That Time Tess and I Were on the Lam

***Part of this story is made up. I’ll let the reader decide which part.***

It was a cold Tuesday morning. Not the coldest of mornings. That was the week before. But still, it was pretty cold—cold enough to make me dread leaving the house, particularly with a baby.

Tess and I had just dropped Sam off at school and were at the grocery store, gathering the half dozen or so items I had forgotten to get when I used the grocery delivery service two days before.

I always write my grocery list in the order that I see the items as I travel through the store, but I had forgotten my list that morning. In my failed attempt to get Sam to school on time, it was the one item I forgot to grab from the table as we darted out the door. So we were weaving through the store in a meandering fashion, backtracking, retracing, and zigzagging. If nothing else, I was burning a lot of calories.

But it doesn’t even compare to the quantity of calories I was about to burn.

We trudged to the checkout counter, and I placed our items on the conveyor belt—plain Greek yogurt, a loaf of bread, a box of cereal, a bag of “spicy hot” almonds for Nate, and some croutons so that Tighe can choke down a spinach salad.

Tess watched me from her seat in the cart. She had had a fever the night before, a nasty cold was quite literally weighing her down. She slumped a little, her eyes were heavy and red, and dried snot crusted her nostrils and upper lip.

But the geriatric ladies who man the mid-morning shift at the cash registers didn’t seem to care. They cooed and made faces and commented on her pretty blue eyes, which were barely visible under her droopy eyelids.

Tess has a pretty solid case of Resting Bitch Face, so she glared at them, unflinching. In fact, I don’t even think she blinked.

“She’s ready for a nap,” I smiled at them apologetically. That’s usually my excuse for her when she shoots eye daggers at strangers. It just also happened to be true this time.

“Uh-oh,” one of the women murmured reading the computer screen in front of her. “Your card’s been declined.”

“Really?” I was hopeful that it was a mistake. That the magnetic strip was just worn out. That the machine reader was defective. That my geriatric friend just didn’t know how to use technology.

“Let’s try again,” she said, probably with the same hopes in mind.

We tried three more times. Each time was a fail. It was the only card I’d brought with me. And I never have cash. I wondered if they would accept the fourteen dollars I had left on a Panera gift card when the cashier interrupted my thoughts.

“We can put your groceries on hold for you, if you like. We can try again after you call the credit card company.” She was trying to be helpful, but my mind was racing now.

Part of my brain was retracing recent events, wondering what could have happened to make the credit card company decline these ordinary charges. Another part of my brain was growing increasingly irritated.

How much time did I just waste in the grocery store and I still didn’t have Greek yogurt for the casserole I was planning to make tonight? What else could I make for dinner then?

Why does this loaf of Sara Lee bread indicate “suspicious activity?” Maybe it’s the Quaker Oatmeal Squares—they’re so expensive! This would never happen at Trader Joe’s!

And I had so much to do today! Two loads of laundry…change the sheets on the kids’ beds, write two blogs—one about great benefits packages and one titled “Hot Jobs in the Skilled Trades Industry”…clean the powder room toilet because I know Sam recently got poop stains on the toilet seat and our cleaning lady only uses natural products—sometimes a toilet just needs a little Clorox…

Is anyone even still reading this? I’m hoping that last paragraph is the most boring thing I’ll ever write, but we all know it won’t be.

I glanced at Tess. She looked pissed, too. I want to be a good mom, so I had to act.

The store was practically empty.

I quickly scanned the ceiling for the black, bulbous security camera and pulled up the collar on my jacket, shielding my face from its view.

I sized up my geriatric friends. I’m bigger, faster, stronger than they are. Could I make it through the bins of discounted Christmas candy, the racks of Chiefs t-shirts and through the automatic doors before they could? Surely.

My thoughts sped up even more as I pictured life on the run from the cops with a ten-month old. Is she ready for this? Is she tough enough? Would a fake moustache look good on her?

Before I could second guess myself, I went for it. I steadied her with one hand, lowered my head, and pushed the cart ahead weaving through the random “why does a grocery store sell this stuff“ displays and hustled out the door!

I sprinted through the parking lot and threw our un-bagged groceries into the passenger seat and my baby in the car seat. My tires literally squealed as I sped out of the parking lot.

I’d never committed a crime before—unless underage drinking or traffic violations count. This was my first crime, I’m so inexperienced! To get home, I’d have to cross State Line Road back into Missouri. Does that make this a felony? Is Tess an accessory? Will her record be wiped clean when she turns 18?

I sped through a yellow light as I tried to recall anything from my undergraduate criminal justice classes, but all that came to mind were the Ed Norris anecdotes and the professors’ insistence that we never mess with the Albanian mob. Apparently, they’re the most vindictive. It was a great class, but it’s no help to me now.

“Check engine?” I said aloud, jarred from my academic nostalgia. “Why is the check engine light on?”

Tess didn’t reply, she was already asleep.

How far would I be able to travel in this ailing Chevy Suburban? Without a credit card! How many diapers did I have with me? How long could we last on the run now that we were robbers?

I checked my rearview mirror. Still no cops.

Tighe will have to raise Nate and Sam on his own. Or remarry. And Tess and I will have to become Uber drivers.  At least we can survive on bread and croutons for a while.

****

Okay, you’re right: most of this didn’t really happen. In reality, I left the store without my six items, mad at no one in particular. By the time I reached the car, I had a text from Tighe asking if I was at the store because he got an alert that there was a fraud attempt on our card.

“Yeah, it was me!” I typed back in anger. Seven minutes later, I pulled into our driveway. Tess was already asleep, and Tighe had texted me back that he had called the credit card company and I was free to use our card again.  She took a four hour nap and I accomplished my entire to-do list. I even made it to the store after I picked Sam up.

See how boring real life can be? You’re probably not even reading anymore, are you?

As I was typing this, sitting at our dining room table in a quiet, nearly empty house, a KCMO patrol car really did drift down our street. Slowly. Too slowly. I’ll be watching my back for the rest of the day.

Straight Outta Joshua Tree

As promised, Tighe and I escaped from Kansas City right after Christmas. Just before it got really, really cold, we flew to San Diego for a night, then drove northeast to Joshua Tree National Park where we had rented a house with several other people. The online listing boasted that the house had previously been rented by several celebrities, including but not limited to: Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Demi Moore, Johnny Depp, and Cher.

So, add that little tidbit to my growing list of commonalities with Cher.

Babysitting for this five-night excursion was courtesy of my parents and their dog, who seem to intervene every time they sense I’m about to lose my figurative marbles. Though our literal marbles also seem to be missing…I blame our move this summer. I’m sure they’re up in the playroom crammed in one of our many toy boxes…

Anyway, I haven’t actually felt as though I was about to lose my marbles lately. I actually feel like I’m starting to be comfortable being a mother. I mean, I still have no idea what I’m doing and I crave my “Erin time,” but I feel like I wake up every morning with some semblance of a plan, and there’s a mindful intention behind every interaction with Nate and Tess.

Not with Sam though. Sam likes to cuddle and curl up in a ball on my lap, which is nice. But then we have to accomplish a task, like get to school on time or change from his pajamas into clothes, you know, to leave the house or something. And that’s when, both frustrated, we lose it on each other and my words become a lot…less mindful.

But really, it’s my physical body that needed this rest.

My eardrums are sore from listening to Nate and Tess. Each is constantly competing to be the loudest in the room, convinced that he/she has the most important thing to say. And sore from Sam’s shrieking each time his fourteen-inch Lego robot starts to tip even the slightest bit.

My joints are old and achy from kneeling on the floor picking up toys and crumbs and dog hair and squatting down to make sure Tess doesn’t stick Legos in her mouth or her fingers in the electrical sockets—you know, to keep her alive. Last time I knelt down, my knees were noisier than Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

My vocal chords are strained from pleading with Nate and Sam not to wrestle at the top of the steps. “But Mom! We’re going to take breaks to pee!” Nate argued back.

And then there’s my back.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice, Tess enjoys a fine slice of pizza pie—who doesn’t? I’ll tell you who: my lower back. Endless hours of carrying her girth on my right hip are starting to twist my spine and the surrounding muscles are having a tough time compensating. Because they’re weak.

My upper back, on the other hand, is tight from the time I’m investing in training Tess to walk—in an effort to get her off my hip. So, all day every day, I hunch over, waddling a half-step behind her teetering body as she clasps my fingers, determined to keep up with Nate and Sam.

When those muscles begin to spasm, the pain shoots into my neck, and as she can feel me starting to give up, she tightens her grip, too delighted with her new skill to allow me to rest.

Babies are sadistic. And selfish.

My body isn’t what it once was. Sometimes, like any self-involved, deluded has-been, I sit Nate and Sam down to tell them of my glory days.

“…I could do thirteen pull-ups without pausing…”

“…I would run twelve miles—uphill the whole time…”

“…I had six touchdowns that day…”

“…thirty-five pound medicine balls, slamming them straight into the ground…”

By this point, no one’s actually listening to me anymore. Nate can’t hear anything outside of his own head, and Sam’s deeply engulfed in the Lego directions, which he reads like riveting suspense novels.

So yeah, I needed this time away in Joshua Tree.

I hiked. I people-watched. I drank champagne. I took showers in the middle of the day. I ate slowly and luxuriously. I sat in the hot tub. I stood outside and looked at stars. And sunsets. I woke up when I wanted to and ate really well-prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I didn’t carry Tess around. I didn’t wrestle clothes onto Sam. I didn’t make meals for people who wouldn’t eat them. I didn’t listen to Nate’s recitation of the most prized Ninjago weapons. I didn’t attempt to organize and put away all the new toys they got for Christmas. I didn’t freeze. And I didn’t worry that I’d need to change my outfit immediately after breakfast because there was banana stuck to it.

There’s a reason that moms giving birth over the age of thirty-five are now considered geriatric. I feel it. “They don’t make them like they used to.” –Nick Saban.

Did Sam Just Wean a Baby for Me??

I sat in the dark with her spread across my lap in standard nursing position. It was bedtime, her favorite of the feeding times, mostly for comfort. She was almost sure to fall asleep after filling up on both sides, and I would carefully place her on her back in her crib and gently lay her fuzzy pink blanket across her still, peaceful little body.

It’s been our routine for nine and a half months. I’ve sacrificed nights out for it. I’ve given up reading bedtime books to Nate and Sam for it. I even forfeited an out-of-town family wedding for it. I mean, it was Tighe’s family, but still. Open bar is open bar.

But tonight, she did not want the boob.

She had had one of the biggest dinners I’d ever seen her eat. While I was making dinner, I threw some orange slices and crackers on her tray and glanced at her every few minutes to make sure she wasn’t choking as I scurried around the kitchen. When Tighe came home, I handed him a container of Greek yogurt and a plastic spoon.

“Here,” I said, “keep her busy.”

By the time she had finished that, we were all sitting down at the table, so I handed her a chunk of soft apple, a dinner roll, two small slices of pizza, and some slivers of pepper.  Oh, and some applesauce.

She pretty much ate it all.

“We need to talk about weaning,” I had told the pediatrician two weeks prior.

Tess had been refusing a bottle for about five months and Tighe and I are taking a trip—no kids!—in December. No matter what, Tess is not invited.

“Sure,” the doctor said. “Well, I’m not worried about her gaining weight. She’s on a great growth curve and getting plenty of nutrition. You can quit trying the bottle. Cut back on the nursing when you can and just give her water or milk or whatever in her sippy cup. She’ll figure it out.”

She met my eyes and nodded with assurance, “She will.”

Well, that seemed easy enough. So I did what she said. I cut back nursing to first thing in the morning, lunchtime, and bedtime. Tess was only nursing for about five minutes each time anyway. In the meantime, she ate three solid meals and at least one decent sized snack.

But I was never very forceful about the sippy cup. They’re so gross, sticky and covered in crusty food particles. And no matter what, they all seem to leak.

Tess was intrigued by it, though. She liked fingering the soft nipple and dragging it with her as she clambered around on the floor. She seemed to understand that hydration is important, but she never really seemed to get many fluids out of it.

