The Purpose of the Play Date

Play dates are not for the kids, they are for the moms.

This is no secret. I’m not saying anything we don’t already know here. But let me specify why they are for the moms. 

Play dates occur not so we moms can get a “break”, as if one more adult somehow relieves us of our duties. We are still out numbered. Not only that, but if we’re at the park, my head is on a swivel looking for approaching pedophiles and pitbulls. And I am also more vigilant than I would be alone because deep down I’m afraid my kid might punch yours, which would not be totally out of character. But I digress. Note, the play date is not so we can vent. Its not for the Starbucks, although that is a perk. 

The play date happens so we don’t lose our adult vocabulary. This is a huge, secret concern for stay at home moms. That we start to sound like toddlers after awhile. 

You know the expression, “use it or lose it”?  That shit is for real. And its not in reference to the second language you speak, or your knowledge of historical events and their corresponding dates. Its for your first language. Use it or lose it. 

I mention this because, when you’re talking to two year-olds all day, something happens to your vocabulary. The words don’t come as easily when you transition at night to an adult conversation about ISIS and ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

Moms have to plan secret meetings with other moms, where there is a pretense of “oh, we’re watching the children play, we’re socializing them”- but we’re really practicing our words. 

So don't hate on the play date and think we’re lame homemaker moms talking about breast pumps and potty training. We’re quizzing each other on geography, you jerks. We have our dictionary apps out on our phones, and we’re looking shit up. 

We are well aware that being around two year-olds is dumbing us down in the long run. I took an inventory of my speech yesterday and now in reflection, can confirm my hypothesis that the majority of what comes out of my mouth daily, are sounds. Not words, but noises. 

As in, animal noises. Alien noises. Truck noises.

My kids aren't even old enough to know what an alien is, what. am. I. doing.

All day I make sounds and give short directions. Mix in some positive affirmation, some reprimands. “Good job!” “Don’t touch that, please. Please. Please. Please God.” I am becoming less intelligent by the minute. If not for play dates, I would probably need to start preschool in the fall with my twins. A real, live mommy-and-me class. We will learn the English language together. 

No thanks, I will take a play date tutoring-sesh with my girlfriend. We will come out of the valley-low IQ ranks together, one coffee at a time. Our kids might fall off the play structure, or punch each other while we are remembering our old vocabularies, but sacrifices must be made (I'll still fight off pitfalls and pedophiles, don't worry). 

I am a college grad! It seems so long ago, but I am, I swear.  I will not go back to pre-school. 

What I Would Do For A Clean House

What I would do for a clean house, twenty-four hours a day. Every. Day.

I cleaned today, and because I cleaned, hey-oh….I cooked dinner! I mean, I always cook dinner, but I tried tonight. Made an effort. I made a “dish”. Not just a (gross) green drink and quesadillas.

When I don’t cook, its because everything is a mess and its totally overwhelming to think about making a mess, amongst the mess. Not into it. I also think, “You know what, I gotta save myself to clean this place up! I can’t waste precious energy on cooking dinner.” So there’s that logic too.

I prioritize. 

To those of you who don’t have this problem, and don't know what I'm talking about because your house is generally very clean, 

1. I envy your drive to be type-A all of the time. You probably have cute little wicker baskets with a chalk board frame hanging on the front labeling contents like “shoelaces” and “red blocks”. 
2. I wish I had your budget, which clearly includes a housekeeper.
3. I think you need to go play with your kids and let your laundry stack up a little. Some day they’re going to have to describe their childhood in a college class, or to a therapist, or to a new girlfriend or boyfriend, and you don’t want them to say “My mother? What was she like growing up? Well, she was constantly vacuuming. And wiping down counters.” You want them to say “My mom built forts, and read us Harry Potter, and wrestled, and made my stuffed animals talk, and threw water balloons at me, and chased my dog, and tickled me until I was mad” and things like that. 

Its hard to do it all though. I get it. 

