a post in which mothers' guilt rears its ugly head

UPDATE from Parker, 4:22pm: "The TV got all dried now." (In case you don't speak toddler, yes, our upstairs television is working again.)

I don't know why we all have mothers' guilt, but we do. Actually, I can think of lots of things that can contribute to mothers' guilt, but it's certainly unnecessary. After all, mothers are human. As much as we might like to velcro on our capes, fly in, and save the day, Supermom doesn't really exist. We all make mistakes, and that's okay.
You know what else? Our children are human. One of my neighbors across the street told me that her friends used to ask her, "Don't you trust your kids?" Her response was, "Of course I do! They're my kids. I trust them to make mistakes!"
So when you put together a combo of a human mother and human children, mistakes get made. By everyone. And that's okay. But today, in our house, mothers' guilt was alive and well.
Let me set the stage:
It's not quite 6:30 am. C wakes. I wake Daddy A, and ask him to get up. (After all, I reason, I got up with him at 3:00 this morning to give him an Orajel refill. Never mind that Daddy A was up with him at 11:00 last night, I want to sleep in.) No dice - it's my turn to get up first. By the time C's diaper is changed, P's awake too, and he wants Daddy A. He tells me to go away and runs to our bedroom door and begins banging. I pull him away.
I tell myself to apologize for being selfish when Daddy A gets up, and our morning starts. I feed the boys, and then I start the dishes. I put on a Thomas DVD and start washing up. I grab a clean dish towel from under the sink and work away. Not much later, P calls to me. "Mommy? The movie's not workin'!"
Upon entering the living room, I am horrified to find that P has been spraying the telelvision with a bottle of (safe, natural) cleaning spray. The floor is soaked, the television is soaked, and the screen is black. (The red light beside the power button is still on, though.)
And despite my resolve to apologize and move on, my mothers' guilt is back. I begin frantically toweling things, asking where the spray came from, and generally freaking out on the inside while trying to remain calm on the outside. (Incidentally, remember two paragraphs ago when I grabbed that clean dish towel? Apparently C grabbed the bottle of cleaner while the cabinet door was open - he's a bit of an opportunist like that - and delivered it right into his brother's hands.)
All sorts of mothers' guilt-y types of thoughts flood my head. What if one of the boys had gotten hurt? I let the kids break the television. Who lets their kids break the television? We can't afford a new telelvision! What will I tell Daddy A? Why wasn't I watching the boys more closely? How could my kids have a bottle of cleaning solution - even a safe, natural cleaning solution - without my knowledge? Is this my fault? Did I place such an emphasis on things being clean that P felt compelled to clean? (I've since decided no - P felt like it would be fun to spray a liquid all over the place, and cleaning solution was available.) And of course, the crowning glory, What kind of a mother am I?
So, what kind of a mother am I? A human one! I love my children, but I'm not perfect. Sometimes I turn my back when I shouldn't, and sometimes I'm cranky, and sometimes I wash the dishes instead of watching a Thomas DVD. Thankfully the boys didn't get hurt.
I tried fixing the television drying off the television and the surrounding areas and hoping that after it "dried out" the TV would work again. I also tried using the hair dryer to "dry it off a bit." Alas, I'm not only a mother who loves her kids, I'm now a mother with a broken television.

fun with a shopping cart

While we were in Virginia, we did all kinds of special activities. We had some fun outside, the boys rode their mini green Kawasaki, and they took some more rides on the rollercoaster. (Remember these posts?)

Oh, and Parker and Poppa Fred put together the toy shopping cart that C really enjoyed at a cool new bookstore Grandma Paige found.

One of the stipulations was that after the cart was together, P had to wait until we got home to play with it. He did, after modeling how it was used with Dragon Number One in the front of the cart.

Both of the boys have really enjoyed "shopping." They are learning to share the cart, too, and they push it all over the house and fill it with toys, play food from the kitchen, and stuffed animals. P wanted to put C in the front of the cart and push him, just like "at the store," so we had to explain why that wouldn't work.

