My Kid Circus

Yesterday morning I was making lunches for the boys to take to day camp.  The little guy was helping me, apparently a little too well.  That night, my husband took out the cheese for some cheese and crackers.  Here is what he found:

Hmm, suspicious.

On another note, Z has been badly needing new sneakers.  He has always had some opinions on what kind of shoes I bought him, but these usually were, “I want the spiderman kind that light up”.  This time, however, he told me, “I want ‘Sketchers’.  They are SO cool!  They are on TV!!”.  Oh no.  I was initially taken aback at what a “mature” request this was.  Later, however, he made me feel a little better.  He told me that he was pretty sure that superheros wear light-up Sketchers, and that he was thinking he might actually be a superhero, he just hasn’t discovered his powers yet.  I was so relieved that he really is still five.  I bought the Sketchers.

Z has really been into bargaining lately too.  The most recent thing has been when he is wanting to watch TV, and I have said no.  He will turn to me and say, “PLEASE, Mommy!  I will say, ‘I love you’”.  Then he tries to up that with “I will say ‘I love you’ AND give you a hug!”.  Hmm, not taking the bait on that one.

For a long time now, my husband and I have joked that our little guy is going to be the one that we will be rushing to the hospital for stitches and broken bones.  He is just such a rough and tumble little guy with pretty much no fear.  Last night, we had our first chance.

The boys were running around the house after dinner while I was changing baby K.  My mother-in-law tells me that she and her siblings were NEVER allowed to run in the house.  We, however, have been somewhat lax about that, and generally if the kids are enjoying each other, we let them.  I may need to be more on top of that now, as the little guy tripped in the dining room, and cut his forehead pretty badly.

As soon as I heard my husband call my name, I knew it was not good, and ran in to see both of them covered in blood.  We jumped in the car, dropped off Z and K with Grandma, and rushed to the Childrens’ Hospital.

Luckily, everything seemed to work in our favor when we got there.  There was no one in the waiting room, and Toy Story was playing on TV.  D seemed to be starting to enjoy himself sitting with both of his parents while volunteers brought him crayons and coloring pages.

We were taken back to a room quickly, and the little guy just sat quietly while they numbed his head, we waited, and they came back to stitch him up.  For a bad looking cut that had a huge amount of blood, it only took 3 stitches.

As we got home, a very concerned Z ran out to check on D.  D yells out, “It was SO fun!  I got a bandaid and a popsicle!” All in all, not such a bad day for a 3 year old.  Not at all a fantastic day for us parents!!

The last few weeks of school we started getting consistent reports from the little guy’s teacher that he is a “ladies man” at school.  One of his teachers’ quotes was, “he really knows how to take care of the ladies”.  She said that he likes to put his arm around them, walk them into the class, and “give them those big blue eyes!”.  Yikes, this guy is 3!  What are we going to have on our hands at age 16??

Shortly after this report, his teacher put him into the car and said, “Well, D was kissing today”.  Whoa.  I really wanted to laugh, but I also thought that I better take the mom role and tell him that kissing is not allowed at school.  I attempted to do that, and he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “I didn’t kiss her.  She kissed me.  I didn’t like it, and I did NOT smile.” Well, what is a guy to do, I guess.  I decided to let that one drop until the very next school day when I was told that he was kissing again, only this time a different girl.  Yikes.  Still, his story didn’t change.  ”Mommy, she kissed me on the head.  I didn’t like it”.

A short time later, D told me that this second little girl is his “princess”.  Oh my.

His two teachers told me they have a bet going that he will marry another girl in the class. I think this is mainly because he looks at her adoringly and does whatever she wants him to do.  What every good marriage is made of.

I think we are going to have our hands full with this guy…

I got dressed this morning, walked out, and Z laughs out loud and says, “you look like you work at Target!!”.  I’m really not sure how to respond to this.  Target is his all-time favorite place, so should I consider it a compliment??  I know my wardrobe consists more of ‘clothes that are easy to throw on and get everyone out of the door in 10 minutes’ than fashionable attire, but am I really being made fun of by my 5 year old???  This does not look good for my future.

