Outnumbered Two to One

Occasionally I like to get away from my children. I run screaming, actually. Then I giggle like a school girl as I watch my house shrink in the rearview mirror. It’s the cheapest therapy I can think of.

Usually Mom’s Night Out involves me and my sister going out to dinner, gorging on gigantic portions to near splitting, and gloating over the fact that we don’t have to quiet, feed, or wipe down anyone but ourselves. We can have uninterrupted conversations. Uninterrupted. When other people’s children squeal or cry or throw forks at the wait staff, we grin silently with the knowledge that it’s not our problem and…well, we’ve been there.

Last night we decided on The Cheesecake Factory since it’s midway between her house and my house. Let me tell you why that was a bad choice.

The food was great, the cheesecake was yummy but last night was special. It was $1.50 a slice cheesecake night, compared to their regular priced $8-ish a slice, apparently a rare occurence. So we accidentally stumbled upon a great deal, right? Except so did everyone and their moms and their grandmas and even their distant aunties. It was a Wednesday and we had to wait an hour and a half for a table. I was starving and sweating and getting elbowed as we waited outside for our little buzzer to light up announcing our table was finally available. By the time we finished eating it was 10:30. By the time we paid our tab and walked out, we couldn’t think of a single other thing to do. We don’t drink, we don’t party, we don’t play pool, and there are no late movies on a Wednesday.

We called it a night.

Even so, it was totally worth it to come home to a quiet house where the kids were sleeping peacefully. They’re like little angels when they’re sleeping.

The coffee table is not a bed but…

It’s been a long day of thunder, lightning, and rain with a side of showers. So me and the kids were…per the standard this summer…slacking. Hard.

Occasionally my dearest husband gets into these moods where witnessing the varying vegetative states of his children will drive him into a motivational frenzy. The TV gets shut off, the lectures ensue, and everyone starts doing the headless chicken dance looking for something productive to occupy their time. For me it was abandoning my computer and heading to the boys room to…gulp…clean out their drawers…and…their closet…and…one of their two toyboxes.

I was reluctant. I was overwhelmed. I was afraid.

My kids accumulate ALOT of crap. I don’t even know how it happens, there’s just stuff everywhere, like maybe while we sleep their junk is just multiplying itself exponentially. I just want to go in there with a bulldozer and tear everything out, just leave the walls and mattresses and burn everything else in a fabulous bonfire.

There are moments too when I hesitated. For example a couple of Christmases ago my 5 year old got something called T-Rex mountain as a gift. T-Rex mountain is one of those toys you should never give to people whose friendship you value, it should be up there with Play-Doh and Lego’s and permanent markers. It’s a contraption of rocky panels and plastic crevices and fossilized bone attachments, that are supposed to fit together to form this impressive mountain with a roaring dino head at its apex. My son was NEVER able to put this thing together. EVER. It was constantly falling apart at the slightest provocation. So that it was always in a dismantled heap in the corner of the room, until my son would beg me to rebuild it, during which time he’d get tired of watching me grunt like a neanderthal and walk away. I didn’t want to part with it though, because it was a big gift from a beloved family member and…I don’t know it came in a nice box.

Today I took the plunge. I dumped T-Rex mountain in a plastic garbage bag headed for the local Goodwill. Along with two other big bags of toys, stuffed animals, and outgrown clothes.

It was work, lemme tell you, on a day when manual labor was not in my forecast. That deserves a toot.

So does my husband, for forcing me into manual labor…the cad.

I’m not proud to admit it. Yet the blogosphere allows for a certain measure of anonymity I can appreciate. So I’ll confess.

I’m being held hostage by a one-and-a-half-year-old.

In my defense, the boy is a master manipulator. He’s been under the weather lately and it seems the prolonged coddling has given him the impression he has the upper hand. Okay, maybe it’s more than an impression, based on today’s events he may have cemented his standing as house dictator.

It started this morning when I had to take my daughter to swim class. I’d planned to leave him behind with his biggest sis, attempting to slip away with little fanfare. But as soon as I put on shoes, he knew something was amiss. So, to ensure he didn’t get left behind, he grabbed my car keys and proceeded to shadow me as I made my way through the house. The implicit threat of a full-blown-rupture-your-eardrum tantrum, loomed dangerously over my head. My teen is responsible but leaving her with an inconsolable baby was out of the question.

That set the tone for the rest of the day.

He brought me his pajamas. I thought he wanted to go to bed, so I took off his play clothes and tried to dress him in his sleep clothes. As soon as his pants were off, he took off running. It seemed wearing a diaper was all the rage, until he tried to peel that off too.

I didn’t give in to his every whim, but it did feel like I was playing the role of personal baby taxi. With two perfectly functioning legs, he spent most of the day on my hip like a pink hairless chimp, searching my hair for ticks and pointing me in the direction he wanted to go.

With a face like this though…I’m helpless.

http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/skin/roseola.html

After my toddler’s fever broke early yesterday, my little tyrrant developed a rash that’s spread along his back and chest. We called the doctor last night around 7-ish.

He returned our call at…3 AM!

I had just dozed off when the phone started ringing. 3 AM phone calls are NEVER good. I just about fell out of bed trying to reach the cordless phone on my dresser. When I answered it was the pediatrician, sounding rather relaxed. There was music and activity in the background, indicative of what I can only imagine was a late night shindig. Perhaps a rave. I don’t know. I was a mess, I thought someone was dead, I thought someone was hospitalized. Nobody calls our house in the pre-dawn hours unless it’s life or death. In this case, it was a glitch in his answering service’s transmittal, something he apologized for…just not nearly enough.

