Like Father, Like Son

I should never have laughed at the story where Matt crawled up in his older brother’s bunk in the middle of the night and bashed him in the forehead with a metal dumptruck.  When I picked up Henry from school today, I was informed that he hit a 4-year-old over the head with a shovel and the boy had to get stitches.  And in the time I was being told this, he picked up a basket and threw it at a girl’s face and she started crying.

I guess it’s time to go spend this week’s paycheck on koosh balls so we can practice throwing soft objects vs. throwing hard objects.  And throwing into space vs. throwing at people’s heads.

Our pediatrician always tells us how little boys are way more difficult than little girls and that by the time our friends who have girls start freaking out, we will be in the clear.  But this man has three boys himself.  Is he just trying to make himself feel better?  Because then our boys will be driving. Thank goodness I never laughed at *those* stories about Matt.

Welcome to Motherhood

As I was leaving the doctor’s office today, I glanced at the bottom half of the checkout sheet: “Diagnosis: weight gain & fatigue.”

A Healthy Way to Process Anger

It seems Henry has learned something that took me 32/33 years and countless therapy sessions to realize.  Actually, it’s a work in progress for me, still.  I’d say 90% of the tantrums occur when we are coming or going—transitions are a real bitch.  We were getting ready to leave for the morning, and the screaming started. Henry pulled his placemat out from underneath his dirty dishes and they broke into a million pieces.  He stopped for a second to look at the mess, looked up at me and said, “I’m frustrated, Mama!”  I asked him what we do when we’re frustrated and first he went and hit the door and cried even harder because it hurt.  But then he remembered and went to the couch and started hitting the pillows.  I joined in and then he looked at me and started laughing.  And we had a truly awesome rest of the morning.

Thanks, Carrie and Bernadette!

Scientists Say Buchers Are F*cked

Well, I wonder what they would say about a 25-month-old who has probably not napped 1/3 of the days of his life already:

No Nap Days Spell End of the World For Your Child

Henry is actually happy and incredibly focused (read: tenacious).  Except when he won’t nap on command—and then it’s really just me who’s unhappy and anxious.

Boundaries, Illuminated

Henry and I took a little walk after dinner last night, and we saw two very fat cats sleeping in a neighbor’s front yard.  Of course he wanted to go kiss them, and I told him that the kitties felt like being alone right now.  He furrowed his brow, nodded, looked at me and said “The kitties need their space.”

Rest assured I will be repeating this back to him when he’s begging for boobies at 2am.

Letter to Henry Wallace, 2 Years

Dear Henry,

I can’t believe you are two.  I feel like we were just planning your first birthday party, and the world was going to end if I did not get that baby book finished in time, goddammit.  How we held it together just to make it through that first year of sleepless nights when, oh wait, what’s this?  You mean the sleepless nights continue?  More no nap days?  And you have strong opinions usually differing from mine?  Holy cow, we are screwed.

So yes, this second year started with a bang and my nervous breakdown, but I did get my mind back after a few months.  It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me and thank goodness it did not happen in your first year.  Now I can even laugh when instead of napping you decide to take off all your clothes, pee circles in the crib, and then strip the sheets into a pile on the floor.  You’re singing or reciting the lines from your favorite books the whole time to hide the fact that what you are actually doing in there is help me sort laundry.  Do sheets ever get changed around here unless there is pee on them?!

I would like to talk to you for a minute about what it is like to ride in a car with you.  Since we live in buttbomb suburbia due to a temporary lapse in judgment—I mean, please, we moved here from Manhattan; isn’t everything west of the Hudson suburbia?!—we spend a good chunk of time in the car.  You won’t allow NPR.  Anytime you hear a voice not busted out in crazy melody, you scream and try to drown it all out. I suppose this is payback for all those times I whined to your grandpa about listening to the market reports and sports talk.  Anyway, throughout your life you have been able to listen to one song and one song only every 2-3 months.  If we try to slip in something else, we hear “Song, song, song, I don’t like it, I don’t like it, song, song, SONG!”  I thought you might like it if I compiled all of your favorite songs on one CD but I was wrong. Out of all those you now only like “Crocodile Rock.” You say Elton John over and over and so fast that you are eventually saying Uncle John.  This is funny only because your Uncle John is just about the last person I can imagine in a glitter-covered pink leotard.

