The Momma Bear Stare

Posted on May 18, 2012 by simplifiedmom

I vaguely remember watching cartoons as a kid and having a fondness for the Care Bears. Today, I slightly tweaked the “Care Bear Stare” that was used in the cartoon to spread joy and happiness to friends in need. It kind of morphed into what I like to call the “Momma Bear Stare” and is my way of puffing out my chest, standing tall, putting on my dirtiest “don’t mess with me” look, and pretending I’m a momma bear with my cubs nearby and giving off the vibe that screams “you best be moving along”. This was the first time I really felt that I needed to pull out the momma bear stare.

You’ll understand why.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is in town for a big summit this weekend and the protesters are out in force. It just so happens that the Occupy Chicago protesters are occupying the church next to our house for the duration of the weekend in order to organize their protests against NATO. They moved in on Wednesday.

Let me first explain that I’m cool with protesters and freedom of speech as long as the protests stay peaceful and protesters act intelligently and are respectful. I’m not a violent person and have little respect for those who think violence is the answer. That said…

At 8:30 am I made the kids wait in the vestibule while I gave a nasty momma-bear stare to protesters marching by my house shouting “F#% the police”. Several protesters noticed my dirty looks and wished me a nice day, said good morning and offered kind greetings (one even blew bubbles for the kids once the crowd had passed). I greeted them all back with “Welcome to Chicago. Please be safe.” What I wanted to say was, “These police officers put themselves at risk to protect me and my family from the 1% of you morons too ashamed to show your faces because you’re here to get violent in my city. I support the fine men and women who serve in the Chicago Police Department and hope for a peaceful weekend.”

Do these protesters not THINK when they make such a blanket statement such as “F#% the police” while they march? Do they forget who comes to their rescue whenever there is trouble? (It surely isn’t Dark Wing Duck… When there’s trouble you call DW… He’s a cartoon… and a duck…) Do they remember 9/11? Do they have no heart?

If only the Care Bears were real and could do one giant Care Bear Stare over our city and the NATO summit, the world would be a better place. Just think of all of the love and joy and happiness those little bears could generate from their glowing tummies. With the state of the world today and all of the heavy issues bearing down on us (pun intended), we could all use a few Care Bear Stares.

Since the Care Bears aren’t real (sorry to burst your bubble) I’m just hopeful that my message to the protesters living next door was loud and clear. I live here. You are a guest in my city. I have children that are watching this and I will do whatever it takes to protect them. The police have been trained to deal with being provoked. I, like a momma bear, have not been trained to avoid provocation and if you mess with me and my children, I will use whatever safe and legal means necessary to shut your little party down. Hopefully, that all came through loud and clear from the momma-bear stare.

Moral of the story: As parents, we are our children’s protectors. Stand up for their safety and model peaceful and intelligent means for discussing your differences. Most importantly, be civil to one another and work together to find solutions to make the world better for us all.

 

Posted in Safety, Strangers | Leave a comment

I’m a Tiger Mom!

Posted on May 13, 2012 by simplifiedmom

It’s Mother’s Day and I’m officially a Tiger Mom… but not in the sense of Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother… more so because Ada got her face (and paws) painted at the Sports Authority’s grand re-opening yesterday by an amazing artist.

The sparkles really are the icing on the cake for me. 

This is the closest I will ever get to being a Tiger Mother. I believe too much in letting things happen on their own. I want to expose my kids to the world and see what interests them. Surely we will teach them how to swim, sign them up for music lessons, and have them play soccer. With college expenses as high as they are these days and tuition costs rising, we would be silly not to offer our kids the chance to learn every skill available that might pique their interest academically and extra-curricularly. Just because they both appear to be left-handed and are estimated to be around six-foot tall when they are done growing, doesn’t mean we should force them to start playing baseball and volleyball in the back yard. But we sure aren’t going to miss an opportunity to teach them how to play sports while they are still quite young. Someone from their generation will play at Wimbledon and the PGA Tour. My role will be arranging car pools to make sure they get to practice on time, helping with homework so they qualify academically for the team, and suggesting they keep trying when they don’t succeed. If that makes me a Kitten Mother instead, I’ll happily bear that title too.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who have sacrificed a bit of themselves to make the next generation a little bit better.

Moral of the story: Whatever parenting style you choose, do so with the best of intentions and the world will be a better place for it.

