Bathtime Conversation

--Mom, remember when I was zero years old, and I was in your tummy?

--Yes, I remember that.

--How did I get out?

--The doctors took you out.

--How did they take me out?

--Well. Actually. They. Had to. Cut? You out? Of my stomach.

--Oh.

--Yeah.

--How did they fix your stomach?

--They just sewed me back up after you came out.

--What do you mean? With string?

--Yeah. Special string called stitches.

--Huh. Was I wearing anything when I was born?

--Nope. We aren't born wearing any clothes, just our skin.

--Oh! I thought I was wearing some clothes with hens on them.

--Hens? Why? Did you see a baby outfit with hens on it in a picture?

--NO! I just imaginated it.

The cuteness is killing me...or maybe it's the sleep deprivation.

The kids were up by 5:40 this morning. Both of them. But for once, people, I'm not going to write about how taxing and desperately frustrating it is to feel like all you can physically do is roll over in bed when your kids are forcing you to be responsible and accept the fact that they're awake and there's nothing you can do about it. Weeee! Is it the fatigue weighing down my brain? Or is the following list of morning events overshadowing my instinctual desire to feel frustrated about it?

1.) I woke up to Quinn's voice over the monitor reciting lines from a movie where a huge, deep-voiced monster says in that slow motion, old fashioned damaged record kind of way, "Hhheeeyyy jjuunniioorr, aa lliittlle ffibb never hurt annnyyybboddy, rrrriiiggghhhttt?" followed by his attempt at a scary laugh: "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!"

2.) When I went to get him up (while chuckling), to keep him from waking Bryce, I had to sneak through Bryce's room, but when my socked, tip-toeing feet touched Bryce's thickly carpeted non-creaking floor, his super-sonic hearing woke him up. He followed me to Quinn's door: "Mom??" I steeled myself for the onslaught of demands and frustration that he usually throws at me when he wakes up too early, but instead, he gently hugged my leg and said, "I'm so sorry that I woke up crying last night. It's just that it was dark and I was scared." I remembered the 1:30 a.m. meltdown and my multiple trips to his room to convince him to stay in his bed, and my overt irritation with that. I pulled him to me and thanked him for his apology, told him I understood, and then headed to Quinn's room, hoping Bryce would go back to sleep.

3.) When I walked up to Quinn's crib to get him out, I whispered, "you have to be quiet becuase Bryce is sleeping, okay?" He was sitting in the middle of his crib, and he looked up at me with so much maturity and understanding oozing out of his little baby face and nodded his head at my request. The cuteness! Then I took him to the changing table to change his diaper, with him whispering at me the whole way across the room, "I have to be quiet? Bryce is sleeping? That's my tent on the floor?" When I placed him on the table, he did this hilarious thing he's been doing every time we change him, every time he watches TV, basically every time he's lying on his back: he crossed his hands behind his head, elbows out, like he was kicking back in a hammock with a beer! I can't adequately describe how cute it is to see his stubby, chubby toddler arms folded behind his head as he looks around with this, "so...got any chips?" expression.

4.) Bryce didn't go back to sleep, so I turned on all the lights and asked the kids if they wanted to stay upstairs and play for a while, thinking they would do what they normally do, and insist on following us around all morning shouting demands for trips to the fair and a million dollars, but no! They wanted to play in their rooms! More specifically, Quinn wanted to read all of his books, and Bryce wanted to play with one of the hundreds of rainbow-colored plastic toy sets stashed in his closet.

Sometimes even the ingredients for the worst case scenarios can't kill the cuteness.



Against all odds, they played quietly for 15 minutes. FIFTEEN MINUTES! Long enough for me to upload pictures and start writing this post. The utopian feel has left the house now (something to do with Bryce demanding that Quinn let him have more marbles, and Quinn screaming "GO AWAY!" and also a recent meltdown about not wanting to eat breakfast after demanding breakast, but who's keeping track?), but I made sure to document it as it was happening, you know, to prove to the world that I do more than yell at my kids -- at least when I'm sleep-deprived and drowning in cuteness, anyway. When I have energy and they're just doing normal, boring old kid stuff, then I'm a real slave-driver.

Switch!

In a random and quick thinking attempt on my part to mediate an argument between Bryce & Quinn on who would get to play with a paperclip one of them found on my office floor, I casually (but in that firm dad voice that everyone in the household laughs at and ridicules respects) told them that one could play with it first, and when I said “switch” the other one would get to play with it.

After a couple of minutes I said “switch” and Quinn immediately gave the paperclip up to Bryce. A few minutes later, another “switch” and back it went to Quinn without any objections. Chuckling to myself at my ingenuity, I thought I had found a way to easily diffuse disagreements on who gets to play with whatever object is being argued about. And it worked! Every time I tried it!

Little did I know at the time how this would boomerang back in my face. The basic rule of law on the Fringe is that the things we like to do are privileges. Bedtime stories, watching Larry Boy videos, chocolate milk for snack, music at bedtime: all privileges. And when we don’t act within the guidelines of appropriate behavior, privileges are taken away. Well, it seems the rule of law can be altered and negated with a " switch ."

Observe:
Bath time. Two kids in the tub. One splash, then another, then a tidal wave of laughter and water causing mom to get soaked despite several vein bulging screams clear and calm warnings that tonight's privileges of bedtime stories are about to be taken away. The behavior continues, the priveleges are removed. Fast forward past drying off, teeth brushing, greasing down (Quinn has very dry skin), powdering up (where does all that pee come from?) and getting into jammies. Quinn is taken off the changing table, runs to his spot on the couch, picks up a book and says “Switch ! Now I can have stories!”

Ahh, if only this would apply in big people’s lives: Switch! I don’t have to pay bills this month! Switch! No ticket for me, officer! Switch! Last year’s gas prices!

