Swear to god, he’s not feral.
Anyone with small children will appreciate the difficulty of leaving one’s home and making it to their intended destination unscathed. It becomes more and more difficult with the increasing number of babies.
I just needed to go to the grocery store. I just needed Panko bread crumbs. Because if you’ve had baked chicken with Panko, versus ANY OTHER TYPE OF BREAD CRUMB, you will understand it cannot be substituted. I may have a pile of laundry scattered throughout the house ( thanks son, my bras absolutely DO belong in the oven)….but my family will have properly breaded Panko chicken for dinner, so help me…
Lots of parents bathe their kids at night, and I understand the importance of that ritual, though it never quite stuck for us. My house is a very charming, 1950′s home just at the base of some rolling foothills and a nature preserve. That’s my loving way of saying the house is really fucking old and needs a shit-ton of work to get it to the standards most people are accustomed to enjoying in the first world. That said, we do enjoy hot water, and electricity, usually. When the pipes in the basement aren’t broken…and so long as we don’t run multiple space-heaters at once, which is a lot to ask because we have no central heating. Spring/Summer living is just dandy. But its freezing in the winter, especially when snow is dusting the hills just above us…And we are spoiled and from the Bay Area, CA., not the tundra. I do not hunt seals, nor am I used to boiling whale blubber for fuel. So anything south of 50 degrees outside is pretty damn cold, even if the house is relatively insulated ( thank you nice windows) it’s still a bit uncomfortable to shower and go to bed with wet hair. My Mexican mother has warned me all my life of the IMMINENT DEATH that awaits when you go to bed with wet hair. Add to that a healthy helping of exhaustion and you have yourself a recipe for NO BEDTIME BATHS. This is all relevant to the story regarding my much-needed trip to the store for Panko bread crumbs…which there are no substitutions for….really, very critical for baked, breaded chicken.
We begin our day with breakfast and a bath. It wakes us up and we feel clean and smell good to start our day. I have a two-year old and a nine-month-old. There is no such thing as a shower to myself. So we all stuff ourselves into the shower and its tricky and slippery and exhausting and takes a good chunk of time. But once we are all dressed and cute, we are feeling GREAT and the challenges ahead seem minimal. Especially something as simple as getting Panko bread crumbs…for which there is no substitution.
On the way out to the car, my son decides, “why walk when I can totally drag myself across the grass. Oh look, it’s a little muddy. Even better.”
Of course I am powerless to stop it, as I have my hands full with a shockingly heavy baby and the diaper-bag plus keys and my purse. He went from perfectly polished to a little muddy. But onward we march, as there is no turning back. If we go back into the house, we will surely never make it out again. And I really need the Panko bread crumbs….for which no other crumbs compare.
Then he finds some stale Cheerios that he stored somewhere in his car seat, like a little chipmunk. He managed to make those three Cheerios into a paste that he proceeded to spread all over his entire shirt and face. You never knew three, stale Cheerios could cover so much ground. So we have muddy pants and hands, plus cheerio-paste everywhere in a matter of three minutes. But I say to myself, “ah, so it’s a little mud and Cheerios, no huge deal, he’s still somewhat presentable with a quick baby-wipe clean-up.” We get to the store and I realize the baby was playing with the baby wipes on the last car trip and pulled them all out and now they are dry and wont be cleaning anything. Whatever, bigger picture, we are at the store, and we need those bread crumbs( for which no crumbs compare).
Oh I wont bore you with the details of how long this went on…mud, cheerio-paste, blackberries, some kind of sticky, questionable substance (I don’t even know), an unexpected dump and a healthy helping of boogers.
The people in line were starring at me like I should really take more pride in my child’s appearance. Like he is some kind of feral child. And all I’m feeding him is a half empty container of blackberries and
….two boxes of Panko bread crumbs. For which none compare.
That’s right restaurant, prepare yourself.
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Mid-scale restaurant employees, hear me:
I know you see me coming a mile away; hair disheveled, crying child strapped to my chest, mystery dried “goo” on my shoulder (to my credit I didn’t actually know it was there), fidgety toddler in hand, oversized diaper bag filled to the brim with sticky books and toys….I know you see me and say, ” Ahh….shit.”
But you know what, deal with it. Do you think I want to order the chicken fingers when I’d rather have a nice adult salad? I hate chicken fingers. It’s the only damn thing my toddler will likely eat here , so I will be a trooper and share my platter because we all know ordering him his own would be a complete waste of food and money, since we also all know everything that is specifically his, he treats like it’s been poisoned, everything mommy orders is golden and beautiful. So I will choke down the greasy fried fingers in order to get us moving along. I’m also sorry if my standing next to the table interferes with your walk way…I would really rather sit. But my infant daughter finds my sitting offensive. My only method of keeping all of us hearing properly and not ripping fistfuls of hair from our scalps, is to hold and bounce her on my hip. Standing and eating with one hand isn’t as easy as it looks, I’m certainly not doing it for the pleasure.
