In Sickness and in Health

Only my husband would break his collar bone on the way to work, and still go into the office for a full days work. When he came home that evening I took one look at the mangled mess that used to be his left shoulder and sent him straight to the hospital, after he ate his dinner of course. However, my anger at him for not wearing his safety helmet has overshadowed any sympathy I might have.

PAUL: When I started to fall, I felt like a complete asshole for not wearing my helmet.

ME: You are an asshole for not wearing your helmet.

Later, after he had some problems connecting a logical thought.

ME: Are you sure your head is OK?

PAUL: Well, wouldn't you rather have a dumb husband?

ME: A dumb husband vs. a smart husband?

PAUL: No an annoying husband?

ME: How about a dumb and annoying husband?

My lack of sympathy has been magnified by the fact that until he heals, he is limited on what he can do with the children. The worst part is that he can't pick up the baby when she cries. So if I want to take a shower, it had better be a quick one, and when I take Asia for her evening walk (which used to be my evening ritual, my hour alone to myself, my moment of peace and quiet, my sanity saver), I have to strap Maggie to my chest.

The most optimistic estimates have Paul healing in 4-6 weeks, but everyone we've talked to knows someone who had the same injury and had to undergo physio-therapy after healing to rebuild muscle strength. So it might be several months before he can pick-up Maggie again.

Music Appreciation

I visited a friend’s house last week for much needed adult interaction. She has a daughter around the same age as Max, and another daughter about six months older than Maggie. The two older kids were playing with a sing-a-long children’s book. It was filled with the simple songs of our childhood, the songs we all know by heart and the ones that when we hear them as adults get trapped in our head for days and weeks.

The book started playing its tinny version of The Wheels on the Bus, and Max started bopping his head to the beat. My friend smiled at him, and asked him if he knows the song. She starts singing the lyrics, half expecting him to join along with her daughter. Max looks at her funny and keeps bopping his head.

Trying to cover my shame, I look on with a half-smile and a non-committal shrug. Max doesn’t know this song, and he won’t know the next one played either, Row-Row-Row Your Boat. He doesn’t know them because I never play them at home, and he only hears them when we are at other more devoted Mothers’ homes. Selfishly, I don’t play, nor do I invest in music that will drive me crazy. I’m already half-way there, and I don’t need any help finishing the trip.

When I’m feeling especially guilty, I will play the podcast, Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child. However, mostly Paul and I play music that we like. So Max might not be able to sing along to Hickory-Dickory-Dock, but he can get down to Barry White, and slow dance with Mommy to Van Morrison.

Secret Smiles

My mother and I are both convinced that Maggie has been smiling since she was just a couple weeks old. My pediatrician thinks I’m mad, which might be true, but has nothing to do with whether or not Maggie is an early smile-er. Of course Maggie refused to smile during her U3, the German well baby one month check-up. However, can you blame her, she was being poked and prodded, hung by one leg than the other and flipped this way and that at a time of day when she is usually sleeping.

Most people explain those early baby smiles as gas, but gas has certainly never made me smile. Maggie’s smiles are becoming more frequent and more obviously a reflection of how she is feeling. When Max leans down to her and whispers “Hi baby,” tickling her with his blonde fringe, a big toothless grin lights up her face. When I speak dinosaur talk, the rolling lips, the clicking of the tongue or the popping of lips, she looks at me, gives me her silent baby laugh and coos.

Those easy un-conscious smiles are one of the best gifts my children can give me. When everything else seems to be falling apart, and I’m not sure I can take it anymore, just one precious smile from one of my children, and I can go on. This time is fleeting, and one day their smiles will be forced if the photographer can coax one out of them. So please don’t take away my babies’ early smiles, they are my little nuggest of gold, the moments I will hold on to when they reach those teenage years, when the smiles become rare and few in-between.

Germanish

As we are learning German, picking up various German words here and there, we find ourselves often throwing in German words to our English speech. This often confuses others, like once when someone asked about Asia's breed, and I responded with Mischling. They looked at me funny, not sure if we were using the German word or if Mischling was the English name for an strange dog breed. Strange would be fitting since Asia is indeed a strange dog, both in appearance and behavior.

I recently signed up to receive a German word of the day via email, and this has become very useful. Sometimes I already know the word, but more often I don't, and slowly I'm building my vocabulary. Like yesterday I learned how to say "Es ist sehr bewölkt heute," which is incredibly appropriate today if I want to talk about the weather.

Earlier this week I received Rührei in my mailbox. This is incredibly useful, as I can't tell you how many times I'm at a restaurant and I see various forms of Ei (sounds like eye) on the menu. I know Ei means egg, and the part of the word before Ei is how the egg is cooked. Every time I ask Paul if he knows how the egg is cooked, and every time he doesn't. So, I order it anyways thinking once I receive my egg I'll have learned a new word. By the time the egg is served however, I can't remember if I ordered the Rührei or the Spiegelei. I mean to refer to a menu or my dictionary when I get home, but I always forget. So every time I return to a restaurant I'm faced with the same dilemma.

Excited I showed Paul my word of the day, and asked him if he knew what it meant. He didn't get it at first, so I covered the Rühr- with my finger so he could get and idea of what the word was about.

"Oh, it's how the 'eye' is cooked."

See how Germanish can get confusing, but also amusing?

