Keeping an open mind

We drove home from preschool this afternoon. A cyclist (using the term loosely to define person on bike since he had no helmet, no signaling ability, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and no sense) swerved in front of me while I turned left when he really should have been stopped on his side of the light where it was red.

"Stupid biker ASSHOLE!" I said, then realized I had the three-year-old in the back. (Again, when the kid swears, yes, it will be my fault and it will be something he learned in the car.)

"I'm sorry, A," I said. "That was a bad word and Mommy shouldn't have yelled. The biker just scared her by riding really, really badly."

"It's okay," A said, "You were expressing yourself."

I stifled the urge to laugh, and said, "Yes, but there are better words to express myself with and I could have used any of them."

"You need to express yourself. You need to have an open mind," said the zen master in the back seat.

"What's an open mind, honey?"

"An open mind is when you listen without yelling."

I'm floored. "Yes, I guess that pretty much sums it up, sweetheart."

"Not on the head!"

Sometimes when I pick A up from preschool, he's very tired. I've been trying to keep him from falling asleep in the car so I don't have to pick him up and carry him upstairs. One of the ways in which I do that is to engage A in ridiculous conversations on the way home, because he can (and does) wake up into outraged incredulousness.

When I picked him up today, he looked groggy. I don't remember why, but the subject of diapers came up.

"Oh, yes," I said, "you can help me put diapers on the baby's nose when the baby comes."

No response from the sleepy boy in the back.

"Because that's where you wear diapers, on the baby's head."

Again, no response. When I got him home, he was still awake and needed a snack before his nap, but no comments on the diapers.

He woke up from his nap a little while ago and was puttering around here with toys (he wakes up slow and grumpy from a nap, like his mommy). Finally, he got between me and my keyboard to announce:

"Mommy, you don't put diapers on the baby's nose or the baby's head. You put diapers on your penis."

Bad day, continued

A capped off his bad day yesterday by taking my embroidery scissors and almost completely cutting through the foot pedal cord of my (relatively) brand new sewing machine.

He's fine. I was in the bathroom. He came to me and said, "Mommy, it was really loud," so he obviously had some learning lesson about electricity that wasn't lethal.

Now I need a new foot pedal (or cord, at least). So much for all the sewing I had planned.

Zoo freakout

We went to the Zoo a couple days ago to spend time at the new Elephant Odyssey (which is terribly neat if not big) exhibit.

A and I were walking along a path. A family with a couple kids walked by us. One of the kids was a boy about six-years-old. A saw him and started to freak. He was pointing at the kid, jabbering, very upset, to the point where the kid and his family noticed.

"What's his problem?" the mother said to me in a not-very-nice way.

I was trying to calm A down so I could understand, because he kept saying, "No shirt, no shirt," over and over and that was all I could understand.

Finally, I looked at the kid. He's wearing a striped blue shirt that says, "Handsome like Daddy," which I recognized as a pajama top from Old Navy, because A has the same PJs.

The mother and her family were still hanging around making clucking noises at A, so I said to A, "I know that's his pajama top. His mommy lets him wear his pajamas in public, and that's okay, even though your mommy doesn't let you wear yours."

A said, "No pajamas outside."

I said, "Yes, for you, no pajamas outside. You're right."

And the family went speechless and the kid looked like he wanted the pavement to eat him and we walked our pajama-less selves onward.

[To be fair, A is allowed to wear his PJs to Bread and Cie for the first run of the day. But only to pick up, certainly not to eat there.]

Daddy's cheese

I went to the restroom earlier today, which is generally a bad idea because two-and-a-half-year-olds only need the exact amount of time it takes a mommy to visit the restroom to wreak havoc on the household. I should get myself a catheter or a drip bag tied to my thigh and give up bathroom breaks altogether.

Anyway, when I came out of the restroom, A met me on the stairs with the, "I didn't do anything wrong at all, Mommy, I swear," look, which means something is amiss. I notice he's chewing something.

"What you got there?" I say.

He smiles and opens his mouth. It looks like frosting, but I know it's not frosting because he ate all the frosting off the cupcakes yesterday.

I go to the kitchen. On the top of the stove, at the edge, sit five half-unwrapped sticks of butter. Two discarded cartons of butter are on the floor.

"Are you eating butter?"

On closer inspection, one of the sticks is completely unwrapped, slightly fuzzy, and dotted with little teeth marks.

"I eat Daddy's cheese!" he tells me.

Of course. I eat olive oil on my bread. C eats butter. When we have cheese on bread, it's usually a soft cheese, which I guess looks a lot like butter. Ergo, butter is Daddy's cheese.

We washed his buttery little hands (God knows where we'll find globs of grease this evening) and put the butter away, even the fuzzy, toothmarked one.

Not a seal

When we went to Sea World last week, we spent some time looking at the walrus exhibit. A kept saying, "Seal!"

I would say, "It's not a seal. It has big tusks, big teeth. It's a walrus."

So what is a walrus called in our house now? Notaseal. With big teeth.

Wet socks!

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but A hates getting splashed with cold water (except for when he's in the pool). He hates it. It's one of the few things I know he hates. If he dribbles water on his shirt when he's taking a drink, he'll fuss until his shirt is a little dried off.

Anyway, yesterday he decided to take some initiative and get the Brita pitcher out of the fridge himself. The Brita is heavy and spilled all over the fridge and the kitchen floor.

A lets out a scream, and I come to see what's happened. He's holding an empty pitcher and yelling, "Wet! Wet! Wet socks!"

"Calm down," I say, and talk some Mommy-talk about how maybe if he asked for help Mommy would get him water. "Take your socks off."

He paced around straight-legged and agitated.