Posted in Balance, Discipline, Playtime Fun, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Simple Errands Gone Wrong

Posted on April 29, 2012 by simplifiedmom

I don’t really like to run errands. I’m not much of a shopper either. I would rather stay home and watch a movie. But, I am a mother and my children have needs. One such need was a gallon of milk on a weeknight before I was off to discuss Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden with my book club. On the way out the door, I decided to let Ada tag along so Rick could get dinner ready while only keeping Iain out of trouble in the kitchen instead of fighting both kids off.

Ada and I had a nice walk to the local CVS Pharmacy. We got the milk and went back to the Pharmacy counter to say hi to our friend Kelly who works there. She and I hadn’t talked in a few weeks and I wanted to catch up with her quickly. That was fine until Ada decided it was time for us to leave. She took the gallon of milk off the counter after I paid and started heading down aisle one toward the door. Meanwhile, my gut was screaming, “DO NOT LET HER TAKE THE MILK GALLON. IT IS GOING TO BREAK ALL OVER THE FLOOR OF THE STORE.” I tried to wrap up my conversation with Kelly and turned around to see Ada drop the milk gallon.

Amazingly, it didn’t break.

“I knew that was going to happen. My gut told me she would drop it. Thank goodness it didn’t break. Well, we better be going before Ada makes a mess. See you soon.” Kelly said her goodbyes as I turned around to see Ada pick up the gallon jug again. She was only ten feet away from me but it was enough distance for her to drop the jug again before I could get to it. I had pushed my luck too far.

The gallon split open right across the middle with me only being able to save half of it from drenching the carpet tiles in aisle one. I quickly had Kelly open the bathroom door and dumped the rest of the container down the drain as she called over the intercom, “Clean up, aisle one.”

I apologized profusely to her and the gentleman who had to clean up our mess. Ada didn’t understand why what she had done wasn’t really supposed to be the funniest thing on earth. She was having a great time while I was mortified. It happened to everyone. I knew that. But the fact that my gut told me repeatedly that it was going to happen and I didn’t listen was what really got me. I knew better.

We went back to the refrigerated section to select another gallon of milk, complements of CVS, and rushed home to tell Rick and Iain all about our adventure.

Then, just a week later, I decided to take both kids over to see Gus at Stella’s diner since he adores Ada and hadn’t seen her in a long time. I thought it would be convenient to stop at CVS again to get more milk since it was right across the street.

The good news is that we didn’t break the gallon of milk. The bad news was that I stopped to catch up with Stacy, another pharmacy friend, while my kids acted like complete maniacs. I rarely took the kids anywhere without the confines of their stroller and this was the reason why.

In the time it took me to find my credit card and swipe it, (yes, I put a three-dollar gallon of milk on my credit card because it was that or paying with the all-too-valuable-quarters I was reserving for the laundry machine), swipe it again since I hit “Debit” by accident, and then get the receipt with all of my coupons, the kids had grabbed six Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and three bottles of nail polish and were within eight feet of the front door. I left the milk on the counter while I retrieved my giggling children (who thought this game was adorable), quickly put the nail polish near a display that contained something that resembled nail polish, wrestled the peanut butter cups from the kids’ hands, and then drug their little bodies back to the pharmacy counter so I could replace the candy, keep them from grabbing more candy, and get the milk that I had just purchased for them because I was attempting to be a good mother. All while a pharmacy patron sat waiting for her prescription to be filled, watching this entire drama-that-is-my-life-with-kids unfold. She was busy chatting away on her cell phone and likely oblivious to it all. In my head, she was judging me as an idiot mother who had no control of her kids. Guilty as charged.

It was funny, frustrating, and awful all at the same time.

The walk home was quite unpleasant as I had to carry Iain in one arm (he refused to walk any further) and a gallon of milk in the other, all while worrying that Ada wasn’t staying close enough to me since I was trying to walk briskly while struggling under the weight of my load and I didn’t have a third hand for her to hold as we crossed the street.

We made it home just fine. I was a little scarred by the experience but overall just relieved to be home.

Moral of the story: Don’t let children carry milk jugs. Run errands alone. If you do need to run errands with your children, securely fasten them in their stroller for your own sanity.

Posted in Balance, Discipline, Double Stroller, Siblings | Leave a comment

Bye Bye Poopy!

Posted on April 29, 2012 by simplifiedmom

This was not the best month for Ada and potty training. We have technically been trying to get her fully potty trained now for two years. Seriously. We started checking to see if she showed any interest in the potty a few months before Iain was born and he turns two in June. Sigh.

