How a Bag of Giblets Made Me Feel Like a Second-Rate Parent, or Life with Two Under Two

Life with two under two has begun.  We have exited the honeymoon stage of the first weeks when people are still bringing us dinner and offering help round the clock--when the high of a new person entering the world is brought down to the reality of laundry every day and diapers all night. 

So the other night it was time for me to cook my first real dinner since mini cooper #2 was born. (Henceforth referred to as "Claire".)  Sure I had nuked a few hotdogs, but that was the extent of my culinary exploits.  This night I was going to tackle: the roast chicken.  Mmm...my mouth was watering just thinking about the bird that would soon be slathered (and I mean slathered) in olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon zest, hot pepper, garlic, rosemary...  I had gotten both girls miraculously down for naps mid-afternoon.  The perfect time to be sticking my new friend into the oven.  I was having a grand old time being proud of myself for having such a peaceful afternoon with napping children and plenty of time for preparing a scrumptious dinner. 

Now time to take the bird out of its cold water bath.  I unwrapped the chick and began to prep it for its impending doom.  I went to remove the giblets.  Hmm.  Try again.  I went to remove the giblets.  No.  Not working.  The #$%#$ thing is stuck in the @#$@%# bird!  Gah!  The $%#$%&& bag of giblets was still frozen in the cavity of the chicken.  Everywhere else was nice and defrosted, all except for this bag of vile blechness.  I pulled.  I braced myself on the kitchen sink.  I pulled again.  The bag ripped.  Giblets fell into the sink while the other half of the bag remained stuck to the insides of the bird.  I muttered curses under my breath. (I was keenly aware of my toddler who repeats *everything* I say.  I may think she is napping but she could be in her crib scribbling down everything for future parroting.)  I pulled again but now with less to grab.  Claire woke up at this point and began crying/screaming for her afternoon snack. I washed my hands and ran to pick her up, but then I had to put her down and immediately return to my giblets while she started crying again. I started wondering what icky body parts these were anyway.  Pull again.  Panick sets in.  I have to get this stupid bird in the oven by 3:30 or Ginny will eat late, and then bedtime will be late.  I started praying: "Please! If You'll just help me with this bag of giblets--" okay I stopped myself.  Praying to God to help me pull out a frozen bag of chicken bits seems ridiculous even in this state of poultry induced insanity.

I have failed parenthood. On my first trial as a parent of two under two, I have failed miserably. 

Nearly in tears of sorrow and anger, I texted my husband about the $%^&$%& giblets.  Can I just leave them in??  His text replies made me think he thought this was humorous. I turned to a different source of consolation.  I began to google giblets.  Will I kill my family if I leave the stupid bag in there?  I frantically paged through cites reading stories similar to my own, and finally from my minutes of thorough research I discovered that as long as the bag the giblets is in is paper, we won't die.  So I slathered up the bird, and threw it into the oven with a heavy heart.  Wait--*was* the giblet bag made of paper?

So that's how life with two under two has begun. I bet you didn't know a tiny bag of blech could make you feel like a failure.  Now you  know.

Author's note:  the chicken was spectacular.

Toilet Parenting

I know it's been a while since last I wrote.  Forgive me, I was whimpering in a corner afraid to tell you what toddlerhood is really like.  Our days have been filled with trying to teach a less than 1 1/2 year old that she should really pick up her toys, trying to feed her more than just raisins and pasta, learning her new language, and trying to cover up our bald spots from pulling out our hair during all of this.  But with all the drama/trauma comes lots of free toddler kisses and hugs which pretty much wipes out all the "bad" stuff.

Now onto today's lesson: Toilet Parenting.  I warned you last post that the insanity of MommyMoo is going to ramp up since I am six months pregnant with our next baby.  And if you've ever been pregnant you know how much time you spend in the bathroom, so toilet parenting is a logical first beginning to our series on "Two Under Two".  Turn back now if you are not a serious student of parenting.  The following could get ugly.

