MommyBlog

No, not the Abba song, but my little Kenny.   Today he went from vaguely not feeling well to a trip to the doctor’s and a diagnosis of pink eye and an ear infection.   My poor sweetest little guy!

We were in the waiting room at the doctor’s office for more than an hour, then stuck in traffic on the way to the pharmacy for nearly forty-five minutes.   Then once at the pharmacy, in line for another twenty minutes, only to get up to the counter and find that they never filled the prescription that the doctor called in.   All through it, Kenny was the most patient, joyful little munchkin you could imagine.

Did I mention that we left our house at 8 am today because they started the demo on the bathroom and guestroom (and Kenny’s room) downstairs?   We spent the day at my mom’s and arrived home way after Kenny’s normal bedtime to find the entire contents of the bathroom in the floor of Kenny’s room, and a stripped pit where the bathroom used to be.   Not the most relaxing homecoming.   Tomorrow will be more of the same as far as noisy construction; so frustrating when what Kenny needs the most is a quiet day at home, and yet we can’t stay here and will have to pile into the car and go somewhere safer!

And did I mention that I had to take Dudley with us this morning, and not only was he a Super Trooper Dog, but he was stuck in the car through all the doctor’s office madness, traffic, pharmacy gaffes and drive home with nary a pee-break.   And not a peep, not a whine, only grateful and gleeful whizzing once we finally got home.

It took a while for Kenny to go to bed once we got him feed and  into his pjs.   Then he was up a mere  hour later for some more rocking and cuddling.   It hurts me so to see him feeling so obviously awful and yet still being his naturally joyous self.   What a lesson to learn!!   He is a much better patient than I.   He is now finally  sleeping in a tiny ball with his spider arms wrapped around his stuffed lamb, Baa.   Dudley is passed out, buried beneath the pillows on my bed, snoring and running in his sleep.

Sleep well, little guys…   tomorrow will be a better day…  

It’s hard to explain to a one-year-old where all the people that he said goodnight to for the past week have gone.   For the third night in a row,  Kenny asked several times for “Papa” and “Ra-ran” (Ryan) and it’s not too much of a stretch to hear the names of the other family members in his slurred toddler speach.   I responded to each with, “He’s home in his house going nigh-night.”   Kenny seemed to accept that all right, but asked a few extra times to be sure.

Come to think of it, explaining just about anything to a one-year-old is like signing up to teach ping pong to a penguin.   Last night, when Kenny threw a cracker at me (which was obviously not what he was asking me for when he was yelling, “CarCar!”), I started in on an  emphatic speech  about not throwing crackers, not wasting food, how was I supposed to understand what he wanted when he whined and threw things, etc.   Casey, who was standing a few feet away, said quietly, “He’s one.”

Yeah, I knew that.

So I sat Kenny down in his highchair, opened some YoBaby yogurt, and touched his little face and told him that I was sorry for getting frustrated with him.   He happily ate all his peach yogurt and cheerfully repeated “Dodurt!” understanding that “CarCar” means cracker, and not just the universal, “Food now, please, oh most wonderful Mommy!”  

He says many food-related words fairly well now: waffle, nana (banana), ap-plee (apple), carcar (cracker), peezah (pizza), pah-ta (pasta), tip (dip, meaning humus), cuk-key (cookie), and the funniest, “Dost!” (toast).     He will also say, “nack?” when he wants a snack.

It’s so hard, though, to be able to give him most anything he wants in many ways ~ snacks and books to read and games to play ~ and yet be unable to conjure up the family members he wants so sweetly to say goodnight to.   It’s one thing  to say NO when he wants to play inside the refrigerator or brush Dudley’s teeth, but quite another to deny him a night-night kiss from the people he loves.

My good friend Kimberly and her kids stayed at our house while we were in Florida over Thanksgiving week.   Today, I finally caught up with her on the phone to see how things went.

Turns out Dudley was a Rascal.

