The true cause of gray hair

So my not-yet-three-year-old is channeling his future teenage self. (Or maybe that's my old teenage self!).

From morning to night he challenges me. On the one hand, I'm proud of him. You know, it's because of his brilliance that every step of the way he asks me "why" and questions my every move. His desire for independence and natural ability to lead causes him to ignore most of my requests...until he decides it's time. You know, "hey, Little Mr. Man, time for dinner"..."I'm not hungry" (time lapse, 3 minutes) "Mommy, I want my brekfax".

Or my favorite "Hey, Little Mr. Man, do you think maybe you need to go potty?" "NO MOMMY!"

(time lapse - 30 seconds) "MOMMY, I HAVE TO GO POTTY" (as he runs to the bathroom, legs crossed and little trickles of pee seeping through his shorts).

So, yes, I'm proud of him. I drink a lot and turn grayer and grayer as the seconds tick by, but yes, I am proud of Little Mr. Man.

How about you? How do you get through the never ending challenge that is raising children?

Change the title to Broken Mom

Seriously. My lovely, beautiful, sweet, loving, caring and wonderful little man broke me today. Seriously. I'm not sure if it was the 6 changes of clothes (care of sudden fear/dislike/??? of the toilet), the hitting, bashing or name calling...but he broke me. So bad that I broke down in tears at the MAC Cosmetics counter (yes, although broken, I am fortunate to have a husband to come home early enough from work that I could get out and make it to the shops to try and get some makeup for a 'pick me up', which turned into a mini-therapy session, but that's a whole other story).

Thank you also to a dear friend that reminded me that of course 'this is just a phase'. Oh and also reminded me that a nice glass of bubbly cures all the ails a 3 year old can dish out!

And with the night (and bubbly) I can look back and plan how I would handle these issues in a more positive way. You know, how to break through the power struggle that is my life! Ah, positive parenting always comes to the rescue. To be fair, I often come away from this stuff and end up feeling worse. You know, it's like hmmmm, maybe I shoulda done that, but I didn't and boy I suck as a Mom, and no wonder we fight all day. But really, the reality is, tomorrow is a new day and well, you know, maybe I'll be a better mother ;-)

As a total aside, did you know that Snoop Dogg is a voice on Tom Tom GPS?

We bond through food

I was once told to help Mr. Man feel more secure and less antagonist towards his sister, I needed to spend at least 20 minutes of quality time with him, alone without said little sister. Easy peasy!

The caveat: it has to be doing something HE wants...so, 20 minutes each day of watching him play trains, trying to join in, only to be told I'm not doing it right, followed by "mom play trains" (after he's taken all trains away from me because "I don't do it right")

So we bake and we eat. These are things we can do together. I may get fatter and fatter, but at least we'll be happy. That is, until Little Miss wakes up from her nap and joins the party.

Which she is doing now...

Making an effort

I did my hair, put on make-up, even put on jewelry other than my standard,-always have on-necklace. At the outset, my clothes were clean. Throughout the course of the day I have been peed on, puked on, had food spit into my hand, pooped on, kicked, punched and spit on. Needless to say, I'm not so sure why I made the effort and more so, why all the other women in this area do? Personally, I find showering in the morning a waste of time, let alone worrying about putting on clean clothes.

But I digress as my main item for this entry was to rant about the "world's only fashionable hands-free pumping bra" that has apparently won a "major parenting award". I don't even know where to start. Maybe I should start with the pictures. I'm sorry, but they look like they'd be better placed in a porn, minus the funky pump and bottle hanging from the woman's breasts.

But the real issues I have is, was pumping that easy for good ol' Wendy, that she could conduct business whilst pumping? Really? I guess I should add my lack of pumping ability to my list of being a 'bad mother', because I couldn't pump while playing with my first born or even starring at the intended recipient of the freakin' milk. The helpful woman at the Breastfeeding Association told me I had to sit and relax and think about feeding my baby, remove all distractions, just focus and that would help the milk flow. So my question to Wendy and all the good people that gave her the award is "how exactly are you to focus on the task at hand when trying to close a merger or do whatever very important business is being conducted whilst being strapped to this ever attractive, and I'm sure fully comfortable, contraption"?!

And for some reason this whole business about making woman that much more productive kind of bothers me. I don't know about you, but I get very little time to myself and to be honest, when I was trying to express, I savoured those 2o minutes to myself. Ditto for when I was breastfeeding my children. The silence. The fact that I could not possibly do anything other than the task at hand. It was bliss. Because for every other waking moment of my day, I am doing at least 3 things at once, never really having the opportunity to enjoy any of them or give them my best.

Yes, I think it's great that mother's have choices. That Mom's can return to work but still offer their babies breast milk. (Although I don't see many women sitting in their cubicles with the "pump ease" placed on their desk and the milk bottles hanging from their breasts. ) But don't you think you can give these women a break and let them sit back and relax for 20-30 minutes while they express?

Of course, I don't mean to disparage the Pump Ease and it's founders. I agree that anything that can help make expressing milk easier and more comfortable is great. I loved my Medela Swing Pump. It too was designed for the 'working' mother and I tried to take full advantage. While not working in an office, I was working home. I tried playing trains, do the dishes and read stories to my first born all while trying to pump while my second born slept. Sadly, I never had much luck. Maybe I'm an anomaly. Maybe it is possible to work on high pressure deals while simultaneously expressing milk for your baby.

Maybe it's all possible to shower and get dressed in the morning and not end up smelling like a urinal at a high school prom. Just maybe.

