Clean Car Days

You know what I am doing?

Cleaning my van. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

It's not.

We spent forever cleaning
this room before breakfast.

It is the "Anger Management Strategy of the Day" aka, the thing that I am doing to avoid totally losing every shred of my cool with my middle child. She is what is commonly referred to as a threenager. And by the end of this day she will have spent more time in her room than out of it, culminating in a 5:00 pm bedtime. Primarily the purpose of the room time out is so that I can put some distance between her and I. Every time that I have had to put this child in the car today it has been a wrestling match, and the two hours of "nap time" resulted in every thing, toys, clothes, books, everything, being thrown about in her room. It makes my stomach clench to think of it,...

...That is why we are now pulling all the seats out of the van so what we can be sure that we get every iota of dirt, and orange peels, and church worksheets, and tater tots, and who knows what else, out from under them.

 I think her sweet compliant nature up until the beginning of this year meant that the defiance that suddenly started around that time felt like a real slap in the face, a punch in the gut, a spit in the proverbial eye, and it makes me want to scream and cry and rant, all at the same time, a lot...

...So I am out here furiously scrubbing the windows on my vehicle, which are covered in stickers, saliva, chocolate and other unrecognizable things, so that I won't hear her kicking the door and barge in like the maternal maniac I feel like.

 I'm running out of strategies and if I am completely honest there are days when I don't even employ them. I just go from 0 to rage in 3 seconds flat blowing right through the tiny voice in the back of my head that is telling me that I am going to regret this....

So there it is. This is why I am shaking out the dead flowers, rocks, granola bars, and playground sand from my floor mats.

Dinner before a 5 pm bedtime
is sparse at best.

Every time I lose my cool it just feeds that monster in the darkest parts of thoughts that continually whispers that I'm a bad mom. That I don't know what I'm doing. That is messing it all up. And there are many days that I can't find much fodder to argue with him. When I yell, and huff and puff and threaten, I regret it instantly. I want to be a calm collected person, dolling out consequences with a side note of love and affection and not this red faced troll bellowing at every misstep.

So I take deep breaths, I try to think through the consequences I am going to give and how reasonable they are, I text my friend phrases like "Ahhhh!", and when all else fails...

... I spend some time shaking all the cheerios, animal crackers and chicken nuggets out of the car seats.

These are the good days. When I find something to help me make it through the day. The days where I remember that there are better days ahead and behind.

 The days that I write about, that I post pictures of on Facebook, those are the best days. I put them there to remind myself that sometimes the best of me wins and my child finds reason to smile at me. So don't judge me because my Facebook makes my life look all hunky dory with sunshine and poppies. Its not that I am trying to project a false image, pretend that my life is perfect, or show off in anyway. I'm just trying to hold on to the things that are worth remembering. Just like my now pristine car sometimes the result belies the cause. Perhaps next time you see overly happy pictures or a perfect family on some sort of social media you can just smile with them.
Or next time you see a woman with a spotless minivan, you can give her a hug and tell her she is a good mom because we all need to hear that more.

How Kids Are Like Heroin

     Kids are heroin. They are destructive to your physical, mental and societal well being, and you keep coming back for more, you just can't resist.

Your first pregnancy, the one where you took naps without the risk of waking up to wanton destruction, and subsequent child lure you in with the false high of their first smiles, the adorable babbling, and the tiny clothes.
So you think... "Let's have another. We can handle this."

Then there is two of them...
Here is where you start to feel the pain... the lack of sleep, money, and time, not to mention no cuddles with the hubby (unless you are forming a two year old sandwich).
But, somehow, it getting harder is a challenge, as if you are waving red in front of a bull.
People say three is so hard. But you can do it. The oldest can be so much help now. You are ready for this! You got it!
So you pep talk your self into having a third...

This is when you realize where your addiction has left you...
Broke. Tired. Bruised. Sore.

How likely is she to sit on
the baby if I go potty?

