ahhh, motherhood.
p.s. it was chocolate
Reason #2345 that I hate toddler teething.
1 Jul posted by
My hand pauses mid-air above the blue paint swatches. ::sniff sniff::
“Harrison? Do you stink?” I should probably learn to phrase that better, I tell myself as I set him on the ground & peer into the back of his pants. What a mom thing to do, right? Sure enough, poop in the diaper. I shrug & figure that a little poop in the pants for twenty minutes never hurt anyone, especially since the wipes had been accidentally moved from the car to the house.
Nate saunters over & helps pick out a paint color. “What stinks?” he asks, making that face where one lip curls up.
“Harry. It’s kind of making your nose burn, isn’t it?” I explain as I decide between paint brushes.
“The poop is strong in you, my son,” Nate says, lifting Harrison out of my arms. “Should we change him??” I explain that for the first time, I left the house without diapers & wipes so it figures he would need them. But no worries, we’re headed to Target & we can just snag the goods & I’ll change him there. Motherhood on the fly, yo. I give myself Elle Woods sorority snaps for being flexible.
“Holy hell, that smells,” I complain as we climb into the car. “How on earth is it that strong?” Absolute confusion & poop talk reign as we swing through the Target parking lot.
Nate lifts Harrison out of the car, I grab a cart & he says, “Wait. Stop. We’ve got a problem.” I look at him in a panic like, DO NOT TELL ME THEY SHUT DOWN THE TARGET STARBUCKS, but no, he’s holding out the baby at arms length & I’m looking at a strange brown stain down the front of his shirt thinking that he may be sexy, but I can’t take this man anywhere. “That’s shit you’re looking at,” he explains.
Sure enough, my husband has toddler diarrhea running down his tshirt. Which means the toddler has diarrhea oozing out of his diaper, looking totally pissed. This is not happening.
“That,” I declare, “is nasty. & filthy. & gross”
“Yeah? It’s on you, too,” he points out as he loads the kid back in the car.
Everything in this post is absolute truth.
23 May posted by
First, the evening started off with a bang:
But we had some snuggles & life was okay again.
But then this happened:
So he laid down on the bathroom floor & gave up on this day. I didn’t blame him.
Until this happened:
I can’t make this shit up.
Pretty much the most pitiful post ever.
9 May posted by
I could look at this two ways – I can either wallow around in awful motherhood misery, or I can thank my lucky stars that it took us almost 19 months to make it to the emergency room with one hell of a rowdy boy.
On Saturday morning, Harrison took a slide down three stairs & landed with at hump on the hardwood floors. He cried a bit, of course, & let me snuggle him close as I wiped away his tears. ”Alright, buddy,” I consoled. ”Let’s go get dressed so we can go outside!”
“Ouu?” he asked hopefully as I dressed us both in jeans & Converse. We headed to the park to meet Brandy & her boy – the boys swung happily in the swings until two birthday parties bogarted the entire playground. (which immediately changed Brandy & I’s perspective of playground parties — they’re kind of rude, no?) Harrison seemed grumpy, but I explained that he had woken up an hour early & then taken a spill. Once home, he ate lunch & settled in for a nap. An hour later, he woke up screaming & mad. In an attempt to placate him & save our sanity, we took him outside once more to let him play on his swingset. ”There’s something wrong,” I worried. ”See how he’s favoring his left hand? He won’t pull up with it. Or put weight on it.” Nate agreed. Two hours later, we emerged from the Emergency Room with Harrison’s first x-rays & sling.
Who knew they even made slings that tiny?!
He fractured his wrist when he fell – the doctor said it looked like he must have landed with his wrist under him & was more of a weight-on-hardwood-floor type thing rather than him bracing himself for a fall. It’s kind of crap luck that other kids fall down a full flight without a scratch & he fell three steps & got a broken bone, but it just proves that he really is my kid. He’ll be in a splint for a week, then move to a cast for four weeks. It should heal nicely & the doctor assured us that this type of thing is way more traumatizing for the parents.
Nate, of course, is worried about the month-long setback to Harrison’s golfing career.
I pretty much felt like a sack of moldy pancakes that I had hung out with my kid the entire morning & not really noticed it. Just another notch in my “Mom of the Year” belt!
On the other hand, it’s not exactly slowing him down.
As a bonus, Tuck is steering clear since he packs a pretty hard plaster whollop.
I like to think that my kid rarely gets sick because he chugs penicillin.
5 May posted by
I have this thing with Harrison’s straw sippy cups.
As in, they’re nasty as hell & I hate them.
For months I thought that my kid would never drink out of a cup. I offered about 10 different kinds of “training cups” only to sigh in exasperation at his shaking head & stubborn refusal. Friends offered suggestions. My husband told me to be patient. The pediatrician recommended tossing all bottles out cold-turkey to create thirst. Finally, PRAISE THE LORD, the child put down the bottle & picked up the Nuby.
Glory be!
Goodbye, bottle parts! Goodbye, bottle sterilizer & bottle brush & formula dispensers! Freedom from your year-long tyranny!
oh.
wait.
I have to wash sippy cups & the dishwasher won’t do an adequate job?
They have even MORE parts than Avent bottles?!
damn.
They never seem to get clean enough. I’ve come to the conclusion that straw cups are really a toddler’s petri dish. So can I rationalize it that I’m being a responsible parent by injecting him daily with penicillin from an unwashed cup? Because yeah, he might be formula-fed & as a result be in line as the Russell Brand of 2059, but he’s going to be a bacteria-fighting machine by the time I’m done with him.
Yet every morning, we pour coffee into travel mugs & milk into a cup & set off on the road. As I throw life into my veins with hot French Roast, Harrison quietly drinks milk in the backseat while watching Curious George. About 20 minutes into the commute, a familiar ::thump:: occurs as he tosses the emptied drink aside. Milk into child = complete. All is right with the world.
The problem comes about 24 hours later when we load up in the car the following morning & realize that yesterday’s sippy has now glued itself to the car floor with milk residue. The even bigger problem comes three days later when we realize that we’re all out of Harrison’s cups because a) they’re in my car or b) rolled under the sofa. & by that point, a HazMat team needs to be called.
So we disdainfully carry the cups in, hold our noses, & unscrew the lids. Scrub, scrub, hot soak, scrub, soak again, scrub some more, dishwasher run, another soak. With the occasional “OH MY GOD, JUST THROW IT OUT!” when we deem a cup totaled & the effort to clean it is not worth the $3.47 to purchase a new one.
& then we promise to never let it get this bad again.
Until three days later, of course.
