Two in Tow: Travelling with the Munchkins

The kids and I are taking a little trip this week to visit their grandparents. It's about a 5 hour drive and we are staying for 5 days. So far, I have 6 bags packed. 6! How do such small people need so much stuff? I don't get it, they are small people!!! I'm lucky too, because we are staying at my mom's and she keeps in stock many things we need like diapers, wipes, sippy cups, child dishes and cutlery, baby blankets, children's books and toys, etc. AND we can do laundry while we're there. So in all honesty, I'm packing light! It could be much, much worse.
Each kid has a small(ish) suitcase and I have a suitcase, that's three bags, then there's a bag of toys for the car, a bag of coats and boots (it is winter after all and you can't be too prepared), and a bag of "miscellaneous" crap. Baby monitor, toddler leash (yes I leash my kids sometimes, because sometimes they act like wild dogs- it also doubles as a way to secure beloved toys to the stroller while we cruise the mall), DVDs for the car DVD player (FYI: dual screen DVD player = best purchase ever made), and of course, snacks times TEN THOUSAND. The key to a successful long distance car ride with kids (at least with my kids) is FOOD. They are like zombies for brains when it comes to snacks. Of course on top of those six bags are the camera bag, the tablet/laptop bag, and the bag with the DVD players in it. I'm also bringing four bags of baby crap I'm off loading on my brother and sister-in-law (and by "crap I'm off loading" I of course mean "wonderfully useful clothes and toys, none of which are haunted, that I'm lovingly donating").... :|
Wish me luck on the drive tomorrow as I endeavour to get the car radio to magically be louder than the sounds of kids gone wild in the back of my car.

Kids = My Daily Heart Attack

As the kids sit quietly in the living room playing with toys (each with their OWN toy, not battling to the death over the same piece of junk McD Happy Meal toy that NO ONE has touched in six months- it's a miracle!). Perfect time for me to slip downstairs and turn the laundry over. Estimated total time with eyes off kids: 3.4 minutes.*

I get the laundry turned over in a minute or so when my peaceful haven known as cleaning out the lint trap without a child attached to me is interrupted by the sound of one Little Man thumping down the stairs. He stands at the landing and asks me what I'm doing, and then looks up the stairs as we both hear The Princess descending the stairs as well.
Suddenly, Little Man GASPS and says, "Oh no Mommy!!! The Princess COLOURED ALL OVER HERSELF!!! Look! Looooooooooook!" All the thoughts run through my head in a nanosecond as I boot it up the stairs. Crap! How did she get a hold of the markers? How did she do that so fast? What else has she coloured all over? Please let it be the washable crayolas and not the permanent sharpies...
Arrive at the top of the stairs to a perfectly normal looking toddler. What the??
"Little Man, what are you talking about she coloured all over herself?"
"Look! It's right there!" And he points to a rather small unoffending blotch of ketchup on her pants from lunch that didn't even warrant changing her (though who are we kidding, who wants more laundry, she'd just be pantsless had it been that big a mess at lunch...).
Seriously child?!? Gah! Heart attack.

At least I didn't have to clean up any markers... ;).





*If you're a parent, you're already saying, maybe out loud to no one in particular (because we're crazy like that), "Uh oh, this is going to be bad."

Little Man Makes Toast

I'm torn. Today something crazy and awesome and terrifying happened. I took The Princess upstairs to change her after a particularly epic pooptastrophe that left me needing to not only wash her, change her clothes, and change my clothes, but also wanting to replace the carpets and repaint the walls (since I'm pretty sure our paint was now peeling from the stink). Don't worry, this is not the crazy/awesome/terrifying thing that happened, just background info. So, I'm upstairs, busy. After a while it occurs to me that all is very quiet downstairs where I left Little Man. So I call down to him to see if he's ok.

"Yes Mommy, I'm fine. I'm just making an Eggo."

Ok, no biggie, he's just making an Eggo. Wait. What??? He's COOKING? By himself???? Ok, what do I do? I am slightly disgustingly preoccupied up here with what I'm doing. Can he DO that? Breath. Ok, we're breathing. Despite my natural motherly instincts to run down there and cook the Eggo for him, cut it into teeny tiny, non-chokeable pieces and spoon feed it to him just to be sure, I need to step back and let him have his independence. Am I right?

