Motherhood

Oh my word have we had a week around here. The whining, the crying, the fit throwing have been legendary and Caroline has been even worse.

Nothing like combining a long weekend road trip with a sinus infection and lack of sleep to come up with one bad cocktail. Speaking of which, I could really use one.

Our day started this morning at the most ungodly hour of 5:20 a.m. and I am not kidding when I say that I started crying. Caroline has been such a bear this week that I was hoping for a reprieve until at least 6:30, but no such luck.

So at 5:30, I put her in my bed and spent the next hour listening to her say that she’s thirsty, she needs Ernie, she needs her blanket. These are all things that she would have had access to had she been in her own bed by the way. Finally at 6:30, I turned on Higglytown Heroes and prayed those little Weeble Wobble wannabes would buy me at least another 30 minutes of sleep. Apparently, I was being a huge optimist.

I had agreed to keep Gulley’s boys this morning because she had to take her husband to a doctor’s appointment. Of course I had agreed to this last week when my own child was still a delight to be around the majority of the time and I didn’t have a lingering cold. But that Gulley, she is dependable and showed up bearing donuts, homemade chocolate chip cookies and a gift certificate for a pedicure. For that, I would’ve kept her boys for the whole week or well you know, the day.

Jacks and Will were perfectly pleasant. Will even let me hold him and kiss his little baby fat cheeks which isn’t common for him and just thrilled me.

About mid-morning, Caroline was in full meltdown mode. I sent her to timeout which then caused Will to start crying and then I looked at Jacks and his lip started to tremble as he said, “I just want to go to my house”. And I wanted to say “Yes, please let’s go to your house and leave this crazed, sleep deprived 3 year old here”.

But I didn’t because that would be wrong.

Instead I calmed everybody down and gave them each one of my precious homemade chocolate chip cookies that Gulley brought this morning. I even managed to hold in my rage when I noticed later that one of those cookies had been dropped on the floor with just one bite taken out of it by an unknown perpetrator.

Hopefully we will all get some much needed rest this weekend and life will return to some semblance of normal. I’m hoping this is just the result of Caroline being a tired, sick little girl and not some new personality that is here to stay. She even told me at one point yesterday, “I don’t want God to live in my heart”. I looked at P and said, “Well, congratulations. We’ve raised a 3 year old blasphemer”.

I am in day 3 of being under siege. Caroline has been sick and like all good germ carrying monkeys, she has spread her sore throat and congestion to her mama. There is really nothing less fun than being a mama with a cold.

Remember in the pre-child days when being sick meant getting on the couch with a warm blanket and watching movies all day? Now being sick just means that I have to chase a whining, runny nosed toddler all over the house while my energy level is below half capacity and amazingly in spite of the sickness, she is still running at full steam. She can outwit me, outlast me, and outwhine me.

In fact, she is so desperate to get us out of the house that she is in her room getting herself dressed. She actually just yelled to me that she needs to put her makeup on and I’m so worn down that all I did was walk in her playroom and open a compact of blue eyeshadow for her. I didn’t even say anything about the fact that she has on two pairs of underwear, a sundress, red sparkly shoes with mismatched socks and has completely soaked her hair down with the no-tangles spray.

By the end of the day, we’ll probably be eating pixie sticks, drinking coke straight from the bottle and using my good linens as a tent. She has worn me down.

And did I mention it is pouring down rain so we couldn’t go anywhere even if I was desperate enough to attempt it? I guess I’ll just go ahead and get out my good wedding china for her to play with since it’s only a matter of time at this point anyway.

I have a group of girlfriends that get together once a month for dinner. We call ourselves Birthday Club, even though there are only 6 of us so we’re really only celebrating a birthday 50% of the time. However, we are all mothers of children ages 5 and younger, so we deserve a night of freedom once a month.

We always meet at the same Mexican restaurant because they have round tables, a delightful outdoor patio (which doesn’t seem like much of a draw in July, but in October it’s lovely), and most importantly, some of the best queso you will ever eat. Ever. And I won’t embarrass myself by mentioning that I really wanted to order another bowl of it last night, but in the interest of decorum and my thighs,I practiced some self control.

