heather

Momfabulous

I’ve always regarded with no modicum of suspicion the term “hot mama.” What exactly separates a hot mama from a regular hot person?

Ah, yes. Now I remember. You can spot the “hot mama” a mile away because she is wearing a mother’s very own type of combat fatigues. Her hair is coiffed in such a way that it is impossible for a toddler to yank. For the first many years, her earrings are never, EVER hoops. If there are multiple kids who are not yet in preschool, 90 percent of her wardrobe will be wash-and-wear fabric. And no matter the ages of the children, the smarter of us hot mamas know to dress in the same color as whatever we’re serving for lunch.

Oh, there are occasions when we might wear white pants or a silk top or a tantalizing, chunky necklace. Those are called dates. As much as “What Not to Wear” might suggest that a mom-on-the-go should opt for a light-colored linen walking short, a fun silk top and some bold jewelry, we don’t see Stacy and Clinton offering to spend hours over our laundry sink with a bottle of Spray ‘N’ Wash, or to take our toddlers to the emergency room when they decide those fun cocktail rings would make delicious appetizers.

Of course, we can’t talk about maternal fashion faux pas without discussing that staple of tastemakers’ ire, the “mom jean.” Now, I’m not saying that our waistbands should touch our ribs. But in the immortal words of Whitney Houston, “Crack is wack.” Low-rise jeans are all fine and well, and I’ve seen moms wearing them. Just not moms that ever bend over to play with their kids, or pick up a diaper bag, or put a kid’s shoes in the bottom cubby at daycare. (Well, at least not after they’ve mooned an entire roomful of other moms their first time out with the baby and immediately thereafter made a trip to the mid-rise jeans section. My apologies, Westbank Public Health Unit.)

And even for those hot mamas of us who spend a lot of time at the gym, motherhood changes us. And by “us” I of course mean our abdominal tone. The skin is only meant to stretch so far, my friends. Even with hundreds of hours of ab-sculpting classes, things never quite snap back. Your abs may return to their pre-baby form, because they’re muscles, and that you can work with. Skin? Not so much.

When you take a balloon out of the package, one side sticks to the other. It’s nice and flat and taut. Now give the balloon a good stretch this way and that way. Then blow it up to capacity. Let it sit around for a good long while. When that balloon deflates, it’s not going to be flat and taut. The sides aren’t going to stick together. It won’t be a pretty new-balloon shape. It’ll be a used-up, stretched-thin, flippity-floppity round thing that only in the vaguest of ways resembles a nice new balloon.

That is exactly what happens to your belly. No matter how much you work out, your skin is just a little bit (or perhaps a lot) thinned out, deflated and droopy. Skintight jeans and a crop top? Not gonna work unless you are a mom who also happens to be 16. Even supermommel Heidi Klum relies on airbrushed abs.

But perhaps the biggest impediments in looking good (not just “good for someone who’s had X kids”) are time and sanity. You see, shopping requires both. And shopping with kids saps both.

Believe me, you may begin your trip to the mall with the goal in mind of finding the perfect jean. (The road to mediocrity is paved with the best intentions.) But a few potty breaks and messy snacks later, and you’re simply hoping to find a really great jean. Your kids peek under enough fitting room doors, and you modify your goal yet again — you just want to find a pair of jeans that fits as well as your old ones that were destroyed by projectile Tylenol (not the clear kind that you buy, but the kind that contains the dye of a thousand red Sharpies and mysteriously appears in the back of your cabinet when you are weak and desperate).

Then the kids begin playing hide-and-seek in the clothing racks and licking mirrors. You notice it is two hours past naptime and that someone — you can’t tell who because there are too many of them and also you have neither slept nor eaten in four years — smells ever so faintly of poop. So you go to The Gap and grab something — anything — in what you think is your size. When you arrive home, you realize it is “reverse fit.” As in the reverse of what anyone should wear, ever.

But after that shopping trip, would you take it back? Would you? Or would you find a way to cover the gigantic butt parachute and the fact that the waist rests at your fourth rib, and rock that almost-mom-jean like the “hot mama” you are?

You see a hot mama. I see a shirt that will camouflage sand, poop, and most food. It’s a winner!

Lucky Three

If things had gone according to plan, James would have turned three during the first week or two of January. As it happens, James has always done things on his own timetable, and he turned three in the last week of November, five weeks ahead of schedule.

His term in utero was not the easiest — I was on partial bedrest for the first 10 weeks and on full bedrest for almost all of the final two-and-a-half. After a partial placental abruption at 32.5 weeks, I spent several harrowing hours wondering whether he had survived at all. I’m not sure I dared even to breathe until 7:15 a.m., Nov. 28, 2006, when he was ushered into the world at exactly 35 weeks’ gestation, pink and healthy and beautiful and squalling. (James garnered a near-perfect APGAR and weighed an impressive 5 lbs. 12 oz. at birth!) He had a few small holes in his heart — which were unrelated to his prematurity and were well on their way to closing up when last he was checked — but he fed well and by the age of six months, he was as roly-poly a baby as you could imagine.

