Too Big for Her Britches

Over the course of the past few weeks, Norah has reached a bit of a tipping point that is causing us no end of trouble. It is a conundrum that only the parents of the world's largest toddler could possibly face. Simply put, no diaper can contain her.

We reached this point with Gabe round about last spring, too. See, diapers max out at size 6. This is not only the largest size in terms of fitting bigger children but it's the maximum capacity size for absorbency. They are designed for kids in and around the 35 pound range. Norah has exceeded this range and her big girl bladder is producing more urine than her size 6 diapers can keep up with. In other words, she is regularly peeing through her pants.

During the day, this isn't that big a deal because we can easily change her diapers to keep up. But when she's in bed, it's a REAL problem, especially considering she still needs bottles every few hours to get her back to sleep. Over a night she will drink more fluids than some adults take in throughout a day. It's kind of messed up.

Anyway, even the "super absorbent overnight" diapers can't contain her. Nightly she is soaking herself, her bed, her pillow, her blankets, her Lulu, and, based on how bad her room smells now, I think it's running off her bed and spilling onto the floor. It is disgusting and disheartening and frustrating and annoying and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing we can do about it.

If we don't give her bottles, she screams and cries until she throws up. If we get her out of bed and change her diaper, she wakes up enough that we can't get her to go back to sleep for an hour or so. We are between a rock and a sopping wet place.

We experienced something similar with Gabe when his bladder capacity reached a size where it outstripped the absorbency of his diapers--but it happened when he was very nearly at the age where we could potty train him. Which is the way it is SUPPOSED to be. That is why the diapers only go up to that size and then they make the switch to training pants (which are bigger in size but have less absorbency because kids aren't supposed to be peeing in them actively).

Norah, however, isn't to that point yet. We've got several months still, I think, before potty training becomes a real option, and even then I seriously doubt she will have the bladder control necessary to make it through the night for several more months.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, if you go upstairs to Norah's room, just pretend like you don't notice the obvious piss smell in her room, because it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Kind of a Big Deal

Over the past few weeks, something kind of major happened that I completely failed to mention on here--which is pretty remiss of me considering how I lamented and moaned about it in the past.

Since age two, we've been trying to get Gabe's binkies away from him. We tried taking them away--he wailed and acted as though he would die. A couple times, when he lost them, we tried to say, "Well, you lost your last one. I guess if you can't take care of them, then you must not want them very much." This was not true and the tantrum that followed proved this. We tried to replace the binkies he liked with ones that we knew he didn't--even stooping to use binkies OBVIOUSLY designed for babies, and telling him as much. He blithely disregarded our attempts to shame him into not using them and sucked away at the binkies. Finally, the best that we could manage was to restrict his usage. We told him that he could only use them upstairs and on long car rides. And, though he acknowledged those rules and accepted the fact that he would have to give up his binkie if caught using it in other circumstances, that didn't stop him from TRYING to use the binkie anywhere and everywhere.

Really, he showed all the signs of a serious addiction. He hid binkies around the house to enable him to sneak sucks on it whenever we weren't looking. He would stick them in his PJs when he came downstairs or wrap them in his blanket. Then, when we weren't looking, he would throw one behind the couch so he could go back there to "play" a few times a day (he covered himself up with one of the blankets back there and sucked away at his binkie for a few minutes). Sometimes he played by the rules and would sit on the stairs (which were technically "upstairs") and suck on it. And he never, ever went to sleep without it. He wouldn't and seemingly couldn't.

And it's only been in the past six months or so that he became mature enough that we could trying bargaining with him. We tried to coax him by saying that big kids who went to big kid schools didn't use binkies--he didn't see any of his friends at preschool using binkies, did he? To which he, quite logically, replied, "They can borrow mine if they want."

It was frustrating and humbling. We were consistently being bested by a three year old. And then we found a seed that actually stuck. Libby suggested that, on his fourth birthday, he would officially be a big boy and the Binkie Fairy would come to our house. This fairy would take away all of his binkies to give to other babies and small children who needed them. And then we repeated this plan ad nauseum until, finally, he started to understand the meaning.

He wasn't fond of the idea until we also informed him that the Binkie Fairy would bring him a present for each binkie that he gave up.

