How to be a slacker mom

08.24.06

I forgot to bring wine coolers to the party this past weekend, so I tried some Boone’s Farm whatever-it-is-funky-wine instead.  Um.  How much is one half of three and a half bottles?  At first I drank it from a glass like the fine young lady I was brought up to be, but after the hazing and peer pressure I had to drink it straight out of the bottle to prove I’m not a snob.  Of course, then they just called me “wino,” so I’m not particularly sure what I gained with that move.

 

But, technically, it was easier to pass the bottle to my drinking partner and back than to keep getting up.  And of course, those stupid little plastic cups always want to tip over when you pour stuff into them.

 

I’m not sure you can actually go on a bender with Boone’s Farm, but let me tell you we sure gave it a good try.  And by the third bottle we were feeling a bit territorial.  We were carrying that bottle from place to place all afternoon.  And the hornet that took a quick dive into our apple wine merely got poured out.  We looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Ah hell, how much could he have drank?” and took another swig. 

 

I am so over being freaky about hornets.

 

Anyway.  The fun part wasn’t the effect of the tiny bit of alcohol that’s in the stuff.  The fun part was that neither myself nor other gal drink a whole lot as a rule.  Which means… by the third bottle it was pretty easy to convince the boys that we were totally blasted and incapable of being responsible for our children.

 

We earned the title of Slacker moms.

 

Now that makes for a relaxing day.  The boys cooked, watched the kids, handled the temper tantrums, the time-outs, and potty detail.

 

We washed the silverware. 

 

Oh yeah, and we laughed at their shenanigans.

 

You know boys – they think of the coolest games.  Little kid fishing rods come with something called a casting plug.  It’s a weighted plastic or rubber fish tied on instead of a hook so a little kid can learn to cast the line without the complication of hooking things like parents or each other.  Now the three little ones had already caught real fish with real hooks, but that required adult supervision, and preferably a ratio of one adult per every hook under semi-control of a child.  So one of the boys tied a casting plug onto one of the fishing poles.  He wanted to see if he could cast that sucker all the way from the cabin into the lake (he could).

 

As an unexpected bonus (at least I think it was unexpected, but you never know with boys and kids) the kids thought chasing the plug was the best game ever.   I think that game kept two men and three toddlers happily amused for well over an hour.  Go dads!  The best part was when the line got hung up in a tree and the little yellow fish bobbed over the kids’ heads.  Pinata bait.  Priceless. 

 

No, I take it back.  The best part was the intense concentration on the boys’ faces as they tried to reel faster than the kids could run.  Not an easy task with a mini-fishing pole.  They looked all wild-eyed and fierce, and, um, well… comical.  And I took lots of pictures.

 

It was a great day.

 

I think we actually got sick before we got truly tipsy.  There’s an awful lot of sugar in that wine.  And while the Boone’s Farm silliness was rather short lived, I’m here to attest that the Boone’s Farm headache goes on and on.

 

But sometimes that’s the price you pay to be a slacker.

 

Let’s do it again soon.  How about next weekend?

Just a simple check-up

08.17.06

So I kind of dropped the ball on the whole pediatrician thing.  The thing is, my kid hardly ever gets sick.  Which pretty much means she hasn’t seen a doctor since her 2 year check-up.  It occurs to me – hindsight being 20/20 and all that –  I should have somehow prepared her for visiting the doctor.  I could have checked out a book from the library, or gone to pbskids.org and walked her through the interactive “Elmo goes to the Doctor” story.  Or even bought her a play doctor kit for her birthday.  But I did none of these things.  I organized the heinous Birthday of the Bees instead.

 

Perhaps not my most shining moment.

 

I knew my girl’s vaccinations were all up to date and there wouldn’t be any shots this visit so I didn’t think there’d be anything for her to freak out about.

 

Whoa.  Except that I didn’t take into account that getting her height and weight would be a phenomenal pain in my rear end.  I’m not even sure what spooked her –  the new office, the new nurse, or the fact that she was happily engrossed in playing with the new toys when her name was called.  Doesn’t really matter.  It quickly became apparent that once a 3 year old isrendered completely uncooperative by fear for whatever reason, there is no way to slow down, back up, and start over. Done is done. 

