Inland Empress

Reason #237 why I suck at parenting

here comes that crystal clear moment in every Momma’s life when reality wallops her.

No matter how much she cherishes the fruit of her womb, no matter how much she nurtures and cozens them, no matter how many thousands of lullabies she chirps off-key or allergen-free cupcakes she bakes, no matter how much she schleps, chauffeurs, buys, sews, glues, reheats or secretly tosses, there will still come that fraught moment when her suckiness is inescapable.

Last night was that moment for me. Correction: last night was the latest such moment.

My first mistake was letting Minitaur head toward the downstairs bathroom while I went upstairs with his fussy sister. This was after dinner, and he was obviously going to perform his evening potty, even if he insisted he only had to pee.

I’m nursing, and listening. He calls out that he needs his shirt changed, meaning he got a few drops of pee on it. I call out that I’ll put him in his jammies whenever he’s finished. He has to poop, he yells. No shit, I think to myself.

A minute later, I hear a lot of yelling and jumping and thumping. He’s obviously climbed on the counter in his stockinged feet and is in some imaginary land or distant planet and having a grand ol’ time. I can picture him holding his pipi, staring at himself in the mirror, jumping and leaping and wiggling and shouting.

Um, earth to Momma: this was your cue to go downstairs, hoist him off the counter with a stern lecture about his safety, wipe his bottom, pull up his pants, wash his widdle fingees and drag him, no doubt mid-tantrum, off to bed.

Instead, I just listened, while the baby sucked away.

Crash.

The timbre of his shouting changed. It was no longer fun.

To infinity and beyond!

Last night I took a rocketship train to Mars. These custom-designed vehicles depart with some regularity from our living room. Baby Mugwort sat in my lap on the sofa with her seatbelt on, which made a loud click. I had to wear one too. It also clicked.

The driver set the engine for six minutes. He fired up both the old and the new engines, which make big explosive noises, and steered along the tracks. Those go straight up into the sky and squeak a lot. Though that may've been the wheels, since there are wheels on the rocketship train too. 

It took only 30 seconds to get to Mars so we could visit Uncle Marc, who has a house there. The house has doors so Uncle Marc can eat his noodles and tofu. They're spicy.

I had to unlatch my seatbelt, which mistakenly made a "click" noise until the driver corrected me. They apparently are supposed to make an unlatching noise, which sounds similar to water gushing. Mugwort and I got up to explore but were ordered back into the rocketship train for our return to Earth.

We took our seats again and our seatbelts made the correct clicking noise to indicate closure. The driver set the engines again for 6 minutes, but it took more like 10 and involved a lot of excited jumping up and down and climbing on the sofa to scream "blast off" in my face. The driver also needed to pat the baby's head a few times for good luck, despite advanced training in the safe operation of rocketship trains and interplanetary navigation.

We were approaching Earth's atmosphere when a key turned in the portal, which turned out to be my husband. The mission was scrubbed with a hearty cry of  "Hi, Daddy!"

And then it was bedtime.

Just thought you'd want to know where I go when I'm too busy to blog.

My son, the doctor

Doesn't it just make a momma's heart beat faster?

Here's the hubby's version of events.

Minitaur  picked out the costume himself. I took him to Target a few weeks ago and he went from eager to terrified with one look at all those scary ghosts and monsters.

"You can be a superhero," I said.

He looked lost. A what?

This is what happens when you set restrictions on TV. Your kid gets lost in pop culture oblivion and doesn't know a Power Ranger from a power tool.

I spied a police costume.

"You can be something scary or something nice," I said.

Nice, he insisted. Such a good kid.

We found a policeman, a firefighter and the doctor. Suddenly, Minitaur was overcome with the wiggly-wrigglies, caused by the sudden onset of extreme excitement:

"THE DOCTOR."

I smiled. He grinned. He had no idea why I was so happy, but that's okay. If he knew, he'd probably have changed his mind and gone for one of the headless ghoul outfits.

I'm still smiling.

Three happy years

Yesterday was Minitaur's 3rd birthday. There was much singing, celebrating and smudging of chocolate cake. Also a kiddie pool, five very wet toddlers, a lot of splashing, and a bunch of relaxed, cheerful Mommies and a ton of leftover munchies.

What there wasn't: no "My Gym" or "Gymboree" extravaganza with 30 screaming kids and synthetically cheerful instructors, frenetic games, exhausted parents, cold pizza, tears. No second mortgage on the house to pay for it all.

I'm not unhappy that Minitaur is too shy for all that.

Happy birthday, monsterling. Mommy loves you heaps, just the way you are. And thank goodness for it too.

(And many thanks to the hubby for all his manual labor cleaning up the yard, filling the kiddie pool, lifting, schlepping, etc.)

