More "Bad Mommy"

Speaking of Ayelet Waldman, this is hysterical. I wish I'd thought of it.

Boy, I hope she can take a joke. From her friend's accounts, the links of which I've long ago lost (Hours! It's been hours!), she is allegedly quite caring towards her children, and of course, suicidal and bipolar. Bad mix.

Your husband or your kids?

Is it possible that people read this blog and not Julie's? I doubt it. But just in case, let me reiterate my thoughts on her discussion of the NY Times article (yes, you have to subscribe, but it's free) by Ayelet Waldman regarding her love for her husband over her children.

I am trying to see the light-hearted humor in this, but I think it's mostly profoundly sad. I absolutely adore my husband; I've known and loved him for 20 years. But we both love the kids with this intense protectiveness that we don't impose on each other.

Basically, I love him for being the kind of guy who can stick up for himself, even if I'd feel terrible if he was hurt by someone. I mean, he's a GROWN UP, for God's sake.

Riley, on the other hand, was treatly poorly by the some little boys when we first joined $100/Twenty Point playgroup and I wanted to run them over with the minivan. Seriously, I had to restrain myself. The little fuckers were mean. Guess you had to be there.

Anyway, maybe when they're older it will all even out, but really. I don't want to have sex with my kids, thank God (I used to investigate people like that for a living). My feelings for my husband are just different - not fiercely protective (like with my kids) and all-consuming (like it was when we were in high school). But there's still passion, and sex, and laughter.

Years ago, we had all of this and shared love of food, and cooking, and travel. We thought that those commonalities made us special, and we were thrilled to have each other to share in those joys. Now we have a shared love of our children, which is so much more infinite and intense than haute cuisine and the heat of the Carribean sun. We are consumed by them in a way that we'd never before experienced, and it makes our love for each other that much more exceptional.

Finally, when I think of losing my husband - a terrible terrible thought, unimagineable really - a large part of the horror has to do with taking care of three kids all by myself, and how much THEY would miss him, and how I could keep his memory alive for them.

But to lose a child? Someone once said - in a movie? I don't recall where...but they said that losing a child is so horrible that there isn't even a word to describe it - you're not orphaned - you're not widowed - it is unspeakable. And I just can't imagine someone being so flippant about it, even as terrible a thought of losing my husband would be. I just can't get past it and see the humor in her essay, because, well, I can't imagine saying or feeling such a thing with respect to my kids - even for poetic license.

Now I know this might sound harsh, but all of this shared enthusiasm of life that I have with my husband can be somewhat replaced if I were to lose him. I think he's my soul mate, I really truly do, but if I lost him I would still have friends to travel with and eat out at fancy restaurants. I could date again. I could have sex with another person, or even with my vibrator.

But my kids? You just don't replace that kind of relationship. Each one is unique and each one is mine. They were born mine - I didn't fall in love with them for who they are, because I'd love them even if they were serial killers. In some ways, I love them in spite of who they are, and I always will.

So what do you think? Am I being too sensitive? Have I lost my sense of humor? Do I need to get a babysitter more often?

Adelyn and her Daddy at the Easter egg hunt. 

More Easter Sunday pictures!

This one's not as sweet of Bella. She's having a tantrum because of conflicting feelings about having a picture taken. Mostly she woke up too early and then ate too much candy. 

Bella smiles in her pretty Easter dress at Great Grandma's Easter Sunday. 

Riley aka Batman aka Swamp Thing (notice the swimming Batman attire - with webbed hands that shoot water!) celebrates Easter at his Great Grandmother's house. 

Here's a cute one of Adelyn and I celebrating at our home on Easter Saturday. 

Happy Easter from our family to yours! 

The things we do for love

This is what I did tonight for Riley:

I suspended a water-filled plastic bottle (from my unused breast pump) in the toilet, with my bare hand hovering oh so close to his excrement-laden rectum, so that he could hang his penis in it while he tried to poop, because "I always pee when I poop and it will hurt!"