You may recall in a much earlier post I described the difficulties of even finding a time to get yourself into the bathroom with a baby.  I was often forced to wait until my husband came home from work at 5 o'clock which meant a very long day.  The good news is with a toddler, you can say "I'm going to the bathroom" and they will cheerily play with their toys while you run off and take care of business. Pah ha ha ha!  Sorry, I must tell you the truth, this blog is after all a public service.  I do say "I'm going to the bathroom, Ginny" but rather than play continuing in the livingroom, Ginny leaps up and says "Potty potty potty!" which in her language means "Yay free-play time!"  She dashes into the bathroom practically quivering at the fun that awaits.  Rather than shutting Ginny out of the bathroom which results in banshee-like crying at the door, I let her stay in.  This can't be too bad, there's a large bin of bath toys that can surely occupy her while I do what needs to be done.  Wrong.  For some reason, toddlers can sense that you are trapped on this big white thing.  We have a tiny bathroom, but Ginny is able to creep into corners where I can't possible reach.  This is the time when toddlers actually want to climb into the bathtub.  Just try rescuing a dangling toddler half in a bathtub while you're on the toilet without making a mess.  Then there's the toilet paper--the logical toddler go-to bathroom destruction.  Luckily Ginny just picks at it and doesn't roll it all out yet. Yet. Then there's that little cap thing on the base of the toilet.  What is that thing anyway? Whatever it is, it seems to attract all the filth in the entire bathroom and is one of Ginny's favorite things to play with.  Second only to...the toilet brush.  Gah.  Toddlers and toilet brushes should not happen.  But you tell me how to get a toilet brush out of a toddlers hand while sitting on the toilet and not getting whatever the heck the toilet brush had on it all over the bathroom. 

I feel sort of guilty now that I have raved about how hilarious and fun a new baby can be in your life.  Maybe you have one now, or you are expecting one soon.  You've already mapped out your discipline chart from now until your child is eighteen.  Maybe you've studied up on Super Nanny's method of discipline: firm voice, get down on their level, look them in the eyes, tell them "this behavior is unacceptable".  Toddlerhood will be a breeze, you've got it all worked out...But try getting down on their level when you're on the pot.


So here's my advice: if it won't kill them or isn't really yucky, let it slide.  That means that bin of your hair bands and clips that you just organized is fair game.  The washcloths and shower curtain can be tossed about.  Let them open and close the bathroom door into your knees a hundred times.  Just be grateful that you are getting the chance to use the bathroom.  For the stuff you don't want them to touch, proceed with the "Hey! Wait! No! Not that! That's icky! No! Or that!  Put it down! No, don't touch Mommy with that!" routine.

There. Now who else is going to tell you how to parent from a toilet?

Catching Up

Hello? Hello? Is anyone still out there?

Sorry folks, I got blogged down-har har-reading other peoples blogs rather than writing my own.  I'm following several that are so good it depresses me.  One of my favorites is The Pioneer Woman.  It's a hilarious blog about family, homeschooling, cooking, and more.  But good heavens.  The woman updates the five threads of her massive blog every seven minutes!  Sometimes the posts are just one picture, or a sentence saying something like, "Yep I'm up at 4 am here on the ranch, just thought everyone in blog-land needed to know!" My Google Reader is sparking and smoking at the sheer volume of posts.  So I thought I would do a service to you folks and only write when, well, there's something worth-while to write about. Another blog I follow is a Daddy blog which is basically what I write, but the guy has turned it into his full-time job so every other day is a post with hundreds of pictures that he downloaded from emails from dedicated fans.  I can't compete!  But I honestly feel that these constant, brief, content-less posts actually weaken their blogs.  That being said, I can't guarantee that this post will be terribly worth-while.  I'll let you know when I finish it.

