Pep

Something about boys with English accents and their pep.

I stepped outside for a run last night, feeling sluggish, and hit play on the shuffle.

BAM!

I ran fast and steady for the next 45 minutes.

Jake is a playlist genius. Every song sat up straight in my brain. He somehow finds music that hits every bit of space. Even the sounds of each word beat on the pavement. There’s something magical about wind in the darkness, tennis shoes, and the right music drowning your eardrums.

Maybe he could get paid for doing that. A Professional Playlister.

(It sounds a little naughty, doesn’t it.)

Mr. Personality.

Moze woke me up early. He likes to get up early, just because, and very insistently yell (not cry, yell. He knows the difference.) for me to get up, talk a little, and then go back to sleep 20 minutes later as to assure that I am wide awake and won’t go back to sleep.

In his defense he has been sleeping pretty well up until 2 nights ago. He would always take 2 long naps (and a couple short ones) during the day and sleep for about 6-7 hour stretch at night (of course, I am awake for most of it, but whatever). Then I made the mistake of telling Damaris that nursing is going well, and then my milk supply dried up overnight. Literally. Now he’s hungry and it hurts and we have to wake up every two hours. Or less. Still investigating the cause of this, since I passed my test already, and the dreaded punctuation mark is not showing up.

He likes it when we watch him sleep.

He is sensitive about his poop. He hates sitting in poop. And he lets me know the second it is invited to his diaper party.

He smiles when you talk to him, and he laughs if you can get him in the right mood. His voice is so cheery and sweet.

He doesn’t freak out when we put him in the ocean. He looks annoyed, but doesn’t hate it.

He’s a lot like his sister. And a lot different. Mostly different. But mostly a lot like her, too.

Especially when you see this:

and then see Moze:

This must be what our offspring look like. I guess I’m okay with it.

It’s my Birthday and I’ll feel unsettled if I want to.

I’m pretty sure when I was 10 and writing about where I wanted to be in 20 years, I said, “Be married and have 2 kids”, because that’s what everyone says. Maybe there’s a little variation with everything else, but most people, at least when they’re 10 and they’ve never had a real relationship, says they want to be settled down, and this means married with kids. Despite dysfunctional family TV.

I’m married, I have 2 kids and I’m not sure what settled means.

Today I am 30. I have a college degree, I’m an English teacher, I have an island I call home, and a fridge that I can open the door of and eat anything I want out of. I put a 4 year old in time out. I clean my floor with an electronic mop I bought off the internet. I have to choose a new medical plan during open enrollment. I know what “open enrollment” actually means. I’m pretty sure this is what it means to be an adult.

When I woke up I felt crappy. I couldn’t decide if I should just shake the funk of night wakings and sore ipples and move on. I sat down with the baby and yelled to Amaya to bring me stuff while I wrote e-mails one-handed. Then I felt bad about what I haven’t accomplished in 30 years and at least I could accomplish something today. I changed and thought about lunch. I put the rice on and immediately felt like I should have made something else. I sat down and started researching grass fed beef in Hawaii and made an order to pick up at the Farmer’s market on Thursday. I started feeling very guilty about buying chicken nuggets last time I was at Costco. I realized that Amaya was basically running wild and decided to make lunch for us to eat outside. Then I sat in front of the computer because I was worried about going back to work in January. This seemed like a solution of some kind. I flipped through the Momofuku cookbook and made notes for challenge #6 for my food blog. Then I felt guilty for basically spending the whole day thinking about food. So I did what I do best: I started getting out stuff to make molten chocolate cakes.

Jake came back and asked me what I wanted to do. I didn’t know.  What do you do when you’re trying to eat healthy and making molten chocolate cakes? What do you do when you’re too tired to go out but find it weird that your birthday has become a day that you still have to live your regular life? What do you do when you’re 30?

I started worrying. Is this what 30 is like? Not knowing and feeling guilty and fighting urges? I’m thinking that if I could go back in time to my 10 year old self, I would say, “You should learn how to organize your stuff, control your impulses, and only shop green. Maybe then you’ll feel settled when you’re married and have 2 kids.”

Then I thought, this is probably not what 30 feels like.

This is probably just what a day after a night of waking up 6 times to feed a baby feels like.

Jake came to the rescue and made us go to the beach, eat out, and wolf down molten chocolate cakes with Haagen dazs. I felt pretty settled.

Especially in my stomach.

Religion

I was thinking about that test I needed to take when we were all three in the bathroom stall at the mall, Amaya was crying and saying she did not need to pee (while peeing), and Moze was crying because he felt claustrophobic and because I had stupidly left his pacifier in the car.

I was thinking about that test I needed to take when we were at Costco and several people commented about me having a handful (Believe me, if they could fit in my hand, we would not be having this problem), and I, again, had stupidly left Moze’s pacifier in the car, so he was crying, and Amaya was constantly trying to stand up in the cart and people were trying to make her sit down because she was endangering her life and I was trying to lift a 25 lb bag of flour (while Moze was in the Bjorn) into the cart. I finally decided not to buy the flour. I completely forgot about the milk. Milk is the reason we go to Costco, which is an hour away from our house. The woman manning the taste testing counter for clam chowder locked me in her gaze for five minutes and spoke to me about the wonders of God and how blessed we were to have children. Then I was really REALLY thinking about that test I needed to take.

I was thinking about that test I needed to take when I was standing at the checkout counter holding a crying baby (guess what I forgot? AGAIN?) and a 4 year old who was walking away while I was yelling at her to come back and I was buying that test I needed to take. The guy handed it to me with raised eyebrows.

