Christmas Fever

It never ceases to amaze me how 5-plus years into this whole parenting gig I still fall into the simplest of traps. 

At this point in my "momming" journey I really should understand this simple rule:

"You should not tell your children about exciting events before those events are actually going to happen."

It's Parenting 101, people, but I admit that blew it. Last month I began to wax rhapsodic about the holiday season to come. And then I mentioned Christmas.

Can anyone guess what happened next?

If you guessed:

a.  Life went on as normal

...you would be incorrect.

If you guessed:

b. At the very mention of the word Christmas my two boys immediately went into a holiday-based frenzy from which there was no hope of recovery.

...yeah, you've nailed it.

The moment the words were out of my mouth my two boys began running about in circles, clapping in delight and shouting, 

"CHRISTMAS is coming! It's Christmas! It's CHRISTMAS!!!!"

It was, in fact, only November the 7th.

OOPS!

For almost a month now I have been living with my mistake.

Each morning my boys leap from their beds with excited squeals of, "Is it today? Is Santa coming today? Is it time to put out the cookies?????"

At which point I need to explain that, no, it is not Christmas. It is totally a normal Thursday and everyone needs to get dressed and go about our normal daily lives.

At which point --- there are tears. Bitter ones.

In an effort to give the kids some much needed timeline context I had answered the following question as we headed off to Chicago for Thanksgiving:

"Wait -- when are we putting up the tree?"

...with what I thought was a very reasonable response:

"When we get back to L.A. Right now let's concentrate on Thanksgiving. Who can name something we are thankful for?"

"Christmas!!! When do we get home?"

On Saturday we flew home from Chicago. The flight was our usual four-and-a-half hour adventure of trying unsuccessfully to get three kids under five to JUST...STOP...KICKING THE LADY IN FRONT OF YOU.

After nine hours of total travel time we limped in our front door desperate to get the kids into baths and bed before collapsing into a pool of our own melty fatigue.

Instead, the second we closed the door behind us the boys turned with determined looks on their small faces and announced in total delight:

"YAY!!! Time to put up the Christmas tree!"

Dear readers, the lesson is simple. If you do not wish to find yourself putting up up a Christmas tree at 9pm after a long day of travel I urge you to revisit those parenting basics. 

It's the most exciting time of the year -- so tread carefully.

I am the Christmas tree of doom

I was erected in the middle of the night by two exhausted travelers

LEARN FROM ME

The Five Stages of the Stomach Flu

Once again the plague has come to my door. My family has been visited by the stomach flu and only two have come out unscathed. (And no, I was not one of the spared. I was scathed. DEFINITELY scathed.) 

So today I come here to simply present

THE FIVE STAGES OF THE STOMACH FLU

1. DENIAL

There is no way I can have the stomach flu. I mean sure the baby was puking pretty bad yesterday and I mean, I guess some of it may have gotten in my eyes. And maybe my mouth. BUT! This vague feeling of nauseousness that I'm currently experiencing? I'm sure it can't be the stomach flu. I mean -- for the love of all that's Holy I JUST HAD the stomach flu a month ago. A loving, all-seeing higher power certainly wouldn't let me get the stomach flu twice in two months, right? RIGHT?????

2. ANGER

Are you #$*&(ing kidding me???? Am I to be SPARED NOTHING!??! I cannot #@$ing believe this! F#@ YOU UNIVERSE!!! I shake my fist at the skies in a rage right up until the point where I begin to lose control of my limbs!!!!!

3. BARGAINING

Listen -- the fever I can handle. I'll deal with some chills. I'll even accept a really bad case of the runs. I mean really bad, OK?? But please, please, please, please NO VOMITING!!!

4. DEPRESSION

It's coming for me. It's coming and there's gonna be vomit and there's nothing I can do to stop it. All that's left is to wallow in debilitating hopelessness and curse the fact that we only have one bathroom in the house. And now...the puking...

5. ACCEPTANCE

I know now that my body is intent on the sole purpose of squeezing all of the contents of my innards, you know, outwards by whatever means necessary. I'm dying. Oh, no I'm dying. I'm dying. 

(cut to two hours later) 

Come for me sweet relief of death!! I'm ready to go to the light! 

