Category Archives: Can’t Get a Break

November 28, 2011 · 10:22 am

The Top 10 Reasons I Can’t Wait to Get Home From a Trip

Our recent Thanksgiving trip reminded me of the joys we face each time we travel. We do it to see loved ones. We do it for fun. We do it because we can’t spend 365 days holed up in this house together. Why not take our craziness on the road, spend a load of cash, and wonder why we don’t do this more often? That’s what I’m wondering by the end of every trip….

10) My daughter, who can hold it all day no matter how much I beg, suddenly has to go when we’ve reached the rural part of our trip and no businesses can be seen for many miles.

9) When the cooler is empty, the kids can’t agree on which disgusting fast-food restaurant we’ll dine at. Then whoever picked it will inevitably not like their dry, crusty meal. Someone always has to return to the counter for sauce, and the workers don’t see you standing there no matter how long you patiently wait.

8) At any roadside location the bathroom stalls, hardly large enough for me to turn around and squat in, can be excruciatingly small when you are trying to avoid the liquid on the floor, cover the seat with tissue, and keep your daughter’s pants from touching anything. Somehow I have managed on past trips to hold an infant on my hip, expertly maneuver button and zipper with one hand, and keep my toddler standing and out of said puddles with my patented whisper-scream all in this 1-foot-by-1-foot space. Oh it can be done.

7) The kids fight for the top bunk, bottom bunk, left side of the bed, or right side of the bed, and the loser makes sure the night is ruined for the rest of us. One kid wants the light on; one wants the light off. One wants music on; one does not. Just GO TO SLEEP!

6) The later the kids go to bed, the earlier they wake up in the morning.

5) Forgetting my husband’s deodorant means he has to use mine. He smells lovely and breezy for a few hours. When I use my tube the next day, I find some really, really long hairs glued to it. Gross.

4) No matter what thrilling event you have spent hours planning for the next day, the kids will gripe that it’s boring and their feet hurt, and you can forget any educational stuff you looked up. They don’t want to hear it.

3) The last hour of the trip, they must ask every two minutes, “When are we going to be there?” Now I know how my dad felt.

2) When we finally pull in the driveway, the kids can only carry one thing and they both have to go to the bathroom—the same one—at the same time.

1) Man, I don’t care how much laundry there is. There’s no place like home.

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November 18, 2011 · 1:31 pm

Sometimes the Kids Win the Battles

It has been weeks now since she’s seen it, asked for it, given me big blue eyes swelling up with tears. I try to stand my ground, be firm and strong. But those kids know how to break me sometimes. And sometimes, they win.

With my kids being 8 and 6, I felt like the days of noisy toys were behind us. On a shopping trip this month, my daughter fell in love with one of those annoying toys that barks and moves when you walk down the aisle. No, I said. A firm NO.

She has asked for that dog several times since, batting her eyelashes at me. Giving me puppy dog eyes so sweet that I have to turn away and think about how horrid she becomes when she screams about her homework and how mean I am for making her do it. “Please, Momma,” she whimpers for the little brown dog.

She already has something similar…that I hate, that she doesn’t play with. The answer is and always will be no. I won’t buy it, and even she can’t buy it. She cannot put it on her Christmas list.

But kids have a way of chiseling through a mom’s tough outer exterior. They chip and chip away. They wear down that enamel, tear through the layers. They beg and plead so much that I am sick to death of hearing about it. They break me down like a prisoner about to sign a confession to a crime I was nowhere near just to stop the harassment. Yep, those kids know what they are doing all right. And I had taken all the batted eyelashes and puppy dog eyes that I could until I found myself saying, “Put it on your Christmas list.”

What was that about? Ugh. She got me. She broke through and now I’m going to have to live with that annoying puppy dog yip and squeak for weeks until it breaks or she grows tired of that stupid toy and it ends up at the bottom of her closet.

I broke down. I gave in. Just get the stupid thing. I can’t take it anymore. Sometimes my kids wear me so completely down, it’s just not worth the fight at all. Parents are supposed to pick their battles, and I do. But it’s rough when you realize that after putting up what you think is a good fight, you realize you were outwitted all along and you just never really had a fighting chance. I should have saved all that energy for a battle that really mattered.

