OHMYGODSHUTTHEHECKUPANDLEAVEMEALONEALREADY

Have you ever hit your head on the microwave door because you were closing it but forgot to get your fat head out of the way? Have you ever hit your head on the car (okay, fine, VAN ) door the very same day for equally stupid reasons? 

Me neither.

I did, however, put the following items through the wash without knowing it: Two plastic dinosaurs, one cowgirl, a stuffed jellyfish and a rhinoceros. Note to self: go through the kids’ laundry before washing. (No I don’t sort laundry. Geeeez. Who does that anyway?)

Holy moly. Moley? (Where did that expression come from anyway?) SIGH. Stare at blinking bar on computer screen. Now is a most excellent time for a beer. Please hold (lalalalalalalala)…

K. I’m back. I fetched me a Blue Moon. Original. Cuz Dooley drank the last Blue Moon Spiced Amber (de-licious!) which I had laid claim to. He denies it but there’s no other way to explain its disappearance. Unless I actually drank two the last time I had a beer, but that just doesn’t happen. EVER. Of course I do have this non-brain thing going on.

It’s beer-thirty because I just put the kids to bed, which lately has become THE most stressful and trying event of the day. It might be neck and neck with mealtime, which also is the worst thing ever. It can’t possibly be this difficult for all parents, which leads me to question my parenting, which leads to more stress, which leads me to this ho-hum Blue Moon Original. 

My children are non-listening monsters. I have to remind them to take bites of their food for each friggen bite. EVERY BITE requires a reminder. As if that’s not enough to make you go insane, they will feign deafness when I request calmly, and as I result, things must escalate and I end up yelling “TAKE A BITE…NOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!” at the top of my lungs like a crazy person yet they are often unfazed. (Okay wow. I just had a moment. Spell check kept telling me that “unphased” wasn’t a word. I knew it looked weird, but hey, “phase”= “faze”, phonetically speaking, and my brain is fried, so I’m allowed to be extra special.) 

Moving on. The incessant counting. I hate myself every time I do it. Which is always. Each number made to sound louder and more threatening: “One…two…THREEEEE…!” Then I move toward them briskly and scarily, making to put them in time-out or bestow a spank on a cute little bottom, at which point a mild panic sets in and they rapidly stuff their faces with the food within reach. Sometimes they will then gag on said massive mouthful and have to spit it out, and it’s a total lose-lose. It’s been suggested that I let them starve, if they don’t want to eat, but hungry=cranky=poor sleep=life sucks for Mom. LOSE-LOSE.

So. Yeah. Bedtime. We have a toothbrushing and story time routine, which we generally stick to, but without fail, be it naptime or actual bedtime, Dirt postpones the real sleep by at least an hour. He has to go pee. He has to go poop. He wants a drink, “just a little bit”. His music quit working. He wants “Hotdog the Cat” in his room. He wants “Hotdog the Cat” in his bed. He has to go pee again. He needs his “baby turtle”. He needs his nose wiped. He wants to sleep in my bed. It goes on. And on. And on. Not only that but Tuesday keeps asking to sing songs over. And over. And over. Not to mention the fact that every time I put her down for nap in a clean diaper, she poops in it immediately.

I didn’t even mention the screaming. That’s a whole different thing. Or the WHYs. Dirt is in a major "why" phase. "Why, Mama? Why? Why?" with everything. He also demands constant validation: "Right, Mom? Right?" after each and every thing he says. For real.Then there's Tuesday with her "NO" phase, which coexists with her "what's that?" phase.

[Side note: I just splashed pee on me. Went to dump out the training potty and was a little too hasty. Oh joy.]

Somehow things are magically easy when my husband is home to help. Not that the kids are perfect angels, but they seem to have an old-timey fear of the Dadwrath, which makes them slightly better behaved. The fact that I’m with them 24-7 (minus the occasional much-needed getaway) makes them used to me, and therefore, unconcerned with Momwrath, even though it comes with the very same consequences as Dadwrath. I can yell and spank just as good as he does, dammit! Fear me! 

Don’t worry folks, we aren’t abusive. Although spanking is considered abuse in some circles. Ugh. I remember getting spanked. It was a wooden spoon. I’d get sent to my room, and have to wait forEVER, and my parents would open the dreaded kitchen drawer loudly and dramatically, and stomp slowly and ominously up the stairs, making the anxiety a greater punishment than the actual whipping.

