Life With Lullah

The other day, my three year old told me that I am "smokin' hot."

Yesterday, I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up, and she said "Hannah Montana."

Today at a restaurant, every time I turned around, she was doing her "Pink Panther" walk, wherein she imitates Steve Martin strutting around New York City.

Tonight on the way home, she shrieked for at least three miles: "Get off this stupid street, you dummy!" We were on the freeway. Apparently, she doesn't like freeways.

I am trying to potty train her. She is ready. She often wakes up in the morning and from her naps dry -- a good sign. She can tell me when she has to pee. She can run around dry, in underwear, for 2, 3, 4 hours. She can sit on the potty when she has to go. But she WILL NOT PEE IN THE POT. Given our busy lives, I have not had time to just sit with her until she goes. Inevitably, she tells me she has to go pee about 30 minutes before we need to be somewhere...and then spends the next 25 minutes messing with me, sitting and not peeing. This makes her giggle with delight. Then we have to leave.

I like to sing along to music in the car; she doesn't like it when I do this. So...when I start to sing, she starts to scream. My own little 3-year old dictator will scream and yell and fling her toddler vitriole at me until I stop. Sometimes she keeps going until I actually turn the music off.

She wants to be held most of the time, too. Except when she's careening around the house like a tasmanian devil, perhaps trying to chip one of her teeth for the third time in her young life. (She has already chipped her two front top teeth, in separate incidents. They are nice and symmetrically chipped: she has a neat little triangle shape right in front of her smile.)

When not careening around, she is either hiding from me so she can eat candy or she is badgering me with "Uppie, uppie, uppie, uppie, uppie!" (Pick me up!) I know she's had it for the day when she says to me: "I wanna sweep in yo' ahms." So sweet. But her timing sucks, because I'm usually making dinner at this point.

She's a pistol. I love her.



And in other news, you must listen to this gem of a story from NPR this morning. Talk about persistence! One wonders where the line between perseverance and insanity is, but there's no arguing with the fact that this lady finally achieved her goal. Good for her.



* * *

Book Circuit, Here I Come

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well, I'm writing with some good news! I have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I know, I know, it took me awhile. But here I am, about to turn 41, and I finally know what I want to be: a writer. More specifically, a published memoir author.

I have noticed, on the NPR interview circuit, that all of today's most interesting books are memoirs, so I am going to write one.

This is where you come in. See, I have noticed that most of these memoir author people have some pretty intense family stuff to write about, wacky parents and bumpy childhoods, drugs, alcohol, mental disorders, etc. So I need you to give me a list of all the stuff you've kept from me over the years, all the really sordid details of our family's lore. Feel free to embellish.

Perhaps you could use some "prompts" or ideas. Think of these categories: Violence...substance abuse...craziness...scandals...shameful events...big family secrets, etc.

Mary Karr, for example, wrote about the night her mother threatened to kill her and her sister with a butcher knife. Now that stuff makes for some good memoir, don't you think? I'm looking for a real attention grabber like that, something Terry Gross can delve into when I am a guest of Fresh Air after my book comes out.

I am hoping to really make it big with this book -- and maybe several sequels -- so I encourage you to think hard about what you can dredge up from the past for me to use.

I am so happy to have finally discovered my true calling. I am going to work hard to make you proud while also portraying you in such a way that I will sell lots of books. It will be a fine line to walk, so I'd just like you to know that whatever I write, I write with purpose. I will not use something just for its sensational value; I will only use what will get me published, I promise.

Hope you are well.

Love,

your daughter

ps. Until I get that big advance towards my book, can you send me some cash? I'd really appreciate it.

* * *

Another Halloween. . .

. . .has come and gone.

I try to love Halloween, really I do, but it's hard. As in "I'm tryin' Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard." (Name that movie!)

I like the idea of dressing up and I like helping my kids assemble costumes. But I'm a dreadful procrastinator, and I'm usually stressed out about some key element of a costume right down to the last minute. I hate that.

This year, the pirate was easy and fun and ready ahead of time. Ditto for Cleopatra. The monkey, thanks to my extended village, turned out to be extremely easy, if a little down to the wire. The Grim Reaper -- easy...but I couldn't let go of the nagging voice in my head that kept saying: "Really? That's what you want to be? You can't think of something more fun? And less...deathly?"

I know, I know, 9-year old boys like that stuff. I'm not a 9-year old boy, though. I think I was sufficiently supportive of his choice that he did not suffer any ill effects from a disapproving mother, so no worries there. He did add his own creative flare; when the mask we found for him ended up featuring blue horns, he changed the name of his costume to The Blue Horned Reaper. Cool.

