Don’t Cry Over Unflushed Pee

    

     So, yesterday we had plans to meet a big group of friends at the beach.  I might have mentioned before what a HUGE undertaking it is to get packed up for a day at the beach.  I wish it was as simple as throwing a towel in a bag and running out the door, but that is just not the case.  It’s like a strategic planning session that requires a great deal of thinking ahead and full cooperation from all participants. However, we are talking about MY twins, who rarely cooperate fully with ANYTHING!  Wouldn’t you know that we just couldn’t get loaded up and ready to go without some type of “incident”??!!

     After I had finally finished packing all of the snacks and lunches and drinks, I was ready to get the kids in their suits and to lather them up with sunscreen.  I had to barter with both of them in order to accomplish this simple task, however, because my daughter was deep into “Firehouse Dog” on t.v., and my son, as usual, was completely mesmerized by the Indiana Jones Wii.  I had to switch into full-on threatening mode in order to get either one of them to collaborate with me.  Finally, I got my son to realize I meant business and to get his butt outside to be sprayed down with sunscreen.  I could vaguely hear my daughter yelling about something as the front screen door shut behind my son and me, but I wasn’t quite sure what she was fussing about, nor did I really care.  I was on a mission to get to the beach!

     Just about the time I was halfway through my son’s sunscreen application, and, coincidentally, just about the time a neighbor was walking her dog past our house, my daughter whipped open the screen door and screamed a bunch of unidentifiable phrases at the top of her lungs.  She was so loud that I think I even saw the neighbor’s dog cover his ears for protection.  It took me a second or two to decipher just what she was so upset about, which apparently was that my son didn’t flush the toilet when he went pee earlier. When I glanced up to tell her to stop all the screaming, I happened to notice that she was standing on the front porch with nothing but her tankini top on. The child was buck naked from the waist down, crying hysterically about the pee that was left behind in the toilet.  I mean, you would’ve thought that my son had set the house on fire with as upset as she was. Girls can be so dramatic!  I looked back over at my neighbor to apologize for all the hullabaloo and found her chuckling to herself, as if she had been there, done that before, many times herself.  That’s the great thing about fellow parents — embarrassing moments just don’t really exist because they’ve happened to all of us in some way, shape or form.

     I was able to calm my daughter down enough to get her tankini bottoms back on her, and we finally made our way to the beach — thirty minutes, late, no less.  Luckily, the other moms we were meeting had also had their own “pantless meltdown”-type mornings, so we all ended up arriving around the same time.  Better late (and clothed) than never, I guess!

The Ventriloquist

      My daughter has become a ventriloquist for my son.  She reads his mind, speaks his thoughts, and answers pretty much any question you might ask him in her presence.  I often think she knows what he wants to say before he even says it.  I guess it’s a twin thing.  While it’s cute and intriguing at first glance, it has become somewhat of a problem for us.  It is what ultimately led to my decision to put them in different classes in school. My son desperately needed the chance to both think and speak for himself, so that he could be his own person. 

     My daughter has always been the dominant personality of the two of them.  She’s been that way ever since her days in the womb.  She was bound and determined to take up every square inch of my uterus, whether my son liked it or not.  Throughout my entire second and third trimesters, I was convinced that there was something terribly wrong with him, because I could only ever feel my daughter kicking and moving around in there. Now, it all makes perfect sense to me. Since she was the first-born by nine minutes, she has decided that this gives her the life-long right to ALWAYS be first at all things concerning her brother.  God love her, but she always wants to be the center of attention and the star of the show.  At the same time, though, she is also very protective of her brother and is almost like a little mother hen to him.  She wants to see him succeed, but he just better not succeed before her!   

         This all started because my son has always been somewhat of a “low talker.”  We are always telling him to enunciate his words and to speak up. He is such a mumbler half the time that it’s enough to make you want to bang your head against the wall.  Since my daughter is usually in closer proximity to him, she will often try to tell me what he’s saying.  And he’s such a laid-back little guy that he usually just lets her do all the talking. I guess he figures, why bother wasting that extra energy if someone else is gonna do it for him?  The issue, though, is that we want to hear the words coming out of his own mouth.  Whenever I pick them up from school, or now days from camp, I have to establish designated speaking times to hear about the events of their day. Otherwise, my daughter will take it upon herself to tell me anything and everything that both she AND my son did the whole day.  She just can’t seem to help herself — the girl loves to yap.

