Prepare for Battle

Ever feel like life is just a series of battles? Battle here, battle there, battle battle everywhere. I battle with my daughter to take a nap without getting a bottle first, I battle with my house to stop barfing up clutter everywhere when my back is turned, and I engage in a battle of wills with my son just about every hour.

We went to a park today and of course Tate very quickly started making me want to pull my hair our. Par for the course. I just wonder what goes on in his little head sometimes, why he gets so frustrated and impatient that he can only express it by hitting or pinching. We try to tell him that it hurts, it's not nice, he'll get a time-out, someone will belt him back harder and we really won't be bothered to care all that much, blah blah BLAH. It doesn't sink in, he hits again, and we leave. It's a finely choreographed routine at this point. Apparently our family isn't much for spontaneity.

Then of course I notice the looks from other people, towards both me and Tate, and I let it affect me more than I should, because really, you think I'd be immune to it at this point. But he's still my son, stinker that he is, and when I can tell that people are disgusted or annoyed by him, it rankles me. I'm his mommy, and even though he drives me to bury my head under a pillow and scream obscenities that would make George Carlin blush, I grew the kid. He's still my baby.

Yes, he hits and yells and makes me wonder sometimes if his head is about to start spinning, but he also kisses his sister's boo-boos and strokes her on the head as she cries. He picks out the best french fry on his plate and gives it to me to eat. He buries his head in my lap and peeks up at me through his lashes, dimples flashing, as he asks "Are you just so proud of me, Mommy? Did I make you happy?" He gets out of bed sometimes at night when he hears me go into my room and asks if he can tuck me in. He's a series of ebbs and flows, rises and falls, smiles and tears, songs and screams. He's not easy, but he's never boring.

And honestly, I like that he's got such strong opinions. I like that he's stubborn and already knows how to stand his ground. He's tough, which often transitions into being naughty, which I'm not so crazy about, but at least he's not going to crumple into a heap and start wailing everytime someone looks at him the wrong way. He's smart. Quick. You really can't hope for more than that. Although there are days where I look at him and wonder if having a nice, dopey kid would be ALL that bad. Just kinda...bumbling along, singing "doo doo doo", getting entranced by a leaf or a rock...I wonder what that would be like, having a kid like that.

But he's not, so we will continue the battle. Someone's gotta back down eventually, right? Now if I could just get my house to stop refusing to stay clean. This battle's gonna be a bitch. Who am I kidding. I've already lost.

Hello World!

I think this may be it. I think the worst is over and Tate is slowly, sloooooowly returning to his human self. The demon may have left the building. I feel like I survived some gigantic nuclear holocaust or something, and am now stepping gingerly out into the sunlight, blinking dazedly and mumbling "Am I ok? Did I make it??" while patting myself down, feeling for bruises and broken bones.

Yeah, I'm what you'd call a survivor. It was a craptastic week but I think, think, we've gotten through the worst of it. I mean, sure we still have at least one daily tantrum, but if those ever stopped I would go right past thinking we survived a nuclear holocaust and go right into thinking we've just been blasted into some alternate universe where up is down and blue is green and people eat ink cartridges for dinner.

The worst part by far has been the kid's breath. Holy crap. They told us it would be a side effect but I kind of forgot about it til the morning he opened his mouth to speak and I swear I saw the flowers outside the window wilt and die. It's like something crawled into his mouth while holding a hot, sweaty penny, stuck poo in it's mouth, and then died while trying to dye it's butt hair with peroxide. I have never smelled such an odor. Thankfully, that seems to be regressing as well. Because for awhile there I'd have to stick my head out of a window and gasp desperately for air anytime he spoke. That didn't work too well while I was driving.

Hopefully this is the end of the fevers. Because if those suckers come back, I'll think I'll actually be hoping for a nuclear holocaust at that point.

Nora's well-timed sickness has abated as well. We of course just had to have a runny-poo-escaping-the-diaper-and-going-all-up-and-down-Mom's-arm episode first, but those are usually to be expected. Now she's running around cheerfully bellowing "Sis? Sat?" ("What's this?" and "What's that?" for those of you not schooled in the fine art of One Year Old-ese.) She also waves madly at anyone who happens to be passing by our house or car or shopping cart while peeping "Hi! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! HI HI HI!!!". She finally seems to have gotten over her stranger anxiety and will now beeline towards any male presence within a 2 mile radius, demand to be picked up, and snuggle her head into their neck. We may have to work on that as well. Girl's gotta learn how to exude a little mystery.

Hork.

So Nora keeps waking up in the morning and horking all over. Yesterday I was summoned into her room at 5:30 in the morning by the lovely, melodic sounds of yakking, and was treated to the sight of barf, well...everywhere. Nothing like starting off the day by giving your daughter a bath at 5:45 am and trying not to fall asleep and tip over into the bathtub with her. Although the putrid stench of all the little chunks I was pulling out of her hair really did a good job of keeping me awake.

So really, the only thing I can think of is that the little dear is stashing a flask of rum or something under her mattress and having a little party every night. Which would really upset me. Because really, if there's rum drinking in this house to be done, it should be done by me.