Ring Around The Moon

I'm hot, I'm sweaty and I'm covered in pee because a new brand of cloth diaper we were testing just failed like a sieve. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor in my nursing bra and panties, with a semi-nude Maggie now safely in a more reliable brand of cloth diaper. She is alternately gulping and coughing to keep up with the fast stream of milk rushing from my breast, which sprays all over both of us every time she pulls back. A naked butt blurs past me, as Max gleefully streaks out of the bathroom past me. Maggie dangling wildly from my breast, I race into the living room training diaper in hand just in time to see his baby white butt launch into the air as he trips over his own feet, and crumples to the ground sobbing. It's another successful day of potty training.

You might think I'm insane for potty training Max this soon after the new addition, and I'm inclined to agree. However, this wasn't my choice, it wasn't Paul's choice, and it wasn't even in our plans for the immediate future. It was Max's choice.

It's been a long time since I've gone to the bathroom without an audience. I've long since gotten over the feeling guilty of holding a wailing baby over my shoulder while relieving my bladder. Later, when Max's separation anxiety stage kicked in, I often carried him with me to the bathroom, sitting him in his Bumbo or in a strategically placed playpen outside the bathroom door. Now going to the bathroom with mommy is such a routine he often follows me in chattering away about whatever it is that interests him that day. I'm so used to this routine, that I have to remind myself to close the bathroom door when I'm at friends'.

Last Thursday, we were following this normal bathroom ritual; Maggie briefly occupied in her playpen, when Max looks at me quizzically, "Maxi poops?"

Not really listening, I replied, "Yes, Mommy is going potty."

He repeats his previous phrase a little more loudly and with a whine at the end "Maxi poop-EEEEEEEE?" because maybe now, Mommy will pay attention.

Startled, and a little confused, I looked up at him, "Is Maxi going poop?"

He nods his head yes. I was used to this, as he has been alerting us for weeks now about activity in his diaper. A preliminary inspection reveals his diaper is still clean.

I start to get a little excited, as he repeats his phrase raising the volume each time, "MAXI POOPS!!!!!"

I ask him tentatively, "Does Maxi want to use the potty?" He solemnly nods his head, yes.

"OK," and I start to remove his diaper.

When I pick him up to set him on the potty, he locks his long legs around my body crying "NO!"

"OK, you don't have to," and I put him down.

He repeats his phrase, "Maxi poops.”

This sequence of events repeats a few more times before I get a brainstorm.

I close the lid of the toilet, and ask him, "Do you want to sit on the toilet now?" He nods yes, and I pick him up, he screams again, but I sit him down anyways. After about 3 seconds, he realizes he is OK and starts laughing hysterically.

Suddenly, I remember the children's step-stool potty stored in our other bathroom. We had briefly courted with the idea of potty training this winter, and purchased one, but after reading the first chapter of the book decided neither he nor we were ready.

With Max following me excitedly, quipping his new favorite phrase, I quickly dig the potty out and install it on the toilet, the whole time sure that Max is going to fulfill his prophecy on the floor before I get it installed.

As I'm installing it, Maggie starts to cry, but I don't want to lose this moment with him, so I ignore her. Once Max is safely on top of the pot, I quickly retrieve Maggie who wants to eat. Max is thrilled with this new throne, and chatters away about it for several minutes. I hover over him expectantly holding fussy Maggie. Nothing happens. Five minutes pass. Nothing happens.

Trying not to let the disappointment show on my face, I look at him, and ask, "All done?"

"NO!"

This is going to take a little longer. So, I sit down on the floor to start nursing Maggie who is now voluminously voicing her displeasure at not being fed on demand.

"Mama, Maggie, go!" Have I ever mentioned that the hardest thing about your child learning how to talk is when they start telling you what to do?

"I can't go honey," I can't leave him on my hastily installed potty that at any moment topple and send him plummeting two feet.

"Mama, Maggie, go!" Who is this kid, who has been accompanying me to the bathroom, his entire life, but is suddenly overcome by modesty?

"OK," I relent, and Maggie and I retreat to the hallway the bathroom door open, Max in clear view.

I nurse Maggie, while Max blabbers away. When I'm finished nursing and burping her, I ask him if he is done, and wants to get down. He is emphatic in his dissent. I grab the bouncy chair from the living room and put Maggie in it next to me. I'm starting to get a little bored now as the initial excitement has worn off. I inspect the potty; there isn't even a drop of pee on it. Every time I ask him if he wants to get off, he refuses. So we wait.

Then a bell goes off in my head, my dad potty trained me in 3 days or so he claims. He sat me on the potty the entire time, feeding me food and drinks and entertaining me. So I run and grab his half-drank juice from breakfast and a book, Everyone Poops from the living room. Then I do what every good mother does, and I grab the camera. After a few shots of him reading the book on the toilet, he still refuses to get down from the toilet, yet this is yielding no results, I realized we are going to need a few more books, and a little bit more food. Eventually I install a bedside table next to him, complete with a neat stack of books, and a bowl of grapes, followed by cookies, followed by pretzels. I sat down again next to Maggie, feed her again, and call Paul to tell him what is happening. I'm the pinnacle of patience right now.

Suddenly I hear a stream of pee which Max inspects with his hands. Thrilled, I exclaim, and clap my hands. Maxi claps too. I ask him if he is all done, he still refuses to get off the toilet. A few minutes later, he poops, and I'm so proud of him when I can't get through to his father to share the news, I wake my mom up on the East Coast. .

Since Thursday, the novelty of the potty has worn off for Maxi. When he's not distracted or too busy, or he sees an opportunity to make Mommy put Maggie down, he lets me know when he has to use the potty. Since the first amazingly successful day, we have had a few pees and poops in the toilet, a few pees on the floor, and a whole lot of M&M rewards (read bribes). I introduced the M&M's to encourage Maxi to get off the toilet. Otherwise Max would spend half the day up there.