So, the night after her gluttonous feast, she clamped it to her chest as Tighe carried her upstairs to change her diaper and put her pajamas on. I joined them upstairs after I had cleaned up dinner. Sam and Tess were sitting next to each other on the carpet in the hallway and he was pouring the sippy cup into her mouth. His face had the sinister smile of a frat boy hazing a freshman with a beer bong.

“Easy, Sam,” I warned. “Please don’t drown her.”

But she seemed to enjoy it. So he persisted. She guzzled for several minutes.

After saying good night to Nate and Sam, I corralled her into her room, turned out the lights, and cradled her in my lap.

She was still clutching her pink sippy cup.

I unbuttoned my shirt and instead of turning her body into mine as she usually does, she tilted her cup to her face and started chugging the water. My nipple started spraying. Instinct.

After a few minutes, she turned and began sucking my nipple. But it didn’t last. There was a faint glow from the battery-powered Christmas candle in her window and in the dim light, she met my eyes, holding my gaze for a few moments.

I lifted her up and pivoted her body to the other side of my chest. She didn’t even try. Instead, she brought her water to her mouth. After a few sips, she pointed her head upward and stared at the ceiling, avoiding my eyes.

Is this what she looks like before she soothes herself to sleep?

She arched her head back again, trying to get comfortable.

This is it, I thought. She’s ready to sleep. This could be the end. Thank you, Sam.

I put her in her crib, covered her in her fuzzy pink blanket, pulled her door shut with out a sound and crept down the steps, stunned.

Sam still throws at least one solid, absolutely irrational tantrum a day. He frequently wakes us up at the crack of dawn to poop after refusing to poop for at least an entire day before that. He protests at bedtime because he “hates to sleep” and he’s afraid of bad guys, which is all code for ‘he feels uncomfortable and needs to poop.’ He makes us late every time we leave the house, and at almost four years old, can barely dress himself.

Yet he can wean a baby? Something I’ve been struggling with for months?

Amazing.

Nate Loses a Tooth

“Mom! My tooth is loose! Feel it!”

“Nate! Why is it loose? Did you fall? Did you run into something?”

I didn’t think he was ready to lose a tooth. Don’t ask me why, most of his friends have already lost several teeth. But he’d been running around with Sam and some friends after church, and there was a lot of rough housing going on.

“My tooth is loose! I have a loose tooth!”

I could hear his voice echoing around the church basement as he darted around from person to person to alert them of his dental status. I wish I had that level of excitement for…anything really.

For dinner that night, we went to a pizza place with an old friend of Tighe’s and his wife. They live in a distant suburb, so this was our first introduction.

“Sam, how old are you?” Joe asked when we were midway through our meal, trying to be friendly. Or maybe it was a desperate attempt to get Sam to sit in his seat and stop crawling around under the table. This couple didn’t have kids and they had clearly never dined out with Sam.

Sam held eye contact with the man as he sipped his chocolate milk through a straw. He didn’t reply as he swished the milk around in his cheeks and dove back down under the table.

“Sam’s three and a half. I’m Nate and I’m five and a half and I have a loose tooth!”

Nate seemed disappointed when Joe’s enthusiasm didn’t match his own, so he joined Sam under the table.

At bedtime that night, I tried to temper Nate’s exhilaration.

“You know, Nate, sometimes it takes a few days for the tooth to actually fall out.” I hate to be such a buzzkill sometimes, but I don’t want him to be disappointed.

“Right. I know, Mom. But is tomorrow a school day? I just can’t wait to show my friends my new loose tooth.”

Tomorrow was Sunday. We all slept late and had a lazy breakfast while Nate, Sam, and Tighe watched a superhero movie.

Okay, it wasn’t a lazy breakfast for Nate. As soon as I saw him that morning, he reminded me of his loose tooth.

“Mom! It’s still loose! See? Feel it.”

“Nate, I believe you. I really don’t want to put my fingers in your mouth.” Mostly because I still hadn’t washed my hands after Tess’s morning diaper blowout. Which reminds me, I need to order bigger diapers. Or maybe we shouldn’t make a habit of feeding her pizza three nights in a row. #weekends

When she went down for her morning nap, I joined Nate and Tighe on the sofa and we brainstormed methods to expedite this loose-tooth-removal process. You know, tying the other end to a doorknob and slamming it shut. Having your dad get out his rusty pliers. Begging your younger brother to punch you in the face. Though it wouldn’t take much begging for Sam to deck Nate.

“I hate to be a mom here, but I think we should just skip all that and let nature take it’s course. It’ll probably be out in two or three days.” I said my peace and retreated to the kitchen to do whatever it is that moms do in kitchens.

Less than two minutes later, I heard a squeal and Nate came running in.

“Mom! It’s out! My tooth came out!”

Oh, great. No one ever listens to moms.

“I need a paper towel! There’s so much blood!”

For a kid who still sobs and requests a Band-Aid when he gets the tiniest of bruises, he sure was elated about the blood gushing from his mouth.

“I can’t believe I lost a tooth!” He repeated it again and again with the same level of glee that someone would have if he had won the lottery—a sum large enough to pay off his student loans and maybe have some left over to purchase a modestly priced mid-sized SUV.

The rest of the morning was exhausting. Lots of unilateral jubilation, blood soaked paper towels, and checking himself out in the mirror. It was annoying, so we sent him to the neighbor’s house for the afternoon.

It took until bedtime for him to mention the Tooth Fairy.

“I wonder what the Tooth Fairy’s going to bring me!”

Tighe and I made eye contact across their bedroom.

“What do you think she’s going to bring you, Nate?” We had to gauge his expectations. Why did we not do this earlier in the day?

“Well, when Lauren lost her tooth, she got a toy under her pillow.” **Names have been changed to protect innocent five year-olds.**

“A toy?” I didn’t have any toys. I mean, I had a few unopened things hidden away, but they’re Sam’s Christmas presents. And they’re pretty Sam-specific #markers #coloring books. Not really anything Nate would get excited about. This tooth just came out so quickly! It really caught us unprepared.

“Yeah. Lauren said you get a toy for your first tooth. So I’ll probably get a Lego set.”

“Really? Lauren said that?” Looks like I owe Lauren’s mom a “grateful” text.

We said our goodnights, and I put Tess to bed while Tighe read stories to Nate and Sam.

When we reconvened downstairs, Tighe said, “I guess I have to run to Target real quick.”

“For what? Tums?” Too much pizza gives us heartburn.

“I gotta pick up a Lego set!”

We had never discussed appropriate Tooth Fairy apportionments. A Lego set seemed a bit steep to me, but I’d also heard of a friend’s cousin in California who doles out a crisp Benjamin Franklins for every lost tooth. So we can handle an eight-dollar Lego set.

After Tighe left, I sent Lauren’s mom a text thanking her for her very high tooth fairy precedent. I received a reply almost immediately.

“Lauren got $10 for her first tooth and $1 for every tooth afterwards. I wonder if she really told him that.”

So, one of them lied. Did Lauren lie to Nate? Or did Nate lie to us? Or was it just an innocent misunderstanding between two feeble minded youngsters? Regardless he woke up with a Star Wars Lego set under his pillow and a stamp on his passport through this rite of passage.

Our Trip to the Dollar Store -OR- Why We Now Take Ukulele Lessons

It was Friday morning and Nate and Sam were mulling around the house waiting for Tess to wake up from her morning nap.

Nate glanced at the Ninja Turtle watch on his wrist. He found it under the couch about thirty minutes earlier and suddenly decided he couldn’t live without it.

“It’s 11:06, Mom.” It wasn’t. The actual time was 10:06, but the watch was too cheap to sync with the recent daylight savings time adjustment.

“It’s 11:07….still 11:07.”

He was home from school because parents were busy decorating the building for the fundraising auction that night. Which is brilliant on the part of the school, by the way. Parents who have to spend all day with their little angels are more likely to need alcohol by the time they arrive at the auction. And tipsy people spend money.

Which might be why Tighe, spending roughly forty-five minutes with them that evening before we handed them off to the babysitter, purchased ukulele lessons.

Anyway, back to the morning. We were anxious to get going so we could get to the dollar store. Not a typical morning activity, but I was trying to help Tighe. He had been organizing a collection of winter amenities to pack into small backpacks to hand out to people who are homeless. He had already been to Costco earlier in the week, but there were some key items he was still missing.

Nate wasn’t excited about the goodwill charity part, he was hoping we could stop by Target on the way home. He hadn’t bought a new Lego set in five days and he needed his fix. He had high hopes for the day.

I drove ten extra minutes to the dollar store that’s farther away. The dollar store that’s closer sucks. It’s dark and dingy and looks like the dollar store delivery truck just careened into the side of the building and spilled all it’s contents, and no one bothered to pick them up and put them on the shelves.

Jars of olives are rolling around on a shelf next to scented candles, which are resting on top of off-brand diapers. Easter candy is still on display, and shoppers stumble over boxes as they search for their desired products.

The other dollar store is bright and friendly and smells of cinnamon and vanilla and structure.  So I’ll gladly drive those ten extra minutes for a better consumer experience.

I tucked Tess into the seat of the tiny dollar store shopping cart and we began weaving our way through the spacious, neatly organized aisles. I steered towards the toiletry aisle looking for mass quantities of chap stick, hand sanitizer, and tissues.

I reached up and clamped the entire batch of chap stick between my palms, sliding it off the hook. I brought the stack to my chest to stabilize it for a second and hurled the whole thing into the cart, practically toppling in myself.

Sam watched me with curiosity, the sleeves of his puffy winter coat dangling down past his fingertips, while Nate was scanning the aisles for loot. His patience was thinning.

“So, guys…where is the hand sanitizer? Oh, there it is!...Since you’re helping me today, you can each pick out one thing….Wow, they have a lot, I wonder how much Tighe wants…”

One of the bottles of hand sanitizer slipped out of the box and started rolling away from us down the aisle.

“Sam, maybe you can get a coloring book!” Sam’s obsession with coloring is stronger than Justin Bieber’s obsession with Selena Gomez. Did I mention I used to teach at an all-girl’s school?

“Yay, a coloring book!” Sam clapped his sleeves together and began spinning in a celebratory circle.

“And Nate, you can get something, too!” I called up to him. I was on my hands and knees, trying to scoop the hand sanitizers up off the floor and back into the cart.

I stood and pushed our load to the end of the aisle where I had spotted some knit hats and gloves.

“Do these look warm enough?” I asked no one as I started hurling them into the cart.

“Where are coloring books? I don’t see coloring books…”

“Mom, I don’t want any gloves and hats.”

“Nate, these aren’t for you.” Satisfied that I now had enough—mostly because our haul was overflowing in the cart—I pointed the cart in the direction of the toy aisle.

Nate and Sam were like starving dogs who know there’s a pile of steaks on the kitchen counter. Anxious, hurried, territorial.

“Coloring books, coloring books, coloring books…” Sam seemed to be on a scent.

Nate pointed his nose in the air, sniffing, searching for that perfect one dollar toy that doesn’t actually exist.

Tess, slumped to the side in the shopping cart, one sock dangling on her toes, glanced up with minimal interest. “Why Boobs would ever take these two clowns to the dollar store is beyond me,” I imagined her thinking. Pretty sure she refers to me as Boobs.

She curled her knuckles and rotated her wrist around so she could examine her cuticles. “I could so go for a mani this week.”

“Uh, Mom….I don’t remember what a coloring book is.”

I took Sam by the shoulders and pulled him in front of the coloring books, inches from where he’d been standing.

“Oooh, I want this one!” he said pulling a Spiderman book from the rack and hugging it to his chest. He closed his eyes and smiled, rocking the book back and forth as though it was the answer to all life’s problems.

Meanwhile, a few yards away, Nate was suffering a crisis of indecision.

“But Mom,” he was saying though I hadn’t been listening. “Which one should I get? The mask?”

He presented a blue and black hunk of cheap plastic in the shape of a mask.

“Or this?” He pointed at a ninja weapon set. Or something. It was a belt and accompanying throwing star and sai that will surely all break or be forgotten about by the end of the day.

