A few months ago we traded in our beloved Subaru Outback wagon for a brand spanking new soccer mom-esque mini-van.  I must confess that while I was excited by the prospect of a new automobile, I was not initially jazzed about a mini-van being my go-to choice for transport.  I was fiercely loyal to my Subaru. I felt rebellious and cool in the parking lot after school in a sea of mini-vans; my manual transmission a big anarchist’s “A” in the face of all the other van-driving mommies. (Right now you all should be thinking, “Newsflash:  the station wagon was the mini-van of two generations’ ago.”) But like that nerdy  dork of a guy who turns out to be a diamond in the rough, I gradually became enamored with the promise of a large cargo hold, the ability to actually car-pool with my kids’ friends, decent gas efficiency and if I had my way, leather trim, a back-up camera and satellite radio…

The Subaru, while trusty and reliable for the past seven years was showing its age. And while plenty of devotees hold on to their Subees for at least two times this easily, we were just done. So we did our research, we test drove, we compared and contrasted and finally settled on a very beautiful Honda in a seductive mocha metallic finish totally befitting of the suburban mommy I had become.

I can fondly recall the excitement surrounding my family’s purchase of a new car when I was a kid. There was the stately black Buick Regal with its vinyl top, then there was the sporty Mercury Capri with its bucket seats, and then finally the sexy champagne colored Toyota Celica Supra with those headlights that futuristically flipped up and down… It was fun scrambling around the showroom, sitting in the driver’s seat, touching things on the dash we weren’t normally allowed to touch. Everything was new and shiny….and then, voila! A new car! Life was good.

When my husband and I made our announcement about our new car, we braced for similar excitement expressed by our children, complete with lively rounds of “Cool!!!! When can we take a ride in it!” But what we got instead was a seven-year old immediately bursting into hysterics and in between shoulder-shaking sobs, him dramatically crying out, “But… but… Why? I love the Subaru. It’s the only car I have ever known. How could you do this to me?”

Upon reflection, we hadn’t made any real effort to discuss the potential purchase of a new car with the kids in advance of its actual purchase. I didn’t think it was necessary to call a family meeting in order to “soften the blow” caused by the new tricked out mini-van,  because to me buying a mini-van was not as life-changing as like, say, having another baby or moving to Tibet or even getting a new puppy might be.

This apparent fierce and soul-crushing love our seven-year old had for the Subaru caught me off guard and in another one of my finer moments, rendered me completely devoid of empathy for what he was experiencing. “Come on!” I said to him incredulously, playfully mussing up his thick crown of dark hair. “Are you kidding me dude? New cars are so cool! You will love it when you see it… I promise…There’s so much more space and all these cool buttons to push…and a back-up camera!!!” This was met simply with, “How? How could you give away the only car I have ever loved?” As he was going on and on with the histrionics, I made a mental note to write to Subaru’s marketing department, for their advertising campaign was clearly the most effective in the whole industry if they were able to capture the heart of a seven-year old non-driver.

Look, I do recognize that people can and do feel all sorts of deep love for their cars. In fact, I think I saw a television ad recently where a Subaru owner whose life was saved by his Subaru was standing in a junk yard emotionally saying goodbye to his trashed car as he yanked the gear shift cover out as a memento.  So I get it. But these car loyalists are usually adults with driver’s licenses. My son is only seven and just learned how to ride a two-wheeler. And furthermore, nothing of any major significance ever happened in that car… Nothing at all. He wasn’t conceived in that car. He wasn’t born in that car. The most we had ever done in that car was eat some chicken nuggets and change a few poop diapers…

I figured at some point he would just get over it, but he didn’t. He moped around the house for days as if his best friend was moving away, searching me with his tear-filled eyes “Why, Mom? Why?” Finally, I could not take his dramatic shit anymore and so I screamed, “For g-d’s sake, you need to get over this dude! It’s not like this car was a relative or a friend! It’s just a car! It’s just a thing! Metal and rubber and glass! You are acting like I told you your stuffed bunny rabbit’s ears fell off, when all that is going on here is that we are buying a new car and just so you know, most people think that getting a new car is COOL!”

Mr. Intractable looked at me with his puppy dog eyes and said, “But there is nothing wrong with the Subaru and even if there was something wrong with it, why don’t you and Daddy just fix it?” My boy, ever the pragmatist, indeed raised a valid point. Why, when there were only 65,000 miles on the car and we owned it free and clear, were we getting a new one? Well, it was going to need new head gaskets in less than a year and that repair alone was close to $2000.00. To us, that was the slippery slope whereby the old reliable Japanese stand-by turned into a money-sucking vortex of frustration.