...and the high from those little booties and the tiny giggles just doesn't quite break through the fog that your sleep deprived zombie brain lives in. You stare at the third, loving them more than anything in the world, trying to formulate coherent sentences but only gibberish comes out.

Here is your life on three kids...
You dress thinking things like...
     How much spit up will this shirt hide?
     If a child hangs on my pocket will these pants end up around my ankles in the middle of a Walmart parking lot like last time?
     Can you really even see that hole?

There really is no reason to spend time thinking about what actually looks good on your body because your body has been so stretched by pregnancy, sleeplessness, stress, and a deep craving for chocolate ice cream that even when your blessedly wonderful husband extols the beauty of your form you stare at him wondering if photoshop has somehow been installed directly into his brain.

Of course the baby needs to
wear the choking hazard
wings, Mom.

You can no longer carry on a conversation.
Instead you have disjointed half finished bits of information exchange floating around, each sentence puntuated by "No, no, no!", "Get that out of your mouth!" and "We don't hit our friends." until most of the meaning is lost and never mind there being a point.

You long for escape
 Then they leave...
 Kindergarten, summer camp, or weekend with the grandparents...
 And all you can do is talk about the kids, what are they doing, what are we going to do when they get back, what they did last week.
And worse than that you worry, worry, worry...
Every night that they are gone you lie awake very aware of the fact that you didn't check to see if they were breathing and sniffling about the fact that when you dropped them off they didn't even look at you, just mumbled "Bye mom" and took off running.

Selfie of a six year old.

You rush back to pick them up envisioning running towards one another with open arms and instead you find that the joyful energetic child you dropped off has used up all their good behavior points while gone and you get the leftover troll points instead.
Within an hour you're ready to send them back so that you can miss them again.

But then your baby, the third, the one who didn't get a nursery, who ate off the floor, didn't have a changing table, and developed an early and uncanny ability to pull full glasses of liquid into your lap, learns to walk.
...

Your heart starts beating fast, your palms get sweaty...
You don't have a baby, you have a toddler!

Your mind starts to wander towards the inevitable place... but your push the thought aside and sleep though the night for the third time in a row.
But it keeps popping up...
Finally you hold someones newborn.
You really should have known better.
And then the last straw.
The moment when you cross the line and there is no turning back.
You really just can't help yourself...

You smell it!

That is when those sneaky addiction thoughts slip in and the what if's start...
     What if we have one more?
     What is the big deal about adding another?
     Four isn't that many more than three in the grand scheme of things.
     You've done it before and it worked out just fine.
     Just one more...
     Just one last time...
   
See...

Heroin

4:00 pm Comes For Us All

 

Too cute to be the source of so much
trouble, right?

     Baby girl came to me with her toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. That is where is all started.

     "I want to brush my teeth Mommy."

     Such a sweet simple statement. And 15 minutes later I find myself on the verge of hysterics.

     I should start by saying it was after 4:00 pm. And all the moms say, "Ahhhh..." in that understanding way. That really should have clued me in. Nothing good starts after 4:00 pm. That is when the children go crazy because they are getting tired, hungry and/or bored and they know if they go crazy at 4:00 then all the craziness damage is done and dealt with before Daddy can get home to put a stop to it. It is all part of their plan to take over the world, but that is another post.

     So, as I said it was 4:00 and baby girl wanted to brush her teeth. My little prince often gets the grumps about this time so I had him in the wrap to soothe him while I got a little something done, at least that was my theory until someone wanted to brush their teeth. 

     I pasted up the toothbrush, tightened the lid back on very securely, and sent her to the bathroom to brush to her little hearts content all the while thinking how proud I was of her for making such good choices. The happy mommy moment should have been a clue too.

     My sweet boy runs by to let me know he is using my bathroom because baby girl is in theirs. So far, so good. Nothing to see here. I walk by the bathroom, I no longer remember why, and see that girl child with her mouth around the tube of toothpaste... yes... eating it!

