My Mom Body

I haven't been blogging lately because it seems I can only concentrate on one thing at a time and this month it's been my mom body. I told myself I would lose the baby weight by the time Moxie was a year old and of course she's 14 months now and I'm still wa-ay past my weight goals. And my birthday is looming. I'm going to be 35-- I'm moving out of the 25-34 check box and into 35-4..... how high up into the forties does the check box go? Never mind, I don't want to know.

I remember once in high school looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, "if my stomach ever protrudes past my hipbones, just shoot me because it's all downhill after that." I don't know if my stomach protruded past my hipbones the day before I realized I was pregnant with Tallulah, but I certainly know it did the day after. The minute I became pregnant my body started retaining water, calories, and gas like I was a human bomb shelter.

I've been overweight since that first pregnancy and I keep vacillating between "enjoy life. It's only ten pounds." and "I'm overweight and middle age is creeping up on me." The thing is, I love to exercise. I'm pretty fit, I just weigh too much. And overweight has been linked to increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, sweat pants as formal wear...

My goals are modest. I no longer want hipbones that protrude past my belly button. I just want verification that my hipbones still exist.

The difference is shoes

Moxie has developed her personality. It is: opinionated.

Yesterday, while Tallulah was in school, Mox and I were hanging out at home. I was attempting to clean house and The Moo was attempting to destroy it. She was winning. First she discovered Tallulah's crayons, left on the coffee table, and decided to decorate the plain, boring old table. "No!" I yelled. "No coloring on tables!" Then I remembered my positive discipline (it always comes to me a sentence too late) and re-stated it.
"We color on paper, Moxie, paper." I dragged out a big roll of paper, cut a strip to cover the coffee table, and let Moxie at it. We colored together awhile, then I began tidying again. While I was tidying, Moxie crawled over to the shoe rack and picked out a pair of white dress-up shoes I had never put on her before.
"Moxie, those shoes are too stiff," I told her. "They'll hurt your feet."
"Blah," said Moxie, shaking the shoes at me.
"You need shoes that are flexible so your feet don't get gnarled and grotesque."
"Blah. Beeelaaaah!" Moxie said louder.
"Your arches haven't developed yet, and you won't be able to walk in those."
"AAAAARRRRRGGGG!!"
So I put the shoes on her. They were a bit too tight, but Moxie immediately grinned up at me and pointed to her feet. When we went to pick up Tallulah she wore the shoes and greeted everyone she saw with a grin and a point at her shoes. Everyone agreed her shoes were pretty and she was pleased.

Tallulah, on the other hand, is a black shoes girl. Her auntie Kimmie bought her some fancy black Mary Janes and, despite the fact that she has about seven pairs of shoes-- all of which are more appropriate for her everyday activities like running, climbing trees, and pretending to do Kung Fu-- she wears these Mary Janes every day. For every occasion.

They're getting a little beat up so I went to the Stride Rite outlet in Ellenton to buy her some new shoes. They had these:



Cute, right? I wanted to get them for her so badly. I can picture her running and jumping and doing fin stuff in these brightly colored cheery shoes. But I've done this before-- bought her shoes I thought were great only to have her continue to wear black Mary janes until the coating is flaking off and the smell emanating from them envelops the entire house. So I bought her these:



Meh.

Both my girls-- apparently-- have huge opinions about shoes. And I thought, ok, they are opinionated and fiesty, that's cool. But they look different. Moxie is a little darker in her coloring, her cheeks are a little more bottom-heavy, their faces are shaped differently. They are totally different people with a similar strong opinion about shoes.

Then a friend came across some old pictures of Tallulah when she was about the same age as Moxie is now. Observe:












My children are identical!!! Can you even tell which one is Tallulah and which one is Moxie? Neither can I. I have started marking all the pictures with initials and dates because in about two years I won't know whose baby pictures are whose. The only way to tell them apart will be to look at their shoes. Black? Tallulah. White? Moxie. I have got to stop taking naked pictures.

FYI: if you're playing along at home, the answer key is Moxie, Tallulah, Tallulah, Moxie. Mixed them up, didn't you.

Ah, sweet mystery of love at last I've found you

Moxie won't sleep with me. For the most part. What I mean by this is: Moxie will sleep only if she is attached, Hoover-like, to my nipple and even then she is restless and easy to wake. With Kent, she falls asleep and stays asleep. I tell him all the time it's because he's boring, but that only amuses me a little bit and the rest of the time I feel helpless at not being able to get the baby to sleep.

Kent has gotten in this routine of taking Moxie after her middle of the night nursing and getting her to sleep in the crook of his arm. If she doesn't settle immediately, he takes her downstairs to the living room couch and for some reason snuggling together on the couch puts her to sleep 95% of the time. A couple nights ago this didn't work and I gave her some more midnight snacking time. While I lay there with the baby kneading my tummy with her feet, pinching my breast, and slapping my face, I realized that Kent hadn't come back upstairs and was still sleeping on the couch. Aw, hell no!