Being a parent has engendered more extreme emotions in me than anything I’ve ever experienced. I can confidently say that I have never felt such absolute blind rage…but I can also say that I’ve never ever felt such extreme, tremendous, bite-your-face off-squeeze-you-to-death love. I didn’t know I had such a temper, but also didn’t know that I would never tire of watching someone sleep, that I would always have to fight the urge to snuggle them, or that I would always always want to hug them and squeeze them and kiss them and kiss them and kiss them relentlessly, until they screech at me like teenagers, “Mooooom!” It’s just like I said in another entry last August, “HOW can such small beings inspire SOOOOOOO much love AND SOOOO much rage??”

I try to curb my temper. Respect, Gentleness, Love, Respect, Gentleness, Love. (Our mantra, written on a dry-erase board on the side of the fridge, because my dearest hub has the same short fuse, and even more volume!) Then I feel guilty for getting so mad at those cutenesses. And guilty for always looking forward to naptime, then bedtime, so I can catch a break. I have to remind myself to enjoy them, and be in the moment with them, and thankful for this time with them, because soon they'll be big and off to school and not want anything to do with me. I have to remember that whatever goofy thing they are saying or doing is more important than what's on TV, or whatever nonsense I'm wasting time with on the computer. It's much easier said than done. My default response is often OHMYGODSHUTTHEHECKUPANDLEAVEMEALONEALEADY, which makes me seem like a horrible person, but seriously, YOU hang out with them all day, every day. Literally. ALL day, EVERY day. Think about it.

Anyway, the wee babes are both hacking away this week—sick, that is, with a nasty cough, so that makes everything slightly more pleasant, if you can believe it. No, for reals, not sarcastically. They can’t scream quite as much (HAhaha!) and they’re very cuddly. Tuesday is kinna whiney about it, but in a sad and adorable manner: she covers her mouth with her teeny tiny hands when she coughs, and looks at me with those big, beautiful, worried eyes, and says in a pathetically cute voice “Mommy, me siiiiiiit (sick)!” I told Dirt he had a fever because his body was fighting the sickness, which he logged in his bank for future use…told me the next day that his body wasn’t winning. We've had a couch potato marathon this week, only venturing out on day three to get supplies like soup, more kleenex, children's ibuprofin, and some honey-based homeopathic cough syrup, cuz for some strange reason you can't give kids under 4 years old the regular Children's cough medicine. Also I think we exhausted Netflix's supply of Go Diego Go, and even though I may want to jump off a bridge if I hear the song again, Tuesday can discern various whale species and Dirt can identify a Coati. I didn't even know what a freaking coati was.

Here. Now you don't have to google it because I already did. Aren't they cute racoony-lemurish things? I want one.

I made the mistake of telling Dirt one day that he could sleep in my bed with me because Daddy wasn’t home. He took that to mean that any night Daddy was working was up for grabs. Of course it’s hard to say no to a sweet little cuddlebug, especially a sick one, but last night he coughed and coughed ALL NIGHT LONG. I know it sounds heartless to lament my lost sleep instead of gushing concern and sympathy for my baby boy, but it sucked. For me. Cuz he wants to be all up on me, coughing in my face. Then our giant dog wanted to be all up on me too. Then the cat. Then Dooley got home at 7am and did the same thing. This morning I had Dirt squished against my left side, Dooley wrapped around me from the right, Hotdog on top of me—stretched from my shoulder to my hip—and Bruce against/on my legs (on the left, under Dirt). It was quite the sardine-y arrangement. I loved it and hated it. But then, much to my dismay Tuesday woke up crying down the hall, and I stared up at the ceiling, puzzling out the best way to extract myself from our snuggly Tetris. It goes without saying that despite my best efforts, everyone but Dooley was disturbed by my squirming. 

Dirt just emerged from his room (remember, he’s supposed to be sleeping), saying he needed his nose wiped, followed by a request in his sweetest voice, “Mama, can I hug you? Because I love you so much?”  Uh, manipulate much? Then he proceeded to waddle like a penguin all the way down the hall and ask me if I was going to go work out now. Random. Randomness is one of my favorite things about them. I want to record everything they say cuz it’s all adorable and hilarious and random. They are so smart and creative and RANDOM. Dirt told me in the car (van) today that in order to avoid being eaten by alligators, he plans to poop in their eyes.

I LOVE MY BABIES!