THAT caught his attention. Gabe has reached the age where he understands gift giving--rather, gift receiving. He wants EVERYTHING he sees, either for his birthday or for Christmas. And he's reasonably sure that he's going to get it all, too. So when he learned that the Binkie Fairy would also give him presents, it suddenly became a game of What Can I Screw This Fairy Person Out of for a Few Binkies. His list was long and loud.

And we kept talking about it and warning him that the day was coming, sort of counting down the weeks until the Binkie Fairy came. I fully expected this plan, like all of the others before it, to flop. I expected him to receive the gifts jubilantly, but then when he went to bed, realize that he didn't have a binkie to sleep with and have a major meltdown that would force me to the store to buy a few replacements for the ones the fairy had taken.

Except, quite out of the blue, Libby asked Gabe if he wanted to try to sleep without it one night as practice and he accepted. And he did it. WEEKS before his birthday and the date we'd been working towards! He didn't have a great first night, but it wasn't terrible. Then the next day he made it through a nap time. He didn't nap because of it being gone, but he didn't freak out either. A day later, we took him to the store and let him pick out something from the Binky Fairy (yeah, kind of cheated on that one, but he never asked why the Binky Fairy--who has also failed to take the old binkie away, it's still on top of our fridge where Gabe can probably see it--would need us to buy his gifts, he was just glad to be getting them).

We offered him a bike! He really doesn't have a good pedaled machine to ride at this point and the purchase of a bike of some sort is inevitable, so we kind of hoped he'd let us lump this gift in with something we'd have to buy him sooner or later anyway. We let him try out several bikes, but he was completely unimpressed by all of them. He ended up going to the lego section and picking out a rescue helicopter and fire truck.

Yes. He chose two cheap lego sets over a bike. Two lego sets that I put together and he tore apart in short order, mixing the pieces so I would never put them together again (that's my rule, I won't dig through and sort out pieces--if he wants them put back together he has to keep the pieces separated, and since he never does that, I only have to put the things together once, which is just fine by me). Weird, right? Clearly he wasn't realizing the value of what he was giving up in our eyes. We would have gladly bought him the bike if it meant he never picked up a binkie again. I might have bought him two.

So, there it is. After nearly four years, our household is binkie free! And it gives me hope that we'll eventually be able to talk Norah out of needing a bottle every time she wakes up in the middle of the night. God that will be nice.

Oooh! Oooh! We took another step in the right direction last week, too. We permanently removed one of the gates from our doorways. The one blocking off the staircase that leads upstairs. We've been leaving it open for the past couple weeks. Norah can easily go up the stairs whenever she wants now. She still won't come down them, but she'll stand at the top of the stairs and call down to me to get her. And she's done it reliably enough that we decided she didn't need a gate there anymore. Really, we leave all of our gates open most of the time (and Gabe has figured out to open them so they are mostly moot anyway), but we are keeping the ones to the kitchen and my office until we no longer need to lock the kids out of the kitchen so they aren't pulling food randomly out of every nook and cranny and spreading it out all over the house. With luck, that will happen in the next few months and never again will I have to scream under my breath as I scrape the skin off my leg or gouge my balls while going over the top of a gate. Oh the joy that will bring me.

A Funny Mental Image

Last week I had a stream of consciousness conversation (not unusual, most conversations I'm involved in tend to wander hither and yon) that eventually led to a memory from my own very early childhood that creates and amusing mental image.

I could skip straight to the mental image, but where's the fun in that.

The conversation started with piledrivers--the famous wrestling move wherein the inflicter picks up the victim, spins him around so his head is between the inflicter's legs and his legs are shooting up over the inflicter's shoulders, and the inflicter drops down to his knees. Clearly, the weight of both wrestlers should smash the victim's head and destroy his spine, but, somehow, that doesn't happen. Wrestlers are just that tough, I guess, because I KNOW there isn't any sort of fakery going on.

At one point in my distant past, a friend and I came up with a Piledriver System. Based on what we knew of wrestling, it was pretty obvious that a handful of piledrivers really wasn't that harmful to a person. We'd seen them inflicted on the same person multiple times in a single match and every time he got up and kept on fighting. So we worked up how many piledrivers it would take to actually do serious damage to a person--starting around the 10th one since any before that could clearly be shaken off easily.

