Maternity clothes, frankly, suck November 10, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Kind of unreasonable.Tags: complaining
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My fellow-mom friend once told me she loved being pregnant, and that she missed it, almost, after she gave birth.
I hope my face didn’t reveal the horror I felt at that statement.
I was reminded last Thursday of this moment of disbelief that anyone would miss the bulging waistline, the non-flattering way clothes drape — because that’s what clothes do to pregnant ladies; these yards of cotton (always too-worn cotton) don’t flatter, they drape — over puffed-out mid-sections … Ah yes. My second foray into maternity clothes was accepted with a certain amount of relief (12 percent), disgust (85 percent) and self-loathing (3 percent).
I did not go quietly into that Rubbermaid container to heave out the clothes no one, not even their makers, could love. I made Dave go fetch it from its place of exile in the basement, and I watched as Alice pulled out all the shirts and pants and tossed them aside. And I sighed.
Long-sleeved shirts were in short supply so I tried to rally around a shopping goal, but scanning the racks at a few stores proved fruitless. Who looks good in big, knotty sweaters that hang to the knee? (Let’s not kid ourselves — I’m 5-foot-1, it would hit my shins when I walk.) Why do these clothes have to be so … maternal? Why are the acceptable items so expensive? Why are there three racks at Target, crammed between the tank tops on clearance and the plus-sized clothes? Three racks for nine months. REALLY, TARGET. REALLY?
WHY I’m doing this is clear. I want another one of these:
I’m lucky to be pregnant, I’m lucky to have Alice. Of course. But elastic-waist pants and bell-shaped shirts take more getting used to than one might imagine.
OK, thanks. I feel slightly less angry now.
The horror! November 8, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Kind of unreasonable.Tags: funny
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Surprise! Our child’s afraid of leaves, just like our dog.
That looks oddly comfortable November 3, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, Toddling it.Tags: toddlerhood
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Not wanting Alice to feel like the baby’s giving her an eviction notice — and scared that Dave would start moving his CD collection back into the empty room that once was Dave’s Room – Do Not Enter and is now Alice’s Big Girl Room — I hurriedly picked out a toddler bed online and shipped it to the house last week.
The whole affair took me an hour to assemble Friday night, plus another five minutes to stare at my mechanical genius, and a solid 10 minutes to pick out a mattress at the store the next day.
Saturday night, I put her in her new bed in her new room at 7, and she lasted til 8:30. OK, so she lasted til 8:30 because that was the fourth time I’d poked my head behind her door to make sure she wasn’t falling out and breaking her skull open. You know, on the hard carpet we just had installed.
But by Monday night she’d slept through the night-ish. This is one of those rare success stories. I must write it down and save it, so when I yell “WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO DIFFICULT” she can say “not always. Remember that dark November night?” And I will concede.
But I say “-ish,” because today around 2 a.m., I heard a whimper.
Reaching back for my best “If you don’t move, Dave will think you’re in deeper sleep than he is and he’ll get up” move, I tried to steady my breathing. But then I heard babbling.
And what did my wondering eyes find behind her gated door down the hallway from our room but a toddler, sitting pretzel-legged on the floor, “Good Night, Gorilla” in her lap as if she were reading to herself.
She wrinkled her nose and did her exhale-and-laugh-through-your-nose sound as if she knew she’d been caught. She giggled when I said “Ooooh, honey, 2 in the morning isn’t for reading,” and I picked her up and put her back in bed, and she waved to me after I kissed her good night.
And then she slept til 7 a.m.
That was one of those times that dulled the fatigued caused by a 10-minute howling fit over dinner that wasn’t done EXACTLY RIGHT THIS INSTANT. I said dulled. Not erased.
Do I detect a hint of minty freshness November 1, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, Kind of unreasonable.Tags: parenting
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With Dave’s dumb hours, this mama gets to be the enforcer five nights out of seven. Under my regime, she must pick up toys. Her hands and face must be cleaned after meals. She must take baths, she must cut her nails. She must brush her teeth, go to bed.
