A Day for the Record Books

Spawnling, we need to talk.

And yes, it's about our relationship.

We've been seeing each other – every single day without fail - for a little over three years now, right? And don't get me wrong, I love it. I mean, you're an amazing guy. Funny, sensitive, cute, well-dressed. Well, except when you dress yourself, which makes you look a bit like a Hawaiian clown. Still, nothing makes me happier than walking down the street hand-in-hand with you, my darling. I'm proud to call you mine.

Except for days like today, when I have to run away – far away from your now thankfully sleeping self – in an attempt to reclaim some balance and sanity.

Take right now, for example. I'm at my favourite little cafe, drowning myself in some half-decaf blend of fair-traded beans and trying to forget the last 12.5 hours of absolute mayhem. I'm attempting to remind myself that, thankfully, you had this horrendous day after my last contract was over, because trying to balance writing a bunch of articles with today's attitude would have been a feat for even the most powerful mother. And I think you slipped some Kryptonite into my cereal this morning, because I'm feeling like anything but a superhero tonight.

It's not your fault, really. You didn't plan the day trip to Peterborough, Ontario yesterday for your great-grandma's 90^th birthday. You couldn't have anticipated how much sugar and artificial colours I would let you eat for dinner in the name of picking my battles. How were you to know that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs would be as captivating the 155^th time around, thus keeping you awake the entire ride home? Falling asleep at 10PM wasn't your doing, my love. And waking up at 7:45 this morning because your teen brother desperately needed to shower in the room next to yours? Entirely understandable.

So you started off on the wrong foot today – I get that. I know how these bad starts can snowball into larger, more catastrophic events.

But, Darling... dumping out every single Cranium card onto the living room floor? Mauling our elderly cat's tail as he's sleeping soundly on the bed? Cornering the 10 pound dog into the kitchen cupboards with a chair? Chasing your brothers around with toys intended to make contact with their persons? Calling your aunt a “stupidhead”?

Not exactly my favourite moments of your lifetime.

But if I were asked to pick a lowlight of the day, I'd have a very difficult time. I think I'd have to narrow it down to the following choices:

• This evening, when you ran away from me in the parking lot of the splash park – stark naked and screaming “Don't grab me!”
• This afternoon when you said “I'm sorry” over and over before I even walked into the bathroom (following a bubblegum scent) only to discover the brand new SpongeBob toothpaste smeared across the sink and all over your hands
• At Starbucks, (the only outing I would consider, and only because there was coffee involved) with the constant whining of “I want a cookie! All I want is a cookie! Where's my cookie, Mommy?!” that attracted so much empathy from the barista that she not only gave you your cookie, but handed me a bag and said “And this one is for mommy” with a look of you poor, poor woman.

The minute your horned little head hit the pillow tonight, I about burst out crying in relief and joy. I think Jesus, Buddha, Allah and Mother Earth all got together to pull off that one amazing miracle. Thanks, guys. You are now on my Non-Denominational Commercially-Driven Holiday Season greeting card list.

Anyway, back to our relationship: We need to work a few things out.

First of all, you have to get a full night's sleep so I have a hope in hell of keeping my wits about me tomorrow.

B) The words “Please,” “Thank you” and “Mommy is the most awesome woman alive” had better be in your vocabulary, while “Stupid,” “Stupidhead,” “NO!” and “I'm going to [insert attention-getting, destructive/aggressive action here]” must not be uttered.

3) For the love of all things good and right in the world, please don't ask me for sugar, because you're not getting any. Furthermore, there will be nothing colourful in your diet that isn't grown in a field or orchard. We will not be having a repeat of today, mister.

The good thing about this otherwise dreadful day – by far the worst disobedience day since Gutsy went loco at the family reunion in Toronto three years ago – is that it will be over soon. Also, I took myself out on a well-deserved coffee date with my new friend, Mr. Macbook. Don't be jealous, Spawn. Sure, he may be young, gorgeous, and have the battery life of a God, but it's not like I get to see him when you're awake, anyway. Between the hours of 8AM and 8PM, I am solely your bitch mom.

Be nicer tomorrow, k? Love you.

