My husband and I are drowning.
We’re being sucked under by a tidal wave of sick kids, pummeled by a tsunami of fake tears.
It’s a rip current of bad attitudes, wave upon wave of time-outs.
There are unexplainable belly aches.
Cold weather crankiness.
Ear aches.
Rainy days trapped indoors.
Not to mention traffic jams caused by overturned trucks carrying baby formula and dogs with mysteriously enlarged spleens.
This past weekend, we tried to make the best of what is becoming a bad life situation.
We took the kids to the horse track. (Trust me, it’s not about gambling. We look at horseys and pick our favorite. Alma always chooses the one with the pink number.)
There are no pictures, because I was too busy giving my kids a perpetual verbal beat down to snap a photo.
On the way there, my son keeps dropping stuff on the floor of the car and whining for me to pick it up.
My daughter whines that she wants her window rolled down. I have those old-timey hand-cranked windows, so I tell her no.
She says, “I can do it with my foot!” I say, “No, don’t roll the window down with your foot.” Seconds later, I can feel my hair start to whip around because… she… rolled it down with her foot.
My husband says, “That’s it, Alma. Time-out whenever we get back home.”
She responds snarkily, “5 minute time-out.”
My husband, “That just earned you 10.”
At the track, she whines that she wants to sit on the benches outside instead of indoors. (Even though it looks as though it might rain.)
She whines that she wants to go in the bouncy houses. (The ones that are surrounded by a moat of mud.)
My son whines that he wants juice, not lemonade.
He whines that he wants a different hot dog. (What the hell does that even mean? All hot dogs are created equal.)
He starts whacking his auditorium seat up and down, then standing on it.
She knocks over my water.
Huck gets angry at me for telling me he’s also getting time-out and smacks my arm.
This is when I threaten to smack him in the face. Loud enough for other people to hear. That is also when I start to cry silently.
I mean, I’m never gonna smack my kid in the face. I’ve never even popped him on the bum.
I am humiliated.
I feel ashamed.
I feel guilty.
I feel like the world’s worst parent and… I feel like drinking A LOT. (Which would ALSO make me feel like a bad parent.)
We ended up cutting the whole thing short and going home angry.
Both kids got time-outs so epic, they both took naps.
I took a nap too.
They woke up feeling rejuvenated.
I woke up feeling ill-prepared to handle another 4 hours with them before bedtime.
That evening proved to be everything I anticipated and MORE.
Frankie is on medication for his chunky spleen or injured spine or whatever they charged us $1,000 for and it causes excessive urination. So, it wasn’t a huge surprise when Alma pointed out the slow-moving puddle of dog piss in the kitchen. I was surprised by the sheer enormity of said puddle. It had to be about a gallon.
I was nearly done sopping it up when I ran out of paper towels.
It’s around the same time that Alma slips and falls while chasing her brother.
She’s scream-crying, her absolute favorite.
I tell them to stop running around.
I’m mopping up the rest of the dog pee with Santa Clause napkins when Huck slips and falls flat on his face. He has a bloody nose and is shrieking. I cradle him on my lap as he yells into my face.
At some point, it almost sounds like he’s trying to make words, but I can’t understand him through the screaming.
It turns out he was saying, “I have to go potty.”
It was too late.
He peed on my lap.
It made it to my undies.
There’s no way in hell I’m cooking after that. So, I rush to Target to get some Chicken nuggets and potato fries.
Huck takes one bite of one nugget and says, “I’m done.” (par for the course) He spends the rest of dinner smashing his food and getting intermittent time-outs.
Clearly, time-out is not working.
We have also removed almost all toys from their rooms. Next would be, what? Furniture? In a month, my kids will be living like orphans in the suburbs.
This is why it takes a village.
Mommy and Daddy are going to lose their ability to cope if they don’t get a goddamned date night.
But, my mom lives far away. His mom is recovering from surgery. My dad and his wife were booked this past weekend visiting my brother. (And frankly, they’re probably overwhelmed by the crush of grandchildren at this point.)