Oh yeah, and because one-year-olds probably shouldn't be drinking rum in the first place.

The demon possession continues around here as well. Like this morning, when I told Tate we were out of bread after the EIGHT peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he had yesterday. Hoo boy. I expected a priest to come slamming through the door, lay his hand on Tate's forehead and start yelling "BACK! Back, ye otherworldly pb&j devil!! BACK!!!" The priest never materialized, though, so I did the next best thing and called Eric on the phone blubbering that he needed to come home from work. At 7:30 am. It didn't happen.

Yogurt-covered raisins were the cure of the day, though. If you're ever trying to get your kid to stop acting like the Devil, try those. I guess they have lots of demon-blocking antioxidants or something. You know, in addition to their sweet sweet chewiness. After the raisins, he was fine. But we're getting really, really bored. This weekend isn't going to be much better. Eric's working 12-hour days, 1:30 am-1:30 pm. Yeah, don't you wish you had those hours?

At least Tate is polite in his aggravation these days. When he gets frustrated, he keeps yelling "Oh my goodness! OH MY GOODNESS!!!!" I don't know where he got the old lady-speak from but it's pretty funny. Well, funny for the first 20 times and then it starts to get a little old. But still, it's better than him yelling "WHAT THE FUCK??" in the middle of the grocery store when he can't get a good hold on his Jell-O square. I have a feeling that would culminate in no more free Jell-O for us.

So Long, Suckers

Do you know how hard it is to try to explain to a three-year-old why he can't have Goldfish crackers? Those things are like cheddar flavor-blasted crack amphibians to this kid. Trying to tell him that they will shred a throat that's still pretty much completely raw is not going over well. All he knows is that he wants Goldfish. Now. Dammit.

It's been a hellish couple of days. I knew it would be, but kind of chose not to dwell on it till the hour of doom approached. Tate's ENT finally suggested getting his tonsils out when we saw him on Friday, and since I decided I would do anything to possibly, perhaps make the fevers of ruin go away, I jumped at the idea. The fevers had to stop.

So we get to the hospital at 6:30 yesterday morning. Tate was pretty chilled out on the drive over and walking into the hospital, but as we were standing in line to register, I watched the expression on his face change to sheer panic as he started to look around. You could see in the dialogue going on in his little brain. "Talking to a bored woman while she gives us paperwork and a bracelet? Check. Weird smell of sick people, rubber gloves and crappy food? Check. Slightly odd pictures of Jesus in the operating room peeking over doctors' shoulders hanging on the walls? CHECK. OH GOD." He started to panic, wailing "I don't LIKE the hosipal! I don't want to BE in the hosipal!!" I knew then that the party had officially started.

We were then checked into our quaint, lovely 10 ft by 10 ft cage of a room surrounded by other little cages and hunkered down to wait. FOREVER. After almost 3 hours of listening to Tate scream that he wanted to go home and watching him chuck shoes at Eric's head, they were finally ready for him. I think the nurses at the desk were relieved when it was finally time to sedate the kid. I kind of expected one of them to slip the anesthesiologist a tenner and whisper to give Tate a heavy load of the real good stuff.

Walking down the hall towards the operating room was extremely difficult. Tate just had this look of sheer confusion and alarm on his face as he held onto Snowy the Monkey with a death grip. We then had to hand him over to Joe the Nurse and watch them walk through the double doors without us. Seeing Tate's face peering over Joe's shoulder at us as the tears started to fall was just about the crappiest thing ever. Seriously. Nothing like knowing your child is terrified and you can't be there to comfort him. Good times. I was a wreck as we sat in the waiting room and listened to two obese old men bellow across the room with each other about their dead wives and various medical complaints.

Luckily, the surgery was over within 15 minutes and they brought him out about a half hour after that. We could hear him crying before we saw him, and when they did bring him through the doors I just about burst into tears myself. Kid looked like he had been ridden hard and put away wet. And of course, there was the IV in his hand. I knew that was going to be a problem, since during our last hospital stay Tate had declared his IV to be his mortal, eternal enemy and set about finding any way to destroy it. I had a feeling this would be "Tate vs IV, vol. 2".

Guess what? I was RIGHT!! Whee for us! We got to spend the next 4 hours trying to keep him from yanking the stupid thing out of his hand and getting whacked in the head for our efforts. He was intent on making that IV suffer for what it had done to him. All of this vengeance-seeking was of course accompanied by window-shattering screams, which I'm going to say was probably not such a good thing to be doing with a throat that had just had stuff carved out of it. After awhile the nurse poked her head in and said "Isn't there anything you can do to get him to stop screaming?" I wanted to reply "Well, yeah, a bunch of things. I just don't feel like doing them. Screaming makes me happy and serene. I FREAKING LOVE IT." I just had to laugh when I thought about how we had dutifully warned the nurses about Tate's Tateness and they all said "Ohhh, don't worry. We've seen it all before, we're used to it, blah blah blah." Right.