The thing about preterm babies, of course, is that you can’t fixate on developmental milestones. Some infants catch up right away; some catch up after a year or two. James’ development has always been a little baffling. He sat early (before 5 months’ gestational age) but walked so late we were just about to dial the pediatrician when he finally began toddling around at 19 months. He figured out how to roll a car before he could sit, but up until recently did not engage in any kind of cooperative or pretend play. And this summer, at 2 1/2, James was still not saying much, unless you count babbling, parroting, and yelling “Digger! Digger! Digger!” We knew he would be hitting some milestones later, but when his 22-moths-younger brother was slapping high-fives before James — and rapidly catching up in vocabulary — we were pretty certain it was more than just an issue of being born 5 weeks ahead of schedule.

Because of these things (and other things, such as his many and outrageous meltdowns, his reluctance to socialize outside his family, and his habit of sorting and lining up all his vehicles rather than actually playing with them) he’s been referred for an evaluation for a high-functioning form of autism.

However, as with his gestation and his early milestones, James does things at his own pace. Not long before his third birthday, his speech went from 90 pecent gibberish to 50 percent gibberish, and he began using an amazing amount of new words. It’s as if that language explosion “they” say to expect at 18 months simply waited an additional 18 months to happen. Instead of screaming like a pig at slaughter and flinging himself on the floor of Maddux’ school — based solely on the fact that the first time we visited, he was in a stroller, and that is how it forevermore should be — he now trots cheerfully down the hall. Instead of lurking in the door and staring (and shrieking and pushing the teacher when invited in), James will now scurry into the room, sit on his favorite couch, sort some blocks, and insist on hugging that same teacher ‘goodbye’ as we leave.

Before November, James had said “I love you” to me exactly twice. Now he says it at least once a week (fishing for it still doesn’t work, alas!). Before Christmas, he played exclusively with wheeled toys, and never pretended they were doing anything other than driving across a room or around a track. Now, he plays with pretend food and hockey sticks and even — if you catch him in the right mood — his animals (although they don’t interact with each other — they’re kind of like vehicles with legs). Today, I caught him pretending to fuel his magnetic trains.

In the past few months, he’s begun potty training, learned to count to three, and mastered most of his colors and a fair amount of animals. He made a friend of sorts at Maddux’ preschool (one who attacks him with kisses, actually, but at this point I’m not going to be choosy!). And yesterday, he finally agreed to go to a daycare at a new gym — a biggie, since we’ve been driving 40 minutes round-trip to our old one to provide him with continuity after our move seven months ago.

There are a few sticking points, to be sure — such as his refusal to wear a jacket even at -15, a slight vocal tic (which diminishes a bit more each week), and his unparalleled fear of unfamiliar footwear. But we’ve made great strides since the day early last year when I brought him to swimming class and he a) insisted on bringing his favorite toy bus IN THE WATER and b) screamed himself snotty until we left the pool because, being in the water as we were, he was unable to roll said bus.

Of course, whatever his developmental timetable turns out to be, every time I hold my little son my thoughts are drawn back to that gut-wrenching 10-minute ambulance ride in 2006, during which I was sure the near-term baby I felt sloshing against the roof of my belly every time we hit a bump had surely died. At least several times a day, as his small arms wrap around me and he asks me to sing the “sunshine song” exactly three times (no more, no less), I am profoundly grateful to have this little boy at all.

Perhaps he will “outgrow” his developmental delays and grow up to be the next Einstein or Edison or Gates (three oft-cited examples of probable Asperger Syndrome). Or perhaps he’ll be living in our in-law suite at age 45 and still subsisting entirely on waffles, steak and cheddar bunnies. Either way, we are lucky to have this happy, healthy kid — and his siblings — and we’re proud of all their milestones, whether on the experts’ schedules or on Jamesy Time.

Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark

Are you afraid of the dark?

Maddux is. She sleeps with a Christmas tree in her room year ’round. The door is always cracked about six inches. And her blinds are open, which she claims is in case Peter Pan wants to visit, but which I suspect is because she appreciates the comforting glare of the streetlights.

Now, when I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark, too. Because, as any child of the ’80s knows, Darth Vader’s armor and Emperor Palpatine’s cloak are both very well camouflaged by bedroom shadows, and if you don’t have the covers up to your chin and a stuffed animal on either side of your head, you may well find yourself staring up at the emperor’s chalky visage as he glares at you with soulless, bloodshot eyes, zaps you with The Force and chortles, “Yessss, yess, I can feel your anger!” while Lord Vader stands nearby, choking you with his mind. In fact, Chris will tell you I still can’t watch anything more frightening than “48 Hours Mystery” right before bed.