     Let me take a moment to say, ew!

     She pulls it out of her mouth and stands there looking guilty. 

     "Did you eat the toothpaste?" I ask her and she says "noooooo" in that long, I think I'm giving the answer mom wants to hear sort of way.

     I've been a mom long enough to be pretty sure the two year old is lying to me so I ask again after a long pause and she says yes, she ate the toothpaste. Ate it! 

     Why, why, why!!?? 

     Why do I still even ask why?! 

     The tube tells me to call poison control and I keep their number on the fridge, easy access for just such occasions. This is not my first rodeo and at least I don't have them on speed dial... yet.

     So I'm talking to the nice, calm lady a poison control and am giving her all the information from the tube, the concentration of fluoride, what type of fluoride and how much she might have eaten. The tube was mostly empty and travel size to begin with so I was fairly sure that she was fine but when they are so little you never know and I would rather be safe.

     The nice lady begins to tell me that she is fine and would have to eat more than the whole full tube to do any harm but if I give her a glass of milk it will counteract even the harmless but uncomfortable symptoms of eating toothpaste like an upset stomach. 

It's all part of the master plan
mom! When you least
expect it.

     I start pouring the milk as she is telling me this when my sweet boy bursts into the kitchen from the direction of my bedroom. "Mommy! There is a potentially dangerous situation!" he breathlessly tells me. I assume this means there is an ant in the bathroom or my straightener is on the bathroom counter and tell my oldest son that I'm on the phone and it will have to wait. This is his cue to notice that I'm getting his sister some milk, the unfairness of which is far more important, so he abruptly changes tracks and begins to whine for milk. Why? Because it's 4:15 pm.

     The nice lady is still talking and asking a few questions which I am miraculously managing to answer when I hear, as I walk to find the girl to give her the milk, "Mommy! I had an accident!" This is when I think the nice lady started struggling to not laugh at me and once she heard me say "Why are you in your brothers crib?!" she got off the phone with me awfully quickly and her voice had the quirky sound of someone who was about to laugh her head off once she was out of ear shot. 

     So now I have a half naked toddler in the baby's crib, an accident next to the crib (thank goodness!) complete with a little pile of pants and underwear, a kindergartner explaining why it's not fair that his sister is getting milk, and I catch a whiff of spit up from the baby strapped to my front. Why not? I give the toddler the milk, put a towel over the accident, take a deep breath and then ask my sweet boy what he was trying to tell me about while I was on the phone.

"Oh, the toilet won't flush! It just fills and fills and fills with water!" 

...

Of course...

     I walk to my bathroom, check that the toilet has not yet overflowed, close the door, and then just walk away, all the while mumbling things about help me Lord, children, where is your father, it was just 15 minutes, and how I hate 4:30 pm.

Clean vs. Neat

Sweet Boy

There is always the first child...
      So, the way I see it, with your first kid, some have a system some don't. There seems to be some wiggle room there for individual interpretation, if you will. You can be a rigid 'junior eats at precisely 8:02 am' parent or a 'go with the flow, whatever we feel like' parent and it seems to work.

So people have a second...

Baby Girl

     The second child often makes people think, "We need some rules around here or basic guide lines of some sort." and a system is born. Often the system is beautiful and complete with two children. The chaos of life is manageable with minimal panic. Things get done and there are enough hands to deal with the break downs. Life is a little louder and more stressful but you can always call a sitter and slip out for the evening to recoup.

The Little Prince

And then there was a third...
     Thus far in my experience it seems it is the third child that makes God laugh, pat you on your sweet overconfident head, and then break your beautiful system in to tiny irreparable pieces. After my third child, who was not a difficult child by most standards, my whole system fell apart. I'm talking, sitting in my living room surrounded by piles of whatnot crying with all the children, apart.

Real life- you can't see it but
the youngest is weeping too.