How Quickly We Forget

This is the first weekend in several weeks that John hasn't been away for a wedding, and it will be the last one for a while, too. "Let's do something fun with the kids," we said as we realized earlier this week (um, Friday morning) that we'd have an entire Saturday to while away as we pleased. What could we do? We knew we'd take them to the zoo: since we have a membership and don't use it nearly enough, our fiscal guilt sets in on the four weekends a year that our schedules open up enough for it. But that would only take a couple of hours. How else could we expand our children's minds, open up their world views, mold their delicate, impressionable intellects?

Errands, of course. We'd make it fun, we'd make it something we'd be doing together! Anything can be fulfilling if we're interacting with the loving acceptance only a family can offer; this, this is what we'd use to teach our progenies with the precious gift of our time on an open Saturday. We needed shoes and shirts for Bryce, so we loaded up the double stroller, checked our sanity at the door, and headed for the mall. Now, we are logical, observant people. We'd like to think we don't live in some sort of fantasy land wherein our kids are angelic, pliable companions; we knew from past experience that taking our particular children to a place like The Mall with all the Crowds And Noise and the Lower Chance For Consequence Due To The Public Nature Of The Outing, gave us about a 50/50 chance for success (which for us is correlated directly with our blood pressure: low to normal range = successful; high to heart attack range accompanied by bulging eyeballs = the kids win, once again). Hmm, I just said we were logical, and then admitted that with our knowledge base, we still voluntarily took this trip. So, you be the judge.

I don't know what the hell has flipped Bryce's switch, but as John put it tonight after arriving home from a brief appointment, having missed the Mom's-In-Our-Clutches-Now-Dinner-Bath-Evening-From-Hell freak show I so wish I had recorded - you know, for evidence when the guys in white coats are trying to figure out exactly when I contracted Stark Raving Mad Disease - "Bryce was really on his game this weekend, wasn't he?" The kid was like a hyped up version of that old Mike Meyers SNL character, The Hyper Hypo, only Bryce was more like The Really Mischievous Hyper Hypo, constantly looking for situations in which a maniacal laugh would be appropriate. And holy hell, did he find them. Every time we walked out of the room and left him alone with Quinn for two minutes, we'd immediately hear Quinn protesting about something, and then hear Bryce literally laughing like an evil scientist, and he's perfected this laugh such that he uses every last molecule of oxygen saved up in his lungs, the capacity of which is starting to frighten me, and it sounds alarmingly...I don't know...accurate? Evil? Somehow not unnatural? Imagine the combination of a growl, several long "ah" sounds punctuated with sharp, breathless breaks, several decibel levels above Keep Your Hearing Through Adulthood. Imagine this silence-shattering sound coming from a 32-pound lanky four-year-old, and all of the physical exertion this forceful act of aggression must take: his muscles taut, his arms victoriously shaking above him in the air, his face purple, the space around his eyes clenching with all available force to keep his eyeballs from popping directly out of their sockets, the skin around his chest stretching to bursting point with the full lungs housed beneath providing all of that astounding, formidable noise.

But back to our fateful trip to The Mall. I think I've painted a clear picture of what volatile compounds we took into a public place with hundreds of other innocent victims simply trying to purchase items they'd wanted for days, weeks, or months. Bryce's growly evil emporer laugh surrounding us as we ducked our heads, avoiding the gaze of the Normal Families With Kids Who Don't Hold Their Parents Hostage, we still stupidly thought we could manage to spend more than five seconds in a store picking out a few decent shirts for the kid. Uh, no. The double stroller is really meant for two kids who are young enough that they haven't yet discovered how much joy life brings when you taunt your sibling. They took turns grabbing each other's hair, popping each other's foreheads and giggling uncontrollably when I would hiss at them for the 12th time in two minutes, "STOPITNOWORYOU'RE LOSING YOUR PRIVELEGES!" Here was their unspoken response: "Priveleges?? Who cares about that? So we lose a couple of bedtime stories or some chocolate milk - it's worth it, let's pull each other's hair again, that was SO MUCH FUN! Geez, did you see the color of mom's face when her head was spinning around and her fangs were snapping? Wow." We snatched two shirts from Baby Gap and I threw them at John while I stormed out of the store with the kids. Well, it wasn't so much the dramatic "storm" I'd hoped for, because The Gap really likes to put all manner of tables and shelves right in the middle of the walkways, and the 80-pound stroller I was pushing with two bouncing kids throwing off my already awkward trajectory kind of put a damper on the effect. I paid for it when we got out of the store, too, because I parked the stroller next to the shiny, clean glass walls lining the store, and the kids, in response to my asking them if they were babies because of their ludicrous behavior in the store, said that yes, they were, and proceeded to slap the glass with their sticky palms and say "ga ga goo ga" over and over, while I pretended their sarcastic victory hadn't pushed me right over the edge of sanity for the day. John joined me a few minutes later and said, "let's check The Children's Place now" and beneath the calm smiling surface I saw that he was just waiting for me to say what we both knew to be the best decision: "Let's just leave." He stopped mid-stroll, incredulous, rebellious even: "No! I will not let them win. We're going to finish what we came here for." I looked down at the blonde blurs of fury and hyperactivity in the stroller beneath me, and visualized the next 40 minutes of mind-numbing horror we would experience in our pointless quest. "John," I said, "it's over. They've already won. Look at us, we look like we've been in a war zone." His face fell. I'd been his last bastion of hope; my pretense of happy survival and ultimate success gone, he couldn't carry it alone. Tragic, really.