But Michael Jackson had me in knots right up to the last minute. Most of the costume was easy to find, in our own closets or at the local thrift store. But everyone was out of the white sequined glove in kids' sizes, and the adult size was huge. I tried a last minute home-made solution, which was utterly pathetic.

So then, with the school parade starting at 12:30, I found myself at the Party Store at 11:45, fighting the urge to kiss the employee when she came up with one huge MJ glove. From there, it was dash to school, hand off the glove, fit it to the kid's hand with a rubber band and a couple of safety pins, collapse in relief that everything worked out. All good. Mother nearly dead.

The other reason I hate Halloween is that my kids go bananas. That's a lot of bananas. Everything about Halloween is just a little too hyped up and intense for me. I'm a simple girl, I like simple things, and the rigamarole of these Uber-Events gets me down.

All that said, we actually had a great time trick-or-treating with friends, and they made the evening really fun for me and for my kids. I didn't even need a flask!

Here they are from youngest to oldest:


The Little Monkey

Cleopatra

The Pirate Anne Bonny

The Blue Horned Reaper

(A photo resistant) Michael Jackson


Close the history books on this one. Bring on the Holidays.

* * *

I Miss My Pillow

I read a short article in the New York Times today about sleep deprivation. Nothing new, just depressing. Here's a quote:

In a study at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 2003...scientists examined the cognitive effects of a week of poor sleep, followed by three days of sleeping at least eight hours a night. The scientists found that the "recovery" sleep did not fully reverse declines in performance on a test of reaction times and other psychomotor tasks, especially for subjects who had been forced to sleep only three or five hours a night.

Read the article here.

This is bad news for someone who routinely gets about 5 hours of sleep at night, often less, sometimes a little more. Rarely do I ever get more than 7 hours of sleep. Rarely do I sleep without interruption. My kids do not keep my up for long periods of time at night anymore, but they do wake me up to crawl into bed beside me. Or someone is coughing. Or someone wants a drink of water. Or someone is snoring like a crazed warthog. Or life has my brain cartwheeling and somersaulting and hoola-hooping.

Sleep has been elusive for such a long time that I have utterly forgotten what it feels like to be well-rested. My baseline is sleep-deprivation. I don't remember not feeling groggy. This is just not good.

I wonder just how many nights in a row of enough sleep (at least 8 hours) it will take for me to catch up, for "the cognitive and physiological consequences of poor sleep to wear off." However many it might take, those nights are not in my immediate future.

I watched my three-year old asleep in her car seat today. She was yelling her head off at an intersection near our school, and by the time we got to the school, she was OUT. I was dripping green with envy. I wanted to be her. She stayed asleep for two hours, four older siblings climbing over her repeatedly, driving to and fro with mom on several errands, with the very essence of peace lying across her face like a baby blanket. Sleep, like youth, is wasted on the young.

How much sleep are you getting these days?

* * *

Simple, Right?

So all I have to do right now is this:

• Deal with a pair of poopy underwear, and the body wearing them.
  
• Help 7-year old with daily homework first, then project due tomorrow.
  
• Make dinner: healthy, delicious, for seven people.
  
• Get the 11-year old to take out the piles and piles of recycling that have been waiting for the empty bin.
  
• Supervise homework for resistant 9- and 11-year olds.
  
• Staighten up living room -- so people can sit down.
  
• Straighten up dining toom -- so people can eat and do homework.
  
• Find some clean utensils.
  
• Give 3-year old a bath. If nothing else happens, this better.
  
• Look at a couple of projects that people will actually be paying me for.
  
• Prepare end of October paperwork for various business and home related projects.
  
• Stay cheerful, hopeful, patient, and POSITIVE! After all, I'm creating people here, right?

In other words, all I really need are three more sets of hands, arms like ElastiGirl, ten times the energy I currently have, a personal chef, fewer children, and a wife.

After that, I'm all set!

* * *

Gifts

It's my birthday this month. And my kids, who by the way are the most excellent offspring on the planet, decided to start early and celebrate from Day One of November. I think they had some encouragement from daddy.

I went to the grocery store and came home to my first gift. Grapes and flowers, harvested from our very own garden. Sweet, sweet.


I am loved. Life is good.

For a practiced complainer, glass-is-half-empty kind of a person like myself, this is saying something.

Thank you children and husband.

