Back in the saddle. Or potty seat, as it were.

Remember this post? Ha! What a joke. Unfortunately, the joke is on mommy. Since that post, almost a year ago, Harper has managed to make zero progress, unless we really want to be honest and assess negative progress, in which case her progress has been impressive, indeed.

Oh, I'm sorry. Harper just walked in and told me she pooped in her underpants. Hang on.

(I swear on Baby Jesus that she really did come in and say that when I was typing that.)

So I don't know if Harper has inherited my distaste for public restrooms (which borders on an actual phobia), but if that's the case, then it wouldn't make sense that it would carry over to home, too. It also wouldn't make sense because despite never using a potty for anything other than dropping plastic toys into, she still wants to visit and sit bare bottom on any public toilet she sees. I think that part might just be so she can get me to face my fears, because as I hiss a constant refrain of "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! Do not TOUCH that!", she does things like put her hands right on the toilet seat, drags her hands along the walls, shoves her hands in the toilet paper dispenser, and asks (via demonstration) what that funny box is on the wall next to the potty, and is that for those band-aids mommies put in their pants? This is all while I'm cursing myself for being duped into yet another unproductive trip to a public restroom and wondering if it's appropriate to carry a spray bottle of bleach with me for exactly these moments.

If that's not enough to make you refill your birth control, then this most certainly will be, and if I had a tag of "Too Much Information", it would absolutely apply to this post, so I highly recommend not reading this if you're settling into a meal of any sort.

Last week we went to a birthday party at what can only be described as a VERY SWANKY country club. We walk in and get handed our towels, walk past the restaurants and main pool, walk past the outdoor bar, and then down a terraced lawn to the secondary pool, which is absolutely amazing. Slides that are three stories tall, beach entry, gorgeous lounge chairs and umbrellas and outdoor fans, and teenage lifeguards that look marginally less bored than the ones at my YMCA. We're playing in the water for a little bit, and then Harper decides to throw a big fit and refuse to do anything other than sit in my lap and be sullen to anyone who tries to speak to her. (This is partially because, I'm sure, that the party, held from 12-2PM at the VERY SWANKY country club, decided to provide us with the Very Swanky nourishment of water or tea, which was delivered by waiters, but without a side of chicken fingers, so tempers were starting to flare). About 1:30, Harper decides to get back in the pool again, and is playing happily, probably because she needed a few minutes in the Very Swanky pool water to really get her bowels moving. She walks out and happily announces to anyone in earshot (Ha! I typed "earshit" until my browser corrected me) that she had pooped and needed someone to clean her up. Nobody else volunteered, so I ended up gritting my teeth and walking Harper to the bathroom to deal with not only my hatred of public restrooms, but even worse, a dirty swim diaper. I'm surprised nobody had a clown in there, or maybe my 10th grade Biology teacher, just to really top things off. Maybe if I could have driven over a bridge to get to the bathroom, I could have completed my trifecta of Things I Hate the Most.

Once we get in the bathroom, even I, veteran of dirty swim diapers, was astonished at the mess confronting me. I honestly had no idea what to do. It was EVERYWHERE, like she exploded or something. I had a pack of wipes and her towel, and those were my only tools. After I had exhausted the wipes, with no noticeable improvement, I went to paper towel after paper towel, soaked in the sink, wipe, throw away. (And even in the midst of this, I was thinking 'thank GOD that I got a single bathroom unit, so I have access to the sink and nobody is here to bear witness/ call the Very Swanky country club police.") Finally I remembered that right outside the bathroom was a water cooler with a supply of plastic cups, so my final effort was to stand her up naked over the floor drain and pour cups of water on her, which seemed effective enough.

I washed her suit out in the sink, and balled it into some paper towels. I had one diaper with me, so I put it on her, and then balled up the Very Swanky towel so that only the clean part was showing, all 14 square inches of it. I wiped up the bathroom as best I could, cementing forever in my head that public restrooms are the most horrid places on earth. And then I held Harper's hand and walked out of the restroom, carrying my disgusting load of, well, crap, and towing a three year old dressed in a diaper and crocs (fake crocs, at that!), which is about as un-swanky as you can get. I found a towel bin, and disposed of the Very Swanky towel, although it was better served going into an incinerator, but I figure (hope) that they probably use some (a lot) of Very Swanky bleach when they wash those things.

The rest of the party had left by this point, kindly taking my bag with them, so I got to extend our walk of shame through both pools and into the restaurant where I could get my hands on Harper's cover-up. (And as I'm putting it on, I notice there are still flecks of, well, you know, down her back, and wonder if there is any limit to the amount of shame one person can feel). I assume at this point that even if I had an extra $60,000 laying around to pay my initiation, that I have probably guaranteed I will never get an invitation to become a member, because Harper is obviously swank-deficient.

We washed our hands again and then sat down to 10 cupcakes for the 8 kids. I guess the 12 adults were supposed to split the other two cupcakes, but I gave up my share because my appetite was pretty much gone.

We finally left and Harper declared it a wonderful party, but I think the moral here is clear. If you have a party at a mealtime, you should feed people, or someone might poop in your $60,000 share of your pool.

Dress Up (?)

It's that time of year again! The time of year when Aaron comes up with something obscure and weird and impossible to buy off the rack as his chosen Halloween costume. The first year I got to choose, and I went with Appropriating Mommy's Indian Heritage as the costume choice.





Year two he still didn't have an opinion, so I went with a borrowed lion costume from a friend. That year it was about 84 degrees on Halloween, and the lion costume would have given him heatstroke before his Snickers bars melted in his sweaty little fists, so I brought out the indian costume again.