Then yesterday it's 11am, I'm still in my pajamas, the kitchen counters are displaying a dirty-dish replication of the Swiss Alps, breakfast shrapnel is still littering the floor under Moxie's highchair, and I'm running around the house with a naked poop covered baby searching for a diaper when Kent breezes in from a meeting, announces that he's taking a shower and then proceeds to take one. The nerve!

I was thinking about this today when a friend told me she and her husband are 'taking a break'.

"We're not really separating. We just need to take a breather from 'us' right now," she explained. To which I replied, huh? Because this is not in my world-view. Sure, we'd all like to take a break-- from our spouses, our kids, the bills, work...all of it. I often, when Tallulah was little, complained that if only I could put the baby on pause for a week, a day, the length of a long nap, I'd be just fine.

But it doesn't work that way. Kids and life and stress and joy just don't wait. In fact, just this week Moxie has been walking, said two new words, Tallulah's tooth got loose, we rediscovered the joy of smoothies... not to mention the regular, everyday stuff like reading the bedtime story and having the following conversation after school pick-up: "How did your day go?" "I don't want to talk about it."

And I know this isn't what my friend was talking about. Grown up relationships have a different pace and rhythm, but I feel it works the same way. We-- all of us, the whole family-- are in this together and becoming each other's strengths by being present for all the little, everyday things. Through sleeplessness and stinkiness and piled up dishes and feet to the abdomen -- all of it. I just can't see how, once you become a parent, you can ever separate the everyday stress and joy from the relationship.

Kent and I have developed a marriage so far removed from the breathless wonder of falling in love. It's messy and loud and spends way too much time talking about who ran the washer last. We spend no time actively being romantic or discussing our inner selves or musing on why we love each other. We don't think about the mystery of love or where our relationship fits into it. Yet somehow, here we are. In the middle of it.

The zenith of cute

We were at the bookstore and Moxie was pulling everything off the shelves and giving me the baby equivalent of "Whatchu gonna do about it?" so I picked her up, set her on her feet four feet away from Kent and said, "Walk to Daddy." And she did, thus ending her babyhood and propelling her on the path to sullen adolescence.

For the past two weeks Moxie has been developing new toddler-esque tricks. She kisses (only Tallulah gets the drooly ones. Moxie is content to give everyone closed mouth kisses, a fact for which Kent and I are extremely grateful, but attacks Tallulah open-mouthed and dripping. Tallulah is underwhelmed with baby kisses), she finally has some sign language (she touches her fingertips together to say 'more', but since she does it only after shrieking at the top of her volume and pitch levels it comes across as more Dr. Evil than Baby Einstein), and now, walking. There is no way to avoid the movement out of babyhood and into toddlerhood and, frankly, I wouldn't want to prolong babyhood.

We've been making a big deal about Moxie's new abilities and Tallulah had been noticing. "I think I'd like to be a baby again so I can be cute," she told me. So I lied to her and told her she, as a five year old, was just as cute as a baby. This is a lie, not because Tallulah isn't the cutest five year old in the history of five year olds-- she is, obviously. (anyone reading this who actually owns a five year old may take offense to this statement. And I'm sorry for that. I'm also sorry for you for not having the cutest five year old in the history of five year olds. For real-- sorry.)

But it's a lie to say any five year old can match a baby for cuteness. It's a biological impossibility. Babies are designed to illicit protective responses. Those big eyes, the impossibly large and ungainly heads. This is thousands of years of human evolution and we are helpless in the face of it. By five, milky sweet breath has developed into morning breath. Poops are solid blocks of stink. Cute helplessness has given way to incessant attention seeking behaviors.

So, as much as I'm ready to exchange baby lugging for toddler hand-holding, ready to see Moxie's personality change and develop and grow, I know that at some point I'm going to really miss the sweet cuddly baby stage.

But not today.

My name is Kellie, and I am a self-torturer

There was no desperate housewives last week, thus no streaming episode online, the fug girls took the WHOLE WEEKEND off just because it was Thanksgiving, and I'm all caught up on Hulu's episodes of Bones, Kitchen Nightmares, and Battlestar. So you will excuse the fact that I read Dooce and now am wallowing in Mom Envy.

I don't usually read Dooce. Sure, she's funny. Yeah, she's figured out how to a.) write daily and b.) make a living from her writing. And I suppose that if I were to rate parenting insight and humor 1-10 with 1 being I'd rather be in that part of labor where my hipbones get wrenched apart from the inside, I'd rate her writing as a solid 15. But I'm on a self torture diet and reading Dooce is like an alcoholic sitting across from a Long Island Iced Tea sipping a glass of water. I started my diet, by the way, after attending a yogurt and kefir making class with a friend who does things like make her family's kefir and yogurt from raw milk produced by happy local organic cows. And I came away from the class believing firmly that I must make my family's yogurt and kefir if I want them to grow up healthy and happy. Until this class I had felt pretty good about getting kefir into my family on a regular basis. But now, the shame. The kefir my family drank was from the store. And sweetened. And pasteurized. I might as well just punch my baby in the face. Which is what my husband almost did when I told him about my plan.