I can't really remember any of them from 10-18, but I do remember that 18 was Unconsciousness with irreparable spinal damage, 19 was Death, and 20 was Death and Stealing the Victim's Soul. So, for quite some time, one of our favorite threats to make was "Don't make me piledrive you 20 times." And this was a pretty effective threat because none of us thought the others very good stewards for our eternal souls.

This last story is relevant in no way to anything. I just like the idea of piledriving someone twenty times. It makes me laugh that there wouldn't really be any serious harm until the upper teens.

So, the other day, a friend was having trouble with a co-worker. I suggested piledriving this co-worker as a way to solve the problem and presented the friend with a handy template that could be used to determine if, in fact, a piledriver was deserved. Despite the fact that the piledriver can be easily shaken off for quite some time, it's still a pretty serious invasion of personal space, so it shouldn't be undertaken lightly.

Nonetheless, it was decided that, if three good reasons could be presented, then that person deserved a piledriver. Thus: "_______ deserves a piledriver because _______, ________, and ________. "

Then, a minute of introspection led me to realize that quite often in my life I resort to a kind of fill-in-the-blank approach to the world. It's difficult to explain, but that example above is pretty close to an actual mental cross-checking system that I might use in my head to justify or explain something. Tracing this back through my development, I decided that I did it because Mad Libs played such a major role in my entertainment for several years while growing up.

This trip down memory lane led me to remember the times my younger cousin and I would sit in my room filling in Mad Libs with bad words. It was our first real experimentation with bad words, and we felt giddily empowered and dangerously exposed all at the same time. We kept looking over our shoulders to make sure my mom wasn't coming into my room, and we kept the pad near my bed so we could quickly throw it under there and look like we were doing something else in case she walked in. When we were finished, we read the stories back to ourselves quietly and tittered at all the bad words we used (which, more often than not, were of the "fart" severity, but we thought we were pretty bad ass all the same). After that, we carefully hid the pad in my room somewhere my mom wouldn't find it. Every once in awhile, we'd pull it back out and laugh anew at our cleverness.

This story is also not relevant to anything, except to show the strangely circuitous way my brain works. Is this really the best use of my memory capacity? At this stage in my life, I'm lucky if I can remember someone's name or face by the third or fourth meeting, and forget about remembering an address or directions without writing them down. Last week, we ran out of ketchup, which is a pretty big deal because Gabe likes ketchup on most things. So it came up many times during the week. When I went to do the grocery shopping yesterday, I forgot my list and was just going off what I remembered being out of. Yet, despite the frequency it came up and the relative severity in terms of my child's happiness, guess what I forgot and had to make a second trip back to the store to pick up? Is it really more important that I remember my cousin and I writing "crap" a dozen times in blank spaces than daily, functional things?

This memory of me sitting in my room doing something naughty led me to another memory of me doing something that I wasn't supposed to as a child (keep in mind, this took the span of about a minute--FAR less time than you and I have wasted here so far on all this nonsense).

Around age six or seven, I learned how to flip the bird. I don't remember who I saw doing it, but it was a pretty popular gesture back on the farm, so any of a number of people probably could have been blamed. I had no real idea what it ACTUALLY meant, but I understood that it was a sign of dislike for something, and one day I decided to try it out myself.

Mom told me to do something, I don't remember what, but I do remember not wanting to do it. So I flipped her off as a response to her order.

Not surprisingly, she didn't take it very well. There was much repercussing. But before things progressed to the spanking and crying phase, I guess Mom must have realized that I really didn't have any idea what I was doing or what the bird stood for. So she calmed down and explained to me that it was an entirely inappropriate thing for me to be doing, and that it was NEVER appropriate to flip someone off.

Because my brain works the way it does, I countered by asking, "What about the devil?" Clearly, if anyone deserves to be flipped off, the devil does. He's a dick--always and forever. And flipping him the bird would be both an act of righteous indignation and a deserved reaction for his many misdeeds. Granted, I didn't make quite such a clear case, but that was basically my train of thought (well, at least that was my surface train of thought--underlying all of it was "I hope she falls for this because then I have someone that I can flip off so I can still make this cool gesture SOMETIME at least).

