Stay tuned for something profound….

Ok, here goes….

I think the theme of this is Post Partum Depression. I could be wrong, but I’m running with it. I, like most of North America, dabble in the depression. I have a good dose of the PTSD, and whewey does it ever mess with me. I talked to a doctor once about it and let’s just say that I didn’t much agree with the end result of that conversation. I have never really discussed it with anyone since. I take the very stupid ‘tough it out’ approach, and someday it’s going to bite me square in the ass, I know.

Needless to say, when the parasites moved out I crashed hard. The birth of each child, in some way, coincided with a truly horrible turn of events in my life. It was tough; I, but for the grace of some very good friends, barely got through all of it.

I’m no doctor, and certainly no expert, but I’d be willing to wager that most women (and men, too) experience some degree of PPD after the kid comes home, whether or not you gave birth to the child or adopted it. Is is the one common link between most moms, and the one we least discuss. Almost a decade after I had my first child, here’s the prescription that I have come up with for it:

• Exercise. Not necessarily gym exercise, because, well, fuck that. I didn’t have time to do laundry, let alone hit a gym. But walking is exercise, too. Buy yourself a jogger stroller and get outside. Walk anywhere. Just walk. Forget the dishes and the phone calls and the groceries and go stroll around the neighborhood. Shoot for 2 hours. Why? Because A) babies LOVE it and won’t cry if you’re walking them and B) it helps. No matter how sleep deprived you are, you will feel better after a walk. Mr. Lady promises, you will.
• Buy yourself something pretty. Often. On my walks with 3of3, I passed a shop on the corner called Wild Flowers. It was chocked full of exquisite little pretties. At least once a week I went in after my walk and picked up a little something for me. Why? Because I was a hotel for 9 months and then I was a full-service restaurant, and I thought someone ought to do something for me occasionally. It helped.
• Do it. I know, I know, yuckyuckyuck. The last thing on Earth you want to do after what just happened to your hoo-haa is the sex. Do it anyway. Why? Two reasons: 1. Your husband is freaking the fuck out. His whole world just fell apart, too. He is the person you’re going to see the most of for a while, and you want him to be in a good mood. 2. It’s funny. Pregnant sex is funny enough, but now your boobies have a new trick they want to show off. There is not one thing on the planet funnier than trying to be all serious and sexy and then suddenly squirting your husband in the face with milk. Nike was right, Just DO it. (Helpful note: unless you have a laundry service or a maid or a fetish for Tide, do it in the shower. Trust me.)
• Do not read parenting books. DO NOT READ PARENTING BOOKS. Read mommy blogs if you must, but read the funny ones where the moms can laugh at themselves. No one can tell you how to raise that kid but you. You have a pediatrician; he will tell you everything you need to know about birth and growth and development. Call him 15 times a night if you must….DO NOT READ PARENTING BOOKS. That includes websites, you cheaters. Why? Nothing will make you feel more inadequate. Nothing will make you worry more. Oh, and that chick at the mall/church/your playgroup/the bar who is always going on and on about how advanced her kid is and how smart and pretty her kid is? Yeah, don’t be friends with her anymore. She’s just bringing you down. (Personal admission: I have never read one stinking parenting book, and I manged to keep all 3 of mine alive, and actually grow them a little. Many of my friends did read them, though, and I stopped being friends with every single one of them really fast.)
• If your mother-in-law comes over to play with the baby…LEAVE. That’s right, leave her there with your kid. I don’t care if that kid is 3 days old and still a bit damp; this is your golden opportunity. They stop coming over once the kid learns how to curse. Take full advantage while you can. Why? Because you need to get out already. You’re starting to look pale. And do you really want to listen to your mother in law tell you about how she gave her babies evaporated milk and used cloth diapers and how she didn’t have the internet or plumbing or language or oil or fire? No, you don’t. If you are lucky enough to know she’s coming before she gets there, leave your dirty laundry out, too. She’ll do it. She’s secretly cool like that. Don’t worry about leaving the baby with her; she’s done this a few times already, and she will do the most amazing job ever caring for your child, if no no other reason than to show your ass up.
• Watch TV. Find a show, get hooked. Like, crack hooked. The catch is; the show has to air only between 2-5 am. Why? Because you will be up between 2-5 am and if you don’t have something to look forward to, you will go batshit crazy and start singing inappropriate songs to your baby and wander all the way to the grocery store in a nightgown and one slipper because you are too delirious to remember what clothes are. I personally went with Law and Order re-runs. Law and Order (back then there was just the one) has 9,241 3/4 episodes. Every channel this side of Ursa Minor airs them in syndication. I saw every single one, in order. I loved the 1:30 am feeding because I got to see my show. And every time 1of3 heard that DaDum Da Da DadaDum, he’d try to nurse. It was gorgeous.
• Drink. Yes, drink. Red wine and Guinness are totally good for you and if anyone tells you otherwise they are not your friend. Drink a glass of wine or a Guinness about an hour and a half before you’d theoretically, in a perfect world, like your kid to go down so you can do it/watch Law and Order/take a nap/shop. You’ll see. Nurse that baby after the 1 1/2 hours and someone will go ni-night. And maybe a taller someone will, too.

