Family Portrait

A few days ago we attempted to take a family picture. I just knew it was a better idea for me to do it, rather than hire someone.

I was wrong.

First, there was the matching outfits. You know how everyone attempts to coordinate the colors. As an artist I should know how to do this. However, I spent most of my time circling Target with multiple shirts and outfits in my hands, scratching my head and wondering what the heck I was doing. 

There was also the small problem of we didn't have anyone to take the picture. But problem solved, I would buy a camera tripod to take the picture for us. Problem created, I accidentally bought a monopod instead. If someone could explain the purpose of a monopod, I would appreciate it. You sure can't stake it in the yard to take a family picture. I can tell you that.

Finally, there was the small issue of getting our family of four ready for the picture.

Timing - Do you do it before or after naptime? 

Before naptime and you risk a 3 year old "I'm tired" meltdown 

After naptime and you risk a 3 year old "I woke up on the wrong side of the nap" meltdown

After naptime it is. 

I dress our baby in a bright blue flapper onesie and then search the house for a our groggy just woken 3 year old. 

I try not to bend around too much in my clothes because I bought a shirt that wrinkles easily, not to mention makes me look more pregnant than I did when I was pregnant, but I'm not going back to the store so that settles it. 

When I find him, he's putting together the lego tractor with Mr. Yardbird that I bought as bribery when I returned the monopod for the tripod. 

"You know he can choke on these pieces," Mr. Yardbird tells me. 

I'm sure he could, but when he was on the edge of a meltdown I grabbed the first thing I could think to distract him at the store. I'll have to remind myself to hide it later.

I begin coaxing our 3 year old to change his clothes, but nothing works except for the promise of a bag of cookies. I sound like mom of year.

Then I herd our family out the door in the blazing heat to take our picture. 

But wait, Ham has no shoes on. 

"Don't worry about your shoes, you don't need them." I could care less about the shoes, lets get this over with.

Then sobs erupt from Ham about how he needs his Batman shoes and bunch of other things I can't understand because he's wailing.

I look at Mr. Yardbird and we shake our heads. This is a kid who we chase around the house and beg to put shoes on, now suddenly can not live without his Batman shoes.

Fine here's your shoes. 

Beads of sweat are forming on our heads and the camera's  not fitting on the tripod, because I accidentally bought a "travel" tripod. 

Camera switched out. More beads of sweat. 

Which button make the self-timer work and......

Viola.

Which felt more like this picture.

Manners

Every morning I wake up early before work so I can sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy the news. This morning as I sat down to begin my ritual I heard a faint call for mom from Ham's room. 

I reluctantly got up, scooped Hammy into my arms and reminded him that this is mommy's coffee time. "I won't spill it." He said. We curled up on the sofa and I wrapped a blanket around us. The news was out of the question. "I want SPIDERMAN!" he demanded. We have been watching the 1987 series on netflix.

I reminded him that he needs to remember to "Say Please" and to say that nicely to me. "Say please" I said again.
"Okay, pleaaaase" Ham exaggerated. Satisfied I took a sip of my coffee. Then, Hammy said in the same sing song voice as me, "Say yes" I looked back at him and he reminded me, "Say yes."

Good grief.

Not that Mickey Mouse

Before I write this post I feel like you should have some background information since it's been so long since my last post.

• I'm 6 months pregnant
• We moved to a bigger house.
• I'm working full-time teaching.
• I'm dealing with the joys of toddler independence.

Okay, so a few days ago I had some time after work, finally, to grab some groceries. It had been a while, maybe three weeks, and we were running low on everything. After work I rushed through the store so I could make it in time to pick Ham up at a reasonable time.

He gets testy if I wait too long to get him and his dinner isn't ready right when we get home. Dealing with the demands of a toddler are hard enough, so I grabbed an already cooked rotisserie chicken that had just come out of the store's oven. It wasn't my oven, but Ham wouldn't know.

I grabbed him from daycare and listened to him tell me how to drive from the backseat thinking that an almost 3 year old is too young to become a backseat driver.

At home, I started unloading all the cold things and after a few minutes of that I noticed how it was a few minutes of complete silence. A few minutes of silence these days could mean permanent marker circles under the coffee table, the inhalation of a tube of kid's toothpaste and a call to poison control, or it could mean my walls are being sprayed with Trisemme hairspray.

I stood up and peeped over the refrigerator door.

"Go Away!" He said with the most serious, leave me alone face. In a corner of the kitchen, Ham stood perfectly still.

