Laugh With Moms

This will serve as an addendum to my previous post “Fun & Games” just so you all can stop vomiting from my idyllic night with my children.  As a final “fun” game, I thought we would play one rousing game of Candy Land before bed.  We picked our favorite color candy land figure and then decided that the youngest would go first, then the next youngest and finally the old lady would be last.  My son caught a break at the beginning drawing an orange card and getting to use the rainbow trail giving him a sizable lead in the game.  My daughter and I continued to move along at a slow pace, while my son was drawing double blues, purples and reds with every pick.  He asked every other turn, “who is winning mom?”.  To which I responded, “you never know what can happen, we won’t know who will win until the end…”.  When he was about 10 spaces from the finish line, he drew the gum drop card and was sent packing to the very beginning of the board.  At this point, he began to whine and tried to pull his sister’s red candy land person back with him which caused an uproar from my daughter.  We continued on, my daughter put together a sizable lead and won the game fair and square.  My son at that point, started with a pout that quickly turned into a loud obnoxious cry and proceeded to throw his green candy land person across the room.  And just as suddendly as fun game night started it came to a screeching halt.  Being a mother at all times, even at 8:30pm as we are trying to wrap up a night of fun, a lesson needs to be taught.  Therefore I immediately have him pick up the candy land person while I am congratulating my daughter for a job well done.  I give the perfunctory speech about being a good winner and loser and taking delight in other’s accomplishments.  With this completed, I send them up to brush their teeth and get ready for bed, while I tidied up downstairs.  I ascend the stairs to the bathroom and I hear my son telling my daughter that she cheated and she didn’t really win the game while he continued to cry and whine loudly about losing.  At this, I bust into the bathroom to tell him that I am tired of him reacting poorly to the result of the game and that if he continued to act like this, he will not be invited to play a game with us the next time.  He replied, “yeah, yeah, yeah, I am not listening”.  Well, my blood pressure went to dangerous levels immediately and I said I did not want to hear one more word from him and that he needed to report to his bed “pronto”.  The use of the word “pronto” came out of nowhere as I have not heard that since I was about 12 years old and in huge trouble for calling my sister a word I will not repeat on this blog.  Anyhow, he then said, “you are not the boss of me, daddy is your boss”.  At this, my face must have been four shades of crimson and I calmly(outwardly) hissed through my teeth, “you better learn when to stop because you just made matters much worse than they were 2 seconds ago.  Get in bed.”  He quietly and very quickly ran for his bedroom and hid under the covers.  I continued to assist my daughter with her bedtime routine, all the while clenching my teeth so hard I thought they would come out my bottom jaw.  I walked into their room with my daughter and saw his two eyes peeking out over his covers and he said in the smallest, tiniest, baby voice he could muster, “mom are you mad?”.  What makes you think that?????  I said, “yes, I am mad and make no mistake I will always be your boss so get used to it”.  With that we turned off the light, said our I love yous and quickly floated (or in my case crashed) into dreamland.  Ahh the life of a mother, just when you’ve got it all figured out, those little rugrats remind you that you don’t and you probably never will.  Jump on, the roller coaster has just begun.

Tonight I said screw it to all the things we have to do at night to prepare for the day ahead and sat down to play game after game with my kiddos.  The dishes are still in the sink from dinner, the kids are not bathed and their school bags are still packed from today.  But we had lots of giggles playing hide and seek, duck duck goose and ring around the rosey.  I love playing hide and seek with my young kiddos because they hide in the same place every time and every time I act like I have no idea where they are.  The giggles that come out of my kids when I “accidently” sit on them while they are hiding under the blankets of their bed is priceless and makes me smile from ear to ear.  Eventually even my 18 month old daughter got into the hide and seek game and would quickly find the other two and sit quietly with them while I continued to look “everywhere”, but couldn’t seem to find them.  When we moved on to Duck Duck Goose, the giggles got even louder and ended up into full roll on the floor laughter as Goose was picked.  When I went around and substituted horse and cat, etc. for Duck, more roll on the floor laughter ensued.  Eventually as with every fun game, it became a little too much and the goose ended up tackling the duck causing a combination of laughter and cry.  But luckily and quickly laughter won out!  So tonight I am saying screw the housework, we are having some fun over here at casa chaos.  I may even pop some popcorn as we watch cartoons.  Tonight is for fun and all else can wait for another day.

