Just Trust Me

Three year olds do NOT like changes in their routines.  Actually, they don't generally feel so happy about things that ARE routine either, but that's another post.

Every day after work, I pick Lila up and we drive home the same way.  We take the back way, BEHIND the diner, over the train tracks, past the furniture store, over the bridge with the trains parked underneath, and onto the highway.  From there we drive past the lake and through downtown until we get to our exit and during that time, I usually have to answer a thousand questions about my day, the trains, traffic, the mall, birds, skyscrapers and anything else that Lila happens to think of as her mind wanders through our regular route.

But today is special.  It is November and Thanksgiving is next week so I know something that she doesn't.  So just as we pass the mall, I get into the right lane and she notices the off-ramp approaching.  I look in the rear-view mirror and see panic in her eyes.

"WHY ARE YOU GOING THIS WAY?" she says, doing her best impression of me when I want her to stop whatever annoying thing she's doing.

"We're taking a detour, sweetie.  I have something I want you to see."  I smile into the mirror as I take the curve a little too fast and come to a stop at the red light under the overpass.

"I don't LIKE detours!  I WANT TO GO HOME! I WANT TO GO HOME!  I WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!!!!"

The light turns green and we take the left turn that will bring it into sight.  "Lila, sweetie.  Can't you just trust me? You are going to LOVE what I am showing you.  If you just stop screaming and acting like a maniac and look up ahead, you will see it in about 30 seconds."

She continues to scream and throw as much of a fit as is possible while tightly strapped into the car seat with her billowy purple winter coat puffing out around the straps.  I see it coming into view, but she refuses to look and keeps yelling at me.

Another red light.

"Lila.  Liii-la. LI-LA!"  She looks at me through the grimacing and pouty face.  I point.  "LOOK."

She isn't really sure what she's looking at yet.  She sees SOMETHING up there...different colors and brighter lights and this is enough to get her to stop the tantrum.

Light turns green.

As we approach, she begins to make it out and I look back again and she's making a little "o" with her mouth now.  "THEY PUT UP THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!!!  AND THERE'S THE TREE!  AND THEY ARE GETTING READY FOR ICE SKATING!  AND THERE'S DECORATIONS ON THE STREET LIGHTS!"  Now she is smiling.  Not just smiling, but beaming!  "When will they light up the Christmas tree?" She asks, eyes full of anticipation.

"Next weekend," I tell her as I put on my right signal and pull over next to the square.  "Wanna go?"

"YEAH" she says, half laughing and half trying to be cool.

"What do you think?" I ask.  "Wasn't that detour worth taking?  I mean, we can just get back on the highway and not take detours anymore if you want."

"NOOOO."  She says.  "I think we should take this detour all the time!"

"Great," I think.  "So now the normal, quick, easy way home will be the tantrum-inducing detour now."  I realize that dinner is going to be  little later every night.  At least for the next month or so.  But it's worth the look of wonder in her eyes right now.

Find more photos at http://www.davidmetraux.com/centralny.html

This was based on a prompt feom the Red Dress Club about taking a detour.

 

Water Trauma and Other Signs of Insantiy.

There is a new fantastic way I have found to completely traumatize my kid.  I found it by accident, since I NEVER would have seen it as something that would create such an overblown and emotional reaction and I really try not to do it but she is traumatized by it at least a few times every day. 

Every time Lila washes her hands, she ends up coming out of the bathroom having suffered what sort of resembles a total nervous breakdown.  If we don't dry her hands enough, she will cry and shed actual real tears because she says her sleeves are wet.  Apparently she also has super human ability to detect moisture because I almost never feel anything remotely wet and don't really understand why this is so upsetting to her suddenly.

This is a kid who would pull a chair up to the kitchen sink at her grandma's house and come away looking like she was thrown in a pool.  She never wiped her own hands and used to think it was hilarious to run up to me with her wet hands and get her hand prints on me. 

Tonight before dinner, her father went in to "help her" wash her hands (because suddenly she is afraid to do it herself) and she got a DROP of water on her shirt.  She cried and cried and cried and cried.  She cried like someone ran over her puppy, it was so pathetic.  She cried some more, and when I asked her to show me where the water got, she couldn't.  Because her tears had gotten her shirt ALL wet.  Needless to say, we had to change that shirt.

Is this something kids go through or is this just another obvious sign that my kid is going to be insane?

Really? Seriously?

So I was looking through some of my old pics of little baby Lila on my computer and came across my favorite stupid warning EVER.  This was Lila's first ever kiddie pool...I will let the pics speak for themselves.




This is the pool and a not quite one year old baby in it to show scale.
You will note the warning on the front.

 
 





















NO DIVING???  Thanks so much.  I was tempted but now I will resist.

 







I added this one just because it's so fucking cute!



Scream Queen

"Mommy has a headache.  Mommy is REALLY REALLY TIRED and has a headache because I had the WORST day at work.  Let's get your coat on and go home."

