Unprofessional Parenting

My son is two years and three months old and if he asks me “What’s that mommy?” one more time I think I might lose my mind. Seriously, he points to every picture in every book we read and asks “what’s that?”. Even if he already knows what it is he will ask anyway.

In an effort to drive me completely insane he started pointing to the television last night and asking “what’s that mommy?” about at least one image in every commercial.  I’m not even sure my brain can register quickly enough to figure out what anything really is at this point.

I know a brilliant parent would patiently answer each question and consistently nurture the curiosity that leads to the development of a thoughtful and intelligent mind but I am seriously falling short of brilliance on this one. I also feel terribly guilty that I am so quickly losing it.

Patience? A perfect Mom? Any degree of mental stability? I think I’ll call my own mom and ask “what’s that?”

My son had a mild case of diarrhea (gross) after Thanksgiving. I don’t know if it was the food or the traveling but at least it wasn’t too bad - until I tried to fix it. Tuesday morning he seemed fine and hadn’t done his business yet so I thought perhaps he was over the worst of it. To get us out of the house I packed up and headed to my office.

We went to lunch and he enjoyed chicken strips and french fries (mostly the fries which I thought wouldn’t be too hard on him) and a glass of milk. On the drive back to the office he exploded in his car seat. I’ll spare everyone the details (except for the few other people in the office who had to witness the cleanup) but it was ugly. Always prepared, I had brought another set of clothes so I cleaned him up, got him changed and he seemed happy again.

Until an hour later when the whole process repeated itself. I was out of clothes at this point so I had to clean up the car seat - from explosion #1, I didn’t realize this was necessary until I opened the car door and the smell hit me - wrap him in a blanket and head home. I did stop at Walgreens to pick up more Pedialyte and toted him along with only a shirt, tennis shoes, and a blanket around his legs.

When we got home he did it again and my husband valiantly offered to clean him up. He didn’t know what he was in for and after a lot of horrified exclamations from the other room he arrived back to say it was done but the smell was so bad, “he must have swallowed a book of matches or something!”

Our pediatrician has a handy online manual for such things so I pulled it up to see what might have gone wrong. It said stay away from fruit or fruit juice - check. Feed him things like potatoes, crackers, bread - check - did that too. Then I saw it and realized where I went horribly wrong. It said that dairy products will aggravate diarrhea so stay away from those too. I flashed back to the giant glass of milk at lunch. Oops. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

One day, several destroyed outfits, a set of washed sheets, and one washed car seat cover later my son seems to be doing much better. Lesson learned - the hard way.

*Note to childcare class instructors. PLEASE MENTION THIS! I most certainly would have remembered the “no dairy or your house will never smell the same” tip. 

Once or twice a week my son and I make mini pizzas out of English muffins for lunch. Today I split the muffins, sliced the tomatoes, and handed him the bag of cheese and a small can of sliced olives to finish them off.  The olives are his favorite part but it’s rare that more than a couple end up on each pizza - it’s a hazard I’ve come to expect.

Today he made a similar move with the shredded cheese. He put a tiny sprinkle on the pizzas and then proceeded to pull out a big handful and shove it in his mouth. I laughed and said “No, silly! You’re supposed to put it on the pizza not in your mouth!” Those of you who are more seasoned parents than I am would probably know not to make such a pronouncement and probably also know what came next.

After looking at me for a second my son reached into his mouth, pulled out the half-chewed hunk of shredded cheese and proceeded to place it on top of one of the pizzas. He was terribly confused when I told him “no, no, no!” and it was too late for me to do anything about it at that point anyway.

I tried to pull most of it off but it was shredded after all so I wasn’t very successful. Plan B was simply to make sure that he ate that pizza himself. Gross.  I should have seen it coming.

Well, I’ve been pondering this post for a while and I’m just now getting around to it because it seems so wrong to write in the first place.  This makes me feel like a really terrible and ungrateful parent but I’m hoping that this confession might reach out to one or two other mothers out there who feel the same way and find themselves living with this tremendous guilt.