“I don’t know, Nate, it’s up to you.” I was distracted by the mental list of homeless amenities I still wanted to find—tissues, granola bars, maybe some scarves. Plus, I still needed something to wear to the auction that night. The theme was Vegas, a place just as tacky as the dollar store.

“But Mo-om! Which one?” When did “mom” become two syllables?

“Just decide and let’s go.” If he had glanced at his wristwatch again, he would have realized it was nearly lunchtime and that we were all getting hungry. Sam was busy whispering sweet nothings to his coloring book, but Tess was getting antsy.

“Can’t I just have two things?”

“No. Just one.” Like a fugitive dodging the cops, my head was on a swivel, peering and squinting into the other aisles looking for something that said either “Vegas” or “homeless.”

“No-ah!” Why does “no” suddenly have two syllables?

We went on in this mother-son tug-of-war for several more minutes. When I was winning, we’d inch toward the checkout counter and he’d slump his shoulders, practically surrendering to my one-toy policy. When he was winning, we’d end up back in the toy aisle, weighing the pros and cons of each piece of crap toy.

Finally, I was done.

“Nate, don’t whine. Just make a decision and let’s go. Here, I’ll count to ten and—“

“No! Don’t count!”

I flashed back to the night we set the tabata timer to encourage them to clean up their Legos before bedtime. It didn’t end well.

“Please don’t count. Mom, I want both! Can’t I just have two things?”

His voice trailed off into a whisper as real tears started to form in his eyes. I almost felt bad, and for a second I contemplated relenting. But no! I had a drawn a line and I had to hold my ground!

Plus, then Sam would need a second toy, too, and I really didn’t have the patience for that. Though I was pretty sure it’d just be a second coloring book.

“Egh!” Tess was fed up. She reached back into the cart and started pulling at anything she could grab.

My friend gave me a plaque when I was pregnant with Nate that reads, “Don’t yell at your kids. Lean in and whisper. It’s much scarier.”

I decided those are wise words, so I bent down to Nate’s level.

“Nate!” The words seemed to just barely seep through the gaps between my clenched teeth.

“Hurry. Up. And. Make. A. Decision.”

His jaw was jutted out in despair, he was gasping for breath in between sobs, and his eyes averted mine, too angry to make contact.

“Fine.” He grabbed the mask and trailed behind me, sullen and defeated, like a Confederate soldier.

We trudged to the checkout counter, my arms swiping even more hats and gloves into the cart as we passed. Since we had more items in our cart than there are complaints about Harvey Weinstein, I knew I had to be strategic about my timing in the line. I didn’t want to anger the people behind me, nor frustrate the cashier for making her do her job. The store was mostly empty, so I felt good about what was about to happen.

Oh, but I didn’t anticipate The Great Dollar Store Balloon Fiasco of 2017!

When we approached the counter, the elderly employee was at the far corner of the store using a helium tank to blow up balloons for another customer, and she seemed to be the only employee.

But the helium tank was unforgiving, causing some sort of failure that captured the full attention of the lone employee for over seven minutes. Which is an eternity when you’re standing in line with three hungry kids, over one hundred items in your cart, and a line of increasingly irritated customers queuing up behind you.

Meanwhile Sam had spotted the display of Ring Pops and asked me if he could have one every six seconds. Did he not see the game of hardball I had just played with Nate? Consider it a win streak.

Finally, a second employee emerged from his secret lair and opened another register. I watched him, amazed at the speed with which he scanned items and rung up totals, handing customers their receipt before they even took a second breath.

Then I looked back at the elderly employee still struggling to fill balloons and finally shuffling back over to the register where we waited impatiently, our tummies rumbling for some peanut butter and jelly. I ached for the speed of Employee #2, but I didn’t want to hurt Employee #1’s feelings.

So we stayed loyal and endured Sam’s six-second Ring Pop queries and Tess’s periodic sock removals and attempts to eat the plastic bags as they piled high in the cart behind her. Only Nate remained quiet, probably because he sensed any sudden movements might make me snap.

After unloading our cargo into the back of the Suburban and making sure everyone was buckled, I glanced in the rear view mirror at Nate, who was examining his mask, turning it over in his hands and looking pensive.

“Mom,” he paused a moment, and our brown eyes met in the mirror, mine narrowing, almost daring him to continue. “I don’t know why I got the blue mask. I think I should have gotten the red. Can we go back in and exchange it?”

Such was our mood when Tighe returned home a few hours later.  When we arrived at the auction, he needed a drink. When we left the auction, Tighe had a ukulele under his arm and a gift certificate for four lessons. Well played, school. Well played.

First vs Third -or- How Sam Pooped on the Wall

Tess and Nate look a lot alike.  Aside from the fact that Tess’s clothes all look like a pink highlighter exploded in the wash and Nate’s clothes all had baseballs and soccer balls on them—are we a sexist society or what?—their baby pictures are nearly identical. Many of them even feature a very patient Wally waiting for food to drop from the highchair. Five years later and that dog has aged well!

But that’s about as far as the similarities go for Nate and Tess. First child versus third child? Totally different upbringings! And the more kids you have the more disparate their upbringings get.

This topic has been exhausted by parenting experts and mom bloggers #wehavetounionize! so I won’t waste your time with the rationale behind the phenomena and the pros and cons of each situation.

Instead, I’ll waste your time with some very specific details from our life.

I changed Nate’s crib sheet every other day—only the cleanest of slumbering nests for my baby! We structured our entire weekend plans around Nate’s nap schedule, and if some event was happening during his naptime, we just DIDN’T GO. I had an illogical, inconsistent internal timer for how much time he should sit in his car seat per day.  I read books to him several times a day, and I actually think he stored his first sight words into his memory at seven months. I counted out every morsel of food he consumed and agonized if he woke up even just fifteen minutes earlier than usual. I vacuumed our house every day so that he would have a clean space to learn to crawl.

Meanwhile, at the same stage of life, we have Tess. I changed her crib sheet once, when we moved three months ago. Tess naps in the car on the way to pick her brothers up from school or in her stroller at her brothers’ soccer games. The only value Tess has found in books is that they seem to taste good. Wait until she finds out there are plots and compelling character arcs! Example: the tale of Elmo trying to outsmart the babysitter at bedtime is a real page-turner! So far, Tess’s edition is coated in drool.

Tess is learning to crawl, but she needs more practice. There’s just nowhere in our house to do it. The hardwood floors are slippery, especially since we don’t always have time to change out of her fleecy PJ’s—another reality of third child syndrome. A few rooms are carpeted, but they have other hazards.

One is covered in dog hair and I log very little vacuuming time nowadays. The dog hair adheres to the gelatinous food residue stuck to her face, knuckles, and aforementioned PJ’s.

Another carpeted room is obscured with Legos, the very same Legos that impale bare feet and choke infants. Nate and Sam have successfully booby-trapped that room. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some strategically placed IED’s just inside the threshold. They’re crafty like that.

A third room that boasts a nice soft carpet, perfect for a tumbling infant is the guest room and WE DON’T GO IN THERE! How many times do I have to say that???!

So, we often resort to the second floor hallway that connects the bedrooms. I throw toys at one end and cheer her on as she races—at a snail’s pace—to get them. Basically, I play fetch with my daughter.

The other night, just before Tighe arrived home from work, Nate joined Tess and me in our game of fetch in the hall when we heard a scream from the third floor Lego room.

Obviously it was Sam. Screams are always Sam. Unless we’re on a plane—then it’s Tess. Unless she’s asleep—then it’s Sam again. Because he needs more Skittles. #airplanesnacks

Anyway, already exhausted from whatever malady Sam was about to throw at us, Nate, Tess, and I turned our attention up the steps—also carpeted.

“What’s wrong, Sam?” I said in my most cheerful, maternal voice. Sometimes I like to pretend that it’s not the witching hour, that it’s happy hour.

“I pooooooooooooooped!”

“In the toilet?” I was so hopeful. So naïve. I mean, there is a bathroom up there, so it’s possible.

“Nooooooooooooo! In my pants!”

“What? Why?”

“I didn’t know it was coming!”

“Okay. Did you think it was just a fart?” We were still sitting on the plush carpet, calling up to Sam as he clunked down the steps. And my patience was still intact.

“Yes, I thought it was just a fart coming! And I touched the pooooooooooop!”

Hmm. The situation was starting to get more sinister, the tiniest hairline fracture in my patience was starting to show. Witching hour.

“Why. Did. You. Touch. The. Poop.” Did I really want him to answer that?

He landed on the last step and from our fortified position eight feet away, I got a clear visual of the situation. His Ninja Turtle underwear and his Adidas track pants were tangled in some sort of inside-out knot wrapped around one of his legs. He had apparently dragged said knot down the steps with him. His blue, long-sleeved Superman shirt was still on, but I could already see some brown… fecal gobs stuck to the sleeves. And his left index finger was lodged in his nostril.

“Stop. Right there. Do not move!” My voice was calm, but authoritative. Poop is a dangerous thing, and I wanted to make sure he really heard my instructions so we could work together to minimize the damage.

“I hate you!” That’s pretty much his go-to response.

Okay, things were escalating. But though I just upgraded my status from Patient, Loving Mom to Hostage Negotiator, I was still in control.

“Well, I love you, Sam. Now, walk into the bathroom and remove your underwear and pants. Lay them on the tile, not on the rugs. I’ll meet you in the bathroom and we’ll clean this up together.”

I still hadn’t moved from my #safespace, but I could now see some feces smeared on his inner thighs.

“No, I hate you!” Motherhood is a special gift from God. I’ll have to thank Him when I land in Heaven some day.

My knees creaked as I unfolded them in a reluctant effort to stand and rendezvous with Sam in the bathroom. By the time I got there, he had managed to smear some poop on the bathroom rugs and inside the sink. He was rinsing his hands with as much of our most expensive hand soap as he could coax out of the bottle and was gleefully singing the alphabet. Apparently, he had forgotten that he had just professed his hatred for his mother, the poor woman on her hands and knees violently scrubbing his legs with diaper wipes, in an ill-fated attempt to sanitize him. 

I instructed Nate to lure Tess into her room, a relatively #safespace. When she ignored him, he went behind her, lifted her at the armpits, and dragged her there. She shrugged and let it happen. Let it be noted that the same motion would have sent an 8 month-old Nate, the little prince, into hysterics.

By the time Tighe got home a few minutes later, Sam was luxuriously paddling around in the tub, scooping large cups of water onto his head and into his mouth as he commented on the particles of poop that floated by him. Why do these things not bother him?

I handed Tess to her alleged father and announced that I had some poop to clean up. Because the situation was worse than I originally thought. Upon closer forensic inspection, it was evident that Sam had tracked poop down the carpeted steps and hallway—Tess’s once beloved racetrack. Oh, and on the walls somehow. But she can’t reach that high yet. And at this rate, she never will.

For Tess, there are no safe spaces in our house. She’ll never master crawling, she’ll have to learn to run first.

Imaginary Reply from A Teacher Friend

To: Nate’s Mother

Cc: My Parent Contact Files 

Bcc: Fellow Teachers

Subject: Early Onset Hovering Anxiety

Status: NEVER!! sent

Dear Slightly Anxious Parent,

Thank you for your email. You are right to have your concerns. You are fortunate you only feel slightly anxious!

It is amazing the damage that has already been inflicted upon your five year old son! As your obvious obsessive compulsive, anal-retentive habits supplied me with a concise list of questions, I will respond by addressing them in order.  

1) bringing some assignments to the wedding with us and

By all means you should bring some assignments to the wedding. In fact, if he is a ring bearer, I suggest that he walk down the aisle with the ring on top of a book. Once he has done his duty and the ring has been handed off, he should then just step to the side, sit down and read the book. It is important that your parenting is on display, in such an education first way. You will be the envy of all other parents who will wish that their child was as focused and eager to learn as your son.

2) his participation in the Bookworm program and

Letting a child discover his interests in his own way and time is absurd. He MUST be directed/required to take advantage, from the get go, of every possible opportunity that is presented to him. If not, the other kids will gain acceptance over him to the elite colleges. All the other parents will know that he didn't get into Harvard when he matriculates at Loyola College...is it a university now? No matter, definitely not top drawer!

