peevish mama

Every once in a while your child does or says something so jarring, so unexpected, so revelatory that it’s as if someone took a pair of buttery soft tan leather kid gloves and slapped you across the face with them and screamed “ATTENTION!” in a heavy French accent.  There are certain moments when something happens that brings into screeching focus the fact that your kid is an other, a sentient, cogitative being apart from you.  My guys are still young, so they are always underfoot, kind of like chickens in a barnyard – so much so that you start to not notice them as much.  Until one of them says something that puts you into a goggle eyed, head swiveling, double take.  And then you go, aaaah, right, oh my God, you are hilarious, only I can’t tell you because I’m your mother and I’m not suppose to think this is hilarious because you are only five and if you say shit like this around other mothers, no one will have you over for play dates, so let me just bite my lips and pretend I didn’t quite hear you and continue on our way.

The other day I was meeting my girlie friends out at a launch party for Sotheby’s new magazine, to be followed by a swimwear fashion show (this all sounds very swoozy, doesn’t it?), to be followed by a trip downtown to see our favorite band, New Congress: an amazing R&B, hip hop, rumpshake,  scritch scratch, freaky deaky, screaming guitar, head banging, hoochie coochie, sweaty, fun, thumpin’ band.  Doctor Dash was dropping me off at the Calhoun Beach Club (where the cougars go to hunt) on his way to Punch Pizza with the kids.  Because he knows this isn’t the tamest bunch of betties and that we tend to get a tad rowdy when we go out and because he’s just a super cautious guy when it comes to his sweet Mama, the following conversation ensues:

Dash:   Have fun but be careful . . . be smart.

Me (with ridiculously enormous sunglasses and grin):  of course, Baby, you know me.  I’m always careful.  And smart!

Supergirl (from the back of the minivan):  Except for that one night you didn’t come home.

OK, first of all, that never happened.  Dash and I look at each other, completely agog.  Total Shaggy and Scooby “zoinks” moment.  That never happened . . . did it?  No, absolutely not.  Holy shit!  Is she fucking with me?  I turn around so I can see her face and she is sitting in her booster seat, swinging her legs, her tan little face lit with mirth.  She starts to giggle her head off and right then and there I realize that she IS fucking with me – that her sense of humor has evolved way beyond potty and knock-knock jokes.  She has gone dark and devious. Genius.  How can she possibly understand the implications of what she is saying?  I’m not sure that she fully does, but she understands enough to know that throwing that out there will stop us dead in our tracks.  And it did.  After I retrieve the eyeballs that have popped out of my head and otherwise gather my wits about me, the conversation continues:

Me:  Supergirl!  Don’t ever say that in front of anyone else!!!  Oh my goodness!  You know that never ever ever happened, right?!??

Supergirl:  Yes it did.

Me:  No it did not!  Do not repeat that in front of anyone!  People will think mommy is . . .  is . . . is . . . a little crazy!

Supergirl:  You are a little crazy.

My friend Susie and I used to scope out “hot dads.”  We would point them out to each other with a frantic whisper - hot dad two o’clock - take a nonchalant look and nod approvingly - Aaaah, yeeees - with fiendish Cheshire cat grins on our mugs, our braces catching the sun.  We were like twelve!  Little Lolitas!  How did we even know to recognize a hot dad?  Must have been some nascent maternal stirrings in our skinny tween bodies, some evolutionary trait honed through the ages to help females pick a good mate.  In actuality we were quite the innocent Catholic school girls, but I’d say we were definitely on to something with the hot dad thing . . .  

So let’s hear it for HOT DADS!!!!  Wooohoooooo!!!!  You guys just don’t get enough props!!!  Here it is baby!  Here’s my shout out to all the hot dads who are out doing their thing . . .  jinging the jingy with the wife, biking with the kids, doing the dishes,  brandishing the barbeque tongs, coaching soccer, trimming the hedges, looking, frankly, hot while you’re doing it!  

Happy Hot Father’s Day!  That’s right men.  Just know that just because your mamas aren’t hunting you down and ripping your clothes off every damn second, it’s not because you’re not hot.  No sirree, it’s because you’re too hot and we are too tired (for the time being).  Not too tired, however, to feel highly appreciative of the serious eye-candy you all are providing for us all over this good green city.