Actually, what he did was laugh at me. Then gently reminded me that we'd just moved, had a six month old baby, and I was starting a new job. Store bought kefir was GOOD ENOUGH! Since then, I've had many opportunities to repeat that lesson to myself. I say it like a mantra whenever I start to stress myself over the little things. Dishes piled up in the sink. Moxie finding-- and eating-- Cheerios on the floor. Laundry going straight from the clean basket to my children's bodies with no stops in folded piles or dresser drawers along the way. It's GOOD ENOUGH!

So I kind of prepped myself before I opened up the dooce website. She's going to be funny and entertaining, I said to myself. I want a giggle. Even if she writes about an experience I've written about only she does it funnier and with greater insight. that's fine. What I do is good enough.

Only, dooce is pregnant in the first trimester and still writing every day in funny and witty ways. She's writing upbeat observations about pregnancy and parenting her older daughter. Tra-la-la, life is great and well-scripted. And I can't help but compare it to my own second child pregnancy. I spent week 6 through week 24 lying in the middle of my bed clutching the edges so i wouldn't fall off. It was my boat in a sea of nausea. The only sentences I put together were to tell Tallulah, when she crawled gently beside me, to stop breathing so hard, she was rocking the bed.

The other thing I did which REALLY made me fall off my self torture diet was weigh myself immediately after our second Thanksgiving dinner. Why? Why did I do that?

Sick in the head

I'm sick, my head is pounding, my nose is running, and Moxie has decided that screaming is the best form of communication while Tallulah has chosen conversationis interruptus (it sounds better in latin) which means that every two seconds I start to ask Kent if he's seen the tissues or the tylenol to which Moxie responds "AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" and Tallulah says, "I was TALKING!!!"

Tallulah forgets about having conversation with anyone other than her imaginary superhero friends until either kent or I begin a conversation. Then she remembers, only, instead of beginning a conversation with us or joining our conversation, she just continues her superhero imaginary friend conversation and gets furious with us for not realizing that she is now speaking to us and how do we dare interrupt her train of thought.

And Moxie has decided that sign language, which I've been trying to teach her for the past four months, is totally lame and for suckers and she never sees us using it so why the hell would she? And instead, she's using imitations of the sounds she hears us making, only at a Much Grander Volume.

The only person making me happy in my sickened state is Kent, who just finished cleaning the kitchen after lunch while on a break from his work. I keep trying to tell him how happy he makes me, only I keep getting interrupted. Or out-volumed.

I want to leave the house to replace the tissues or the tylenol that have now mysteriously disappeared (why is it that these things sit on a shelf for months during health and the minute a cold comes on, poof, they scurry away to dark corners until you're healthy again) but I can't because I would have to take my children to the store with me and I'm afraid that some well meaning little old lady or young woman with ticking biological clock will stop me to gush over how cute my kids are and I will start weeping and warning them against the dangers of biology.

Moxie and the curse of the second child

The alternative title to this post is: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Moxie is turning one on November 28th. Can you believe it? It seems like only ten posts ago I was blogging about being pregnant. Umm, err, ahem. This might have less to do with the passage of time and more to do with my lack of blog entries. However...

Since it's her first, we haven't had to deal with the whole, birthday-near-a-major-holiday thing and I'm figuring out how to negotiate this. We celebrate Thanksgiving typically with my mom and family on the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Then, because Kent is ruthless when it comes to eating good meals as often and in as much quantity as possible, he's convinced his parents to have their Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend so we can eat with them, too. Next weekend is also Moxie's birthday so we decided to have a birthday celebration tonight, a week early.

And here's where being the second child is both a boon and a curse. On Tallulah's first birthday, we invited three babies her age, their parents, Tallulah's cousin, his parents, my parents, my sisters, Kent's parents, our neighbors, and another family. Tallulah was totally overwhelmed and in every picture she is looking dazed, confused, and on the brink of tears. For Moxie's birthday dinner, we invited grandparents. Period. And my set can't make it which means Grandma, Grandpa, Tallulah, Kent, me, and the birthday girl-- just a quiet family celebration. I think this will go over so much better with Moxie and we'll be able to really gush over her and laugh at her little fingers in the homemade carrot cake smashing it around messily. But when she is eight years old and trolling the photo albums for a final score in the game "Who does mommy and daddy love best," I believe she will hold up the first birthday pictures as proof of something unintended.

Plus, Kent decided to get Moxie a present today after he finished work, but she hadn't napped and he rocked her to sleep and inadvertently fell asleep himself. So now they are cuddled up together on the bed looking adorable and sweet. This is, of course, Moxie's preference in life right now: daddy cuddles rate way higher than toys and presents. But, again, an eight year old Moxie is really going to get some points on the scorecard since Kent's nap-share is taking up his shopping time.



