The Sickie Ickies

Well, hello there cold and flu season. So lovely to see you again. Let's get something straight right now.

That business you pulled in our house from January to April ain't happenin' again. Do you hear me? Do you understand me? It was awful. You turned me into a true believer of hand washing and sanitizing and quarantining. Of Puffs Plus and Children's Benadryl. Of Bacchus and liquid grapes.

Each and EVERY time we ventured out of the house, just a day after their leaky little snot faucets dried up, we ran into a snotty nosed child running all over the play equipment. One whose mother was not exhausted from taking care of two children under two years of age with two runny noses and four watery eyes and two sore throats for four months.

So, I just stayed away from all things play. I kept us all locked up in this house. Just us and the Sickie Ickies. And I cannot do that again. My husband may leave me if he has to come home to That Wife again.

This is day seven, kiddo numero uno. Show some manners and spare the baby. The girls are getting antsy. I'm starting to drink more. Let's wrap this play date up. Consider this your eviction notice.

"Yes, Mom. I ate the ham."

Then how did it get on the windowsill?

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Ever seen Bill Cosby As Himself?

Eat More Chiken, or, The Day I Lost My Kid

It happened at a Mommy and Me event. Outside, under a big white tent that you could rent for weddings and such. There were lots of mom-centric vendors. You know, cell phone people next to the Childen's Museum people next to the new-spa-in-town people next to the Chik-fil-a people. The latter was the problem.

I had my oldest daughter out of the stroller so she could burn off all that toddler energy. We tried some crafts. We walked around. We saw The Cow. The Eat More Chiken Cow. She bolted towards it. "See the cow?!?!"

Off she ran, through a crowd of people. I remember thinking, "No, that's too far. I can't see her from here." I grabbed the stroller with my youngest daughter in it. I walked quickly towards The Cow.

I looked for her. I looked again. No. She came this way. I watched her come this way. There's The Cow. Where is she? She has to be here. (What if she ran out of the tent?) I looked again, spinning around slowly in a circle. (Where could she be? What if someone took her?) Oh. My. God. Where is she? I spin around again. (They could take her. They could take her and no one would notice because of the crowd.)

I remember running to the edge of the tent, looking frantically. And then, I lost it. I ran back to the middle of the tent and I lost my mind.

It felt like I was in a movie. The kind with the scenes with mothers who look away right as the villian snatches their child from the playground and takes them away and tortures them. I kept spinning around in a circle, yelling her name, as a sea of faces and figures rushed past me. None of it made any sense. I was screaming. I couldn't hear anything, but I did realize that music stopped. I knew everyone was staring. I kept screaming her name. (In hindsight, I REALLY must've looked crazy at first, given my daugher's name is the same as our state of residence.) I heard only the sound of my heart beating and my breath. A woman tried to pull me back to reality.

"What is your daugher wearing?"

"Bright yellow sundress. Bright yellow. Bright yellow," I said. I coninued to spin around, too frantic to see anything. Everything was blurry. My heart was in my throat, and in my stomach, and my heart was gone. My baby. My baby. My baby. This can't be happening to me. This can't be happening to me.

"She's right here!"

What?

There she was, squatting down, not 5 feet from where we were standing before this whole drama began, pointing to a dog. Oh, my sweet baby! My baby!

I ran to her, picked her up, and held her. I walked to the outside of the tent and stood there, just holding her, as she kept pointing to the dog. She felt so small in my arms. Had she always been this small? Not sure how long we stood there. She soon started to squirm and wiggle. I know I told her I loved her, and to never, NEVER run away from Mommy again.

A few minutes later, after I'd collected myself and strapped the runaway into the stroller, a woman said this to me,

"I'm so glad you found her. That must be a horrible feeling. You know, at first I thought you were part of storytime and were just a great actress." Well, thanks so much for your help in my time of need.

So, obviously, this is not my best moment. It's the top of my scary moments list. And I'm still not over it. Taking the kids places stresses me out majorly. I still do it, but I don't feel safe trying to multitask it. You know what I mean? I see these groups of moms at the park or the children's museum, and they're just sitting there talking while their kids play. They're not watching their kids AT ALL. It terrifies me.

I know someday, I'm going to have to let her wander out of my sight. I know that. Just not quite yet.

