Lila's eating disorder

"MY BELLY'S FULL!!!"

I am tired of doing dinner time with my kid. If I have her tell me her belly is full after 3 bites of lettuce one more time I am going to lose it.

I am seriously tired of it.

I am tired of telling her to stop playing and start eating.  I am tired of listening to her cry because I wouldn't make her chicken nuggets or mac and cheese because those are the only two things she is willing to eat.  I am tired of trying to get her to sit still for 5 minutes and eat and I am tired of the whining and crying about it.  I am tired of her telling me she's full and her belly hurts only to have her ask for ice cream or cake or a snack 15 minutes later.  I am tired of explaining OVER AND OVER that if she's got room for ice cream, she has room for carrots (or chicken or mashed potatoes or whatever).



Lila ALWAYS has room for dessert. 



I am tired of not being able to have a conversation with Ben at the table without Lila banging things or throwing something or getting out of her seat 200 times.

Trust me when I say that the whole "fine, go to bed without dinner" thing does not work.  She says that's fine, gets down and plays, and then cries for the next 4 hours because she is hungry. Then she is awake every 2 hours through the night.  The last time she went to school and told her teacher that I wouldn't feed her when she was starving.  I am even less willing to deal with that bullshit.

I refuse to be one of those parents who lets their kids have lax table manners and I truly believe that dinner time is important family time.  My parents say that I behaved at the table when I was her age.  I ate whatever my mother put in front of me (with a few exceptions) and I never expected dessert every night. 

I want to just stop feeding her altogether for a week.  Then see how she does when I say, "let's sit down and eat, shall we?" I bet that she'd be ready to sit and eat then.  

I don't bribe her with desserts.  She always brings it up.  I have stopped telling her "if you eat your dinner" and started saying "we don't have dessert so this is what you have to eat."  She cries EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I give her tiny portions and she still won't eat them.  In fact, I would argue that the less I put on her plate, the less she actually eats.

WHAT THE HELL DID I DO WRONG HERE???  Am I breeding a kid who is a shoe-in for an eating disorder later?  Should I just take her to the shrink now and get that inevitable process started?  And when did mothers start worrying so much about what and how much their kids ate?  I am pretty sure my mother didn't give a shit if I ate or not.

I'm not ready.

(Or Lila finds a new way to make Mommy insane)


"Lila, it's time for school.  You have to get up."
I'm not ready.
"Lila you have to eat some breakfast.  We need to get going."
I'm not ready.
"It's time to get dressed.  Come on.  We need to go in ten minutes."
I'm not ready.

"You have five minutes and then it will be time to go to the doctor."
I'm not ready.
"Can you get ready?"
I'm not ready to get ready.
"In five minutes you need to be ready."
I don't think I will be ready.

"Lila, it's time for dinner. Wash your hands."
I'm not ready.
"I need you to help me set the table."
I'm not ready.
"Well, it is time NOW so ready or not, I need you help me."
I'm not ready NOW.

"Lila, look at the clock.  In 5 minutes it's time for a bath."
I'm not ready.
"Right.  When the clock says 7:15 you need to be ready."
I'm not ready.
"Ok.  That's why I am telling you to watch the clock."
I'm not ready to watch the clock.
"Ok.  Well you have 5 minutes."
I won't be ready.

"We need to get your pajamas on and get ready for bed."
I'm not ready.
"ok.  Well, We have to do things we aren't ready for sometimes."
I'm not ready.
"Lila, if you don't get your pajamas on you don't get a bedtime snack."
I WANT MY SNACK RIGHT NOW!!!
"Well, I'm not ready."

I don't suck? Thanks!!!

HOLY CRAP!  I was given another award! 

YAY to MOTHERHOOD (OH AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN) for not noticing that I am so sick I haven't showered in 3 days and that all my posts have been a little sickly lately too.

But I will take it. 

First the official part that I have to do to accept this award:

Seven random facts about me:

1. My first year with Lila was so bad that I swore I would never have another baby.  And I am sticking to it.  I am not a praying woman.  But I cannot tell you how many times I prayed to God during Lila's non stop 10 hour crying fits and my 24 hour post-partum crying fits to just let me live through this without killing her or anyone else and I would never think I was smart enough to try it again.  He let me live. So I have to let Lila be an only child.  For everyone's sake.

"We have to pray just to make it today...Oh yeah, we pray..."

2. I think I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome even though I kind of don't think it's a real disease.  I keep being tested for every illness known to man (which is putting me into debt because I have no insurance) and they can't find any good reason for me to feel so crappy all the time.  I am going with it and asking for a prescription for 2 hour naps every day. 

3. I am in a pretty bad mood as I write this.  I am sick and Lila has been sick and Daddy's been away (hers not mine) and so I apologize for the whining.

4. I thought 30 days of books was going to be fun.  And it was.  For like 12 days.  But here on day 24 or wherever the hell I am , it is getting tedious.