I’m the bad guy.
So when Dave’s home on Sundays and Monday nights, I sometimes ask him to do it; or some of it.
I do this because when she wants to read a book, Mama can’t do it if Super Daddy’s in the vicinity. Nooooo, not Mama. It has to be Dad. If she wants a snack, it has to come from Dad’s hands, or else no, her head shakes, she doesn’t want it. I do this because she’ll watch TV on his lap. She’ll squeal when she hears the toilet flush upstairs, because she knows he’s on his way down. Seriously.
I do this because, OK, so what. I’m jealous.
So tonight I gave her to him so I could wallow in self loathing for a few minutes. I was doing fairly well with it when suddenly a wail of colic-like proportions erupted from the bathroom. I raced into the bathroom to find my poor baby — MY BABY — on the floor, torrential-downpour-sized tears streaming down her face, WHITE, FOAMING TOOTHPASTE in her mouth.
If you have no children this will not strike you as anything but annoying.
But my husband had her innocent little Elmo toothbrush covered in COLGATE. Adult Colgate. Her baby toothbrush.
Oh, she screamed. It burned her gums, which are already deep pink from teething. It tasted nothing like her bubble gum training paste, with the cute little bear on the package and no warning about calling the Poison Control Center on the back. Oh, my baby.
“ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL HER?!” I hissed — yes, hissed, it was one of my better moments as a wife — while trying to wipe it out with a washcloth before she swallowed it all.
“What? What did I do?”
And just like that: She wanted her Mama.
Redemption.
In better news a quick Google search says she probably won’t die from it. And she let me put her into her big girl bed in her new room, with hugs and kisses. Just for Mom.
Oh, I needed that.
Like you didn’t see this shirt coming October 26, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in It's how we roll.3 comments
When you ask her where the baby is, she’ll point to my stomach (or her own, which is slightly disconcerting). But I know she has no idea what’s coming.
And do we? We slept in ’til 9 a.m. Sunday and my first thought upon waking was “In about six months we won’t be able to do this.”
I’m also superstitious so telling more than a handful of people would just be dangerous October 24, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama.Tags: pregnancy
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The last pregnancy showed up around the time we were deciding it’d be cool to get pregnant … in the next few months. This one took some work. Every twitch last time had me Googling and diagnosing cancer of the entire body, convinced I had it bad. This one’s just causing me to have daydreams at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday about eating some chicken wangs and getting that unnaturally orange sauce all over my fingers. Mmm. Or some salsa. Yesss, Lara’s Tortilla Flats salsa.
Dave bought me a whole jar of the stuff last week. It’s almost gone.
I’m clearly going to go over my 42-pound weight gain for the first one if I give in to these demands.
Seconds-hands on clocks took minutes to pass during the first trimester with Alice, and there were lulls in between those seconds-hand movements that I died multiple times and came back only to hope it was late November and I could stop worrying I’d scream “I’m PREGNANT” in the middle of the office and have to gasp and slap my hands over my mouth and run back to my desk.
This time, seconds were seconds, and my Tourette-like fears never surfaced. I didn’t want to tell anyone. We told our parents, my two “TMI” best friends. We told our siblings, our babysitter, our bosses. Then we told no one else. And it was the warmest, happiest little secret I’ve ever kept in my pocket.
Of course one could argue not mentioning it to many people made it less real, and therefore I could forget how strongly the urge to growl hits you when you’re heating up a toddler’s food as fast as you can but she keeps “MMMMMMM”-ing and what does “MMMMMM” mean?!! AND WHY WON’T THIS MICROWAVE HEAT UP and “MMMMMM!!!”, she whines, and now it’s TOO hot and she doesn’t UNDERSTAND why I have to stand here and wave the food in front of her face and blow on it.
And it’s all very CAPITAL LETTERS.