And, of course, Happy Hot Father’s Day to Doctor Dash – the hottest hottie Daddy-o I know!  Now he’s going to be all embarrassed.  Am I crossing the line?  I think not.  I am the picture of discretion.  I am nothing, if not discrete.  So no, it’s fine . . .  love, love, love the hot dads.  Who doesn’t? 

And I super duper dig mine in particular.  It’s funny, although I thought I loved and adored Doctor Dash before having kids, he irretrievably stole my heart and buried it somewhere very very deep the day Saint James was born.  I felt like a wave crashed into me when I saw him holding our beautiful squalling boy, just beaming with joy.  He looked how I felt and sharing that intense happiness, all wrapped up in a light blue blanket was heady indeed.  Saint James was us, yet totally separate and unique and outside of us.  We were a triangle now, and boy, now we were really IN.  

And with each new kid, Dash has shown new colors.  Supergirl brought out a different kind of tenderness – a magical sweetness reserved specifically for fathers and daughters.  Supergirl’s eyes were so enormous as a newborn that she looked like an alien, or a nocturnal animal.  She was adorable and freaky-looking at the same time and Doctor Dash fell for her, hard.

Devil Baby, with all the scares she gave us, worried him sleepless (although he kept it to himself).  His relief that she and I were going to be alright seemed to galvanized itself into a zen-like patience.  He was my safety net and my punching bag during those bleary months when I couldn’t seem to make her happy.  He didn’t say much. The torrent of words, the frantic venting, that was all coming from me.  He let me speak and cry and simply held her.  He gave me the physical separation I needed for a few moments to actually SEE her.  And those minutes of watching him get to know her while I sat a few feet away were priceless – little nuggets of sanity I gobbled up greedily.  In a way, I fell in love with Devil Baby, through Doctor Dash’s eyes.  He was my guide because she and I were so inextricably wrapped up in the crying and nursing and rocking and soothing, none of which was working, that I felt like she and I were one sad, exhausted creature.  He needed to be there, to create physical and emotional space between us, to quietly push us into a triangle, so I could see what he saw, so I could fall in love like he was.   

If Saint James grows up to be like Doctor Dash, I will be a proud and contented mommy, indeed.  I will sigh and hug myself and feel goosebumpily satisfied to have put a good man out into the world.  Dash is a good man. And what can be hotter than that?

Devil Baby turns two today, which she indicates with a little “nanu nanu” gesture, holding up all five of her chubby fingers and trying with all her might to get two to stick out of the pack. 

It has been a wild ride with this little girl, pretty much since conception.  Devil Baby is one-half of a heterotopic pregnancy, a rare occurrence where you have two fertilized eggs, one of which never makes it down the tube, causing an ectopic pregnancy alongside the viable uterine pregnancy.  In short, she should have been twins.  Without dredging up a lot of difficult details, suffice it to say that it took a long time to figure out that I had a ruptured ectopic seven weeks into my pregnancy.  In the meantime, half of my blood volume ended up swishing around in my abdomen before I was rushed in for emergency surgery.  I had so much blood where it wasn’t supposed to be, that I couldn’t breathe and I remember being thankful, through my delirious, suffocating, panic, to be knocked out for surgery.  We were told that it was likely I would miscarry my other pregnancy, but, honestly, I was just happy to be alive, to be around for Saint James, Supergirl and Dash.  I found it surprisingly easy to shelve all thoughts of the baby growing inside me, to focus my energy on healing and gratitude.  I felt stupid and selfish and greedy for having risked my life for a third when we had more than enough – two beautiful, healthy children.  My responsibility was to them.  That morning we had gone to a farm with a petting zoo.  There were pictures on my camera.  For Saint James and Supergirl, those came breathtakingly close to being the last pictures of life as they knew it.

But as the weeks passed, the baby just kept on keeping on  and soon I went from a high risk pregnancy to a run of the mill, take a number pregnancy.  Happily.  We started to talk about the baby again with the kids, to imagine the possibilities. We called her Little Trooper.

