A Letter to my kids...

Dear Kids,

Contrary to popular belief, the house is not self-cleaning. Backpacks, shoes toys, etc., do not sprout legs and walk themselves to where they belong. The vacuum does not run itself and the mop does not dance around all the floors like in Fantasia. If Disney would make that happen then I would finally believe in "Happily Ever After".

The clothes that you all like to wear each day do not wash themselves and hang themselves up to dry. Nor have they, to the best of my knowledge, learned how to use an iron or mastered the art of folding themselves.

The toilets do not scrub themselves and neither do the shower, the bathtub or the toothpaste spit stained sinks. (Seriously, can't you rinse that down when you're done brushing? It's a real bitch to clean up once it's dried.) Oh, the mirrors do not magically shine to let you see your smiling little faces either. It takes some elbow grease and windex. It's almost an art to get them looking fabulously streak free so keep your damn fingers off or risk losing them!

The refrigerator dose not take a trip to the grocery store and fill itself with food. Nor does it prepare the food and put it on the stove, in the oven or microwave. Also, do you really have to touch every inch of every stainless steel appliance? Heaven forbid there is once place that does not have a grubby little finger smudge or face print. Really? A face print? Which one of you closes the fridge with their face?! Don't answer that. I don't want to know.

The dishwasher does infact wash the dishes. I do not deny this. However it has not learned and never will learn how to load and unload itself. You can stop assuming that this is how it happens because it most definately does not.

The lawn does not suck the grass in to make it shorter each week nor does the lawn gnome spring to life and pluck it uniformly short. The mower has to be gassed, primed and pushed over the yard repeatedly for it to be cropped so neatly.

Please consider this my letter of resignation. By this I mean that I am resigned to the fact that I will continue to do these things regardless of the recognition or lack there of.  I will do them because I love both of you.

Love,
Mom

Feelings of verbal and written inadequacies...

Sometimes I find it hard being married to a man who is a much better writer than I am. I've be so overly critical of everything I put to the page that a new neurosis has formed to join the abundance of others I have. I will type out a sentence and then re-read it over and over to see how I can make it better. This is a no-no. "Let it flow. Don't look back. Feel the moment and write it down." Advice from my college creative writing professor. Advice I have yet to take...even now as I write this. I've re-read these few sentences numerous times already. Looking for...what? I don't know exactly. I know what I don't look for when I re-read. I don't look back to make sure my gramatics and syntax or even my spelling is correct. I gave up on those things long ago. (Actually I just caught myself spell checking what I have written. Check that of the list of what I don't look back for.) I suppose look back to make sure that what I am writing will be of the most possible interest to anyone reading my words. In doing so I tend to be overly wordy, a puking of words so to speak, that are completely unnecessary but without those words I wouldn't really have much to say at all.

Wow, have I digressed from my first sentence. Let me try to bring it back around. My husband is a phenomenal writer...among other things. Writing comes to him with such ease. The way he writes, the things he writes about, are all so captivating and engaging. I envy him and a little bit of me admittedly hates him for his creativeness. Just a small part of me...not the important parts mind you. Just the bit that resides in the back of my brain that whispers ugly insults at myself for not being better at one of the things I love to do. The bit that holds me back for fear that I will never compare to his abilites so why even bother trying at all. The dark bit that I mostly try to ignore but which festers just on the edge of my conciousness, waiting to get it's grips in and turn me into an angy blubbering mess of words that spill onto the screen haphazardly like this.

The Potty Train

So I realized the other day that Maxwell takes things quite literally as most 2 year old's do. I told him that he cannot go to pre-school ever if he is not potty trained. My son looks at me with such excitement and exclaims, "I get to go to school if I ride the Potty Train! I want to ride the Potty Train. Where is it?" Once I picked myself up off of the floor where I had fallen in the throws of laughter, I tried to explain to him that there is no Potty Train but he was having none of it. When I told my husband about the incident, a light bulb when off in his brain. He told Max that when he uses the potty and not diapers anymore he can go on the Potty Train with Daddy. His excitement was encouraging. We will see what happens.Post Options

Adventures in Potty Training

My youngest son Maxwell is in the midst of potty training. And let me tell you, it is not a fun place to be right now. More so for mommy than for Max. This kid has a stubborn streak that runs deeper than the Grand Canyon and as long as the Great Wall of China. I say "Yes" and he says "No!" I so "No" and he says "Yes!" I say "Up" and he says "Down!" I can go on and on but I'm sure that by now you got the point.

My frustration has been mounting over his unwillingness to use the potty rather than his pants. Some people say to me that he will let me know when he is ready and not to push him or it will take longer. Well I say that when your son comes up to you carrying a new, fresh diaper and says "I need to be changed. I pee pee." Well, then he is damn well ready to start using the toilet I say.

