Ironic Mom

Let’s face it: this holiday season, many of us will have the task of getting kids-hyped-up-on-chocolate to fall asleep beside us in hotel rooms or in a grandparent’s spare bedroom. This is no easy task; if it were, someone would’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize for Parenting.

Saturday night, in a desperate attempt to get my five-year-old twins to fall asleep in a hotel room, I pulled five strategies out of my parenting-backpack. They all failed.

Strategy One To Get My Kids To Sleep: Make It a Competition

This works well with any siblings, but especially with twins, who’ve competed for everything since womb-space was an issue. I’m desperate to get into a book – or just have hallway noise to contend with – so I say, “First one to fall asleep gets a million points and wins.” My kids stop their game of tag-on-a-bed and flop down into a corpse-like pose. Then Vivian rises from the dead to say, “Wait a minute. If I’m asleep, how will I know I won?” Chaos ensues.

Strategy Two: Contain the Problem

“Get under the covers now,” I order. Like two well-trained turtles, they go under the covers, all the way under. They proceed to build a fort. I could call it a kingdom since the only language they speak is Giggle. When this strategy doesn’t work, I shift to a more extreme version of containment: musical beds. I switch places with William.

Strategy Three: Unite the Troops with a Common Enemy

“There are people trying very hard to sleep on the other side of the wall,” I say. Both kids stop, look at the picture of bison hanging on the wall.  “They might be very grumpy if they can children giggling,” I caution. Not sure where this attempt went awry, but both kids double over in a fit of laughter.

Strategy Four:  Issue the Penultimate Threat

“Okay, it’s not funny anymore. Mommy’s serious,” I say. Now, I’m not a certified pyschologist, but I know enough about human (mis)behaviour to know that this is the final statement of those with the authority of a gnat.

Strategy Five: Bring in Reinforcements

At this time of year, skip Daddy and bring in the heavyweight. It’s why I love December, really. “Mommy’s going to call Santa.” This shuts ‘em up for a few minutes, but not for long, so I pick up the phone and dial ho-ho-ho. I fake a call and, while Meryl Streep does not have to worry about being dethroned this March, I’m convincing enough for two five-year-olds.

Sixty minutes have passed since I implemented Strategy One. The passage of time has the desired effect on Vivian and William’s volume level. Vivian dozes off first. Ten minutes later, from my look-out post, I spot Wiliam commando crawling at the foot of his bed, sneaking his way to his twin sister in an attempt to rescue her from slumber. He is sent back to isolation, and finally succumbs to sleep. As do his parents. Mercifully.

7:00 a.m.

Although Vivian has been up for one hour, William is sleeping away. I walk into his room, turn on the light, and spy him asleep on the edge of his bed. It’s at this point I see the vomit. It has congealed beside him, one-inch chunks of partially digested banana.

I wake him. “William, you threw up.”

“Yes, Mommy,” he says, pushing himself to a sitting position. “I was sick.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up when you were sick?”

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I forgot,” he says, like it’s his fault.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes,” he says, and saunters down the hallway toward the television. He needs the violence from Bugs Bunny to wake himself up fully.

I spend endless minutes scraping banana-mush coated with stomach-acid-glaze into the toilet bowl. I give up and start dunking the entire sheet into the toilet bowl. The pre-automatic-washing-machine part of my brain is in full swing, as is my gag reflex. With the chunks now floating in toilet water, I take the laundry downstairs, deposit it in the washer, and crank the knob to heavy-duty.

7:12 a.m.

I’m in the kitchen with Vivian, who has finished her breakfast. Whoever says kids have short attention spans hasn’t met my daughter. She is carrying a thread of conversation that began when she awoke. “Please can I eat my chocolate from my Advent calendar?”

“Vivi, I’ve told you three times already and the answer’s still no. Not until after school.” I’m starting to sense that she feels left out because she hasn’t spewed banana.

7:14 a.m.

William joins us in the kitchen, alert now that he’s watched Elmer Fudd hunt Bugs Bunny with a wifle.  Will plops down at the table to eat his breakfast.

