I know I’ve been a bad blogger and not written for a couple weeks. Kids sick, Mom Sick, birthdays, whatever, its been a little nuts. So, I’m sorry, thanks for all the emails begging me to write something trite and complain about my Mother in Law, Husband, Nude neighbor, etc. I’ll get right on that. Tonight.
Maybe I’ll take up drinking. I’ve heard it can be inspiring.
Why is it that I pay no attention to my own grooming until someone walks by and drops their spare change into my Starbucks’ cup, thinking I am a transient? There is no greater motivation to schedule a haircut and wax than a total stranger mistaking me for a homeless person because I am so disheveled and unkempt.
Appointment made.
Today I had my girlfriend who is a photographer come to the house and take pictures of all three kids outside. It was 10:30am, 95 degrees, and so humid that her lens kept fogging up. Also, that rain I’ve been bitching about? It made my back yard the consistency of a very saturated sponge. I had to get creative since it was an outdoor shoot to take advantage of all my flowers, and since I am SO bright I had put everyone in white. I know, I totally thought this one through.
So I get a vinyl table cloth and put my good white table cloth over it for them to sit on. It was either that or Pottery Barn Train sheets, and I figured all white was a lot more neutral. Also, for the first day in freaking eons, its bright and sunny, so the kids are looking over exposed. I had to hold an umbrella and this round shade thingie that she brought to keep them in the right lighting. They keep squinting and complaining about the heat. Too bad. I’m going to make some memories here, and you’re going to LIKE it, damn it!
So half way through the shoot one of her daughters, who is two and has similar allergies and digestive nightmares like Max poops her pants. IN my house. Her older sister comes out and announces this to us right when the kids are really in a groove and have opted to cooperate. Its getting hotter by the second and I am soaked in boob sweat so I know we’re running out of time. I volunteer to go handle the situation. I can tell she is mortified, but really, its not anything I don’t see every day, a dozen times a day with Max, so I am unfazed. When the shit covered toddler comes upstairs I see that its about the texture of warmed whipped cream. Its bubbled up the back of her underwear, oozed out the legs and covered her dress. Her older sister informs me that there are considerable amounts on my playroom carpet as well. Oh! Bonus! I take her into the tub, scrub her down, dress her in her emergency outfit and her Mom comes in horrified and thankful that I’d helped her. It surprised me while I was bathing her that I wasn’t even bothered. I have been in so deep with these poop issues with Max for so long that its not even irritating any more, its like washing my hands. Habit. I even told my girlfriend I was happy to sit for her any time. She seemed confused.
After we’re poop free and we resume pictures Ainsley vomited her breakfast onto her white dress, but mercifully on the lower part so we could barely see it. Time for an outfit change, a black tutu, monarch wings and antenna. Adorable, over the top, but HEY, I had two boys first. There are never enough foo foo items to buy, force the child to wear, and take umpteen photos of. She lasted, and was well behaved and I think we actually had GOOD shots of her. At some point during the process I had called out in desperation that if they would JUST cooperate and JUST not smother their sister then I would take them to McDonalds to eat and play after we were done. So of course, on the one day I’d rather stay home, they behave and earn the reward.
We get to McDonalds, the kids eat well, then go to the playland. I settle in and I begin hearing screeching that is so irritating it would peel paint off the walls. After several minutes of waiting for any of the many parents sitting around to lay down some ground rules for their children I see that I am going to have to take matters into my own hands. I climb up into the upper area and announce that the next child to scream will be sitting in time out, on their bootie with their back against the wall. Some of them looked shocked, one girl said “whatever” and I light into her. When I came down I faced the wrath of the 400 pound daycare provider that I had seen pull up in a five seater Ford Tempo with NINE children. Booster seats you ask? No, I think not. She didn’t speak to me directly, oh no. She complained on her Trac-Phone to her invisible friend about the raving bitch who was bossing around HER kids. “Well, they’re just havin’ a good ‘ol time and she thanks [thinks] she kin [can] jus [just] cum [come] on in hair [here] and take over!” Her friend commiserated with her for some time until she moved on to new topics, such as using her sister’s medicaid to have her many teeth fixed for free (she seemed to be missing several and what was left didn’t look as though it planned to stay for long) and how she’d discovered if she took all the daycare kids with her to the food pantry and claimed to be totally out of food, she could easily set stocked up for a good week or two for free. She planned on making this a monthly event. She highly recommended her friend borrow someone else’s kids, have them flash a pitiful face, and get some free grub.
