08.16.08
There went my dinner…up in smoke.
It was 5:00. We were hungry. What to eat? Nothing in the kitchen looked good…and the thought of actually cooking something didn’t sound great either. Then, I had a brilliant idea - a pizza place in the next town where my family went at least once a week for the duration of my childhood, but that my husband and children had never visited. So we jumped in the van, and we were off.
Everything about the place was the same - the big, medieval style handle on the door, the small-ish tables and rickety wooden chairs, the handpainted coats of arms decorating the walls, the jukebox, the penny gumball machine by the door. Even the smell of the place was exactly the same as it was twenty years ago - I’ve never encounted another pizza that smells quite like theirs. Two of the people behind the counter were familiar faces from my childhood, although a bit older now. I happily placed our order, introduced my old friends to my husband and children, and headed for “our” table in the far corner. We settled down with our drinks, and prepared to have a nice meal.
And then I choked. And gagged. And nearly heaved. A quick glance around the small-ish dining area brought back to me the one memory that had obviously been suppressed: this restaurant still allows smoking. And a large table behind us was taking full advantage of the fact, with three patrons happily puffing away. Next to them, another table of smokers. And across the room, still more.
Now, I don’t know if there’s such a thing as an actual allergy to cigarette smoke, but if there is, I have one. My throat closes right up at the smell of the stuff - I can’t breathe, I can’t talk, I feel sick. If I hang around it for long enough, I actually become sick. But even worse than my own physiological symptoms is the immediate rage I now feel when cornered by secondhand cigarette smoke - how DARE they smoke on my children?! I snatched Boogie out of her high chair and took my children outside for a walk while we waited for our food. After several minutes, we ventured back in to find things not much better. And although it saddened me immensely to do it, I finally requested our meal to go instead.
It turned out okay in the end. We drove to a nearby park - that Princess loves, and that we don’t get to visit often enough - and ate under the picnic shelter, then played on the playground. She loved it. But I’m still irritated that a few smokers ruined my plan for dinner. Ruined my reminiscing.
I know that we should hate the sin and love the sinner, but it’s darned hard for me when it comes to smoking. Smokers are, in my experience, such a self-righteous bunch. “I have the RIGHT to smoke”, etc. Funny, I think that humans should have the right to BREATHE. Especially innocent children. I’ve been around for long enough now that I’m sure there’s some secondhand crap cluttering my lungs already - and really, once you have children, your own life isn’t *quite* as important as before anyway. But my babies’ lungs are pink and spotless, and goshdarnit I intend for them to stay that way for as long as possible.
Do smokers even know how disgusting they are because of their habit? Do they realize how ridiculous they look with a cloud of smoke following them everywhere they go? Do they know that people notice their yellow teeth and hands and that their breath could puke a dog on a gut wagon? Does it really not bother them that people are constantly having to move away from them? I mean, it’s like self-induced body odor. I just don’t understand.
And I would love to know what chemical in cancer sticks makes them stop caring about social niceties, such as keeping their filth to themselves. Even those with language that would make a sailor blush with shame will very often refrain in mixed company. But not smokers. They feel entitled, somehow, to spread it around.
My husband, who loves listening to talk radio, told me on the way home that Neal Boortz loves to rant about smokers, calling them “filthy drug addicts” and smoking “an act of self-hatred”. I couldn’t agree more. I understand that it’s a habit, and that it’s hard to quit - but nothing worthwhile in this life comes easily. And who wouldn’t want just to be healthy again, to extend their life by a few years - and to stop being gross and irritating as well? Maybe I’ll never understand. Certainly I’ll always have to avoid them. And this probably won’t be my last rant about them. You’ve been warned…
08.05.08
Since I’m a slacker…
I started this blog because I had become so horrible at updating my old one. Apparently, old habits are hard to break. So before I forget entirely what’s happening right now, a quick rundown of what Boogie is up to at not-quite-eight-months-old.