This is probably a good time to even out the score: Tallulah, when you were two weeks old, I put you down on the couch and got up to make some coffee. I wasn't more than two steps away before you rolled off the couch and landed smack on the floor. I think this is proof that you should be playing the game, "why did we get stuck with these parents?"

Oh, and here--finally--is a picture of Tallulah's bangs. I took the picture that night, but the red wine made me too lazy to upload. And, no, I did not give Tallulah any of my red wine to dull the pain of her haircut. Who can spare the wine?

womanly advice

Tonight I was googling sugar addiction because I'm pretty sure I have it and I found this pretty amazing site about how to balance life as a mom and caregiver with maintaining a sense of self. I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing-- I love flipping through Oprah's O magazine even if I have to roll my eyes every other page as she leads the reader through a maze of 'reasonably priced splurges' at $200 per 'must-have' cashmere sweater or affirmations to run ten miles and get a pedicure during lunch.

Then, because I was on a roll of finding helpful womanly advice, I checked out Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter/website. And damn, was that a mistake.

What is wrong with Gwynnie? Has she been hanging out with Oprah too much? I mean, what could her thought process be? Gee, Oprah, you haven't acted since the Color Purple. All you do is sit around and tell people how awesome they could be if they were like you. Hmm....I'm awesome. I don't want to act and be away from my rockstar husband and oddly named children. I should tell people how to be like me!

So now I'm in a ridiculously bad mood. First, I'm realizing that I should cut the sugar out of my diet which makes me very very crabby. Second, I'm pissed off at Gwyneth for telling me that I can be just like her when I obviously can't. I have no Oscar winning actress mom or hunky actor dad, my husband is not a multimillion dollar rock star, and I don't, when I choose to work, get paid three million dollars to make out with hunky actors. But according to Gwyneth, I should not "be lazy" or "be passive" about my life. Thanks, Gwyneth, I'll keep that in mind. Here's some advice right back at you: if you can't write worth a shit, don't lecture via the written word.

Sigh. I think I'll take the first step towards de-sugaring my house and finish the Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

Tallulah's bad haircut is good for me

I gave Tallulah a haircut tonight even though we only had ten minutes in part because of wine induced urgency. I drank a glass of wine at dinner-- or two-- and was staring at Tallulah's bangs hanging down over her eyes like a sheepdog and suddenly, tipsily, couldn't stand the thought of her having bangs in her face for One. More. Minute.

So I cut them.

I think they're pretty straight, you know, relatively speaking. I mean, her forehead isn't straight, you know? And one ear is definitely higher than the other and even her nostrils don't line up completely. So I did great, considering.

I'm foreseeing a lot of these wine-induced emergencies in our future. I went to the Holistic Moms Meeting this week and the one take-away message I got was that wine is, indeed, good for you. In particular organic Australian red wine because it has the highest level of resperidal, the anti-aging nutrient grapes produce. Which is great for the times I go to the Wine Warehouse, but on my regular Publix run Cheap Red Wine (no shit-- this wine exists and is tasty) will have to do.

It's for my health.

Broccoli Blues

It's 6:20 am and I've slept approximately 20 minutes all night in part because Moxie is uncomfortable and restless and in part because I get anxiety insomnia. I lay in bed and think about how I'm not getting any sleep and I have to work in the morning and how am I going to get through the day without any rest and why can't my babies sleep at night and whatever happened about that amendment about preserving land and oh my god the last episode of Desperate Housewives, Gabriel is hilarious this season and so much more relatable and do I have anything to pack for lunch and are my library books overdue....so on and so on ALL NIGHT LONG.

And I blame this on broccoli. We gave Moxie broccoli Thursday for dinner, right before Kent and I had a date night to do karaoke-- something we've been planning a long time but never seem to manage. We've given Moxie broccoli before and vaguely remembered some stink issues, but we figured it would hit the following day and not while Moxie was being watched by grandma. Poor grandma.

By the time we got to the grandparents house there was a definite odor emenating from our dear, sweet baby. Passing her off to grandma, she wrinled her nose and said, "someone's poopy." It's against my morality to hand off a poopy child, so I whisked Moxie away and began to change her diaper only to discover no poop. Just really really stinky broccoli pee. When I went back out to the living room, I discovered that the smell had lingered. It was now covering the living room and bathroom, drifting in Moxie's wake where ever she crawled. By the time Kent and I left, we were fleeing to escape the smell. Poor poor grandma.

This is only the second time we've left Moxie with the grandparents and, although they have always insisted that our babies are angels, even through Tallulah's constant screaming, I think the broccoli pee tested grandma's angel theory. I don't think any religion describes angels bearing that smell.

Anyway, we're still dealing with broccoli fallout. The broccoli pee made Moxie's bottom sore so she can't sleep and needs to keep us informed of her broccoli status throughout the night.

I don't even like broccoli.

The Tide is High

Kent and I woke up this morning and immediately watched Obama's acceptance speech on youtube:


Then I went to one of my favorite blogs, www.americanelf.com-- I like it because it's a cartoon, the artist's kids are the same age as mine, and drawing random bits of parenting life gets a point across in a very different way than typing it into words. Like yesterday's:


Yes. Yes.