Conversations with Spawnling, May Edition

Forgive me for not blogging much over the last couple of weeks, but I've been playing with this new concept of - get this - writing for money. Did you know you can actually get paid to write blog posts and articles? I also learned you can put other people's numbers into a spreadsheet, and that action gets translated into currency in your pocket. Seriously. I'm not even making this stuff up. All it takes is working full-time as a mom while simultaneously working part-time as a writer, trying to write sensible sentences while being screamed at for more apple juice, and subsisting on lots of coffee and an average of five hours of sleep every night.

You, too, can have this dream life!

Making a living with my mad skillages is nice and all, but there's nothing like a good freebie of a blog post to really let loose. This is why I don't have advertisers, giveaways, or anything else on here. I get to be me, without interruption, and without being owned by The Man, whoever he is. This is freedom money can't buy, baby.

For example, advertisers may not want to show off their parenting wares on a site where the mom parents poorly half the time, and Spawn-isms are commonly displayed for all to gasp at and chuckle about.

You know what Spawn-isms are, right? All good Stay-at-Home-Maven readers know that Spawnling comes up with the most inappropriate hilarities. Offensive to some, knee-slappingly funny to others, this is a three-year-old I'm simultaneously proud and mortified to call my son.

Today was no exception. We went out for lunch with Jobthingy, who had a day off from that work stuff she usually neglects me for. (Why we're still friends after what she puts me through , I'm not quite sure. ) We ordered our food and sat a perfectly acceptable length of time waiting for it, while we drank our drinks and chitchatted and did our best to keep a three-year-old entertained. Meanwhile, Spawnling would let out a whiny "I'm hungryyyyyyyyy!" or an "I'm staaaaaaaarving!" or a "When is my food going to be heeeeeeeeere?" every so often.

Spawn's food arrived not 15 minutes after ordering. The waiter put the plate down and started to walk away. He wasn't halfway through the restaurant when my dear child let out a loud sigh and followed it up with an even louder "FINALLY." The waiter turned around, wide-eyed, looked at me turning beat red, and started to laugh.

He returned to the table a couple of minutes later to bring the grownup food and said "It's a good thing I brought his food out early, eh?"

Say it with me now: MOR-TI-FIED. That is my child, who came from my womb, who has this sense of entitlement built right into him. I don't know who, exactly, decided he was King of the Universe, but we'll be hard pressed to ever take that crown away now.

*~*~*~*

We get back home. Spawn is happily playing on my bed. I lie down beside him for a minute (see above mention of lack of sleep) and he comes in for a snuggle. I get sentimental for a moment - always a fatal mistake - and say to him "Please don't ever grow up, ok? I like three-year-old you."

"Even when I'm four, I'll still love you, Mommy" says he, and smiles.

If there was a sound for my heart melting, I would put it in here.

"When I'm four," continues Spawn, "Will I be bigger?"

"Yes, you will be," I answer.

"Will I have this?" he whacks my stomach and makes it jiggle.

"No, I don't think so."

"Will I have boobies?" he asks as he smacks my breast.

"Um, nope. That's a girl thing." I reply, warily. I can see where this is going.

He looks at me with that rotten little twinkle in his eye. "Will I have one of... Uh... what's that called again? That thing you got? Oh, yeah: a buhgina?" He giggles. "Will I have a BUH-GIIIIIIIINA?"

"No, honey. You'll still be a boy."

"So I'll have a PENIS! And you'll keep your BUUUUUHGINA! BUHGINA! BUHGINA! BUHGINA!"

"I'm going to go get you a snack now and sit you in front of a movie now, ok? Mommy needs to get work done."

"Okay, Mommy. Mommy's buhgina. Heehee!"

Welcome to my life.

Top 10 things I won't miss as my kids get older

A few of my friends are pregnant or have just recently had babies.

Good for them.

Holding those snuggly-wuggly newborns is nice and all, but doesn't do a thing for my maternal instinct. I am done. Finished. There is absolutely no desire to reproduce. This is a good thing, because based on family history, my body will hit menopause a good ten years earlier than the average woman. I'm likely at the start of perimenopause as we speak; and dammit, I'm absolutely fine with that. It means that, even if a rogue sperm should escape the would-be Alcatraz of my husband's vasectomy, it will soon discover a pile of dust that used to be my eggs, and no embryo shall come of it.