Year three was when he started getting really adamant about his costume choice, and settled very firmly on being a bagel with cream cheese, and I am not making this up. I did not encourage this costume, and tried my hardest to switch him to a pirate or maybe a hobo, but he wasn't having it.

Year four was surprisingly traditional, and he went with being a pumpkin. That was Harper's first Halloween, and she went as a lobster, which I thought was hysterical. That opinion was shared by nobody else, including Jason, who just kind of looked at her in costume and rolled his eyes. Not like it mattered, she decided within 14 seconds of being outside that she was over and done with this Halloween nonsense, and she was going to make everyone flat out miserable until we took her home and put her in bed.

Year five was when Aaron decided he was just going to see how far I'd go, and he wanted to be a garbage truck. He and Jason would brainstorm this costume, coming up with all sorts of great ideas, which sounds really neat-o until you consider that the costuming department consisted of precisely one person, namely Mommy. In fact, I was not only in charge of Costuming, but also Candy Procurement, Staff Photographer, and Set Decorator. Jason, until that point, had mastered the role of Candy Taster, and that was about it. So I told Aaron that his garbage truck costume sounded great, and I would paint it to look like a garbage truck just as soon as Daddy built the costume. I thought Jason would work overtime trying to talk Aaron back into that awesome hobo idea, but instead, he spent his energy trying to show up my previous years of costume creation. He built Aaron a real "working" garbage truck with a moving hopper, so when people put candy in the front hopper, Aaron could raise the hopper and dump it in the back of the truck. Show off. (I am taking painting credit, though).

Harper was again too young to care what she was, so I went with a cavewoman, which she again hated. Not a fan of dress up, that one. (She had pants and a shirt on under her costume when we went out. I wasn't going for "slutty cavewoman". I find that trend alarming even on grownups. It makes me uncomfortable to see a woman take a normal costume and tramp it up within an inch of it's life, and I think we can all safely say I'm no prude. It somehow seems wrong to be dressed up as "sexy cop" or "sexy Little Bo Peep" or whatever. When did grown up costumes become basically a giant fetish?" Okay, back on topic.)




This year they each chose their costumes, and they're both sticking to their decisions. I went and bought all of the stuff to make costumes , and this week am planning on figuring out how I can hobble these costumes together in two hours or less from an assortment of bath towels, sweatpants, and felt. I was making great headway last night on Harper's costume when I got into an altercation with the sewing machine, and the machine definitely came out the winner. (Skeeve alert!)
Since sewing bath towels is apparently only for experts, I got my middle finger caught in the machine, where the needle went through the nail and out the other side. And while the needle was coming back up, I yanked my hand out of the machine, 'cause that mofo HURT, and you can just imagine the ick factor. I will say that wine and a Spongebob bandaid (and milking the story for all the sympathy I can get) are remarkable medicine. (And in case you're wondering, I didn't have to cut a stitch from my hand, which I was surprised and maybe a little disappointed about. Not that I relished the thought of cutting a machine stitch from my finger, but I think it would have made for a much more interesting anecdote).

Their costume choices weren't anything out of the ordinary this year, but I found the irony delicious, since they each chose their costume on their own, without knowing what the other one had picked. So when Harper told me she wanted to be a dog, and Aaron told me he wanted to be a cat, all I could do was laugh at how ridiculously appropriate it is for them to be dressing up as their own alter egos. Cats and dogs, indeed.

Jesus loves YOU. And you, too.

I know, I know. Consistency isn't my strong point, which is why I'll probably never be the Ultimate Survivor. Or the Top Designer. Well, consistency, and the lack of actually applying. And hating bugs, as well as most things that dwell outdoors, like humidity and cold and whatnot. Whatever.

Since my last blog, I've been pretty busy with work, which I am not complaning about even a teeny tiny bit. But the real reason for my non-posting is because I'm so consumed with Aaron, and it's really weighing on me. He's having what could only be described as a difficult transition to kindergarten. In addition, the neighborhood politics of the 5-7 year old set are becoming more and more apparent to me. Unfortunately, Aaron obviously inherited my disdain for being political, so he's not earning any points for himself that way. Without going into too much detail, because I'll either sob or light my neighbor's house on fire, I can say without question that being the one bullied/ left out ('cause I've been there) isn't one tenth as bad as watching it happen to your own child. It bothers me that at 36 years old, my mood can be so affected by a 6 year old who doesn't even belong to me. It should come as no surprise that my issue is with the child of the man I don't think highly of that lives behind me, and that's as diplomatic as I can be right now. Bless his heart. I'm feeling not at all bad about Aaron dropping his pants and pooing on said neighbor's lawn a number of months ago. (Cross my heart, that happened.) At the time, Aaron was made to pick it up and apologize, but at this point, I might encourage him to bag it, set it on the front porch, and light it on fire.

I really need to grow up.

Anyhow, I'm trying to just get back into blogging, because it's like medicine for my head, so here's what Harper's been up to. It seems a shame to know my mind and heart is really preoccupied with Aaron right now, and still bring out a Harper story, but she's pretty much a living anecdote. Where Aaron is complex and intuitive, Harper is like a little butterfly landing on your nose at the most inappropriate moment, and the two of them together are what makes our family, well, family.

So, Harper is completely convinced that the world revolves around her, and any evidence she sees to the contrary she quickly yells into submission. Lately she's been nixing the nightey-nite song and asking to say "pears" instead. We have our conversation with God, which involves Harper telling God to be thankful for her. I started singing "Jesus Loves Me" to her, but Harper's version is taking entirely too long. I'll start "Jesus loves me..."
"And Harper."
"Oh, sorry. Jesus loves me and Harper..."
"And Daddy."
"Right. Jesus loves me and Harper and Daddy..."
"And Aaron. And Babe and Storm. And Nene and Miss Marilyn."
"Of course. Got it."
"And Eeyore and Kiki, and Kara and Miss Nancie. And Jake."