I met some friends at the local Berry Patch today. Its a family owned and run Berry Farm and they grow acres and acres of blueberries, boysenberries, etc. You can go out to the patches with a bucket they provide, pick whatever you want, or purchase berries they’ve picked and their amazing home made goodies in their shop. Its fun for the kids, its an outdoor activity, its a great way to get cheap berries.
I am such a fool.
Its been raining here for four strait days. The patch was one big mud wrestling pit. I half expected to walk around a bend to discover Spike TV had convinced some twenty-something college attendees in desperate need of cash to be wrestling in a filthy pit in bathing suits I would have mistaken for a kleenex. There has been so much rain that we were on the National News for flooding, so its not like I wasn’t aware there had been rain. The weather promised morning showers with total clearing by 11am which did not happen.
It was terribly humid, so humid that my knees were sweating. I had Ainsley in the Bjorn on the front of me because I realized when I stepped out onto the drenched ground that a stroller would not be an option. So the boys had strict instructions on what color and density the berries needed to before they made it into their bucket. I forgot to explain to the boys that the berries on the ground were NOT in need of squishing, were NOT grenades, and did NOT need to be mashed into their brother’s faux hawk. I also was so intent on my berry picking that I neglected to realize Ainsley was perfectly capable of picking berries for herself and consuming them the ripe ones while masticating and rejecting the sour ones right down the front of her shirt. Super.
We had lunch at the picnic tables provided by the farm, which would have been a delightful experience had the Farm owner’s several dogs and cats not been milling around. I used to love animals, until Max was born and we discovered that a simple lick from a Dog or a cat rubbing against his legs could stop him breathing in less than five minutes. I now hate them. So my lunch time was spent shooing an ancient cat away from my hyper allergic child and hovering over him with an Epi-Pen, should he react unfavorably.
Finally the kids were totally spent and all that was left was to allow them to ride in the jerry rigged train cars (cut open plastic barrels with wheels) pulled by a tractor. As soon as I purchased tickets for all the kids a monsoon began. Ten minutes later the children arrived soaked to their underwear, caked with mud from the barrels and they all wanted to “go again!” Not going to happen. I dragged all three back to the car with blueberry candy canes staining their fingers and faces while they whined and begged to stay because they were NOT tired, even though ten seconds after the car started they were all snoring and dripping blue drool down their shirts.
I’m wondering how a blueberry Margarita would taste… or maybe I’ll just use the berries for the cobbler and muffins and drink my booze strait from the bottle. I hear its more effective that way.
It was recently brought to my attention that I have been sporting one wicked moustache and beard. I don’t know how this came to pass. I have a very fair complexion and most of the hair on my arms, legs and where ever else is mostly blond with a few brown sprinkled in. I never thought I’d be one of those women that you pass in the grocery store and spend the length of the cereal isle playing a guessing game as to what sex she REALLY is because no woman I’ve met looks as though she has pasted the hide of one of the Chipmunks on her her upper lip. After seeing Miss Scruffy I was nearly convinced that I was just being obsessive and was going to let it go entirely when Max crawled onto my lap, grabbed one of the long hairs dangling from my chin and tugged, giggled and said, “Mommy! You have hairy face like Daddy!” That sealed it, I needed a hair exorcism.
So I went to a place my girlfriend recommended to me to have my eye brows, upper lip and chin waxed. I have had my fair share of bikini waxing but never done anything on my face. It wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be, but I definitely wouldn’t do it as an extra curricular activity. As needed basis only. The woman that did it had a very thick Russian accent. She was wearing four inch stiletto heels and a very tight low cut and short black cocktail dress that was very appropriate for the third date when she planned to get laid but not so appropriate for 2pm in the afternoon with Kansas 90 degree heat and 80% humidity. When she bent over me her enormous pendulous breasts nearly smothered me while she was stripping the hair from my face. I had the sneaking suspicion that I was being groomed by a girlfriend of a Russian Mobster.
