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truett and kirsten

motherhood

The *terrible* twos

October 19, 2009

I always thought the terrible twos started at two and it wasn’t just because some guy was trying to think of a number that started with ‘T”. Because it’s supposed to leave me with another seven months before I have a little monster on my hands. But apparently that bubble has burst for me. My 17-month-old has entered the phase commonly known as the terrible twos.

I used to look at toddlers throwing magnificent tantrums in malls and tsk tsk at the mothers who clearly have no control over their heinous spawn. There’d be screaming, kicking, flailing limbs, headbanging and curious stares from onlookers complete with looks of pity. Sometimes there would even be whispering and finger pointing as the frazzled mother tries to pry her kid off the floor with a spatula.

Naturally, I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. The parenting authorities all have different advice on how to deal with it. Leave them to scream it out, bring them home immediately, give them the spanking of their lives, bribe them with candy, distract them or just cave and give them whatever they wanted in the first place. Frankly, none of the above options sound like any fun. Plus, I’m not the caving-in sort.

In any case, I thought I had some time before I had to deal with it, so I kinda just left it in the back burner for a while to contemplate the intricacies of disciplining a monster. I thought I’d still have several months of the one-derful ones (see, I can do alliteration too).

Last week, we brought Tru to the airport to pick up my sister who was away having foie gras in Paris. It was supposed to be a grab-and-go thing, but it turned out to be a friggin’ nightmare on elm street – a 30-min nonstop screamfest. And it would be fine if it was just a one-off blip in the chart, but according to the experts, it’s more like a foreshadowing of things to come. Like I’m supposed to be prepared for this kinda thing. Hell, no.

Anyway, Tru’s been fascinated with fountains, basically anything that squirts water is like GOD’S GIFT TO MANKIND for him and he will watch in wonder and clap his hands and go “WOWWWW” (which is so cute). But then he’ll want to go near it and grab the water and make a colossal mess (which is fine at the pool but not fine anywhere else). At the airport, it’s only see no touch but that concept is foreign to him. When I told him he wasn’t supposed to touch it, he started whining, so I grabbed him and ran (literally) and he broke out into a full scale hissy fit.

He was screaming at the top of his lungs and started flailing wildly. Nothing I did could make him stop. I tried distracting him with every possible object I could find (including my iPhone which is usually off-limits) but nuh-uh. I had become one of those mothers with a brat of a kid screaming his head off in a public place. Pretty soon, EVERYONE was staring and whispering and I felt like the absolute worst mother on the face of the planet. I would have grabbed him and gone straight home but my sister’s flight was delayed and I just had to improvise.

I brought him to a corner and held him (flying mucus and all) and just let him vent his frustration. The episode lasted almost 30 minutes and thats a *very long time* to hold a screaming kid while strangers stared at me. I did think of losing it and screaming as well just to give those prying eyes a proper show. You know, to make it really worth their while. Except that my mom was right beside me and she would probably have given me the spanking of my life.

I’m usually thrilled when Tru is advanced for his age but this time, not so much. The terrible twos are upon me and there’s no turning back now. All I can say is I hope Tru grows out of it before Kirsten gets there. I can’t possibly deal with two terrible twos all at the same time.

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motherhood

The Perfect Mother

September 25, 2009

After 16 months at this motherhood thing, I’m beginning to realize there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. It exists in the realm of fairies and flying unicorns – that is, a nice notion but pretty much codswollop.

At first, I wanted to do it all. Be the perfect mom and even look the part. After day 1, I gave up on the looking bit, and I’m content to get through the day without once looking in the mirror because it was too depressing to face the crazy hair. But I still tried to get the rest of the mom stuff right. Most days, I would beat myself up trying to cook the meals, do the laundry, clean the house, sing the nursery rhymes, think of new activities to entertain the kids and make sure they’re relatively clean. It was like a never-ending cycle of things to be done.

