Two and a Half

I don’t know what it is about this age, but after having 2 children hit this age, I have noticed a trend…this is the age where they stop having a cherub like demeanor and develop devil like horns.  I don’t understand why this is this way, but I now know without a shadow of a doubt that this is an age of changing.

 My son…my adorable angel…my ONLY boy has reached this age, and my days have turned into long and drawn out torture sessions.  I live for when he sleeps, for when we are able to con some unsuspecting soul to sit with him, and for the stolen moments where I can sneak time. 

 Yesterday I was sitting downstairs with the two of them, watching tv and playing with the ipad.  My son went upstairs for a little bit, which he does all the time given that the playroom is upstairs, so I didn’t think anything of it…my first mistake.  After having him take his diaper off at least twice, I finally wandered back upstairs to find black scribbles all over my white cupboards.  I came to discover, upon closer inspection, that these scribbles were made using a sharpie marker.  I knew that if I got to it quick enough with rubbing alcohol that it would come off…upon dropping everything in my hands to race for the necessary items, I nearly fall and kill myself on the slippery hand soap that has been spread all over my carpet.  Apparently the scribbles weren’t fresh enough because they weren’t coming off…I was forced to move onto the soft scrub.

 While scrubbing my life away, with sweat dripping into my eyes, I was struck by the memory of Casey at this age…she threw my brand new pink Nintendo DS lite into a crock pot full of water.  This is what led me to the belief that there is something about being 2 and a half that turns them into monsters.  My son, who is not yet talking to me, strips at every opportunity in order to wave his junk about and pee on things.  He dumps any and every liquid that he can get ahold of onto my carpet to make a puddle so he can jump in it.  He throws everything on the floor to see if it will break.  His most favorite toys are the plunger and the toilet brush.  He climbs on bathroom counters to get to toothbrushes (which he uses to brush the dog and cat), and into the medicine cabinets to see what bottles he can open.  We have those cabinet clip things on all drawers and cabinets in this house…not that it does any good because he just pulls on them so hard that they break.

  This is truly the house of my dreams, and I am trying with all I am to keep it in good shape, because I love it.  I have waited and even given up hope that I would ever have a house like this, and now my children are trying with all their might to destroy it.  The remains of the scribbling mock me every time I look at my counter, and I sit here knowing that I am going to have to drastically alter where everything is in this house in order to retain my somewhat slippery grip on sanity.  So here’s to the necessary changes we make to remain a functioning mother and wife!  Off I go to mourn the loss of all that is me in the pursuit of all things domestic.

Swimming Lessons

This is what happens when you have a stubborn little drama queen who doesn’t want to do what she is asked to do, and she has a mom who is even more stubborn and mean than she could have ever imagined. 

 In our infinite wisdom as parents we made the monumental decision that our 5 year old girl would take swimming lessons this summer.  My husband’s mother bought a house with a pool and Jacuzzi, which is both awesome and scary at the same time.  In order for this to be a safe circumstance the young girl must learn to swim, and she has a long history of refusing to do things for mom and dad, but will for a complete stranger.  Thus the decision of swimming lessons was made.  We found a place in town that offers them for $70, and they run every day for 10 days for 45 min each day.  I went down, signed her up, paid the money, and thought of a reward that she would get at the end of the 2 weeks…Legoland water park, just me and her.

 Day 1 came and went without any problems and she did very well, I started to believe this was going to be easier than I had expected.  Day 2 was almost over when she was asked to put her face in the water…we hit complete meltdown.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth was putting it mildly…but it got worse, much worse. 

 

 I first tried spraying her face with the shower that evening…we were in the shower for over an hour.  There was screaming, and crying, and sobbing, and attempts at bribery (I offered her Princess Luna).  All the while my son was having the time of his life spraying us with the shower.  Finally we accomplished her face sprayed twice…then she crashed in bed.  The next day, being the 4^th of July, there were no lessons…at the gym.  We went to Gammi’s pool where Dad and Gammi did their very best to get her to even go into the water…after 30 min I had hit my limit of what I could stand.  I was watching out the window while giving my son a drink and all I saw was her standing on the step shaking her head “no”.  That was it, I could take no more!  I walked out there, let her go to the bathroom, and when we came back out I put her goggles and nose plugs on and walked her right into the deep end of the pool.

 At this point I did a lot of counting to 3 and telling her to hold her breath…about the 6^th time in she finally started holding her breath when I got to 3.  Of course in the meantime I am pretty sure that she could have been possessed by something evil because she not only kicked me and called me names and said she hated me and that I was the worst mother in the world, but she also tried to bite me!  I am really glad that we were in the privacy of my mother-in-law’s back yard, because I am positive that if anyone else had seen that I would be greeting CPS at my door.  It is really hard to explain to an outsider why you deal with your child the way you do…especially when it seems as though you are trying to drown both you and her.

 For those who still think I am the worst mother in the world, please know that before we got out of the pool that day my daughter told me that she loved me and went under the water willingly.  We returned to swim class and my baby girl willingly went under water, and even doggy paddled with her face in the water!  She gave me a card that said “thanks for teaching me how to swim.”…So after several days of guilt I cried!  I will keep that one forever and ever!

