Yesterday Ruthie and I were snuggling on the couch watching our daily dose of Dora the Explorer when she leaned over, pressed her forhead into mine, held both my cheeks in her hands, and said, “Mommy, you’re my best. friend.”
The other day Ruthie and I walked down the street to get our hair cut. On the way home she ran ahead of me, turning her head to see if I was watching how fast she was running. I contorted my body in all sorts of directions as she approached a tree on the edge of the sidewalk, not really finding the words to warn her in my panic. She turned just in time to see the tree, but still bumped into it and fell back onto her bum.
In these situations, sadly, my first response tends to be laughter – because it was kind of funny, and I could see she was okay.
She was more stunned and embarrassed than she was hurt. Nonetheless, as she continued to run down the sidewalk she would holler, “OH NO! TREE!†and veer hard right to get out of its path.
This was problematic since we were planning a camping trip in the woods.
With lots of trees.
But her wariness of trees didn’t last long, and we were able to camp in a grove of trees without any one of them running into her.
Just got back last night from our annual camping trip to Orcas Island in the San Juans. Getting there involves two hours of driving, an hour ferry ride, and what turned out to be a four hour wait for the ferry because the first one we tried for was full.
It started off pleasantly enough when Ruthie realized we were taking a ferry to our destination, and she started hollering, “WHERE’S OUR LIFE JACKETS? WHERE’S OUR LIFE JACKETS?â€
Thank you, Dora. So much.
But we missed the first ferry and it was a three hour wait until the next one, which turned into a four hour wait because it was late, and you’d think with waits like that there would be something to do to pass the time – but there is really. nothing. to do. (stupid, state-run ferry). Well, there were some rugged, death defying paths down a steep embankment to the beach, but I was wearing my pretty sandals instead of my functional sandals, so there was no way I was getting down there without breaking my neck or getting the worst ‘rug burn’ on my ass that is humanly possible.
So we wandered around for a couple hours until Bryan finally decided it was worth it to pull Ruthie’s tricycle out of the car. And after dragging her around the hot pavement for an hour we decided that tricycles SUCK because you can’t get any leverage with the pedals directly on the front wheel.
Then after awhile we all smooshed into the front seat of the car to keep everyone contained without having to do any actually running, and I decided it was a good idea to hand out fruit leathers, which resulted in very sticky fingers in a very crowded and enclosed space.
Sticky hands on a son who uses your boobs as handles to pull himself up – the aftermath can be disturbing to the random passerby.
So when you add an extra three hours to your travel time that happens to extend over the dinner hour, and your husband missed his nap time, and your three year old is being extremely high maintenance with the running into traffic thing … it makes for a long day.
But we survived, albeit with a little time shaved off the end of my life.
On the way home we were hoping to catch the 1:30 ferry from Orcas Island, but it was filled up long before we even left our camp site because all the morning ferries were full and spilling over. BAH. We then had to wait for the 4:20 ferry, which was delayed on Shaw Island for an extra forty-five minutes due to a “passenger situation.â€
At least on the return trip we were waiting with friends who also had toddlers, so they spent four hours filling empty water bottles with gravel, eating grass, and generally nitpicking each other – but at lease they left us out of it.
Oh, did I mention that there were NINE preschoolers and toddlers in our group? And that NONE of them had a nap because we were sitting in the dead grass waiting for the ferry all afternoon? Well, none of them except for Thomas.
It was fun to be with friends, and the group thing helped relieve the stress, and Ruthie ONLY ran away from us twice that afternoon. That’s a record for her.
It’s Monday morning, and thank the good Lord in heaven I don’t have to go anywhere today. When Ruthie starts school full time I’m screwed, because the one thing about motherhood that agrees with me is the part about not having to be anywhere in particular. Ruthie was in day camp last week, and by the time my alarm went off on Thursday I was so DONE with the morning rush and just wanted to sit in my p.j.’s with my coffee while the kids took turns playing in the toilet.
I’ve definitely grown accustomed to the leisurely morning. I hate showering right after waking up because it signals the beginning of productivity. Showering also means I have to then do something with my face and my hair and put on actual clothes, and that really takes the leisure out of the morning.
But it was a good trial run, because now I know the clock is ticking on my lazy ass days. From now on I will be taking full advantage.