5. I worked at Borders for like half of my adult life.  My only real dream is to one day open my own book store. 

6. I am pissed that Oprah quit before having me on. 

That's right, Oprah.  You missed out on this.  Cry me a f**king river.

7. My laptop is broken and I have to use Ben's computer.  It was put together sometime in 2003 and is the slowest thing I have ever used.  I am trying to get my blog to that "next level" but I am limited by this machine I literally CANNOT get it to log into twitter, which I can easily do on my PHONE!!!.  It also won't let me comment on blogger blogs for some reason.  And this post right here took me an hour.  Yeah.  I am serious.  So Although I am supposed to give this award to something like 15 blogs, I am probably going to have to limit it to 3 or 5.  And they will likely be wordpress blogs.  Unless I can go back to work in the next couple of days to use my work computer. 

Nominations to come.



(p.s.  as always, I just randomly googled these pics.  I have no idea who they belong to but they aren't mine)

Another Confession about Motherhood

As I sit here I am sweating and hyperventilating and having all the typical fight or flight panic symptoms. 

Am I being stalked by a wild animal?  You could say that.

Am I about to be attacked by some crazed lunatic in the middle of the night?  Maybe.

Am I simply underconfident and know I am going to have my will and my patience tested to the point of breaking?  Yes.  For sure.

What is it that is causing me such distress?  I am alone all weekend with my three-year-old.

For most of you this is probably where you roll your eyes and click over to TMZ or some youtube video of a cat getting its little head stuck in a glass while trying to get a drop of milk (I saw it.  It's cute, right?).  Because I know that for many of you who are single mothers or full time stay at home moms, this is nothing you don't do all the time.

But for me, it terrifies me to no end.

Ben had to fly out to Arizona to take care of some things that were left undone when we moved back here.  IT was a last-minute thing,  so I only had a couple of days to prepare myself for the hell that would unfold when Lila got bored/annoyed/angry/her usual self with me and started to work my last nerve. I did not have ample time to work out a plan as to what I would do instead of just calling in The Big Guns (also known as "Daddy") to take over for a little while so that I didn't have a nervous breakdown.

Me after the FIRST
12 hours of continuous
whining.

I am afraid of a three year old. Not that I would ever let her in on that.  OHHHH No!  This is something I keep on the inside while I go about my day making sure we both eat and sleep and poop and keep ourselves in one piece.

Because I KNOW that I am the adult.  I know that I am in charge.  I know that we will be fine.  There is really honestly not a doubt in my mind that we will both survive this 4 day MOMMY-FEST relatively unharmed and only minimally emotionally drained.  And yet, the IDEA of not having backup around the house fills me with nothing short of complete and absolute dread.

Am I the only mother who feels this way?  Should I be committed?  Is it wrong that I depend so heavily on another person to keep the peace around here?  Do I need a body guard?

CRAP-TASTIC! - No, seriously.

I dont know why Lila sees the toilet as being pure evil.  It's not like I showed her this:

Image from http://yippie-kai-yay.blogspot.com/

Well folks, after a year of begging and cajoling and trying ever suggestion (including bribery, trickery and just leaving her alone) Lila managed to take a crap on the toilet on Tuesday.  Not only that, she has crapped Wednesday and this morning as well.

I wish I could say it was her choice.  I wish I could say that I did what any loving and attentive parent would have done and let her come around on her own.  But I didn't.  I simply refused to buy any more pull-ups and it just so happened that she was sick and couldn't really hold it anymore.

I wish I could give credit to the gazillion suggestions I received from you all.  I wish I could say it was because I bribed her with a trip to Target for a new Barbie or because I told her I would take her to Friendly's for ice cream (Yes, I told her both of those things) but it wasn't.  It was just because Ben has a shitload of patience with her begging and crying that I don't have.

He was the hero in this one.  After me trying to talk her through it for about 15 minutes while she cried in sheer terror that she could not properly explain (because she is three), I gave up and called in the big guns. 

Ben went in and offered to take all the water out of the toilet so there would be no splash.  This helped but did not in any way make her want to go.  I sat in the hallway crying because this was obviously mean and cruel but I reminded myself that I had never heard of anyone so traumatized by having to shit on the potty that they became mass murderers.

Ben started asking her about school.  About who was sick and who was the "leader" and all of a sudden I heard her stop crying and squeak out a little, "I think I did it."

And she did.  She was so proud of herself and so we had to act like crapping in the toilet was the most incredible thing we had ever witnessed.  We told her she was brave and so big now and she just beamed with pride!

from cafepress.com

And of course, yesterday we went to Target where I managed to spend $22 on a Barbie and some other crap toys just to keep the momentum going.

So to all of you who reassured me it was going to be okay and that my kid would eventually stop crapping her pants, I say THANK YOU FOR THE SUPPORT.

Now I have to figure out how to properly wipe a kid's ass when she is half standing up.