I obsessively check the stats on both of my blogs. The stats I have set up over at Tales From The Burning Prairie
let me see what visitors “Google” that directs them to my site. I love that feature, and sometimes it cracks me up.

So what are people searching for when they find me? In January there were 10 searches related to ghosts, 5 searches for Bigfoot, and 7 searches related to accidents and falling. There are others of course, tornadoes,  hobo grocery, tiny houses, and to everyone searching for controlled burning of prairies for ecological purposes-hope you liked it anyway.

Here are some of my particular favorites: fell from stairs hip and back pain, my knee swelled up after falling, two left thumbs clumsiness, and fell backwards stairs not walk. But hands-down, all-time champion, weirdest thing someone typed into a search engine that turned up my blog is, drum roll please, didn t you see the angels what angels they were all around us tornado school!!!!!!! (emphasis mine, oh and the exclamation marks are mine too) Congratulations to whoever thought that one up, I was thoroughly charmed!

Well, I guess if anybody needs to know about ghostly Bigfoots who fall a lot, I’m your girl.

It is a forgone conclusion that, as a parent, you are going to be saying certain things you otherwise would not. “Not in my house you don’t. Because I said so. Don’t put that in your nose.” And the like. And then you will find yourself saying truly bizarre things. Today I said this: “Take the food out of my boot!”

Hubby and I have both found interesting things in our shoes, mostly toys. But once or twice, I’ve found miniature puddles in my shoes because Pumpkin dumped or spit water in them. Yep, she’s a spitter. Today I caught her in the act, putting a piece of chocolate in one of my boots! At least I caught it before it melted in there. Ick.

First, lest you begin to think otherwise, my husband is a wonderful father. Second, the kids adore their time with Daddy. Third, I love my children but I have no illusions about them, they can try the hardiest of souls.

As a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom), I spend an inordinate amount of time with them, by myself. Weekdays, from too early in the morning until Hubby gets home in the evening, are my shift. Weekends and evenings have always been our tandem-parenting times. But for much of the last two years, I have been going to classes on Saturdays. This semester I added some evenings to my class schedule. I happen to think that these alone times with the kids are good for Hubby, but I think it’s getting to him. Poor man.

You see, he’s outnumbered. There are two of us and we have two kids, so we’re even. Status quo, dead-lock, tie, draw, stand-off. If this makes parenting sound like a battle, good, because often it is. No, more like a thousand little battles. With two parents in the House, we can divide and conquer; when there’s only one of us, they sense the shift in the balance of power. And then like cheetahs cutting a wounded gazelle from the herd, they attack. Now I don’t mean that literally, but they sure do pull out all the stops on the bad behaviors.

The evening class times seem less trying for Hubby, maybe because the cheetahs are exhausted from a full day of cutting Mama from the herd. But he gets the full-on naughty treatment on Saturdays, he literally does not know what to do with them all day. So he comes up with some creative ways to kill time.

While Night School is at the campus closest to our house, my Saturday class is at the campus all the way across town. Hubby and the kids drove me to class (well, Hubby did all the driving) and he told me his plans for the day. First, after dropping me off, they were going to drive all the way back to our part of town to go to his favorite Starbucks ™ and then, drive all the way back to the other side of town to go to the donut shop before heading back to the House. As often happens, plans changed. But he did get the donuts.

I called home during a break, only to hear all hell breaking loose in the background. They were both hopped-up on donuts and the mere act of Hubby talking to me on the phone sent them into a sugar-fueled frenzy. He couldn’t do it, I was talking in one ear and the kids were yelling in the other. He made some noises like trying to get another word in sideways but finally gave up and said he had to go. They cut him from the herd because they had him outnumbered, poor gazelle, I mean guy.

My oldest baby, Monkey, is sick today, poor kid. He got up at 6 o’clock this morning, which is very odd for him. But even stranger is the fact that I got up 5:30. I try to eke in as much sleep possible because every day at least one of the critters decides to be an early bird. Not today, for some reason I decided to stay awake. I read the funny papers online, checked in on some homework I turned in Friday, and checked my e-mail (nothing but spam). Monkey opened his door at 6 and Hubby brought him into the den because he wanted to stay up with Mama.

