I Know

Look, I just...I KNOW, okay? I've been trying to write -- really, really trying -- but my baby has suddenly decided that sitting still is completely unacceptable. We must walk! Pace! Go places! Walk over there! Now walk back again! Show me things! I want to see windows and ceiling fans and interestingly pointy potted plants! Have you not seen those diaper commercials? I AM NOT A BRICK, I AM A HUMAN BEING. NUTURE MY INTELLECT, BOOB LADY.

Speaking of diapers (hey! what?), I do have new posts up at the Luvs site. I've pretty much given up on the true "time-and-money-saving tips" theme and am now hoping to educate by examples of what NOT to do, unless you want the simplest task to end in disaster. It's the Amalah Way! Recent disasters include gift wrapping and creating an art gallery for Noah's preschool projects. Honestly, I'm amazed I can manage to walk upright most of the time.

Anyway, I shall keep trying to figure out how to type while doing the baby-pace-and-butt-tap dance and will post again very soon. Hopefully this afternoon. I've got Big Ideas involving my kitchen counters and a figure-eight walking path. (Seriously. Even in the sling he seems to know when I try to use my hands for Other Things and will start squawking if I do not pat or rub or touch him in some way every .325 seconds. And what am I supposed to do? You've seen his face. He's pretty much going to get whatever he wants from me, and he knows it.)

Septuacentenial Cupcake in a Cup

As a Very Important "Beauty Insider" member at Sephora (translation: HA HA, WE GOT YOU TO SIGN UP FOR A CARD JUST FOR FREE SAMPLES, SUCKER), I am apparently entitled to a birthday gift every year. Provided I make a purchase during my birthday month. And remember to present that stupid card.

Anyway, my gift was a small bottle of shower gel. It's glittery and sparkly and smells like cupcakes. Thanks, Sephora! How did you know I was turning 12 this year? My mom says I can wear the tinted kind of Chapstick now too!

(I guess I should be grateful that they DON'T customize the birthday gift too much, since if they were to base it off my recent purchases I'd probably get an anti-wrinkle cream that smells like lemon verbena. And desperation.)

(Oh, and I'm 31 now. Everyone kept telling me that 31 would hit me harder than 30, but it didn't. I guess there's something about having TWO CHILDREN that makes you already feel older than dirt, what with how terriblly haggard you look next to their chubby smooth perfection [seriously, if you ever want to feel REALLY BADLY about yourself, press your face against an infant's and look in a mirror], and I'm possibly a little senile because I swore I was turning 32 this year and had to use a calculator to check the math. 31? Is that all? Wow, I'm going downhill faster than I thought, but I guess you might as well get a head start on these things.)

And now, a couple holiday-ish pictures, as required by law.

Noah, looking especially dashing in his holiday sweater, if perhaps a little baffled by the whole affair. He caught on after awhile, and will now randomly announce that he is ready to open another present now, thank you.

Ez, in one of the rare photos where he is actually wearing clothes. Everybody seemed to prefer him in nothing but a diaper. In our white trash defence, the turkey DID take a lot longer to cook than anticipated, and his thighs make for some awfully good chomping.

But It's Tradition, Dammit

I have taken approximately 3,923,001 pictures of that child over the past three years, and I have NEVER once seen him make that face. I'm so glad I got to pay $16.99 for this once-in-a-lifetime expression of Complete & Utter Goober.

(I do like how Ezra's just trying to blend in, striking the patented T-Rex-can-only-see-you-if-you-move pose. Good work, son.)

Happy Holidays. We're off to introduce the new man to the family and eat a lot of pie.

The Worst Thing Ever That Actually Really Wasn't

I have been writing posts nonstop in my head since Friday -- nothing I ever intended to commit to the keyboard and publish, just a endless series of disjointed paragraphs that bounced from topic to topic and argued with straw men and imaginary bureaucrats. On and on, my brain kept going and talking and spinning. It kept me awake and anxious at night and distracted and disconnected during the day -- all the signs of an obviously superior coping mechanism.

Those of you who follow my sporadic dispatches over at Twitter probably Know Of What I Speak.

Here, like a Band-Aid: On Friday, Noah's teacher unleashed a long litany of behavior complaints at me, many of which I was hearing for the first time, others which I thought were already being addressed, all of which together painted a very bleak picture of an overwhelmed, uncontrollable child with no attention span who simply could not function in the classroom. A child whose continued enrollment in the school was in serious jeopardy and was on a one-way track to being dismissed from the school.

Here, like a bottle of alcohol emptied on the open wound underneath the Band-Aid: Expelled. From preschool. Merry fucking Christmas! Epic parenting FAIL1!!1

Of course, I did exactly what any capable parent would do in that situation: I burst into tears, and then came home and spent the next 60 hours of my life freaking the royal fuck out.