We went home, but not before stopping off at Chili's for some of these. That's why the kids are still alive and well today (although Quinn almost didn't make out of the restaurant with all of his limbs intact; helicopter arms + fork + John's head = disaster). I'm sure in a few weeks we'll make this attempt again. Idiots. That's what we are.

Even the animals ridicule us.

We took the kids to the zoo today. Even though it snowed two days ago, we saw lots and lots of these buds:

And also some of these:

The kids enjoyed themselves, despite the fact that Quinn spent the entire trip there telling us how afraid he was of elephants, and how he refused, REFUSED BY GOD, to look at them. As we pulled into the parking lot, Bryce said, "you know what I want to see first? The elephants." Yeah. Manipulative much?

For the record, even though Bryce is destined to be the ruler of a small (hopefully sparsely populated) planet, we did not succumb to his cruel demands. We forced him to see all manner of other boring animals first, like these:

And these:

Then we came across the tortoises, which were being kept in the climate-controlled fake beach since it was too cool outside for them today. The kids got a better view of the bronze tortoise statue in front of the exhibit, but Bryce was disgusted by the single splat of bird poop on its shell, so the experience was kind of ruined for everyone, as you can see by the critical expressions and Quinn's - what? fear? curiosity?

After that, something strange started happening. Was it some sort of metaphysical phenomena wherein all of the creatures within the city zoo felt a simultaneous connection to their observers, and in one magical hour learned universal communication skills transcending all genetic, geographic, and cultural barriers? I don't know, but Quinn was involved somehow:

I mean, WHAT is with the tongues, creatures? Quinn, what are you telling them? There will be no gibbon escapes from this zoo, young man. Not on my watch.

Uninspired

The blank post page mocks me as I stare at the dust particles clouding the brightness of my screen, thinking to myself, why bother? Another post about the quirky freaks that make up this family? How much can people -- can I -- take? This isn't a real blog anyway, so where's the pressure? We have no regular installment posts, no unique series forcing a steady stream of creativity. We still use the basic, free blogger template with a simple banner across the top - no fancy graphics, no daily links or flickr photos blinking in the sidebars.

I wonder as I stew in my usual vat of worry, frustration, fatigue, and -- what else, what else? oh, who cares -- if my demotivated, numb attitude has something to do with the fact that, along with a delayed stress reaction to a seventh new job in seven years and the resulting lack of a comfortable daily routine, extremely conspicuous braces that still make me cringe at my own reflection even two months later, and the disturbing extra layers of fat my stress seems to have deposited suddenly around my middle, I'm sleep-deprived in a way that I haven't been since my children were infants. Sleep-deprived because my dog has joined the ranks of the die-hard Expert Sleep Deprivers Who Love To Deprive Us Of Sleep With The Sleep Deprivation (also known as the Ranks Of Bryce). I realize as this thought crosses my mind that if we were real bloggers, some measley sleep deprivation would mean nothing to us: HA! We laugh in the face of sleep deprivation! Sleep is a luxury we can't afford what with all the real blogging we have to do! Those weaklings who insist on sleep don't deserve to have blogs anyway! Wimps.

Hmm, yes. Yes. This might be a viable explanation. The jingling, jingling, jingling of the dog's collar right next to my head at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 a.m. My concession to stumble out of bed and let him into the back yard to dart around aimlessly sniffing, searching always for the perfect place to deposit an apparently stubborn undigested collection of band-aid wrappers, paper towels, and used kleenex. I think back to my half-asleep anger bubbling slowly to the surface as I stand for the third time in a night, arms crossed, face stern, eyes squinting into the pitch black cold space of my back yard as I wait for this stupid, stupid animal to get back inside. Anger because if I close the door and leave him out there, he will wake us within 20 minutes with the force of his 70-pound body slamming against the sliding glass door in protest of the injustice of being abandoned in his own huge back yard, the one he woke me up three times to get into, woke me with his creepy unwavering dog stare into my sleeping face and his jingling, jingling, jingling collar and his pantpantpantpanting warm dog breath: let me out. let me out. let me out. I think to myself in awe that I spent more time dealing with this high-maintenance epileptic dog in the middle of the night than I did dealing with my own issue-ridden flesh and blood, who was also waking us with random, unexplainable demands throughout the night: his room lamp had been turned off and therefore when he stirred at 1:15 a.m., his bedroom, the one he SLEEPS IN, was dimmer than his standards require - his standards being that any room he enters maintain the BRIGHTNESS OF SUN-SHINY DAYLIGHT 24 hours a day.

And then I think, oh look. Another post about the freaks that make up this household.

Tortured Soul(s)

Bryce has been in an increasingly disturbing phase at bedtime. I don't know what brought it on, and with Bryce there is simply no way to know. The smallest change in his environment can send him into a tailspin, and he brings me along for the scary, difficult ride. I normally blame any stalling and bedtime intensity on his being overtired, since he rarely naps, wakes up early, and doesn't stop moving all day. But today, he did have a nap. My next assumption would normally be hunger, since he hardly eats anything, despite (or because of) our ridiculous catering to his pickiness. But tonight, he ate a big dinner, dessert, and then more dinner.