But Maddux is not the lucky recipient of nightly visits from Maleficent or Ursula the sea witch. The only thing she’s afraid of is tripping over her Barbies as she frolics quietly (and, sometimes, not-so-quietly) in the wee hours. In fact, my intrepid daughter cannot sleep properly unless she has been told a story that includes pirates, skeletons, wolves, man-eating sharks, ghosts, malevolent space aliens, evil owls, or a combination thereof. Routinely, she will badger me to allow her to watch a movie she spied in the grown-up section of our media center — a movie all about her favorite subject, aliens.

“Mommy, I want to watch the movie called ‘Aliens’,” she told me recently.

“Oh, no, you can watch a movie about aliens, but you may not watch ‘Aliens’,” I replied.

“But I will be SO GOOD.”

“Well, sweet pea,” I told her, “That movie is for grown-ups only, because it’s really scary and the aliens kill lots of people and they don’t come back to life.”

“That’s OK, Mommy,” my preschooler replied sweetly. “I will be really brave.”

Maddux’ powers of persuasion are strong, but not strong enough for me to allow my little princess to watch gruesome disembowelings performed by slavering razor-toothed killers. So we watched “Chicken Little” instead, to her great disappointment.

But a few nights later, as I tucked her in, she resumed her incessant badgering.

Me: “What would you like your bedtime story to be about?”

Maddux: “I would like you to tell me the movie ‘Aliens’ because I really want to see it and you and Daddy won’t let me. But you can just tell me about it.”

Me: “How about a different alien story, with a girl superhero?”

Maddux: “How about ‘Aliens’?”

Me (tired after a long day of arguing with kids and not using my best judgment): “OK. Once upon a time, there was an astronaut princess named Ripley.”

Maddux: “You mean Maddux.”

Me: “Of course. Maddux. Anyway, the astronaut princess named Maddux was sleeping in her special refrigerator on her spaceship when she got a message from a planet asking for a superhero to come help. When they got to the planet, all the people were gone, but there were some alien eggs.” I leave off the part where an alien attaches itself to a guy’s face.

Maddux: “What about the aliens?”

Me: “Be patient! So Maddux and her astronaut go back onto the spaceship and are minding their own business, enjoying their dinner, when all of the sudden, a horrible evil alien POPS RIGHT OUT OF AN ASTRONAUT’S CHEST!”

Maddux is totally unfazed.

Me: “The alien EATS THROUGH HIS CHEST with its slobbery, razor-sharp teeth. And then the cool robot doctor sews him up as good as new.” (Because even if my daughter is a coldblooded enjoyer of gory R-rated bedtime stories, the only people who die on my watch are wolves, pirates and, of course, aliens.)

The story proceeded, but instead of cowering under her blankets, Maddux seemed nonplussed. After all, the Big Bad Wolf gets disemboweled routinely in our stories, courtesy of the kindly woodsman (you know, to remove the gobbled-up granny). So I pull out all the stops.

Me: “Now, this was not just any old alien. Instead of a humanoid head, the alien that was chasing Maddux and her friends had a long, pointy head with dozens of pointy teeth, and inside his gigantic, gleaming head was a tiny little box-shaped head that would shoot out of his mouth with amazing speed and CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP at people just when they thought they were out of his reach. And as they hunted for the alien, HE was hunting for THEM, waiting in the dark with slobber dripping from his rows of terrible teeth.”

Maddux (not even a little wide-eyed after this terrifying slumbertime narrative): “Like Thomas?”

Me: “Uh, sure. And as they hunted the alien, they foolishly decided to separate. And the alien gobbled up everyone on the ship, one by one. He even ate (dramatic pause) the robot doctor.”

Maddux: “Noooooooo! Not the robot doctor! I am changing your story and putting him back together.”

Me: “OK, so she puts the robot doctor back together and they program the ship to self-destruct. They get into an escape pod and fly out of the spaceship as it bursts into flame with the alien still inside it. Then the robot doctor sews everyone up and they throw a royal ball, where Maddux meets a prince astronaut, they fall in love, and are married that very day. The End.”

Maddux curled up in her bed with a happy sigh. “Thank you for telling me the ‘Alien’ story, Mommy,” she said blissfully. “It was so cyooool!”

Ten minutes later when I returned upstairs to tell James his trucks needed to honk more quietly, Maddux was snoring away softly — dreaming, no doubt, of saving the day from drooling, razor-toothed extraterrestrials. On top of the covers.

I draped her blanket over her. She may not be afraid of the Alien, but you never know when Palpatine and Vader might show up.

My Kid, The Cartoon

Life in our house frequently resembles a bad Saturday-morning cartoon. There is a lot of noise. The plotlines are nonsensical. We have no shortage of comic violence. And everyone has enormous eyes and is wearing some crazy costume discover this info here.

So of course, when Thomas learned to walk, it came as no surprise that his idea of walking involves stretching his arms out in front of him and lurching about like a Scooby Doo villain. I half expect Maddux to run up, peel off his mask and proclaim “Jinkies, gang! He’s not a baby at all! Our ‘baby’ is really Mr. Skaggs from the jam factory!”

At first it was just a few swoopy lurches at a time, followed by the inevitable plop-and-wail. Now our little cartoon villain races around at top speed, still with the herky-jerky gait and still with the creepy zombie arms stretched out in front — for no reason, apparently, other than to make me laugh.

