C U Next ... Wednesday

my grandmother always told me, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

sorry, grams.

daycare. those people have really hard jobs. i mean, REALLY hard. there are like 497 other jobs in the world that i would rather do. and i'm so glad that there are some people patient/kind/crazy enough to do this job more or less willingly. we really are so "#blessed" to have found a daycare provider where colby is loved and well-taken care of. she really loves "matty," as she calls him, and linda, the father-daughter daycare team. when i drop her off she is happy as a clam. honestly. drop offs with jack are like a bad high school break up, every single day. colby does not give even a single shit. she's like, peace out! and though she's usually excited to see me, the other day she started SOBBING in the car because she didn't want to leave "her linda," which made me feel AWESOME, believe you me. but, while it did sting a bit, it also made me thankful, because growing up i was lucky enough to lurve our after-school daycare lady and i think it made the whole working-parents thing that much easier on me.

but. i must admit. linda occasionally gets on my nerves. i have a feeling it's one of those situations where she's already under my skin so everything she does is just disproportionately annoying as shit, though she is guilty of a couple of legitimate transgressions. in any event, this occurrence really chapped my hide. am i overreacting? most likely. but i'll let you be the judge.


hate is too strong a word. i just didn't feel like making a new e-card.

as you may or may not know, DM and i are currently getting our a$$es handed to us by Life. as such, we asked one of our date night babysitters to help us pick up some of the slack this week. when I dropped colby off monday morning, i informed linda that jenny, the babysitter, would be picking her up that evening, as well as the next two days. linda makes this face:

and says, "really? wow. hmmm. okayyyy." then she yells into the kitchen at her father: "hey dad! did you hear that? apparently colby's getting picked up by a babysitter this week." ummmm, yeah. sorry that i have a job and an employer who is not my father and silly little things like bills to pay and mouths to feed. thanks though! what i really needed this sunshine-y monday morning was for someone who is 29 and does not have children and lives with (and is employed and provided room and board by) her parents to sit in not-so-silent judgment of my parenting prowess.

then she says, "well, make sure you tell her to come around the side gate because last week when your sister came [because you suck at motherhood and you couldn't pick colby up yourself then, either (okay, she didn't say that part, that is my own internal mom-guilt generator speaking)] she came to the front door and rang the doorbell." *GASP* THE HORROR.

then, i go drop jack at school and tell the school's administrator that our babysitter will be picking jack up from school through wednesday. i informed her that i wasn't sure whether or not i'd included jenny on the original "not a kidnapper" list. so we go back to her office and she's flipping through the big binder and she says, "bella, bella... what's bella's last name?" me: "um, it's jackson, actually." her: "oooh yeah! jackson! jackson....." me: "cheeseman." her: "got it! the reason I thought you were bella's mom is because she's pregnant, too!"

i'm not pregnant. i haven't been pregnant in two years. i didn't think i looked pregnant. i was wearing a sweatshirt with a kangaroo pouch and i had my keys in it so maybe it just looked like i had a tiny lumpy baby in there. i don't know. maybe i need to lay off the cheese.

so that was fun.

and while we're on the subject of mom guilt. i just texted my sister, who is the room mom for my nephew's kindergarten class, and told her to make sure that she doesn't make working parents feel like assholes. this was prompted after receiving the fifth email in 48 hours from the self-appointed room mom from jack's class regarding the "book faire-with-an-E" at the preschool and the need for volunteers. don't get me wrong. i think it's super duper amazing that people have the time and energy and inclination to help out for nothing other than crooked smiles and crappy coffee. but, i'm not not-volunteering because i'm having a spa day. i'm working. and i have used every single "get out of work free" card i have, and then some, over the past weeks and months for various and sundry momergencies. when i emailed back to let her know that it's really hard for either DM or I to help out during business hours, she replied that the 5 o'clock slot was available. oh. i'm sorry. i meant lawyers' hours. not bankers' hours. and when i finally do arrive to pick J up, it's with my littlest curly dimpled lunatic in tow, and they both need SNAAAAACKS and mama has to make DINNERRRRRR while fending off the restless natives, then force-feed said natives said dinner, then give them baths aka water torture... so unless YOU want to watch my kids while i volunteer at the book fairE ... no, i apologize, i'm not going to be able to swing it this time.