I know when your father met me he had to carefully evaluate the chances of the Pitcher OCD gene being perpetuated in our Bucher offspring.  And it looks like we got it on the first shot.  Thank you, Henry.  Now I finally have someone with whom I can share my neuroticisms.  While wrinkled sheets make me break out in hives, you cannot stand an opened door.  If your closet is the slightest bit open at bedtime, you say, “Close it!  Close it!”  Kitchen cabinets are a major trigger for you.  And you cannot understand for the life of you why we removed the closet door in our bedroom.  Every morning you stand in the doorway and say, “Why there no door here?!!”

About a month before your birthday we decided our lives were not chaotic enough and we got another dog.  It was our test to see if we were ready to give you a sister or brother, and let me tell you, puppies are good birth control.  You can’t understand why on earth you are supposed to be gentle to this little stuffed animal who has teeth like razors.  This causes a lot of conflict, especially around dinnertime.  Yesterday I turned to see you holding Nacho up by a fistful of fur.  Later you threw a 10-pound monster truck at her.  This is sibling rivalry at its best.  You are always so sweet to the other animals though—you tried to climb into a box with baby ducks at a petting zoo a few weeks ago, and when you saw the bunnies you laid flat on the ground and let them rest all over your belly.  My favorite part is the territorial marking—Nacho pees on the carpet and then about 10 minutes later it gets really quiet (again, usually when I am making dinner) and I come into the living room to find you naked and peeing on top of her pee.  Now if only you were as handy with the cleaner as you are with your clothes.  But, Henry, I will always bring bail money when they catch you for streaking.

Love,
Mama

A Conversation About the Laundry

M (gesturing to the overflowing basket of clean laundry that has been on the bedroom floor for 6 months now): Do you need me to wash that?

Me: No.  It’s clean.  You know this.

M: If we all kept our laundry on the floor like you do, we would be swimming in dirty armpits.

Me: No, because I only keep clean laundry on the floor.  That is why when Henry is old enough, he is going to fold the laundry.

M: You’re going to have Henry fold your laundry?!

Me: No!  I’m going to have him fold *his* laundry.  I can’t fold my own because I have to fold his instead.

What was the excuse I used 20 years ago?  I wish I could remember.

What Life is Like in Buttbomb Suburbia

A perk is the trail right outside our back gate which leads to this duck pond. Who am I kidding– this is Austin and there is nature everywhere. But these photos from our afternoon hike today make me feel a little better about the Chili’s around the corner.

Also this my first post via iPhone. Maybe now I can finally keep up.

So THAT’S Why He Doesn’t Sleep!

He’s been sneaking Dunkin’ Donuts coffee at the playground.

The Grossest Night I’ve Ever Had

Those of you who have been with me from the beginning may remember The Kelp Powder Incident. Well, hold on to your hats, people, because what went down in this house this evening was far, *far* worse.

It’s the first Saturday night of SXSW and Matt’s out at his semi-annual MeFi meetup.  I’m like, yeah, no problem, Nacho is practically potty trained (a week compared to Riley’s 2 months); Henry is done teething… we’ll have dinner, chill, maybe watch some smoking roosters shoot up some gambling chickens in a bar (see The Muppets, Season 2, hosted by Petula Clark), read a few books, and then I’ll catch up on the 10,000 things I have on my to-do list.

Henry got a little messy with his apres dinner markers, and then pizza was off the hook, yo, so he decided to strip down to his diaper.  I set him up with some books and told him I’d be right back.  I wanted to put Matt’s wash in the dryer and get another load in so that it could be in the dryer after bath.  When I walked back inside, I saw Henry was naked.  OK, he does this a lot, no biggie.

But then he said, “Mama, I pooped my diaper!” and I realized Nacho *was eating the diaper.*  Nacho had human feces all over her white paws and looked quite content to have a huge piece of poop hanging out both sides of her mouth. And that is when I completely lost my shit, pun intented.  I really *want* to be a calm mom when the shit hits the fan (I couldn’t help that one), but I just haven’t gotten to that place yet.  I picked up Nacho and ran her out to the backyard, screaming Oh My God the whole time.  I seriously was throwing up in my mouth.  Poor Henry thought he’d done something wrong so he bolted to my office and shut the door.  I found him sitting on my desk trying to drink the liquid potpourrie, looking supremely guilty.

I spent the whole bath apologizing for the way I acted and told him he didn’t do anything wrong.  It’s just that no one is meant to eat poop.  It only goes in the diaper or in the potty.  But dogs will eat anything, so we have to help them out.  I don’t think he completely got it and of course I’ve scarred him for life when it comes to bowel movements—but in the end, he asked for a hug and a kiss, and we went to read stories. He picked out This is Ireland and told me all about Guiness and pubs and whiskey, and I thought, damn, we are doing a great job.