     While I hope that my twins always remain the best of buddies, I do hope that my son can develop more of his own voice the older that he gets.  His sister will always have his back, that’s for sure.  I just hope that she has it in the sense of sticking up for him, rather than as the control panel for her own little puppet show.

Insomnia: My New Best Friend

    

     I am quite certain that I could very easily be mistaken for one of the zombies in MJ’s “Thriller” video today.  After the night I had last night, I must look like dead woman walking.  And no, it did not involve any margaritas, thank you very much!  My husband was out of town, and for some reason, I can never sleep well when he’s gone. Insomnia becomes my new best friend, and I hear every little pop and creak throughout our entire house all night long.  And since our house was built in the late 1800′s, we have A LOT of unidentifiable pops and creaks, let me just tell ya.

     I thought I was starting off on the right foot by crawling into bed fairly early with a good book that I’ve been wanting to read forever (The Shack). But after about three or four pages, I could barely keep my eyes open. When I shut the lights off and tried to drift away, though, my mind had VERY different plans for me.  Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a million thoughts, so instead of counting sheep, I was counting all of the things I needed to get done the next day.  No matter how much I tried to push out thoughts of my impossible-to-achieve “to-do” list, I kept thinking of more items to add to it.  

     And to add fury to the fire, I recently switched deodorant and now have some kind of irritated bump on my right armpit as a result.  It hurts like a son of a bitch, so sleeping on my favorite side is not really an option at this point.  As much as I tried to get comfortable on my left side, it just wasn’t working for me.  I am a right side girl through and through and felt like I was going against all that is pure and good in the world by switching things up like that.    

     And as if I didn’t already have enough distractions, I also kept thinking that I heard footsteps in the hallway right outside my bedroom door.  It was seriously freaking me out.  My husband swears that we have a ghost in our house, so I was convinced that this so-called apparition was trying to mess with me.  I was certainly not in the mood to be spooked.  I desperately needed my sleep and was ready to kick any spiritual punk booty that got in my way.

     Somehow, some way, I apparently must’ve managed to finally fade away at some point.  I couldn’t have been sleeping for more than a half an hour, though, before I was startled awake by a faint cry of “Mommy!”  I lay there for a minute, praying to God that I was dreaming, but then I heard it again, only louder.  ”MOMMY!!!!”  Nope, not a dream.  I dragged myself out of bed and down the hall to see what was soooooo important that I had to be jerked out of my hard-earned slumber.  The highly crucial reason for this very unwelcome interruption was that my son was thirsty.  Unbelievable.  I had tossed and turned, made additions and subtractions from a very detailed “to-do” list, mentally battled a ghost in the hallway, and agonized through armpit pain and suffering all to be awoken for a freaking drink of water?!! But as all good mamas do, I took several deep breaths and calmly walked my son to his bathroom to get a sip of water and then tucked him back in bed with a kiss.  I then went back to my insomnia haven and stared at the ceiling for the next several hours.

     What has happened to me?  Have I forgotten how much I LOVE sleep?  I saw one of those Ambien t.v. ads this morning, which obviously caught my eye.  I contemplated whether or not I might need some type of sleeping aid. Shortly thereafter, though, I saw a commercial for a news show with the latest Michael Jackson death investigation details, and I shook that idea right out of my head.  I don’t like being looped out on pills — just one Benadryl makes my head feel like it’s on the teacup ride at Disney World. I’m keeping my tired fingers crossed that I’m so exhausted tonight, that I just literally pass out when my head hits the pillow.  If not, I certainly have enough things “to do” around here that I can easily keep myself busy all night. I’m holding out hope for the former….

No More Training Wheels

    

     Over the weekend, my twins finally learned to ride their bikes without training wheels.  I’ve been bugging my husband to take them out for weeks, because I knew he’d have WAY more patience than I would to deal with all the whining and crying that was sure to ensue. Apparently, my son got the hang of it right away, and after some over-the-top dramatic melt-downs from my daughter, she eventually figured it out as well.  

