Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Envy

Christmas is awesome.
I have always pined for a tree, a fireplace, perfectly wrapped gifts, carols. It was a Lifetime movie in my head. Everyone was so happy on Christmas. Charlie Brown, Frosty, Meredith Baxter-Birney. Even Schneider from One Day at a Time softened up for the holiday. It's that good.

Chanukah doesn't hold a candle to it. There's no TV special that makes you feel all warm and good inside. Charlie Brown never lit a menorah. So as a jewish kid, I looked forward to Christmas as much as (if not more than) chanukah.

Now as a cynical adult, I see the brilliant marketing behind the holiday. Having never celebrated it, I wonder if it's as awesome as I imagine it. Are the chestnuts roasting on the open fire? Is the family unit sitting in their flannel pajamas listening to music while staring at the fire?

If we did Christmas, I imagine it would look like this:

Tree decorations all over the floor, baby eating pine needles by the handful.
HM opening the corners of every gift to see which one's hers and LOUDLY caroling.
#1 skipping Christmas dinner and eating 8 waffles at midnight.
Christmas Day would be a chaotic morning with revved up hyperactive kids opening gifts they don't need and throwing wrapping paper all over the floor. Baby would then eat wrapping paper by the handful.

Because that's pretty much what our chanukah looked like. Except with more candles.

I watched a Very Smurfy Christmas today with the kids. I saw in their eyes the same glazed look of awe and peace that I had as a kid (and today) watching these shows.

Life can really be warm and good. For one day a year, everyone gets along. Smurf Village was aglow  and Gargamel wasn't such a jerk. The music plays. Everyone hugs in the end. Gratitude abounds.
Cynics are quiet.

Christmas is awesome.

Merry Christmas to all my gentile peeps. Happy Festivus to the rest of us.









Sunday, December 16, 2012

Poop

The world is so impossibly sad sometimes.
Ugly, awful things happen.
Things that remind me that shit will happen beyond anyones control. That there are times when there's not one goddamn thing you can do to make it better or to change it. That we are but minuscule specks of dust floating in the ether.

And then, on those same days, as I'm flipping through pictures on my phone- I find a picture of my toilet full of poop.

On Friday, as the news of the massacre came in slowly, I was scrolling through pictures on my iPhone to distract me from the news on TV. Cute baby picture, cute 8 year old picture, awesome dinner picture, toilet full of crap picture, cute baby picture again....
I froze when I saw the poop picture and had to look at it closely to make sure it was in fact my toilet.... It was.
I immediately accused my husband of being a vile idiot. He swore it wasn't him. I then went to his second in command- our 8 year old son; his doppelganger in every way. Denial. And he was kind of bummed he didn't do it. I didn't fully believe him.

I was stumped. Who did the phantom deuce belong to? Who would take a picture with my phone?

Later that evening, walking with HM- (my 5 year old daughter)- I mentioned the poo picture to her to see if she would maybe narc her older brother out. She looked at me and smirked.
Astounded, I asked: "You did NOT take a picture of your doody with my phone, did you?"
HM replied- "yep" *laughing uncontrollably* "isn't that a funny prank?"

Silence.

I have a 5 year old daughter who took my iPhone, went to the bathroom, took a picture of her poop and left it on my phone for days in order for me to find it unexpectedly. To punk me.
She's 5.

So besides being disturbed at the above facts, I admire her comedic timing, her sense of a great prank and that she knows that poop is (almost) always funny.

The weekend went on. The sadness kept rolling in with every flip of the channel.

Sometimes you need some poop to laugh at.










Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Sleep Training

Sleep training a 9 month old is about as much fun as a colonoscopy prep.
I'm currently in the kitchen with the timer set for 5 minutes listening to my child wail.
Years ago, I read somewhere that in Guantanamo they would pipe in a recording of a baby screaming for hours on end. The unrelenting sound of a baby screaming is horrid. Its a function of evolution to respond. Quickly and with immediate comfort. To have to listen to a screaming baby for days on end would make me jump into an electrified fence.
That's kind of where I am now.
The problem is that this child does not sleep. For the last month he has been waking up every 2 hours every night. Like a newborn. Except as a newborn, he slept 6 hour stretches.
So for the last 4 weeks, I've been up all night with this overgrown newborn.
Fever, ear infections and enormous adenoids have all been taken care of.
It's time.

So as he screams and my neck muscles are tight and my jaw is set so hard it may crack- I'm letting him cry. It goes against every natural impulse of mine.
But sleep deprivation will make a bitch crazy. And willing to do anything for a 5 hour stretch of sleep.