However, as the Gremlins Three gradually leave behind their individual "little kid" stages, I'm met with the occasional bit of sadness. I give away Spawnling's too-small clothes knowing that he's growing far too quickly. I put books and toys in a garage sale bin that my children will never use again. I look at paint colours in their rooms and realize we may need to change them soon to suit their maturity levels. I go through baby pictures and get a little teary at the sweet little beings they used to be (before they started coming up with exciting and original ways to torture their parents).

All that aside, I'm so pleased to be done with diapers, night after sleepless night, teething, screaming sick babies who can't tell me what's wrong, and even breastfeeding (a total of seven years, I'll proudly announce to anyone who asks... or who doesn't. Whatever). Yes, it's good to have my body back and my bed (mostly) back. I've earned my stripes, thank you very much.

There are many other things I won't miss, either. Here are the first 10 that come to mind. Can you think of others?

1. Exhaustion

Evening hits me like a Mac truck with a driver who's high on barbiturates. It's not tired I'm feeling; it's a whole new level of fatigue unknown to those who don't serve little masters all day, every day, for thirteen years straight. To those parents who seem to have it all together - clean house, well-behaved children, solid relationship, fruitful career - I ask you: What are you on, and did you get it from the truck driver? More importantly, can I have some?

2. Stress

Is parenting ever not stressful? No no, I mean, when you're not high on barbiturates? What I would give for a full day when I don't have to deal with some kind of child-induced upheaval. The best laid plans are often laid to rest in a matter of minutes and there's nothing I can do about it. Maybe being a control freak with a vision of what our day should look like doesn't help. Yet, I never seem to learn. I just keep hitting my head against the same wall of frustration as I try to reason with a child who is too young to reason, one who is too explosive to reason, and one who is too pubescent to reason. Silly Maven.

3. Bedtime Routines

I use the word "routine" lightly. It's more of a patchwork attempt at salvaging the last of our sanity stores in time to spend at least a couple of hours together without being asked for one more glass of milk, one more slice of cheese, one more story, or one more cuddle. These days, Intrepid brushes his teeth, gets his pajamas on, says goodnight and goes to bed. We've had a piece of this independence pie and can't wait until those are our evenings all the time. I'm looking forward to the days when the only bedtime routine I need to follow is my own.

4. Noise

This could have been grouped with stress but I believe it deserves its own category. With two hearing impaired children and a three-year-old infatuated with the sound of his own voice, this is a loud household. The television is louder, the music is louder, the fights are louder, the singing is louder... Well, you get the idea. And as someone who needs quiet for any shred of creativity to blossom, the near-constant loudness factor makes me all twitchy-like. Twitching doesn't help in the sex appeal department. I feel like my hotness is wasted when my eyelid is fluttering.

5. What's a Vacation?

Oh, you mean that time when two-thirds of my children are not in school? That's not a vacation, people: that's pure chaos. And those rare times we actually get away to somewhere that is not our own city? You got it: foreign chaos. Overwhelmed gremlins who are completely off schedule and don't know what to do with themselves resulting in overwhelmed parents who are trying their best to justify the cost of this would-be stress reducer. No, we don't do vacations very often at all. Twice in thirteen years, to be exact. We're going to wait until Spawnling is at least five or six before attempting a big one. I envy the parents who's children travel well, I really do. You're very lucky. I'm thinking the truck driver may have something to do with your "good luck," though. Just sayin'.

6. Dirt

Filth. Smears. Stains. Smells. Everywhere. Enough said.

7. The Overgrown Thing I Call a "Lawn"

Somewhere in my front yard there are gardens. Unfortunately, they are being molested by an insane amount of weeds. But it's alright: you can't see the gardens anyway because of the long grass that should have been cut last week but wasn't because we were too busy. The good news? A lot of the toys littering the front yard are buried in said grass. Actually, between hidden toys and gardens, this overgrown lawn thing might not be so bad after all.

