That Day I Stayed Home

Remember how last Wednesday I stayed home from work because Olivia had a dentist appointment? Yeah, that day. I too the entire day off even though her appointment was at 9:40 and only lasted a half hour. The dentist told me O would need to stay home from school the entire day and I figured I’d just stay home with her.

I kind of vaguely thought maybe I’d get a load of laundry done or maybe even clean out my closet.

Hahahaha. Right.

As noted Olivia cried the entire way home. She’d finally gotten herself under control as we pulled into our garage. At that point, she just wanted to sit next to me for a bit and continue to calm down.

After fifteen minutes or so, she decided she was hungry and really wanted some cream of chicken soup. Ahhh, Campbell’s how we love you and your delicious, instant soups.

I heated a can of soup up for her (on the STOVE, not in the microwave, Wonder Mom here, thank you very much.)

And then, yes, I sat in front of her and fed her, spoonful by spoonful, until the first bowl was empty. Then she asked for more. In the end, she ate the contents of an entire can of soup. Good eating, there, right?

Then she asked if we had any Jello. Which, yes, we did have some. So I fed her a bowl of that too.

All of that took about forty-five minutes. Then we laid on the couch together. I hoped she’d take a nap. I kind of wanted to take one with her.

It didn’t happen.

I don’t know where the rest of the day went but the time between when I finished feeding Olivia her soup and Jello and when Alyssa got home seemed just fly by. I used that time to, I don’t know, peruse Facebook, take pictures of Olivia post-dental procedure and post them on said F-book and, wow, I think I laid on the couch some more.

There was no folding of laundry, there was no sweeping of the kitchen floor. No closets were cleaned and no carpets were vacuumed. I might have washed a sink full of dishes but even that is up for debate.

I wonder if I were home every day if I’d get more done each day. I can’t be sure. I’d like to try, though.

Alas, that is probably not ever going to happen. We need my income and the insurance my job provides.

Poor me.

Complete Idiot

I think I need to start filtering the words that come out of my mouth.

I mean, duh, of course I need to filter the words that come out of my mouth, especially around my children.

The voices in my head hate me. I guess that means that down deep, I kind of hate myself. This is well documented and is an ongoing issue on which I am working.

Sadly, sometimes I lend an actual voice to the ones in my head. That voice is not nice to me. It says means things about me and sadly, my kids have heard it.

Last night was proof.

As I was putting dinner on the table, I called the girls to come and eat. Tom sat down to assisted Olivia in the consumption of her meal.

I’d put everything on the table except Olivia’s sour cream, which I was in the process of getting from the counter and taking to the table when she announced that I’d forgotten it.

I told her I was bringing it to her and then set it in front of her.

As I started to walk away, she said cheerfully, “You’re a complete idiot.”

Excuse me? I mean, really?

Let me just say right here that hearing those words from my eight year old is way harsher than hearing them from my own head or even in my own voice.

I told her that wasn’t a very nice thing to say and she apologized. But you know what? It’s my own fault she said that. She’s heard me say it and she probably doesn’t even realize how mean it is.

I mean, if someone says something about themselves, why is it wrong for you to say it about them? Right? Right. As a matter of fact, she asked a little while later what ‘complete idiot’ meant.

So yes, I need to be kinder to myself both in my head and out loud.

To give credit where it’s due, I would like to applaud myself for not making any derogatory remarks about myself while we were at the lake the day before. I thought them and I consciously told myself (silently) not to say them. Who wants to hear that kind of stuff from their spouse or mother? No one, that’s who.

If I can’t stop the voices in my head from being mean to me, I can at least stop giving them a voice that can be heard by my girls. They don’t need to hear that stuff. They don’t need to know that Mom is stewing in a bit of self-hatred. I want better for them. I want them to see a mother who loves herself as much as she loves them. I want them to grow up seeing confidence and strength, not self-deprecation and hatred.

If I can’t fix this for me, I need to do it for them.

