Tag: boy mom

Cranky-man Syndrome

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Sometime last year, J gave up napping. It happens once kids turn two. They decide that napping is for the birds and stop doing it. The fools! As any parent knows, this often leads to late-afternoon crankiness. Unfortunately for me, J’s late-afternoon crankiness typically manifests in the middle of dinner and lasts until he falls asleep.

He has a fantastic ability to flip the switch on this crankiness too. Of the many things my boys can do, this one might be the most impressive. It starts with refusing to finish or even eat his dinner. We struggle to get a few bites in, then comes tubby time. He’s ok until it’s time to get cleaned up and out. That’s when the tears and the screaming starts. He becomes damn near inconsolable during clean-up, drying off, and getting dressed. If he’s feeling particularly cranky, it goes through teeth brushing as we settle down to sleep. There may be a few pockets of calm here or there, but it’s mostly loud and grating on the nerves.

As he gets older, the cranky-man tantrums are fewer and farther between — THANK GOD — but when they flair up, all I can do is take a deep breath and hang on for the bumpy ride until he falls asleep.

At the end of a long day, because it’s always a long day when this happens, I find myself praying for the patience of Job or a tequila IV, whichever is easiest. It’s days like this when I want to say, “Yea, f*ing right!” to anyone who tells me I will miss these days. Sure, I’ll miss the cuddles and the funny little things he comes up with, but I will be happy when tantrums aren’t the go-to method for communicating. I also know the day will come when waking him up before noon will bring its own frustrations. But for now, I’ll breathe my way through tantrums until I have to hold my nose to wake him up.

Tiiiiiiiiiimmmmeee ISN’T On My Side, No It Isn’t

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What is free time? I have no idea anymore. At any point during the day when I’m not working, cooking, or cleaning, my time is occupied by the boys. I don’t know why I thought about this the other day, but I don’t think I ever really appreciated all the free time I had when I was single.

I’ve always been a homebody, no question, but there were times when I would get the itch to grab my camera and explore the world around me. When I lived in New York, I’d hop on the train and get off at a random stop and walk around. Take in the sights, smells, and sounds.

When I moved back Boston, I’d hop on my bike and ride down all the streets I grew up just passing by and really saw the city where I lived.

When I was single, I read all the time too. I finished the first book in the Game of Thrones series in ONE DAY. Now it takes me five days to complete books that are a third of the length. I miss being able to move about the world on my own without having to make sure the diaper bag is stocked and negotiating behavior before going into a store. I miss being able to spend all day reading if I want to.

I haven’t explored the world with my camera in a long time, but I do take pictures of my boys almost every day. I get to see our little bubble world through their eyes, and it’s just as cool. Some days, a little bit cooler than people-watching in Central Park.

As for reading — and writing these blog posts — I do them in what I call the “in-between times.” In between arriving at an OT appointment and leaving or swim lessons. While I watch them in the bathtub, while I’m waiting for a pan to warm up. Those are the little moments I take for myself. It’s not a lot, but time isn’t on my side.

Not a lot of time for myself. Not a lot of time to run errands. Not a lot of time to kiss their chubby little feet before they become massive sweaty feet.

I think we could all use a little bit more time.

The Big, Bad, Scary School Nurse

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On Monday, while at gymnastics with J, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my sweatshirt pocket, ready to reject the telemarketing call when I saw it was the nurse from C’s school.

FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!

He had a stuffy nose the previous night. I checked him for fever before I put him on the bus, and the way he was running around with J, I knew he was fine. The temps have dropped again here, so a little nasal congestion isn’t out of the ordinary.

I answer the call, and the first thing she says is, “Nothing’s wrong…”

WHY CALL IF NOTHING IS WRONG?!?

He had a coughing fit while eating Pirates Booty, so his teacher sent him to her office. She checked, and he had no fever. She even admitted that the air is dryer in the building, so the kids tend to cough more while there than at home. She called me to tell me that they might send him home. It was a heads-up that I might have to come get him.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been given a “heads up” call. The heads-up call makes me sweat bullets. They mean well, but it’s the last thing I want.

