You Know You're a Potty-Training Mom When...

I am in the process of potty-training two children at once. (Go ahead, make the sign of the Evil Eye. I know I just did.) Every mom – or dad – or preschool teacher – or nanny – or anyone else - who has ever potty-trained a child knows that there are certain universal signs that you are in the throes of this dreaded process. You know you’re a potty training mom when:

• You automatically put a sticker on the chart on the bathroom door every time you (or anyone else in the family) uses the toilet.
• You can’t help but sing, “Flush and wash and be on your way!” every time you finish peeing.
• You sing “Happy Birthday” while washing your hands. Even in a public restroom.
• You announce to everyone in the room every time you’re about to use the bathroom. And then invite them to join you.
• And you narrate while you’re going.
• You’re more likely to accidentally sit on a child’s potty seat than on a toilet with the lid still up.
• Scrubbing pee off the bathroom floor is part of your bedtime routine, right alongside brushing your teeth and putting on your PJs.
• You occasionally sniff the air suspiciously and ask, “Who needs to go do a poop?”
• Your bathroom closest holds not only towels and toilet paper, but a collection of pull-ups and small underpants.
• And a “treat box” full of temporary tattoos, Dum-Dum lollipops, and snack-size bags of M&Ms.
• You do a choreographed dance any time a child successfully uses the toilet.
• You check for soiled underpants rinsing in the toilet before you pee.
• Your bribery reward list includes trips to Chuck E. Cheese, the Lego store, and the Bouncy House place.
• There are Cheerios floating in the toilet at any given time.
• You can recite “Once Upon a Potty,” “Elmo’s Potty Time,” or “Everybody Poops” without once referencing the book and/or video.
• You do more than one load of laundry every day.
• Ninety percent of that load of laundry consists of underpants and sheets.
• You make everyone in the house “do a try” before you get in the car, even if you’re only going out for 10 minutes.
• You know the location of every public restroom within a 30-mile radius.
• And you’ve used every one of them.

Any other parents out there who are in the throes of this stage? Let’s all remind ourselves that there are very few children who go to kindergarten in diapers. And even fewer who do so in college. And let’s not think about how many parents wind up losing their minds before they reach that stage.

And then let’s all have a glass of wine together. 

You Raise Me Up

It must be very frustrating to be a small child trapped in a world of knees and pants legs (and, let’s be honest, crotches and butts), never being able to see the interesting stuff that everyone is looking at.

Fortunately, a pair of adult shoulders makes a good perch, so giving Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Uncle Jim a puppy dog face will usually result in getting the best view in the house.

 

If one of the worst parts of childhood is being short, one of the best is being small enough to be lifted and tossed around by the adults in your life. It’s like having your own personal amusement park every time you can convince someone to pick you up. They’ll put you on their shoulders, they’ll swing you around like an airplane, they’ll throw you in the pool, they’ll let you dive off their knees, they’ll swing you back and forth like a pendulum. They’ll give you a sense of freedom like you’ve never experienced before – and like you’ll never quite be able to reclaim as an adult. It’s as close to flying like a bird as you’ll get any time in your life. And it’s as close to having perfect trust in another human being as you’ll get any time in your life.

And THAT’S flying high!

(Note: This is not my child. My husband knows my neuroses well enough to not capture a moment like this on film.)

 

 

 

Charades

My daughter has reached that exciting but frustrating stage where her mental development has outstripped her verbal skills and physical abilities. In other words, she’s in the pointing and grunting stage. Since 20% of her vocabulary is comprised of the words “hat” and “shoes,” it’s rare that she is able to say the name of an object she wants. (Granted, about 50% of the time what she wants IS a hat or a shoe, but that still leaves about 49% of the time when she doesn’t have the necessary word at her disposal.) She knows what she wants but is often not able to get it herself, and struggles to communicate verbally with others to get them to help her get it. She’s in the age of charades.

She’s actually quite creative in how she expresses her wants. If she wants something to drink, for example, she has a whole arsenal of techniques to let me know. If she has a sippy cup that she’s finished, she holds it up in my general direction and shakes it. If she’s in the kitchen, she goes to the counter where the cups are and reaches up over the edge in an attempt to knock one down. If she succeeds, she brings it to me and shows me that it’s empty (usually accompanied by a woeful expression and a sad, “Uh-oh!”). If she can’t reach a cup, she comes to find me, takes my hand (well, technically, my thumb), and leads me to the refrigerator, then looks at me expectantly. If I still don’t get it, she grabs onto the handle of the refrigerator door and tugs with all her might.

