Does size really matter?

My son is so competitive it drives me crazy. We can’t play games at all, ever. He melts down and the afternoon is ruined. I have tried a lot of creative things to handle this. I started with the Yo Gabba Gabba song, “Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose.” He looked at me and said, “I don’t know it.” Then I thought we would role play “losing” and saying congratulations to the stuffed animals. He threw them across the room. I don’t know how long this phase is going to last. I even tried the “When we compete we don’t complete” line I heard on Dharma and Greg. I gave up. We just can’t pick plastic cherries off a cardboard tree right now.

I decided that this was a male thing because Frances hadn’t done this. I was grateful that women didn’t act that way. We love each other, we support each other. No one would ever cry and pout forever over having to slide down a chute instead of going up a ladder-right? Right? Who is with me girls??????

Anyone who says “Heck yeah!” has not been pregnant and given birth lately.

How you give birth has become our pissing contest. It is our version of “size ” if you know what I mean. You see a woman with a baby snug in a sling around her front or you see her with a sweet little baby in the car seat carrier being pushed in a stroller and you wonder. You wonder if she gave birth in a tub of water while her closest friends danced outside in the moonlight. You wonder if she scheduled a c-section and was able to get her hair done, her toes painted, and a good night sleep the night before. You wonder how long she held out at the hospital before she begged for an epidural. You wonder if it took less than five hours on a birthing ball. All of this from one sweet little baby….

At the time of this writing, I have four girlfriends who have successfully given birth at home. Hurray for them!

At the time of this writing, I can’t count all the other women.

Some did it the normal way without any pain medication-hurray for them!

Some did it the normal way with pain medication-hurray for them!

Some of them had c-sections-hurray for them!

Some of them had VBACS-hurray for them!

Some of them had repeat c-sections-hurray for them!

Maybe I’m being too much of a socialist for some of my friends, better knock it off, but remember what I told my son, when we compete we don’t complete.
What we need to do is share our own experiences, articles, and blog entries that were helpful to us. Then all the other women can take what we used and form their own opinions.

I’ll use myself and one dear friend quite different from myself as the examples. Yes, I have her permission.

I had three c-sections. My first child was breech. I did anything and everything I could do to get her to turn. I lay upside down, I played music and flashed lights in the direction I wanted her to go, I rocked out the pelvic tilts. You can ask my husband-I did it! Then we scheduled the external cephalic version-and she still wouldn’t budge. (BTW-I consider that morning to be my labor-another post another day.) I scheduled the c-section. With the next two babies, my husband and I decided that the repeat c-sections worked best for us-but I did let both babies go into labor, so I knew they were ready to arrive.

That is MY story. I personally did not pursue VBACS. But, if you are going to look at the pros/cons to VBAC or repeat, here were MY thoughts:
1) Are you going to have help with your older child or children? You can’t do anything else but take care of that baby for two weeks.
2) How many children do you want? If you want a big family, c-sections might not be the best thing for your uterus.

So, in case anyone was wondering about the “size” cough, cough, of my birth, that was it.

Now, I have a girlfriend with three children. Just like me, she had her girl first and her boys came later. She did it all at home. She trusted her body, lit the candles, pushed the munchkins out, and then ate mac and cheese in her own bed. Wowsa. If you asked her what she would do, she would give you a different story. Even with the breech babies-she knows competent professionals prepared to deliver butt first.

Which one of us is bigger? In my mind-we are the same size. You take my story, you take her story, you take hundreds of other stories, and then you write your own. Just make sure you educate yourself and always consider the sources. Most importantly, avoid the “haters.” There are people out there that are going to share their stories not to help you write your own, but to judge you and pressure you to do things you might not feel comfortable with. If you aren’t comfortable giving birth at home don’t do it. If you aren’t comfortable having your stomach cut open over and over again, don’t do it. Ignore the haters and trust yourself to make the right choices FOR YOU.

The bottom line is there are lots of ways to give birth and while all ways are rewarding miracles, none of them are completely pleasant. Twilighters? Think about Bella’s pregnancy in the first half of Breaking Dawn. I have said it before, Meyer is the ultimate “Mommy blogger.” You can read that book like one big tribute to motherhood. Pregnancy can suck, other women love and hate you for it, and your worst enemy can have your back while the men sit around dumb founded and yell at each other. Brilliant when you think about it. I am thrilled no vampire ever got ME pregnant…

None of it, and I mean none of it, is going to matter when that angel that you snuggle up close to or drag around in the car seat has his/her first tantrum. “Oh Mommy! Did you labor for 48 hours in our living room until Daddy finally caught my head with his own bare hands? Let me quit coloring on the walls right now!” If your child does that give him/her a gold star from me.

