Metal Meredith

I never wanted to have kids when I was a teenager. I thought I couldn’t remove myself from my selfish behavior enough, nor could I share my future husband with anyone else. After I met Phil, I changed my mind. He was just cute enough that I wanted to see what we could make.

When pregnant with Vivienne, I very much wanted to glow. I wanted to be beautiful, sexy pregnant woman who wasn’t afraid to show her big ol’ stomach to the world. None of those things happened either. I was sick, I felt gross and ugly the entire time. I was exhausted and nauseous for most of the 9 months. So why would someone do that again, you ask? I have no idea. But we are.

I would love to say that seeing that positive test result filled me with joy and anticipation, but it didn’t. I would love to say that I am so looking forward to expanding my family, but I am not. Right now, it is just a fight to survive the next 7 months without getting sick each morning, without turning into a giant ball of acne, without replacing a smile with a series of yawns. I cannot look forward enough to decide what we will do with Vivienne when the time comes to go to the hospital. We haven’t given one second of thought to a nursery, to gadgets and gear, to child proofing and storage space.

As Vivienne grows older, I knew that I would find less things appealing about having a newborn, sleep deprivation, the ‘blob’ stage. And I have. It was a matter of ‘now or never’ rather than ‘when’. Vivienne impresses me each day with the things she says, information she retains and talks about later and her daily challenges for independence. When I told her she was going to be a big sister, she asked me what the baby’s name is. I had to tell her I didn’t know yet. She asked me if it was a boy or girl. Again I told her I didn’t know. She told me that we would “talk later about it more”. Um, sure.

So, if anyone would like to volunteer to come clean my house, make my family meals, play with my kid, and just generally take over for me for the next 6 or so months, I would appreciate it. Until then, I will just be curled up in my bed with a milkshake, cheese, pickles and some ginger ale.

This is your only warning.

When you don’t have kids, the horror stories start at “terrible twos”. When you have kids, you come to know better.

I was expecting Vivienne to turn into a beast overnight when she turned two. When she was very little, I overheard some moms talking about their toddlers. I clearly remember exactly what one said to the other “Terrible Twos? No way. Three is so much worse.” I was very nervous at that point.

Welcome to almost-three. Please, take a seat and let’s chat about it. I will tell you a few stories of the past week and you decide.

Sunday: Vivienne went through another non-pooping weekend and by Sunday she resembled Andy Rooney’s permanent furrowed brow. At noon, Phil and I decided to administer a little something to make things “run more smoothly” for her.

Although the label clearly said it would work in 15 min up to one hour, 8 hours later she was hitting and screaming and crying at both of us until she finally cleared out. After she picked out a “poopie prize” (yes, it has come to that), she informed both Phil and I that she was all done and would never poop again. We looked at each other, smirked and thought “Great.”

Tuesday: We met my sister at the Mall for some lunch and some playtime. Since Monday was a happy day, Tuesday started the cycle of full of crap = nasty attitude all over again. After she curled up on me when she was done eating, I thought we were in for a nice afternoon. Of course, this was just a ploy to get to the playground.

She spent a good hour jumping, climbing, playing with other kids, running around, laughing, sliding and having a great time. When it was time to go, I gave her two warnings. On that last, I waited for her to go down the slide, informed her it was the last time and then grabbed her when she came out.

Suddenly and without warning, her head spun around 360 and she started spitting pea soup all over the….ok, maybe not that bad, but it wasn’t pretty. Fortunately, if my sister ever questioned her decision not to have kids, she was immediately satisfied. Vivienne proceeded to hit me, scream as loud as she could, spit at me, spit again, kick, go limp and then yell a few more times as I picked her up with one arm and grabbed her shoes with the other.

It didn’t end there. She yelled most of the way home until I started to talk to Phil on the phone. She then proclaimed that she was angry and showed me so by pushing her brow in and down, glaring straight at me and pursing her lips. It didn’t stop until she fell asleep at naptime.

Wednesday: After school, she typically plays with Sam in the school parking lot median, transporting the gravel from one end to the other in the “Gravel Relocation Project 2006”. On Wednesday, she walked straight to the car, grabbed the keys from my hand, turned around and looked right at Sam. “No Sam, I go home now,” as she put her hand right up in front of her and turned to get into the car. Ouch.

Thursday: So far today, we have been in time out twice, where she is forced to sit in her tiny chair, facing a closed door in the extra room. It isn’t a happy place and she knows it. After enduring her spitting at me for not getting Her Majesty juice right when she asked, it was time out for her. Instead of her typical 2-3 minutes, it lasted 6 because she would yell, scream, kick the door and continue to spit.

When I finally came into the room to collect her, I sat down next to her and didn’t say a word. She looked up and said (with a tiny smile, I might add), “I kicked the door and spit at you when you were in the other room.”

Lord. Help. Me.

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.