7:15 a.m.

William announces, “I’m done my breakfast, Mommy.” I look up. He has licked the peanut butter off his English muffin. That’s it.

“William,” I start, “Are you not–”

“Mommy!” Vivian interrupts. “Can I have a chocolate? Please, please, pl–”

“Vivian!” I’ve lost it now. “If you ask that question one more time, Mommy’s going to eat your entire Advent calendar.”

Parenting tip number twenty-three: Always make threats you can follow through with. Yesterday I’d even read the calorie count on the back of Vivian’s calendar: 130 calories for 80 grams, and the whole thing’s 100 grams. I could inhale the nine remaining chocolates in less time than it takes for a new mistress of Tiger to pop out of the woodwork.

7:20 a.m.

We struggle into our winter gear and trudge out to the van.  Another twenty minutes in a household with twins.

December 15th is Cat Herders Day. This invent-a-holiday recognizes people who have kids whose lives are so out of control it’s like they’re herding cats.

Try herding these kitties into a single photo

When I first heard of this “holiday”, my brain twisted the word herding into hoarding, a word association that would cause psychologists to scribble something into their notebooks. Of course, a reasonable association would have been remembering my five-year-old twins run opposite directions in the parking lot on Saturday, but my mind is not logical. I thought of hoarding, which made me think of the clutter in my house.

My husband collects cheap things. I’m not sure if I should include myself in this categorization.  If something’s cheap, he’ll take ten. Or more.  Even if we don’t need any.

Last week, he came home with one of his deals.

“I got you something,” he said. Visions of a one-night-solo-stay in a boutique hotel danced in my head.

I looked up from Twitter as he dropped the box in front of me. I peeked through the flap and spied hundreds of individually-packaged marmalade jams, enough to power Denny’s through a month of burnt toast servings.

“Marmalade? What are we going to do with this?”

“Eat it,” he said. “On toast.”

“I hate marmalade.”

“But it was only five bucks.”

And therein lies his theory of accumulating things. If it’s a good deal, we need lots.

My daughter seems to have inherited this penchant for low-grade hoarding. She covets her “collections.” They range from rocks and leaves, to stuffed animals and cut-out paper hearts. Last year she even tried to collect snow. She’s like a magpie; anything shiny is slated to a lifetime in a plastic container. Half of our Tupperware containers have gone AWOL because they’re housing her collection du jour.

I seem to have a thing for collectors. Maybe it’s because I’m a failed collector.

I tried it once myself. During one long week of my childhood, I collected nail clippings. Then someone wisely told me it was gross, so I threw out my collection in a fit of embarrassment.  After that, the only things I saved were letters. And a few years ago, I gave those back to the writers. I figured it was a nice flashback to all the guys my pen pals had crushes on.  Nothing like a window into your life at the age of thirteen to realize how far you’ve come. Or not.

To complete the mom metaphor, add rollerskates and stir

(cc) Richard, Creative Commons, used under a ShareAlike License

Maybe most collections are embarrassing. Or should be.  But maybe they’re our security too. Our way of exerting control in a world where we feel not only like we’re herding cats on a daily basis, but also like we’re blindfolded and on rollerskates.

Tip 1: Don’t.

So what’s wrong with vacationing in your house? There’s nothing wrong with it, besides the fact that your kids want to kill each other because they’re routine-bound and besides the fact you’ve started to wax poetic about the lives of your childless friends. Take it from someone who took her twins on two round-trip, trans-Pacific flights before they were thirteen months old: don’t.

If Junior can't complete it in ink, do everyone a favour: stay home

(cc) KitAy, Used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Tip 2: If you must travel, wait until your kids can complete the New York Times Crossword in ink.

And, unless your kid is Ben Pall – a 14-year-old who created a crossword that was published in the Times last month, then you’re safe for a few years. By the way, Pall could recite the alphabet at the age of two…backwards. Freak.

A Remote: More Essential Than Your Kids

(cc) Rick Audet, Used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Tip 3: There’s only one button that matters: repeat play.