can you tell i'm a little grumpy? well. it's partly because i've been mostly single-momming it for the past little while as my fancy lawyer husband is furiously busy doing fancy lawyer things. which is really freaking hard. in my opinion, single parents are the strongest bravest people on earth. BUT. have you ever noticed that when you are forced to do everything yourself, and you know you just have to f*cking handle it, you're actually better at it? like somehow, by taking away the crutch of relying on the other person, you get superpowers? not to mention negating any resentment you might normally harbor when your partner doesn't live up to your fairsy-wairsy expectations of the parenting quid pro quo. i find it very interesting, BUT IN NO WAY DOES THIS MEAN I WANT IT TO BE A REGULAR OCCURRENCE. i think, in part, it's also easier because i know it's going to end in a day or a week or whatever. if that was the status quo i might just die.

another reason i'm a crabby patty is that i haven't been sleeping because, in addition to my crazy ass insomnia, we have dreadful DEVIL BIRD living in the tree outside our bedroom. i think it's just one even though is sounds like the f*cking philharmonic of the amazon rainforest. seriously. and it only sings the songs of its people between 1 and 3 am.

i am seriously going to kill a f*cking mockingbird

i'll end on a high note though! coming home to happy little children who have already been fed and bathed and pj-fied and are playing contentedly in their craft corner? best. thing. EVER. i wish i could afford to do this EVERY night! it's funny. my mother-in-law grew up in a wealthy family in iran. her dad had multiple wives and the whole bit. she tells some awesome stories. they had a "staff," just as i've always dreamed - shopping, cooking, cleaning, gardening - DONE. and she had a nanny/nurse who basically raised her. her mother generally only dealt with them when they were on their very best behavior. before i had kids i remember thinking, oh, that is so sad, i would never ever let someone else raise my children. and of course i still feel that way. except when i don't.

sometimes, sometimes, i am well rested and well fed and my "to do" list isn't 13 miles long and i can afford to see the ugly parts of parenting for what they are - dips and curves on this wild rollercoaster ride that i wouldn't trade for the world. or better yet, i have the energy and creativity and wherewithal to expertly sidestep at least some of the potholes. but other times, i feel as though it would be quite nice to outsource all the crappy parts so that i could just be fun mom. happy mom. attentive mom. snuggly mom. let someone else handle the cooking and the cleaning and the dinner diplomacy and the bedtime battles. i will do family snuggles and story time and sunday mornings and summer evenings and beach days and backyard adventures. and naps. i am AWESOME at naps.


for crying it out loud

i am furious, and getting furiouser as i sit and steep in my furiousness.

back story. colby jean has been fighting naps and bedtimes with a vengeance for the past couple of days. i would like to blame it on our weekend trip/unfamiliar surroundings/change in routine and pray it will work its way out of her system sooner than later, but she was already showing signs of sleep issues last week - waking up hollering 5-10 minutes after we put her down a couple of nights - which she has never done before. last night was the worst yet. it took an hour to get her down, and she was up every 2 hours during the night. normally, we put her down in her bed awake and she smiles at us and rolls over to snuggle with her lovey, and that's all she wrote until the next morning. the last few nights, it's been a battle to even put her down, let alone leave the room. and she's in a big-girl bed (has been for almost 2 months now), so we can't just walk away, due to her pesky tendency to make a break for it like she's bustin' out of alcatraz. once we finally do get her to lie down and close her eyes, we're stranded for the next 30-60 minutes, because she seems to have developed a sixth sense and her eyeballs pop open at the slightest movement. it sucks. (before you start hating me for complaining about two days of sleep-crazy, please know, i already paid my dues. if you had told me when jack was wee that there are babies in the world who go to bed without a fuss, sleep through the night, and actually have to be woken up to eat, i would have punched you in the face. but i now know that this rare and mythical creature does in fact exist.)

i was kind of whining about colby's aberrant sleep psychosis but then DM reminded me that we have been extremely spoiled with this girl, and she is entitled to her fair share of dickery. jack tortured us for 10 months straight, gave us somewhat of a reprieve, and then got right back down to the business of sustained sleep deprivation when his little sister was born. he's still usually "the short straw" at bedtime. it's been two nights. give the girl a break.