Perhaps one could make that argument. Well, we’ll see if the crazies come back now that I’m outed.
Listen, I have something important to say this time October 22, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama.Tags: pregnancy
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The impetus behind the echoing silence on this blog is only partly explained by Alice’s energy.
There’s an elephant in the room, my friends, and it’s called “Erin’s getting chubby,” or … OK, yes, I’m pregnant.
Oh yes. It’s true. On May 5-ish, my life will get a lot more complicated.
The second time around, I feel smarter. I feel less scared. I feel just as moody. I’m always right on the edge. I don’t know what’s coming next. Dave is really nice to me.
I feel like a pooch showed up around day 14, before the pink line even registered on my fourth pregnancy test, and firmly — or softly, kind of jiggly — refused to do much but hang over my pants’ waistbands.
I also feel like Elmo’s been raising my child, and I don’t feel guilty for that. I regret having “Sing, Sing a Song” in my head at work, but these are the side effects of second pregnancies, I’m sure of it.
I’ve also realized the second time around is more fun to keep secret.
At 7 a.m. on Sept. 24, alone with a technician while Dave was at home feeding Alice her toast, I saw Cashew 2’s heartbeat, and I had to wipe a tear away because OH MY GOD WHAT DID I DO and he/she is already growing fingers and kidneys and perhaps a Wasinger nose.
And then I had to go home to show Alice and Dave our latest edition:
And I’m the one who scoffs at those dumb ‘mom guilt’ articles in parenting magazines October 19, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, Kind of unreasonable.Tags: motherhood, work
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Alice no longer requires constant babying: no coddling, no holding, no hovering. She requires some toys and some space, please. About 18 inches’ worth of space, to be exact. She requires a sippy cup of water or juice, some crackers, some cheese. Her clomping shoes and her straight-legged marching wander around our first floor and toddle up the stairs, and no she doesn’t want to hold my hand while she does it. She wants to read “Peter Pan” and Golden Books and coloring books. She wants to pull the DVDs out of the TV stand and then she wants to point and ask you to name each character, each movie.
When she watches a movie, she wants you to be there. And she wants her blankie, her pink and white silky blankie.
She’s 16 months old. She’s old.
This is what I thought of when I got to work and saw I had a couple voicemails and 670-something e-mails from over the last week. I just sighed, walked slowly to the fountain to fill up my water cup and then I sulked back and sat heavily, and cursed at every single soul on this planet. Except Alice. And probably you.
Logging back on the computer at work after a vacation with sand and sun and margaritas isn’t as hard as logging on to the computer after a vacation with Alice, the 16-month-old.
Guilt isn’t something I had before Oct. 9, because quite frankly hanging out at home with a demanding baby isn’t as much fun as it may sound. It’s cute, but it’s work. It’s easier to spend a few days at home with the baby, absorbing that talcum smell and those squishy cheek kisses, and then go back to work with adults who never scream at you to burp them.
Had I acted out how difficult it was to go back to work today, you would have been able to find me screaming obscenities in my driveway, my fingernails ripped out and bloody as I fought my way back to the house while The Man dragged me to work.
Understatement of my life: I really did not want to go to work today.
This is a development that has smacked me in the face, completely unexpected.
I don’t even know myself anymore.
Everybody wants to be a cat October 15, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, So married.Tags: halloween, vacation
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The idea was to relax and get the house to look as if upright-walking people lived in it instead of a pack of hyenas. Hyenas apparently don’t do dishes, is my conclusion. They fold laundry but let it sit on the loveseat all week. They loathe dusting. Mopping, not so much. These are the facts — and you can take them to Wikipedia.
Well. Instead I’ve decided I need to find a benefactor so I can stay home, at least part time. If anyone is interested in supporting this end by sending money to me and getting nothing but gratitude in return, let me know.