On the eve before we were to trade in the Subaru for the new mini-van, the seven-year old went to bed still deflated.  I went to bed feeling frustrated as hell but then that old friend of mine, Guilt, started to creep in making me feel like the grand prize winner of the “Biggest Bitch on Earth” contest because I couldn’t muster up any empathy for what the kid was going through. If a friend moved away or a pet died or a bully was bugging him, I would be right there to squeeze all my love into him and make it better. But his attachment and connection to this car, this thing, was just something I could not relate to.

So I decided to take an informal poll of my mom-friends to see whether any of them had experienced this type of reaction from any of their kids when buying a new car. Much to my surprise, quite a number of them reported that their children too “had a hard time with change” when it came to a new car purchase. I was humbled, for it never dawned on me that something like buying a new car could represent security-threatening change to a kid. It never occurred to me to look at this event through the lens of a child. My child. I had to make this right.

In the light of a new day, the morning that the trade was to go down, my son came to the kitchen dressed and ready for summer camp, but clearly still sullen. I considered this beautiful sensitive child for a moment and how unsettled the poor kid was feeling and decided that we should immediately go into the garage, climb into the Subaru, and sit in it one last time as a family to take turns eulogizing the car. There were tears, stories, laughs and hugs, the three-year old made up nonsensical stories about the car and a princess and Dora and a dragon and a cookie. I took silly snapshots of the boy hugging and kissing the car goodbye, and afterwards I think we all felt a little better. As we climbed out of the Subaru for the last time, I thought of that television ad and I turned and dramatically reached in the car to pull out the gear shift cover to keep for the seven-year old. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tug that sucker loose. So I settled for the ashtray. I wiped back a rogue tear, went back into the house and gave the ashtray to the seven-year old.

Then later that morning at the camp bus stop, the most ridiculous thing happened. My son, you know the one moping for days over the whole new car thing? Well, he ran up to his counselor Mike with a noticeable spring in his step and announced with unmistakable glee, “Hey Mike! Guess what? We are getting a brand new mini-van today!!! It has a back-up camera in it… How cool is that!!!”

If any of you were thinking that my extended silence can be attributed to some amazing development in my children’s sleeping habits and that I have been greedily indulging in gobs of restorative sleep, don’t waste your time… My children are still the shitty sleepers that they always have been; they still take endless amounts of time to actually go to sleep and do a piss poor job of actually staying asleep.

About six weeks ago, my computer caught a nasty virus and quickly passed, taking all my work with it and killing my ability to write my tales of woe.  Now my dead computer is being held hostage at Data Doctors for an appalling three hundred dollar ransom, and though I miss my work dearly, I am finding it hard to cough up this princely sum for its release.  Sadly the death of my laptop was solely my fault;  apparently one has to renew virus protection periodically, and apparently  I failed to notice/chose to ignore  the blinking flashing swirling beeping and honking yellow exclamation points letting me know that my computer was at risk… I suppose it was naïve of me to think I was invincible when it came to computer viruses. But I digress.

So though I have not entered into a parenting stage approaching normalcy (meaning, that of everyone else I know similarly situated) complete with healthy doses of quality sleep, and quality time with my hunky husband, I can report that things have marginally improved. Now instead of me lying on the floor of the toddler’s (now preschooler’s) room seething while my extremities go numb for an hour, I have somehow managed to kiss and go, with the proviso that I can do this as long as I am sitting just outside her door in the hallway with my (new) computer. This is a win-win because I get to do something other than go stark raving mad in the dark and she still gets to keep me in her sights as she drifts off to sleep. This new method is especially effective when I have to put both children to bed on my own because now I really can technically be in two places at once.

But while I have gotten some relief in this department, things have seemingly run afoul during the “pre-game” show. Now there is all sorts of pre-bedtime mishegas that sometimes actually make me feel wistful for the simple days of lying on the floor for hours contorted and in the dark. There is “Extended Bath Time”, where the newly minted second grader requests some extra time to “chill” in the tub (Child: “After you finish washing my hair, I just feel like relaxing here in the tub for a bit, Mom. Okay?” Me: “Oh, really, had a rough day in the second grade, did you?”) I am not sure what all of that is about, but I do know this: if I do not have the luxury of time to just “chill” in the tub, then hey, neither should you, you unemployed parasite of a second grader.

Come bath time, especially because I have to administer two separate baths, I am all business: get in, lather it up, rinse it off and get out. I know without a doubt that if I had more than two children I would just march them outside every night and toss them a bar of soap while I brusquely and unceremoniously hosed them down. And though I am fairly certain that I am sucking every last bits of joy out of bath time, it seems that everything they do lately, from getting in and out of the car, to eating and getting dressed, to coming when I call for them, takes for-ev-er, and it drives me batty because I come from the land of speed and efficiency. My motto is “Get the job done fast and move on.”