Faced with my flawless logic, she relented. I mean, how could she not? It's the devil! Not only did he deserve to be flipped off, he NEEDED to be flipped off. But she set a few conditions. I could ONLY flip off the devil, and I could ONLY flip off the devil somewhere that nobody, including my mother, could see it.

This cheered me greatly. I could still practice my shiny new gesture--which I then knew to be a pretty severe gesture considering the considerable restrictions put on my using it. I just needed to find a good place to practice it. So I went back to my room and considered my options.

The devil, I knew, lived in hell. Hell, I knew, was underground and very hot. I knew this because I had at least once before tried to dig to it, just to see what it was like. I figured, once I broke through the "roof" of hell, I'd be able to sit from the top of my hole and peer down on the goings-on below, passing judgment and scoffing at all the sinners as their skin was baked from their bodies and wild beasts defecated in the eye sockets they had just pulled and eaten the eyeballs from. It's no wonder hell was a kind of obsession with me for awhile. It was such a colorful place.

Strangely, I was never able to dig that far, though.

But I did know the basic rules of hell, so I had to think of the best "access point" to apply my new gesturing skills at. I had to hope that the devil would be paying attention and see me doing it--but, really, it didn't matter if he did or didn't, I just wanted to flip something off.

There was only one logical point in my room: the heat register. It made perfect sense. It blew out hot air. It went below the house. Strange noises came out of it from time to time. Clearly this was a portal to the nether world.

So I plopped down on the floor of my room. I wrapped my legs up Indian style and peered down into the heat register. I couldn't SEE hell, but it had to be there somewhere. So, with some deliberation, I folded down my fingers and held them into place with my thumb and I flipped off Satan. And I continued to flip him off for the better part of the next hour. I don't know if he ever fully recovered from such a sound, symbolic thumping from me, but I do know that I nearly perfected the act of giving the bird--and that is a skill that has served me quite well over the years.

Splashing and Lava Lamps

Just a few videos to share again today.

After dinner last night, we took the kids outside to play for a bit before bed time. One of the first things Libby did while we were out there was to put some water in a bucket to give to her chickens (which, sadly, haven't died yet). After watering the birds, Norah decided that she needed to play in the water. But simply splashing in it with her hands wasn't enough. She decided that she needed to stand in the bucket and stomp around. By the time I got the camera around, she was mostly done with that, but I got some video of her doing some generally cute stuff after, too.

After getting soaked, we went inside and took a bath and got ready for bed. Then, kind of out of the blue, Libby got inspired to buy something for the kids.

Gabe has been a little obsessed with volcanoes for the past two weeks or so now. They are about all he talks about. Pretty much everything relates to volcanoes in some way, shape, or form. He might be playing with army guys and a dump truck, and those toys might be doing typical armying and dumping for a little bit, but before long they all end up doing something volcano related. Sometimes they are exploding forth from a volcano. Sometimes they are cleaning up after the volcano.

Kind of a funny story about that, actually. Two weeks ago, he said he wanted to see a volcano. He wanted me to load him up in the car and drive him to one that he could see. I explained that we lived VERY far away from the nearest active volcano, but I could show him one on the computer. So we spent about a half an hour looking at volcano videos on youtube and National Geographic's web site. And he would have continued to watch for the next hour or two if I'd felt like constantly finding new clips to watch. But I didn't, so I told him I would find him a volcano movie to watch, and I ordered a National Geographic Explorer episode about volcanoes on ebay. Fortunately, the person I bought it from was on the ball, because a dozen or so times a day (starting from five minutes after I ordered it), Gabe asked me if his movie had come in the mail yet.

It came in early last week and he has watched it at least once every day. He's even watched all of the special features on the DVD. There's a good chance that, within a couple weeks, he will have watched more hours of National Geographic in his life already than I have managed to watch myself over . . . however many years old I am. I can't remember anymore. A lot.

Last night, then, Libby was inspired to find Gabe a lava lamp for his room. Everything is volcanoes, lava and molten rock take up a goodly portion of his brain these days, we've been having to leave the light upstairs on for him because he's been scared of the dark recently--pretty much getting a lava lamp seemed like a fantastic idea. So she ran out and got two of them, one for Gabe and one for Norah's room (because what the hell, we often have to turn the light on in her room so we can see where she is to hand her a bottle and tuck her back in, so having some light in the room wasn't a bad idea).