I’ve never had a whole week in my own home — without a newborn — without having to go to work. Alice and I have colored, watched “Toy Story.” We sat on the kitchen floor and I showed her the finer ways to eat string cheese. I set her down in her big puffy winter coat on Monday in the kids’ section at the library and let her linger over the puzzles table instead of our Saturday routine of begging her to go, come on, let’s go see Daddy, he needs the car to get to work.
When Dave was home earlier this week, we could eat dinner without him wiping his mouth, tossing his napkin on his empty plate and saying “Well, I gotta get going.” Mmm, potatoes without resentment are so delicious.
We played a game together for the first time since the Bush administration. Scrabble. I won. Dave’s big word: Peep. Peep? Oh yes he did spell peep.
And hey, we’ve got a Halloween costume. She’s gonna be a cat. How about that.
Third year’s a charm, I hear October 13, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Home, So married.3 comments
Today is day two of my week off work, which I took for no other reason than being able to see my husband for more than an hour a day and perhaps to sleep in past 8 a.m.
We’re a day away from being married three years (will we make it — duhn, duhn, duhn — stay tuned!), we’ve got a kid, a dog, a fish and some exciting things going on — did you see that new carpet? I mean, come on.
Four years ago this week, we were paying rent with a credit card (… inadvisable. We’re still paying for those few months) and Dave was scrounging up a measly paycheck of about three bucks working for a record store. Three years ago this week we were in our wedding best. Two years ago I was just pregnant. Last year I was saying we weren’t unhappy, just … parents of a newborn. This year, we got some new carpet. Romantic, yes. We’re great, thanks.
Blech, man. Blech. October 5, 2009
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Clorox wipes couldn’t save us from Alice’s upset stomach this weekend, try as we might to hold those suckers up in the air and scream “DIE GERMS DIE.” Apparently they work better if you use them to kill the germs before they invade. Details, details.
This weekend has been one long “your turn,” “no, man, you didn’t see that one. It’s your turn.” Etc. Meanwhile, Alice is making a mess all over and I’m thinking goldfish make really good children.
But she’s cute, so we kept her.
Guess who decided to walk September 28, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in It's how we roll, Toddling it.Tags: video
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Just as some predicted, one day she just decided crawling was for suckers.
Couldn’t have been over the weekend away, when I carried her approximately 48 miles on my hip. Couldn’t have been when I was trying to carry a heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs, with her and a purse balanced on my other arm.
But I digress. I’m not bitter.
I apologize for the darkness. Cutbacks, you know.
Oh, I should explain: The dog’s in the laundry basket because he was ruining my attempts to get a video. I swear, he doesn’t live in there.
She doesn’t look like me, but she’s mine. I promise. September 28, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Pesky memories, Something to do.Tags: vacation
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When I was about 10 or 12, my dad and stepmom took me and my siblings to the Beach, a waterpark around Cincinnati. Waterparks aren’t known for their frugality, so I was chided a bit for only riding the lazy river all day.
Well. Slides scare the bejeezus out of me. The world should be still beneath my feet, my heartrate should be as if I were standing. Putting my life on nothing but a flimsy piece of plastic intertube sounds as much fun to me, still, as getting my fingernails ripped out by a wild tiger.
So. So.
So, this weekend Alice and I were invited to the Kalahari for a free trip (tip: making new friends? Pick someone who has “continuing education” requirements) with some friends (and I’m not even making this up). Weee! Hotel room soap! Weee! Comfy bed I don’t have to share with anyone! Weee, weee, weee. Alice liked the shopping, she liked the chicken finger lunch, the french fries.
But the water park was greeted with all the enthusiasm of moi, circa 1993. Oh, fate, you sly dog.
My God. Walking in the waterpark, I suddenly had the rabid, screaming hyena in my arms. Oh, the horror!, the water! It must be fire! Or acid! MOM! ALLIGATORS! MOM! Her legs curled up under her ruffly-bottom swimsuit, her talons fit nicely between my first few layers of skin. Her wail reduced to a whine, until some brat splashed her in the face, and then it was back to pleading for reason. (I’ve never been so angry at an innocent 8-year-old child, even when I was 8 and some other brat outted me at a slumber party for having a blankie. Eight-year-olds are BRATS, the WHOLE LOT OF THEM.)