I had a friend invite us to hang out this past weekend with him, his daughter and his wife, even with our kids in tow.
How do I explain that it’s not possible because my children will suck every drop of fun out of whatever we do?
And how do I do that while still conveying just how much I adore my children?
I love them so much, so much that weekends like this past one just break my heart. Feel me?
Last night while I was sweating through my daily hour-long commute in bumper to bumper traffic, my husband calls to let me know that Huck has an outrageous ear ache.
I am immediately assessing the logistical nightmare involved. A rough night of no sleep is all but guaranteed unless we confront the offending ear head-on. (pun intended)
So, I rush home and grab a healthy snack and rush Huck to the nearest urgent care clinic. As I drive, I am doing the parental reach-around, shuttling hunks of banana to the backseat.
I’m wiping banana gunk on my seat and trying to assuage his fears by scream-singing Frozen songs.
At the doctor’s office, he holds it together while I discuss paperwork with the snippy, condescending bitch who runs the front desk.
For some reason it’s not until I am actually filling out paperwork with Huck on my lap that it sinks in that he is, INDEED, inside a doctor’s office.
He starts to cry.
It escalates.
He’s blowing snot bubbles and growling underneath the sobs.
Now begins the humiliating struggle to get him to calm down.
I bounce him on my lap, hold him and say “shhhh, it will be okay.” The people in the waiting room are giving the “Oh, poor baby, sweet mommy” looks.
Not working, so I move on to offering up games on my phone.
He starts gurgling, “I don’t want games toooo.” (Suddenly, everything he says is followed by the word “too.”)
I start showing him pictures on my phone and asking him to tell me who it is.
“I want Alma toooo!” “I want daddy toooo!” “I wanna go home toooo!”
The tension in the room is escalating, the looks far less sympathetic.
The crying/yelling is perpetual.
I offer up mandarin oranges, magazines, videos on my phone, all to no avail.
People are grumbling now, shifting awkwardly in their seats. I’m starting to appear to be a really ineffective comforter.
I take him outside and he calms down. He starts looking at cars, flags, signs… and stops crying.
I start… SWEATING.
We go back in and… he bursts into tears.
I try reasoning with him. “We have to see the doctor to get medicine so your ear won’t hurt anymore.” That seems to remind him about the pain and the yelling grows more passionate.
Even the nasty bitch on the desk is trying to help now, offering up cartoons on TV…. anything to make him shut up.
You know what would’ve made him shut up? Not making us wait an hour and a half to see a f&*ing doctor!
When we finally make it into the room where my son will be seen, it’s another 30 minutes of spastic non-stop sobbing.
I offer him tongue depressors to play with, cotton balls, suggest he write on the crinkly, keep your bottom clean paper.
Nothing works. Everything is followed by an irritated “I don’t wanna (insert suggestion here) tooooo!”
I am rocking my little weapon of mass destruction fervently, begging him to tell me what’s wrong. He calms down enough to avoid explosion and mass casualties, but he can’t even talk he’s so beside himself.
I end up playing Frozen singalong videos on Youtube during which he intermittently ceases screaming. I have no doubt that people outside the room were yucking it up listening to me sing while my son continued to cry.
They offered him a juice box. You know what his response was.
The Doctor finally arrives, accidentally calls my son by his last name and swoops in to check his ears.
His hands are shaking violently. He says, It’s hard with a moving target.” (Yeah, my son is sitting perfectly still. He’s not the problem.) Of course I end up with the one urgent care physician in all of Tampa Bay with severe Parkinson’s.
I have to suggest to him the medication my son requires and he promises to call it in to our pharmacy right away.
That night, we call the pharmacy and it was never called in. The urgent care clinic is closed. We have no medication. I am buying beer on the way home. This was supposed to be my workout day. Can you lose lbs through severe stress and trauma?