And that’s all I’ve got. Oh, except call your freaking doctor already. Don’t be embarrased or ashamed and certainly don’t convince yourself that there’s nothing at all wrong with you that a good nap won’t cure. Call your doctor. That’s what they’re there for. Or call me. I’ll totally walk you through it.

(First things first: Popcorn? Big fat Zero. They hated it. It gave them The Pukes.)

Being a housewife and a stay-at-home-mom gets lonely. Eventually it starts to wear at you, and you find yourself doing things, private things, things you are ashamed of, things you don’t want anyone to know you’ve done.

Like watching SuperNanny. Please don’t tell anyone.

So, I’m watching SuperNanny last night, and though I don’t agree with a lot of things on that show, I always find something that makes me say “Huh?”. Like last night, and something about chores. I had a whole post written about how I am struggling in the chores department and how maybe I needed some advice. And then SuperNanny came to the rescue.

She set up this system for the family in question with a fishbowl full of felt fish with magnets on them. Each one had a chore written on it. The kids took a homemade fishing pole (stick+magnet+string) and went fishing for chores. They each got 2, and then they did them.

It’s brilliant.

My struggle is in assigning them chores and keeping it balanced. It’s tempting to give 2of3 the easy ones, because, well, he’s short. He’s always going to be short. And 1of3 is really, oddly tall. They get a little pissy with me for picking chores that they don’t think are fair. But this way, oh this way, this way it’s off of me and onto fate. *clouds part, angels sing* I am SAVED!

So here’s my question: What kinds of chores are good for a 9 and a 7 year old? It’s not that I didn’t have chores as a kid, it’s just that my brother and I did EVERYTHING. We did all the cooking and all the cleaning and I don’t think that my worldview on chores is realistic for normal children. And here’s where you come in. I need to put, oh, 6-10 chores in this fishbowl and I would like to offer you the chance of a lifetime! The chance to make my poor, abused children suffer with HOUSEWORK. What chores did you do at that age? What did you wish your mom made you do when you became an adult and suddenly realized you had no clue how to do it?

Rules: I am never going to let them cook more than tacos. I will not let them use strong cleaners, like bleach or lye or anything. I can barely change the baby’s diaper, so that one’s out for the kids. Aside from that, it’s open season on the boys’ Wii time. Have at it.

2of3 disappeared again. He’s done it a few times since the last biggy, but I’m learning how to handle it. There are a series of kids he like to play with, and usually by just peeking in the carports of those kids, I can find a skateboard or a bike that looks familiar and hence find my errant son. I’ve figured out all the “cool” spots in the woods, and now I know where best to shout.

The difference is that today, his dad was home to see it. It’s not such a big difference to him, but it does give me some credence with daddio.

Today, the boys were going to run errands with their dad. 2of3 was out skateboarding and dad told him he had 10 minutes. 10 minutes came and went and when dad and 1of3 went out to find 2of3, well, he was no where. They looked in all the carports, they checked all the hiding spots. No kid. Dad got that look in his eye, the oh shit maybe we should call the cops look. We checked our carport and the skateboard was back, but the bike was gone. And that’s when I had him.

The kid 3 doors down is 14 and my boys adore him. He takes them (with my permission) on bikes rides outside of our little neighborhood. They love it. Mr. 14 is soon to start babysitting for us; he’s a really good boy and unbelievably nice to my kids. Anyway, missing 2of3 + missing bike = excursion with Mr. 14. And just like that, I found him. Across the big street, in the neighborhood over there, out of earshot, having a grand old time.