Strange days, indeed.

Update

I apologize for yesterday's over-the-top melodrama. I got my period today, so that should explain it somewhat. Of course, I was scared to death for Riley but my emotions were probably a bit overcharged for a ten minute outpatient procedure.

Anyway, Riley is doing extremely well. He was a champ today, and is currently running around the house like a lunatic.

So obviously the drugs aren't working quite the way that I'd hoped.

This morning we took him for the surgery while my mom came and stayed with the girls. The worst part for us was how they took him in - we were sitting in the waiting area, Riley completely naked and wrapped in a sheet because he didn't like the "itchy" hospital gown - as I sat struggling to inflate a latex glove while clutching rosary beads (this cannot be done, btw). The nurse came over and started talking about a cool balloon she had in the back, and wisked Riley away without giving us the chance to say goodbye.

Now, in retrospect, he was fine with this and it prevented us from slathering him with weepy kisses, but still.

A short time later (of course I was outside and on the phone with my mother, who does not shut up) the doctor called us in and told us that everything went perfectly well. We were able to sit with him in recovery while he cried and screamed about his penis hurting, and the IV, and our singing, and his general state of disocontent, but an Arthur book about computers and pirate video games eventually calmed him down enough to take home.

The other worst part, the one that hasn't gone away yet, is that his poor little penis hurts every time he pees. The doctor suggested (thank God because I would never have thought of it) that we sit him in the bathtub full of water and let him pee in there, in order to avoid the sting of urine on the open wound. It's been working pretty well so far, but we allowed that first attempt at urination in the toilet and boy, that was a mistake.

So we had Burger King for lunch and french toast and bacon for dinner (there were raspberries and blueberries too, so it wasn't all a wash), and while I may be a half a pound heavier tomorrow, I am so very relieved that my little boy is OK. So relieved in fact that I headed out to Target and bought him that Matchbox Buried Treasure Playset he's been clamoring for. Oh, and Bella got a tiara for being such a princess for her big brother today. Adelyn, of course, got food, which is her greatest joy these days.

For the record, the condition was likely caused by irritation from the healing circumcision wound rubbing against a wet diaper, causing scar tissue to form. They say the surgery is curative, and that it won't come back again. All hail the end of penis surgery in this household!

Also, if I had another son, I'd probably still circumcise him. Quite possibly I'm an idiot, but if you read this blog regularly, you know that already.

So once again, thank you for the kind and supportive words. After the house and the surgery and Easter this weekend (which we are hosting at our house), I am hoping that next week is very very boring.

I know that it doesn't make for good blogging, but really, some monotony and boredom would be good right about now.

Did you hear that? It was the other shoe falling. Otherwise known as "Penis Perils, Part Two"

Well, I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but I'm not sure I have the words. Time is of the essence, though.

If you're reading this, you probably read Tertia's blog, because, well, she's got hundreds of readers and I don't. Anyway, a while back, she wrote an entry on the circumcision debate, and, if I chimed in, I can't find it in the hundreds of comments there so you probably won't either. That being said, I'll reiterate what I would have (might have?) said here:

We circumcised Riley because Vincent is circumcised, and he wanted him circumcised too. Vincent's father was circumcised as an adult, when he joined the navy, and he then chose to have his own three sons circumcised when they were born. It seemed like the best advertisement for circumcision out there to us, being that he'd had it both ways.

I recall the debate about how circumcision is unnecessary really, and that foreskin was making a comeback in popularity (foreskin is the new black!). I also recall hearing about children who lost more of their penises than was intended, but that didn't worry me much, giving birth in a hospital with more childbirths than any other in our city. That, and he had plenty to spare, of course.

What I don't recall is the risk of complications.

Vincent says to me back in December, "Hey, that's funny how Riley doesn't have to hold his penis when he pees. It sticks down but the pee shoots straight out into the toilet anyway." Me, never having had a penis (to PEE with) had no idea that men really had to aim.