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Then I hung up the phone, annoyed that my mind had already started pouring on the extra guilt that I sent him to school and didn’t notice he was sick even though some days it feels like all I do is stare at them like I can catch the instant they go from healthy to unhealthy.

As I packed J up and put him in the car at the end of class, I reviewed my to-do list for the day. I recently started as a remote EA for a marketing company, so I had tasks to complete for them. During the course of the day, for every task I started, I kept myself ready to stop in the middle, grab J — and hopefully not have to fight with him — and head to the school.

All day I worked and waited, and the call never came. The next time I saw C was when his bus driver pulled into the driveway to drop him off.

I wonder if the school nurses know the emotional turmoil moms go through every time they call. It’s not fun, and it’s not funny. I understand that in a post-COVID world — and I say post-COVID because we know what it is now and how to treat it — they have to be extra vigilant when it comes to sick kids in school. I also understand that not every part can stay home when their kid has the sniffles. I’m grateful that I’m in the position to be able to drop what I’m doing and pick C up if I need to. I just don’t want to be called unless I have to go get him because I swear every call from the school nurse adds ten grey hairs and ages me another six months!

Sometimes I Just Want to be a Lazy Mama

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A lot of being a toddler mama is constantly on the move. Just when you think you can take a break and sit, you have to get up and keep going. It isn’t always directly related to the kids. It’s all the little things like switching the laundry, loading the dishwasher, or running errands. Sometimes it’s kid related, like all the kid-related activities we sign them up for to keep them busy.

Every extracurricular I’ve signed the boys up for has required my participation as well. From a little ninja warriors class to swimming to gymnastics, I’ve been required to participate in all the activities. I had a thought the other day: Why am I paying someone else to watch me play with my kid?

Some days when I take J to his weekly gymnastics class, I wish his teacher would just take over and chase after him for 45 minutes. Any mom will tell you that as soon as you open your eyes, the stopwatch starts on your day, and you are racing against the clock to get everything done and make it to bedtime. Bedtime is the finish line. It is the pot of gold at the end of the get-through-the-day rainbow.

Until bedtime, we do our best to keep the kids busy and learning, so they don’t fall behind developmentally AND burn any pent-up energy they may have. Lord, it is tiring. There are some days when I barely make it to bedtime myself. I’m on my feet so much that lying in C’s twin-sized bed under his weighted blanket is the most comfortable place in the world.

In my twenties, I worked as a restaurant hostess in New York. During the month of March, I also freelanced at CBS Sports. There were some days when I’d be at the CBS studios on 57th Street until almost 2 AM, just to turn around and head to the restaurant for my 6:30 AM opening shift at the restaurant. Even then, I’ve never felt as tired as I do now that I’m a mom. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now or because parenting is a constant, daily grind where I don’t get enough sleep most nights.

That’s why, now more than ever, I wish there was just one of these programs where I didn’t have to chase after my kid. I look around at some of the moms — and grandmothers — at J’s gym class, and I see the exhaustion on their faces. There is one mom who, God love her, chases after her three-year-old daughter while her six-month-old sleeps in a car seat in the corner.

Everyone talks about “the hustle” and “the grind” when it comes to work and success. There is no greater hustle and grind than motherhood — dads get some credit too, but it’s a little bit different. So, yea, sometimes I want to be lazy. Sometimes I want to pay someone else to play with my kid while I read a book, zone out on my phone, or — God forbid — nap! Since that won’t be happening, you can find me chasing after J as he bounces down a trampoline or crawls under a tunnel. Maybe you’ll see me walking across a balance beam with C on my back because he uses me as his own personal litter since I have to participate. No rest for the extremely weary!

Is Acceptance the Same as Defeat?

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C is a terrible sleeper. He wakes up in the middle of the night and STRUGGLES to get back to sleep. The struggle is really mine. He’s just hanging out, reenacting episodes of his favorite TV shows and movies…loudly. At the end of last week, though, we seemed to turn a corner to where he slept as much through the night as he ever does. Meaning we’d put him to sleep in his bed, then at some point, he’d wake up, come running into our room, and go right back to sleep.