If she wants something that she can see but can’t quite reach, she also has several techniques in her arsenal. The most common are the crab-pincers and the point-and-grunt. If an object is almost within reach, she uses the crab pincers. She has developed a great fondness for jelly beans this Easter season, so if she walks up to the piano, reaches up, and flaps her hand open and closed like a little crab’s claw, I can be sure she wants a jelly bean from the dish that lives up there, and not a closer look at a framed photo or a piece of sheet music, which are the only other objects in that general vicinity.

And if she’s strapped in her high chair and there’s a toy that’s just out of reach, the crab pincers aimed in that direction are enough to indicate what she wants.

If the item is a bit further away, or if it’s part of a group of objects, she does the classic toddler point-and-grunt and waits for me to guess what she means. If she wants a toy that’s inside her playpen, she’ll lead me over, point at something, and then look at me with a quizzical expression and a grunt. So I begin showing her different objects: “Phone? Lamb? Truck? Baby? Giraffe? Beads?” At each wrong answer, she chirps, “Noooo!” in an increasingly annoyed voice, and stabs again with her extended index finger. It reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” when the Ghost forces a reluctant Ebenezer Scrooge to look at his own gravestone.

(She’s not very intimidating, so it’s definitely the Mr. Magoo version that comes to mind.)

The complication in this scenario is that since she doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on what the word “no” actually means, even when I show her the item she wants, I’d better be watching her instead of just listening to her response because she will say “no” even when she means “yes.”

At times it can be frustrating for both of us, but most of the time we both see it as a game, a creative challenge, and a fun problem to be solved. Plus, when we do it right, sometimes we both get a jelly bean.

 

Kids Are Boring - NOT!

The other day I overheard a young man saying that he didn’t want to have kids because they’re so boring. Boring? Kids?? I don’t know whose kids he had been hanging around with, but it certainly wasn’t my kids. There are lots of words you could use to describe my children – frustrating, infuriating, hilarious, energetic, mystifying, fascinating, unruly, and disobedient all spring to mind – but boring is certainly not one of them.

Is it boring to listen to a 3-year-old throw words he’s learned into a random conversation? Because my son does that all the time. Last night, he was racing around the room at top speed and he stopped in front of me just long enough to announce, “Mama, I’m a go-getter!” before tearing off again. Later that night he was being silly and falling over and told me that he had just “capsized.” Is it boring to try to figure out what a 1-1/2-year-old who doesn’t really talk yet means by her babbles? My daughter’s usual conversation is, “Tucka tucka tucka tucka,” but occasionally she’ll throw a word like “’iger” (while patting a stuffed tiger), “’tar” (while pointing at a star-shaped cookie), “hat” (while donning a yellow hard hat), or “’ook” (while handing me a book) into the mix. How could that possibly be construed as boring?

And then there’s the creative use of toys. Hand an adult a cardboard box and he’ll use it for something boring like storing file folders or putting winter clothes in the attic. Hand it to a child and it will be magically transformed into a spaceship or a pirate ship or a castle.

 

Give an adult an empty paper towel tube and he’ll throw it in the trash, but give it to a child and it’s a trumpet or a telescope or a drumstick. Send an adult out in the snow and after he shovels the driveway, it won’t occur to him to do anything other than come back inside. Send a kid out there and he’ll be climbing up the biggest snowbank he can find, making snow angels, building a snowman, starting snowball fights with the neighbors’ kids, and poking icy patches with a big stick.

Who would you rather hang out with, the child who can make fun out of anything, or the adult? I know which one sounds boring to me. And it’s not the one who eats spaghetti with a fork.

Angel Kisses

One tradition I love to do with my son is what I call “angel kisses.” Just before I go to bed at night, after he’s been asleep for quite a while, I tiptoe into his room and give him a kiss on the forehead. He’s a pretty heavy sleeper so he rarely even stirs, but he knows that I do it. If my husband and I are going out for the night and a babysitter will be putting him to bed, I can often quash his protests by reminding him that I will come in and give him an angel kiss when I get home, while he’s asleep. So even if he doesn’t wake up to feel it, he knows I’ll check on him before morning.

