Monday, March 15, 2010

Rising from the ashes... or the cheddar bunny dust...

So. Yeah. Um…
You know what I hate? When someone writes on their blog regularly for a long time and then they’re all ………. *crickets*…………
And you’re all “WTF? Are you DEAD?”
And then they come back with this lame-o “Sorry… life so busy” post. What-ev.
So I won’t do that.
Yes, I am busy. But duh-fucking-huh, right? I have a two-year-old, and a house, and a husband, and a part-time job. But plenty of work-at-home parents make the time to do things like blog and exercise and even shower (or so I hear).
Problem is I haven’t been much able to do any of that. Problem is I’ve spent the last two months or so having to kick my own ass just to get the hell out of bed and be a semi-decent parent. And when I wasn’t trying to talk my racing brain into getting its proverbial shit together, I was beating myself up for all I haven’t done well or done at all.
Yep. Depression. Blah, blah, blah, lather, rinse, repeat.
Without going into details, let me just say that I was cosmically destined to be under the care of a psychiatric professional someday. I was born to two people with all sorts of whack-a-do birds hanging out in their family trees. Add to that my own issues and well… yeah… my parents should have been saving for SSRI’s, not college.
But I am in capable professional care and I’m blessed with amazingly supportive people all around me. This week, I’ve felt more like myself, my old self, than I have in a few months. And I think that’s enough said on that topic. So many bloggers (Mommy & otherwise) have addressed this topic more eloquently and descriptively than I ever could.
So let’s talk about this mothering business, shall we?
Specifically, let’s talk about how insanely awesome my kid is turning out. And no, this is not one of those posts where I tell you about how she never cries and always minds and is reading Camus in preparation for her interview with Little Geniuses Preschool Academy for Future Anxiety-Addled Adults.
My kid? Well, she’s a one-woman wrecking crew- a veritable tornado of activity with incredible comedic timing who sings and dances her way through the day leaving a trail of toys, crayons, and Cheddar Bunny crumbs in her wake. She is always a mess, frequently naked, and sometimes more than just a little defiant.
And she is perfect.
Don’t get me wrong- my kid is not badly behaved. I will sure as fire correct her for any of that crap. But I think a lot of parents are quick to correct and worry about the wrong stuff. Clothes wash, kids can be bathed, and a little clutter never killed anyone. I have tried to be the mother who lets my kid explore and who isn’t constantly barking for her to be quiet or clean. My child is incredibly spirited, very independent, and relatively fearless. My policy has been this: if she won’t break anything important, harm herself, harm someone else, or be rude… well, game on. I do not want the child who sits quietly in a perfectly-pressed outfit and will not try to grab that shiny thing that looks tempting. Because those kids grow up to be the adults who sit quietly and never take the big risks that make life really interesting. They never question, never jump, never fall, and live (sometimes angrily, sometimes thoughtlessly) in a beige world.
Not my baby.
It sure as hell ain’t anarchy in the pre-K at my house, though. My child has boundaries. I expect her to be polite. I put her in time-out when she disobeys me. She has bedtimes and routines and expectations. We teach patience, we teach kindness, we teach respect.
But if you show up to my house and my little Wild Woman of Borneo is naked save for the fingerpaints she applied to her body and she’s doing laps of the downstairs singing the song she made up about Daddy and a frog and the golf ball place… well, that’s par for the course at our house. Because someday all these wild women antics will (hopefully) translate to an adult woman who knows which of the 10,000 rules and constraints the world tries to put on her are important and which ones are bullshit. And she will have nurtured the freedom and the spirit to call the bullshit.
From Margaret Thatcher Ulrich:
“Well-behaved women rarely make history.”
Right on, Chick.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Just another evening at our house...

Husband: "Look Vivi, it's a full hour of Dora!!"

Me: "Is it Dora and the Crystal Kingdom?"

Husband: "uh... I don't know... it looks like Dora is running around with Ron Jeremy..."

Me: "Is Ron Jeremy wearing a crown?"

Husband: "Yeah."

Me: "Yep, that's Dora and the Crystal Kindom."

Husband: "Uh...King Ron is carrying around what appears to be a ... um... you know"

Me: "Yeah- that's his scepter... as it were..."

Husband: "So it's not a studded you-know-what?"

Me: "No, not so much."

Friday, November 06, 2009

Halloween Picture Bonanza!










And now... because everyone is the house is sick and I barely have the brainpower to keep myself from drooling... gratuitous Halloween photos.