so. DM just informed me that when he dropped colby off at daycare this morning, the daycare girl asked how she was doing, and he mentioned that she'd woken up screaming five times the night prior, and had been up since 5am, but was in a suprisingly good mood, considering. the daycare girl put on her judgy face and reminded DM that colby hadn't napped the day before, either. then she asked if we were making colby "cry it out." DM said, no, not really, but we'd discussed it this morning as a potential option. daycare girl responded, "well, you need to do that because, you know, what you do at home affects us here, too."

um, i'm sorry, what?!?!? as colby would say, phuuuuuuck youuuuuuuu.

first off. you are 27 years old and you don't drive and you still live with your parents, so forgive me if you're not my go-to source for parenting advice.

second, this is your job. handle your sh*t. i don't complain to my employer when my job sucks. you shouldn't, either.

third, colby is basically an angel baby. i mean, this is the first time we're even having this discussion because this is the first and only time in the 20 months she's been alive that she's caused a fuss two nights in a row. so you'll excuse me for cutting the kid some freakin' slack.

fourth, the "~18 month sleep regression" is an actual thing, if the "sleep experts" are to be believed, and apparently it tends to be the most difficult one. i just don't think she's doing this to spite us. also, seeing as you are a child care provider, you may be aware that children do whatever they damn well please a lot of the time, despite the best efforts of the large humans in their lives.

fifth, last time i checked, colby is our child. where in the folkenflik do you get off telling us how to parent her?! (i'm not even against CIO, at least in theory, though with jack i could never stomach the no-holds-barred ferber version. and also, it seems moot now that she is fully mobile and no longer sleeping in a baby cage. i'm sorry but i'm not going to lock her in her room. what i am against is people telling me how i "need" to raise my kid.)

lest you start wondering why on God's green earth i'm leaving my precious daughter's care to such an asshat, it's actually a two-person, father-daughter operation, and usually, the daughter half of the equation is, by all appearances, very good with kids, and both of mine seem to like her. but still. it's like freaking "Katie's Korner" from jack's old preschool where a childless pubescent wrote articles about how feeding my kids chicken nuggets is poison and how i should be introducing classical music, shakespeare, and age-appropriate, educational craft projects into my evening routine.

am i being an A-hole? probably. oh well.

i know what i'm getting daycare girl for christmas
kittie franz quote by mb art studios on etsy
http://etsy.me/1ivVWAH

for want of a barf bag

sunday night, DM and i were discussing the fact that our littles were active snot-faucets again and how i wasn't ready for another cold and flu season because last year it lasted for five months. seriously. from november 2012 through march 2013, a minimum of two of us and an average of four of us were sick with some sort of nasty crud, including the week where i was possibly dying from the flu even though i got a flu shot (i'm not one of those crazy anti-vaccine people. just stating the facts. i actually got a flu shot again this year. an hour later i could barely move my left arm and i said as much to DM with a follow up message, "but don't worry, it's not my drinkin' hand." :))

anyway. during said conversation about sickness and snot (was that part of our wedding vows?) DM reminded me of this one time during that extended snot saga when Jack randomly projectile vomited twice. but we think that was just rapid over-consumption of mango juice because he was perfectly fine afterwards. then DM says, "we've actually been really lucky in the barf arena.... knock on wood."

now. let me take this opportunity to inform you that DM is the KING of jinx. like, if there is a Jedi-mind-trick-master, he is the opposite. he is the master of making sh*t that you do not want to happen, happen, by saying "oh that'll never happen" out loud. so, after he said the thing about our generally barf-free lives, i knew with complete certainty that at least one of my children would be puking within 24 hours.

i sealed our fate by making a joke to a girlfriend (who is due any moment with her first child, and who had likened pre-labor ministrations to primping for senior prom) about how birthing a child is sort of like senior prom in that you become completely disoriented and wake up in bed with a stranger, covered in bodily fluids (yours and others'). (so i've heard. i assure you nothing so exciting happened at my prom, being the staunch anti-drug-and-alcohol a$$hole ambassador that i was.)