And he loves the light. Already this morning he's gone up to his room just to stand in front of it and stare for a few minutes.

After installing the lights last night, I decided to keep a hold of the tubes they came in, just in case one of them didn't work or something. But I also figured that the kids would enjoy playing with them this morning. And they did. Though in a way that I didn't expect.

I REALLY wanted him to try to put one on each leg and walk around. Sadly, I don't think that ever occurred to him.

Gabe's First Program

Tuesday night was graduation at Gabe's preschool. He's still got a year of preschool left, so the ceremony wasn't in his honor, but they did work up a little program for all of the preschoolers to participate in.

Because I wanted to post it on here, I had to break the videos into little 1 minute 30 second clips (though a couple times I wasn't paying close enough attention and wandered over--so if there are some breaks in the program, that means I couldn't get blogger to load one of my videos). So, you know, sorry that you have to watch these videos in small chunks.

While Gabe didn't manage to do anything America's Funniest Videos funny, he also didn't stay on script very well (and since I didn't want to be one of those people standing up in the middle of everything blocking the view of others, I didn't do such a hot job of video-taking, either--but there you go).

And that's that, sort of. I had a little video of their procession out, but Gabe ran around the other way to find Poppa again, so I didn't get him in it at all.

Mud Baths and Frogs

Just a couple videos to share today.

Yesterday we broke the previous heat record for our state for the 9th of May by 16 degrees, topping out over 100. And it wasn't much better on Sunday. Since it was so warm, Libby got the sprinkler out and let the kids go at it for awhile. Just as he did the last time we let them play in the sprinkler, Gabe spent only as much time playing in the water as it took for a spot of ground to get muddy enough to start tearing things up. This time, instead of just stomping around, though, he decided to make his ancient ancestors proud and he made use of a simple tool.

OK, so I lied. There are a few pictures to go along with the videos, too.

I really am glad that Libby lets the kids do this kind of thing. I always put on a cranky face when it happens because I, personally, am not a fan of messes or of gaping holes in our yard, but I still appreciate the kids getting to have this kind of fun while they are young.

Then, this morning, Norah did something that caught me as amusing. I'm not sure what brought it on, but seemingly out of the blue she said, "Frog. Jump!" and then she made a ribbit noise. It was really loud and sounded something like "BRAP!" It was awfully hilarious, so I tried to talk her into doing it for the camera.

Obviously, she's picked up Gabe's bad habit of always having to see herself on the camera afterwards. I'm afraid that I'm raising a pair of narcissists. But at least a decent narcissist would put on a performance in front of the camera before insisting on seeing it instead of just assuming that, as soon as the camera is turned on, something worth seeing will materialize on it to look at. So we're going to have to work on that part if nothing else. All in all, the video wasn't successful, but I like to share my failures as well (since, if I didn't, this blog would only get updated once every few weeks at best).

Field Trips

We finished the second of Gabe's field trips. They were . . . interesting (and here I use the dramatic pause followed by the euphemistically nondescript participle "interesting" in the place of "nightmarish hellscapes that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy" because I don't want people to think that I'm being overly dramatic or hyperbolic just for the sake of colorful narrative).

Let me just begin by reiterating that I do not have the tools necessary to adequately cope with my small children out in public settings like this. If I've learned nothing else over these past four years (and, in fact, that's probably not far from an accurate evaluation of my learning curve), I have come to realize my own limitations in this particular area. I like children who follow orders--who do what they are told and are blithely capable of having a good time within the rather strict behavioral guidelines that I categorize as "acceptable."

I also know that this is an entirely unrealistic expectation of my children--or anyone else's. Kids are kids and they will do stupid kid things and almost never do what they are told. And I can accept that reality. I just don't accept my place in that reality. If children aren't doing what they are told, then I like to have a section of the house that I can gate/lock off from the rest where the kids can do their own thing and I can delude myself into thinking that they are doing precisely what I WANT them to be doing. The problem is, no such lock-offable places exist out in public.
So outings like this tend to go something like this:

Pat says, "Gabe, please stand by me and don't touch anything.

Gabe: immediately walks away and starts touching something hot, sharp, poisonous, explosive, or molting.

Pat says, "Norah, please hold my hand."

