Epic Embarrassment!

There is no good lead in for this story so I'll just throw it out there.
Ben peed on the floor of Walmart.

All over the floor.
Right through his pants.

He just let it rip.

I had to change him in the bra aisle using a diaper I had in my purse and a $3.88 pair of sweatpants I grabbed from the kid's department.

His own pants got thrown in the garbage.

Don't worry, I paid for the sweatpants.

Attention Kidnappers, These Moms are Onto Your Tricks!

I just saw the funniest thing ever. Well, it didn't start out funny but it sure as hell ended up funny. For me at least.
Let me back up.

I went to pick up Liz and our neighbor from school. We have to wait like 10 minutes for the neighbor girl's school to let out so we wait at the park.

As I sit down in the grass this woman approaches me and asks if I have seen a little girl with curly blonde hair. I say "I JUST sat down, I didn't see her"

She walks off still talking to me, presumably, "There are two little girls and we can't find them..."

I am thinking, this is Simi and this is a small park, where the hell could they have gotten to?? They had like three moms engaged in the search so I didn't get up and join, I don't even know what these two missing girls look like so what help would I be, just hauling over random girls...Is it this one? This one? This one? I'd probably end up arrested!

Anyway, I digress...

The search party is wandering around, calling out these girls names for about five minutes. Fruitless.

Then these two little girls, one with curly blonde hair, come running out from underneath the playground equipment where they were sitting and happily playing the whole time.

The mom of the girls immediately starts yelling at them "Didn't you hear me calling you?" The girl, guilelessly says "No I didn't."

"Well you need to be listening for me when I am calling you and I didn't know where you were and you need to stay where I can see you...." blah blah blah...

I start laughing. Why was the mom yelling at her kids for playing on the playground? She should have been yelling at herself for being a dumb, blind bitch who didn't see her own kids 10 feet in front of her face!

The "crisis" averted, another kind mom reminds the once "missing" girls that they have to "Play where we can see you from now on!"

Oh, you mean like RIGHT ON THE PLAYGROUND IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE?? Would that be an appropriate place to play? Whaddya think mom?

Those poor kids.

The best part was after the dust settled and the kids were properly admonished for being "missing" the moms sat down and started exchanging tips on what to do when the kids DO end up abducted, as surely they soon will be abducted...seeing as they had this very close call today.

My favorite tip was to remember what shoes your kids were wearing when they were abducted because "the kidnappers will cut their hair and change their clothes but they never remember to change their shoes."

Good tip.
I will have to remember that one.

Little Known Side Effects of Candy Overindulgence

I might be going to hell....or to candy island.

Dylan had a bloody nose this morning and another one at school.

Just a few minutes ago he was rooting around in the Halloween candy bowl.

Instantly, I had the greatest thought I have ever thunk.

I whipped around, looked him straight in the eye and said "Dylan! If you eat any more of that candy you will get another bloody nose. Too much candy is what causes bloody noses."

He froze, lollipop mid air.

"Do you want another bloody nose?"

Slowly he shook his head back and forth, as if to not tempt the capillaries in his nose to burst and issue forth a bloody waterfall.

He dropped the lollipop back into the bowl, turned around and ran away.

I did feel slightly guilty. But only slightly.

Dylan's Magic Teeth

I took Dylan to a chain dental office yesterday to get his cavities filled.
I mistakenly thought this was the only place that took his insurance. It turns out I was wrong. But I digress...

I had already cancelled and rescheduled the appointment once, I was hesitant to bring him back because I didn't like the place on our first visit.
Note to self: Listen to that voice.

I even considered cancelling yesterday's appointment because it was Bob's birthday, and we were all hanging out together having fun. But, I thought, he has to get these cavities filled. It just had to be done.

When we got there the office wasn't quite as crowded and noisy as it was the first time. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad?

They took Dylan back to the exam room to take x-rays. When they called me back to show me the x-rays they had once again left him alone in the exam room. I didn't like that at all. He is four. He has no common sense. He can't be left alone with sharp objects. Duh.

