Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Boys Will Be Boys


Colin is really developing a personality now that he is a big 18-month old.  I would say the prevalent personality trait that is coming out is boy.  He loves balls, trucks, airplanes, tractors and pretty much anything that has wheels.

People warned me that boys are different than girls and I was fully prepared for a bit of a culture shock once I had one.  I felt a little more prepared because Maddie was pretty active and was always getting into things, pulling things out of drawers, pulling pots and pans out of cabinets, unloading the pantry, climbing, standing in the dog's water bowl, etc.  But there are some subtle, and not so subtle differences with Colin.

It all started when I changed his first diaper.  The only word I can think of to describe it was chaos.  My friends with boys primary advice was keep lots of Vaseline on hand for the circumcision wound. Vaseline, check.  Unfortunately, the minute, no, the second I opened his diaper he would whizz all over himself and me.  I would unsuccessfully end up dodging pee before I could even get the Vaseline on!  The main problem is if you try to cover his little wee-wee without properly lubing it first, it will cause his circumcision wound a great deal of pain.  Think about the logistics of this and you can only imagine the comedy that changing each diaper brought.  When the whizz wasn't flying, his butt was usually providing some explosions of their own. As with most breastfed babies, the watery mustard seed poops didn't really subside until he was about 4 months old and started eating some solids.

I finally realized that if I waited to change him until after I nursed him, I would usually avoid major cleanups.  I learned the hard way that he usually relieved himself during feedings.  About 5 minutes into his feeding I could feel a sudden warm rush on my stomach.  Somehow he had leaked through his diaper and all over me.  Rather than interrupt the feeding, I would sit in the wetness because God forbid I tease him with 5 minutes of Mother's Milk only to pull him away and put him through the agony of being stripped naked and changed.  I received some good advice and bumped him up to the next diaper size and we solved the whole leaking issue and once his wound healed, the juggling act got a little easier. 

As he got older, he did most of the usual baby things.  Eat, sleep, poop, eat, eat, sleep, poop, eat, sleep, eat, eat, poop...but mostly eat.  And that was one of the first differences between he and Maddie.  She nursed well and did pretty well with baby food, but as soon as I introduced texture, she gagged and threw up.  To this day, she has a limited diet and isn't much for trying new things.  Colin, on the other hand, will eat pretty much anything and everything you put in front of him.  In fact, he will also seek out things to eat, like dog food for example.

It is pretty much a given if we leave the laundry room door open, Colin will make his way in there for a little snack.  Makes it hard for the dogs to eat when a) the door is almost always closed and b) they have to compete for food with Colin.  Luckily Colin makes up for what he takes from them by tossing his extra food off his tray when he's done or outright feeding them his food.  When he's not eating dog food, he's using the dog bowl as a water table driving his trucks into the bowl or dropping Maddie's stuffed animals into it.

Colin also likes to hide in the pantry, because that is where all the good stuff is.  He has learned to pull boxes and bags off the shelves and help himself.  One day I found him hiding in there chowing down on a bag of Cheetos like a Bulimic teenage girl.  He looked up at me with his cheesy face and licked his fingers.  Now he has also discovered that is where we keep an even guiltier pleasure...cat food.  I do a great deal of  "sweeping" animal food out of Colin's mouth.  Turns out that the smorgasbord doesn't stop there.  Colin also likes leaves, mulch and as I mentioned in my previous post, Polly Pockets clothes. 

Today was a particularly gold banner day for Colin.  A trip to the park involved licking the slide, the edge of the equipment, and the piece de resistance, going face first into the sand and taking a nice bite like he was in a pie-eating contest.  Only difference is the sand at the park isn't a blueberry pie, it’s the neighborhood litter box.  He immediately started sputtering and I had to try and get as much of it out of his mouth as possible.  Once I had cleared most of it out, I could just hear the grains of sand crunching in as he bit down.  There's nothing like exfoliating the inside of your mouth and everything else throughout the digestive tract.  Shortly after that, I was distracted by a Maddie meltdown when a little girl pushed her.  After dealing with the situation, I realized Colin had run off and I caught him trying to steal a juice box out of someone’s stroller.  Clearly, he had "dry mouth."  Yeah, dry like the Mojave! At least sand has minerals, right?  When we arrived home, he headed toward the recycling bin where he grabbed a Subway cup and tried to quench his thirst.  We finally made our way inside and he chugged some milk. 