Mother Runner

I am our childcare. That means if I run, they run with me. Well, sit while I push the stroller. My children are often my biggest fans. "Great job, Mommy! Yaaaaay!" My goodness gracious, I could run forever if I get to hear that when I finish. There's also, "Want me help you stretch, Mommy?" Oh, my sweet baby girl. You are the best thing I've ever done.

That's how I imagined jogging would be as I stood in line in Babies-R-Us, wondering what my husband would say when he saw this new, bigger, more expensive double jogging stroller ("You paid HOW much??? And why do we need another stroller??"). I am going to be a runner! My children will love it! We will run in the park! It's going to be great!

We generally start off all rainbows and butterflies. The girls quietly take in the scenery, sipping milk happily from their sippy cups. Occasionally, my oldest points out a dog. "Hi, dog!" I find my rhythm easily and jog along to my music (my pimped out stroller has speakers, home slice!). The birds. The breeze. The trees. The music.

Enter Mile Two. It's usually when Beyonce starts singing about "All the Single Ladies." The sippy cups are empty. The first round of toys have become boring, there is a shift in the universe, and things deteriorate quickly.

I'm a four-ish miler (wimp). So, we're talkin' about the middle of my run, when the pace is faster and I have to do a little mental digging. My breathing is heavier. Talking is more difficult. I can speak, but it comes out tense and breathless, a sentence or two at a time. I try to reason with them. "Mommy needs two more miles." Breathe. Breathe. "Can you be patient and sing a song for Mommy?" Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

That never works. My two-year old can't reason, and the one-year old CERTAINLY doesn't understand. More whining. Beyonce swears she's not that kind of girl. I wonder just how much longer I've got to listen to this, and reach for my phone. I fumble with it, running awkwardly now, with one hand on the handles of the stroller, phone in the other, cussing technology that never just works the way I need it to work when my kids start screaming, finally getting my running GPS app to open. 1.75 miles to go. Ugh. I can't handle that much longer with the whining. I hit the "pause workout" button.

"Mommy knows it's hard to sit still for a long time. Let's find you something different to play with." I'm breathing hard as I bend over to reach the under-the-seat baskets. Two books. That works. "Here you go."

And then, we're off again. I skip to the next song because Beyonce just doesn't motivate me enough, and then my Amazon Cloud Player forces closed and the music stops all together. Frustration rising.

"Mommy, I want music, Mommy. No, no, nooooo!"

"Mommy is working on it." A string of four letter words rest on the tip of my tongue. I purse my lips and swallow them back down. Ok. Music fixed. Running again.

I'm talking to myself at this point. Just hurry up and finish. You got this. Pick up the pace. Go. Go. Go. And then, Amelia throws her book over the side of the stroller and starts screaming.

Ugh. Stop. Pick up the book. Try to give it back. She screams more and waves her hands back and forth in protest. Fine. No book for you if you want to act that way. I'm the Book Nazi. Push off again, a little more violently than I anticipated, but running none the less.

I have no idea what song is playing because the youngest is screaming and it drowns out all other sound. I can't hear the voice in my head. All I can hear is screaming.

Could an elite runner mentally handle running like this?

I slow to a jog, reach under the stroller while still running, and grab the first toy I find. Youngest finds it momentarily acceptable. Phew. Thank you. I can hear again.

"No, no, no, Amelia! That's MINE'S!" Well, that didn't last long. Youngest is again screaming. I reach over the sun canopies and grab said toy from the oldest and hand it back to the youngest. She stops crying. The oldest fiercely protests.

"No, no, no, Mommy! I want the duuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" Oh my god. How much farther do I have to listen to this. Why can't I just get a run in silence? Do they make portable DVD players that I can mount to the snack trays? What if I just put in my headphones? Would that make me a horrible mother? "I want the DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" .75 miles to go.

"Virginia." Breathe. Breathe. "Mommy's almost done." Breathe. Breathe. "I need you to," breathe, breathe, "be a good girl," breathe, breathe, "and sing some songs for Mommy." Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

"I want the duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." And she takes it from her sister. And this time I let her keep it. And I'm angry. And I'm tired. And I'm drenched in sweat. And I'm pushing fifty pounds of kid in fifty pounds stroller and they're screaming and the sweat is dripping into my eyes and it stings and this sucks and why don't I just get up at 5 am and run before they wake up?

And now, I'm passing a woman with her brown lab. She stares as I huff past. I know, lady. I know how this must look to you. But, I'm running and you're just walking so who's the tougher one here? She pulls her dog away from us, even though she's on the other side of the street. I must look some kinda crazy.

