Like Living with Mental Patients

I think I'm losing it

2007-12-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a snapshot into my life, December 4, 2007.

Our middle child is home from school today. Because she swallowed a ghost. A little wooden ghost about half the size of my pinkie. I have a hard time swallowing pills sometimes so for the life of me I have no idea how she swallowed the thing, with no water even. She claims that it was hard at times, and that she had to keep 'chewing' her spit, but that it went down eventually.

What does this mean? That I can't send her to school because I will need to search through her poop for a toy ghost. I have spent most of my morning brainstorming strategies for how to search through poop without ever having to actually *touch* poop. Everything sort of hinges on when this ghost makes his appearance though. The people at poison control will be calling me daily until the ghost shows up. Talk about pressure.

That is just one thing on my mind today though. I spent my morning in a circle of events that, if filmed, would have looked like an Abbott and Costello routine. My 18 month old son is into dumping things out. He got into the puzzle cupboard. He dumped out a puzzle. As I was putting the puzzle pieces away, he was dumping out a second puzzle. (You can see where this is going). As I cleaned up the second puzzle, he dumped out a third. As I was putting away the third puzzle, he lined up six bottles of salad dressing along the kitchen floor. As I put away the salad dressing he dumped out another puzzle. As I cleaned up the newly dumped puzzle, he dumped a container of raisins onto the floor.

I put him in his highchair (the only place I can keep him restrained). Then I spent the next 20 minutes putting up two baby gates, gating off the kitchen from the living room while he screamed. I took him out of his chair and set him in the secured living room area. I admit, I chuckled to myself, thinking that I had finally outwitted him. I walked into the kitchen to clean up the raisins. I turned around to see him unlocking the gate mechanism and walking into the kitchen behind me.

There are many days when I feel like raising a white surrender flag to my children.

I'll give you a cookie

2007-09-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

if you can tell me why my children do or say the things they do and say. Here are some of the current most puzzling behaviors:

1. If the baby brings me a book and I try to read it to him, he throws himself on the floor and cries.

2. If the baby brings me two legos that he is trying to put together and I try to help him put them together, he throws himself on the floor and cries.

3. If the baby lets me read him one page of a book, and (after reading that page 284 times) I try to turn the page, he throws himself on the floor and cries. (Do you notice a pattern here?)

4. My oldest child has gotten in trouble twice now for going into his room (while the baby was taking a nap) and yelling. Not so weird you say? Both times he was yelling "KUMQUAT" over and over. Yeah, explain that one.

5. The middle child just came to me crying because she says there is a bee in her room. I went to investigate. After looking around for several minutes and not seeing anything, despite the fact that she kept pointing to which direction it was flying, she revealed to me that it is an invisible bee.

6. Speaking of the middle child, she has recently decided that it is a lot of fun to moon the baby. Why would she do that?

7. Speaking of the baby, why does he take the wireless card out of my laptop and hide it? He does this every time he is in sight of the wireless card. I know what you are thinking (Yeah, you, the smug childless person) You are thinking 'why does she let the baby go anywhere near the computer?' Well let me ask you this Smug Childless: if someone in your home needed help getting to the bathroom and if you didn't help them they were going to pee on your floor, you would go help them, wouldn't you? Because you wouldn't want pee on your floor, would you? And you would want to move quickly so as to avoid the pee. So the last thing on your mind would be a baby stealing your wireless card, right? Now substitute things like milk on the floor, glue on the floor, or someone screaming for you and you don't even know what might end up on the floor for the pee and you just might start to get an idea of how things work around here.

8. The two older kids were fighting tonight. I know its normal for siblings to fight, but this fight was exceptionally weird/puzzling. Here's what I overheard:

Oldest: "I'm going to pack the truck without you." (nope no idea what that means)
Middle: "Oh."
Oldest: "When I say that, it's supposed to make you mad, so you say 'no that's not fair' and then we fight about it."
Middle: "No! That's not fair!"
Oldest: "Oh yes it is!"
Middle: "No it's not!"
Oldest: "Oh yes it it!"
Middle: *actually crying* "Mama! He is being mean to me and hurting my feelings!"

Well cyberspace people, what do you make of all this?

To earn your cookie you must submit to me a numbered list addressing each item on my numbered list. Your behavior explanations must not only tell me why the child is saying this/behaving this way, but also explain how this correlates with his/her superior intellect. Thank you.

If I taught Mom 101...

2007-08-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

I think it would go something like this:

Welcome perspective moms! We have a series of tasks set up for you that will help you hone your skills to become some of the greatest moms in the country. Now, today's lesson is called 'Take the kids to the gym'. Sound easy? Welllll, you are in for a rude awakening sisters! Now let's get to it!

First, set out in front of you are three bags and three children. Your task is simple. Pack the gym bag with your personal things, everything to shower and get dressed at the gym. The second bag is the diaper bag. Pack it with everything the baby might need at the gym daycare. Please don't forget that they feed the kids chocolate cookies there and they don't have sippy cups at the gym daycare either! The third bag is your purse. Now, since you are going to be leaving the gym in the mid morning, they will be very hungry so you will need to pack it with snacks and drinks for all three kids. Okay.....GO!