Then the alleged dentist showed me his x-ray and pointed out what they'd do. Her accent was so thick (Eastern European? Central American?) I couldn't quite understand everything she said. I heard "this cavity might be bad" blah blah blah "might have to do a baby root canal" blah blah blah "caps"

Here is where my brain started twitching. She kept saying they wouldn't KNOW if they'd have to do the baby root canal until they started, but it felt like she was saying here is the easiest way to do this, and we're going to do it. I should have said, no caps. NO CAPS. But I didn't. What do I know about dentistry?

Then they wrapped Dylan up in a papoose and I could see him starting to freak out. I should have ended it then. But I didn't. It had to be done. He can't walk around with cavities!

They told me to go back and wait in the waiting room. I already felt uneasy and called my husband to tell him I was not feeling good about this. But what could we do? It had to be done.

About 45 minutes later I saw them walking him down the hallway. How was he walking around? Weren't they supposed to have knocked him out? Turns out, they did NOT knock him out.
When he saw me, he burst into hysterical tears. I knelt down and hugged him, he was soaked with sweat. Hair all wet, clothes damp. Poor kid must have really been upset. I looked at his face. It was sprinkled with tiny red dots around his eyes and cheeks and down his neck. Broken capillaries.
He was yelling and crying so badly, he'd broken about a thousand capillaries.
What the hell did they do to him?

Then I looked at his teeth.
Three shiny silver teeth, all right up front.
They turned my son into a cyborg.

He was still hysterical. So with no aftercare instructions or medication, we left. I drove straight home in tears.
Once home I gave him a dosage of children's Motrin and made him sit and relax. Then I lost it.

His hysterical tears transferred to me. WHY didn't I trust my feelings? WHY did I let him go through with this? WHY did they put SILVER CAPS on his FRONT TEETH?

I spent the rest of the night at some level of that self-flagellating anger and despair. I barely ate dinner, didn't even consider a piece of birthday cake. I cried on and off.
I went online and printed out a list of every dentist in the county that takes our insurance vowing that I'd get this put right to save my soul from the sure damnation it was facing for allowing such a crime against my child.

Dylan came up to me said "I love you mom" Aw, I love you too baby. "But...you shouldn't have taken me to the dentist."

Whaaaaaah!

He started calling them his "magic teeth" because as he said they just put water on his old teeth and they turned silver. Uh, yeah.

I cried myself to sleep and had torturous dreams of plumbers wrenches and toothless grins.

This morning I woke up and started calling dentists.
I'm still waiting to hear back from one to see if she can replace the silver caps with the white ones. It seems like it's possible if not probable. It HAS to be. I can't have a cyborg baby with magic teeth.

The Importance of Being Rested

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I am NOT a morning person.
In the past I've been able to train myself to wake up early when necessary but if I'm left to my own devices I naturally will default to staying up too late and dreading the sunrise.

Of course, there have been times when my preference (or my tendency I suppose) just didn't matter one bit, for example high school. Classes started at 8 am or whatever, and I had to be there on time. That's not saying there weren't times I was late. I was also pretty ecstatic when we had to split time on one campus with our rival high school because of earthquake damage to our school and we got to go to school at lunchtime. Those were good times.

But I digress. I've held jobs that start WAY early, both the bakery AND summer camp started at 6 am. As did before school day care. But I've ALSO had jobs that required me to be up until the wee hours of the morning, mostly newspaper jobs. I learned to deal with either scenario.

Now that I have three kids, one of whom is in kindergarten in the morning, it is becoming readily apparent that I have to enter into a phase of time management restructuring, again.

Despite the fact that the nighttime is the right time for so many things (silence, solitude, great TV) I'm going to have to give all those things up in favor of an early bedtime so I can handle the early wake-up whisperings of my soon to be 6 year old telling me that her grandmother can't take her to school that morning and she has to leave, uh, like NOW!