It's been 10 minutes and there's no sign of him losing steam. If he was ever left alone in a jungle somewhere he would be OK because he would scream long enough for a mama orangutan to come save him. Then she would raise him and he would be fine. And then there'd be a great Phil Collins song at the end of his biopic movie.

Go to sleep Tarzan. Just GO TO SLEEP.


Sunday, December 9, 2012

Marriage Diet

The one down side of being happily married is that there goes the single best diet plan ever. The breakup diet. It's hands-down the fastest, least healthy weight to drop some serious poundage.
Having experienced my fair share of getting dumped on my ass, I can say this with certainty: It makes you thin.

0 caloric intake X 3 weeks=  10 lb weight loss
That's break-up math.

Thousands of calories per day + 3 gestational periods x 12 happy years= 30 lb weight gain
That's marriage math.

So, I'm certain I won't be doing the break-up diet ever again. I need to find a new "marriage diet".
One that's doable. Easy. One that doesn't make me more irritable than my baseline irritability.
One that doesn't include advice to eat baby carrots as a snack. Or those tiny cheese circle things. Those are excellent snack options for a small squirrel. If I was the type of person who could eat baby carrots as a snack and be satisfied, would I be dieting in the first place?

I need a food plan for a girl who dreams about breakfast.





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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Dirty Words

I read one of my favoritest bloggers (The Mad Woman from Diary of a Mad Woman) lament that some people don't like her dirty mouth. They think it's bad for her kids. Will sully their pristine minds. Makes her seem less classy.
Got me thinking.....
I remember my soul-friend once telling me that she knew she had sunk to a new low when her then 3 year old daughter asked her, in the sweetest of voices, to please read her this fucking book. (I miss you so, my soul-friend!)
My own HM was complaining about her older brother a few years ago (so she must've been 2) and yelled "He's so fuckannoying". One word. It's become my most favorite adjective.

My kids grow up in a house where real parents have real frustration and use real good, colorful words. They know them all. I admittedly have a wretched potty mouth. I've never been called "classy". Not even once.

However, both my kids have never used those words since the fuckannoying debacle. In fact, the eldest gives me a look when he hears curse words. It's a widening of the eyes, "did-you-also-hear-that", knowing look of disapproval. He has never once swore. When a friend of his dropped the F bomb in my van a few weeks ago and I nearly drove into a tree in a fit of laughter, he was appalled.

So who knows- maybe if you drop F bombs often in your home- your kids will be more sensitive to it?

Either way, who the fuck gives a shit?


Monday, December 3, 2012

Occupational Hazard

#3 has recurrent ear infections. At 8 months old, he has been on 5 different antibiotics in the last 4 weeks. All to no avail. ENT and tubes are in the immediate future. This ranks pretty low on the worry barometer.
My little guy has had fevers on and off for the last 4 weeks. BFD, he's still cheerful, eating, peeing.

Bit for whatever reason, at the unholy hour of 4am today, when little guy had a scalding forehead (again) and piping hot breath- I went loco.
Here's what happened.
While picking him up and feeling his very hot little head and neck, I dove head first into a spiral of catastrophic thinking. I couldn't be rational and think that clearly this was yet another ear infection/virus and therefore he has fever. Instead, it turned into 4 consecutive weeks of fever, multiple antibiotics for ear infection, then finally diagnosed with leukemia after pediatrician checked his blood counts. A story I've heard countless times in the last decade of doing what I do.
That thought was alternating with: "Jesus, get your shit together, woman, its an ear infection".
This is my occupational hazard.

I've made my pediatrician check for abdominal masses, eye deviations, enlarged lymph nodes...and today I made him rule out leukemia. Needless to day, he was not thrilled with me today. Apparently, some doctors don't like being told how to practice. Who knew?.... Who cares?

I needed to explain that the lens in which I see the world is sometimes twisted (actually probably often) and full of really random, horrifying muck. I find myself wondering "why not me?".  There's no good reason why not. And that's terrifying.

So yes, a simple, benign fever in my child will 9 times out of 10 not even make the radar of concern. I have on many occasions given my kid motrin and sent them to school. I've ignored my kids complaints of tummy aches, knee pain, infected nails, mad diaper rash and back pain. I'm currently 5 months overdue on well child visits. Don't even ask me about dental care for my little dirt balls.

But every so often, without any warning, it'll hit me like a steamroller. The knowledge that random shit happens to people. Healthy, unassuming, carefree people. Until they're not anymore.

And the truth is that since theres not a damn thing you can do about it; you might as well eat that piece of cake, go on that expensive trip, let your kids stay home from school and go to the movies.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to stay sane and go back to ignoring most of my kids ailments.
Until the next time a fever derails me.