Sunday, May 23, 2010

playgrounds aren't for wimps

if there's one thing my kids hate more than anything, it's trips to the doctor's office. they are fine when we talk about what's about to happen in the car on the way there, they are fine when we walk in and they see the giant fish tank, and they are fine when we get called back in to the room. it gets instantly ugly as soon as the nurse walks in. ty turns in to this koala-esque creature who leads me to believe that he may both strangulate me and cause me to go deaf in the same moment. i spend more time with the doctor saying, "what did you say?" than anything else. he does not stop crying to the point of almost-hyperventilation until we are checking out and he is picking a sticker out of the basket (for good behavior, of course). cj, on the other hand, enjoys reminding me approximately 50 thousand times that "the doctor's not gonna touch me, just ty, right mama?" and then proceeds to stick his thumb in his mouth and pretty much challenge anyone who walks in to a staring contest. it's especially fun when it IS in fact cj's turn to go. he not only refuses to take his thumb out or talk, but he also refuses to stand on the scale. i highly enjoy having to stand on there once by myself and then a second time while i'm holding him so the nurse can figure out how much he weighs. (last time i told her i was positive my clothes weighed at least 10 pounds. she just laughed. i wasn't trying to be funny.) i attribute my kids' fear of the doctor to their outstanding health, (which of course is a result of my outstanding parenting.) so i'm sure you can understand how delighted i was to find out upon walking in the house after work the other day that we were about to have to make an emergency visit. bonus- it was lunch time. which leads directly in to nap time, aka my happy hour. this was undoubtedly going to be an ultimate disaster.

i got a call from the babysitter just as i was packing up to leave that i really shouldn't worry, but just to let me know, ty fell on the playground and is bleeding from the mouth. his teeth are fine but he's crying so much there's no way to tell exactly where the blood is coming from. wishing for a second that i had imagined the whole call, i walked in the house to find a little boy sitting on his babysitter's lap who was covered from head to toe in every liquid possible that the body knows how to produce. surprisingly, i didn't freak out. after all, 90% of the time, the kid walks like he's drunk. he falls constantly, and i just assumed this time was a little harder than usual. but because it was his mouth this time, i decided to take him in to be checked out.

after an intense pep talk that concluded with a promise of chicken nuggets for boys who are good for the doctor, i walked in with two quiet, pleasant children in tow. (side note: yes, i bribe my children with food frequently. it works, and i will continue to do it. even if said food is sodium-laden questionable "chicken" that is cooked in a vat of grease. hey, i never said i was trying to win the mother-of-the-year award.)

the nurse checked him out and decided that since the cut was located right where his lip meets his mouth, she was going to have to have plastics take a look at it. Wha??? all of a sudden i had no idea what was going on. Plastics? as in surgeons who make old women look young again? for a 16-month-old with a tiny cut on his face? o.m.g.

about a half hour later, a doctor came in and poked and prodded at my poor little man's lip, mouth and teeth. surprisingly, ty didn't cry once. i knew though that this was too good to be true. when he decided to have a third person come in and look at it, i knew it was the beginning of the end. and right i was. by the time the second doctor came in and attempted to touch his face, ty pursed his lips together so tightly and began to cry. this happened in conjunction with some serious back arching and random arm flailing. while i was starting to sweat from restraining him, and feeling like i was about to cry as well, they were busy deciding that,after all of that, stitches would end up leaving a bigger scar than just leaving it to heal by itself. they did point out the hole in his mouth where his top tooth went all the way through his bottom lip, and said to call back if any of his teeth started turning black. unsure what to say at this point, i'm pretty sure i uttered something ridiculously intelligent like, "ummmmm, okay" as we started to run out the door towards that sticker basket. 5 minutes later, you'd never even know my man had just endured one of the most traumatic mornings of his life to date. he and his brother were two of the happiest chicken-nugget-eating boys i've ever seen.