8. Playdates

These are such a crap shoot. Let's get two or more kids together and they can play nicely while the moms drink coffee and get a bit of a break. What a good idea! Oh, except when the kids don't play nicely/won't share/push or shove or kick or scratch each other/break things/injure themselves. Then, everyone is more stressed out than when they were before and, tragically, the coffee goes cold. Swell. Know what I want? Coffee without the playdates. Actual conversation not involving several dozen "excuse me for a minute"s. Is that so wrong?

9. Scheduled Date Nights

"Honey, would you like to go out on Saturday night?"
"Sure! Sounds wonderful. Let's do it."
"Okay, we just need to make sure someone can babysit and that the kids are fed and bathed and ready for bed and that the babysitter doesn't cancel at the last minute and that nobody gets really sick right before our big date night so we don't have to cancel. Oh, and we have to be back by 10:30."
"I'm... looking forward to it, I guess."
"Me too, I think."

10. Barf

This had to get a mention. I hate barf. I hate stomach bugs. I especially hate stomach bugs in little kids who can't anticipate and can't aim. Our couch has told me it feels violated.

Must go. It's been chaos for the last 30 minutes. Loud, tantrumy chaos. Thankfully, no barf. One must be grateful for the little things.

Some Updates on the Incredible Gutsy

Everyone wants to know about Gutsy.

Gutsy, Gutsy, Gutsy.

It's all about Gutsy. Never mind how The Maven is doing. Never mind about her dumb anniversary or usurped trips to the grocery store. Who cares about that? Let's talk about a child in crisis, like that's somehow more important.

Fine: I'll indulge your disturbing show of empathy for seven-year-olds and tell you about what's going on in the realm of the Middle Gremlin. You may want to put your change and personal belongings in a zipped up pocket and keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times. It's been a couple of weeks and there is some updating to be had.

Things are going very well at school. This isn't a huge change for Gutsy, because school is not a place where he usually has major issues. Since he has my genius brain (and incredible good looks), the kid is destined for success just like me, his millionaire mother.

Oh, right. Never mind. I'm walking proof that perfection doesn't equal success. I guess I'll have to work hard for reasonable earnings my entire life like all those people who are less perfect than I am. Who says life is fair?

Anyway, back to Gutsy: He's now in the English stream and really enjoying it. I think he needed the freedom to be chatty about things without worrying about expressing himself in a new language. He can be a bit of a motormouth - no idea where he gets it from, honest.

Today, he's presenting an "Expert of the Day" project he worked very hard on. He chose the subject "Pro Movie Making" and included a film he made of Intrepid interviewing him about - you guessed it - making movies. He added in a FBI warning, a PG-13 rating, some sound effects, captions and credits. He's had several projects in the French Immersion program, but I practically needed a cattle prod to get him motivated enough to work on them. This motivation is a very positive sign for our little man. It tells me we made the right decision to switch him back to English.

We have a wonderful behavior tech at the school who is now working with Gutsy daily. They're making comic strips every afternoon to talk about how his day went. She's doing some simple exercises with him to work on his anger and frustration levels. The added bonus is that he can decompress a little with her before coming home. This may add years to my life, and I'm only kind of joking.

The last few days, Gutsy's claws have remained mostly retracted after school, which is a huge change from the hurricane mood swings happening just a handful of weeks ago. He does still have his moments - like when he got in a fight with one of his best friends last Tuesday and erupted in a way that scared the socks off me - but things are improving overall.

This isn't to say that Gutsy isn't still Gutsy. He was born with a personality and we need to work within the confines of it. He's always been an explosive kind of kid and that likely won't go away anytime soon. Transitions are difficult and he has a certain amount of rigidity when it comes to routine, foods, clothes, etc. That's just who he is, and with the right amount of gentle guidance, I see him becoming a creative, meticulous, responsible and reliable adult. Gutsy is the type of kid who will grow up to do great things if we can help his confidence grow. He just needs love, understanding and consistency (and mommy needs copious amounts of coffee.)


Speaking of which, if I hear one more person suggest that we're not consistent enough/don't show Gutsy who's boss enough/aren't in control enough, I'm going to get all up in their grill. I know they're trying to help, but that type of "help" isn't very helpful. Contrary to popular belief, Geekster and I have watched Super Nanny, too. We realize that letting a child run the house can lead to screaming and tantrums and all sorts of rotten behaviour. We have been doing this for a few years, you know. Heck, parenting is my full-time job. If I let the Gremlins Three run the house, I would have been strung up by my ankles and pelted to death with potatoes a long time ago.