This week’s kindergarten project was to make a turkey and discuss what we are thankful for this year.  I thought this would be a great project and was excited to get to it with both of my children.  Because my 3 year old daughter wants to do everything her older brother is doing, I traced another turkey and had her do the same project as her brother.  My son, being a typical boy, likes to fly through any fine motor activity to get onto a more gross motor activity.  So the prerequisite, “take your time”, “do your best work”, directions were given prior to the start of the project.  He said, “mom, I know, I know”.  Therefore I handed over the turkeys for coloring.  My son picked a brown crayon and started coloring all different directions, no rhyme or reason to his coloring other than he somewhat stayed within the lines.  My daughter picked up a red crayon and colored in small strokes, in one direction, always staying within the lines.  My son is done and happy with his work in a mere 30 seconds, my daughter continued to work taking at least 5 minutes on the coloring of the turkey.  On we go to the cutting portion of the project, “take your time”, “stay on the line when you cut” directions are given.  My son took the scissors, cut around the turkey in a mere 10 seconds, cutting off the “waddle” under the turkey neck and the bottom of the feet.  My daughter took the scissors and cut slowly around the turkey taking at least 3 minutes and managed to only cut off the bottom of the feet, but about 1 inch from the line.  This of course makes me cringe as I am an occupational therapist by trade and fine motor skills are my specialty, but I have to remind myself he is a boy and she is only 3.  Regardless, on we move to the discussion portion where we talk about what we are thankful for this year.  I said,  “I will start…I am thankful for my three wonderful, smart, creative, adorable and loving children who bring much happiness to my heart.”  My son said, “I’ll go next, I am thankful for monster trucks.”  I nod and let my daughter go next.  She said, “I am thankful for the sun because it is bright and sunny.”  I like it and we move on.  I said, “I am thankful for daddy because he works so hard, is so much fun and loves us with all his heart”.  My son said, “I am thankful for Transformers”.  I nod and move on to my daughter.  She said, “I am thankful for my brother because he helps me do things”.  I smiled and nodded my head in approval.  I  said, “I am thankful for my parents (big dramatic pause), Mimi and Papa, because they love us so much and help us every chance they get”.  My son smiled and said, “I am thankful for my principal because she gave me that paper and she is really nice.”  I think to myself we are getting closer, but his principal?  We move on, my daughter said, “I am thankful for the fence because it is white”.  Sometimes I think she is getting it and then she just isn’t.  Finally, I say, “I am thankful for daddy’s parents, Nana and Papa, because they love us so much”.   My son says with a little smirk on his face, “I am thankful for mommy and daddy”.  Man am I exhausted, it takes a lot to get some acknowledgement around here! This reminded me of last year for Mother’s Day, my son completed a project at preschool where they explained why they love their mommy so much.  His response was, “My mommy is the best mommy because she makes chicken parm and vaccuums the house”.  Very funny because both of those things happen about 4 times of year!  Anyway back to the thankful turkey, together we all decided what we are most thankful for and wrote them down on feathers that will be stapled to the turkey.  Once again the scissors came out, my son cut out 5 feathers in at most 30 seconds and begged me to let him use the stapler.  With my fingers in serious jeapordy, I let him staple the feathers on the turkey and he stuffed the project in his folder for school.  He quickly moved on to jumping on and over the couch into the couch cushions.   My daughter continued to slowly and painstakingly cut out the feathers, only completing three, before she was enticed to join her brother in the jumping game he has just created.  Fun and chaos has returned to the house and my son could not be happier, well maybe if he had a brother who would wrestle with him, then his life would be perfect!

Early this morning, my daughter sleepily walked into my room and climbed into our bed.  She usually climbs in and falls right back to sleep, slowly making her way sideways in the bed.  I usually get her head in my back and my husband gets her feet.  This morning though she had trouble falling asleep and thus she tossed and turned for awhile.  Eventually my son realized that she was gone from their room and came in to see where she was.  My husband decided to take him back to his room to get him to go back to sleep.  About 5 minutes later my son came into our room and climbed into bed with me and my daughter.  He proceeded to toss and turn, knock into his sister about 20 times, cough and blow his nose about 20 times for the next half hour.  At this point, I got up told him to lay down and go back to sleep in my very stern mommy voice and flipped over to my other side with a big sigh.  Eventually after about one hour, they both fell back to sleep giving us all about 30 more minutes of sleep.  Right now that seems pretty good, but at the time I was not happy with that at all.  Therefore, thirty minutes later I got up and was almost giddy at the prospect of having to wake up my son to go to school.  I actually giggled as I walked back into my room and put together a plan to wake him up without waking my daughter.  I wanted him to know what it felt like to want to sleep and yet someone was right there making sure that they didn’t.   He was not happy about the wake up and it took him about 15 minutes to shake off his bad mood, but it gave me great joy this morning to have to wake him up.  I laugh at myself right now that that would cause me joy, but it did and I am sticking to it.  Does that make me a terrible mom or one who sees the humor in it all??