Now, so many things have gone so very far south since the kids were born. I never had a perfect body, but I had a nice shape. I now look like a turnip at first glance. My hair is constantly in a pony tail, not styled or fashionable. I look frumpy. I wear nursing bras instead of Victoria Secret Ultra Sexy. Crocs instead of heels. I feel like I keep noticing some new horrific loss of femininity each day. I only hope that the process is gradual so the shock doesn’t cause a mass amount of wrinkle lines that force me to run to the nearest Botox clinic.
Items not covered in the recently instituted “Husband Substituting for Wife” Act of 2010 are noted below.
Shampooing baby spit up off carpet. Ainsley likes to eat just a bit more food than she has room for and then vomit it up in small amounts randomly distributed around the living room floor. Alex ignores this entirely.
Sweeping kitchen and dining room floors unless I stumble out, step on something crispy and begin sweeping up days worth of the excess and he sees me doing this and snatches the broom away.
Dribbles of poop deposited on the carpet. The other night after a “Daddy Dinner” (one which involves Daddy bringing a meal home in a paper bag that contains an excess of oil and salt soaked fries) Max hovered at the end of the hallway and peered into the living room to let Daddy know that he’d made a late deposit in his pull up. Just then that deposit decided to gurgle up and ooze out dripping onto the carpet. Daddy rushed to get a towel and… put a towel on top of the poop until Mom could get to it.
My husband is doing a fantastic job of story reading, teeth brushing, toy repair, time outs and cuddles, but hes opted out of cleaning up the bodily fluid spills. Can’t say I blame him. If I had a wife, I’d make her do it too.
Turns out sick is good, sick is very, VERY good. I’m miserable, the antibiotic isn’t working, I have no energy and the effort to take a deep breath renders me unconscious, but…. I’ve lost ten pounds in four days! Sweet! A month or so of this and I’m in bikini business! I’ll take one stomach flu, a week of bronchitis and maybe just a couple weeks of pneumonia, please. Then I’ll be smokin’.
So I’ve come down with a double ear infection, sinus infection, with a side of strep throat. I didn’t even know I could get all of those things, much less all at once. After limping through the night with a 104 fever I saw my Doctor who instructed me to “take it easy”, then snickered and said “as if”. Shes a Mom too.
So, I don’t have the energy, much less the drive to do ANYTHING at all. No dinner, no laundry, no buttermilk pancakes. In fact, its been suggested that in lieu of freshly baked from scratch breakfast goods I just just feed the kids half of a cold bagel on the floor. Then they’d learn how good they have it.
This has given me an idea. We have the luxury of Merry Maids and Social Suppers all great services to help the busy family. Where oh WHERE is the Rent-a-Mom service? You know, she comes in the morning, dresses the kids, feeds them a nutritious breakfast and then shoos them outside to play. Then Rent-a-Mom can frantically load and run the dishwasher, toss in a bit of laundry, make all the beds and sneak ten minutes with a cup of coffee while staring at HGTV wondering why THIS house can’t look like THOSE houses. She can make snacks, wipe bottoms, breastfeed, kiss the owies, dispense time outs for hitting, and put baby down for nap. Read a stack of books with the big kid during little kid nap time, make a light and healthy afternoon snack, cut some herbs from the garden for dinner and make a nutritious meal that is piping hot and ready precisely when Daddy walks though the door.
I just figured out why there is no Rent-a-Mom. Because I do this job for free, and no one in their right mind (which suggests I may be slightly crazy, and I probably am) would do this job for free, and whatever they would charge I sure couldn’t afford to pay.
Before kids when I got sick it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’d take some cold medicine, put on some cozy pajamas and snuggle on the couch with a box tissues and good Jane Austin romance. After kids, more specifically after THREE kids, this is a nightmare. Its the end of a three day Memorial weekend and I woke up with a raging fever barely able to swallow. There are several loads of laundry to wash, three sunscreen soaked heads of hair to scrub, a kitchen drowning in a sea of dishes and there is simply no possible way I can accomplish even one of these things. My husband is doing his best, but I am pretty sure my children ate hot dogs with a side of oatmeal for lunch. Ainsley is squalling for my undivided attention, Connor wants to do some sort of a painting project and Max thinks we should use my bed as a trampoline. And even though I have drool dripping down my chin while I stare ahead in a glazed over stupor I am also very slowly folding a mountain of laundry. I just don’t have time to be sick. So I’ll have to be sick and click things off my to-do list simultaneously.