I called the school district and formerly requested a new evaluation. I called the private speech center that I'd contacted several weeks ago and got a little screechy about how long I've been waiting for a therapist to call me and schedule THAT evaluation. I called some smaller, more specialized preschools and nearly threw up when I heard the tuition rates. We talked about moving. I emailed everybody I ever talked to at Early Intervention to see if there was any way they could help speed up the process of getting back into our current county's system. We purged our house of extra cluttered toys and distractions and outlined a plan for improving his attention span and adding more structure at home. I called my mom and whimpered that I just wanted someone to tell me what I should do-o-o, I'm not smart enough for th-i-i-i-s, why can't I figure out how to fix my ba-a-a-by.

On Sunday, we attended a preschool classmate's birthday party at one of those kiddie gym places. Despite giving Noah a pre-party briefing that rivaled most military operations, it did not go well. He was indeed, as usual, overwhelmed by the group, terrified of the organized games and activities, melted down at every single transition or whenever something happened that he had not been prepared for. (I spent a lot of time talking about how he would be asked to leave the play area and eat birthday cake, since that caused a lot of woe at the LAST birthday party we attended, but forgot to mention the possibility that someone might dare put a slice of PIZZA in front of him BEFORE the birthday cake was served, and Oh. My. Fucking. God.)

Jason and I were exhausted and heartsick by the end of the party -- Jason mumbled something about taking equity out of our house to pay for one of those special preschools, and since I could no longer even attempt to keep up a happy social party face, I broke down and shared what the teacher had said to me with a couple other mothers. Who then shared a few anecdotes of their own and stories they'd learned from previous years' families that painted a picture of a teacher who maaaaaybe gets a little crazy by December and maaaaaaybe a little dramatic about things and maaaaaybe I should go talk to the principal myself before, you know, losing my shit too spectacularly.

So...long story short, I saw the school's principal today, whose jaw dropped to the floor when I repeated what had been said to me, because: no. Not even. Noah is most definitely not at all in danger of expulsion. Never has been. The whole thing was a case of a preschool teacher gone rogue, off the rails, whatever. The principal has observed Noah many times, and she's never seen anything remotely close to the kind of behavior his teacher was describing or at the level where they'd start considering dismissal. He wanders away from the group when he is bored. He prefers one-on-one direction to large group free-for-all projects. He is easily agitated by transitions and easily distracted by everything in the world. Also, you know, he is THREE. 

There IS a child in his class who is causing the teachers and the school a lot of problems (pushing, hitting, using not-so-very-nice words), and Noah and I may have simply gotten caught up in a teacher's Terrible Horrible Not So Good Very Bad Day, and maybe she just really needs her holiday break.  And then the principal and I had a long talk about Sensory Processing Disorder and brainstormed some additional strategies that could be used to keep Noah with the group and help him through transitions.

Of course...I'm not an idiot. The behavior at Sunday's birthday party alone is enough for us to realize that yes, Noah most definitely needs some help. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between Early Intervention assuring us that Everything Is Just Fine!! and his teacher telling us that Everything Is Just Terrible!! I am still anxious to get him re-evaluated. I am still exploring other preschool options, because GODDAMN.

But at least now I can go back to making up imaginary conversations between my deodorants in the middle of the night instead. So...back to normal! Hooray!

He Just Wants To Dance.

Ezra slept for eight solid hours last night. I slept for three, thanks to a complete and utter inability to breathe due to the aforementioned Y.A.F.C.

Noah -- who has made a full recovery and is back at school today, probably contracting the next bacterial scourge as I type this -- slept for less than eight hours but more than three, as I heard him conversing until midnight with an imaginary scary goblin who lives in his closet and is his new best friend in the world, because he's a NICE scary goblin. They go on ADVENTURES. Shut the DOOR, Mama. I BUSY.

I am pretty sure the scary goblin is actually the garden gnome from our neighbor's yard.

I have no idea how he ever got so hopped up last night. It's like someone was ordering him to dance until he collapsed headfirst into the furniture in exhaustion right before bedtime, or something.


Noah's Dance from amalah on Vimeo.

(Totally gratuitous footage of the baby doing absolutely nothing of interest is at the end. You're welcome.)

(Also, yes, we are out of butter. Thanks for the update, Jase.)

Y.A.F.C.

Aaaaand the rest of the family has now been felled by Yet Another Fucking Cold. Felled, I say! Like mighty oak trees! Except...well, more like low-lying shrubs at this point. Or that dead hydrangea in the backyard.

Noah is still home from school, which is nice in a way, because I miss playing with him, but also kind of eyeball stabby, because I don't understand how a child can go from a napless wonder running laps around the house at 7 pm, shrieking at top volume and demanding PLAY-DOH CRAYONS MARKERS TRAINS WANNA PLAY MY TRAINS NO WAIT BUBBLES, to feverish and miserable and wailing MY EAR HURRRRTS by 10 pm, thus re-setting the "he can go back to school tomorrow yay!" clock back to zero.

