Things That Fly Out of Our Mouths

“Do nice! Niceness! Niceness to each other!”

“Aim down so you don’t pee on your pants!” And yes, that IS directed at my female child. Go figure.

“Stop sticking things up your nose!”

“Use words or I cannot help you!”

“We don’t eat the toothpaste.”

“Mommy doesn’t like to have [insert play dough, paper towel, slice of cheese, etc. here] in her coffee.” Yes, I drank an entire cup of interesting tasting coffee only to discover a hunk of green play dough soaking on the bottom. Yum.

“Hands don’t belong down our pants.”

“Poop goes in the potty.”

“You still working on that poop?”

“We do NOT poop in the bath tub!” Yes, I have noticed it, too. So much of my daily conversations now concern base bodily functions. Exciting.

“Library books are not used to make confetti!”

“Our feet like to stay UNDER the table during dinner!”



Things that fly out of my daughter’s mouth on a daily basis:


“Where is pumpkin? Where is pumpkin? Here I am…”

“I am going to bring my pajamas into the space ship.” Yeah, that one was totally out of left field.

“That’s Alizée’s car. Want Alizée to drive? Yeah? Okay!”

“Oliver wants to sleep in my bed!”

“Whatchyoosay?!”

Recent conversation between Alizée and Uncle Matt:

A- “Now you stay right here in the bathroom and I am turning off the light and closing the door. You stay right here and do NOT open the door and do NOT call for Alizée. I am right here and you are in here because you are yelling.”
M- Completely confused and standing in a dark bathroom being scolded by a three
year old.


Come into the kitchen as breakfast is being eaten and Alizée says, “All the monkeys are eating!”

“Jesus rose again on the spaceship!” …I think we may have another cult leader on our hands!

“No, that’s my piracy!” She means privacy.

“Jus a spoonful of shoo heps the messin go down…a lox a scree, it’s very clee to see...” I used to like Mary Poppins very much until the last bout of ear infections. We have been singing it ever since.

“Oliver wants (insert whatever Alizée currently wants here)!”

“I wanna get outta here!” Yeah, well you know what? Sometimes I do too!!

Content in my "Nothingness"

I have been living under a self-imposed misapprehension for most of my adult life.

Hi. My name is Jennifer. And I believed the lie that I have to “Be Somebody” or “Do Something” in order to live a purposeful and productive life. I am now removing myself from underneath this rock that I have inadvertently placed upon myself. It’s taking some time, but I am worth it.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they have their Twelve Steps; admitting they have a problem, submitting to a Higher Power, making amends or apologies. I guess, this could be one of my steps in telling myself that I need not apologize for who I am and who I am not. I am me and that is quite beyond good enough.

I don’t know when it began or why, as that seems to be the way with most things in life, but I have always strived towards some unknown or undiscovered goal to “Be Somebody” in this world. We always hear these statements about “making your mark” and “leaving a legacy” and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with these ideals intrinsically, they are all wonderfully exemplary, I may have taken them to a level beyond. Conversely I thought, if I did not leave my indelible mark upon this earth for people or if I have not left some massive legacy behind for my children, family, friends and anyone else than I would have been a waste of space, breathe, time and resources upon this planet. A burden. With every day that passed that I was not the best at something, anything, then I was a complete and utter failure. At absolutely everything.

I would see a person that I may have labeled “smart” reading a certain book and so I would make a mental note to read it, too. Even now, I see people doing wonderful things and being fabulously creative and for the most part, I admire it, but in all honesty, I try very hard to not become slightly jealous, not necessarily of the person, but of what they could do and are doing.

I take things too personally. It seems as though everyone around me has these wonderful talents and abilities and uses their time to hone their skills and practice or create these wonderful things and these amazing lives they seem to be living and even in light of being happy for and proud of them, I think, “What the heck is wrong with ME that I can’t do SOMETHING? ANYTHING?”