You would think he would have learned his lesson about putting foreign objects in his mouth, but later in the evening, he had managed to get his hands on one the gourds we had gotten from the pumpkin farm and was gnawing on the end of that.  Gross. I worried with all the "snacking" he had done he wouldn't eat dinner.  Nope.  Fish, corn, pears, a cookie... he ate it all. 

An hour later I found him opening the garbage can and grabbing scraps of food out.  What is wrong with this child?  Another hour goes by and he comes to visit Maddie and I in the bathroom as I am wiping her and helping her wash her hands.  I look over and he is licking the toilet seat cover.  Seriously?

Did I mentioned that toilet seat cover has a handy, dandy little locking device because I caught him using that as a water table a few months back?  I guess that makes the dog's water bowl look sterile in comparison.

Other new addition to our childproofing is Plexiglas shield that is about 3 feet high and 5 feet wide to cover our entire entertainment center.  He was really good and turning our TV on and off, pulling the DVD off the shelf and pulling any cable or electronic device associated with our TV, cable or computer.  Maybe he has a future in electrical engineering?  Let's hope so.  Next on the list to childproof is our DVD/CD cabinet that he loves to unload and spread throughout the house.

Needless to say, he climbs, he gets into everything and above all else, he loves to throw things!  He takes 2 liters of pop and hurls them across the kitchen.  Ten-pound weights...no problem.  I see a shot put scholarship in his future.  I have even caught him throwing an art easel across the room, and then turned it on its side to use as a slide.  I guess now that the weather is getting colder and since we can't go to the park as much, he's going to bring the park to us.

Today ended with him using the edge of the crib for leverage and balancing his stomach on it until his legs were out behind him...picture a gymnast on the high bar.  I am dreading the day he figures out how to get out of his crib. I am guessing that if that is his method for flipping himself out, it is fairly likely a trip to the E.R. will follow.

And when all is said and done, he is my boy. He loves to give hugs and kisses. He is silly and I can already tell he is going to have a great sense of humor.  He is also a total flirt and since he came out of me, he looked at me with those big brown eyes framed by those dark eyebrows, like I was the most beautiful girl in the world.  Now, when we are out, he finds the most beautiful girl in the room to fixate on.  She often times tends to be a blond with big boobs.  Like I said, he's all boy.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

POOF!!

Many times I have fantasized about what I would do if I won the Lottery.  I've decided to make my fantasy more realistic and wish for a magic wand instead.

I read all these books about princesses and I think these gals got the right idea.  It seems to me that life would be so much easier if I just had one of those damn wands.

I would start with the obvious.  World peace, feed the hungry, health for my friends and family. Cure Cancer, AIDS and such.  Then I would move closer to home and cure the common cold.

In my last entry I mentioned that 99% of what I do is clean up piss, shit and puke.  I need to retract that and make that 75% piss, shit and puke.  The other 24% is snot.  I have been so blessed to have two children that are otherwise healthy, but it seems like they constantly have a runny nose.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, these colds usually turn into double ear infections. Along with these ear infections comes a massive amount of green, yellow and sometimes gray snot.  When I say massive, I mean it seems like part of their frontal lobe comes out every time they sneeze.  I can hear a sneeze from 4 rooms over and know I need to immediately get a tissue S.T.A.T. before the snots are consumed. POOF!

At the first sign of one of these nasty colds, I would love to wave that magic wand and make them go away.  This would avoid all the crusty faces, having to use my sleeve to wipe boogs in a pinch, having to constantly sanitize every surface and every toy.  It would avoid getting kicked out of the daycare at the gym 20 minutes into my workout because they had to wipe his nose 3 times.  It would avoid having to cancel play dates and birthday parties as to not infect other children even though it is fairly likely that they got the cold from daycare or Chuckie Cheese to begin with. It would also save having to go to the doctor where I have to prevent my 2 kids from tearing the place apart, pay a $20 co-pay each time, followed by a $15 antibiotic which may or may not work in which case the kid has to stay on a steady dose of amoxicillin for 3 months. Then wait for both Tom and I get the same bug and end up at the doctor.  $40 more bucks in co-pay and $30 more for antibiotics for each of us. Frickin' POOF!

OK, now on to more important matter besides snot.  Cleaning the house.  Let's start with the pets.  I think my last posting pretty much explained what a mess they make, but let's just give a brief rundown.  Dog shit in the backyard, Poof.  Litter box, Poof. Dog pukes, Poof. Cat spits up a hairball, Poof. Dog hair, Poof. Dog slobber on my couch, Poof.  Mud tracked in from outside along with mulch, grass, leaves, etc. POOF!