cue monday morning. got "the call" from daycare. do you know what i'm talking about? i am talking about the "your child got sick at daycare and is now too sick to be at daycare oh and ps she can't come back tomorrow either so good luck with that" call. do you know there is a special ring tone for this call? it rings to the dulcet tones of my career taking a flying leap out of an 18th story window to it's death on the concrete sidewalk below. but oh well. what're you gonna do?! so i went to go pick up my snotty little snuggle muffin. she had a slight fever and a lot of yellow goo but was generally in good spirits. i planned to take her home and leave J at preschool until later in the afternoon, but apparently she was scarred by their short separation this weekend because when i told her we weren't going to go get brother until later, she looked at me like i had just personally massacred her favorite pet. she was utterly heartbroken, and started wailing "brudderrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrrr, go geen 'um [go get him]" all the way home. so i called an audible, swung by the preschool, and snatched up big bro. they were mostly fine and DM came home a tad early and we got them to bed by 7:30 which never happens, ever.

all was well until the little miss woke up in the middle of the night. DM went in to get her, but then he called to me over the monitor that she had a fever and chills. i went in and her whole body was violently shuddering. aside from the body quakes, though, she was a pretty happy camper. she was chattin' away but we couldn't understand her because she was shaking so hard. i'm not really a wimp about sick kids... we've had scrapes and cuts and bloody noses and enormous eggs on the dome etc. without too much fuss, but when she was about 3.5 months old, my one-kidneyed daughter had a kidney infection and it got gnarly and all the doctors kept referring to it as a "life threatening event" and it scared the bejesus outta me so now anytime she has a fever or other unexplained symptoms i freak the frack out.

so. DM called the always helpful nurse triage hotline while i tried to keep the girl warm. (they always ask a litany of completely irrelevant questions. they even start their spiel by basically warning you that they are about to ask you a bunch of random a$$ sh*t. "can she walk in a straight line while reciting the ABCs backwards? does she prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream? who is her favorite sesame street character?") i will mention, in a stroke of seemingly unrelated foreshadowing, that lately Colby Jean has been obsessed with putting things down shirts. mostly my shirt. also her shirt. she loves to collect dead leaves and flowers from the patio, or hot wheels, or legos, or crayons, or used tissues, and stuff them down my shirt so that they're nested in my cleavage. she gets really upset if/when i try to "take out the garbage," so to speak. she also becomes perplexed/distressed when she puts things down her own shirt and they just fall right through, rather than getting lodged in the boobular region. anyway. maybe, if you were an english major or something, you can guess where this is headed...

Colby had been quietly snuggling and shuddering when suddenly she reared back with this confused look on her face. then i hear the pre-barf-warning-sounds. every parent and pet-owner knows what i'm talking about. still. neither she nor i had time to react. she had never thrown up (like, legitimately vomited) before, and it caught us both by surprise. the first one went all down her front, but then, before the second round began, her eyes locked onto her favorite receptacle as of late - a.k.a., my boobs. she grabbed the collar of my shirt (luckily, or, unluckily, a v-neck) and bent over like a verdrunken sorority girl prayin' to the porcelain gods. so deft were her movements then that i have to assume she was tapping some sort of innate knowledge. at that point i was paralyzed... i didn't want to move for fear of leaking or jostling the contents of my cleavage... so i called, as loudly as i could without waking the other child, for a bowl, and backup, both of which were delivered in short order. of course, by then, it was too late. my C-cups runneth over. with barf.

with some assistance, i was able to get myself, and the girl, cleaned up, and Super Dad took the next shift, which, unfortunately for him, ended up lasting until 3:30am. unfortunately for me, as soon as i was de-barfed and climbing back in between my clean warm sheets, J woke up for who knows what reason (an evil ax-weilding ghost? a gnat?) and i was too tired to battle so i just climbed in bed next to him and spent the next 3 hours attempting to sleep with heels and toes jammed up in my ribs and nose.

so yeah. that was my monday. how's your week going?!

i don't know why, but the "pre-barf-warning sounds" remind me of this:
Buttercup: We'll never succeed. We may as well die here.
Westley: No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.
Buttercup: Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.'s?
Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.

"sick day"

Deep thoughts...

