Why babies have mothers.
I thought I'd put up some old posts for a laugh or two. Well also to mitigate the drivel below. Happy Mother's Day!~ Live, Love, Breath and Hope.
Been mothering for twelve years now. My siblings, family and friends may beg to differ. My name and the word 'mother' were often put into the same sentence long before I had my first Easy Bake Oven.
Serious, world on her shoulders, earnest-- I have heard them all.
I had dinner the other night with this mama friend in my old home town. I grew up babysitting her kids. It's a friendship where we meet every few years and make massive downloads into one another's brains. We relay what we are doing, have those nfw that kid is that old?! Tell him to quit growing THIS instant conversations. We talk about what inanities can drive us us to drink, put our fists through drywall, make us laugh beverage through our noses and assess just how much damage that last pass through the atmosphere did to our heat reflectors. You know, mama talk.
She asked what I had been up to and so I told her of the projects and interests I have now and her eyes never wavered as she looked at me from her seat across the table.
"So working with warriors eh? I'm not surprised. You've been a warrior since I met you."
She's right. And yet, I wasn't sure how to take it. For it meant I must admit with no equivocation I have been taut and vigilant ever since I can remember and that I own the mother lion, the OCD angst ridden, I'll-never-fit-into-his family-I-wonder-how-much-therapy-the-kids-will-need-if-I-can-just-fix-that-or-bring-the-right-dish-to-the-potluck-everything-will-be-fine-who am-I-kidding-I'm-so-full-of-crap role I share with a great number of the population on the planet.
One thing I've come to understand through age, fatigue, discomfort all necessitating an eventual need for understanding, is that any of those traits are all are bearable in the absence of second guessing. In it's presence all bets are off. It's the one rock that when you put it in anyone's wagon, lifts the donkey harnessed to said cart, straight into the air.
So I've been turning off that second guess switch--a little I mean. I think it comes with age. One hits that forty mark and the sticky, thick Self Conscious vaccine some of us self administrate in spite of our loathing of sharp, shiny, painful needles all those years becomes less of a given.
I have now found the nerve to throw that stuff right into the bio-hazard container. I'm glad, too, cause if I threw it in a regular trash can, I'd dive right in to get it bacl after an hour.
Bio-hazard containers have those little doors that you can't pull back out, see. Once your crap is in, there's no getting it out. I've seen other more well adjusted mamas with one mounted on the wall and I kept lusting theirs from afar. Thinking I did not have the emotional currency to invest in one, I never put it on my Christmas list.
Alas I scraped the human cash together.
My bio-hazard container was telling my mother in law just what I thought and then repeating it to her offspring less there were any issues with translation. It was also pursuing passions and realizing the kids would survive if they ate cold cereal for breakfast every once in a while. It's in the gym, this grad school app sitting at my desk, the priority boxes my feet are resting on here under my desk waiting to be mailed across the pond and in the friends I've kept as well as the friends I remember fondly.
Without the vaccine, dongivafukitis is beginning to flourish.It feels like any condition would especially as your body and mind get the first flush of its little beasties. Nothing is particularly better or easier, but the viral load is shifted so it feels less heavy despite of the fact that when I look in my wagon all the good and the bad is present and accounted for--the same but loaded differently, less awkwardly.
I know this is true. It is because even now after all this time, motherhood is not a role I feel extremely confident in and I'm not so freaked out by that. I'd even go so far as to say it's a role that keeps me pretty frustrated at my lack of grace or clarity most of the time, but again I have begun to expect that time will change that.
I know motherhood is not a role you can ever put down or in my case would want to put down. Leave in personal storage while I renovate...well maybe--but I digress.
How you shoulder the role is something you will answer for one way or the other as it marks your mind and your body, indelibly and ephemerally and as it marks those you love in some ways.
I often joke I'd prefer to have been born a man. Only sometimes, I'm not really joking.
Given the inherent, sophomoric humor of the Universe, I understand why I wasn't.
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Blogging Milsupport here and here (scroll halfway down on this post. I may have been having a moment. *eyes looking up innocently*) Go have a look if you haven't. Trying to gather a few things for some guys in Iraq.
I don't often speak of my husband on this blog. Though I realize when I do it's generally to reference whatever example of residual knuckledragging behavior imbued upon him by his Y chromosome and a stint in the Marine Corps.
I should have known there would be issues when dialogue about our children's sexual orientation went like this:
Me: Oh you'd love them no matter who they were attracted to, come on.
Him: Sure I would. But he's not.
Me: But I'm just saying you know, if it were to be the case, you'd accept it.
Him: Well yeah--But he's not.