That was my alarm clock going off at 5:30am this morning trying to arouse me from a good nights sleep.  It took awhile to register and then for me to register why I actually agree to get up at this ungodly hour to go run with my friend.  I quickly turn off the alarm and quietly sneak to the window to take a peak outside.  There was a threat of rain and secretly I was hoping to see rain pouring down, but it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t see a thing.  I quietly gathered my things and tiptoed into our only bathroom to put on my gear, go to the bathroom and quietly flush the toilet.  You don’t want to wake the troops as you are trying to leave at this early hour.  As I was walking out the door, I saw raindrops glistening on my windshield and quickly took out my cellphone to call my friend to find out if she was actually going.  I knew the minute she answered that she was already in her car and so my last hope of getting out of the run had faded.  As I climbed into my car, I made a mental note to myself…find yourself some friends who are less dedicated!!  We met for the run with our winter hats and gloves and sprinkles of rain coming down (the temp was a balmy 36 degrees).  Eventually we got in the groove and realized that it had stopped raining.   As we were coming into the homestretch today, my friend said “look at that sky”.  I looked up and I saw the most beautiful morning sky.  Pinks and blues, clouds mixed with the reflection of the rising sun.  We both stayed quiet for a little while, thinking the same thing.  If we had stayed in bed this morning, we would have missed out on that beautiful sunrise and a great run with an awesome friend.  Thanks friend!

That is what I look like by the end of the day.  No, I am not pregnant, but man I wish I had that excuse as the muffin top inches over the belt line.  In the morning when I awake from a full nights slumber (well not full nights slumber because with 3 kids someone is always waking up, but as close as I can come to it) and I catch my profile in the mirror I think, not bad for 3 kids.  But as the day wears on and I consume scraps off the plates of my little ones and a few stray Oreos here and there, that stomach starts to take a life of its own.  I can see my friends eyes gaze toward the stomach area and wonder to themselves, “did she decide to go for the fourth” (kid not oreo!)?  The next question then is, “are you still running?”, as they continue to garner more information as to the state of my belly.  My answer to this is always, “not much” even if I have been running on a regular basis.  Who wants to be running their butt off only to gain it in the stomach area?    As the holiday season fast approaches, my goal to be a little more healthy in my eating habits will be extremely hard to adhere to.  I never say no to a good pie or a second helping of mashed potatoes.  So I think maybe that four month pregnant belly is here to stay at least until the threat of having to put on a swimsuit at the beach draws near.  So here’s to all of us who are not pregnant but sometimes look like it after a good bowl of pasta!

Ok I am going to be completely honest here and say that I throw out idle threats everyday to get my kids to follow directions!  At some point they are going to call me on it, but so far so good.  All day yesterday, I used the “if you don’t ________, you won’t play hockey tomorrow!” threat and it worked like a charm.  I truly have no intention of keeping them out of hockey, but so far they haven’t figured that out yet.  Today I am using the “if you don’t ________, you won’t go to the Patriots game tomorrow!”  threat.   This one is especially powerful because this is something they have been wanting to do for so long and this will be their first trip to Foxboro for the game.  Believe me, I have read all the books that say don’t throw out a threat unless you are willing to follow up on it!  Eventually this will all come back and bite me in the ass, but for now I am going with it!  My son said to me today, “I’m not afraid of you”, which got the response from me, “excuse me, would you like to say that again?”.  At this point, he backed off and gave me that cute little smile and I knew I still had a little bit of fear to work with it.  I think that a little bit of fear is healthy and keeps us from doing things that get us into trouble.  I want my children to fear heights when they are just learning the stairs.  I want them to fear strangers when they are learning who is a friend and who isn’t.  I want them to fear the road when they are first learning to drive.  The key is to learn when the fear is no longer needed so that it doesn’t rule your life.  As a mother, one of my fears is that they will figure out that I will eventually run out of idle threats and I am going to have to either follow through or give in (I hope that it is not this one!).  When this happens, I start to lose a little bit of the fear they may have of me and the emotionally challenging years will be upon us.  For now though, I will continue to throw out those idle threats and hope they aren’t going to call me on them anytime soon.