Then he spent the weekend at my mom’s house.

Hubby and I were happy for the break, so we could sleep through the night and do some much-needed basement reorganizing. We did a lot of heavy lifting, which made the nights sleeping in the bed, just the two of us without kicking, fussy toddlers, a delight. Readers, we even got to cuddle, just the two of us. No squirmy, cute little furnaces in between us.

We picked the boys up on Monday afternoon. They had a good time, as always, at my mom’s. And to her credit, she followed their bedtime routine every night they were there. For some reason, however, C came back, and his sleep pattern was all out of whack. It wasn’t so much out of whack as it was back to what it was before. He woke up at 1 AM both nights and wouldn’t go back to sleep for hours, if at all.

Before we picked them up, I felt rested. Even just shy of reinvigorated — the only thing that would reinvigorate me at this point would be two weeks by myself on a beach and a stack of books from my TBR pile. Since that isn’t happening anytime soon, this girl will take a few days’ reprieve and a comfy reading chair for an hour or two.

But I digress. The kid wouldn’t go to sleep. He kept singing “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. While he was singing, I was googling pressure points to try and help him. Just so you know, that didn’t work either. 😭

I think I’ve finally reached the acceptance point in my grieving over lack of sleep process. I’ll never sleep again, and I’m begrudgingly ok with it — no, I’m not — but that is what motherhood is all about, right? Sacrificing all for the sake of our kids.

Wins Will Come, and They Will Definitely Go

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Some days, I feel like I have this mom thing down. Everyone sleeps through the night — not in their own bed — but through the night nonetheless. Then there are other days when everything I thought I knew goes flying out the window and I realize I’m Jon Snow beyond the Wall.

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Thursday was unseasonably warm for mid-February, so I took J to the park. As we were walking up to it, I overheard two money talking about how they just wished their kids would listen sometimes. “Mom just needs a win.”

And isn’t it something how little it takes for we moms — and dads — to feel like we’re ok. That we’re on the right track and everything really is going to be ok. Right now, as parents to tiny humans, it’s hard for everything we do wrong to feel like an epic Bay of Pigs level failure.

It occurred to me the other day that the reason we think our failures are so epic is because when our kids feel, they feel BIG. That morning, for example, a different van picked C up for school. The seatbelt on his usual seat was broken — the strap that allows me to loosen and tighten the straps was broken — and this was unacceptable to young C. He had a total meltdown. Was damn near inconsolable. It took about fifteen minutes to get him into buckled into another seat.

After the bus was gone, I talked myself down for calling the bus company and yelling at the dispatcher about the broken seatbelt. I also talked myself down from posting a rant on my town’s mom’s page. Instead l, I took a deep breath, messaged C’s teacher in the app to let her know he’d be coming in hot so that they would be prepared to console him. Then I took J to the park.

What I’ve learned in the almost five years that I’ve been mom-ing is — can’t believe C will be five soon😬🥰 — if my reactions are as big as his, then we’ll never grow. Him as a boy who needs to learn how to manage emotions and me as his mother who needs to teach him how.

So yea, some days you’ve got it all together. Some days you don’t. And some days, it starts well only to fall apart and come back together again…and then maybe fall apart again by bath time. It’s the cycle we live in now as parents that won’t end until…we’ll I don’t think it ever ends.

***inhales deeply, long exhale, followed by a looooooong sip of wine.***

Sticky Stickers Everywhere!

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It occurred to me this week that I hate stickers. It wasn’t a random thought. I almost wish it was. J decided to decorate the window in our dining room with stickers from the piano mat my youngest brother gave them for Christmas. I tried taking them off with my nails, but no such luck. I have to use a razor. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet…

We have stickers floating around the house in any and every room on any given day. Honestly, it’s a pretty close race between dinosaurs and stickers for what we have more of in the house.

They come from everywhere. The doctor’s office. Birthday parties. School. Coloring books. And the boys put them on everything. Windows. Furniture. Notebooks. My laptop.