3) whether Miley Cyrus is an adequate reading tutor and

Especially if Miley shows up in the attire she typically wears, she should be a wonderful tutor!  Nate should be exposed at the very earliest age to provocative dress in women so that he learns to objectify them. I imagine her hillbilly twang will be a rounding out addition to his growing arsenal of different accents. You definitely want to develop his interest in the arts, so good choice to show him the Wrecking Ball video. 

4) about speech therapy for Nate and

Don't let the fact that Nate has gone from doh doh's to donuts fool you. It is reckless to let nature take its course. The school has a speech pathologist on staff, so for the standard fee charged in private practice, you can have the satisfaction that you are doing all that you possibly can to assure your son's future success. Sign him up now!

5) whether he’ll be punished for his dress code violation and

Of course he will be punished for his blatant disregard for the school rules! A five year old who wants to express his individuality with an unapproved hair cut...what kind of parent are you? You give an inch now, and he will take advantage of you every step of the way. And you didn't see the notice I carefully placed in his backpack? Did you check every side pocket? He obviously is already trying to deceive you. If you don't get a handle on him now, you will be in big trouble down the road when the stakes are higher!

6) your knowledge about weaning an infant.  

And you are still weaning your infant?! No wonder Nate is having so much trouble! How do you think he feels when he sees his Mom spending all the time with this little intruder into his world? Why did you have another kid anyway? China's one child policy works on so many levels. Every child deserves the right to be the apple of his parents' and both sets of grandparents' eyes. What were you thinking? Do you need to attend a sex education program? I can make a referral.

Clearly, Nate's problems stem from the poor parenting skills of you and your husband. Our school also has a counselor on staff who is here for the benefit of parents as well as the students. I suggest you sign the two of you (and three if the baby is attached to your breast) up for some sessions while Nate is in with the speech pathologist. The school will kindly list the charges for both types of additional help on the same bill.

Just to be clear, Nate is to serve a detention for wearing that outlandish haircut. He will be required to sit inside during recess and practice his letter writing (his B's still seem to give him trouble) until he gets a proper cut. The upside to this is that he will at least be able to be removed from the barrage of taunting jeers from the other children at recess. His obvious lack of social skills will need to be addressed at another time.

With deep concern,

The Best Teacher Ever 

...Who knows more than any set of parents about their child

P.S. Good luck with Tess flying AGAIN this weekend. Another questionable decision. 

An Unsent E-mail to Nate's Teacher

To: Nate’s Teacher

Cc: Peanut Butter Urinal

Bcc: Loyal PBU Readers

Subject: 3 quick things, I promise

Status: NEVER sent

Hey Nate’s Teacher,

Really, just 3 things. I’m not an anxious parent or anything.

First, I just wanted to let you know that Nate’s in a wedding in Baltimore next weekend. We leave on Wednesday night, so he’ll miss school on Thursday and Friday. Let me know if there’s anything you want him to work on/study while we’re away—aside from the dance floor, wedding cake, and his college essays.

Second, should he be bringing home Bookworm books to read every night? I know you said it was an optional program, so I’m totally fine with that process being "Nate-led.” I was a teacher, too, and I’m all in favor of not imposing too many boring drill-and-kill exercises that stress kids out and stifle creativity.

I just want to make sure he’s getting enough reading practice. I mean, at dinner the other night we watched Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball video to practice reading. It was the one with the lyrics, not the one at the Sugar Bowl—though we did watch that, too.

Third, there was definitely a third thing, but I forget. Hmm… nope, not remembering. I’m going to blame lack of sleep and an insufficient amount of caffeine in my morning tea. Must have been a dud of a tea bag. Ha, that’s what she said!

So, I guess I’ll just take a moment to tell you that Nate is LOVING kindergarten. At dinnertime when we ask him what the coolest thing that happened that day was, he really struggles to come up with an answer. Though usually it involves recess or discovering that a certain boy has a crush on a certain girl. I won’t name names, I need to maintain some mother-son trust. 

But for the right price, I will tell you what their names rhyme with. Does he seem girl crazy to you?

Did I mention that I was a teacher, too? I’m totally on your side and we’ll always support the school. My husband will, too, even though he also believes that formal education is flawed in many ways and he could do better if it were feasible for him to homeschool these little hellions. Ha, I’d love to see him try to teach factoring polynomials, amIright? #teacherjoke

And while I have you here, can you tell me why Nate’s suddenly developed an accent? It started about six weeks ago, right as school started, and at first we thought it was a Baltimore accent. Like Traffic Jam Jimmy trying to order a fish sandwich. But then we listened more closely and realized it was part Southern California surfer dude and part South Jersey. He sounds like a Valley girl—is that PC? Did I offend someone? Anyway, did he pick that up from one of his new friends? Or are you taking bi-coastal field trips during the day?

And speaking of his pronunciation—and really, he’s come so far! Donuts used to be “doh-dohs” and sofa cushions were once “pushions”—he still hasn’t mastered the word “ruin.” It’s “gruin” to Nate. He told me I gruined his day by making him bring his dirty socks in from the swing set—they’d already sat there for over a week, through all those storms we had over the weekend. Pretty durable socks now that I think about it.

But should we be worried about his pronunciation? Maybe we should pull him out of class so he can see the speech therapist? Again, I’m not an anxious parent, but please let me know what you think.

And can you tell me whether he committed a dress code violation with his mohawk the other day? He was so excited to show it off, and the rulebook said only “moderate styles allowed.” We weren’t really sure what that meant, but since his hair is so short, it wasn’t that high, seemed pretty moderate to me. But still, he got pretty nervous about it as we were pulling into the carpool line that morning, trying to smooth it down with his hands, full of all kinds of regret.

He didn’t come home with any kind of paperwork detailing a violation and I didn’t hear from the school at all, but I just want to make sure it doesn’t go on his permanent record or anything. He’s only in kindergarten, can this just be a warning?

Also, do you know anything about weaning an infant? Because at this rate, I’m going to have to go to prom with her and I don’t have a dress yet.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you and assure you that I’m not an anxious parent, we’re pretty laid back about everything. But let me know what you think about:

1) bringing some assignments to the wedding with us and

2) his participation in the Bookworm program and

3) whether Miley Cyrus is an adequate reading tutor and

4) about speech therapy for Nate and

5) whether he’ll be punished for his dress code violation and

6) your knowledge about weaning an infant.

Thanks! Have a great night!

Erin Greenhalgh

PS Can you please remind me the dates I signed up to bring snack?

PPS Sorry about the overdue library book! I’ll put it in his backpack immediately!

The No-Fly List: Tess

The world changed forever on September 11, 2001.  In a lot of ways, namely the way we fly on planes. And then it changed again on August 22, 2017. Because that was Tess’s first plane ride. And I’m pretty sure that the FAA just added her to the no-fly list.

I mean, I’ve flown with babies before. Nate and Sam each took their first flights when they were about the same age—six months. They were both great, even Sam!  

But this flight—Tess’s flight—was delayed by 70 minutes due to weather in Baltimore, our destination. Which meant that I’d be committing the cardinal sin of flying with an infant: don’t fly at bedtime.

I hoped, prayed, that my little lap passenger would fall asleep at take off and stay asleep for the full two hour flight, preferably in a position that would allow me to comfortably listen to my headphones, reach my snack with ease, and sip a drink without spilling it.

As we stood waiting to board and listening to multiple announcements—more like menacing, foreshadowing threats—that this would be a full flight, Tess flashed her bright blue eyes and smiled at the people around us. They smiled back and told her how cute she was while secretly praying to their gods that she didn’t end up seated near them. I get it.

I snagged a window seat, and a very large man quickly took the aisle seat in our row. While he joined the “Tess is cute” bandwagon, I got myself situated, making sure our snacks, my nursing cover, her blanket, sippy cup, and a few toys were accessible. I started to reach for my headphones, too, but decided that was pushing my luck.

Suddenly the boarding stopped. I looked around the plane and saw that there were no passengers still standing. All the seats were taken except the one between us and our heavyset friend on the aisle.

“How’d we do that?” I smiled to him.

“Well, I stuck my gut out as far as possible and you have a baby. Good work, baby! No one wants to sit with us.”

But his triumph and my relief were short-lived. Moments later, I heard an “excuse me, sir, is anyone sitting there?”

I looked up to see The Second Most Unlucky Person of The Evening squeezing into the seat next to me.  

And that’s about the time that Tess started to lose it. For the next hour or so, we battled. She wanted to nurse. But she also wanted to sprawl out and sleep. She wanted to chew on the toys I packed and lick the baby snacks I supplied. She wanted to look out the window at the bright lights below and swat at the tray table. She was overtired and over-stimulated and this combination of sensations exploded into first squeals and frustrated squawks and then, too quickly, full-blown screaming.

Like, real screaming. A panicked and angry frenzy all at once. Just as the complimentary beverage service was starting.

I was trying to stay calm and composed, but inside I was dying.

This is real. This is really happening to me. This trip is not worth it. I have so many regrets right now. Why did I let Tighe talk me into this trip? Why am I doing this to this poor baby? She’s miserable! And to these poor people! They hate me. They hate Tess! I wish I could tell them what a great personality she has. [Repeat to self]

The Second Most Unlucky Person of The Evening was struggling to stay composed. He was wiggling himself away from me, to his left, both in an effort to escape the noise and to avoid looking at my boobs, which I was desperately trying to shove in Tess’s face.

Eat, baby, eat! Please just eat and fall asleep!

But our heavyset friend on the aisle wasn’t yielding him much space. And so The Second Most Unlucky Person of The Evening was stuck. As Tess squirmed and flung herself around, he leaned forward, pressing his hands together and burying them between his knees.

When her volume spiked into the shrillest of screeches, his head would tumble back, slowly, as if in pain, until he’d let it collapse again into his hands. He repeated those motions again and again, and in such a confined space, I’m not sure what else he could have done.

Aside from the screaming, she had also begun to kick him. At which point, she decided she liked the dry-fit texture of his shirt. So she sat up and began to smack his shoulder. Aggressively.

“Keep your hands to yourself, baby,” I cooed to her, pulling her hand away.

“She can touch me,” he muttered. “She can touch me.”

His head was buried in his palms and he was massaging both his temples in a circular motion with his fingers. He repeated himself the way that crazy people do. See: Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I started to grow fearful. All screaming and no quiet makes the guy next to me a dull boy.

Leaning forward, I squished Tess for a second—she was already crying anyway—and reached down into my backpack. I pulled out my crumpled drink voucher, courtesy of Southwest Airlines, the best airline ever. Seriously.

“Sir?”

He couldn’t hear me over the screaming.

“Sir?” I was louder this time. “Would you like this? I think you’ve earned it. In fact, I think you need it.”

He took it from me, squinting in the dim light to determine what exactly I was giving him. Once he figured it out, he clutched it to his chest, and began scanning the aisle for the flight attendants.

“Thank you,” he mumbled. “Thank you.”

Please stop repeating yourself!

But the screaming continued. I tried to rock her and nurse her, flashing more nipple that Elaine Benes’s Christmas cards.

Then, finally, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

I looked up from trying to cram my boob into Tess’s wailing mouth to see a woman in her mid-sixties standing over our row.

“If you trust me, may I take your baby and try to distract her?”

A real-life baby whisperer? Yes, please! Anything!

“Sure!” I was humiliated, frustrated, hungry, exhausted, but so grateful for this woman’s compassion.

“She’s just tired,” I advised. “She can’t get comfortable in this seat.”

The woman nodded and clutching Tess to her chest, began walking up and down the aisle while I quickly stuffed some cookies into my mouth.

She’s still screaming! I can hear her!

I stood up in my seat to see where they were. All the way in the back of the plane—I was in the fourth row—and I could still hear her.

I’m dying.

The woman returned. Tess was still screaming, her face was blotchy and her eyes were red and wide with panic.

“Could it be her diaper?” she asked, still trying to be the hero.

“Well, I just changed it, so probably not. I think she’s just really, really tired.”