 

Big surprise, right?   But the truth is, aside from Alicia over at My Dog Owns Me, no one (but another owner of a weimaraner) can understand the full meaning implied by the word, “rascal.”   Dudley was up to his usual shenanigans, which I was not surprised to hear.   But poor Kimberly and her kids were quite unaccustomed to a canine who is taller than the dinner table and can easily eat all the food off all the plates in the time between setting the table and calling the kids to sit down.   He eats sticks of butter left unattended.   He eats cakes out of the oven.   He will grab a verbotten toy and trot by you with a flitatious gait while you are changing a baby’s diaper and unable to chase him.   He will rearrange the pillows on the couch and bury a bone in the crevice while you are trying to make dinner.   He will defend his food from other dogs, children and crickets with the utmost intensity.   He will sleep on your lap, on your feet or on your head if you let him.   He will bury his nose in your crotch when you have an armload of groceries and can’t defend yourself.   He will bark at the door for hours, not because he wants to go out, but because he wants you to go out with him.   He will drink out of the baby bathtub if you forget to drain it right away.   He will make himself a bacon and egg breakfast when no one is home and use the last of the eggs without writing it down on the grocery list.   Ok, that last one was made up.

In Kim’s words, “He’s as much work as a toddler.   I really feel for you.”

Ah, Dudley.   Today he was the perfect dog.   Obedient, calm, appropriately loving and gentle.   I think he’s afraid we’re going to find out what he was up to while we were away.   Little does he know that the tattle has already been told.

***  

And just for fun, here  is one of  my favorite  shots of Kenny and me from Florida…

 

We arrived home this afternoon from Florida, exhausted and full of fun memories.   The above picture is from yesterday morning, on Siesta Key beach.   The whole family got decked out in our beige and white and prepared for a fantastic family shot amidst the palm trees, white  sugar sand  and blue skies.   Unfortunately, the family friend who arrived to take the shot was not only not a photograhper, but he opened up the photo shoot by quipping, “I’m no photographer.   I sometimes have trouble getting all the bodies in.”   hm.

But we have some great shots of small groups of us, taken by each other after the volunteer snapshoot enthusiast left…

 

                               

Other than  the family picture taking marathon, the week was full of fun, food, games and a surprising cold snap that kept us away from the beach, but still couldn’t stop the good time.     One of my favorite parts of the week was watching Kenny an his big cousin Ryan (age 7) become buddies.   Kenny was mesmerized by Ryan when we went up to visit them in Boston back in August, but this time he was actually able to “keep up” a little: running around the golf course in Gramma’s back yard, learning ping pong and t-ball, reading and playing Rummykube, and lots of hugs and sqeezes.

                       

Tonight when we put Kenny to bed, he popped his head up as we were saying our “Nigh,  nights” and suddenly said, “Ra-ra?”   That’s what he called Ryan all week.   When we explained that he was at his house, he said his name a few more times, and then seemed to accept the fact that Ryan wasn’t able to come give him a goodnight hug.

It will take me a few days to continue to recap the rest of the  highlights from this wonderful week, so keep reading!  

Just to note that Kenny and Casey and I have ventured down to Gramma and Papa’s house in sunny Florida for the week.

I will not have the chance to write as much as I thought, so please stay tuned.   We’ll be back in full MommyBlog mode after Thanksgiving!

Count it all joy…

Kristjana and Kenny

Today my Mommy came over to help out a little with watching Kenny, while all the construction workers were here, so that I could take care of a little housekeeping.   As her assistant, she brought four and a half year-old Kaitie with her,  my sweet and  creative niece.