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October 28, 2011 · 1:51 pm

The Strange Case of Hyde and the Four Green Beans

We’ve had a few rough afternoons lately. Sassy mouths. Crying fits under the kitchen table. Rude remarks.

I’d blame it on the full moon, but that’s already passed. Is it the promise of an insane amount of candy in a few days? A sugar high from the vapors escaping from bags of it hiding in the pantry? Whatever it is, it sits, pent up all day to the point of boiling, until 3 o’clock when the kids release this energy like a mad teapot.

Yesterday, I felt pretty proud of myself when, after a day of back-to-back-to-back meltdowns, I actually didn’t lose my cool, managed to handle my kids without yelling, and sent them to their rooms for a very long time to calm down.

I relayed the events of the afternoon to my husband only when asked, and it was the short story, not the long version.

He then told me that when he pulled up to the house after work, our daughter was standing at the front door crying. I wondered what she could have been crying about. Oh, green beans.

“I didn’t know whether to just keep on driving,” he said.

He didn’t. He asked her why she was crying and she pointed to the green beans on her plate. All four of them.

I was upstairs telling my son, Mr. Hyde, why we don’t talk to adults that way as I bit my tongue hard not to mouth at him in return. It was difficult, but I was good. I deserved an award, a trophy for Mother Who Kept Her Mean Thoughts to Herself. They have those, don’t they?

Just when it seemed everyone had kissed and made up, those damn green beans ruined everything. Withering away on my daughter’s plate. I had told her to try them. She was going to make it difficult. While she screamed at my husband in a way I have rarely seen her do (no doubt picked up from her brother a few hours before), I hung over my plate laughing and fighting back tears in the same sad breath because after the day I’d had, I really didn’t know what was about to come out of me.

Bedtime can never arrive fast enough on days like these. But no matter what has happened or how infuriated or exhausted I am, I take a breath, march into their rooms, read to them, and tell them I love them. Then I skip out of there as fast as I can and hope tomorrow is a better day. And that Jekyll is back. And that I don’t forget that I will not be serving green beans for a while.

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October 10, 2011 · 4:22 pm

Another Goal, A Different Story

As I sat watching the mass of 28 feet desperately battering the ball, I realized I couldn’t even see the goal. My husband was out of town and if my daughter scored her first goal, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to give him the play-by-play. But surely that won’t happen, I thought.

The couple next to me looked away during their conversation and missed their son’s first goal. That’s really a shame, I thought, reliving the glory of my son’s first goal a few days earlier. “Did we miss it?” they asked me. “Did our son just score and we missed it?” I was almost certain he did, but we sat on the opposite end of the field and the five- and six-year-olds huddle around the ball like vultures around a dying cow. It was hard to see exactly what happened.

My daughter played awesome defense. She fought for position against the boys to get a crack at kicking the ball. And then something happened. She kicked it toward the goal. And it was no accident. I craned my neck and sprang to the edge of my seat for a clear view. She was there, she kicked it with force, and it looked like it went in, but then a teammate came and kicked it in farther. Who made the goal?

She looked over at me, smirking. Bewildered, I clapped and smiled and gave her a big thumbs-up. The couple next to me asked, “Did she get it in?” I was thinking the same thing. Great. Now I had possibly missed out on the big rush of my daughter’s first goal because I hadn’t a clue as to whether she made one or not. It all happened so fast.

I figured I’d play it safe, see what she said after the game. She was no help. “Mommy, I almost made a goal,” she told me. “It went behind the goalie and then David kicked it in more.”

“Was the goalie in the goal?” I asked, now revealing my doubts.

“Yes.”

“Well then you made it.”

Another parent congratulated her. I figured he had some clue, maybe better than the parents next to me who had already missed their son’s goal. We asked her coach to be sure. He said it was on the line and rolled in, but I couldn’t help feeling a little suspicious.

So we had to tell my husband that we thought she made a goal, reenacting it at home, trying to put together evidence. The verdict? Either way, she was right there and she did great and she knows it.