 

The nurse asks her to step on the scale.  My usually cheerful, charming girl eyes it suspiciously, then says, “No.  I don’t want to.”  Mm-hmm.  All righty then.  We’ll try for height.  I position her against the wall under the little height bar and her legs turn to cooked spaghetti.  Then she worms away and runs back to the toy area.  I retrieve her.  She gets away again.  I retrieve her again.  The nurse rolls her eyes and makes kind of a disgusted face.  Oh yeah, that’s helping.  I start to feel a little offended because what does she want me to do?  And, I’ll admit, I was a bit embarrassed.  Here’s a kid that’s quite capable of higher thought and has a well-developed sense of humor, but none of that’s showing.  She’s acting like an out of control brat.  A part of me wants to give her a sharp wallop and hiss, “Knock it off!” because at this point my child is not cute and she certainly is not charming. She is going to be stubbornly impossible for the rest of the visit.  I try for 1 minute to reason with her, to tell her we’re just going to show the doctor how good she’s growing, but she’s having none of it.

 

The nurse has a new tactic.  We put my girl on the infant scale long enough to get her weight.  Then we wrestle her flat on the exam table and mark the paper cover at her heels and head.  My daughter, of course, is a screaming, kicking, flailing banshee through all of this.  Thankfully the nurse now goes away.  We’re alone.  I could give her a wallop, but really, what’s the point?  Punish her for embarrassing me?  Eh.  I’ll live.

 

When the doctor comes in Little Miss climbs on my lap and buries her head between my neck and shoulder.  She pretty much stays there quietly right up until the moment her doctor wants to listen to her heart. No way is she going to make anything about this visit easy.  I can’t imagine how the doc could even hear her heart past all that screaming, though I suspect he got a great listen to her lungs.  Hell, he probably got such a great listen that his eardrums were permanently damaged.  She screamed through the peek in the eyes, peek in the ears, split second peek at the throat.  Belly check.  Whew.  We all survived.  The doctor, bless his heart, seemed nonchalant about the whole thing.  “She’s 3,” he said, and I was thankful someone else understands.  I think being 3 is like having Jekyll and Hyde disorder.  When the atmosphere is good you have a rational miniature adult.  When the atmosphere is not so good you have a perfectly contrary little  monster. 

 

Later in the day I saw her out in the yard talking toherself.  I said, “What are you doing?”  She said, “I’m pretending to have my check-up.” 

 

“What are you pretending about your check-up?”

 

She stared at me with serious blue eyes, “I’m pretending to be good!”

 

Maybe the upcoming visit to the eye doctor will go better than the visit to the pediatrician.  Yeah, right.  Somehow I doubt it.

Bees-day blues

08.10.06

You might know by now that I really struggle with some of the fantasies involved in providing my girl with the traditional idyllic childhood, so why should birthdays be any different?  I’m thinking we can make the whole birthday thing heinous so she’ll refuse to have them, and then she’ll stay a little girl forever.  That’s how it works, right?

 

We all grew up with our birthday traditions – food, family, friends, presents, and the much beloved “Happy Birthday to You” sung completely off key like a chorus of dying beluga whales, then make a wish, blow out the candles, and we all have cake and ice cream.  Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

 

We planned a nice, quiet, low-key birthday party in the park.  The day was beautiful.  It was sunny, but not too hot.  My car rocked gently in the breeze on the drive there… well, okay, “breeze” is a romantic description, but I think a little wind adds a bit of whimsical ambiance to a day at the park.

 

My husband was charged with picking up the cake, god love him, and he kind of sort of dropped it a little bit getting out of the car.  In the moment I took this as a personal affront and a catastrophic event.   I had a niggling suspicion the day was forever to be tagged, “The year Daddy dropped your Nemo cake.”  As in, “Remember your third birthday?  Daddy dropped your Nemo cake,” but it turned out to be just a tiny glitch in light of the horrors to come.   

 

I noticed a few bees around but forgot them as soon as guests started arriving. 

 

Food time.  I walk over to the food table and there was something going on with the fruit.  I took a closer look.  Whoa, I thought, hornets really love fruit.  About 15 of the little buggers had their ugly bodies beneath the plastic wrap and were having a party of their own in the fruit bowl.  Deep breath.  Ok, forget about the fruit.  Move it away from the party, uncover it, and leave it as bait.

 

All-righty then.  We’ll cut the cake.  At this point it occurs to me that the park is swarming with big nasty hornets.  I look at my husband, who’d been all for skipping the park in the first place and having the party at our house, and say, “I’m going to cut the cake.  Your job is to fend off the uninvited guests.”

 

Now, don’t forget the gentle “breeze” that rocked my car. 

 

So I’m fending off hornets, cutting cake, and trying to place them right side up on paper plates that the wind is trying to blow away.  My husband is fending off hornets, scooping melted ice cream onto plates that are blowing away.