It was a circus to be sure.   For awhile there, we not only had the usual suspects (Kenny, Dudley and me), but Kaitie and my Mom, two electricians, a carpenter and my friend Kim, along with her one-year-old and four-year-old, to go over things in the house in preparation for her housesitting adventure here next week.   At one point, the lead electrician Donny looked at me and said, “This couldn’t get much crazier, could it?” and looked out at a sea of chaos, with Dudley leading the fray.   But things eventually quieted down mid-afternoon when the number of people in the house decreased by half and the electrcians finished up.   Kaitie and Kenny retired to his room to relax, and when I  peeked in, I saw this:

Moments later, Kenny brought his book out to my Mom to read to him, and Kaitie stayed behind to play alone in Kenny’s room.   Although, “played” is perhaps a generous term.   After everyone had left, I walked into Kenny’s room  to pick up all the toys and was overwhelmed with the aroma of coffee.   Coffee?   Turns out, I had left my half-full morning coffee cup on the bookshelf, too high for Kenny to reach, but not for Kaitie.   She had “borrowed” the feather duster at one point in the afternoon, telling me that there was some dust in Kenny’s room.   I gladly handed it over, figuring that at least some portion of the room might get dusted, never dreaming of what she would do.   She found the coffee cup, and carefully dipping the feather duster into the cafe au lait, “dusted” the walls, the bookshelf and most of the toys.   Several hours later, the sticky brown liquid was firmly congealed to everything.

Kenny thoroughly enjoyed all the excitement of the day.   He didn’t bother to nap (but that’s not news), and instead fell asleep at 4:45 in his highchair with one hand still stuffing macaroni and marinara into his mouth.   I gently cleaned him off and picked him up, at which time he woke up and  started pointing at the stairs and crying, “Nigh, Nigh!”   I literally took off his clothes as we walked to his room, and put on his PJs while holding him.   He was asleep before the clock struck five.

The wild events of the day wore my other little guy out too:

 

Today Kenny and I went shopping for a bathtub.   And a toilet, a shower and all of the accompanying faucets and drains.

We found ourselves in a high-end showroom, surrounded with luxuriously deep whirlpool tubs and multi-jetted spa showers.   As Kenny had been in the car for a toddler eternity (45 minutes), and due to the fact we were the only customers there, I set him down and let him run around while we waited for a salesman.   He so wanted to climb into the bathtubs!   He ran over to each one, looked up at me with a wild and euphorically hopeful grin and started cawing, “BA! BA!”   (You have to understand that baths are one of his favorite activities of the day.)   It was very hard to explain why we couldn’t jump on in.   Thank goodness he doesn’t know how to take his clothes off yet.

Our eager young salesman came over to greet me, then seeing Kenny, by now playing peek-a-boo from behind a state-of-the-art Kohler toilet that looked like an ottoman (and a three thousand dollar price tag), turned a little pale.   I got to the point, “I have to buy a bathtub, a shower, a sink, a toilet and everything that goes with it, and my dog is in the car, my little boy is hungry.   Let’s get busy!”   He was just starting to say, “Yes, M’am” when a loud and emphatic grunt broke through the quiet of the showroom.   Yes, Kenny was squatting, next to the state-of-the-art toilet and filling his Huggies to capacity.   I decided to ignore the obvious, and kept talking to the salesman, who was by now becoming woefully aware of the smell coming from this adorable little kid.   “Um, do you need to change him?” he asked.   “Do you have a changing table in here?”  I countered.   “Um.   No.”  he said, looking confused.   “Then he’s fine,” said I, and walked over to the ottoman-styled toilet and scooped up Kenny.   “Let’s get to work.”

An hour later, everything was selected and Kenny had learned how to work all of the (thankfully disconnected) bathtub faucets.   I shook our salesman’s hand, and departed to the parking lot where I actually changed Kenny in the front seat of the 4-Runner, with Dudley whining from the back, no doubt having to do some business of his own.     Once Kenny was somewhat cleaned up (I also discovered at this point that I had no wipes with us, and had to use some napkins I found in the glovebox instead) I buckled him in and took Dudley out on a leash to sniff through the pitifully tiny patch of grass in the showroom parking lot.    He looked up at me  as if  to say, “You want  me to pee here?” and hopped back into the car.