“Okay!” she nodded doubtfully and turned back down her well-worn path in the aisle.

As she did, Tess spun her head around to hold my eye-contact. “Who is this woman? And what is she doing to me?” her expression seemed to say.

And her vocal chords said, “Waaaaaaaah!” But louder than the volume you’re imagining.

The woman returned again less than a minute later. 

“It’s her diaper,” she assured me. “Do you have a clean one?”

“Sure,” I said and passed one down the row.

It’s definitely not her diaper, thought every other person on the plane.

The woman came back a third time.

“It was her diaper!” she proclaimed.

Then why is she still screaming? —Everyone else’s inner monologue.

“I’ll just take her now,” I said, shimmying myself past The Second Most Unlucky Person of The Evening and my heavyset friend on the aisle.

“I think I put the new one on backwards,” my heroic friend whispered to me as she handed me my daughter.

“Ohhhh. Okay. Well, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it.”

She definitely made it worse.

But Tess quieted as soon as she was in my arms, and gripping one another, we scooted toward the back of the plane. I rocked her gently and avoided eye contact with every single person I passed, trying to pretend this wasn’t the worst night of my life.

“Is there something we can do to help?” asked one of the flight attendants, cocking her head to the side and pouting her bottom lip in sympathy. They were finished serving drinks and enjoying their own happy hour in the back.

“Is it too late to add her to the checked baggage?” I was half-joking.

They smiled and assured me that although the fasten seatbelt light was on, Tess and I could hang out in the back of the plane as long as we wanted—we still had another hour to Baltimore. I continued rocking and swaying, like a crazy person, and soon she was asleep.

So, the flight attendants and I had a great time getting to know one another in the back of the plane. One has a five year-old son, one is just starting the adoption process after years of infertility, and one likes to make her own hummus. They offered tips on how to remain standing in rough turbulence, and we debated where they should eat when they land in Dallas the next night.

And of course there was a steady stream of bathroom goers waiting their turn to cram themselves into the bathroom and empty their bladders. They offered sympathy and consoling tales of their own nightmares when flying with babies. Some were even worse than mine.

“At least she’s very vocal and you don’t have to worry that she’s autistic,” one man told me.

Hmm. Interesting silver lining.

She slept the remainder of the flight, including my cumbersome return to my seat when I had to scrunch up her legs, spin myself around and collapse on top of my seatbelt, which I never bothered to fasten. She even slept through our bumpy landing!

While I waited for the car seat at baggage claim, I called to check in with Tighe.

“Hello?”

“Tighe, Tess and I live in Baltimore now. We have no way to return to Kansas City. Tess can never board a plane again, and I’m not driving her back. Not any time soon, anyway.”

“It was that bad, huh?”

“Yes. It was that bad.”

But seriously, the flight back to Kansas City? She slept the entire time. Because, remember, she’s the favorite.

Epilogue: In case you were wondering who The Most Unlucky Person of The Evening was, it wasn’t me. Not even Tess. It was the woman in the row in front of us who was suffering a migraine headache night. She never said anything to me, nor do I know who she was, but I heard about her later from one of the other passengers. Ma’am, my apologies and respect. A true migraine is no joke. 

There's Always Something to Write About

Ugh, it feels good to be typing again! “Ten thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck! “–Robin Williams as Aladdin’s Genie

Yes, we’ve been busy—moving, vacationing, parenting, IKEA-ing. But also, I’ve been suffering from a bit of writer’s block. And not to say that funny, ridiculous incidents haven’t occurred.

For instance, there are swim lessons, which are absurd. I’ll probably have to hire a sports psychologist to get Nate to swim. And then there was the training wheels fiasco. And Nate’s fragile nostalgia as we pulled away our old house for the last time—were those real tears??! And then Sam’s geographical confusion as he adjusted to our new house.

And then the five nights—count ‘em, FIVE!—that Tighe spent at my brother’s bachelor party. I could have live-streamed events from our house: Real Housewives Kansas City, and I probably would have won some sort of independent film award. Or sainthood. Or at least a visit from Child Protective Services. Though the fire department did come, but Tighe was home for that.

All easy to write about. But I didn’t.

And then, most recently, Nate very intentionally threw his entire McDonald’s Happy Meal from the backseat of the Suburban up to the front center console. Aiming for me, I believe. Fries everywhere. The greasy stench lingered in the car for days. Are you kidding me?

And then there’s the reason I had bought them Happy Meals in the first place—not to promote childhood obesity or because I find their food particularly delicious.  

Nope, it was because we were twenty minutes from home and Sam, who had just woken from a late afternoon doze, had started screeching nonsense from the backseat. Thrusting around in his car seat, arching his back, and pulling at his straps,

“Do you have to pee?” I was starting to panic. He couldn’t hold it until we got home.

“No! No, I don’t have to pee, Mom!”

“Sam.” Calmer this time, “Do you have to pee?”

“No!”

And after another quarter mile of shrieky denials in rush-hour traffic, he came clean.

“Mom, I need to PEEEEEEE!”

“I know you need to pee!”

Ha, vindication! I’m always right about urinating. And Tighe’s always right about bowel movements. Theirs and his. And sometimes mine. We’ll call it “vicarious familial instinct.” I think it’s kind of like how sorority sisters naturally synch up their menstrual cycles or something. 

But back to Sam and our impending flood. My sense of self-righteousness quickly vanished as I realized I’d soon have to dismember his car seat and wash the cover. Not to mention listen to him scream the entire way home about how he hates to be wet and stinky.

“I need to pee RIGHT NOW!”

“We should probably stop so he can pee, Mom.”

Speaking of self-righteous know-it-alls…

“Yeah, thanks, Nate.”

I made an impromptu left turn at the next light, pulled into a McDonald’s, and explained my plan over Sam’s desperate pleas of “I need to pee really bad!” and Nate’s joyous monologue: “Yay McDonald’s I wonder what the Happy Meal toy is I think it’s Minions because the minion movie just came out and Colin had a minion toy at the playground the other day and I’m pretty sure it was from McDonald’s and Mom you should park on the other side we saw the minion movie already too so it’d be great to get a minion toy oh I’m so excited to get a minion toy mom can we get smoothies too McDonald’s milkshakes aren’t that good but their smoothies are I think I like Wendy’s Frosty’s better than…”

“Nate.” Of course he can’t hear me over Sam screaming. Or his own soliloquy.

Does anyone ever listen to me? Of course not, that’s why I had to start a blog.

“Nate!” I barked.

“What, Mom?”

“You wait here with Tess while I run Sam into the bathroom.”

“Mom, Tess is asleep.” How does she do that?

“Ok, I’ll be right back. Keep the car doors locked.”

I reached back to unbuckle Sam, trying not to disturb Tess, and wrestled his jittery, panicked little body around her car seat and out the door. We had already rehearsed this same dance in a very crowded IKEA the week before. It’s awkward and graceful and intensely emotional all at once. 

As soon as he peed and washed his hands, we embraced, victorious yet again. We proclaimed our love for one another our commitment as mother and son. Again, we’re old pros at this routine. It’s exhausting.

Returning to the car, I delicately shoved him into his car seat so he wouldn’t bump Tess.

“Great! Now we can just go through the drive-thru! I’m so excited about this minion toy!”

I wonder if Nate ever stopped talking while Sam and I were in the McDonald’s.

I glanced at the clock. 5:57. What the hell, let’s do it.

I should mention that while I was inside the McDonald’s and again as we sat in the drive-thru line, I noticed that the Happy Meal signs did not boast minions, but advertised The Emoji Movie instead. And I mentioned this to Nate. Several times.

“No, it’s minions.” He smirked, dismissing my statements in a way that seemed eerily prescient of a conversation we’ll probably have when I’m old and senile. Like, “My poor mom, always wrong.”

Incidentally, at a red light, I pried open the Happy Meal box on front seat and glanced inside. Definitely an emoji toy. Not a minion.

I shrugged. This should be interesting, I thought to myself.

So, we listened to him talk about the minion movie the whole way home with occasional inquiries about who sings the song on the radio at the moment or why we never go to that playground anymore and why all his friends from preschool aren’t going to the same kindergarten and why people’s homes flood when we get seven inches of rain and why some cars are more expensive than others and why babies need sleep and then there was a brief lecture, directed at Sam, about why smoothies are healthier than milkshakes.

And as we pulled into the driveway—when my head already felt like it was about to explode—he unbuckled himself and hopped up to the front seat, grabbed his Happy Meal box and poked his head inside.

“What the—?”

I could feel the rage and despair joining forces to take over Nate’s being.

And the next thing I knew, I had fries in my lap.

See? There’s always something to write about. That, for me, was a pretty standard Thursday afternoon.

Pre-Road Trip Anxiety

“So we’ll be at my parent’s cabin for a few days, then we’ll head to Baltimore for a few days, then we’ll drive eight hours to meet Tighe’s family at the beach in North Carolina for a week…“

I was chatting with a friend while our kids maimed each other with sticks on the playground.

“So you’ll rent a car when you land in Baltimore? You’re flying, right?”

“No—“

“You’re not driving all the way back East, are you?”

I nodded.

“You are? The whole thing? Again?”

“Yeah, we are!” I feigned enthusiasm, but her incredulity was making me apprehensive.

I mean, are we crazy?

Three kids, one car. Two weeks. Eighteen hours to the cabin. Three hours to Baltimore. Eight hours to the beach. Then eighteen hours back to Kansas City.

Hmm… When I sum it up like that, it makes me think that yes, we might actually be crazy.

We are simplifying our lives this year by not bringing the dog with us. But we replaced him with a 4 month-old…a 4 month-old who suddenly won’t drink from a bottle. Certainly puts a lot of pressure on me, if you know what I mean.

And we’ve already done this trip so many times. In so many different ways.

Pre-kids—a more sane era—Tighe and I did it several times in one straight shot: Baltimore to Kansas City and back again, eating only Cheez-its, beef jerky and gum. (Gum is a lie your mouth tells your stomach. –Titus Andromedon)

The first time we did it in the Kid Era, Nate was one and a half. And because I was a more devoted and conscientious young mother who believed that kids shouldn’t be confined in a car seat for more than an hour at a time, we did the trip in two and a half days.

Fast forward five years, and my self-imposed parenting rules have changed. Tess recently spent eight hours in her car seat because she fell asleep on the way home from church and stayed asleep. No harm, no foul—she seems to be the smartest of the three.

We also drove through the night once—left Kansas City at dinnertime and just drove east on I-70. We thought Nate would sleep and Tighe and I could take turns driving and sleeping.

But no, Nate never slept. He stayed awake and talked all. night.

“Look, Mom, a truck!” I’ve always wondered how he can be so cheerful on no sleep.

But again, because I was a conscientious young mother focused on developing his verbal and conversation skills, I replied to every comment.

“Yes, Nate, a truck! …Again.” At 32 weeks pregnant with Sam, I ignored the Braxton-Hicks contractions I was having as I floated some questions to stimulate his little brain.

“How many axles does it have? What do you think it’s carrying? Is it a Mack or a Peterbilt? Where might it be going? What do you think the driver’s name is? Is he wearing a hat? Now, go to sleep so I don’t go into labor. And Wally, stop slobbering on my arm and GET in the BACKSEAT!”

I drove the final stretch through western Maryland as the sun rose ahead of us. Having not slept a wink, I leaned forward over the steering wheel, peeling my eyelids open with one hand and navigating the big hills and sharp turns with the other.

I was so tired and hungry and disillusioned with reality that I ordered and ate an egg McMuffin when we stopped for our final bathroom break. Like Tom Hanks falling in love with a volleyball as he stumbled onto a deserted island, I fell in love with that little breakfast sandwich as I stumbled into McDonald’s. And regretted it twenty minutes later.

All three of us—four, if you count Sam growing in my belly—cranky and haggard, fell immediately into bed when we arrived at my parent’s house outside of Baltimore, while Wally paced around the basement, dry-heaving.

More commonly, though, we’ve done the voyage in a day and a half: about twelve hours the first day and another four to five the second. Tighe does most of the driving and I do most of the crowd maintenance. It takes a lot of aggressive planning, proactive interventions, and prayers.