But later today, I had the little guy in time out, and baby K was having a complete melt-down.  Z patted my back and said, “I know it’s tough.  It is a little out of control, and that can be really tough.”  Wow.  He totally redeemed himself.

Well, Z is grounded.  Here is how it started:

Z was sitting at the counter playing with some play money.  I innocently said, “Oh, where did you get that?”.  Z then got quiet, and I saw the look that told me in no uncertain terms that he should not have that money.  I waited.  He told me that he got it at school.  After further questioning, he told me that he took it out of a cabinet that he wasn’t supposed to be in.  Great.

He seemed surprised when I pointed out that this was stealing.  At this point I went a little easy on him.  I told him that if he wanted to keep it then he had to ask his teacher if it was okay.  Otherwise, I told him, he had to put it back where he got it.  He reluctantly put it back in his bag.

So when I picked him up from school I asked him how it went.  He very happily told me, “Oh, it went great.  I tricked my teacher”.  I knew this wasn’t going to be good.  He then tells me that his teacher asked him if the money came from the classroom, but he just continued insisting that it didn’t. He thought the problem was then solved.

He saw that it wasn’t when I parked the car.  We walked back in to school, and I stood there while he apologized to his teacher for 1) stealing, and 2) lying. Yikes.

Still, at this point I put it behind us.

Then, yesterday I happened to ride in the back of the van next to him.  What do I see in his car seat cup holder, but more play money.  We were not alone in the car, so I wasn’t able to say everything I wanted to say, but I’m pretty sure my face turned purple.

So today I suffered humiliation along with him AGAIN, as I walked him into school to confess to the teacher.  Again.

Now he is grounded.  In 5 year old terms, this means that he is not allowed to watch television.  This is a harsh punishment to him.  Unfortunately, he is the only one who wants to watch T.V. on any given afternoon, so I had to kind of push my little guy into sitting on the couch and watching a show, just for the purpose of making Z “miss out” on it. Just admitting that makes me realize what ridiculous parenting that was.  Oh well.  Anyway, I think I am looking forward to this incident being over more than he is.  Although I’m thinking I better go check out his nightstand drawers…

Yesterday I took the kids to have their pictures taken.  As has been the case EVERY time that I have done this, it was a nightmare!!  My main purpose in taking the pictures was to get some good “1 year” pictures of K.  Well, she is right in the middle of the stranger anxiety stage, which was a major problem when I wanted her to sit down and smile while a STRANGER put a big camera in her face.  Not good.  She screamed, she cried.  She refused to stay on the picture mat.  Oy.

I tried bribing the boys with ice cream afterwards if they did a good job.  Well, the promise of ice cream was long forgotten when they had the immediate gratification of repeatedly spinning the stool they were supposed to be sitting on.  Oh, it was really fun to run around also.  And just forget following simple directions like, “sit down next to your sister”, or “smile”.  The photographer might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

We didn’t get any ice cream.

Of course, I am a mom.  I got sucked in and bought way too many pictures.  I really don’t know why.

Anyway, here is a little picture of what I was dealing with:

Well, we have continued with the choice to ignore the stutter, and it is definitely improving.  Still there, for sure, but not as bad as it was.  That is a relief.

I still went through days of torturing myself trying to figure out what had brought this on overnight.  I decided to have a serious talk with him.  I said, “Z, you know that you can tell me ANYTHING.  If something has been upsetting you, or there is something you are thinking or worrying about, we can always always talk about it.”.  He sat quietly and seemed to be thinking very seriously.  Then he looked up at me and said, “What’s in soap?”  WHAT????  So, I guess if that is what has been weighing heavy on his mind, then he is doing okay.

So, our newest parental worry around here is about Z.  At almost 5 1/2, he has acquired a stutter.