* * *

Post Pediatrician Ramblings

I took some kids to the doctor today. One had a well-visit. Three had to get flu shots. One had to be checked for wheezing, a follow-up to a visit two weeks ago. That's a lot of stuff, right? Well, that's nothing compared to the to-do list I left with. Check this out:

-- Get eye exam for one kid. (Poor thing bombed her in-office eye exam...just like her momma!)
-- Get chest xray for one kid.
-- Get KUB xray for one kid.
-- Fill prescription -- two different meds -- for one kid
-- Get over the counter meds for one kid.
-- Bring one back in a month.

In the next 5 weeks, four of my kids will have their regular well-visits. Some people think of November and December as the Holiday Season. I think of those months as "Time to Reconnect with My Pediatrician Season." Which is nice, because I have a wonderful pediatrician, and love chatting with her. How many of you are facebook friends with your pediatrician? See, she's just that awesome. In fact, she's so awesome that when she moved her practice to a town 25 minutes away from us, we stayed with her; we make that drive because we can't imagine anyone else caring for our kids. With gas prices as high as they are, this means that you have to be pretty sick to warrant a trip to the doctor's office at my house.

So by the time I picked them up at school, got them all in and out of the doctor's office, got them all fed (I heart In-n-Out), stopped briefly at home to get them changed into soccer gear, got them to their practice field, raced to pick up the little one from daycare, swung by the bank to make a deposit that reaaaaallllly needed to go in today, stopped by the pharmacy to drop off the prescription, I had been in my car for over four hours. Thank you Bay Bridge malfunction for making the roads ridiculous today.

In case you are wondering, if you spend 4+ hours in a car with rambunctious children and too many containers of soda/coffee, here are a few things that might happen to you:

Your 7-year old girl might spill her root beer on your 9 year old son's absolute favorite drawing, the one he did of a monkey in a school desk, raising his hand and saying: "Would you mind repeating everything you said after 'LISTEN CAREFULLY'?" And he might respond with a howl filled with so much despair that the flowers on the side of the road will wilt.

Your 5-year old might dump her french fries on the floor with just the right timing so that the 9 and 11 year old boys will smush them into the carpet when they climb over the backpacks in a headlong effort to get into the back seat.

Your 5-year old might kick your coffee cup while attempting to hightail it out of the front seat, where she is not supposed to be because "I have a cup of coffee there and don't spill it!" The coffee could get all over the diaper bag and all over the Kindergartner's homework assignment.

Your 3 year old might flick a straw full of Dr. Pepper in your face as you are trying to unbuckle her...which means you might walk around the house for 5 or 10 minutes with Dr. Pepper speckles all over your glasses before you manage to clean them.

You might notice, after getting rid of three of them at the soccer field, that a few more of them also spilled their fries in the back seat.

You might yell a lot at your offspring. You might hear yourself saying quite a few things you thought you'd never say, like "You never learn, you never ever learn!" because you've heard that one before, in your own childhood, and could have sworn you were immune from such nonsense.

You might arrive home with no plan for dinner, but an acute awareness of where exactly in the fridge is the last bottle of Pipeline Porter made with 100% Hawaiian Kona Coffee.

Put a fork in me: I'm done.

* * *

Hook and Eye

Not very many people use hook and eye latches anymore. They're a bit outdated, I suppose. But there are two in my mom and dad's house, and I love them.

Lest you think I have some strange attachment to bits of metal, let me tell you the story of how they came to be on the doors of the two bathrooms in my childhood home, and then you will know why I love them.

* * *

My mom and dad hosted my wedding reception in their backyard. It was a gorgeous June day. Early that morning, the preparations began, with family, friends and workers carting tables and chairs, spreading linens, and readying the BBQ. It was a lively, crowded scene.

Two of our guests, our friends Margaret and Lola, arrived to dress, having driven up early in the morning in more comfortable clothes. Both were in the category of our "older" guests, and because of this, I was especially concerned about their comfort. They were also extremely honored guests; they have both had a profound, wonderful impact on our lives, so I wanted them to both enjoy themselves and feel well treated.

The old, quirky house of my childhood was not built with locks on the bathroom doors. Somehow, this was never a big deal when I was growing up. We all got fairly used to hollering or knocking to establish vacancy. I never recall, even in my intense teen girl years, caring much that the bathrooms did not lock.

But on the day of my wedding, my two dear, older Austrian friends did care; the prospect of having someone walk in on them was, I am sure, horrifying.

The beautiful part of this story, at least from a bride's perspective, is that most of it occurred without my knowing anything about it.

I was at the house, getting dressed, with my sister and other bridesmaids. I was, as was natural, a bit self-absorbed. I had no idea that Margaret and Lola were having "dressing room issues."