One year, I wrapped small toys in wrapping paper and anytime I sensed angst or boredom in the backseat, I tossed one back. And it worked! I fended off a mutiny each time… Except that it was a mess. By hour six or seven, it looked like a Christmas tree vomited in our car. And it smelled like Wally’s hot, panting dog breath.

This year, per the suggestion of a friend, I’ll utilize the ticket exchange strategy. Nate and Sam will each get tickets, one for each hour of the trip, that they can exchange for snacks and treats and dollar store prizes. Anything to keep Nate’s and Sam’s minds busy and bodies stationary. 

Well, almost anything. I avoided whistles and harmonicas and xylophones and air horns. Tess will need to sleep. And Tighe and I will need to maintain our sanity.

I also avoided Nerf guns, ping pong paddles, rocket launchers, and anything else that could cause an accident, a lost eye, or a severed arm. Not trying to teach any lessons here, just trying to survive.

So think about us this weekend. Send prayers and good vibes and hopefully—God willing—you’ll be reading some cute little tale about Nate/Sam’s adventures at the lake and the beach in a few weeks.

But first, we gotta survive this car ride.

The Night the House Didn't Burn Down...

...But They Panicked Anyway

We have a very lightly enforced rule in our house: Any toy or otherwise unspecified belonging of Nate and/or Sam that is not properly put away at bedtime or other arbitrary deadline will be placed in the giant blue trash bag to be taken, eventually, to a landfill.

So, after dinner is over, the blue trash bag is brought out from the laundry room and the panicked scurrying begins. Like Hogan and his heroes hurrying to cover the tracks of their tunnels from Colonel Klink, Nate’s and Sam’s hearts race as they scour the floor for every…last…toy.

The first night we tried it, Tighe set the tabata timer on his phone as a gauge for them to know how much time was left until bedtime. It was programmed to “ding” every twenty seconds for four solid minutes. In retrospect, the constant dinging may have been overkill. Though perfect for squats, burpees, or sprints, for Nate, it elicited pure horror.

He became hysterical at the thought of losing his toys, sobbing and screeching orders at Sam while Tighe and I laughed at him, unable to believe his agitated state. I almost felt evil, except that it was so absurd.

Sam, on the other hand, wasn’t the slightest bit distressed. He was busy finishing the last of his ice cream, and since it was down to the melted chocolaty soup at the bottom of his bowl, it took all of his concentration to spoon every last drop onto his expectant tongue. It was like watching a sloth trying to eat with a spoon for the very first time.

Meanwhile, in the foreground, Nate was in a full sweat—or maybe those were just his tears. He had exactly 7,273 Lego pieces on the coffee table in the family room. By the final tabata ding, they needed to make their way to their plastic bins in the adjoining room. Had I been given the same task, I would have taken the bin into the family room and used my forearm to sweep them all into the bin. There, done! It would have taken me one single trip and thirty seconds—tops.

But Nate doesn’t boast the same efficiency skills I do. Plus, his frenzied state left him unable to think, and any planning that would have saved him three and a half minutes was impossible.

Instead, he sprinted back and forth between the table and the office, carrying only small handfuls of Legos at a time. And since he was literally shaking with horror, he dropped them again and again, leaving and Hanzel-and-Gretel trail of toys behind him. Realizing that he now had even more to pick up made him stop dead in his tracks, throw his head back in dismay and shriek.

“Please! Dad! Sam! Somebody has to help me!”

This was about the point that I paused my dinner clean-up routine to see what was going on in the other room.

Tighe, lord and overseer, was resting his bum on the arm of a chair and cooing to Tess. “Sorry, man, I’m holding a baby.”

Sam, starting to realize what was at stake and also that there was no more ice cream soup left in his bowl, dropped his spoon and began to hustle as fast as he could—which really isn’t very fast—in the direction of Nate’s pleas.

“DING.”

“Ahhh! Sam, please!”

I was laughing, but I was also getting worried about Nate’s lack of judgment and attachment to material possessions. Also that Sam might be a diabetic.

“Tighe, is this really happening?”

“I think so. In fairness, the tabata app is kind of annoying. Next time, we should try a different type of timer.”

“DING.”

“NO!! Please help us! Somebody help us!”

“Nate, calm down,” I said. I had stopped laughing at this point and had become slightly troubled by his torment. “Don’t waste time asking for help, just do what you can do.”

By the time the final ding went off, there were still many Lego’s on the table and Nate’s body was sprawled on the floor, practically unconscious with physical and emotional exhaustion.

They had failed, but because we’re not complete sadists, we paused to help them problem-solve. I told them my idea about bringing the bin to the table and scooping the remaining toys into it.

“Oh,” Nate said, brushing away his tears and cracking a relieved smile. “That was easy.”

I know.

The next night at bedtime, when it was my turn to tell a “story from when I was a kid,” I recounted a made-up story about a family I had known who all perished in a fire because they had panicked as their house was burning around them.

“If they had only calmed themselves enough to think clearly, they could have found a way out of the house and be alive today,” I finished up. “So the lesson is, don’t panic. Stay calm and make a plan.”

Extreme, I know, but maybe the lesson will be memorable? I don’t know, I make all kinds of parenting mistakes. You try raising Nate and Sam.

The Three Amigos

“She’s our favorite,” I said to the mom standing next to me at the playground, kissing the top of Tess’s head.

“Well, obviously.”

Both our gazes fell over to Nate and Sam a few yards away as they scourged the wet earth with sticks and flinging dark chunks of mud into the air and laughing maniacally. I glanced down to my armpit, where Tess nuzzled her head, fluttered her tiny eyelids and returned to sleep.

“Yep, definitely my favorite,” I repeated.

And she is our favorite at the moment. She hangs out with Tighe and me on the sofa long after Nate and Sam surrender to sleep every evening. We watch Netflix and sometimes basketball or baseball while we drown our sorrows in dark chocolate ice cream and I try to remember absurd arguments I had with Nate and Sam that day.

With Sam, it’s usually about pooping or what constitutes “dessert.” With Nate, we negotiate changing the date of his half-birthday, whether or not it’s worth it to FINALLY learn to swim this summer (it is), and whether it’s appropriate for me to text his friend’s mom and request that her son’s birthday party be held at a splash park instead of at their house (it’s not).

So, sure Tess is our third wheel in the evening, but we like her. At this point we’re used to our private marital time being interrupted, so if she wants to sit there and smirk at us and cheer for Lebron with Tighe, so be it! Aside from my nipple, she makes no demands. Not like Sam, who would surely request his own bowl of ice cream. Or Nate, who would monopolize my laptop, browsing Amazon and talking non-stop about which Lego set he wants to order next until he ultimately passes out from exhaustion. He wakes up that way and he falls asleep that way.

But last weekend, I think Tess finally got an inkling that she’s actually one of…them.

Because we left her. Overnight. For the first time.

Tighe and I traveled to Chicago for a friend’s wedding—one that we absolutely could not miss—and left all three kids with Wally. And a very competent, trustworthy babysitter.

It was glorious. We ate, we drank, we danced, we slept.

But when I thought about poor Tess, left with Nate and Sam, watching after our car as we pulled out of the driveway in the direction of the airport, wondering how we could possibly forget her, I got sad.

I mean, that’s a tough lesson for any kid to learn. She knew she was one-third of The Three Amigos, but she didn’t realize who made up the other two-thirds.

Sorry, kid, it’s not us. It’s…them!

When we returned home late on Monday afternoon, our joints stiff from sitting on the plane and in the car, she glared at us from the arms of the babysitter.

Ok, she glared at me. And by that, I mean she stared at my chest. At my boobs, her food source. It’s pretty much the only trait she shares with teenage boys. Or “questioning” teenage girls.

After I peed—in the toilet—I took her and hugged her and covered her real-life bobble head with kisses. I bounced her on my knee and told her all about the wedding and other nonsensical details about the weekend.

“Deep dish pizza, Tess! Deep dish! You’ll love it!”

Like any disinterested daughter listening to her mom’s boring account of her weekend, she smirked and tried her best to hold eye contact.

Until Nate popped up out of nowhere. Startled at first by his sudden movement, she immediately laughed at his stupid poop joke, bubbly drool sliding out of her mouth—more traits she shares with teenage boys.

Sam climbed up and sat on my other side. Resting his head on my shoulder, he grabbed Tess’s hand with aggression not usually used on babies.

“Aww, Tessie baby! You’re a little cutie pie, baby!”

And she returned his forceful affections with a smile.

She knows, I thought to myself. She gets it. She formed an unmistakable and hopefully unbreakable bond with her peers this weekend. The Three Amigos.

Here’s my best advice to you, Tess: Nate and Sam are your people. Your allies. Your best friends and your most worthy adversaries. Protect your toys. Stand up for yourself. Don’t get caught messing with their stuff. And don’t tattle. Protect their secrets, listen to their complaints about Tighe and me, and lie for them when you need to. We’ll love you no matter what and so will they.

Some day soon she’ll be terrorizing us, too, with her bodily functions, her illogical reasoning, her sticky messes, her snarky comments, and her public meltdowns. Probably all in one day.

And as we drag her to time-out, exasperated and bitter, we’ll wonder where our sweet, innocent, blue-eyed baby went—a rite of passage as she inches closer and closer to independence.

And in eighteen years, when we’re moving her out of the house—empty nest, here we come!—she’ll find solace in the guidance and encouragement of her older brothers. Because that’s what siblings are for.

An Open Letter to Nate

Re: The Laundry

Dear Nate,

Well, here we are. You’re 5 now. I thought at this point you’d grow out of some of your quirks. That you’d be hardened by the conformity of traditional schooling, disillusioned by peer pressure and the overwhelming desire to fit in.

What can I say, I’m a natural cynic. That’s what carries this blog.

But I was wrong. I mean, sure, some of your quirks have disappeared.

For example, you no longer intentionally mismatch your socks or wear them on your hands as mittens. The infatuation with anything and everything red has kind of faded. Though you did make a bird at school last week using only red tissue paper, but you recently added gray to your growing list of favorite colors. Festive.

You've sat in the same seat on the same sofa pretty much as long as we’ve lived here—3 and a half years. You perch there. You eat breakfast there, eat your snack there, watch movies there, play with Legos there, and bark orders at Sam from there. You’ve dubbed it your couch. Which, quite frankly, is fine with me. You’ve stained that thing beyond recognition with all kinds of juices, milks, and bodily fluids. I don’t even like brushing by that piece of…furniture.

Also, your obsession with jigsaw puzzles has been replaced by a need to accumulate and tinker with Legos. Oh…so many Legos. So, so, so many.

But fine. That’s fine. I’m fine with that. I don’t even mind that you and Sam bring them to the table at mealtimes as long as you clean them up.

What’s getting old to me is the costume thing. Sure, costumed kids are normal and fun—lookin at you, Jimmy A! Your hammerhead shark costume on the playground a few weeks back made my day—but your costumes are not costumes. They’re just…clothes. Clothes that you’ve dug from your drawers and your closet and hand-me-down boxes and Sam’s drawers and piecemealed together to produce costumes.

I gotta say, I admire the creativity.  You’ve accumulated pieces for the Black Ninja, Kai the Red Ninja, Batman (see also: the Black Ninja), Leonardo, and Raphael. Nice.

There have also been some random, unidentifiable costumes. Like yesterday, when you wore three different pairs of Adidas track pants. At the same time. Last week you simultaneously donned so many black, gray, and navy blue t-shirts that when I punched you in the stomach—at your request, mind you—you didn’t even feel it.

So, here’s the problem: your new hobby is generating a lot of laundry. It’s also depriving Sam of clothing.

I did a load of laundry this morning and folded seven pairs of pants that you had worn. Granted it had been almost 24 hours since the last load of laundry I did, so I can totally see how you’d worn seven pairs of pants in those 24 hours, 12 of which you spent sleeping. I did not include your pajama pants in this count.