By the time I make it through this song, including all of the relevant characters in Harper's life, I'm pretty sure I could have just sung Don McClean's "American Pie". But it's nice to know that no matter what you might think, in Harper's world, Jesus loves us ALL. Maybe even the kid and dad who live behind us, although I remain unconvinced.

Problem Child

So, I was embracing our new routine, all ready to start on the next few years of Aaron being in school while Harper's at home, figuring out how to spend our time. I was thinking of what I'd write for blog posts, maybe something about how I got totally immersed in teenage vampire love stories, or how I got even more immersed in reading bloggers who summarize teenage vampire love stories. Maybe I'd write about my new goal to perfect the application of self tanner, so that my friend Cindy doesn't look at my streaky ankles, shake her head, and sigh.

But then, after a solid three days at school, I got an email from Aaron's kindergarten teacher. Here's an excerpt:

Im sorry to bother you on a Tuesday evening, but I wanted to bring something to
your attention. As we are transitioning in the building (mainly as we are coming
in from playground) Aaron i having issues keeping his hands to himself. On
Friday we had a minor pushing incident and today Aaron was pushing and hitting
the boy in front of him. When i speak with him he can tell me that his hands
belong to himself but he struggles with doing so. Can you please speak with him
about this? I don't him or anyone else to get hurt.

Isn't that nice? And in the two days since that email, Aaron has contined to not only push and hit other kids, but he's escalated his desired target number, since today I asked how many kids he hit/ pushed, and his estimate was "probably ten". And it's not like I'm not addressing it; short of medicating him prior to getting on the bus, I am at a complete and total loss, to say nothing of being so angry and humiliated I could scream. He's currently sitting in his room while I grit my teeth and try to take deep breaths.

Kindergarten is totally kicking my ass.

Boil Watch 2008, Redux

Just briefly, I talked with a nurse today about Harper's lab results. Her new abcess came back as a staph infection, but apparently not MRSA (thankyouJesus). The nurse was far less informed about the difference between staph/ MRSA than I was; you'd think she didn't have Google or something. So in addition to that being the only information I got from her, I also got no viable information regarding whether this was just a freak coincidence (two boils in a month and a half? Come on!) or a sign of a more serious problem, or what. There is another culture I'm waiting for to come back tomorrow that will give us more information as to this being MRSA vs. staph. I don't know why, since the woman I talked to was so clueless, but for some reason I got a good feeling that tomorrow wouldn't show anything unexpected. Maybe it was just because she was so happy in her cluelessness that it gave me a happy feeling, too. If I didn't have Google, I'd be happier, too, and not the boo-hooing mess one might have seen yesterday as I was Googling "toddler MRSA".

So keep thinking happy thoughts and keeping crossables crossed. Her abcess now is definitely under control (at least, it sure looks that way), so I've got that going for me. And if she'd stop erupting, I could even move on to Aaron's last day of daycare (today). Poor Aaron.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Writing this blog has taught me how completely formulaic my life is. Each day is basically a limited multiple choice.

"Today we:

A. went to Target.

B. went to the doctor.

C. went to the pool.

While we were there, my kids:

A. behaved miserably.

B. did something funny or particularly cute and poignant.

C. humiliated me.

And at the end of it, :

A. I felt kind of depressed about being a parent, and that this job is harder than it should be.

B. got a funny anecdote to share with the internet and use to embarrass them in the future.

C. learned a valuable lesson about myself which I will hopefully grow from."

See how easy it is? Just use the above formula, and you can either write my next blog post, or maybe make bets with yourself about which of the above scenarios will play out on any given day.

Today?

Today we went to the doctor. While we were there, my kids behaved miserably. At the end of it, I felt kind of depressed about being a parent, and that this job is harder than it should be.

It wouldn't have been *that* bad, but Harper has been feeling lousy and has bad memories from her boil experience, so she kind of freaks out now. So now that she's developed another boil (abcess) in her leg that they had to drain in the office, it was pretty much a downhill slide. They're culturing it to see if it's just a regular staph infection or MRSA, and I should know in a few days. I don't have any great way to sum this up, I'm just worried and feeling badly for my little bunny. If you're the praying type I wouldn't mind if you sent a few out her way.

Bathing Beauty

I read somewhere once that if your kids don't humiliate you at least once a day, then you're not getting your money's worth. There is no question that my kids were a bargain in that department, because if we leave the house, I'm guaranteed at least two public humiliations, and that's on a slow day.

We were at the pool today and the kids were fine, but the longer we're there, the sassier Harper gets. Eventually she was spending an average of two minutes in Time Out for every one minute she was in the pool. While she was sitting next to me right by the pool edge, she was amusing herself doing whatever; I wasn't really paying attention since I was watching Aaron. At least, I wasn't paying attention until a little girl about 6 or 7 walks out of the pool, looks at Harper, and makes a face that would lead one to believe she had seen something unpleasant. And I look at Harper and realize that she has barfed up the gallon of pool water she had consumed, as well as the lunch she had eaten shortly beforehand. And it's all down her stomach and crotch, all over the chair, and all over the pool deck.

Hoo, boy, let me tell you, you haven't LIVED until you get the opportunity to wrangle a towel out from under your soggy (and, of course, dirty diapered) toddler and get on your hands and knees wiping up vomit from concrete, calling over your five year old because you have to get out of there RIGHT NOW. Because as other pool moms know, when someone barfs in the pool, the entire thing is shut down for an hour and everyone has to get out, which makes you not very popular at all. Since no barf had actually gotten into the water, I don't know how it would have been handled, but I didn't particularly want to find out. So I wiped up the barf and took Senorita Soggy Stink and Captain Yell and hightailed it out of there and didn't notify a single authority, because the only thing that could have made this more humiliating was me having to tell the perpetually bored and annoyed 17 year old lifeguard that we had a vomit issue that needed to be addressed.