Over two years, not a lot of progress was made. We tried pulling up all of the rugs and having naked weekends. They worked a little but as soon as she wore underwear, all of her “training” failed. Once we enrolled her in daycare with Iain, she started peeing on the potty and finally became consistent late last year. It wasn’t until recently that she had any success popping in the potty.

The first half of April was awful for Ada. She had pooping accidents everyday at daycare for two weeks straight. Then she started wetting her pants too. Rick blamed himself for working too much and not being home enough. I felt at fault because I wasn’t monitoring her diet, or encouraging her to go to the bathroom more often. Daycare wasn’t sure what to do for her. She just didn’t seem motivated and she didn’t care if she pooped in her pants. We all agreed we needed to make helping her our top priority. We just weren’t sure how.

A few friends suggested we take Ada to the doctor but I knew all he would say was, “She’s constipated. Feed her more fiber and add a laxative to her diet.” One wise mom we know sent me an article from Slate.com called, The Real Reason Your Kid Wets the Bed by Steve Hodges with Suzanne Schlosberg. To summarize, many kids get so constipated that they can’t control their bodily functions anymore and whereas most people think constipation only applies to pooping, once you are that backed up, it affects peeing too. They recommend de-constipating your child. So that’s what we did. We added a tablespoon of laxative powder to Ada’s water and a fiber bar for dessert and made it part of her daily routine.

It worked. Things started moving again and she was so proud. We tracked her success with a sticker chart—complete with Rick’s rendition of a potty, pee, and what defines a little poop from a big poop, all correlating to the number of stickers earned. Each time Ada earned four stickers, she was rewarded with her favorite activity, a chance to watch a movie. We implemented the sticker chart at home for the first weekend and then received a daily report from daycare on her progress. They gave her a Super Kid award each day she didn’t have an accident.

Thursday was the day of her biggest success. She had three poops in the potty at school, which was amazing for a kid who would never poop at daycare. She was so excited that she told the entire school in her loudest big girl voice, “I got it in the potty!” She was beaming with pride as all of her teachers cheered her on while trying to hold back hysterical laughter. To top it all off, Ada flushed the potty  and said, “Bye bye, poopy!” We were so proud!

Who knows how long this will last and if our potty training struggles are over. We still need to get her trained during naps and overnight. We are optimistic that the worst has passed and we are off to better times in the bathroom. And Rick noticed that Iain is pretty interested in Ada’s potty trials so he’s hoping to pull out the crayons to make Iain a potty chart of his own.

Moral of the story: Constipated kids can be hard to identify. Sometimes, a little bit of laxative powder and fiber can go a long way in helping kids succeed at potty training. Know your options and do your best to be supportive.

Posted in Diapers, Potty Training | Leave a comment

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Posted on April 8, 2012 by simplifiedmom

Rick’s birthday was overshadowed this year by deadlines at work, me changing jobs, and the generally busy life we lead. We were able to celebrate with a home-cooked meal and some delicious peanut butter chocolate cupcakes from our local Trader Joe’s grocery store. Ada did a beautiful rendition of the Happy Birthday song.

Iain smushed frosting all over his face, and the table.

And Rick got to make a wish and blow out a big number 3 candle—I only had one birthday candle in the house but we made it work. Happy Birthday Rick!

Moral of the story: No matter how busy life gets, you must make time to celebrate what’s important. Birthdays belong at the top of the importance list.

Posted in Balance | Leave a comment

Baby Proofing Take 2

Posted on April 8, 2012 by simplifiedmom

At some point, in the first year of having children, we should have made a clear list of things the kids weren’t allowed to get into. Sure, there was the common list of household cleansers, knives and poisonous plants. Unfortunately, we left it at that and added items to the list once the kids had already shown interest in them, created multiple messes, and driven us to the point of insanity. Not the best scenario. We left significant room for improvement.

While I recently spent a weekend in Minneapolis celebrating a friend’s new photography studio, Rick was busy at home installing additional child safety devices to all of the lower cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. His intentions were good, however, his choice of safety lock was severely lacking. He chose what was locally available—white plastic hooks that you screwed into the insides of the cabinets. They caught the door when you tried to open it more than an inch or two. Normally, they might have worked well, but at our house they failed for three reasons: 1) Rick didn’t buy enough and they didn’t work on all types of cabinets we had. 2) They drove me insane since I forgot they were there and used too much force opening cabinets and drawers and didn’t have the patience to be delayed by them while I was cooking or in a rush to get food on the table for two screaming children. 3) Most importantly, Iain could still get his hand in the two-inch gap to pull utensils out of the drawers making the so-called baby proofing hooks more of a delay tactic than a safety device.