There is a chance that suffering through the worst doctor’s visit ever had its reward in the end. Huck was so exhausted from all of that crying that he drank milk, took Motrin and some ear drops and NEARLY slept through the night.
We survived the crappy clinic and all we got was this lousy sticker.
Everyone knows that what people post on social media sites isn’t actually an accurate snapshot of your life.
You put your best foot forward, your best pic posted.
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
This is never more true than for parents of toddlers.
Here are pictures of my husband and I on daycare date night.
It might look like we’re having a lovely evening, but we actually spent the entire dinner try to hail our waitress. We watched other diners arrive, be served and finish dinner and we couldn’t even get a second round of Sake.
That b*&ch interrupted our Sake cycle.
Instead of riveting conversation, we were busy glowering at the staff, pleading with our eyes for assistance from the hostess. (who was equally oblivious to our plight)
I considered luring her by dangling our food because she was all skin and bones, but my husband noted that she clearly wasn’t interested in eating. Maybe Meth would’ve worked?
The next morning, here’s a picture of my precious daughter hugging my dog. (Yes, he looks terrified. He’s old, partially blind and has Addison’s Disease. He’s always terrified.)
What you don’t see is my son screaming in the background because he’s sick. Our punishment for a miserable night on the town was waking up early to face a feverish toddler.
My son is a real jerk when he’s sick.
I feel bad that he doesn’t feel well, but I don’t exactly feel like babying him when he’s constantly trying to throw heavy objects at my head and screaming “NO WAY” when I’m not even touching him or talking to him.
A fun day at the park? I think not.
It poured the night before so the whole playground was a soggy, mulchy mess.
We had to cut it short when my son decided to run full speed through a mud puddle in canvas shoes.
I did find it amusing that Alma wouldn’t stop berating an older girl who was playing barefoot in the mud.
“She’s gonna get her pants wet! She doesn’t have shoes on! She can’t go in the puddles!”
Her mom was nearby.
I just said, “That’s up to her and her mommy or daddy to decide honey.” (as I continued to yell at my kids to stay out of the puddles… awkward, awkward, awkward)
Here’s what else there AREN’T pictures of:
1) Our kids both instantly falling asleep as we drive off for lunch, so we have to drive around for an hour being quiet.
2) My son crying when we have to wake him up because we HAVE TO EAT.
3) My son demanding to walk outside while we’re trying to eat at Chilis, throwing all food offered to him across the room. (even slimy segments of mandarin oranges)
4) Mommy downing two margaritas.
5) Daddy saying he needs to work on the computer and mommy nearly having a nervous breakdown considering time alone with the kids.
So, I took Alma to buy white poster board to draw on with markers outside.
Look how adorable she was playing with the neighborhood kids.
What you don’t see:
1) Huck stealing all balls from the neighbor’s garage. Bouncy balls, plastic softballs, a football.
2) Huck repeatedly kicking said balls toward the road.
3) Alma looking shocked and appalled when the neighbor’s little girl wouldn’t let her have a turn at basketball. (awkward, awkward, awkward)
So, we go back inside and I serve up the kids an enviable spread of fresh fruit, Gouda and ham.
We watch Monsters Inc. for the 30th time.
I give the kids a bath, which means I get soaked from head to toe, chase around a naked maniac who refuses to put on a diaper and occasionally pisses on the carpet and manhandle my cranky daughter who screams at me to get her into her PJ’s and then screams even louder that she CAN DO IT HERSELF!
At this point, my husband is still on the effing computer and I shout downstairs, “Are you DONE YET?”
He storms up and says no, but takes over. So, then I feel like a shitty wife.
My husband can’t get his work done and I am already trying to figure out if enough time has passed since lunch for me to start drinking alcohol again.
Let’s just say the night ended with me breaking my diet to eat a Lean Cuisine and my husband telling me I had purple teeth. Wine drinkers feel me.
No pictures of that folks.
Smoke and mirrors friends.
Living The American Scream 