I am officially the worst mother ever

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I’m just going to in the simplest and quickest way possible tell you about what happened tonight. I normally wouldn’t waste the brain power needed to sit and write a full blog on one story, but this worth telling. I need to clear up the origin of my two-year-old’s black eye.

It’s a doozy.

It’s been a long day, but some how I made it through and even managed to score a NAP out of it. A NAP! My child has lately been refusing to nap now that he has acquired this new freedom with his bed. He reserves sleep for when he absolutely can’t escape it, or just when he is dead. But after an exhausting day of cleaning, my child and curled up on the living room furniture and napped past dinner. It was beautiful.

The day in general went pretty well which was unexpected since I was awoken at 7 am by my child and was feeling awful from a combination of this cold-from-hell and a week of rude early-morning awakenings. I got to the point when I was just about to completely lose it when I decided I wasn’t going to do this to myself  today. I was going to take 5, clean myself up, and make something of the day. I was ready for whatever life and my adorable little demon spawn were preparing to hurl my way. I wish I could have said the same for my son.

After I had prepared dinner I decided it was time for a post-nap diaper change for Deven. Our Dog, whom I have yet to introduce to my readers, was acting very excited and antsy, which was typical since it was dinner for him as well. I changed Deven’s very wet diaper and headed into the kitchen to throw it away when I hear a strange whizzing sound and giggling coming from the farthest corner of the living room. I turned around to find the dog peeing on the carpet.

My initial reaction was to scream at the dog, but when that surprisingly had no effect, I panic, and hurl the heavy wet diaper in the direction of the dog. Only, the child was standing kind of close to the dog. And I am not known as an excellent marksman.

The diaper hit Deven square in the face. In his eye. Really hard. He started crying and I am so overcome with guilt. My son has his first black eye at 2 years old because of me. Because my panicked reaction to a dog peeing on the carpet is to hurl a wet diaper.

What are people gonna say? “Oh my, how did your boy get that black eye?” The only way around this it to bite the bullet and tell the truth. And hopefully neither CPS or Animal Control wont show up on my door step. Maybe I just leave it at “I’m a bad shot.”

This is so one for the baby book.

Gone are the days…

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Last night was horrible. Horrible. It’s been an adjustment ever since we added the fourth installment to our family and our bed, one that feels the need to scratch himself, shake himself off, and lick his crotch in the middle of the night, and follow us to the bathroom every time we get up to pee, but that adjustment has been easy in comparison to the other events that have transpired over the last week.

Which reminds me, did I ever mention we got a dog? We did.

Anyway, last week Deven’s crib broke. Something happened and a bolt was ripped from a wood panel and the bed spring was bent, and that was $360 we are not going to be able to reuse. I thought we would use the portable crib until we could get another crib, but that would mean dropping another $300-400 we don’t have into something we may not be using for a very long time anyway. Seriously, you blow that much money on something you’re going to be using for at least a couple of years when you’re within our income bracket. So I remembered that someone donated a bed to the Deven cause and that it was sitting in our garage, ready to go, no assembly required, just needed to be carried up the stairs.It was worth a try, right?

Neither of us thought it would work. This is a kid that won’t sit in one spot for more than a nano-second, that wouldn’t listen to his parents if his life depended on it, how were we going to get him to stay in a bed? This bed that he can get in and out of, this bed that is in a room full of toys and books neatly placed on shelves, toys and books that have yet to be ripped into shreds. We were counting on the four of us to be in our bed tonight.

That day because there was no crib, there was no nap, and no mercy for mama during the evening before dinner time. We got him into his bath, and I laid him in the bed tucked him under his blanket, read him a few stories, said goodnight, turned off the lights and left the room. The exact same routine we go through when he sleeps in a crib. I was expecting to be chasing him all over the house before just giving up and going to bed with him in our room, but after I left the room I didn’t hear a peep from him. He didn’t even get up to check out the free space in the room, he just went right to sleep.

My son sleeps in a big boy bed now. I can’t even say my baby sleeps in a bed now, because just the fact that he sleeps in a bed makes him a big boy. I no longer have a baby in my house. I have a big boy. But I have a dog now, so it’s okay.