There is probably some middle ground where I could ease up and not be so militant and they could be more responsive to me than the semi-comatose slugs they are prone to be…but there are some days, days when I have not slept, when I have been cranking it all day long between work-work, house-work, and mommy-work… that I simply cannot stand to sit on that tiny bathroom stool in that tiny prison cell of a bathroom for more than a nanosecond anxiously waiting till they tell me that either the water has turned cold or someone has to pee. My irritation is compounded by a factor of two because after the first bath, I have to do it all over again for the other one, emptying and cleaning the tub, filling it up again, and ensuring there is an adequate bubble to water ratio.

Then after dinner, after the kitchen is cleaned up, after bath time, after pajamas but before tooth brushing time, they have also devised what is known as “Cereal Time” (Child: “Mom… it’s not like we are asking to eat Oreos before bed! Just wholesome ‘whole grain’ Cheerios!” and “You wouldn’t want us to starve, would you?”). Within the sacred confines of my head, to this I reply:  I think “Cereal Time” is a load of crap. In my world, after dinner the kitchen is closed. So note to my children– I really have no problem with you going to bed starving till you wake up the next day to eat your organic blueberry waffles slathered with Nutella.

But my hunky husband holds a completely different philosophy than I do on this matter, something having to do with him feeling “heartsick” at the mere thought of his children going to bed hungry (even though they ate a full plate of chicken nuggets with a chocolate chip cookie chaser just two hours’ prior). This perplexes me because it’s not like he grew up during the Irish potato famine or the Great Depression for heaven’s sake, so he’s got no real first-hand knowledge of “starving”. He’s a Jewish guy from northern New Jersey with a solid history of being well-fed, so I don’t get it. I mean, COME ON, it’s not like our kids would ever be confused with actual starving children who have flies crawling all over their sad little faces while they eat spoonfuls of dirty river water that one might see and be tempted to even adopt on those infomercials designed to tug at one’s heart and purse strings at the vulnerable hour of 3 a.m.!! But there are just so many battles one can fight in a given day. And I don’t want my long lasting legacy to be that of the family’s sole joy-sucking Grinch mother at every turn. So now I quietly dole out the bowls of cereal and smile as I pour the milk, trying to think happy thoughts as I go.

Next we come to Story Time (Child: “Mom, how about we act out some ‘Frog and Toad’ stories? I’ll be Frog, you can be Toad.” Me: “Um well, it takes me some time to ‘get into character’ and it’s way past your bedtime.” Child: “Okay, will you read to us about how the Earth was created?” Me: “Um, son, it’s 8:45; way too late to give equal time to both the scientific and biblical versions of the answer to this very well thought out question.” Child: “Okay, how about reading to us about how hair grows?” Me: “Um, well, that is just too biological a story for before bed.”)… Don’t get the wrong impression I really do like to read stories to them. I love snuggling close with a good book or three, reading aloud with silly voices for all the different characters, but I think in all fairness that three books, three short books max, is aplenty.  But when it comes to story time, they have an insatiable appetite. So I spend just as much time saying, “No, no, no, no, no…. three stories is enough!” as I do reading the actual stories.

Tooth brushing time is another time-sucker complete with lively rounds of “He goes first!”, “No, she goes first!”, “But I went first yesterday!”, “No, I did!”, then giving way to, “I want to go first!”, “No, I do!”, “She’s pushing me off the stool!”, “It’s my stool!”, “”It has my name on it!”, “I want to try flossing!” “No, I want to try flossing!” Me: “Um, you both can try flossing?”, “No, I do it!” It’s just a hazy swirl of little toothbrushes, splashing water and small elbows. I am not really sure if their teeth ever get brushed in all this craziness. But I can only hope.

Once they finally are asleep, it feels as though I have run a marathon and I am dog-tired as I drag myself across the threshold of my bedroom and haul myself into bed. These children of mine, who I love so very much, well they still wake at ridiculously early morning hours. The second grader is slightly better than the preschooler in this arena. He gets up at around a roosterly yet tolerable 6:00 a.m. But the preschooler routinely kicks our door down SWAT-team style somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., climbing over me and wedging herself between us on a nightly basis. So in summation, nothing has really changed and yes, even though my children are waaaaaaay past the newborn-it’s-all-about-survival stage, here I am still sleep deprived, still insane. Have you seen me lately? My hair is half gray, usually untamed and huge, my eyebrows are in need of some TLC and most likely only one leg is shaved (this is probably too much information. I know.).

