What the Shell

What the Shell
Originally uploaded by Dewchild

Playing in the wet sand at dusk.

Beach Baby

Beach Baby
Originally uploaded by Dewchild

If only he were able to put the whole beach into his mouth.

Miles to go before we beach

I’ve been slacking on the blog, but for good reason. We just got back from the beach. The first hour of the trip up turned the minivan into a small torture chamber with Connor whining for candy, to get out of the car, for the car to stop and for any toy that was not within my reach while Tristan fussed a chorus of discontent. The highlight of the road trip was watching Jorma crawl through a McDonalds play area, like a guinea pig moving through gerbil tubes, as he searched for Connor’s missing sandals. Turns out Connor had put his sandals into the cubbies at the foot of the play area just like he was supposed to, although I’m not sure how he knew to do this, since I’m pretty leery about letting him into the fast food play areas, infested with germs as they are. I mean. Really. How often do you think those crawl through tubes get cleaned? Once the sandals and children were safely tucked into the car, we resumed the trip reaching the beach in a record six hours.

I’ll post more about the trip later because you know I’ve got stories that will both make your ovaries ache for want of a child (or more children) or send you diving over the fence to the “Maybe a puppy WOULD be better than kids” plan of action. Meanwhile, I’ve got some sleep to catch up on.

 

Dear Connor - 31 Months

Dear Connor,
Word of the month. NO!!! Notice that is an ALL CAPS triple exclaimation point, NO!!!, because that is how you say it. Five hundred and twenty seven times a day. “Connor, would you like some juice? NO!!! Connor, would you like to go outside and play? NO!!! Five seconds later – “I WANT TO GO OOOUUTTTSSSIIIDDDEE!!!”Connor, would you like cake for breakfast? NO!!! And so on and so on… All. Day. Long. We know that you can’t help it, that you are suffering from a sickness we like to call, “Being Two Years Old” and that the sickness won’t hurt you and will only make Mommy and Daddy very tired. Sometimes when we offer you something, you yell “NO!!!” and then cling to me for dear life, as if you want us to protect you from the Pimento Cheese Sandwich that’s being offered. I kinda like that part of it truthfully. You may be disagreeable, but you still love us with all your heart.

With this, we’ve notice another change. You are slowly able to sit still for short periods of time. Short periods of time being ten minutes of playing by yourself, or sometimes 20 minutes snuggled up on the sofa watching Wow Wow Wubzy, your new favorite TV show. Wow, Wow Wubzy is the new Max and Ruby, which was the new Go, Diego Go!, which was the new Jack’s Big Music Show, which was the new Oobi.
I guess it’s the bath association but something about water makes you want to get completely naked, even if it’s a puddle that you want to splash in. Nothing makes yu happier than a hose and no clothing… even M&Ms.

We’ve been trying to bribe you with M&Ms when you pp on the potty, but potty training isn’t happening as quickly as we’d like it to. Actually, changing diapers doesn’t seem to bother me nearly as much as cleaning up pp off of the bathroom floor and rereolling an entire rollof toilet paper. Unrolling toilet paper is your favorite potty pastime.

I have to confess that I spend a fair amount of time complaining about the terrible twos and how exasperating you can be, but there are benefits to experiencing this stage. Since your Dad has been home with us for several months we’ve all grown a little bit closer. You’ve gotten to spend some quality time with your Dad and your Dad and I feel bonded in much the same way that members of a hostage crisis are.
The other benefit is that you are so damn cute that it’s impossible to stay mad at you. Because when you dump a box of tampons, unwrap one and bring it to me proudly displaying it string up and exclaiming, “Here is your birthday candle Mommy!!!” it’s pretty hard to be mad.