Let me preface by saying that (so far) I have a really happy kid. He is relatively easy to take care of - he eats almost anything I put in front of him, he doesn’t get in to too much stuff that he isn’t supposed to, and he’s almost always smiling. So here’s the confession - sometimes his happiness makes me crazy. Sometimes it’s even (**cringe**) annoying.

There - it’s out. Yes, sometimes his smiling and giggling can be really annoying. He tends to think everything is a joke and “fun time” so even when I’m trying to be serious he’s laughing. When I tell him it’s time to brush his teeth he falls down on the ground, refuses to get up, and laughs his head off when I drag him into the bathroom. When I need to get him dressed in the morning he refuses to cooperate but he laughs the entire time. This isn’t exactly tantrum material but what the heck? All of life can’t be that funny, can it?

Here’s the worst of all: I tell him not to try to climb up the dressers in my most serious mommy voice. I explain that it’s not safe, I don’t want him to get ouchies. He laughs the entire time I’m talking. Laughs. Right in my face.

He’s only two so he’s either just a really happy kid or an evil genius who will eventually drive me mad. I suppose only time will tell.

After my oh-so-unprofessional locking my kid in the car post I didn’t think it could get much worse. Alas, here I am. I have the best intentions but as namesake of the Unprofessional Parenting blog sometimes I have to admit when I blow it big time.

What now? I might have to defer slightly to my “placenta brain” post on this one but the other day I was leaving my mom’s house and I lifted my son into the car seat and prepared to buckle him in so we could head home. As I was working on getting the straps untangled my mom started talking to me so I turned to answer.

After a brief discussion my phone rang (my husband) and I dutifully spent a few minutes talking to him before I got in the car to leave.  Patting myself on the back for not jumping in the car while I was on the phone (the newest major crime in California) I shut the doors and headed home.

It’s about a five minute drive to the store on the way to my house where I stopped to get a few things. When I opened the back door to get my son out I was shocked and very guilty about what I saw.  Yes, I forgot to buckle him into the car seat. He was sitting there politely - somehow not motivated to jump down while I was driving thank goodness!

I go back and forth between thinking it was kind of funny (since nothing terrible happened) and thinking I’m the worst parent ever (what if something had happened?).  I told my mom who couldn’t get over the fact that he was cooperative enough to sit there the whole time. She clearly didn’t share my sense of horror about the whole thing.

I could take the path of one particular older woman in my family and say that the baby would be safer in my arms than in a car seat anyway.  When I politely disagreed with her at the time she said “well, it’s probably okay for someone like you because you don’t know any better.”

I should tell her my story. At least I could make someone proud and convince her that maybe I do know . . . well, something (if not better).

A few weeks ago my son had a slight cold.  It didn’t develop into anything major (thank goodness) but the congestion that was left over from it was hanging on for a couple of weeks afterward.  In an effort to clear the last of it up I decided to get a little drastic.  He’s not quite two yet so I was advised against using any cold remedy designed for kids. I did a ton of reading and found frustratingly conflicting advice about dealing with it.  Half of what I read said to decrease milk intake - the old theory that milk and dairy contribute to mucus.  There’s a new thought though that milk consumption has nothing to do with mucus so it’s pointless to cut it from the diet.  Whatever.  I needed to take action.

I decided to reduce the milk and see what happened.  The first couple of days I just replaced one meal serving of milk with juice or water.  No change.  I then spent an entire day in at my office and then went to dinner with my son in the evening.  Here’s how it played out - for lunch we met a friend at a restaurant and I ordered him orange juice instead of milk.  He drank the whole cup and seemed okay with it.  At dinner he was slightly cranky and demanding milk.  It was a Japanese food restaurant and they didn’t have any.  I tried him with water but he wasn’t having it. In a panic I asked them for juice. The first response was they didn’t have that either.  Then they dug up a personal size can of pineapple juice and brought it out.  All seemed well - until the next day.