And why, you ask, couldn't the boys use the shopping cart indoors at their grandparents' house? Here's a video of C "shopping." He may have, ahem, gently tapped a few things with the cart as he rolled it around. If you listen closely to the background noise in the video, you might hear P and I having a discussion about why he was placed in time out, and why we don't use a toy shopping cart to push our brother down or to run into him. Well, you probably won't hear that. Not at our house! But wouldn't it be kind of funny? I mean, if you did?

And if you had heard a conversation about improper shopping cart use in the video, then you'd be relieved to know that after just one evening of revoked shopping cart privileges, the cart seized to be a weapon of torture. Happy shopping!

Parker Live!

Last weekend, the boys and I went to Virginia to visit with Grandma Paige, Poppa Fred, and Aunt Tiffany and John. And Elmo. We took the boys to see Sesame Street Live! C loved the first 20 minutes. Then he was ready to get down and play. P enjoyed the show, and his favorite part was "when the spider came. And he hit Oscar's trash can and bumped his head. I liked the spider part."


When we got back to Grandma Paige and Poppa Fred's house, P did several "shows" for us. At one point, he sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" all the way through, "just like Grouch." Of course, I didn't get that on film. But I did manage to get some bits and pieces of his performances. Enjoy!

Tweetsie Railroad, here we come!

Last summer, P really started to take an interest in trains. So when Thomas came to Tweetsie Railroad in a town not too far from our house, we decided to take a trip for some "Wild West Family Fun." We had a blast, and decided to upgrade our single day tickets to season passes. We went to Tweetsie almost once a week (and occassionally twice!) all summer long. Grandma Paige and Poppa Fred gifted us with renewed passes for Christmas, and we were ready to go when the park opened for the season.
P could not wait to ride the train! No, not this one.

P wanted to ride the "mouse train at the top of the heel (hill)". He was "skeered" to ride this one. Never you mind that he rode it all the time last summer. Anyway, we hung out near the park entrance and watched this train for a while. P was happy to do that, and commented on the whistle and the steam. C was not a fan on the loud whistle, so Daddy A walked him toward the back of the train. (While they were walking and P and I were watching the train leave the station, an employeed ran into Daddy A and asked, "Where's the rest of the family?" Did I mention that we were frequent visitors to the park last summer?)

Despite being afraid to ride the train this summer, P is no longer afraid of the jail cell in Tweetsie Town. He was allowed to buy a black gun "like Samuel," which he placed in his holster and wore for the rest of the day weekend. And a good part of the next week. He even wore the empty holster to church. I made him leave his "gunny" in the car. Everyone has to draw a line somewhere.

We headed up the "heel" to the fudge shop for snacks, and took them to the Palace Saloon, where we watched Diamond Lil's Can Can Revue. P really enjoyed his "chocit train stick."

After the show, P chatted with the dancers a bit. Turns out that Miss Ruby is a dance student where P will be taking dance this summer. She was a good dancer, so that was nice to hear. Diamond Lil herself talked with the boys, and commented on how much C had grown this year and that he still had "those pretty blue eyes." (We were, ahem, pretty familiar with the Tweetsie staff by the end of last summer. I think I may have mentioned that.)
After the show, we headed forward in time a bit and drove into town to "cow chikin" for lunch. Then back to the park wild west and all the way to the top of the mountain. We got off the bus at the Deer Park and prepared to head down toward some rides. P surprised us by asking to feed the goats, which he had tired of by the end of last summer. I guess after a long break from the goats the novelty was back, because he fed plenty of them!

At this point in the day, C was pretty tired, because while P rode the planes

and the boats,

C rode in the stroller. And, you know, slept.

When we passed by the face painting station, P asked for a James. He wanted it on his arm, though, so he could see it. We finally got to the mouse train. While we waited for our turn to ride, P looked at his freshly painted arm.

The engineer on the mouse train offered to take a family photo. I know, C looks unhappy. But really, he didn't realize she was snapping the picture and he blinked. Or something. But this is the only family photo we got that day, so here it is:

Finally, even P was exhausted. We made our way back down the hill as he slept in his stroller. Clutching his prized toy gun.

We had a blast, and we're already planning a trip back the first week in June to see the Little Blue Engine and Sir Topham Hatt!