It doesn’t matter if your kid can recite all the words to Finding Nemo. After all, look at Ben Pall.

Tip 4: If you have a choice, travel before Christmas.

Your arsenal of discipline-techniques increases greatly if you can use Santa as a threat. Put him on speed dial. If you have to travel outside of December, throw out nutritional expectations and food pyramids. Candy makes a great second-level threat.

Tip 5: Seriously, don’t do it.

There are things that scare me more than pregnancy, such as raising children or having a camera crew chase me around as I attempt to parent. But even after disasters such as lying face down on a golf course amidst a spectacular lightning storm (and I don’t even golf), pregnancy still ranks up there on my list of things-that-freak-me-out. It’s not so much the pregnancy itself, but my memory of being eight months pregnant with twins during the hottest season. In Thailand.

While Bangkok might be called the City of Angels, it sometimes feels more like the City of Smells. Waste disposal techniques include dumping sewage in the local canal so pedestrians (also known as targets) can smell it. Especially if you’re pregnant, the variety of stenches presents a multitude of problems, not the least of which is eating without upchucking. Imagine walking along Sukhumvit Road, one of Bangkok’s main arteries. The sidewalks themselves are an obstacle course. Not only does the congestion necessitate having to step over two-foot curbs, but also requires dodging vendors who are selling a range of goods, from pirated Shania Twain CDs and pineapple with chillies, to deep-fried bugs and sex.

If she were pregnant in Bangkok, she wouldn't be smiling this much

(cc) Roger Price, used under a Share-Alike Creative Commons License

If the partially decomposed bat clinging to an overhead wire doesn’t make me puke my Green Curry, maybe it’s the stench of rotting garbage or the sight of a Chihuahua-sized rat. And if my lunch hasn’t climbed all the way up my esophagus yet, then it surely will after seeing a seventy-year-old Westerner lip-locked with a sixteen-year-old Thai from upcountry.

Indeed, as I continue my waddle up the street, ignoring tailors who salivate over how many yards of fabric it’d take to clothe me, I feel a slimy connection to those tourists.

A Bangkok scene: Pregnant expat vs. Western tourist

(cc) baby-gaga.com, used under a Share-Alike Creative Commons License

Let’s face it, in Bangkok, pregnant women have a lot in common with tourists.

We both sweat a lot.

We’re both overweight.

We’re repulsed by Bangkok’s street smells.

We’re drawn to wearing ill-fitting clothes, perhaps to further tempt the tailors.

We trip on uneven sidewalks.

We long for a foot rub.

We’ll walk miles off course to search for a clean, Western-style toilet.

We look bad in a bathing suit.

We struggle to carry our extra baggage.

We realize the anticipation of an event is often better than the reality.

We both crave an ice cold beer.

And I didn’t even say anything about sex.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love Bangkok, especially now that I no longer live there. Everything people say about Thai people is true. Heck, they’re even nicer than Canadians. And now that I’m  back in Canada with -40 winters, Bangkok is smelling pretty good.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. You know, in that same category as opening another bottle of wine or giving your phone number to the guy who’d later become your husband.

It was a bit of synchronicity really. My husband saw a gingerbread kit at the supermarket. Then my neighbour – who makes Martha Stewart look lazy – announced she was making a gingerbread village.

Never Trust a Company That Can't Spell "Easy"

So, I took the plunge and purchased a gingerbread train assembly kit with an “E-Z Build Tray.” I should’ve known better than to trust a company that can’t spell easy.

***

“You’re in the middle of what?” my husband asks. I believe he nearly dropped his cell phone.

“Putting together a gingerbread house-thing,” I say, starting to doubt my already-weak confidence.

“Good luck with that,” he says. “I’ll be home soon.”

I pick up the box to see what I’m in for. Now, you know you’re in trouble when the instructions on the back direct you to watch a video. This isn’t an “add water and stir” muffin mix; this is a twelve step program. Since the nicely-manicured hand on the video constructs the train and caboose in just over two minutes, I am optimistic. Plus, given the gingerbread is pre-baked and the icing is pre-made, what could be so hard?