So I finish up what I'm doing and wait impatiently on the stairs, where he can't see me, straining my ears to hear and interpret every noise he makes. And you know what? He did awesome! He pulled a chair to the fridge, got an Eggo out of the freezer, pulled his chair to the counter, put the Eggo in the toaster. He moved his chair once more to retrieve a spoon (pat myself on the back for teaching him to spread peanut butter with the back of a spoon instead of a knife) and the peanut butter and then went back to the toaster, where he carefully retrieved his Eggo, spread his peanut butter, got down a plate and carried it all to the kitchen table to eat.

I'm torn because on the one hand, I couldn't be prouder of my little guy for being so clever and independent. On the other hand I'm terrified he may burn the house down while I'm in shower one day. (What's missing from this story is the information that last week after putting The Princess down for her nap I came downstairs to find him attempting to microwave a bag of popcorn by himself- also with much success, though he was stumped into waiting for my help by the plastic packaging on it). I always let him help with things like cooking, but if I didn't show him how to do it maybe he wouldn't try and be safer. Or maybe he still would try and he's safer if he's been shown how to do it properly? I just don't know!! In my perfect world they'd just manufacture giant kid sized hamster balls that magically kept them from ever being hurt, sad or scared, and I'd be a much more relaxed Mommy! Teaching them, guiding them, helping them, and then eventually letting them go and watching them do it alone... Man parenting is HARD sometimes! In the end, I think I have to give this one a big "Way to go Little Man!"

Mama Cat Takes a Nap

The Princess has this annoying little quirk right now where she always wants me to sit on the couch in our living room. She doesn't want to sit with me, she wants to play with her toys, she just wants to know where I am, like I'm a piece of furniture. Part of her feng shui of toddlerhood. Wherever I am, she just takes my hand, leads me over to the couch, pats the seat, and says, "Down!" (Everything The Princess says is a command.) It's kind of annoying, because come on kid, I've got things to do! But I do concede a few times a day.

Today I let her lead me over and I plopped down with a sigh, happy to take a load off after spending the morning cleaning up from "playdate-ageddon" at my house yesterday. A few minutes pass. The kids are playing. I'm sitting. I'm watching Toy Story. I've seen this movie ten trillion times (totally not exaggerating at all). I have to admit that I may have dozed off (ready to accept my parent of the year award any day now...). I wake up to Little Man saying, "Mommy wake up! Mommy I want to play cut your hair!" (When a three year old mentions cutting your hair, you wake up pretty damn fast! He was just playing pretend, by the way.) So I'm sitting on the couch still, The Princess is sitting beside me, my shirt is yanked down, she is firmly latched and nursing, with her head turned so she can still see the tv (heaven forbid she not be able to). There's a cowboy hat on my head. There's a balloon hanging limply from my mouth. I can't have been asleep more than a couple minutes. Little Man smiles at me and simply says, "Blow please!". This is my life. Welcome to parenthood- these are the only naps you get now. <3

Little White Lies

Tonight I'm thinking about the little lies we as parents tell our kids. My husband is sick right now so today I had a good talk with Little Man about germs and how we were going to stay clear of Daddy until he was better so we didn't get sick as well. So at bedtime he asks me in his sweet way if I would like to sleep in his bed with him "for the whole night" so I didn't get any of daddy's germs. He can be pretty clever. He loves it when I lay in his bed with him, so a little sleepover would be the greatest thing ever. I told him I would, partly because I wanted him to settle down and go to bed, and partly because I thought I might really do it. But I'm not going to. Tomorrow I will likely tell him that I did sleep in his bed, but he was sleeping so he didn't notice. I think to a certain extent it's necessary to have these little white lies we tell our kids. It protects them right? From being hurt, or being confused, by things they can't really comprehend yet. I always feel badly though, it feels weird to not be honest with them when I expect it in return from them without exception. Hmm.... food for thought anyhow. What little white lies have you told your kids, and how do you feel about it?

