Things I am Ungrateful For – part 2

By popular request,  a new list of crap that bugs me:

– Anti Meth commercials: They are big right now in  Arizona and consist of a recovering addict telling horrible stories of what they did while under the influence of meth. Do they REALLY think there is an addict out there or potential addict saying “wow, that sounds terrible, I better stop this”. My guess is that the addict or potential addict is saying “that won’t be me!!”. I’m not against anti-drug ads, just  this one.

– People who think the kids playground equipment is a great place to practice yoga: No sir, you “downward dog” is not at all freaking my child or me out. By all means, continue your creepiness.

– Parents who think their kids are geniuses: I think all parents think their kids are bright, I know I do. But I’m talking about the parents who think their kids are Harvard bound at age 8 months because, and I quote directly from a parent at swim lessons “Tommy is so smart! He made up his own sign language for milk!!”. Tommy is not smart. Tommy is hungry and is doing anything to get your attention and if patting his head is getting your attention, then that’s what he’s doing.

– People who give you a dirty look because you don’t let them go ahead of  you: Normally, I will let someone with less groceries in their cart go in front of me. But when the kid is teetering on melt down, my cart is slammed with food and I know we’ve got less than 20 minutes to get home, get cold stuff put away, and get a snack before nap time, I will not be letting you in front of me. Deal with it.

And now for something I am grateful for – good friends! Please check out Stephanie’s blog and enter for a chance to win a beautiful necklace. See the blog for details: http://www.babycross.wordpress.com.

Today makes me envy working moms…

Look, I know I have it amazing, ok? So no snarky “I would love to be home with my baby!!” comments, ‘kay?

Because the truth is, yes, 9 times out of 10, you would like to be home with your kiddo full time. But that 1 time out of 10, you’d rather be at the office and let someone else deal with your earpiercing screaming, klingy, so tired she can’t stand it but refuses to nap, kid. For the last 2 hours I’ve tried everything to get Baylie to go down for her afternoon nap. After the first 45 minutes, I gave up only to have her run around screaming and hitting because she’s exhausted. She even kicked Bear the dog. Not that I haven’t thought about that once in awhile, but he wasn’t doing anything to deserve it so it was unfair (trust me, she has lots of opportunities when he’s being bad to kick him so we need to be sure to praise when he’s not being bad). So I fed her a snack, broke down and gave her a bottle (after no bottles for the last 2 days, arg!!) and no sleepy. But when I release her from her swaddle, she instantly melts down. I bounced and rocked her in her cool, quiet and dark bedroom for an hour – she finally closed her eyes and when I put her down, they popped back open. At this point I would hold her if she would just fall asleep, but noooo. So how am I writting this post right now? Well, we’re all in a bit of a time out. Bear and Travis are in the laundry room having their dinner, Bay is in her crib with classical music on and lots of toys and books and I am writting in an effort to vent my frustration and then off to fold the 3+ baskets of laundry that have been waiting for the last several hours.

Don’t think this is a great solution – there are spurts of screaming, loud and sad “Momma!!’s”, yabbering and even calling for Bear (which comes out more like “Baaah!!” like she’s from Boston). The quiet timeout is going to continue for at least as long as it takes me to finish the laundry. Hopefully by then everyone will be in a nicer place and we’ll all be able to play hide and seek and “Where’s Travis??” in a nice, non dog kicking manner.

If not, the wine opens early.