Friday, June 17, 2011

Admit it, your kid sucks too.

Since I finally accepted that PunkYuppie had become a mommy blog, I gave in and started reading other mommy blogs. It's been interesting and often wildly entertaining to read about other new moms learning about parenting under the gun.

However.

I'm troubled by a glaring lack of one particular topic. We write openly and cheerfully about poop, sex after baby, lack of sleep delirium, blah blah blah, but we all seem to avoid one key detail of parenting, one huge part of the day to day life of a mom.

Not liking your kid.

Let's be honest, we've all disliked our offspring at some point, when they won't sleep, when they discover biting, when they won't stop crying for no apparent reason, whatever. I personally am pissed at Havoc several times a day. I'm currently ticked off because, while he doles out hugs to Zoe and Tim like they're going out of style, he will fight my hugs so hard that he literally jumps out of my arms with complete disregard to his own safety. I also can't stand him when he dumps out the crumbs from his Dad's empty Cheezits box (thanks for leaving that within his reach, babe) all over the floor and grinds them to powder. I hate that he still won't say Mommy, but says Zeezee (his name for our dog, Zoe) about five hundred times an hour.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love my kid fiercely and will fight to the death anyone with the balls to say otherwise (I'm small, but scrappy, and I fight dirty). He's awesome and I wouldn't trade him for anything. I am just honest about the fact that loving my kid doesn't have to mean being happy with him every second. Sometimes he's a pain in the ass, and when he is I count the minutes until it's late enough to have a good stiff drink. Sometimes I just want to toss him to his Dad and disappear for a few hours.

Sometimes being Mommy SUCKS. And that's okay! Sometimes being Heather sucks, too, but no one thinks any less (or at least not much less) of me for feeling that way, so why should I be ashamed of being sick of being on call 24/7 to an infant or toddler? This is a hard job! The boss is a demanding jerk sometimes! It sucks a lot of the time, for every single one of us. Hell, we should just be proud of ourselves for showing up every day, for grinning and bearing it, for just doing it.

And if we can't be proud of it, at least there's always liquor.

Naptime wars

My child hates me.

No, really, he does. And all thanks to naptime.

Havoc has reached a really, um, let's say independent, stage. He doesn't want to be fed, he wants to hold the spoon himself. He doesn't want to use bottles, he wants cups. (Both of those things end in catastrophic messes, in case you were wondering.) He doesn't want to be carried, he wants to walk.
And he absolutely, positively, DOES NOT WANT TO NAP.
Kid is so damned tired that he's lying down on the ground and closing his eyes, yawning, rubbing his eyes raw, but if I dare be so cruel as to put him to bed, I am invariably treated to the screaming fit that I am listening to right this second. He sometimes even falls asleep while he's putting on his display of defiance, but then he wakes back up a moment later and resumes, as if jolted awake by the recollection that "I don't want to nap, no matter how tired I might be, and YOU CAN'T MAKE MEEEEEEEEE!!!"

Ugh.

Oh, right now he's doing the lie down and scream bit, because he's actually too tired to keep standing. Here in a moment, he'll catch a second wind and stand back up, but all I can think is, "Well, at least it's quieter when he's lying down..."

I don't get it! When I'm tired, all I can think about is how good a nap would be! Why must he fight it so?! And, to make matters worse, even if I go get him right this second, he's going to be mad at me all day long for being so evil as to want him to sleep a little when he's exhausted.

He totally hates me.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Clothesline in the meadow.

While preparing for this trip, I spent hours online trying to find resources or advice for extended traveling with a cloth diapered baby. There is some info, but not nearly as much as I had expected, other than that I would want to find unmanned laundromats to avoid trouble when washing said cloth diapers. Makes sense; I'm not sure how stoked I'd be (assuming I didn't know any better, of course) to know I was washing my delicates in the same washer that just washed some kids pee cloths.

Well, so far his butt has still been cheerfully clothed. I just hang the wet diapers out to dry on a clothes line between two trees, and after they're nice and dry, they go into a five gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid.



It looks as though I've got enough diapers to last him about two weeks (which is good because that's all I can cram into a five gallon bucket), and my five covers seems to be plenty. Also, Havoc absolutely LOVES dragging that bucket around with him for some reason. It's currently his favorite outside toy. Kids are weird, man.
I'm still on the hunt for an unmanned laundromat, though. Jamie is super awesome and let me wash at her place, but I'm not into imposing. I prefer to not mix business and pleasure.


Luckily he's still doing fairly well with the potty training, so his three or four diaper a day badassery is maintained. I have yet to find many things in life as satisfying as discovering that the diaper you put on your one year old two hours ago is dry, other than putting said one year old on the potty and hearing that tinkle as he grins proudly at you from the seat. We've never chided him for a wet or dirty diaper, but praise him like crazy for dry ones, and we practically throw him a party for using the potty like a big boy! I'm still blown away by how well it works, not to mention how easy it is, not to mention how awesome it is when Havoc marches himself to the bathroom door and looks at me expectantly, ALL ON HIS OWN! That's right. He tells me when he needs to go. I don't even have to ask anymore! It's incredible.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Smoke in the meadow

We got smoked out of our camp site yesterday. Apparently a crew of some kind that is qualified to use explosives wasn't exactly well qualified to use explosives, and they started a fire in the forest a few miles south west of us. We really weren't more than idly concerned, since IH40 was between us and the fire, and besides that, forest fires are old hat around here. We had just bought our solar set up (more on that later), and mostly ignored the smoke in the distance.

But then the wind picked up, and that distant plume of smoke got less distant, and much much lower. Like, in the meadow. In the trailer, where Havoc was napping. I did some quick internetting, and learned that the powers that be were considering closing 49. As in, our only way out.
We decided to err on the side of caution and packed up and bolted. As Tim said, it's not usually the fire that kills you, it's the smoke. And we prefer that Havoc not breathe smoke, as a general rule.

So now we're camped out with Allen, smoke free and clear across town from the (still raging) fire.