Odd, we agreed. Let's look into it.

So at his four-year-old checkup I mentioned the pee thing, and they suggested that we take him to a urologist to see if there was a problem. Of course, I had just quit my job and we were changing insurance to an HMO, but it hadn't happened yet. Since we needed a referral from our not-yet-insurance carrier, I waited, and promptly forgot. Later, when we searched for the lost testicle, the doctor asked if I'd been to the urologist yet. Uh, no. Oops.

So I arranged for a sitter and off we went, Riley with his stomach virus and all, writhing and vomiting and feverish in the doctor's office. The doctor diagnosed my little boy, my first born, my darling son, with something called meatal stenosis, a complication of circumcision seen in as many as 10% of circumcised boys. Basically, scar tissue forms around the urethra when a really shitty mother doesn't change her son's diaper enough after he's been circumcised, due to the irritation on the penis caused by the shitty mother and her lazy diaper changing, and the boy's urethra gets clogged with scar tissue. And the only way to fix it is to cut open the tip of the penis with a really sharp knife and stitch the opening so that it is large enough to pee out of normally.

Under general anesthesia. My son. Tomorrow morning. Will be cut with a knife on his penis. Because I am lazy with the diaper changes and chose to have him circumcised so that he could parade around the house with his father and their similar penises - for no other reason but to look alike in their naked penis dancing, which they have never actually done.

I was terrified enough for my baby boy because he can't eat in the morning, and he wakes up hungry like his mother, and vomits just as easily too. And the whole coming out of anesthesia with screaming terrors thing. And the excruciating pain that must be when you are four years old and the tip of your penis is stitched open after being cut with a knife. But tonight Vincent told me how frightened he is of death and brain damage and now I'm in a complete panic.

Riley knows that the nice doctor is going to fix his penis tomorrow morning, and that he can't eat breakfast, and that he'll be asleep when they fix him because he'll be drinking magic medicine first so it won't even hurt when they do it. He also knows that Mommy and Daddy will buy him whatever he wants to eat afterwards and he can eat it in our bed while watching TV all day long. And if he eats messy food and he gets the sheets messy and his clothes messy we'll just change them and we won't even be mad.

So he knows something must be up.

Actualy, his innocence about all of this is what breaks my heart the most. I can tell that he's scared, and his little body doesn't know how to process the anxiety. Tonight before bed we gave him a banana and some milk so that his tummy would be full, and he was a bundle of energy. He told me that he wants to bring Mr. Green Jeans, and Blue Rabbit (who is really a bear), and Green Frog, and Rodney the Robot from Burger King Who Lights Up, and his Duel Masters Cards because he can play with things when he's sleeping, even if his eyes are closed.

"Look Mommy! See?" as he squints his eyes closed and holds up his toys high in the air. "I'm playing with them and I can't even see them!"

Vincent and I squeezed on either side of him in his twin bed tonight, snuggling with him before he went to sleep. I told him about when he was a tiny baby, and slept right between us in our bed. In the middle of the night, he would wiggle as close to me as possible, until I felt like I was falling over the edge. I would slide him back over to Vincent, but ten minutes later he'd be glued to my side again.

He laughed and laughed and told us how much he loved us, and his sisters too.

"Your hands are enormous! Someday, will my hands be bigger than yours?" he asks me, glued to my side.

Our beautiful, talkative, funny, intelligent little boy.

Yes darling, your hands will be enormous someday. You'll be fine. You'll wake up when the magic medicine wears off, and you might be in pain, but you'll be back with us just as you are tonight.

I hope. I pray. I promise.

Melodrama

So this is what happened - we put a bid in on the house, and then I cried for a half an hour, reminiscing about when I painted the bathroom nine months pregnant with Riley, and decorating the nurseries, and the neighbors that we love.

Today was a beautiful Spring day, and I could see from my window that the neighbors were outside playing. We hung out on my friend's patio - eight kids, four adults - and ate popsicles. When the baby started to show signs of being tired, I brought her in, plopped her in her crib, and went back outside with the baby monitor on.