I was thinking about that test I needed to take when I got out of the car to get gas and realized that Moze was screaming because he was completely covered in yellow poop. Even his pacifier was covered in poop. There were 5 cars waiting in line behind me while I attempted to clean up massive amounts of yellow sticky drool-like poop from him, the car seat, and strangely, little tiny splatters all over the whole back seat of the car. I just threw away his onesie. A woman, blessedly, offered to hold him while I pumped gas. While I was pumping gas I looked at her and him and realized there were still yellow streaks on the backs of his legs.

I said nothing.

I was thinking about that test I needed to take when I got home.

I went into the bathroom to take that test.

I am so happy to report that I passed.

That woman at the clam chowder stand was right, but today was not a day for us to be blessed.

God is good. God is great. God is so much smarter than me. And maybe the woman at the clam chowder stand, too.

Time out can have a time out.

I hate time out. Hate hate hate. Almost as much as Amaya does.

Amaya is Jekyll and Hyde these days. She can be the sweetest, cutest person ever (especially for other people who demand absolutely nothing from her and give her whatever she wants--you would be amazed at the amount of sugar she can get out of the average person), and she can be the most unruly, bossy, lying and impulsive thing ever. She has started screaming the second I say No to anything, screaming when she doesn’t like what we’ve asked her to do, and screaming when I send her to time out for screaming at me.
The second I put her in time out (because I have to pick her up, kicking and screaming, and put her there) she jumps up immediately and runs after me, hitting me all the way. I have to pick her up and put her back. Over and over and over again, all the while explaining that she is going to stay in time out until it’s over.

So today I closed the door on the way out and she had a complete breakdown, screaming (did I tell you she was screaming?) and kicking the door and not listening to a word I said through the door (that I would not let her out until she sat in her time out spot). I just waited. And waited. And waited. It was like torture. In fact, she sounded like I was torturing her.

When she finally went and lay down on her bed, still screaming at me, I went to google “Time out doesn’t work.” Did you know that there are 88 million results for such a google?

The first site was an article on Dr. Spock’s website. I read it. I felt like I was reading my autobiography.

“The temperamental traits that make the behavior of some children in general more challenging--high levels of activity and intensity, high impulsiveness, persistence (which comes across as stubbornness), and relatively low sensitivity to rewards and punishments--make all forms of discipline less effective. Parents and teachers of these children often turn to harsher forms of punishment in the hope that yelling louder or spanking harder will work to correct the unacceptable behavior. But these tactics almost always backfire, resulting in a child who is angry and resentful, or fearful, and even more badly behaved, at least when adults aren't watching.
So, even though timeout doesn't work as well for some children, it is still far and away the most effective form of punishment. Parents of children who have "difficult" temperamental traits need to be even more skillful in the use of timeout and other nonhurtful discipline, whereas parents who are lucky enough to have easygoing children can get away with only a basic understanding of timeout. (For these children, almost anything works.)”

It is SO difficult for me to keep my cool. I don’t.

I read everything that related to this article and tried to prepare myself with an arsenal of techniques. (Techniques I’ve used before, of course.) It just sucks that time out is not that effective but is the only thing I’ve got.

The funny thing is, she is completely wonderful for the five minutes after she comes out of time out. I always hold my breath and hope that she is going to stay that way. It’s like waking up from a dream and trying your hardest to keep it in your memory.

And that’s why you’re the child.

Amaya said to me, while picnicking at the BYUH parking lot,

“Mom, I love you. You should take me to the haunted of the goon again.”

She cried when I said No. No. No.

See, I’m getting better at this.

Why I Will Never Be Mom of the Year

Amaya tells me, when I’m brushing her hair, “You’re the worst!”

I’m not sure where she learned the word “worst”, but she totally understands it.

Yesterday I took Amaya and Mozely to The Haunted Lagoon. It’s a total craze here. People will wait in line for 4 hours to get into this thing. I know. Because I did. Totally worth it.

There’s a kid haunted lagoon and Amaya’s been talking about it for weeks. The second she saw the posters go up she was talking about “the haunted of the goon,” as she calls it. I was told by several people that the kid haunted lagoon was not scary and a lot of fun. Since she was so interested in it I decided to take her. Luckily, for the kid one, we did not have to wait for 4 hours. We didn’t even wait 5 minutes. If we had, I probably would have turned around and saved all of us a lot of trouble.

The second we got into the canoe I knew it was a mistake. For the whole 20 minutes I was thinking, “THIS IS A MISTAKE,” but you can’t get off, so you just have to wallow in your mistake. There’s no going back. It is the worst kind of lesson you can learn.

I took Moze because Jake had a meeting. Even he was scared, despite having zero understanding of what a monster jumping out of the water was. The noises were loud and the flashing lights were awful.

Later, when Amaya had woken up for the 5th time that night crying and I let her sit up to watch “Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theater” she said to me: “Mom, you shouldn’t have taken the baby and me to the haunted of the goon! You should have left us at home!”

Yep, yep, and yep.

Pulling my leg

My legs are not so pretty, but they get the job done.

In fact, my legs are amazing. I should write an ode to my legs.

They climb mountains very quickly. They have perfect mental stamina.

It’s just the rest of my body parts they’d like to leave behind. Especially the parts (around) my waist.

Sometimes they tell me, “Just let me please, please, go on ahead. I promise it will be okay.”

So I let them.

And now I have a headache and a sore gut.

My legs are such liars.