Teacher Appreciation Week

a post alternately titled
My Child is a Genius

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week. We certainly do love Ms. Tammy. I hope we appreciate her, and she knows by our appreciation that we value everything she does for P. I wanted to make sure we did something special for Ms. Tammy, so when P announced on Tuesday, "I would like to write a story. It is a story of Ms. Tammy," I thought, Woo hoo! A little something for Teacher Appreciation Week! (Don't worry; I know teachers get lots of homemade stuff, and they can't keep it all. We got her a gift card to the movie theater, too. But I do think P's story is nice.)
So Tuesday P told me his story, and Tuesday night I typed it up and made it into a booklet. This morning, we sat down together to do the illustrations. I read P a page, and he would decide what to draw. He wanted almost no help. And the "genius" part? I am so impressed by how well his pictures go with the story. And with a model to look at, he wrote his whole first name and his teacher's name. I did not know he could do that! (I knew he had the first three letters of his name down, but the rest was a surprise.) I almost scanned the finished book, but I decided just to take pictures and blog about it. The illustrations are a bit hard to see, because the medium he chose almost exclusively was colored pencil, but I still wanted to share his "story" with you here.

Here we have a picture of P's school from the outside. The steeple is on the right side of the roof, and there's a (very faint) cross on the left side of the roof. The building is purple. His school is white, but hey, I guess this is a prime example of artistic license.

In P's words, (about the left hand page) "That's Ms. Tammy. Her hair is black." And the right hand page? "The boo boo is above my eye. And on my face. An' it's bleedin'. See?"

And here's P's entire first name, taking up a two page spread.

The left hand page is a picture of the computer in P's classroom, complete with dots for "buttons" (the keys on the keyboard). The right hand page has a picture of a sandbox with a dump truck "for playin' in the sand".

P wanted to write Ms. Tammy's name next, so that takes up the left hand page. He copied it from a model that I wrote out for him. I was impressed again with his mad copying skills. The very last page has a heart. P was quite certain that he didn't want any help drawing his heart, so I let him have at it.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Even when you know what's coming...

you're not always ready.

Disclaimer: This post contains potty training/toileting stories. It may be TMI for some readers.

A little over a year ago, when C was in the hospital with RSV, I was surfing the web while C slept. While browsing, I stopped to read my friend Amanda's blog and was entertained by this funny story. One of my friends came in to sit with C so I could get some fresh air, and she asked me why I was laughing. I said, "Oh, I've just had a preview of my life next year." She read the story and agreed. 16 months later, and I'm here to tell you, folks, it's not so funny when it's happening to you. (It's funny how things work out that way sometimes, isn't it?)

Here's the scenario: P has really got this "potty" thing down. He lets me know when he needs to go (in plenty of time, no less), and we head to the bathroom. In a pinch, he can get his own pants on and off, but I usually help him handle that, and then I stick around for hand washing, etc. C, meanwhile, wants to be "where the party at," so to speak, so he follows us into the bathroom and C and I play a game of "help C remember to keep his hands away from the toilet and Parker's ahem, bodily fluids" while P handles his business. Then I try to keep C from getting his fingers smashed when P closes the "lids" on the toilet (hey, at least he puts the seat down!) and P washes his hands and we're on our way... in an ideal situation.
Yesterday, between P using the potty and putting the "lids" down, C somehow got his hands into the toilet. I'm trying to get P out of the way and working on washing his hands, C is splashing and laughing in quite the animated fashion, and I'm frantically working to get C away from the nastiness and get his hands disinfected. I am successful. I breathe a sigh of relief. We all exit the bathroom. I occupy the boys with something (I can't even remember what), and I return to the bathroom to flush, straighten up, and wipe off the seat. It is at this point that I discover that the bathroom floor around the toilet is wet. Not damp, mind you. Wet. Puddle wet. Sigh... I clean it up. We're golden.
I'm pretty sure, if you're still reading this, you're wondering why I don't take P into the bathroom and leave C outside, crying and banging on the bathroom door. I wonder that sometimes, too. Today I decide to give that another try. (I mean, we'd just had that fiasco, and I hadn't tried the "leave him outside the bathroom" technique for at least three days.) When P and I exited the downstairs bathroom this morning, the decorative teeny tiny pebbles in the bottom of our fireplace were spread out all over the room. Yeah, I think another technique might be in order. Or maybe yesterday was just "one of those days".