Monday, January 30, 2012

If He Weren't So Cute...

With a toddler you cannot show any signs of weakness. They pick up on that right away and totally use it to their advantage. They prey on the weak and can eat you alive. Jack is what my mother calls a "spirited" child. This just means that sometimes he can be a real jerk.

This past Friday was one of those times.

Weakness #1 Jack had been up in the night several times Wednesday and Thursday so I was tired. After work I decided to take him to Khol's because I was in desperate need of some new bras. I put him in the stroller/cart and off we went to the women's undies. While I was searching for my size, he managed to climb out of the stroller and remove an entire rack of bras. I stuffed him into the cart part and frantically picked up the bras. While I was doing this he was shoving who knows what from the bottom of the cart into his mouth. I fished that out of this mouth, grabbed my bras, and went to check out where I then got the evil eye from another mom in line in front of me like "why can't you control your child?" I held him the entire time we checked out and headed for the car.

Jack's car seat is positioned in the middle of the backseat rear facing. I have been meaning to turn it around, but was stalling as long as humanly possible. Also, my car is a Saturn Ion and the backseat, although a four door, is microscopic. I have to get into the car to put him in the seat and frankly the bigger my belly gets the harder it is to maneuver around back there.
Weakness #2. Because Jack is so "spirited" he doesn't always like getting into his car seat. This day was no exception. With his superhuman toddler strength and wiggling accompanied by loud screaming he managed to get away from me. I chased him around the car for 20 minutes with him staying just out of my reach. What a sight we must have been. Me sitting in the backseat sobbing in frustration and him smiling away in the driver's seat "steering" and occasionally leaning to sip from the straw of my McDonald's coke in the cupholder. At this point I called Spiderman to keep me from either murdering him or leaving him in the parking lot of Khol's altogether. Total Mommy fail. I eventually gathered myself, turned his car seat around, scooped him up, and flung my entire body over him and strapped him into the seat chanting you will get in this seat over and over again.
He has been acting out more and more lately and I know part if it is normal toddler boundary testing, but also part of it is me. I used to play with him more. Lately, I've been so tired or physically cannot get down on the floor for long periods of time to play with him like I used to. This leaves a very busy, curious child to entertain himself more...by climbing on things and getting into anything he possibly can. I feel like all I do is yell at him. He's going to think his name is Jackson No by the time he's two. If I can't handle him now what is it going to be like when Baby X gets here?

I know some of you mom's out there have been though this. Even you non-mom's can offer suggestions! I will try anything at this point! What would you do in my situation?

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Has it been that long?

So why haven't I been posting too much lately? Several reasons. The first and most obvious is that I'm 6 months pregnant and tired. Then there was the business of the holidays. Then both my boys came down with the flu and had temps over 101 for a week. And finally my laptop completely melted down leaving me with very limited access to the internet since the other computers in my house were also down.
Since then Spiderman has set up our iMac so that I can use it, and we are looking around to replace our laptop so I will have more opportunities to be online.

That only leaves laziness and lack of anything remotely interesting to post about. I do have a few things roaming around my head that I hope to be able to put down in the next few weeks so bear with me.

In the past I've posted about the scary state of my office/junk room. Now that we have a new addition to the family it is going to be Baby X's (still can't decide on a name) room. That means we not only have to clean out the room, but also figure out where the piles of other shit in there have to go. I have already started to make piles of things to throw away, donate, and sell in my neighborhood's garage sale this summer. I've had to make some hard decisions about what do to with some of my books. It's so hard to part with many of them, but I just don't have the room!
We also put new shelves in our storage areas so that we have more room to relocate some of the things we do want to keep. All this work and I still have SO much I have to do. But in the end it will be worth it because I have kind of a theme decided on.

I'm not buying the whole bedding set because I did that with Jack and didn't use all the pieces. It just feels wasteful plus this room seems kind of busy. I am going to buy some key pieces like the lamp, wall hangings and curtains and use the color scheme. I might also buy the quilt set but for the toddler bed for use later.

What do you think?