One of the reasons I love angel kisses is that they give me the chance to see my son when he is quiet and peaceful. At the age of three, he is often rebellious and petulant and disobedient and frustrating to be around. But seeing him asleep lets me imagine him as his most perfect self: calm, unresisting, and sweet. It reminds me of his potential, and it reassures me that he has that calm, sweet boy inside him who someday will once again emerge from the rebellious tot. After a particularly frustrating day, I look at his sleeping face and think, “Why aren’t you like this all the time? Why can’t you stop fighting against me and obey? Why can’t you trust that I’m doing what’s best for you? Why can’t you just submit your stubborn little will to my greater wisdom?”

And then I realize that God must look at me and think the same thing. But then I also remember that He always sees me through the blood of Christ as that peaceful, obedient servant that I could – and should – be. And I forgive my son for his stubborn spirit, just as God forgives me for mine. And I thank my Father above that He loves me infinitely more than I am humanly capable of loving my own dear children.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9-11)

 

Why We Don't Need a Pet

We recently took care of my sister’s pet rat while she was away for a few weeks, and my kids were delighted to have a pet for a little while. My son told me often, with longing in his voice, “Mama, I just love this fuzzy little guy.” Both kids were remarkably careful and gentle with her, and spent hours just watching her in her cage. So after she went back home, a number of people asked me if we would be getting a pet of our own in the near future. My reply was a resounding NO. As of right now, there are lots of reasons NOT to get a pet (my kids aren’t old enough to help take care of it, for one thing), but most of the reasons people give TO get a pet, our household already has covered. Here are the reasons why we don’t need a pet:

1.      Pets are happy to see you when you get home.

I have two kids who squeal with excitement and practically turn themselves inside out when I walk in the room, whether I’ve been gone for 3 hours, 3 minutes, or 3 seconds. And if even they get so excited that they pee themselves, they're wearing diapers so I don't have to clean up the carpet.

2.      Pets are nice to snuggle up with at the end of the day.

After supper, my kids love to snuggle with me and read a few books. Plus, they don’t shed on the couch.

3.      Nothing makes you feel as special as a pet licking your face.

Except for your kids licking your face. And your kids are less likely to have just drunk out of the toilet. They may have splashed in it, but they probably didn’t actually drink out of it.

4.      Pets are great for finishing up leftovers.

My kids would snack all day long if I’d let them. That last spoonful of mac and cheese or applesauce or those last few wedges of orange are just the right size to make them happy without spoiling their dinner. They even lick the plates clean so I don’t have to rinse them before I put them in the dishwasher.

5.      Pets love you unconditionally.

My kids randomly come up to me and give me big hugs and kisses without warning. My son tells me, “I love you, Mama,” all the time, even right after I’ve punished him. Which is almost never because he's just peed on the rug or eaten my favorite pair of socks.

6.      Having a pet makes sure you get regular exercise.

Anyone who’s met my children knows that they make sure I get plenty of exercise.

7.      Pets help you meet people and make new friends.

Strangers come up to me all the time to talk about my kids. In fact, it’s a rare occasion that I’m out in public with my kids that someone doesn’t approach me with a smile and a pleasant comment about them. My latest babysitter is a result of a stranger commenting on how adorable my kids are. And they have yet to bite a single stranger.

8.      Pets assure that you have a daily routine.

We refer to my kids as the “baby alarm clocks” because they wake up within a 15-minute window like clockwork every morning. Their inner dinner bells chime at the same time for every meal. And they conk out at exactly the same time every night. They make sure I have a daily routine whether I want to or not.

9.      Taking care of another living thing is satisfying.

Yes, yes, it is. Especially when it can tell you, "Thank you" in words.

10.   Having a pet is good protection from burglars.

My kids won’t bark at or bite an intruder, but I guarantee you that any prowler trying to make his way through my truck- and Lego-strewn house in the dark will not make it very far. And if he does, the sounds of breaking plastic and muffled groans of pain will certainly wake us up in time to call the cops.

 Maybe someday we’ll be ready to get a pet, but not right now. So if you’ll excuse me, someone seems to be scratching at the door of my office begging to be let in.

 

You Know You're a Mom When...