It all began after he saw an Arthur episode about stuttering, and told me that he thought it sounded, “cool”.  He began stuttering in a way that seemed intentional.  He would stop when we told him to stop, and it wouldn’t pop up again for a little while.

Then it got worse.  And worse.  Then I freaked out.

The intellectual, child therapist side of me said that this is some sort of phase.  My gut feeling was not to make a big deal about it and it would eventually go away.  Then the mom side of me overruled and said, “there is something wrong with my baby, I don’t know what it is,  AHHHHH!!”.  So, I took him to the doctor.  I told him for a while that if the stutter didn’t go away then that was what I was going to do.  So, I took him to the car and without any hint of a stutter he says, “That’s okay, Mommy.  I don’t need to go.  I’m all done stuttering”.  Hmm…

The intellectual side of me felt validated, the mom side of me still drove us to the doctor.  She listened to the situation.  She gave him a thorough evaluation, making sure that all of his neurological signs looked good (they did).  Then she tells me that it looks like just a phase.  She gave me a referral to speech therapist, but seemed skeptical that it was needed or would be helpful. She encouraged me just to wait it out.  So, that is what we are doing.  Waiting and trying to ignore…..

Just another day at the circus.

So yes, we kicked off K’s birthday with a call to poison control.  In the 12 seconds it took me to take a box of cereal out of the pantry, she managed to get a bottle of furniture polish, and when I turned around she had it covering her arms, legs, and mouth.  Ahh!

I grabbed the bottle where I immediately saw the “harmful or fatal if swallowed” label.  So, I very seriously told the boys that I had to call poison control, and they were able to hold it together while I talked to the very wonderful person on the other line.

Apparently, the biggest concern with that type of thing is if she had gotten it in her lungs.  Since she was not coughing and did not appear distressed at all, this seemed unlikely.  She reassured me that if K had not swallowed more than a teaspoonful, which I knew she had not, then she would really be fine.

I had a few tears over it, and a few minutes of feeling like the worst mother in the world for starting off my daughter’s first birthday like that, but then was just grateful it was okay.

Unfortunately, that was not the only call that I have ever made  to poison control.  It was my fourth.  (Yikes, I am truly ashamed to admit that).  Surprisingly enough, none of those calls were for wild man D.  They were all 3 for Z!

The first call I can attribute to me being an overly cautious first time mom, since I think I called when he got approximately 2 drops of body soap in his mouth.  Yes, I can laugh about that now, but it was very serious at the time.

The second time was when he drank a good bit of a bottle of baby Motrin.  I knew he was playing with the bottle while I was changing his diaper, but I guess I got so involved in the clean up that I didn’t even realize that he got the top off of it.  That taught me several huge lessons.  Child proof caps are SO not child proof, and kids can manage to get into trouble with their hands even when you are holding their feet.  Useful information for a first time mom!

The third time, he was really old enough to know better.  He ate almost a full travel sized tube of children’s toothpaste.  That time, the man who answered laughed and said, “I get this call every day of the week”.  Needless to say, he was fine, and I did find it reassuring that there are lots of other mothers frantically calling about toothpaste.

When you call poison control, they take down all of your information (after they talk you through your crisis).  I have never had any problem with this, but after my most recent call I started worrying.  I have had to call FOUR times!!  Yikes!  At some point, I’m afraid that my name is going to be flagged (or maybe it already has been!). I’m hoping there won’t be a next time for me to call, but if there is, I think I better accidentally lose our connection right at that point.

Today is my sweet baby K’s first birthday. I cannot even believe it.  With Z, the first year seemed to go very slowly. I was so excited to celebrate his first birthday and looking forward to what is to come.  With D it went a little faster, but with K, wow.

The day she was born was definitely an answer to my prayers and as I got to hold my long awaited daughter.  I am so very thankful to get to be her mom.

And later I will share the story of how we kicked off the day with a call to poison control, but right now I am just going to celebrate the day.