OOOOOHHH I am so MAD

So I was just on the phone with my mom, who mentioned that the house seemed rather quiet. Indeed, it did. I bragged that my kids had been playing quietly together for the last hour in their favorite spot - the kitchen corner cabinet (it's an empty cabinet right now, waiting for the kitchen remodel to continue).

I had even managed to get some of my homework reading done, and was feeling rather smug.

Until I entered the kitchen.



Now, I had carefully put away Miles' art easel and all the tempera paints and paintbrushes sitting on it. I also warned him that he was not to get it out, because Eleanor was too little.

Well, I suppose he did obey literally. But he managed to find the closed bottles of tempera paint and the clean brushes, not to mention the watercolors. And as we all know, we need water to use watercolors, and he managed that too. In case you can't tell, the floor is semi-flooded.

After my initial (less than affirming) reaction, I dragged them both bodily into the bathroom and told them to strip for a shower.



All this time, my comments are being cheerfully punctuated by little consolations:
"Oh, it's OK, Mommy!" (no, it's NOT!)
"Well, I sure won't do it again this time!" (True, because you won't be allowed into the kitchen again)
"That's a lot of paint on my clothes, huh, Mommy?" (no comment)
"Eleanor wasn't supposed to paint. She DID paint, Mommy. THAT's not OK, is it?" (Aarrrggghhh!)

I should have known better...

So last night I broke one of our cardinal rules or parenting...and boy did I pay!

The rule: never, ever, EVER enter a room where Eleanor is sleeping. Ever.

But last night, Scott was out of town, and something woke me up out of a lovely sleep at 4 am. I listened for a minute, and heard nothing. Lay back down, and heard a moan. Sat up, listened again, heard a whimper a couple minutes later.

Now, I know that if I open the door, Eleanor will wake up. I also know from long and sad experience that, if she's crying, going in to comfort her will never ever help. Never has. Not once, not multiple times. It just prolongs the misery; we've even timed the episodes.

But Scott wasn't home, and I thought, well, she doesn't usually cry out in her sleep (or not enough to wake me up anyway) - what if something's wrong? What if she's cold (we keep the house around 55 at night)? What if her leg is stuck in the crib? So finally, in the interest of at least occasionally feeling like a good mom, I got out of bed, pulled on some pants, and staggered into the kids' room, only to discover two totally flat-out asleep children.

Well, they were asleep.

Eleanor's head instantly pops up, eyes open, and she gives me that confused hedgehog-in-the-headlights look. I cover her up with the blanket again, stuff her puppy in her arms, shush her briefly, and back out of the room.

No luck. Instant screaming, choking sobs, and meltdown in all possible ways. "Mommmmeeeeeee!" I kick myself, and listen for a few minutes, hoping against hope that it's a fluke and really, she'll fall right back to sleep.

Right.

Then I hear an irritated little voice saying, "Eleanor, stop crying! Go back to sleep NOW! Please stop!" My son, who (as usual) is a blanket-wrapped eggroll of misery when woken, is intervening.

This didn't help. So I stumble back in, and do the hush/pat/rub back thing for a while until she's calm, and then firmly say, "Good night, Nora. Go to sleep now," on my way out the door for the second time.

Meltdown #2.

Anyway, to make a long story somewhat shorter, she DID fall back to sleep. I didn't go back in again, but nonetheless missed out on a significant chunk of my early morning sleep.

Which is my perhaps not excellent excuse why we didn't go to the gym this morning. That, and I wanted to go to Jewel to spend my six coupons (yay! free crackers!)

A brief respite from the terrible threes

So Miles is three. And what other moms have warned me about - that three can often be worse (aka more "challenging") than two - has certainly proved true thus far. Eleanor, in contrast, seems to be over her clinginess and separation anxiety, and has turned into Miss Easy-to-be-around, temporarily at least. I figure she's got around a hundred, maybe two hundred word vocabulary and is starting to string words together, so simply being able to communicate what she wants has helped her moods, I think.

But today was really pretty lovely for both. Getting up was rocky for Miles - he has a really hard time in the mornings if he doesn't wake up on his own, and when you don't wake up on your own until 8:00, unfortunately Mom has to do it for you sometimes. So he basically ends up a crying puddle of misery on the floor or his bed, whining that he "JUST wants to go back to sleep, please leave me alone, Mommy! Go close the door, please! I don't WANT to wake up, I don't NEED to go potty..."

Unlike some mornings, though, he snapped out of it pretty quickly today. We had a breakfast where he actually ate, then we made it to the gym in time for class, and got rave reviews from the childcare attendant, who asked me, "Do they always get along this well? They don't fight? He's just so sweet to her, bringing her toys and giving her kisses and encouraging her."

Well, it's nice to hear. I also (a few months ago) was told by Eleanor's physical therapist that Miles is one of "the best behaved three-year-old boys she's seen." Ha HA! She obviously hasn't had to eat lunch with him or had him yell "NO!" in her face three billion times a day.