By Sunday, when Dave joined us for the day, she was cool with watching other people swim, which was officially Big Improvement. I also escaped on the lazy river myself, so. So. We’re better now.
Can’t rush her. We’ve tried. September 19, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Toddling it.2 comments
I’ve caught her taking a few steps, usually when I’m acting non-chalant and not 100 percent watching. She’ll stoop over to pick up her blanket or a walnut shell, she does a zombie-like march, not bending her knees. She’ll bounce a little bit in between shuffle-steps, like at any minute she’ll be ready to bow out.
But most of the time it’s just a crawl, or a one-legged crab crawl.
First bubble bath September 16, 2009
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We were trying for a Santa-like beard. She opted for just slapping herself on the face. She soon after regretted that decision.
I thought maybe she’d learn to walk before learning to sass, but I was wrong September 15, 2009
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She’s testing me.
She’s 15 months old and she’s already testing me.
“Don’t sit on the keyboard,” I’ll say, removing her from the kitty-shaped keyboard on the floor in front of us.
She’ll move back to sitting right on middle C, not taking her eyes off mine.
“Off. Or Mommy takes it away.”
She stares at me.
I move her off. Her arm angrily slaps the ground, not once moving her gaze. I attempt to distract her. “Look at the fishy. Where’s the fishy?”
And she points (yes, to her new fish; we haven’t kept her six dead fish), then puts her chubby thighs back on the keyboard.
As promised, the keyboard is then mine. I move it to the couch, and she whines, slapping my leg.
She’s 15 months old.
It’d be frustrating if it weren’t so, well, funny. She thinks she has a choice! Isn’t that darling. Oh, honey. Mama always wins.
Six moments of silence September 9, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Bad ideas, Kind of unreasonable.Tags: ridiculous, yes.
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There’s been a death in the family today.
More precisely, there have been six deaths in the family today.
What we lost was not only six respected goldfish, but also a centerpiece on our dining room table. Please bow your heads.
The passing of Dorothy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 marks both the longest that 28-cent fish have survived under my care and the largest suicide pact in Wasinger family pet history. Or Wasinger history, I believe. I have reason to suspect Dorothy 6, the ugly brown-not-gold-fish goldfish, was behind the whole mass side-swimming movement. But there’s no reason to malign the dead.
We’ll just mourn their passing, wipe the smelly bowl clean and put it in the closet.
Alice is really torn up about it. She’d been pointing and saying “mmm!” at their bowl for 1/22ndthst of her life. Now what is she supposed to do — Crawl on by, pretending they never happened? Oh, Dorothy. Times six.
So, no, we won’t be getting any more fish.
(Fish poo. It’s something they don’t advertise on the box, but I think I should point that out here. Six Dorothys were enough for a while.)
Sesame Street is a big deal for us. We don’t get out much. September 9, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Home, Kind of unreasonable.3 comments
She would have no one else but me on that four-day trip to Ohio, and maybe sometimes, if she felt like it, sorta Gramma.
The rest of the world be damned. My shoulder was the most comfortable spot. Her bony butt bones dug into my hip bones, my arm ached, but her monkey-like grip just tightened around my shoulders.
No one but me.
Twelve years from now I will point to this post and say “YOU, WITH YOUR EYE MAKEUP — YOU USED TO LOVE ME.” And eyes will roll, doors will slam and angry 2021-era emo music will blare from 2021-era speakers, and I’ll close my eyes and soothe myself a bit on the memory of her gripping my thighs in desperation, her little neck arched backwards, her teeth grinding together, her “Mmmm!!!”
I’ll remember her desperation to sit on my lap, to be held til my arms shook, to sit near me if not on me.