Of course, the real Swamp Monster would never pause in mid-lurch, cock his head, and give a proud twelve-toothed beam and then applaud himself for walking. Still, once he gets a little practice under his belt, I won’t be surprised if, when Thomas runs, his feet look like crazy wheels.

Zoinks!

Have keyboard, will blog

“No Riding The Baby” is back. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Thanks to my possessed keyboard, I haven’t been able to type in a month and a half. No typing = no blog. But thanks to some troubleshooting by Chris, my keyboard is working again (for now …) and I leave you with this while I work at chronicling the happenings of November/December.

It is a photo of our lovely and charming kids getting ready to provide in-flight entertainment on the Nashville-to-Vegas route. Merrrrrry Christmas!

The Odyssey (And Other Things Borrowed From Those Masters of Tragedy, The Greeks)

In Greek mythology, a boy named Icarus puts on a pair of wings made of wax and feathers and, ignoring the warnings of his father, flies too close to the sun. Since wax doesn’t hold up terribly well to heat (Daedalus apparently didn’t think his invention through too well), poor Icarus falls into the sea when his wings melt away.

I recently undertook an Icarian journey of my own, but substitute a plane for the sun and my kids for wings. The plane hadn’t even pulled out of the hangar before the meltdowns began.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I was very excited when Chris booked a trip for all five of us to attend my brother’s wedding in Tennessee. But I also threw up a little in my mouth, because none of us (even the most patient and perfect, which I am not!) really looks forward with delight to an international trip spanning four travel days and 6,000 miles round-trip.

My mom suggested that we make a few weeks of it, but I looked into it, and they don’t offer a Round-Trip-With-Padded-Cell-On-Return-Flight special, so I politely declined the offer to spend an extra week being smothered by insane toddlers on a bouncy air mattress.

Our odyssey begins the Wednesday before the wedding weekend. We were supposed to be packed and ready to go by the time Maddux got out of school, but of course we weren’t. When one has three kids, packing up all the “last-minute” things such as toothbrushes and suckies and special toys takes a lot more than your “last minute” between the end of naptime and time to get out the door. Try “last five hours with many interruptions from small children who are hanging, slothlike, from your limbs.” So we got out of the house three hours behind schedule, at 7.

It actually worked out well, because the kids slept on the five-and-a-half-hour drive to Spokane instead of what they usually do in the car, which is fight and whine. Or, maybe not. Once we got to the motel, they were bouncing off the walls. If there is one thing worse than sleeping on a lumpy motel mattress, it’s trying to sleep on a motel mattress while listening to a wide-awake toddler chatter until 1:30 a.m. about diggers and trains and who poops in their pants or doesn’t (turns out, everyone does).

Eventually, I fell asleep wedged — uncomfortable and completely immobile — between a toddler and a hotel-crib-hating baby, while listening to the steady snores of my preschooler (but only until 5:30, when she woke up and decided to gallop around the room. Joy.)

After that refreshing 4-hour repose (and let’s not forget that the previous night was spent packing) it was time to spend nine hours in various planes and airports. Let me just say that while we saved thousands of dollars by driving to the states and taking a flight with a layover, THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO TRAVEL WITH KIDS. Seriously. Can’t emphasize that enough. Quite honestly, any travel time greater than two hours pretty much requires a heaping dose of Valium for everyone involved. It’s impossible for me to adequately describe the horror of a full day of flying after a half-day of car travel. I will try anyway, but much like the battlefield, nothing is quite the same as actually being in the trenches.

So, the day began promisingly enough. After drinking enough coffee to kill Juan Valdez himself, we headed to the airport with kids and bags in tow. Check-in and security were surprisingly uneventful, except for a teensy meltdown when James was asked to remove his shoes. The kids were all very well behaved in the airport. You know, like the calm before the storm.

That all changed once the captain turned on the “fasten seatbelt” light. I leaned over to fasten James’ for him, but apparently I had neglected to inform him that children need to be properly restrained during flight.

“NNNOOOO SEATBELT!!” he shrieked, to the warm smiles dismay of everyone around us. “I DON’T WANNITTTTT!!! NOOOOO, MOMMMMEEE, NOOOOO!”

And to my immense delight, my little treasure of a boy threw himself on the floor in front of his seat and proceeded to have the most adorable screaming fit ever. Everyone applauded. Oh, I mean glared. I threw up a little in my mouth.

Luckily, after we determined that James was now fulfilling the dual role of ticketed passenger AND lap baby, that flight was uneventful.

That flight.

Fast-forward through a disgusting and slimy lunch at the Las Vegas airport’s Sbarro, which was abundant with whining, crying and pizza-throwing by our non-napped baby, and we were on our second flight of the evening, which basically started not long before bedtime (you know about foreshadowing, right? So remember the phrases “non-napped baby” and “not long before bedtime”.)