Beddie-bye

A bed is a wonderful thing, especially when there's no toddler in it. For three weeks now, my bed has been blissfully free of cold little toes tucked under my tummy. No arms flung over my neck in the middle of the night, no hard little heads crashing into my face and breathing nose to nose.

Dang, I miss him. It was kinda cuddly, you know?

Now, to cuddle, I have to scale the heights of his platform bed, a big wooden contraption with a slide and a ladder. If you are skinny and agile, you can actually fit on both. If you are pregnant and clumsy, you cannot.

This meant nothing to Minitaur, shown above assembling the thing. I don't trust anything a toddler can assemble, especially if it's from Ikea. I am not thinking this is a bed that can accommodate a stiff-limbed, middle-aged woman and her swollen uterus.

The bed wasn't happy either, and creaked and complained whenever I tried to ease myself up or down, which was really more like cramming a loaf of bread through a keyhole. Sure, it can be done, but you're not going to recognize the bread afterward. That's what I felt like -- like I'd left some of my mushier parts squeezed onto the floor somewhere.

But this is the bed he begged us for and that he helped build. He chose spaceship-themed sheets for it and stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall by his pillow. The $500 all this cost didn't mean anything to him either.

What means something: knowing he can still fall asleep in his Mommy's arms, and screaming for her in the middle of the night when he wakes up alone.

What it means to me: I am practicing losing sleep for when our newborn comes. I am happier than ever to have my hubby home from his business trip, so he can take over sleep patrol. I am patiently waiting for my son to go to college so Plosh and I can get the entire house to ourselves.

Dang, I'll miss him.

And I probably won't sleep much then either.

The devolution of Play-Doh

I admit it. I was one of those people who wanted the Play-Doh to remain pristine, each color neatly packed away in its proper container, which would then be resealed in as airtight a manner as I could manage.

I even grew a little grumpy at a nephew for once daring to mix pink and purple. The nerve.

Minitaur, however, has a much clearer idea of the proper care of his favorite toy:

I'm thinking shades of Peter Max and '60s acid trips, no? I mean, what with Baby Boomers and their obsessive nostalgia and self-congratulatory navel-gazing, there could be big money in this.

Forget E-Bay, I'm thinking of starting a Play-Doh gallery and selling his one-of-a-kind creations, though I use the term "creations" loosely. More like "destructions".

Overhead would be low, the stuff's cheap as dirt.

I once went to a Mommy-and-me thing where the instructor had us make modeling clay out of peanut butter and powdered milk. I was like, you're kidding, right? It's not like there's a worldwide shortage of Play-Doh and we must use up perfectly good food to reinvent the wheel. Plus the homemade stuff only comes in diarrhea brown. Yum.

Then again, Minitaur did try to eat Play-Doh once. I told him a clay choo-choo train would grow in his stomach. Okay, I lie. If I told him that, he'd be eating the stuff until it oozed out of his ears.

I told him to throw it away after he was done. This made his day. Throwing stuff away is very, very cool, since it means whatever you're handling must be dirty. And dirty is good to a little boy.

We opened a new package of Play-Doh and I told him to keep the colors separate. He said, "No, Mommy, I need to mush them together and get them dirty."

Maybe if I sealed Minitaur in airtight containers he'd stay clean.

There might be money in that idea too ...

Have glue gun, will travel

Is this the world's cutest Persian king or what? Today marked the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates one of the few times in our history we escaped genocide.

Basically, a beautiful queen uses her feminine wiles to persuade her hubby, the king (pictured here) to spare her people (that's us) from an evil advisor who sought our demise. The king relents, the baddy is hanged and everybody gets drunk.

Not that the widdle wuv muffin in this photo could ever hurt a fly. The cat, maybe, but not a fly.

The story's apocryphal, according to a handout from Minitaur's pre-school. The costumed revelry dates from the same pagan rituals that gave rise to Mardi Gras and Carnivale.

Even so, they held a parade and party today. The kids dressed as characters from the story, or Spiderman or a fireman or a bumblebee or whatever inspired them. There were quite a few superheroes in the mix -- at least in keeping with the theme, if not the exact story.

Okay, maybe Spiderman would've dashed to our rescue if he'd been around back then. I'd like to think so. He's a nerd, just like much of the tribe, right?

But His Majesty had a big advantage over Marvel's mightiest: The Queen Mum made his costume. Yes, I did it just to make all the other Mommies feel inferior. It's amazing what a glue gun can do to boost my self esteem, even if I singed the tips off my fingers.

King Cuteness used Elmer's on the sequins and the necklace is alphabet beads that spell his name (yeah, I had to help a little with that too).