"Sit! Sit down and take your socks off." He sits and discovers that wet socks are hard to take off. When he finally got them off, I made him help me wipe up the gallon of water off the floor.

And he still wanted a drink after all of that.

Sick and story

Sick first: A celebrated MLKJ day by puking, rather spectacularly, as we were getting into "time to go to swim class" mode. Of course, being such a momentous week, he celebrated again on Tuesday and Wednesday by throwing up right after breakfast.

Being with a sick toddler who can talk a little is no fun, because he spent most of his days saying, "Hungry! Cookie! Cookie! Fruit [leather]! Cookie! Drink!" when he was supposed to be getting two tablespoons of Pedialyte or water every ten to fifteen minutes. This was pretty unbearable for a mommy. At least I wasn't sick with the stomach flu this time too, although I've got a riotous head cold going and I felt like I was under house arrest from not leaving the house for three days.

But this morning he was fine, breakfast stayed down, and he went to preschool. He's in a much better mood; the drywallers came to put the downstairs bathroom ceiling back together and it looks much better, plus these guys didn't seem to be on meth, always a plus.

Story: This is from last week. One of the words A has picked up is IKEA. I kid you not. We drive on 805, and there is IKEA in all its shiny yellow and blue Swedishness across the way in Mission Valley, and A yells and points, "KEA, KEA, KEA." When we go to Costco, he asks to go to IKEA, and sometimes I indulge him. I don't know why he wants to go. I really don't. I am told that these are my genes.

So here's the story. Last week, before he was sick, A and I headed to IKEA for the semi-annual sale. At some point, we went to the restroom for a diaper change. After we get done, we both wash our hands, and I hand A a length of paper towel. I tell him, "There's a trash can right by the door, just throw your paper towel out and wait for me," since I'm coming up behind him with the stroller.

A ignores me, takes the paper towel, wraps it around the door handle, and opens the door. Yes, he's opening the door with a paper towel, just like Mommy and Daddy do, especially when they see the lady who left the bathroom before us without washing her hands.

Good? I'll show you good...

I got sick. A's doing better. I'm doing better. We're crazy busy for the holidays, as I'm sure you all are.

It's pouring rain here. Yesterday, C and I attempted to mail off the Christmas goodness and found a self-service postal office kiosk--with no place to put the packages. So we bought all the postage and slapped labels on things and left them all in the car for shipping on Monday.

This morning, C's late. Our local post office isn't open when we swing by and they don't have a nifty package drop either. A falls asleep on the way home from dropping off C, and I'm thrilled because I've got a list. Bake a quick-bread for his speech therapist, who is coming at 1pm. Wrap presents. Sew stockings. Whip up a gingerbread house dough. Identify any last-minute giftees and figure out last-minute presents. Put together a grocery store list for Xmas. I'm thrilled in the way only mothers of toddlers can be when their sweet cherubs are conked out.

We pull into the garage, and A wakes up.

I snuggle and cuddle and coax and A won't go back to sleep.

Fine. Now I'm mad and snarly mommy. I'm sick. I'd like to sleep. I'd like to be anything other than in charge of a Christmas cornucopia of errands in the pouring rain with a sick toddler, but here I am. Back in the car, off to the post office. We get a spot next to the door, but I am in a bad enough mood that I do not care. A doesn't want to put on his raincoat but no, he has no choice and he is standing beside the boxes on the sidewalk as I run from the trunk to the car in the rain.

It takes me three trips to unload all the boxes. A is screaming and having a tantrum. I have to wait in line because one of the boxes is too big, even though we've already paid for postage. The other people in line look at my snotty, screaming toddler and my red nose and treat us like we have the plague, which I guess we do.

Back in the car. We've got a little under two hours, so we'll go to the grocery store, get our supplies for Christmas, and be able to get a gift for the speech therapist in one swoop.

Now, unless I have driven in a car with you, which is pretty a limited number of people because I really hate to drive, you may not be aware that I turn into Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver when I drive. There's a constant stream-of-consciousness incoherent, delusional rambling commentary every time I get behind the wheel. My most flagrant, eyebrow-lifting obscenity happens when I'm driving. I try to rein it in, of course, since the boy, but when that baby lets something obscene fly there will be no question at all where he learned it.

The underground parking garage is full, with vultures circling. I go up to the uncovered parking lot, since I'm not made of sugar (definitely not today), and I start listening to myself as I pass by parking space. I'm in so much of a snit that I'm saying things like, "Oh, yeah, great space there, should be a handicapped but it's not, and I drove right past it. And by the time I come back, there'll be some idiot there. And there's a great space, parallel that I could get into easy, but no, I'm driving right by it. Oh, that space I saw before, yes, that's full now too."

And I listen to myself, really listen, and I then I start laughing. I am being presented with numerous opportunities to be helped and I am passing by each one with my delusional ranting. I have already benefited from the largess of the universe by getting a spot near the door at the post office and three people who held the door open for me each time.

I apologize to A, and tell him I'm going to be a more cheerful mommy, and turn into the back parking lot and get a space right by the door. Not ten feet from that, under the awnings, is the only Trader Joe's cart that is dry. Bone-dry. And I say thank you to the universe, thank you for being kind to me and giving me two good parking spots in Hillcrest in one hour, a dry place to put my child's bottom, and an appreciation that, even with the Christmas cornucopia and colds and lack of naps, my life's pretty darn good.

I got the speech therapist a big box of Rocher, and I am glad I did, because she brought A a book. And now I am going to go sit with some chai and sew a stocking by the lights of our Christmas tree.

New skill

A is moving right along. He was climbing into things he shouldn't have been this afternoon, and I said, "Hey, can you find Brown Bear, Brown Bear and bring it to me?" He stopped, looked around, picked up Brown Bear and came over to me. He does speak English!