A successful trip, all in all.

Home Depot.   Again.   Kenny was such a trooper.   But we got the stuff we needed (most of it, anyway) and our little renovation project is back on schedule.   As in, the schedule that we made today, after the schedule that said we should be done already was thrown out the window.   After the window that we have been waiting three weeks for arrived today and turned out to be the wrong one.   After the flooring we thought we had enough of turns out to be a few square feet short.

I am never renovating anything again.

Tomorrow, my sweet little boy and I have to go to a plumbing supply company to buy a bathtub.   I haven’t told Kenny yet, because I’m in denial, and because  I don’t want him to start having nightmares about home improvement warehouse supply stores.

In other news, I think it’s safe to say that the weaning is nearly done.   Kenny still asked for milk a couple of times today, but today was the first day that I really had none left.   He was frustrated, but kindly suggested,  “Waffle?” and after the eggo was neatly toasted, soon forgot about the missing milk.   But my triumph is taking a depressing turn.

I need to put in a disclaimer here about what I am about to write: my apologies to any men reading this, but I gotta  be honest to the Mommies…  

I had this wild delusion that my nursing… um…  “assets” would somehow stick around a little longer.   I  have always been  on the  stick-figiure side, and I have to admit that I’ve taken for granted the C-cup glory of the last  fourteen  months.   Today, for the first time since my third trimester, I had to dig out the old “Nearly A’s” that were optomistically stuffed into the back of the drawer.   (Thank goodness I didn’t throw then away!   I guess I wasn’t that optomistic….)     That’s right.   The milk is gone and the cupboard is bare.  

sigh.

 

I hate having to make decisions that force me to weigh the good of one over the good of another.   I am supposed to attend a meeting tonight for MOPS (I am on the steering team), and as Casey is working late, I was planning on taking Kenny over to my parent’s house for the night so that they could watch him and I could go out.

Unfortunately, we are doing a minor renovation to the house, and wouldn’t you know it, not only to I have to go to Home Depot for the SECOND time today (the one that’s 30 minutes away, instead of the one that’s fifteen minutes away) to buy the tile they need for tomorrow morning, but  tomorrow is the day that they are disconnecting the washer and dryer for the next three weeks.   I don’t know about you other Mommies out there, but I do about five loads a week.   This is broaching on catastrophic.   What do three weeks of undone laundry look like?   What do three weeks of undone laundry smell like?  

So I’ve decided that I need to stay home tonight for a variety of reasons:  to wash everything in the house that might need a trip through the washer and dryer, because I’m about to put Kenny (who actually just went down for a nap, no doubt because of the angst of our first trip to Home Depot where we stood in line for twenty minutes to return a vanity that their computer said we never bought, and then endure the questioning as to whether or not is was actually shop-lifted… yeah, I walk out of stores everyday with seventy pound boxes of bathroom appliances… then through the ordeal of buying another one) in the car AGAIN for an hour roundtrip to Home Depot for the tile (not to mention the time we will then spend in Home Depot, otherwise known as The Place Where Time Died), because Dudley still hasn’t gotten a walk today, which means I’m going to  have to put a post-nap toddler into rain gear and buddle him into the stroller for as long as we all can stand so that Dudley’s little canine brain doesn’t explode from a build-up of suppressed energy, and because my parents live forty-five minutes away and that’s another car trip for  the already car-sick  Kenny and the Mama.  

But:  staying at home tonight means that I will miss the meeting I’ve committed to, and miss the post meeting Girls Night Out that I so desperately need.   Staying home tonight means that I’m disappointing my sister, who is the coordinator of our MOPS chapter and the organizer of the meeting.   And finally, staying at home tonight means that I will need to swing by the grocery store on our way home from Home Depot, because we have no food in the house after having a college kid stay here to watch Dudley this past weekend, and I need something to feed my poor boy for dinner.