Lila just ignored me.  My mother tried.  "Lila, you can come back and play with your (annoying) toy tomorrow.  I will leave it here and it will be here when you come here in the morning."  Nothing.

"Lila.  It is TIME TO GO!" 

That was when the screaming started.  Lila is a gifted screamer.  She started practicing about a week out of the womb and has truly perfected the art of the ear-busting, brain-sterilizing, skull eradicating scream.  Seriously.  When Charlie Sheen said that whole thing about mind-melting, exploded bodies or whatever, I thought of my kid screaming. 

Under normal circumstances, her scream will give a normal, healthy person an aneurysm.  But when you already HAVE a headache it turns it into the most painful, awful blinding kind of headache and you just want to die. 

Lila continued the screaming into the car.  She did it for the entirety of the 15 minute ride home.  I was pretty sure at one point that I blacked out because I have no idea how I got to the exit ramp, but there I was, alive and gripping the steering wheel for dear life at the red light. 

Lila screamed as we pulled into the driveway and then proceeded to continue screaming and then started flailing around as I began to undo her seat belt thingy.  I threatened to leave her in the car and totally saw myself coming out in the morning to a nice sleeping happy kid, but I knew that my neighbors would TOTALLY call Child Protective Services because they would have heard the screaming and thought that my kid's skin was being peeled off by that guy in Silence of the Lambs. 

So I un-buckled her and yanked her out of the car and as she walked into the house she began to calm down.  As she plodded up the steps behind me, she was breathing heavy and whining that she was tired.  And when we walked in the door, she saw her Daddy.  Her eyes lit up.  She put a big smile on her face and ran to him and yelled, "DAAADDDDYYYY!!! I AM SOOOOO HAPPY TO SEE YOU!!!"

"Thanks so much for that." I said to no one in particular.

Not JUST being lazy...but

I am going to let my friend Amanda tell you how she has fucked up her children because I love her.  And because I want to share my forum with other people who agree that Motherhood is one guilt-inducing fuck up after another.  Enjoy:

I've messed up my kids. No, really. Hugely and badly. I think. But I do know that since you can't control your own genes, you should definitely be careful about what kinds of other genes you bequeath them. My 3 children have inherited the worst genes from both sides.

I dropped out of community college at 19 because I had this awesome boyfriend who was a really stand up guy and I wanted to spend all of my time with him. And because I lived on my own (with 2 roommates), nobody could tell me what to do - you know, because I was mature and strong and untouchable. Except somehow, before long at allactually, that laid back guy flip sided as a gross lazy cheat of a manchild. I split, moved back home, re-met a guy I'd known since middle school and married him. I moved from my conservative, Mormon family's home in California's central valley to Berkeley, where my brainiac husband had entered his PhD. program, which brings us up to date.

I'm a first born, strong willed, creative, (usually optimistic), introverted, lefter than liberal, bipolar, aquarian frustrated artist. My husband is an only child, brilliant, hardcore nerd, valedictorian, overachiever, master scholar doctor, published author, mechanical engineer, thinker. 

So then our two children that we had biologically together are smug, self aware, perfectionist assholes. They get every part of it right, and they do it perfectly. They are both extremely in tune with themselves (others, not so much) and independent thinkers = They are self centered narcissists and will not be told what to do. And then there's my firstborn, the daughter my husband legally adopted. She is very in tune with herself and is very personable and easy to get along with = A charming and beautiful teenage daughter who is one of the Popular Girls. I add that last bit because seriously that's a punishment for me.

Neither of these two types of kids are easy to parent. While I do realize that my younger two kids' personality traits are really pretty desirable and will serve them well in life as they get older, it's hard to give that a rat's ass when you have a flash of brief empathy for the mom you just heard about on the news. And while I actually really enjoy my eldest daughter's company (she's pretty hilarious and fun to hang out with), I worry endlessly and desperately about her lack of drive or initiative in her grades/future. At nearly 16 years old, she has literally zero idea of what she'd like to do "when she grows up", and it also has not dawned on her that her current 1.5 grade point average will not facilitate this training anyway. Her biological dad was kind of (to put it nicely) 'dim' intellectually. And not everyone really wants or needs to go to 12 years of college and grad school to become a mechanical engineer. So it's not like we're expecting her to be a doctor or anything (god that sounds pitiful). Honestly all I want is for her to be happy with her path. If she's driven to be a photographer or a nanny (holy crap I'd kill myself first) or a bus driver, that's cool. Whatever. But she doesn't seem to have a clue.

Nobody tells you this stuff. Having kids all over the spectrum (pun intended) age wise (5, 9, and 15), I assure you we're having An Event or five hundred on any given day. But I guess they really are some pretty awesome short people. When I realize that I really don't want them to change, I guess it's going okay. Pretty well actually.


But don't quote me.

If you want to see some of what Amanda really does (she is not a blogger but a beautiful crafter) go here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/tackledandshackled