Rip my heart out already

CT had his 5 year old check-up with his pediatrician today. We have been talking about this day for weeks. He has a great amount of anxiety associated with shots and will not even watch his siblings get their shots. He will excuse himself from the examination room and wait outside the door until it is all over. The last time he got a shot, I had to physically restrain him. I wrapped all four of my appendages around his little thrashing body, all the while he was screaming hysterically. It was great.

This year we have read books about shots, drawn pictures of how he feels and talked and talked and talked some more about shots: why we need them, how they work and that they may hurt but only a little bit and that they are really necessary. I even pulled the, “They won’t let you go to Kindergarten” card. Umm, that didn’t work either.

This morning he woke up with a headache, wouldn’t eat breakfast, told PJ & KP that he wasn’t going to get a shot and then ran away from me and hid when I told him it was time to go.

We got out the door. We went through all the hoops of the 5 year old check-up, discussed at great length with the pediatrician why he was nervous. She too tried to reassure him. He had all sorts of wonderful ideas of how to get out of getting the shots, but she wasn’t biting on any of them.

The nurse came in, fully apprised of the terror he was feeling, and got the job done. One finger poke and three shots later, it was all over. She even told him he was so brave he could have three suckers on his way out the door…and then he smiled.

Blame it on Rio

I was cutting my toe cuticles in the gym bathroom this morning and felt really weird about it. I started thinking, should I really be clipping in the gym bathroom? Is that gross? I am pretty sure I wouldn’t like to watch someone else clipping their toes there. So, I tried to find an out-of-the-way place to get the job done. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was just clipping and leaving them lay on the floor for bare-footed, freshly showered folks to walk upon.

I found a nice little bench to sit on, in a little room that contained a scale and a few hooks. Shortly afterward, another woman came waltzing in, dropped her towel, stepped on the scale and there I was, standing face-to-face with her very stylish coochy snort.

Firstly, I felt very uncomfortable about being so close to a woman’s you know what. I started to sweat and could barely get out the “excuse me” as I ducked my head to get up and leave.

Secondly, I felt like I was in a really bad porn film, I could almost hear the music in the background, bum bumbumm boww wwwwoooowwww.

Thirdly, I knew I had to write about this and was going to title the post, “Can you feel the Brazilian heat?” However, I decided I better check to see if I was calling “it” the right thing. Well, I wasn’t. This woman did not have a Brazilian. Having a Brazilian, means you have taken it ALL off. She had something else, which I think may be called a Landing Strip or the Gucci Coochy or something like that. I’m not actually sure, it all got a bit foggy there at the end. However, what I do know for sure is that I don’t want to know how my fellow 5:00am gym-goers express themselves through their pubic hair.

I won’t be clipping there again!

11 months old

Dear KP,
You are on the verge of so many things these days. You are so busy with moving around and figuring things out and playing with toys that only 5 year olds should be playing with and eating three squares and two snacks and still breastfeeding and trying to get up on your knees and interacting with people and understanding simple commands and using sign language to tell us you want more and playing coy with people you don’t know and crying when I walk out of site (but only sometimes) and being so enthralled with the cat that it bites you and finding so many extra snacks on the floor that I don’t even need to vacuum some days and trying to figure out if you need two naps or one and biting objects when you don’t get what you want and jabbering non-sense that is starting to sound like real words and when all that is done you do it all over again and again and again. My little man, you are getting so big!

I love you.

How high is too high?

PJ loves to swing high. High enough so she catches air on the back end and front if luck is on her side. I am happy to push her that high; it evokes such wonderful laughter I just can’t resist. So, I am not one to judge other parents pushing techniques, or how high they push their kids, because mine looks as though she may be the next kid at the park to go to the ER due to a swing related injury. However, when I saw this guy (he stood about 6 ½ feet tall) at the park with his kids, I thought to myself…now that just might be a touch too high.

Do you see the joy? It ain’t from me.

After an early morning children’s dental appointment, I needed to refill my caffeine tank. I headed for the closest coffee shop which just so happened to be in a mall. It was 9:00 am and the only people in the mall were us and the mall walkers. On the way through the mall to the coffee shop, we had to pass the rides. I have to admit, I HATE these rides. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I tell my kids I don’t have any quarters, even if I do. Why start them on these rides? If I do, then they will think every time we pass by one, they get a ride, NOT! They also have every other kid’s germs on them, but that is a story for another time. As my kids were getting on and off the rides, constantly asking if they could have money to ride them and me telling them that I didn’t have any money (and this time I really didn’t) this elderly mall walking man walked up to us, dug in his pockets, handed me four quarters, smiled and said, “here you go, for them.”

Thanks old man, you just made their day.

The floor

KP is on the move. This kid is all over the place. He isn’t even up on his knees yet. And why should he be? He can motor anywhere he wants on his belly with his right arm and left big toe. He seems to find the back entryway a great place to spend some quality alone time. I’m not sure if it is because he can see out the door, or if it is all the baskets filled with hats, or all the dirty shoes he can chew on, but he loves spending time back there. I really try to keep it clean and rock free, but for god sake it is the most heavily used entrance in the house. The other day, he had been back there a bit too long, so I went to check on him. I walked up to him and he flashed me the biggest ear to ear grin. The only thing that was amiss was instead of seeing beautiful pearly white teeth, I saw a mouth full of mud. Teeth black as dirt, literally.

Oh…my favorite

Thank you for thinking of me.
I love you too.

Constantly changing

How is it a person can change so dramatically from one child to the next? Yesterday it really hit me. PJ was playing at the park with no shoes on. I would have NEVER let CT play at the park with no shoes on when he was my only child. She ended up catching her toe on the slide and ripping it wide open.

It’s interesting to look back at all the things I worried about as a first time mom, and now that the third child has come along, how much I let slip by. And when those things slip by, does that make me laid back or negligent? I also wonder how the maternal changes in myself, actually affects my kids. How different would each child be if they were born in a different order? And is it really birth order that has to do with it, or is it me and how I handle things differently, or is it all the above and other miscellaneous items mixed in?

I’ll never know the answer. I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back to the nail biting, nervousness of a first time mom. I like being were I am, however, every accident gives me pause and lets me take a closer look at what I could be doing better going forward. And from now on…all my kids will wear shoes at the park!

L.A. Adam

On our way to Rancho Mirage.

Gym rage

6:15 am
I just finished my run on the treadmill. I gathered the small armful of items I had with me. I was working my way toward the EFX machine located directly in front of the treadmill. I stepped off the treadmill and took two steps forward, this dumpy, middle aged, curly gray-haired, fat man bellows, “Hey, wipe off that machine!” I turned around and said, “Do you see what I have in my hands? I’m getting to it, but thanks for the reminder.” As I walk by him to get the wipes he said, “If someone doesn’t remind people, no one would ever do it. And people have such gross germs.” After he finished speaking, he coughed so hard it sounded like a chunk was going to fly out of his mouth and hit the monitor. I looked at him and said, “Instead of pontificating to everyone else about germs, why don’t you just start by covering your mouth when you cough.”