Is that you Grandma???

Scabby-Kneed Girl

My daughter is currently sporting a bruised leg, a minor scrape on each elbow, and a ping pong ball-sized carbuncle towards the base of her scalp...

...which means we're running just about par for the course this week when it comes to injuries sustained.

At twenty-one months old this girl has two older brothers with whom she is DETERMINED to keep up. Unfortunately her physical coordination is no match for her personal enthusiasm, and so it is that she winds up on a daily basis with bruises, bumps, and bonks of all shapes and size sprouting from each part of her body at an alarming rate.

As we move out about town lately I can't help but notice the choruses of, "Oh no Sweetie!! What happened?" that greet us wherever we go. It has reached the point where I am seriously considering changing supermarkets for fear that, one facial bruise from now, some well-meaning checker will turn me in to child protective services.


Because at this point hiding would seem to be my only option. There is simply no slowing this girl down. She continues to hurl her tulle-clad self at the world with reckless abandon. Like a mini mountaineer, she scales every surface of our home gleefully, often finding her way to the top of the bookcase or fireplace mantle before I can retrieve her in a panic. It's kind of exhausting...

...and it is also kind of awesome. I'm genuinely happy to have such a fearless little female human under my care. I love to watch my daughter as she sees her brothers take on a highly ill-advised tree climb. She scrunches up her little face in determination before following right along in spite of being half their size.  

I am embarrassed to admit, as a proud feminist and women's college graduate, that I find in myself a desire to "contain" her that I never felt with my boys. I fight against this odd and foreign voice that wells up in me as I watch her scrambling and scaling that seems to believe that she is too fragile....too pretty even...to get hurt.

I have to actually force myself to remember that injuries are part of the growing process for boys and girls alike, and so I let her dare and roam and bump and bang and cry. I know that she is building some great life skills -- boldness and fearlessness and a feeling that she can keep up with the big guys -- and I pray they will serve her well.

In the meantime, if anyone does question the various scratches and nicks she gets along the way, I just smile and say, "Yup - that's my girl."

The Ride

When my son was sixteen-months-old we received a hand-me-down tricycle from a neighbor.

My son LOVED it. His Dad outfitted it with new handlebars and a shiny new seat and my son's face would just light up whenever he got a glimpse of the thing. Long before his feet could even reach the pedals my guy would sit on top of his tricycle happily or push it up and down the front walk, squealing in delight.

Eventually his little legs grew big enough and he mastered the pedals and spent long afternoons zooming up and down our driveway.

When he turned four we moved our son up to a big boy bike with training wheels. Outfitted with a slick new Spiderman helmet, he was finally ready to leave the confines of our gated house behind and take to the open sidewalk!

Since he didn't have the leg strength to get the bike going I'd give him a nice big push to start off each ride. We live in a bustling neighborhood in Los Angeles, so I walked next to him as he made his way slowly forward, warning him all the way to watch out for upcoming driveways. I instructed him on how to push the pedals in the opposite direction in order to stop and walked a few steps in front of him to form a human blockade until he had it figured out.

Then there was the problem of concentration. One of the wonders of being out on a bike for my son was that there was just so much to look at from his new bike-y perspective.  He'd reach out to touch trees and flowers as he passed. He'd search the skies for passing airplanes and turn to shout important Toy Story 2 plot points to each and every passerby.

Time and again I'd remind him, 

"You need to look where you're going or you'll crash!"

and he'd ignore me and crash into things and then, completely unfazed, he'd dust himself off, get back on his bike and keep rolling.

For hours on end we explored the neighborhood on two wheels. Soon my kiddo no longer needed a push to get started and he almost never needed help getting over the bumpy parts of the sidewalk.  

Each day he rode a little faster and a little more confidently -- which left me quickening my pace so that I could stay right by his side providing reinforcement and reminders and standing at the ready to grab him if he fell.  Sometimes we'd be joined by his brother on his tricycle and his sister in her stroller. When I was supervising all three of them I had less time to monitor my big guy's biking skills, and so I had to just sort of linger behind, only jumping in to get involved at signs of trouble.

