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Crazy kids! Last week Pumpkin was going to sleep (yeah, right) on a sleeping bag in our room. (We're kind of co-sleeping again, which is a whole 'nother post.) I came to check on him and found that he had pulled on one of my oh-so-lovely knee-high nylons.
Looking through our pictures from one year ago, on the exact same day, Sparkle was sporting this hosiery.
Lookin' good, boys, lookin' good!
I always check on the boys and give them a kiss before I go to bed. Here's how Sparkle was sleeping last night. I don't know how he managed to stay on the bed at all! After taking some pictures, I rolled him over onto the bed, and he slept soundly all night. (He likes to wear socks to bed, even in the summer, which gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.)
After I picked up the boys from school today, we headed to the grocery store. As we went up and down the aisles with Pumpkin standing in the cart, he fussed every once in a while because his shorts kept falling down. ("My butt is falling!" he said.) The shorts were a little too big anyway, and he was commando because he ran out of extra grundies at school. And I kept pulling his shorts back up, because the middle of a grocery store is not a good place for nakedness, as a general rule.
So we were kind of hurrying, and Pumpkin was fussing, and Sparkle was dawdling, and I kept turning back to yell at him encourage him to keep up. And when I turned back around toward the cart...
There was a giant glob of goopy poop in the bottom of the cart.
And Pumpkin was smeared with poop from the waist down.
It happened so fast! After a split second of horror, trying to take it all in, I grabbed Sparkle and bolted for the restroom. We left the cart outside the restroom and I carried Pumpkin at arm's length into the handicapped accessible stall, with Sparkle following behind.
Neither of my kids has ever had a blow-out like this one! I stripped Pumpkin and wiped him off as well as I could with toilet paper and a few wet bathroom towels. The clothing was not salvagable. (Oh well, $1.99 clearance Old Navy items.) The Crocs, though! I just paid $30 freaking bucks for the Crocs, so I threw them in the sink. I had Sparkle take off his shorts and underwear, and then put Sparkle's underwear on Pumpkin.
Meanwhile, our cart with the glob of poop was still sitting outside the restroom and people were coming in and out... I wonder what they were thinking. Perhaps I should have abandoned the cart and made a break for it, but we were almost done with the grocery shopping, and I didn't want to have to come back again later!
Armed with a handful of paper towel, I grabbed the poop glob from the cart and threw it away in the restroom. I layed some other towels over the still-poopy grate at the bottom of the cart (because, um... that's more sanitary, therefore totally acceptable for poop to be near food items, as long as you can't actually see the larger particles of poop...)
So with one clothed child, paper towel and Crocs in a plastic grocery bag in my cart, and another child wearing nothing but too-big underwear, we headed for the checkout.
And still, the horror was not over...
As we looked for a checkout line, I saw that there were smeared bits of poop on the floor for about 50 feet down the aisle in front of all the checkouts. It must have dripped through the cart, and apparently people had been walking through it, and pushing their carts through it.
We got in a line as far from the poop smears as possible, and I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. Maybe no one would make the connection! Hmm... Poop smears on the floor... Harried-looking mother with almost-naked two year old... Naw, couldn't be!
And still, more horror to come...
As I hastily threw groceries into the cart (avoiding the paper-toweled area), a grocery store employee came along, wiping down the bagging areas with a spray bottle and a rag. Of course, she came right up to the bagging area next to us.
And my dear Sparkle, in his loudest four-year-old voice said, "What are you doing?" (She said she was cleaning.) "There is poop on the floor over there!" (He pointed enthusiastically. Employee mumbled something, not sure what to say.) "There is a whole bunch of poop on the floor over there! Are you going to clean that up, too?"
When we finally (finally!) got out to the van, I loaded up the kids and the groceries. Then I called Beloved to let him know that he, or the Universe, or someone owed me big time.
We got home, I threw Pumpkin into the tub and scrubbed us both down, put a diaper on him, started a load of laundry (Crocs, post-poop bath towel, etc) on Extra Hot/Heavy Wash/Extra Rinse, turned on Sesame Street, ordered a pizza, and collapsed in an armchair in the playroom.
Hours later, I have just now recovered enough to tell you all about it.
I don't know if I can go to bed tonight. There are sure to be nightmares.
Sparkle is playing on a local 4 and 5 year olds soccer team this summer. In this picture, he was making sure his shoes and shin guards were going to work okay before the first practice.
He asked me, "Mama, what if I score a goal?" and I told him, "I'll be on the sidelines and I'll cheer extra loud for you when you score a goal!"
He thought about that and smiled a little, and asked, "Mama, what if I score all the goals?"
I love that kind of confidence, the ability to see himself as unstoppable!
I hope we can help him hang on to that confidence for a long, long time.
In only three more months, Pumpkin will be three. It was an adjustment for me to think of him as "two and a half" instead of "two" a few months ago. And soon he will be three! Unbelievable! He is the sweetest, bravest, smartest little boy!
Here he is blowing bubbles last weekend. I love how he cheers, "I can DO IT!" when he makes a particularly impressive bubble.
You know which book the boys love? It's this one: Luke Goes to Bat by Rachel Isadora. (Here's a summary: Luke's hero is Jackie Robinson. Luke wants to play baseball, but he isn't great at it, though he tries really hard. Jackie Robinson tells him never to give up, and Luke gets better at baseball.)
We have hundreds of children's books. We definitely buy more books than toys for the boys. It's not because we're snobby "we're-such-great-parents-we-only-buy-books" type of people, but mostly because books are entertaining and they don't take up too much space and they don't make noise.
