E for effort

Telling a two-year-old that the mini Christmas tree that was in his room for a month is now being put away until next Christmas isn't easy.

OK, telling him is easy, but enduring the fallout from telling him isn't.

Last weekend, JP I and tackled putting away our holiday decorations. I told him if he would just bring our plastic storage totes down from the attic, I'd put it all away -- the trees (the main big one and the two little ones), the lights, the ornaments, the stockings, the snow globes, the manger scenes, the nesting wooden Santa dolls, the doorknob hangers, the wreath, the pine jingle bells decoration. The everything. (OK -- believe it or not, that wasn't everything. There were a lot of decorations we never put out.)

JP took pity and me and took down the big tree by himself.

And he helped me put the rest of the decorations in the storage totes. They've gone up in the attic until next Christmas, much to Fly's confusion.

It's a new year, and it feels good to pack up and put away. (Like going through my stash of baby things and deciding to turn them into a giveaway that ends tomorrow. Or cleaning out the spare room for my baby and finding 53 framed pictures for the walls, 6 empty frames, two mirrors and a corkboard. Clearly, JP and I have wall art issues. But that's for another post.)

But, wait! Darn, I forgot all the snow globes are still sitting on my dresser. And I found two little ornaments of Fly's tree in his room buried under all the new Christmas presents he got from family.

So our holiday pack-up system isn't perfect.

My guess is those snow globes will sit on my dresser until at least March.

- - - - -

The Parent Bloggers Network and Right@Home are asking how bloggers clean up after the holidays. Because Right@Home is full of homecare articles about cleaning and other things, maybe they will at least give me an E for effort.

What I'd Wear Wednesday: Recession chic

What I'd wear today if I could: Well, it's really not what I would wear, but if this economic crisis keeps going the way it has the past couple weeks, I might end up wearing a barrel!

Or a sandwich board!



Um, but perhaps with a different slogan on the front.

I suppose I could always shop at consignment stores. Yard sales. My own closet. I sometimes sew my own clothes, but that's not always the bargain you might think it is -- maybe if I used recycled materials like gum wrappers?



Or duct tape?



Promise not to call the paddy wagon for me....

Have you bought anything for yourself recently, or do you plan to soon?

What keeps me awake at night

At 2:30 in the morning, I still couldn't sleep because I was thinking about how so many children have disappeared and gone missing.

I suppose I was overly tired and my mind just turned to darker thoughts, as I do sometimes at night. Names of many children who disappeared or were abducted came to mind, and I thought of ways they might have suffered -- might still be suffering. My imagination got the best of me, and I had to check on Fly to make sure he was really still in his room, asleep.

It also doesn't help that I am in uncharted territory: just in the past two weeks, I have allowed Fly to walk on his own in public. Up until recently, he was either in a sling, in a stroller, in a cart or in my arms. But because he is getting so heavy (he's more than 30 pounds now), and because he greatly protests strollers and shopping carts (he threw himself face down on the ground at the entrance of the supermarket at the idea of being put in a cart, and he usually cries almost the whole time he is in one) -- and also because he is two now and needs to learn -- I have been allowing him some freedom. I require Fly to hold my hand in many situations, but sometimes I need both hands. When I can't hold his hand, I constantly remind him to stay close.

Fly, of course, has no fear. He knows I am nearby, and that is enough for him, emboldening him to tuck around a corner where I can't see him or to race ahead of me. He has always been an explorer; he's my son.

He is curious. He is friendly. He is cute. He is innocent. I know what could happen.

And so I come to a question every parent asks at various points in their child's life: how do I give my child freedom while making sure he is safe?

It was a fitful sleep, a night with worries and no answers.

So it was a relief to be woken up by my little boy, interrupting my dream about taking him somewhere to buy a toy.

Joy does come in the morning.

But those nights will nag me.

Rock 'n' roll

Feeling sooo original today....