This has happened too many times. I do not ever want to be the parent who is used to the idea of not knowing where her kids are. Part of me says that I know he’s going to do this and that maybe I should just work around it. You know, plop a cell phone in his pocket or something when he goes out to play. (I have actually done that a few times, withmy cell phone, and it does have its advantages). And then the other part of me says that I have this one little tiny rule for him, this don’t leave the neighborhood without asking me rule, and there is no reason on Earth he can’t follow it.

I have tried everything. I grounded his ass for a week solid, I have taken away allowance, tv, the precious Wii. I have reasoned with him. We had the stranger danger talk. I have cried. I have hollered. None of it is sinking in.

It appears to me I have only a few options:

• Buy the kid a god damn cell phone
• Ground him until he’s 17
• Give him a screwdriver and make him take the bike apart, piece by piece, and hand it to the trash collector in a bag on Tuesday
• Spank his butt.

Ok, I’m not buying him a cell phone. I’m just not. He’s SEVEN, for Christ’s sake, and dad’s saving up for 3of3’s pony.

Grounding him sounds great, on the surface, but he will make sure my life is a living hell until I throw him outside by the collar of his shirt. And the last thing I want is a little 7 year old inside glued to a damn tv all day.

Taking the bike apart would be devilishly fun, but it’s his dinky old bike and he’s got the world’s best bike in Denver which will be here shortly. Wasted effort is all that would be.

Spanking his butt is what I’m down to. The problem is that I don’t want to spank his butt. I don’t believe in spankings. Sure, they’ve both had them before, but I hate hate hate them. I think they should only be used in emergency situations, like skinning the neighbors cat or playing doctor with the girl all the boys have kissed. But what else can I do? Nothing, nothing is getting through to him. Something has to sink in or he’s going to disappear for good one of these days and I will die a thousand horrible deaths because I was too chicken shit to spank my kid.

He’s going to be home in an hour or so; I have until then to decide. Sometimes I hate being the parent.

What do I know about bed-wetting? Almost nothing. Except that I know just enough to sound like an over-bearing-know-it-all and a total failure.

My mother was a bed-wetter until she was 13. She also suffered the sort of childhood abuses that Oprah would think twice about discussing, and I’m guessing those two things are in no way mutually exclusive.

My sister wet her bed until she was 8 or 9, but she had some serious genetic issues including, but not limited to, almost no leg function or ear function until she was past 4 years old, one oddly shaped kidney right where you and I have two, a good dose of mental retardation, and almost no structure at home. This one time she got up in the middle of the night to pee, walked into the hall by the bathroom, walked back into her room, dropped trou and pee’d* on the floor, pulled’m up, walked back into the hall by the potty, walked back into her room and climbed into bed. At 8 or 9, on vacation in Colorado, my dad found a pile of peepee sheets that I had been hiding from him over the course of a week and beat the crap out of her. She never pee’d her bed again.

I in no way agree with beating the bed-wetting out of a kid, for the record. It just happened. That’s all I’m saying.

I have never been a bed-wetter. Well, except that there was that one time**……

Anyway, both of my boys have been bed-wetters. 1of3 did it until he was about 5, and I tried everything. I tried no drinks after 7, I tried making him wear his brother’s Pampers. Nothing worked. Especially the diapers bit. When he started school, he just stopped.

I never got too worried about it; I mean, I double-mattress-pad their beds already (YOU spend a week in the hospital with your son, Captain Asthma, who can’t breath almost at all and see how much you’re willing to wrap in plastic after it). I have a washer. It’s not the worst of my problems. I did some reading on it, and the consensus seems to be that some kids’ bladders just don’t grow with their bodies like some other kids’ do, and it’s not their fault, and there is almost nothing at all you can do about it but wait. And so, I let it go.

Because of that, it never even registered that 20f3 was still doing it. I’ve asked him (repeatedly) to tell me if he does so I can take care of it. but he makes his own bed every day, and I never think to check for it. Once a week I pull the sheets and wash them. They have 2 very good waterproof mattress pads that are apparently quite absorbent. And, honestly, I have just trained myself to ignore it. It’s not on my radar. I thought for a while it might actually be over, but then…

But then I went away for a week and came home and instantly caught the goddamn plague, and so almost 3 weeks came and went without a sheet-change.

Sweet mother of Christ.

My 7 year old has NOT stopped wetting his bed. I think he may actually be going for a world record or something. It was bad enough that I had to go buy new pads for the beds. And perhaps new sheets. We’ll see how a few days of baking soda soaks do.

