Potty Training…The Lows
Posted on: February 1, 2013
Potty training. It’s really a fun time full of cheering and bribing and washing shit out of fabric. Baby W has his jar full of Smarties on top of the TV..ready for when I try to lure him onto the toilet. So far, things have been going well.
I’m going to pretend that the 2 times he peed in G’s closet didn’t happen…especially since one of those times he was supposed to be going into the bathroom but made a beeline for G’s room. Poor G…he said “THIS IS WHY HE ISN’T ALLOWED IN MY ROOM!!!”. Ummmm, who could’ve predicted that the kid would squat in your freaking closet?? Make sure your toys are picked up!
W was dry for 2 days in his adorable little teeny gitchies! Seriously…can they make those things any more adorable???? Today we went for coffee after dropping Girly off at preschool. I thought “Hey, I will do some studying. W will entertain himself with toys and cookies. Life is great!”. We settled in and he said “Mama, I need to pee.”.
The washroom is in the next building.
I asked if maybe he could just pee in his diaper and he said “Yes. No…I need to pee in toilet.”. Whatever…we’ll go to the washroom.
W has a thing about being mostly nekkid to go pee so we’re in the bathroom in a church basement (which is, strangely, hot as hell!!) and he’s stripping down (including his socks). I sit him up on the toilet and do the countdown (3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!).
Then he pees on me. Like a fire hose. It shoots over the front of the toilet and onto me as I was squatting in front of him. I try desperately to aim it into the toilet and I swear it shoots straight up…completely covering my hand in pee. I am grabbing at the toilet paper with my free hand and the fucking single ply paper is breaking in single squares. SINGLE SQUARES! There is pee fucking everywhere and I can’t get more than 3 squares of toilet paper!
When the pee was finally finished (no joke: this was post-cryogenic Austin Powers pee), I wiped down my hand, his legs, the toilet, and the floor before W pointed out the pee on my leg. He had peed all over my right calf and all over my entire crotch area..making it look like I had wet myself.
And then it hit me….we still have to go back to the coffee shop. I look like I lost bladder control and I have to go back to the coffee shop. Where people are. I re-dressed W and buttoned my jacket over the wet spot. Honestly, what else am I going to do? I can’t go home and change so I had to go back with wet pants…worried the whole time that I smelled like urine.
It’s 5 o’clock Somewhere!
Posted on: October 18, 2012
With the boys in hockey again this winter I have realized that any chance I have at sleeping in is gone. Hubby was out of the house at 6:30 to take the 2 to their games and I was happily sleeping in my warm bed.
The dog started howling..jolting me from that happy sleep and leaving me wondering what the fuck his problem was. Oh, he had probably seen the boys long enough to realize that he hadn’t been taken out of his kennel. I gritted my teeth and hoped that he would shut the fuck up before he woke up any of the kids. Having sensed that it was way before 7, therefore too early to be out of his kennel, he shut up. Maybe he grew bored of the howling instead…one will never know.
None of the little kids had heard the dog so I rolled back over and hoped they would all stay sleeping until at least 9. I could tell he was awake before he even started moving around… His co-sleeper still firmly attached to our bed means that any time is appropriate for him to crawl into our bed for morning snuggles. By morning snuggles I mean stealing the blankets, kicking me in the stomach, and shoving his hands in my shirt.
He opted to skip all of his morning rituals for a prompt “I all done. I go downstairs! You coming, mama?” while he climbed off of the bed. 7:45…a far cry from 9. All of the coffee in the world couldn’t save me.
Thanks to his inability to sit quietly on the couch, Girly woke up and a fight broke out immediately over who the fuck knows what. The fight ended quickly and girly remembered that she had some new (hand me down) dressed that she wanted to wear. They both went upstairs while she got dressed and she yelled downstairs that wee boy was in the buff.
He was in the bathroom trying to climb onto the toilet. Great sign that maybe we should work on potty training!! He squeezed out a little poop while girly and I cheered. And then it happened……
Girly, in her beautiful dress, stood in the doorway of the bathroom and shuffled the skirt. I was coaxing the boy to pee just a little. And the dog…he played a rather innocent role of hanging out in the background. He sniffed at Girly’s dress like he sniffs at most things…rather ambivalently. Suddenly, it was different. Suddenly, something caught his nose. Suddenly, he lifted his leg and started peeing on the dress.