Dinnertime and the livin' is easy

So I'm making dinner (right now in fact-- look at me multi-task). The sauce for the fish is boiling down, the fish is in the oven, the salad is on the table, and the veggies are roasting next to the fish. I start chopping dinner for Moxie: papaya is her latest fave and I've got a big bowl of that plus some chopped pears and I'll give her a little naked fish for protein. And chopping all this stuff is making me remember Monday night, Kent's cooking night, when we were all set to sit down at the table for dinner and I innocently ask, what's Moxie having? And he gives one of those 'Oh shit!' looks, then promptly grabs the box of cheerios and dumps a handful on her tray. "Done!" he pronounces.

I was kind of debating going for a run after dinner-- I have a headache and the cool weather makes me want to slouch around in my house with my socks on, drinking tea and being cuddly with my babes. But now I'm definitely going and let me tell you why: my health and well-being is very important to my family. Because if I die young from a heart attack or cookie-induced glaucoma, my kids are gonna be living on a diet of cheerios and Twizzlers. And I won't have that.

It's Tuesday, not perspective day

It's Tuesday and I'm doing my regular Tuesday routine: running mad loads of laundry, tidying up the house, scrubbing the kitchen, folding and putting away laundry, running to the grocery, preparing meals for the week... you know, the usual mom stuff. Tuesdays are my catch-up day after working all weekend because, even though Kent does cook and run a load of diapers over the weekend, he just doesn't see the house the same way I do. The grease on the stove top, the crusties in the crevices of the highchair-- these are visible only to female eyes.

And everytime I put the baby down, she tries to climb Tallulah's stair step-- it's her latest 'work'. Moxie loves to accomplish things: climbing up the stairs, reversing and climbing back down, gumming an entire apple, climbing into the living room chairs and turning to sit like a grown up-- these are her Mt Everests. She is conquering the world one baby milestone at a time and today's milestone is climbing onto the 2 and 1/2 foot stairstep that Tallulah uses to help me in the kitchen and pulling all the books off the non- baby proofed bookshelf she can reach from the top. But every time she leans against the bookshelf with one hand so she can grab and fling books with the other, the stair step slides farther away from the shelf. Yikes! So I keep dashing from the laundry to her, the cooking to her, the scrubbing to her. Since this is my day at home with just Moxie, one could say that it's a day to relax, but one would be wrong. Then one would get a punch in the nose.

It is however, a gorgeous day. The sun is shining, the breeze is blowing in the windows, and it has cooled down so much Tallulah and Kent complained that they were cold. Then I went to the grocery store and people kept telling me to hurry from the car to the store and "get that baby inside where it's warm". Can you believe that? It's 68 degrees, people! Get some perspective!

Dirty, like I'll never be clean again

I've been watching cable tv all day because my in-laws are out of town and when they go out of town, we spend at least one day watching their cable and swimming in their pool. When I've talked about watching tv before, I've been talking about watching streaming tv on the internet, which is a totally different animal: there's a minor amount of commercials and you have to search out whatever crappy show you want to watch. With cable, though, you're just flipping the channels and...Wham! You come across a show like The Mermaid Girl about a girl born with her legs fused together, unable to surgically part them, and her family's struggle to deal. And I have very mixed feelings about this show. Is it exploitive? Presumably, the show is giving the family money for filming them and they're raising awareness for the disease. But it's very hard to see that aspect when the camera keeps recording this girl scootching her 'mermaid tail' across the floor and I'm so glad the show gives her the name, Mermaid Girl, because it feels wrong to describe her. She has a flipper. If you've seen Brain Candy, the old Kids in the Hall movie, then you, too, have enjoyed a good flipper baby joke. But to see this girl is so much more disturbing than the flippers-for-hands image that Flipper Baby elicits. But I feel bad for feeling so disturbed-- she's a six year old girl. Anyway, after ten minutes of gaping, I gather the strength of will to tear my eyes away and change the channel. Deep breath of relief.

Then I fall into a "What Not to Wear" pit because it's featuring a 36 year old mom and I'm hoping that she looks just like me so the tips will be appropriate the next time I win a $1000 shopping spree at J. Crew (it could happen, right?). Then I spend the next fifteen minutes worrying that I do look just like her with the frizzy hair, pudgy legs, disappearing chin, and protruding tummy.

After a few hours of switching between bits of movies I've already seen, tivo'd episodes of Ugly Betty, and Celebrity Fitness episodes (Erik Estrada still has it, that cutie pie), I got excited when Super Nanny came on. I love watching other people parent their children. Love it. I can't even explain the deep satisfaction I get from watching well-meaning parents holding their kicking and screaming children in time out or yelping when they get bitten by a two year old. Yes, I think with grim pleasure, bite that bad mommy.

