Unbreak My House

Posted by Duff

Atticus, please desist with the ruination.

You’ll be two years old in two weeks, and you won’t let me forget it, as you grow out of clothes that were once too big, skip shoe sizes and dart from the pediatrician’s check out desk through the waiting room, past reception and back up the stairs of the old Victorian. Ear infection? Schmear infection. You’ve got goals. And one goal in particular: Break it. Break it all, now, completely.

A recent record of your spoils:
The Dervish’s play minivan
Any and all writing implements: pens, markers, crayons, colored pencils
Sheet upon sheet of stickers
Countless bags of goldfish crackers (you’ve got a particular gift for grinding them into powder)
A box of tissues (pluck, rip, tear, shred, leave mommy to clean up and whammo! Something else for the breaking)
One travel pack of pomegranate applesauce (per day)
Any craft The Dervish makes in preschool, same day, often in the car on the way home (cue tears)
Barbie clothes dipped in yogurt, syrup, jelly
Couch cushions and pillows dipped in yogurt, syrup, jelly
Snot. Everywhere. EVERYwhere.
One Cinderella ‘pumpkin into a carriage’
One Princess Tiana (The Frog Princess) arm
The hair of one glorious Princess Jasmine
2 bottles of Elmer’s glue
1 sand shovel
1 Backyard Safari Bug Vaccuum (which, to it’s credit, can be fixed over and over only to be dismantled)

Please keep the destruction to these inanimate, though messy and sometimes costly objects, and spare your wee bones, and with them, my heart.

That is all. Carry on (my wayward son . )

 

On Love, Marriage, and Kindergarten

Posted by Duff

Disclaimer: all quotes pulled from The Dervish when she was well past the point of overtired:

On Love:

“Well I’m mad, because I’m in love with Daddy. And he’s in love with you.”

(Note to self: sleep with the lights on, lest I have an’ accident’)

On Marriage:

D: “I asked (neighbor boy, aged 5) to marry me three times this week. Once at his birthday, once in his yard, and again today in the driveway. He said no every time.”

Me: “Well, that’s the thing about boys. They don’t really want to talk marriage. Not at 5, and not at 25. Good luck with that.”

On Kindergarten:

Me: “Aren’t you excited to go to kindergarten in September?”

D: “Um. I don’t know. Will they have a full-size firetruck there?”

Me: “I hope not.”

 

You just never know.

Posted by Duff

I’ve heard of loveys and blankies and I’ve had a kid who adored her pacifier.

But never, never did I think my son would have a security vaccuum.

(This is someone else’s kid loving a similar vaccuum. Apparently, it’s more common that you or I thought).

Live and learn.

 

Random and Retrospective

Posted by Duff

Next week will mark the one year anniversary of my becoming a mostly stay-at-home mom.

Here are some of my takeaways:

I thought I would be more organized when I had more time to be organized.  I was wrong.

Kids need to leave the house every day or will punchfight. At least, this is true for my kids.

Oatmeal is like a fungal infection. If not addressed immediately and completely, it spreads.

It’s awesome to wear lamb’s wool-lined boots everyday.  It also cuts down on the need for pedicures. However, I crave a visit to the nail salon with the fire of a thousand white-hot suns each day I slide my feet into those boots.  It’s the screaming (mostly joyful, sometimes not, it still rattles the nerves).  I need to soak away the screaming.

I like quiet. A lot. I like to think, and I used to think complete thoughts.  Imagine each of my thoughts, these days, as a carton of eggs.  Three are missing. Sometimes four.  If you’ve asked me to do something, please remind me.

I have, by far, the biggest head circumference in my house. My husband and Atticus can share hats. I’m not sure if this means my husband has a pin head or Atticus inherited my melon.  Likely both. The main point is, my head is enormous.

I didn’t use my crock pot nearly enough when I was working outside the home.

I get lots of hugs per day, lots of ‘love yous”.  These remind me, when I’m striving, planning and submitting for paid work, that nothing else I do, nothing else I accomplish or set as a bar that I haven’t yet reached and so judge myself, that I’m not so far from where I need to be.  I’m about as smack dab in the middle, if I take the time to notice, as I had always hoped to be.

 

This One Goes Out To The Ones I Love (and REM)

Posted by Duff

It’s funny, how love reveals itself, both in the things you’ll do for others and the way they show you they care. 

I’ve never been one for Valentine’s Day. I’m a big fan of love, in general. I’ve done unrequited (lots of that) and loved and lost, and found love in unforeseen places, and I’m grateful for it everyday–but I’m not really one to go all out on the day I’m supposed to, because I don’t like to be told what to do.

I know, I sound like a sourpuss.  Believe me, I got the ass-kicking I deserved.

Last week, we added a new cat to our family.  I know, no one cares about the new cat, and it’s not a story of the love of a new cat. The meat of it is this: the cat likes my kids better than she likes me, and that’s fine. Except my husband and I were the ones who discovered the fallout from the cat’s discovery: diapers have some of the same ingredients as cat litter.  And the cat crapped on Valentine’s Day, literally.