Magic Mommy

This morning I took Little Man and The Princess to a nearby play group. And by "nearby", I mean I've timed it and it's literally a 7-8 minute drive.

Sometimes I swear we go to playgroup just for a change of place to eat snack. The kids begged for food like they hadn't been fed in years the entire drive there. They have a special knack for making 7 minutes feel like an eternity...

So we arrive and within the two hour playgroup they manage to each eat a fruit cup, a cereal bar, a half a cup of alphabet pretzels, a half a cup of goldfish crackers, and one of those small 100 calorie baggies of cookies. They cleaned out my diaper bag of not only the snack I'd packed, but also most of my dry "emergency" snacks that live in the bag full time. Man those kids can eat. I swear they're part billy goat (on their father's side, of course).

Play group ends just before lunch time, so we always go straight home and eat (yet again). I should mention here that it's a crisp -24 degrees Celsius here today, so we were super bundled in hats and mitts and the whole shebang today. No sooner had we hit the road home than Little Man asks for.... You guessed it... A snack! This is how our conversation went:

Little Man: "I want a snack!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeassssse!!"

Me: "Sorry bud, but we're out of snacks. We're heading home for lunch right now."

Little Man: "NO! I want a snack NOW!!"

Me: "Excuse me, that's very rude. No snack."

Little Man: "Get me a snack RIGHT NOW pleeeeeeeeease!!!!" (Apparently adding an exaggerated please to the end of a righteous demand makes it less rude... )

Me: "Little Man. We are out. of. snacks. I cannot make snacks magically appear out of thin air!"

Little Man: "Oh."

I wait. He's quiet. We drive home. Did he really think I WAS capable of magically making snacks appear out of thin air? Maybe in three year old land that is something Mommy can do. Telling him that I couldn't seemed to immediately satisfy him.

Needless to say, as we approached home and he noted that it had stopped snowing, and, beginning to get upset, asked me to make the snow come back, I was quick to tell him that I'm not able to make snow magically appear out of thin air.

Meanie Moms

If you're a parent, I'm can say with relative confidence that you have (or will) encounter a "meanie mom" at some point, if not regularly. What's a meanie mom? These are the moms you meet who, clearly, know everything. These moms have their shit together, and are more than happy to tell you all about it, and "help" you with your many obvious deficiencies as a parent. Some are pretty forward and will tell you exactly what they think you're doing wrong, others will be more sneaky (but just as jerky). Here are some examples of meanie mom comments, please share your favourites in the comments!
1. As your child drinks from their sippy cup of pink liquid, clearly juice of some kind... "Oh I won't let MY Kimmie have juice, it rots their teeth right out!"
(I've got news for you lady, their teeth are gonna fall out anyway... They're baby teeth!)
2. "I would rather wrap MY Timmy in a tea towel then ever let a 'sposie touch him!"
(I've discovered that a "'sposie" is a disposable diaper... Apparently they are evil.)
3. "You're letting her feed herself already? Wow, you're very brave.... I couldn't stand having my house such a mess."
4. One of my personal favs is when Meanie Mom speaks to your child (an infant who can't talk back) instead of directly to you... "Look how sweet and tiny you are! Doesn't anybody feed you?"
"Tell your mommy you need to have your clothes changed bc you made an itty bitty spill on yourself and she hasn't noticed!" (Guess what? I have noticed, I just don't care. You may want to spend your life doing laundry, but not I.)
Come on Mommas, we all worry about our little ones and we are all doing our very best, can we not lay off each other a little here? After The Princess was born I struggled with some post-partum depression, one thing in particular was the overwhelming feeling that everyone else was doing a better job than I was. Everyone else handled everything while I was dropping the ball left and right. I've since learned that this is perception, and the image other moms try to put out of themselves. I went to a workshop on toddler nutrition and heard a group of about ten moms all speaking over each other and literally competing with each other for the imaginary best mom award. "I cook my son steel cut oats for breakfast every morning!", "In my house we only eat whole grains.", "I grind my own flax and add it to everything." "I hide puréed vegetables in all our foods." There was not a word of support from anyone and honestly I left there thinking, a) Why did all these perfect moms sign up for a workshop when they clearly have it under control? Did they just come to "help" by sharing their infinite wisdom?, and b) I'm the worst mom ever.
Is this really how we want to make each other feel? I've really taken a new approach to talking about parenting with other moms since then. I try really hard to be brutally honest, even if I sound like I'm a mess (which most of the time, lets face it, we all are!), and to try and keep an open mind about everyone having their own way of doing things. It's not always easy, but it's worth trying, because we're all doing the best we can and we need support from each other, not to be made to feel worse. Down with the meanie moms! ;)