I really thought Ruthie would talk unendingly about her days in “school†– which is what we had to start calling it because she kept confusing ‘day camp’ with the fact that we are going ‘camping’ next week – but she never really said a thing. The most I got out of her was when she started walking around on all fours meowing like a cat, and when I asked her if she learned to walk like a cat in school she said … yup. And that was pretty much the extent of it.
I found myself falling into my old peer pressure ways, too, checking myself out in the mirror before we left to make sure I would impress the other moms. I hated the one morning when I went to the gym after dropping her off because, as great as some people might look in work-out wear, I am not that impressive. I actually considered, for one brief moment, the benefits of dressing up to drop her off then running home to change into my gym clothes.
I know. Gross! For the love of Pete, I’m 34 years old and worried about looking cool to the other moms! But it’s true, I did struggle with that. Honestly, though, I think it was a fleeting issue, and mostly because I’m so used to my comfort zone of friends and Safeway check-out girls that I experienced a little culture shock of the world beyond my toddlers.
I did manage to get past my own silly issues long enough to have A Moment. It was a moment of pride, of overwhelming love, of anticipating new chapters: my little girl is growing up. She is tall, and runs fast, and thinks for herself, and makes decisions, and walks into a classroom to engage in learning.
I have been in denial of the impending school years because for now she is all mine, and I’m selfish like that. I love her painfully, and I’m all she ever really wants, and I know someday that will change. And as dysfunctional as I can be, at least right now I’m the only one fucking her up. Her mess is my mess, and we can work through that together. But one day girls will be mean, or a boy will dump her, or a close friend will die, and her mess will be so much more complicated.
I fear she won’t need me anymore. Or that what I have to offer will no longer be comforting. Or that I won’t know what to do.
Good grief. After four mornings of day camp I need co-dependency therapy.
Here are the top five reasons why I love this video:
1. Ruthie’s fingernails are painted with blue markers because I won’t put nail polish on her fingernails while she still sucks her thumb.
2. She sings this song at top volume all. day. long. and somebody else needs to know this.
3. You get to hear how cute she sounds when she sings, “Next time won’t-chya sing with me…”
4. She is wearing only her underpants, which needs to be documented. Ruthie hardly ever wears clothes around the house, mostly because she has to be able to see her cute underpants at all times. But also because clothes are just so restricting, ya know?
5. Someday when she and Thomas go on the road, I’ll have it on video how their famous band got its start!
Ruthie made her own peanut butter and jelly sandwich today, which was really fun to watch until it all went down hill very quickly. She was very proud, and I was very encouraging, until there was half an inch of peanut butter involved and she was about to slap on half a cup of jam.
I tried to be very Love and Logic about it by saying, “Are you sure you want that much peanut butter?” and “Can I help you scrape some of that off?” and so forth, to which she answered Yes and No respectively.
I figured as much.
I’m only on page 52 of Love and Logic, so I wasn’t sure what to do next in this latest quest for the right formula of parenting. So what did I do? I resorted to my old ways of taking control of the situation, though I did it calmly. She simply CAN’T have half a jar of jam on her sandwich, right?
She didn’t see it that way, and threw a fit, earning herself a time-out after making her own peanut butter sandwich like a big girl.
Doesn’t that suck?
Doesn’t that just make you want to shed a tear?
It all worked out in the end, and she enjoyed eating the sandwich (minus about half the peanut butter, which I scraped off during her time out). But again I will say it: this parenting thing is EXHAUSTING.
If this seems dumb to you as you read it, imagine how dumb I feel admitting it.
I was tired and cranky this evening. I always pack the days too full when Bryan is gone, which I did today by cramming in a bunch of afternoon errands that I should have just left alone, especially since they involved trying on clothes. Which? Never goes well.
While eating dinner Ruthie kept scraping her fork against my plate, making a screeching fingernail-on-chalkboard kind of sound.
I asked her to stop, which she did.
Then she scraped again, quieter, while looking at me to see how I would respond.
I asked her to stop. Again. Which she did.
Then she TAPPED my plate with her fork while, again, looking for my reaction.
My new phrase for her is, “What you are doing is mean spirited,†because she can be a little shit to me and all her friends with her antagonizing. So I said this to her, adding that I didn’t like the sound she was making, and I had already asked her to stop.
She then proceeded to stick her leg out and tap her foot on my knee, WHILE LOOKING FOR A FUCKING REACTION.
Which I, of course, gave her. In full color and form.
It was not my finest hour, but DAMN IT, she was pissing me off with the testing.