That's when I realized he was going number 2 on himself.

Never mind he knows how to use the potty. Never mind that he's done it a million times. But standing in the kitchen and in all of his toddler independence, he argues with me that he is going to do it in his pants.

And being the frustrated, I've worked all day, bought you this already made Rotisserie chicken, I'm 6 months pregnant and tired, I argued right back.

I  know some moms that would grab their kid, run across the house and put them on the potty, but this tired mom finally gave up and said, "Fine. Poop in your pants." (Judge me.)

In my frustration and carrying a couple of bags of spaghetti noodles I charged across the kitchen and threw open my "pasta" drawer. (Did I mention we live in an old house) And maybe I did it with such force, but the little bit of things that were in there ricocheted off the back of the drawer and flew up in the air.

I must have missed my calling as a football player because I managed to catch one of those things as it flew up in front of me.

And as I gripped the back of it and stared briefly at its coarse gray hair and long tail that's when I realized it was a.......RAT. And seconds later I screamed a scream that I never knew existed. I dropped the rat who scurried under the sink and my whole body trembled.

Across the room, Ham screamed, "What happened!!!???"

To which I screamed, "A mouse!!!!"

It wasn't a mouse, let's be honest with ourselves.

To which he screamed "Mickey Mouse???!!!"

And it certainly wasn't Mickey Mouse.

"Nooooo!!!!," I screamed.

Ham took off in the other direction. The poor thing who was in the middle of doing his business, decided I was too crazy to be around and hid in the bedroom to finish what he started.

And the rat, well all the necessary measures are being taken to eliminate him.

And me, well I don't know that I'll ever be the same.

Neighborhood Friends

Tomorrow is the first day of 1st grade with my students. While I should be walking around in circles nervously preparing for the day, I decided instead to take a relaxing walk with Ham around the neighborhood.

I asked him if he'd like to ride his new tricycle but he said he'd rather walk, so we put our shoes on and headed out the door.

He mentioned going to the church to "see Jesus" so we headed that way taking an alternative scenic route. Instead of passing our favorite tree, we passed our favorite bush. If we're careful and quiet enough we can creep up on the bush filled with fifty squeaking sparrows. For a minute, you can see the birds up close chirping feverishly to one another. They hardly notice us, but just as we raise our voices above a whisper the birds rush out in all directions, furious we interrupted their meeting. Being that close to it all is sort of magical and for minute I'm almost certain they were gossiping. But just as soon as we can catch a snippet of conversation they are off to a more secluded tree.

Today, as we stood whispering by the bird bush, I realized we had an audience behind us. Ms. Jennie, Barbara, Judy and Bonnie stood in the parking lot of the assisted living home that was just across the street. Jennie and I go way back to Henry baby days. To the days when I sat on my front porch bouncing him on my knee and she would sit next to me chatting about just about anything. Now we are regular neighborhood friends who catch up where we left off every time the timing is just right and our paths cross.

Ham and I didn't hesitate to stop for in for a chat and before we knew it, Ham had made a life long friend with Ms. Barbara who has almost no family at all.

And Ms. Judy who sells Avon.

 

And though she's not picture, Ms. Barbara, who doesn't technically live there but shows up to chat with the girls from time to time.

 

While Ham walked their pets, we talked about my first day of school tomorrow and a bunch of other random things, like the fact that Ms. Jennie put her dress on inside out by mistake. Though she was real embarrassed about it, she wasn't about to go fix it. I told her looked fine and that it really is a beautiful dress anyway. Ms. Barbara nudged my arm and said I was smart for saying so.

 

Then as the sun came down we hugged Ms. Jennie goodbye and headed to church.

 

 



To see "Baby Jesus".

And to splash over and over and over again in the puddles, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Annual Cool Zoo

Today, I overslept big time. I had the worst time sleeping last night so I spent the morning rushing around getting Ham and I ready to work on my classroom. We had stopped by McDonalds so that I could grab another coffee when I got a call from my cousin wanting us to go to the cool zoo.

I know there is still so much to do for school, but I couldn't miss our annual summer trip to the cool zoo. I told her we could be ready in thirty minutes.

In my previous post, I mentioned how difficult Ham is for me at zoos, bug museums, etc. There is an exception to that general rule and that is when we go with my Uncle and cousins.

There were no temper tantrums, no exaggerated crying, No I want, I need, I do it, mine, me, my. Instead there was laughter and playing. We roamed around the zoo, checked out the animals and ate snowballs in a tree house. It was the perfect way to wrap up our summer. Here's some pictures from today.