These are the things they don’t teach you in school and what I managed to pick up from other moms are all the taboos like what not to do (most of which I’ve committed anyway). Like you can’t have dirt on the floor – what if your kid EATS THE DIRT? Or you can’t let your kid eat processed snacks or don’t let your baby cry.

All of which are good advice, no doubt, but I’ve come to realize that being a mom requires choosing your battles and letting go of the things that are of the least consequence. It’s called prioritizing.

So on any given day, I’ve got a thousand urgent things to do, like wash the mountain of clothes that threatens to fill up my kitchen and do the dishes and vacuum the floor, but in my list of mothering priorities, those are way down the list. Which is not to say that my kids live in a slum (I make the husband do the housework in the evenings) but given a choice between sweating the small stuff like cleanliness or playing with the kids, I pick the playing every time.

Sometimes I get surprise visitors and they get a shock because they think I was just robbed, but I’m totally cool with it.

madness
Please don’t rob me

Honestly, I would do it the same way all over again if I had the choice because Tru is absolutely delighted when I wheel him around the house in his little car for hours everyday or when I take him to the park. I could probably multitask but kids know when you’re distracted and Tru starts shouting and grabbing my face if he notices that I’m not paying undivided attention to the blocks he’s building.

Baby girl isn’t into the activities much but she loves being on my lap and listening to my Mother Goose rendition. So I guess what I’m trying to say is when you become a mother, your priorities become very different and you learn to live with things you never thought you would. Because when you end your day, you don’t think about how many dishes you washed but how your kid’s face lit up when you sat down beside them and sang silly songs.

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motherhood

Eau De Bebe

September 23, 2009
Hello-Kitty-Baby-perfume

It reminds me of a cologne by Michael Jordan

My brain is telling me “No more babies”. So is my uterus. It’s not good for my social life, sex life, and also my sanity. 18 months of being pregnant plus 6 months of postpartum recovery and a lifetime of being driven up the wall all make compelling reasons NOT to make another baby. And don’t even get me started on the delivery, which only a hardcore masochist would want to inflict on themselves.

I’m totally loving not being pregnant. No swollen ankles, midnight cramps, numb fingers, backaches and insomnia. I can jump around and drink all the alcohol coffee in the world without worrying that my baby is going to come out all messed up. It’s also nice not having to drag a huge ass (mine, not the kid’s) everywhere I go.

So it’s gotta be weird that I’ve already got names for my next 2 kids, hopefully both at the same time. My next boy will be Travis and if it’s a girl, she’ll be Hailey. The names are so cute that I’ve just gotta make sure I make a couple more babies. Insane, RIGHT? As it is, 2 kids are way more than I can handle, but I can’t help myself. I’m like a crazy baby-making machine. MORE BABIES, muahahaha…

On some level, it’s an attempt to hold on to their infancy and babyness for as long as I can because time just passes you by so quickly and before you know it, you’ve got a couple a gangly, awkward teens on your hands.

Tru is growing up so fast it scares me sometimes. It seemed like just yesterday when he was all wide-eyed wonder and helpless flailing limbs. Now all I can do is wonder what happened to his helplessness as he destroys yet another electrical appliance in my house. And all I have are the moments where I held him tight, smothered him with kisses and tickled him senseless all stored up in my head. With every passing day, I have to come to terms with the fact that his days as a baby are numbered.

That’s pretty much why we made Kirsten in the first place (besides the fact that I’m addicted to pain and I need counseling). So that there’ll still be another baby to smell and kiss and cuddle and relive the babyness. In spite of all the whining and griping about how my life sucks and I am sleep-deprived and my boobs are killing me, all it takes is that little smile and gurgle for me to feel like it’s all worth it. Every bit of it.

The husband says we cannot keep making babies “just so that I can smell them”, and my head actually agrees. But I don’t know, the smell of a newborn baby is probably the most awesome smell in the world. Plus I ALREADY HAVE NAMES. That’s gotta be a good enough reason.

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