She snuck into Atticus’s room when I went to check on him the night before and was stuck in there for the night, and well, Happy Valentines Day to me.  Atticus woke up, delighted by his companion. I was not so delighted by the surprise I found. 

Later that day, Atticus and I went for a walk in the melting snow. Thanks to the magic of smartphones and Pandora, as he stomped through puddles in his Buzz Lightyear boots, we got to listen to REM’s Fall on Me. Add that to the C’mon mama of a nearly two-year-old who beams at you with eyes as blue as the sky of an unseasonably warm day and you get what my grinchly heart much needed and got:

One of life’s perfect moments.

 

At Least, vol. 17

Posted by Duff

Check this out:

 

Yes, these are Slickles.  At least they’re not Suckles, which is what I thought the label said when I found the jar in my fridge yesterday.

 

 

Storm prep, and the makings of a domestic dispute

Posted by Duff

My plans for the day:

Pick up enough food, infant Motrin, diapers, and entertainment for 2 days.

Call our town offices regarding signing up The Dervish for kindergarten. Yes. Kindergarten.

Call the vet to inquire about side effects from cat’s recent dental work.

Do enough laundry to get us by in the event of lost power.

Prepare meals, wipe faces and heinies, save children from themselves.

My husband’s plans for the day:

Go apesh*t outside with the snowblower, shovel, and broom to prep for the next 2 days. 

Order sandbags for upcoming but seeming impossible thaw.

The Dervish’s plans for the day:

Become a princess

Become the baby she used to be, so she can remember what it’s like.

Purchase mini-muffins, fruit snacks, lollipops, juice boxes and chocolate

Play, alone, with everything within reach

Atticus’s plans for the day:

Throw food. Pour juice. Sit on mommy’s lap in the bathroom.

Be carried around. Avoid the car, all store carts, the changing table, the crib.

Purchase mini-muffins, fruit snacks, juice, and chocolate

Play with everything The Dervish has made look interesting.

Snot on everything.

*******

We’re looking at two days inside. Please send reinforcements. And entertainment. And snowboots that dry faster.

 

On Dream Jobs and Favorite Colors: Real Conversation

Posted by Duff

I sometimes forget that I always wanted a kid this age, so I could ask her questions like these (the following is taken from a real conversation with The Dervish at 4.5 years old):

Me: Hey, What’s up?

Dervish: Hi.

Me: So what do you want to be when you grow up?

D: What do you mean?

Me: I mean, what do you want to become? Anything you want. (Expecting to hear ‘princess’ or ‘fairy’ or ‘Doctor Sheehan’)

D: (Silence. Thinking. Mild amusement at the possibility of answering). Mommy, what do YOU want to be?

Me: A writer.

D: A writer?

Me: Someone who decides the words that go in books, like the ones you and I read. Only the ones that mommy reads, without pictures.

D: Oh.

Me: So what do you want to be?

D: A picnic basket. With a blanket inside.

Me: And will you have any special powers?

D: Yes.

Me: What?

D: Batteries.

… A moment later:

Me: So what’s your favorite color?

D: Pink. And purple. And yellow and white and blue and green and orange.

Me: Well, if you could wear any color dress right now, what would it be?

D: Pink. And purple. And yellow and orange. And mashed potatoes and peas.

 

Sometimes, Stuff Works Out.

Posted by Duff

You know how certain songs take you back to a memory, spotlight it, show you yourself at a different (and, in retrospect, immature) time?

Through the fantasticness that is Pandora, my Sting station plays newer Matt Nathanson alongside Sting’s mid-90′s Hounds of Winter, which probably holds minimal signifcance for many, but I know you’ve got your own version of it: the song that reminds you of the, well, sting of young, melodramatic, unrequited love.

The pain of this heartbreak is all but muted now, minus the minor time travel that dropped me into my 21-year-old self–not into the lost love of a boy,  but what it meant to be myself before I knew how things would work out. Can you even imagine what it would have been like, at the peak of your unrequitedness, to know what was to come? I probably wouldn’t have believed it, honestly. Though it would have been comforting.

Because just then, Atticus handed me a toy car, and made his way over to his train table, and smiled at me.  He had kicked me in the throat earlier that day, and spread oatmeal on the TV and unplugged the cable connection. But he also begged me for my homemade meatballs (bland) and chocolate chip cookies (when will I learn to use real butter?) and linked arms with me while I read him a bedtime story.  And told me I was pretty, (even if by accident) and often tells me he loves me (sort of, like a parrot would) and thanks me for anything I hand him.

Talk about requited, 21-year-old self. You just wait.

 

Mayday–I’m Lost in January Over Here.

Posted by Duff

Please help. I’m being held prisoner by attitude over here, the preschool and toddler kinds. 

Please send advice on how to outwit them, or  keep them from killing each other. Or, at the very least, how to keep them from killing me so I can keep raising them–hopefully to be the nice kind of people that don’t harm anyone other than each other and their mother.

Also, while you’re at it, please send Spring.  Three. feet. of. snow.

And, good news is always welcome.