The poor thing is absolutely humiliated by the whole thing, and if you’ve ever met him, you’ll attest to the fact that humility isn’t exactly one of his stronger points. He said he forgets to tell me in the morning. He says he tries to wake up at night but he can’t. I know he goes potty before bed every night. I also know that he completely loses his shit if he doesn’t drink 15 1/2 gallons of water every day. I also also know that if I come home from the store with overnight pants he will find amazingly creative ways to make both me and his therapist pay for it in his teens.

Rock? Meet hard place.

The fact of the matter is this: he is a bed-wetter. Period. I can’t change it. All I can do is wait. But I also cannot live with stinky beds and so I think my plan of attack here is this:

• We’re cutting off the water at 7 again. This is going to make my life an absolute hell on earth. He is going to freak out in a largish way. But hell, I have an obsessive-compulsive one year old. I should be able to handle a water freak out.
• We’re buying an alarm clock and setting it for 2 am. It’s going by my bed. 1of3 will shoot us both in the head with a bazooka if he has to wake up at 2 am so his brother can pee, so I am going to be the potty police. We’ve agreed that we are going to try & re-train his body to wake up.
• We’re both taking a little more responsibility for this. It is his job to tell me if he wet the bed, daily, and it is my job to make sure he has a clean bed, daily. He’s going to check in the mornings; I’m going to double check for him.

I’m writing all of this because dear god in heaven I would love some input on the subject. This is one of those things where the best advice comes form moms and dads, not doctors and websites. Anyone? Bueller?

*How the hell does one spell peed?

**So, I’m 21, maybe just barely 22, and I’m living with Josh. We shared a house with 4 other guys and I had my own room and everything, but we were totally doing it and we weren’t with anyone else, so I guess that means we were dating or something. He was at work and I was reading in his bed and I fell asleep. I woke up later, all cozy and warm, and almost fell right back to sleep when I realized that he still wasn’t home. Weird. I stirred awake a little more and realized also that I was perhaps a little too cozy and warm. It took a few minutes to wake up enough to understand that the cozies and the warms were also accompanied by the moists. Yes-sir-ree-bob, I somehow managed to pee in my on-again, off-again, boyfriendish’s bed. I didn’t know where clean sheets were, or if there even were clean sheets. I totally panicked. And then I saw it, there on the bedside table. A barely touched, almost full beer. And I did what any self-respecting blond would do…I dumped that beer all over the wet spot on the bed and covered the whole thing with towels. See, I am a bit on the clumsy side and spilling beer? Well, that was right up my alley. Josh came home later, rolled his eyes at me, showed me where the clean sheets were, and that was that. And we never mentioned it again. A couple of weeks later, he asked me to marry him, and so I’m guessing I got away with it. And no, I never did tell him. There’s a Post Secret for you.

Not a democracy.
(This is going to sound really self-congratulatory for a minute, but I swear I’m going somewhere with it…)

I would like to ramble on a bit about discipline. I get asked a lot about how I discipline my children, I guess because if you were to meet us for the first time, out somewhere, perhaps in public, you would meet 2 very well behaved boys. The girl? She’s one. I haven’t had enough time with her yet.

My boys refer to adults with a Mr. or Ms. in front of their name. I hate hate hate when kids address adults in a casual manner. It’s rude. Sorry, that’s just how I feel. They know please and thank you and may I and all that good stuff. This is very misleading to passers-by, causing them to think I am the proud mother of angels straight from heaven.

Not.

So.

And when people ask me what I do, what my secret recipe is, the only thing I have ever been able to reply with is this: They’re kinda scared of me. I don’t fuck around.

I don’t do time-outs. I never could grasp it. Nor do I spank, though my kids, I am quite sure, would argue that point with me. I definitely use the threat of the spanking as a bargaining chip. But, being beaten to a bloody pulp most of my life, I get it that spankings suck. We have a spanking rule. 3 swats, butt only, emergencies only. You ran into traffic? Spanking worthy. You traded daddies WWII pistol for new Yu Gi Oh cards? Totally spanking worthy. We agree on this, we stick to this. That way, it’s predictable. Ifin’s they get a spanking, they know what’s coming. Though, honestly, it’s been so damn long since they’ve gotten one, I don’t imagine they can remember what the deal is with one. But I am sure they have vague memories of them and I KNOW that they remember that if I say they’re getting one, then one is what they get.