Bugs

Have you ever navigated the zoo, the Aquarium or what not with a 2 year old? Did you lose your sanity?

I think those places are designed for that.

Today we navigated the Bug Zoo with not one, but two 2 year olds. I'm not sure how but I somehow managed to talk both my brother (and his kid) and Mr. Yardbird into that today.

It wasn't all that bad.

The drive there was easy with the kids watching a movie in the back seat. Parking was a synch and we were able to pick up coffee on the way. We strolled along insisting our kids hold our hands to which they adamantly refused.

And when we finally got there and our coffee was starting to taste really good, we stepped into a long line behind the medal detectors. You know, the old school kind you used to find in airports. Nothing high-tech. And I'm wondering what sort of security issues they have going on in a bug museum, but the thought flees my mind and I sip on my coffee. The coffee that I know is going to get me through the approaching chaos.

"You can't take that in here", says the cop to my brother and I watch my brother begrudgingly toss his hardly sipped on coffee in the trash and Mr. Yardbird and I follow suit. I thought the coffee might give us the energy to manage our kids, but now that's out of the window.

And we meander around the bug museum staring quizzically at all the tiny bugs, some that swim and some that might kill you if they bit you.  We ponder their existence in quiet solitude and offer tidbits of knowledge to our kids' thirsty little minds.

Did I say meander? ponder? in quiet solitude?

I mean we chased our kids in circles, fumbled over people who were taking pictures (let's face it there is plenty of that going on) and darted through crowds only to just miss the shirt sleeve of our crazy two year olds. Sure we saw bugs. We said, " Look at this bug right here", and when we turned our kids were sprinting on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.


Sometimes, we remarkably found each other in the middle of the museum and traded off kids to chase around. "You got that one, I've got this one." and as we ran around we made sure our kids soaked up the endless knowledge of a bug's life by pointing out everything that was rushing past them. That's a skill only for the parent of a two year old.

And finally we sat down to eat a healthy meal of nachos, cookies, french-fries and pizza. And I'm sure the bug zoo is plotting against us as it offers the most sugary junk food assortment. My brother's kid, L, insists on  only eating the chips with no cheese and Ham insists on licking the cheese and not eating the chip. They make the best two year old picky eating companions.

We finish up and watch a 4-D movie, stroll through the butterfly exhibit and as we open the exit door we are pushed out into the gift shop with all its brightly colored toys. My brother, Mr. Y and I beeline to the door, before one of them could mutter an "I want...."

All and all it was a pleasant mildly stressful day with the bugs.

Blue-Pink

Ham and I have been working on colors and counting this summer. I know there are baby Einsteins out there that have their colors and shapes memorized and can count to two thousand and twenty but that's not really what we're striving for over here.

Mostly, I save our lessons in counting for when I'm angry. It usually starts off with " Ham, I'm going to count ten and you better.....___________" And then I fill in the blank with whatever is necessary at the time, such as drop that permanent marker you are using to draw circles on our couch, smearing your yogurt into your hair, the chair, and the kitchen table, and my favorite stop trying to drill a hole into our cat's back with your play drill.

And over time Ham caught on and when I counted he started to finished with the ending numbers.

Eventually he counted for everything -  jumping into the pool, to himself when we were driving and down the steps at his Maw Maw's house. But, it wasn't always fluid. Sometimes it would sound something like 1, 7, 3, 10.

This happened so often that I started doing the same thing - in public.

For example, in my haste to try on clothes in the changing room I told the store worker I had 6 clothes to try on. "See," I said, as I flipped through the outfits, "1, 2, 7, 6."  The woman looked at me like I was nuts for a minute. And the only thing I thought to say was "That's how my toddler does it." She burst into the laughter and said her toddler does the same thing. "1, 3, 2, 9!" she said laughing, as I walked back to the changing room a little mortified.

And as for colors, every now and then, when he feels like it, he will tell you the right color for whatever it is you point to. However, some how or another, he has decided to create a new color called "blue-pink".

He's sees this color everywhere. "That's blue-pink!" he'll say and point into the air. And I look all around for it, but I don't know which one it is. And when he asks for a popsicle, he asks for the "blue-pink" one. This is always a dilemma because I don't have either blue or pink, so I hand him a purple one. He doesn't ever correct me though, which I think is pretty thoughtful since he seems to know exactly what it looks like.