As a mother to both a son and a daughter, I have what I believe to be the best of both worlds. Having come from a long line of females, I was excited to learn that my firstborn was going to be a boy. I love being a mother to my son, seeing how the young male brain works and having the chance to experiment on him daily to make him a better specimen of man is very cool (the latter part is a joke. Sort of). Of course, as any normal mother will admit, all I wanted was healthy children regardless of gender. But when my daughter was born, I must admit that I was totally psyched! I love knowing that my daughter will be my partner in crime until such time that she becomes a teenager and if history is any indication, she turns on me and becomes a moody little bitch of the highest order.

My daughter has been on this planet for a little over three years now and upon observing her in the “wild,” I believe that I now have sufficient anecdotal evidence to support the ancient human societal and cultural phenomenon known as the “hunter-gatherer” social system, whereby the men go out and hunt for meat and the women forage for grains and fruits. For over four years I’d only had our son to observe and he’s a definite hunter, not in the sense that he has hunted and killed anything we’ve eaten for dinner, obviously, but more so in the context of playtime. Place him in a habitat full of toys and games, say someone’s finished basement which runneth over with toys, and he will scan the room, quickly hone in on exactly what he wants to play with and then strike.

Contrast him to my two lovely nieces who are a bit younger than my son. I’ve had a number of years to observe them in the “wild” as well. When we’re all together, I’ve noticed that on many an occasion when the girls are placed in the same finished basement full o’ toys type of environment, they will invariably find some sort of gathering device, say a bucket, small bag or a box. Then they will rummage around in the toys, plucking nuggets out and squirreling them away, carrying their spoils around with them for hours. They never ever place their buckets, handbags or boxes out of arm’s reach. And if you got the rare opportunity to peek inside one of their gathering vessels, you might find all sorts of chazerai: pieces of chalk, beads, blocks, scraps of paper, bouncy balls, various and assorted game pieces, princess-y type accessories, hair bows, erasers, and maybe some forbidden items, like small broken electronic devices (cell phones or cameras), guitar picks, wallets, pistachio nuts or hard candy. They clutch onto their catch possessively and watching them try to do other things like gather more stuff, or eat or even go to the bathroom always makes me chuckle; these two tiny beautiful girls trying to navigate an ice cream cone while toting around two tons of crap is a sight to see.

At first I put the notion that there were anthropological roots to this behavior aside, for these nieces are my sister’s daughters, and while I love my sister with all of my heart, I can tell you that after many years of living with her, she could be classified as a borderline hoarder had she not been rescued by my very neat and orderly brother-in-law. But now I am beginning to notice that my pint-sized daughter is definitely a gatherer in her own right and quite possibly a hoarder, the likes of which they make reality shows about on TLC. She is either living out her anthropological destiny or she inherited this genetic trait from my sister.

I believe that the triggering event was the result of my parents giving my daughter a small soft pink backpack as a gift a few months’ ago. This backpack now accompanies the three-year old wherever she goes and she is very territorial over it. No one is allowed to touch it, open it, look inside of it, mention it or even think about it.  She brings it into her bedroom before she goes to bed every night and she drags it into the bathroom when she pretends to go potty.

The other day she was insistent that we take that backpack on our trip to the supermarket. Wanting to be a good sport, I said okay and proceeded to reach for it to pick it up. She immediately started screaming at me not to touch it as if I was going to steal her stash, when I noticed that this thing had some heft to it. I became quite concerned that she would get a hernia if she toted it around. I was also really really curious as to what could possibly be inside of it. So ignoring her cries of “It’s mine!” and a more angrily spat out, “Don’t touch my backpack, Mama!” I brought it into the kitchen and hoisted it up on to the counter high out of her reach. She was grabbing at my legs and batting at me with all of her little might, she was so riled up.  A quick flash appeared in my head of what her teenage years will be like…

In this cute little backpack I found about fifty crayons plus a sharpener, a few tubs of Play-Doh, a bag of pretzels, assorted baubles and beaded necklaces (mostly lifted from me), six bouncy balls, alphabet refrigerator magnets, pieces of broken chalk, two rubber watches, pictures of Elmo, Cookie Monster, Minnie Mouse and her brother, three plastic plates and three plastic forks from her princess tea set, about twenty Lego’s I know she swiped from her brother’s room, my calculator, an old wallet, rocks from the garden, some Tinker toys, a pen and pencil (which I confiscated), a box of raisins, a deck of cards, a flashlight, two small board books about colors, four binkies, a pack of tissues, and a partridge in pear tree. It was an interesting and eclectic mix of crap that I am sure had lots of meaning to her, and I was happy to find the calculator I had been searching for every day for a month.