He peed on the fucking dress while Girly was wearing it and I could do nothing to stop it.
I sent him outside and quickly grabbed the stuff to clean it up, remembering that the boy was still on the toilet waiting for a bum wipe. By the time I got back up there, he was trying to climb off of the toilet. Girly stood by the tub, shoulders hunched, sulking in her freshly pissed on dress. Wipe a bum, clean up pee, help Girly out of the dress… She went to get dressed again; into jeans and a shirt this time. Her expression mirrored how I felt; sad, defeated, and angry.
I looked at the clock. It was 7:59. I took a mental inventory of the alcohol we have in the house; there was a half bottle of wine in the fridge. I resisted the urge to take it with me back up to bed.
Murphy’s Laws of Motherhood
Posted on: June 19, 2012
- In: Random
- 2 Comments
I have no excuse for my lack of blogging…except the 5 kids, the dog, the husband, the house, the purging, and the studying. There are about a zillion FML moments that I have let go without blogging. I am barely able to open the computer, let alone form that shit into sentences and blog posts.
Yesterday I realized that Murphy’s Law has a completely separate set of rules when it comes to motherhood. Here’s a compilation of a few Murphy’s Laws of Motherhood:
-Mom will use the bathroom immediately after the one that pees on the seat. Every time.
-Mom will use the energy of 100 men to clean all the things while the kids destroy it all.
-Mom will discover that we are out of toilet paper…while using the bathroom.
-Mom will just sit down to a cup of hot coffee when the shit hits the fan (figuratively AND literally).
-Mom will just lay down for a nap when all of the neighbourhood kids decide to converge upon the house…especially when the kids are not home.
-Mom will spend hours creating a delicious meal…only to have to eat it cold.
-Mom will make sure the kids have everything they need (and more) to leave the house…and then forget to put on a bra.
-Mom will remember everyone’s birth date, health care #, bank account/credit card #, password, doctor’s phone #,…. and forget how old she is/her cell number/her middle name/that damned bra.
Please feel free to add your own Murphy’s Laws of Motherhood to the list!
My New Normal
Posted on: May 25, 2012
I’ve had a startling realization this morning…. this is my new normal. This chaos and weird shit that happens…. this is my NORMAL! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, really.
Dog barks at 6:20 so I get up, thinking that he needs to do business. He doesn’t need to do business…his focus is chasing after me and licking my bare legs. I don’t know why having the dog lick my legs grosses me out so much but I want to never wear shorts again.
I had planned to make the kids pumpkin bake this week but we ended up a day late so I made it this morning. There is a reason I usually bake it the night before and that is because it takes forever to bake! I turned the oven on and got everything mixed together before I realized that there was a very bright orange in the oven.
Oh yeah…whatever spilled in the bottom of the oven was on fire. There was a moment right before the panic struck that I was envisioning trying to get 5 sleeping kids and all of my important shit out of the house before it burned to the ground.
The chunk on fire was probably the size of a grape so I figured I could probably grasp it with the barbecue tongs. I didn’t really expect to have the chunk crumble as I picked it up…spreading the flaming coals all over the bottom of the oven. Shit.
I had to actually crush the bits of charcoal food remnants with a flipper and scrape them out of the oven; all the while trying not to burn my hand.
This is probably a sign that I need to run the self clean cycle on the oven. I should also figure out how to use the fire extinguisher.
Just a random mention..no big deal..but the dog totally tried to trip me while I hauled the laundry basket down the stairs. I’m pretty sure it was payback for eating bacon in front of him. Or maybe the barking at 6:20 was all part of his master plan to off me today.
Paging Dr. Google
Posted on: May 24, 2012
I know I am not the only person who googles symptoms and then freaks out when Dr. Google tells me I have an inoperable brain tumour or MS.
That shit happens way too often… I get a headache for 3 days, I have a ringing in my ears, my left foot goes numb, …. And I know better than to Google my symptoms but I still do it! Glutton for punishment?
Probably worse than my numerous consultations with Dr. Google is the fact that I have a bit of a fear of doctors. Well, not really a fear of doctors but more an intense hatred for being spoken to like I’m a stupid child that just needs to be shut up with anti-depressants.