    To be fair, it may be that I'm not especially well cut out for this big family thing, or that my standards are too high (Ha! She said standards!), or even that I was fooling myself to think that I ever had a system that really worked. I have considered this and decided that I really think it's just that my beautiful little prince broke my system. My system, and to an extent, me, maxed out at two and burst at the seams with three.

   And here is the crux of the matter. The real trouble I have, as I drift in system-less space, can be summed up like this: There is a saying that trying to clean with a toddler in the house is like trying to brush your teeth while eating Oreos. Now multiply that times three. Though I like the idea of three Oreos (hold the toothpaste) I'm actually referring to the rampant destruction that three children can leave in the wake of their every move.
Let me explain how things have changed.

          Instead of a quarantine on the mess created while your work in another area, for example: "Go disassemble your room while I clean the main living areas", you have to quarantine the cleanness, for example: "No one in the living room making a mess behind me while I'm cleaning it." Instead of picking up the toys in the living room you try to remove the choking hazards in the living room. Instead of "Put your dirty clothes in the hamper" it is "Toss your clothes in the laundry room and hope that nothing eats you alive when you open it's door".

    I could go on but from here we enter the realm of you don't want to know, its all down hill from there, and it might make me cry a little.

"We got Mommy's phone!"

     I have never been a neat person but I have always been a clean person. It's a "I might have clutter and piles but my toilets are clean" sort of thing. Having to let go of that has been the hardest part of having three children for me. My family needs neat to function and clean may or may not follow as closely as I like when my attempt to transition from straightening up so things are neat to cleaning is interrupted by a wrestling match gone wrong, the mystery thuds followed by screams, or a blow out diaper.
 
     The question I keep asking myself is how do I feel content, and confident, enough in my sometimes partially neat house to have friends over, or host a play-date and not cringe and apologize. It is a questions that I don't have an answer to. Maybe I need to embrace the chaos, relax and let go. Maybe I need to put in some extra energy and effort to try to find a neatness solution that will work for my family. I always seem to find, after much prayer and petition, that the answer is somewhere in the middle. A happy medium that results in a functional solution that takes into account the big picture and yet allows me to take pride in a home that will always look like happy children live there.

     I wouldn't trade my little mess makers for the world, they one of the most precious things in my life and are a constant source of joy...

.... but I have considered confiscating their allowance to hire a maid.

The Playtime Catalyst

     "Come on! Let's go play!"

     These words, that I heard from my sons mouth to my daughter when breakfast was over, were sweet music to my ears. There is a three and a half year age gap between these two which is enough time for my sweet boy to remember life before baby girl and also to clearly remember her as a tiny baby. I have been wondering for a few months now when my sweet boy would look at his baby sister, who is now two years old and ready to play with her 'brubah', and realize 'Hey, she is a kid too!' In other words, some one he can actually play with. Most of their playtime interaction, until just recently was brother doing something, baby girl watching him, then annoying him as she tried to imitate it. There was a whole period of time where her MO was to stick legos in her mouth just to see him have a conniption over it.

     It seems that we found our catalyst in the new arrival that graced our lives last month. Our little prince arrived about a month ago and the change was immediate. Some of it may have been that my husband and I seem to divide our children up into categories according to mobility when we are carting them from place to place. For example: I take the one in the infant carrier, you take the two that can walk. But how much of a hand the adults had in this change isn't really important, what is important is that something about seeing a tiny baby seems to have sparked a comparison in my sons brain and he now sees our (not so)baby girl as a playmate instead of some thing to play around.

     He has always been good about helping her do things like wash her hands and get unbuckled but now they also color together, make ridiculous noises at one another at entirely inappropriate times, and the world revolves around making one another laugh. This has been wonderful for her development. Her vocabulary and sentence structure has taken huge leaps, her attention span is a little longer, and she tracks conversations much better. Much of this is probably from needing to learn how to tattle on what her big brother has put her through, he still forgets at times that she is smaller than him and can be a little too rough with her. She seems to have surmised that tears with give you kisses and sympathy but perhaps words will result in vengeance on her persecutor/helper.