John is away at a wedding, and Bryce hasn't seen him all day. As bedtime approached, Bryce started whining and asking when John would be home. He is used to the situation, so I told him his dad was working and that he'd see him in the morning. I asked him to wait for me on his bed while I put Quinn down, but the tears that had been building up behind his lids hit the corners of his eyes: "But I'm scared to be by myself!" In an attempt to avoid the argument, I told him he could stand quietly by the chair while I sang Quinn's songs (if I don't specify, he runs around the room laughing, which doesn't exactly lend itself to getting Quinn into his crib successfully). For some still unknown reason, I started to bust a gut during Quinn's first song. Bryce was just standing at my elbow holding his blanket, looking straight ahead like some sort of bedtime soldier, and I think the absurdity of it just got to me. He chuckled when I did, but he thought he would be in trouble for not staying quiet, and said, "I don't want to wait in my bed!" I ruffled the top of his head and told him he was doing fine, that I'd thought it was funny to have him standing there so still and serious while I sang...he didn't reply. I started singing the next song, and Quinn started to laugh, which made me laugh. I looked over at Bryce in the dark, and he was still standing there like a nervous sentry. I poked him and he gave a tentative giggle, which I thought was strange. But I continued. This time, on Quinn's last song, Quinn's soft head shaking with the baby laughs emanating from his little chest was too much, and we both gave in to gales of laughter. Bryce looked straight ahead and cried out, giving in to the (apparent) pain that had been weighing him down; I was shocked, and stopped immediately: "What's wrong??!" He replied, through genuine tears, "I just don't like it when you guys laugh at meeeee!"

OH. GOD. My kid thought his mom and younger brother were ridiculing him. In the dark, while he was scared. For doing what I TOLD HIM TO DO. I apologized profusely, and told him we were laughing because sometimes we just do that during the songs, and I really can't explain why (which is true) - not because of him. Tears. Streaming. Down. His face. He said, "Oh. Well, I just didn't know that [sniff, more tears]."

He never recovered after that. He stopped crying, and seemed okay, but after Quinn was in bed, I gave Bryce his water and started arranging his covers, and the stalling started. He was afraid of monsters (I told them to leave), he was hungry (I wouldn't let him get up to eat), he was thirsty (I conceded to more water), he was sick and had to "spit up" (I let him go to the bathroom, he "forgot to spit up" and we did it all over again, at which point he stood over the toilet as if he were going to be sick, then said, "I think I'll need to try again in the morning"), he didn't like his bed (I made him stay in it), he wanted John (I promised to send John in to his room when he got home), his "body kept waking him up." And this went on for an hour, with him crying and yelling from his bed, me threatening to take away Noir if he got out of bed one more time, me closing his door and getting halfway down the stairs, then hearing his crying, yet also adult-like tone when he'd say, "oh no, not again, not again" followed by his door opening and more crying, a new, awful reason he couldn't go to sleep or stay in his bed for even two peaceful minutes.

I have no idea what to do after four or five successfully patient warnings and concessions with this kid. My blood pressure goes up, I feel anger and resentment, I see him as manipulative and demanding and high maintenance, rather than scared and lonely and four years old. Our final interaction was terrible, and exactly the type of interaction I wouldn't want immediately preceding his going to sleep. And for the hour following that last impatient hiss from me and the last frustrated, desperate sob as he put himself back to bed (I'd told him I wasn't coming back to his room anymore tonight), I felt lonely, scared, and intensely frustrated - much like I assume Bryce felt tonight, for whatever reason. I suppose if someone from a different walk in life, with different motivations and more knowledge and history, were refusing to listen to me as I tried desperately to explain these feelings to them, and were tuning me out and repeating themselves in a frustrated, impatient voice ("this conversation is over. i've already answered your question. get back in your bed. this conversation is over."), I'd be screaming and crying and making up new excuses to try to get through to them, too.

Maybe one of these days I'll figure out what the hell I'm doing. Hopefully it will be soon enough that the kid will actually benefit from that knowledge.

I better hurry up and say this before Blogger dies again.

Last night John and I had about two hours from the time we dropped the kids off with my mom to the time he had an appointment with a client, and even though we weren't actually hungry, we decided to use that time to go eat in a restaurant without kids. Because we could. We'd had a big lunch, so we opted for the Olive Garden's light minestrone and salad. When our restaurant beeper went off after our 10-minute wait, we were taken to our table. As we walked through the din of clanging forks and plates, passing through small room after small room full of moveable tables with wheeled cloth-covered chairs, the sense of confusion that I always get at the Olive Garden came back. We sat down and ordered, and I looked up at the wall behind John, which had a huge air-conditioning control panel right in the center. Slightly above that, and just to the right, was a decorative plate that would have been too small for the wall even without the monstrous control panel distracting from it. I pointed it out to John and we chuckled over how randomly placed the plate was, and how the panel should have been somewhere less obvious, and then John said something that explained it all - the vague sense of confusion I've had all this time during the two or three visits per year to the Olive Garden, the unexplainable resistance I've had to buying more than the occasional quick lunch there, the underlying but until now unadmitted snobbery I feel toward this chain - and he said it with such effortlessness, as if he'd been privy to such wisdom his whole life, and was only now choosing to share it with me, as I'd finally proven myself capable of accepting it: "The Olive Garden is just so cafeteria-ish."

Suddenly it all made sense: the folding tray tables set up everywhere, the unsightly black support rails lining both sides of every hallway, the carpeted floors, the rolling chairs and tables, the mediocre food quality FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! It had been so obvious! How had I not seen it before?! In all his wisdom, John calmly looked on as I came to terms with the shocking truth: the restaurant beeper, the waiting for a table, the server bringing the food directly to the table, the availability of wine - it was all just a ploy to distract from the real truth! The Olive Garden is a cafeteria! They distract us with these inconsistencies to keep us from questioning why we would spend $8.00 on cafeteria soup. I told John it was all so mind-blowing, a revelation I'd never expected: "How has the Olive Garden convinced the public that they're some kind of nice restaurant chain?!"

He looked at me with amusement and ridicule. "Uh. They haven't. I don't really think anybody views the Olive Garden as a fancy restaurant, Kristen."

OH. Right. Nevermind, then.