It hurts me how much time I've wasted today and how dark is the chasm that used to be my soul. I feel like the tv is trying to catch my attention by catering to the worst aspects of my character. If cable tv were a mirror, I would feel ashamed. While I've been typing this, Kent came along and took control of the remote control and now his soul is shining through-- a Johnny Cash biography and mixed martial arts fights.

Squinting

I haven't been able to write about parenting because I haven't been able to think about parenting. In fact, I'm trying hard not to think about anything at all. I've been feeling lately that my life is all work-- working at my job, working at my housekeeping, working on my marriage, working on my friendships, work, work, work. Not because I'm putting any energy into any of these things, but because nothing is fluid or smooth right now.

You know what I'm talking about. Some days you tell your kids to get their jammies on and go to bed and they do. And then they sleep for four hours straight giving you and your husband a chance to drink a glass of wine, giggle about an Onion article, and make sweet sweet sexy time before falling asleep at a reasonable hour. Then the next day, well rested, your best friend calls just after you've dropped off your kid at preschool and she's dropped her kids at school and wants to giggle about fashion and celebrities and other non-important issue over omelettes.

Other days, you tell your kids to go to bed and they scream and kick and trash the playroom and it takes two hours to get the oldest one in bed and then the baby won't fall asleep even though you pace for an hour with her. And you pass her off to your husband just as the older one comes out of her room AGAIN to demand water. And at some point in the middle of the night after being awakened by a hungry nursing baby or a foot in the face by a restless preschooler (because of course she climbed in bed with you when she woke up for the fifth time at midnight) you are lying in bed unable to get back to sleep and realize that the only words passed between you and your husband all day was "Oh, I was going to tell you about..." before being interrupted by one or both of the children and "Your turn" as you passed a screaming child between you. Then the next morning your best friend calls to talk about her crappy day and when you are interrupted by the baby crying she gets frustrated and when you both try to figure out a time to hang out and chat no time is available because of this doctor's appointment or that errand. And when all of this happens it's no one's fault, it's just the way life is, but it makes every day feel like work. Even the things that usually are fun and fulfilling.

The days when nothing is fluid, it's easy for me to feel oppressed and depressed about my life. It's been a long time since I've had a complete night's sleep and with Moxie only ten months old, this isn't going to change soon. I'm back at work and we're still not getting ahead financially-- that's not going to change soon. Kent and I are doing fine, we're just too tired and busy to connect and that's not going to change anytime soon. I'm trying not to think about this too hard. I'm just doing what I have to do; washing the dirty baby or floor or kitchen or laundry. I'm taking care of the work at hand and squinting at the big picture. I'm trying not to rush through this hard time because this babyhood and young childhood is a weird combination of stress and joy and I'm not sure its possible to have one without the other. Of course, if I'm wrong and there is a way to get through this without the painful days, one of you bitches better tell me.

My zen moment

Tonight Kent and I got into a fight. I forget what it was about-- laundry, kitchen duty, whether or not apocalyptic movies have to talk about god [I say if the movie is about the dissolution of humanity, the concept of god is practically begging to be addressed at some point. Kent says this isn't necessary and points out Mad Max. No talk of god there, he says. And that movie rocks.] Anyway, whatever the fight was about, it got loud. Kent decided he didn't want to go to our friends' house for dinner like we planned. And since the friends have kids Tallulah's age, she was promptly pulled into the argument. "Wait, wait. Let's not fight," she says, trying to salvage the evening. "I have an idea. Let's still go to our friends' house. It'll make us feel better." We explain that Mommy and Daddy need to work it out and then we do. We keep talking until we reach an understanding of each other's viewpoints, hug, kiss, tell each other how glad we are to be married, and hop in the car for our evening. We give Tallulah the standard, "Mommy and Daddy argue sometimes, but we always love each other" speech which she acknowledges with a grunt. As long as we're headed in the direction of playtime, she's got no input.

Fast forward a few hours. We're leaving our friends' house and I'm doing all my tricks. The five minute warning which I let Tallulah negotiate into ten minutes, the play/clean up time which now means cleaning up like superheroes, the race to the car, etc. We get to the car with surprising ease and I compliment Tallulah on her exiting behavior. Then Kent and I start to chat when Tallulah interrupts.
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom!"
"Tallulah, you know how to get my attention. Say excuse me and then wait your turn."
"But it's important!"
"Then say excuse me."
"Aaaaghhhh!"

Did I mention that it was 10:30pm? That her bedtime is 7:30? That she doesn't nap anymore? That bedtime is always our hardest time of day?

This conversation was the beginning of a half hour long screamfest. While I held her bedroom door shut and she kicked and screamed on the other side, I thought about something I've heard before about kids. It is developmentally appropriate for kids to behave well in public and school, and then act out with their parents. I always wondered about that. Why would a child understand how to get themselves heard and negotiate the toy they want and generally interact appropriately, then forget just because they're in a comfortable environment? As Tallulah gnawed the wood off the doorjamb, I had one of those flashes of insight: children are moving from a wordless, cultureless, lawless existence into a structured world with too many rules, words they can't comprehend, and expectations they have to struggle to fulfill. They hold themselves in as long as they can and then, Boom! They go completely bitchcakes. And they do it in the place where they feel most free, where the repercussions are the lowest.