If I’m not careful, I spend my whole day changing diapers, throwing them away, refilling the diaper box with new ones, making a meal, serving a meal, cleaning up the meal, gathering the laundry, running the laundry, folding the laundry, putting away the laundry, picking up the toys, vacuuming, picking up the toys again, picking up the toys again, picking up the toys again, distributing crackers, sweeping the crackers, on and on and on and on, and before I know it, I miss the most important part of the day. Which, is teaching my two year-old that “elephant” is actually pronounced “elephant”, and not “elka”, although not to be ashamed, that’s a common mistake. 

Still. What I would do for a house that stays clean. 

Literally, let me tell you. 

I would drive my 15 year-old van for the rest of my life. The emergency brake light blinks on and off while you drive. Don’t care. 

I would jump off the bridge, at the zoo, where all the koi swim below. This is three-fold undesirable: I don’t like heights, I don’t like murky water, I don’t like being amongst fish. This particular pond is the most disgusting combination of each of those elements. Although its mostly disgusting because the fish are truly coming out of the water, piling on top of each other to get the fish food that people drop them. Its so gross to see their huge bodies, I could just barf. Piles of wet koi. I would dive into that.

I would reach out and call a yellow jacket to me, and hold it. In my closed, cupped hands, I would hold it, and let it freak out. It would sting and bite and not die, because as I said, its a yellow jacket, not a bumble bee.

These are just a few ideas.

Until I can somehow negotiate one of these trades with the universe, I will just keep doing what I’m doing. I will have a really deep-cleaned house sometimes, a really messy house sometimes, a microwaved dinner sometimes, a recipe-followed dinner sometimes, and I will just strive to keep my family on their toes with the instability of our lives. 

Surviving a Tornado (siren) with Children

The first time I heard a tornado siren was the day after we landed in Omaha. “Welcome” said Nebraska. “This is what happens here.” We were in the middle of unpacking and moving in, but I aggressively made everyone get down to the basement. Once down in the basement, a few thoughts crossed my mind. As in, 

1. So… when do we come out?
2. Is there a second siren that signifies “come out now”?
3. I have nothing down here. This is extremely boring. 
4. This is actually worse than a tornado. We have no food, or water, or toys, or diapers. Come to think of it, we will probably last eight minutes down here.
5. Should I risk my life, and run upstairs to collect some supplies? I need some kind of kit.
6. We need to paint the basement immediately, or this color alone will kill me. 

The second time I heard a siren, was a few weeks later. Justin had started at the hospital and I was solo at our house with the boys. I had just put them down for a mid-morning nap, had microwaved my cold coffee that I poured two hours ago but never got to (imagine that), and was sitting at my computer googling Home Depot’s paint department phone number, to ask if they could possibly darken the 3 gallons of paint I had previously purchased (“Hi, yes, I bought some grey paint, but I was being overly conservative and didn't want something too dark, because I know it can get depressing here in the winter with no sun, so instead I ended up with a grey that is too light, and sterile, and equally depressing… and now I'm wondering if you can maybe add some black drops to it, and like, stir it around again…I don’t really know how this works… obviously… but I think just a darker grey on the same color palette will do? Maybe like, 5 drops of black? I am an idiot, yes… yes, I did paint a swatch on the wall beforehand…). And there I was, at my desk, practicing an embarassing conversation in my head with the Home Depot guy, when I heard the siren. 

And I suffered a mild heart attack. 

I survived the heart attack and ran up the stairs. Without a plan. I was about to burst into my kids’ room when I realized I had a logistics problem. Who do I take down first? The baby or the twins? I chose the twins because Jack was in a deeper sleep. I know this, because we drilled a sight hole (as in, a front door, see-who’s-there-in-a-weird-fisheye-lens-kinda-way) into their bedroom door. A simple, yet effective way to spy on them during their “naps”. A video monitor wouldn’t work because they are the most destructive people I’ve ever met, and would pull out any device or cable that needed to be plugged in. So anyways, I checked in on them, and they were mostly asleep. Which, I should elaborate more on, so allow me this tangent…

The twins and sleeping… they have it all backwards. Here it is:

1. They jump out of their cribs. 
2. So, no more cribs. 
3. Toddler beds? 
4. No, they will out grow those soon enough. 
5. The answer, at least I thought: a full size mattress, no frame, just on the floor. They can do what they were born to do, jump and fall. But safely now.  