When Little Trooper was born on June 11, 2006, she looked just like Saint James, partially due to the fact that they were both born looking as if they had gone a few rounds in the boxing ring.  But she was perfect and healthy and we all breathed a sigh of relief.  For a little while, anyway.

As the first few days slipped by, it began to dawn on me that she and I hadn’t shared that moment I remembered with my others: the moment when she was supposed to look into my eyes so we could say hello and drink each other in.  Her eyes were pretty swollen, but I started to get this nagging feeling that maybe she was blind – that maybe she wasn’t opening her eyes, because there was nothing to see.  I hadn’t completely shaken the scare from early on, postpartum is a completely irrational time anyway, and, well, she really wasn’t opening her eyes!  She would lift her heavy, bobbing head and seemingly look around, her eyes shut like a kitten’s.  I began to wonder if her eyes really were fused shut like a kitten’s – should I lick them?  It started to freak me out, and then I made the mistake of telling my mother and then she started to freak out, which really freaked me out because she’s a pediatrician. Doctor Dash had gone out to play tennis with my brother and returned to find us in a state of hysteria, crying and running around, shining a flashlight in her eyes – the top pediatric opthomologist at my dad’s hospital having been secured for an emergency visit at 8:00 a.m. the next morning. 

I have never prayed so hard in my life.  Please don’t let her be blind. Please don’t let her be blind.  Please don’t let her be blind.

Doctor Dash calmly took Little Trooper away from us, sat down on the couch, propped her up on his legs and tried to see if her eyes moved along to the light of the flashlight behind her puffy, gossamer eyelids.  They did.  And so the appointment was cancelled and relative calm was restored.

But Little Trooper wasn’t finished with us yet.  She cried.  And she cried.  And then she cried some more and pretty much didn’t stop until she was six months old.  And then she was better for a month.  And then she screamed for the next five months.  She was colicky with a capital C, only I never let myself go there, never let myself label her, because what would that solve?  The beauty of this having happened with my third is that I knew it wasn’t me – clearly, it was her.  But the ugly flip side is that I blamed my baby, and that felt much, much worse than blaming myself.  When you’re that strung out and exhausted, there is nothing to do but slide into survival mode.  Poor little Supergirl had to grow up quickity-quick and learn to help herself because Little Trooper, fast becoming Devil Baby, had me crawling on my hands and knees, begging for mercy.  

As she’s grown, things have gotten better, but mostly, she manages to find new ways to send me to the brink.  Example: for us, bath time had always been a bit of a treat, a relaxing little respite where my kids could splash and play with toys and I could sit next to the tub for a few moments of rest.  Unfortunately something about that warm water seemed to get Devil Baby’s little anus all atwitter and she would poop in the tub with crushing regularity. Seriously, four out of five times. Suddenly bath time wasn’t so peaceful.  Supergirl would scream and lurch out of the tub, sending poopy water spraying everywhere and I’d end up having to get everyone cleaned up in the sink and spend the next half hour and disinfecting the tub and all the bath toys.  I eventually learned my lesson and began pulling Devil Baby out as soon as she was clean.  But every once in a while she was having so much fun, and being so calm and quiet and smiley that I’d linger for just a moment too long . . .  

And now Devil Baby is two and she’s terribly challenging, but so very funny.  She throws her weight around like a hockey goon to get what she wants.  She is stubborn and defiant and LOUD.  Lately she has taken to yelling HELP! HELP! HELP! when I’m carrying her kicking and screaming out of Target, the pool or any other place she’s not ready to leave.  Then she starts yelling WOAH! WOAH! WOOOAH! like I’m whipping her around or something.  (I swear to you, I’m not.)   She is going to get me arrested.

I remind myself regularly that she is a GIFT!  We almost didn’t get to have her!  Without her my life would undoubtedly be easier, but so much less interesting.  She has sent me to depths of rage and exhaustion and exasperation heretofore unknown to me.  I feel like we’re in the trenches together, walking through fire, so that I can keep her safe, help her grow up and teach her to be her best self.  