To my previous employer's medical flex account third party administrator:

What exactly do you have to DO to become a third party administrator? I'm guessing you rented a shack somewhere near Wausau, Wisconsin, slapped a hand-painted sign on your door, incorporated, and voila! You became a third party administrator. Shortly after that, you had to learn what third party administrators actually do. (Say this in the voice of Rex the dinosaur from Toy Story when he's asking Buzz, "But Mr. Lightyear, what do space rangers actually do?" with the whole high pitch at the end there - that's what I'm going for.) Gosh, you discovered that third party administrators have to talk to BOTH the company whose business they dubiously win AND that company's high-maintenance, whiny employees. Sheesh, this was going to be more work than you expected. And, wait! You have to keep track of people's accounts, too?! Oh for the love of god! Why is it so complicated? Why did you get involved in this line of work in the first place?

Oh, right. The money. It's so convenient, isn't it, random third party administrator? Once you get through all those pesky proposals and presentations, and your huge company clients have picked you to oversee their employees' vast flexible spending accounts, you can watch the money roll in, glance half-heartedly at employee claims as they come in, make sure they don't say anything outrageously fraudulent, like "eye exam and new contacts: one MEEEELLION dollars!" and send the check out. Double checking the employee's account? Who needs to bother? The company sent the money in, and you're getting paid a hefty fee to worry about the administration for them, so you might as well just let those overpaid executives golf in peace assuming your professional expertise is in complete control of this whole "money thing" while you IM your boyfriend and file your fire engine red tap-tap claw-nails.

When you get a call from a previous employee, though, who is telling you that she's trying to be honest, and that someone has made a mistake and continued sending money to her account as if her paycheck is still being deducted, even though she no longer gets a paycheck from that employer, you should really perk up and take note. The proper, and profitable (money! we like money!) answer here is, "Oh, you want us to send you less money than we're willing to? OKAY! That sounds nice and legal!" The proper and profitable answer IS NOT you telling this previous employee, through bored smacks of your bubble gum, no less, that even though you realize she hasn't contributed the money, you're authorized to go ahead and send it to her anyway. Maybe they didn't cover this in your training, possibly because you're still in 8th grade, but that is called "fraud" and it is - say it with me - ILLEGAL. Yes, that's right. Veeerrry good. Illegal. Illegal is bad. We don't want to do illegal things. Illegal will land us in jail, where they don't have fire engine red nail polish. Only candy apple red. The horror.

Repeat after me, third party administrator girl who answers the phone and who probably created this bogus company in her parents' basement at 4 a.m. when she was sick of prank calling her algebra teacher: Illegal is BAD. More money is GOOD. When honest people call, take advantage of them and assume they're trying to keep both of you out of trouble.

A Birthday Letter for The Mighty Quinn

Dear Quinn,

I’ve never written you a birthday letter before, and for that I am sorry. You can add it to the list of things I envisioned doing as your mother, but never accomplished due to this pesky old life of ours getting in the way. Instead of an ornately adorned, highly organized baby scrapbook complete with documented first and second year milestones, you have an envelope they gave me at the hospital full of the major newborn memorabilia – our hospital bracelets, some pictures, your newborn footprints – stashed somewhere at the top of my closet.

When I found out I was pregnant with you when your brother was 10 months old, I was shocked and excited. It took us so long to have Bryce that we didn’t know if we’d be having any more kids at all, and getting pregnant so soon wasn’t even on our radar screen – you were a big bonus. As the pregnancy progressed, I began to worry, like many mothers pregnant with second children, about how I would relate to another child. What would I do if both kids were crying at the same time? Would it betray a subconscious preference if I went to one over the other? Would I feel resentment toward you if you were a demanding, intense baby when I already had one intense toddler to care for? How would this affect my relationship with your brother? Was I even logistically capable of taking care of two kids under the age of two years BY MYSELF all day long?

When you were born, you laid all those fears to rest. I didn’t really have to address the concern of both kids crying at the same time, because the only time you cried was when your silent reflux woke you up from naps, and all I had to do was take you out of your crib and put you in a bouncy seat on the kitchen table while I worked on your brother’s next meal, cleaned something, filled out unemployment verifications, worked on photography stuff for your dad, or applied for jobs online. You were perfectly content to sit and watch and coo, and you flashed your simultaneously dazzling and patient smile at me every time I managed to remember that I had a baby and look in your direction.

I went back to work when you were eight months old, and it was the hardest time of my life. I had never planned to stay home with my kids because of our financial situation, but it really sucked the comfort and ease out of my days to leave your patient company after becoming accustomed to having you with me everywhere I went for eight months. For you, though, it was no big deal. There was no adjustment period at all. Who’s taking care of me today? Mom? Dad? The Cashier from Wal-Mart? It’s all good.

You didn’t really walk or talk until you were over 15 months old, and your pediatrician was concerned at your 18-month appointment. We had some people come to evaluate you, but by the time that happened, you decided to make fools out of all of us and pass their crazy tests with flying colors – actually exceed their age expectations in many areas. It was at that point that your dad and I realized you were a lot more complex than we’d given you credit for. I think you realized this at the same time, because this was also the time period that you discovered how well you could manipulate us with your magical powers. Tantrums, whining, cuteness, humor – you could wield all of them effortlessly, and it was so sudden! That was your best trick, really. Saving that all up to ambush us when we were least expecting it. Kudos to you, Quinn. You got us.