Did I mention that it’s raining?   Did I mention that there are workmen in the house, dismantaling the offending laundry room, with loud and dangerous tools, which we should really go someplace else to avoid?   And that going out to my parent’s house right now would really be the safest thing to do?  

What a crummy example of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Situations are so unfairly presented sometimes.   The choice I am making to stay here is not the best, and yet the alternative leaves my house in a lurch and my child in the car way too long.   If only Mary Poppins could show up and babysit and do laundry tonight.   Hm.

At least my angel is taking a rare nap, and I am freed up for the moment to express myself.   Too bad I can’t be using this “free time” to catch up on some laundry.

 

PS – Three hours after that post, and still no trip to the Home Depot or the grocery store.. by the time Kenny awoke from his beauty sleep, it was snack time.   Sometime during that snack preparation, he reached over my shoulder and pulled down a half-full coffee pot all over us, the counter and the floor.   After that was cleaned, it was Poopie Diaper Time.   After that was cleaned, it was Dudley Walk Time, which lasted for about eight minutes, as the rain was just too much.  

When we got back home, Kenny turned into the little girl from The Exorcist.   I made the mistake of giving him a chocolate chip cookie, and from then on it’s been more than a little bit of Whine-Tantrum-Scream City.   And for dinner, he’s gone from being an “all I want is CRACKERS!” kid to “WAFFLE now or I will scream!” little monster.   I’ve toasted seven, that’s right SEVEN, waffles for him today (at least three were whole wheat!) and he’s eaten most of them (except the three halves he handed over to Dudley and the two halves I ate) along with mountains of cheese, bananas, apples and cereal.   Now we really have no food in the house.   Looks like an early morning tomorrow (after my late night laundry date) to go to Home Depot and Safeway before the guys come back to work again.   Grr.

Casey and Kenny and I were off again this past weekend for another conference, this time for The Clapham Institute.   We decided, after last weekend’s debacle of me missing all of the events, that Casey would go on Friday for the first half, and Kenny and I would join him on Saturday at lunch, when my Mom, who was attending as a guest with my Dad, would watch Kenny for the evening so that I could attend the final lectures and dinner.  

There’s a really funny story about the drive Kenny and I experienced out to the retreat location, but I’ll need to recount it later, as not enough time has passed to make me see the humor in it.   (In a nutshell, there are two Inns with the same name on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, about two hours away from each other… I  showed up  right on time  to the wrong one.   Ha Ha.)

But the part of the weekend that I did manage to be present for was really fantastic.   Critical thinking and conversations are something that I love to take part in, yet don’t get to do as often as I’d like.   No matter how I try, all of the Mommy conversations always seem to revert back to diapers, diets and milestones.   But every minute of the twenty or so hours I was there was packed with converstations that stretched my brain, kindled my imagination and jolted me into paying attention so that I could participate coherantly.   It was definitely not a weekend to check my brains at the door.

And oh how I needed that!!   It reminded me that I can be quite inclined to critical thinking, I only need the discipline to practice it.

Kenny was a dream kid throughout the trip.   He is such a blessing, such a joy.   On our drive home, we somehow mis-timed lunch and he started to ask for everything he could pronounce… crackers, waffles, apples, and juice.   As I had nothing in the car but a bag of trail mix, we pulled off at a McDonalds and shared a sandwich.   There is something so uniquely charming about Kenny whenever we are in a public place to eat, just he and I.   He seems to know that it’s something a little different, even a little special, and we sit close and keep our heads together, smiling and giggling.   He was a tough cookie when we got home, though.   All the travel and a not great night of sleep caught up to him.   He’s just a little guy, after all.

Days like this, from the conference to the drive home to the afternoon challenges, make me want to be not just a better Mom, but a better woman.   It makes me want to work harder and be more patient and cherish every moment.   How did I come to be so blessed with this precious boy?   Works alone could never make me deserving of all that I have; all I can do it be grateful to my Creator and strive each day to be the woman He created me to be.