So despite my lack of posting, things have been busy since last I wrote.  Wow, remember that last post about our relaxing vacation? I could go for another one of those.  Since then, Ginny turned one, officially leaving babyhood.  This was depressing, so we thought surely another baby was a good idea.  I also figured it would be good for my blog.  You know, ramp up the insanity.  So yes, I've been trying to figure out these past few months how to parent when you feel like barfing.  Or what to do when your toddler comes and leans over the toilet next to you when you are actually barfing.  TMI, I know.  But these things you need to think about! Who knew.

We also moved to a new apartment last month.  A month later and we still are using boxes as end tables and haven't seen the floor in most of the apartment.  This is what happens when you move with a toddler when you have morning sickness--nothing.  However, Ginny is happy as can be, scuttling about the apartment, hiding where ever is coziest (mainly the kitchen cabinet). I actually found her reading books while perched in the cabinet a few weeks ago.  She also likes to start our new washing machine, choosing the hottest wash cycle.  I'm pretty sure she thinks we moved to this apartment just for her own amusement.

Ginny has finally started adding "words" to her vocabulary.  "Ditty!" for kitty and "Oof oof!" or "Dah-ie!" for doggie.  But other than that, your guess is as good as mine as to what the heck she is saying.  She sure thinks it's eloquent though.

I'm pretty sure Ginny is a monkey.  I know before I thought she was a squirrel, but I have more evidence.  One early morning Ginny woke us up with a worried crying sound.  My husband jumped out of bed and grabbed her as she was hanging on the bar of her crib about to go over.  That was an exhilarating way to wake up.  She sobbed for a few minutes out of fear, and I wondered if we could possible lower her crib any more or if we'd need to invest in a cage for her to climb around in. Further evidence:  In the morning, Ginny grabs her favorite stuffed monkey and runs around the house saying "Oo oo ah! Oo oo ah!".  Yep. Monkey child.

Okay well I guess that's the main gist of what's been happening here in crazy parenting land.  Not a terribly fulfilling post, I know, but I just wanted you all to know that I do still exist and there will be plenty more "What not to do" posts in the future.  Afterall, having two children under two is a blogging blessing.

Vacation

Ginny is almost a year old now so, needless to say, I need a vacation.  Gone are the days of young married life when my husband and I could throw a few sets of clothes in a bag and dash off for the weekend.  However, we did finally get the chance to go on a real first family vacation to our favorite mountain lake last week.

It's a good thing you get to rest while you're on vacation, because after packing for three people for a week--I was close to losing my mind.  How on earth could one tiny person need so much stuff for one week??  Now I know why, when I was a child, our '89 light blue dodge caravan was always stuffed completely full with six people and their entire lives in bags.  The back end of the van, nearly touching the ground, proved to be just the right tool for removing stumps in the driveway at our mountain cabin.  While my brothers liked to "rough-it" with their sleeping bags and probably one set of "camo" for the week, the rest of us packed up our rooms and brought them to the lake.  I recall one year when I literally sat with my knees around my head.  But with my knees so close to my ears I was able to easily block out the sound of my older sister singing along with R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" on repeat for 4 solid hours.  That was a long trip.

Facing packing only three people for a week still seemed a little daunting.  So I created a spreadsheet with each family member and all the hundreds of things we needed to bring. Yes I created the spreadsheet in excel and then uploaded it to google docs for ease in sharing.  Yes I am a dork.  We spent a day and a half packing up everything we owned and loaded it all into our moderately sized sedan.  We even noticed how much cleaner our apartment looked with all the crap out of it. (Thoughts of leaving all our belongings on the interstate crossed my mind.)   So after eating a lunch of whatever the heck was still in the fridge, we were off on our first family vacation.