We are embarking on the very long season of hockey here on the East Coast.  When my son first said he wanted to play hockey, I thought great, he will learn how to skate and hit a puck around.  What I didn’t understand is that there is this whole underworld in which hockey families exist every weekend and a few nights per week.  They duck into the rink on Saturday morning never to be heard from again until Monday morning in time for school.  Luckily we are not yet into the travel portion of the hockey world, but sitting at the rink for two hours every Saturday and Sunday with an active 18 month old is going to be great.  This year with my daughter turning 3 (yes 3) she gets the opportunity to get out there and skate like her big brother.  She cannot wait as she sat there all last year watching him skate and begging me to let her out there (she was only 2, I have my limits!).  So this year we not only have to hang at the rink for two hours we now have to double up on all the equipment.  Luckily this is the East Coast and we have a lot of hockey players in our family and thus have been the recipients of some pretty sweet hockey hand me downs.  We would be broke on hockey alone if it wasn’t for the hand me downs.  Then there is the skate sharpening that takes place every few weeks, you have to keep those blades sharp for those 3 and 5 year olds!!  I laugh at this, because you do have to sharpen them regularly as dull blades cause those little hockey players to trip and fall all over the ice.  Hockey here is serious and involves sleepy eyed children and parents making their morning trek to the rink sometimes driving as far as 45 minutes to an hour to the closest rink in the wee hours of the morning.  Only to return there in the early evening to do it all again.  The strapping on of equipment alone requires a diagram for those of us new to the sport and requires at least a 15 minute leeway on both ends of the session to take on and off.  This should be really fun when I have to do this twice with an 18 month old in tow.  Why I don’t get a babysitter, I will never know. Actually I do know as the money for the babysitter went out the window with all the equipment and fees required to actually play hockey.  Seriously though we are extremely fortunate to have a great ice rink close to our home that has an awesome youth hockey program.  They have those kiddos out there for 50 minutes, skating non-stop with great volunteers who love to see little kids playing hockey.  This is actually the best part because by the end of the session, they are exhausted and sleep like little angels at night.  To be completely honest, I love hockey and I love to see my little darlings out there skating around.  I am no pitbull in lipstick, but I am a hockey mom and proud of it.

A few months ago, I was totally in my groove.  I would get up at 5:30am to go to the gym and my workout was done for the day!  I would rush home, shower and then take over the kids while my husband left for work.  Somehow in the past few months my gym days have gone south.  One day, I decided to not get up early and from there on I have lacked the motivation to leave my cozy bed.  As a result, I have gained a few pounds and just don’t feel as good as I used to.  This morning my youngest son started whining in his crib and then I heard my other guy talking to himself in his room.  Next thing I know my husband has jumped out of bed and locked the bathroom door.  This is his new routine.  As soon as I hear the kids he pops up and locks that door.  Every morning when I hear him press that button I cringe.  I sit in bed and think it must be nice to lock the door and shave and shower with no interruption.  Once that door locks, it means my day begins as mom and doesn’t end until 8pm at night.  My 14 hour days are long and hard and unpaid:).  Oprah always says being a mother is the hardest job in the world and I totally agree!   I wonder when I can just lock my door and not think about anyone else but myself.

The best and worst thing you can do is take your child to a toy store.  We’ve been going a lot lately since my oldest just had his 4th b-day and a bunch of parents bought him gift certificates to Toys ‘R Us.  The adventure always starts out fun but then takes a turn for the worse when mommy has to step in and explain why we can’t buy every toy in the store.  This latest adventure was no different except that today he was focused on one thing in particular: buying the biggest box he could find. He actually passed up many of his favorites and definitely some that I would have purchased for him had he not been with me.  So, we bought the big box and he has been happy as can be since.  This particular box featured Handy Manny and he was so excited with his purchase that he insisted on finding projects to do with his father around the house.  As luck would have it, my husband and I were redoing my son’s closet so sure enough, my 4 year old came dressed in his “working clothes” with tools in hand, ready to do the job. Nothing is cuter than seeing a 4 year old try to help screw something in with his fake screwdriver and him thinking that he’s really helping.  It’s times like this that I love being a mom.