We round the corner and are chugging/jogging/clomping back to the house. "Aaaaaalllll done," says my eldest. Almost, baby. Almost. Just let me do the last quater mile without having to talk to you, because I just don't have the energy to do both right now.

And then, it's over. I slow to a walk. "Aaaaaaaaall done," she says again. We pull into our yard. I stop the stroller. I pace around the yard. I'm thinking, "We made it. I did it. Why does it always have to be like that?" I turn around to walk back towards the girls.

"Yaaaaaaaaaay, Mommy! Great job, Mommy! Want me get down help you stretch, Mommy?" Amelia smiles and bounces up and down and claps her hands as Virginia screams my congratulations. It all melts away.

I just ran four miles with my girls and they're cheering for me. Cause I'm a bad mother runner.

Time to start the day

5:30 am. There have been whining noises coming from the girls' room for an hour. At first, I thought I could move downstairs to the sofa and maybe the intermittent whining would stop, or at least stop before it made it to my ears. If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it....

It's unclear how my husband sleeps through this. Why can't I sleep through this?

It sounded as if she couldn't get comfortable and was tossing and turning for a while. No real cries. Just noise. Just enough noise to wake me up. Just often enough to make sleep elusive. And now, it seems to have stopped. Since I've given up on sleep, that makes perfect sense.

Or, as it turns out, my child is actually awake. A voice from the baby monitor just said, "No." My thoughts exactly. Other thoughts include:

I must stop allowing her to refuse food at dinner. She's awake from hunger.
I remember when I used to go to bed around 5:30.
Did she go back to sleep?
I need more coffee.
Nope. She's still awake.

The baby monitor spoke again. "Wake up, Amelia," in her singsong voice. Which movie was it? Signs? The one with Mel Gibson and the alien invasion and they used baby monitors to listen for the sounds? Sometimes I feel like my life isn't far off from that. I just sit and wait for the monitor to make noise. Except flinging cups of water at my children won't solve the problem.

When it was abolutely clear she wasn't going back to sleep, I began to wonder if I could go up and get her without waking the younger child. Doubful, but possible. No noise from her thus far. Why is my deep sleeper awake, and my light sleeper silent in the face of all those urgent wake up demands? One last sip of coffee.

I walk slowly and quietly up the stairs. I'm careful to walk on the outside edge of each step to minimize creaking. I try not to breathe too loudly. I barely touch the door when I push it open. Must. Be. Quiet.

Virginia stands up. I hold my breath and wait for her to scream hello. She does not. I tiptoe over to her bed, my eyes on Amelia. She's face down, with her knees tucked under her, cute little butt stuck up in the air. She hears my thoughts and opens her eyes. Cuss word.

Maybe if I'm fast, she'll go right back to sleep. I grab Virginia and do a wierd tiptoe run back out of the room. I pull the door shut. She screams.

"Amelia's awake, Mom." You don't say.

We make it downstairs. I manage to find the remote and Yo Gabba Gabba without too much fussing from the girls. I keep the light off. We all sit on the sofa. Amelia is unusually snuggly. Virginia's in a good mood, and very cute in her just-woke-up hair. I think, "Aww. This isn't so bad. One day soon, I'll wish they were this small."

Virginia looks over at me and says, "I took a good nap, Mom." Nope.

Baristas and Barbie Dolls

It's back! Autumn roasted, toasted, ground, and percolated into the spicy perfection that is the pumpkin spice latte. And want to know what's so unhip and wonderful about living in the suburbs? Drive through Starbucks on every corner. I'm too busy to bother with parking my car and going in a coffee shop, you know? Well, maybe you don't know. But trust, you don't want me bringing my kids into Starbucks. And it's too much of a hassle for me to do it, anyway. Starbucks drive through really, truly is a super business idea. At least from a mom's perspective. (I have become the person I hated when I was childless and cool.) I digress.

There we are, the girls and I, pulling up to the pick-up window. I pay. I wait. The barista leaves the window open. Virginia asks if she's going to get a chocolate milk (because we're in a drive through, and why wouldn't she be getting a happy meal). I laugh.

"No, baby. Mommy is getting a coffee."

Barista giggles, observes the toddler and baby,and says, "Mommy has TWO kids. Mommy needs her coffee." Amen, sister. She then says hello to my oldest. Virginia responds, "See my baby doll?"

And holds up this.

Fabulous. I'm not at all embarassed.