     They were pretty proud of their newfound skills and very much wanted to show them off to me, so I agreed to take them on a bike ride yesterday after they came home from camp.  Unfortunately, though, my daughter had to make the whole thing into a competition, as she typically does with everything concerning her brother.  As it turns out, my son is definitely the better bike rider at this point, which just boils my daughter’s blood.  (Of course, we tell them that they are both equally good, yada, yada, yada.) She does not want him to be better at anything and gets FURIOUS when he is. When he made it to the end of every block before her, she would scream and yell at him and get so agitated that she’d lose her balance and fall into the grass. And then she’d blame her brother — apparently, it was all his fault that she’d made herself fall down.  Luckily, my son was oblivious to all of her bitching at first and just kept going on his merry way.  But, after about five or six blocks of this all-out drama from my daughter, I had had enough. I declared the official ending to the bike ride, and we slowly made our way home.

     When we got home, the kids wanted to keep practicing on the sidewalk next to our house.  This plan, however, was just destined to be a disaster, because two wobbly new riders trying to go in opposite directions down the same path could not possibly end well.  I decided to sit in the back yard and just wait for the bottom to fall out. As predicted, my daughter kept falling down while trying to avoid my son and his bike and grew more and more pissed with each scraped knee. She was screaming at my son for being “in her way.”  Next thing I know, my son is putting his bike in the garage saying he’s sick of being blamed for everything and is done riding for the day, and my daughter is so upset that she’s PUTTING HERSELF IN TIME OUT in her room to cool off. What the??!!  After a long talk with my daughter about the importance of practicing new skills, having patience with herself AND others, and not having to be THE BEST AT EVERYTHING, she eventually calmed down enough to apologize to her brother.  

     I’m sure the neighbors were all thrilled to see the bikes be put away for the day after all the commotion we had just created.  I thought bike riding was supposed to be a fun, relaxing family thing to do together.  Wow, I could not have been more wrong!  Needless to say, I’m not looking too forward to our next bike ride any time soon. Maybe I’ll wear my ear plugs next time….

Disturbance At The Beach

     I saw one of the most horrific-looking things I have ever seen at the beach this weekend.  I was certainly not alone in my horror, because heads were turning and mouths were dropping all around me.  Sadly, it was a woman who was so disturbingly anorexic that she looked like she had crawled out of a coffin to sunbathe at the beach.  

     I’ve seen many talk shows on the topic, but I have never seen a person so skinny in all my life.  This woman honestly looked like a walking skeleton with bones protruding throughout her entire body. She literally had not one ounce of muscle anywhere on her.  Her skin was so tanned that it looked like leather stuck to her scrawny bones, and her face was so sunken in that she looked like she was dead.  I am not exaggerating when I say that she was lucky to have weighed 50-55 pounds.  

     She had placed her towel right at the end of the main walkway that leads down to the lake, so everyone who came to the beach was pretty much forced to make eye contact with her.  You could see the looks of utter shock on each person’s face who passed her by.  At one point, she somehow managed to walk to the water to cool off.  She was so frail, though, that it took her a while to muster up the strength to even move her stick legs.  It was painful just to watch her.  The sight of this obviously very sick woman caused quite a stir, particularly among kids.  I was talking to another dad whose pre-teen daughter had asked what was wrong with the lady. He simply told her that she wasn’t feeding herself enough food, which can make you very sick. He told me he was kind of glad his daughter could see the detrimental effects of eating disorders up close and personal, since girls are pressured at such a young age about their body images now days. Surprisingly, my kids didn’t ask any questions, but they did take a good, long look at her.

     I had another conversation with a mom who said she was considering contacting the park district to complain about the lady. She said she was disturbing the community and that she should be asked to leave. She was concerned that the woman was showing young girls that this image is acceptable.  Now, I personally don’t agree with that line of thinking at all. No matter how upsetting someone’s appearance might be, it is a free country, and you can’t ban people from a public place.  Do I want to stare at a skeleton of a woman who is clearly on the pathway to her own death? Of course not!  Do I want my kids to have to see such a disturbing sight with their innocent little eyes?  No, I most certainly do not!  However, I can make the choice to look away, and I can tell my kids to do the same. I can also use it as an opportunity to talk to my kids and educate them if they ask questions.   

