Mom Talk

We went to Sears to have my girl’s 4-year pictures taken today. It went amazingly well, a far cry from her 2-year pictures when she spent most of the shoot with red eyes and it took a lot of coaxing to get her to detach from my leg and get onto the backdrop. I think she’s actually holding my chap stick on one of those pics because it was the only thing I could think of that would stop the screaming.

Today, it was so smooth. She did exactly what the photographer told her and posed amazingly well. The only small issue we had is her “cheesy” smile. We quickly learned not to tell her to smile or we got the scrunchy-eyed, teeth-baring look that almost made me laugh. Instead, I had to act like a goof-ball to get genuine smiles and laughter. All in all, it was pretty painless. . .that is, until I had to pull out my credit card and pay for it.

My daughter is always asking for something. What kid isn’t? She wants everything in the Toys R Us Christmas toy book. She wants a happy meal at McDonalds. You get the picture. Typical kid. Today she wanted to know why she wasn’t going to get to meet Bob and Larry at the Veggie Tales Live show we’re going to on Friday. I told her it is because it costs too much ($10 more than a regular ticket). She said that our friends who are going with us “have lots of money” and they can buy the other tickets. I told her that is not true (it really isn’t) and at that point realized that I have been taking the wrong approach to telling her when we can’t spend money on something.

My approach to this point has been telling her I don’t have the money. I realize now that she thinks if we have the money, we can spend it on whatever we want. My new approach is to tell her that I do have the money, but I don’t think xyz is the right thing to spend it on. We have to be careful with our money and spend it wisely. We’ll see if this changes her perspective. The conversation this morning ended with me telling her she should be thankful she gets to go see Veggie Tales at all.

I only work in the office 2 days per week, Monday and Wednesday. This week, management called a mandatory meeting on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. In order to make it work, I had to have my husband work from home so I can leave my daughter here. I also had to skip my exercise class because I wouldn’t have time to take it and make it to work by the meeting time (unless I went sweaty and in my workout clothes. I doubt that would be smiled on). I am, however, wearing jeans to the meeting. I have a very limited work wardrobe and an extra outfit is not in the cards. I guess if they don’t like it, I’ll hear about it. Overall, I’m annoyed by the inconvenience. They could have picked a day I’m already there or offered to let me participate via conference call. The real kicker is that this meeting is about nothing in particular. It’s just a “status” meeting to talk about various topics, most of which don’t even affect me. Okay, I’ll get out of rant mode now.

 Ever had to take a “mental health day” from work? I know this practice is largely frowned upon but to be fair, I didn’t call in sick. I called and said I was staying home today. After our very busy weekend, during which I failed to do laundry, I became completely exhausted. I was also out of underwear, which is no minor thing. So the girl and I stayed in today. We slept in until 9:00 a.m. Then had a leisurely day of working on college stuff, watching TV, playing together, napping and getting the aforementioned laundry caught up. Tomorrow is back to normal but I really needed this little day of catching up. Sometimes I think it’s necessary to recharge if you want to keep giving your best.

We had our annual day at the pumpkin patch today. We like Eckert’s Millstadt Fun Farm around here. They have kiddie rides, pony rides, camel rides, a petting farm and more! Today, we went with a group of families from church and we had a ton of fun. For me, it’s all about the country food (kettle corn and funnel cakes anyone?) For the kids, it’s all about the rides. My daughter left still asking to ride the “Big Apple” ride again (a bunch of giant apples you sit in and spin around). We got to pick our perfect pumpkin and ride on a trailer pulled behind a tractor to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch. All in all, it was an awesome day of family fun.

My sister and I went to visit our mom in the hospital today and left our kids at home with their respective daddies. When we got back to my sister’s apartment, we noticed that her 2-year-old son was not moving his right arm. It was just dangling uselessly at his side. Apparently, he’s been playing the “my chair!” game when people try to sit down and he dove underneath his dad as he was sitting down on the couch, causing daddy to sit on his elbow and hyper extend it. He was fine unless you tried to make him move his arm, then he got very fussy and wanted someone to “kiss it”.

There was some debate over whether he needed the ER and so I called a friend of mine who’s a nurse with a lot of experience in orthopedics and described the incident and his symptoms. She immediately called the injury “nursemaid’s elbow” and said it was basically a dislocation and he needed to have it reduced at the ER. We took him to the hospital and the nurse at the ER said she didn’t think it was nursemaid’s but they would do x-rays and have a doctor examine him. After 3 hours there and x-rays of his wrist and his elbow, the doctor came and said the x-rays were normal. She looked at his arm and said she thought it was nursemaid’s elbow (ahem, have I heard that somewhere before??). She told my sister she was going to make him cry a bit, then grabbed his arm and quickly popped it back in place. He did indeed cry for about a minute, then got a popsicle and began using his arm again! It was amazing. I called my nurse friend on the way home to tell her how smart she is.