In the past year, you’ve also learned how to manipulate Bryce. And that, my son, is quite a feat. You keep him honest, and you shake up his structured view of the world, which is good for him, I think. I can’t tell you how many times you’ve caused your dad and I to risk tear duct infection by forcing ourselves to hold back tears of intense, inappropriate laughter when you have pulled Bryce’s own exploits on him. In the car coming home from dinner the other night, you had a toy that Bryce wanted, and he was really furious that you wouldn’t give it to him. He was pontificating angrily, shaking his head, trying desperately to get you in trouble. During his loud dissertation, he looked away from you momentarily, and when he did, you held out the toy he wanted, just within his reach. As Bryce turned his head back towards you, his speech stopped dead in its tracks and his expression changed to one of victory. He reached out to take the toy right as you pulled it back into your lap. Bryce was incensed! The sermon began anew, this time with more vigor and passion. You sat still, your face calm and mature (I can only assume the way you see MY face when I am so appropriately disciplining you, which I obviously do very, very often and well), and you said to him, in the even, disappointed tone that I would use if I were telling a friend I couldn’t go to lunch with her, “Too bad, Bryce. You had your chance. Sorry. Too bad, Bryce.” Quinn, that was riotously, hilariously funny. But you can never do it again, because we almost had a wreck; you can’t drive when laughing hysterically and simultaneously hiding it from your children.

You’ve added an element of surprise, color, and fun to our lives. Every time we think we know you, you pull another trick out of your hat. What hasn’t changed through all of the surprises is how full of contentment and wonder you are. I love your question mark talking and the way you pronounce sandwich “saynerch” (which developed from “weenerch”) and Froot Loops “flip lips” and french fries “bench fries” (why the FR sound on fries and not french?) and the letter W “duvayou”and how every single time you get out of the bathtub, you run naked down the hall to Bryce’s bed to hide under the covers simply because I ask you to wait until your pajamas are on to do so (annoying, yet somehow also cute). I love that when you’re concentrating while listening to a story, your feet move in small circles while your toes each individually wiggle, as if your feet are thinking, too. And secretly, I love that you’re not potty trained yet, because I think I’m in denial about the fact that you have to grow up eventually, and this is going to be one of the major steps to get you there. You’re not ready yet, and maybe I’m not either.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Q. I love you.

Love, Mom

Even Quinn the Eskimo wouldn't put up with this.

I said to John last night, "I don't know why I'm surprised. I mean, we had a homeless person attend our engagement party." (True story: John's mom met a homeless woman on her way to our engagement party, and brought her - her name was Regina, we have pictures, and I guarantee you my mother-in-law has had no contact with her since that very public display of Good Samaritanism. How convenient.) I think it's great that John's family can be "open" and "welcoming" when they first meet people, and while I admire the fact that my sister-in-law has the patience to cart other people's children around with her every weekend (her ulterior motive is that these other children entertain her own so that she doesn't have to, so really, I guess I don't admire that habit so much as accept that it's just who she is), I do have a problem with both of them just showing up to a family function, a three-year-old's birthday celebration, with people our family, and most importantly, the kid being celebrated, doesn't even know. Maybe that makes me, I don't know, an anti-social bitch? But I don't really care. That's how I feel about it. Both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law brought an additional person with them yesterday, as if they were merely stopping by their grandson's/nephew's birthday party on their way to their REAL weekend events, like shopping, or going to the park with friends.

Luckily Quinn is a go-with-the-flow kind of kid, and he wouldn't have cared if the entire population from my mother-in-law's retirement community showed up. He was more interested in presents, cake, and several mad dashes around the house with four other kids. None of the chaos could really last too long, what with the pile of presents Quinn had to open. And he made sure to remind us all that they were there. Every two minutes. Um, everyone? Presents? Remember we need to leave time for me to open them all. Thank goodness Bryce was around to help Quinn get through the pile. Quinn never could have managed without him. What a considerate older brother (the cousins were really helpful, too).


The cake was cool, but Quinn hates sweet things. He wanted so much to eat the cake that everyone else was enjoying that he forced a few bites down. When John asked everyone if the cake was good, the whole room full of kids yelled, "yeah!!" and Quinn just looked at John with this disappointed glance and shook his head and said, "No. I don't like cake."



Here he is contemplating whether or not he's going to cave to peer pressure:

Luckily, we had cheesy chex mix for him. I think Quinn ate the whole bag; see how much happier he is with salty snacks?


Quinn's party was a smashing success. And when I say "smashing," I'm referring to the activities all the kids engaged in when a few of them managed to sneak upstairs unsupervised and destroy within mere minutes what had taken me all morning to clean. And also to the moment when the older kids (one of whom I, and my kids, didn't know) were playing some sort of elementary school form of "chicken" on the stairs, and my three-year-old happened to get in their way, and come flying down several steps, his head hitting the tile floor at the bottom. Yeah, that was a nice birthday gift for him. And let's not forget the time when those same older kids convinced Bryce to play "crack the whip" with them in the front yard, putting Bryce, the lightest, youngest, and least coordinated kid on the end, ultimately launching him across the yard and scraping his arm within 10 seconds of starting. Very nice.

Next year, maybe have the party in a padded room? And just go ahead and put "bring whoever the hell you run into on your way over" on the invitation? It might alleviate some of my frustration to just go into it expecting that my kids will be accosted by strangers at their own birthday parties. Maybe I could also outfit them in armor and tell them it's a costume party.

Wish us luck. Lots of it.

We're having Quinn's birthday party today. I only invited family, but that means my sister in law and her kids will be here. They say invite one kid per year of the birthday kid's age. There are three cousins, Quinn's turning 3, so clearly I'm not obligated to invite other young children. Besides, my sister-in-law is notorious for bringing along other random kids without notice, so we may end up with 10 or 12 extras.