     The sweet moments, in between tattling, tears and screams, when I hear the joyful bangs, happy screams and mystery thuds emanating from their room, are music to my ears. Next year my sweet boy will be in kindergarten so these precious days together will become fewer and further between. I know that she will miss her big brother terribly when she is stuck with me and the not nearly as interesting little prince.

     In my mind it all comes down to something I told my children when they were fussing at one another the other day:

     Your siblings will always be there, they will always love you just because you are you, and the bond between brothers and sisters is very special and never goes away. Being part of a family is hard, and being part of a bigger family takes even more cooperation and effort from everyone, you all have to pitch in to make things work. But the bigger the family the more people there are in this world to love you from the first moment you exist.

Getting To Know You

     In elementary school you knew your best friend because she was the one who knew your favorite color and favorite Disney princess. She would spend the night and you would stay up until, I know it's crazy, MIDNIGHT, giggling over the fact that you were still awake.

Honestly, I couldn't name one of
the backstreet boys, then or now.
I am so un-cool.

    In junior high it was the girl who knew which of the backstreet boys you thought was the cutest and that you wanted to be a veterinarian when you grew up. Slumber parties were still exciting but now you painted nails and talked about when your mom had said that you could start wearing make up. MASH was the name of the game and you kept hoping that if you stopped the circle just in time you could get it all, the mansion and the man of your dreams.

Summer daze

     In high school she is the one who knew what band you were into and that you wanted a pair of jncos for your birthday more than anything else in the world. You would never let a boy come between you and you spent everyday of the summer together.

Don't worry mom and dad. I've got
it all planned out. What could go wrong?

 


      In college is was the girl who knew that you were re-thinking your major but didn't know how you were going to tell your parents and that you refused to get married before you graduated and wouldn't even think of having kids until after med school, or at least your masters program. She made the finals week caffeine runs and the post gym class ER visits by your side and told you to get a grip when you moaned that you were sure that you were going to die unmarried and alone.

You tell me now you don't
like the name Conrad?!!

     Post-college it was the girl, soon to be your bridesmaid, who knew that your teaching career wasn't quite all you had dreamed it would be, that you still really loved it deep down inside somewhere, and what names you had picked out for your future (very future) children. You would call each other after a hard day at work and, if you were feeling crazy, head out to dinner and a movie, even on a work night. You would spend your time swapping work related horror stories and dreaming about the houses that you were going to buy someday.

     But now, when so many of my best friends have become moms the things we know about one another are so far from where we started that it is a bit baffling to think of the scope of it.
What do I know about my best friends that is so vastly changed? Here is a short list of things I know now that I wasn't aware existed to know about somebody five to ten years ago:

Do you see that one child that
gave everyone the baby fever?
That's mine.
Kid count- 1

    Did they deliver naturally, at home, or in a hospital with an epidural and/or a c-section? Do they spank, do time out, co-sleep, attachment parent, or 'cry it out'? Do they do cloth or disposable diapers, and where do they fall on the buying organically/humane spectrum. And when we all get together we discuss who is sleeping through the night, who is not, and the latest attempts at potty training as well as exchanging our worst diaper/vomit stories, each one more terrible than the last.

We make mom-ing look good!
Kid count- 5 (baby fever jump)

     And do not for one moment think that these are not subjects that are as emotionally charged as the best Disney princess issue or that the winner of the "I got less sleep than you for longer" contest has any fewer bragging rights than the owner of those new jncos. The subjects may change but, in truth, the people don't, which is why, after all these years, you still keep them around. And, seriously, every mom needs someone to tell their gross out stories to, preferable over a meal, and only in part to make all the husbands cringe and vacate the room.

They continue to multiply!
Kid count- 8 (1 not pictured)
Current count- 12 and 1 on deck

     Besides, you get extra points for the number of husbands that gag as they run.

Triple the Children, Triple the Gear?