Well, I have come to a conclusion. Are you ready for this complete and utter shocker of an epiphany? This revelation? There is nothing wrong with me. I am not a waste of time or space. I am simply and wholly and completely JUST ME. No apologies. I strive to do my best and to be the best me I can be, but that is really the only thing I can do in life. The only thing any of us can do.

I love to cook, but I will probably never be a chef or The Next Food Network Star.
I love to read and write and will continue to do so. Will I ever be able to sit down and complete a novel worthy of popular publication? I do hope so.
I love my kids and my family. Will I ever get a TLC show out of it? In light of the Jon & Kate Plus 8 media storm, good God, I hope not!
I am particularly fabulous at any one thing in particular? Not that I can think of, but that is okay. I am okay.

This is not a manifesto or apology for mediocrity or laziness in the least and I hope it is not coming across as such, and even if it does, then perhaps, I am not as clear a writer as I had hoped to be at the moment, but I am still working on it. And that is entirely the point. All I can ever do is be me and enjoy my journey. I am tired of all of my own hang ups and taking upon myself the things that I think that others think I should or could be doing and/or not doing. This is all I have. This moment. And I am going to be me in it with everything I can and that is good enough.

My “nothing” seems to be a whole lot of somethings. I am living. If this is being “nothing” and doing “nothing,” then so be it. I seem to be busy enough with my “nothingness” and I am content. And this is more than good enough for me.

Spoonfuls of Sugar

SCALE
If I could only see the scale,
I'm sure that it would state
That I've lost ounces... maybe pounds
Or even tons of weight.
"You'd better eat some pancakes--
You're skinny as a rail."
I'm sure that's what the scale would say...
If I could see the scale.

From,
Falling Up
Copyright 1996 by Shel Silverstein
HarperCollins Publishers

Because It's Been Awhile

I don't know if anyone misses me when I don't write for some time so I figured I would jot a short note for the two or three people who may have felt pangs of sadness in my absence. Or not, but I felt I should say something...

We've been busy.

My son is "cruising" and into just about everything and when we tell him, "No!" to things he just smiles like he's in on our silly little game and he goes right ahead and does whatever we have tried to stop him from doing. Usually when our hands are full or our daughter has also just gotten into something. Her game is a bit more complex. She does what she knows we don't want her to do because she is an observer. She likes to push our proverbial parental buttons and see what transpires. So, yeah, busy.

My husband's schedule has been completely nutso, to say the least, lately. I cannot get over how one slight ring from his phone and every muscle in my entire body tightens. I automatically get ready to spring because every call could be dispatch and if it is, he grabs his bags and sprints out the door. Stressful? Slightly. Just a tad. I look at the calendar on the computer three dozen times a day planning every day should he be here, not be here, and should I have to move something around for whatever reason, is that at all possible? I always try to make it so. No complaints, though. I am not ranting in the least, just explaining my sabbatical from blog world for the past ten days. We have a good life and my husband loves what he does and we just do what we have to do. I think in the past few days my husband has driven back and forth from Connecticut half a dozen times. Mix ups and changes in plans and mechanics with the plane. This is precisely why those who work and the families of those who work in the travel industry rarely travel.

That and a bunch of other things and swirl the daily daily-ness of life on top of it all and there you have it. Was this a boring read? I apologize. I will be sharper and wittier and more banter friendly for the next one...

"A World of Pure Imagination"

I like to make up words:

Nastified

Stinktastic

Actually you can add the ending –tastic to almost anything. Poo-tastic, Fart-tastic, Crack-tastic, Stank-tastic, etc. It’s most funny when paired with an overabundance of a bodily function. I don’t know why.

Craxy –that was actually a typo that just got added to our everyday vernacular. Particularly crazy = craxy

Sometimes I lovingly refer to our dog, the furry baby, as Turd Muffin.

Adding –o at the end of a word is also fun.
Retard-o, Awesome-o… Those may be the only two…

If you watched late night television in the ‘90’s then you may be familiar with that SNL sketch with Rob Schneider as the copy guy who added -meister to the end of words and other such nonsense. We may have gotten adding –ster to the endings of certain words from that. Sebastian is also referred to as “The Seb-ster” or if anyone is particularly cranky, they have become a “Crank-ster” (refer to the next one and “Uber Crankster” may be applicable), etc.