Wait! The baby has a poopy diaper, stop what you are doing and change him. Don't let him stick his hand in the poop, if he touches the poop more than once you get points taken off your score. Okay, now wash his hands and yours and go back to the bag packing.

Wait! You just noticed that the middle child has her shoes on the wrong feet. Fix those. Now get back to those bags.

Wait! The baby is standing on his dump truck in the middle of the living room. That's dangerous, you can't let him do that. Okay, go back to the bag-packing.

Wait! One of the older kids left the door to the kitchen open and the baby is eating something out of the garbage! Stick your finger in his mouth and extract whatever it is. Okay, go back to the bag-packing.

Did you pack the bags? Great! Now load the kids into the van. Make sure they are buckled into their carseats, check that the straps are tight and not twisted.

Wait! The middle child hasn't had her hair brushed since yesterday. Go back inside, get a brush and a hair doodle (yes, you have to call it that) and do her hair as she cries and goes on about how much she doesn't want her hair done. Now get her buckled back into her seat.

Now, you may feel frazzled and tired from what you have done so far, but its just the beginning. This part of the lesson is called the 'Car Quiz'. The oldest child will ask you a series of questions, which you need to answer to the best of your ability and as fast as possible. If you take longer than 2 seconds to answer he will just reask the question. Repeatedly. And don't forget to drive safely while you answer them. Okay, here are the questions....GO!

What if January came before December instead of December coming before January?
Which super heroes besides Aqua Man can swim?
Why aren't you scared of the moon?
How small is the smallest scab you have ever seen?
Why isn't is my birthday today?
What if you gave me a piece of toast but it was really a camel?
If you put caution tape around some flowers, would it make it so a robber wouldn't steal them?
If the kitchen was on fire, and I was a super hero and I shot ice out onto it, and it turned into water, would you let me swim in it?

Okay, now you are at the gym. Unbuckle them and take them into the building. Wait! You have to hold their hands, don't let them run, don't let them bump into other people, and don't let them bump into the walls.

Now you get a nice break--running four miles on the treadmill.

Go shower, get dressed, pick the kids up from the daycare. Take them out of the gym without letting them bump into anyone, wander off anywhere, or get hit by a car in the parking lot. Buckle them all again. Pass out the snacks. Hope that the questioning will be quieted by the eating of snacks. If its not, tell oldest child that 'Mommy needs some quiet time, no talking until we get home.' (this is a very important survival skill, be sure to write that one down).

That's all for today. I will see you all next week with one of our more advanced lessons: Take all three kids to the dentist.

When dining with mental patients...

2007-08-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today seemed like a great day to take the kids out to eat. Actually no day is ever a good day to take kids out to eat, but today seemed like a great day to not cook dinner. We got all three ready (after a lot of 'I can't find my shoes! No, I don't like THOSE shoes, I like the OTHER shoes!' etc.) and were on our way. We got to the restaurant and I immediately started to think that I should have just cooked dinner. The baby is going through a screaming phase. He screams when he wants something, and he wanted food. He didn't care that it takes time to prepare food, he just wanted it. My husband and I tried to distract him with games (he smiled then continued screaming), crayons (he bit the tip off a red one, chewed happily for 3.2 seconds, and continued screaming with little chunky red crayon bits on his tongue) and his cup of milk.

When you hand our baby a cup of milk one of three things will happen. He will either 1. Smile and drink some of the milk, 2. Smile and hurl the cup of milk to the ground, or 3. Scream and hurl the cup of milk to the ground. His reaction of choice this evening was actually secret option #4, which is scream and hurl the cup of milk to the floor so hard that milk actually sprays out of one of those 'no spill' sippy cups. (By the way, there is something in me that is impressed by the fact that he can throw it this hard). In the meantime, the oldest was going on and on and on and on about super heroes and the middle kid was trying to tell us all something, then dramatically flopping her head into her arms onto the table when nobody heard her. The screaming from the baby kept on.

I'll admit it, after a certain amount of screaming I can no longer think clearly. All I can think is 'must make the screaming stop, must make the screaming stop'. I quickly scanned the table in search of something, anything to plug the scream-hole. I saw coffee creamers, sweet and low packets, and jelly packets. I told my husband 'we have to feed him a jelly packet!'

My husband replied 'What?' (not because he was shocked at my suggestion, but because he couldn't hear me with the incessant chatter from the oldest and the maniacal giggling of the middle child. I'm not sure why she was giggling so loudly but I'm guessing it was because she was able to work the word 'butt' into the conversation somehow, I don't know, I was too focused on the screaming). He heard me the second time and quickly grabbed a grape jelly packet and started spoon feeding it to the baby. Ahhhh, sweet ear relief. The older two, ever concerned with equal rights, grabbed their spoons and a few jelly packets and went to town.

The important points to learn from all this:
1. I don't want to hear the screaming anymore.
2. Our children now think it is completely socially acceptable to eat jelly packets with a spoon.
3. The word 'butt' is just always, always funny.
4. The baby isn't over the crayon-eating phase yet.
5. I don't think those no spill sippy cups are actually 'no spill'
6. I can't take the screaming.
7. It is never a good idea to take kids out to dinner, but it is important to do it sometimes to remember why not (and so that other people will hate you. Its humbling and good for the soul to have other people hate you).