The Son Only Rises in Mommy and Daddy's Room

Four years ago my husband and I believed in the "family bed." Why not let the kiddies sleep with us, if it meant that we all got sleep? That last part is key "if we all got sleep," but recently our family bed has turned into the General and the Tank's resting quarters, while my hubby and I get pushed to the end of the bed or to the floor like family pets.

I woke up last night with my husband, the Bear ,hibernating on the floor by our bed covered with a blanket that looked like it was made for a doll. I nudged him very carefully, I didn't want to startle the beast. Half an eyelid opened, so I quietly asked, "what are you doing on the floor?"

He responded, "one of the boys kicked me in the head so I moved to the floor."

I couldn't help by chuckle. "This is ridiculous," I told the Bear. "After all, we are the adults and that is our bed. If anybody should be sleeping on the floor, it should be the boys."

We looked that our children all nestled in our bed. I don't think that there was a more peaceful scene on earth at that moment. The General had his armed intertwined with the Tank's and they were holding hands. It was truly beautiful. But, with only a moment of hesitation, I ripped the covers off my little soldiers and marched them right back to their own beds.

The next morning, the Bear asked the General why he's been sleeping in our bed so much lately.

The General said, "Because, when I wake up in my room it's still dark out. But if I get up and go into your bed, when I wake up it's light out. Your room makes the night go away and makes morning come."

It took a promise of ice cream for breakfast to convince the General and the Tank to stay in their room all through the night. And low and behold morning really does come in their room too!

Bug Infestion

My house has been infested. No, not with termites or cockroaches, those would be easier to rid then this vermin that is reeking havoc in my home.

The Stomach Bug. It is a species so vicious that it has literally stopped the General, the Tank, and the Destroyer in their tracks, which is no easy feat.

The General and the Tank seem to be enduring the worst of the damage. After seeing the General make a mad dash for the latrine, I went to check to check on him. When I asked how he was doing, he looked up from where he was stationed and said, "my butt just puked."

It seems that every year this bug likes to take up residence in our house, working its way through each of us. If only I could find an exterminator in the yellow pages that would extirpate this Bug for good.

I've Been SPOTED!

Okay, I'm six months shy of hitting 30 and it seems as though I've just hit puberty. Or at least puberty has hit my face.

I seem to be in the midst of a hormonal rage that is attacking my face with red bumps. I'm not talking the occasional blemish that one would normally get around that time of the month, these things mean business. Every morning I seem to wake up with a new enemy staking claim on my face.

I actually considered calling out of work the other day because I felt so awful about the way I look, until my husband, the voice of reason, laughingly said "what are you going to tell your boss that you came down with a case of the pimples?"

These suckers aren't just a nuisance that I'm dealing with, they are a painful embarrassment. I went to my sister's yesterday and before she even greeted me, she asked if I had the chicken pox.

"No, just a case of pimples," I moaned.

Determined not to been defeated, I've collected an arsenal of gels, creams and washes to destroy these little suckers! I figure if I can do battle with the General and the Tank and survive, then I can definitely take on the Pimples.

Road Trip- 2007

The Departure

We recently took the kids, yes all three, on a road trip to Florida to visit my parents and of course Mickey Mouse. You’re probably thinking, “What was she thinking driving 1100 miles for 20 hours with three toddlers and a husband (who counts as a 4th toddler at times)?”

We started our adventure at 4am. We wanted to beat the Jersey turnpike traffic. Normally my husband has only one rule while we’re on a road trip.

I’m not allowed to drive unattended, navigationally speaking. Apparently, I inherited my Nonnie’s sense of direction, who once decided to follow a car with a Florida license plate, because she was going to Fl, and ended up in Michigan. I too seem to suffer a serious deficiency when it comes to sense of direction.

But this trip seemed to pose an odd situation. My husband went to a college football game the night before and, since he only got home two hours prior to our departure; he was in no condition to drive. In other words, he needed a nap. So naturally I assumed I was going to drive the first leg of the trip. And we all know what they say about ASSUME.

My husband’s response to my suggestion of driving was less than enthusiastic. But I assured him that with our new GPS device that it would be virtually impossible to get lost. I just put in our destination and let my cool new gadget lead the way. So with the whole navigation issue resolve, I told him to take a nap that me and Navman had it under control.