Yesterday she was coming by to pick up Hannah to babysit. When she got here an hour and a half late, as we were trying to get Quinn to eat so we could bathe him and put him to bed, thus ending the cacophony of pre-school fighting John had endured for the past four hours (I was at work for most of it, lucky me) and preserving some semblance of our sanity, she came into the house with a lot more kids than I was expecting. Five, to be exact. That's right. Five. One, two, three, four, five. Plus our two. All under the age of 7. So much for Quinn eating his dinner. They all clamored upstairs as my sister-in-law sat down calmly at our kitchen table, as if it were tea time and the nanny we keep upstairs for such occasions would obviously be taking over with all SEVEN children. By the time we got all seven kids outside, the two youngest ones refused to get into the van, then Bryce and Quinn made a game out of it and tried to sneak past us to go along for the ride - they probably figured with all those kids, their aunt wouldn't notice an extra head or two. (They're right. She wouldn't.) By the time she finally pulled away, it was time for Quinn to go to bed, but wait! He hadn't eaten dinner yet! Or had a bath! Or thrown three more tantrums from sheer fatigue and over-stimulation!

This morning the kids both woke up early. I managed to get the house clean despite their coming behind me and jumping on the beds I made and dumping out the toy bins I'd filled, but now I'm thinking, why? She's probably going to show up here with another chaotic flock of strange children running through my house and picking everything up and throwing it across the room for pleasure (not that my kids don't do this...I'm just saying it might be harder to keep up with seven of them doing it at once, as opposed to the two I so efficiently control). Bryce and Quinn are napping now, storing up their energy for the onslaught of noise, running, throwing, and growling that will undoubtedly make up their afternoon. All this will be fueled by cake provided by yours truly. So, I'm just asking for it.

Well, at least Quinn's party will live up to his months-long expectations. He's been imagining a circus, an entertainment extravaganza. It'll be a circus, alright. I'll be playing the part of the Crazy Lady in a Cage, complete with involuntary facial twitches and unkempt hair. I'm not kidding.

Irritable

My One and Only Remark on the "Mommy Wars"
Just writing that title made me throw up in my mouth a little. This debate has always bugged me, because I feel like there is nothing left to debate. You have the "traditional" view where mom should stay home with the kids and has no "choice" in her life and "careers" are for bacon-winning fathers or prostitutes. You have the feminist movement followed by choices for everyone! followed by acceptance for moms with real life "careers" and a generation of latchkey kids. You have remorse and guilt for some moms, followed by a new wave of moms with working partners staying home "by choice," and also dads staying home "by choice". You have Linda Hirschman telling the moms (but not the dads, see) who choose to stay home that they aren't really making a choice because their choice isn't her choice, and you have a bunch of pissed off stay-at-home moms defending their legitimately difficult jobs, and a bunch of working moms who could stay home but don't, but who also don't want to be associated with Hirschman's illogical argument for feminism that is actually the antithesis of feminism, either. I don't identify or align myself with any of these arguments because I've literally been in EVERY. SINGLE. SCENARIO. POSSIBLE. Working out of the house, staying home with the kids, both parents working, dad staying at home while I work... And the thing about it is this, as Susan has pointed out much more coherently before: It's all profoundly exhausting and frustrating and confusing and amazing. Parenting is hard. Kids aren't predictable and they bring tension and challenge into a marriage or partnership. Working for money sucks, and no one I know is independently wealthy, so the way I see it is this: why don't we all do what we need to do to let our families survive and be as content as possible in this culture that by its very nature is non-conducive to contentment? Why all the debate? I don't so much feel like analyzing and over-analyzing the "choices" here. Seeing as how regardless of what any of us do, for 99% of the people in these discussions, at least ONE of the two parents will be working outside the home (or spending time in their home not parenting while running a home business) to bring in money, and the parenting, mixed with the relationship between parents, mixed with coordinating all that money-earning, mixed with, you know, THE KIDS, is a lot to deal with. We all have to make some less than ideal decisions. We pick the ones we're most willing to accept and hope the universe doesn't laugh maniacally and make voodoo dolls out of us. The end. This is all the half-thought-through content I can muster on what to me is a very annoying circular argument.

I stopped nursing him too soon, didn't I?
Quinn still hates me. Despite the fact that I spent an entire weekend with him, took him shopping with my sister-in-law (which meant that in the two seconds I turned my back, she let him have her son's pre-chewed bubble gum even after I told her I don't give MY not-quite-three-year-old gum, no matter how anal and paranoid that makes me...by the way, Quinn swallowed the gum. DAMN. HER.), let him stay up late with his cousin watching movies, and single-handedly dealt with his fatigue tantrums the next day without once screaming back at him, he wants nothing to do with me if John is in the general vicinity. I now realize he is completely playing us against each other and relishing the reaction he gets when he shuns me (the one I try to hide but that is so obvious, even to a pre-schooler). But still, how much does it suck to walk up to your child, your baby even, and offer to spend some special time with him reading stories before bed, and have him turn to you, whimper, then dramatically run to the other parent and clutch frantically at his shirt tails, "No! I want daddy!"? We're trying a new routine now, but the first run was tonight and it was only mildly successful; you see, a vague outline of John's silhouette's shadow was visible before Quinn was actually in bed asleep, and that's when things went askew. Damn it.

Is it asking too much for things to be stable?
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to have my new job. It's a good job, with a good company, good benefits, and good opportunities. And you know what? All those things were true when I got laid off from there three and a half years ago WHILE PREGNANT and went into the tailspin of my short life. Since that time, I've been home through pregnancy, one toddler stage, one infant stage, one pre-toddler stage, and one pre-school stage. I've worked for two OTHER companies, had three different insurance providers and two other 401(k) plans, and have dealt with the paperwork and frustration associated with moving all of those around year after year, employer after employer. I have gained 50 pounds (pregnancy), and lost 50 pounds (post pregnancy), and gained 20 pounds (return to work stress), and lost 25 pounds (one year job stabilization before latest change). And this is all just me. This doesn't take into account John's older kids' issues of the past four years, John's exponential growth in business which has drastically changed our lives and schedules at home, or even things as simple as the purchases we've made (cars, computers, furniture, braces, counseling sessions) or the major work we've had to do to our house (piers for structural problems, outside paint, landscaping, all new flooring, inside paint, garage door), let alone the work that still needs to be done, but hasn't yet (windows, baseboards, roof, driveway, bathroom fixtures). I'd just like things to be stable for a while. I'm not saying EVERYTHING has to be stable, but it would be nice if my job could be the same job for more than a year. Then maybe the other changes wouldn't feel so much like an onslaught. And I wouldn't feel the need to snack at my desk as I try to eat away the paranoia. Hmm, two birds with one stone: less stress, less weight gain. Work with me, corporate america. PLEASE. I just. need. a break.