But I do remember seeing my dad, all decked out in his classy tuxedo, walking out to his studio, rumaging around, returning with tools. There, amid the flurry of activity, the people running to and fro, guests in the way on the deck, my dapper dad calmly found two hook and eye sets, got the right tools, went into the house and made our bathrooms lock-able. For Margaret and Lola. Before I even knew they were having a minor tizzy about the lock-less bathrooms.

Such a small, simple thing. But on a day when you are hosting 260 people in your back yard, when you've got a million details to see to, I think it takes a special kind of grace to screw hook and eye assemblies into place, especially to do it calmly. He took care of my friends; I heard about it later. But now, whenever I'm at their house and in one of those bathrooms, the hook and eye latch reminds me of my wedding day, my good friends, my lovely father, and the care he and my mother took that day to make everything perfect.

Saturday was Dad's birthday. This post was supposed to have been written and posted that day. As with everything else in my life, it didn't get done until a bit too late. So two days later, here it is, straight from my heart and my memory, to my dad on his birthday. Happy Birthday Dad, and thank you so much for the hook and eyes.

Love, Monica



* * *

Raising Environmentalists

While I admire your commitment to the creed of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," I would much rather have you toss your empty Capri Sun pouch instead of saving it to use as a whoopie cushion.

He does get 10 points for creativity, though.

* * *

Rain on the Roof

I have learned my appreciation of poetry from my husband.

Being a lover of books and literature in general, I've always liked poetry well enough, but have never really delved into the genre with enthusiasm. That is, until meeting and marrying the father of my children.

He loves poetry. He loves the art, the craft, and maybe most of all, the marriage of sound and meaning. I had never really thought about the sounds of poetry before hearing him wax eloquently about the repetition of consonants or the rhythym of iambic pentameter. I just thought poetry was nice and rhyme-y. Except for the stuff that didn't rhyme, which I admit baffled me a bit.

But Rick has introduced me, and our offspring, to the pleasure of sounds -- and really, sounds do take us places, don't they? I think of the deep delight I take in the sound of rain on the roof while I am cozy beneath blankets...or the rush of the creek next to my girlhood home after a big rain...or the crunch of car wheels pulling up my mom and dad's driveway. Sounds are evocative, and poetry is their expression.

I am thankful to have learned this from Rick. And he is raising our children to hear poetry around them everyday, too.

The other day in the car, my nine-year old opened a glass bottle of carbonated pomegranate cider, and was delighted by the PFFFT-sound released by the twist of his wrist. He told me he liked to close the bottle, let the bubbles build up, and open it again so he could hear that same sound over and over.

Which led us to think about what other sounds we love. The conversation went something like this:

7-year old: "You love rain on the roof, mom!"

9-year old: "I also love that steam-y sound that trains make when they start and stop!"

7-year old: "You love hearing us laugh, mom!"

9-year old: (because we were now in a parking lot, on our way to watch Sam play soccer) "I love this sound, mom!" At which point he put down the drink he was carrying, placed a soccer ball on the ground, backed up, and then kicked the ball using the exact sweet spot on the top of his foot to produce that beautiful "thunk" of a well-placed shot.

This was one of the most fun conversations I've ever had with my kids. I was so delighted to discover that they listen, maybe not to me when I'm asking them to put their shoes away, but to the world around them, to the train going by, to the laughter that makes me smile.

I worry so much about the damage we are doing to our children when we fail, when we yell too much, when we aren't nearly patient enough. I know parents who are able to shrug off this complicated, crazy-making anxiety: I am not one of them. I worry. Because we are all they have in terms of parents, and sometimes, we fall miserably short.

But after conversations like this one, my heart soars because I think to myself that they are going to be fine, even better than fine, because they can hear things around them and describe the sounds they like the best, and because I hear some of the good things we do for them reflected back to me.

Their words and observations are rain on the roof: in the midst of a storm, they help me know that we will all be OK in this difficult and beautiful world.

* * *

Don't Report Me

Although I am definitely guilty of Blog Neglect, I am throwing myself at your mercy and begging you not to call BPS on me. Blog Protective Services. Those people could revoke my blog-ental rights and possibly even remove my blog from my home!

Look, I know I can do better, be better. Give me another chance. Send me to some classes or training or something. Don't make me talk to a judge, who sees too many cases of Blog Neglect to give bloggers like me a fair shake.

I am better than this. Please let me prove it.

Signed,

A blogger with the firm resolve to, you know, actually blog. Sometime soon. When work slows down. Or the kids grow up and move out. Or the earth moves under my feet. Or I just make the damn time.

* * *