Making faces

There is a virus meme going around where you're supposed to post a photo of yourself first thing in the morning. I found out from Janet at Three and Holding.

Heh. Um, har. Trying to see the humor in this.

But in my new spirit of trying to have more fun, I changed my mind....

Things I never thought I'd say

Fly, where did you get that little piece of wallpaper?

Gah! Stop playing in the toilet!

I can't put your diaper on with your butt up in the air like that.

You just bit a chunk out of your potty seat!

The cat doesn't like it when you pour things on her.

We can't play with this really noisy toy right now because it's sleeping.

And finally . . . .

What did I come into this room for?


- - - - -

I'm Sincere Week starts in two weeks! Be thinking about the bloggers you admire and how you would imitate their style.

Either/Or

Today I did something extremely stupid and possibly slightly, very mildly heroic.

Fly and I were at a mall that has a large indoor playground. (God bless these places. When you are shopping with little ones who can't stay stuck in a stroller for long, you need a place like this to let them burn off some energy.) I had been following Fly around the play area for about 15 minutes when I noticed a little girl had gotten stuck inside one of those climbing towers. Her parents were on the other side of the grate wall of the tower, trying to tell her how to get un-stuck. They weren't speaking English, so I don't know if they were telling her to go up or to come back down. She was crying, halfway up a steep step with one leg stretched out to the grate where her parents were and the other leg dangling.

Fly got stuck in a different play area last month, so I could relate. He had surprised me by being able to climb to the top of the tower, then not understand how to crawl into the tube and go down the slide. So I had to crawl up into the tower. I showed him how to get to the slide and come down, for future reference. It was cramped, but I made it. Fly cried the whole time -- and I've been reluctant to go back since! This play area was built for larger children, so Fly couldn't climb it.

I watched the parents and the crying little girl for a while and wondered if they wanted her to learn how to get out on her own. But she still wasn't budging. The little girl was frozen. Her dad was obviously too big to get into the tower to get her -- and her mom was pregnant. So I offered to get her. Turns out her parents spoke English too, and almost before I could finish asking, they told me to please go inside and bring her back down.

And here is where I made my mistake.

I should have asked one of the girl's parents to watch Fly while I carried their little girl back down the tower.

It took me less than 30 seconds to crawl up and get her, but that was 30 seconds no one was watching Fly. He could have left the play area and started wandering around the mall. Another child could have hurt him. An adult could have grabbed him and taken him away. Anything could have happened.

Perhaps even before I offered to help the parents, my subconscious had already calculated the risks and determined it would be fine to help the other family. Maybe that instinctual, mothering part of me -- the same part that wanted to help the little girl -- knew it would be OK. Possibly, it was faith that God would keep Fly safe if I helped another child. Some people would call it karma or some kind of checks and balances in the universe, e.g., help someone else out and you're taken care of in the process.

But the truth is I didn't think these things. I may have felt them, sensed them, known them within my inner self -- but I didn't stop and think.

On the way home, I berated myself for leaving Fly unattended and told myself I can't do that ever again.

And I wondered if that meant not helping others in need when I have Fly to care for. Even as I wondered that, I knew it couldn't be right -- at least not all the time, in every situation. Surely, I thought, it can't always come down to either taking care of your child or helping another child. In many cultures and animal species, several adults watch out for all the children -- not just to each her own. But it's not right for Fly to suffer if I happen to momentarily be more interested in someone else's child.

Those 30 seconds and the what-ifs and the philosophical questions have been beating me up. I'd like to believe it was faith and instincts that led me to help the little girl -- having that real sense of just knowing Fly would be OK -- and I'd like to tell myself I'm overthinking something simple. And I don't want to swear off helping others if it means my attention is diverted from Fly for a while. However, I also realize I am Fly's only mother and that he looks to me for protection.

If it's true that a mother to one is a mother to all, then there must be a balance within each of us so no child is neglected.

And yet ... there are neglected children.

