Metal Meredith

or Everything Is Coming Up Sweetie

Vivienne has many pet names, some nice and some not-so-nice. I won’t bother typing out the list because inevitably someone will be offended that we called her “Poppy Nuts” for a good year. But one that has stuck the whole time has been my constant use of “Sweetie Pie”. Apparently this has not been lost on Vivienne.

About 6 times a day Vivienne asks if we would like to play with her dollhouse. Up in her room are 4 play areas; one has a dollhouse, across the room is the playground, floating around between is a Jungle Train and on her table is a Pirate Ship. We spend our time taking the 3 boys and girls, the mom, dad and baby back and forth from house to playground. Then, the tiger will be sad and need to find his friend the parrot at the pirate ship and all hell breaks loose.

Somehow in the midst of all of this playing, Vivienne named all of the people in her game. This is where it all began. There is a Asian girl, her name is Meredith. The mom in the house, her name is Meredith, too. Then, the dad is Dad, the little boy is Little Boy (we never said she was super genius.) Both the baby and the little blond haired girl ended up with the name, ‘Sweetie Pie’. We thought that was really cute.

Then, everything started being Sweetie Pie, the bear and the little bear was Mommy and Sweetie Pie. Phil made her a tiny juice cup out of playdough which suddenly made her juice into a game of mommy and sweetie. Sticks, lint, pieces of paper, french fries, cars, frogs, nothing is able to escape the name game. Lately, the banisters on the stairs have even been tagged. When going up or down, Vivienne will tell you, “You hold onto the Mommy railing and I will hold Sweetie Pie railing. Then, we will share the big one together.”

The other fun in naming comes when there is more than 2 things and they get seperated. If in the car and one goldfish snack falls down into the chair, the other has lost his friend. Then we must do a little fake crying goldfish that is sad because he lost ‘Friend’ goldfish in the chair. Later, when reunited, the goldfish will exclaim “Sweetie, Sweetie, I find you. I miss you so much!”

I suppose we should just thank our stars there no one has been named “Dumbass” and move on.

It has been 11 days since my last entry

I am going to do these updates in tiny entries instead of tossing a massive pile of crap at you all at once. I fear that the people that care will do ok, but the others will fall off their chairs dead asleep from sheer and utter boredom.

Vivienne has been practicing mastering the art of the potty, as mentioned in my previous post. She now can do a good 5 hour span with ‘big girl underpants’ on, often using the potty all by herself. This creates a few scenerios that have been amusing in part and terrifying in others.

First problem: Vivienne is sitting on the coffee table playing with her Dora Treehouse (remind me to thank you later, Ronni) for the fourteen hundreth time today and she tells me “Oops, I peed”. I ask “Is it a little or a lot?” “A lot” she replies. I tell her to stay put, don’t move and I will bring a towel. I grab a hand towel and come around the corner to see her drawing in her pee with two fingers. “WE DON’T PLAY IN OUR PEE,” I said through clenched but happy teeth. She pulls her fingers up and says, “Oh, ok”. Like that was all it took.

Second problem: Vivienne calls me into the bathroom to tell me that she has peed. “Mommy, I got drippies on my legs!” So I dutifully go in to help with the back end chore. I give her a wad of toilet tissue that she uses to wipe up “drippies” and her girl part. Then, like in slow motion, she tells me, “Oops, my nose is running!” and proceeds to pull tissue from crotch up belly, up chin and wipe right up her face. I could feel myself in a comedy sketch doing the slow motion “Noooooooooooooo!”, but I never made it. It was more like *inhale* “NNnn” and it was over. So we had a talk about how tissues that touch nether regions never come back above the belly button.

Third and final problem: Vivienne is still having the poop problems. We are ecstatic when she finally does anything, making sure she knows we are proud of her, blah blah blah. While cleaning her butt after one such praise session, I left a wipe on her bed. She grabs it and proceeds to wipe her own bottom, “I help!” she proclaims and then takes wipe and runs it all over her face. “I clean my face, too!” We have the talk one more time and she gets a good, long, very soapy, face washing.