I should have known when I came home from errands one day and all male members of the family were squatting around a pot of macaroni on the living room floor clutching spoons and dressed in their tighty whiteys. Hey! No laundry, no dishes, Hubs explained.
I should have known when I walked into a very dark room to find a line of multiple size high and tights illuminated in the blue light of a computer monitor and overheard one little awestruck voice chirping, "Oooooooo, blow him up again, Daddy," being contradicted by still another angelic voice making his own plea, "Nooooo, Daaaaad...catch him on fire instead! It lasts longer!"
I should have know by now.
I should have known
I
never
had
a
chance.
Even after we managed a girl child, it was clear unless I was willing to have children well into my fifties, the chances of the estrogen counterbalancing the testosterone levels in this house was a virtual impossibility.
Still, these displays of male inappropriateness continue to drop my jaw.
Hubs just walked in awhile ago from the store to find the four year old bent over at the knees with his Lightning McQueen's down around his ankles, hands firmly planted on either lily white cheek admonishing me to look at his butt.
"Mom!
Mooooooooom!
Lookit!
There's an owie dare!
See?!
Right. daaaare!
See it?"
I looked for the source of these muffled exhortations and was met instead by Four Year Old ass.
"I hurt," he said from the carpet grazing location of his head down around his ankles.
"What is dat?"he went on.
"You're bottom is just sore from antibiotics, baby. It'll go away."
"Get it out," he demanded.
"Get the 'botics' out!!!" he continued to shout while trying to follow me out of the room. I couldn't help, but be impressed with the coordination it took to walk head down, butt up and cheeks spread, simultaneously. Like a car wreck you really couldn't look away.
But I only lingered on that aspect of the situation for a moment before I redirected my thoughts to Hubs, now visibly mirthful at the physical comedy of it all.
Four Year Old would have none of it.
Exasperated he whined,"Somebody look at my butt!"
Hubs trying to maintain some sort of parental resolve and dignity and failing miserably, choked out,"Boy, I am not looking at your ass!"
"(Hubs)!"
Hubs tried to force his chin into his neck from the self restraint it was taking to not start convulsing with laughter or maybe just to survive my withering look.
Littlest Guy continued to waggle his hiney at anyone willing to pay it some attention.
"Quit. picking. your. butt!!" Hubs said with voice and resolve cracking. The man was clearly running out of runway. You could almost hear his own internal dialogue: Pull up. PULL UP!!
"Whah??? Hubs!! You. can't. tell. him. that.
He'll go to school and share it with 18 3 and 4 year olds who love dropping dimes on each other and their parents. Cut it out! Will ya?!"
"Well, he needs to cut that out," Hubs says gesturing to his youngest, still standing in our midst doing his best imitation of baboon.
"He's going to call it his ass though, honey. Or start using the term butt picking. Knock it off!"
"Ahhh, no he isn't," said the Hubs.
Littlest Guy is enjoying the hubbub in the meantime and still doing his ass walk, clearly red with what was ailing him, and intent on someone mitigating the situation..."Boy, I said quit--!!"
"Picking my butt?" Still head upside down and staring mischieviously back at us from between his own legs, the kid now had the room and his howling sibs in it and he knew it.
OMG.
There was much spousal apology, but Hubs face couldn't quite maintain any modicum of composure between the visual he was getting from the youngest fruit of his loins still stubbornly seeking relief from a raw butt and the the other genetically related hams now crowing on the couch and waiting to see just how bad Dad was going to get it.
It was a first though here in one way.
Today was the first time in this household where one person's ass literally got another person's ass in trouble.
Upon discussing my son Matthew's foray with dad to the Halloween carnival, I was regaled with tales related to all manner of fawning, spoiling and petting of my youngest offspring by teachers and student body of the girl persuasion...seems my little guy is quite the big man on campus.
Helping mom with mail to some Marines day before yesterday.
Well I have found it.
I have found the method for teaching my 11 year old to shut the %#@ door behind him...
sweet _
mother_
of_
God,_
I have found it.
No manner of plaintive, exasperated or crazed bellowing to SHUT THE DOOR!!! has worked.
not
making him shut it 30 times
pushups
squat thrusts
death threats
orphanage applications left casually on the counter next to the cookies
or
sentence writing
has worked.
so
I was walking through the living room the other day and there it was again.
WIDE OPEN!!!!
arrrgggggggggggghhhhhh.....!!!!!!
M_O_T_H_E_R_F_U_>>>
I walked up slammed it shut saw him coming back up to the porch from throwing the garbage and instinctively locked the door.
Mom!
What?