If the video doesn’t scare me off, the phone should when it rings again. It’s my neighbour – the Martha Stewart one who’s not only crafty but also kind and beautiful. She has just finished baking her umpteenth batch of cookies, bonding with her children. Can her daughter come over and play?

“Of course,” I say, before realizing there’ll be a witness to the carnage that is bound to happen.

I watch the video two more times, answer the door when her daughter arrives, and start peeling the plastic off the kit.

“Have you done one of these with your mom yet?” I ask, making conversation.

“Actually, my dad’s the one who usually makes it.” Excellent, now I’ll be compared to her dad, not a gourmand like his wife, but a let’s-build-a-dresser-and-paint-the-room-on-my-day-off type of guy.

I reread the directions on the box. The volume level in the kitchen is rising in direct proportion to the amount of candy that’s being pilfered from the gingerbread kit.

“Quiet,” I yell. “I need to think.”

This whole experience is bringing me to my knees.

First, I’m supposed to snap the pieces in half. I do this and the pieces break, but not where they’re supposed to. I end up using the icing to glue most of the pieces back to a recognizable shape. I let the kids eat a couple of wayward hunks.

Then my eight-year-old neighbour says, “You cut the hole on the icing bag way bigger than my dad does.” Uh oh.

Icing is everywhere: all over the pieces, all over the counter, all over me. I am now putting icing on the wrong pieces, and eventually resort to smearing it on with a knife. I construct something that resembles a train. You just have to use your imagination.

Finally, near exhaustion, I tell the kids to stick the candy on. They take pieces out of their mouths and plunk them on the icing.

If you tilt your head, it almost looks straight

“Is it leaning?” I ask, tilting my head.

“Yeah,” my neighbour says. “You forgot to let the icing dry first.”

“Okay, you three, go play,” I say. Then I lick the icing off the knife, eat the rest of the candies, and look up to see my husband walk in.

He examines our construction. “Nice outhouse – no offense. Do you know it’s leaning?”

Way-back-when, my husband and I used to go on a date every Thursday. That was when we viewed this parenting thing as a phase, a blip on our couple-o-meter.

After hibernating for four weeks following the birth of our twins, we resumed weekly dates. We’d take our newborns to restaurants in our neighbourhood in Bangkok – where we lived at the time – and the lovely Thai staff would fawn over our babes, take them into the kitchen, and bring them back every ten minutes to show us they hadn’t dropped them into a vat of Pad Thai. Meanwhile, we’d stare into each other’s eyes, trying to think of non-baby topics to discuss.

Thursday: The Day Formerly Known As Date-Night

(cc) Adapted from Joel Lanman, under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Fast forward a year. Vivian and William are now one and we’ve moved back to Canada. Soon date nights become like our disposable income: extinct.

In the four years we’ve been back living in Canada, we’ve managed a few dates, each one ending with the refrain, “We need to do this more often.” And we need to. How do I know? There are a number of neon signs that indicate it’s time to go out with your beloved. Here are five:

Mr. Darcy 1, Edward 0

1.  You watch Bridget Jones’ Diary and BBC’s Pride and Prejudice for the twenty-somethingthtime.

Whether it’s Mr. Darcy or Mark Darcy, it doesn’t matter. Colin Firth is the thinking woman’s Edward. We don’t need teen vampires with transluscent skin, we need Colin. Or maybe we need a date, even with our own husband.

2.  You’re looking forward to cozying up with your heat bag.

Seriously, if you’re in your thirties like me and you’re addicted to a wheat bag (it warms my feet faster than my husband), it’s time, it really is.

3.  Romance means watching an E-Harmony commercial together

So my husband’s flipping between the basketball game and the comedy channel, when an E-Harmony commercial comes on. For whatever reason, we watch and provide a running commentary.

Commercial: “Are you looking for the love of your life?”

Me:  “Nope. Gave up on that a long time ago.”

Husband: “We don’t need E-Harmony, we need E-Sarcasm.”