Or alternatively, so I will have enough good quality sleep on my head when the (no longer really a baby) baby decides that he's topped out at 5 am and really WOULD like to get out of bed and eat waffles, uh, like NOW!

Or when the inevitable happens and my husband is finally able to find work and he and my mom are both out of the house by 7:30 am for work and SOMEONE has to get up to supervise the kids and the dog, lest there be another "incident".

Bottomline, Christmas vacation really spoiled me and having my mom here as a morning facilitator for Elizabeth has REALLY spoiled me and before I get too complacent (which inevitably will lead to the destruction of this carefully crafted system in which I wake up at 8:30 even though my kid starts school at 8 am) I have to become prepared to once again shoulder it all on my own.

It's a good thing that I've already stockpiled coffee.

It was bound to happen someday

Elizabeth has not been feeling well these last few days. A sore throat, turned into fever, turned into some sort of croupy nightmare.

Last night she took a hot bath to alleviate all those symptoms.
Afterwards she wanted to change into totally different pajamas. I told her to forget it because I didn't want her rifling through the laundry baskets destroying the delicate order of the clothes just to change unnecessarily.

About a half hour later she tried to convince me to let her change again.

"Mom," she croaked. "There is a spot on my pajamas. I better change."

"No Liz," I said. "You will live with a tiny spot on your PJs. You do not need to change."

"Mom," she said in her 'OK here's the deal' voice.
She motioned to me "That is your body."
She motioned to herself "And THIS is my body. You're in charge of your body. And I am in charge of my body. So I can do whatever I want."

"No no no little girl," I said.
I pointed to her.
"That body's existence is SUBSIDIZED by this body," I pointed to myself. "and THAT body," I pointed to her father.
"So until you start paying rent, half the utilities, buying your own food and cooking it and driving yourself around town, WE are in charge of THAT little body and YOU will do what WE say you will do, not whatever you want to do. You got that?"

She shook her tiny head as if to say, "Oh mother, you really do not know anything" and tried to rekindle her opposition but I cut her off.

"You are NOT changing because there is a speck of a spot on your PJs. End of discussion."

And as that familiar phrase spilled from my lips, I became my mother.

Hi, worst mom ever here!

I totally forgot to take pictures of Dylan on his first day of school yesterday.

What a bitch!

Tales from the Playland...and other tales...

Dylan tried to have lunch with the kids at Elizabeth's school yesterday but they were having bean burritos and he almost had an aneurysm instead.
None of my kids are very keen on the Mexican food, least of all burritos. They can tolerate tortillas and might munch on a quesadilla, but they shun tacos, enchiladas and salsa. They don't even like my special secret recipe guacamole which I make fresh from scratch. They're strange.

After his rather unflattering display of temper, I thought it was best if Dylan left the classroom. So we went to McDonalds for lunch. Burritos are gross, but fried up nuggets of chicken are delicious.
Of course, we went to the McDonalds that has a Playland. And of course there were little jerkoff kids playing there with their jerkoff moms doing their very best to NOT supervise them at all.

McDonalds is promoting the new Madagascar movie right now, and you get a plastic animal toy with your Happy Meal. Dylan got a funny penguin. These jerkoff kids each got the zebra.
As Dylan went to join them in playing the bad kids were taking turns throwing their toys up the slide of the Playland. I cautioned Dylan that if he were to even CONSIDER throwing his toy, I'd take it away from him and we've leave McDonalds immediately.
He never even dared to dream of throwing that toy. These other kids though...

Every five minutes or so one of the jerkoff moms would snap to reality and realize that she had just been listening to five minutes of her jerkoff kid hucking a plastic toy up a plastic slide. Quite loud.

"Do not throw that toy!" the mom would yell...then go back to her very interesting conversation...which was actually not that interesting at all. Yes, I eavesdropped. Ben is not a great lunch companion. Not much to say that one.

Anyway. The kids would stop throwing the toys for about 2 seconds, then start again, and five minutes later...you get the point.
I was getting pretty freaking irritated. And I was getting a headache from the damn racket!