Monday, October 05, 2009

Completely Frivolous & Sacrilegious Fluff

Husband and I have come up with some alternative names for the swine flu:
Pancetta Pandemic
Pork Plague
Bacon Bubonic
and my favorite...
Fatback Fever

And from last night, this conversation:

Husband: Why are you so mean* to me?
Me: I was sent by the Lord to test you. Jesus told me so. In an Eggo.
Husband: Yeah, well he told me to tell you to knock it off.... an Eggo? Really?
Me: It was all I could come up with.

Mean = telling him to shush so as not to wake the rustling baby with his full-volume description of an ESPN commercial.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Mother of the Year

You know it's been a banner day when you have to call the Poison Control Center and say "So... my 20-month-old just took a swig of some KY massage oil... what's that gonna do to my day?"
The answer is not much. Maybe a really sludgey diaper later, but no real harm done. Actually, I'm enjoying my child smelling like "Bali Moonlight" as opposed to the usual eau de A&D ointment.
What's really bothering me is that this was my THIRD (yes, third) call to Poison Control since the child got mobile. For the record, Old Spice deodorant and L'Oreal mineral makeup are also both relatively harmless snacks for the tots. Aren't you glad I can provide these handy factoids? *SIGH*

Friday, August 07, 2009

Diary of a Mad Housewife

The story of my last few weeks is one of hot steamy chaos topped with a heaping melty helping of stress and sprinkled with crunchy annoying complications. A delicious recipe for Mama Meltdown! Mmmm… All that came to a nice hot boiling messy head on the phone with my Mom last week. I cried, she soothed, and then I changed a leaking poopy diaper. Let’s use last Wednesday as an example.
I was in the second hour of time on the phone with a certain wireless carrier that merged with my carrier and proceeded to overcharge me and refuse to answer emails and can’t tell me how to update my Blackberry software and …. The dogs were acting as my defacto childcare, keeping Viv’s harpy-esque, ear-shattering shrieking to the happy kind. Oh, and did I mention I was cleaning the kitchen and answering work emails at the same time? I had just emptied the silverware basket and turned to use the laptop. In that short span… maybe 45 seconds… somehow things went terribly wrong.
When I turned back around, the silverware basket was gone. But I needn’t have wondered about it’s location for long. At that moment, my child and the dogs came thundering through in the 1st Annual Mayhem Parade. My demure little flower of a girl-child was naked from the waist down, having removed both her shorts and diaper. She was brandishing the missing silverware basket over her head like a hockey player making his rounds of the ice with the Stanley Cup. In hot pursuit behind my sweet baby were BOTH dogs, one barking as though she’d treed a ‘coon (as they say around these parts) and the other sporting a box of Annie’s Chocolate Bunnies in his mouth. They roared through, knocking over the trash can and stepping on BOTH my feet as they went.
I followed the wild rumpus crew into the den and it was then that I realized the true extent of the festivities. That box of Bunnies was empty, it turns out, and the bodies were strewn across the den floor like a little bunny Jonestown. Both dogs were now feasting on the carnage. My daughter stood in the middle of it all, pants-less and gleeful, shrieking her excitement to the neighborhood.
And then, then she peed. Down her leg. Onto the carpet. Soggying a couple of errant bunnies beneath her feet.
Fast forward to the end of the week. It was no surprise when my Mom emailed and oh-so-casually mentioned that she didn’t have choir practice this week and they really wanted to see the baby and so, hey, why don’t they cruise on up for a short visit? To which I responded SWEET MONKEYS AND RED WINE, WHY AREN’T YOU IN THE CAR YET????
They arrived Monday and spent the week amusing my daughter, fixing my car, and providing excellent meals. They left this morning. Viv and I both cried.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Absence makes your readership go wander...

*SIGH*

So where have I been? I wish I had something sexy to report, but no, I do not. Let me put it to you this way...

A few night's ago I dreamed I was doing laundry pretty much all night. I woke up thinking "dammit! Couldn't my subconscious come up with something a little more glamorous?" But it's not my poor subconscious's fault. I mean, it's not like my conscious self has been providing any good raw material. The dancey dance segment of Yo Gabba Gabba is about as hot as the party gets around here these days.

But I do have some exciting news from a life other than my own! One of my old college cronies has co-authored a book! And it got published! Holla! (Do the kids still say "holla"?)

Behold....

Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels

Sarah Wendell had the great misfortune of being a total gee- er, I mean, English major with me. The book is awesome, she is awesome, and if you don't buy it, well, woe be unto you is all I'm gonna say. Serious Biblical proportions WOE! (OK... not really... no actual woe...but it is an excellent and funny read.)

Later today (or maybe tomorrow) my thoughtful analysis (read: fragmented rant) on the Sarah Palin vs. Levi Johnston smackdown.

Ciao!

Oh wait... I forgot... your daily dose of adorable.