Other People's Kids

In an attempt to squeeze one more drop out of summer, Tom and I tool Olivia swimming yesterday.

Alyssa didn’t want to go because “reasons” and so Olivia got both parents to herself. She was thrilled by this prospect and wasn’t sure who to drag into the water first.

She got around that one by telling us that we were all three going into the water. She’s just lucky that was already the plan.

We swam, we frolicked, Olivia jumped off the square of foam Tom takes to the lake with us, climbed back up and jumped again.

Finally, she was ready to just swim around with me for a bit. She and I swam maybe five feet from where Tom was now lying on the raft thing when a girl, maybe eleven years old, came up and asked me if she play on our raft with us.

I told her that Olivia was pretty shy and she wanted to just swim with me instead. Then I nodded toward Tom and said, “And now that he’s on it, he’s going to be hard to get off of it.”

The girl then asked if she could flip it over and knock him off.

Huh…okay then. I just replied with, “Like I said, he’s pretty hard to knock off.”

She apparently took that as a challenge because the next thing I knew, she was diving under the raft and springing up from underneath, dethroning the king of the raft.

She did this probably four times when two little boys, maybe seven and five came up to Tom. The older of the two boys asked, “May my brother and I play with you guys?”

Tom looked to me and I shrugged. The littler of the two boys said to his brother, “Austin, Mom wants you.”

The boys wandered off toward their mom and Tom looked relieved. The girl was still attempting to dunk him at every turn. Olivia tried to pull me away from the raft, you know, since it had become a magnet for strange kids.

I asked Tom, “You want me to stick close to you so that you don’t come across as the strange dude who was luring kids to play with him and his raft?”

He nodded gratefully.

A little while later, Austin returned sans little brother. He announced, “My mom said I could play with you.”

Okay then. At that point, the girl had abandoned her job of flipping Tom off the raft and her brother had replaced her, though he just wanted to jump off the raft, not dunk Tom.

So there he was, holding the rope to our raft while two strange kids climbed and jumped and climbed up to jump again.

At one point, I was nearby with Olivia when Austin called out to me, “Hey, watch! Watch me.”

I rolled my eyes. Oh yes, yes I did roll my eyes at this seven year old. Then I said to Tom, “I don’t hear that enough from my own kids, now I have to hear it from other people’s kids?”

Tom smiled in empathy.

After he emerged from the water, Austin turned to me and asked, “Did you see me?”

Are you kidding me? I mean, seriously! I have never met this kid before in my life. His mother didn’t bother to come over and make sure it was okay if he was risking his neck diving off our raft into three feet of water and he’s calling out to me, a stranger, “Watch me!”

Give me a break. I get it. I know there are kids who are awesomely outgoing and who love people. I get that my kids are probably freaks because of their shyness and their introverted natures but come on!!

I believe I mentioned before that I almost became a teacher. I changed my major in October of my fifth year of college because I realized that I didn’t like other people’s kids nearly enough to spend eight hours a day with them for the better part of a year.

I like other people’s kids when those kids come to my house to play with my kids. I like other people’s kids when I got to the school three times a year and help put on holiday parties for them. And if I know you and your kids? I like your kids. Your kids are awesome and beautiful and amazing.

But I do not like other people’s kids who invite themselves to play with our stuff while out in public and I’ve never met these kids or their parents. I just don’t. There it is.

I can appreciate that outgoing kids get far in this world. I mean, you don’t get anywhere if you aren’t willing to risk someone telling you no. I get that. And yet…boundaries are a good thing. Boundaries are lovely. Boundaries help keep this over-worked mom from having to hear, “Watch me!” from anyone who isn’t one of my own two beautiful, wonderful, charming children who actually have a right to say that to me.

Halfway Decent Human Being

We'd just settled into the booth at McD's for lunch when Alyssa said with wonder, "You haven't yelled once today."

Yes, I'm freaking mother of the year here. I get frustrated, I get annoyed, I get cranky and sometimes (way too often, it seems) I yell at my kids.