Then...I hear my son crying. OH HELL NO! It's on!
I go over there and Dylan is crying "No no! Don't hurt me! I'm just Dylan!"

And the little jerkoff kid has the zebra in his hand, arm cocked back, ready to throw it at my son's head. Again.
OH HELL TO THE NO!

I said "Hey! That's not very nice. You shouldn't be throwing your toys around."

As I brought Dylan back to the table one of the moms came over to her kid and said "That not nice, someone could get hurt."

Uh, someone DID get hurt you dumb idiot.
Of course, as soon as the mom walked away, the kids resumed throwing the toys. Little bastards.

I was about two minutes away from punching one of those kids or one of their moms, so we left McDonalds and headed back to Elizabeth's school.

I parked at the library and we walked around the block and up the hill to her school...this is because one of the girls in her class asked me yesterday morning if I had another baby in my belly.

Whah! I seriously wanted to cry.

Anyway...we picked up Elizabeth and were walking back to the car. I asked Dylan...

"How do you spell your name?"
"My name is Dylan! I'm Dylan!"
"Yeah, I know, but how do you spell Dylan?"

Dylan shouted "P-O-I-S!"

"No buddy. D-Y-L-A-N."
He repeated the letters after me.

"That spells Dylan. How do you spell Dylan?"

He shouted "P-O-I-S! P-O-I-S!!"

"Whatever."

Rock a bye baby...

Last night was perhaps the WORST NIGHT EVER in terms of baby wakefulness.

Not only did Ben wake up every two hours, for the first time since birth he wanted to STAY up all night long. No thank you baby sir.

When he woke up at 11 pm, I nursed him, put him back in the crib and he fussed. I popped his paci in his mouth and he quieted down and went back to sleep.

When he woke up at 1 am, I nursed him, put him back in the crib and he fussed. I popped his paci in his mouth and he spit it out and screamed at me. I picked him back up, snuggled him for awhile and he went back to sleep.

When he woke up at 3 am, I nursed him, put him back in the crib and he fussed. I popped his paci in his mouth and he spit it out and screamed at me. I picked him back up, snuggled him for awhile but he wouldn't fall asleep. Then I got a bloody nose. So I put him down and ran to get a tissue. Then he cried while I bled on a tissue. Then I laid down in my bed with him and he fell asleep. I put him back in the crib and he woke up. He didn't cry though, he just cooed and oohed to himself for about a half hour. Then he fell asleep.

When he woke up at 5 am, I cursed him, then I nursed him. Then I snuggled with him in my bed until he fell asleep. I put him back in the crib, he fussed, he cooed and oohed. He screamed a little bit. He finally fell asleep. This is when Bob jumped up, looked at the alarm clock, glared and me and Ben and slammed his head back onto the pillow...all while still half-asleep. He pulled a pillow over his head and started snoring again went back to sleep without snoring at all, because he DOES NOT SNORE! Heh.

When I woke up at 7 am I was bleary eyed and exhausted. I woke up to the house phone ringing. I was in the middle of a crazy ass dream that combined all the horrible school nightmares (nudity, not ready for a test, can't find my locker) with all the regular nightmares (getting chased by criminals, living in a WalMart, etc.) I was partially glad to wake up from that, but partially like, seriously? Who is calling me at 7 am????!!?

It turned out to be someone offering Bob a side job, so I can't be TOO mad. But still. 7 am? That's way freaking early.
The baby slept until 7:30 am, which means I got to take a shower this morning! Yay!

Naturally, I have turned to coffee to help me get through the day...If I could INJECT coffee right into my veins I would. It's just gonna be one of THOSE days.

I'm hoping this performance of Ben's is a one-night only engagement. I can't do a night like last night ever again.
Ever ever.

Did you read that baby? Never ever!!

My LORD!

So I didn't get any pictures at the field trip because it was a crazy mob scene of 4 year olds and Dylan. Yikes!
There were other siblings along for the trip who were around his age, so I didn't feel weird about taking him. There was even another baby!
But, Dylan is clearly a handful, so my attention was focused on him and not, I repeat NOT on the cute firemen. Not at all!