At least let me defend the dirty diaper- I didn't *know* it was dirty, it must have happened while she was in time out, maybe in the midst of all of puking (that I wasn't paying attention to. Where's that mother of the year application again?) Clearly, though, that wasn't the time to deal with it; we needed to make a speedy exit, not get caught in the locker room where we would have potentially been lynched if the pool was, in fact, closed. Thank heavens we live just a couple of miles from the pool, because by the time this diaper got home, I was hanging my head out the window and gagging, and I rationalized that while I had committed a parenting sin by running out on public puke, my penance was addressing that diaper (and I'm not going to go into details, but any parent who has dealt with swim diapers should understand the mechanics of the nastiness I was dealing with).

So, you might want to wait until it rains to visit our pool. Or at the very least, wear your shoes on the pool deck. I'm sorry for the situation, but I know if I had to do it over again, I'd make the same coward choice, so my apologies to anyone who runs into my kids and their blinder-wearing, rationalizing mother.

Rude Awakening

Jason and I went on vacation last week, and it was decadent. Our itinerary included eating, drinking, and sleeping. If we got to see some of the city we were visiting, that was fine, too, but mostly we wanted to enjoy being kid-free for a minute. Just driving there and having silence in the car was relaxing beyond measure, and it got better from there.

While we were there, I told him "I can't imagine what I'm going to write about when we get back. Nobody humiliated me or infuriated me, I didn't yell at anyone, I didn't have to deal with anyone else's fecal matter, how deliciously boring!" (To which he replied "The weekend's not over yet!")

And then we got home and picked up the kids. Before we even left my sister's house, where they had been staying (thanks, Kara!), there were at least 3 fights between them. By the time we got them to the car, it was pure chaos, and we hadn't even gotten home and started the unpacking yet. Jason's and my vacation bliss melted away rapidly under a steady barrage of crying and bickering among the littles.

When Jason and I started dating, like everyone else, we were in "put your best foot forward" mode. We were probably in our first year of marriage before he became aware that my toenails don't naturally grow out shiny and pink, and maybe the second or third year before I decided that shaving my legs every day during the winter was far more effort than shaving them once a week (or less). Everyone's been there- you just get more comfortable with your partner, and let down more of your guard about what a real slob you are underneath it all. When I got pregnant with Aaron, I was a little embarrassed about the new issues that pregnancy brings up that aren't exactly modest, but Jason was always fine with everything, or at least he pretended to not be horrified by my constant burping and chewing on Tums and the sixty-five pound weight gain (thanks, Dairy Queen!) The only thing that was really making me nervous was the actual delivery. I mean, if you have a shred of dignity, I think we can all agree that you can package that up and throw it right out the window when it comes to giving birth. In the end, of course, everything went fine. He was not traumatized by the sight of our children being born (so he maintains), and it just became another experience that we shared. We thought that was it- that's as bonded as you can get, right?

What I did not realize at the time, is that your partner seeing you give birth isn't nearly as revealing as your partner seeing the way you parent. I think that's when the real guard comes down; the last frontier of facade is destroyed. Giving birth is just biology; any grownup involved knows you don't really have any control over it. Yelling at your kids, or getting fed up to the point where a bedtime story is just more than you feel like dealing with, or putting them in front of the TV all day because it mutes the arguing- those are real tests of who you are, and I fail those tests more frequently than I'd like to admit. They tell Jason a lot more about me (and vice versa) than me admitting that I'm perfectly happy to use the dryer as my clothes closet to avoid folding anything.

When Aaron was first born, that shock to our marriage was so difficult to deal with that I wasn't sure we'd make it to Aaron's first birthday together. But we did, and while I can't say that parenting has gotten any easier since then, our marriage certainly did once we realized that we're a team. Sometimes one of us has to come in and relieve the other one when we're at a breaking point. We spend a lot of our time on the weekends separately running errands with one kid, our "divide and conquer" method. We sit on the porch at night and commiserate about the day, or laugh about the funny stuff the kids did. We're starting to figure out how to work with each other's strong points, and when the other person needs help. By no means do we have this perfected, and it's been a long road, to say the least. But there's no question that there's been a lot of soul-baring in the past 6 years- some of it I'm proud of, some of it not, that we would never have had to reveal to the other person if we hadn't had kids. I didn't know half of these things about myself before becoming a mom; I can only imagine how surprised Jason must have been.

At this point, the only secret I've got left is my natural hair color. I'm keeping that one until I think he's ready for it.

Code Harper

Thursday afternoon Aaron came home from daycare with a fever of 103 something. Friday morning, it was up to 104.7, and he was really out of it- confused, disoriented, talking nonsense. That freaked me out, so I called the pediatrician and they told me what to do, what to look for, and what would warrant a doctor visit. So I drugged him up all day Friday and we hung around the house. Saturday morning he woke up, another 104.5 fever, drugged him again. Sunday morning, more of the same. Once he hit 72 hours with a fever, we needed to go to the doctor, so this morning I took his temperature, and again, 104.6. Called the pediatrician, got an appointment, and rushed getting Harper up and in the car, throwing a pop-tart and some milk at her to keep her quiet. Nothing like keeping her on a healthy diet to keep *her* immune system up, right?

Aaron was kind of enjoying this attention- the breakfasts in bed, the back scratches, the limitless popsicles, and finally a doctor visit that revolved all around him. Once we got to the doctor, he changed his mind about enjoying his patient status once he realized there was going to be a needle involved. My ears are still ringing from the hysterics.

