A quiet moment

I have a big trial today.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I've been at the office in the evenings or on weekends more in the last month than I have in probably my entire career put together.  I'm CRABBY!  Thankfully, it's all over after today (at least until the next big thing comes) and I'm looking forward to that.  In the meantime, I'm CRABBY!

This morning as I was getting my mini monsters ready, they were taking full advantage of their energy and my lack thereof.  I was at the office until 11:00 p.m. and up at 5:30 a.m.  It's going to be a long day and the games weren't nearly as funny this morning as they sometimes are...you know, on Saturdays when I have nothing to do.  So I finally get the kids dressed, pick up the oatmeal they refused to eat (much of which was on the floor when I came back into the room), wrangle them to put on shoes and jackets and strap them into their car seats.  Kev comes down to say goodbye and we took a moment next to the car.  He kissed me, I leaned into him, thankful that this day will be over soon and that he's remained patient with my obligations recently.  Both kids are looking at us curiously and I remarked, "Little monsters.  They're so cute when they're strapped into a car that I haven't gotten into yet."

They proceeded to scream and pout the entire way to Grandma's house.  At least, as like most things they do, they were playing.  

The playground and my blood pressure

The park.  This place is a child's dream and a parent's nightmare.  The super duper playground by our house has both a slide (yay) and an opening straight to the ground (damn) at every platform.  All.  Six. Platforms.

I'm not particularly religious, but places like this make me believe that there is someone out there pointing and laughing at me.  See, I was blessed with a very cautious little girl.  She's dainty, unless she's throwing shit, but for the most part, she's very careful.  I didn't make her that way.  In fact, I was a tree-climbing kind of kid and hope that mine will be too...you know, when they're older, won't fall and I don't have to watch.  Then I was blessed with a son who is, well, a boy.

So, picture this.  Kaia climbs up the low stairs with Mikko close behind.  Kaia climbs up the short ladder to the tunnel.  Mikko follows.  They stop in the center of the tunnel, I bang on the clear walls and get them good and riled up.  Then Kaia goes left and Mikko goes right.  Uh oh.  So I let Kaia be because she's less likely to walk off the edge of a platform without at least an attempt at holding on to the fireman's pole or monkey bars. I duck beneath the second tunnel to get to the platform between them before Mikko makes it to the edge.  Phew, I caught him before he dove and instead he dives into the second tunnel.  Meanwhile, Kaia is calling me because she wants me to catch her at the bottom of the slide.  I turn around to realize that she's at the top of a VERY high platform, the tallest at the park, and is literally so high that I'm a little sick to my stomach over it.  I imagine her terror (undoubtedly, delight) and rush over to where she's climbing into a gigantic tube slide.  I rush her because I have literally no idea where her brother is.  She finally comes down, her skinny little butt isn't heavy enough to propel her down and she has to scoot from about half way.  I see Mikko's head pop up out of the tunnel and, when he sees me, he turns and runs.  I run through the cedar chips, ducking to avoid, unsuccessfully, bumping my head on metal bars of various shapes, sizes and configurations.  I get to the opening where I last saw my little boy's floppy hair and big grin and he's no where to be seen.  Just then I hear banging on the clear plastic walls of one first tunnel that I had just run underneath.  Both little monkeys are inside, giggling their insane little heads off.

The kids love the playground, but Mommy's blood pressure can't handle it.  The only day I ever took them to the park by myself, when I finally got them safely strapped into their carseats, I sat in the front seat, turned the Disney CD up really, really loud, and balled my eyes out.  Being a mom is really hard.

Storms and such

I live in Wisconsin.  We don't generally play host to tropical storms or the dreaded hurricane.  We do get the occasional tornado, but since they're not named, they don't apply to this RANT.  This week, my house has been overtaken by Tropical Storm Kaia and Hurricane Mikko.  Not surprisingly, neither has been officially recorded, but I can attest to their existence.

Tropical Storm Kaia has been brewing for a while now.  She hasn't been sleeping well.  She's teething.  She's two...  It was inevitable.  This morning she told me, "Mommy, when I talk, you have to LISTEN TO ME!"  Um, okay, kid.  All day it was "No, Mommy" this and "No, Mommy" that.  She freaked when I took her jammies shirt off to change her into her clothes, then she freaked again when I took off her regular shirt to put back on her jammies shirt.  WTF is that!?  The swirling winds really picked up when mean mommy made homemade pizzas and tried to make her EAT IT!  I decided that I was boss and sat her in her chair despite her protests.  She screamed and cried for five minutes before I gave in and let her get down without even a bite.  Then she cried bloody murder because I wouldn't get up from the table.  After I finished eating, she cried for a sticker.  Then she got the sticker stuck on her play kitchen and cried for a new sticker.  She didn't want the new sticker because I cut it out instead of giving her the sticky side, trying to avoid a repeat of the original sticker's demise.  Seriously, child.  I got her juice, brushed her teeth, read her a story and had her in bed by a merciful 7:05 p.m.  She was crying again within 5 minutes.  I went in her room where she was still laying down and she said, "I want Dora."  I said, "Sweetie, you have Dora right here."  "I DON'T want Dora," she clarifies.  Alright, Kaia, I'll take Dora with me, but could you please sleep off whatever this attitude this is so that I don't lose my mind??