This day, though, her observation struck me as funny. Not that I think yelling is funny but the fact that I hadn't yelled all day was a nice change and I was obviously in a good place since I hadn't yelled and so I laughed.

Then I said, "Well, we did go to be last night at 9 and I got up at 8 this morning, so apparently, I need eleven hours of sleep to be a halfway decent human being."

Lyss and I laughed and laughed at that. Liv laughed because we were laughing. Then she asked, "Why are we laughing?"

This caused me and Lyss to burst into new waves of laughter.

It was good to be able to laugh at my foibles, my less-than-perfect mothering. I'm glad Lyss was comfortable commenting on the lack of yelling. I would never want her to worry that saying something like that might make me mean or, you know, yell at her.

I don't want to be a wire mother. I don't want them to someday be able to share horror stories about the way their narcissistic mother behaved toward them. I know I can't help but screw up my girls in ways I don't even know I'm doing but I want so badly to be good at this mothering thing. I want so badly to do it right, or as right as possible and still be human.

As we were leaving McD's Liv's flip flop came off her foot (it happens all the time, poor kid and her Rapunzel feet) and I told her it was okay, to get it back on and not stress over fixing it.

Alyssa asked again, "Why are you being so patient and nice?"

"Because right this second, I can," I told her.

When we got in the car, I told A that I'm sorry that I'm not always patient and nice. I wish I were but sometimes I'm tired or I hurt (my stupid 80 year old foot hurts all the damn time these days) or I've had a long day and I feel crowded and need a little space. I told her that I want to always be loving and kind and patient and fun but...I don't always get eleven hours of sleep the night before.

Then I laughed again and suggested, "Hey, maybe I should go to be at 7 each evening since I have to get up at 6 the next morning for work. I would be the best mom EVER during those two hours we'd get together each school/work night."

Alyssa joined me in laughter.

I amended my schedule, "Instead, maybe my boss would let me come to work at 10 each morning so I can sleep until 8 and then just go to bed at 9 each night."

Yeah, we all know that's not going to happen. But I need to harness these peaceful, decent feelings and reach deep when I'm at my tired, cranky worst. These girls deserve for me to try a little harder to be a halfway decent human being a little more often, even when I'm tired and cranky and just want five minutes to poop in private. Because we all that's not going to happen either and as the mom, I need to suck it up and figure it out and NOT be a wire mother. Because they deserve better. They deserve me to be at my best all the time, not just one random Saturdays when I've had eleven hours of sleep.

Of course, now I have to confess that at 1:45 this afternoon, not even six hours after waking up from eleven hours of sleep (let me say here too, that those eleven hours were not uninterrupted) my patience had dwindled. A crazy busy Walmart will do that to a person. Add to the crazy busy Walmart the slowest cashier in the history of Walmart cashiers (who has to count a cash payment FOUR damned times to figure out that two 50s, four 20s, three 5s and four 1s are $199? I mean seriously!?!) who was dealing with the most irritating of all customers in the history of Walmart customers and you have one irritated, cranky mother. Yes, that was me. Olivia had to pee TWICE during the wait in that line. It was insane.

We were supposed to be at a birthday party at 2:00. If we'd managed to get into any other line at the Walmart at 1:20, we'd have been fine on time, but no, we got the above cashier and the above customer and we were doomed.

And it was pouring rain as we walked to the car. O was whining about wet feet, my right heel hurt from where A had run into me TWICE while in the store and the half of my human side that had been decent all morning had run far, far away. All that was left was my cranky, irritable side.

Thankfully, there was much annoying traffic against which I could rail, which always amuses the girls. And amusing them goes a long way in making them forget my occasional wiriness. Thank goodness.

Keeping It Real

The other night, I was watching a movie with my older daughter. I hadn’t watched this movie before and so was as surprise as she was when a couple of teenagers began…doing things that twelve years olds do not need to watch.

There was no graphic nudity but there was, um, movement and such.