Maybe more alarming than Dr. Google is the fact that I am now the proud owner of a wealth of information in the form of textbooks. Several times in the first couple of chapters, I would pause and think “Wow…I need more _____. And less _____. And maybe that’s what’s wrong with me!”. Billy, at one point, asked if I was planning on self diagnosing for the next 2 years. Ummm….yeah! And I’m going to diagnose the hell out of you, too! Ha!
My latest self diagnosis? Mercury poisoning. I have a lot of the symptoms. Fatigue, tingling/numbness in my face, hands, and feet, emotional instability, … And I’m currently analyzing my urine to see if it has a change in odor.
More like is the fact that I need to sleep more and stop eating whatever food I’m having a reaction too. But it’s impressive how many diseases overlap symptoms! Here’s the ultimate lesson: never, ever Google what could be causing your fatigue because Dr. Google will respond “You gonna die, bitch!”. He’s an asshole like that.
Weird and Wacky Mornings
Posted on: May 23, 2012
Is it too much to ask that our mornings just go smoothly? Weird things always seem to happen before I’m showered, fed, or caffeinated; before I’m capable of coping properly.
This morning, there was a knock on the door at 6:30….at least I think it was a knock on the door. By the time I woke up fully, there was no one at the door. I texted Billy (after locking the door because it freaked the hell out of me) and he wondered who would knock on the door at 6:30. Umm… serial killers?? Well, maybe not serial killers because a) they wouldn’t knock and b) it’s 6:30am…do they even work at that hour?
I woke up the boys and Logan immediately said “My stomach really hurts.”. Great. I don’t really believe that his stomach hurts (on account of the plate full of breakfast he took down) but he’s home anyway. And the TV is on Sportsnet. I fucking loathe Sportsnet. I would take eternal episodes of Caillou over this stupid channel!
Gavin, quietly, told me that his finger really hurt. No kidding it hurt…there is a cut inside of his knuckle and half the finger is red & swollen! I’ve heard a couple of versions of ‘what happened’ but both involve a pocket knife (thanks Mom) and Gavin ‘carving’ wood. Billy got home while I was cleaning his finger with tea tree oil and he managed to re-open it to de-puss the wound. All of this sounds unnecessarily gory…. but it had to be done. Gavin’s concern during all of this was the fact that he had to hold his middle finger up while we tended to the wound. “No, I don’t want to flip the bird!”
In a matter of 15 minutes, things really went to hell. Wylder and Anya woke up, Anya started demanding I make her scrambled eggs, and Gavin got bit on the nose by the dog.
I started cracking eggs for Anya’s breakfast and decided that 4 eggs wouldn’t be enough for Anya, Wylder and I so I grabbed the carton with 2 left in it. 5 eggs in the bowl, 1 left to crack….. and it was blood. Not a spot of blood but an egg encapsulated murder scene. I made Billy take care of it because I thought I was going to blow chunks. I don’t know that I can ever recover from this…seriously… *gag*
A fresh start, a new carton of eggs, and I whipped up Anya’s scrambled eggs. She held her hand out to me because it hurt and, ummm, there was brown on it. She swore it was from the chocolate cake we had last night but I knew. Her nighttime pull up had more than a middle of the night pee in it.
While I held my 4 year old’s awkwardly long legs in the air, I wondered how this morning could go so fucking wrong. And now Logan is playing hockey on the Playstation 3. I’m going to make a coffee and pray that this day goes by quickly.
The City Kids
Posted on: May 20, 2012
My husband has a lot of pride in the fact that he grew up a country kid. When, recently, he was called ‘city folk’, he was crushed. I, on the other hand, found it fucking hilarious! This is the guy that has grabbed an electric fence to create a surge chain. He rode car hoods behind vehicles in the winter. He has killed various types of animals. He is a typical country kid… Unfortunately, after 13 years out of the country, he’s a little more city.
Our own kids have known nothing but city life and it shows..much to Billy’s dismay. When Adam was 4, he spotted a dog running in the field of a local farm. He said “Hey, that dog is walking itself!”.
Small indicators that our kids were city came out over the years. Probably the most shameful, for Billy, was our trip up to the mountains. We pulled up to the cabin and there were deer grazing on the hill. Gavin leaped out of the vehicle and called “Hey, MOOSE!!! Come here moose!”.