I'm feeling especially competent today, thank you, even if I failed to put him down for a nap and ended up losing my temper at him and yelling. Okay, so I still suck at parenting, but I get brownie points for Best Use of Leftover Fabric.

Some things about thingees

Yikes, where has the week gone? Damn, I miss my son's naps. That was my only time to sit and stew and write a bit. Think anyone would notice if I slipped a Unisom or two into his peanut butter sandwiches?

A few highlights of days past:

Look ma, no clothes! My son has declared our household a clothing-optional resort. Some fun things to do while naked include racing around slapping your belly screaming, "I'm dancing naked!" even when there's no music. Insist on having it videotaped. Other fun events include wriggling in front of a full-length mirror and clutching your thingee. When anyone asks what you're doing, state the obvious: "I'm naked."

Feels so goooooood. In another of Minitaur's fits of nekkidity, I noticed he had a few dry patches of skin. I taught him to rub some lotion on his legs and tummy. I stupidly left the room, then a minute later realized there would probably be lotion all over the carpet by now. There wasn't. But there also wasn't any on his legs or tummy, but quite a big gob on a certain appendage in between. He had a big, ol' smile on his face too. His father's reaction: "That's my boy."

It's my potty and I'll pee if I want to. We are deep in the throes of potty training, and it's going so easily I keep wanting to ask if this is really my son. Are you the same pint-sized banshee who didn't wean until 22 months and didn't sleep eight hours straight until age two and who, to this day, buries his cold little toes under my tummy at night? It seems I get a break this time. I'm owed. Big time. Anyway, he's into it. Any excuse to whip out his pipi is fine with him. It's his new favorite toy, which he apparently likes to keep well lubricated (see previous item).

It's around here someplace. Ask Minitaur to find his bellybutton and he points to his pipi. Tell him that's wrong, that's his pipi, where's your bellybutton? And he points around back to his tuchus. No, sweetie, that's the hole in your bottom. Where's your bellybutton. He thinks about this for a moment, then points to his pipi again. Must be a trick question, he figures.

For some reason, this entire post is about my son's genitalia. Someday my son will sue me over this, I'm sure. I guess I should hide the videos in that case. 

Yet another excuse to stay indoors

Squeak, squeak.

That faint rasp you hear is my son.

Squeak, squeak.

He has a sore throat, and his usually chirpy voice has been reduced to a high-pitched croak.

Yep, our mobile germ incubator has brought home yet another virus this cold/flu season. I believe we're up to about 1,000, but I might've overlooked a few. So far, we've missed out on ebola and the plague, but I think that's mostly a matter of luck.

I'm already accustomed to acting as his simultaneous translator, turning mo-go mo-go into "locomotive," or fashee yites into "flashing lights" for those who don't happen to share a little boy's obsession with trains and trucks.

But now everything comes out as pip pip, which my brain immediately interprets as, "Quick, Mommy, I'm drowning in snot! Tissue needed on the double, woman."

Actually, requests for tissues usually come out more like a frantic, teary aaaiiieeeee!!! Shoo-shoooo!

I'm not really sure what pip pip means, to be honest.

He could be decrying the woeful lack of flu vaccines due to government incompetence, or describing his take on the need for nationalized health care, or debunking the old wives' tale that Vitamin C bolsters the immune system. He's a smart kid, for a pipsqueak. Ahem.

To my limited, sleep-deprived brain, I numbly file his mouse calls under the catch-all category of primal noises designed to trigger the ol' maternal instinct. Unfortunately for Minitaur, my maternal instinct prodded me to plop him in front of a fire truck video and disappear onto the blogosphere for a bit.

A pity too, since it's a lovely California day and I'm in the mood to take him to the playground. When I asked him about it, he nuzzled close to my face and coughed violently at my nose. I took that to mean no.

I hear some squeaking downstairs. Either a door hinge needs oiling or I'm about to get a critique of my mothering skills.

He's on to me

I'm a born liar, and I lie to my son. I steal his fries, bites of his ice cream, even his cookies, right out from under him and then blithely deny it when he squawks. I'm so ashamed.

Tonight, I peeled myself an orange -- one of his favorites -- and didn't offer him any. It was down the hatch before he realized. He wanted to reach down my throat and get it back, and would've too if his arm had been long enough.

I told him the orange was in my tummy with the baby, and the baby was eating it now. He poked my belly button a few times but seemed placated.

Inspired, I tried the same thing later when he caught me filching a french fry off his plate. Wow, did he fuss. "Don't! Eat! My! French Fries!"

So I told him the baby was eating that too.

Minutes pass. All seems forgiven. I come up with the bright idea of digging out a pregnancy book and showing him pictures of what the baby in Mommy's tummy looks like.

He nods and says, "See picture of baby with french fry in his mouth."

Serves me right, I suppose.