Of course we have been deliberate about reading books with characters of many races, ages, genders, and family types. Most of them are actually good books. We don't buy a book that's not good just to add "diversity" to our collection.
Even though we have lots and lots of books, we specifically don't have any books (until now) where the focus of the book is on the athletic ability of a Black male character. I guess I just figured the boys would get enough of that "Black men as hero athletes" stuff.
Luke Goes to Bat is not a book we bought. It came in the mail as a part of a kindergarten readiness program in our school district. And the boys both love it!
Their response to the book surprised me. It isn't really a great book, I don't think. In fact, it's kind of confusing because Jackie Robinson shows up as a ghost-type-guy, tells Luke to never give up, and then disappears. Not something I would expect a toddler to get.
But they both want to read "Jackie Robinson!" and we've looked for pictures online, and they know that he was the first Black American to play major league baseball.
Neither of the boys could tell you who Martin Luther King, Jr. or Nelson Mandela are. If you're at my house, and you'd like to gauge our success as parents of Black boys by quietly taking them aside and checking their knowledge of Black male world leaders... Please don't judge us based on the blank looks my boys will give you if you ask them anything about MLK. Because blank looks there will be. Hey, we're working on it.
I'm not sure what to make of it. Do they just like the book because they're toddlers/preschoolers, and they have strange and changing tastes in literature? Have they already been exposed to the Black male as hero athlete stuff more than I realized, and are somehow identifying with that idea (oh, crap...)?
Should I encourage their interest, or should we work on developing an engaging puppet show about the life of Harriet Tubman?
The boys were playing "hockey" in the kitchen, which involves using two fly-swatters to hit a bottle cap around the floor. The "hockey puck" went under the stove, much to their dismay. So Sparkle used his fly-swatter to reach under the stove and pull out the bottle cap. Look at the treasures he found! (For honesty's sake, I have to tell you that there was also a, um... chunk... of unrecognizable food of some kind. When Sparkle pulled that out he said, "Eww!" and threw it back under the stove!)
We celebrated Beloved's birthday last weekend. The boys LOVE birthdays!
Sparkle and I made the cake together. ("We're a good cooking team, aren't we, Mama?") It is a great dessert to make in the summer with kids, because it's a frozen "cake" (no actual baking, no hot oven) made mostly of ice cream sandwiches. Sparkle was in charge of taking the cake out of the freezer and carrying it to the table. We all sang Happy Birthday (three times!), and ate some cake. Then Beloved opened a few presents and he and the boys had a wrestling match. Overall, a perfect day!
Here's the recipe for Hot Fudge Ice Cream Bar Cake:
Ingredients:
about 20 ice cream sandwiches
Hershey's chocolate syrup, one 16 oz can
whipped topping, 12 or 16 oz
3/4 c peanut butter
1 c salted peanuts
Pour the chocolate syrup into a microwave safe bowl and microwave for about two minutes. Don't let the syrup get hot enough to boil. Stir the peanut butter into the hot chocolate until smooth. Allow to cool.
Line the bottom of a 9x13 pan with a layer of ice cream sandwiches. Spread half of the whipped topping over the sandwiches. Spoon half of the chocolate mixture over that. Top with half of the peanuts. Repeat the layers. Freeze until firm, about one hour. Tah-dah!
Happy Birthday, Beloved! You're an amazing husband and father, and we love you very much!
Beloved and I are still in discussion on whether or not to have a third child. I hope we can just make a decision soon, because I'm emotionally tired from going over and over it.
(For background, you can read older posts one, two, three, four, and five.)
Neither of us is sure that we should have another kid, so the default decision is that we shouldn't. Yet I'm not sure of that as a decision either.
Yesterday I was quite confident that we don't need another child in our family.
My work schedule would have to change, daycare costs would go up, and the house would definitely feel cramped. We've been buying diapers continuously for over four years now, but Pumpkin is almost ready to be done. It's amazing how much freedom there is to do things when you don't have to carry twelve hundred million things with you every time you leave the house. The boys can both buckle their own car seats. They both do OK if their nap or meal schedule is a little off. They are amazing, engaging, perfectly wonderful kids. Another baby would really set us back!
Then tonight, I was sitting in a meeting where a new mom had brought her sleeping baby. The baby was on the floor in an infant seat across the room. I couldn't even see her. I wasn't thinking about babies or parenting. (Focusing dutifully on the meeting, of course!)
The baby gave a little fussing sound, and instantly my heart was in my throat.
"A baby! I want a baby!"
I'm frustrated with myself, actually. I am not a very sentimental person. I don't make emotional or impulsive decisions. I don't (usually) believe that one thing or another is "meant to be."
So WHY can I not just make a decision and choose to be at peace and happy about it, either way?
(Beloved is also not sure what we should do, but he is ridiculously easy-going, and would be fine either way.) (His personality is a weird combination of being easy-going in some situations and totally focused and driven in others.) (In a good way! It seems to work well for our marriage and for his career, in particular.)
And then I rediscover pictures like this:
Check out those knees! (The knees! Oh, my gosh, the adorable knees!) How could I turn away from the chance to kiss knees like those again!
So, yeah, I guess I'm officially undecided. Mostly.
Well, Sparkle has has two good days so far this week! Whoo-hoo! We're so proud of him, and he's proud of himself. We're trying to let him know that we are proud of him for working hard on this, and for learning to be self-controlled, rather than because he's "being good." I think he understands.
Now I need help with something else...
I am coming up dry on blogging topics. Do you have any suggestions? Questions? Ask me anything, and I'll do my best to answer.
Just because I think it's funny, here's a picture of Sparkle on his first day of school two years ago. (He was just over two years old.)
Why in the world do children do these things?