Every once in a while, I do, say, or see something that makes me think, “Oy, I am SUCH a mom.” There are certain telltale signs that belong to no-one else except a mom. Here is a list of a few of the things that help me to never forget that I’m a mom. Even when I really, REALLY want to forget.

1.          There are nose and lip prints on every shiny vertical surface in your house about 3 feet up from the floor.

The sliding glass doors, the refrigerator, the dishwasher, the stove, the full-length mirrors. You can make circuits around the house with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels and there will still be fresh prints on every surface by the time you finish a circuit. In my house, these are made by the 3-year-old, who a) is curious as to what’s outside, which makes the prints on the sliding glass doors, and b) likes to make his mother crazy by licking random surfaces, which makes the prints on everything else; and by the one-year-old, who forgets to watch where she’s going and crashes into things. She crashes into every vertical surface, not just the shiny ones; it’s just that only the shiny ones manage to retain the prints.

2.            Your purse contains more items belonging to your children than to you.

My kids are old enough that I don’t need a full diaper bag for short outings like going out to dinner or to the grocery store. But I do need a stash of a few necessary items in case of emergency. So my purse contains my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, and possibly a tube of lipstick, but it also contains two different sizes of diapers, a pack of baby wipes, several Matchbox cars, a small plastic tiger and giraffe, a Ziploc baggie of somewhat crumbled Cheez-its, a small plastic fork and spoon, and a juice box. Yes, my purse is nearly as big as a diaper bag. But it looks slightly classier. At least, it does until I start pulling out all the items mentioned above.

See? I was not exaggerating. This is really what’s in my purse. There is a wallet in there somewhere. I hope.

And I know it’s not just me, because I was recently on a flight with my children and my one-year-old was fussing. The mom in the aisle behind us reached into her purse and wordlessly handed me a slightly sticky board book, and as our eyes met, I could feel her silently telling me, “Courage, sister.”

3.            You narrate yourself all day long.

My 3-year-old son is very verbal and loves to learn new words, so I talk to him a lot. And I explain new, relatively complex words to him on a regular basis. When we go to the grocery store, we talk about the different kinds of fruits and how they grow and why they’re good for you. We discuss why the lobsters in the tank have rubber bands on their claws. We talk about why we have to close the refrigerator and freezer doors right away after we get what we need. We talk about how we have to pay for what we’re buying before we can open it up and eat it (this is a crucial – and difficult - lesson whenever we buy cookies). We learn words like “patience” and “preservatives” and “dozen.” I didn’t realize how automatic this was for me until the whole family was in the car the other day and my husband suddenly burst out laughing because I was explaining to my son some concept like “asphalt” or “curb.” [NB: While I was writing this paragraph, I had to take a break to check on my son and I kid you not, I explained to him the words “outrank” and “trebuchet.” Yes, there was a logical context. No, I am not going to attempt to explain it here.]

4.            You find yourself translating from “child” to “English” whenever someone else is in the room.

My 1-year-old doesn’t speak much yet (her vocabulary consists of “Mama,” “uh-oh,” “wow,” “ow,”and “quack”), but she does have a few sounds that mean something to us although they aren’t actual words. When she points to something, she makes a sound that we have decided means, “What’s that?” so whenever she says it, I repeat, “What’s that?” so anyone listening will know what she means. She also has begun saying “k” to mean both cup and book, so I repeat the appropriate word both to teach her and to fill in anyone nearby.

And although my 3-year-old speaks quite clearly and is generally understandable to strangers, his speech often requires context clues to make any sense. For example, the other day he put on his police helmet with the green visor and informed me, “Mama, you look like a big green potato!” This comes off as a pretty bizarre statement in and of itself, until I ask him, “Oh, just like Quack the duck looked like a big green potato when his friend Chirp the bird looked at him through a green glass bottle?” Strangers probably still think he’s crazy, but at least they know he gets it from his mother.

5.            You can identify the specific object causing a crashing noise from the next room.

Any mother of a toddler can tell you that you very quickly develop a sense of knowing which crashes are ordinary, harmless play and which require motherly intervention and/or medical attention. Dull plastic thwacks are generally toy trucks and do not need to be checked out; sharper wooden clunks could be furniture being damaged and require a quick peek; resounding metallic clangs or the sound of shattering glass are definite immediate response indicators. If the latter category is followed by the sound of a small body hitting the floor and then silence, 9-1-1 should be dialed on the way to the scene.