In honor of our son's recent revelation, a photojournalistic commentary.

Making the world a more accepting place...one slaughtered pig at a time.

Don't Hate, Advocate!

--Here, mom. Do you want some delicious baby duck?

--No, thanks. I don't eat duck.

--It's just for pretend!

--Oh. Okay. Well, sure, yum yum. Thanks for that duck. Now can you please get out of the tub and dry off?

--Okay. But, you know what? Mrs. F. said we could eat ducks! She said we could.

--Yes, some people do eat ducks.

--Yeah. I wish I could eat ducks. But I can't. Because I'm a vegetarian.

--Well, actually, you eat bacon, and that's meat; you're not a vegetarian.

--*SIGH!* I don't eat meat very OFTEN, so that's why I'm a vegetarian!

--Okay. You're a vegetarian who eats bacon. Why do you think people become vegetarians?

--No, I was already a vegetarian when I was born! I didn't become one.

--OH? Huh. Well, why do you think other people choose to be vegetarians?

--I don't CHOOSE it! I just am one. *rolls eyes*

----------------------------------------------------

My son is a bacon-eating vegetarian and he was born that way. If there is any decency left in this world, one day he, and other bacon-eating vegetarians, even those with less accepting families (in-the-pantry bacon-eating vegetarians, if you will), will be granted the same acceptance as all the other food-eaters in this predominantly either/or, carnivorous/vegetarian country of ours. It's not an "illness," a "disorder," or a "sin" -- that's absurd! It's just who he is. And there is nothing inherently wrong with being a bacon-eating vegetarian. Linguistically, and for technical reasons involving the little problem of the phrase not being...accurate? Yes. Morally? No.

O, bacon! He wishes he could quit you.

good morning

Fringetastic Workout Routine: Instructions

Sunday
Plan your week, feel confident in your ability to get up early every morning and jog 2-3 miles before the kids wake up and you have to get ready for work while yelling answers to your four-year-old over the hair dryer. Answers like, “No, I didn’t know that baby kangaroos were a pinkish-gray color. That’s very interesting!”

Monday
Curse yourself for pushing snooze 14 times and convincing your half-asleep brain that getting up one hour before you have to physically BE in the office will still leave plenty of time for a jog, changing outfits six times, intervening in a who-can-throw-the-most-breakable-item-down-the-stairs-before-someone-comes-to-stop-us contest between your kids, and apologizing to your husband for once again failing to feed the epileptic dog his organic diet like you promised you would when you still felt sorry for said epileptic dog – before the novelty of his condition wore off, that is.

After dinner, feel pleased with yourself for going for a jog after failing to in the morning. Then feel guilty for losing that 40 minutes before bed with the kids while jogging. Then get frustrated when, in your sweaty jogging clothes and still feeling dehydrated, your kids’ chaotic pre-bedtime behavior reaches its peak; threaten to take away their precious blankets, then feel guilty again. After kids are asleep and you’ve re-hydrated, have a glass of wine to dull the pain of knowing you’re ultimately just a cruel, heartless security blanket thief. What’s next – stealing the squirrels’ winter nut supply in your back yard?

Tuesday
Triumphantly hit snooze only four times. Instead of going for a jog, make the mistake of turning on your computer to check e-mail. 25 minutes later, let out an exasperated yelp as you realize you’re going to be late for work again. Apologize to your husband on the way out the door, promising you’ll remember to feed that epileptic dog like you agreed…tomorrow.

Still smarting from the Monday night guilt, forego the jog to spend quality time with the kids. Wonder, as you dry off kid #2, why you thought NOT going for a run would be more pleasant for your kids, since you spent the entire bath time screaming at them to stop drenching you with their mad, mad bathtub surfing.

Wednesday
Admit to yourself that you are not going to get up early to run, period. Get up early enough to feed the dog once this week, and be proud that you accomplished that much. Realize you continually lower the standards you thought you’d set for yourself as an adult.

After work, decide to combine your goals of quality time with the kids and exercise: take them for a jog while pushing them in the double stroller. This way you burn calories in three ways: 1.) jogging, 2.) pushing 85 pounds of stroller and two children up your neighborhood hills, and 3.) yelling at your kids to stop hitting each other and stop demanding that you go faster, because you’re gasping for the breath of life at your snail’s pace as it is, damn it.

Thursday
Forget to even set the alarm, be happy you get out the door in time to be at work before anyone notices how late you really are. And maybe they won’t notice that your socks are mismatched.

After work, forget the jog. It’s just too complicated. Eat take-out, have a Mike’s, let the kids run wild while laughing about it, then kill some (more) brain cells while watching a few episodes of The Office.

Friday
Well, you accomplished two out of the planned five jogs this week. Tell yourself you’ll start all over on Monday. Hit snooze and look forward to the margarita and chips and salsa you’ll be indulging in after work today. Ask yourself curiously why your pants seem to be getting tighter each week. Oops, no time for such questions. You’re late again. The kids are throwing matchbox cars at each other and screaming. And you owe your husband yet another apology for not feeding that dog of yours.