Norah says, "No!" then she pulls her hands roughly down to her side, slumps to her butt on the ground, and starts shrieking like I've just poked her in the gullet with a cattle prod.

Pat says, "Gabe, please listen to the grown ups and do what they say."

Gabe: (he never says anything anymore, instead just doing what he wants to instead of trying to rationalize or explain his actions to me in lively debate) picks his nose and wipes the booger on my pants, he then uses the distraction this offers--while I am trying to wipe the snot ball off my clothes--to find something large that he can go behind to "look at" so that I can't see him anymore. Then he will find something, anything, to pick up and put in his mouth.

Pat says, "Norah, honey . . ." and then stops because there really is no point.

Norah says, "No!" but lets me pick her up. Once she's four feet off the ground, she performs an outstandingly complex physical display wherein she simultaneously slumps limply into my arms (giving her the holdability of a greased sack of weevils) while using invisible limbs (her actual limbs are always flailing out behind her) to push away from my body with all her might. The end result is something like me wrestling a narcoleptic pig suffering a grand mal seizure. Inevitably, it is only sheer force of will that keeps her from crashing head first to the floor. But the fact that I have managed to prevent my smallest child from braining herself on the tarmac rarely distracts passers-by from the reality of the fantastic bratitude of said child and my obvious parenting deficiencies in raising such a nether-beast. I am only being judged by the attitude, not by the feat of physics defying deftness that enables me to keep my child alive and well.

And that probably sums my problems up quite adequately. I don't like being judged by people I don't know (and, frankly, who probably deserve to be on the receiving end of judgment instead of the giving end), and having small children in public is the judgment inducing equivalent of wearing a Ms. America style sash that says Dog Botherer or Real Doll Pimp on it.

Anyway. Gabe's first field trip was to our local Daylight Donuts. Gabe, as I'm sure I've pointed out several times before, has a real thing for donuts. Every day he asks for donuts. Several times, usually. So we kind of figured this trip would be like visiting his own nirvana. And he did enjoy eating the donuts--he ate his, Norah's, and half of mine. He also drank two juice cups.

Outside the donuteria.

My brilliant plan was to keep Norah locked in her definitely-too-small-for-her-now stroller. But the store isn't what you'd call spacious, and Norah pretty much hated sitting in this thing (plus, she doesn't like donuts, so there really wasn't anything to keep her interest while we were there). While she was confined thus, I was able to snap these three pictures. She demanded to be set free almost immediately after I took the next picture of Gabe, and from that point on I had to carry her or chase her around the place. So picture taking because an unaffordable luxury at that point.

Gabe, on his first juice cup, after his second donut.

This field trip actually didn't go THAT poorly. It only lasted about an hour, and Gabe was at least politely disinterested in most of what was going on around him--but NOT a running around touching and eating everything terror like I was a little afraid he would be. I had mental images of him tearing around the store, grabbing donuts off the shelves and stuffing them in his mouth like Cookie Monster. But he didn't. He was quite well behaved.

The only minor hiccup we had--which was kind of hilarious, actually--happened while the . . . what do you call the guy who makes the donuts? The Donut Master? King Donut? Whatever his name, that guy. He showed the kids how most of the different donut varieties were made, and Gabe managed to feign interest for about the first half dozen varieties. After that, he just stood quietly next to the counter where the guy was piling the cut dough. As King Donut worked on the other varieties, he looked up and said, "Oh, no. You don't want to eat that," and he reached over the counter to, you guessed it, Gabe. He had quietly scooped up one of the raw donut holes and put it into his mouth. He repentantly let the little dough ball roll out of his mouth into the guy's hand and stood there, looking sheepish for the next few minutes.

But the thing is, as his teacher pointed out to me, we're pretty sure the guy had cut three donut holes out, and only two of them could be accounted for. So Gabe probably ended up sneaking the other one while nobody was paying attention. He's getting pretty sneaky.

And that was pretty much the highlight of that trip. The morning didn't go poorly. Probably that was what provided me with the false confidence to go against my better judgment and involve Norah in the second field trip--a decision I would whole-heartedly regret on Thursday.

Thursday they took a field trip to a remote little creek. Libby was the guest teacher for the day, which excited Gabe to no end. The kids were all dressed in boots and clothes they could get wet and the plan was for Libby to guide them around this shallow creek and show them all the treasures wet, seething nature had to offer.

