Elmo

Language is tough. Especially when you're almost two and you want your Elmo doll, but your mother mistakenly tries to put you in an Elmo diaper, brush your teeth with an Elmo toothbrush, or put Elmo panties on you. Because, let's face it, "I want Elmo!" could mean all those things.

"No" is another one of those tricky little phrases. It can mean No way jose! Over my dead body! Or it can be a verbal tic common to toddlers the world over. Knowing which one can only be discerned by risking a tantrum.

Other endearing little vocabulary lapses include the classing of all bodily fluids under the past particilple pooped. For example, instead of saying, "Mommy I have to piss like a race horse!" My daughter will say, much more charmingly, "I pooped," which means she has to pee and or poop, or she just wants to sit on the toilet and look at an Elmo book. When she is noticeably upset and she says, "I pooped," it generally means she has gone in her pants. The latter definition is becoming archaic thank God!

Dahlia also, quite logically, classifies all substances placed into her mouth as "eat.' "I want to eat" may mean that she is ravenously hungry or that she is dry as Texas in August. So I offer her something to eat or drink each time. And sometimes, the wrong answer gets thrown clear across the room. So watch out for that sippy cup!

Kitchen Counter As Potty

Dahlia has some new favorite hangouts in our house. Number one among these is probably the kitchen counter. How I got into this habit, I'm not sure. Like most parental mistakes, they happen inadvertently.

She puts on her cutest face and says, "Hug?" To which it is nearly impossible to resist picking her up. But I can't stay in the hug position forever, and because I am a very busy woman, I placate her by placing her right next to me while I make lunches, cook dinner, etc.

Dahlia, who is eerily intelligent for an 18-month-old has made the logical connection that if she's perched upon the kitchen counter, while I'm in the kitchen, that I won't leave her side. She knows that if I take her down it's usually because I have business elsewhere, and she may not be included in said business.

There are interesting things to do up there. She can play with the coffee maker, grab bananas and persimmons, play with the cyclamen or the toaster, and most importantly It keeps me close. But it presents problems when I have to use sharp objects or turn the stove on, or do anything that isn't 3 feet from the counter.

It also is problematic when she takes her diaper off as she has begun to do. On Tuesday, for example, she disrobed with a little help from Miles, and asked for a hug. I hugged her and placed her, happy as can be, buck naked on the kitchen counter. She promptly rewarded me by saying, "Poopy" and leaving a turd the size of a persimmon. I whisked her and the majority of the turd (wrapped in paper towel) right off to the bathroom, leaving the rest of the mess for later. In the bathroom I said, "Bye bye poopy!" and flushed it down, and within seconds, Dahlia was sitting on her potty, which I'd dragged to the kitchen, looking adorable and confused, while I scooped the rest of the poop and disinfected the counter with two kinds of kitchen spray.

Seeing that I might make a run for it, and leave the room for a moment, Dahlia said, "up" meaning that she wanted me to put her and her potty on the counter. I obliged, and she went pee-pee and poo-poopy inside the potty. And I was very happy and proud of Dahlia. All those readings of Once Upon a Potty are paying off!

Where Has the Time Gone?

August, September, October, November. Well, it really has been a very busy period, one day just swept away the next. In that time we've been through 3 au pairs from Yenny to Angely to Triin. My work has been in major flux, Miles and Alec finished summer camp at a ritzy pre-prep school near our house; Miles started third grade; Alec started kindergarden. Dahlia has been picking up a very sophisticated lexicon and a serious sweet tooth. We've had construction in the house, Hadley traveled for business; the seasons switched, we had to chop down our two big maples, well actually we paid two men and a crane to do that; My parents and Hadley's parents have visited and gone, visited and gone; there have been ER visits, minor injuries for each of us, and all in all there has been no time to breath or write or read or sleep.

But hopefully now that we have a new au pair who I pray will be with us at least a year, I can get back to blogging here at least once a week.

Ta Ta Thomas the Tank Engine

A man came to our house this morning to look at the trains that the boys have cast off. He stood on our porch and stood and stood, waiting for me to reduce the price...

For years my boys played with little else. Gordon, Thomas, James, Henry and all their locomotive consorts were on their tongues, the way children of missionaries must know the characters in the bible.

Shortly before Miles, our eldest, turned 2 my parents bought him a train set and my father and husband assembled the table, after which I lovingly set up the tracks and we waited for Miles to play. We waited with the hushed silence of parents anticipating some great developmental leap on the part of their child. But at two, Miles didn't yet know what to do with them.