Then we can move on to cleaning the rest of the house.  Loading and unloading the dishwasher has to be one of my least favorite things.  I know what you are thinking.  "Hey, lady! You have a machine that washes your dishes for you!  Quit your bitchin'" I don't care.  It is the bain of my existence and I feel like the movie "Groundhog Day" because of that damn machine.  Rinse dishes, scrub caked on cheese off plates, load it up, run it. Then, before it even hits the heated dry, I have another sink full of dishes. Take apart sippy cups, put them back together, and look for little straws that fell out of their "cage" during the rinse cycle.  On and on and on.  POOF!

The refrigerator and all the disgusting things that ends up crusting and caking in there. POOF!
Mopping the floor. POOF!
Cleaning the grime off the stove. POOF!
Cleaning the microwave especially the day after we have lasagna and it gets heated up. POOF!
Wiping the fingerprints off the front of our stainless steel refrigerator. POOF!
Items to go out for recycling on the counter. POOF!
Random business cards, coupons, pens, sunglasses, loose change, power cords, and mail on the counter. POOF!
Coffeemaker grounds. POOF!
Food caked on the chairs, booster seat, and walls. POOF! POOF! and POOF!
Wow, this is fun.

Let's clean up some toys!  It is the end of the day, or the beginning.  I guess it is all the same when you have two tornadoes living in your house and the minute they wake up they start unloading bins of toys, pulling out games with little pieces, throwing plastic food around the house.  We don't have a basement or a toy room, so lucky for us the living room is our toy room.  Maybe one of these days the housing market will pick up and we can actually afford to sell this house and buy a bigger one.  Hmmm.  Wonder if the magic wand could help with that?  Never mind.  In the meantime, I think it handle some smaller tasks.

I'd start by building some nice shelving and storage units. POOF!  With enough room for all of Colin's trucks, bulldozers, tractors, fire trucks, garbage trucks, Chuck the Truck, etc., etc.  Then I'd create a wardrobe closet for all the princess dresses with cubbies for all the princess shoes.  Then I’d create a bin for balls of all sizes.  And with a wave of my magic wand all would go from being strewn about my floor to their rightful bins.

Then on to all those little toys.  I have two words for you.  POLLY frickin' POCKETS. OK, that's three, but those little bitches and their tiny rubber dresses, shoes and purses that my son likes to eat like candy drive me crazy! POOF!

Puzzle pieces, Match Game cards, Candyland pieces, Let's Go Fishing fish, EleFun butterflies, every pot and pan and plastic piece of food and fork and knife and pretend donut.  Teacups and saucers, necklaces, bracelets and those Godforsaken Silly Bands. POOF!

I wouldn't have to worry about those pesky missing items I am always searching for. Where is that last library book that is due today?  POOF!  There it is!  Where are my keys so we can get out the door and to school in time? POOF!  Cell phone? I think you know what comes next.

One of my other all-time favorite activities, laundry, would be a snap. Separate whites from darks, POOF! Remember to spray pesky food stains on the front of shirts, POOF! Fold laundry, POOF! Match socks, POOF!  Put it all back in the drawers, POOF! Changing sheets, especially crib sheet and Maddie's bed where you need to carb load before the workout you get moving furniture, lifting mattresses and schlepping 101 stuffed animals in and out of the bed.  POOF!

Vacuuming, I mean really vacuuming where ALL the dirt, hair and crumbs come up and not the kind of vacuuming where you could vacuum 30 seconds later and get just as much dirt, hair and crumbs as the first time. POOF!  Crumbs in between the cushions on the couch, POOF!

I think it goes without saying that cleaning the bathrooms should be included especially all those damn water stains that all the CLR and bleach cannot get rid of.  Do I even need to mention toilets, floors, and cleaning drains? POOF!

Finally, I would do a little work on myself.  Besides, what kind of princess would allow herself to go without a little pampering?  I'd start with an eyebrow wax, a hair trim, teeth whitening and mmmm...how about a little help with those dark circles under the eyes? POOF!  Then, turning my sagging barely "B's" into some perky "C's, " a little tuck for that extra "pooch" on my stomach I affectionately refer to as my "valances." Then, I'd eliminate that cellulite that I collected in college from too much fried food and beer that, along with Student Loans, I am still paying for.

Ooh! Speaking of Student Loans...POOF!

I suppose if I just went back to my original fantasy of winning the Lottery, I could just buy a bigger house, and shelving units, a maid to clean up all the above mentioned, pay for a boob job and a tummy tuck and pay off all those Student Loans.  But let's be honest, being a princess with a wand would be so much more fun especially if I could do it all in a beautiful princess gown. POOF!