In general I actually don’t want to be at your restaurant. But I’m here because of simple math. #1, we are hungry, need to eat and I don’t have my own kitchen handy. #2, I’m actually outside of my home and going to a restaurant is one of those things that seems like, a really good idea at the time, even though it mostly ends horribly and is more stress than it’s worth (yet we are always optimistic that THIS time it’s going to be great).
I know I am being seated in the back, in the “child” section. But I understand, if you’re going to clean piles of food and chewed crayons from the floor you’d rather keep it in one general area. I get it. I also get that most of your servers don’t have children. CLEARLY. Because people with kids would notice the care I have taken to place all the silverware, drink menus, sugar packets, hot sauce and anything that could be thrown or even remotely used as a weapon on the opposite side of the table and yet, servers place hot and/or messy items directly in the danger zone. If I don’t want my kid throwing dull knives at me, you better believe I am not looking forward to a face full of steaming clam chowder.
Please understand that I am painfully aware of the difficulty in bringing small children to an eating establishment. I am painfully aware how annoying children can be with everything, in general. I am also aware that you’re in the business of customer service, and, as much as you may find us repulsive and irritating, we are giving you business and quite possibly a large tip ( especially, to my absolute HORROR, if you mistakenly cleaned the poo off my son’s hand with your napkin thinking it was just food….you know who you are, again, I apologize. It was a difficult stage for us that has thankfully passed).
One day, this will be a non-issue, but for now…restaurant staff…please know that my going there is actually more difficult for me than it is for you. The end.
The Great Manipulator and his trusty sidekick, Demanding.
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Once upon a time I gave my dad a sign that says, “I’d like to understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t get my head that far up my ass.” A truly genius and existential concept.
Blogging is pretty fantastic because it’s a simple way for me to allow my internal narrator to actually be heard. Some people find my thoughts funny ( you get me, I get you, we are ONE), other people find my thoughts disturbing ( to whom I say FAAACK off), but for me, gosh, its kinda liberating. It helps me grow as a human being, because I am able to admit things to myself, like not being patient, having a cruel sense of humor, accepting that I am not the world’s best mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend…but hey, I’m by no means the worst either. And its OKAY. I’m okay with it. I like to explore ideas of how my parenting techniques will affect my children, and honestly, I hope I do a good job. I hope they are happy. “Success is when your kids grow up, they still want to hang out with you.”- Founder of Kinkos ( remember Kinkos? before they were bought out by FedEx? wow, that seems so long ago!) I digress. Back to the topic….
I find myself wondering just how much of me is going into my children’s personalities and how much is just all them. My internal narrator, whom we will refer to as “Rita,” likes to think of my children as super heroes. Their challenges for the day are all so daunting and intense no matter how simple it seems to me. Rita regularly fills in the captions for my son’s thoughts if he were a super hero in a comic book.
” He tastes the air, testing the wind for the perfect opportunity to swoop in and capture the Mandarin Orange gem from atop Counter Mountain. He must move quickly, as evil dark Lord MOMMY approaches. Should he be seized and trapped, he’ll fight to the death rather than face the perils of the crib and the dreaded torture known only as naptime…”
Actually, if he were a super hero, he would be The Great Manipulator. Again, wondering who he’s picking these skills up from, and is it a good thing he has super powers of manipulation as a two-year-old? Will he dial-in the skill as he ages? Am I going to buy him a flashy sports car when he’s 16 and not even realize I’ve been totally conned? Here is what I’m talking about. He’ll say something ( mind you his vocab isn’t extensive, he’s two for christ’s sake) such as, “drive the car.” But I can’t quite make out what he’s saying. He keeps mumbling it, and I keep guessing until he says it just clear enough, and I repeat it, “oh, drive the car!” and he says crystal clear and with unrefined enthusiasm, ” OKAY!” Like I was totally the one who suggested the activity in the first damn place.
Of course, the enthusiasm of an excited and painfully-cute toddler is impossible crush, so what do I do, I take him to the car to pretend drive and I hit my head against the window because any sane person who isn’t high as a fucking kite and has any amount of grey matter in their skull will be bored sitting with a little kid in a car for hours as he turns on and off the radio, blasts your ears out, opens the windows, shuts the windows, turns on the blinker…again…and again…and again. Have I thoroughly painted a picture for you? So as much as I didn’t have it in the days plan to take him to the car for two hours, he totally manipulated me into doing it by working his magic. It’s really an amazing spectacle to behold.