Open the door!
No.
MOOOM.
What?!
Open the door! Come on!
NO!
You make it your job to leave the freaking door open-- so guess what buddy??? I'm making it my new job to shut it and lock it if I see it open. I'd start keeping a chair out there, if I were you. I think you are going to need it.
Blank stare.
So...
You aren't opening it?
Ding! Ding!Ding!
Whaddawehaveforhimjohnny???
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
NO!!!!
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
You can"t do that.
I just did, boy.
What the hell do you mean I can't do it?
Geez boy, catch up.
I briefly felt a new balance to the universe.
but still
Being a mom sucks sometimes.
Post script...I have been assured that this problem is temporary in my son and is due soley to an over-abundance of neurons with no corollary snyaptic links. Whew and I was worried...
Having four kids was not something I set out to do when I got married. What I set out to do was not work--outside of the home that is, if I had children. I felt like it was important that I raised them and Tony was the breadwinner. I've been raising kids now for 11 years. Yes, Tony is here and does a great deal, but the whole 24/7 thing is on me. Traditional roles and all.
I'm pretty sure I suck at it. I won't go into how I rate up against other parents since the point is moot, but for me and without sucking around for comments to the contrary, I can look at what I have done so far and realize I have made some important mistakes.
I have done too much for them.
I have not had high enough expectations.
I have not been as consistent as they deserved.
I could go on, but it would be a little redundant-- all the rest will have something to do with these three anyway.
So I have been making sure they do for themselves, raising the bar where character and expectation are concerned and subsequently, as far as the children are concerned, been on their proverbial asses.
There have been sporadic uprisings, guerilla/insurgent like tactics and all manner of guilt led assaults in hopes that mom will capitulate. NO.
NO.
NO.
NO.
and so-
It's been ugly aroud here.
U-G-L-Y.
Mom is tired.
BUT
Mom is:
faster.
smarter.
more tenacious.
and
Mom has researched foster care.
Mom WILL win.
Yup-- this sounds adversarial and not child led at all. But I think that was the problem to begin with.
From the procreates...
Quit touching me!
Quit looking at me!
Quit breathing on me!
She started it !
He started it!
I didn't do it...
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! (said in a very paint peeling, eardrum bleeding way)Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!!
Do I HAVE to?
Why can't I?
Whencani--yes, as a matter of fact that one IS one word.
You never let me do anything.
You make me do everything.
It's too hard.
What's for dinner? (usually said in ten second intervals between the hours of 3:30 and whenever we actually begin to put food in our mouths...)
THAT is NOT mine.
That's gonna take forever.
But we just got here...(ala whine)
You never make:::insert name of any other sibling here:::do that.
I'm bored.
:::Insert name of sibling:::hit, pushed, pinched, sat on,peed on,yelled at me!
BUTIDONWANNU.......(yes, another one word statement)
From the two idiots deadset on procreating...at the time.
Flush the toilet.
Pick up your clothes.
Don't eat THAT.
DON'T_DO_THAT!
I can't believe you did that.
Turn that off! (THAT generally has some sort of plug, rating and or title)
Are you serious?
Are you kidding me?
Alright! WHO wiped that there?
Eww. I can't believe you ate that...
No. Lesbians are not from Lebanon--minor curiousity at present still trying to suss out WHERE they picked up that new word. It's time we covered the whole sexuality thing looks like.
go to bed...
Go to bed.
GO TO BED!
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND EVERYTHING HOLY! WHY AREN'T YOU IN BED?!!?!
Don't hit, push, pinch, sit on,pee on,yell at your brother and or sister.
Are you serious? You call that clean/done/finished?
Stop it.
Stop it now!
Stop it or I'll have to take you out. (I mean for ice cream what did you people think I meant?)
Pull up your pants.
Well pack you trash and get out then.
See ya! don't forget to write (intermittently effective when trying to leave a park)
Give me 10.
Give me 20.
That's it, squat thrusts for ever!
Let's go! We're burning daylight.
Are you on fire? Bleeding from a sucking chest wound? Then this isn't an emergency.
What_are_you_doing?
Yes, you have to.
Because I said so.
Why did you do that?
Don't hang your brother off the slide/bunk bed/ceiling fan.
There's more, but it's such a blur.
I have a college degree-- you know? I mean I could make a good living. What am I doing? I'm a stay at home mom with 4 kids under eleven whos' sole aim in life --and I'm beginning to suspect primary pleasure--is to pound me into blithering idiot dust.
Jihad my ass.
This is MOMMIHAD man!
Counterinsurgency Operations must begin forthwith....the enemy is formidable...