Today when you were naked on the front deck playing in the hose, you turned it on full force on both your Dad and me as we stood at a distance watching the reverie. We both dodged and jumped which was most amusing to you. Once you stopped squirting you said, “Was that so funny?” we both said in unison, “NO! That was NOT funny” although we couldn’t stop laughing when we said it which made us laugh even harder. You corrected us at once, “That WAS SO funny!” And… you were right.
During the same hose spray episode I was trying to take picture and dodged yet another spray with the hose. Jorma said to you, “Mommy doesn’t want to get the camera wet” to which you responded “If she does not want it wet, she needs to take it inside.” Which was both a long sentence and profound truth from a naked two year old with a hose. Touché little one.
Love,
Mommy

Hawaii - The Alien Battlefield State

Today when we were driving back from the park, we saw on the side of a U-Haul truck an image of a large yellow spider with the words Alien Battlefield - Hawaii on the side of it. It stopped next to us at the light and we stared at it the whole time that the light was red. This is mostly because we were amazed that Hawaii, not being known for it's beautiful spiders, would be portrayed this way.
Later while the kids were napping, I couldn't resist and had to google it. I found this on the U-Haul site. No really, read the Hawaii interactive site.One it's pretty hard to navagate because although it has directions I'll bet the average person is confused about where to click. I was confused about where to click and I would consider myself to be a master web surfer... if there is such a thing.
All in all, I guess it's a rather interesting marketing ploy. After all... I'm blogging about it.

Child on a Fire Truck

Child on a Fire Truck
Originally uploaded by Dewchild.

When I shot this picture I used my friend Kehli's Nikon D-50. OMG the difference in the picture quality. So I've decided come hell or high water, I'm getting one. Someday. In the meantime, I'll just keep taking the odd job here and then until I can gather enough cash to splurge. Website anyone?

The Liberation of Mommy

Yesterday was a hard day. I’m not sure if it was the weather, the child or pms, but by the time 4pm rolled around, I was ready to cry. It was a day full of nothing but, “No no, that’s not a toy. No, baby, don’t put THAT in your mouth. No, no HONEY, we do NOT tackle little brother.” All. Day. Long.

Tonight I thought…how liberating it would be just to let the kid do whatever the hell he wants just for one day. Just one day of not telling him no every five minutes. Just one day of only stopping him when he was about to hurt himself or someone else and just letting everything else slide. Just cleaning up the coffee that he’s stolen off of the counter. Just sweeping up the shards from the ceramic coffee cup after he’s thrown it on the floor. Just letting go. Completely. Would it be exhilarating to not pick up socks off of the floor all day long and just freakin relax? To not be peeved if he strips down naked and runs through the yard screaming because he wants the irrigation system on. To just leave the clothes lying on the deck, continue reading my novel and cooing at Tristan. Turn on the sprinklers. To let him play with the cell phone. Would it be wonderful? Would it be terrifying? Would it be hard? Would I be able to do it at all? 

And how would it be for Connor? The best day that he’s ever had? Would it be exhilarating for him to be able to let loose each impulse and not look over at Mommy to see if he’s allow to do whatever it is that he’s doing? To have Mommy walk into the room and not take something away from him two hundred and forty seven times during the day. To be able to run through the house naked blowing on his plastic flute like a drunken cherub at seven thirty in the morning. To just have it his way… all day long.

Would it make it worse to let him find his own way for a day? Or better?  Would he keep pulling up the potted plants if I didn’t tell him no? Or is the thrill of it all just in the daily battle for control?

I want to try it. Just for one day I want to let him loose on the world. Just for one day I want to sit back and let go. Just for one day I want to not feel like the taker away of all things fun. Just for one day I want to breathe. I am young and life is long… and there is time to kill today.

How Potty Training is Going

Potty Training
Originally uploaded by Dewchild.

I should probably write an entire entry on this subject, but if a picture is worth 1000 words this one alone should tell the story. In short, not as quickly as we had hoped.

How to Start a Battle

Tonight about an hour after Connor had been put to bed, we heard footsteps down the hallway and the upstairs gate slam.

“Is that you?”, Jorma yelled from the office. “NO!”, I yelled from the kitchen.

“Yes, it’s me! It’s me! On the stairs!” Connor said from the stairs.

Jorma intercepted him and we did night night kisses again and explained that he should be in the bed.

“I don waaaaaaant to go nite-nite! I want to go to PaaaaPaaaawwww’s! I want. I want. I want a dink of ice wadder!”