     I made a registry for this baby. It sounds greedy and like I am expecting something to even say it. It was not because I expect a shower, or for anyone to ever even look at it. It was purely an exercise designed to organize my thoughts on what we really "need" (this is a strong word for our position on baby things) and to remind myself what we already have from our previous children.
     So here is the thing about the baby things on my "need" list. I have had a child in the last two years so I should have all the normal things you use day to day for a baby. Right? But there are two catches to that way of thinking as I see it:
          1. I had a girl, and while I kept it neutral some things like the clothes, pacifiers, and blankets really don't translate well if they survive at all. To put it bluntly, I don't want my baby boy in a pink a blanket, wearing a purple onsie, sucking on a pink pacifier, and under a pink floral nursing cover. I know it is shocking and sometimes it makes me feel so wasteful and spoiled, but its true. More practically, as far as her sheets and stuff that were neutral go, she is still using it!
          2. "Ah, but you did have a boy before that girl!" you might say, and that would be true, but that was SIX YEARS ago. It freaks me out to realize this, my sweet boy is about to be six years old. His crib, car seat, diaper bags, monitor and bedding, to name a few things off the top of my head, are all either worn to pieces, expired or recalled. And since he was born we have moved twice, one of those times to a different town entirely, so I only kept what I was sure I would use later.
     So I conclude that I "need" some baby stuff. As I see it there are three main categories for the things on the registry. Will need soon, need, and would be really nice.
     The will need soon things straddle the line between need and "need" because they will eventually graduate from one to the other as the child gets older. For instance, I can easily get an infant carrier that will last about the first year but baby girl will not be out of her car seat by then and that leaves us one short. Now that is not a pressing concern at this moment due to the deadline for dealing with that being about a year away. So it is a "Will need soon".
     Some of the things we must get are non-negotiable for example the fact that our car will not even hold three children safely is a big deal. That is something that we realized early on and have a plan for, not to mention you can't put cars on a registry. Also in this category, clothing. Leaving your child naked for all occasions is frowned upon, even if they are a summer baby, and I have no boy or girl clothing in sizes smaller than 12 months. I am pretty sure that he won't be that big when he is born, though I do have nightmares like that. These are really the true "needs".
     Other things, and in reality, the majority, are sheer luxury like a double stroller, or crib sheets, or a new diaper bag. I could do more laundry and not really need extra sheets and blankets beyond what we already have. I don't have to be able to strap my two year old down, load the immeasurable amounts of things we carry with us everywhere, and not destroy what is left of my spine when we go places, but it would sure take a lot of the stress off to have that option. We don't have to have a monitor in the older children's room, but it sure makes it easier to figure out if someone in there is truly dying, puking, or jumping on the others head in the middle of the night to be able to check that from our room.  I don't really need a new large, handy, put all the kids items in one place, not too girly for my husband to carry diaper bag but getting three wiggling, shoe removing after you put them on, whining, maybe even crying, escaping children in and out of the house, or any other place, would be so much simpler if I had one.
     So many wants, for that is what they really are when I put the correct label on them. And as I look over my list I am struck by how amazingly blessed we are to already have so much, to truly need so little, and to have access to things that are here purely to make life simpler or more convenient. And in those moments I feel so content and humbled by what God has given us.
     Those are beautiful, happy, golden moments in the sunshine when my children are either playing quietly or sleeping peacefully. I set aside my list, my worries, my fears and face the future at peace with my ability to make do with the plethora of things I already have.
     But then, as someone snatches a toy, falls in the mud, or leaps from the arm of the sofa, or, perhaps, as I step on a lego, carry a screaming child out of a store, or haul our belongings into the house from the car, I realize that I am adding a child to our lives. This is not a different song, same tune, repeat as necessary situation. I will have THREE children and one of them will be a no sleep, can't nap because of the older kids, pooping, spitting up, double the laundry alone, can't put me down, newborn...
Maybe some luxuries are a good idea.