I was supposed to hear by seven o'clock tonight. I waited and waited as the time went by, and eventually went to a friend's tupperware party at eight, cell phone clutched in white knuckles.

My husband called me from the party to tell me that our neighbors, the ones I had eaten popsicles with only hours before, the ones who had come to the open house just as a curiosity because we were looking to buy it, the ones that told us that if we asked them not to bid, that they wouldn't, had outbid us on the house.

This was my worst case scenario. I didn't get the house, and I was OK with that, because it was a ton of money and would need about a hundred grand worth of work to get it up to snuff. The FOUR other bidders were my neighbors, a couple that was downsizing from a much more expensive house, a couple from Virginia that grew up in the neighborhood, and a couple who own some company in need of a bigger home. I figured that one of the others would get it, and that would be OK.

This is not OK.

Did you ever have a friend that liked the guy you liked, and he dated her instead of you?

That's what this feels like. Because I was OK staying here because I love our little corner, and now one of us is leaving, and dammit it isn't me.

Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit.

That's all I can say right now. I know that sometimes the greatest gift is an unanswered prayer (thanks Joc) but I'm pissed off right now, and wondering who my new neighbors will be.

Thanks for checking in to see what was going on - it was nice to see your insight and concern. It's made me feel so much better about this whole thing.

I don't know what to wish for, but...

...the realtor is coming to pick up our bid in about 10 minutes. We should know this evening if we got the house. I'm torn, I'm torn. But I think everything will work out the way it should.

Divinity, divinity, baby.

I HOPE.

Didn't you know I was indecisive? HELP ME!

First, please ignore the Great eBlogger Debacle down below. I would erase it all but am afraid of rousing the Gods again (ssshhhhhh...nice Blogger) but really, Blogger hates me anyway, obviously, so it's all in vain, I'm sure.

Regardless, goooood Blogger.

OK. Now I am completely unable to make decisions without remorse. I over-analyze. I fret. But mostly, I ask for people's advice incessantly, so that's what I'm going to do here.

I have a friend who was pregnant at the same time I was pregnant with Adelyn. We both had scheduled C-Sections, and she decided to have her tubes tied. Vincent and I talk about maybe having four children, so I wasn't ready to commit. And, while I feel a little sorry that she decided to stop at two, I am a bit jealous of her as well. Because she made the decision to move on and never look back, and she has no remorse. I shiver at the thought of tying tubes after number four, if there is one. Basically, I am not wired to make big decisions like the one I'm facing now.

Once I wrote a really long post about our alleged home addition that was supposed to occur last Spring, but, alas! I got knocked up in the back seat of my car and we had another baby instead. We adore her, so that worked out. Of course, Blogger deleted the entire post, so no one read it.

Do you detect a theme here? Gooood Blogger. Nice Blogger.

Anyway, we didn't do the addition, and we are supposed to start this Spring. We have lovely plans that include a master bathroom suite with jacuzzi bathtub, a gourmet kitchen/great room and a first floor powder room, which we do not have now. We have paid for the plans, twice (long story), and are all set to go.

But, and here's where it gets tricky...there is a house for sale in the neighborhood. It's about 500 square feet larger than our house with the addition, and it has an EIK and family room (though not together), plus charming touches like a back staircase into the kitchen and a fireplace on the porch. It does not have french doors between the kitchen and dining room, like my house has, or built-in bookshelves in the living room. The lot however, is almost twice the size of mine - it's ginormous. And we could build a deck there, and play volleyball, or have a pool someday if we wanted.

Oh, but there's no air conditioning in this house, and it has radiator heat. We, on the other hand, just spent ten grand on a new heating and air conditioning system in September.