I wish Rick would have known about the magnetic version of cabinet and drawer locks, but then again, those would still have driven me insane—but at least they wouldn’t allow Iain access to spatulas and wooden spoons with which to whack his sister.

The bigger solution—and better I hope—would be to have sweet, innocent, disciplined children who listened to their parents, followed the house rules (that we should have set from the beginning), and didn’t get into things that were off limits. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, but I kept it on my wish list for some blissful day in the future.

Were I to go back and rewrite the list of things that should have been baby proofed from the beginning, it would have included the following and I would made them completely off-limits from day one:

  • All of my makeup, brushes, lotions,  and cleansers
  • ALL electronics without prior permission (cell phones, remote controls, DVD players)
  • My sewing and knitting supplies and projects in progress (Oh, the number of times I had to put my knitting back on the needles after my children decided the bamboo sticks made good swords.)
  • Scissors in every shape, size and color (Ada’s hair would have thanked me for that.)
  • Brooms and mops and long sticks of any sort
  • The vacuum cleaner and all of its extensions that constantly become swords
  • Silverware that wasn’t been placed at the table specifically for consuming a meal (Spoons have a tendency to disappear around our house. I wasn’t sure why, but the kid’s room tended to collect them.)
  • Long-handled spoons and spatulas (Sword fighting was really popular at our house.)
  • The fireplace tools (By now, you know why.)
  • The desk drawers, pens, paper and all things office related (I didn’t enjoy getting pen marks out of clothing or couch cushions.)
  • Closets and all of their contents
  • Hairbrushes (They were never where I needed them when I needed them, and they could be used as weapons.)
  • Jewelry (Many a piece of jewelry was broken by my little ninjas.)
  • Nail polish, clippers, polish remover, and files
  • My books (The kids loved to rearrange, remove, wrinkle and occasionally rip their pages.)

I also would have invested in small bins for grouping toys with multiple parts from the very beginning. Cleanup was so much easier when every toy—and all of the annoying little parts that I kept stepping on—had a home.

Refrigerator magnets were another major annoyance at our house. We had alphabet letters but the kids loved to flick them off the fridge door and then refused to pick them up. After stepping on them several times, I gave up and moved them to a storage bin on top of the fridge for when they kids were being good and wanted to play with them at a time I found more convenient than the middle of my cooking session when I was trying to measure ingredients and had to stop to curse the pain in my foot from stepping on them, again.

With two kids, my patience for cleaning up messes and stepping on things was at dangerously low levels. Luckily, my children were young enough to forget how much fun they had with all of the items I had since hidden or donated in an effort to maintain my sanity, simplify my life, and protect them from harm. Every little bit counted, I just wish I would have known that from the beginning.

Moral of the story: Be proactive when baby proofing. Beyond something being dangerous, if you would be annoyed should your child get into or break something, find a way to baby proof it. Set the rules and boundaries early and stick to them.

Posted in Child care, Childproofing, Discipline, Safety | Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Posted on February 13, 2012 by simplifiedmom

It’s time for our annual holiday card to be unveiled…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love,

Ada

& Iain

Hope your day is filled with LOVE.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lights On, Lights Off

Posted on January 2, 2012 by simplifiedmom

Kids love to turn lights on and off. It was one of the most fascinating observations of a young mind, like learning you had a shadow and it followed you almost everywhere. Iain became fascinated with turning the lights on and off at our house and was determined to do it all by himself. Once again, Ada must be blamed for planting the seed here. She showed him how it was done, with more balance than he had developed at this point and no need to stand on the arm of the chair for height—thereby reducing the degree of difficulty dramatically.

After a week of being reprimanded for performing this incredible feat—on a rocking chair none the less—Iain finally outgrew the need to play with the light switch, at least for a little while.

Moral of the story: Childproofing is more than just covering the outlets, hiding the toxic chemicals and putting away the knives. Sometimes it includes rearranging the furniture, and teaching older siblings what behaviors are inappropriate to model for their younger protégés.

Posted in Balance, Childproofing, Safety | Leave a comment

Gate = Fail

Posted on January 2, 2012 by simplifiedmom

Most parents install baby gates at the top or bottom of stairs to protect their children from harm. At our house, we didn’t have stairs but still wanted to be able to contain our children as needed. With a mere thousand square feet, there wasn’t much we could partition off but our hope was, by installing a baby gate in our hallway, we would be able to keep the kids in the front of the house playing while we cooked hot foods in the kitchen.