It hasn’t been that easy every night. The last two nights he’s figured the run-out-of-the-room game, and we’ve figured out after 2 or 3 rounds, putting him into bed and then holding the door shut is pretty effective. It sounds cruel, but he gets the message.

The worst part of this, however, is  that he now just gets right up and leaves the room when he wakes up. When he would sleep in his crib he would wake up and talk to himself and fall back asleep a couple of times leaving me to sleep in until 10 am sometimes. Those days are gone and done with. I have to adjust my own sleep schedule now because he is up and ready to go before daddy leaves for work.

Last night Deven went to bed with a runny nose which I thought was just allergies, but I realized he was actually sick when he woke up at like 3 am screaming and crying and choking, something he never does unless he is sick. And can’t breath. So I had to go in there and lay with him until he went back to sleep. I laid in there for probably close to 2 hours with him. He would fall asleep and I would attempt to get up and he would wake up, so I had to wait until he was asleep enough to not be disturbed by the massive shift in weight when I tumbled my ass out of his teeny bed. He still woke up at 8:30, and that means I didn’t even get enough sleep to safely descend the stairs, let alone go about my day.

Deven is growing up so fast. I just described one huge milestone, I didn’t even get into all the talking and understanding and remembering he has been doing lately. That’s mostly because I can’t even remember all of the new things he is learning every day. Seriously, it’s incredible.

Coming soon: potty training.

Life still goes on

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It makes me laugh and cry a little on the inside that there are people in the world, who, in the face of tragic events in other parts of the world, feel like it’s time to stop going about our daily jobs, and time to start CRYING AND SUFFERING. OH DEAR GOD, SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENED AND A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING AND I HAVE ALL THIS MONEY AND I HATE MYSELF FOR HAVING IT AND FOR BEING SUCCESSFUL WHEN THERE ARE ALL OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO DONT HAVE IT AND OOOOHHHH GOD. You get the idea, right? I want to overnight those people some tourniquets and coagulants to stop the bleeding in their ever-loving  hearts.

Yes, I know the people of Haiti have pretty much lost everything including the hope of ever recovering from this.  No one on this Earth deserves a fate like this, even Pat Robertson. Horrible things happen in the world every day. The scale of horror goes from only affecting a single individual to a nation of people. The fucked up thing is that often there is no explanation; no reason that we can at all comprehend why people go hungry, die of disease, or why earth quakes and tidal waves hit nations of people who don’t do anything wrong, they just live their lives. The pain these people go through is beyond comprehension for those of us who have been lucky enough to never have to go through it.

Terrible things happen in the world, but I don’t think any justification in feeling the need to drop everything so you can suffer unnecessarily too.  You do have what many of those people don’t. I don’t believe you have to feel bad for it. You have your health, your money, your security, your house, your food and you are damn lucky to have it. You shouldn’t take any of it granted. And be thankful you don’t live on a fault line that is capable of causing that level of destruction.

To me, the only way to face situations like this is to do what you can that will make a difference. If you have some extra money lying around and are on a position in which you can let it go, give it to a reputable source to help with the recovery effort. If you have some extra prayers or positive energy lying around, give that too. There is no good reason to stop living your own life or blogging about your hair.

And pray to God above or your local congressman that the government won’t send them any aid. Leave it to the pros.

Here is some lyrics that help sum up how I feel about bad things that happen in the world.

The Larger Bowl (A Pantuom) (By Rush. Lyrics by Neil Peart)

if we’re so much the same like I always hear
why such different fortunes and fates?
some of us live in a cloud of fear
some live behind iron gates

why such different fortunes and fates?
some are blessed and some are cursed
some live behind iron gates
while others only see the worst

some are blessed and some are cursed
the golden one or scarred from birth
while others only see the worst
such a lot of pain on the earth

the golden one or scarred from birth
somethings can never be changed
such a lot of pain on this earth
It’s somehow so badly arranged

somethings can never be changed
some reasons will never come clear
it’s somehow so badly arranged
if we’re so much the same like I always hear

On a similar note, when I heard Alyssa Milano donated $50,000 to the Red Cross and dared corporations to “match it” I swear to god the only thing I could think was “Oh yeah, Gisele Bundchen donated $1.5 Million, Why don’t you shut your mouth or match THAT!” Let’s get real, Alyssa Milano’s bank account weeps at the idea of even having $1.5 million in it  to throw around.