The other day I had to go food shopping. I had to both “hunt” and “gather” for my family. I had no desire to go to the supermarket whatsoever, for I was tired and it was really really hot out, but we were running low on supplies. Prior to my trip to the market, I painstakingly made an actual shopping list, even planned out a few meals for the week (nary a chicken cutlet in sight) so that I could attack this mission with military-like precision. Then I quickly got dressed, grabbed my big yellow leather tote bag, doled out my kisses and was on my merry way. I figured that I could be in and out of the market in an hour…

I got to the supermarket, found a wagon and I was off and running. Usually when I food shop, the list is contained in my head, but I have found lately that this method leads to all sorts of trouble: forgetting the necessities, impulse buying, buying in triplicate, and generally spending too much money. But when I go out of my way to make an actual list, I habitually leave it at home; it is almost pathological. I will take the better part of an hour making a list, then I will leave for the market only to have my husband call me and tell me that I forgot the list, but by then I am too far gone to turn back. I will ask him to email the list to me, but by the time he gets around to booting up the computer, the damage is already done. I have shopped, forgotten the bananas, coffee and toilet paper, but remembered this new prosciutto and mozzarella pin wheel sort of a thing, lobster tails and some new coconut scented shampoo (it was organic!).

On this day, I knew I had stuffed that list in my tote bag; I was certain of it. The trouble was that my handbags tend to resemble a black hole after a week or two and I hadn’t yet engaged in operation handbag reorganization, so I had to dig around for this list for a few minutes. In my bag were a few Pull-ups (clean ones), gum (that really good new gum that tastes like chocolate chip mint ice cream!), a 100 calorie pack of almonds, a Clementine, three bottles of hand sanitizer, some band-aids and antibiotic cream, my wallet, my new Android, my Nook, my iPod, a small bottle of water, my reading glasses, my sunglasses, a mirror, a box of raisins, three hair clips, some crayons, about a yard’s worth of wadded up receipts, four lip glosses (in the necessary plummy, nude, pink, and red shades), some expired coupons, five pens, none of which had any ink left, and a ton of loose change. Interesting. The comparisons to my daughter’s pink backpack were eerie. But still no list to be found. I was trying to keep my cool. I knew I had that g-d damned list. I just knew it. To call home and see if it was there on the counter or lying on the driveway would be to admit defeat. I started to sweat as I frantically dug through that yellow bag… to no avail. I was tearing that flippin’ bag apart, determined to pull that list out of it, sweating, and cursing under my breath when I thrust my hands in my coat pocket in utter despair… And then there, in my right hand coat pocket was my list.

I wonder whether it truly is part of our genetic makeup that women and girls the world over wield giant handbags and tote around lots of crap while boys and men trot around with only their slim wallets. I guess it doesn’t really matter. But reflecting on it a bit, it makes sense. Women the world over are caregivers. We are the ones counted on to be prepared. We are the ones our kids turn to when they need to blow their noses or when they skin their knees or when they need a snack. We are the ones our husbands turn to when they need an aspirin or something to clean their glasses with, or a toothpick. So it is all as it should be. Besides, those guys who carry man-purses freak me out.

It is Monday evening and the kiddies are asleep… (Amen.). I’m sitting in the kitchen jotting down the shopping list for the grocery store, taking inventory of what we need, what we have, and what I can make for supper during the week, when it suddenly dawns on me that last week, and I am pretty sure quite possibly a good portion of the week before, I fed my family a diet that consisted primarily of breaded chicken cutlets… It’s true. I’m not proud. There was no beef, no fish, not even pasta… It was chicken cutlets all week-long. Like Shark Week on the Discovery Channel or something.

What the hell was I thinking? Apparently something other than variety in my family’s dinner menu, that’s for sure. I might have rotated a veggie or two, which might as well have been the plastic veggies from the kids’ play kitchen, because the corn and peas are treated as just for-show vegetables and routinely ignored. So it was the chicken cutlet that sustained them nightly. Don’t get me wrong, I like to cook, really, I do. I love reading cookbooks. I love recipes, I love trying new foods, new textures, I love cheeses and olives and fish and spices and ethnic foods. I love to eat. But I have two forces working against me: (1) I am not a great cook. (I have already disclosed my limited repertoire and crippling fear of seasoning.) I am so not free in the kitchen and am afraid to improvise… I don’t pinch, dash, or sprinkle. I measure with scientific precision…which leads to the second force working against me: (2) the people who live in my house with me, a.k.a. my family, are picky eaters to the point of being pathological and it annoys the shit out of me and kind of knocks the wind out of my sails. Pasta has to be a certain shape (who knew that a ziti noodle tastes different from a penne noodle?). Vegetables cannot touch rice, rice cannot touch meat, meat cannot have spice, spice must be left at the door. Holy shit! Who are these people? I ask myself this at almost every meal. I must be the freak of the family, for I just shovel it all in, regardless of what shape it’s in or what it has touched (with maybe the exception of the floor, and there are limited circumstances when I do not even find that too offensive) for we all know it all ends up in the same place anyway. This argument is NOT compelling with this crowd, however.