But I don't know. There's still something extra endearing about them when they're a little peaked and still bedheady and pajammied at lunchtime:

Anyway, I clearly have some important lying-in-bed-and-moaning to do today, but I still invite you to have a laugh or an eyeroll at my expense over at The MomSpeak, where I wrote about my dread fear of coupons. Yes. Coupons. You probably thought it was not humanly possible to have a dumber phobia than volcanoes. And then there I go. With coupons.

Motherbrain

So...if I were to mine my own life for a post topic today, I'd unfortunately be forced to report that Noah is once again home from school with an ear infection.

(Scene: Doctor's Office. Yesterday.)

DOCTOR: (after hearing Noah's cough) Has he been checked out?

AMY: (waves dismissively) Oh, he's fine. Just a cold.

(Scene: Noah's Room. Like, Not Even Eight Hours Later.)

NOAH: (holding his ear and howling in pain)

AMY: Wait. Don't tell me. I think I know this one.

(Seriously. Fuck this noise and this nasal drip. Fuck them DIRECTLY. Noah attended a birthday party on Sunday at one of those little gym-type places, and I made a joke to another mother that I SWEAR, we walk into one and within 48 hours Noah is sick. It was a JOKE! You didn't literally have to whip out the stopwatch, Universe. Christ.)

(I am maybe getting the hang of this, though. Crank up the humidifier in Noah's room, start calling his bookshelf the "library," haul out a Duplo train set and dub it the "imagination center," declare the laundry pile the "tactile center," climb into his bed with baby, laptop and coffee and ta-da! Instant preschool. With way less germs! Except for the ones he's coughed and oozed all over his sheets...in his bed...where I am sitting right now. With the baby. And. Hmm.)

(Please hold! Going to do some laundry real quick.)

Anyway, I cannot even imagine how sick y'all must be of hearing about how sick we all be, so I'm going to break format and tell a story about someone else, simply because I don't know if this individual has her own blog, and the story MUST be told.

Because of a scheduling mix-up, I had no choice but to bring Noah to Ezra's appointment yesterday. (Apparently a 9:45 am appointment on a Wednesday actually means a 1 pm appointment on a Tuesday in Pediatric Office Receptionist Land.) It was raining, Noah was coughing, we got a late start out the door and I ended up breaking all the usual traffic laws to get us there on time. In order to keep things as streamlined as possible, I left the carseat in the car and opted for a sling instead, so I could have two free hands to corrall Noah from the ultra-fun waiting room with the televisions into the boring exam room.

And there, we waited. And waited. Finally the doctor stuck her head in and apologized, because it would be a few more minutes. I was wedged into an armchair with both boys -- Ez on the boob while I read a Charlie Brown book to Noah -- and assured her that we were fine. When Noah tired of the book I had no problem letting him compose a "song," an awesome (AND TOTALLY NOT ANNOYING) activity that involves banging out a rhythym on every available surface in the room to hear the differences in pitch. It's educational! And also, not my house! Have a blast, kid. You just may drown out the screams from the flu shot clinic two rooms down.

I noticed a weird, bemused look on her face right before she closed the door.

When she reappeared, I was reading a medical brochure about ADHD to Noah (he thought the dark-haired little girl on the cover was Dora, and did not seem to notice the difference several pages in), and she apologized again.

She was running late because her last patient was late. Very late. Because she'd been out in the parking lot, panicking. Because she could not get her infant's carseat out of the car.

She didn't want to leave the baby, and since she did not, apparently, have the doctors' office number on her phone, she ended up calling her mother, who drove all the way from God knows where to help her get the carseat unhooked from the base and into the office.

"And so I asked her," the doctor continued, "'Why didn't you just unbuckle the baby and bring him in without the carseat?' And she looked at me and admitted that had never occurred to her."

I stared at her, not knowing whether to bust a gut laughing...or rush out after that poor woman and give her a big hug and let her cry into Noah's snotty tissues that I had mashed into every available pocket. She went on.

"And then I look in here, and you're alone with two kids and one is coughing and the other nursing and you have the smallest diaper bag I've seen all day and no stroller and you're just as relaxed as can be and..."

She trailed off and shook her head. "You're doing SO GREAT."

I flashed back to that morning. How irritated I'd been when I realized that I needed to keep Noah home from school. The TV I'd bribed him with so I could nurse and maybe squeeze in an extra 30 minues of sleep. How my lunch consisted of some microwaved mac and cheese that I frantically shoveled into my mouth while drying at least some of my hair and Ezra howled in protest from a swing. The not-very-nice tone I'd used while mushing Noah's feet into his shoes because we had to go go go right now hurry up, even though I was the one who chose the extra 30 minutes of sleep that was costing us DEARLY, and dear God, thank you for realizing that you can't take the empty wrapping paper tube with us but why do you have to put it down so slllloooooowly, and how can the baby be hungry AGAIN and Noah! Cover your mouth when you cough, pleeeeeeease.

