually easier to keep a little penis cleaned. The topic of foreskin removal came up. Someone was saying that it was actually easier to keep clean than the little labia. The little boy's mom gently grabbed his penis, pulled it up and pointed at his little scrotum and said, "Yeah, but you've got to get into the little wrinkles in his ball S-A-C-K." Now WHY after saying penis, foreskin, circumcision, labia and ball, did we need to spell sack????
Maybe it's a phenomenon of the firstborn or that I've become a bit more jaded now that I have two. Angelina will occasionally melt into a puddle of dramatic sobbing over some minor issue. I realized my fundamental attitude had changed when I'd picked her up and was dutifully consoling her and realized that if I patted her back just a little bit faster her wails kinda sounded like a motor boat. I'm still a neurotic mom, just a little less so. Sometimes I wonder if I'm caught in the parenting version of a Far Side cartoon.
She loves playing pretend. "You be Kiki, and I'll be Finn." (Two baby dragons from "Dragon Tails.") Then we'll baby talk each other and just be silly for a while. Then she changes the players and we assume the new roles. I realized she's pretty good at thinking outside the box when she told me "You be the cookie monster and I'll be the cookies!"
Man oh man do kids see through us! Angelina was doing her usual bed time routine: hop out of bed and sneak down the hall. Doug finally had had enough and went in to make good on his threat of spanking her. She offered up her heinie with resignation and Doug smacked it at about the level of polite applause. He realized she wasn't getting any effect from this and smacked her just enough to sting at which time she screamed dramatically "NO DADDY, not a REAL spanking!!!!" So what have all the others been in her mind, I wonder? I can just see that somewhere in her head she realized that we had this little social contract going. We parents used this lame form of spanking to convince her we were serious, but she knew we're both softies and wouldn't want to actually cause pain. She therefore dutifully offered up her little ass as part of this social contract, understanding that we parents just had to go through this ritual. If there's any reason to be consistent it's cause THEY'RE WATCHING US!
Angelina was sick a while ago. General malaise and something in her tummy. Doug and I have been blessedly well. This means, however that Angelina learned how to be sick from the cats; wanders around inexplicably agitated for a little while, then pukes on the carpet.
If you have a baby, fair warning, Angelina's obsessed with their ears. We started calling Lexie "Our little Ferengi." Of course it fits on a multitude of levels, 'cause all trekkies know that Ferengis didn't allow their womenfolk to wear clothes. Angelina would rather be naked than clothed any day of the week. Me? Naked? Let's just not go there.
Doug's been trying to encourage Angelina to undertake more challenging things. He'll tell her "I have full faith and confidence in your abilities!" That she didn't understand this, as if she would, was evidenced by her stomping one little foot and hollering back at him "I'm NOT a Billibees!" That rapidly became "Wildebeast," so for a while our conversations were "I need to nurse the Ferengi." Or "Could you get the Wildebeast a sippycup?"
Nicknames come and go, of course. Lexie's been waking up VERY early, and has been obviously done with sleeping. She's so perky it's painful to see when I'm that stoned with lack of sleep. She grins that brilliant toothless grin that involves her whole face and causes her to flap her arms with glee. Her new nickname has become Princess Sparky Sweetbuttons, but we just call her Sparky for short.
Toilet training has been an adventure. It's interesting to see how they reverse-engineer these things and don't always get it right. On those occasions when Angelina decides she has to go potty, she'll suddenly stop in the middle of what she's doing, announce that she has to go potty, pull her pants down to her ankles and THEN run to the bathroom in this hobbled shuffling step that makes me SURE she's going to fall and irrigate the carpet. In a couple weeks we'll get that sequence down. FIRST run to the bathroom, THEN pull the pants down.
I decided I needed to get on the toilet training. I'd been giving myself a pass since I had a newborn, but since Lexie's crawling backwards everywhere (and quite frustrated that she keeps getting farther and farther from the object of her desire) I just don't have that excuse anymore. Angelina brought this home to me when I knew she'd gone to hide and poop, but had forgotten and insisted that she sit down and eat her lunch. Of course her full diaper came back to me immediately when she said "Oooooh, that's squishy!" Okay Ev, (says I to myself) if she has the language abilities to say "that's squishy!" I think I better get on it. Since then I've tried stickers and chocolate as motivators. We'll have to see how the refrigerated wipes work.
There are days when I feel like all I do is clean up. I couldn't quite figure out why I was always having to pick up the hand towels from the bathroom which migrated to other parts of the house. I painstakingly re hung them on the towel racks repeatedly. I later solved the mystery when I discovered Angelina on one of her toilet-training, run-around-naked days wiping her pussy with the hand towel. Imagine my horror at realizing how many times I'd painstakingly re hung those. To everyone who's been to my house, I apologize and assure you it was mostly her "Hello Kitty" hand towel. We've since solved this problem and restored our house to its usual haphazard hygiene levels.
Doug keeps getting blow after blow to his ego. We like to cuddle with Angelina before she goes to sleep. It's just a time to leave the dishes in the sink and our cares at the door and really enjoy her. She always asks "How was your day?" and we discuss that. Her response to the same question is always "Pretty nice!" Doug was cuddling on a Friday night and told Angelina he was going to be home tomorrow, what would she like to do? "Spend some time with Mommy," she said with a wistful sigh.
Where do they get these things... Doug and I were spatting slightly as we regularly do, when Angelina hollered between us at Doug "STOP PISSING MOMMY OFF!!!!" Well THERE'S a conversation stopper!
Another conversation stopper came as I realized my ability to creatively cuss can only be topped by my darling daughter being even more, but innocently creative. We were tracing letters in her preschool curriculum book when Lexie woke from her nap. Angelina looked at me and says "Someone's awake, Oh Criminey Shit." How the hell does one NOT laugh at that? Is there a way to completely delete expletives from my vocabulary? After 14 years as a cop where "Fuck" was used as every part of speech, the fact that I've improved as much as I have is laudable. I've been trying to switch to "Aye Caramba." Of course now someone is going to tell me that that means "Go screw your pooch" in Spanish. Great. I'll be able to offend people in THREE languages.
It's so fun to see how they express themselves with limited language abilities. Doug was reading Angelina books before bed. As usual, he was wearing his hanging-about-home uniform of shorts that he's had for 10 years. Angelina looked at him and remarked "Daddy! Your boobies have a beard!" (Doug insists I include a disclaimer that he DOES NOT have "man breasts" and that she was referring to his well-developed pectoral muscles.)
God I fall in love with my kids all over again every day. I was waking Angelina up by laying in bed and cuddling with her when it occurred to me that I LOVE her little funky morning breath. She wraps her little arms around me all sleepy and sighs some morning breath in my face and I'm in love all over again.
Lexie, at not quite 8 months is pulling herself up to standing at every opportunity. She's started to crawl forward in just the last week or so. I'm sure she'll be an early walker like Angelina was, in part because she's seeing Angelina walk all the time, and it's all Lexie wants to do. Hold her little hands and she'll be thrilled to walk until your back is breaking. After her rocky start, she's such an easy baby now. Almost to the point that I wish she were more cuddly. They're babes in arms for such a short time. At least she still smells like diaper cream and spit up.
Send me your thoughts and YOUR mommy moments. I love to hear them. I'd love to keep up my list of "You know you're a mommy when..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)