A final note-if your child is ever diagnosed with this injury, it becomes more likely to happen again. They told us to make sure and tell anyone who’s playing with him until he’s about 4-years-old that they mustn’t pick him up by his arms or they will cause a recurrence.

So I wrote an essay for my college comp II class detailing the process of grief after my miscarriage in July. I turned it in a few weeks ago and just got a response back from my instructor. Here is what he wrote:

“Here is an essay with nary a misstep. I might add paragraphing here and an image there, but the crafting of this piece is superb. From title to end you smartly employ echo and scene to animate key points. You’ve used outside sources well, employing citation and commentary to take full advantage of the content. Most striking are your observations and insights—right up through the end.

If you have no objections, I’d like to add this piece as a model. Indeed, if you so desire, I’d like to help you publish this essay. It deserves a larger audience.

Form isn’t perfect, but it’s nearly so. Of all the errors here, wordiness should cause you the most concern. Don’t allow unnecessary words to clutter your ideas.”

So I’m completely flattered that my essay got such awesome comments but I’m not really sure what to do about publishing it. I don’t even know what that means when you’re talking about an essay. I was thinking about writing a book on the topic of grieving a miscarriage so maybe this is a good springboard. I guess for tonight, I’ll just bask in the glow of my teacher’s praise and not over think it. It goes against my nature but maybe I’ll try something new.

I set out to get my hair cut today. I switched to a new hairdresser several months ago. She’s a new friend who also happens to do hair and she offered to cut me a deal so I jumped in! I had never before had my hair professionally colored so the whole two-process foil thing was a real treat for me. This is the fourth time she’s cut my hair (third time for color) and last time I asked for something more drastic and didn’t really get it.

This time, I was in a hurry because my daughter had violin lessons at 4:00 p.m. My cut/color/brow appointment was at 2:00 p.m. so we were cutting it close anyway. She colored my hair (a lovely shade for fall, I love it!) and cut it and I dashed out the door, vowing to be back after lessons for the brows. As I looked at my hair in the rearview mirror (wow, that’s not safe) I realized that it looked the exact same as last time and I really wanted more layers on top and just a more drastic angle. As I sat through my daughter’s lesson I worked up the nerve to tell her so. It seems when the stylist is a friend, it’s even harder to tell them that your hair is not exactly what you wanted.

We returned to the salon and she did my eyebrows, rescuing me from animal control, and then I tenatively broached the subject of my hair. She was so nice about it! She said if I could wait about 20 minutes until after her next appointment, she would put in more layers and texture the top. She did that, then asked me what I thought and I said it still wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. She cut some more and finally it was perfect! In discussing all this, she and I discovered that the problem was two-fold. I have trouble translating what I see in my head into words. Also, the first time she cut my hair, I was very adamant about her not getting it too short so she was still a little gun-shy. All in all, I love my new do and she’s still my friend! We’ll call it a good day.

My daughter is horribly scared of any type of insect.  Unfortunately, we have a problem with one of the windows in her room-flies and ladybugs get in around it somehow.  The creatures then meet their demise on her windowsill.  As a result, there is sometimes an accumulation of little dead bodies on her windowsill.  Since it is behind her curtain, I rarely notice unless I am cleaning house.  One night this week, my husband decided to use the dust buster to clean the insect graveyard up and because my daughter was afraid, he left the appliance in her room, telling her it would scare the flies away from her bed. 

The next night, it was my turn to do bedtime.  As I was getting ready to leave her room, she asked me to vacuum the two or three flies in her windowsill (apparently she’s keeping track now).  I told her it would be okay but she became distressed and was going to cry (she said it was ugly and scary-go figure).  I ended up vacuuming them up and then she begged to keep the dust buster in her room again.  I was tired and not up for a reasoning match so I left it.  When it got downstairs, I told my husband he’d better consult me next time before establishing dust busting the window sills as part of the bedtime routine.  Grrr. . .

 My daughter is the queen of questions. I never understood why it bugged my mom so much when I asked her “why?” until now. I also never realized that there really is not an answer to that question every time.

Today, she asked me something like, “Mommy, why are you getting rid of the old furniture?”

Me: “Because it’s old and broken.”

Her: “Why is it broken?”

Me: “Because it’s old.”

Her: “But why is it old?”

Me: “Because we got it a long time ago.”

Her: “Why did we get it a long time ago?”

Me: “I don’t know, we just did.”

That’s usually how it ends. I give up and just give her one of those answers. “That’s just the way it is.” She’s usually not satisfied and I have to follow up by telling her I have no more answers and we should talk about something else. That is to squelch my urge to scream, “I DON’T KNOW!!” The ironic thing? I can’t stand when she tells me “just because” about something. Double standard? I think so!