Obviously, this list is a mere sampling of the signs of motherhood. These are only a few of the more common and recognizable signs. Although I suspect the most common and recognizable is that haggard, exhausted, vaguely unkempt look and vacant expression that is so universal among moms of tots.

First Child vs. Second Child

When my son was born, I think I filled in the information in his baby book the day I came home from the hospital. I dutifully looked up all the data for the “On The Day I Was Born” page – I googled the most popular song that day, the top news stories, the current world leaders of various countries, the hit television shows and movies. I wrote up bios for myself and my husband. I filled out the genealogy page with names and dates. And I carefully read through the “milestones” page nearly every day, so I wouldn’t miss my chance to record his first smile, his first trip to the zoo/the mall/church/his grandparents’ house, his first tooth, his first step, his first everything.

My daughter is over a month old and her baby book doesn’t even have her name in it. In fact, the only reason she HAS a baby book is that we got two at her brother’s baby shower.

I am a bad mother.

Actually, I’m really not. I am simply the mother of two instead of the mother of one. I honestly thought I understood what a difference that would be. Ha ha ha ha ha. It’s hard to write in a baby book when you’re holding a nursing baby to your breast while chasing a laughing toddler around the room shouting, “Spit out that penny! Spit it out! Now!”

But there are also benefits to having been through an older child’s infancy. You understand the crucial difference between the “I’m hungry/tired/wet” cries and the “I’m bored” cry, and you know which need to be attended to within two minutes and which can wait for ten or fifteen. I hadn’t realized how much I’d absorbed that idea until I was at a neighborhood yard sale over the weekend with my daughter in her stroller. She began fussing, so without even looking at her, I started rocking the stroller back and forth with my foot while I continued browsing. The mom running the sale laughed and commented, “This must not be your first.”

Another benefit to having had a child already is that you have an arsenal of tricks to use on a cranky baby. It took a couple of months of thinking of various way to soothe my son during his cranky times, but with my daughter, I had two or three months’ worth of tricks up my sleeve the day she came home. I already knew that “just any lullaby” wouldn’t work. My son’s preference was “Old McDonald”, which I didn’t figure out until he was 6 or 7 weeks old; after going through my full repertoire, I knew within a day or two that my daughter could be soothed only by “Moonshine Lullaby”. And I figured out right away that she shared her brother’s need to be held standing up, not sitting in a chair. That tidbit took several weeks with her brother.

But the ultimate benefit to having an older child is that you can look at that older child and realize that even though you had no idea what you were doing, he grew up to be a healthy, happy, well-adjusted toddler with no physical or emotional scars to speak of. So chances are pretty good that your little one will survive your incompetence just as nicely.

What Kind of Mother Am I, Anyway?

Yesterday, I offered my child up for sale on Facebook. Yes, I was only kidding, but I’ll admit that if I’d gotten a better offer than a peeing cat I might have given it a split-second’s consideration. Seriously, I love my child more than life itself. I’d throw myself into the path of a moving train for him. But yesterday was one of those days when I was hoping for that train to come by and put me out of my misery.

I should have known it would be a rough day when he woke up at 7am instead of his usual 8 or 8:30. But I figured that with that early rising he’d be eager for an early (and hopefully long!) nap. And in fact, when I put him in his highchair for a snack at 11:00, he was moving in slo-mo and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. By 11:30 I was certain he’d be out cold in a few minutes, so I didn’t even tempt fate by asking him to climb the stairs to his bedroom. I picked him up to carry him upstairs and he laid his head on my shoulder and “koala snuggled” his arms around my neck. I turned on the air conditioner and a lullaby CD and tucked him in his bed with a few soft toys and a book, convinced that he’d fall asleep within moments, then slipped down the hall to lay on my bed until I was sure he was asleep.

For a few minutes, all was quiet, then I started to hear him chatting quietly to himself. Then I heard the quiet thud of a little body slipping from the bed to the floor. Then I heard the jingle of the jinglebells hanging on the outside doorknob of his door and I immediately ran down the hallway. When I came in the room, he was happily jingling his bells (which he had stolen from the knob and then re-closed the door) and was headed for a stack of toys, having already turned off the A/C and the CD and turned on the overhead light. I took the bells away and told him to get back into bed, which he did without question. I turned the A/C and the CD back on, gave him a kiss, reminded him one more time to stay in bed, and turned the light off on my way out.