So, in this light, Kent and I fighting is an important part of raising our girls. We show them that we disagree, we feel strongly, we yell, and after it's all over, we still love each other. We're still glad to be a family. And Tallulah is sending us an important message by losing her shit. She's saying, I trust you to still love me, even when I don't follow the rules or act the way you tell me to. So, it's good to fight, it's great when my kid yells at me.

Aah, insight. It looks so much like self-delusion.

Hot Guy Day

It was hot guy day at the grocery store today. Usually the days I go are old people day which is fine because Moxie loves to flirt with the little old ladies-- she lights up when they call her pretty. Shallow baby. But today was hot guy day and it's weird for me on a few levels.

First, if they're under 25, I automatically rate their suitability to date my daughters. Especially Indie teenagers with pencil jeans and black floppy hair. I imagine their sullen looks when they come to pick Tallulah or Moxie up, Tallulah's anguished, melodramatic pronouncements, "I'm in lo-ove, mom, you don't understand!" I imagine Moxie matching cool-for-cool, "Yeah, he's ok. He wants me to go to prom but, I don't know, it seems kind of lame." I picture the cute clean cut boys picking up the girls, calling Kent 'sir' and telling me they know where my daughters got their looks from. While I wander the grocery aisle I practice my look: "I know you're going to try to get my daughter drunk and keep her out past her curfew and that's why we have GPS tracking implanted in her hip and an automatic rifle in the closet." It's a lot to get across in one look, so I practice now.

But the older hot guys I find even more disconcerting. I compare all of them with my husband or with guys I went to high school. Like today there was a tall blonde guy checking out ahead of me with his 4 year old son. Instead of keeping it simple and admiring his ass, I'm analyzing his parenting skills and wondering where his baby mama was. Is he taking the kid so she can have the morning off? Is he raising his son by himself? Did he just give his kid a chocolate bar? Because these things influence how hot I think he is. And this is crazy because parenting skills should only affect hotness level when it comes to my husband. But it affects how I view every man of baby-making age (I know this could potentially be a wide range. I'm thinking late 20's to late 40's. Not Palin's soon to be son in law or Sean Connery) Am I alone here? Like when Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina, his hotness points dropped significantly. Jennifer may not be my ideal woman, but to leave her for a blood drinking Billy Bob Thornton cast-off? Yuck. But then they had babies and his hotness factor went back up again. Higher than ever. Actually, strike that. There's nothing higher on the hotness scale than the low riding pants he wore in Fight Club. But you get my point.

Anyway, I was musing about the intricacy of male hotness for a mom while I loaded up my groceries and I noticed Moxie making eyes at an older guy getting into the car next to us. He was in his 60's or 70's and making smiley googly eyes at Moxie to make her giggle. "Watch out," I said. "She's an incorrigible flirt."

"Just the way I like them." He said. "Only maybe a little older."

There is no subtlety or intricacy to the male mind.

What the Hell Wednesday: Tylenol

I was playing Chicken with Moxie's fever last week, waiting for it to rise above 102 to get worried. I try not to medicate, trusting my children's healthy bodies, good nutrition, and occasionally supportive homeopathics to get us through the minor colds and flu bugs. But at night I worry more-- what if I sleep through the side effects of a dangerously high fever? Here are the side effects of a dangerously high fever I'm looking for:
*extreme lethargy and difficulty rousing
*difficulty breathing or odd breathing (shallow and fast or heaving in the diaphragm)
*dehydration (sunken spots on the soft spots of the head, no urination, no tears)
*seizures
*vomiting and diarrhea
*guarding of the abdomen--tummy is sensitive to the touch

Some of these are no more a problem at night than during the day-- I'd probably wake up if Moxie started to vomit on me. But lethargy?

So I tend to medicate with Tylenol at night, but I try not to medicate normally. I wait it out as long as I can, daring the fever to go over my comfort zone before I touch the medication. You might ask, why? Why not medicate for comfort and convenience? After all, having a miserable baby to tend all day is no picnic. The first reason is, our bodies punch us into fever for a reason. Fevers make the body inhospitable to bugs. If we don't allow the body to use its natural defense, how can it rid itself of the bugs?

The other answer is, Tylenol is evil. Oops, did I say evil? I meant....well, yeah, I meant evil. See, tylenol is metastasized (read: cleared) out of the body through the liver by binding to a powerful antioxidant called glutathione. Glutathione "plays an important role in antioxidant defense...Glutathione deficiency contributes to oxidative stress, which plays a key role in aging and the pathogenesis of many diseases including seizures, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, liver disease, cancer...." So basically, when you take Tylenol because you're sick, the tylenol depletes your body of it's ability to keep you from getting sick. And it ages you. Which is kind of funny-- everybody is looking for a magic pill to keep them young, meanwhile popping a pill that makes them old. Ha ha, mmm, sigh.