We watched shows, he drank water, we had a good time. Pumpkin woke up some time later and he begged me  not to get her, that he wanted to snuggle some more. But, alas, she was calling to me, “Mama, come and get me!”

Later, when Hubby was reading books to Pumpkin, Monkey told me he wanted his Mario game. When I got back with the game, he was the very picture of “listless”. Eyes drooping, body visibly sagging, he looked sick. I touched his forehead, warm but not alarmingly so, yet. The thermometer said his temp was just at 100 degrees. Over the course of about an hour, his temperature climbed to over 101 and he said his head hurt, right on top. I sent Hubby on an emergency Children’s Motrin(tm)-run.

While Hubby was at the store, his temp rose some more and he began to cry with the pain in his poor little head. I will never be caught with my pants down again, at least about children’s pain-killer. He kept swiping his arm across the top of his blond head and crying. I curled up behind him and held him, trying to warm up his cold hands and kissing his forehead over and over, wishing for all the world that I could take the “sick” right out of him.

The medicine has started to work and he is now happily watching “Diego” and sucking on the Ring Pop Hubby bought him as a “sorry you’re sick, buddy” treat. He seems to get sicker and more often than Pumpkin, and gives me bigger health scares. At least we haven’t had a visit from the MRSA-monster here at the House. But my sister has and I will have some information about MRSA up soon. But for now, I’m just glad Monkey is feeling better. I hope he gets to go to school tomorrow, I need the break.

Night School is a haven of working adults and parents, a time to spend with other adults, learning exciting, new things. Last night was our first test and some of us finished very early, including me. We gathered upstairs outside our locked lab to wait for the rest of the class. Another mother of small children and I were trading war stories, much to the horror of a couple of the younger women. After several rounds of “terrible pregnancy”, “horrific labor”, “destructive toddlers”, “crayon-eating”, “feces-flinging”, one of the young women told us, “I’m afraid to have kids now”.

We tried to tell her that it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is. Not that having babies isn’t worth it, it is. But, seriously, only have kids if you have a very strong stomach, it’s not for the timid or the queasy. This is what happens any time two or more mothers, who live in the reality-based community, get together. We bitch about the kids, it’s inevitable.

And my school-mate and I definitely live in the reality-based community. No “it’s always peace, light, and joy in my house” or “my kids are perfect angels, who never talk back or disobey or poop their pants” for us, we tell it like it is. I believe that more people should be able to say that having an infant in the house sucks for just about everyone, or that two-year-olds are tyrannical little monsters with no bowel control, or that pre-schoolers have pretty salty language and bad attitudes, or that sometimes, the lovely man you married makes you want to scream. Marriage and motherhood are hard, trying, and, sometimes, smelly undertakings that take fear-inducing amounts of difficult, unpaid labor. But that’s just on the bad days, there are actually good days, and sometimes there are transcendent days that make everything else fade to almost nothing. It is those transcendent days that keep me going, that keep me from wandering off to become a hermit.

I’m really sorry we scared that young woman, but eventually, should she have kids, she’ll remember that conversation and realize that: 1) we were right and 2) she’s not crazy for feeling the exact same way.

Caution: The following post is about potty-training and the word “poop” will be mentioned. You have been warned.

I am in the belly of the beast, my friends. My 2-year old has entered the terrible phase that resides between a baby being blissfully unaware of what’s going on in her pants and a toddler being ready to begin the potty-training process. She has developed a keen interest in her bodily functions, including an unholy fascination with poop. While she likes to follow me into the bathroom and conduct her very scientific observations about the whole process, she is not really exhibiting a desire to conduct her own personal business in there. She is also, unfortunately, very hands-on about her observations. My 5-year old is fully trained so it’s not like I’m some kind of amateur at this potty-training business. He did his share of pooping on the floor and occasionally hosing the place down, but this kid makes him look like a piker.