Gutsy's issue is not that his parents are complacent. Geekster and I were laughing about that the other night and saying we wish that were the case; it would be much easier to solve the problem if it were all our fault. However, we have a child who isn't in control of his emotions as much as he probably should be at this age. He's anxious and quick to anger. Watching him snap is not only stressful for everyone, but terribly heartbreaking. He's a good kid with a lot of love, and yet he can turn in an instant when his brain just can't take anymore. This is a biological issue, not a parenting one.

If I don't haul Gutsy off to a corner for a time-out when he's yelling and jumping up and down and stomping his feet, it's not because I'm not in control of the situation. When his dad speaks gently to him when Gutsy is screaming back in anger, it's not because he's weak. What we're doing is helping our son get the words out of his overwhelmed little body so that he can calm down faster without further escalating the situation. The goal is that next time he'll be closer to using his words instead of exploding and feel safe enough to do so. The best part is that this method is working. It's working so much better than showing him who's boss and demanding he stop his retched behaviour right now. A quick fix isn't the solution here. Believe me, staying calm and talking him down is significantly harder than giving a time-out. It takes a lot more effort to extract those feelings from him than removing privileges and making up reward charts. It's positively fucking exhausting, actually. Complacency isn't even in our vocabulary right now.

So please, if you want to make ignorant assumptions feel free to do so but keep them to yourself. Much like any parent of special needs kids, we have enough on our plates without having to explain ourselves to those who are quick to point fingers. We have no time or energy for that right now.

Why yes, I do feel much better after saying that. Thanks for asking.

Another thing we did to simplify our family life is get rid of the playroom. Sounds counterproductive, doesn't it? How did that make things easier? A few ways:

1. We purged about half the toys in our house, making cleanup easier

2. We moved the office into the old playroom

3. We moved Gutsy into the old office and left Spawnling in his existing room, giving all three gremlins their own room

4. Now everyone has a quiet space to get away and go to sleep

5. Because the old-playroom-turned-office is rather large, I was able to move my desk out of the bedroom and join Geekster in here, all professional-like. Booyaka!

Gutsy loves his new room. He goes in there after school to unwind before joining everyone else in the common rooms. There has been far less fighting and far more harmony in the three days since we moved everyone around. And yes, that means the move was done Mother's Day weekend. Believe me, peace in an otherwise chaotic household is a gift that keeps on giving. Who needs flowers?

We now also have a social worker at our local health department who will be coordinating any help we get for Gutsy. They must have fast-tracked him in, because I was told it would likely take a few months. We now start the difficult process of finding a therapist who understands that children with hearing loss often have behavioral issues that mimic ADD/ADHD and other similar disorders. That therapist will likely cost a great deal of money, so I'm thinking I might start that prostitution ring I've been contemplating.

Either that, or write the bestselling novel in my head. Prostitution is probably easier and quicker, but I don't know if I can bring myself to wear faux fur in the coming Summer months. Nobody likes a sweaty hooker.

All this to say that things are slowly getting better but are by no means resolved. There are times when Geekster and I look at each other and wonder how we're going to get through that particular day, when I call someone sobbing because I'm exhausted and don't know if I can take anymore, when I sit by Gutsy's bed at night wondering how we got here and how we can make things better for the boy I love so much. But overall, he's happier, he smiles more, he breaks down less. He has a bit of a twinkle in his eye that I missed so much.

And for the first time in a long time, I believe things are going to be okay. Having hope is definitely progress.

There's your damn update. Now can we talk about me again?

(All pictures by my sister, owner of Trinque Photography. You can find her Facebook fan page here. If you live in the Ottawa, Canada area, this girl is for hire! I keep telling her she needs to do this photography thing full-time but she won't listen to me. Figures.)

17 years later, my husband figures it out

It's a mellow Monday morning. Intrepid and Gutsy are at school. Spawnling slept like ass and is splayed across my queen size bed like he was most of the night. Of course, this means coffee has already been brewed, poured and partially ingested into his tired parents' bodies. It also means I probably won't over-think a blog post and can possibly write something funny. I've been lacking in the creativity department lately. Stress is a cruel mistress.