I should note that at this point I'm going moderately insane. I've been stuck in the house with the kids for three solid days, and the best I can tell, they're training for the Screaming and Arguing Olympics, in which they would surely take gold. With each new chorus of "NO, I'M NOT!", "YES, YOU ARE!", I can feel my brain liquefy just a little bit more. I was tempted to withhold the Tylenol and ibuprofen from Aaron just so he'd get all feverish again and maybe calm down.

At the pediatrician, after swabs and questions and bloodwork and an hour and a half of keeping the littles occupied in an 8x10 room, we had no answers as to what is making Aaron so sick (although miraculously not lowering his volume). I was given a prescription for an antibiotic, off to Target we go.

Of course the mindnumbing bickering starts before I even get them into their carseats, and driving to Target I felt like I was in a fog, and starting to really get depressed that my role as a parent seems to involve nothing more than fixing meals and saying "stop it. ignore her. come back here. leave him alone. be quiet." Waiting for the prescription confirms this, because as I spend approximately 60 seconds talking with another mom, they manage to get unruly to the point of literally dragging each other around on the floor by their arms and running behind the counter at the snack bar. (And, of course, screaming. Always the screaming.) By the time I go to pay for the prescription, I'm absolutely numb. So numb I feel like I barely even registered the shock of how much the antibiotic cost. But I must have been somewhat shocked, because for a half second I apparently gave all of my attention to the ridiculous number on the register at the pharmacy. And when that half second was up, I looked up, and Harper was gone.

Aaron said "she ran off! she went down this way!", and I start looking down aisle after aisle, calling her name louder and louder each time. Within a minute, I'm calling so loudly and frantically that the Target employees (whom I like to think of as family, I'm there so much) figure out what's going on and I hear them call through their radios that there's a CODE YELLOW, and I can hear it echoing through all of the radios around me. Other customers are coming up to me and telling me they just saw her, she went that way, so I head that way, and someone tells me they saw her go the other way, and it seemed like everywhere I turned someone was telling me they had seen her somewhere else. At this point, I am in full on panic, and halfway afraid I'm about to black out. I'm screaming her name and hysterically crying, to the point that when someone asked what she looked like I couldn't even speak, except to choke out "she's little, and she's got a little ponytail on top, and she's without me". I'm just walking down the aisles, sobbing and yelling her name at the top of my lungs with Aaron running next to me asking why I'm crying, and a Target employee right behind me, assuring me we'll find her. I hear crackles over the radios that "we've found her in the men's department", and then "she's in electronics", and then "oh, wait, now she's in the infant section". If you're as familiar with Target as I am, you should know how far those sections are from the pharmacy, and part of me is absolutely horrified at how far she got in that short amount of time, and some little tiny part of me thinks "yep, that's definitely her". I finally walked up to infants and there is a human dragnet of Target employees trying to corral her. When I saw her I went from hysterical to absolutely mortified, although way in the back of my brain I was thinking "see? you guys had a hard time pinning her down with 12 of you! do you know how hard it is with just one of me?"

Harper was thoroughly annoyed that her adventure was over. I picked her up and carried her out, still crying (me, not her), embarrassed at how hysterical I had gotten, and sobbing out thanks to every Target employee I saw. (And at this point they're all still ridiculously nice, offering me help, offering to get me a cart, patting my shoulder and telling me it's okay. I should send them all a Target giftcard.)

We walked out to my car and as I'm tightening the straps on Aaron's carseat, I realize he's been silent for almost 5 minutes, which is unheard of. Probably because no matter what that poor kid does, Harper manages to steal the show.

Mea Culpa

I'm a very good apologizer. If Jason were standing next to me right now, he'd shove me off my chair and type in here "NO, SHE'S NOT! DON'T BELIEVE HER! YOU CAN'T WRESTLE AN APOLOGY OUT OF HER WITH A CROWBAR!", but that would just be him being dramatic. Because when you hear an apology from me, you can be sure that I am 100% sincere in my apology, and really feel badly about however I've wronged you, and I am owning up to my own culpability. And if you don't hear an apology from me, well, you can figure out how I feel from that, too.

A couple of months ago Jason and I were getting into one of those hissing, clenched teeth arguments. As usual, it was entirely because we were in a public place and our kids were acting like complete fools. We were tripping over ourselves in embarrassment at our kids' behavior, trying to contain them, trying to make the people around us comfortable (or rather, "less uncomfortable") by not arguing in front of them, and convinced that the other person was handling the situation poorly (me being the correct one in that assertion). After enough hissing and sneering at each other, we separated the kids and got them calmed down, which dissipated all of the anger between us. He came up to me a few minutes later and said sweetly "I'm sorry", to which I responded "thank you".

"'Thank you?' Your response is 'thank you'?"

"Well, I appreciate your apology."

"You don't think an apology back is appropriate?"

"No, because I'm not sorry."

And really, I wasn't, and even though I don't remember what the argument was about, I remain steadfast in my conviction that I was in the right, and therefore didn't need to deliver an apology. I told him thank you, and ended by telling him that I was glad we were finished arguing and that I loved him. And he gave me a kiss and smiled and rolled his eyes at me, and that was that.

A few weeks ago, we were all driving to a friend's house when (of course) the kids started acting like crazy people. Jason and I were already tense from rushing to get out of the house, the kids' screaming and arguing compounds that tension, and then I made a fatal mistake: I let him drive. I am certainly not what ANYONE would call a reckless driver, but letting Jason drive is like letting your nearsighted grandma drive. If that grandma were from a country where they drive on the other side of the road. His driving ability (or lack thereof) is one of our favorite arguments to hash out every few weeks, and always ends with him saying to me "THEN WHY DON'T YOU DRIVE?!", which always wins that argument, because it's not like I shouldn't know this after spending the last decade complaining in the passenger seat. He definitely has a point.