     Even a day later, I still can’t get the image of this poor woman out of my head.  I honestly don’t know how she is even alive, and I wonder if she has friends or family who have tried to help her.  It also has me wondering just how soon my own daughter is going to start becoming more self-conscious about her body. This is a real concern of mine, because I really think our society has gotten totally out of control with weight issues. Undoubtedly, the woman at the beach was a victim of this herself.  I know I have to catch myself sometimes when I say things like, “Ugh, I feel so fat today” in front of my kids.  I don’t want to initiate any of these unhealthy thoughts in their heads. Building their self-esteem is one of THE most important parental responsibilities I have.

     So, how do you talk to your kids about body image?  Have you found it difficult to protect them from societal and peer pressures to be “skinny”? How do you teach them to appreciate what they’ve got when they look in the mirror?

Sawing Logs

     What is it with men and snoring??!!  I don’t know many men who can honestly say that they don’t snore.  My father-in-law did it;  my dad does it. And, now, I am double-whammied, because I have not only one man in my house who snores but two! 

     Prior to having kids, I was a pretty deep sleeper.  My mom used to say that I could sleep through World War III and never even know it. Once kids came along, though, I started waking up at the drop of a hat.  Now, I’m lucky to sleep throughout an entire night without someone or something disturbing my slumber.

    It started out with my husband being the sole snorer in the family. It used to be just when he slept on his back.  Now, it’s whether he’s on his back, his side, or standing on his head — it makes no difference.  To give him credit, he has tried to rectify the situation by testing out the Breathe Right strips, the mouth sprays, etc., but, unfortunately, nothing seems to work.  I, too, have tried to better the situation by nudging him, yelling at him, and even kicking him in the night, of course to absolutely no avail.  I have finally resorted to wearing those stupid foam ear plugs each and every night to block out the noise.

     And, wouldn’t you know, my other little man in the house has now followed in the footsteps of his father.  Over the past couple of years, my son has become a mouth breather. Translation: the kid saws logs like nobody’s business at night.  I can often hear him all the way down the hall even though his bedroom door is closed. My mom made me ask the pediatrician about it to see if he might have a problem with his adenoids. The doctor said that he really doesn’t recommend removing them unless sleep apnea is involved.  He definitely doesn’t seem to stop breathing in his sleep — I’ve listened intently on many occasions.  He’s got a steady and very excruciating rhythm going on with his snoring.  

     So, why is it that men are typically the ones who snore?  My daughter doesn’t snore, and I certainly don’t either.  Am I really doomed to stuff foam in my ears for the remainder of my nights?  I don’t want to become like Lucy and Ricky and sleep in two different beds!  I guess I just answered my own question — foam forever it is….

The Furry Vest

    

     Most kids, particularly girls, tend to have a favorite item of clothing. They want to wear it every single day, regardless of whether it fits them or has a zillion holes in it from one too many washings. My daughter’s favorite thing in her closet is a furry vest that I think very much resembles a dead squirrel.

     Late last summer when my mom was in town for a visit, she wanted to buy the kids a back-to-school outfit, so we headed over to Gapkids at the mall.  She happened to point out this brown furry vest to my daughter, who instantly fell in love at first sight.  It was clearly a fall/winter piece of clothing, but nevertheless, my daughter immediately slipped the thing over her sundress and pranced around the store modeling it.  Even though it was pretend fur, I could just imagine someone dumping red paint on her as she walked down the sidewalk someday.  I had to then bear witness to all kinds of begging and pleading from my daughter who wanted nothing more than for me or her Grammy to buy the vest for her.  One of us (I can’t remember who) eventually gave in, the suckers that we are, and my daughter was then the proud owner of  her very own fashionably fake road-kill vest.

     Throughout the entire winter, I constantly had to battle my daughter over this thing.  She wanted to wear the vest every other day.  Her favorite teacher at school had complimented her on it one time, so from that moment on, she was determined to show it off as much as possible.  I was so sick of seeing it by the time Spring finally rolled around.  I thought I had finally seen the last of it — at least until this morning, that is.