So they have a full size bed in their room. Yet, where do they elect to fall asleep, every nap, every night? Somewhere on the floor. With a pillow on top of them. When I look through the peephole I see an empty bed, and legs sticking out from pillows. Usually they have pulled every item out of their dresser and are lying on little nests of toddler clothes. I highly recommend, when it comes to parenting, not doing any research but rather, just doing whatever comes to mind. You end up with scenes like I just described.

Back to the tornado story. We all managed to get downstairs. Jack woke up in the process, but happily. He is perfect. The twins were crying. Standard. 

I turned on the boys’ Kidsongs singalong, then realized I should turn on the news, and find out where the funnel is headed. That brief interruption caused more crying. I ran up and grabbed our battery-less lantern. More crying. And I suddenly realized I was really back where I started, the day of that first siren, wholly unprepared. We have no food, no water. The diaper box down here is empty. Of course it is. I still don’t know when you “come out”. The only thing we do have down here now, are toys. Which lead me to this. 

For the next three years that we live in this tornado-ridden state, I will be subject to these storms. The safe haven and solution, is the basement. Our basement functions as a giant playroom. If a tornado were to tear through our house, I will be found dead, impaled, by a colorful variety of toys. 

I will be dead, in my pajamas, with toys embedded in my body.  

May this blog post serve as a last request. Please let the announcement of my death read: “She was killed tragically, by a train. Several trains, actually. Thomas, Gordon, and Percy, to be specific.”

A short while later I learned the siren was a test, that they test every first Wednesday of the month, and I woke my kids up for nothing. 

You know, all I want in this world, is to drink my coffee while its still warm. Just once. Death by toys, fine. Its pleasant enough, I guess. Just let me drink hot coffee beforehand. Please God. 

How to Properly Care for a Toddler's Teeth

Holy neglected blog. My apologies. Not that you were standing by with anticipation or anything, but my apologies nevertheless. Since I last posted, I’ve been busy with a) another baby and b) entering the HGTV dream house sweepstakes. Both very time-consuming. 

I’d like to tell you about my latest debacle as a parent: brushing teeth. Or rather, not brushing teeth. I was concerned recently that the twins wouldn’t be getting an adequate amount of fluoride for those little white daggers that have recently taken over their once-sweet little mouths. But what do I know about fluoride? Nothing really. My knowledge is limited to this: I think your teeth need it, and I think you get it from tap water. No real solid knowledge here. At our house, we drink bottled water, because LA County tap water tastes like pipes, and dirt, and what I imagine runoff and smog to taste like. So according to my knowledge of fluoride, we must be missing out. 

I had a close friend over (whom I grew up with) who’s father happens to be a dentist. One day I had her get him on the horn so I could ask a few questions about the tater tots’ new teeth. We very quickly got past the fluoride  concern (get supplements from your pediatrician) to a more pressing issue, that of actually brushing their teeth regularly. I told him a few things about how that works here. 

I brush their teeth in the bath at night. That is, when I remember to. So maybe three times a week. I don’t use toothpaste. Oh, and they pretty much just bite the toothbrush, so it really becomes a tug-a-war instead of a cleaning session. Its a very amusing game to them. Once I’ve finally wrestled the toothbrush out of the mouth of twin A, I dip it in the bathwater to “clean it off”, and I begin the toothbrush-biting tug-a-war again, with twin B. So to recap: most of the time I forget to brush their teeth, when I do remember, there’s not really any brushing going on, and for toothpaste, I use dirty bath water. Which for a fact I know they pee in, immediately, as soon as they get in the tub. 

My friend’s dad the dentist said he would double check the literature on pee-acid toothpaste water, and suggested we preform our own study if none exists. Then he said, “You wanna know the biggest issue? When four year-olds have grills? Juice in their cup. And bottles in their crib.”

And then folks, I went to my kitchen and threw Mott’s for Tots in the trash, sprinted upstairs, took the empty bottles out of their cribs, threw those puppies out the window, and promptly ran the twins a bath so I could take care of their teeth properly, like any good parent would, with pee water. 