Even Wylder got in on the action.. .”Deeeeee-errrrr. Come here puppy!!”.
And it got worse as we were going into the cabin. A squirrel was skittering around the trees and Gavin remarked “Look at the mouses!!”. Oh snap… lol This kid is so city that it hurts.
That was the day that Billy swore he would take the kids into nature more.
I, on the other hand, am perfectly content being city.
Teenage Drama….at 4.
Posted on: May 18, 2012
Having 4 boys and 1 girl = lots of “You must be happy that you got your girl!” or “Your poor daughter will never get a boyfriend with all of those brothers!”.
Yes, having a girl is nice but having 4 boys is also nice… they are not less because I have a girl. Anya is more than capable of taking care of herself as well…she definitely does not need brothers for that.
She’s only 4 but she makes me fear the teenage years. A lot.
I was thrilled to have the chance to take pictures of my girlfriend’s newborn and even more excited because I had someone to watch the kids while I did it. For some stupid reason, at the last minute, I decided to bring Anya along. She would be my photography assistant…a task that even SHE was excited about! We snuck away in my Mom’s vehicle, which was parked behind mine.
On the way, we stopped at our favourite coffee bus and Anya immediately lined up the chocolate muffins. Beside the chocolate muffins were cake pops with sprinkles and Anya demanded that she get a chocolate muffin WITH sprinkles. I couldn’t convince her that there were no freaking chocolate muffins with sprinkles so she pouted. Nothing else was a suitable alternative to the fucking sprinkles.
I ordered, paid, and still…she pouted. It was the moment that I started walking out of the bus that she decided to flip her shit…”I WANT A MUFFIN!”. She absolutely refused to carry her hot chocolate so I ended up holding 2 coffees and her hot chocolate; the hot chocolate set precariously on top of the coffees and tucked under my chin while I struggled to find my keys.
By the time we reached the vehicle, she was in full out tantrum mode; nearly hyperventilating between muffin pleas.
Still struggling with the tower of scalding hot liquids, I set the hot chocolate on the front seat while I attempted to re-arrange the console to fit the coffees. And it happened…the cup fell over. You have got to be fucking kidding me… Anya was still screaming about the damn muffin, hot liquid was pouring all over the seat, and I could feel my brain on the verge of exploding.
What I wouldn’t give to leave my still screaming daughter in the middle of the parking lot while I peeled out of there…!! Instead, I got her in the vehicle, handed her the hot chocolate, and told her to stop crying so that I could clean up the mess.
By the time we got to my friend’s house, she was calm again. Inside, she was happy. And I am wondering how I will ever survive her teen years when she has hormonal teenage outbursts like that on a daily basis.
Kijiji Fails Me Again
Posted on: May 11, 2012
Billy is a savvy Kijiji shopper. He can negotiate, wheel & deal, swap, trade, sell, buy, … it’s genius. It also annoys the fuck out of me because he is on Kijiji as often as I am on Facebook….which is a lot…. We never need anything, though, so I don’t even understand why he’s on it! And sometimes things are going on around him but he’s completely in the Kijiji-zone so he’s oblivious!
Me: “Billy, someone is crying.”
Billy: “Yep, just a sec.”
Me: “I swear, if you are on Kijiji I am going to hit you!”
Billy: “I’m going!”
It would be embarrassing to admit how often this happens (every single day) but maybe…just MAYBE…there is a part of me that is jealous of his Kijiji skillz.
I have no Kijiji skills. I can’t wheel & deal. I get the people who offer me half of my asking price or ask me to meet them across the city during the baby’s naptime. I kind of hate Kijiji!
But, since we are thinking about moving the boys into the basement bedroom, I decided to see if I could find a couple of chairs for them. I found the exact chair (from Ikea) that I was looking for and the person had 2 of them!! $30 each. I offered $50 for both.
Now, according to Billy, my mistake was offering them too much. I got an e-mail back with a counter offer…. she asked to meet halfway so $60 for both.
I’m not a mathematician or anything but…. $30 plus $30 = $60. Right? WTF?? I haven’t even been able to reply back because I’m torn between sending an extremely sarcastic response or declining because this person is obviously the exact fucking type of person I get sucked into dealing with. I know that if I go through with it, I will swear off Kijiji for another year.
Forgive My Life 