I don’t have any real reasons to complain. These are by far tame by my friends’ experiences, which will most likely horrrify my childless friends on the edge of considering children to run the other way as fast as they can. For once, I am wholeheartedly considering them the sane ones. 

It Does’t Fall Far From the Tree

For anyone who is familiar with my family, you understand that there is a long line of running butt jokes. I am unsure where they started or how they have kept momentum all these years, but when it comes to humor, my family goes right to the toilet. So, it is no shock that Vivienne has come by this trait honestly. Like her mother before her, she is exhibiting all the signs of early problems, including clenching butt cheeks and refusal to poop saying “it is owie”.

This has happened twice since we returned from vacation. I decided that her reward for finally pooping last go round was the book “Everyone Poops” by Taro Gomi. (Strangely enough, I knew about this book because it sits prominently in my father’s guest bathroom, alongside “Walter the Farting Dog” and “The Gas We Pass”.)

Off to Barnes and Noble we went to find a few books on all things poop. Vivienne was delighted, telling everyone in the store who would listen that we were there to buy the poop book. We took it home much to her delight and read it at least 3 times before nap. Then Phil came home.

After putting Vivienne to bed that night, I asked if he read the poop book. He replied, “Yes, and it made me a little nauseous. I mean, it was so graphic and it was all about poop. Too much poop.”

Phil isn’t a big fan of the bodily function. He doesn’t have the same background as I do. But Vivienne, a week and a half later, still wants the book read every day. We talk about poop very often, give praise and hoot and holler when it all goes smoothly. There is still a lot of “Ewwwww’s” when it is brought up, but she is getting the point, albeit slowly.

I just keep thinking how proud Dad will be when he reads this.

SNDM Weblog

I am so very pleased to be able to bring this new blog to you. After all, I have been wanting to share this group of people with everyone for quite a while. For anyone who has heard me tell stories and reference them to my ‘Mom Message Board’ “My online friends”, then you will be pleased to learn that they are all real people. I wasn’t making them up, they are not invisible.

Please stop by and take a read. Sit and hang out a while. Leave comments on the posts. I know we will all be thrilled to have a new audience for our stories, ideas and advice.

http://sndm.net

In late 2002, I found out I was expecting my first child. I was terrified and overjoyed, but mostly terrified. So I did what any internet addict would do, I searched all over to find out information.

In doing so, I stumbled upon BabyCenter’s birth month section. Each month and year has its own message board. New mothers and mothers-to-be all join these boards looking for comfort, ideas, friendship, help and laughter. Mostly, they are looking for someone to share the pregnancy with that is going through exactly what they are.

I logged on to the June 2003 section in December of 2002. Mostly, I just read posts and laughed. I picked out the people I identified with and the ones I was scared of. I was addicted to it and read it all day long in between emails and phone calls at work. It wasn’t long before I started posting, made a few friends and was in on all the inside jokes.

After we all had our babies, we started getting closer. We had online chat times when up to 20 of us would do instant chat on the site and our personalities really started shining through. Then, all hell broke loose.

The problem with the internet is almost the same as the advantage; one can remain as nameless and distant as possible without feeling the real-life rudeness and discomfort of others. Along with this distance comes the real possibility of hurt feelings, people stirring up crap with others and being downright mean.

One of the members decided to branch out and create a place where the only initial rule was ‘respect each other’. Soon, we grew to 60 people and she gave us the name “So Not Drama Mammas”.

Since that time, I have spent 2 years getting to know many women that I would have never taken the time to speak to in person. In this situation, I was allowed to ‘listen’ to others opinions, voices and experiences without having to offer up feedback. I was able to share my experiences, as little or as much detail as I wanted, without worrying about someone being hurtful. We all felt safe.

I can honestly say that I have grown as a human in the past two years because of the friendships I have made with the SNDMs. I enjoy these women so much that I wanted to offer a space for all of them to share their voices with the world. So, I asked Phil (my wonderful web designer husband), to help me make this site.

Hopefully, as more people read and see this version of the SNDMs, they will also come to appreciate the universality of motherhood, love and family.