5 posts tagged “motherhood”

I love the smell of fall. Woodsmoke, moldy leaves, wet earth...the perfume of heaven. I love the nip in the air - just the slightest bite - and drizzly rain.  I love putting the down comforter on the bed and leaving the windows open at night, snuggling and cuddling under the covers in a chilly room. Sunday morning rain is falling...steal some covers, share some skin. I love watching Walker build a fire in the fireplace so we can all spend the day in the room that has no TV, watching the flames jump and listening to the wood pop and hiss. I love to see the leaves turn, especially the huge old oak trees that turn flaming orange like their tops are on fire. I love pumpkins and gourds, and hay bales, and scarecrows and turkeys.

It reminds me of childhood - the first day of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. All the things little kids love, the holidays of childhood, free of acrimony and full of wonderful, almost magical, surprises. Mom cooking all your favorite things for Thanksgiving dinner. Dragging out the Christmas decorations after the Thanksgiving dishes have been washed. Tiny white twinkle lights.

It reminds me of meeting my husband, and sneaking away from college to spend the weekend with him. His coat on my shoulders, road trips and hay bale surfing and long walks with your best college friend. Deep conversations, endless dreams, and youth in the season of aging.

Now, it's my turn to teach my kids to love this time of year. I get to make magical memories for them, pasted on a background of scarlet leaves and perfumed with the smell of autumn in the air. And I ask you a question: what season wallpapers your fondest memories?

The other day I was putting some snapshots into the 'media storage boxes' that I resorted to using a few years back (when I finally admitted to myself that I was never going to get all my pictures neatly lined up and labeled in cute photo albums - who the hell has time for that?). Anyway, I came across a picture that took me back to the days when I had a pair of four-year-olds and a two-year-old who was a handful by himself (can anyone say "crazy lady"?). And then I remembered a specific day that I really felt should be immortalized on the internet for all to read, and from which all mothers could learn. *Giggle* Ahem...

My sister-in-law says that there moments in every mother's life when she is confronted by a situation that makes her wish that she were somewhere - anywhere! - else, preferably not on this same planet. She also wishes fervently that some other person, preferably her husband, were responsible for dealing with the situation. Those are the moments when, upon walking into a room and looking around, the mother thinks to herself, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of sharing their home with a willful two year old is aware of the inherent potential for disaster, and have at one time or another thought to themselves something akin to "Beam me up, Scottie!" For those of you who don't have your own toddler, you should borrow one from a close friend for a few days because words cannot even begin to prepare you. Have you ever had a bassett hound as a pet? They are difficult to train, willful, forgetful, and retaliatory in nature; actually, they're a lot like toddlers. In fact, I think that all high school graduates should receive a bassett hound pup with their diploma. If they manage to raise the pup without losing his/her mind, then they are issued a license to have children. If not...well, no license for you, Bub.

But I digress. Sometimes it seems like you couldn't keep a busy toddler from getting into things even if you tied him up, which - for the record - is illegal. We were having one of those days. C. (who was oh so very TWO at the time) had already dumped a brand new box of cereal in the middle of the living room floor. I was completely unaware that he had learned to open the pantry door. About the time that I got that mess all cleaned up, I realized that his older brother had neglected to close the bathroom door all the way. This resulted in an unfortunate incident involving a running water faucet, some toothpaste, some toilet paper, a cup, and the potty. Not a pretty sight. I was beginning to feel a trifle frazzled, so when my mother-in-law phoned, I was glad to sit down on the couch and talk to her for a minute. And I do mean, one minute.