The things you do...

...to get out of the house.

In the past couple of months I have gone to Bikram's Yoga--you know the one, 26 postures in 38 degree heat (plus humidity); Power Yoga (more downward dog than Lassie did in her lifetime); Spin Cycle (with seats so hard the pain in your ass takes away from the pain in your legs) and started running, all in the name of escaping the four walls I call home and all that comes with it.

Although I suppose it's not all bad--I mean, I could be going to the local pub instead. Which of course is what I would be doing, if say, my next birthday was 30 and not forty. Yes, that's right, in a little over 2 months I will be 40. And if I want to be able to keep up with my darling children, I'd better start getting that heart rate up before it gets too late!

So I guess this exercise kick may be more about running away from getting old than running away from the dishes, laundry and all other duties that fall under my job description. Or maybe it's running away from both. Hopefully the more I go the faster and farther I can run away and stave it all off!

Repeating my Mother's Mistakes

Ah, the summer of 1980, how I remember it well...and shudder with horror whenever I do! You see, that summer was my very first summer at sleep-over camp. It was to be 2 full weeks of Fun! Fun! Fun! Instead it was 2 full weeks of absolute, non-stop misery, that will only ever be healed by a couple of years of therapy.

Why, you ask, was this such an awful summer camp experience, whose scars have stayed with me some 30 years later? You see, my mother (whom I love dearly and not a day goes by that I don't miss, wishing more than anything that she were still here to share in my life today--going on 6 years since her passing) filled out my enrollment form incorrectly. A very easy-to-make, simple little mistake.

As she was completing the form several months before camp was to begin, she innocently put my birthday down as it was on the date she completed the form, instead of as of the date the camp would start--as the form instructed. So instead of being with "High Point", I was grouped with "Rocky Road". Such a tiny little administrative error. No big deal, right?!

Well, at the meet-up centre I was grouped with "High Point" girls and within minutes, had made 5 instant BFF. We laughed, shared all our secrets and checked out all the cute boys and planned out the next 2 weeks to the minute. I was in heaven! Until, of course they were calling the kids to get on the busses and my name was never called. When I inquired, I was advised that I was on the "Rocky Road" bus. The counsellor smiled and pointed to a group of what appeared to be babies with absolutely no fashion sense...this could not be happening. I begged with the counsellor to look into the problem, explaining that in no way was I to spend the next two weeks with these little kids, when I was so much more worldly and was meant to be with the cool girls in bus #7. Sadly my complaints fell on deaf ears and for the next two weeks I was placed with the "little kids" and my dreams of a summer of fun came crashing to a bitter end.

So other than outing myself as "old" why am I sharing this, and is my life really that sad that I am still belabouring this dreadful experience? No, and in fact I haven't really thought about it in a number of years, until of course a few days ago. You see, Little Mister Man will be starting pre-school in April and the pre-school has been calling me to bring in the enrollment form in. Apologizing profusely for being 3 months late with them I told the secretary that I would have them to her the very next day, all I had to do was have my husband sign the forms. Well, that next day arrived, my husband dutifully asked me for said forms to sign, but I could not find them. They have vanished from my house. My cats ate them? The baby shredded them? I have NO IDEA, all I know is that these forms that I have been keeping in a very special place, so as not to forget, have just disappeared. And so, memories of my mother's own administrative misdoings came to mind.

Of course, mine is a minor one, as all the school needs to do is re-send me the forms and all's well. But I now realize how easy it is to make little mistakes. To forget to tick a box or mail in a form. Tiny, innocuous little mistakes or overlookings, that can in fact lead to weeks, if not years, of unhappiness. No pressure, eh?!

Maybe tomorrow I won't scream louder than a gaggle of 10 year old girls

OK, so I don't like reptiles. Any kind, whether they are harmful or not. It was only about 5 years ago that I could even say the word "sn*ke". Seeing it in print still gives me the chills.

So you can just imagine my despair when I walked into the house, after taking smelly nappy bags to the bins, to see a baby blue tongue lizard writhing on the floor of my front entrance. My black cat clawing it, tossing it, and flicking it.

OK, I admit that I screamed louder than a gaggle of 10 year old girls running into Hannah Montana. The scream was followed by 10 minutes of swearing and pacing wondering who the hell was going to get this thing out of my house. All this in front of Little Mr. Man & Little Miss and any neighbours who happened to be hanging around outside as we were standing as far away from my house as possible. I'm glad I got dressed before taking the garbage out.

My rantings were interrupted by Little Mr. Man who kept on asking me what was going on. "Why Momma?" "What's wrong Momma?" I tried to explain that his evil cat brought an "outside" friend inside and we had to get it out.

When I finally realized that I had to get the damn thing out of the house Little Mr. Man was going on how he liked the lizard, how it was nice, it was his friend. On the plus side my screams and goings on seemed not to have permanently scarred him into having reptile phobias. But now I had to explain to him that his nice, friendly lizard was most likely dead. That his nice and friendly cat had played a bit too rough with the lizard.

As I'm trying to explain the concept of death to my not-yet-three year old son, I realized that I should just change the subject. Fast. Is 9am too early to offer ice cream as a means of distraction?

So yeah, maybe tomorrow I'll be a better mother and not scare you by screaming at the sight of a baby blue tongue lizard or scar you by telling you how your pet cat just killed the cute little lizard with the blue tongue. And maybe, just maybe, tomorrow I'll be able to pick the damn lizard up from the front lawn so we don't have to see it every time we go in and out of the house. Maybe....