She is such a presence in our family, such a HUGE personality.  Our baby cannon-balled into our lives, grabbed us by the scruff of our necks and claimed us as hers.  She didn’t meld into our family; we molded to her.  None of us is the same.  Especially me.  She has pushed me into totally foreign territory even though I thought I had done it all, seen it all.  

Lately I get the feeling that she is starting to figure out that we are all putty in the face of her charms and humor.  She is extra funny (probably because she is extra naughty) and when we’re all sitting around the dinner table laughing at something she is doing, I can see a little shimmer of understanding forming as she belly laughs, looking from one smiling face to another.  In the coming months and years, as her little animal instincts begin to be tamed and pushed aside by her higher faculties, I suspect we may be in for some highly entertaining times.  

So happy birthday to my wonderful, exhausting, hilarious, Devil Baby.  I look forward to rechristening you on this blog sometime soon . . . but we’re not there yet.  I love you.

You wake up and it looks like shit outside so you decide to dress yourself in polka dots from head to toe.

Then your fabulous mommy takes you and your baby sis to buy new shoes and you get a balloon on your way out.  But it isn’t just any balloon.  It’s a silver siamese twin balloon! The girl at the Shoe Zoo wasn’t sure it would blow up, but she tried it, and it did.

So then you get to do this:

And then this:

And then this:

But the best part is that you got these:

Having written that title brings to mind the wonderful, unforgettable day when Doctor Dash learned about pinworms in medical school.  Apparently, pinworms go out for what the medical establishment calls “a nocturnal stroll.”  I know, it’s too good.  Now, I’m not sure if I’m making this part up, but I think that the way you diagnose pinworms is by waiting near the afflicted person’s buttocks armed with nothing more than scotch tape and a little patience, and when the pinworms grab their galoshes and head out for their nocturnal stroll you pounce on them with the tape and voila! 

I MUST be making this up.  But I’m going to let it stand because, like I said . . .  it’s too good.

Anyway, that was not at all where this entry was going. Our particular wee nocturnal visitor is, fortunately, not a parasite but the inimitable Supergirl.  She has been showing up in our room in the middle of the night for the past week and a half or so.  Sometimes she’s crying that her legs hurt and oh, how I feel for her on those nights.  I remember those growing pains where your bones and muscles and sinews throb as they stretch and pull into new space.  Doctor Dash doesn’t recall having had growing pains, but I sure do.  Usually a little Tylenol and leg rubbing does the trick.  

On other nights Supergirl claims to have had a nightmare.  Again, I feel for her.  I remember vivid dreams where a bad man was chasing me through a forest, but I couldn’t run, I couldn’t get traction.  Other times someone was taking my mom in a parking lot and I couldn’t scream.  The feeling of terror and impotence (maybe impotence is the definition of terror) upon awaking is still so palpable to me.  I also dreamt of flying around in a hula hoop and swimming on the back of a dolphin, so it wasn’t all bad.

The thing is, we don’t buy that she’s having nightmares every night.  More likely she gets up to pee and it’s just as easy to come to our bed as it is to return to hers.  I do have to admit that she’s very sweet and knocks quietly at the door before handing us her bogus story.  Since this has been going on for a while, our reception of her is more of the mumbling and grumbling variety.  My sleep is very precarious.  If someone wakes me up in the middle of the night, there is a really good chance I won’t get back to sleep, which results in hours of tossing and turning, an eventual trip downstairs to eat Frosted Flakes and watch TV, and a relentless search for a flashlight or batteries for a flashlight so I can read myself back to sleep.  It’s annoying to say the least.

But here’s the thing.  Supergirl is one independent little chick.  At the tender age of five, she’s already pretty self-sufficient and trustworthy.  She picks out her own clothes and dresses herself; she rides a bike with no training wheels and knows to ask if she wants to go beyond our agreed-upon perimeter; she swims like a fish, goes off the diving board and has a way of checking in with me from time to time at the pool just before I start to wonder where she is.  She is not a snuggler like Saint James and does not give or ask for much by way of physical affection.  If she wants to tuck her little body between us for a while at night, why would I object?  She may not be having nightmares, but surely she has a reason for this little phase.  We need to enjoy her nocturnal visits while they last.