The car trip was supposed to be about 4 and 1/2 hours. (So said our brand-new Garmin who we named James because he sounds exactly like James May from "Top Gear")  We were not looking forward to that length of time in a car with a less than 1 year old, but we had high hopes.  (We're new parents after all...)  Ginny ended up only sleeping for an hour of the trip and began shrieking after about 3 hours.  What a great way to begin a vacation!  So relaxing!  I moved into the back seat with Ginny in order to keep her entertained for the last hour and half to two hours.  She kept herself amused by playing with my cell phone and reading the brochure that came with my motion-sickness wrist bands. 

Finally.  As the sun was sinking below the mountains, we arrived at the lake.  A sense of peace and relaxation immediately came over us.  The sun danced and glittered on the lake.  A flock of birds flitted over the water.  Ah...vacation.  We opened the windows and sniffed deeply that clean, crisp mountain air.  And then, from beside me: "HERRK!!!"  Oh no.  I looked over to see Ginny spewing forth like a geyser.  This was no cute baby spit-up.  This was "I'm-a-big-girl-now" honest to goodness barf.  We pulled over at the side of the lake and I got Ginny out of her carseat and dangled her over the guardrail to finish her expelling.  (I will never look at peaches the same way.)  Cars passed, no doubt trying to see the beautiful scenery, but saw two newbie parents holding out their now naked baby herking at the side of the road.  We gave Ginny a baby wipe bath there on the side of the highway as the sun slid further behind the mountains.  Vacation had begun.

Princess Ginny

Have you seen those baby clothes with bedazzled lettering and some word or phrase denoting royalty?  Well, I'm not a huge fan.  It seems like we're encouraging kids to be vain and bratty. (Don't get me started on the shorts with lettering on the rear that teenage girls wear...) Anyway, regardless of my haughty opinions, Ginny was wearing a pretty simple pink onesie the other day with the word "princess" in smallish silver lettering.  I felt awkward about it.  It didn't really seem to go with her personality all that well, and someone actually commented on it.  It made me stop and think.

Ginny is a baby. She hasn't really developed royal airs yet.  She likes to get messy.  She sits quietly and reads books.  Nothing really regal.  But then I remembered my walk into work today...

I work in an old mansion turned office building a couple miles from my house.   It's quite an impressive building with beautiful carved furniture, large windows, lovely oriental rugs, and a spiral stone staircase.  Rather castle-like.  However, it's quite the to-do getting inside the darn building with a baby in a carseat, a monster diaper bag, any stray toys, and lastly myself.  You have to go through several doors (that are far too narrow) no matter which way you choose to get in.  It's a pain.  Often some kind co-worker will take pity on me and open one or two of the six doors I have to go through to get to my office.  But while I'm sweating and puffing around trying to get in, Ginny is all smiles in her carseat.  And that's when I realized.  She does act rather regal at times.  She rides around in her carseat-turned-sedan chair with me as her lowly lackey.  I scuttle around opening doors for her--and does she thank me? No! She just smiles, or looks off in the distance.  We enter the building and she may smile meekly at co-workers, or occasionally she will deign to wave at someone from behind the sun shade in her sedan chair.  We enter the hall with the large stone staircase.  This entrance of peasants opening doors and smiling and waving wasn't triumphant enough for Princess Ginny.  As we ascend the stairs, Ginny yanks down on her toy bug that "sings" and it's music booms throughout the echoey hall and up the stairs.  A royal fanfare is added to Ginny's procession as if to proclaim to the whole office building: "Hear ye! Hear ye! Stop your work and bow to me, Princess Ginny!  Everyone gather 'round and wave and smile as I bounce towards my luxurious office in my sedan chair with this mere peasant, my mother."

Maybe the onesie speaks the truth.

Squirrely Behavior

If you know me, or have met me even once, you'll know I detest squirrels. Loathe them in fact.  Nevertheless people always give me all sorts of squirrel paraphernalia: squirrel mugs, ornaments, stuffed animals, tins, books, statues, cast iron figures, etc.  Blech.  I don't hate these items, or the people that gave them to me (I do question their sanity though), but I keep them to serve as a constant reminder of how much I hate the nasty little buggers.  People always say, "But they're so cute!". Exactly fools. That's what they want you to think.  They are just rats with fuzzy hind-ends.  But rats have the decency not to pretend they are cute.  I have been barked at more by squirrels than by dogs in my neighborhood.  I have had acorns forcefully propelled towards my head in a cold, calculated manner.  I have had my wedding flowers gnawed to bits the night before my wedding by the varmints. All the while you keep mindlessly chanting, "But they're so cute!".

