In case you haven’t noticed, The Sarcastic Journalist gave birth to a scrumptious little boy this week. I want to bury my nose in his little neck folds and breeeeeeathe for a while. Stop looking at me like that. Go tell her congratulations and pretend I don’t have a weird baby fetish.
My own children, well, they won’t do at all. They are big(ish) and no longer all that cute and they often SMELL and also they know how to irritate the living crap out of me. I’ve decided it’s time to institute some changes around here, for sanity’s sake.
Monkey needs to spend some time in a room with nothing but a floor and four walls. No furniture, no objects. Certainly no objects belonging to ME. The child walks across the backs of the couches, swings from my desk chair, kicks the side of the desk as he shimmies up the nearby toy box, and starts clomping across the room in my brand new running shoes. I envision a special space for him where he can roam free without my barking “Get down! Get off! Leave those ALONE!”
Chickadee, on the other hand, needs a room with her dolls, assorted accessories, books, a cozy spot to curl up and read, and NO FLOOR. I’m aware that this is impossible. Just let me dream. The child is incapable of putting anything back where she found it. Onto the floor it goes. The bookcase looks like it threw up. Doll clothes are strewn about, intermingling with her own clothes (which never reach the hamper). Left to her own devices, she leaves a trail like Gretel. At least I always know where to find her.
I’ve also decided to stop packing lunches for my children. It’s a huge waste of time, and then they have to tote them back and forth. Nope, from now on I’m just going to get up in the morning, pull some food out of the fridge, sit on it a couple of times, and then throw it directly into the trash. Then I’ll just pack a juice box for Monkey and give Chickadee permission to bum food off of all her friends (which is, apparently, what she does anyway, as all her friends have cooler moms who pack better food).
Monkey is done with nighttime pull-ups (the kid is 6 now, for crying out loud) but still wets the bed if I forget to take him to the bathroom before I go to sleep. Or if he’s sick. Or if he drinks too much with dinner. Or if Mercury is in retrograde. Let’s just say he’s doing well, but I am changing sheets a lot more often than I’d like. And it’s not so much the sheet changing as the massive amounts of laundry that are driving me insane. So from now on, I’m putting saran wrap over the sheets and putting all of his blankets in those new giant ziploc bags (bargain duvet cover!). I think it’ll make those middle of the night accidents a little easier to deal with.
From now on I plan only to buy snowpants that are brown. Or at least brown in the seat and on the knees. And if I can get them already damp and moldy, so much the better. Also I will buy only single mittens and gloves, or perhaps an assortment pack of half a dozen left gloves, or whatever. I will preemptively load each backpack with a couple of pounds of pencil stubs, paper scraps, happy meal toys and found items… just to save the children some time and give me plenty of places to hide the gloves.
Hey, the alternative to all of this is to get rid of the kids and enjoy peace and order. What fun would that be??
N is finally staying dry more nights than not, with the same must-be-taken-to-the-bathroom-before-we-go-to-bed caveats. What kept me sane in the interim? A cheapo synthetic indoor-only sleeping bag (ours has Blue on it) that he sleeps on top of. He loves it! It’s a campout every night! And when he wets in the night, well, it wipes clean in about half a second and dries just as quickly. By the time his pjs are changed, his sleeping bag is ready…
Benjamin is four, he’s finally potty trained (very difficult for me, his mother was trained by 1 and a half – I didn’t know I’d been spoiled.) He still uses nighttime pullups.
His mother on the other hand was Chickadee. Everything has a place, but nothing is in its place. The more wrinkled and smelly the better, that means it doesn’t need to be folded and put away – whose concept was that anyway? One difference, she cherished her books, they were treated unlike everything else she owned
25 years later she is not better, well her clothes are clean and folded, but she’s a lousy housekeeper. Great mom, to a very neat little boy.
Good luck with Monkey and Chickadee.
I’m with you and while I’m at it, I’m going to take all of my 7 year old’s hair ties and ribbons and hide them, because they all end up hidden somewhere anyway.
You slay me!!!
I’m with you 100%. Lunches will not be packed anymore, but stomped, squished, left on the counter, hidden somewhere (I love this one) and then frantically searched for when we’re 10 minutes late.
I particularly like the idea of buying the prepackaged bundle of left gloves and mittens. I will sell them to you at a good rate. Drop me a line. ;)
Honey you need to join My Kids Are Pigs! Just email me and I’ll send you an invite.
De lurking here…My 10 yr old DD is STILL having nighttime accidents. After going round and round with different doctors, her father finally tells me that he had the same problem until he was almost 12!!! They all say that she just sleeps too hard and will eventually outgrow it. At least she is old enough that now, when she has an accident, she will get up in the morning and take her wet sheets and pj’s straight to the washing machine before even letting me know she had an accident. I can’t wait for her to outgrow this!! Also, I gave up on packing lunches for school. She never would eat enough of them, and came home starving every afternoon. I let her buy the school lunch now, so at least I know she’s eating.
Here i was thinking that it is only my kids that do this, and it is only me who is being driven crazy by said behaviour. Just this morning I asked them why do i have to send a lunch along with them as they will just beg pudding cups and pop tarts from their neighbours. Their response? “Because you luv us mom!” Harumph. I also love sleeping in and saving money. Neither is going to happen any time soon. Good to know you are paddling right along with me!
Excellent advice – the preemptive strike. Works wonders with kids!
we aren’t a wee bit FRUSTRATED are we? I have bad news, this only continues as they grow up. They improve in some areas, and demonstrate increased slackness in others. I am frequently surprised that my 20 year old son can find his behind with both hands. I sometimes worry what I have unleashed upon the world when he leaves the house.
by the way, you are now the TOP fund raiser for the Boston walk. woohoo, Props to you.
Definitely time for pie.
This is fun!
I will apply a layer of glue inside my toddler’s snow boots before I put them on the first time, not the fifteenth. Maybe his mitts too.
I will only have photos of vegetables instead of real vegetables at the table. That will save me cooking them and they’ll get the same benefit they get now.
And you’re definitely right about the floor. Sigh. Maybe I’ll just replace his carpet with a drop sheet and his shirt with a smock.
Thank you for making my day better.
I am supposed to be working, so I didn’t have time to read all of the comments. With that said: My kiddo is 7 and just in the last year started staying dry at night.
What worked? A Malem alarm.
I still have it, and a few extra wires that go with it. It’s your if you want to try it. Ours is the model that vibrates, or sounds and alarm, or does both depending on how you want to set it. There’s a safety pin that you attach to the shirt, or a clip where you slide in on the pajama top. The clip part is broken.
I thought he’d never learn to stay dry at night but this worked really really well. Best $100 I ever spent!
Again – if you’d like – email me and I’d be happy to pop it in the mail for you.
Hey lookie there! I actually didn’t even read the whole post!
I thought I read he *wasn’t* done with pull-ups.
Work Quality today: Outlook sucky!
Right now I have an eight year old boy in the bathtub dumping half of a deluxe Suave bottle into his bathwater (that’s the last bottle of shampoo in the house) and my 2 1/2 year old girl just let loose with the urine stream while I was changing a delovely poopy diaper–she was lying on my bed with my bathroom roughly 10 steps away. A great big yellow pool of bodily fluids all over the new 300 thread count Egyptian cotton sheet set my mom got me for Christmas.
The alternative is looking pretty damn good and SHINY right about now.