Neither of us had been to this little stretch of water before, so we had no idea how far it was from our parking spot or what to expect when we got there. Because, apparently, neither of us have had a two year old before, we decided to let Norah walk it.

As it turned out, the creek was about a quarter mile away from the parking lot. A hilly, mulch and rock covered trail led us there. Because there was two of us, we were able to trail Gabe while helping Norah trundle along at her measure pace. And I was also able to take a few pictures (until things went pear shaped, anyway).

So, we started at a little area with benches and the kids had a snack while the adults got their shit together.

I think Libby gets credit for this dashing ensemble. I say this because, even though she's wearing a skirt with rubber boots, she's still FAR more equipped to walk around in the muddy water than I was. For some reason, the point of the morning escaped me and I didn't find shoes I could get wet. I'm pretty daft sometimes (most of the time).

After I left with Norah, Gabe put on quite a display. Not once through Libby's presentation did Gabe pay attention to what was going on. Instead, he jumped around in the river, found ledges and an old bridge to jump off into the water, and ran around offering the other kids as much distraction as he possibly could. It was not a good day to make a case against him being ADHD. But, as this picture shows, I think the kid was tired--and Gabe doesn't handle tired with grace and aplomb. This was taken at a little campsitey area about halfway down the trail to the creek. The kids were all gathered while Libby did some introductions and talked about what they were going to do in the creek.

Libby telling the kids the facts of life, in river critter form. This was about as far away from Libby as Norah was willing to get until we got down to the creek.

Libby, naturing up the kids.

At the creek. This was about five minutes after we got there. Libby was already dredging up snake skins and other signs of nature. But, once we'd reached the water, Norah had been pretty content to stand around in it. She didn't move much. She just sort of hung around these little stepping stones, hopping up on one and dropping back into the water. Twice she decided to take a seat. Keep in mind, it was in the upper 50s or so and the water was pretty much freezing. Yet none of the kids seemed to mind. And neither of our kids got pneumonia, despite everything popular folklore likes to say about being cold and wet.

Gabe in one of the few instances when he wasn't hip to shoulder deep in water, but still not paying the least bit of attention to what was going on.

"Look, kids! We're so lucky! We've found some things in their natural element. This is a Coney Island Whitefish. I know it looks like a used condom, but it's not. And here we have . . . no, Gabe. Please stop poking that poor, bloated, er, sleeping person with that stick."

This was the last picture that I got, roughly ten seconds before my morning turned to shite. Right after this picture, Norah snagged her boot on something in the creek and fell down. She didn't hurt herself in the least--no scraped knees or banged up hands--but you sure wouldn't have guessed that from the way she completely lost her shit.

That's the story so far. Norah fell down and I went out to get her. I picked her up and she doubled her efforts to burst ear drums and disconcert rational thinking people with her wailing. On the one hand, she had fallen. And, though she hadn't hurt herself, falling down still pissed her off, and she wanted to be comforted for that. On the other hand, she didn't want ME to be the one comforting her. She wanted Libby, and she wanted to be comforted while remaining in the creek and doing whatever she wanted. But Libby was busy teaching the kids. So, since I picked Norah up out of the water, and I wasn't Libby, neither of these conditions were met, so she lost her mind.

I gave Libby a pathetically put upon look, standing there, holding a writhing, sopping wet, tantrum throwing two year old, and she said, "Take her home." I nodded quietly but thought "Oh thank god," quite loudly.

I felt bad abandoning Libby with Gabe there more or less unsupervised, but that feeling passed as soon as I took about ten steps away from the creek. By that point, I was also soaked to the core and Norah was showing no signs of slowing down. Which is a bad thing. Norah crying uncontrollably means one thing and one thing only--vomit.

And the vomit came.

There is one important difference between Libby and I when it comes to parenting. When the kids are sick, Libby doesn't hesitate to hold and comfort them through a thorough dousing with vomit. She is content to let them puke all over her and then clean herself and her clothing up later.

I am not this way.