4. Your kids suggest getting a babysitter.

My kids love getting a babysitter. A week ago Vivian said, “It’s a great day. I was the class leader, and you put candy in my lunch, and we get a babysitter!” My kids love their babysitter because she plays tag, does crafts, and builds castles for hours on end. It’s one big playtime. I’m pretty sure she never says, “It’s time for independent play,” or “I need to work on the computer now,” my two favourite dismissive phrases. It doesn’t matter that, when my husband and I do hire a sitter, we can enjoy an Italian meal in fewer than ninety minutes.  We’ve perfected marriage-style speed dating.

5.  You write blogs posts in bed. G’nite.

Since my kids survived their hair cuts gash-free, didn’t drown at their swimming lessons, and suffered only minor rug burns at a gymnastics-themed birthday party, I decided to try harder to inflict pain. So, I took them to get their H1N1 shots.

The H1N1 Virus, Magnified

(cc) Mike Licht, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

True to my haphazard approach to parenting, I didn’t come prepared. No snacks, no games, no distractions for the line-up. I was spinning plates to entertain two five-year-olds already hyper from chocolate birthday cake.

We begin Operation Distraction by playing Eye Spy. Now, I’m pretty proud of William and Vivian’s progression on this game. We started playing it as a stuck-in-traffic diversion when they were two-years-old; I’d give challenging clues like, “I spy…mommy.” And magically, both kids would point at me. Not exactly the Harvard version. Standing in that dim hospital hallway, we graduate to colours. It all goes swimmingly; as we inch forward, new posters and doors offer colourful possibilities. Soon, however, the line slows and the options dissipate. It’s William’s turn. “I spy something black,” he says. I follow his eyes. He’s staring at the boy in line behind us, who’s from the Sudan. His mom and I had chatted earlier. Rather than deal with political correctness, I say, “Let’s play rhymes.”

“Name one word that rhymes with car.”

“Star,” Vivian says, eyes shining.

“Bar,” says William, as if he knows where I’d rather be.

“Here’s another one,” I say. “Tell me a word that rhymes with truck.” You know where this joke’s going without the punch line. It falls in the mommy’s-not-too-swift category.

We progress to Simon Says. After I jump up and down for half a minute, a nurse utters that beautiful word, “Next.”

We walk to Station 12 in the final row. Vivian opts to go first. It seems like a good idea until she sees the needle laying-in-wait on the table. Then she starts screaming, “No, mommy, no!” I attempt to wriggle up her sleeve, but it’s too tight. Great. More clothes that don’t fit. And I wonder why she looks vaguely homeless.

“You’ll have to remove her shirt,” the nurse says. So, I twist it off and snag Vivian’s glasses in the process.

The nurse gives me proper gripping instructions: sit Vivian sideways on my lap, pin her right arm between my back and the chair, and hold her left arm down with my other hand. William watches the entertainment unfold before him. Vivian catches a glimpse of the needle again, approaching her arm. She screams, “I’m not ready yet!” Her enunciation and volume cause all stations to pause.

A Modern Day Game of Clue: Nurse Mustard in the Gym with the Syringe

(cc) Nathan Forget, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

H1N1, Take Two. Vivian goes into a back arch that nearly catapults her over the table, while screaming “I need another minute!” She’s got some serious potential as a B Horror Film actor if her career as a one-girl-craft-factory doesn’t work out.

H1N1, Take Three. She sees it coming. Her eyes are wild and she’s bucking like a bull-rider at the rodeo. The nurse grips Vivian’s bicep. She means business. Vivian screams, “Didn’t you hear me? I said I need another minute!”

And the needle sinks into Vivian’s flesh. A shriek echoes throughout the gym. There is a silence underneath the scream as all eleven stations have once again stopped to watch the freak show. I scan the gym, making eye contact with them all. No sense pretending this isn’t my kid.

William, transfixed by his sister’s episode, is a postscript to the whole thing. He sits still, watches the needle pierce his epidermis, and whispers, “Ouch.”

When we get home, my husband asks, “How did it go?”

Vivian answers, “It was fine, Daddy.”