I had hardly sat down when my daughter (who had just turned four) came running into the living room, yelling something at me that I couldn't quite understand. Those of you who have preschoolers know that children this age have no sense of personal boundaries. When our children are babies, every time they whimper or wiggle most of us drop what we're doing and redirect our attention to them. This leads them to grow up with the notion that they are the center of the universe: little gods with tunnel vision whose needs eclipse those of the lesser mortals around them. I had been trying, pretty much in vain, to teach them to say, "Excuse me, please," and wait patiently until I could give them my full attention. I had to give them credit, they were trying. But so far my attempts had resulted in them standing next to me and saying, "Excuse me, please," over and over and over, getting progressively louder and louder until I couldn't focus on what it is I was trying to do or who it was that I was trying to talk to. I must admit, I found this very annoying. Finally, though, what she was trying to tell me wormed its way into my consciousness and my blood ran cold.

"C. pooped and he took his diaper off and now he's naked." She pronounced the last word in true southern fashion so it came out 'nekkid'. "Aaannnd," my little drama queen continued, "he made a mess in K.'s room." At that very moment, the instant before my so very helpful toddler rounded the corner with baby poop smeared from his hips to his ankles, proudly carrying his diaper which he gleefully bestowed upon his stupefied mother - all I could think was, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

And that, my dear friends, is why birth control pills were invented.

If you can't write about your sex life when you're a faceless entity on the internet, when can you write about your sex life?

I'm going to take the leap.

We have three kids, right? So, our sex life should be non-existant, right? Well, normally it's not, but lately it has been. I don't know why, maybe it's because we're tired. Maybe it's because I've been sick with some sort of chest crud. Maybe it's because - having PCOS - I've had my first period in, oh, about 6 months. Maybe it's because the Lexapro I've been taking to thwart the crazies has affected my sex drive. Whatever the reason, yesterday morning I guess the planets were aligned, the cosmos was singing, and we were both home and we both felt like having sex.

The boys were awake, but they had had breakfast and were playing and watching TV in back of the house. D. was spending the night with Gran. So, I get up, lock the bedroom door, and we snuggle quietly under the sheets. Right about the time that things start getting interesting, Walker's phone rings. He's the boss so he has to answer, but I really feel like chunking the thing right out the window. This is not the first time that this has happened. He finishes the call, and things start getting interesting again, when the cat jumps up in the middle of the bed. Walker hates the cat. So, I get up and throw the cat out in the hall and re-lock the bedroom door.

Things start getting interesting again, when we hear it:

bang, BANG, BANG on the bedroom door.

"Mommy, K. won't let me up on his bed!"

"Mommy, where are you?"

BANG, BANG, BANG!

"Mommy!"

I give up.

Sooo, yesterday was my husband's 31st birthday. Happy Birthday, Dear. I asked the kids if they wanted to cook for Daddy or take him out to dinner. My little restaurant-addicts promptly replied, "Westauwant, westauwant, westauwant, Mommy!!!" at the tops of their little lungs while jumping enthusiastically up and down. Westauwant, it was.

My kids' current favorites are Chili's and The Olive Garden. Daddy is sick unto death of both. Daddy probably deserved a big, fat, juicy steak, but the idea of wrestling with the children at some fancy steakhouse was just not appealing to me (anybody else understand my reluctance?). So there's this Mexican food place that all of my local friends have been raving about, and I thought that would be a great compromise - Daddy loooves Mexican food, and so do the kids.

In hindsight, we should have gone to the danged steakhouse.

We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when disaster struck, in the form of the natural disaster that is our youngest son. Daddy had opened all of his birthday cards, we had ordered our supper, and we were drinking our tea and eating chips and salsa (you guessed it - we're from Texas!), when our four-year-old  fell out of his chair.

Here's the "Bad Mommy" moment: I snickered. At my own child. Unforgiveable, I know. In my defense, the first few times that my son fell out of his chair while wiggling around at the dinner table, I jumped up like a "Good Mommy" and scooped him up and checked for boo-boos and kissed all the ouchies. However, our little wiggle-worm manages to trip over his own feet, walk into a wall, or fall out of his chair at least twice a week. Natural consequences of doing ev-er-y-thing at 90 m.p.h. while paying not the slightest bit of attention to one's surroundings. I stopped snickering abruptly when my normally unflappable husband said, "No! He hit his head."