The train table stood in his room, a beacon of things to come. As he got closer to 3 he spent more and more time at his trains, but still they derailed too easily and he needed constant supervision to play with them or he'd be reduced to tears and shrieks of frustration within seconds.

Enter Thomas the Tank Engine.

About the time he started nursery school we let him watch Thomas on TV, and the stories captivated Miles, as they do so many boys and girls. Once he had those stories and their characters in his little mind his play with the trains literally took off. Over the next two and a half years Miles played with them constantly and collected them train by train. He'd sit at the kitchen table pouring over the Thomas catalog with longing.

Seeing Miles's fascination, Alec loved them well before his second birthday. He would yank the tracks out from under trains like a little earthquake, the tracks that Miles or I had artfully set up. If frustration were a commodity that we could have sold, we'd be rich as Croesus. The boys would bicker over who got to play with James, or Diesel 10. To remedy this situation we or my parents would buy another James, but it was never enough. Even then, the boys would fight over the one thing that they didn't both possess--whatever that was.

Time passed. The train table lost a leg from all the rough and tumble. Miles started first grade. There were other more exciting toys. Though Alec was still in his prime Thomas playing years, Miles minced no words in telling Alec that Thomas was for babies. And of course Alec believed him. The trains sat and sat--sad extras from the movie Toy Story.

I got pregnant with Dahlia and serious nesting set in. We finished the basement to have extra playspace, but the trains just seemed to be in the way. So I dumped them unceremoniously in a mass grave of a Rubbermaid container and put them in a closet under the basement stairs. It was my hope that I could bring them out in a blizzard for a great day of play. And I did, but the boys were bored with them. They chose to make snow angels and play Wii instead. Then I knew that Thomas's day had come and gone in our house.

When I placed an ad on Craig's list, I was not expecting the overwhelming response I received. I got over 20 emails from people expressing interest--new members of the Thomas cult, wanting all the religious paraphernalia I possessed. Or just parents hoping to make their little darlings happy without paying full price.

...so the man stood and stood on our porch. But I didn't come down in price. I didn't have to. There were others lined up to buy them if he didn't. The man knew this. He pulled a wad of clean bills from his chinos and counted them off. "This will be a christmas present for my little boy," he said. A christmas present in July.

Mea Culpa: Or Confessions of a Guilt-Ridden Mama

The boys are up in Canada with their grandparents. And I am in a confessional mood this morning.

Here are my confessions:

1. It is partially my fault that the boys' trip to Ottawa with their grandmother took 12 hours instead of 2, because I didn't know that I could print the boarding passes instead of just the itineraries. Thus their seats were given to others while we waited for Natalie to arrive on her weather-delayed flight.

2. Alec didn't have a bag of things to do on the plane because he didn't pack one, and I didn't feel like packing one for him either because I assumed that Natalie would tell him stories on the short hour flight.

3. Last week I was on the toilet and Dahlia wandered out of the bathroom. The door to the basement had been shut when I went to do my business, but one of her brothers subsequently left it open and she decided to visit her brothers, but she can't fly or go down the stairs without help, and when I found her she was a crying heap at the bottom. And I was sure she'd broken her neck.

4. I picked her up despite a warning in my head that she may have a spinal injury. I picked her up and ran upstairs to call the pediatrician. She stopped crying in a minute or so. The pediatrician's aid said,
"Are the basement stairs carpeted?" Check.
"Can she move her arms and legs?" Check.
"Does she have any noticeable bumps or bruises on her head" No. Check.
"Did she lose consciousness?" No. Check.
"Ok, then just watch her. If she acts any different or throws up bring her in."

5. Then I went to work. I had to. I told Yenny to call me if Dahlia did anything different. I told her to check on her during her nap and not to let her sleep more than an hour. I told her to watch her like a hawk. And then I got in my Camry and drove away.


Epilogue: Thank goodness Dahlia was okay. No harm no foul. And the boys and their grandmother made it to Ottawa in one piece. But I like to think I've learned my lesson, then again, I'm not sure what lesson that is. Perhaps the moral of the story is to get off my keister even if my butt is in a sling.

MacGyver Momma

This blog entry is dedicated to all of us moms who try to keep ourselves looking as unhag-like as possible while running after a posse of messy, loud, endlessly needy youngsters AND switching as effortlessly as possible to the adult world of work. This blog post is NOT meant for Moms who manage weekly pedicures, facials and the like.

Life with young children in an urban setting requires a certain amount of invention just to get through the day, let alone look human in the process, but it helps to have a bunch of stuff in your car. If you are anything like me your car looks like it should be condemned. However, all the clutter can have its upside when it comes to scavenging something useful for any given purpose.