So, as we are holding our now TWO lap babies pre-flight, we foolishly tell our fellow passengers, “They haven’t had a nap today and it’s bedtime, so with any luck, they will sleep the whole time.”

This is the point in our story where, were it sci-fi, current-day Heather builds a time machine and goes back to strangle two-weeks ago Heather, screaming, “WHY? WHY DID YOU SAY THAT??!”

Naturally, Thomas whined and cried the entire time and did not, in fact, fall asleep until he had entertained the entire plane with his imitation of an angry bald eagle for a good half-hour. We were happy to deplane long after everyone else, so that they would have time to decide NOT to rush us en masse.

By the time we got to the hotel, it was 2:30 a.m. Tennessee time and way past bedtime any way you cut it. The kids, thank goodness, all passed out the instant their heads hit their pillows and slept until a ridiculous hour (which, combined with Thomas eating the longest breakfast in the history of breakfast, probably owing to his hatred of Sbarro pizza, resulted in our being late to the rehearsal). Oh, I forgot to mention — the rehearsal and wedding? A four-hour drive from Nashville, where we landed. The money we saved on airfare might just be spent on psychotherapy.

The three-ish days we spent in Memphis are a blur of wedding awesomeness and kids-in-the-same-bed-as-me awfulness. I will skip over the late-night chatter of James, the early-morning waking of Maddux, and the joys of entertaining a baby in a series of unbabyproofed venues.

Fast-forward to the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I was dreading this night, because no matter how much he may deny it, Dad does wake up at 5 a.m. and make inhuman amounts of maybe-inadvertent-but-maybe-not noise. Every. Living. Day. (Do we know any 4-year-old girls like this? Why yes. We surely do. Wonder where she got that …) So after securing his promise that he would be as quiet as the proverbial mouse (although, having grown up with pet rodents, I can assure you that they are actually very audible), we agreed to crash in the guest room. Thomas had dibs on the Pack ‘N’ Play, Maddux called the little couch, and James and I shared the air mattress.

Ahh, James. He of the never-ending nighttime chatter. On this particular night, I can verify that he was awake and talking until 1:30 a.m. Tennessee time. The rest of the night I spent completely awake, as his weight and my weight rolled us into the middle of the air mattress in a sweaty, kicking, drooly heap.

Sunrise in Tennessee comes around 6 a.m. I can tell you this because my watch said 4-something when I first heard Maddux chattering away to her stuffed animals and realized with horror that there were no blackout curtains. WHY DIDN’T I REMEMBER TO WARN THEM ABOUT BLACKOUT CURTAINS? All of the kids would really benefit from falconers’ hoods, but Maddux more so than her brothers. As soon as there’s a glimmer of light coming into her room, her eyes spring open and she’s ready to go, as if she were a walking, talking solar panel (who, unfortunately, keeps a charge long after the sun has set). Naturally, her morning adventures became louder and louder until I sent her downstairs — the resulting tantrum, of course, being what woke the boys at 6 our time. The saddest part in all of this is that I didn’t hear a single bang or crash from my dad the whole morning. Nope. Just from the kids.

This was going to be the most awesome day of travelling yet. I could tell.

We’ll just fast-forward here through the first flight, which was pretty much the same story as the second flight of the previous trip. James seatbelt tantrum, Thomas wants to nap but instead cries, Mom bounces everyone on knees and sings “Thomas the Tank Engine” theme song until boys fall asleep just as captain announces descent. Deplane in shame after angry business passengers, having ordered record amounts of in-flight adult drinks, rush off plane to consume Juan-Valdez-killing amounts of coffee and schedule vasectomies. Spend an hour on the tram because a) the kids think it’s a Thomas train and b) an hour of riding between two buildings numbly listening to your kids yell “All aboard!” exactly every two minutes beats sitting in chairs having people direct homicidal glares your way.

This brings us to the second flight.

Note to self: Never again schedule a flight after the kids’ normal bedtime. Especially after five days on the road. Especially when it’s your second flight of the day and you have made your Sbarro-hating baby eat (or rather, throw and complain about) Sbarro again because it is the only restaurant in your stupid terminal.

Imagine the previous plane scenarios I’ve described, except with Thomas literally climbing on Chris’ and my heads and James having even more floor tantrums. Imagine Maddux, for whatever reason, pretending she’s at a Jewish wedding — except substitute the glass with some in-flight Chips Ahoy wafer thingies. Imagine me singing the stupid Thomas train song for more than an hour (oh, lucky, LUCKY people in front of me!). Imagine it not really working. Imagine the most high-pitched eagle screech a baby could possibly make, but imagine it being done into a megaphone — seriously, that boy has some pipes. And for a good 30 minutes nonstop, at least. What I imagined was Samuel L. Jackson coming at us with a gun, beads of sweat rolling down his face as he commanded “Get these emm-effing kids off this emm-effing plane!”