And maybe spring for a king-size bed.

This past Saturday, our lovely friends had us over for a lovely barbeque in their lovely backyard.  I should have known something was up when Saint James asked for exactly eleven grapes.  He proceeded to stuff them all in his mouth, one by one, and just as I was about to bust his little seven year old balls, I noticed that our friends’ daughter, Little E, was giggling her head off.  He was clearly doing it to impress her, which is heart clutchingly cute.  So I bit my tongue and looked away so he could hone his rudimentary flirtation skills.  The next thing I knew, Saint James had barfed a neat little pile of chewed up brat and grapes on the table.  I’m sure he was mortified enough without the addition of my operatic yodel of surprise and clumsy napkin-in-hand-across-the-table-swoop-in.  

I’m not sure what Little E thought about any of this, but her three year old brother now thinks Saint James is a total rock star.

And here I was worried he might choke to death.

Today is Sunday and as I sent Saint James off to mass with Doctor Dash, I felt that all too familiar twinge of guilt.  Saint James had his first communion about a month ago and I am trying, like hell, to get him to mass every week.  Sometimes we rally the troops and go as a family, stashing Devil Baby in the nursery for a blessed hour of peace.  Of course each time we do, she gets pink eye or some nasty cold, as punishment for the fact that we aren’t volunteering to take care of other peoples’ infested children.  (Yes, on some level I do believe in a tit-for-tat, lightning bolt wielding kind of a God).  Most of the time it’s easier to ditch the dead weight and one of us will just take Saint James, so he can take communion, so he can say the Lord’s Prayer, so he can start to experience the ritual and the comfort in attending mass with some degree of consistency.   

There are other families who all go, all the time – the infants nap peacefully as the mothers sway to the music, the toddlers scribble with crayons or eat Cheerios like contented little cherubs . . .  not a one of them is wearing a tie-dye shirt  or Vans with skulls on them or lying down in the aisles.  I have never had those kind of children.  It goes without saying that Devil Baby has never sat through mass, but neither have Supergirl or until recently, Saint James.   Ten minutes in church pew seems to bring on a Sahara Desert thirst for Supergirl – a Pavlovian response to the water cooler with little paper cups located in the vestibule.  She never fails to sashay down the center aisle with her cup in her hand, like she’s traversing a cocktail party.  I’m not sure what the policy is about beverages in church (aside from the sacramental), but when I need to rehydrate after overindulging on a Saturday night, I try to keep it on the down low.  

I’m ok with my children being heathens until age 7.  

I’ve decided to go with the “down the hatch” theory.  It has worked with swimming, reading and potty training, and I don’t see why it won’t work for church.  I’ve got three kids: 7, 5 and almost 2.  Obviously they’re all at different developmental stages and since I am only human, I just take’em one at a time. 

My tally to date is as follows:  

reading:1;

swimming: 2; 

potty training: 2;

mass ready: 1.  

As long as they all end up literate, water-safe and inoculated against fanaticism* (and preferably, moderately Catholic) I will have done my job.  They will feel appropriately guilty when they skip mass to read a book in the pool and all will be right in the world.

*  I need to give credit to my friend and neighbor for the phrase inoculation against fanaticism; it’s his stated reason for dragging his three adorable, sleepy, crabby pubescent boys to 9:30 mass.  I’ll call him Ten Gallon because he wears a cowboy hat so well.  He also wears slippers to church and I love him for that.  He’s married to Gigi the Animal Whisperer and Neighborhood Scat Expert (Gigi, for short).  She runs around in a down vest and wellies and identifies poo.

Doctor Dash to Saint James on researching his second grade habitat project: “Just go upstairs and google beaver.”

So why blog?  My reasons are manifold and since I haven’t really planned out this first entry (I was more just sort of ferreting out a cool background), I’m just going to say that it has a little something to do with having too many words in my head flapping around like a bunch of nasty pigeons.