Hmm? What? This is a parenting blog? Oh. Well that reminds me.  I think I might be raising a squirrel.

I came to the painful realization this morning.  My daughter was playing with some foam floor puzzles that she absolutely adores.  She will not let anyone complete these puzzles.  The air must change and send out special "I'm almost done this puzzle" waves that Ginny immediately picks up on.  She darts over and tears the puzzle apart and stuffs the pieces in her mouth.  This behavior isn't directly squirrely.  But this morning I noticed she was skittering.  Yes, skittering.  I glanced around to see what she was doing.  My skittering daughter was darting around the livingroom (Skittering and darting? This is bad...) collecting the puzzle pieces and stuffing them into her secret hiding places.  Her two main stashes are between the arm chairs an underneath the exer-saucer.  If she can't hold as much as she wants in her hands, she'll stuff the others in her mouth and continue skittering. (The puzzle pieces now have perfect Ginny Teeth impressions that makes me think dentists should invest in a supply of baby floor puzzles to get the tooth info they need.)  I came close to her when she was stashing her pieces and she got frantic!  She immediately leaped up from the floor and skittered to another part of the room.   And now that I think of it, she does wiggle her backside akin to the flick of a bushy tail...

I can just hear the squirrel enthusiasts nodding and patting each other on the back, "Good. She's getting what she deserves.  It serves her right for hating the precious squirrels. They're so cute!"

How to Spy on Your Children

I know this isn't a new idea.  I'm sure if the CIA put some veteran parents in the field they'd have a fleet of the most resourceful, cunning spies.  Spies that don't need to dress in black and dart from dark alley to dark alley.  Rather, they would be spies that can waltz around in broad daylight, coo an embarrassing baby babble--and get the job done.   And all this without their targets thinking they have the mental capacity to function in society.

So our child is only ten months, what on earth would we need to spy on her for? She's not dating boys, staying out late, or going to drinking parties.  She's a baby for goodness sake.  Don't be fooled you naive being.  Babies are cunning.  They can tell once you have put them down for a nap how close you are to the bedroom door.  They can sense your presence and your ear smushed up against the wall.  They know.  They lay there until the winds change from your movement in the rest of the house.  Then they make their move.  It's playtime!  Ginny begins jumping in the crib, playing with the curtains, throwing her stuffed animal out of the crib, walking the perimeter of her mattress.  Say good-bye to nap time.

We had to put an end to this.  This girl needed to nap.  We got tired of walking into the room and lying  her back down every few seconds.  We needed some one-way glass--but we have no budget for such expenditures.  We are no James Bond spies with shmancy gadgets galore.  We are parents.  We have to get crafty.  So we have to go old-school. Old, old, old-school.  We have a keyhole.  My husband first discovered it.  The keyhole is rather large and points directly at the crib.  We have a perfect view.  Now we can sit outside the door and say an ominous "Ginny....." and she will whimper and lay back down.

Jordan: Parental Spy Extraordinaire

Well, she didn't listen to our ominous voices for very long.  Soon she started to ignore us.  Now we just have to let her play herself to sleep, but we still peep in to see if she has indeed fallen asleep.

View from the keyhole: Ginny surveys the perimeter of her crib.

Ginny contemplates throwing Lamby-baa overboard.

Ginny starts to surrender to sleep. Muah ha ha!

And she's down!

 Night-night!

The key to being a parental spy is to get rid of your stuffy pride.  Be resourceful.  Scoff at dignity.  Keep a camera handy.