And so the bedtime battles begin…

 

Dear Tristan - 8 months

Dear Sugar Bear,
It’s about this time that you should know your name. And you would. If your name was Sugar Bear. We’ve called you that so much that if you ask Connor who scratched him next to his eye, he’ll answer in a solemn whispering tone, “The Sugar Bear scratched me”. You will answer to Tristan as well, answer being a turn of the head and an expression of wonder at what you might be about to see.You have been pulling up and crawling like a champ. The crawling started right at 7 months and the pulling up two weeks later. You’ll be walking soon. You see your brother walking and you really want to do it too, but whenever you let go of something and take a step, it ends badly. Although not so badly that you might get upset… you just get back up and try it again.

You’ve proved to everyone that you really are my offspring by showing an intense love for cheese. Nothings better to you than a high chair full of shredded mozzarella cheese and everyone else sitting at our respective seats at the table so that you can beam with joy at us in between bites. You look over at me while you shove fistfuls into your mouth like, “MOM! You should TOTALLY check this stuff out! It’s spectacular! Dude!”

I thought that the kitty might have learned a very valuable lesson from your brother. All of those people that say they want to be reincarnated as cats might want to stop and consider the ramifications of having a brain the size of a kiwi fruit. This is a benefit to you however because he’s not as fast as he used to be and because he’s so desperate for love, he’s willing to suck up to anyone. Even the pink, drooling human that always puts his tail in his mouth. It’s a hard life for our cat, sleeping on a feather pillow for 17 hours a day in the sunshine. The other day I was cleaning the upstairs with you and the cat trailing behind me. I was bouncing from room to room attempting to organize the chaos before it swept me away and Pink was following right on my heels lest I accidentally drop a can of Tuna. I didn’t have to worry about you because you were so busy following the cat following Mommy from room to room you were too busy to put any of the five million pieces of carpet lint you manage to find like a radar into your mouth.

We’ve recently taken drastic steps to improve everyone’s well being. Our plan is to make sure everyone is getting enough sleep to ward off the cataclysmic chain of events that occurs around 5pm when everyone is tired and irritable. The first part of this plan was to move your brother to his “Big Boy Room” and let him get accustomed to it, while gradually acclimating you to your new room, (your brother’s old room) by rocking you to sleep in said room each night, until you were comfortable after a week or so and then moving you into your room and out of ours. We ended up moving you out of our room five days earlier because the prospect of being able to take a shower in the evening or turn on a light without worrying about waking you was so damn intoxicating that we just couldn’t stand it. And I don’t have words to describe how wonderful it is to be able to flush the toilet in our bathroom at night again. But even better than that is that you sleep so much better, only waking twice in the night as opposed to the usual five times you wake, hoping to end up in the bed with us. Sadly, at this same time your brother has decided that he will not nap in his new room and spends his time screaming from the room next to yours. But alas our plan is working.

Now that you are in the nursery, in the middle of the night, we get to rock you in the recliner. You are so sleepy and warm. You have that baby smell, which is so much better than new car even. And when you are done with your bottle, you don’t even need your paci, you just curl up on my chest and get rocked to sleep. I like your new room. We end up closer together, because we are farther apart.
Love,
Mommy

Insert ExFiles Theme Here

I’ve always believed that children have a sixth sense. I think everyone has a sixth sense really, but children haven’t had the opportunity to have the intuition drilled out of them by our culture. So when Connor tells me something that sounds strange but is possible, I always believe him. A while back he looked at me and said in all seriousness, “Grammie is sad right now. Grammie is crying. Stop crying Grammie!” So I called my Mother. Turns out she was just fine, but it’s still hard not to believe him. Just in case.

The other day when I had laid down with Tristan for a nap, Connor woke up from his nap and proclaimed to Jorma, “Mommy is all gone. Mommy was with the monsters in the corner.” Jorma was afraid that I had one of my famous fainting spells and my heart had stopped while I was sleeping. He didn’t go in and check on me though. I guess he figured, since Tristan was in the bed with me, if I was dead, there was nothing he could do about it now and if he woke me up, he’d have to wake Tristan up too. We don’t wake Tristan up because the only thing that is worse than a grumpy two year old is a grumpy 7 month old. At least you can bribe the two year old with M&M’s and Diego, but the baby… not so much.