I hate that her big moment sort of fizzled out by so much uncertainty. I wish her coach had congratulated whoever made it in the moment. But my daughter saw an opportunity and she took it. And I have a feeling this won’t be the last time she pushes her way through a pack of kids and scores big.

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October 5, 2011 · 1:27 pm

Sick Days

I’m into day two of sick days with my daughter. After she finished crying this morning when I told her she had to stay home another day, she began listing the crafts we were going to make. This after more than two hours of crafting with her yesterday.

Sick days are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, a sick day meant I never left my bedroom. I slept the entire day. I always felt like I’d been run over. My kids? Never. Well, except for the nasty stomach bug we all had last year when none of us could lift a pinky. My kids play the day away like it’s a mini vacation. If they sleep for 30 minutes, they’re up past my bedtime.

I must have missed the lesson on sick days: Don’t play with your kids. Don’t make it fun. Give them castor oil and keep them weighted in their beds with layer upon layer of leaden blankets.

Instead, I get stuck with, “Mommy, do you have any crafts for me to do?” Or, “Let’s play ponies.” Sure, it’s nice to have a day alone with them, just the two of us. But when they’re at school, I do things. When they’re home, I don’t get to do my things. And around day two, I get antsy. And I’m out of craft ideas. And then I start to get a tickle in my throat or a cough or whatever germs they’re spreading.

The whole decision to even keep one of my kids home is often a struggle to begin with. Fevers and puking are easy to figure out. But my daughter gets these annoying coughs. What to do? How long to keep her home for that when she otherwise feels pretty good? Many times I’ve kept a well kid home or sent a sick kid in. It’s rarely a winning situation for me.

When my husband came home at lunch today, my daughter raced around the house, laughing and yelling.

As my husband was leaving to go back to work, he said, “I’m glad you kept her home today since she was really sick, Dear.” Yep. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

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September 27, 2011 · 12:53 pm

No, No, I Won’t Mow

“Look, Annie across the street is mowing the grass,” says my daughter, peering through the blinds like a puppy waiting for the mailman.

“Mmm hmm,” I say, not the least bit interested in that remark. I know where this is going.

“Hey, Mom,” my son yells, taking the steps two at a time, “Did you see Annie mowing the grass?”

“Yep.”

Five minutes later, “Oh, look, Dear,” my husband runs in to tell me. “Annie is mowing the grass.”

“Well isn’t that good for Annie,” I say. Dammit, why can’t the women around here band together? Or at least can’t they mow the grass when my family is not at home?

I have held fast for 13 years and counting. I have never mowed the lawn. Well, I attempted 13 years ago when we were moving from a rental and needed to mow the thick, waist-deep forest that had become our backyard. I pushed and heaved with all my might, and the mower sputtered and choked and did things I wasn’t sure it was supposed to do. I mean, I was new to the whole mowing thing. Thick, three-foot grass is not something to cut your teeth on. So I stopped. A whole eight-foot strip of grass. That is what I have mowed. So yes, technically I have never mowed a whole lawn. And I don’t dare start now.

I’ll tell you why. I have wiped so many butts some days, that I have not been sure which was my own. I have had every bodily function spewed or smeared all over me. I have cooked dinner while doing laundry, helping the kids with their homework while they have been splayed over the table crying that they don’t understand, and trying to get my mother off the phone for the third time that day. I have had a meal on the table every night when my husband comes home from work, even when my kids decide that while I am cooking is the best time to pitch a fit. I clean the house, wash the sheets, put toys away, clean the crud off the toilets, hold the kids down for shots, check body parts for things I do not want to, shovel snow, rake the leaves, sweep the driveway, and sometimes trim the bushes….I do it and that’s fine.

I do not want to mow the grass. And every time I see little Annie over there mowing the grass or the three other women on my street who occasionally do it, I grit my teeth, clench my fists, and think to myself, “Don’t we do enough?”

Well, evidently, they don’t.

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September 2, 2011 · 10:18 am

Cry Me a River

So it’s been a full week of back-to-school bliss. My days are filled with quiet cleaning, cool morning walks, peaceful time to work, hours to do what I want with no interruptions. And then at three o’clock every day, all hell breaks loose.