Please stop wondering about my size -save that for the men.

Now I must go let my four year old kick my ass at UNO so he won’t cry later….

The Grocery Store Diaries 9

You've got your hands full: two
Dirty looks: five-we had a bad day
Damage control: We made it home without any broken jars or cracked eggs

You know how much I would enjoy being able to sit down and be pushed around a store? Just once, maybe I could climb into the race car and they could push me around like I pretended I could drive? Yeah right....

Anyway, we are now playing musical chairs and "hokey-pokey" with the grocery cart cars. The baby has discovered how much fun it is to drive instead of sit up front with mommy. Sometimes if I am shopping with just him, I grab a regular cart and throw him in it. Major oops. He screams bloody murder all around the store. People stare. They stare a lot. You can always be flippant and say, "What do I care what they think?" But you know that you do. You also know there are cameras everywhere filming you pushing a screaming child around the store. So it is a given that he will get one of the two steering wheels and the other two will have to fight it out for the other. That is when "musical seats" kicks in.

Today Kenneth got in next to his brother and Frances sat up front. Half away around the store she wants down. I tell her no and she screams yes and I keep thinking about those cameras and let her out. Then she tries to climb into the car with her brothers, who start yelling at her to get out. So now she is hanging off the side of the cart.

In the mean time, the boys are doing the "hokey-pokey" sticking their arms and legs every way they can in and out of the car. Lowell has perfected sneaking his little hand in between the silver bars for a grape. Kenneth will wait until we are in the most crowded aisle in the store, usually the most judgmental too, and put his head thru the front and scream "LOOK AT ME!" Apparently I don't give him enough attention for doing the right thing.

I feel like a skipping CD. "Put your arm in." "Put your leg in!" "Why is he crying?" "Don't pull things off the shelves." "Stay in the cart!" "I mean it this time! We will go home." This just makes people crack up as they walk by. Then sure enough, no matter how many times I say don't stick your hand out, someone gets a finger pinched, and then they are screaming again.

Now Kenneth is out of the car to "help" me and Frances is in the car to "help" Lowell. Neither of us need help from either of them. So I start snapping at Kenneth and Lowell starts screeching at Frances. One of these days I'm going to end up on an HBO episode of In Treatment.

Check out, sweet check out. How I love to check out. Today we got behind an older woman who had coupons and was paying in cash-which means she counted out her change in pennies. Sure enough, my mascot decided to pull all of the Suns off the magazine rack. I guess he wanted to read about how Aliens from Mars are secretly taking over the world.

Kenneth wants to help bag. Actually, he is quite good at it. He matches the boxes with boxes and the jars with jars and knows that cleaners should have their own bag. This takes longer than it would if the bagger and I just threw everything wherever. Before anyone emails me, I use plastic. I know, someday I will buy and bring my own canvas ones. Cut me some slack until then.

As we are walking back, all is well. I buckle all three of them in, start the car, get the DVD player going, and pull out of the parking spot.

With the cart still full of groceries behind me.

Enough said?

The best planned day.....

My husband is out of town, spring break for the kids is coming to an end, and the weather has decided not to cooperate. Last night I made a plan to have today go smoothly. I had even planned to write a kick ass blog entry. What is the saying about plans? No need to really remind me.

This was the schedule as I went to bed last night:

1. Work while sitter takes older kids to gymnastics and baby has early intervention therapy.
2. Mail off expense report with time at the library.
3. Home for a play date with one of my daughter's special friends.

This is what happened:

1. Sitter called from gymnastics and said "Open gym" was "Closed." PDD-NOS daughter is having meltdown in the parking lot because of this. They go to an in door playground instead, but daughter keeps telling sitter, "I want to do gymnastics. There is no room for gymnastics." Bummer for her.

2. Son comes home starving because the peanut butter had jelly on it and the goldfish crackers were pizza instead of plain. I thought only "only children" could be so freaking picky.

3. I am ready to take everyone to the post office for the expense report and then a quick trip to the library, and I can't find my car keys. Where the hell are my keys? Keys? I better find those keys. Like I said, my husband is out of town and if I can't take the kids anywhere this weekend Jack Nicholson will look like father of the year and you will see a blog post that says, "All work and no play make Pagie go crazy" over and over again. Maybe one or two blog posts that way...

4. Found the keys but had no time to go to the library. I promised them we could go tomorrow if they were good at the post office. Then I thought, why drive to the post office now? We can do it all at once tomorrow.

5. The little girl never shows up for the play date. I call her mom who didn't get my email with directions to our house. She IS coming tomorrow, but still, tell my child her plan has changed AGAIN. She had already laid out all the dress up princess clothes and printed out the Disney Princess coloring sheets. It wasn't fun this afternoon.