Ah, Hurricane Mikko.  I considered letting Mikko be the mild tropical storm and giving Kaia the title of "hurricane."  She kind of seems to deserve it.  Yet Mikko gave me his own version of crazy and it was quite a bit more destructive and stressful, so Hurricane Mikko it is.  So Mikko likes to be on the couch now.  He's a big boy, you know.  I watch him pretty carefully because he likes to stand and he's already taken a header off the couch.  Because I watch him so closely, I was a mere 12 inches from him when he bounced himself backward which propelled him forward.  Right. Into. The. Corner.  The arm of the couch is padded, but not on the very very very edge.  Instead, it's a wooden edge covered by suede fabric.  Little dude had a knot so big and blue that it made my stomach turn a little.  This morning he woke up with a broken blood vessel in his eye.  This afternoon I ran to find him crying because he had pinched his fingers in a drawer (and was holding the drawer closed on them with his other hand).  I rescued him from that and sent him on his way.  Not 30 seconds later, he was chewing on a screw he pulled from the wall.  Later, he went tearing up the stairs at Grandma's house and when she blocked those off with a gate, he started to climb the side of the stairs that is an open banister.  Hurricane Mikko.

So I'm taking the day off tomorrow and I wouldn't mind getting a mommy break, but as it happens, I'll be spending the day with my little loves.  If it's awful, I'll just consider it research.  Or normal.

Being THAT mom

No, I'm not that mom....but apparently my kid is that kid and she did it to a kid with that mom.  So Kaia and I are doing tots gymnastics this summer.  First, let me clear a few things up about tots gymnastics.  It is NOT the fast track to the US Olympic team, although I get the impression that the "big girls" who do handstands for the first 40 minutes we are there are probably in training.  It is NOT cartwheels, kips and Kasamatsus (I didn't make that last one up, that's actually a thing).  It is also NOT fun for Mommy.

See, in my head, everything Kaia and I do is fun because we do it together.  I really dig my kid.  She's funny.  In reality, though, lots of things we do also involve other people and I think a lot of other people suck.  I don't really have a sanctimommy routine, so bear with me as I sort out my judgment.  (I didn't make that up either, "sanctimommy" has graced the pages of both the New York and Washington Times!  Google it, I bet you know one.)

Some of the parents hover around their kids saying things like, "You gotta suck it up, honey, you're a big boy/girl," and "If you don't listen to teacher and follow the circuit, we'll go home," and "Why do I pay for this if you refuse to participate?"  Now, all these kids are 18-36 months, and while she's a pretty smart cookie, I suspect Kaia doesn't know what a "circuit" is, nor does she understand the concept of paying for something, but whatevs.  Perhaps some of the 36-monthers do.  My kid usually cooperates because she's glued to my side and I think it's fun to walk across the beam and hop hop hop across the numbered floor.  In their defense, it would be hard for some of the mothers to hop in their high heels and skirts (no joke) and the one nanny always seems pretty tired.  These mommies are not having fun.

Then there are the two boys.  The two sweet little 18 month boys who are both too young and far too rambunctious to really do what they're "supposed" to do.  The boys' mommies aren't having fun because they're never there.  In fact, both boys come with their dads, which I think is AWESOME!  Those poor dads always look terrified of the other moms and I think they should be.  So am I.

Finally, there are the kids.  See, this entry isn't all about judging moms.  I judge kids too.  There is, in particular, one kid, the kid, who continuously messes with the blocks.  The kids are given blocks to carry across the beam (to encourage them not to hold mommy or daddy's hand, I assume) and stack at the end.  This kid lurks at the end of the beam and knocks down the tower the other kids make or grabs the blocks out of their hands as they pick one to carry across.  I've never noticed her mom before (because she never attempts to stop her at the end of the beam).  Until Friday.