We tried installing a gate before but it didn’t last. The first attempt was when Ada was a baby. She hated the gate and it got so annoying to open it and close it every time we went from one end of the house to the other that we gave up. Our second attempt was earlier this year when we installed the gate via the compression fit method. It wasn’t supposed to move, but it wasn’t exactly designed to have toddlers standing on the frame while it was open. Somehow, the kids managed to beat on the gate to the point that it became un-installed.

This time around, Rick wasn’t going to fail. He got out his drill and installed the gate the permanent way. He avoided drilling holes through the molding by raising the gate off the ground a bit. He installed little onto the wall and mounted the gate like a professional. It wasn’t going to be bullied by our little monsters.

The first three days were good as far as the gate doing its job. The kids hated it and constantly whined when it was closed. Cooking was easier and important papers magically stopped disappearing from my desk since the kids couldn’t get to the back of the house to ransack my stuff. The whining was only temporary. The gate was working.

On day four, Ada found Rick’s mistake. Because the molding in our house was five inches high, that left about six inches of clearance under the gate. It just so happened that the thickest point of a determined four-year-old was less than six inches, or could be sucked in long enough to wiggle under a gate when properly motivated. She magically appeared on the other side and Rick and I were both stumped.

 “Did you open the gate?”

“No. Did you?”

“No.”

Uh oh. She knew how to get under it. It wasn’t easy, but if she needed to, she could do it. Rick and I resigned ourselves to that fact knowing that the gate was still preventing Iain from getting into the kitchen and the office area. He was the one we had to childproof for after all.

Two days later, we caught him in the act. He was trying to be like his brave big sister and failed. Whereas a four-year old had the ability to wiggle under the gate, a one-year old wasn’t quite coordinated enough to make his body squirm the distance to get fully clear of the gate on the other side. It only took getting stuck once for him to give up the mission.

A few days after Iain got stuck, Ada learned how to open the gate via the latch. It quickly became another method for her to torment her little brother. If he wanted to get into the back of the house to see us, she would push him aside, open the gate, come through, and then quickly close it behind her and laugh at his misfortune. Sibling rivalry at its best.

For all of the good the gate may have done protecting our kids from a hot stove or scissors left out on the desk, it likely wasn’t enough to outweigh all of the times it had caused great annoyance. Either way, it didn’t really matter because it was permanent. It wasn’t coming down until we were ready to patch and repaint the four holes it would leave behind.

Moral of the story: When children are determined to do something, be it dangerous or mischievous, don’t expect a baby gate to stop them. If you are lucky, it might slow them down, a little.

 

Posted in Childproofing, Safety, Siblings | Leave a comment

Ah! Scary Monsters!

Posted on January 2, 2012 by simplifiedmom

Oh, Halloween! How fun it was to get dressed up like silly things and parade around the neighborhood. Similar to our neighborhood’s amazing gay pride parade, but for kids and more “G-Rated”.

This Halloween was sponsored by Grandma Ba and Grandpa Rich. I didn’t want any part in shopping for costumes since I’m not much of a shopper, and they seemed to take great joy in spoiling their grandchildren so, I let them (and often encouraged minor spoiling). Their shopping spree netted three costumes: Cinderella, Scooby Doo, and a t-shirt that said nothing but “Costume” and was perfect for Rick to chaperone the kids to their parties.

Ada was a bit confused about her costume. She really wanted to be Cinderella, but when it came time to go to the school Halloween party, she thought it best to accessorize with Iain’s Scooby Doo head. I’m not sure that’s what Cinderella would have done but when you are three-years-old, you can get away with a lot. Whereas the “real” Cinderella lost her shoe, Ada managed to misplace her candy bag within moments of leaving the house. No handsome prince rang our bell to return it so it must be lost for good.  

Iain’s costume was, let’s say, less than successful. When you have a 1-year-old on track to be 6-foot-tall, don’t be surprised when the 2T costume doesn’t cover his crotch, or Velcro together at the back of his neck. Do not assume it would ever possibly fit over a sweatshirt and sweatpants either. And keep in mind that these costumes weren’t designed for warmth…they were strictly made for fashion. It would be crazy to think kids would ever walk from house to house wearing these things in late October when it was forty degrees outside–silly, really.

 

Moral of the story: Try to balance costume function with fashion, safety and warmth when preparing for Halloween. And be open-minded when hybrid costumes like Scooberella come your way.

Posted in Balance, Fashion, Safety, Siblings | Leave a comment