But I can make a chicken cutlet without looking in a cookbook, which is HUGE for me, since I rely heavily on a cookbook when making virtually anything else. I actually stare at the simplest of recipes over and over again till I enter into a mind numbing stupor to make sure I read have read the ingredients correctly; I get so anxious that I will misread a measurement and put in a cup instead of a quarter cup of something vital to the recipe and will have to trash the whole damn thing… It has happened many times before. I am no perfectionist when it comes to cooking. I do not “plate” the food, style it or put garnish on it. But I just want it to taste good, so I get a little nervous that I might accidentally put a cup of sugar in something that needed a third cup of salt instead. And so all the joy gets sucked right out of the process. Plus I have these three people who sit at the table like we are taping an episode of Food Network Star, at the ready to turn their noses up at my Mac and Cheese because it is not as Mac and Cheesy as Grandma’s. There is a lot of fucking pressure. And this is usually about the time I want to throw all of it down the disposal and lock myself in the bathroom with a nice chicken curry and a good bottle of wine.

So anyway, back to the chicken cutlet… I can make them on autopilot and clearly, that was what happened here. There was no variation, no sauce, no pesto, no cheese, nothing but a breaded chicken breast and oddly enough, my picky eater family didn’t even complain, because lo and behold, they actually like my chicken cutlets enough to apparently eat them almost every night without complaint! Without conditions! Though the thought did cross my mind for a fleeting second about whether or not this chicken cutlet thing may rise to the level of me being a “bad mother” because I think as a mother I am charged with the responsibility of nourishing my children and I recall something about that food pyramid and the different food groups.  It is probably a stretch to count the parsley I put in the breadcrumbs as a vegetable, right?  I am so sure that other über-mothers out there plan amazing menus that rotate monthly which incorporate free-range buffalo and milk-fed wild salmon or whatever and organic coop farm vegetable succotash using in-season produce only that they have grown themselves, and may even throw in a pizza with a home-made stone ground whole wheat crust that they stone ground themselves a la The Little Red Hen every now and then… but not me.

I don’t usually spend tons of time flogging myself over my parenting skills. I know my kids will turn out fine. I am fine, un-medicated (for now), and fine. And I ate a lot worse things than a repetitive home-made chicken cutlet in my day (think: Velveeta(!), La Choy fake Chinese food from a can (!!), Ellio’s Pizza(!!!), Swanson TV Dinners(!!!!), White Bread (!!!!!) washed down with a big ol’ glass of Hawaiian Punch(!!!!!!)) And the fact of the matter is that I had lots of thin sliced chicken breasts lying around, well, not exactly lying around, but in an actual freezer, and a seemingly endless supply of eggs, and a ginormous vat of breadcrumbs and plenty of olive oil. So you see, it seems that the stars were aligned for a chicken cutlet fest in my house… I have tried many other things, but they don’t go down as well as the chicken cutlet. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere tucked away deep in my subconscious I was sick and tired of cooking balanced meals that only I would eat, and I wanted to cook, to provide for fuck’s sake, for my family and I wanted accolades, g-d damn it! And my ticket was the chicken cutlet… Seems like a win-win situation to me, no?

This week however, I vow to break the vicious chicken cutlet cycle for the betterment of my family’s nutritional health and will order in a pizza to break up the monotony.

For G-d’s sake, it is 9:46 p.m. I just slithered out of the toddler’s room and my eyes are having trouble adjusting to the bright lights of my kitchen. I have come to the realization that I am no longer a mother, no longer human even. I am just a mole, living huge chunks of my life crawling around blindly in the dark on the floor. Crawling, you ask? What the hell is a 41 year old woman doing night after night crawling around in the dark on the floor of a toddler’s room? I ask myself this every single night and I have no good answers for you. I have nothing to offer that would prompt you to nod your head in understanding or pity for me, forget about joining me in solidarity. I am an ass. A poor excuse of a mother if ever there was one, because I am unable to get this otherwise amazing kid to go to sleep.

Yes, I was crawling because that is the only way I can get out alive. I need to crawl and it’s not even a hands-and-knees type of crawl that babies generally do before they learn how to walk. Nope, and do you know why? It’s too noisy. When I crawl like that, things crack and pop or tinkle and jingle and I get caught. The kind of crawling I have now resorted to is the kind they do in basic training in the military. Face down, breathing in carpet fibers, flat on my belly. I have to slide towards the door very slowly because even if the toddler’s night vision is sometimes not up to snuff, her supersonic hearing always is. She hears everything. Every crack of my knees, every rustle of my sweatpants, every jingle of some piece of jewelry that I forgot to remove before the bedtime ritual that might tinkle in the silence… They all betray me. Traitors, all of you! I am being driven insane because of my ineptitude as a parent and it totally sucks because I have lived my whole life getting things right on the first try with very little effort on my part. I wished that I experienced defeat a little more so I could put all of this in a healthier perspective. And oh, how I wish that I learned that valuable life lesson of if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again… Instead it would appear that my life’s motto has become, when the going gets tough, the wimpy mommy lies face down on the carpet.