Only a few minutes had passed before I heard the distinctive sound of venetian blinds being rattled and raced back in to scold him. Much to his father’s chagrin, he had already bent them badly out of shape and I was afraid of him making them any worse. He looked at me with big innocent eyes as I ordered him back into bed yet again. I decided to sit in the rocking chair and watch him for a few minutes, but when I realized he was much more interested in marching up and down the bed than in laying down and sleeping, I knew that wouldn’t work. So I heaved myself into his bed (and if you’ve never seen an 8-months-pregnant woman maneuver herself over a bedrail, you’ve missed out on an impressive sight), patted the pillow next to me, and convinced him to “come and snuggle with Mama”.

He immediately threw himself down next to me and commenced fake snoring. Ever hopeful, I threw my arm over him and waited for him to fall asleep for real. Ha! Silly Mama. That lasted for about 8 seconds before he jumped up and began throwing each of his toys and stuffed animals out of the bed, one at a time. I warned him, “all gone” with each item, and he solemnly repeated my words each time. Block? All gone. Bear? All gone. Book? All gone. He even pulled the pillow from under my head and jettisoned it. And then he leaned over me and peered at the detritus on the floor, pointing and looking at me hopefully. “Nope, all gone,” I told him. Unfazed, he then turned and crashed into the wall. Discovering what a delightfully loud noise that made, he began pounding on the wall with both fists until I couldn’t take it any more and told him “Enough!” Surprisingly, he stopped, and then announced to me, “Poop!” while patting his bottom. He then threw himself on my head, leaving no doubt in my mind that it was time for a diaper change.

At that point, I gave up on any hope for a nap for either one of us. I changed his diaper and brought him back downstairs to the playroom, where he commenced racing laps around the room while I collapsed on the couch and watched him. Every once in a while there would be a pause before he came around the corner and I found myself carefully listening to hear what trouble he was getting into in the back hallway. I’ve never been able to decide which is more disconcerting when he’s out of sight: absolute silence or unidentifiable crunching noises. Either way, it must be investigated ASAP. In this particular room, silence is usually the more serious problem, since it usually means he’s gone into the study with all the tempting electronic equipment with its exciting buttons and lights. I found him holding the baby monitor up to his ear and asking, “Hello? Hello?” while my wireless mouse lay on the floor without its battery cover. I returned the monitor to its cradle, found and replaced the battery cover on my mouse, and escorted him back to the playroom, regretfully closing the study door with its wonderful air-conditioned air inside.

Without the study to explore, he managed to find trouble all over the rest of the room. He ran through the vertical blinds. He threw all his toys into the big aluminum tub. He moved them from the tub onto the top of the toybox then flailed his arms to knock them all over the room. He opened all the cabinet doors that he’s not allowed to open. He tried to throw things at the glass doors, the television, and Mama. He finally broke the camel’s back when he ran up to me and very deliberately gave my leg a hard smack. I grabbed his hand, gave it a good slap, looked right in his eyes, and fully aware of my own hypocrisy, shouted in my sternest “angry Mom” voice, “No! No hitting!” I guess I finally got it right that time, because instead of his usual giggle when I scold him, he puddled up and started to cry. I started to cry a bit myself, and scooped him into my arms and told him I love him even when he makes me crazy.

He calmed down after a quick snuggle and we laid down on the couch together and played, until suddenly something struck him as hilariously funny and he executed what I’ve dubbed the “happy puppy wriggle”. You know how puppies, especially really big breeds of puppies, get so excited that their whole bodies nearly convulse with excitement? That’s what he does. Unfortunately, as he kicked out with both feet with his full strength, he managed to kick me full-on in the pelvis with one heel. I literally saw stars, and doubled over in pain (or as close to double as I can get these days) while I waited to get my breath back. I couldn’t scold him because it was completely unintentional, but it just felt like adding insult to injury (or injury to insult, to be more accurate). I started to get up from the couch and was rewarded with a fresh stab of pain. So much for the grocery shopping trip I’d planned.

By the time my husband called to say he was on his way home from work, I was definitely ready to sell this kid to the gypsies. So what kind of mom does that make me?

I’m pretty sure it just makes me human.