So last class, like at the end of every class, the kids are allowed to jump on the trampoline.  This time, though, they got to bounce down the tumble tramp.  It's a long, somewhat narrow trampoline used for mastering skills in a floor tumbling pass.  So, the little kids usually just run down it.  The big kids bounce down it with their feet together.  Kaia usually bounces down it on her butt.  I taught her that.  Nice, right?  It was a good idea when they were jumping on the regular trampoline and not expected to make forward progress.  Oh well.  Live and learn right?  Lesson:  No butt drops until you KNOW they're not going to be going on the tumble tramp during this session...

So Kaia is bouncing her little butt down the tramp and Block Girl comes tearing up behind her.  Kaia stands up and BOOM! knocks right into the little girl.  I say "boom," but for real, it was like she stood up and they bumped heads.  There was no skull cracking, no hysteria.  In fact, I think the other little girl was still standing and Kaia landed back on her butt, which was probably just fine as far as she was concerned.  Oh, but the hysteria came.

Block Girl goes nuts crying.  Block Mom says she's sorry and makes Block Girl say she's sorry.  I also apologize and a few seconds later Kaia said, "I'm sorry," to her and followed that up with, "It's okay, Mommy.  She'll be happy soon."  But she was not.  In fact, she was so tremendously upset over the incident that they left before class was over, which is a big deal because you get a stamp on your hand AND a coloring page.

Okay, so the 3 year old overreacted, what's my beef, right?  Block Mom must have said, at least three times to no one at all, "Oh, she's going to have a black eye now."  "Look at that.  It's going to be a black eye, I'm sure of it."  "Yep, that's definitely going to be a black eye."  Seriously, Block Mom?  No wonder your kid just went bonkers because she bumped her head.  You're lucky my kid didn't intentionally knock your kid down, like your kid knocks down the block tower, when your kid stole my kid's block at the end of the balance beam.  BOOM.

So, no, I'm not that mom.  I genuinely felt bad that they had a collision.  I made sure my kid said sorry too.  It wasn't anyone's fault.  Kids fall down sometimes.  Kids bump heads sometimes.  Shit, kids in gymnastics tear callouses, break bones and tear ligaments sometimes.  Unfortunately, my butt bouncing goofball managed to bump into a kid who has a crazy mom, that mom.

Sadly, we don't have class this week, so I don't get to gloat when the kid comes to class without that dreaded black eye.  Bummer.

How many times can you say "Mommy" today?

Today I challenged Kaia to say "Mommy" 1000 times.  I'm pretty sure she met and exceeded that figure.  No, I am not a tiger mom attempting to give my child goals to achieve in preparation for the grueling future I have planned for her.  Instead, since she had already "mommied" me a few hundred times in the car that morning, I figured I'd find some positive spin.  Give the kid an achievable goal, right?

Jesus.  I swear to you she said "Mommy" a hundred times in 30 minutes.  "Mommy, look."  "Mommy, call Kaia."  "No, Mommy, no!"  "Mommy, what are you doing?"  "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy...."  The latest is that I am not allowed to speak to anyone else in the car.  She says, "Mommy, no calling Poppy.  Call Kaia."  "Mommy, no calling Daddy.  Mommy wants to call Kaia."  I don't know how she decided that speaking in the car was considered "calling," but that's her thing.  I'm not allowed to call anyone but her.  She wants me to look at everything she's doing (and everything she puts in her mouth, incidentally).  She just likes to hear herself say "Mommy."

I'm pretty sure she drained the ever-living-mommy out of me today.  Thank goodness for grandparents, baseball and beer.  Hopefully I can find my mommy pants tomorrow morning because I think there'll be some "Mommy" in my future.

Rainbows, boo boos and COPS(?)! Oh my....

Remember when I said most of my blogs come on the heels of some sort of chaos?  How's about an emergency 911 call?  That counts, right?  Totally.  My sweet baby girl, Kaia, recently turned 2.  While we have been fairly lucky to avoid the "terrible twos," she has her moments of absolute monstrousness.  Last night was "one of those days."  It was a little chaotic at bedtime.  We had been gone all day, so we came home and nearly tossed Mikko straight into bed, where he was still displaying his immense displeasure.  Kaia was playing with my locked blackberry, an attempt to keep her occupied and not yelling for 15 minutes so her brother can fall asleep.  It's a work phone, so I keep it locked at all times rather than let my two-year old call clients and courts.  Suddenly it beeped.  It was a beep I'd never heard before, which to be fair, is not that uncommon when a two-year old is playing with an electronic that she's too young for...happens with my laptop all the time.  So I walk over and notice that a call had been placed and quickly hit the "end" button as I realize, slowly, that the disconnected call was "EMERGENCY SERVICES."  Great.