Ahem, yes. I’m going to wait a while on that Mother of the Year trophy after all, aren’t I?

So I covered her eyes and then whispered to her, “You don’t need to watch this. They’re…having the sex.”

She laughed and covered my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see ‘the sex’ either. She’s a very thoughtful child. I don’t know where she gets it.

After the bad teens were skewered by a stalactite that fell during an earth quake, I turned to A and said, “And that’s what happens when teenagers make bad choices. They die.”

I do this every so often in hopes of making awkward topics a little less awkward. I want her to know that nothing is taboo when it comes to talking to me.

Later she said, “I can’t wait to tell my friends about you covering my eyes during ‘the sex.’”

I told her, “Make sure you whisper the words ‘the sex’ because it makes the story that much funnier.”

Then I adopted an exaggerated ‘teen’ voice and said, “You guys, my mom is so weird! We were watching a movie and she covered my eyes, telling me not to watch ‘the sex.’ Then the teenager were killed during the sex and she told me that’s what happens when teens make bad choices.”

She laughed so hard I was afraid she was going to wake Olivia or Tom.

I like being able to make Alyssa laugh. I like that she’s comfortable sitting next to me and watching movies, even when awkward moments happen and we glimpse images of *whisper* the sex, *end whisper*, it’s okay. She’s growing up and I’m lucky that she’s still sitting beside me, laughing at my lame jokes and silly voices.

I’ll start to worry when she’s avoiding me and ignoring me and no longer talking or listening to me at all.

For the record, she told me I could tell this story.

Dr. O

Olivia had to miss school today for a dentist appointment. The appointment was at 9:40, she was given her dose of valium at 8:30 to relax her for the appointment and then she and I were on the road at 8:40 to get there by 9:30.

Once there, she got two fillings and a crown, all on/in molars on the left side of her mouth.

The dentist came out when it was all done and told me how well she'd done. He said she sat quietly the entire time, making his job much easier. He'd praised her quite often during the procedure, he said.

When she came out to meet me at the reception desk, she was very out of it. She couldn't walk a straight line and needed me to help her to the car. Poor kid was also very numb on the left side of her face.

One of the sucky parts of 5p- syndrome is the fact that O's body doesn't use its water well. She pees just fine but water that is supposed to be sent to the colon doesn't do its job and water that is supposed to make saliva also doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Because of this, she get plaque build up on her teeth and needs more dental work than your typical eight year old who brushes her teeth faithfully.

We left the dentist's office and headed toward home, planning to make a stop at Walmart to pick up some milk and a few other things. As we drove away, Olivia mentioned the numbness in her mouth. This numbness distressed her greatly. By the time we'd driven the twenty minutes to get to Walmart, she was in tears due to the numbness. I assured her the numbness would subside but that didn't comfort her. We ended up making a quick purchase of tissues before going to the toy section of Walmart to try and ease her distress.

We needed to pick out a present for a classmate who invited O to her eighth birthday party this coming Saturday. Once the gift was chosen, Olivia chose a prize for herself. She had, after all, been a star patient at the dentist.

Even after picking out a plush Elsa doll, Livie cried through the rest of our time at Walmart. She really couldn't stand the numbness. I stopped often to hug her and try to comfort her but it didn't help her much.

We got a few looks as she sobbed her way through the store. As we were checking out, she'd managed to get her wails under control for the moment and the cashier noticed O's red face. She asked if Liv had a bad cold.

I mentioned that we'd just come from the dentist and she was stressed by the numbness in her mouth. The cashier started to make a judgmental statement, something about not eating so much candy. I interrupted her and gave her a quick summary of rare chromosomal disorders, plaque build-up and never, EVER being able to brush enough to keep the cavities at bay, even without ever touching a piece of candy. She was quite nice after that but come on! Why does one need to even explain?

Whatever. It didn't even bother me at the time. I just wanted to get my sad, miserable baby out of the store and home where she could rest and recover.