And three of these pairs of pants belonged to Sam. Which really immobilized him when I told him to get dressed—a difficult task for him to begin with—and he was left with few choices. But he donned his hideous olive green cargo pants without complaint because he considered it an honor that you chose his size 2T gray sweatpants to squeeze into as part of your Black Ninja costume.

But sure, go ahead and wear them for fifteen minutes before tearing them off, tossing them into the laundry basket and foraging through your drawers to find your green fatigue sweats and kelly green long-sleeved shirt that my mom bought you in Ireland so you can dress as Leo. Or Raph. Whatever. I'll wash it all.

Thanks for keeping me busy. And jacking up our water bill. And destroying the environment.

Much unconditional love,

Your Mom, who has absolutely no weird quirks at all—except the thing about organizing cereal boxes and the system for consuming M&M’s

PS In case you’re looking for it later, your black Darth Vader cape is folded neatly on top of your dresser. 

Our Household Urinal...or Here's to the Dreamers

“Mom, Sam peed on the floor!”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did!”

“Yes, I did!”

“No, he didn’t,” I assured them dubiously from the laundry room where I was folding clothes. There was actually very little doubt in my mind that he had in fact peed on the floor. I had just a tiny sliver of hope that he was messing with me. But I held firm.

“And do you know how I know that he didn’t pee on the floor? Because Sam is a big boy who is potty-trained and big boys pee in toilets…or on trees when they’re outside.”

“I peed on the floor,” Sam confirmed. “And in my underwear. And on my pants and shoes.”

I dropped my head back and closed my eyes. My tiny sliver of hope had just about vanished from my soul at this point. Sam had recently decided to prioritize play and TV and eating and reading stories and just about any other activity over finding a bathroom. Which annoyed me because he was potty-trained. He hadn’t had an accident in months. We were just about to receive a slew of accolades and awards from the Institute of Potty-Training Overseers Who Award Kids Who Haven’t Peed Their Pants in a While. We had a party planned and everything.

I walked into the living room where Nate and Sam had been building towers and slides for their marbles.

“See?” Sam said.

He moved to the side so I could see the dark stain on the carpet and the wetness on his sweatpants.

“I peed on the floor.”

Nate looked up at me before returning to the marbles. “Told you so.”

I’m trying this new thing where I don’t flip out and get angry and drop an abundance of profanity or punch a hole through the TV. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered it yet, but it’s a developing skill.

And I’m finding that it’s especially challenging with Sam. Every morning I wake up with a mental list of things I’d like to accomplish. It includes but is not limited to: eating, being on time, go to the bathroom, laundry, cooking, feeding/sleeping/diapering Tess, and maintaining order and some minimal level of cleanliness in our home.

But Sam…is in another world. It’s filled with imaginary characters and inane observations about his surroundings. I mean, he has the agenda of a three year-old.

While I have the agenda of a thirty-three year-old.

He dawdles and wanders, he daydreams, he narrates his every action and thought in a low murmur—mostly to himself. And then he shrieks and makes loud, excited announcements when I need him to be quiet. Like when I’m putting a baby to bed.

Meanwhile I’ve been hardened by adult life. I just want to accomplish my list with as few obstacles as possible. Sam is usually my obstacle.

And so lately, when he’s suddenly been peeing anywhere but in the toilet, it’s been…aggravating. But in my Zen-like attempt at parenting—seeking serenity and peaceful problem solving instead of anger—I made a decision not to react to him right then.

“I peed on the floor!” he announced again. “Someone should change me!”

“Well, I’m not. You know how to get dressed. Change yourself. And hurry up because you stink.” I twisted my nose at the growing stench of urine in the air and returned to the laundry room.

“Yeah, you stink, Sam! Can I go outside?”

“Sure, Nate. Here, take this chalk out there.” He charged out the front door, gasping for air and sat down on the front steps to draw.

“No, you change me, Mom! This is yucky and I hate it.”

“Then stop peeing in your pants. Use the toilet.”

He stood up and threw his head back in protest, drooping his shoulders forward so that his fingers dropped past his knees. It’s a classic Sam pose.

“Here are some clean clothes.” I threw some pants and underwear that I had just washed on the bottom step and went to start making dinner.

I could hear him waddling around, trying not to let his sticky sweatpants, heavy with urine, touch his legs. A few minutes later I found him sprawled upside down on the bottom step, his legs spread across the second and third steps. I was struck by how tall he looked in that position and also by the foul urine odor. He was still soaked in pee and had made no attempt to remove his wet clothing.

He watched Nate through the storm door, happily chalking up our sidewalk in the fresh spring air.

“You change me, Mom?” He sounded weak, sulky, almost defeated.

“No, you can do it. If you’re going to have ‘accidents’ then you can change yourself. Or hang out in your own filth.”

But the stink and the discomfort must have been too much because eventually Sam joined Nate on the front step. His wet pants, underwear, socks, and shoes were strewn across the hardwood floor. He was squatting, bare-assed, coloring and making small talk with our elderly neighbor, who had just pulled into her driveway.

I was proud of him. I mean, I cringed a little when a dog walker crossed to the other side of the street as she approached our house and spotted a half-naked boy, but still. And I should admit that I cringed again when both boys stormed into the house a little later smearing chalk residue all over the hardwood floors, sofa cushions, and coffee table, but regardless, I think we made progress that day. All of us.

Just an Update. A Simple Update.

Well, believe it or not, I’ve actually been working on this post for more than three weeks. Lots of clever ideas paraded through my head as I sat and nursed Tess in the middle of the night, but when I sat down to type them out the next morning, it turned out they were nonsensical.

But they were so ingenious at 3AM! What happened??

In the same way dreams make sense to us as we slumber and then seem ludicrous when we try to explain them to anyone who’ll listen over breakfast the next day, I was finding that all my brilliant late-night ruminations were pure crap upon waking up and consuming a small dose of caffeine.

I’m going to go ahead and attribute that disconnect to sleep deprivation. Or “mommy-brain.” Or maybe I’m just an idiot.

So, instead of some very Dali-esque depiction of our home life seen through Tess’s innocent eyes—which is what I originally planned—I’ll just give you a basic, factual update on our lives. Boring, I know. Except that with Sam around, it’s never boring.

Let’s start with Sam—you know, to really hook the reader.

Sam loves being a big brother. When prompted, he’s super helpful and prideful. He’s fetching diapers and dispensing doses of vitamin D and trying to make her smile while I do something imperative to our continued existences. Like make dinner. Or go to the bathroom.

But he also misses his share of parental attention.

“Hey Tighe, I’m kickin’ your daughter!” He taunts from the other room as we’re trying to see through our sleepy tears and get breakfast in the kitchen.

Don’t worry, he’s not actually kicking her. He’s just fishing for some sort of panicked reaction from us.

Charming.

A stream of visitors processing through our lives combined with a fluctuation in our daily routines really threw Sam. Like, it was painful.

“Sam, we’re just trying to watch The Crown on Netflix and eat our ice cream in peace. Please go back to bed.”

“No! You put my covers back on!”

So, one of us would stumble upstairs to put his covers back on and remind him to stay in bed. Weak with exhaustion, he’d slide out of bed, throw his door open, and stand at the top of the steps and screech again—often before we reached the bottom of the steps.

“Sam! If you get out of bed again, I’m going to fine you a dollar!” Tighe loves to levy taxes and fines. He’s a regular President Roosevelt. I’ll let the reader decide which one.

“No! Don’t take my dollar!” Works every time. Except when it doesn’t.

There were many nights one of us climbed the steps four or five times before Sam finally surrendered to sleep. Though we complained at the time, I really have to credit him with helping me lose that baby weight—my glutes have never looked better.

Now to Nate.

Like a proud parent, his Highness views Tess as an extension of himself. He gazes at her lovingly as he tells people that “she looks like Sam, but she acts like me.”

In fairness, I did say that. Once. And Tess does have blue eyes like Sam and sleeps well at night like Nate did, but he’s projecting all of his talents and genius onto her. Note: he views himself as very gifted.

But these tender, proud moments are largely infrequent, as Nate has very little free time anymore.

You see, while Sam comforted himself with donuts and cookies and ice cream in the aftermath of Tess’s birth—thanks friends and family and hospital staff!— Nate comforted himself with Lego’s. Lots of Lego’s.

Some were birthday gifts, some were acquired with birthday money, some were hand-me-downs, and some were just “hey, sorry your mom had a baby” gifts. In less than three weeks, our Lego collection suddenly went from about one million to one trillion.

He darts around the house doing…well, whatever it is he does with Lego’s…with the urgency of a squirrel stashing away acorns as winter approaches. From the office to his perch on the couch to the dining room table, he’s constantly transferring the tiny pieces from one locale to another. I assume he has a method or some sort of master plan, but I have no idea what it is. And I really don’t care as long as he’s leaving me alone to bond with Tess.

And all the while, he’s barking orders, like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross at Sam, his faithful disciple.

And believe me, as soon as I get some free time on a day when Nate’s in school, I’m going to impose my own organizational system on the storage of those damn Lego’s. I’ll fight the growing urge to throw them all in the trash because I know they’re great toys for imagination and spatial ordering and fine motor skills and other educational buzzwords, but we at least need some bins from Ikea.

As for the rest of us—Tess, Wally, Tighe and I—we’re all doing very well. Tess is eating, sleeping, pooping, gaining weight, and farting. Lots of farting. Blame the baby.

Wally has surrendered his floor space to all the paraphernalia that comes with a newborn—bouncy seats and tummy time blankets—and begrudgingly plops down on injurious piles of Lego’s. Fortunately, his primal instincts have recently been recharged by two raccoons who tease him in the evenings as they scamper across our front yard. He seems to enjoy growling and flirting through the window.

Meanwhile Tighe and I renew our vows to never divorce and abandon the other as a single parent every night at dinner. It probably sounds like a beautiful heartfelt moment, but it’s usually frazzled and desperate.

So that’s us in a nutshell. More weekly stories to come as hysterics erupt and tempers collide!

Nate and Sam Have Super Powers! ...and other lies we tell them

I have a relative whose children never experienced Santa Claus because she didn’t feel it was right to lie to them. Don’t worry, she doesn’t read this.

Hmm…interesting approach. Meanwhile Tighe and I feel no such ethical anguish about lying to Nate and Sam.

I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m brutally honest sometimes. Recently, while listening to the news in the car, Nate asked me what the Supreme Court is. I began, “Well, there are three branches of the federal government: the executive, the judicial, and the legislative—“

“I hope transformers are real.”

“Me too!” Sam shouted from his car seat.

I ignored them and continued my discourse, detailing who makes up each branch, what their various functions are, and how checks and balances works to keep our government useless. Which is fine as far as I’m concerned. I ended with an explanation of why the President’s Supreme Court nominee is such an urgent and significant matter.  

I followed up with a basic framework for both sides of the abortion debate and right as I was about to make the logical jump to the topic of euthanasia, I turned around and realized Sam had fallen asleep. Nate was pretending to be asleep.

Which is a shame because I have a lot to say about euthanasia, especially as I approach old age myself.

My point is, we don’t always lie to them. We’ve briefly talked about underage drinking—mostly with Sam, of course—premarital sex, and how sausage is really made.

However, I do believe that a certain degree of fantastical, imaginative thinking is important to a child’s developing brain. So, sometimes, we lie to them.

My favorite lie is that they have super powers.

Well, they don’t have them yet, but they’re in line to inherit them from Tighe. I don’t remember whether this lie was meant as a threat—like, Tighe’s omnipotent, fear him!—or whether we were trying to incentivize some desired behaviors, but the lie has yielded both results.

And before you jump to my defense and say, “Well, what about Erin’s omnipotence? What kind of misogynist patriarchy is this?” let me stop you. I’m The Mom. Thus, my legitimacy as reigning, sovereign authority is unquestioned.  

Anyway, back to the propaganda machine. Nate and Sam believe that if they work really hard and they’re always nice to people, they’ll gradually earn these superpowers as Tighe’s will simultaneously recede. It’s a very real transfer of power, but requires no formal ceremony or swearing in.

Consequently, Nate and Sam take two things very seriously: 1) working hard and never giving up and 2) being nice and having a lot of friends.

Both good qualities.

