Mommy PTSD

 

Two of my dear friends were suffering the anxiety that follows too many emergency room visits in too little time and one of them was describing a common scene in her home where something would hit the floor loudly and she would start running through the house screaming, which led to her kids laughing at her overreactions on a regular basis. She joked that she was suffering from some mild form of post traumatic stress disorder.

Yesterday my six-year-old daughter stayed home from school because she had a cold and then spent the rest of her day driving me into an absurd panic by making strange loud noises (NAAAAAY!) that sounded an awful lot like she was sticking her fingers in an electrical outlet as soon as I sat down to feed the baby. Later, while I made lunch, she started screaming, "I'm falling! I'm falling! AHHHH!"  and I ran to discover her deep in imaginary play with her dolls safely on the floor of our back deck, not dangling from three, then two, then one finger from the deck boards, as I had imagined. 

My mind plays tricks on me. It's probably neurologically the same reason why as soon as I take a shower I hear the baby crying and jump out of the shower dripping wet just to find him sleeping soundly where I left him. The crying is in fact some phantom ghost baby, conjured by the deep dark anxiety-ridden place in my brain where strange fears lay in waiting for me to take a moment's reprieve.

Check for Ticks

 

I was going to wait until Father's Day to introduce this character but now it just can't wait. Because my husband got Lyme Disease from spending every free moment outside in the woods and he doesn't think it is funny at all. It's not really. It's terrible. Our wooded property is loaded with ticks. In the summer we check for ticks daily and find at least one on someone but every spring tick season just sneaks up on us. If you have a great natural tick repellent recipe I'd love to hear it! I'm always experimenting with new things.

Happy Father's Day in like a month from now and if you are anywhere near the woods remember to check for ticks this spring!

Seasonal Wardrobe

Here's me. Just fighting to keep my kids clothes on. From now until Halloween.

If you live on the Northern side of North America it is slooowly warming up around where you are. I keep trying to put away winter clothes and dig out our summer shorts but the cold rainy days just keep coming anyway. Not that any of this matters because keeping the clothes actually on my kids after the temperature rises above freezing is some sort of weird embarrassing struggle. My little innocents just have no awareness of their nakedness. But I'm pretty sure the neighbors do. Soooo.... pants. At least pants.

The Past Will Come Back to Haunt You

As a pregnant mom of 4 last summer I could not be bothered with arbitrary regulations at the local public library like "due dates" and "returning library books to the library."

I feel like this may reveal me as the scatter brain I am but I do actually have at this moment at least a $100 library fine. I've been on the run from the librarians for over 9 months. And this isn't the first time this has happened. I have paid hundreds of dollars in library fines in the past. So now my current long-term plan is to never go back to the library again. It seems like I can't really handle the responsibility. Here is why.

Things in my home can be separated into two categories:
A. Important things that matter that I keep from the kids that they are not allowed to play with or use for any reason.
B. Things that are unimportant that will be eventually lost or broken and I allow the kids to use or play with.

But then there are things like library books which demand a new category:
C. Things that are important and matter but are designed for children so it's impossible and insane to keep children from using or playing with them and therefore they eventually lose or break them.

Library books belong in category C and I was wrong to ever think I could monitor and maintain three whole categories of things in my home. We need to be a category C free home.

It would help if each child only brought home one book each and zero of the DVD's that cost $1.25 a day for a late fee and $20 to replace when lost but there are people with self-control and then there is me.

I often found myself checking out several dozen library books and the maximum allowable 4 DVD's per visit. This may have been in part shameless bribery to please just let us leave the Bermuda Triangle that is the children's library, and another part reckless attempt to keep up with the reading time requirements of a budding reader in the house. I finally just bought a Kindle eReader.

So I was disappointed when I learned that I may have to swallow my pride and my budget and pay off the librarian to let me take home a book about kangaroos for my son's first research project ever. But later, upon further review, I learned he can just go online. So you get a sketchy drawing about unwarranted library fine anxiety and I get to live another day as an irresponsible child-adult. Everybody wins. Until we meet again, library fine.

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Mother's Day

Oh Mother's Day. Once upon a time in my selfish delusion I thought you would somehow make up for the all sacrificing a mother does for her family. When I was a new mom and being a mom was so new, I set my expectations for Mother's Day pretty high. I was often disappointed and a huge turd to be around. It was a pretty intimidating and high-stakes game for my family and I totally regret it. I've finally come around to realizing they don't owe me anything, because it's pretty impossible at this point to make up for all the crap I do parental love and sacrifice.

My own mother reminds me often about how terrible it was to be in labor with me for something like 48 hours hooked up to Pitocin after being pregnant with me for 43 weeks. Just when she was 10 centimeters dilated I flipped around to the breech position and the nurse had to manually turn me head down. She says it hurt a little bit. So every Mother's Day I'm like, "Sorry Mom. Here's a macaroni necklace." And I'm pretty sure that's not making up for any of it. I mean I was a real pain of a child. So this year I sent her this.

I hope you have fun this Mother's Day. I love you mom and I hope you know it! You should read my blog and stop saying it's weird and that you don't really get it! And if you are a mom too may your heart be full and your expectations be low, because sometimes kids are jerks. Happy Mother's Day!

And if you don't have a six year old daughter, and you don't know what Shopkins are, then consider yourself lucky because nothing annoys me more then shelling out money for plastic junk that targets and glorifies the compulsive consumerism of our culture. It's buying useless stuff designed to look like you are buying useless stuff. So many layers of uselessness.

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Holy Day of Obligation

Someone once told me the Coptic Catholics in Egypt remove their shoes before prayer. I'm sure that was the Catholic rite my daughter was channeling this morning when she chose not to wear shoes to church on the Feast of the Ascension. I totally shouldn't have missed it but I was super rushed and my two big kids were actually in school so I really have no excuses other than I like to eat breakfast and my daughter missed the bus and my baby likes to eat breakfast too. And shoes people. Come on we all know the struggle that surrounds kids and shoes.

I put my big kids in there because I want to make this the cover for my new in-progress Facebook page. Happy Feast of the Ascension! Remember your shoes. Or don't. It's all good.

How to Raise a Jedi

This is one for all you Star Wars movie fans. I've have actually, and my kids have actually, never seen them. I know. I know. I'm the worst kind of person. We just don't often do movies. And my kids frighten at any sort of suspense and excitement that exceeds a Paw Patrol story line. We are, however, big fans of toy weapons. There are so many in our home that I've had to create an organizational system around them. We now have a "Weaponry" box. It's on top of the fridge where kids can't reach them. Unless they get a stool and I'm too busy feeding the baby to stop them. I didn't say it was an organizational system that works.

I'm definitely one for fostering healthy conflict resolution between my kids. This should serve them well later in life. I am also one for finishing my morning cup of coffee before speaking. Most of the time they figure it out on their own. When this particular instance happened in my home Kid 3 hit Kid 1 who said "Ow!" and then started giggling hysterically in what became an epic lightsaber battle that I actually did have to intervene in to explain that "No, lightsabers are not actually for hitting people. Just smack them together at least. Or at the very least not in the face." Today the lightsabers are broken. Like into multiple pieces. I call that a self-correcting problem.

May the force be with you.

How to Keep Your Toddler Hydrated

 

The Earbug

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