I had over-juiced.  Poop time was a mess. It only got worse from there. The congestion did clear up quickly but the diarrhea situation was even less pleasant to deal with.  I checked my pediatrician’s website and it informed me that milk can make diarrhea worse so we should cut down on milk . . . and juice. That meant he would be mostly on Pedialyte and water for a few days.  Sigh.

It actually took almost a week to completely clear up.  It would get better then come back. Once, about four days in when I thought he was better, we happened to meet someone at a Mexican restaurant where he insisted on beans and rice (his favorite).  That was a major setback - and really dumb on my part.

Lesson learned. In fact, I learned two lessons 1) Don’t over-juice under any circumstances, and 2) Japanese and Thai food restaurants often don’t have milk or juice - this doesn’t mean we can’t go there but I need to make sure my son is in a good enough mood to not throw a fit about having water with his veggie tempura.  Fascinating.

In my weekend parenting news review I picked up an article that examines the involvement of dads and how the level of interaction between dad and infant might vary depending on the encouragement or discouragement of mom. While this seems pretty obvious (critical, griping mom leads dad to “hands off” approach dad) it reminded me of the involvement scenario in our home when our son was born.

Of course, I watched all those Discovery shows about babies when I was pregnant so I saw first hand the impact of the highly critical mom.  I knew that when our son came home I would be encouraging and helpful when it came to my husband’s involvement.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was actually going to take discipline on my part.

The problem I had was that I was home with the baby all day, I was exhausted, and the thought of him not putting the diaper on right led to a whole chain of imaginary events that would end in twice as much work for me. Seeing that diaper too loose gave me visions of poop leaking on pajamas, and on sheets, and on the couch, and on me.  I could see myself changing the diaper, changing the clothes, having to clean the couch stain, and then having to wash myself off and change my own clothes. This would all probably take place after the baby had fallen asleep and would cost me precious nap time minutes with which I might close my own eyes.

Was this a bit dramatic? Probably, well yes. But in those early days of sleepless delirium nothing seemed too far fetched.  I tried to bite my tongue but eventually my staring became enough to scare him away from helping - even if I didn’t say anything about what he was doing or how he was doing it.  I even knew it was bad while I was doing it but that didn’t help me stop. I needed an intervention.

Luckily, my husband was there to not take any sh. . . uh . . . stuff from me. He told me that if I wanted his help I’d have to leave the room.  I was annoyed but I complied and over time, as I began to sleep more and we settled into a routine, I became less paranoid.  I’m still surprised though at how difficult it was to release control at that point.  My intellectual side was telling me not to be critical but I wasn’t listening to that side much those days so I turned into the hypercritical, insane person I was trying to avoid.

Fortunately for us both, I’m now perfect and logical at all times so this is an issue we don’t have anymore.

Here’s a really brainless move to avoid when giving your toddler a bath.

My son loves to take his bath at the end of the day. He’s usually pretty dirty so I give him plenty of time to splash around before I try to get down to the scrubbing business.  I realized yesterday that we had run out of our liquid bath soap so I headed to the soap drawer to find something else.  My son is almost two now and we’re still working on the soaps and bubble bath that I received at his baby shower - that stuff is going to last forever.

Digging through everything I noticed we were out of liquid soap so I grabbed a baby bath bar and my washcloth and went to work.  Everything progressed normally until I made a fatal mistake.  In order to make things a little easier for myself I set the bar of soap on the edge of the tub.  My son immediately grabbed it.

At first glance I didn’t realize what a disaster this was going to be but in less than five seconds he had set the soap back down and . . . yes, stuck his fingers directly into his eyes.  The shrill, painful screams only lasted a few minutes but it was a brutal occurrence for us both.

Lesson learned: Keep an eye, and a hand, on that bar soap.