If you haven't managed to brush your teeth, put on make-up or comb your hair I highly recommend the Mom's Car Kit that includes: a lipstick (pink enough to double as blush), a matchbook, a corkscrew, a mini-tube of toothpaste, a small vial of purrell, some diaper wipes, a bag of almonds, a sippy cup full of water, a safety razor, a small vial of hand lotion, and an iphone. With these items one can do an amazing array of necessary bodily functions in one's car and emerge from said vehicle looking more human than when you stepped into the driver's seat.

Here are some examples of the multiplicity at your fingertips.
Say you just managed to run out of the house leaving the kids with the babysitter and you have 20 minutes to get to a client meeting. You haven't managed to shower in more than a day, and it's been hours since you looked in the mirror or brushed your teeth. You have creamcheese on your shirt from the baby, mud on your pants from your 5-year-olds sneakers, your hair looks like a dying shrub, and your hands look as if you make your living as a sewer rat; oh and you have to pee.

Have no fear.

First sprinkle some water on your hair to wet it down and tame it, then pour a glob of lotion on your hands, rub it in and put the excess onto your hair to keep it from being a flyaway mess. Then apply a dab of lipstick to your cheek bones and rub it in until it looks like blush. Cross your legs to keep yourself from peeing in your seat and apply the lipstick to your lips. Drink a little water from the sippy cup and pour the rest onto the clean sock next to you and into an old coffee cup in the cup holder. Then pull your skirt up to crouch over the sippy cup. Pee into the sippy cup. It helps if you are a pro at Kegels because it's easier to stop midstream if your cup runneth over. Pour the pee out the window* and continue from the beginning.

Put the wet clean sock into the sippy cup to dilute the pee so it doesn't stink up the car and so it reminds you to take it in with you to wash, after your client meeting. If you happen to splash yourself a drop or two don't worry. That's what the wipes are for!

After you've relieved yourself, get to work on your nails. Clean them with the corkscrew tip, file them with the matchbook flint until they are even enough for government work. Then it's time to clean your mouth. Put a dab of the toothpaste on your finger, "brush" your teeth with your fingerprints, take a swig from the old coffee cup of water that you poured from the sippy cup before you used it as a potty. Swill the toothpaste/ stale-coffee tainted water around your mouth until you are about to upchuck than spit it back into the old coffee cup and pour the contents out the window*.

If your legs need a shave, wipe a little Purrell on your legs or armpits and start shaving fast until the Purell dries. If you cut yourself at least you know it's sterile. Pop a handful of almonds in your mouth to stave off hunger and check your iPhone to make sure that nothing's changed with your clients or kids.

Now you are ready to pull up to your client's building. Check your reflection in the mirror, check your email one more time on your iPhone. Polish your shoes with a diaper wipe and your are good to go.



* Always be sure that you pour said fluids out in ways that won't be stepped in by passersby. I highly recommend the soil around trees especially if there is sufficient mulch, or a seldom used patch of grass behind a building.

Is Our Daughter the Family Dog?

Well, she is the third. And she is a quadraped for at least another week or so until she gets this walking thing down pat. Plus she's in that stage where everything goes in her mouth, so she will try hard to clean the floor with her pincer grasp and open mouth. I suppose I should be grateful that she doesn't lick the floor.

Her brothers, especially Alec, treat her like a pet as well. They fight over her relentlessly, "It's my turn with Dahlia," says Alec as he grabs her arms. She protests, not liking to be treated like a doll/dog. "No it's my turn," says Miles as he woos her with a strawberry that might as well be a doggy bone.

I even treat her a bit like a poodle, in my fetish for dressing her in the perfect outfit. But she draws the line at hair bows. Every time I put one in her scant reddish fuzz she takes it out.

Being compared to a dog would surely not offend her. Doggy is one of her first words and she will bolt towards one given any opportunity. Neighboring the boys' dojo is a dog grooming place, and Dahlia who isn't even 14-months old knows exactly how to get there from inside the dojo. It's hard to stop her. She scoots out the door onto the sidewalk and without hesitation turns left and walk-crawls two doors down to the doggy place, saying Doggy Doggy Doggy the whole way. When we get there she indicates that she wants me to pick her up so she can see the dogs. And when I do she tries to reach over the little wall to grab them.

Maybe one day when we bite the bone and buy a real dog she'll lose her status as the family dog, or probably much sooner when she can tell us in more than baby words that she's a person to be reckoned with. But certainly, one of the first things she will tell us also is that she wants a dog in our house 24/7, preferably in her room. And maybe, since neither she nor her brothers will let me put bows in their hair, we'll get a dog who will.