I could go on and on, but it's really comparing apples to oranges - french doors, back staircase, deck, private patio. Financially it's about even, except that we would sink lots of money into the new house (if we bought it) somewhere down the road, in order to get that gourmet kitchen. I'd probably never be able to have a master bathroom suite or my laundry on the second floor, or air consitioning, but there'd be other perks.

Mostly though, I love my neighbors, and I'd miss them,ven though the new house is only two blocks away from mine now. We wouldn't be able to get out the baby monitors on warm summer nights and drink beer on our porch after the kids went to bed with our friends, and I wouldn't be abl;e to see that there are twenty kids playing hide and go seek right now just outside my door, and, hey! let's go join them! Even at two blocks away, it would be different, because there are no kids that are immediate neighbors.

I need to bid tonight, if we're going to. It's an estate sale, and they are reviewing bids tomorrow. There are at least two others, possibly five others, and one of my neighbors is going to bid too. She showed up apologetically the other morning, cluthing a Wawa coffee and talking about how she didn't want to ruin our friendship but hey, she loves the house too.

So what do I do? Bid? Build? Run screaming??

HELLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!

more 

blah 

Oh my God I hate blogger

I can't even fucking post about why I fucking HATE blogger. What the FUCK?

Oh my God I hate blogger

Why is are posts totally fucked up?? WHY????????

AAAHHHHH!!!!!

Oh my God I hate blogger

Why is my post not working????????

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

and THIS

is the house that I'd like to buy but can just barely not afford to buy. We need to get a bid in by Friday. It's two blocks away from where I live now, so if I am outbid, I can be unusually cruel to the new owners for as long as we all live in this town together.

Long time gone

This





is the reason that I haven't posted in so long. Two pink eye infections, one ear infection, and a wheeze. Three bottles of medication, three times a day each. Plus, 4:00 am wakings, lots of screaming, and a partridge in pear tree.


This


waiting for skates

and this


threesome

is what Vincent did with the kids to get them out of the house while I puked and Adelyn slept. Because I was hung over. Like a twenty-two year old, only not.

This


living room 

is the house that I'd like to buy but can just barely not afford to buy. We need to get a bid in by Friday. It's two blocks away from where I live now, so if I am outbid, I can be unusually cruel to the new owners for as long as we all live in this town together.

Three slices of Chuck E. Cheese veggie pizza is an inhuman 18 points.

Just so you know.

Friday morning weigh-in

OK, OK, so I indignantly proclaimed that I needed to eat before my Thursday night meetings, but did I have to eat an enormous portion of macaroni before weighing in?? I lost a measly .6 lbs this week, but I believe that it's really more like a pound or two. That is, if you subtract the bread and the macaroni and the sausage. Whatever, my pants were less snug, and that's something.

Vincent is gone today from before the kids got up until after they go to bed - he plays poker with some friends tonight - and boy does that add hours to my day. Plus, Riley stays up late on Friday nights to watch Avatar. Is this the weirest show on TV? Vincent likes it too, so it must be like The Three Stooges and Hogan's Heroes - laden with testosterone.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese's after preschool and that killed two hours, but now what? Not to mention that I ate THREE slices of pizza. I got nutritional info online but my little Weight Watchers slide rule just doesn't go up that high, dammit.

Is it Saturday yet??

It makes sense if you remember that I'm doing Weight Watchers

From this day forward, I hereby decree that "$100 Playgroup" will heretofore be known as "20 Point Playgroup."

Do we really need to serve New York Cheesecake and Jewish Apple Cake?

To tired to title this...yawn.

This has been a rough, rough week. Two weeks ago, I thought we were all sick...last week we really were. Suffice it to say that there has been enough vomit, diarrhea and fevers at our house to last a lifetime. And now we are all coughing and gagging and keeping each other up all night. There are used tissues strewn about my house wherever you look, because one blow is never enough for me. Imagine that this is the one area in which I am frugal! The kids are starting to realize that I am allowing Bella to blow her nose in a tissue, and then Riley has to blow in the same one, and well, yuck. It's awful. Stand back, really, and wash your hands once you've finished reading this.