So out of three plans made, none of it came to pass-even though they did have fun at the indoor playground. That is why in the north, we say "It is what it is," and THEN you don't have a southern girl hissy fit if it isn't exactly like your check list.

On a positive note, I did get all of my school work done, caught up the laundry, and made a wonderful dinner that involved no microwaving. The kids ate it too!

Did this blog post kick ass? Not sure, but I'm sure someone somewhere can relate.

The ability to read is the first thing to go

I have always been an avid reader. When a book attracts my attention, I devour it and I can’t do anything else until it is done. The most embarrassing example of this would be Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour with Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone in second place. When I worked in public schools, I had audio books for the car. I almost wrecked twice during action packed scenes and lights turning from yellow to red. I hope Kevin isn’t reading this one…

When Harry Potter six and seven were released there was no way I would be able to give Harry the attention he deserved with little ones in the house. Therefore, I did what a normal mom would do. I sent the kids to grandma’s house for the weekend. You can judge all you want, but I got my books read. Now that I live in the wonderful northeast, I don’t have the luxury of grandparents down the road to keep my kids so I can read.

A new book just came out by the Young Adult novelist Natasha Friend. I have been looking forward to it, mostly because I have yet to read a YA novel with a northern setting instead of a southern one. I tried to start it the other day with all three kids around. Yep-read with three kids. That is what I just wrote.

This is what happened:

“I am crouched behind a tower of Meow Mix in the pet-food aisle of Shop-Co, watching my mother hyperventilate….”

“MOM!!!!!!!”
High strung middle child with big ideas comes to me with a box, a magnifying glass, and his ant farm instructions: “Mom! Good, you aren’t busy. Let’s start my ant farm, you know, the one I got for my birthday in November, but guess what; there were no ants to collect in November. Why not start it today?"

Well the main characters are in the pet food aisle. Let’s go hunt for ants. We decide that the best way to trap them would be to place an apple slice outside. Gross, but happy is the four year old.

Back to my book!

An older man picks up a York Peppermint Patty and his wife screeches at him in public, “Put that back!” “No sweets!” The teenager laughs to herself that it is candy and not a crack pipe. Maybe crack would help me finally lose the last of my baby weight….

Speaking of the baby, my third child/toddler /mascot is in full swing with his early interventions. He comes running through the kitchen with a toy car he is pushing on the floor saying, “Ready! Set! Go!” over and over again as he pushes it and laughs. Then I noticed his face is red. He has been helping himself to his sister’s ketchup, but I don’t think he had anything to put it on. Book is down, paper towel is up.

Dishes are done, faces are wiped, and I’m going to try again.

The main character’s mother is two years younger than I am (and I’m not old compared to other Connecticut mothers). When she gets depressed, she pulls out her Beverly Hills 90210 VHS tapes and eats popcorn. Oh hell yes! This is awesome!!!!

My only daughter decides now she wants to care about fashion and her Kindergarten social life. “Mom!! Will you fix my hair-what are you reading?” Then it hits me she will be a teenager one day, but I will be really old and not cool like this lady. She doesn’t notice my pathetic attempts at math in my head.

“If you aren’t doing anything, I need my red shoes and the cape-I want to play Snow White. Hey- where is the play date book? I want a play date with Buffy, Muffy, and Bitsy… can you check Facebook and see if their mommies are there?” How does she know this stuff?

I handle my diva’s princess crisis and go back to my book. I read Stephen King’s The Stand in a weekend. I will confess to Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas in one afternoon. I really am enjoying For Keeps, it is fun and readable. I looked down at the page number.

I was still on page 19. That was it. I had not broken 20 pages in two hours. I once was teased in the third grade because it took me a week to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but it took the gifted kids less than two days. This was not going to happen to me again.

I huddled the kids up on the couch and gave them a talk:

"Now listen you three, I know for a fact that a mother of three wrote this book and if she can write it with three kids, then I can read it."

This speech was returned with blank stares and their own agendas, big surprise.

Frances: Can we order pizza?
Kenneth: Order Pizza?-“Billy’s” mommy makes it, they don’t order it.
Frances: You better sweep the cheerios up before Dad gets home.
Lowell: Cookie! Water! Yes! Please…ready set go…..
I gave up. OK Tash, I’ll get to you later….

(LATER)

Everyone is in bed…Ah, I can curl up and embrace my inner teenage self just like I promised I would.

Then I remembered I was married.

“Hey honey? Honey? Where are you? What are you doing?”

I have every intention of writing a wonderful book review on this blog eventually. But you know what? To do that, I have to read the freaking book. I’ll try again tomorrow…..

Hoarding????