So the car ride over consists of everyone getting increasingly hostile, what with the bickering kids and Jason and me scolding them and my increasing frustration with Jason's driving. I try to bite my tongue regarding the driving, but it's really just building up pressure, and eventually we start sniping about that, too. By the time we're unloading our family from the car, we're flat out arguing; hissing snotty comments to each other while barking at the kids to stop hitting each other. We walk into the party and plaster smiles on our faces, and after a few minutes of pointedly ignoring each other, Jason comes up and gives me a kiss and quietly says "I'm sorry". And I said "thank you for apologizing. I don't want to argue".

He smiled and raised an eyebrow and said "Thank you? Seriously? You don't think you have anything to say 'sorry' for?"

"I'm sorry I let you drive".

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Aaron and I went last night to pick out his backpack and lunchbox. For him to start kindergarten. Next month. Pass the valium, please.

It took him almost 3 entire seconds to select his backpack.




Behold.

Then on to the lunchbox aisle. Big decisions to be made. What to choose?

Of course.

He was supposed to pick out a thermos, until I found out that they cost $15, and I imagine it would get used precisely twice before it was left behind in the cafeteria, or inadvertently tossed into a trash can. So instead of a thermos, he picked out an ice pack for his lunchbox. In the shape of? Lightning McQueen. This kindergarten preparation has been brought to you by Target and Disney-Pixar.

And maybe a few Kleenex for mommy.

This one goes to eleven

If volume was any indicator of health, I could have told you by Wednesday afternoon that Harper was feeling right as rain. A physician confirmed this morning that Harper is, in fact, fine, and everything's healing nicely. (And when I made my comment about volume to him, he replied "I don't think that's a good measure. She didn't seem to have any problems creating some volume the other day.") More importantly, he gave me clearance to send her back to daycare, and I practically peeled out of the pediatrician's office to get her there, pronto, since my ears are bleeding from 6 straight days in her company.

Her level of loudness is really only something that can be appreciated if you're around her. And it's not like Aaron is a shrinking violet, so the two of them combined are absolutely deafening. I have yet to meet a daycare teacher, babysitter, family member, person in line at the grocery store, etc. who doesn't comment on two things (and it's the same two things with both of them):

1.Wow, you've got a talker, huh? (And when I say sadly "no, I have two talkers", I always get looks of sympathy. Which I appreciate.)

2. Whew! Nobody's going to ignore that one!

Which means not only is it THAT LOUD, it's THAT LOUD- ALL THE TIME.

We have a friend who comes to visit regularly who wears a hearing aid. It's a really nice hearing aid; it adjusts to the ambient noise in a room automatically and resets itself regularly to recognize new volume levels. I am not kidding when I write that he can't wear it when the kids are around- they're so loud that his earpiece starts giving feedback, and doesn't know what to do- adjust to typical room noise and adult voices, or the frequent screaming and yelling that's as loud as a jet engine? After 5 minutes in their company, the hearing aid just tilts and shuts down, essentially saying, "let me know when normalcy has been restored". If I were him, I'd just take it out entirely while the kids are awake. I think they'd be much more palatable that way.

This should give you an idea of how loud they are: we have motion alarms set on the sofa. When they're disturbed by a dog jumping up on the furniture, they give off a high pitched alarm that sounds for a second or two, to scare the dogs away. Occasionally if the dogs (2 sixty pound mutts) start on a barking frenzy (which only happens when something really awful occurs, like another dog dared to walk on the street by our house, or the postman had the nerve to actually leave mail in our mailbox), the alarms might go off once or twice from the sound. Harper sets those alarms off with her voice a minimum of 6 times a day. Even our 7 year old neighbor, the 3rd loudest kid on the block, dropped her jaw when she realized that. I could see the defeat in that 7 year old's eyes when she realized she couldn't ever hope to achieve the earsplitting shrillness my 2 year old has mastered (having spent the past 28 months being tutored in loudness by her older brother).

A couple of months ago a friend of mine took me to a shooting range to teach me how to use a handgun. He let me use his ear protection, which was a fancy set of headphones that had a microphone worked into it somehow, so when he would speak to me, I could hear him perfectly. When anything louder than a speaking voice sounded, the microphone cut off automatically, so that gunshots were muffled. I can't stop thinking about those headphones lately. I crave them. I need a pair to wear around the house. If they sold them at Target, I'd already have them (and in fact, I'd be wearing them right now). It was the first time I had ever shot a handgun, and I think I did pretty well (and I hope he doesn't post here and contradict me). I'm convinced it's because compared to a day in the company of my children, a room full of weapons firing is relatively soothing.

Whirlwind

This is how Sunday started:

And this is how it ended:

And it all started with a pimple, which Harper has been happy to tell everyone.

"Hi! I have a pimple on my bottom. (insert dejected martyr voice here, and downcast eyes with a pout for days) But I'm okay."

This little pimple on her fanny from last week developed into a massive boil, and by Sunday evening, Harper had a raging fever. We called the pediatrician and they told us to go to the ER, so we now have "first hospital visit" off our list of stuff to do. I'm exhausted and don't feel like writing much, but the summary is that I had to hold her down while they cut her bottom and packed it open, and she screamed the entire time. At the end, she got a popsicle and a new Mickey Mouse doll (which she hasn't put down), and they didn't even offer me a shot of whiskey or anything.

She's still going to the doctor every day to monitor it and change the packing, I have somehow been elected the Person In Charge Of Changing The Grody Bandage On The Screaming Child. I'm hoping and expecting this to just resolve over the week, but I'm still pretty worried and stressed.