I’m pretty sure that even the laid-back coastal mom whose two preschoolish-age kids led the rear of the plane in a rousing rendition of “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” was wishing she hadn’t sat in front of the crazy family with a preschooler, a toddler and an almost-toddler. And at the end of the Flight of Horror, instead of heaving a huge sigh of relief, I ended up carrying not one but TWO sleepy boys along with a diaper bag THROUGH THE AIRPORT because, even though you can get one immediately if you are flying OUT, apparently they do not rent out little baggage carts right at the gate. (The baggage cart wouldn’t have been for the boys, but rather the baggage that Chris was lugging instead of a boy. Although I’m sure they would have enjoyed that.)

We went to the hotel, James chattered and suffocated me in sweaty, drooly toddler snuggles (how DO they simultaneously snuggle and kick?), baby wailed, Maddux rose early with bells on, blah blah blah. I’m sure you know the drill.

AHHHH, Chris and I thought, Five hours and it’s over. (Oh, you poor fools.)

You know how you always forget something on a trip? Well, I remembered everything. Just not enough of everything. Namely, diapers. Also, after four days in a roomy minivan, I forgot how, in the Highlander, our three young and feisty children are all but inches away from each other.

So, with Thomas in a pair of size 5 Diego Easy-Ups, we headed onto the open road to a round of, “Jamesy’s touchin’ me!” “Maggots poops her pants, HAHAHA!” “CAWW! CA-CAWWWW!” “Thomas scratcheded me!” “DON’T DO DAT, MAGGOTS!!” “CAWWWWWWWWW!!!!”

But it was all OK, because hey, there’s the border! Hey, there’s that cute little town we passed in the Kootenays. Hey … what’s that smell?

That smell, my friends, is the smell of despair. Changing a diaper in the front seat of a fully-packed car is no easy task. Changing an oversize pair of Easy-Ups on a baby who has eaten too much Sonic and still thinks of diaper changes as a contact sport, in near-freezing temperatures at a mountain gas station? Worse than all the aforementioned plane trips combined.

Eventually we made it home, although we think our sanity may have been lost in transit. Guess that shows us for aiming too high! I’m pretty certain that if Icarus had been travelling with kids, he would have been pretty happy to plunge into the sea and end it all.

Next time: Why we will never fly Southwest again.

Wedding Belles

Every little girl dreams of her wedding day (except for me — I always dreamed of becoming a 6-foot-tall Russian double agent outfitted in a black PVC minidress, thigh-high boots and a chic ebony bob, but that is neither here nor there). Since Maddux has decided to wait until her sixteenth birthday to tie the knot with Prince Phillip from “Sleeping Beauty,” the next-best thing to nuptials of her own is being a flower girl in someone else’s wedding. Luckily, Uncle Gary and Aunt Elizabeth gave Maddux the opportunity of a lifetime last week, buying me at least another 11.5 years before I have to worry about sending my baby daughter down the aisle in a white dress.

Ever since Elizabeth asked Maddux to be the flower girl earlier this year, our little princess has been beside herself with anticipation. She practiced swanning about in her dress-up clothes (being sure to lift her skirts daintily whilst going up stairs or curtsying). She rehearsed the strewing of the rose petals in her bedroom with her bridal dress-up set, in the playroom with tiny bits of torn-up construction paper, and at her school playground with leaves. She was so enamored of the hairstyle we planned for the wedding that she begged me to put her hair up “in a Tinkerbell bun” for school one day.

As if being a flower girl wasn’t exciting enough, a masked ball was to follow the wedding. Now, if you are a 4-year-old girl who devours princess movies and fairy-tale books like a dragon eats knights, a ball is basically The Most Important Event You Will Ever Attend. Maddux occasionally tells me she wants take walks in the woods in the mornings, because that is when you are most likely to encounter princes. Just THINK of all the prince-meeting opportunities an actual ball presents!

On the day of Gary and Elizabeth’s wedding, Maddux got all dolled up in her flower-girl best and sashayed around the opera center (this sashaying, I should add, was done on pretty much zero sleep, so we are all incredibly lucky that her lovely white dress did not wind up going through the fountain out front).

Upon receiving each of the 70,000 compliments she got that night, my little daughter told people, “Thanks. I’m the flower girl, but you can just call me Flower.” And right before Maddux headed down the aisle, she told Elizabeth, in her most let’s-get-down-to-business voice, “I’m going to go spread rose petals now!”

Maddux very methodically walked down the aisle spreading rose petals, and, upon reaching the end of the red carpet and discovering that there were still flowers left in her little basket, she very conscientiously turned the basket upside down to ensure that the petal-scattering job was done to the fullest extent.

Now, since it was basically bedtime and we all know Maddux needs her sleep, I had but one requirement for my little flower girl. Fidgeting and dancing and looking around were pretty much expected at this point.

“Maddux,” I told her the day of the wedding, “Your job is to smile and look pretty. You don’t need to say ‘hi’ to anyone. But no matter what, remember NOT TO PICK YOUR NOSE.”