She does NOT like the feel of poop in her pants so she takes them off, wherever she happens to be. Unfortunately she doesn’t always do so when on a hard-surface floor, in fact carpeting is her favorite place to leave her gruesome little deposits. By the way, I cannot recommend Resolve Triple Action(tm) spray highly enough, the stuff is amazing! Anyway, her favorite time to, ick, play with poop is right before we have to go someplace. Pick Hubby up from work, take Mama to school, pick brother up at his school-all perfect times to completely mess oneself with one’s own poo, according to the Pumpkin anyway. Last Tuesday, I had to give that child two baths! And the very next day, right before Nana was set to arrive so Mama could go to class, not only did I have to bath her again, I had to strip and clean the inside of her bed. I have heard that some monkeys smear the insides of their cages with their own feces; and I am here to tell you that some toddlers do the very same thing. What started as an attempt at a much-needed nap turned into a disgusting, smelly mess that Mama had to race the clock to clean before Night School.

Luckily I got most of the mess cleaned before class and left instructions for Hubby to finish laundering her bedding while I was gone. Five hours later when I got home, I finished inspecting, and cleaning, her room for random poop pieces. The good news-she has not played with poop since; the bad news-one, it’s only a matter of time and two, now I’m afraid to put her down for a nap.

As some of you may know, I am incredibly busy. Just how busy? Let’s see: Monkey is 5 and started school this year, Pumpkin is 2 and the less said about that the better, I’m taking 11 hours in school this semester, I have 3 blogs (how did that happen?), and I have 1 house to care for.

Because of all the different things going on in my life I decided a long time ago that New Year’s resolutions were just not going to work for me. I love the idea of a fresh start every year, a fresh chance to get it right. But we all know that New Year’s resolutions usually don’t last very long. I needed something with more heft, some kind of resolve that I could live with beyond the new year.

A couple of years ago, with a toddler and an infant in the House, I looked at my life and realized that even with all that I had, I wasn’t satisfied. I felt like I wasn’t doing all I could for myself and, therefore, for my family. There was a missing piece, a neglected corner of my life, something I should have done a long time before. I needed a Bachelor’s degree, but saying that and actually making it happen are two different things.

That’s the way it is with most things we want to do, that’s why every year we make New Year’s resolutions and every year we don’t follow through on them. It’s too easy to say, “I need to lose weight” or “This year I’ll stick to a budget” or “This is the year my house will stay organized”. But we never mean it, these declarations are half-hearted at best. They’re the socially expected lip-service we pay to the ideals of positive change. I think the problem is not that most people don’t want to make positive changes, but that people don’t know which are the best positive changes for them. So each year they sit down and write a list totally unsuited to their lives and then, unsurprisingly, fail to follow through.

There are all these things just screaming at us to be done: things we want to do, need to do, don’t want to do, things other people want us to do, things society as a whole tells us we should do. How do we figure out what is right for us? I had to figure out what was right for me, nobody else, me. Like everyone else I had a long list of things to do: lose weight, get a degree (in what?), budget, organize my messy House, quit yelling, be more patient, speak up for myself, be a better mom (whatever that means), dress better, write a book, get it published, eat out less, cook more, try to stay on top of the daily Household chores, quit saving every piece of paper that makes it to my hands.

OK, that’s a long list and I can’t do everything all at once, nor would I want to. How do I winnow it down to just things that are really right for me? The crucial things, the major things, the things that are absolutely essential to my continued happiness. How do I figure out, from the bewildering array of choices, what direction my life should take? Well, I came up with a plan that works for me and I hope that maybe it will help someone else with a bewildering array of choices before them. But right now I have to go pretend I know what I’m doing with this mothering-thingy. More tomorrow.

Everybody congratulate me, I have been declared a Bad Mama by my 5-year old, Monkey! Last night he said to me, “You are a Bad Mama and I’m never gonna love you again. And I’m never gonna like you again. Not ever again.” What atrocious behavior on my part caused these declarations, you may ask? When he tore the metal brad off a manila envelope I took it away from him. And I squeezed past him instead of letting him be a  roadblock. His sister was crying about, well, practically nothing, but I had to find out and he didn’t want me to comfort her. Makes me think he may have had something to do with the aforementioned crying. But Pumpkin calmed down quickly and Monkey wasn’t talking.

