daughters · marriage · military life · mood issues · motherhood · poop · preschoolers

More Depressing than a Sad Santa

From the Momplex archives:

It would be an understatement to say I’ve been a little blue lately. Blue’s such a pretty color anyway. Why don’t we refer to the doldrums with a color like diarrhea brown, as in “I’ve been feeling a little diarrhea-brown lately.” I have.

My daughter, who will be five this week, crapped on her bedroom floor last night. I have never quite understood the root of the expression “do me a solid,” but I can definitely say she didn’t do me one. She did me a liquid, and a lot of it. I am hoping against all hope that it wasn’t some sort of willful act, the giant heap of diarrhea unleashed in the corner by her hamper. It was about an hour after she went to sleep, and I won’t get into all the details, but it appears she was just disoriented. When a little one wakes in the night from a deep slumber with an urgent need to “unleash the hounds,” it seems safe to assume that she might not have the wherewithal to properly navigate herself.

I can’t tell you how disgusting that room smelled. The windows in her room were frozen shut, too. Oh, and we plugged the toilet with all the toilet paper we used cleaning her up. And when I plunged a while later, the splashing poo water went into my face. For those of you who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I didn’t have my mouth shut at the time. (I almost never have my mouth shut.)

Thank God my husband happened to be home for the day/night from his three-week annual training with the National Guard. I am sure he is thrilled that he opted to make the long drive back home for a booty call. (One could certainly argue that cleaning up a diarrhea-butt IS a booty call of sorts, literally speaking.) In that regard, I am secretly thankful my daughter shat on the floor.

“Honey, I just accidentally swallowed some diarrhea” packs a much bigger punch in the frigidity department than “Not now, dear. I have a headache.”

Anyway, I’m feeling diarrhea-brown. I got so desperate today that I even took my daughter to the mall play area just to get out of the house. The mall play area is essentially Hell on Earth: Hyperactive kids with depressed moms spreading germs as holiday Muzak pipes overhead and too-skinny mannequins taunt us from all directions. Also, this time of year there are the Salvation Army bell-ringers dinga-donging ad infinitum next to the acrid-smelling Asian nail salon. As if that’s not diarrhea-brown enough, we took up an invitation to go watch some poor entertainer called the Banana Lady over in the JCPenney children’s section at 11 a.m. She set up shop (which consisted of a karaoke machine) in a four-way intersection of Hannah Montana paraphernalia.

Initially, it was just my daughter and me watching this woman prance around in her banana suit and sing songs about being healthy and doing your own thing. She was horribly, horribly gleeful (seriously, did you click on that link? or how about this one?), and it was horribly, horribly awkward how she was performing to maybe six people total. I felt terrible for her, as people kept walking between us, not realizing she was a show and we were her audience. She’d try to lure them over by trying to ventriloquize the large spidermonkey-puppet that’s sewn to her suit but with her lips totally moving. Few took the bait. When she said, “Come on and dance with me, everyone!” I was the only one who obliged. My daughter and the other sad moms and their kids stared blankly at us.

So, this is my life. Cleaning up diarrhea and dancing with a stranger in a banana suit in JCPenneys in the middle of the Hannah Montana aisle at the mall. Exactly how I hoped things would turn out for me. Exactly.

babies · beauty · humor · mood issues · motherhood · sleep

The Latest Post-Partum Depression Fix: Flamboyant Baby Boy Clothes (from the Momplex Blog archive)

My baby son is dressed like something out of Brokeback Mountain right now. He’s wearing a plaid flannel get-up that runs from head to toe with mother-of-pearl snap-buttons. My husband almost barfed when he saw it this morning. I purposely dressed the baby in something completely horrid-adorable (there is such a hybrid, you know), because I need a good laugh. There’s one to be had somewhere at this stage, isn’t there? I mean, sure, he can’t fall asleep or stay asleep without gobs of hair-raising crying or being bagged. And sure I basically have to wear him on me 10 or so hours every day. But isn’t there a bright side?

Heck, yeah! It’s the fact that little 12-pound baby boys look downright hilarious in flannel coveralls with mother-of-pearl buttons. They also look pretty funny in fake antennae from Gymboree, particularly when they’re crying. Oh, and a miniaturized huntsman cap with earflaps, like something out of the movie Fargo, is an excellent outfit for babies with colic, too.

He’s crying right now in his swing. He’s been up since 6 a.m. It’s almost 9 a.m., and I’ve been trying to get him to sleep since 7 a.m. His brow, as usual, is all knitted up . (I think the kid’s going to need Botox before he’s four.) His little stiff John McCain arms are shaking, and his mouth is in the shape of a big O, wailing. My nerves are completely frazzled, and I’m so tired and jittery that I’d probably fail a roadside sobriety test. I’ve had the reprise of this song, which I blasted on the radio to lull him to sleep in the car yesterday, running like a broken record through my head for about 18 hours now. I stink like spit-up.

But, man, I still don’t think it’s an emotional breakdown that a size 0-3 fuschia leopard-print unitard with a miniature clip-on bowtie couldn’t remedy. And, after all, it’s not couthe to start pouring martinis this early in the morning…

Is it?

daughters · death · mood issues · motherhood · preschoolers · sexuality

Answering Life’s Big Questions (from the Momplex Blog archive)

(The following was originally published in 2009.)

My daughter is getting to that stage where she’s starting to ask the Big Questions. Actually, she hit the stage some months ago, around the time I became pregnant again. I’m a fan of Dr. Spock’s advice on these matters, which is to offer no more information than a child is requesting.

At first, the questions about how babies are made were answered with things like, “From a mom and dad’s love.” Oddly enough, she seemed satisfied with that type of Helen Steiner Rice drivel. I might as well have told her that babies are three parts magic, two parts wonder, and just a pinch of heaven.

When the questions got more specific, my answers got more concrete. “Babies are made from an egg that lives in the mom’s body,” I’d explain, “and a teeny little seed that the daddy gives to her.” (She probably imagined my husband handing over a little Burpee’s seed packet to me.)

This explanation only lasted so long. She eventually became concerned about how a baby in my tummy could already have an egg in its tummy, which would in turn also have an egg in its tummy, and on and on down the line. This notion of some sort of infinite set of Russian nesting dolls was torturing her sense of logic, so I finally got down to brass tacks.

Well, hello there, great-great granddaughter!
Well, hello there, great-great granddaughter!

“You know whenever we see grasshoppers on top of each other, or frogs or ducks or any animal, and I tell you they’re making a baby?” I explained. “Well, that’s how it is with pretty much all living creatures, people included.”

I waited for her to process this new information. That took exactly three seconds, judging by the way her expression changed from curious to horrified. I had no idea that I, personally, could disgust her so much.

“Nooooo,” she said with a question mark in her eyes. “You and Daddy don’t get on top of each other, do you?”

Technically, no. No, we don’t. I mean, two people can’t be on top of each other at the same time, right? I’ve been getting by on such technicalities in my explanations for a long time now. And I could have dodged the truth just this one more time. Instead, it finally occurred to me that I don’t have to answer every single question she asks exactly when she asks it. So, this time? This time I said, “Who wants to play My Little Pony!?” And to my surprise, it worked.