I have tried many many things these past few weeks. I’ve tried depriving her of her nap. I’ve tried letting her sleep for three hours during her nap. I’ve taken her to a kiddie-gym type of place so she can jump around for a good hour. I have given her warm baths, warm milk, warm blankets. I have played relaxing music for her as well as sounds of the ocean… I’ve set the thermostat to a sleep-friendly 68 degrees. But none of it works. For it is me and only me that will soothe her. She only wants me. On the floor. In the dark. If it is not me, she screams, cries, and clings to me for dear life (way to turn off hundreds of potential babysitters who may be reading this) and because the first grader has to get up so early for school, I habitually cave to her manipulation so as not to wake him. And now it is has mushroomed out of control.

People have privately emailed me their strategies, peppered with cautionary tales of what could happen if I do not deal with this now. Obviously there is a population out there who has done this better than I do it and they all think I am pathetic. I’ve been told to let her scream or cry herself to sleep (!), that I should really call the Super Nanny, it’s gotten that bad (!!), that I should just let her sleep with me every night (!!!), and my favorite, that I should slip her just a little bit of Benadryl (!!!!), and I cannot do any of it. So I simply continue to do what I have been doing. I think that if I could find some way to be Zen about it, then it wouldn’t be so bad. I could look at it as quiet time to, say, meditate in the dark or practice some deep breathing techniques to get me back to center, or at the very least make my to-do list for the next day. The trouble is that I generally think all of that is a bunch of bullshit and I cannot clear my head long enough to even try, so wound up am I about my predicament.

After tonight I now know that she lies there quietly in her bed listening for sounds of my movements, just as I lie there quietly listening for sounds that she has fallen asleep. Bedtime has become an irritating chess game and she gets to checkmate almost every night. There I am, on the floor, in the dark, all antsy and pissed off and she is lying there in silence, just waiting me out. Why not? She’s got all the time in the world, after all. Tonight when it’s quiet I get this (apparently) false sense that she has drifted off to sleep thus enabling me to make my move… and then when I am two lickable inches from the door, I am busted. She calmly calls out in the darkness, “Mommy, don’t go.” She is playing me and I know it, but her tiny little pleading voice stabs at my heart, rendering me powerless. She manages to do this to me about four times tonight. Every time I make it to the door, cross the threshold and actually leave the room, she ends up leaping out of bed, giggling with delight and then pleading with me to come back and lie down. I dutifully pick her up each time, kiss her neck and tuck her back in her bed. But by the fourth time, I am struggling hard to force the evil angry mommy thoughts out of my head and jam in thoughts of she-will-not-be-a-toddler-forever-so-enjoy-it-while-it-lasts-bullshit which usually has some appeasing effect on me, but tonight there is just ice running through my veins.

Though I have tried and tried to put a positive spin on this, tonight I have to admit that I just cannot take it. I cannot take one more night of not having any night at all. It is sheer torture. The days are starting to blur together into one long endless day with no night whatsoever, I am starting to look forward to my next trips to the dentist and the gynecologist as my “Jamie time.” How on earth do people do bedtime with more than two kids? I can only imagine that bedtime processes for large families must finish sometime in the wee hours of the morning… and that it has got to require large quantities of Red Bull or some prescription medication… It is incomprehensible to me that this toddler of mine, who is really so great by day, sucks it big time at bedtime. This refusal to just go to bed is madness. We have fun all day long. We cuddle, we read, we play, we talk, we browse shoes and handbags and other accessories (and I am happy to report that we have very similar tastes in all three categories)… We like the same foods, we like the same music… but for the love of G-d and all things holy, this kid does not like to go to bed… What on earth she thinks she is missing by actually sleeping is beyond me. I can attest, I would even put it in writing if she knew how to read, that after 8:00 p.m. nothing much of interest for toddlers goes on, there is nothing worth fighting delicious slumber for after 8:00 p.m.

Who are these mythical creatures I have only heard about and never ever seen who go to sleep on their own at 7:30 and sleep through the night till 7:00 a.m.? Who are they? I want names. Where are they? I believe like the unicorn, Snuffleupagus and Bigfoot, they do not truly exist and it is a tactic used by competitive mommies to make people like me, people who are failing miserably at this one aspect of motherhood, feel badly about my parenting skills.