My daughter, well, her super powers would be making her DEMANDS known. God knows, she gets what she wants. Rita thinks her captions would be this (and we really have no need to mix it up for the forseeable future): “Hello, can you not hear me over here? Have I not explicitly told you time and time again I am to be fed at exactly 5 past the hour, not a second more? Umm, diaper? Hello?! There is one drop of piss in it and I can’t be bothered with it. Change it immediately and cuddle with me. Oh! and I like it when you do the silly faces. Make more of those. Chop chop or so help me, I will scream until I’m purple and you will RUE THE DAY. RUE…THE….DAY.”
haha. god, I love ‘em.
Bring on the wonder years.
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I’d like to think of myself as an incredibly patient person, but I’m pretty sure I’m NOT. Its taken me almost 4 years to grow out my hair from a pixie cut, and that’s not because my hair grows slowly, it’s because I run out of patience and chop it off, right when I’m making progress. I paint and do other artsy things with lightening speed, not because i am THAT good, it’s because I am impatient and want to see the finished product already. I am willing to experience severe discomfort in the process to feel satisfied by swift end-results.
So I shouldnt be terribly surprised that I am impatient with my kids. I want them to grow up quickly so I can have real conversations with them and take them places, like the zoo, and enjoy watching the animals with them rather than peeling them off the ground that they’d rather lick than step on. You hear all the time, ” They grow up too fast..” and yeah, I get that, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to fast forward a tiny bit of the rough and/or boring stuff. BLASPHEMY, I know. How dare I, as a mother, say my kids are at a boring or tiresome stage, but I’m just being honest with myself. Doesn’t make me love them any less. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t fart rainbows. I also don’t like wiping asses, or enjoy the feeling of dreading a trip to the beach (THE BEACH), because, let’s face it…sand + diaper creme= one screaming kid. I guess I’m just not big on the baby stage. I don’t have a nursery set up, for either of my kids, which is something “baby-lovers” are really big on. But it’s not because I don’t care, I’m just really practical. I figure, once I get to know my kids, as little people, WE can decide what they want in their room and I’m not shoving, say, The Little Mermaid down my daughters throat because it’s what I think is cute (if she chose that, I would MORE than encourage it). Maybe she’d want ballerina stuff instead or even race cars for all I know. I really want to encourage them to have a sense of self that isn’t overly swayed by my interests. I am ready to roll my sleeves up, and mural entire walls! But I want to know what they like first. Honestly, I envision myself being the best mom when my kids are in, late elementary through high school and beyond. I’m stoked for pre-teens, which is unusual considering that’s a tough age and parents are at odds with their kids.
Babies are cute and all, but…they are just a lot of work and not really much fun. Not to say I don’t enjoy anything about my babies at the stages they are currently in, I’m just saying I have a preference for slightly older kids, given my natural lack of patience and lack of desire to do “baby-eske” things.
I want to chase them at the beach and build sand-castles. I want to hear their stories about school and friends and watch movies together. I want to document my son catching his first wave with his dad. That to me, is the good stuff. I am not too excited or emotional about a first haircut or writing in the baby book ( I really need to get on that though). I’m sure there will be plenty of amazing and glorious moments before then, and I don’t want to miss anything, but I cant help but look forward to whats ahead. my kids growing up doesn’t scare me, or make me emotional. I’m stoked about it! Bring it!!!
Pregnancy: a blessing, a miracle…that Sucks.
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I know there are millions of women out there who truly enjoy the process of building a person in their womb, and let me say that I am truly grateful for the opportunity to do so….but let me also say…Pregnancy SUCKS. I mean, what the heck is good about it? I can’t say I enjoy gaining weight by the week, or squeezing myself into maternity pants that, in no way, shape or form, flatter my ever-expanding ass. Know the feeling of having to really pee first thing in the morning? How about experiencing it all DAY! like sleeping on your back? Too bad. Like eating tuna fish sandwiches? Too bad. A cold glass of wine after a long day? Nope. The baby kicking is cute until your organs become a punching bag and the super amazing hyper sensitive sense of smell is perfect in a rose garden, but terrible during a lunch trip to Milpitas, when the local dump has had a good soaking of warm sunshine. A compliment of “you don’t look pregnant in the face,” never feels as good as was intended. Why do I want to eat so much lemon, but absolutely can’t stand the basic taste of water? this is definitely my last time being pregnant, I wish it was April already.
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