So my hubby slipped into a nice cozy slumber passing thunderous zzzz’s along the way.

Suddenly I felt my control quickly slip away. We hit the Jersey turnpike and there were so many lanes and so many exits that I got confused by Mr. Navman’s directions and got off on to the wrong route. Instantly, Mr. Navman picked up on my mistake and quickly corrected my error, “Please perform a U-Turn as soon as possible.”

Uh-oh.

Okay, I told my self not to panic that Mr. Navman would redirect me. But it just kept chanting, “Please perform a U-Turn as soon as possible.” I needed to find an off ramp and quick so I could turn around and get going in the right direction before my husband woke up. “Please perform a U-Turn as soon as possible,” was starting to become Mr. Navman’s mantra. There was no off ramp and sight, so I just kept driving until the darn contraption’s hymn woke up my husband, the bear, next to me.

“Why is the GPS saying to perform a U-Turn?” grumbled the bear.

“I think I missed the exit for the Jersey turnpike,” I said timidly.

The bear sat upright and turned to me with a fierce growl, “You THINK you missed the exit? Where are we?”

“Okay, I definitely missed the exit. And I’m not sure where we are. I was hoping to find an off ramp and turn around before you woke up, but I’ve been driving for 11 miles with no signs of away to turn around.”

The next bit of exchange between me and the bear I’ll leave to your imagination, but it wasn’t pretty. We eventually got turnaround and heading in the right direction. Needless to say that was the end of my unsupervised driving for the rest of the trip.
Stay tuned for more of Road Trip-2007!

Toughing Out Toddler Torture While the Hubby is Away

My husband’s recent business trip has definitely put a cease on any thoughts that I’ve had about having another baby. After spending fours days alone with The General, The Tank and my youngest, which I’ve newly named The Destroyer has led me to the conclusion that handling three boys under four is like trying to fend off a pack of hungry wolves while standing there with a fresh slab of meat around your neck. I never stood a chance.

After enduring hours on end of tantrums and bickering I decided that some serious intervention was needed to round up the cattle and draw them back to the corral. With the meanest and toughest voice I could muster up I tried to scare the herd back in line. The result was definitely not what I was aiming for; the only thing my booming outburst succeeded at was setting off the house alarm.

This was only night one.

The following days didn’t offer much relief. My hubby hearing the distress in my voice kindly suggested that I pack the boys up and head up to New Hampshire to spend the rest of the week with him while he finished up his work.

I weighed my options. Three more days of being tortured alone with no other adult companionship or endure the nuisance of packing up the whole house to head up to New Hampshire to share the insanity with my husband. Visions of more nights setting off the house alarm swim in my head. Option two it was!

The next day I packed up everything but the kitchen refrigerator and hit the road. Thirty minutes into our adventure and the car started to shake and it started to expel this awful order. “Mommy, Mommy the car is on fire!” cried the General. I looked in the review mirror. There was smoke coming from the rear tire. The smoke and the fumes of burning rubber only too clearly pointed to a flat tire.

I pulled over to the breakdown lane immediately called my husband seeking some advice and some sympathy. I don’t know what I was thinking....that maybe he would teleport himself there to change my tire I suppose. “Call AAA,” was the only thing he could offer. I dialed AAA, the gentleman on the other end told me he’d send a repair truck out and that the wait time would be between 1 and 2 hours. I felt like I just landed on Gilligan’s Island. I left my home for what I thought was going to be a short two hour journey, but there I was, on the side of I-91 by myself, with a flat tire and three toddlers.

Just when I thought my situation couldn’t get any worse, tears and screams of panic started to emerge from the back of the car. I calmly pleaded with the AAA guy, “You don’t understand, I have and infant and two toddlers under the age of 4 and I’m traveling by myself.”


Twenty-five minutes later a repair guy pulled up behind me. He put a doughnut on my car and I was off, driving 50 mph down the highway. You can imagine all the friends I was quickly making. “Mommy, who was that?” asked the General as a not so gentleman waived some choice fingers at me beeping his horn.

Needless to say I quickly exited the highway and took the scenic route the rest of the way.
Our time up in New Hampshire with my husband and his family went by smoothly.

When I got home I called my sister, who I knew would be very empathetic to my situation as she was home alone with her son for the week as well. As I was sharing stories about my house alarm incident and my time on Gilligan’s Island, I could tell she was only half listening.