- Considering crawling. Thinking very hard about it, but not quite decided yet. She’s very good at getting onto her hands and knee, while sticking her other knee out to one side like a chubby little kickstand and getting utterly stuck for several seconds, before finally plopping down onto her belly and assuming the scooting position. She’s very good at scooting backward, and around in circles, and sometimes sideways. She’s definitely mobile, just not in any traditional or easily describable way.
- Clapping is fun. Even more fun is clapping your hands, for you. And then gnawing on them.
- She gnaws on them because she has two pearly whites now, on the bottom. They’re the cutest teeth in the world, incidentally.
- She subscribes to the “eat to live, don’t live to eat” theory. Real food comes along but once a day, at dinnertime, and usually consists of either peas, sweet potatoes, green beans, apples, pears or oatmeal. Sweet potatoes and apples are by far the favorites. She is still breastfed on demand, and demands loudly and often. Broken up Cheerios are a recent discovery, although the verdict is still out.
- The three things that relieve teething pain every time: her sippy cup, full of ice water (apparently makes the spout cold, as she chews on it); “icy cold teethers” that her sister loves to fetch for her from the fridge; and an ice cube in that funky mesh feeder thing that her sister would never touch as an infant.
- She knows the sign for “milk” and ain’t afraid to use it.
- Loves to talk. Started out with “dadadada” non-stop, but has since ditched him in favor of “mamamama”. However, the vast majority of her babbling sounds exactly like “BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”, and I have no clue how she makes the “l” sound.
- She instigates games of peek-a-boo by hiding her face in your arm/leg/shoulder/whatever is available, and leaving it there until you say “wheeeeere’s Boogie?” Then she pops her head up and grins. It’s only the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, and she’s an absolute genius for figuring it out all by herself.
- We are still happy co-sleepers. It’s been nearly a month now since she stopped nursing to sleep, and I am still amazed every. single. time. she goes to bed without a boob in her mouth. I nursed her sister to sleep every night, every naptime, until she was eighteen months old. For Boogie to be able to go to sleep without my assistance feels like a little miracle. She goes to bed around 8 now, sleeps until I come to bed (usually at a ridiculous time), nurses and goes back to sleep until 8-ish, or whenever her sister sees fit to wake us up.
- My only complaint is that separation anxiety hit hard and early. Woe be unto me if I attempt to sit the child down and move more then three inches away. On rare occasions, she’ll play happily in the floor while I wash a dish or check my email, but usually my moving away from her is rewarded by banshee-like screams of displeasure, which are quieted only by picking her up again. Needless to say, it is difficult to accomplish much of anything while lugging around a twenty pound cling-on.
Having two children is much more difficult than I imagined that it would be - and that’s a complete understatement. There are days when none of us get dressed, simply because she won’t allow me to put her down for long enough without her screaming - and while sometimes it’s just necessary, I don’t like to let her cry unless there’s just no way around it. There are days when I don’t get to do anything one-on-one with Princess, and I feel horrible about that. There are days when I don’t do anything to the house, and I feel horrible about that. In fact, it seems as though I always feel horrible about something. Mommy guilt is an unforgiving master.
However, there is one thing that helps alleviate some of that guilt. I was utterly convinced, before Boogie was born, that I could never, never love another child the way I loved my first. And as much as I wanted another girl, I almost thought that a boy would be easier to love, since that love would be, somehow, different. But, I’m happy to report that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I love her more than I thought possible, and without sacrificing one iota of my love and devotion to my first daughter. Weird how that works for us mommies. And very, very cool.
07.24.08
Rock-a-bye, Baby
There are so few perfect moments in this life - and rarely do we have the time to stop and fully appreciate one when we’re in the middle of it.
There’s the marriage proposal - it’s magical, except for your heart pounding in your ears and the screaming refrain in your head of “ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!!”
There’s your wedding day, which (as any married woman knows) is planned to death but ends up being a complete blur in the end.
There’s the birth of your child, during which hormones do funny things to your mind even if drugs do not.