I don’t really have anything big or sweeping to say on this topic. Only that I hate them and I’ve come to the realization a week before Valentine’s Day, on which C will inevitably come home with for effing stickers.🤬

The Love & Hate of Motherhood

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Last Sunday, I hit the ceiling of my patience. Between a lack of sleep and feeling overall run down, I couldn’t deal with the screaming-jumping-running-around of it all. I locked myself in my office for a few hours to snack and decompress. And it got me thinking. There is so much to love about being a mom. There is also so much to hate about it. And it really is ok to hate some of it. Motherhood asks that we give a lot more than we get most days. Sometimes it’s a little bit too much. The dichotomy of motherhood is the strangest mix of joy and sorrow, love and frustration there is.

Here’s my love/hate of motherhood list.

Love: All the cuddles, squeezes, and kisses. There are moments in the day where a surprise squeeze from my boys is exactly what the doctor ordered and it makes everything feel better.

Hate: All the cuddles, squeezes, and kisses. Then there are days when they are hanging off me like a necklace. Clinging to me like the barnacle on the bottom of a boat. It all feels like too much and I just don’t want to be touched anymore. To the point where, when A comes home from work, I don’t have enough affection left to show him love.

Love: Watching them learn new things and explore the world around them. One of the amazing things about having kids is learning about the world through their eyes. Their enthusiasm and pride after they accomplish something new. Like, when J says, “It worked!” every time he owes in the potty. EVERY. TIME. Or whenever C figures out how to do something — like opening the child lock we put on the fridge because he kept leaving the door open — and he says, “I did it!” Even when it’s something I don’t want him to do, I love the enthusiasm. It’s infectious.

Hate: How hard it is to keep them teach them about the world and protect them from it at the same time. In a world of police brutality and ALICE drills for pre-schoolers, what are parents supposed to teach their kids about trust? One day you can have lunch and laugh with a friend, the next day you’re running from them in an attempt to save your own life…as a child. How do we teach them how to trust the police when it feels like every other day there’s another story about officer-involved violence against civilians?

Love: The extra purpose in life that having children gives you. I’m not the kind of person who thinks having children makes me superior to anyone who doesn’t. But raising kids is an important job, probably the most important job, we can have. We’re literally molding the future. When every thing else goes away. When you get laid off or divorced or lose people, your little ones are always there. So even when we feel like we have no purpose, they are our purpose.

Hate: Motherhood takes away so much of our autonomy, and sometimes it all feels like too much. Taking care of yourself can sometimes feel like a daunting task. Of course, caring for another person will feel overwhelming at times. Knowing that they are solely depending on you to keep them alive and mold them into good people…sometimes it’s an utter mindfuck. The person you were before you have kids and who you are after are two very different people. In some ways that’s a good thing. In others, we have to give up some of the things that make us feel the most like ourselves.

Motherhood asks a lot of us, and sometimes it feels like it takes without giving. Other times it asks nothing and gives so very much. See, perfect dichotomy.

Just Call Me Stuck-in-a-Rut Mama!

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Originally, this post started as me venting about how stuck in a loop I’ve been feeling. How much some days I want to let the kids take control. Nothing will shake you out of a routine like a winter in New England.

C came into our room around 1 AM — not really that abnormal — and couldn’t/wouldn’t go back to sleep — also not that abnormal — until I gave him some melatonin. While he got back to sleep, I was fully awake, playing Solitaire on my phone when A’s alarm went off at 4:30.

As I lay there lamenting my lack of sleep, A came rushing back to our bedroom, letting me know it had snowed overnight — it was raining when we went to bed — and he wasn’t going to have time to shovel our “only annoying that it’s big when it snows” driveway, so I’d have to do it to clear it for the school bus! Yay.😑

Somewhere in the middle of clearing the left entrance — we have a U-shaped driveway — the call came in that school was cancelled for the day. Why? I’m not really sure. They’d already cleared the street, and there was only about two inches in the driveway.

So my loop was interrupted by the weather and school cancellations. While the one day interruption was “pleasant,” it won’t fix the stuck way I’ve been feeling as of late.