Being sick with kids sucks. Being sick with sick kids sucks worse. On the totem pole of sickness, moms are at the bottom. I think it goes dads/grown men, then kids, then moms. Maybe kids then dads, I don't know. But either way, people are steppin' on mama's head. Honestly I'd rather be at work because then at least I could take a 20 minute cat nap in my car or just close my door and drink tea and be quiet. Baby and I must have the same bug, but she's handling it much better than I. Sadly, this is not the "snuggle and sleep on mama all day" kind of sickness. This is the "visibly contagious germ factory, but she must have missed the memo" kind of sickness. She looks and sounds like she has TB, but she still wants to run around cataloging every object on our property ("Wha's dat?" "A tree." "No!" "A plant?" "NO!" "Uhhhh.... bush?" "NOOOOOOO! ISS A BIWDY!!!" "Actually, no, it's not a birdie." "[*Ear-piercing scream*] ISS A BIWDIE!!!! WAAAAA!!!!" "Okay, okay, it's a birdie! Made of wood. Growing out of the ground. With leaves. A deciduous birdie.") Then read every book she owns at least two times (there is a method to her madness... YOU DO NOT GET TO CHOOSE THE BOOKS). And of course, continue with her calculated campaign designed to break Big Brother's balls. She pesters him constantly, with repeated full-body tackle-hugs that veer into violent territory if unrequited. (As we like to say, she doesn't start fights, but she ends them ;))

This sibling rivalry is so interesting to me, now, as a mother. I basically contemplated my little sister's untimely demise until the day I left for college (LOVE YA, SIS!), so I totally get where Jack's coming from. Baby is ALL UP in his business at all times and definitely terrorizes him on a regular basis, and he tries really hard to be sweet at least 75% 63% 51% of the time.... but then, she's my lovinest littlest sugarlump and sometimes I just cannot abide the way he treats her. Now I know how my parents felt. Right down to him throwing blunt objects at her head. (Better than sharp ones, I suppose!)

By the way, am I going to call her Baby for the rest of her life like in Dirty Dancing?

Speaking of Dirty Dancing - remember "the old days" when "sick day" meant lounging on the couch with a Thera Flu slushee and watching "the classics", a.k.a. Dirty Dancing, Almost Famous, GI Jane, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Bring It On, etc? I still haven't seen Pitch Perfect, people!!! Meanwhile, the DDs (diminutive dictators) have monopolized the remote, and while I appreciate the 26 minutes of relative peace, if I have to hear the "LITTOW EIN-TINES" song one more time I might commit hara-kiri with a spork. (To the tune of TCHAI-kovsky! Actually that reminds me of a cute story - J gets so proud of himself when he pronounces something correctly - he says, "Mama!! Watch this!!!" "Okay, I'm watching." "Overture." Hahaha. Well done, son. :))

On a happier note, I have forgiven the new preschool its trespasses against cupcakes because, instead of a 40 to 60 minute round trip with a shrieking banshee in the back seat, it is two minutes from home. SO GLORIOUS.

Anyway. That's all I got. I am so brain dead. I sorta feel like I got the stuffing knocked out of me. Do you know I don't really sleep? More about that later. But it pretty much sucks. Add two solid months of back-to-back-to-back weekend events and travel, looming work deadlines, a virulent strain of the bubonic plague, and I am just barely holding it together. Do you ever get that feeling that you are juggling so many balls and you are about to drop them ALL??? That's me right now. Too many balls ;)

One of these metaphorical balls is thank you notes. I used to be a thank you card super star. Personalized photo cards in 3-5 business days. Now, we're two weeks out from J$'s birthday, and I'm still only halfway done. Tonight, I'm trying to catch up, writing thank yous in the voice of my three year old. Yes. I am "That Mom."

"Dear Auntie -

Thank you for the awesome keyboard that I for some reason insist on playing with Ziploc baggies on my hands because apparently I am Phantom of the Freaking Opera.

Love you lots!

Jackson Jay"

Another metaphorical ball is this "blog." Hopefully I don't run out of funny!

Oh yeah, also, coughing fits with a postpartum pelvic floor? Goodbye Hanky Panky! Hellloooo Depends!

nectar of the gods