 

Apparently hornets love cake and ice cream even more than they love fruit because I was getting dive-bombed.  Somehow the kids get parked at the food table.  I’m standing there holding cake with two hands looking for a plate while the black and yellow bleepity-bleeps keep trying to land on the cake which is getting massacred by my clumsy hornet-swatting-cake-cutting maneuvers.  My husband has his back to me handing a plate to someone.  I feel irritable.  I yell, “You are NOT doing your JOB here.” 

 

Finally I’ve had enough and I sort of lose it.  “Please get the KIDS under the pavilion AWAY from the FOOD.”

 

Yeah, right, that helped.  I finish cutting cake and walk over to the pavilion a few minutes later.  The 3 little ones are at a table and hornets are swarming around them, all over the table.  First my girl in her adorable yellow party dress freaks out, screaming and swatting the air.  Then the little boy across from her does the same, and then the little boy next to him does it.  They are trying to eat their cake and they are totally aggravated.  It would be hysterical if it wasn’t so awful.  It really didn’t matter a whole lot that the cake got dropped.  Nobody was able to enjoy it anyway.  I feel like I’m in a movie starring Chevy Chase.

 

We need a plan.  “Everybody who smokes come on over here and light up.  We’ll blow smoke right at the kids so the hornets will go away and they can eat in peace.”

 

Nice.  Is this PC, or what?  There’s something wrong with us.  But it worked.  The kids got to eat cake.  

 

The party ended when the birthday girl got stung.  Many of our guests then came to our (hornet-free) house, where the Little Miss graciously received her benevolent callers from her kitchen-counter-throne while she soaked her foot.

 

Forget the cake.  This one will get tagged The Birthday of the Bees.

Complaint Department

08.03.06

Column time.  Dang, I forgot I have to write a column and I really have no idea what to write.  Should I write about how my dog chews up everything, from remote controls to cell phones to $200 eyeglasses?  Should I write about our recent weekend away, without the kid, and how it was in some respects fantastic, and in others not exactly how I imagined it would be?  What to do, what to do?

 

Having a chewed-up remote control is really a pain.  My daughter loves the book character Madeline, and recently received a DVD from a friend.  But she’ll only ever see the first episode (about Madeline and the pirates) because selecting the second episode (about Madeline and the gypsies) requires a working remote.  Without one, we are limited to putting the disc in the player and pressing “Play.”  That’s it.  No scene selection, no playing around with menus or extras.  No skipping previews.  Egads.  It’s like living in the dark ages.

 

At least the chewed-up cell phone belonged to my husband.  And it’s his dog.  So there.  I don’t even want to talk about the eyeglasses, but let me assure you, it’s HIS dog.  Why does the dog chew things up?  Well, she needs exercise, of course.  A fence?  Yeah, yeah, but I’m getting a deck this year.  My available project budget (which includes both time and money) is all used up for the year with that.  So I should walk the dog.  But she’s too much dog for me, so instead of me taking her for a walk, she takes me for a drag and I get totally annoyed.  Did I mention it’s his dog?  Oh, yeah, I guess I did.  Never mind.

 

Moving right along… a weekend away with my husband.  Sweet.  Very sweet, actually.  What’s really amazing is that he lets me make the most diabolical plans for things he has absolutely no interest in, and then he tags along and pays for everything.  Does it get any better than that?  Truth is, he’s so grateful for a weekend away from his work phone that he’d be willing to subject himself to almost anything I can come up with.  His price?  One full night of uninterrupted sleep.  Preferably on a Sleep Number bed.  Oh my goodness.  Have you slept on a Sleep Number bed?  It’s like sleeping on a cloud.  Or a steel girder, I suppose, if you prefer something firmer than a cloud.  Your next weekend away try a Radisson.  I recommend the one in Roseville.

 

We talked about the kid a lot.  Like… when is she going to be potty trained?  (When she decides it’s time).  What should we get her for her birthday?  (A new bike?  A Hot Wheels race track?)  When the heck is she going to stop sleeping on her floor and sleep in her bed again?  (Refer to question number one about potty training).

 

And we talked about the dog.  We brainstormed “dog solutions,” and managed to come up with, “Next summer’s project will be a fence.”  We heard of a perimeter fence, like the invisible fence, sort of, but no buried cables.  You set the thing to cover a certain footage perimeter, and when the dog goes past the boundaries it gets zapped.  I don’t know.  My dog might find the prospect of chasing deer worth a zap or two.  I just hope she doesn’t catch one.  I’ve seen the deer run.  I’ve seen the dog run.  To my untrained eye the dog is faster.  Eeek!  Also, someone has to test the strength of the electric shock collar before the dog is subjected to it.  I’ve been voted to be the guinea pig, but I don’t think electric play is one of my kinks.