And how easily Elmo could buy me a good five minutes.
You’ve gotta get one of these things September 8, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Bad ideas.Tags: traveling
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I will from henceforth call the inventor of the portable DVD player “Lover.”
Sorry to the prudish, but that man or woman deserves everything they earn. They deserve my eternal love and devotion, and perhaps a nice day off. Go ahead. Take the afternoon off, sir/ ma’am. Here’s $5. Go get yourself something nice, like a Sesame Street DVD from the library and a Twinkie, and take it easy.
When you’re sitting in park on I-90 in Nowhere, Ind., and a barefoot Jim Bob-type gets out of his car in front of you to both check the cooler in the bed of the beat-up pickup and then wander to the median to check on the traffic in front of us, you need Big Bird.
When you’ve just spent a 15 minutes waiting in line at a Burger King — and who even likes Burger King, really — at an oasis, and three unsupervised chunky, loud, greasy-haired preteens knock into the umbrella stroller because one wanted ketchup so they all must hover like muffin-topped punk-wannabes, YOU NEED BIG BIRD.
And maybe a drink.
When you have 45 minutes to go, and every book, Binkie and graham cracker from Fort Wayne to Road P in Van Wert County has hit the back of the driver’s seat, Big Bird is damn sexy.
I swear to all that is holy … That DVD player is in my top 5 list of most favorite possessions as a mother.
Am I rotting her brain with TV? Spoiling her precious imagination and language skills with mindless DVD after DVD? Perhaps. But it eases the guilt to pick something with some sort of redeeming value.
It’s not like it was something like “Fraggle Rock.”
OK, so she didn’t like “Fraggle Rock.”
Dad calls those your chubby pajamas. September 2, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, Toddling it.Tags: Erin gets emotional
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Dear Alice,
Someday your friends at school will be talking about some inane reality TV show, and you’ll laugh a little too loudly because you won’t want them to know that the night before you were enthralled in “Nova.”
At least that’s our hope for you.
It was just another banner weeknight last Tuesday for us, too. Wearing pajama bottoms and your ketchup-riddled daytime shirt, we watched the council meeting on TV while you dumped all your crayons out of the empty diaper wipe container and then picked them all up again, over and over.
Someone would comment, and you’d look up from your mess of crayons and say “mmm?”, which is your favorite word this month, used as an exclamation, a question, or a statement. “Mmmm.” “Mmmm?” “Mmm!”
Then the mayor would call for a vote, and you’d stand up.
The clerk would call a last name. “Aye,” they’d each say. “(Last name), aye,” the clerk repeated.
You’d rock back and forth, pointing at the TV while looking at me and repeat “Aye! Aye! Aye!”
And that’s when I knew you’d fit in here.
Besides participating in small-city politics from our living room, you’ve also been developing a streak of shyness. While you shriek out “aye”s at home, you hide your face in the crook of my neck when anyone approaches you.
Even just laying eyes on our friends and their 19-month-old standing in our living room could cause your bottom lip to curl and your big blue eyes (as cashiers and strangers remind us in public) to overflow these crocodile tears. It’s really going to net you some figurative ponies from unsuspecting boyfriends someday. But not before you’re 25.
And the rest of your new traits just round out the day. You flail yourself forward out of my arms to wake up your dad every morning. You point and whine — more “mmm!” — til we give you more ketchup (note that should be “give you more ketchup,” in quotes, because you’re not smart enough yet to realize when Mommy makes the squishy noise with her mouth, no ketchup is actually coming out the bottle that’s suspended over your dinner). You try to drain the bathwater as soon as I say “push the button.” You try to put every article of clothing on over your head.
You make my day pretty much every day. Pretty much. At least 70 percent of the time.
Love you, Googly Bear.
Mama
Shh, I’m trying to enjoy myself August 28, 2009
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Alice picked up a mug of Dave’s lukewarm coffee from, appropriately (or so Dave thought), the coffee table, and promptly dumped it all over the navy blue carpet.