So yesterday morning, when Connor announced, “PaPaw is in a fire. We have to help him, Mommy. PaPaw can’t see. He can’t see, Mommy, he’s in the fire” I fought the urge to call Dad at 7:30 in the morning just to make sure that his house wasn’t burning down. I did call him at 9am and of course he was just fine, although maybe a little bit surprised that I would call over something so silly. But the thing that freaked me out the most about it is that I didn’t even know that Connor knew what fire was. I’ve never heard him say that word. We talked about how fire trucks put out fires, but he’s only seen fire one time. And that was at a birthday party about 6 months ago.

I’ll still keep checking on everyone when Connor comes up with these types of things, because I don’t want the one time that he’s right about something, to be the one time that Mommy didn’t believe him. If I could insert wav files into the blog, I’d add the ExFiles theme here. But since I can’t you’ll just have to hum it to yourself.

When Not Getting Your Way Is Really in Your Best Interest

If you were at our house tonight at 6:45pm, this is what you would have heard. This was the conversation between Connor and Jorma during our dinner, which consisted of three bean chili.
Jorma was just eating his last bite.

 

“I want that. I want that bean. I want your bean. I WANT THAT BEAN!!!”

“What bean? My bean?”

“I WANT THAT BEEAAANNN!!! I WAANNTT THAT BEEAANNN!!!”

“You want the beans in my mouth?! You have GOT to be kidding me”

“I WAANT THAT BEAN!!! THE BEAN IN YOUR MOUTH! I WANT THAT BEAN!” Begins crying hysterically… “BEAN! BEAN! I WAANNNTTT IT! I WANT THAT BEAN!” Starts bouncing up and down in the chair having a total and complete meltdown.

“You can’t have THAT bean. It’s in my mouth. It’s all gone.”

“BBBBBBBEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“OhMyGod. You have got the worst case of You Have That, I Want It, I have ever seen!”

 

Of course he didn’t get the bean because that’s just not how we roll in this household. We might pretend we didn’t see him eat a Cheerio off of the floor, but the regurgitation stage… that’s for the birds.

 

 

Monsters!

Connor has monsters that visit him at night. He’s pretty consistent with his story and we’re not sure where it came from. He doesn’t watch television shows with monsters and it only seems to happen when he’s sleeping. The first time that the monsters appeared we were alerted by a piercing scream from upstairs. Jorma went up to check on him and he was awake, staring off in the corner in a zombie-like manner screaming. Jorma couldn’t do anything to soothe him and it seemed that Connor might be having a night terror. It probably didn’t help the situation any that Jorma reported that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up at full attention during this incident.

When we woke Connor up in the morning, we asked him about it. He said, “There were monsters in my room. They came out of the hole in the corner.” And pointed to the right corner of his room. We tried to spin it a little bit and said, “Really?! What did they do?!” in a happy excited voice, like monsters only come to lucky girls and boys and were just SO FUN! Connor responded that the monsters went to the grocery store after they left him and then brought him some cake. We played up the story so that in the event that Connor was seeing something that we couldn't maybe it wouldn’t freak him out. I even launched into an animated story about how monsters are friendly and only want to protect him and bring him sweets.

It seemed to work and the night terrors went away, although we still have regular discussions about the monsters. We don’t instigate these discussions and make sure that he doesn’t get undue attention for them, lest we be forced to listen to him talk about trolls in the attic and anything else he might be able to spin into a tale of mystery.

After the monsters made their first or second appearance I smudged the house. I mean that’s what any normal parent would do upon the appearance of monsters, right? My Amber resin got a little bit out of control at the top of the stairs, setting off the smoke detector and the husband. Jorma disassembled the detector, shaking his head at me and then wandered back downstairs more miffed that I had interrupted his game of NetHack than the fact that I had filled the hallway with smoke. He’s a good man, that one.

The monsters still return on a regular basis, but we haven’t had any more night terrors. It will be interesting to see if the monsters still appear when Connor moves into his new room. Maybe he’ll give up and move on to something completely different. Maybe dragons in the closet.

TV Emergency

I walk into the garage where Jorma is working out.