I do not like vomit. I have not been a puker since I was a very small child and I don't have much sympathy for people who are. I have a sensitive gag reflex, so if I can keep myself from puking, most people should be able to. Plus, it's gross. Warm, chunky, slimy, clingy, and horribly smelly. I've cleaned up FAR more than my fair share of it over the past few years, and I'm fine with cleaning it up with towels or whatever. But I do not let it touch me. If one of the kids is facing me and they start to puke, as quickly as I can I turn them some other direction and let them puke on ANYTHING that isn't me. This might be a little heartless, I guess, but I see it as doing a service for my children. They need to learn that you just don't do something things all over other people. There are limits.

And here I could go into a discussion of golden showers or something else unsettling, but I won't, because this post is epically long already. So just go ahead and picture some options there and shake your head a little in disgust (or wistfulness, I guess, if that's your thing).

So I quickly rolled Norah over in my arms. I was carrying her like a forty pound log. She was spewing vomit with every step I took and screaming like a banshee that had been set on fire. And she was squirming, too, obviously. Trying to get down so she could run back to the creek and her mother.

And I walked like this for about a quarter of a mile.

I am not a small person. Anyone using words to describe me will NEVER think "slight" is an accurate modifier. I grew up lifting heavy things. I do it less frequently now because I am old and years of lifting heavy things when I was young left me with all sorts of back and joint issues, but I'm still not a slouch. I can manhandle a refrigerator with the best of them--or at least the middle of the range of them.

Yet I can't think of anything that was more physically exhausting than carrying Norah back to our car. I don't know if I've pointed this out before or not, but she's kind of a big girl. A big, sopping wet, screaming, squirming, puking girls are not very easy to carry for a quarter of a mile.

Fortunately, though, she had puked herself out by the time we reached the car, and all that was left was the uncontrollable sobbing, which lasted until we were home, undressed, and she was in the bath tub. Once back in the water--this time warm and not out in the middle of nowhere--she was happy as a clam again.

And, on the plus side, both she and Gabe took GREAT naps that afternoon. Which was good because it allowed me to lie down on the couch and decompress for awhile, too. I'm not sure what would have happened if they hadn't slept, but it probably would have involved a glass and a box of wine. Possibly the entire box.

ANorahble

This time of year is stupid. Approximately 80% of everything "busy" that happens during the year happens either in April-May or December. I don't get it. Why can't people schedule things year round so people can actually appreciate what's happening? Infuriating.

Because it's been so busy and there's been such an overall feeling of exhaustion and of being overwhelmed, I've not had much gumption to post on here. Which is fine because, despite the fact that there always seems to be something going on, I really don't have that much material to work with anyway. Gabe has/had two field trips for school this week, so I'll get the few pictures I managed to get from those posted later (Norah came along, too, so chaperoning two small children during these events limited my ability to snap pictures). Otherwise, all I've got to offer are some random pictures of Norah that we've managed to get the past week and a half or so.

Norah with part of a peep. Every time Gabe asks for one (which is over now as the last of our stash disappeared this morning), Norah has to remind herself that she hates them. She puts it in her mouth for a second then spits the slobbering, mushy mess somewhere that I won't see until it's had the chance to set back up properly and become a permanent part of the environment.

I should point out this was pre-bath. We don't generally let our kids walk around with clothes on. I find it distasteful. I don't think I'm prudish about nudity, particularly, but there is a fine line between "naturist" and "hillbilly," and I would rather let my children distinguish that line on their own time when they are old enough to be embarrassed by their bodies.

These pictures are what is known in the business as "filler." In effect, I am announcing "I don't have a damn thing to post about, so here are a few pictures of my child making the same adorable faces that you've seen on this blog before."

It's the blog equivalent of a "best of" episode of a sitcom, where the characters all reminisce, in flashback form, to all the silly or amazing things they've done over the past season. These episodes invariably make me angry. Not only are they an insult to my intelligence (as I can clearly remember those things happening myself, since it's only been a month or two since I saw it the first time, and I'm not a goldfish), but they are an insult to my production ideals. Being little more than a rerunning of previous clips, they cost next to nothing to make yet they create nearly-normal ad revenue. This might seem like a practical means to turning an extra buck, but I find it loathsomely lazy.

So, here you go. Loathsomely lazy. Sort of. At least I took fresh pictures instead of just using stuff from previous posts. See, TV producing world, I'm better than you, even when I'm lazy! Hacks.