Once we were home, she ate some cream of chicken soup and played with her new doll. The numbness is finally gone and there have bee no more tears. Her next cleaning isn't until February. Until then we'll keep brushing as well as we can, keep drinking lots of water and try to stay away from judgmental Walmart cashiers.

Why She's the Best Big Sister Ever

Last Saturday we snuck a trip to Meijer between lunch and Walmart. I needed to return a lunch box I’d bought for Olivia and we wanted to pick up some beans for a couple of bean bag chairs that have flattened over the past year. Alyssa informed me as we walked in that Bomber, our Betta fish needed food. Yes, that damned fish is STILL alive. My husband is just sure we got Bomber after we got Orville, but no, Bomber is older than Orville and Orville will be four years old this month. So Bomber is AT LEAST four and a half. Damned fish. That reminds me, I need to clean his bowl this evening. Ugh.

While we were looking for the fish food, the girls watched the fish swim in the tanks. They’re lovely because someone else gets to clean those tanks. No tank fish for us, thank you very much.

Because we were there, we had to peruse the book aisle because duh, it’s what one does when one is in Meijer.

Olivia found a coloring book with pictures of the characters from Inside Out. It came with a multi-colored pencil. She had to have it.

I know. I’m overly indulgent but coloring is still something she needs to do more often because it helps build strength in her hands. So yeah, I justified my spinelessness and got her the book. Alyssa found a copy of the latest Dork Diaries book and because I was getting Olivia something I let Alyssa put her book in the cart too. I need to grow some resolve.

Except…books! How can I say no too books? Reading is such a good practice, even fiction that isn’t particularly well written. Just saying.

Before she was even in the car Liv was clamoring for me to get her book and pencil out for her. As far as she was concerned the quarter mile drive from Meijer to Walmart didn’t give her nearly enough time to color. When I started to unsnap her seatbelt, she declared that she was taking her coloring book and pencil into Walmart with us.

I told her not to bother because she wouldn’t be able to walk and color at the same time.

“Let’s get a blue cart,” she suggested.

I reminded her that our local Walmart has done away with the blue carts (carts with seats on the back where kids can sit and be pushed by their parents. I loved those carts because they kept one Miss O contained…I miss those carts.)

She sighed. Then she perked up again. “How about if I ride in the back of your cart?”

“And where will I put the groceries?” I asked her.

She gave it a little more thought and came up with what she thought was a brilliant idea. “How about if you push two carts?”

Ha. Hahahaha…but wait. Alyssa stood waiting for us to figure it all out.

Without another word, I grabbed the blanket we keep in the backseat of the car and ushered the girls into the store. On the way in, I made my suggestion.

“Lyssie, will you push Livie in a cart while she colors?”

I think Alyssa thought I was joking. She looked startled by the suggestion.

“Isn’t she a little big to be riding in a cart?” she asked when she realized I was serious.

“Of course she is, but who cares?”

“Yes! I want Lyssie to push me so I can color. Lyssie, look, Mom brought my blanket so I can sit on it and not on the hard cart. This will be so great.”

A rolled her eyes but amicably lifted her sister into a cart after I laid out the blanket. Olivia settled in with a giggle and opened her book.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Alyssa muttered.

I smiled at her and said, “Just think, you’re getting points toward your big sister of the year award.”

She smirked. “I think I already got that one just because Livie is still alive.”

Ha!

We got a few weird looks as we wandered the store with our two carts, one full of groceries and the other full of a coloring eight-year-old. Honestly, I’m over weird looks. They don’t bother me at all. I just smile and nod and sometimes say something like, “I know, right? I wish some giant would come and push me around in a big old shopping cart.”

I consider things like this to be character building moments for Alyssa. She’s learning not to care what strangers think of her. She’s learning that sometimes, doing something nice for someone (even her little sister) is fun if only because it makes people look at you weird.

As for Olivia, she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her daddy how great her sister was for pushing her in a cart while she colored. I’m calling the entire weekend a win just because of that one act of kindness from my twelve-year-old.