     I was racing through my shower in hopes of finishing before the kids woke up, when my daughter pounced into my bathroom.  She loudly announced that she had peed her bed and needed some dry clothes.  I told her to clean herself off with wipes and to pick a t-shirt out of her closet to wear.  I was almost ready to grab my towel and get out of the shower, when my daughter strolled into the bathroom once again, wearing nothing but that brown furry vest and a great big smile on her face.  We’re talking buck naked, with the exception of the vest! I told her I thought she might be a little hot, given the fact that it is MID-JULY!!!  She said she wanted to wear it to eat her breakfast, so I told her that at the very least, she needed to put on some underwear.  

     Luckily, she got hot and decided to change into her pink Minnie Mouse t-shirt instead.  And now, the furry vest is once again tucked away in her closet, ready to make its next surprise appearance at any given moment.  I just hope any future ensembles come complete with pants….

Night Moves

    

     My son is about to drive me over the cliff with his late night shenanigans (wow — did I just sound like an old lady there or what??!!) Our bedtime routine seems to be getting longer and longer with each passing night.  For some reason, he can’t seem to get himself settled down enough to close his eyes and get the sleep that his body very much needs.  

     If I’m in charge (translation: my husband is out of town or working late), I have the kids in bed with the lights out by 7:30.  This is not only because I know their little bodies need that much sleep, but also because I know I’m in for a good hour or more of running up and down the stairs to get everyone to finally shut the hell up.  I’m not really sure why my kids call out to me past 7:30 at night, since I’m not really even nice anymore by that time of the day.  I need some “me” time and get more and more cranky each and every second that it’s delayed.     

     So, last night, a night when my husband had to travel for business, I missed my 7:30 goal time by about 20 minutes.  I finally had the kids tucked away with lights out by a little before 8 p.m.  However, my son decided to continue with his recent tradition of seeing just how much he can get away with at night.  I kept hearing overhead thumping, indicating that some little trouble-maker was escaping his/her room.  After going up there two times, I’d reached my limit. Put a fork in me — I was done.  I was ready to take things away at that point.  As I stomped up the stairs, I announced that the next person to come out of their room was not allowed to go to camp the next day (clearly, I wasn’t thinking this through, because that would only punish me, now, wouldn’t it??!!)  My daughter immediately came to her own defense by shouting out her innocence in the matter.  But when I burst into my son’s room, I caught him trying to shove something under his bed before I could see.  The little sneak had gone into the playroom across the hall and gathered up a bunch of building blocks.  He was apparently hard at work on a rather elaborate dump truck before I busted up the party.  After taking away his top-secret creation, I warned him that the Wii would be taken away if I heard anymore footsteps on the floor.  And, surprise, surprise, the footsteps halted henceforth.

     When my husband later texted me to see how the night was going, I told him about the running up and down the stairs hoopla with the kids. His response from his cozy little kid-free hotel room was to not be too mad at our son.  He said to be grateful that he’s using his imagination and that he could someday turn out to be a future engineer.  You can probably guess how well this went over with an overly exhausted single mama for the night.  And you can probably guess who gets to play the cat and mouse game when my husband returns home from his business trip….

Mama. Needs. Sleep.

     Yesterday I think I must’ve been running solely on auto pilot.  I was still exhausted from all the weekend’s activities (AKA:  hosting a crapload of people in my backyard), so I think it’s pretty fair to say that I was a bit spacey, to say the least.  I thought a trip to the beach with the kids would be a good way to pass the time.  I got us all packed up with snacks, towels, and toys. Unfortunately, though, I forgot to pack my brain.  