Then finally yesterday afternoon I took my son out for our usual after-school ride. As we started down the sidewalk to make the loop around our cul-de-sac I found myself having to run at a brisk pace to try to keep up with him. I was getting winded after the first lap, and by the end of the third loop I realized it was hopeless -- I just couldn't keep up anymore.

And so I stopped running and I let my son head off without me by his side. All I could do was hope that all that time I'd spent shouting instructions and providing all those lifts over bumps had somehow implanted in his little brain all the lessons I'd offered along the way. I had to trust that he would remember them as he headed off on his own, leaving me behind to worry and to hope. 

And if that ain't a perfect metaphor for parenthood, folks -- I don't know what is.

Sick Day

This weekend we took the kids for our annual outing to the Pumpkin Patch.

We did it up. We rode the tractor, we selected pumpkins, we got cornfused in the giant corn maze, and we ate our weight in garlic fries. 

It was fantastic. 

Except that -- because we live in Southern California -- it was also so, so, so HOT.

As we made our way home it occurred to me that I was feeling really, really tired, which wasn't all that surprising considering that I might as well been hauling massive gourds around on the surface of Mars for seven hours straight. But when I woke up the next morning I realized that I was more than just tired. I was, in fact, sick. Like chills, fevers, there-might-be-vomiting-in-my-very-near-future SICK.

This bad news turned into truly terrible news when I heard my five-year-old calling miserably from his bed in the next room. 

"MOMMY! I don't feel good!!! Please get me some milk!"

Because of my rising fever I was unable to process this request as what is was -- straight up insane -- and so I headed to the kitchen and poured the kid a tall glass. Not surprisingly, minutes later milk came flying back in my general direction from my son's mouth, nose, and possibly eye sockets.

"MILK WAS A BAD CHOICE"

My husband had an important meeting and had to head for the office, which left sick me and sick son to sick it up together for the better part of the day. As David shut the door to take the two younger ones to the sitter and head to work I had a "Sandra Bullock 20 minutes into the movie Gravity" moment and thought,

"I cannot imagine how I am going to get out of this alive...."

I did bucket duty for my poor puking kid for the next two hours in a sort of fugue state.

When the vomiting finally subsided I dragged my son into my bed and the two of us fell into a feverish sleep. I woke up two hours later and found myself staring into my boy's cute little face. He was awake but still looking pretty dazed. 

I put my arms around him and asked him how he was feeling.

"Terrible," he said. "I hate being sick."

"Me too," I replied.

Then something kind of great happened. 

My son and I laid together and started talking. We talked about school and what he likes about it and what he doesn't like. (LIKES: Doing Wii Fit and lunch. DOESN'T LIKE: When the Big Bad Wolf blows the house down at story time.) We talked about platypuses and how weird it is that they have venom. I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up. (He feels it would probably be best to stay a kid forever but if he absolutely had to get bigger he might consider being a fireman.) We talked about the Wall-E doll he wants to ask Santa for this year and how it drives him crazy when his sister knocks over his trains.

As I laid there listening to my son talk I realized how rarely we get time like this. With three kids aged 5 and under, my days are pretty darn busy. My big guy is in school five days now, and between keeping the smaller ones from destroying the house, getting meals on the table, and getting clothes on and off every day there's just not a lot of downtime for, you know, chatting. 

We have meals together, but with five of us at the table we don't really have conversations as much as we have an endless string of shouted statements that rapidly devolve into constant and tearful demands for cookies. 

But on our otherwise miserable sick day I ended up with a delightfully perfect half an hour of conversation with my oldest child, and it reminded me again of how often the worst days of mothering can contain these little perfect moments if you keep an eye out for them.

About half an hour into our conversation my son immediately announced he was hungry. He'd experienced one of those miraculous young-person recoveries where they go from feverish and limp to eating everything in sight in the course of an hour.

I got out of bed and served him:

• two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• two bowls of cereal
• an ice cream cone
• two bananas
• four glasses of water
• some juice

A half an hour later the food had all stayed down and my son was busy playing HexBugs in the playroom. I was glad my guy was feeling better, but felt a little melancholy that it meant our cuddle and conversation time was over...

...at least until the next sick day.