But there’s one completely perfect moment that happens to me every single day, and I am eternally grateful that I have realized it now, before it’s too late. It’s that few minutes every night when I rock my baby to sleep.
After she’s in her pajamas, I turn out the bedroom lights (leaving on the bathroom light, so I can see) and sit down in the rocking chair to nurse her…during which we talk about her day (nothing too in-depth, just a recap) and I sing her bedtime songs - Rock-A-Bye and Baby Mine. Thankfully, she hasn’t yet learned that her mommy couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles. Then, once she’s had her fill, she sits up and I scoot her up onto my shoulder.
We rock, I pat, she snuggles in. She rubs her smooth, soft cheek against mine, and I rest my chin on her little shoulder. I revel in the sweet baby smell of her skin, her hair, her clothes. I remember when it was her sister that I rocked in that same chair - four and a half years ago, that feels like just yesterday. And I know that soon - too soon - my baby will be just as big, just as smart and just as independent. And that I’ll have no one left to rock to sleep.
So I enjoy it immensely, while I can. Whatever else needs to be done before bed can wait - the dishes aren’t going anywhere, the Tivo is recording any “can’t miss” TV, and truth be told, there’s nothing that I’d rather see than cuddle my baby anyway. Nothing that I want to do that I won’t have plenty of time for later, when she doesn’t need me as much. Nothing that could possibly rival this precious, fleeting moment with my sweet baby girl.
I have been blessed with the privilege of cuddling this child every night, and I intend to take full advantage of it - for as long as she’ll allow it.
07.22.08
*chomp*
My baby girl has a tooth! The first little pearly white pushed through on Friday, and there’s another just beside it that will be here just any second now. Aside from a little (completely justifiable) grouchiness on her part, she’s handling the whole ordeal with remarkable aplomb.
Just to be on the safe side, I’ve stocked up on Baby Orajel and filled the fridge with teethers. You never know when her inner gremlin might be unleashed thanks to sharp little daggers ripping through her tiny gums, after all. Poor Boogie.
07.18.08
I heart my grandshrimp.
Guess I haven’t mentioned yet that we’re a homeschooling family, have I? Yep, we’re crazy homeschoolers. My kiddos are wildly unsocialized - don’t make direct eye contact with them. They’re like little wolverines.
Okay, that’s entirely untrue. Sass is anything but antisocial - in fact, we often find ourselves wondering just where her super-social gene came from, as she certainly didn’t inherit it from her parents. Boogie is too young yet to be antisocial; she’ll go to most anyone except my mother-in-law, for reasons entirely unknown to anyone but her little self. Although we have our theories. *ahem*
Anyway, I was browsing the toy department at Wal-Mart last week, looking for an appropriate bribe surprise for Sass, who was being reasonably well-behaved while we shopped for groceries, when I came across Sea Monkeys! My reaction, of course, was that of any former-kid who had drooled over the wordy Sea Monkey ads in the back of her Archie comics - amazing, live sea monkeys! Watch them come to live before your very eyes! And do tricks! And clean your room and eat your broccoli! That is, my reaction was: “Hey, cool! Sea Monkeys!” And since I wanted them, I immediately justified buying them for Sass by turning them into a summertime science curriculum. I need to do more science-y things anyway, as we mostly focus on reading and math. But hey, she is only four.
So we came home with her nifty new little blue Sea Monkey tank, filled it up and added the water purifier, and waited the requisite 24 hours before adding the eggs to the tank. The next morning, while squinting into the water, I distinctly saw a little squiggle swimming about. Later that day, I saw a bunch more little squiggles - at least a dozen of them, and a few of them actually identifiable as the teensy brine shrimp they are. (But “monkeys” sounds like so much more fun, doesn’t it?!) I pointed them out to her, and we spent at least two happy minutes peering into the water at them. Sass immediately christened the largest squiggle Wall-E, and the next-largest squiggle Eve. Girlfriend is a little obsessed with Pixar films.