Of course I sent them to The Little Gym on Thursday, sick or not. Because, $570, remember??

Oh I am so going to to hell.

On Friday, I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up a forgotten ingredient. Must I state the obvious and say that I really really hate grocery shopping with all three kids? Anyway, I needed all of three things, so I was optimistic. I parked the car, turned around to tell the kids that we had arrived, and realized that Bella had fallen asleep in her carseat.

Now, what does a good mother do in this situation? I ask this because I honestly don't know. What I did was to put my sleeping daughter into the large portion of the shopping cart (Adelyn sat up front), where she slept, sitting up, until she slumped over with her head resting on the bottom of the shopping cart. Between her legs. Like, when she woke up, she had little lines on her face from the bottom of the cart. Oh, if only I had my camera! I had to physically restrain the bagger from tossing her aside to place the bags in - I'm hoping that she thought Bella was just a jacket or something. Anyway, thank God for Riley and those little kid-sized carts, or we'd have been able to buy exactly nothing.

Bella wakes up as I'm about to put her back in the car and cries that she wants to go shopping. She is sooo my husband's karma.

Speaking of food (do I say that alot?)...I lost 4 lbs. at Weight Watchers last week. Then I went to a bar with my girlfriend to celebrate, which was classier than the sex toy party that I attended the following night. You would have been proud! I won the double dong game (pass it between your knees - sort of like musical chairs for double-sided dildos) and came home with a free vibrator. And you'd think that would have kept me from spending another $85 - but they had all sorts of lotions and sheet sprays and I need all of the incentive I can get these days. Three kids will do that to you I suppose.

So after having the neighbors for dinner last night (now let's see where your minds are - food or sex) I am realizing that it's been another bad week for counting WW points. So it's back to wolfing down 0-point grape tomatoes all day until weigh-in on Thursday. Lucky me!

I have much to tell about Riley but little energy. *cough cough* Maybe later. Plus, thoughts on my mother-daughter relationships and general laziness issues. But of course, if I wasn't so lazy, you'd know all about everything already.

The irony!

And speaking of food...

This is just deranged.

Pestilence is never fat free

I can't keep this Michael Jackson photo up any longer at the top of my page, because he frightens me, and this is a family page.

We spent the weekend at my mom's again - it was her birthday - and now that we've come home, the pestilence has returned. This time, it has targeted Riley, who had a fever last night of 105.7 and threw up all over his bed sheets while I was reading him a story.

Being the selfish woman that I am, I can't help but be disappointed to miss $100 playgroup today. It's at my immediate neighbor's which is the best spot to have it, since I can put Adelyn down for her nap and then wander back and forth between our houses with the monitor.

It's like having it at home, but without having to clean first. Or blow $100.

That, and we have almost a foot of snow on the ground. And I know you all love snowman photos. I can't imagine that we'll make it outside, which isn't all that bad, since I don't own a pair of snowboots. Instead, I have sneakers from 1998 with little holes in the bottoms that the snow seeps through.

Well, at least I have an excuse for another Target run.

In other, slightly related news, I joined Weight Watchers again last Thursday night. And, true to form, since then I have been eating crap.

Here is a list of the dinners I've eaten since driving in a snowstorm and paying $40 to join Weight Watchers:

Pizza, followed by birthday cake
Pizza, followed by birthday cake (no, this is not a typo. I did it TWICE)
Chicken Piccata (made with a whole stick of butter) and Orzo tossed in heavy cream, egg and parmasean cheese
Pan-fried (in more butter) pork chops with twice baked potatoes

Now granted, I did count points when I made the twice baked potatoes, but STILL. And, annd...I ate Burger King for lunch yesterday. And chocolate covered strawberries for dessert for the last two nights.

So I guess missing $100 playgroup might be a good thing today, what with the hors d'oeuvres, white pizza, and cheesecake...

...Unless I eat that leftover chili and cornbread for lunch.