He has a serious hogging-all-of-Mama’s-attention problem and hates it when I am not slavishly devoting 110% to his every whim. So when I paid attention to Pumpkin and then viciously refused to let him play with a tiny, sharp piece of metal, I was declared a Bad Mama. And then to top off my bizarre behavior, I thanked him for using his words instead of violence to express his anger. Then he threw a toy at me (good aim-hit me in the face), luckily it was a light-weight one and then he called me “stupid”.

That was it, the last straw, his downfall. Mama is lots of things, but stupid is not one of them. I took him to his room and informed him that calling people, but most especially Mama, stupid was unacceptable and he could just stay in his room until he was able to act like a civilized human being.

Guess what? When I went back into to his room later to see if he wanted to come out, he loved me again and I wasn’t a Bad Mama anymore. Aw, and just when I was getting used to it.

Ok, I realize that I am the all-time champion Queen of the Dorks. It’s not like they had a contest, but if they had, I would’ve won it. And as their Queen I am frequently called upon to set the bar for dorky behavior. One of the ways I continue to fulfill this duty is to run things through the washing machine that have absolutely no business being washed. Like my husband’s wallet, including cash, receipts, and credit cards. Well, at least it got clean. After that I decided that just maybe it might possibly be important to check pockets before I put the pants in the wash. Good thing, too, I nearly washed his iPhone about a week later.

There is one un-washable item that I just can’t seem to catch before it goes in the washing machine-my son’s pull-on diapers. He is totally potty trained, but he’s a very deep sleeper so he wears them at night. I wash at least one load of kid-clothes every day; who knew they went through that many outfits a day! Monkey gets himself dressed for school and tends to leave the pull-ons inside his PJ pants. I don’t know is you’ve ever washed a disposable diaper, heck I don’t know if anybody else has ever done that, but I don’t recommend it. The diapers split open and deposit a gelatinous goo all over the clothes and the inside of the machine. Then I have to shake out all the clothes, clean out the tub, and re-wash all the clothes. Do I ever learn my lesson? Apparently not. Not only did I wash a diaper yesterday, I turned right around and washed another today!

Not that it’s his fault in any way, but I’ve decided that Monkey needs to transition away from the pull-ons. He’ll start flying solo tonight! Wish us luck, we’ll need it.

Just a quick update to my earlier post. As some of you may know, I am gracefulness-challenged. Well, now my entire class knows, too.

With my hip and back issues, I find sitting in school desks for extended periods to be pure torture. I have surprised teachers and other students by bounding up out of my seat to stand in the back of the class, when I just can’t take it anymore. Labs are usually easier on me because I can get up and move around and don’t have to use the rolling, spinning death-trap chairs that typically populate such labs. This evening was an exception, there was more paperwork than legwork to do tonight. So I sat in the rolling, spinning death-trap to fill out my papers and then got up to hand them to the teacher.

Now this is where it gets weird. As I stood, I must have moved the seat a quarter-turn and pulled my jacket of the back of the chair. The seat itself was in the wrong position when I sat down, so I stood on the footrest so I could swing the seat back under me. But my jacket got caught and my purse fell off the back (important in just a second). Somehow I lost my footing or more correctly, my sitting and tumbled backwards off the chair. I could’ve saved myself from complete humiliation, but then I tripped backwards over my purse! I ended up full-splayed, spread-eagle on my back on the floor.

As usual there were gasps of horror and shouts of “Are you alright?!” I said what I always say, “I’m fine, this happens all the time.” And, “My husband is going to laugh when he hears about this.” For the record, there is no graceful way to get up off the floor after you have taken such a fall, not when you’re on your back. Fall forward and you can use your hands to push up off the floor; full-splay flat on your back and the best you can hope for is clambering up. Which is a darn sight better than just rolling back and forth like a turtle on its shell, desperately trying to build up enough momentum to spring to your feet. So I did what any self-respecting klutz would do, I sprung up and put my arms up in the air, just like the gymnasts at the Olympics.

One lady tried to comfort me by telling me the rest of the class would forget all about it long before I would, but I find that unlikely in the extreme. I told her, “Don’t underestimate the staying-power of being the girl who fell.” And I meant it, do you think you could forget it if someone fell out of their chair in front you? Didn’t think so. Hopefully, next class time won’t be quite so exciting.