That’s the other thing I do. I never, ever say something’s going to happen that doesn’t. If I tell you that the next time you stick your french fry up your sister’s nose you’re going to bed, then you will go to bed. Period. My boys also know this and they do not test it.

I am not big on the large punishments. My kids have never had their bottoms swatted with anything but my hand. They have never gone to bed without dinner. Yet. They have never had to throw every toy in their room in the trash (though they almost did once, but I’m saving that for when they are 15 and have bigger attitudes and more expensive toys). I have never sent them to their room for an arbitrary amount of time. Some people do time-outs, or go-to-your-rooms, by the one minute for every year of life guidelines. That, also, has never jived with me. I do, instead, go to your room until you can behave like a decent human being. If it takes them 2 minutes, great. If it takes them 45 minutes, tough. But they had better be back to normal before they come down. I like this because it takes it off of me a little, in that it lets them dictate their own punishment. It doesn’t force them to be sweet and pleasing before they are ready, which never, ever works. And it doesn’t force them to sit in their room steaming at me because they have calmed down and are still being punished for no good reason. They both, however, have eaten their fair shares of soap and I have one thing to say about that: Totally. Underrated. Punishment. My oldest has done it once, and will never, ever repeat that offense again. 2of3 has done it 2 times, because he’s slower to catch on. He is downright afraid of it. That one gets saved for the biggies: cursing and lying. I am mildly annoyed by the cursing, but goddamn it I fucking hate the lying.

My point is that I have the discipline thing down to a science. I know what works for our family. And my kids know who’s boss. It is, in short, not a democracy ’round here. I don’t ever get to 3. If I say “one”, they jump. One seems to mean, “oh shit, we’re fucked”. Sometimes I get to “two”. Two seems to mean, “this is gonna hurt”. I have never, ever once made it to three. I couldn’t guess what they think three means.

I give them input on things around the house: what chores are best for them and what we eat for dinner and such, and then I try to lay out my expectations as openly as I can. We discuss screw-ups and try to figure out how to do better next time.

I say all of this because all of this is quickly taking a leap out the window. I’m at the point with my kids where I have to re-format, and I am at a loss. 1of3 is at that tween age, where my opinion means less and less, where his emotions are getting the better of him. He is starting to see me as fallible, and that is when the fun starts. Still, he is a thousand times better than 2of3. That boy, man, that boy is making me mumble. He’s got this over-blown middle child syndrome thing going on. We’ve all been pretty lax on him, considering that the last year sucked ass for him and all of us, but sheesh. When he sits down to dinner, unless it’s McDonald’s or Hamburger Helper, he gags. He gags. He nags at me all day long. He doesn’t ever say one sentence that doesn’t include “can I?”. He deliberately disobeys me on big things, like, oh, I don’t know…like putting his little wanker on the foot massager in the middle of the living room? Come. On. I get it, your a boy, you’ve got that thingy, you have to mess with it. But in the living room? Seriously? And I can’t punish him for messing with his weiner unless I want to give him a complex and so I have to get creative. After I sent him to his room for what I planned on being the rest of his life, I stopped, thought and figure it out. I called him down.

“Dude, exactly how many times have I asked you to do that in your room?”

“A lot?”

“Exactly how many times TODAY have I asked you to not do that in my living room?”

“Three?”

“That’s right. And now you get thirty minutes in your room for each time you ignored me today.”

Crisis averted. One less therapy bill to pay for. My point in all of this? Well, I think it’s this: I run a really tight ship here. I have rules, I expect them to be followed. I try to use some common sense in that. I feel like I’ve done a really good job with these kids. But lately there have been whispers of mutiny. The oldest one? I’m not so worried. He’s left-handed. Logic works on him. But that middle one? Man, he’s slipping through my fingers. He’s testing me and defying me and pushing me and has turned into this ungrateful, unsatisfiable monster. Nothing is good enough for him. He makes me debate every bite of food he eats and bemoans every gift he is given because it’s not big enough or good enough. And I am at a loss. I have to tighten the straps a bit and I am not so terribly excited about it. I like being the kind of parent I am. I like having them participate in their upbringing, to a degree. But I think I have to turn into bitchy mom for a while, just long enough to remind him who’s boss. I know I can do it, I also know I don’t want to. Yeah, my boys are a little scared of me, as they should be, but we have always kind of done this together. It’s time for me to step out of my comfort zone and I think this kid needs his wings clipped for a while.

And that sucks.