Here’s how our week has gone:

~Nearly everyone in my daughter’s class from last year is in another class together this year. “Why did I get left out?” Heartbreak for her, heartbreak for me. Not to mention the impulse to call the principal and ask him what in the world was he thinking doing that to my daughter? She shed a few tears.

~A fall down the stairs sent my daughter into a well-earned crying fit. More crying upstairs. I raced up to learn that my daughter had bumped her nose. And then when a mid-air flip attempt went awry, my son landed on his head. More tears.

~My daughter released a flood of tears one afternoon on the couch, just because.

~Tears flowed at the mere mention of writing thank-you notes for birthday presents my daughter recently received. This followed by a bit of rolling around on the floor and burying her head in a pillow.

~Homework, ugh!!! My son just didn’t get it and he wanted my help. Yet every time I read the directions to him and tried to explain it, he threw a fit. Did he or did he not want my help? I know he didn’t read the directions to begin with. Writhing on the floor, he screamed, “I hate homework!” Me too, man, me too.

~It took me 15 minutes to read one email due to four crying fits over a chair, a stool, a couch filled with dolls, and a knee to the eye. Each time I entered the room, it was a different story. “What’s wrong now?” I said, trying to keep my frustration to myself. My son kneed himself in the eye while doing flips on the couch. I didn’t even know what to say. After the whole head thing? Seriously?

~A math problem nearly sent me into tears. My son just wanted me to do it but I continued trying to calmly explain what he was missing. Hair pulling. Teeth gritting. Tears man, more freakin’ tears.

~Don’t even get me started about the announcement of bathtime and bedtime every night….

I’m amazed I’ve been able to get dinner on the table and homework done and the kids to bed on time (7:30 because they are so damn cranky). In years past, we’ve suffered nearly two months of this meltdown mania at the onset of school.

If you are a cranky mom this week, hugs to you. If you know one, give her a hug. Me? I think I just need a good cry.

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August 29, 2011 · 1:34 pm

Don’t Pick Up Strange Creatures

Every now and then, I think it’s important to be put in one’s place. I’d prefer it be gently, of course, but I don’t get to choose. Last week, I learned a lesson: Don’t forget to practice what you preach. Sometimes I just need to shut up and follow all that advice that I’m always dishing out to my kids. It’s tough when you open your eyes and realize you’re just as guilty and annoying and senseless as they are.

Example one: I ran a red light. Thankfully, I realized it as soon as I was about to sail through it, but screeching, skidding tires was a worse option than slowing down and maneuvering through safely. There were two stoplights yards apart from each other, and I was focused on the farther one. Neither my kids nor the lady entering the intersection even noticed.

Example two: My daughter dressed herself in a pink-and-white-striped shirt and a skirt with diagonal stripes of blues and purples.

“Honey, the shorts that match that shirt are right here. They’ve just been washed,” I offered, wanting her to wear the outfit that I liked. “Do you want to wear those instead?” Man, I tried, I really did.

“No thanks,” my daughter said.

“What your mother is saying is that doesn’t match,” my husband blurted out.

“I don’t care,” my daughter said. And she didn’t. She wore it all day, out in public, in places where I saw people I knew, even after I had asked once more if she wanted to change before we left. It was tough. Cute to mismatch at 4, not so cute at 6.

Example three: At the pool, just as I was about to sit down, I noticed what I thought was a yellow and black worm on my towel, on the part where my rear was about to go. I gently plucked it from the towel only to feel excruciating, piercing pain in my finger. “OW, OW, OW!” I yelled as I tried to fling it off. It stuck to me like a burr and left a nasty sting. Fool that I am, it was no worm but the rearend of a yellow jacket.

“Don’t pick up strange creatures,” my husband scolded as he handed me an ice pack. I should have known better.

As I pouted, trying to numb my burning finger, I thought about my week and what I did. I thought about what I am always telling my kids, and I did learn some things:

1) Pay attention! How many times do I have to say it?
2) Mind your own business. Worry about how you are dressed.
3) Think before you act. Don’t pick up something if you don’t know what it is.

Lesson learned.