Throwing Sippy Cups

I think my twins will be stellar athletes. Is this prediction based on contributing factors such as my height, or maybe, my husband’s hand-eye coordination? No. It’s the way they go about drinking their sippy cup. Here is the best way to describe their hydration style: they chug it the way Napoleon Dynamite drinks his gatorade, and with the majority of what they sucked out dripping down their faces, they throw it across the room like a marathon runner who takes his water cup hand-off with no time to slow down. After throwing the cup haphazardly, they take off, bumbling along at breakneck speed (and overconfidently, mind you; they have not been walking long enough to move this fast). To me this is the makeup of a true sportsman: part intensity, part drama. Let's break this down.

1: The thirst itself.

You are acting like you just crossed the Sahara and haven’t had water, like, ever. However, I change your diaper many, many times a day and know this isn’t the case. But I do love your drama, little Napoleon Dynamite. How you occasionally fall over backward throwing your head back. Such determination.

2: The casting away of the sippy cup.

You throw that cup like it was offensive to you! Like you didn’t have time for it, and you don’t care about it. And we all – Max the dog, me the mom, your brother- have been hit by the cup. Its small and colorful but it does hurt.

3: The “vacate the area” attitude.

This movement, whether crawling or your version of “walking”, is too fast for your own good. You did not just throw a grenade; you do not need to book it away from the cup. Actually the cup itself is hurt, and you should probably check on it. I’ll mop up the entire first floor of the house, since the cup just exploded into the wall.  

How to Keep Infants Awake

I totally dropped the ball in training my twins to be good sleepers. Consult another blog for tips on how to make babies sleep, or read this to learn how to keep infants awake.

Top 5 Steps to Keeping Infants Awake

1.    Give them everything they want, particularly in the middle of the night. More milk? You got it! Your binkie, the one you just threw out of your crib? No problem, I found it!! It was on the wall-side of your crib, by the baseboard, and I broke my back to get to it and sucked off the dust… but here ya go, little baby!

2.    Let them sleep on you and next to you, even if that means you get a portion of the bed equivalent to a bacon strip. I promise you won’t roll over on them, because you’ll never get into that black-out state of sleep with your shoulder throbbing from putting all your weight on it.

3.    Use a really uncomfortable Pack n’ Play as a basinet; its such a high quality cardboard mattress.

4.    Don’t let them cry. It reflects poorly on your parenting skills if they do, and all those people who watch you operate in the middle of the night might judge you.

5.    Have a really obnoxious dog, one you haven’t trained not to bark. Make sure he barks at everything, like a cabinet door opening, or you dropping a pen. It shouldn’t be hard in his newfound state of confusion and neglect.

So there you have it, you’re on your way to successful sleep deprivation!!

Rough-housing

My (barely) one year-old sons are rough-housing already. I call it rough-housing because that’s a positive spin on “hurting each other”, and I’m an optimist. I sigh and tell myself as I pull them apart, “boys will be boys, huh!!!” But again, they’re only one… so I don’t think the influence of gender on behavior comes into play as much as I hope. They do things I’m not equipped to respond to, things I’m half in denial about because they’re so cute. I think, “No… I didn’t just see that happen, he has too much baby fat to strike that fast! Or, “He didn’t mean to push him, he was gaining his balance! He has a hard time understanding his center of gravity in the morning.” However its time I’m honest with myself; they are doing things to one another. Things like stealing toys and retaliating. One using the hair on the back of the other’s head as leverage to stand. Slapping his brother’s back as he crawls by. Pulling onesies until the baby falls over. Pushing. Biting. I’ve even seen a head butt.

I witness these things and think, “What? Why are you doing that, you sweet little baby?!  You are mine, but he is mine too, so don’t!”

Then I reason with these one year-olds in the following ways:

1.    “NO! “

a.    Response: Blank stare followed by another hit to see if I say it again. Here my child is thinking, “that was interesting, I’d like to see my mother in that state of confusion and panic again”

2.    “Play nice! Play nice!”

a.    Response: Crying, or sometimes a continuation of what was occurring. The response to this varies.

3.    Me fake crying (occasionally I am the victim of this one year-old abuse)

a.    Response: one twin laughing, one twin legitimately crying in fear of my unusual, obnoxious, and foreign sobs

4.    “Kiss! Kiss your brother!”

a.    Response: twice I have got them to open mouth kiss. 

 I win. This is clearly the way to go.