(and i needed a drink. was it happy hour yet?) ;)

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Honor Thy Mother

the boys are the light of my mother's life. At her house (which is only 15 minutes away), they have their own bedroom and their own toy room. they have their own little seats at the dining room table and little cups with their names on them. it was at her house that they ate peanut butter when they were only 9 months old (WHAT?! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO WAIT TILL THEY'RE ONE!), skipped nap time altogether (he was having too much fun and didn't feel like taking a nap...), and stayed up until 9:00 even though bedtime's at 7 (They just wanted me to sleep with them for a few minutes.) i'm pretty sure she likes them more than she likes us. so in thinking of the perfect gift with which to honor my mother and their "ga", i let cj lead the way. we walked in to the build-a-bear store with the intention of making her a small stuffed bear that she could tuck in to her travel bag. (she travels weekly for work). in my mind it would be soft and smooshy and would play a cute little saying in cj's voice when it's hand got pressed. we left with something just a little different.

the wall was covered with soft smooshy options and as i pointed them out, i said, "cj, pick out one for ga. which one do you think she would love?" he walked up and down the aisle as intensely as an almost-three-year old can in a toy store, and shot down all of my suggestions. "no" he claimed. "ga would love this one". and how could i argue?

after trapping him in the bathroom ("where it's quieter") we practiced recording a message to ga. it only took me about three tries before i finally figured out how to work the friggin' thing, then three more before he actually spoke on cue, and a few more minutes of begging and bribing with ice cream before i put the microphone up to his mouth, which was dangerously close to the bathroom floor at this point since he had decided to lie down, before he said something we were both satisfied with. (i think he really wanted it to say "please save me ga, my mama's a lunatic".)So Mom, if the recording sounds like it's from inside a toilet, well- it kinda actually is. Hey, we have to pick our battles, right?

Ah, mother's day: a day to show our appreciation for all of the mothers in our lives- to spoil them with gifts and meals and flowers. My dad took care of the meal, my brother the gifts and my sister the flowers. so what was left? Well, a fire breathing, 18-inch, bright green DRAGON with huge shiny gold wings and long white claws of course. That, mom, is our way of saying thank you. for your patience and your calmness; for your friendship and your phone calls; for your cooking and your babysitting; for letting them do whatever they want simply because they are at ga's house; and for putting things in perspective when i think i might drive off the nearest bridge. push the hand of your new cuddly friend and hear cj say it all, "Happy Mother's Day, Ga. I love you. Favorite Ga". I couldn't have said it better myself.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

last week at a glance

Monday- aunt tessie moved to a new house and dropped off a really fun surprise- her goldfish that she no longer wanted but was afraid to flush since it was, well, still alive. yay! good thing goldfish only have a two second memory.

Tuesday- the fish is still cool. they plaster their faces up to the side of it's bowl and stick their chubby fingers in the water. ty throws his red ball in and laughs. later that day we grocery shop and cj wants to walk. now, when they were babies, grocery shopping used to be a major source of my anxiety. if i put the baby's carseat up in the front of the cart, i could put cj in the big part, and hope that he wouldn't mind his legs being crushed under the groceries. i would then pray that ty wouldn't let the entire store see his ugly side- that loud, relentless cry that he's never been ashamed of and I would break out in to a cold sweat as i randomly started pulling stuff off of the shelves so that i could outta there as quickly as possible. time went on, and i got my act together, and now cj will only sit in the cart for a few minutes. the bagel bribery trick has played it's course and as a result, i send my most sincere apologies to the person who stocks the deodorant in aisle 5- i confess that it was my son who not only knocked over ALL of the men's speed sticks, but then reshelved them by putting them back up there, in a huge pile on their sides. i'll say it won't happen again, but to be quite honest, i'm not making any guarantees.

Wednesday- dada is mad. after the boys went to bed all he wanted to do was watch some sportscenter. he came up to the room where i was feeding my reality tv addiction and held up a dripping (literally) remote. "thanks for letting one of the boys put the remote in the fishbowl" he said and walked back out. oops.

Thursday- dorothy enjoyed a mid-afternoon snack of goldfish crackers. she then was given a bath and a new home on the kitchen table. (maybe while they're up there staring at her, they'll actually eat something besides chicken nuggets or peanut butter on bread.) Later that night while they were taking a bath, i heard myself actually utter the phrase "please stop grabbing your brother's wiener".

Friday- dorothy was served a breakfast of approximately 12 pounds of fish food. we are still very thankful to aunt tessie for such a wonderful surprise. After a long day of walking to the playground, digging for worms, eating popsicles and playing baseball, cj looked at me while we were eating dinner, pointed his chubby little finger right at my face and said, "you're the BEST." amazing.