“Are you listening to me?” I selfishly asked.

“Not really,” she replied. “I just left the emergency room with TJ; he stuck a rock up his nose.”

I couldn’t help but giggle.

“Boys!” she said, meaning “you know boys”.

“Yes, boys,” was all I could say back. And so ended my self pity….it could always be worse.

The Not So Holy Bible Of Parenting

When I left the hospital with our newborn son, who looked to be the most angelic child I had ever seen in my life, I thought I was prepared for it all. The dirty diapers, the all night feeding sessions and even the crying. The endless crying. (At first I thought we brought someone else’s child home, because ours definitely didn’t cry this much when we were in the hospital when we had endless amounts of help to come to the rescue if we couldn’t figure out what was troubling our seemingly perfect baby.) After all, the nurse that discharged me gave my husband and me this handy thousand page book, that she assured us would cover everything that we would possibly need to know until our son reached the ripe old age of 5. Like what to do when this yellow pussy stuff is oozing out the side of your baby’s left eye. It even has detailed steps on how to change your baby’s diaper and even more detailed charts on your child’s growth patterns from birth to 5. We really thought we hit the jackpot, “cool, like a how to manual,” my husband, the new dad, said. As if we just bought a new car.

My husband and I treated this book like the holy bible. Before we gave our son his first bottle we consulted our handy manual only to find out that before we gave him a bottle that we had to sterilize it. Ok that makes sense. But, after further reading we learned that since we have well water that we have to sterilize the water before we could mix the formula. I instantly thought, “Wow, thank God we have this book because our son could really have gotten sick.” Then the next day when the doctor called to check on his new patient, we proudly told him of our finding and not too worry that we boiled our water for 5 minutes before we mixed the formula. And without hesitation Dr. Bill chuckled and said, “What old book did you read that in?” There it was plain and simple our first clue that this book was not the be all and all of raising a child.

Yet, for some reason night after night “the book” called out to us to consult it. At first, even after the little water incident, it proved to be handy. It reassured us that in fact babies do eat ten to twelve times a day and it’s completely normal for a baby to hold his or her poop for 5 days only to release what my husband now refers to as “the Mother Load.” But over time my husband and I began to notice that things started to happen to our son and to us as parents that just weren’t covered in the book. For instance, babies can simultaneously puke out their nose and relieve their intestines at the same time. Or what a child eats comes out their rear the same color that it goes in their mouth. No where in that book did it reassure me not to panic beacause it would be completely normal for my child to poop bright blue for two days after eating Cotton -Candy Trix yogart.

It’s been over four years since that fateful day the nurse gave us “the book” and I am convinced that the authors were paid to purposely leave things out for fear that parents would be leaving newborns unclaimed in hospitals all over America.

The Mom Bag

Men equate the "official" arrival of parenthood with trading in their small, cute, and sporty ride, which most of their friends envy and beg to go cruising in, for a practical and spacious Mom-mobile, aka the Mini-Van, which causes most of their friends to disguise themselves before stepping in for a ride.

Not woman. We'd be OK with a Mini-Van. For us, it's trading in our cute designer handbags for what our co-workers refer to as "the mom bag." With tears in my eyes, I tucked Kate, Andi, and Coach into a safe spot in my closet and broke down and bought A Vera Bradley cross-body cargo sling. This bag is the Mother of all bags. It's has enough room and pockets to pack up all my child paraphernalia, in fact I think I could pack a small child in it too.

I decided to take make bag out for a test drive. I wore it to my son's school fair. I was instantly plagued by Moms green with envy. They were in awe over all the pockets and "the colors," one mom excitedly declared "it goes with everything!" I imagined what followed was similar to to the Man's version of testing the waters with his new ride. You know, when a Dad pulls up with the top of the line mini-van and shows off all the bells and whistles, to other curious Dads who are contemplating taking the plunge, in hopes to gain their approval.

The question and answer session continued for a 20 minutes. "Have you tried to wash it yet?" "What other colors does it come in?" "Can you strap it to your stroller?" "Is it heavy?" "Can I try it on?"

So, yes it is official. I am now the proud owner of a "mom bag." And like most everything else that I've come to acquire through motherhood, I love it.