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August 10, 2011 · 1:48 pm

My Friend, the Neat Freak

I don’t profess to be a perfect housekeeper. My home is lived in and looks it. I can’t keep up with the clutter and frankly, I get tired of asking everyone else to pitch in. When I know no one is coming for a visit, I can live with certain things, like globs of toothpaste cemented to the kids’ bathroom sink and a little dust here and there…OK, everywhere. I don’t love it, but I can let it slide a few days or a week if I need to. I simply don’t look at it. And I have a set list of friends whom I’ll allow to witness the filth. Don’t get me wrong. If I know someone may drop by, I straighten up a little, clear the unfinished crafts off the kitchen counter, put the dirty dishes in the sink, push piles of toys into a bin. You know, hide stuff.

When the kids are in school, the house passes code. I have time to scrub the toilets and dust the fans and wipe who-knows-what from the walls. But sometimes, life still gets in the way and it’s so hectic that my choice is either to cook dinner or clean. Well, I like my food.

So today, while at a friend’s house, I notice that everything is white-glove clean. It always is. I wasn’t even a totally expected guest. Even upstairs, in the kids’ rooms, the playroom, everything is spotless.

“Do you clean every day?” I asked.

Yes, she spot-cleans some. “And I vacuum every day,” she said. Even her closets.

What?

“I have a problem, I know,” she said, but she didn’t seem bothered by this syndrome. Her other friends tease that she never has footprints on her carpets.

Every day. Man, this summer at my house it’s been more like every other week, but I don’t dare admit that to her. Her son was just at my house. She probably had to shower him off when he got home in case he rolled around on my floor.

She showed me new furniture in her bedroom, like a magazine spread where nothing is out of place, not a thread, a hint of stray lint. My dresser always has random bits of paper, jewelry, and receipts spread across it. Magazine articles sit in piles on the floor. But my bed is always made at least. Always. I look on her floor and see I have left a trail of footprints in her carpet, impressions of my bare feet. They stick out like a weed in a Monet.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Now you have to vacuum!”

It’s all right. She does every night, before bed, after she turns down and smooths the sheets.

Well, I’ll be thinking of her vacuuming tonight as I relax on my couch, toys strewn across a floor covered in hair and dust and probably some boogers, eating a crunchy snack that will leave crumbs that I will probably vacuum up sometime next week.

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August 1, 2011 · 10:00 am

Motherhood: I’m Just Along for the Ride

I have a motto as a mom: It’s just a phase, it will end, and I’ll get through it.

For many months, I’ve been tested on every level known to mom. My eight-year-old son yearns for independence of the college set, wanting to do everything his way with none of that motherly advice thrown in. He pushes my buttons like he’s operating a remote control car and I just try to hang on.

We’ve been butting heads over any issue, big or small. I tell him to stop doing something and it’s like telling a two-year-old he has to take a bath during Barney. I have literally been tiptoeing on eggshells.

Many thoughts have raced through my mind: What is going to set him off next? Is it hormones? At 8? Heaven help me when he’s a teenager. And he’s such a sweet kid. Where did my sweet boy go? Something must be wrong with him. Is this normal?

Just what do you do when you tell him to stop and he says no again and again? By gosh, he’s too heavy for me to carry to his room anymore and he knows it. Yelling makes things so much worse. I tried to stay calm, but that was a big test for me. I screamed inside…and what I said was not very nice. For months, it has been up and down, and I’ve been waiting, knowing my motto has always held true. Is this what my next ten years will be like?

And then, just when I was at my breaking point, the ride ended. At least, I think it did. Do the phases just get longer as kids get older? They certainly get harder. But surely they do end.

Walking through a parking lot the other day, my nearly six-year-old daughter and I held hands like always. Surprisingly, my son grabbed my other and in that instant, life was really good. He said, “I love summer,” and gave my hand a light squeeze.

“Yeah, me too,” I said over the lump in my throat. We kept walking and I thought, “I can make it through any bad day for this tiny moment.” I held on as long as I could. As long as he’d let me.

And just when I started to enjoy the calm and started to relax, my daughter, who has been syrupy sweet all these months, entered a phase. There’s no rest for the weary and it’s time for me to buckle up again. Hopefully it will be a short ride.

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