So he finally passed out on my lap and slept for a couple hours. As soon as he woke up, the nurse took a look at his throat and said "Okhelooksfinelet'sgetyououtofhereI'llgetthepaperworkberightback" and sprinted out of the room. We were out of there about 4 minutes later.

And now we're home and having epic Goldfish battles every 45 minutes or so. I'm thinking the little guy's probably getting tired of Popsicles after having 4,000 of them in the last 24 hours, but I can't start feeding him soft foods til tomorrow. I'm surprised he hasn't resorted to picking food up off the floor or out of the garbage and hastily stuffing it in his mouth. I mean, he sees Nora doing it all the time, you'd think it would be at the forefront of his mind.

It's been just loads of fun around here. Tantrums at every turn. Puke splattered all over my kitchen floors, cabinets, and refrigerator, courtesy of Nora. She decided she just had to join in the extremely gratifying process of making Mommy's sanity completely perish, and what better way to do that than hork up blueberries all over the floor? Perfect.

But honestly, if doing this makes the fevers stop, I have no regrets or qualms about it. We couldn't keep going on like that...it was taking a huge toll on every one of us. I can take a week or two of pure, unadulterated hell if it's worth it in the end. I may come out of it missing a frontal lobe or something, but it'll be worth it. Those suckers have been removed and disposed of in an undignified fashion. Screw you, tonsils!!

And once again, I'm humbled and blown away by all the fabulous people we know who have offered help, prayers, good thoughts, Popsicles, and wine. Cool people make everything better.

More to Come

As many of you know, our little Tater got his tonsils out today. And surprise, surprise, it was quite an adventure. I've been up for almost 15 hours and am pretty mentally fried. Therefore, you will be getting the story tomorrow. Try not to quiver to death with anticipation.

Hey! GOAT!!

Toddlers do not come with snooze buttons.

Case in point: my two little angels, who have both gotten about 28 fewer hours of sleep this weekend than normal, and who both went to bed way way way WAY later than they should have last night...and who were both awake this morning well before 7:15. And once those suckers start buzzing and warbling and EE-EE-EE-EEing...well, they don't shut off.

What they do have? Some crazy sonar that tells them exactly when Mommy is on her Very. Last. Nerve. Once they get the secret signal that Mommy is thisclose to losing her shit if she hears that whiny little "uh-uh-uh" or the "NOOOOOOO!! I DO IT!!!" one more time, they spring into action.

Tate: "Look Mommy! I bit Nora! Whyyyyyyyy can't I watch TV?? WHYYYYYYY CAN'T I PLAY IN THE CAR??? WHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY CAN'T I POUR MAPLE SYRUP ON THE DOG????????????"

Nora: "HHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEESQUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" (Translated: "IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME ANOTHER GOLDFISH CRACKER OR LET ME DRINK OUT OF THE DOG BOWL I'MA THROW THE SMACK DOWN HARDCORE!!!")

Me: CLUNK. Twitch, twitch.

Yeah, so apart from the six thousand moments of crabbiness and general hatred of life by our little cherubs, it was a fun weekend overall. Well, apart from Friday, which sucked. But anyway, we spent the 4th at a couple of different barbecues with friends and neighbors where the kidlets partook in the traditional Fourth activities:

Sparklers. The perfect toy for a 3 year old.

Careening down a hill on a plastic duck that was made for no such careening.

Eating

And...eating. Can you believe it?

We all had a lot of fun. We did miss our friend setting his woods on fire, though...bummer we left before that action. Also, our crazy neighbor didn't call the cops on us this year...first time ever. Although I don't think he was home. We scared him away.

Today we took the kidlets to a petting farm up in Door County. This is where I learned that my daughter is obsessed with goats. Good thing there were 200 of them at this place, so she could go up to each and every one of them, pet them, pull their tail, examine their buttholes, and painstakingly pick up single kernels of corn from the ground and shove them into the goats' mouths. Over and over and over. With every single goat. We tried to interest her in the cows or pigs or kitties, but no. Nora the Goatherd would not stray from her flock. As soon as I'd put her down after walking away from the Goats of Temptation, she would turn around and freakin' book back to them. Fine. Nora loves goats. It is what it is.

Tate was not so endeared to them. He mostly spent our goat-viewing hours going "Hey!! GOAT!!! GOAT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??" Then he'd see a tree or a leaf and wander off to go check that out. Cause, really, if we're going to drive and hour and pay $16 to show Tate stuff, it may as well be trees, right? He did really like the baby chicks, though. He dug the chicks.

So I took 52 pictures today. And honestly, 26 of them are ones I tried to take of the kids together where they were both looking at the camera, didn't have a hand down their shorts or up their skirts, weren't looking constipated, and weren't in the process of yelling, "Mommy, do you have to go poo??" It was a long process. Here's an incredibly condensed version.

I swear Tate isn't peeing off the side of the wagon.

...um, yeah.

Almost...

So close...

Yesss!!! The ONE AND ONLY picture of the two of them not looking like schlubs together.

It was a good weekend. But I'm ready for a vacation now. I've learned the valuable lesson that there is such a thing as too much quality family time. And I'm riiiiight about there.