Naturally, during the ceremony, Maddux wiggled around. She fidgeted and hopped from foot to foot. She played with the bridesmaids’ feather fans and swung her basket around like she was a helicopter about to take off and tried to engage people in conversation. She waved to all and sundry. (I saw all this thanks to the complimentary baby-sitting. Otherwise I’m sure I would have been shushing and rocking and pacifying two bedtime boys. So thanks, Gary and Elizabeth!)

“That’s OK,” I told myself, while putting a finger up to my lips and making the universal “Shhhhhh!” sign, which was met with gleeful waving. “At least she is NOT PICKING HER NOSE.”

Then she picked her nose.

Luckily, she was the cutest little nose-picking flower girl there ever was. She smiled the whole time and was charming all night long. Hardly anyone noticed that her third knuckle was in her sinus cavity and I’m pretty sure there is no photographic evidence of the gold-mining expedition.

After the bride and groom were married and sent back down the aisle (YAY!) we convened for the masked ball. Maddux was among the first people on the dance floor.

“Do you think you’re going to meet a prince?” I asked her.

“No, Mommy, you’re so silly,” she told me. “Princes don’t marry little girls.”

But she did want to dance. Until midnight.

I figured after 20 minutes, she’d tire out. After all, it’s not as if they have cardio classes for 4-year-olds. (Later it occurred to me that the reason they don’t have exercise classes for 4-year-olds is because kids that age have about 10 million times more energy than grown-ups and that they would probably find a Zumba class quite restful.)

Maddux deigned to dance with me for awhile, but quickly deduced that I am a wretched dancer, so she kindly told me, “Mommy, I need to dance by myself. You can go sit down now.”

She danced with my brother Gary, which was adorable (brides and grooms are celebrities when you’re 4, so he was not sent to sit on the sidelines). Then she danced with a few other people, but sent most of them away.

For a good hour or 90 minutes, she danced in circles with one hand over her head like a ballerina. Everyone stopped trying to cut in after awhile (since she repeatedly insisted she worked better solo), so at the end we only intervened when she twirled too close to the candles.

That night, as we collapsed into bed at the hotel, Maddux sighed, “This was the best day ever!” (I’m sure Gary and Elizabeth agreed.)

Dia de los Muertos

In Latin American culture, the day after Halloween is called Dia de los Muertos, or “Day of the Dead.” (Don’t think zombies, though — think a cross between Halloween and Memorial Day.)

I’m thinking in the future, we will dub Nov. 1 “Day of the Dead” at our house, as well. Not because we plan on memorializing our ancestors with a skeleton cake, but because after the hustle and bustle of celebrating Halloween with a house full of small, active kids, we feel a lot like zombies the following day.

First, there are the endless parties. Maddux, being a 4-year-old girl, was delighted to spend three entire days in full princess regalia. (How does this differ from every other three-day period? Besides going out in public and not getting too many stares, not as much as one might think.)

Then there’s the Halloween candy, which Chris buys a month ahead “so we don’t have to fight the Halloween rush.” Of course, three days later, when we’ve eaten all the candy, we have to repeat this exercise in futility. And three days after that, and three days after that. At some point, the two older kids figure out that there’s candy in the house, at which point the candy replenishing must take place every 36 hours.

And this year, SOMEONE (I won’t tell you who, to protect Chris’ identity) had the fantastic idea of giving the baby an Aero bar.

Now, when you are a not-quite-toddler who is in possession of the world’s most ear-piercing eagle screech, and you have finished your very first fun-size candy bar and see that everyone else is devouring candy from a gigantic box of wonder, what are YOU gonna do? If you’re a smart baby (Thomas happens to be very savvy for a 1-year-old), you will wave your fat little arms about and employ that horrific scream until the giant waves of sound pummel your parents’ brains to jelly and they hand the candy to you with sad, empty zombie eyes.

Therefore, yesterday afternoon, we had to buy YET MORE CANDY for, you know, ACTUAL TRICK-OR-TREATERS. Joy.

So take two parents who have to orchestrate pumpkin carving, school party snacks, costumes and trick-0r-treat plans on top of all the usual parenting stuff; add a trio of already chocolate-addled kids; wrap it all up with a late bedtime and continual pounding (yes, POUNDING!) on the door by horrible pre-teens who don’t even live in the neighborhood, and you have a recipe for our very own Day of the Dead. (Did I mention the pounding? I was so mad after the preteen version of the Spanish Inquisition woke up both boys that I turned out the lights, Chris snuffed out the Jack-o’-lantern, and we found ourselves stuck with a gigantic bowl of candy — to be eaten by our own over-noisy hooligans, no doubt.)

So yeah. Today, we’re zombies. (Luckily for the citizens of our fair town, we’re too tired to lumber out the door and go cruising for brains.)

Thomas was up at 5 a.m. today with an earache (surely this has nothing to do with the fact that sugar lowers one’s immune response!) and naturally, so was Mads. The first thing out of her mouth?

“Mommy, when are we going to have Halloween again?”

Hello, My Name Is:

Heaven help us if my children are ever lost (an unlikely event given that the boys are always in their stroller, and Maddux is required to have one hand on said stroller at all times — but we mommies do worry!).

