![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hippybngstockngI was having one of those "Why am I here" kind of weeks about my life and my existence in it, and the things that I do. I was feeling like I had nothing to say that I thought anyone would want to hear, and likely I didn't. I don't usually feel like my life is interesting enough in a moment to moment kind of way beyond the little things my son does, and those cease to be interesting to the general population after a couple stories, and I know that.
But then today was of course another day.
Last night K (my 2 going on 3 yrd old son) went to bed at a reasonablish hour (for him) but woke up sometime in the middle of the night. UC5 tried to get him to return to his room to watch Thomas the Train and snuggle on the floor, or to come sleep in bed with us, but K instead opted for door #3, curling up in the pile of dirty laundry that was collected in the hallway that hadn't been completed. So I wake up in the morning aching and sick, and go to the bathroom to pee without putting my glasses on. I notice K's door is open so upon returning to bed I ask UC5 where he is, and he tells me, and I put my glasses on and go look and indeed, I probably missed stepping on his foot by inches, and since the laundry is mostly his, he blends in nicely :) I am amused but feel like we are awful parents for not insisting that he sleep in his bed. We put him in there and invariably he is out of it within an hour. I wonder if there isn't some kind of "Princess and the Pea" thing going on that I'm not aware of, but anyway, that's just the way the day begins...
It's Tuesday so it's one of those days when I baby sit for K's little friend M. I wake up early but K continues to snooze in the laundry which is sort of good because I've got a flu or a sinus infection or I don't know what and I feel like death left out to get crusty at room temperature, the warming up having been skipped. We FINALLY manage to get ourselves into the car knowing full well we're going to be late, but manage to get there at almost the same time we did yesterday (apparently K and I are taking turns making us late to pick up M).
So we eventually get to M's preschool, and we play in the play room while M had lunch, or more to the point K plays and I put things away as he discards them. M finishes her lunch and I go through about 15 minutes of wrestling her into her snow suit. It's pretty evident she's not in a listening mood today. I had to grab her arm and give her a good glaring at because she wouldn't stop hitting and kicking K when asked, even after he began to scream. We finally leave the building and I manage to get them in the car in less time than the day before which is good. I tell M we are going to her house because I am not feeling well, and she says that's fine.
We get to her house quickly and I get them both out of the car and into the house easily.
Here's where the fun begins...
K immediately begins trying to kick off his shoes upon entering the house and becomes upset when he can't- very typical K. M says she's going to go look for her father. I tell her that he's not home, but again she isn't listening, so she says she's going to "peak in the basement". I know her well enough that I trust her to wander off. I get K's shoes and my own off and I take off my coat. K takes his own off, but I don't get to congratulate him about it because I've gone to look for M.
I go to the basement door and I call. Nothing.
I keep K from destroying something and then I go to the door and call again. Still nothing.
I go down the stairs. I call. Still nothing. So of course I go through the basement. No M in sight. I check the basement exit door, and it is locked firmly enough that I can't unlock it, so I assume she's hiding, but upon looking I can't find her. I listen but I hear dead silence. I call again telling her this isn't funny and still there's nothing. I go back up the stairs to make sure K hasn't gotten into anything else, he's found trains so he's okay. I look for a flash light but can't find one. Then I go back, turning on the lights that I know really won't help but I do it anyway.
I go back down and start looking again and I'm calling a little more passionately and loudly now. I have a very loud voice so she can't be in the basement and miss hearing me, but she isn't responding. So I start thinking now...
She could be in the basement and injured. She could have snuck past me and be upstairs. I didn't hear any loud crashes, so I decide to go up first. I find the front door ever so slightly ajar. Now of course I am truly freaking out. I start imagining the phone call to M's father. "Um. Well, I can't find M. Is there any place in the house she likes to hide because she's literally vanished into so much thin air." I run out the front door in my socks onto the wet front porch and crunch through the rock salt down the stairs BELLOWING LIKE A RAVING MANIAC and I look up and down the street quickly and then down the alleys on either side of her building, then run back into the house to make sure that she hasn't resurfaced and that K hasn't added himself to the missing list. Then I return to the basement. Now I am shrieking M's name like a woman in a slasher flick. I am tearing through the house at high rates of speed, feeling my stomach slowly creep into my throat, imagining having to tell her parents this story of how I allowed their daughter to die because I was too busy fussing with my coat. At some point I did yell, "Please, M, I'm really scared." but it wasn't until I had made the circuit 2 more times did she emerge. She had been in the basement the whole time.