Occasionally they backfire on us. Like, Nate wants me to arrange play dates for him ALL THE TIME. Like, multiple in a day. And for kids we don’t even know. Like the Egyptian kid who shared breadsticks with him on the Staten Island Ferry.

Trust me, if you or your child has never been invited to a play date at our house, it’s only a result of my own laziness, not because Nate hasn’t requested it.

Or last week when Sam and I had a forty-minute battle in which he refused to back down. I won’t go into details of the argument for Sam’s sake—I think I divulged enough about him last week. But, seriously—forty minutes of screaming and tears. Both of us screaming, both of us crying, interspersed with moments of calm, though irrational, dialogue laying out our arguments. He’s relentless, never gives up! No matter how absurd his argument was. And believe me, it was ridiculous. He’s a stubborn guy.

But otherwise, the resolve to work hard and never give up is a great quality. I’ve seen it in Nate on the soccer field. He sprints down the turf with no real direction, puffing out his chest, pumping his arms as hard as possible, lifting those knees, and turning back to giggle with his friends.

And Sam—if he can sit and work on a puzzle, tirelessly, until he puts in the last piece, that’s a win! Those skills are transferrable to learning to read, to practicing the guitar, to learning to golf, to pursuing a love interest. I mean, at some point, we’ll have to teach him that ‘no means no,’ but as Dr. Leo Marvin famously instructed: baby steps.

“Nate, Sam, whoever has the most friends in life wins!” I tell them over and over.

“But what does that mean?” Nate will say.

“It means that you’ll be a lot happier in life if you have a lot of friends and loved ones.”

And so they refer to everyone as their “friends.” It’s kind of endearing. If we’re being totally honest, Nate’s also inclined to hold grudges fiercer than the mafia. It’s usually the result of a miscommunication, but he takes it pretty seriously. It requires a lot of coaching on our part to get him to forgive and forget.

And then he immediately requests a play date with his one-time nemesis.

And he doesn’t give up until he gets it.

All in the name of one day possessing x-ray vision. And super-speed. Perhaps super-strength. Or the ability to fly. Or—I’m hoping—to clean up their Legos in record time.

Epiphany Erection

I don’t have a penis. I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s one of the qualities that attracted Tighe to me many, many years ago.

I don’t even know what it’s like to have a penis. Nor do I know what an erection feels like. But I’ve been around enough penises—peni?—to know that erections come at inconvenient times.

Like at church. On Epiphany Sunday.

Because I guess that happens. In fact, I know that happens. To Sam anyway.

And so this Sunday at church, we were seated next to Tighe’s grandparents, down the row from one of Tighe’s uncles, his wife and their two daughters, and immediately behind another uncle, aunt, and cousin. Oh, good—a totally anonymous setting.

Just as we were removing our coats and getting settled in the pew, Sam made that announcement to me.

“My penis is big!”

“What?” I whispered back, kneeling down to his face.

The processional song was loud and I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly.

“My penis is big!”

Okay, that was exactly what I had thought he said.

“Do you need to pee? Should we go to the bathroom?”

“NO! My penis is big, my penis is big!”

He wasn’t bragging, he was distressed. He had an erection that was bothering him, pressing up against the zipper on his corduroy pants. He needed help.

From my seat in the pew, I tugged on Tighe’s jacket for back-up. This was a father-son problem. Not my domain.

“I think we need to get him out of here!”

I handed him to Tighe just as the music was ending.

Oh, good, I thought, now Tighe will be able to hear him. And so will this half of the church.

“My penis is big! I have a big penis!”

Louder. Obviously. Why has he never learned to whisper?

“Ok, it’ll go down,” Tighe murmured to him. “Think about baseball.”

“No! It’s big! I have a big penis!” He was even louder this time, getting increasingly desperate.

“Sshhh!” Tighe looked down the row in both directions, trying to determine the quickest escape route while I tried to stifle my laughs.

“My penis is big!”

Sam was at a full-on hysterical screech now.

As Tighe carted him away and out of the sanctuary, the frenzied shrieks faded to the point that the only word I could still make out was…penis.

Of course.

In the lobby, Tighe got creative trying to help our distraught son.

“Okay, Sam. Try and run around.”

“No! It’s big, my penis is big!” He was getting teary now—relieved that someone was listening to him, but frustrated that that cellular skyscraper remained in his pants.

He dragged him to the empty bathroom by the main doors.

“Let’s try and pee,” Tighe advised, helping him unfasten his pants.

“No, I not have to pee!”

Regardless he peed, and as he did so, Tighe commented, “See? It’s not that big.”

“Yes, it is. My penis is big.”

That time it sounded like a brag.

They returned to us in the pew, so Tighe could meditate on Jesus or whatever and Sam could ingest some fruit snacks, color on himself with marker, and wrestle on the floor with Nate.

During the passing of the peace just before communion, I leaned into Tighe’s grandmother who was seated next to me.

“Could you hear what Sam was saying before Tighe took him out?”

“Did he say what I think he was saying?”

I smiled sheepishly and nodded. I think my cheeks even reddened.

“It’s okay,” she said. “God gives us children to keep us humble.”

What an epiphany.

In the lobby after mass had ended, we were recounting the blood flow problem in Sam’s pants when Tighe’s aunt put everything in perspective.

“Well, at least it wasn’t Tighe yelling that.”

So true. Those days are surely over.

The Christmas Blowtorch

“Mom, tell a story from when you were a kid!”

“A funny one!” Sam’s head and eyelids were getting heavier by the second.

“Yeah, a WEIRD one!” Nate always wants a weird one. Neither Tighe nor I are even sure what that means.

We alternate nights putting them to bed, and after three books and prayers and the lights are off, they always request one more story, improvised, calling on my ability to make something up on the fly, never easy when I'm within thirty minutes of falling asleep.

Tighe’s stories are intentionally planned out with character arcs, plot twists, and a moral that’s usually reflective of an event that happened in our lives that week, designed to teach a life lesson. It’s impressive. My stories, on the other hand, are usually some hodgepodge of events that my brain wearily strings together. They’re nonsensical and anti-climatic and at the end, I usually just trail off and hope they’re already asleep.

But almost always, Nate asks a follow-up question about my brother, Tim. Tim is his godfather and the object of his first crush. It’s always, “Then what did Tim say?” or “What did Tim do?” Sometimes Tim wasn’t even a character in this particular story, but, like a needy partner in any bromance, Nate needs to know every detail of his life.

The past week or so, I’ve tried to make my stories about Christmas. I always embellish, of course, but with Christmas, you throw in a Santa reference or a favorite toy and your story is gold—a special brunch with Santa, Santa riding down our street on a fire truck passing out candy canes, the year I was convinced I spied the glow from Rudolph’s nose outside my window. They eat it up.

Last night, my Christmas story also needed no fabrications. It didn’t involve any magical traditions, but it was compelling and a bit nostalgic for me. For them, it may have been a bit disturbing. For Nate, it was most definitely weird.

It centered around my Jack Russell Terrier, Rambo—a birthday present from my aunt when I turned eleven—and my grandfather, Poppie—may they both rest in peace. They had a special bond, and I like to think they’re taking long walks together in the afterlife. I typed it up for your…enjoyment.

****

“Rambo escaped from our backyard all the time! Because he was a terrier and terriers are crazy!”

“What’s a terrier? Is Sam a terrier, then?”

“What? No, Sam’s not a terrier. Sam’s a different kind of crazy. Anyway, Rambo loved to escape and run through the woods, hunting and digging and stuff.”

“Why?”

“Because terriers love to hunt and be free. And our neighbor’s dog, Smoky, hated Rambo!”

“Is Smoky a bad guy?”

“No, Smoky is dead. He was a good dog, but he didn’t like our dogs, so they would fight sometimes. Anyway, one year on Christmas, we were about to sit down to our big feast—beef tenderloin and crab cakes and pies and cookies!”

I paused to recall the food in more detail. Actually, I’m doing that again now.

“Ok, back to the story. Suddenly, we heard Rambo returning from his outing. His white fur was red with blood and his whole body was shaking. He left a trail of blood all across the white tile floor in the kitchen—part of the reason Mimi always says to never get white tiles—and every time he shook his body, blood would splatter all over the walls and the ceiling! It was gross!”

“Cool! Did he die?”

“No, he didn’t die. Well, not that time, anyway. He was really old when he died. Anyway, he had been fighting with Smoky, and the tip of his ear had somehow been punctured. No matter what we did, we could not get it to stop bleeding—there was blood everywhere! It felt more like Good Friday than Christmas.”

“Christmas is this Friday?”

“No, never mind. Anyway, Poppie said, ‘I know how to get him to stop bleeding.’ And we said, ‘Ok, great.’ Sometimes we all forgot that although Poppie’s professional background was in mathematics and engineering, he also fancied himself an amateur veterinarian.”

“He didn’t eat meat?”

“No. A veterinarian is a doctor for animals. So, anyway, Poppie scooped Rambo up and took him out to his van in the driveway. There, he removed a blow torch from under the back seat and, restraining Rambo with one arm, proceeded to try and blow torch the tip of his ear!”

“What’s a blow torch?”

“It’s like a gun that shoots fire. Remember how hot your hot chocolate was this afternoon? A blow torch is much hotter!”

I noticed Sam struggling to pull his comforter up over his head. In retrospect, this story may have been a bit…real. It was time to end it.

“We were all watching from the windows in the family room, but we could hear Rambo barking and screaming, so Pop-Pop [my dad] ran outside and rescued Rambo. ‘But that’s what they do in the army!’ Dr. Poppie was saying. So Pop-Pop and Straight Dave and I got in the car with a trembling Rambo and drove forty minutes to the only animal hospital that was open on Christmas. They fixed his ear and we went home and had a Christmas dinner that couldn’t be beat—like Arlo Guthrie. The end.”

“That WAS weird. And what did Tim do?”

****

A few minutes later I was back downstairs.

“I told them the blow torch story,” I told Tighe.

“You did what?!”

“It’s a Christmas memory! Family folklore! Anyway, I think Sam was scared. They might wake up with nightmares tonight.”

“Uh, yeah. Geeze, Erin. They’re too young for that.”

“So was I! So was Rambo! Okay, never mind. Let’s watch something funny.”

And through to back-to-back episodes of Jim Gaffigan, we tried to push the visions of blood splatter and charred dog fur to the backs of our minds. Merry Christmas.

An Open Letter From Baby #3 to Nate and Sam

Dear big brothers,

Let’s get a few things straight. First, you know I can hear you, right? I may not be able to see, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on out there. Frankly, I’m not surprised that Erin and Tighe are already referring to me as ‘the smart one.’ Sam, you’ve been tattooing your face, arms, and hands with Crayola markers. Nate, the minion-like language you speak with your friends is nonsensical and confusing.

Second, Sam—please stop kicking me and sitting on me and ramming your head into Erin’s uterus when you hug her. I’m keeping track of these infractions and believe me, some day I will make you pay. Maybe not right away, since apparently my gross motor skills won’t be fully “developed,” but some day.

Third—and this one is also for Sam—my name is not and will not be “Toot Butt.” That’s not even a name. Please cease and desist from calling me that. Frankly, some of your other suggestions, “Sam 2” and “Scotch Tape,” were better than “Toot Butt.” And while we’re on the subject, I also refuse to be named after a Ninja Turtle. In fact, why don’t we just leave the whole naming thing to Erin and Tighe? They’ve done a decent job so far, aside from the Ignatius debacle of 2012.

And now that that’s settled, I have a few questions for you guys. Like, how serious are Erin and Tighe about discipline? Do they really throw away your toys when you talk about poop and butts and farts and penises, or is that just a bluff? How are they at Christmas and birthdays? Generous or stingy? I mean, is it worth coming out early or should I just keep baking in here?

Love always,

Baby #3, aka The Professor

PS You know Erin eats your Halloween candy after you go to bed, right? We both enjoy it immensely.

PPS Please remind Erin and Tighe to set up the crib again at some point in January. Depending on how things are going here in the womb, I may decide to come early. If she steps up her Christmas shopping game, I might even make it December.