The sadness of a small plastic toy

Last Saturday Milo was in tears, screaming, "Can you tape it? Can you tape it?" His world was literally coming apart. And by that I mean that this little plastic globe keychain that he'd gotten as a favor at a birthday party had broken and I was not doing a good job of fixing it.

That's when I started to calculate the sadness that this little plastic toy had wrought upon the world.  First, I doubt the working conditions for the people in China who created this toy are ideal. Next, I know the mom who bought the toy for the birthday party favors was not happy. Because even if it's only a dollar, when you're buying enough of these little toys to fill a pinata, that adds up. And since there was only one globe, my children fought bitterly over it. More sadness. And then as soon as we returned home, the globe broke, which brought Milo to tears. I'd like to think those tears were for the working conditions in China, but who am I kidding?

I know this seems all doom and gloom. It's just one little plastic toy, right? But, it's not one. We go to birthday parties at least once a month and my boys aren't even in school yet. Our house is littered with those little plastic toys. Do I just have to live with this until my kids are of the age when their party goody bags are filled with illegal drugs and booze? What's a mom to do?

When bad goldfish happen to good people

Risa Green of Tales from the Mommy Track always has funny things to say about being a manic mom, but yesterday's post just cracked me up. Of course the rushing around is all too familiar, but so is the forgetting, the lying, and the self-recrimination. Everything was familiar except this line:

"It was all I could do not to tell her that if she didn’t inform me that she was hungry, I would probably forget to feed her, and that the only reason our dog is still alive is because she’s learned to bark at me when I’m on my way out the door in the morning if I’ve forgotten to put food in her bowl."

If we had a dog I might be inclinded to ignore the barking. Perhaps that's why we don't have a dog.

How to Mark Your Children's Growth

Some parents track their children's growth with sweet little growth charts they hang on the wall. We mark ours by how much further away from the edge of the counter we have to move the knives, so our children won't grab them and stab each other.

As of this morning that's about two inches.

Since when did I become a cliche?

I dropped Annabella off at preschool yesterday and was driving to the grocery store in our Toyota Sienna when I heard this on the radio news:

"Want to know who's going to be the most powerful block of voters in the upcoming election? Well, if you just dropped your kids off at school and are headed to the grocery store in the minivan, then look in the rearview mirror."

Cherish Every Moment?

People say that you should cherish every moment when your children are young, because they grow up so fast. People say this, so it must be true. But I do not think that it is true. I do not think you should cherish changing dirty diapers that make the entire room smell like the inside of a sewer. I do not think you should cherish the twelve times you have to tell your 3.5 year old daughter that she has to clean up her room. I do not think you should cherish the moment when after the twelfth time she slaps you because she is so tired because she has given up her nap, even though she really needs it. Today I choose to cherish this moment. We are saving paper towel and toilet paper rolls for some project in Annabella’s preschool class. This afternoon the kids entertained themselves for the better part of 15 minutes marching around the living room making horn sounds into empty toilet paper rolls.

Things you never thought you'd have to say

1. We don't eat food out of the trash can.
2. We don't wrap things tightly around anyone's neck.
3. Little boys are not allowed to play with knives.
4. Toothpaste is not food.
5. Do not put cheerios in the heating vent.
6. No, your brothers can't drink beer either.
7. I don't like it when you lick me on the cheek.
8. If you're going to eat a lima bean off the floor, pick it up with your hands, not with your teeth.
9. Don't eat your sister's hair.
10. Maybe your brother doesn't want to wear your fairy wings today.
11. Don't sit on your brother.
12. Don't stand on your brother.
13. Don't bend your brother that way.
14. Don't bite your brother on the face.
15. Don't get out of bed unless you're bleeding.
16. Boots is not Dora's husband because little girls don't get married to monkeys.

I Owe My Sanity to Huggies Overnights

Annabella wasn't just a good sleeper, she was a great sleeper. She was an A+ sleeper. She was a genius at sleeping, a real baby prodigy. Thank heavens for this journal entry or I might have thought my sleep-deprived mind was playing tricks on me when I remembered that she started sleeping through the night when she six weeks old.

Has there ever been a mother who was lucky enough to have been blessed with more than one good sleeper? I would have been happy with two out of three. I would even have been OK with two bad sleepers, just as long as they didn't happen to have been born at the same time.

But when six weeks passed and the boys were still waking up every few hours, we were disappointed, but not in despair. Even at four months, we were cautiously optimistic every evening that the boys would sleep (or at least let us sleep) for more than a four hour stretch. True despair probably set in at six months. And then eight months passed. And then nine. At nearly a year they were still waking up at 4:30 am screaming, wet, hungry, and very, very angry.

Lets get something straight. I love my boys. They are two of the sweetest little tan munchkins that ever crawled on this earth. They are both this complicated combination of cuteness and swarthiness. Each day they amaze me with their huge smiles, uncontrollable laughter, and endless capacity for cuddling. And they are so lucky that they are so loveable because otherwise I would hate them for not letting me sleep more.

Do you have any idea what eleven months of sleep deprivation does to a person? If you don't, I hope that you never do. If you do, I hope that you have people in your life who can remind you that life was not always like this and will not always be like this and that you should definitely not strangle the next person who tells you to "cherish these moments because they grow up so fast!"

Who knew that the solution to all my problems was a more absorbent diaper? I cannot say enough good things about the Huggies Overnight diaper. They are the only things that keep my boys from being a sopping mess at four in the morning. And as a result, for the past few days (a little under a week before their first birthdays) the boys have slept straight through from 7 pm until 6 am. Maybe it was daylight savings time that turned 6 am into the new 5 am. And maybe they saw the glint of insanity in my eyes that convinced them that cuteness can only take you so far. And maybe they were just ready to sleep longer. Whatever the case may be, I'm not taking any chances. I'm keeping Huggies Overnights in stock forever.

Baby's Night Out

I have a confession to make. I judge parents whom I don't know. I realize that being judgmental is a bad thing and I don't judge the parenting decisions that my friends or my family makes. But I think it's perfectly OK to judge a stranger. And I'm not afraid to say that judging sometimes makes me feel good. That's wrong, I know. If you don't really know me, go ahead and judge me. It doesn't hurt anyone. When I see a child sitting in a shopping cart passed out over the handle, I judge that child's parents. I do a silent "tsk, tsk" to myself and think that this child is sleep deprived. Never mind that this child is two or three and I know nothing at all about the behaviors of two or three-year-olds. I just know that if Annabella did that, she'd be sleep deprived. Similarly, if I see a child Annabella's age who is out after 7pm, I judge. The child should be home asleep, or at least heading that way. And yet, here I am with Annabella, out on a Saturday night (way after 7pm) with my friend MJ and her 3-month-old, Finn. Why are we out so late? So we could see fireworks in downtown San Francisco. Last year around this time I surmised that becoming a mother had somehow turned me into a responsible adult. Thankfully, it turns out that this is not entirely true. That night Annabella didn't get to bed until after 11pm and she hasn't quite gotten over that fact three days later. But, you know what? The spontaneous sound of awe she made when she saw the first firework explode over the Bay Bridge was more than worth it. You be the judge.