But no, I will not succumb to it. I will be stronger than the tongue-cluckers and view each day as a clean slate to reorganize and figure out how to get this baby to sleep if it is the last thing I do. So stay tuned. This really can only go in one of three ways: I will become an alcoholic in my continued (failing) attempts to drink and go and will just resort to solely the drinking part in an attempt to drown my frustration, or I will move a cot or futon into the toddler’s room for the next three years in order to save my back (but run the risk of ruining my marriage), or hopefully some higher power out in the universe will just take pity on me and intervene and just get this kid to sleep somehow. I’m secretly betting on the power of the universe.

May Day! May Day! Operation “Drink and Go” is failing miserably. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. I have followed the instructions from my childhood friend to a tee. I’ve stuck with the Malbec after a few callous attempts to shake things up with a Cabernet and a Beaujolais Nouveau. I’ve sat by the door cooing and shushing to no avail. Tonight my hunky husband is working late and I must confess that sometimes when he works late, I take a sick twisted delight in it. Why, you ask? Well, when he works late it’s kind of like a ladies’ night in for me. If I can get the kids to bed early, I can eat cereal or chocolate or a handful of nuts for dinner and not have to worry about preparing a protein, vegetable and a starch. I can do a face mask and watch stupid TV. I don’t have to talk about my day or listen to his. Look, I am not a selfish bitch of this magnitude every day, but once in a while it is a treat. So tonight while he is working late I execute my plans for ladies’ night into action: Feed the kids early. Shower them early. Pajama them early. Corral them into bed early. Read a few stories. Then drink and go.

Tonight’s bedtime reading selection was from Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” series. These books have been around since I was a kid. Truth be told, I don’t recall ever liking these stories. I’m not sure why, perhaps the pictures, all homey and in shades of drab olive gray didn’t catch my eye, they held very little appeal to me. However now as an adult who’s read every single one of these Frog and Toad stories easily over 750 times, they are finally starting to grow on me. My kids love these stories, too. Each of these simple stories is trying to teach us something about life, but it doesn’t bang you over the head. It’s subtle. You learn about friendship and loyalty and patience and kindness and about procrastination and appreciating the small good stuff of life, like the change of seasons or the joy in a chocolate ice cream cone and not letting differences ruin relationships…

The first grader may almost be a bit too old for these stories (not the lessons, though), but he rolls with it. It is a challenge doing the group story time with my kids; while I don’t want to risk dumbing down the older one, I think the risk is even greater to the younger one if I read excerpts from “Captain Underpants” or “Super Diaper Baby”. So the happy medium tonight was a few Frog and Toad stories. Frog is a frog (obviously) and he is neat, smart, responsible and unfailingly upbeat with a “can-do” attitude. Toad is a slovenly depressive who’s a little brusque and not that bright, but who has a good heart overall. For some strange reason these guys are best friends, kinda like other polar opposite best friend duos: Felix and Oscar or Laverne and Shirley, but it works.

Despite my efforts to drink and go this evening, bedtime for the toddler took a record 75 minutes. It was utterly maddening. I walked her around the house three times, I tuck tuck tucked her in with the Thomas the Train blankie, I held her sweet little hand, I listened for the breathing changes and every time I made a move, her grip would tighten around my fingers like one of those Chinese fingercuff trap things. I rubbed her back. I cooed and kissed her. I sang to her. Then I moved toward the door slowly, in various yoga-like poses that would propel me closer to the door at about an inch at a time in the hopes that that she would not perceive any movement. I was sitting pretzel-like very close to the door with my back facing her, desperately struggling to hear cues that I could go.

Instead I was treated to the smooth stylings of a restless baby, kicking off blankets, rolling around, knocking on the crib rails, calling out my name “Moooommmmmy. Mommy where you go?” I sat there quietly in the dark just inches from the door, not acknowledging her, burning with frustration. I was so close to the door that I could almost lick it and because I was being driven to the edge of insanity, I actually stuck my tongue out to see if it would reach the door. While I am sitting there fuming and almost-licking the door, I am fantasizing that at that moment it would be preferable to jam a fork into my eye than to have to sit in the toddler’s room for one more second. And then as if on cue, she slithers out of her bed and comes up behind me. She throws her arms around my neck and kisses my cheek.

I am such a bitch. A mean evil horrible bitch. This toddler is pure love. Sweetness incarnate and I am a she-devil. I love this kid. She is Frog and clearly I am Toad, minus the good heart. She is awesome. She is articulate and smart and her comedic timing is impressive for a two and a half year old. But I was so damn tired. I haven’t slept well in days… I scooped her up, kissed her neck and put her back into her bed, and as my penance for my impure thoughts, I laid down on the floor assuming my position again and held her hand until she fell asleep.