And boy, did he hit his head. On the concrete floor or the brick wall, we're not actually sure. So, as blood starts gushing out of our baby's head in the middle of a packed restaurant with tons of people trying to actually enjoy their suppers (salsa, anyone?), the manager non-chalantly strolls over in response to our son's shrieks and asks if he's going to be okay. Which, for those of us veterans of the food-service industry, translates directly into: "Could you please quiet your child, he's disrupting my patrons." I have to give Mr. Manager a little bit of credit, he scurried away for ice and a clean towel pretty quickly after he saw the blood. I've noticed blood has that effect on most people.

In the end, we decided that C. should probably be taken to the hospital. I volunteered to take him and let his Daddy and siblings eat their supper. We hadn't been at the E.R. for an hour when the three of them came in - the big kids refused to go home until they were sure that their brother was okay. My charming four-year-old held court in the emergency department like Liberace in Las Vegas. At one point, he had roped in the mother of another casualty, a clerk from the hospital, a nurse, and a paramedic. The highlight of the night's entertainment came when he announced to his audience, "I'm four, and I go to school at St. Paul's, and don't I have big feet?" Talk about your non-sequiter.

So, my husband got to spend the evening of his 31st birthday in the emergency room, getting our four-year-old's head stitched up. One thing's for sure: it's not a birthday he'll be forgetting any time soon. I think C. really capped off the evening when he sang his dad "The Happy Birthday Song" ~ while he handed him the bill from the hospital.

Okay, I may not be an actual alcoholic yet, but I sense that the day is not too far in the future...for right now, chocolate is a viable and preferred alternative to alcohol. Oh, and Lexapro. And caffeine. And carbohydrates!

Sooo, I guess I should introduce myself.

I'm a wife, a mom, and a zookeeper ~ alright, so I'm really a stay-at-home mom. And I have come to the conclusion that children, not alcohol, kill brain cells. Loss of intelligence seems to be directly porportional to the number of births a mother has endured. I saw a coffee mug the other day that said, "Memory loss is contagious, I got it from my kids!" But I digress...

My name is Yvette, I have a husband of 8 1/2 years (and I swear I haven't made even one teensy, tiny attempt on his life in all that time) named Walker, who I still love and who still makes me laugh. And please, the "Walker, Texas Ranger" jokes are not original. We have three beautiful, healthy children with a total age span between the oldest and youngest of 34 months. There are 10 1/2 months between my son, K, and my daughter, D; there are 23 months between my daughter and my youngest son, C. Before you ask, yes, we know what causes it and we have a license to do it...yes, we did wait the 6 week post-partum moratorium on sex...and yes, we did finally get a TV for the bedroom. Oh, and yes, they do keep me terribly busy. They keep me running. For my life.

The children have managed to accumulate a small number of additional responsibilities for their tireless mother. We have an English Spaniel named Angel, a Siamese cat named Bella, and a white-faced cockatiel named Sam. And though Bella was supposed to have already been spayed when we got her from the Humane Society last year, we now have a six week old kitten named Ellie. We also have a time-share Jack Russell Terrier that spends part of the year in Alabama with my mother and part of the year here with us. The kids are currently begging for a chinchilla, some fish, another bird, and a pet snake, but I have to draw the line somewhere. We already have entirely too many links of the food chain represented in one household.

I have a slew of fantastic, patient friends that get me through my days. One of those friends, who shall remain nameless, has been encouraging me to write my own blog as a means to "vent". (Thanks, Amy! ;^) ) Then, my friend Mel finally roped me into it with an invitation and promise of getting to design my own page - finally, something I actually have control over! Because, of course, at home I have about as much control as a shepherd trying to herd cats.

Anyway, this is my blog. It probably won't be very funny, and it probably won't be very original, and it probably won't be very good, but it doesn't matter. Because when I feel like poking my fingers in my ears and yelling, "Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bahbahbah..." I will have a place to do just that.