But I don’t even like Bud Light, Sebastian

On Sunday, after my children had spent all Saturday at the zoo with their grandparents wearing costumes and dancing and Halloweening and decidedly not napping, and then Sunday afternoon also not napping but most definitely whining, we had Sebastian’s soccer party.

The soccer star. His team was Argentina. The
photographers did a pretty crappy job, but
you can still see how grown up and adorable
Sebastian is.

(Oh, did I not tell you Sebastian played soccer?  I’m not sure how that happened as I am a bit of an oversharer.  We had a couple of rough starts to practice wherein my son, who will scrape his face on the concrete and barely acknowledge it except to talk macabrely about the blood, got knocked down and refused to play anymore which was totally not expected and so we were at a loss as to how to proceed.  Mostly I employed worrying.  And stressing.  And then none of it mattered because he was fine and had a blast although didn’t take it a seriously as some of the other kids and parents and he learned lots of new bad words and wrestling moves.  Because whenever they weren’t kicking the soccer ball the entire team was in a pile on the ground wrestling and talking smack.  And I met some moms that I wished would become my New! Best! Friends! but who I was too afraid to ask out on a mom date.  The end.)

The party was the end of the season get-together where the coaches handed out trophies and awards to the kids.  It was held at Mr. Gattis, which we all know is the worst place in the history of ever and I wish it would just fall into the ground so I wouldn’t have to experience it’s loud, crowded, broken game area anymore, if nothing else to avoid seeing the half-naked video game girls on the games that are meant FOR CHILDREN YOU ASSHOLES. 

But being the amazing mother I am, I decided that I would take Sebastian anyway.  But really it was because I didn’t want to stay home with Miss No Nap for Two Days.  There were other smaller, toddler-esque children at Sebastian’s party, but none of them threw their plates on the floor or spit food at whoever was sitting across from them or flailed about limply in disgust whenever they were told to calm down, so I don’t think Adele would have fit in very well.  We decided to save ourselves the embarrassment and tears and not poke the bear.  She stayed home with Chris.

So as Sebastian and I were walking into Mr. Gattis the wind blew a can right near our feet.  Sebastian, being the responsible citizen he is, picked it up.

Somebody dropped this!  They shouldn’t have done that!  They should have thrown it away! That’s not nice.

I agreed with him, that it wasn’t very polite to throw random cans on the ground.  And then I got a closer look as he handed it to me.

Bud Light.  And it still had some in it.

I wanted so bad to just throw it back on the ground, but Sebastian was proud of himself for knowing that it’s kind of rude to throw trash on the ground and he was watching me and I didn’t want to confuse him and there are lessons we have to teach our children, such as DON’T THROW BEER CANS IN THE PARKING LOT OF A PIZZA PLACE BECAUSE A 4 YEAR OLD MIGHT PICK IT UP AND HAND IT TO THEIR MOTHER, THUS MAKING HER DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT.

But of course, that wasn’t where it ended.  At first I thought there would be a garbage can outside the building because there always seems to be one outside of buildings.

There wasn’t.

Okay.

So I brought it into the restaurant.  And I endured all of the looks from strangers that bored into my skull and emitted disapproving telepathic signals straight into my person.   And I knew what they were thinking. 

I wanted to shout “It’s not mine!  I SWEAR!  But I figured that the more I protested, the worse it would be for everyone.  You know, all those people waiting in line ahead of me because of course I couldn’t just calmly walk up to the front and find a garbage.  Nope.  I waited there with Sebastian drawing attention to himself as he usually does because he was excited about his party and doesn’t pass by a stranger without introducing himself.  And there I was, holding a half-full beer can in line at Mr. Gattis while my son discussed his championship party with nearby patrons.

I finally saw someone I could ask to throw away the beer can for me, while making sure that I told her that my son picked it up in the parking lot, possibly trying to imply that maybe they should have been better about cleaning that shit up so a mother of a 4 year old model citizen wouldn’t have to melt into a puddle of mortification when her son makes her carry it around until she finds a garbage can.

Also, put garbage cans outside.  We could have avoided all of this if they would have just put a damn garbage can outside.

She didn’t believe me.  I could tell by her raised eyebrow.

Homemade Friday: Halloween Garland on a Stick

Yesterday Sebastian was searching for something to do, which basically entailed him walking behind me saying "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

I'd been thinking about making a Halloween craft with him and thought that this might be a good time.  Actually, what I really thought was "If it will get you to stop whining my name so much, then FINE. LET'S CRAFT."

But that's not what I said.  Obviously.

We started a little late and so had to rush through to get done before Adele woke up.  So that means that I let Sebastian watch me cut out ghosts and pumpkins and bright blue bats because we didn't have any black felt.  He did decide what the faces would look like on the little Halloween shapes.  And he did keep picking up my needle I used to attach thread and telling me how sharp it was.

A word of advice if you decide to make something like this: Don't take it outside on a windy day to take pictures.  Otherwise you will get photos like this:

And then you will spend 10 minutes untangling it.  As I had put in the effort, I felt it only fair that Sebastian forgo his need to use the bathroom and let me continue to take his picture.  Here he is complaining about needing to pee:

And this is after the bathroom break and after I gave up getting an outside photo and way after Sebastian was done with the whole silly craft:

I hung it over our window in our back room/play room:

And here's how it looks from outside:

And here's how I felt about untangling all of those strings multiple times because of wind and various excited 4 year olds who wouldn't hold still and stop swinging the branch around:

Sebastian likes it, though.  He says it's part of our haunted house.