I’m realizing it’s not so much the disobeying that I get frustrated by, because HELLO! She’s three. I’m pretty sure she’s going to disobey. I become completely unglued when she antagonizes: when I tell her to not touch something and she brings her little hand within a centimeter of the thing she’s not supposed to touch and watches to see what I’ll do, when she touches the space ALL AROUND the thing she’s not supposed to touch and watches to see what I’ll do, when she slides her FOOT close to the thing she’s not supposed to touch and watches to see what I’ll do…
Are you getting the picture?
Why does that bug me so much?
Because A) I have a rage problem, which is essentially an issue of being a control-freak, and her being out of my control makes my chest tight and my jaw clench (my issue), and B) she is TECHNICALLY obeying me by not touching, but in her heart she’s giving me the big fuck you! finger, and that scares the shit out of me.
I don’t want my cute, smart, funny, sweet, blondie growing up with a big fuck you! finger tattooed on her heart. I want her heart to be soft, and teachable, and receptive of discipline.
Has my own dysfunction made her mean spirited?
Am I blowing a normal thing out of proportion?
Granted, I acted like a child myself the way I handled her tonight. I played right into her hand. I admit it. But I feel so worn down by this issue at large, and when you add to that a tiring day I honestly didn’t have the energy to be mature about it.
But it definitely has me stressed out.
Sometimes, when Ruthie wakes up too early, she’ll wander downstairs to find Bryan in his office and snuggle up on his plush, shag rug. She’ll get to hang out there with him as long as she’s quiet. Sometimes Bryan will call me to come get her, but other times, like this morning, he’ll bring her upstairs to me and she’ll go back to sleep in my bed.
At lunch time we all eat together, and after I put the kids down for a nap Bryan and I get some time to snuggle on the couch and read together before he goes back down to his office.
I often get frustrated with Bryan for his strict boundaries of time, because it means I don’t get to do some of the things I want to do, or projects take longer to complete. But other times, like today, I see the benefits of good boundaries, because it means I can count on spending an hour with him for lunch every day.
And that’s kinda nice.
This morning as I was drinking my coffee, Thomas held out his sippy cup to me and said, “Da!” which means “Cheers!” in Thomas-speak.
It’s a little something Bryan started with Ruthie a long time ago, daddy and daughter clanking their glasses together as they partook in beverages. But it soon evolved into something Ruthie does when she notices she has the same thing as another person, like when she cheers-ed our toes because she wore the same color nail polish as me.
I’m so used to this endearing ritual that it never occurred to me it’s a little quirky. Until, of course, I was at a playgroup last week and noticed a four-year-old wearing the same style and color of sandals that I was wearing. When I stuck my foot out in his direction and joyfully said, “Cheers!” he crossed his eyebrows at me and walked away.
Thomas has quickly picked up on this tradition, and now whenever we’re holding a beverage at the same time I’m sucked into the toddler-style uber-repetition of cheers-ing his sippy cup. It never ends. And just now as I was sweeping, he jabbed my little hand whisk out in front of him and said, “Da!” as he tapped my broom.
Ruthie got in trouble a couple weeks ago for touching her window fan, and ever since then she is reminded to not touch her fan whenever she is in her room.
Tonight I caught her pushing buttons on the window fan in MY room, so I reminded her that she was not to touch the fan.
She looked from me to the fan and back again, then said, “No mommy, this YOUR fan. It’s not MY fan.”
Bryan and I exchanged raised eyebrows, and I said, “Did your daughter just split hairs with me?”
Apologizing to Ruthie after losing my temper: I’m sorry I yelled at you. It was wrong for mommy to yell at you like that.
Ruthie (sweetly): you need to just hush, mommy.
Yeah.
You need to just talk, mommy.
Yeah.
And laugh.
I need to laugh?
(smirking) Yeah, you need to laugh.
Yesterday after my babysitter arrived, Ruthie started throwing a fit over [insert ANYTHING] so I put her in a time out on a chair in the hallway where she immediately began crying and screeching at high octaves. But she was in the other room, so the rest of us continued our conversation.
When the babysitter found a little doll’s brush, she said to Thomas, “Can I brush your hair, Thomas?â€
As if a switch had been flipped, the screeching stopped instantly, and Ruthie said in the most rational, matter-of-fact, calm voice, “Thomas doesn’t have any hair!â€
Both of us snorted through our noses trying to suppress the laughter as Ruthie flipped the switch back on and continued her screeching.