I was upstairs when she finally decided to let me know she had never left. She told me she was coming up and when she got there I got right in her face-
"M, where were you."
"I was in the bikes" (which means she was in the darkest corner of the basement, in a place I figured she couldn't get)
"M, why did you do that to me?" I ask her, almost crying.
She looks at me very guiltfully, "I was playing peek-a-boo". She looks scared and sad.
At this point, I have to say I impressed myself. I really really really wanted to just go off on her. I really wanted to tell her that was a crummy thing to do and really make her understand how awful it felt. I wanted to scream and cry. Instead I took a breath and said, "Well that's okay, except that I didn't know we were playing a game. So please for next time if you want to play peek-a-boo you need to tell me first before you hide because I didn't know we were playing and I was very scared when you didn't come out."
So while my pulse returns to "frightened rabbit" speed, I remove the remaining snow suits from both kids and then collapse in a chair.
But lo the fun doesn't end there :)
I called M's dad and he can't get back for about an hour and a half. I am mostly okay, I can suffer through it, no biggie. It turns out to be largely true, though M started to become quite emotional right as her dad was supposed to be getting home. She had a big freak out when I wouldn't let her eat the microwave popcorn before I actually popped it. I could tell she needed a nap so it didn't phase me, but I was happy when her dad finally got there. He invited me to stay a while before I crawled home and I decided to do so.
So we're sitting there all watching Toy Story (a big favorite of both kids) when M calmly announces that she's stuffed a popcorn seed up her nose.
M's dad and I look at each other with that, "Oh great, just what we need now, a trip to the hospital!" look that I know most parents can identify with. We spend a lot of time talking to her about trying to breath in through her mouth and then blow out through her nose but she isn't quite getting it. She's also getting a little panicked, and she's still fairly emotional from being tired. We let her know that if we can't get it out that it will mean going to the doctor and having to wait a long long time, so she needs to listen to us and let us help her get it out.
The nose is a wonderful part of the face, it knows what doesn't belong there and that's why kids end up having sinus infections when the body produces an excess of fluids trying to free those lost crayons and dimes that have made it up there. So in keeping with its duty, M's nose began running vigorously and with her dad holding her at an angle she finally sniffed it out onto his shirt. Hospital trip averted!
We all gave a cheer and I loaded K into his snow suit and we got into the car and I finally crawled home.
So I score points in the "not losing my shit at a child" department, but I take yet another huge hit in the "keeping kids out of danger with constant vigilance" department. Don't ever ask me to baby-sit, I'm clearly not capable. UC5 says I am being too harsh on myself but I'm not so sure.
This of course brings me back to the "why would I want to in my right mind have another child" question that's been troubling me of late. My mother seems to be of the odd belief that when there are 2 of them that they magically keep each other entertained, freeing you up to become queen of the Universe. The way I look at it, if they decide for whatever reason to not like each other then I've got twice the work. If one of them splits, I better hope I can still carry the other one so it can't get away while I chase the first. If they figure out too early on that I'm not god then I'm DOOOOOOOOOMED because they can gang up and use it against me to play me for the sucker that I truly am. I no longer know why I had the first one, so the idea of playing the odds on another seems like gambling with borrowed money. There are some weird reasons I would want to have a second, but they are starting to pale in comparison to the overwhelming evidence that I am in over my head.
Am I right? I grew up an only child, so I can't say I know for sure, but I know plenty of people who messed with their parents, and hated their siblings. I think my mom is smoking crack when she says it won't be hard. She only had me, and I was a little angel compared to a lot of people I know. I wouldn't have wanted 2 of me!
But then today was of course another day.
Last night K (my 2 going on 3 yrd old son) went to bed at a reasonablish hour (for him) but woke up sometime in the middle of the night. UC5 tried to get him to return to his room to watch Thomas the Train and snuggle on the floor, or to come sleep in bed with us, but K instead opted for door #3, curling up in the pile of dirty laundry that was collected in the hallway that hadn't been completed. So I wake up in the morning aching and sick, and go to the bathroom to pee without putting my glasses on. I notice K's door is open so upon returning to bed I ask UC5 where he is, and he tells me, and I put my glasses on and go look and indeed, I probably missed stepping on his foot by inches, and since the laundry is mostly his, he blends in nicely :) I am amused but feel like we are awful parents for not insisting that he sleep in his bed. We put him in there and invariably he is out of it within an hour. I wonder if there isn't some kind of "Princess and the Pea" thing going on that I'm not aware of, but anyway, that's just the way the day begins...