I will say that the worry and stress about this big zit has me in absolute awe of any parent with a chronically ill or special needs child, or the parents of children who have had to go through real surgeries or hospital admissions. Hats off, and hearts out.

Independence Day

I took the kids to the pool today, which is always an exercise in frustration. It's astonishing to me how many times I have to give the same directives over and over to get from point A to point B. Just getting Aaron to put his bathing suit on sounds something like:

"Aaron, put your bathing suit on.

Leave the lockers alone and put your bathing suit on.

Stop slamming the lockers!

Are you kidding me?! Put on your BATHING SUIT! Do you want to go home right now?

Take your clothes off!

Finally. Now put on your bathing suit.

Pick your clothes up off the floor.

I don't want your clothes, I'm trying to get Harper dressed, can you please just put them away?

No! Not there! That bag doesn't belong to us! Put them in OUR bag!"

This doesn't include trying to put on sunscreen, trying to get everything packed up, trying to organize which bags have clothes, which have toys, which have wet stuff, which have dry stuff, where the snacks are...oh, and the fact that there's a very bossy and non-compliant two year old involved in this whole process, who chooses extraordinarily inconvenient times to poop. By the time we walk onto the pool deck, I need a cocktail and a babysitter. (And have I mentioned that neither child can swim even a little bit?)

Aaron has been making great strides in the past couple of months regarding water. In spring of this year, getting him to take a shower was the equivalent of branding him with a hot iron (in his opinion). But since we've been going to the pool, I started a deal with him- he has to walk under the umbrella of water thing in the splash park before he's allowed to go in the pool. If he doesn't do it, we leave. (He's always done it). He's been doing really well, and is putting his face in the water without me even asking. This week he started swimming lessons and was doing a great job at tossing sinking toys into the pool and ducking his whole head under to go get them.

I know it sounds cruel, but I have to have some level of comfort with him in the 24 inches of water at the kids' pool, since Harper and I spend an enormous amount of time in the locker room changing dirty diapers that have been marinated in chlorine water (for which I deserve a medal, truly. If she ever gets constipated, all I have to do is put her in a one piece tricky-to-get-on bathing suit, and I'm sure the problem will be solved).

Since we've been going to the pool a lot this summer, we've gotten our little system down. Today, though, Harper and I walked over to where Aaron was playing and he immediately handed me his toys and jumped out of the water, telling me "I have to go potty".

So I get Harper out and we walk after him and I yell "wait up, buddy!", and he turns his head and yells to me "I can go by myself!" Well, I guess theoretically he could, but he's not able to open the doors to the locker room without help, so we caught up to him. And he was pulling on the handle of the men's locker room. I said "we're right here, bud, let's go in this one" (pointing to the women's locker room, which is where we all get dressed and he's always gone to the bathroom before).

"No, I really want to go in this one. It's for boys."

My heart just flipped over, because it's something so insignificant, but it's somehow so profound, too. I know he needs to start going in the men's room by himself, but how am I supposed to know who's in there? What if some Bad Guy is stashed away in there? What if Aaron starts playing in the urinals? What if he needs help, or decides to go out the other door that leads into the gym, and he gets lost? Or some crazy person takes him? (And truly, they would have to be crazy to take on that one). I know my whole job as a parent is to put myself out of business, to make it so they don't need me anymore, but it still stings to the core when you go through a rite of passage that's a definitive marker that "I've outgrown my need for you for this task". I know I should be happy that he doesn't want me to take him to the bathroom, but it's so scary and so sad at the same time- I'm convinced he needs me because God knows what evils lurk in that locker room, but he's equally convinced that he's completely and totally fine without me.

Right then a group of 4 teenage boys walked out of the locker room, so he had his in, and he held the door open, looked at me and asked if it was okay. I said "okay", and he told me "you don't have to go in with me". The teenagers were holding the door for him, and my heart broke when I told him "I can't go with you there. You have to go alone".

One of those teenagers looked at Aaron, and looked at me and smiled a really sweet, comforting smile, and I watched my boy go into the men's room by himself. Harper and I stood there for what seemed like days, and of course I had to poke my head in (just once!) to ask if he was okay, and of course he was. And then, what do you know, he walked right out- hands washed, ready to go play again, nothing out of the ordinary.

At least, not that he noticed.

Happy Birthday

Today is Jason's birthday, and it's astonished us both to realize that as of today, he's 38. How am I married to a thirty eight year old, when just blinks ago I remember putting up a "Happy Birthday" sign for my own dad's 40th birthday?

I've already mentioned that Aaron finds birthdays a very important celebration, and surprisingly, that extends to everyone he loves, not just his normal frame of importance, which usually includes, well, him . He came to me early this morning and whispered "I told daddy that he wasn't getting an ice cream cake, but that means we should get him an ice cream cake and then it will be a surprise". I had already gotten a dessert request from the birthday boy, though, and told Aaron we'd be making Daddy's cake. While we were making it, Jason couldn't walk within a 40 foot radius of the kitchen without Aaron yelling "DADDY, NO! GO OUT! DON'T LOOK!" But that kid certainly did enjoy cake making. Especially the "licking the spoon" part, which I highly recommend to any parents feeling crappy about their parenting. Yelled at your kid? Shoved them in front of the TV instead of playing with them? Don't worry- just whip up a batch of instant pudding and let that kid lick the spoon; then you can replace your guilt with patting yourself on the back for instilling such great memories, since don't we all remember licking the spoon when we were little and our moms would bake? Of course, instant pudding hardly holds a candle to homemade cookies, but to a 5 year old, it's a wash.