One can add “uber” in front of anything other than “super” or “very.” I tend to do that a lot. Uber tired, uber nutty, uber good, uber awesome, etc.

That’s all for now…

The Backward Pajama Brigade: A Poo-tastrophe

If you ask a parent what their favorite sounds are, I am fairly confident that their child’s laughter along with the sweet serenity of silence are on the top of that list.

If you ask a parent what sounds fill them with terror of impending doom, these same items would also top the list.

If we lived on a farm, my children would be waking up the roosters. It always seems to be on the mornings where inexplicably the clock creeps past seven and perhaps even later, that the worst episodes with my children occur. First there is laughter at the crack of dawn and I am relieved that I am not waking up to screaming. Then it gets quiet. Too quiet. Quiet like it was before the arrival of the little house monkeys and so the drifting back into sleep is inevitable. Then before you know it, it’s past eight in the morning and it’s still quiet. This is when the catapult out of bed occurs and the mindless, insane dash into the children’s room happens, only to be met by a site that takes the ticks of ten to twenty seconds before the magnitude of the situation truly sinks in.

What could have occurred, you ask, that makes me fear the laughter and silence of my children? A poo-tastrophe.

If you have never experienced one, then count yourself among the blessed, fortunate, and to be envied for they are ridiculously hideously tedious and stressful and can take hours of cleaning and bleaching to return a room back to normal with only the faint smell of human excrement left behind. Forgive me if this is a tad gross, but it happens and it happens a lot, especially to us, so I am going to tell my story…

When my daughter turned two, she was still in her crib and still napped on a somewhat consistent basis, but something very disturbing began to occur. Perhaps I broached the potty training too soon. Maybe I reacted in such a way in the first instance to cause this to become a “thing” with her, but there it is and it began; she began to remove her pajamas in the mornings and at nap times and along with it, her diaper. Needless to say, the poo-tastrophe was born. When it became too consistent for my sanity, I started looking around for solutions. I read sites online and was relieved to find out that my child was not the only one indelibly and completely obsessed by their bowel movements. Yes, it is normal. But the kicker is this: One cannot reason with a two year old, one cannot fully explain the utter disgustingness of the situation, nor can one demonstrate what it takes to un-contaminate from such an episode. Thus we are left with the one lesson I have learned and have had learned the hard way: There are some things in parenting we cannot do anything about. In other words, you have just got to deal! Which is what I began to do.

I talked to other moms who dealt with similar issues and received a slew of advice and encouragement. I could not in good conscience duct tape a diaper to my child. Sleeping with her in her room or sitting with her until she slept simply did not work at all. Even when it kept occurring, I tried many different responses: the shock and clean up along with lots of “No, no!!!” and “We don’t throw poo! It’s yucky” with stern looks, the shut out with clean up and ignoring the proud looks and “See, it’s poop!” and even the time outs and removing of toys to discourage it. None to any avail. Then I started putting on pajamas backward. Stretch and twist the footsies to the front and zip it and button it up the back! She would still poop during bedtimes and naptimes but at least it remained contained and much easier to dispose! The poo-tastrophes were over.

My daughter has since been more or less potty trained and the fiascos have been more or less becoming minimal and we have almost forgotten the strain and tension that came along with sleep times in our home…until recently…

My son is just over one year old and he shares a room with my daughter. There have been a few incidents, as she enjoys climbing into his crib and keeping him entertained. This entertainment has taken a turn for the worst.

In all attempts to be the best that I can be and to prevent as much as I can, I get the bright idea, yet again, to put my second child’s pajamas backwards. If he gets out of them, then I know of a little girl who might have possibly (most definitely) “helped” in the situation.

This was last night.

8 a.m. this cloudy morning. Silence, then slight giggles. Catapult out of bed. Rush through kids’ bedroom door and the horror has begun yet again.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...”