Here's the recap.
We started out at school where the kids got a sack lunch and then sang some songs while we waited to go over to the fire department.
This was a WALKING field trip, the FD is right around the corner from the school.
So, picture about 40 four year olds all holding onto those ring lines like from "Jon & Kate Plus 8" yeaaaah.
Then add in the five or six younger siblings, the two babies, all the moms, the frazzled teachers...
It was quite a scene.
When we got to the fire department all the kids got to climb up into the cab of a fire engine and check it out and then come right back out the other side.
My kids loved this part.

Then we climbed up these HUGE stairs (which made me sort of queasy) and watched a movie about fire safety featuring Donald Duck. I'm 99 percent sure that I watched the same movie when I was a kid.
This time around though, I noticed that the movie featured a very young Mark-Paul Gosselaar and I think Brian Dunkleman. Weird. Very weird.

During this part of the field trip, the baby got restless so he nursed in the back of the room. Dylan demonstrated the fire safety techniques he learned from the film by crawling all over the floor, presumably to avoid the invisible smoke gathering in the upper half of the room.

Then we had to go DOWN the big giant stairs, which was slightly MORE quease-inducing and made more than a few kids freak out.

Then a fireman slid down the fire pole, to the delight of all the kids. I think some moms will be scrambling to change Halloween costumes at the last minute after THAT display!

After that it was all over and we walked back to the school without incident.

I let the kids play in the playground for a while, but school was over and we left after about a half hour of playing.

This is where the story gets ugly.
I stopped off at the store to pick up some meat for dinner. I had $7 in my wallet and some PayPal money.
I picked out some chicken breasts (on sale, 50% off!) and almost 6 pounds of hamburger meat for about $10. Not a GREAT deal, but not bad.

I got up to the register and found $2 left in the change return. Thank you self checkout!

As I got ready to be a booper, Elizabeth demanded a push pop as compensation for the lollipop she let her brother have her brother stole from her and ate in 5 seconds.

When I went around the checkstand to get a push pop, Dylan stole an apple off a nearby fruit display and bit into it. I didn't NOTICE because Elizabeth started yelling about how she changed her mind and wanted a donut instead.
No donut! No way! Push pop only!

I scanned my items, still oblivious to the apple theft. And tried to pay. My card wasn't working...I slid it through again. Didn't work. Again. Nothing.
Gah!
I put my $7 and the $2 from the change return into the machine. Then I slid my card. That time it worked.
I'm bad at math I guess and overestimated my PayPal balance. Oops!

During that melee, ELIZABETH shoplifted an apple and started eating it!

"What are you doing!?!"
I had already paid, had NO more money and my kids were eating forbidden fruit!

The manager gal came over and said "It's ok, they can be samples."
So nice.

I did give them a good harsh talking to out in the car about not stealing.

"You cannot steal apples from the store!"
Elizabeth said "But I was hungry" and took a bite of the apple.
"So! You have to PAY FOR the things you want!"

Ugh!
I gave up trying to teach them this fine point and just started the car and headed home. I think I'll leave the rest of the lecture to their dad. I'm exhausted.

They were gooood apples though.

No Imagination

Last night I was making dinner (Tuna Noodle Casserole, for the epicurious) and Elizabeth decided to play make-believe with some styrofoam packing material.
Her game of choice "Does THIS look like a pirate hat?"
Every single variation she came up with just looked like styrofoam on her head. And I was distracted by boiling noodles and piping hot cheese sauce, so everytime she would come out and ask "Does THIS look like a pirate hat?" I would say "No, not really"
She'd huff off back to her dressing room and tell her dad "She said no again!"
Then there would be some rustling and some giggling and she'd return with a new configuration of styrofoam.
I rejected all of her creations.
Finally, she got upset...she took off the hat and ran back to her daddy saying "She keeps saying NO! She just doesn't REALIZE!!!"

Then I laughed, and also kinda felt bad.