Stupid and heroic sometimes go hand in hand. Where do we draw the line?

Me try teach child

Walking one-year-old. Won't nap in the morning. Must find things to do. MUST FIND THINGS TO DO! Using caveman English. Help! Must get out of house before vocabulary disappears!

Aha! Libraries. Books. Words. Go there to get vocabulary (and mind) back. Libraries have programs for little people. Even if they're not readers yet? Maybe. Google, click, click. Yes! Twenty minutes away. Let's go.

Oh, we're early. Meet other early toddlers and moms. This is looking fun. Flybaby plays with toys. Fly runs down aisles of books. Fly finds creepy old man sitting in corner of children's section! Gah! Come away, sweetie, let's go this way....

Wait, the program is starting. We have to walk past the creepy old man again. Pick up Fly, hum a happy tune and avert eyes.

Enter activity room. Look at the colors! Look at the children! Let's sit. Fly wiggles out of my lap. All right, then, you can play with your new friends. Say hi to the little boy with the stuffed lion.

Now we really have to sit because the librarian is starting the program. She is smiling. She is singing to a music CD. The CD is spinning in the oh-so-very shiny CD player placed at toddler eye level. Fly wiggles out of my lap. He approaches the singing librarian. BAM! BAM! BAM! go Fly's hands on the CD player. The music stops. Uh ... oh ... I fix it. There you go. Sorry, everyone. Music plays again.

Fly back in lap. I take his hands and do hand motions. I sing softly in his ear. Fly wiggles out of my lap. He approaches CD player. I scoop him up.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

I give up.

I pass creepy old man. I pass books. I pass chance to share learning with child. Using caveman English. Me try another day.

When mosquito netting seems like a fashionable option

Before Flybaby was born, friends could count on me to be the local "cruise director" to find fun things to do and organize everyone to do them. Now, I still find fun-ish things to do -- but my brain is gone.

When Flybaby doesn't sleep -- which is about 16 hours of the day -- it's often hard to come up with things to do with him. My brilliant idea for today was a trip to a protected, small remnant of a forest.

It's the middle of July.

The forest is swampy.



Can you find the 2,387 mosquitoes in this picture?



Hey! Can you let me out of my stroller yet?!



Waiting for the lightning alarm to give the all-clear....

I forgot my anniversary

... my blogiversary, that is. It was Friday. Oh, me.

Feb. 16 is the day I technically started up this blog. But I posted entries dating back to the previous December, when I thought I might be pregnant. I wanted to start at the beginning, see.

Some blogger I am.

In which I reveal my inner idiot

Yesterday, Flybaby and I joined a baby and moms class at our local hospital. There were more than a dozen babies and moms seated on mats in a circle on the floor. So many babies in one place!

We opened the class by singing a song that used the name of each baby in turn around the circle. Not only were we supposed to sing the song and use the baby's name, but we're also supposed to be signing -- as in real American Sign Language, because the instructor is partially deaf -- the lyrics of the song and holding onto our little ones in our laps.

There was just too much going on in that little nursery rhyme-type song for me. Please, it's not like I get out much anymore. Balance, coordination, singing, signing and memorization? It's a good day for me if I can hold Fly while transferring clothes from the washer to the dryer.

I use all of this as my defense.

Because when our turn came, I forgot Flybaby's name!

Oh, the shame.

I mean, I eventually remembered his name. But I'm sure all the other moms in the class were thinking what an idiot mother I am. Who forgets her child's name?

I actually have forgotten Flybaby's name a couple of times. I think it's because JP and I didn't have a name picked out for him. Heck, we didn't even have a name until a half-hour before we left the hospital. So for the first two days of his life, I called Fly "Baby" because it was all I had.

You see the consequences?

Fortunately, Flybaby didn't seem to mind my goof, and he actually smoothed things over with everyone in the class when he gave out little Valentines to all the babies in the class. What a classy kid.




Little green man