It's Tuesday so it's one of those days when I baby sit for K's little friend M. I wake up early but K continues to snooze in the laundry which is sort of good because I've got a flu or a sinus infection or I don't know what and I feel like death left out to get crusty at room temperature, the warming up having been skipped. We FINALLY manage to get ourselves into the car knowing full well we're going to be late, but manage to get there at almost the same time we did yesterday (apparently K and I are taking turns making us late to pick up M).
So we eventually get to M's preschool, and we play in the play room while M had lunch, or more to the point K plays and I put things away as he discards them. M finishes her lunch and I go through about 15 minutes of wrestling her into her snow suit. It's pretty evident she's not in a listening mood today. I had to grab her arm and give her a good glaring at because she wouldn't stop hitting and kicking K when asked, even after he began to scream. We finally leave the building and I manage to get them in the car in less time than the day before which is good. I tell M we are going to her house because I am not feeling well, and she says that's fine.
We get to her house quickly and I get them both out of the car and into the house easily.
Here's where the fun begins...
K immediately begins trying to kick off his shoes upon entering the house and becomes upset when he can't- very typical K. M says she's going to go look for her father. I tell her that he's not home, but again she isn't listening, so she says she's going to "peak in the basement". I know her well enough that I trust her to wander off. I get K's shoes and my own off and I take off my coat. K takes his own off, but I don't get to congratulate him about it because I've gone to look for M.
I go to the basement door and I call. Nothing.
I keep K from destroying something and then I go to the door and call again. Still nothing.
I go down the stairs. I call. Still nothing. So of course I go through the basement. No M in sight. I check the basement exit door, and it is locked firmly enough that I can't unlock it, so I assume she's hiding, but upon looking I can't find her. I listen but I hear dead silence. I call again telling her this isn't funny and still there's nothing. I go back up the stairs to make sure K hasn't gotten into anything else, he's found trains so he's okay. I look for a flash light but can't find one. Then I go back, turning on the lights that I know really won't help but I do it anyway.
I go back down and start looking again and I'm calling a little more passionately and loudly now. I have a very loud voice so she can't be in the basement and miss hearing me, but she isn't responding. So I start thinking now...
She could be in the basement and injured. She could have snuck past me and be upstairs. I didn't hear any loud crashes, so I decide to go up first. I find the front door ever so slightly ajar. Now of course I am truly freaking out. I start imagining the phone call to M's father. "Um. Well, I can't find M. Is there any place in the house she likes to hide because she's literally vanished into so much thin air." I run out the front door in my socks onto the wet front porch and crunch through the rock salt down the stairs BELLOWING LIKE A RAVING MANIAC and I look up and down the street quickly and then down the alleys on either side of her building, then run back into the house to make sure that she hasn't resurfaced and that K hasn't added himself to the missing list. Then I return to the basement. Now I am shrieking M's name like a woman in a slasher flick. I am tearing through the house at high rates of speed, feeling my stomach slowly creep into my throat, imagining having to tell her parents this story of how I allowed their daughter to die because I was too busy fussing with my coat. At some point I did yell, "Please, M, I'm really scared." but it wasn't until I had made the circuit 2 more times did she emerge. She had been in the basement the whole time.
I was upstairs when she finally decided to let me know she had never left. She told me she was coming up and when she got there I got right in her face-
"M, where were you."
"I was in the bikes" (which means she was in the darkest corner of the basement, in a place I figured she couldn't get)
"M, why did you do that to me?" I ask her, almost crying.
She looks at me very guiltfully, "I was playing peek-a-boo". She looks scared and sad.
At this point, I have to say I impressed myself. I really really really wanted to just go off on her. I really wanted to tell her that was a crummy thing to do and really make her understand how awful it felt. I wanted to scream and cry. Instead I took a breath and said, "Well that's okay, except that I didn't know we were playing a game. So please for next time if you want to play peek-a-boo you need to tell me first before you hide because I didn't know we were playing and I was very scared when you didn't come out."
So while my pulse returns to "frightened rabbit" speed, I remove the remaining snow suits from both kids and then collapse in a chair.