 Swim classes finished triumphantly with me having to drag her out of the pool, because she wouldn’t come willingly, and at some point in the next few weeks I will be taking her to the Legoland Water Park as her reward for finishing.  My guilt is gone and I am very proud of my stubborn little girl.  So here’s to all those hard things we have to do as mothers, may we not appear to be abusing them every time that we have to assert our decisions!

June

 This month is heinously busy for my family…every single year!  My birthday, my dad’s birthday, father’s day, more birthdays, and an anniversary…right now add in my uncle visiting from Montana for a week, party at my house for said uncle and dad’s birthday, visiting teaching conference on the same day, my husband’s vacation, and Legoland.  All of this adding equals a mom trudging around the house making ewok-like growling sounds and talking to herself.

 So let us begin at my birthday, I got some things I have been wanting for some time now…like Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 on the 360.  Yay!!  I sat down that evening after having a grand day to play my game, I pop it in and sit down expectantly with controller in hand…what do I see?  NOT Harry Potter…instead I see 1 (only 1) red ring of death.  I take the disk out and it boots up fine…I send my husband to get a new disk as this one is obviously defective…still nothing.  I spend an hour on the internet only to discover that I am not the only one having this difficulty...this means I have to call those Xbox people!  And the growling begins.  I spent the rest of the evening looking at wholesale places that sell vending machine capsules to put in my very own GUMBALL MACHINE!!  Angie bought it at a yard sale for me…and I now have happiness sitting in the living room of my home!  It needs some improvements and minor repairs but it vends great, and it is all mine!!  I also got the new Thundercats cartoon on DVD, and a large gift card from our best friend…all this almost makes up for the fact that I can’t play my game!

 The day after my birthday my uncle Henry arrives just as I am leaving to have my nails done.  We didn’t expect him until later in the afternoon, that’s when he says that he left St George at 4:30 that morning…and it was just after 9 am.  Once I got over the initial shock of my 75 year old uncle driving from St George to San Jacinto in 5 hours, I realize that he is not as tall as I remember him being.  So for a week there was a lot of gun and car talk in my house…he got along great with Matt, who would stop in to use the facilities, grab an energy drink, and talk guns before heading back to work to finish his charts.  On Saturday we had a party…which meant I had to get up early to make the salad, then rush off to the visiting teaching conference, hang around long enough to do my part and get insulted, then hurry home to find my house full of people.

 The week following this insanity is my husband’s vacation.  I love my husband and I love having him around, but his vacations mean that I don’t get anything done in the house…for an entire week.  Which means; I didn’t clean any room, I didn’t vacuum any floor, I didn’t clean either of the toilets, and the laundry was nothing short of a nightmare!  My husband took me to Legoland for the day on Tuesday, without the children…yay for me!!  We were planning on going to the water park, because it was like 100 degrees here…we get to Carlsbad and it is sprinkling.  Then I realize that I didn’t bring a jacket or pants…so after going on the bionicle ride and eating lunch, we go back to the big store and buy me a jacket.  I didn’t find any Lord of the Rings keychains, but I did get a Wonder Woman one!  On the way home we stopped at Fry’s in San Marcos, and wandered gleefully for an hour.

 One of the purchases we made at Fry’s was a Magic Jack…so we could use our internet connection to dial out because we don’t have a phone line to the house…and this irritates Directv something fierce.  We have older tivo boxes which we love, but Directv has decided in their infinite wisdom to take all the local channels from us, and won’t give them back until we connect the boxes to a phone line.  We buy the Magic Jack thinking this will solve our problem…only to discover that they don’t support satellite boxes calling out to update…we contend that they should put that on the damn packaging, cause now we are out $30!  By the time the day was over my growl was starting to have words and they weren’t nice words.

 We did a variety of things the rest of the week, all the while my growling and irritableness was increasing in direct correlation with the way the upstairs piles of crap were increasing.  Things just kept getting worse and worse and higher and higher until I ended up with a migraine to go with the antibiotics that were making me sick.  When Monday of the following week rolled around I vowed to un-pile the upstairs and make it habitable again…which I have managed to accomplish.

 The following week brought a Doctor change, and its associated headaches, and joy of all joys, my stomach has stopped processing food…yes, all food.  I discover this on Sunday when I throw up everything I have eaten for more than 24 hours and nothing is digested…oh gosh this is fun!  Matt puts me on a liquid diet to get me through until I can see him on Monday, when our insurance company says it is alright.  Mean-while he texts every night to ask if I have thrown up that day.  I have discovered that the worst thing about a liquid diet is that you feel like you are drowning constantly and you are weak and light-headed all the time.  But, I refuse to allow this house to become piled the way it was a couple of weeks ago…so if I don’t do anything else but sit, I will at least get my cleaning done!  I have never been so grateful for the cleaning schedule that I have set up for myself!

 Here I sit at the end of another month, hoping that next month will be better…because even if we have nothing else, we always have hope.  Here’s to hope and the comfort that it can bring.  Because I have no idea how Matt is going to make this better, but in the end it doesn’t matter because I have faith and hope!