In case you were truly interested in what I did, I cut out shapes by hand - pumpkins, ghosts and bats - using felt.  Then I drew faces with a sharpie - either happy, sad or scary, whichever Sebastian wanted.  We went out into the yard and found a big stick, then I attached all the shapes to the stick with black thread.  I didn't measure anything, as you would expect.

When Chris got home he noticed it right away and said "Hey, that's neat!"  I'm assuming he meant "Hey! Looks like you actually did something today!"

But I could be over-analyzing ...

Potty training is the best thing ever

If you were to ask me how potty training was going, I would direct your attention to the amount of times I’ve cleaned pee up off of the floor in the last week, versus the amount of times the potty has been actually used for its purpose instead of just as a hat.

I’ll let you guess which one is bigger.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Just kidding!  You thought you were getting out of here with a tasteful description of this next phase in Adele’s development.  You haven’t been reading long, have you?

I got a little ikea potty not that long ago because it’s about twice as small as the giant puppy potty we used for Sebastian, which was cumbersome and annoying and half the time the pee didn’t actually make it into the potty. 

I wasn’t entirely sure Adele was ready.  She did show some interest, and by interest I mean that she barged her way into the bathroom every time I was in it, demanding toilet paper and to flush the toilet herself thankyouverymuch.  If you didn’t comply there was much yelling and thrashing and she may even have taken a swing or two.

She takes it very seriously, apparently.

With Sebastian I waited awhile, until he was between 2 ½ and 3.  I wanted to wait until Adele was born and we were all sort of settled into being a new family of four before I attempted training because I knew that any new change, such as a brand new sister, would completely uproot all the work we’d done to get him trained.

And it wasn’t too bad, I guess, in spite of the pooping in the driveway episode. 

I figured I would start Adele a little earlier since I’m here with her all day, and we could spend most mornings here by ourselves focusing on the task at hand.  And by focusing I mean opting for the no pants rule and shoving the potty under her when she starts to pee.

She’s peed on the potty exactly once on purpose.  All week.  Once.  She’s also pooped on it once.  It’s like, she knows she has to pee, she gets that part.  But she’s still a little scared to use the potty.  She’ll run around saying ‘PEEPEE! PEEPEE!” and I know she’s got to go, but she doesn’t want to sit down long enough.

And now she refuses to wear diapers except when she’s sleeping, so whenever she’s wearing pants basically I’m just changing pull-ups like I would diapers.  And those bastards are expensive.

I know it takes a little bit for it to all click into place. 

But damn.  I’m tired of cleaning the floor.

Yes, I do let her go out in public looking like this.

Motherhood and More: Housework slides down priority list

I’ll never be a domestic goddess.

I’ll also never enjoy the phrase “domestic goddess,” but that’s a whole other column.

But I’m not sure I was made for this type of work. I mean, I don’t necessarily care I’ve had stacks of magazines on the end table for months and every month the stack just keeps growing. I keep meaning to go through them and get rid of the ones I don’t need — probably all of them — but I don’t ever seem to have the time. Or the desire.

There always are toys strewn about almost every room in the house, including the bathroom for some reason. And there are Lego pieces pretty much everywhere you look but they’re small, and so, hide well. But I refuse to spend all day following my children around picking up all the toys they haphazardly drop just to drive me crazy. I’ll have to do it again in five minutes.

There’s dust where it shouldn’t be, there’s unorganized books on the bookshelf, there’s dirty dishes in my sink. And my bedroom has somehow become a catch-all area.

That’s life. Or it’s my life, I guess.

Still, it bugs me. I would love to be better at this sort of thing. I would love to have my house spotless first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And I mean the whole house, even the closets, not just the parts you see without opening any doors.

But I’ve never been that way. And I don’t think of myself as lazy, though some might disagree. But everything is even harder now. It’s like, I feel like I’m finally at a point in my life where I will clean when I need to instead of watching television or reading a book but it’s so difficult to sweep the kitchen floor without the 4-year-old running back and forth through the dirt or wash dishes without the 2-year-old thinking it’s time for her to play in the water.

I know it’s a little anti-girl power, whatever that means, but I do want to excel at this. I want to have a household schedule and stick to it, I want to be organized, I want to have meals planned for the entire month and I want to get rid of all the dust.

And I’m getting there, slowly.

But cleaning still is pushed to the side, mainly because I’m so much better at it when no one is around and someone always is around.

The other day I was doing laundry and washed our sheets, telling myself I had to remember to put them in the dryer and back on the bed before it was actually time for bed. But then I forgot about them. All day.

I remembered late, probably around 10 p.m., that they still needed to be dried.

And so there I was, at 11:30 p.m. with my one nice set of sheets and blankets still in the dryer, with myself and my husband exhausted and ready to sleep.

And all I could think was Martha Stewart would never be in this predicament.

*This column originally published in The News-Enterprise on October 24, 2012.