 

Anyhow, we ate good food.  Had fun shopping.  Talked and laughed and enjoyed one another.  We don’t get enough time forthose things in our daily lives.  We got a little lost and one of us said, “I told you we should have gone the other way,” a phrase that originated after a speeding ticket fourteen years ago in another part of the country.  It’s good to realize that we still like each other as people, and that although we each have changed, we understand that change is inevitable and somehow we accommodate for each other’s growth.

 

Sometimes a weekend away is just what the crazy life ordered.

Hangin' out with little ones

07.27.06

Eating out with children can be a trial despite the fact that most area restaurants have crayons and kid menus.  As a parent, that’s great and all, but if you really want to make me happy and have me come back again (this being completely a matter of personal opinion, because my fellow diners may not want me to come back ever again)  here’s a tip; give me fast service.  The faster the better because I have just about an hour from entry to complete meltdown.  Feed me quick.  Feed my kid quicker.

 

Moms want to hang with their girlfriends.  We hate saying ‘no’ all the time and we want to get out and be part of a world a little bit wider than home and work.  But it’s hard to send children to daycare all week long and then hire a babysitter on the weekend.  For one, it feels icky.  For two, we actually miss our kids.  So now and again we risk total embarrassment and say “Hey, I’ll join you guys for supper as long as nobody minds a three year old tagging along.”

 

Non-parents have no idea how much we love you, our friends, to be willing to do this in order to hang out with you.  Seriously.  We know long before we get to the restaurant that we’re going be miserable and that our child will be naughty.  This is a given particularly for dinner dates at dinner time.

 

I thought this week I might impart some serving tips to area wait-staff.  This will help me, and probably a whole bunch of other parents of toddlers and pre-schoolers.  Ready?  Set … Go.

 

Thank you for the crayons and kiddie menus you handed out when we were seated.  A separate set of menus and crayons for each additional child would be greatly appreciated.  Please come back in 5 minutes to take our order.  When you do come back bring a tall plastic glass of crushed ice and a spoon because my kid will be done with the crayons already.

 

When you submit our order to the kitchen just go ahead and yell, “Three-year-old alert – put a rush on it!”   In the end pretty much everyone in the restaurant will thank you for this.  A few people might feel annoyed when we receive our food before them even though we ordered after them.  Trust me, they will forgive you when the freak show is packing up and they realize they will be able to eat in peace.

 

If the kid’s meal comes with a dessert, bring the dessert five minutes after you bring the food.  This will give the adults an additional seven minutes to scarf down their meal.

 

Finally, don’t ever bring one check for five women and two children.  Whatever is going on in your head that you do this?  Bring separate checks.  If one is treating the rest they can certainly gather them up.  Waiting 10 minutes for the orders to be separated puts us over the allotted hour and a meltdown is guaranteed, because at that point if my kid doesn’t have a meltdown I’m going to.

 

I have spent the last hour of my life using a series phrases that all parents hate to say, mostly because kids don’t even hear them anyway:

 

Sit on that chair.  Settle down.  Be good.  Stop that.  Be patient for a few minutes.  Listen to me.  Do you want to go home right now?  I take that back, do you want to stay here forever?  Because I’ll leave you here.  I will.  STOP THAT.  I am never taking you out in public again.  Are you listening to me?  Can you just be patient for a few more minutes?  Stop that.  That’s it, you’re going right to bed when we get home.  Knock.  It.  Off.  Are you done?  Just a few more minutes.  We just have to wait for the waitress to fix our check.  Why?  Because if I bounce a check to pay for everybody’s food Dad will kill me.  A few minutes. Yes, I agree she’s not very smart.  Must you climb that?  Get down from there.  Okay, we’re leaving right now.  Get down.  Get down.  We’re leaving.  If I have to drag you by the hair out of here you’re not going to like it.  No you won’t.

 

One last word of wisdom to our child-less friends… If you really love us you’ll meet us for coffee in the morning at a McDonald’s with a Playland.  I say morning, because after twelve noon Playland turns into Screamland and it’s really not so good.  Even better than that, come over and hang out in my yard after bedtime.  We’ve got the tikki torches.  We’ve got the bug zapper.  Bring your own whatever to drink.  I’ll provide coffee and Heath Crunch pie.  And then you’ll see me relaxed.  Maybe even comatose.  If you’re lucky, you won’t see hide nor hair of my child because the NyQuil night air has worked its magic.

 

Sometimes eating out is fun.  I can’t remember any such silliness, but it does still seem to be a popular way to socialize.