     When we arrived at the beach, I realized that I had grabbed the wrong beach bag.  And, also at about that same time, I got a call from a good friend who needed to vent.  She always does the same for me whenever I’m having a rotten day, so of course I’m always willing to reciprocate.  As I was allowing her to get a load off her chest, I searched the bag only to find that our beach passes didn’t appear to be anywhere in it.  My friend said she needed to call me back, so I took the kids up to the beach office to see if they could look us up in their system to see that we do have passes.  My kids were getting antsy as we stood there waiting for the guy to make the call to the park district to check us out.  He finally gave us wristbands and sent us on our way, as my kids bitched and moaned about who had to carry the bag of beach toys.  We waddled through the sand until we found a good spot.  I plopped the beach bag down and unzipped the little inside pocket to tuck away my cell phone and keys.  But then what to my wondering eyes did appear?  Why, the envelope with all of our beach passes, of course!  I had the damn thing with me all along! I guess I got distracted with the phone call.

     Then, I happened to notice that my son was still in his underwear and shorts. I had meant to change him into a bathing suit before we left the house, but I guess I forgot!  At least I had managed to lather him up with sunscreen.  The only problem was that he was wearing white shorts, which are now most likely stained yellow from all the sunscreen.  Smooth move, slick!  Luckily, the little guy could’ve cared less.  In fact, he thought it was hysterical that he was wearing underwear full of sand. That’s the great thing about kids — when life hands them lemons, they are more than happy to make lemonade!

     The rest of the afternoon at the beach turned out to be pretty enjoyable.  I was so looking forward to collapsing into my bed last night and trying to catch up on all my lost zzz’s.  However, my body had different plans, and I randomly woke up at 3:30 this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.  I think I may need a co-pilot today, because even my auto-pilot seems to be sleep-deprived….

The Party’s Over

     Thanks to Mother Nature, we had to change our 4th of July BBQ to a 5th of July BBQ.  Postponing the festivities turned out to be a very smart move, because the weather yesterday could not have been more gorgeous — not too hot and not too chilly.  Although there were a few families who couldn’t make the new date, we had a really good turnout overall with at least 75 or more people here at different times throughout the afternoon. Everyone seemed to have a blast, particularly the kids, as was evidenced by their filthy, dirty feet and scraped up knees and elbows by the end of the day — the true sign of a good party.  

     The party started with just a few families hanging around talking in our backyard, when I noticed that my husband had suddenly disappeared. Come to find out, one of my son’s friends had completely stopped up and totally overflowed the powder room toilet. It took his dad and my husband a good twenty minutes to clean up the mess.  And this was just the beginning of all the fun!  

     I was pretty adamant in the fact that I didn’t want a bunch of kids wandering around unsupervised in our house.  So, in an attempt to thwart that scenario, my husband and I positioned the long food table in front of the deck stairs that lead to the back door.  But, kids will be kids, and as the day went on, I kept noticing different groups of kids coming and going from the inside of the house. When I went to check on the situation, I found lights on throughout the entire house. Apparently, they had been snooping around in our master bedroom and even in our closets.  They had also dragged out a bunch of old bathtub toys from under the kids’ bathroom sinks.  I have no clue who was responsible for all the snooping, and luckily, it seemed to have stopped at just snooping.  Nothing appeared to be damaged or broken.

     At another point during the afternoon, my daughter decided to bring out her savings account book to show all of her friends how much money she has in the bank from her allowance.  It is a complete mystery to me what possessed her to bust this out!  Did I mention that she is only six??!! She really doesn’t have a ton of money in there, but to her, anything over a dollar means a lot.  I’m glad the child is proud of her earnings, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate to be whipping out her financial portfolio at the holiday BBQ!  

     And my poor son now looks like he went to battle after spending more time making full-on contact with the concrete than standing upright.  He must’ve come up to me three different times throughout the day with blood streaming down from some appendage on his body.  He finished the day off with a direct blow to the eye from an oversized frisbee, resulting in a big reddish, blueish scrape under his right eye.  I should’ve dressed him in red, white and blue body armor, given how horribly accident-prone the little guy seems to be.

     Overall, though, the party was a huge success.  We have some super nice neighbors who even stayed after to help us clean up the mess.  The squirrels and other neighborhood varmints will be in seventh heaven over the next couple of days as they work to clean up the remaining crumbs and food chunks that fell to the ground.  As my husband and I sat with our feet propped up eating a Dominos pizza last night, we felt a huge sigh of relief that the party was over.  Now we only have 363 days to decide if we can muster up the strength to do it all over again….