But it's hard to find the information about this. I want to put links for this information, but I'm finding it in hard to read and digest medical texts or doctor blogs. Here is one fact sheet that spells out the dangers of Tylenol, but often the discussion is about toxic overloads, rather than damage caused by regular doses. Also, liver corruption directly caused by tylenol use is downplayed or not discussed in most texts, although I did find it here, citing tylenol as the #1 cause of liver failure. Number ONE! I guess I can keep drinking my gin and tonics-- just cut back on the morning after meds.

And look, you can't avoid medicating the kids sometimes. The night I was watching Moxie's fever, I lost my game of Chicken. The fever won. I medicated at one am when her temperature got to 102.3. I think we just need to have all the information before using a medication so we can make a good decision for our long-term health. And the pharmaceutical companies aren't going to give us that information, the FDA apparently isn't concerned, and we get lulled into believing that 'safe' is the same as not harmful to our health rather than the FDA's true meaning: approved over the counter medications won't kill most people if used within recommended dosage. A friend of mine medicates when her kids grimace, just in case they might have an ache. Why would it be over the counter if it wasn't safe, she asks. Good question.

My next question is: what's up with the red dye #40 in the children's liquid Tylenol? Because I promise my kids don't give a shit what color the drug is when they take it. The corn syrup makes sure of that.

The full moon

We're still having behavioral issues with Tallulah, as evidenced by her behavior yesterday when her Grandma stopped by our house. Tallulah was excited her Grandma was coming over and prepared by coloring a picture and putting on her favorite dress. Unfortunately, Grandma was with a friend and could only stay a minute. Tallulah begged her to stay, and then jumped in the back of Grandma's van. When I reached back to grab her out, she hopped over the seat into the way back where I would have to climb over things to get her.

Now, I didn't want to embarrass Grandma in front of her friend with a screaming, disobedient granddaughter. I decided to move quickly and get Tallulah out of the van by reaching in and yanking her out of the car. I knew otherwise we would be talking and negotiating too long.

So I was pulling her out of the car and in the process she flipped upside down, yelling and giggling at the same time, when her dress flew up over her head revealing....somebody remembered her favorite dress, but forgot her underpants. And grandma's friend got a full moon AND a gynecological review.

Parenting is not for the weak of heart. Apparently neither is grand-parenting.

What the Hell Wednesday: The Joys of High Fructose Corn Syrup

Have you seen the new ad campaign about high fructose corn syrup? Let's defer the obvious by first noting that the girl in the commercial linked here was really cute in both a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode and in Desperate Housewives as the nurse who failed to see Carlos' mom waken from her coma and run around the hospital trying to narc on Gabrielle for her hot affair with the gardener. I'm so glad she's got a national ad campaign. Maybe the dairy industry can hire her next to talk about how eating more dairy can make you lose weight.

Because we all recognize this PR campaign as total bullshit, right? I mean, everybody and their grandma knows that high fructose corn syrup has been linked to increased diabetes, lowered insulin sensitivity, obesity, and, combined with a high fat diet and a sedentary life style, liver damage. The corn industry had to hire really good actors for these commercials because who else would be able to say those lines without rolling their eyes? And I LO-OVE that the commercial specifically talks about feeding that red food dye #40 and high fructose corn syrup cocktail to kids. Why wouldn't you feed that shit to kids? Hmm.

The Mayo Clinic recommends limiting consumption because "animal studies have shown a link between increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and adverse health effects, such as diabetes and high cholesterol." The article goes on to say that there isn't a definitive link between human consumption and these health risks because not enough studies have been done. Perhaps our government could spend fewer dollars subsidizing the Corn Refining industry and more dollars protecting its citizens with studies analyzing the health consequences of consumer products. Perhaps if we had universal health coverage, interest in keeping citizens healthy would be higher. But not only is the government subsidizing unstudied refined sugar, they also recently allowed high fructose corn syrup to be labeled "natural". That's right, check your products with the tag 'natural' on the front because you may be getting more than you think.

But let's say high fructose corn syrup is fine. No worse than consuming table sugar hidden in everything from ketchup to spaghetti sauce to bread to yogurt to toothpaste to fruit juice. What about the environmental damage caused by corn refining? Corn, according to a recent Washington Post article, requires more pesticides and fertilizers than any other crops and the runoff has long term effects.

Maybe if the Corn Refinery Association has $30 million for an ad campaign to tell consumers that we're stupid for not wanting their product, maybe they can afford to have their subsidies and governmental sponsorship slashed. In the meantime, we'll be checking our 'natural' products and continuing to keep the refined corn out of our kitchen.

One last thought: If you can't live without Coke, try getting it from a mexican market. Apparently imported coke, particularly from Mexico, is made with cane sugar. I haven't checked it out myself, yet, but that's the rumor. I hear the cane sugar really enhances the other chemicals in the soda.