My loop currently looks something like this: wake up. Work out. Get C dressed. Make C breakfast. Make and pack lunch and snack for C. Find something for J to eat because he doesn’t like eggs. Shower. Brush C’s teeth. Get him on the school bus. Spend the day entertaining J/cleaning/attempting to work on side projects. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I also find myself having the same conversation with the boys every day — “Stop fighting!”, “Pick up your toys!”, “Go to the potty!” It’s a miracle I still know other words in the English language.

There are some days when I’m so sick of the routine that I want to just let the boys go wild(er than usual) and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, I can’t do that. I’ve been working on potty training J this week and have to make sure he doesn’t pee behind the couch…again. The boys also have a tendency to get into wrestling matches, usually at C’s instigation, and I have to make sure they don’t kill each other. So what’s a burnt out, stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

Keep calm, take a breath, and soldier on. Also, hide in the pantry and eat snack pack Pringles…and pour a glass of wine while making dinner.

But seriously, I think I need to find something to balance out the everyday mundanity. Committing to my #65in365 goal is helping to keep me a little bit sane. I get most of my reading done when J insists that I can’t work, and I must watch Cocomelon/Little Angels/Blippi/Spidey and his Amazing Friends with him. Outside of that, though, what’s a stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

I know that these things I’m complaining about are all part of motherhood, but isn’t that all the more reason to find a way to achieve the “just treading water” feeling of only communicating with toddlers all day? What’s your thing to help combat stay-at-home mom burnout?

The Burden of Being the Favorite

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Sometimes I envy my husband’s position as the second parent in our family. In every family, one parent is always to go-to. The one the kids find first when they’re sad, when they’re happy, or when they’re tired. More often than not, moms are that person. I’m for sure the preferred parent in my house. This is not to say my boys don’t go to their father, but he’s the pinch hitter. To them, Mama is the one who hits the home runs.

Pre-covid, pre-J, we had a good balance. C knew he could rely on us equally to fulfill his every need. Except for when I was breastfeeding. A – hubby – told me that C would start fussing a few minutes before I walked in the door like he knew his food supply was nearby. Since the beginning of the pandemic, however, I have become the primary caregiver. A is an essential worker, so he went into his office daily. Gone was the beautiful balance that we’d created.

Now, I can’t sit down for a moment or complete a task without one of the boys running to me. Just this week, J came to me while I was making dinner for help when the show he was watching ended. A was sitting at the dining table reading something on his phone. What he was doing needed far less of his immediate attention than not burning the house down. He had to be convinced to ask his dad.

During bedtime, both the boys want to cuddle with me, which leads to the three of us – sometimes four if A is invited to enjoy the fun – scrunched up on one of their twin extra-long beds to get to sleep. Some nights as I lay there waiting for J to fall asleep because he fights sleep until the bitter end, I dream of what it would be like not to be the preferred parent. How much more reading I would get done (#65in365), how much more writing I would get done, and how much more up-to-date I would be on shows I watch/want to watch. Over Christmas break, A managed to Eternal, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Clerks 3 largely uninterrupted. Guys, I still haven’t finished The Woman King!

Even during the writing of the post, I’ve gotten up several times at the boys’ request. J refused to let A clean him in the tubby. He wanted “Mama to do!” C came and got me to help with his melatonin, not even two minutes after I told him to go to his dad.

I hope I haven’t made it sound like A just lays back and watches while I do all the things. He does not. When it comes to the husband/father lottery, I really did win the jackpot. He does everything except cook, although he is capable. If he’s in earshot – and paying attention – when the boys are pulling on me to do something, he steps in and asks if he can help. It still doesn’t lift the burden of being the one they go to first. I often find myself feeling frazzled because I can’t complete a thought, or I feel guilty because I snap at them when I just need thirty seconds to pee!

As I’ve said before, I know one day I won’t be the person they go to first when they are having a hard time. I know one day I will be replaced by a best friend or a girlfriend – or boyfriend – but it doesn’t mean that being the preferred parent right now isn’t a lot. It’s draining…and it doesn’t stop when they go to sleep because, at least in my house, they wake up and come to me in the middle of the night…and fight over who is going to cuddle with me. I don’t sleep because my kids love me too much. Am I an ass for complaining about this? Let me know in the comments.