But lo the fun doesn't end there :)
I called M's dad and he can't get back for about an hour and a half. I am mostly okay, I can suffer through it, no biggie. It turns out to be largely true, though M started to become quite emotional right as her dad was supposed to be getting home. She had a big freak out when I wouldn't let her eat the microwave popcorn before I actually popped it. I could tell she needed a nap so it didn't phase me, but I was happy when her dad finally got there. He invited me to stay a while before I crawled home and I decided to do so.
So we're sitting there all watching Toy Story (a big favorite of both kids) when M calmly announces that she's stuffed a popcorn seed up her nose.
M's dad and I look at each other with that, "Oh great, just what we need now, a trip to the hospital!" look that I know most parents can identify with. We spend a lot of time talking to her about trying to breath in through her mouth and then blow out through her nose but she isn't quite getting it. She's also getting a little panicked, and she's still fairly emotional from being tired. We let her know that if we can't get it out that it will mean going to the doctor and having to wait a long long time, so she needs to listen to us and let us help her get it out.
The nose is a wonderful part of the face, it knows what doesn't belong there and that's why kids end up having sinus infections when the body produces an excess of fluids trying to free those lost crayons and dimes that have made it up there. So in keeping with its duty, M's nose began running vigorously and with her dad holding her at an angle she finally sniffed it out onto his shirt. Hospital trip averted!
We all gave a cheer and I loaded K into his snow suit and we got into the car and I finally crawled home.
So I score points in the "not losing my shit at a child" department, but I take yet another huge hit in the "keeping kids out of danger with constant vigilance" department. Don't ever ask me to baby-sit, I'm clearly not capable. UC5 says I am being too harsh on myself but I'm not so sure.
This of course brings me back to the "why would I want to in my right mind have another child" question that's been troubling me of late. My mother seems to be of the odd belief that when there are 2 of them that they magically keep each other entertained, freeing you up to become queen of the Universe. The way I look at it, if they decide for whatever reason to not like each other then I've got twice the work. If one of them splits, I better hope I can still carry the other one so it can't get away while I chase the first. If they figure out too early on that I'm not god then I'm DOOOOOOOOOMED because they can gang up and use it against me to play me for the sucker that I truly am. I no longer know why I had the first one, so the idea of playing the odds on another seems like gambling with borrowed money. There are some weird reasons I would want to have a second, but they are starting to pale in comparison to the overwhelming evidence that I am in over my head.
Am I right? I grew up an only child, so I can't say I know for sure, but I know plenty of people who messed with their parents, and hated their siblings. I think my mom is smoking crack when she says it won't be hard. She only had me, and I was a little angel compared to a lot of people I know. I wouldn't have wanted 2 of me!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 04:38 am (UTC)And I worked at a day care for a while as well, but never had a scary moment like that. There was one kid who used to wander off but you always knew where he was going because he had a certain set of motivations- He liked to go see his older brother in the "big kid room" and be a little comedian there for the bigger kids until the worker noticed him and dragged him back. He would sneak out right under our noses sometimes, it was maddening! I knew she could have been playing, and now I can't decide whether I kept her in hiding longer by freaking out the way I did, but she was SOOOOOOOOOOO quiet. She's an amazing little kid.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 11:26 pm (UTC)I think your Mom isn't entirely wrong about the concept of them entertaining themselves -- I think my nieces are learning to play and keep each other amused. But of course this doesn't mean they'd cancel each other out. It's also important to remember that you're never going to get clones, all kids are different.
Anyway, there's advice from the fairly obvious facts department.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 04:43 am (UTC)I was originally friends with the older one, but then ended up being better friends with the younger brother who was about 3 years younger than I, an odd pairing at the time.
And, also, not to harrass you but I was going to include a shot of K sleeping in the laundry, but you haven't gotten back to me about how to post on your site since I confessed my need for dummy instructions :)
Could I poke you again for those? Gently of course? :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 11:15 am (UTC)I said this stuff to her while I was there and she said, "But you know I would help with money stuff." and my response was, "Mom, don't you think it would be nice to not have to support me someday?" and she sort of smirked but you could see in her eye she knew I was right, that it would likely mean she's support me until she dies... Then again I am pretty sure that's what her parents did for her, and likely what I'll end up doing with my kid...
Otherwise they wouldn't call it "the Bank of Mom" :)