Not that I don't always have stress. Remember the whole "three boys" part of my life? That's stress in excess right there, my friends. Yesterday, when said three boys invited two more over to play, I tried to sneak out and do groceries. It was then when I heard the very worst sentence come from my spouse's mouth:

"I might like to do groceries today, Maven."

Children were running around wildly, throwing themselves into walls in some kind of faux superhero battle. A foam sword whizzed past my ear. My jaw dropped to the floor along with the bags (grocery bags, not body bags - they weren't being that loud).

Did he... did he just steal my sunshine? Did the man I graciously allowed to spend his life with me just take my highly coveted supermarket time away?

We have a well-established routine in this house: I wait until it gets really loud and I could use a break. Then, I say I have to go to the grocery store to pick up some "things" (I'm never incredibly specific on account of running out of justifiable reasons to go). I follow that up with apologizing for leaving him in chaos in the name of feeding our children. I follow that line up with something about how busy the store is going to be and how stressful running errands is, and how it's just part of my job and I'm glad to do it for my family.

Then, when my van turns the corner, I crank up the cheesiest pop music imaginable, sing at the top of my lungs, whip into the parking lot, grab the bags out of the trunk and waltz into the store like I own the place.

I get some space, a breather, a few minutes to switch gears and get immersed in a different kind of stress; for while there's definitely some crazy involved in aisles blocked by old ladies tut-tutting over the price of tuna, I don't have my gremlins crawling all over the cart, which means I can patiently wait - it makes the trip longer, anyway. And when I hear children howling at the checkout, my empathetic look is quickly hijacked by a grin that says: Psst. Check out my childless cart. Isn't it amazingly quiet?

I come home refreshed and ready to get slapped by the wall of chaos at the front door: The screaming, the tears, the frustrated faces. But it's okay because I had my little break.

Who needs an affair? Way too complicated. I just go fondle produce for an hour.

And then, out of the blue, my husband offers to go tickle the tomatoes instead? What right does he have? Those are my grapes to grope, Geekster. You have your office job with your, well, office, and desk, and lunch breaks, and bosses who don't scream and you and throw things and tip over chairs (we hope). And I have my damn grocery store. That's my lunch break, ok?

But I let him walk out that door holding my bags, strolling to his car, while behind me in the living room the noise grew louder.

After seventeen years, he's figured me out.

Oh, did I mention that we celebrated our seventeenth date-a-versary on Saturday? On May 1st, 1993, I met this cute boy at a party and talked his ear off for three hours. Even after that, he couldn't wait to see me the next day. And now he's been seeing me every day for nearly two decades. Poor sop. No wonder he needs a grocery store outing.

Our amazing friends graciously took all three gremlins on Saturday afternoon and kept them until after dinner. Other than the fact that I think my friend may have attempted to remove her own uterus after six hours with my boys, it was a good day. Geekster and I were able to spend time in our own house without any children around for the first time in years.

Years.

We've gone out, we've even stayed out overnight a handful of times, but there's something really nice about being in your own home together without any responsibilities. I can't tell you what happened in the first hour after we got home whatsoever - a gas leak, crack in the space/time continuum, alien abduction, who knows? - but after that hour was over, we had coffee, stirfry, cake, watched really soothing nature programs on television, and snuggled a lot. It was bliss.

By the time we picked the kids up, Geekster and I were rejuvenated, happy, calm. That feeling stayed for most of yesterday, which is why I didn't try to hit him with a rubber boot as he walked out the door and headed to my favourite getaway. I then redirected the busy boys to the great outdoors, threw some food at them to keep them quiet, then went into the kitchen and made pasta, bagels and cookies from scratch.

Damn, I'm amazing.

And where is my wonderful husband today? At stupid, wonderful work. 'See you at six!' he said this morning, then kissed me sweetly and walked out the door.

I almost knocked him out with a folded umbrella and stole his keys and building pass, but then realized I couldn't write a line of code to save my life. Not to mention I'm anything but bald or skinny or male, so passing as him probably wouldn't work very well.

He can have his coffee breaks and lunches. I'll have bagels and cookies. On this particular rainy Monday morning, I totally win.