Now, I'm not known for my patience. In fact I usually only have a small surplus of such and I have reached my limit. So, when my son informed me that he was going to wear diapers forever I nearly lost it. Images of me as a gray haired old lady changing her 30year old son's adult sized pampers sent me to the bathroom to weep.

Well, once I regained my composure, I decided he was going to wear his big boy underwear today. Let me just say that having a toddler wearing underwear for the first time is kind of like trying to potty train a puppy. (Which, for the record, I tried a while back and failed miserably at.) I feel the need to follow him around the house trying to prevent any sort of accident. I think Max is beginning to understand how I feel when he is my constant shadow. When he goes to play cars, mommy is there. When he runs to play on the keyboard, mommy is not far behind. When squats in the corner to do his business, mommy is there to scoop him up and whisk him away to the potty. You can imagine how old this gets. I eventually stop shadowing him and just obsessively ask him if he needs to go potty. The answer? Always "No!" I mean, he told me no as he stood in front of me actively peeing through his undies, down his leg and onto the wood floor! Even then he insisted he was not wet. (I can only surmise that he gets this from Kevin's side of the family, as my side is not stubborn in the least.) Then Max inform me that he did make a puddle on the floor earlier. He takes me over by his toy box and book shelf and points at the floor. I look and see nothing wet. I don't feel anything wet either. But the unmistakable smell of pee is definately there. Upon closer inspection I see that he has either used a book to try to clean up his mess, or just squated over the book and did his business. Trying to get a straight answer from his is harder than convincing a rebublican that McCain in no way measures of to Obama. Anyhow, there was no saving the book. At least it was one of his and not the library's. Imagine explaining that one to them.

So, Max is on his second pair of underwear and doing okay for the most part. At least I think he is. I haven't been upstairs in the last ten minutes. I sit here imagining piles of poo and puddles of pee riddling the living room floor. (Which isn't too far from the truth. The pile of poo on the floor is a whole other story.) As much as I am dreading it, I must go investigate the silence up above....

My Trouble with Tribble

Last week we got a guinea pig. She looks more like a ball of hair that purrs and squeaks, hence her name, Tribble. What I didn't know when bringing her home, was that she was not alone. She had, unbeknown to me, brought hundreds of microscopic friends along. Lice. The Guinea Pig Louse to be exact. Thank God these lice are species specific and will not infect humans or other animals. Although this should be comforting, it still gives me the heebie-jeebies. Well, I took her into the vet to have these unwanted guests evicted from my little friend only to find out that it may take 6 weeks and two more vet visits during this time to rid her of all parasites. She has to have a series of Ivermectin injections to get rid of the damn little buggers! All of this for the bargain price of about $100.00 give or take. Our free guinea pig suddenly has become quite expensive.

Fruit Bars and Butt Cracks

I spent the morning looking for a missing fruit bar. I new that it was missing and not just eaten because it was Max's fruit bar and Max's fruit bars are very rarely completely eaten. I found a small section of said fruit bar smeared across the love seat and yet another section ground into the area rug. The area rug that I just spent two hours running the carpet cleaner over yesterday. Max has a tendency to place his snacks on the floor and then dance on them. I even caught him licking fruit bar off of his toes the other day. That's my boy. So, as I search the living room for the rouge fruit bar, I am coming across many things that I wish I had not. Such as the unknown sticky substance puddled under the couch. (I am pretending I did not see it. Maybe it will magically disappear if I ignore it.) Moving on...Having no luck in finding the fruit bar I decided to give up and start folding the laundry that was threatening to eat the entire couch. I soon forgot about the fruit bar completely. About an hour later Max informed me that he needed his diaper to be changed. Rather than saying, "Oh mother. I could really use a fresh diaper.", my son yells out "Ewww! Poopie!" when he needs me to be changed. Cute at first. Annoying after hearing it all day long. Anyways, as I was changing his diaper, I noticed some red in his poo. I started to freak out thinking my baby was pooing blood. Upon further investigation, and too my absolute horror, I discovered the source of the red color in his diaper. Yes, that's correct. Fruit bar. And not just a small amount of fruit bar. My son had taken most of his fruit bar and shoved it down the back of his diaper. Not only did he put it in his diaper, but he wedged it between his but cheeks. Maybe he was saving it for later, or maybe he liked how it felt. I don't know. It's not easy to get a strait answer from a two year old. Sometimes I wonder what goes through his head.

Hot Dog

Have you ever given a flamming hot Cheeto to a dog? I have and I must say it was extremely disappointing. I don't know what I really expected to happen but I thought that there would be some reaction other than the look of anticipation from her as I pulled another Cheeto from the bag.