I love these nights because we laugh and talk about everything under the sun. We can range from the serious discussions of fertility and marital issues to equally serious, but not life defining, subjects such as The Bachelor, Grey’s Anatomy, fashion, and chefs on the Food Network who have lollipop heads because they are so dang skinny. Good times indeed.

We usually don’t talk about our kids that much because 1. we’re there to have a break from being a mama and 2. we all have them, so there is really no novelty. However, last night Stephanie mentioned that she is in the process of trying to potty train her little boy.

It brought a collective groan from the crowd.

The rest of us have already been through this soul-draining debacle at least once and so we are all fully aware of what she is about to deal with on a daily basis. The daily struggle of diapers vs. bodily waste on your floor (always the carpet, never the tile) or perhaps even your couch. The gut wrenching decision to let a 2 1/2 year old have a little bit of power over you in the form of deciding they need to go “RIGHT NOW” even though you have a Racecar Cart full of quickly melting groceries on aisle 12 which is the aisle furthest from any restroom.

Oh sure, there are the mothers who will sit in playgroup and tell you with a straight face that little Fielding was potty trained in one day and has never had a problem. I’ll tell y’all the technique those mothers use. LYING. Feel free to use it, but ultimately it will bring you no closer to your goal of helping your child achieve some modicum of social skills in the form of not peeing on the floor at an upscale baby store.

The other story, which is usually told by your well-meaning mother or mother-in-law, is that you or your husband was potty trained at 16 months. Here’s the secret with that one, someone was potty trained. It was the MOTHER who sat that child on the potty every 15 minutes ALL day long. These mothers also had the benefit of raising children in a time when potty training didn’t have to be about unlimited amounts of Skittles as a reward and you could actually punish someone for wetting the floor or the dog, without being told you were going to cause them to be an incontinent sociopath for the rest of their lives.

Here’s the thing about potty training. It is the great equalizer of motherhood. Whether you taught your child to read in the womb or you let them play with bags of glass, you have very little control over when they will decide to not poop in their pants. Even Gwyneth Paltrow and Catherine Zeta-Jones have urine stains somewhere in their homes. Now granted they probably have a Nanny and some high dollar cleanser to clean it with, but it’s there because they have toddlers who will have to learn to use the bathroom.

The greatest story last night was told by my friend Hillary. Her little boy was having a hard time not having accidents, so her pediatrician recommended making a big reward chart. She went to the store, bought a big calendar and some stickers, and told her little boy that if he could be accident free for a week, he could go to the toy store and pick out a new train. They spent the week crossing off days, putting on star stickers, and finally he made it to the one week mark. She took him to the toy store and he picked out his train. She told him how proud she was of him as she paid for the train and as they were walking out of the store hand in hand, he looked up at her and said “Mama, I just pooped in my pants”.

So she took that train and threw it across the parking lot. No, she didn’t. I’m totally kidding. But I promise she wanted to, because I have been there. There is nothing as humbling as a toddler with a little bit of power.

Two pieces of parental wisdom that I have shared with Caroline this week:

1. She came out of her playroom with her toy gun and said “Mama, I’m shooting you” and I said “Oh no sweetie, we don’t shoot people. We just shoot things like birds and dogs.” Um, yeah…that’s what I said. P. said it might be one of the most redneck sounding life lessons he’s ever heard.

Before you report me to the Humane Society or CPS, please know that I was really tired and in my mind I was thinking birds such as quail or dove because her daddy is a hunter. As for dogs…I don’t know where that came from, but I made sure I told her later that you don’t shoot dogs. We love dogs, we have two and I don’t want them shot.

2. After bathtime she was dawdling around and I said “Get over here and let’s get your pajamas on!” She said, “but Mama, I have the toots.” I’m sure my reply is one that Emily Post completely left out,”Well you can walk and toot at the same time.” Isn’t motherhood really about teaching them important skills to help them through life?.