Staying at Home

I realize that to childless people, I probably seem pretty boring. In fact I've even been told that I'm not a very interesting person to talk to. Ouch. That stings, and I'll tell you why. I'm busy. My day is full, and my mind is constantly in overdrive. I'm a stay at home parent by choice, my husband and I make a lot of sacrifices so that I can raise my kids at home, and that means a lot to me. I'll admit my preoccupations are almost entirely on the kids, but that's ok, call me a workaholic.
I'm constantly planning for them and worrying about and considering whether they got enough sleep, if they're eating well enough, if they watch too much tv, if we stay home too much, if we go out too much, if I'm giving them enough attention, if I'm giving them enough space, if they are learning enough reading, writing, arithmetic to be in a good position come school time, if they washed their hands often enough today, if they brushed their teeth well enough, if they ate enough, if they had enough water, if the other kids at play group are being nice to them, if they are being nice to the other kids at play group, if they spend enough time with their dad, if they do enough chores, if they do too many chores, if I'm teaching them bad habits by cleaning up after them, if they're doing well enough at potty training as their peers, if that rash has cleared up yet, if there's enough diapers/wipes/food/bubble bath/etc etc etc (to infinity!) to make it through one more day, and if there's not enough of something, is there enough money in the bank to get it, and then, of course, I put them to bed and sit on the floor outside the door of The Princess' bedroom and worry about whether I'm handling this sleep training thing the right way. Phew- I'm exhausted just typing all that, no wonder I'm tired at the end of the day!
So it's hard to accept that while I'm planning meals, activities, building schedules, prepping crafts, making math games and devouring any reading materials I can find on sleep problems that all my effort and time and worry and concern is labelled as boring to others. Yes I stay at home, yes all I have to talk about are my kids, but that's ok- my kids are pretty damned important and pretty freakin' awesome, they deserve to have all my attention. :)

On the floor...

So.... This is my first blog post. Is that what it's called? A post? I have no idea how to do this. I know two things: I love (and I mean, LOVE) the iPad I got for Christmas; and I hate sitting on the floor.

I'm sitting on the floor because for the last four weeks my daughter has decided not to sleep. All parents have been here I know. The only way I can get her to stay in her bed at bedtime long enough to drift off is if I sit on the floor, right outside her door, reading my book and browsing the Internet on my beloved iPad. I'm seriously not sure what I'd be doing with myself if I hadn't gotten the iPad. My thumbs would be getting a lot of twiddling practice. So here I am, sitting on the floor, outside the door. Hence the name of this blog. I figured I'd try it out. I mean really, I'm a stay at home mom so clearly, I've got nothing but time. It gets tiresome watching soap operas and eating bon bons all day long.

I'm enticed by the idea of getting to do some writing, which I haven't done in a very long time, and getting to use my brain a little. Though who knows what shape it is in. I can sing all the words to most of the Disney movies. I know which Little People belong with which sets, for all the sets. I know that Little Man likes ketchup on his hotdog and his KD and The Princess likes ketchup on her hotdog but NOT on her KD. Mix this up, and madness ensues. Beyond the kid-absorbed details, my brain doesn't get out much. That's ok. I love my job. I love my kids. I love my family and my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But, maybe this writing thing can be something that's just for me? Of course I'll mostly be talking about my kids, because after all, I got lucky enough to get the two best on the whole planet in the entire history of time (in my most humble, unbiased opinion).

My butt hurts.
The end.