Two weeks later, the dog is still licking the carpet. And yeah, I was told Dave cleaned it up.
We had spaghetti the other night — so I was reminded when I found a spaghetti noodle in the bathtub.
Our paint job’s complete, but our carpet-and-curtains splurge has yet to commence, so we’re one wagon-wheel-couch away from looking like a bachelor’s place.
But no one’s mentioned layoffs for like a whole month, so we’re trying to just, you know, stay low. Shhh.
I love the fishes cuz they’re so delicious … Wait, wrong goldfish. August 23, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in It's how we roll.Tags: photo
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Nina bought Alice her first pet — or, her first six pets.
Meet Dorothy (1-6, only 2 and 5 pictured below):
I swear if I end up being the one feeding them, picking up after them and taking them outside to pee at 11 p.m. in February … Kids these days.
I’ve been driving everyone crazy August 22, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in It's how we roll.Tags: video
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But “The Phantom of the Opera” is just so darn catchy.
Just ask Alice.
So here’s my excuse. August 20, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Home, It's how we roll.Tags: home stuff
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We picked the family room to start, because the scumbling has been slowly eroding our wills to live over these last three years.
But when the family room was cured of its faux finish, the lavender bedroom beckoned, and then the sea foam green bathroom, and before we were done we were crashing on the crummy college-era mattress in the spare room with dried adobe white latex paint on our heels.
And by “college-era” I mean my dad bought that on a yard sale when he was in college, and it’s been mine since my own toddlerhood. It’s that good.
It’s been that kind of week.
So now we’ve got paint on our ugly navy blue carpet, which has a very short time left under my feet anyhow. We’ve got curtains that don’t match; bare, stark walls, and “Masquerade” in my head, because I’ve been painting with my “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack blaring on my iPod.
And did I mention my inlaws are coming tomorrow? Oh. I guess I should pick up the week’s worth of laundry. Whoops!
So, that’s my excuse.
Running out of batteries isn’t a bad thing August 10, 2009
Posted by erinfrances in Being a mama, Kind of unreasonable.Tags: toddlerhood, toys
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We’ve been hobbling along her first few months of toddlerhood with a walk-and-ride bike, a sandbox and an Elmo movie. That about concludes the list of big-kid toys around here — oh, wait, there’s the purse that sings this when you open it:
“I open up my purse, I close it up and then, put my things inside and take them out again! Learn about some numbers, count from one to 10 — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.”
Which is in no way annoying.
So it was time to go and actually buy something that didn’t have a teething ring attached to it, if only so we could convince her to come home with us after an afternoon playing at the sitter’s or our friend’s house. Bribery, you might say.
We strapped her in a cart in Target and were walking the aisles ostensibly for a vacuum filter, but let’s not kid ourselves; those aren’t next to the Little People. And suddenly it was like something in Alice snapped: “What the crap … Look at this. AND THIS! MOM! DAD!” Her big eyes got bigger, her pointing got more forceful. It was like her toybox on acid. LOOK! “Dis! Dis!” she was saying and pointing: “DIS!” There was a keyboard! A baby drum set! An Elmo doll that actually moved instead of clunked around like the 1999 Tickle Me Elmo she inherited, sitting dejectedly and heavily on her shelf.
Oh yes. Yes, she coveted these things.
But I, the mama, coveted more. Because I’m adult, and I wanted it all. I wanted the big blocks, the instruments set (I quickly talked myself out of that one), the piggy bank that counts, the puzzles.
We walked out with a school bus for some Little People and some clippy-block-buildy things that appeared to have a fighting chance against the dog.
But it was so hard to say no. We said no because I’m cheap, because this is how it starts — and it ends with a Hannah Montana poster and a Bratz doll, and that’s no life.
But it was difficult.
See, I’m beginning to fantasize about all the mean-spirited things I could do to that purse’s batteries.