It’s nice to have a diagnosis for what’s been ailing my little boy, only less so at 3 AM on a Saturday night. The viral infection pretty much resolves itself, and keeping his fever down was really the only treatment, so we fared well all things considering. My nerves were shot after that call though, I was twitching for half an hour before I finally fell off to sleep. Then had my usual 8 AM wake up call, which goes something like “mommymommymommymommymommymommymommymommy”. No snooze button on that one.

They’re not that far removed, teens and toddlers I mean. They’re both about testing limits, pushing the envelope, exacting their will. When their efforts are met with unyielding barriers, they respond in kind. Toddlers throw tantrums because their understanding of language is limited, they express their anger and frustration physically - throwing things, flailing, screaming incoherently. Teens throw a somewhat evolved tantrum involving eye-rolls, muffled shrieks, and slammed doors. Their somewhat broader vocabulary suddenly limited to “oh my God” and “whatever” and my favorite “I don’t care.”

It’s enough to drive a person to drink. Not me per se, but maybe another person.

If you want to torture someone, interrupt their sleep periodically with the piped in sonata of a screaming two year old or have them try to solve a quadriatic equation with a small child hanging on to their pant leg shrieking “mommy, mommy, mommy”.

Or you could go the other route. Send them to the grocery store with a surly teen, who alternately talks your ear off about their love of cheese then broods while casting you loathing glares.

It’s never a dull time, I’ll tell you that much.

I embark on this weekend with a vague diagnosis of a throat infection, most likely viral, currently making its way through my toddler’s system. He’s feverish, he’s crankier than usual, and he’s not eating. I am stressed, exhausted, and losing my patience. Right now I’m waiting for midnight to roll around so I can give him his next dose of Tylenol.

Two nights in a row of predawn awakenings are taking its toll and of course I’m at it alone because my better half is on shift. Bummer for me.

I meant to stay up late tonight, working on a revision to a short story I’m tinkering with. Instead I’m trying not to go bananas with a combination of worry and frustration and guilt for being frustrated about being worried.

Yeah, not much room for creativity there.

I’m gonna chill my baby a bit with a damp wash cloth and hope the medicine keeps his temp down. Apart from that, sleep is high up on my list of priorities.

We’re still recovering from our birthday festivities, not to mention a sick baby who was feverish and calling my name all night long. Around lunch time we sat down in the living room to watch Napoleon Dynamite on DVD. It’s one of our favorites for some unknown reason, we’ll quote his inane dialogue for weeks after a viewing.

Halfway through though, a monster electrical storm rolls in. Lightning strikes booming in the very near vicinity, until a huge CRACK exploded just outside, and just like that the power was out. Rain was sheeting down, it looked like a hurricane was blowing through, swirls of water coming into the patio sideways. It was quite a sight.

So with no mind-numbing television to watch as a family, we did the next best thing. We taught the kids to play poker. It was a good time. We didn’t use chips, we were just trying to get them to understand the concept and recognize a good hand. They all enjoyed it. Except for our little one who was sleeping his infection off less than peacefully.

Even after the power came back up, we kept dealing, taking turns with a Tinkerbell crown passed on to the winner of each hand. My son was in stitches when his dad sported the dainty crown and he was more than happy to wear it himself.

I was the one to finally break the spell. After my husband took the three older kids to the library, I broke out the Guitar Hero just to get in a couple of songs uninterrupted. Of course they came in just as I started playing Barracuda, but then again that’s the story of my life. After kids, nothing ever goes uninterrupted, least of all sleep.

I ushered them out before sundown. Our sleepover guests. It was a stressful 24 hours, not one that I want to relive any time soon.

The amount of unadulterated whining I’ve been exposed to, it’s got to be equivalent to some sort of massive radiation dosage because it honestly feels like my brain is disintegrating. Several times I found myself on the brink…that dangerous line between rational-reasonable-lets-work-this-out-mom and glowing-red-eyed-i’ll-swallow-your-soul-mom. I might have been trembling with subdued rage a couple of times there, but I choked it down with some rice krispie treats and coffee. 

Overall fun was had by all (of them), gifts and goodies were exchanged, then bowling, then sandwiches and ice-cream cake. The end.

Unfortunately it seems some sort of viral infection made the rounds, as my youngest came down with a fever, which only added to the craziness, but I suppose we’re past pointing fingers right now.

I’ve really got to start screening my visitors though, maybe hire a medical professional to stand at the door and examine any prospective guests for signs of incubating. Take samples to be analyzed overnight. Anyone with a temperature of 99 or above will be abruptly turned away, as will callers with sniffles, rashes, upset stomachs, headaches, and/or nausea. Oh and also people who’ve recently left the country. I think it’s fair.

It’s not just for my protection, it’s for the benefit of all those who live under my protection, who I’m responsible for nursing back to health at the cost of my sleep and sanity.

They’re fun when you’re a kid, not so much when you’re the grown-up hosting said function.

We’ve got four kids, plus three that aren’t mine, one of whom is currently running a fever and threatening to throw up, probably on one of the other children. I signed up for feeding extra children, I sprung for the hot dogs, I made rice krispie treats, I’ve got a sweet breakfast spread planned. It’s all good. Cleaning foreign puke, well, that’s not part of the bargain, especially when there’s a possibility it’s contagious. 

We’re supposed to be bowling tomorrow, to celebrate my daughter’s tenth birthday, hopefully it will be barf free. Right now kids are still stirring, I can’t even get my thoughts together, and those rice krispie treats are calling me. More tomorrow.