That evening, I was multitasking as usual - making dinner (chicken casserole, which is semi-June-ish), straightening the kitchen and talking on the phone to my mom. I was telling her all about our new little critters, how neat they were, how excited Rachael was, etc. All this while I was wiping the countertops around the tank. And then, just as I’d finished talking about them… *THUNK* That was me knocking over the sea monkey tank, in case you didn’t recognize that particular breed of “thunk”. Water and sea monkeys flew all over the kitchen counter, into the floor…there was no saving the poor little things. I couldn’t even SEE them, much less rescue them. Sass, being in the next room, flew into the kitchen in a rage, placed her little hands squarely on her hips, stomped her foot and yelled, “ASHAME OF YOU!”
Ashame of me indeed. I felt terrible. Horrible. Miserable. Lower than low. I am pond scum. I am the amoeba that feed on pond scum. I murdered my baby’s pets. It was accidental shrimp-slaughter, but it was a massacre nonetheless.
I did what any mom would do, I suppose. I hugged her and told her how very (VERY) sorry I was, and that I would hie to Wal-Mart that very evening to buy her all new Sea Monkeys, and that she would have two tanks instead of just one. And I did.
Round two of our sea monkey experiment is now in residence on the kitchen counter - we just added the eggs to the water tonight. I’ll be looking tomorrow to see if there are new baby shrimp wiggling around in the water, but you can rest assured that I won’t be getting too close.
07.16.08
Why?
Oh, June Cleaver. Her dress always neatly pressed, pearls gleaming at her throat, merrily vacuuming away the afternoon whilst her perfectly well-mannered children quietly complete their homework at the glistening kitchen table. (Well, okay, one of her kids might have done that. But it’s not like the Beav’s mischief was hardcore.) June of the never ending patience, June with all the answers, June who handled everything with style and grace.
How I loathe June Cleaver. And how I want to be her.
I have my moments, but I’m mostly the anti-June. I wear what’s clean and comfortable, and usually on sale. I think I still have the pearls I wore on my wedding day, but they’re surely buried in a jewelry box and haven’t seen the light of day since. My vacuum cleaner and I are on speaking terms, but barely.
My children are well-mannered enough - for other people. Even the baby, who will scream at me for attention all the live long day, instantly turns babbly and precious when handed off to someone who is not Mommy or Daddy. As for my older child, manners sometimes fly out the window in favor of rambunctiousness, but hey, she’s four. I suppose it’s to be expected. And I hope she’ll grow out of it.
Never-ending patience? Please. I get irritated when my Minute Rice moves too slowly. Patience is not and never has been my forte. I keep hoping I’ll find some on clearance at the Wal-Mart, but no luck yet. I’m nowhere close to all of the answers, and handle practically nothing with style and grace, although I’m pretty good at winging most anything when I have to.
So, if not June Cleaver, then who am I? I’m a stay-at-home in Virginia, wife of seven years, mother for four and a half. I left the working world when my oldest was born and have never looked back, even on the days when I’d gladly have traded a kidney for just two and three quarters minutes of absolute silence. I learned to knit when Princess Sass was a year old - too late to knit cute baby things for her, too busy to knit anything for the next babe. Ditto with scrapbooking - at least I’ll have a ton to work with when the girls are grown and gone and I have time to unearth it again. And I’m a bit of a computer addict - it is, after all, my lifeline to the outside world, where Barbie and ballet are not perpetually the topics du jour.
I used to blog - I started a blog at Xanga when Sass was just a wee thing, to document the cute things she did. It ended up being a venting place to document her inability to sleep for longer than three consecutive minutes, and later, her inability to be quiet for as long between waking and going back to bed. Hate to leave the ol’ blogplace, but it was time for a little more variety - ’tis the spice of life and whatnot. So here I am. Looking forward to learning my way around, meeting some new people, and documenting whatever is to come.
And continuing my quest to be more June-like in my mothering. Of course.