But I digress. Today, as I said, was pretty lovely. Miles painted on his easel and then listened to his headphones while I had to be with Eleanor in her PT session, and then we had a lunch where he actually ate again (leftover macaroni, thanks Mabel) and some sweet brother-sister play until naptime. He SLEPT during nap (about a 50/50 chance of that happening lately), and then woke up in a sweet mood and helped me make pizza dough and set the table for dinner. Bathtime went pretty smoothly, ditto bedtime. I just wish I knew what I could do to increase the odds of THIS day happening instead of, oh, a day like Monday, for example.

Mwanamke anahamanika

Did I really think I could learn Swahili? Who are we kidding here?

I am recalling reading, somewhere, that (at least for English speakers) our brains process words based on their starting letter. I read a sample excerpt where, in every word on the page, the letters had been scrambled, which looked like code to me. But in another sample, they scrambled the words but left the initial letter of each word as the correct letter, and oddly, I could read it just fine - my brain I guess could interpret the words as long as they started right!

So I'm wondering if that's my Swahili problem. Because unlike all the European languages I've studied, in this one the word BEGINNINGS change with person, tense, gender, case, etc. Ack! So each time I encounter a given word, it looks completely foreign, and then I look it up in my handy online dictionary (kudos to the Kamusi project, btw) and discover for the nth time that, oh yes, I did learn that word actually, but this time it starts with ny- or an extra m- or a j- for no reason I can figure out yet.

I'm sure this will all become clear someday. Whether I'll have given up by then, though, I couldn't tell you.

little gourmets (or is it gourmands?)

Today, Scott is out of town on business, and as it happened, I had scheduled us all to go get our H1N1 shots (yes, I know, but better late than never). So then I have to agonize: better to prepare Miles for it ahead of time and endure the whining, or to spring it on him last minute ("oh, on the way to the grocery store, let's stop in this office and see if the doctor has something for us!") Anyway, I chose the former, and was amazed that, after promises of a post-shot treat, specified by him to be strawberry ice cream in a cone, I didn't hear any complaints. He even sounded excited when he told the plumber we were going to the doctor. Well, until the shot itself, but those tears blew over pretty quickly. I hope my kids grow out of the squirming before they grow too strong for me to pin their arms down, though.

As often happens when there's no second adult to feed, I opted for one of my simple, not-really-cooking dinner solutions. Tonight it was wheat pasta for the kids, with mussels in a tomato garlic white wine sauce for me (sounds fancy but in reality was a frozen kit from Aldi). I happen to love mussels. In the interest of enticing my picky and contrary children to try something new, I said I didn't want to share my mussels, and they were all for me, but that Miles and Eleanor could each try ONE, I supposed.

Big mistake. Eleanor masticated hers for a while, then spit it out. Pre-chewed food always looks pretty horrendous, but a mussel starts out looking horrendous in the first place. Let's just say it didn't inspire me to finish it off, regardless of my love of the little creatures. Miles, on the other hand, after opening the shell and slurping one, decided he loved them. He ate about twelve (really, I think the shells were the fun part), and then insisted on me sharing the remaining "mussel juice" with him. This was supposed to be my special treat - low-calorie protein that feels like a decadence. And here a three-year-old consumed the lion's share. This is a child who won't eat steak, or fried chicken, or Cheerios, or even peanut butter.

I had to forgive him, though, when - as I was washing dishes - he says to me, "Mommy, when I grow up I want to be JUST like you." I said, "Oh, thank you honey!" He continues, "Yeah, because you're so much like the Lord."

OK, so I know that's merely a direct quote from Kids' Praise Three (aka Psalty 3), which he received for Christmas from my mom, and he has no idea what that really means, but...it was awfully sweet to hear. Someday I pray he'll be able to say it and mean it (and that I could deserve it).

well, we can give it a try...

Seriously, I'm wondering why the girl who's never successfully kept a journal in her life would try blogging. Ostensibly, to share my everyday life with those who might care, right? Also, like my mom keeps nagging me to do, to put down the cute events and sayings of my kids before they're lost in the ether of my long-term memory (which isn't terrific, as compared to my short-term memory, which helped me slaughter many a multiple-choice exam). But if this blog doesn't blossom, don't say I didn't warn you. Whoever "you" may be (Mom?) Hey, I got a B in "Freshman Experience" - the easiest A out there - because I couldn't keep a journal!

Really, though, who would want to read this? There are tons of mommy-blogs out there, many of them written far more cleverly and wittily than I can aspire to do. Actually, I wonder if we're the most overpopulated category of blog? Because, among mothers, we fall into one of several categories: a)we think everything about our kids must be fascinating, and we know the world must be waiting with bated breath (I've seen that spelled "baited" sometimes, and it just sounds so unappealing...like your breath is reminiscent of night crawlers, or hot dogs, or the like), b)conversation with the toddler and preschooler set does occasionally pall (yes, I admitted it!) and we wonder whether our formerly articulate selves still exist, c)we spend so many hours away from our children that writing about the time we DO have together makes it feel more special or lasting or something, or d) we are inspired by our more clever and articulate mommy-friends (whose blogs we follow and envy) to try to do the same, because surely our own adorable children must be as interesting as theirs, right? For myself, I think I'm mostly in category b, with a healthy dose of category d.