My husband and I don’t go out much. Blame it on what you will: little kids, a bad economy, not many choices on the shoreline, but we tend to stay home and watch movies. There weren’t many movie choices on Easter eve. I turned my attention toward the premium channels and shows we had never seen. There it was under A&E: Hoarders. Hmmmm –this might not be a good idea. We couldn’t resist, we had to watch and see what was going to happen.

My husband is a neat freak. He comes from a family of neat freaks. I don’t think I am a neat freak until I get around people that aren’t us and then I realize that I am neater than I ever was fifteen years ago. The show follows two people with this hoarding problem and how they try to get help. Before I hit “Play” on demand, I giggled to myself that I have hoarding tendencies-but I was wrong. These people don’t just have spoiled kids with a playroom that could keep an empty preschool happy for years. These people don’t just have bookshelves and bookshelves of books because they were raised by a college professor and a lawyer. These people refuse to throw away tax book guides from 1988 and have skunks running around the basements. Yes, I said skunks. I could not believe what I was watching-my books and my children’s toys were nothing. The next day was Easter, and after a wonderful sermon on rebirth and starting over-we purged our already clean house just to make sure we weren’t “hoarders.” Of course, hoarding might be relative. I'm sure someone with the opposite problem of O.C.D.thinks the house is a mess if there is one dish in the sink.

I am not a psychologist, and I don’t know what I’m talking about, hence the title “Quack” in my blog. BUT I think something is going on with these people that they aren’t showing us in the editing process. We watched three episodes, and all three times when the professional cleaners were called in with the dumpsters, they flashed their faces like they were trying very hard not to crack up. One of them politely said, “M’am, a rat chewed through this shoe,” and she still wouldn’t let him toss it. It took another woman four hours to look at one box and she started screaming for them to find something she had to have that minute. Does this happen in any other country? Seriously?

I did notice that when it was time to throw something away the hoarder always had a reason and a story behind why they should keep it. Now, don’t go off on me, but that was pretty cool. I could tell/make up a story about any object in my house too, and I’m going to start writing them down.

Here we go:

“No! No! Don’t throw away the Snoopy glue stick-when I was in Kindergarten, I begged my mom for a Snoopy lunchbox and we finally found one and I have to have that glue stick because of Snoopy, even if it is used up.”

Or this:

“No, I must keep my 2007 Wonders of the World wall calendar because some day I’m going to visit all of them and then I’ll need to make a special scrapbook for the kids and I’ll want to cut those pictures out of that calendar.”

I’ll stop with the stories-but now I have good places to get material from.

I think that this hoarding might be like my memory. I don’t need things because I remember it all anyway. I also have a European attitude in the sense that I would take time with friends over having things any time when given the choice. Some people must need to have the physical presence instead of the mental one. I hoard a lot of memories…

We have to remember when we watch these shows that these are real people suffering from a real problem. The point is that they are trying to get help in addition to entertaining us in a bad economy. If one person watches this show and decides, "hey, that is me-I need help," then the show has done it's job. I definitely look at some of my daughter's autism tendencies a little differently now. If she has a Mickey, she needs a Minnie. Then we need to add Donald, Daisy, and the rest of the gang as well. The next thing you know the toys have piled up and she has moved on to another show. When we see it early, we can help it quicker. On the flip side, when you go on television or the internet, you give people the opportunity to judge and poke fun. I'm a victim of it too, but it doesn't slow me down. It's life.

A few more tips if you don’t want to be like these people:

1) Pick a day to “purge.” Make it monthly, annually-whatever. Neighborhoods have tag sales and Goodwills have donation places. Then you don’t have to feel guilty if you just toss it. (One more little disclaimer-if it is trashed, throw it out. Be respectful of donation centers and what people would want to buy or re-use.)
2) Subway kid meals come in really cute reusable bags. We fill them with markers and little toys. Great for organization and if it gets ripped, no big deal-just don’t hoard them.
3) We print out pictures and labels that the kids color and cut out and then tape to the bins that toys should go in. This takes all kinds of time and keeps everyone busy for hours…
4) Take care of the toys and things that you have-then you buy less.
5) Keep a notebook and jot down the stories as you clean!
6) Don’t be afraid to tell the kids “No!” or “You can’t have that many toys, spiders and skunks could hide in them.” LOL that was funny……

Now the only place in the house that looks like a “Hoarders” episode is the attic, but I’ll take care of it soon enough. Must get a special notebook for the occasion and make sure we can name the skunk something other than Flower….

God Bless.....

1. Other moms-whatever their personal style or belief.
2. Libraries and playgrounds
3. 1$ bins full of chalk and bubbles
4. batteries, batteries, and more batteries
5. Early Intervention!

Happy Easter and Spring Breaks to all-will write more when all is calm. LOL.....