So a few minutes later, a nice lady calls and confirms that we're having an emergency.  We are not.  She takes my information and says she'll advise the officer that we do not need him to stop by.  He does anyway.  I apologize.  She laughs and says, "It happens all the time."  Officer comes.  I made Kaia apologize ("Sorry Offdider") and tell her that he has real work to do.  He did tell her he liked her Dora jammies, which didn't really strike the fear of dialing 911 into her as I had hoped talking to a strange man with a gun would.  She spent the rest of the night alternating between "Sorry Offdider" and "He has to go to work.  He has real work."  So that was a SWEET end to a busy weekend full of tantrums and madness.

This morning I woke up to my sweet, yet strange, little girl again.  I bumped my elbow (expletive) and Kaia asked me if I had a boo boo.  Now where the hell did she hear that nonsense?  "Boo boo?"  I can handle "owie," but "boo boo?"  I'm sure I rolled my eyes and said, "Yes, Kaia.  Mommy has a boo boo," while I gagged a little.  Then she asked if she could help and offered to kiss it.  Aw, melt.  Boo boo it is, kid, and candy for dinner.  So a little later, we're outside and I see a rainbow.  Well, if she's all boo boos and kissies, maybe she'll love rainbows and unicorns too.  So I pointed it out and she said, "I see it!  I see the car, Mommy."  Me:  "No Kaia, rainbow.  See it up there in the sky (pointing)?"  Kaia:  "I see it!  I see the bird, Mommy."  Me:  "Nevermind."  We came inside to play pirates.

Lacking material??

My blogs tend to come on the heels of some sort of chaos.  As such, I haven't had much to say lately.  Don't get me wrong, my house is always chaos.  I have a 1 and a 2 year old...what else could it be?  BUT, some of that chaos just isn't funny.  It's downright ugly.  And since every mom in the world thinks their kid is the cutest, smartest, most wonderful creature on earth, I won't bore you with how awesome my kids are....and funny.  Well, maybe I will a little.  I just moved baby Mikko into the nursery with big sister Kaia.  Let's keep in mind that "baby Mikko" turns a year old this week and "big sister Kaia" just finally caught up to him in diaper size.  With the new arrangement, Kaia decided they MUST play in Mikko's crib.  The next twenty minutes go as follows:  Mikko stands up, holding onto the railing.  Kaia tugs him down.  They roll around a bit, Kaia finally outmaneuvers Mikko and straddles his back like a horsey, all the while chanting, "Giddy up, Mikko."  Repeat.  Strange kids.

But really, the funny stuff is always the ugly stuff right?  I know my kids are cute, but your kids are cute too, so for every story I share, you've got a match.  Try to beat the two nights of hell I enjoyed after moving the cribs into the same room.  We're limited in space in this joint.  It's a 2 bedroom condo with a loft.  When we moved here, it was Kev, Kailey and I.  We had LOTS of space.  Then we had a baby.  We adjusted and it was alright.  Then we had another baby.  Shit.

So our mini Harry Potter slept in Mommy and Daddy's closet, which worked pretty well except for every time we needed to get stuff out of the closet, which was pretty much every day.  So for nearly a year, I've been dying to get my closet back.  On a random Wednesday night, when Kev was off to a choir concert, I decided it was the night.  Why would I do it on a night when I was solely responsible for dismantling the crib, moving it from room to room, reconstructing the same crib, AND putting the kids to bed?  Who the f knows!  I had decided "it was time."  Whatev.  The first tuck in wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.  In fact, with the horsey rides, it was downright funny.

I had Mikko down first and despite his habit of screaming for upwards of 45 minutes, he was quiet pretty quickly.  He woke up when I brought Kaia in, but magically (I say magically because it happened somehow and it most certainly wasn't anything I had done or I would have done it again the next night to save myself the 2 hours of INSANITY), he went back to sleep without much fuss.  Then he proceeded to wake up 4 more times.  The best was the 4:00 a.m. wake up when he screamed bloody murder for an hour.  You know what time I'm not ready to get up?  4:00.  I fell asleep every 4 minutes between outbursts.  It wasn't pretty.  Thursday was So. Much. Worse.  (See reference to "2 hours of INSANITY" above.  'Nough said.)

Tonight, after a weekend with the grandparents, they just went to bed.  Seriously.  Mikko went down, no screaming.  Kaia went down without waking Mikko or any "Mooooooooooooommy, Moooooooooooooommy, Mooooooooooooommy."  Amazing.  So, the thing is, it's just not that funny to be miserably tired and have actual problems like wickedly unsleeping babies and it's equally not funny to have sweet little angels who just go to sleep when I want them to.  You know what is funny?  Stuff that my husband does and says.  Fixing that after he reads this, though, would again not be funny, so I guess I won't go there either.  Love you, honey.  :)  For what it's worth, I sincerely doubt he reads this.