Harper's been feeling particularly "two-ish" lately, which means we spend most of our day counting down to naptime or bedtime. Since she spent most of today crying, yelling at us that she wanted to watch Monsters, Inc., and begging for whatever parent wasn't currently holding her, let's just post a throwback picture to a day when she wasn't possessed by the patron demon of two and three year olds. (Also, because I know their grandparents are thinking "these are lovely stories and all, Sara, but where are the BABIES? Those pictures aren't going to post themselves, you know".)

I've been trying to think of some poignant point to summarize Jason turning 38, but really, does there need to be one? We're getting older. Our kids, which should serve as a reminder to stay young, seem to instead remind us how quickly we're aging. If it weren't for how yummy Jason looks with some gray in his hair, I might find the whole ordeal mildly depressing.

Hooray for Dollywood!

Oh, good. I was afraid I wouldn't get behind in this, but luckily, I'm staying true in not getting around to updates.

So what, two weeks ago? Something like that. We went out to visit my dad for a family trip to DOLLYWOOD! If that's not Wholesome Family Fun, I don't know what is.

Where else can the kids rip up the landscaping unfettered?

So in brief, Harper's reaction to basically everything was "I don' LIKE this (horsey, pig, car, whatever). GET ME OFF THIS PIGGIE!"

Luckily, Mama Jean also had no use for the piggies or horseys (horsies?) or any of that nonsense, either, so those two girls had a fabulous time looking at baby duckies, or stealing Poppie Harold's candy bars. And honestly, if you've had a two year old manhandling a candy bar in 90 degree heat, you're likely to say "um, no, just keep it", too. Diabolical, that one. Jason, Poppie, and I managed most of the nausea-inducing, pants-soaking fun of things like the teacups or rafts. Harper did find one or two acceptable rides.

Aaron, on the other had, surprised us by having fun on pretty much everything. He did have a brief moment on the log flume ride when, on the final big hill, he looked at Jason on the way up and said "I don't want to do this anymore. Let's get off", but I think that's a great opportunity to teach a child the definition of "inevitable".

Overall, Aaron was remarkably daring and was willing to go on pretty much everything.

But I still maintain the biggest thrill seekers were those parents who braved an amusement park with a 5 and a 2 year old.

OG of the C-D-S

We made a fun filled family trip to Dollywood this week, but more on that later. The way more exciting part of this week is that Jason came *thisclose* to getting in a real, bona fide fist fight! And there wasn't any alcohol involved! Anyone who knows Jason knows this statement is about as expected as saying "Paris Hilton got her PhD!", so this was really the talk of the week in this section of the cul-de-sac. Unfortunately, Jason's almost-fight was with our neighbor, who can best be described with a word that sounds a lot like "schmasshole" (see dad? No swearing!) I'll call him Fish for the sake of this story. Anyhow, we had come to a comfortable mutual dislike with Fish over the past several years- polite enough if we had to be, but typically preferring to avoid him entirely, which has been remarkably easy since Fish is pretty anti-social. (Save for him puking in our yard- AND BEER COOLER!- last year during a party because he has no concept of how to drink socially. I just threw that part out to be mean and petty, but it is entirely true.) Fish is one of those guys who you can happily ignore or toss off a very insincere "hey" to, and life moves on nicely. Once every few months he'll catch you of guard and try to be chatty, but it's so uncomfortable that it doesn't last more than a minute or two before the sneer creeps back onto one of our faces and we can return to ignoring each other. There's not even any actual animosity, he's just someone you can't bring yourself to like, and someone you can't bother wasting any energy on hating.


Jason was outside doing something or another when Fish comes storming into our yard bellowing about Aaron, who was very likely doing something horrid, but considering Fish has a horrid 6 year old of his own, you'd think there would be a mutual understanding of the awfulness of little boys that age, right? Wrong. The story isn't that exciting, the summary is: Fish thinks our kid sucks (which he frequently does), he thinks we don't ever do anything about it (which is summarily wrong), and he thinks his kid doesn't have any problems (which is *laughably* wrong). During this heated argument I looked out the window and saw Jason and Fish talking, and I figured it was just one of Fish's weird "friendly" outbursts, so I shuddered and said "blech- better Jason than me!", and didn't think anything about it until Jason came in shaking with anger. Looking back, I realized when I looked out the window, they were just a few inches from each other's faces, and they had that posture like male gorillas, with their shoulders thrown back and their chests puffed out, and I could hear them through the closed window they were talking so loudly. I'm kind of kicking myself for not realizing what was going on, and then going outside to throw some fuel on that fire. ('Cause I think Jason could have taken him. Also, I think Fish could really benefit from a Chuck Norris style roundhouse kick in the neck.)


Anyhow, it blew over because Jason's a grownup and not a hothead punk, and was willing to walk away even though Fish maintained til the end (and it went on for a while) that his kid is perfect and our kid belongs on Dante's 6th or 7th level. But it does speak volumes about how little it takes to produce some excitement here on the cul-de-sac! An *almost* fight gets a whole blog post, and was the talk of the neighbors later that day at the cul-de-sac Memorial Day picnic, which was SUPER fun and comfortable with Fish and all of our kids there. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a For Sale sign go up in Fish's yard over the past few days, so we're probably stuck with him as a neighbor for the forseeable future.


I'm sure that's one of those stories Jason and I will talk about for years because it's just so out of the norm for our lives, and our kids will roll their eyes and think what losers we are that we waste brain cells remembering something so utterly boring. Jason said "thank God it wasn't you he came up to. You would have gouged out his eyes while screaming every obscenity in the book" (and I like to think that's not true, although the obscenity part is probably accurate. How he married a hothead like me is beyond comprehension). So while part of me thinks it would have been totally cool to see Jason punch Fish, I think he's even more badass that he could have, but didn't.