I do my best to teach them their vital info and the numbers “9-1-1,” but it’s definitely a work in progress.

Maddux still identifies the number 9 as a seven. When I ask her what number she should dial if there is a fire, she usually says — with an air of absolute authority — “one-three-six” or some other random series of numbers. But at least she knows all of our names and where she lives.

Today, since James is finally talking fairly competently, I decided to quiz him on his personal info.

Me: “What’s your name?”

James: “GROCCOLI!” (big smile on his face, no broccoli anywhere to be seen)

Me: “OK, Broccoli, what’s your mommy’s name?”

James: “BACON!” (Wait, what? We’re pronouncing that correctly now? Or only when we’re telling the police we were raised by a slab of cured meat?)

Me: “What’s your last name, little guy?”

James: “MADDUX!” (laughing uproariously, because being a lost little boy is super fun)

Me: “Where do you live?”

James: “Poppa’s truck! AAAHAHAHAHAAA!”

Me: “OK, let’s try this again. Your name is James.”

James: “GROCCOLI!”

Me: “What is your last name?”

James: “I go downstairs, play diggers and trucks?”

Me: “Not right now. Your last name is Phillips. You live in (name of our town).”

James: “Phillips! I play trains!”

Me: “Yes, your name is James Phillips. Where do you live?”

James: “Nana’s house! In da bathroom!”

Me: “You had better hope you never get lost and picked up by the police, kiddo.”

Meanwhile, his sister has no trouble telling people her parents’ first names. From time to time, if the rude “Mommy-mommy-mommy” chorus isn’t doing the trick when she’s trying to interrupt adult conversation, Maddux will make herself known by uttering a very polite (but also very forbidden) “Heather.” And I’m not entirely sure that her preschool teacher is convinced Chris is her actual father, because Maddux introduced us as “Mommy and Chris.” So now her teacher calls us “Mommy and Chris,” too, even though I thought I was fairly clear about the fact that Chris is, indeed, my daughter’s dad and not a random boyfriend.

As annoying as it is that our sweet-faced preschooler occasionally abuses our names, I like to think she’ll remember this information if she ever finds herself lost at the mall. Let’s hope if Groccoli ever gets lost, he will have our handy Walking Encyclopedia of Grown-Ups’ Real Names along with him for easy reference. Otherwise, we’ll see this on the news:

DO YOU KNOW THIS CHILD?
Boy named Broccoli claims he’s been living in his
grandfather’s truck and his grandmother’s bathroom
and working illegally as a digger operator.

Thank You, Helpful Advice Lady

If you’ve had kids and don’t live under a rock, you’ve met her. She’s the mom with the helpful advice. “Helpful” in that it helps you into the psychiatrist’s office or the liquor cabinet.

You will first meet her when you are pregnant and beginning to show.

“Oh, you look like you’re about to pop any day,” she will tell you, when you are, in fact, three and a half months pregnant and still in the throes of morning sickness.

“Get your sleep while you can — you’ll need it,” she’ll say smugly. Perhaps she got super-awesome sleep when she was pregnant, but most of us find it difficult to sleep with a beach ball full of fighting raccoons strapped to our bellies.

Then there’s the doozy she’ll come up with once the baby is finally out.

“It doesn’t get any easier.”

What? WHAT? Are you kidding me? I would take a toddler who sleeps through the night ANY DAY OF THE WEEK before I’d take a brand-new baby (even though I will happily hold your newborn all day long. Give it here!). And I think answering the infinite questions of my preschooler, sassy and obstreperous though she may be, beats cleaning toddler diarrhea off the train table, hands-down. (I did that today. Thanks for that, Thomas.) And you know what? I’m willing to bet that helpful mom probably wouldn’t trade her self-sufficient 10-year-old for my preschooler and all the bottom-wiping, toy destruction and surreptitious baby torturing that goes along with a 4-year-old.

In fact, short of teen-age girls, whose parents I imagine experience the constant dread of their getting pregnant and Mom’s having to Do It All Over Again While Incredibly Old, I’m pretty sure it does get easier. Sure, there are different problems as kids get older — criminal mischief, uncomfortable questions, the constant “You’re ruining my life” accusations — but with every year that passes, it’s less labor-intensive. I can’t imagine that parents of non-disabled teen-agers drop into bed at the end of every day saying “Wow, I don’t think I could have taken another hour of that day.”

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps, as Future Me is frantically chasing my car-stealing teen-age boys down the street while holding my daughter’s baby under an arm, Helpful Advice Mom will pop out from around some corner with a smug expression on her face and do the “Told Ya So” dance.

But for my sanity’s sake, I am going to assume she’s wrong about kids never getting easier, just as she was wrong about getting your sleep in while you’re pregnant. (For the record, those two comfortable hours of post-baby sleep before you are awakened by frantic squalling beat 12 hours of sleeping with an abdomen full of writhing anacondas. Every time. As blog is my witness, I will never get pregnant again!)