Then I looked back down at Ezra's rolly polly body and over at Noah, who was adorably hamming it up in front of a mirror, raising his arms and announcing that it was time for DA NOAH SHOW YAAY!!!

Maybe not always so great, and definitely not perfect, but eh. Good enough. And I'll take it.

And to that other mother, wherever she is: We've all been there, and we've all eventually figured out how those blasted carseats work, and regained at least some of our problem-solving abilities. 

You're doing great.

Laughing with you, not at you.

Make That the Mighty Mighty Ez

Here is Noah (the 9 pound, 15 ounce chunk of Christmas Ham) on the day of his two-month check-up:

He was 12 pounds even. 24.5 inches long.

And here is Ezra (the 7 pound, 7 ounce miniature deep-fried peanut), after today's two-month check-up:

12 pounds, 12 ounces. 24 inches long.

HA. HA HA HA. HAAAAAAAA.  Outstanding work, little man. Out. Standing.

MacGroober

Ezra is a comfort sucker. (As in, he likes to suck on things for comfort. Not that he is a sucker for comfort, although frankly, who isn't? I'm a sucker for comfort food, for instance. Comfort food with butter and extra deep-fried carbs.)

In pretty much every ultrasound we had, his face was always obscured by various body parts that he was attempting to shove into his mouth. I took note of this and tossed a pack of pacifiers into my hospital bag. I popped a Soothie into his mouth the very first night. Screw nipple confusion -- if I didn't give that kid a pacifier I wasn't going to have any damn nipples LEFT.

He liked the Soothie well enough -- much better than the free pacifiers the hospital nursery had to offer, which I of course hoarded and took home regardless, because they were FREE FREE FREE -- but once we got home he started rejecting them too. If it wasn't a boob, it better be a finger, inserted at an awkward, palms-up angle that ensured you could do absolutely nothing else except SIT THERE while your wrist cramped up and Ezra sucked your fingerprints off.

So, you know, we tried a few other pacifiers.

 

Exhibit A, aka Give It Up Already, Crazy People

Every brand was offered and summarily rejected, and eventually I resigned myself to always having the baby attached to my chest, for food or for comfort.

But then this weekend he started getting a little DIFFICULT ABOUT THAT. A little TAD HYSTERICAL. He would latch on and then get BEYOND INDIGNANT to end up with a mouthful of MILK, MY GOD. He'd pull off in fury and weep. I'd offer the pacifer. He'd take it, spit it out and dive bomb for my chest again. Same thing with my finger.  Over and over, we did this, and always at nap and bedtime. I'd rock him and sing and pace around the house, but eventually it always came back to the back-and-forth dance between my boob and the pacifer.

So last night, I had a flash of either genius or a psychotic break -- definitely one of those two -- and took the hollow end of a Soothie pacifier and stuck it on my boob. Add baby and VOILA. The ultimate in cushiony comfort without the hassle of nutrition.

And...that was the highlight of my weekend, unless you count the fact that Noah ate five atoms of the breading off a chicken nugget and finally told me something specific about his day at school ("I pushed Miles AND Everett!"), or maybe when Ezra threw up on Heather B and I sat there and laughed like a really evil person because NOT ME NOT ME, and I think I cleaned up the chair before thinking to offer her some paper towels and overall the weekend was comprised of a lot of moments that made me massage my temples in annoyance and parental defeat, but then I stuck a pacifer ON MY BOOB and it made my baby happy and put him to sleep.

 

Dream big!

Festive

Hey boys, let's get some pictures of you in those super-cute matchy-matchy big brother/little brother tees that the Redneck Mommy sent us:

Hmm.

Okay! I can sort of read one of the shirts. Close enough! Moving on!

A little aside to myself here, you know, something for the baby book that I will probably never assemble:

Remember last year when you hit the post-Christmas sale at the Hallmark store and you found those cute little Thomas the Tank Engine ornaments and you were all, AWESOME and PROUD and BEST PARENT EVER? Do you remember what Christmas ornaments are actually FOR? That they are not TOYS, that they hang on a TREE, high above your toddler's REACH? Did you honestly think that would be FUN? Were you honestly surprised that your toddler did not ENJOY THAT? Are you still all kinds of PROUD now that you've successfully turned the Christmas tree into THAT THING WITH THE TOYS THAT DANGLE JUST OUT OF MY REACH and do you have any ideas for washing your child's bitter, salty tears out of the velvet tree skirt?

Dear Ezra: I will only buy you stupid-looking ornaments that totally suck and are not interesting at all. You're welcome.