“Sorry to bother you, but this is an emergency. Gilmore Girls has been canceled.”

Cheese Patch Indeed

I remember being exhausted and giggly one night after working several days in a row during race on no sleep and having a conversation with Pattie and Dar. We were talking about the nicotine patch and I simply stated that I needed a cheese patch. It’s probably not funny to you, but come by after you haven’t sleep for a few days and have been dealing with drunken race fans for almost a week and I’ll tell you again. You’ll think it’s hysterical. Promise. It’s all in the delivery.
Jorma and I have been on a diet, for oh…about three years now. Sometimes it’s the South Beach, sometimes it’s the Midnight Ice Cream Diet, (when I’m pregnant), sometimes it’s the Bob Greene Diet and sometimes it’s the Let’s Eat Taco Bell Until We Are Completely Sick Of It Diet. For the past few months we’ve been on The Eat Healthy and Work-Out Diet. Or at least Jorma has. I jumped on the bandwagon officially about two months ago and I’m doing pretty well. I’ve lost 13 lbs so far and can actually say that for the past few weeks, I’ve been either lifting free weights or walking every day. The eating healthy diet consists of a lot of whole wheat pasta, salads and grilled chicken. Lots and lots of chicken. So much chicken that when Jorma says, “What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” at least once a week, I have to respond with, “Maybe we should get a little crazy. You know… have some chicken.”
Tonight we had girls night out at Outback and I decided, to hell with it all, I’m getting something delicious. And a salad. So I did. I started with a house salad, drank ice water and then moved on to my entrée. Cheese fries.
When they delivered the cheese fries to the table, I started to feel a little anxiety. My dinner was the size of a Volkswagen. They brought it on two stacked plates giving the impression that one of the large dinner plates would not support the heft. On top of my Volkswagen there was probably about a pound of cheese and at least half a pound of bacon. The anxiety was because I was afraid that I might try to eat it all.
Mostly I ate the cheesy fries off of the top, dipping each in blue cheese or ranch dressing alternately, occasionally picking up the bacon crumbles off of the plate so that none went to waste. I didn’t eat it all nor did I try, but The Eat Healthy and Work-Out Diet, my tummy isn’t used to ingesting such richness. And it’s not happy. Not one bit. I felt overly full for a while, but then it moved to nausea. From there I moved to “Holy Crap! I think I might vomit!”, which for me is monumentous since I am just not a thrower upper. I’m just not. I don’t vomit unless faced with the stomach flu or vodka with a Boone’s Farm chaser. I can drink tequila on an empty stomach  and don’t get me started on how Jagermeister is the cure for the common cold.

I can hold my liquor. I can not hold my cheese.

I guess this could really be a blessing. Because I feel like if I ever look at a cheese fry again. It might be too soon. Cheese patch indeed.

 

Sleeping Like A Baby

Over the past few days, we’ve been trying to teach Tristan how to go to sleep on his own. We waited significantly longer with Connor to do this and we learned our lesson. When Connor was a year old, the only way he would go to sleep is if someone was holding him while walking and simultaneously patting his bottom. So we decided that it was time for Tristan to learn how to sleep. The previous method for Tristan was taking him upstairs, baby classical music CD, baby massage, clean diaper and pj’s. Then paci in mouth he would lay in the crib while I patted his bottom until he fell asleep.
Since we’ve started his sleep training, I’ve gained an hour of my life back. But it’s not the hour of quality time I was hoping for. This is mainly because Tristan is relentless with his screaming. We are doing the check on method, where we let him cry for 5 minutes, then 10, then 15 and so on, but in the end, he just screams until he passes out. And since we’ve started his sleep training, he’s started waking up again at midnight, 2am, 4am and 6am. Where as before we had an entire week where he slept from 8 until 6am. And now he has a cold.
Which makes us feel just awful putting him down and letting him cry when he doesn’t feel well. So we’ve been cuddling him a little bit more and listening to the screaming a little bit less. The screaming sessions are starting to get a little shorter though, tonight he cried for only ten minutes and I checked him after the first five so we are seeing an improvement.
Slowly but surely… we will all be sleeping like babies.