Sometimes all these words get strung together into thoughts  which are incredibly convoluted and, frankly, out there.  By way of example, I have actually imagined spawning a tiny version of myself who, after landing deftly on the countertop, arm of the couch or where ever I happen to be, scrambles up my sleeve, does a neat pike dive into my ear and hangs out in the bubbling hot tub that is my mind, rather enjoying the churning and the noise, but completely oblivious to the outside world.  

I have also composed entire paragraphs in my head depicting my travels in India, a travelogue redolent with the scents of turmeric and clove, frangipani, tuberose and water hyacinth . . . are you feeling me?  There’s more: dusty cows, swirling saris, warm sheets of monsoon rain, piles of gold and saffron in the markets, secret maps etched on the hennaed hands of brides.  I have never been to India, and, more importantly, do not have a job that would require me to document my impressions of India should I ever go there.  

Better to get all these words out, no?

This whole being in my head thing sounds a bit escapist, I’ll admit, and so this would be a good time to introduce the three short people who live in my house.  Wait.  One step back.  There is also one tall one, taller than me, actually, and I’ll call him Doctor Dash.  He vetoed Doctor Love because, he, unlike me, is not so sure that no one will ever read this blog.  In fact, Doctor Dash has enumerated a whole honkin’ list of things I’m not allowed to write about, but we’ll just see about that.  

I WILL NOT BE CENSORED!

Actually, I will.  I will censor myself to protect the innocent because this is just a lark, a little free therapy, and I intend to avoid any unnecessary mortification of loved ones (myself excluded).

Doctor Dash is very smart, which is very sexy – which is not to say that he wouldn’t be sexy were he not smart – I just wouldn’t be married to him.  He’s also funny, to me anyway.  We met our senior year in college when we were young and fun and about 15 pounds heavier each.  We met at the age when we both lived in flannel shirts and 501’s and drank copious amounts of beer and smoked copious amounts of woops!  We basically got to grow up together.  He wrapped me up in music, I wrapped him up in books and I’m so thankful I didn’t play too hard to get for too long.  (Yes, I was peevish back then too).  He gets me and really, what else could I ask for?

Our oldest lad is a heavenly seven and I will call him Saint James.  He loves all creatures, great and small, and wants to be a naturalist when he grows up.  He’s got the circadian rhythms of a teen.  He’s a killer reader and a pretty great soccer player too.  He’s got a big pouf of dirty blond hair, my eyes but in sparkly blue, an infectious cackle, a gentle soul, and, currently, a horrible case of hay fever.  

Our middle child is fabulously five and I will call her Supergirl.  She’s fearless and sporty and has the biggest green-brown eyes you’ve ever seen.  She craves speed, physical peril, and candy.  She rides her bike like the wind, is never cold and has the world’s dirtiest feet at the end of a good day outside.  She, I suspect, will also have many words in her head someday because she loves to chat and sometimes, honestly, you feel like you are talking to a teenager (albeit, a relatively agreeable one).  She’s determined and fierce and does a mean one-handed cartwheel.

Our youngest, God help us, our youngest is almost two and I can’t decide whether I will call her The Boss or Devil Baby.  Yes, that’s right.  I love her, I’ll keep her, but SHE’S FUCKING KILLING ME.  There, I said it.  I’m sick of all the pitying looks I get at Supergirl’s preschool as I wrestle 28 pounds of bucking fat and muscle to the car every day.  Devil Baby likes to stay and push the toy shopping cart around.  If you fuck with her plans, there is hell to pay.  She has porcelain skin, blue eyes, doe colored hair, and the steely innards of a mob boss.  She can be hilarious and she can make you want to stick your head in the oven.  She likes Elmo and tearing down the street on her big wheel.  She does not cooperate.  She does not compromise.  She does not listen.  She is killing me.  But I love her.  

I love them all.  And so I will write, a bit, to make myself a little more sane, a little more patient, a little less peevish.

Ah, yes, and why peevishmama?  Well, I think I’ve pretty much covered that.  Suffice it to say that I like the word and it captures, perfectly, how I feel 94% of the time.  And by the way, it’s not just my husband and kids making me peevish.  No, sometimes it’s everything and everyone else and they, Doctor Dash, Saint James, Supergirl and Devil Baby are the only, and the perfect, antidote.