I was surfing YouTube last night and came across this video – a very serious matter. I implore everyone who reads this, to watch and find some way to contribute to this worthy cause. Won’t you please help us save the rock?
Also, I caught my fair share of baseball this last weekend, and I have to say the Twins are a much more fun team to watch than the Mariners. The actually get excited when good things happen – it’s like they’re little kids playing in the neighborhood, only they kick ass on the Yankees.
Anyhow, in this article in the Star Tribune, Patrick Reusse calls out a sensitive issue the pitcher faced during the game:
Baker’s other distressing moment came in the second, when his jockstrap broke on a 3-2 foul ball by Jorge Posada. His protective cup came free and started sliding down his leg.
Baker motioned catcher Joe Mauer toward the mound. When Mauer arrived, he said, “Joe, my cup’s down by my knee.”
Mauer, always a young man of common sense, replied: “What do you want me to do about it?”
Baker went to the dugout, removed the cup, retired Posada to end the inning, then raced up the steps to get a new jockstrap to secure the cup.
You didn’t want to face this Yankees lineup without proper protection? “Not a chance,” Baker said.
On a family note, my lovely daughter dropped the F-bomb in my 70-year-old Baptist mother’s presence over the weekend (gee, I wonder where she picked up THAT language). I thought I handled it quite well despite Marge’s near-fatal gasp of shock. To be honest, it doesn’t really bother me when she swears. And to her credit, she used the word in THE most appropriate scenario: she was frustrated – no, dare I say PISSED – and acting out in rebellion against me, and I was trying to reign her in. I can’t say I wouldn’t have said the same thing in her shoes.
In fact, after Marge passed out I reminded Ruthie that Mama uses that word when she does not have a Happy Heart, and wasn’t it true that in using that word it means RUTHIE doesn’t have a happy heart? And to my complete joy she ACTUALLY GOT IT. I do believe I’m raising a genius despite myself.
Someone flipped the Obstinate switch on in Ruthie’s brain today. From the moment she woke up (do you want cereal for breakfast? NO!), to the minute she went to bed (would you like to take a book with you? NO!) she expressed not a word of voluntary cooperation. Every question, even every request, met with her resolute NO! answer.
By dinner time I was losing my mind.
This morning my sister, my mom, and I took the kids to Como Park Zoo. Shortly after walking through our first indoor exhibit – the primates – Ruthie ran ahead of us to a wrought iron fence that separated the zoo from the amusement park, which was currently not in operation. I didn’t think much of it. The curve of the fence cupped her in and there wasn’t anywhere she could go.
Or so I thought.
I caught a glimpse of my mother shouting at and running toward Ruthie. I panicked as I saw the upper half of her body wedged through a gap between the fence and a gate. Her cap fell off, and she grabbed it in her hand as she tried to shimmy the rest of the way through the gate. I raced toward her and yelled, “Ruthie! Stop!†like I have so. many. times. It never seems to work. It didn’t work today, either.
In a split second, as I raced faster than I thought my flab could take me, a montage of images flickered in my mind: My screaming at Ruthie to come back. Ruthie’s blatant disregard for my authority. Calling for help as my three-year-old wanders alone through an empty amusement park. Wondering if I’ll ever see her again. Furious that the little bitch was ignoring me again. It was a mixture of fear and rage.
The scene played out like the climax of a movie. The more I yelled at her to stop, the faster she shimmied. I reached the fence just as her last leg disappeared, and I reached through the bars and caught a handful of shirt at the nape of her neck.
Ruthie turned and saw the look on my face and instantly began to cry. I had scared her. I’m not sure if the look itself (murder, death, dismemberment) scared her, or if she finally realized the scariness of her situation, but it was obvious she was suddenly scared.
Later, in an unrelated spurt of self-expression, she took her cap off and tossed it over the fence into the lion’s yard. I closed my eyes and gripped the fence to avert my will from tossing her in after it. This behavior went on all day, and it exhausted me.
Now, as I lay in bed, I am tense and wound up. Today I didn’t lost my temper, I didn’t speak disrespectfully to her, I never grabbed her or spanked her inappropriately, and I still managed to have moments of fun and affection with her. I am a different mother today than I was a few months ago. Yet, without the expression of my rage I feel anxious and full of nervous energy.
It was a taxing day, but I’m trying to see life through the victories. Today I was a good mother, despite having a bad, bad daughter.
