Don't Have Kids

Jon loves being a dad. I get told all the time by spouses of pilots he's deployed with that he pretty much goes around proselytizing for parenthood. Which is really sweet. It warms my heart to see and hear how much he loves his family.

This is what Jon missed yesterday on our trip to Salt Lake City. This is the sort of thing that dampens spirits and makes people want to have their tubes tied. This is why I don't push my friends to have kids.

Traveling alone with a toddler is a very brave thing to do and I, therefore, am a brave woman. I packed very light, I had my brother purchase a car seat on his end, so I wouldn't have to check one and I bought a small umbrella stroller that I could check at the gate. I am brave and I am a savvy traveler. I am not, however, smart, because I did, after all, travel with a toddler by myself.

The first flight was fine. No real problems or anything. It was pretty much the same level of stress as taking a toddler to Costco and purchasing large items. Not fun, but not bad enough to make me avoid it. We landed, unruffled, in Phoenix, where we ate and I chased Nate all over the airport, hoping it would wear him out.

He was, indeed worn out and for the first forty minutes of the flight, he slept like a sweet little blonde angel with rosy cheeks and striped socks. If I could stop the movie there, you all would run to your spouses and beg for babies.

But, then, he woke up.

"But, then" is like the fine print on an "As Seen on TV" special.

He woke up a little off and started to cry, which soon turned to a scream. Screaming isn't fun, but it's totally doable. THEN he started to thrash. And kick and WAIL and SCREAM ('scream' and "SCREAM" do not mean the same thing). I am not kidding when I say I have never seen a child act the way Nathan proceeded to act for the remainder of the flight. It was like trying to hold an angry, rabid wolverine. On steroids. With a thorn in it's eye.

My child thrashed and arched his back and screamed and SCREAMED and turned in thrashing circles in my lap, trying to escape something like it was burning him. I had no idea a human being could act like that. The whole plane was either concerned or penciling, "Get Sterilized" into their day planners. I had the guy next to me offering to help, people in front of and behind me offering help, THREE stewardesses at ONCE standing at our row, asking questions, offering wet paper towels, food from first class and asking on on earth they could do to help.

It really was horrible. Purgatory is here on earth. It's called parenthood and I just made up for 26 years worth of sin.

I may not be smart, but I still think I'm brave and travel savvy. And I'm awfully good at pretending to be cool and collected. I stayed calm the entire 40 minutes he had his fit and I calmly walked off the plane (he had stopped crying from pure exhaustion by then) and collected our things and picked up our luggage at baggage claim and layered my wolverine for the cold weather and waited outside for my brother and only let out a few choice words when it took me 20 minutes to install the carseat and made it back to eat dinner and go to bed by 9:30, San Diego time. But when I wrote my "this is how things went" email to Jon, I cried. Because I only pretend to be calm.

Which is all to say, whatever you may hear from my husband, do not have children. A purgatory sentence is best served off a commercial airplane.

One Billy Goat Gruff

Recently Nathan has been trying to climb onto things. His little-boy-ness is so innate. Like climbing, for instance. In the past 2 weeks, I've looked over from the stove to see Nate with a desperate grip on the other side of a kitchen chair, grunting like an over-burdened ox and trying to heave his body up. In my infinite wisdom, I let him struggle. Not for his character's sake, but rather for my sanity, because I knew that once he could climb, it was all over... again... like when he started to walk.

The other day, I heard the familiar scrape of a chair being pulled out from under the kitchen table and the ox-grunts as he tried to climb, but when silence ensued, I looked up and he was standing on the chair, grinning like a fool at his mother as if to say, "Look what I did, Sucker!"

He then, being a newly established Billy Goat, proceeded to climb on top of the kitchen table.


In my infinite wisdom, I choose to empty the table of fragile items first, instead of hauling him to the floor, because I knew he would just climb back up while I was saving my hoard of breakables, that were up there for the sole purpose of being out of his reach. I got most of them and as I was going to grab the last one - a vase wrapped in paper - my own dear godzilla, destroyer of all that is good and holy, grabbed the corner of the paper and unrolled the glass vase onto the floor, where it shattered.

It wasn't even my vase.

And it was a special order.

Sometimes I get to this point in the story and I can't decide on the next line. A sentence is never enough to express my feelings, which are usually a mix of exhaustion, extreme exasperation and a tiny bit of hidden affection. He may be a horrible rotten monster who destroyed my body and is slowly chipping away at my sanity with his Billy Goat hooves, but he's my rotten monster. And for some unknown reason, I have a hard time being mad when he grins at me so endearingly with each new dangerous accomplishment.

Which is why babies have survived to this day. If they hadn't learned to grin before they were two, the human race would be extinct. And if we were extinct, there would be no one to feed Henry.

Therefore, God was not only looking out for the future of the human race when he programmed "smile" as one of the first learned tasks, but also for large yellow labs.

So I have a vase to replace.

And such is life.

Haiku #1

Studying at night
The dog yawns at my hard work
"Laziness pays off"

Anorexia Lite

I kind of get girls who struggle with anorexia. I totally understand the need to act out in some way in order to feel in control when my situation is anything but controllable. And at times like these, when the husband is deployed, the baby has become a throw-everything-away-because-trash-cans-are-cool toddler and the toilet breaks and the care needs brakes, I consider the need to control things.

Don't get me wrong, though. I have a complete and utter obsession with food. I don't have the self-control to be anorexic. One look at a chocolate cupcake and I'm done. I read cooking magazines like romance novels. And just like romance novel readers imagine themselves in the arms of the shirtless, rippling-muscled Maximuses in the stories they read, I imagine myself slowly stirring the roux and steadily adding the cheese... maybe a little extra... like a block extra... and baking it for an hour with macaroni and bread crumbs and finally when the anticipation is too great, EATING the divine casserole for all it's worth and basking in the afterglow.

I'm a little hungry just thinking about it and I forgot what I'm writing about.

Okay, but the point is, I've noticed something about myself since the Navy kidnapped Jon. On bad days, when I'm exhausted and it's been rough and I find a toddler shoe in the trash AGAIN while looking for a sippy cup there, because I can't find it and that's where my offspring chooses to hide things, I rebel. Before bed, I survey the damage; it could be dishes in the sink or the remains of what used to be my makeup... and I do nothing about it. Let us be very clear it. It is not the exhaustion that keeps me from washing the dishes or my face. It's rebellion.

I get this little foot-stomp going in my brain and say, "I don't have to put up with it any longer! Too long have the tyrants of toddlerhood and housekeeping and beauty regimes held me under their power, but today I say NO! Yes, watching babies and cleaning house and trying to keep a bad complexion at bay all make perfect sense. But that's the problem. They're right. And rebellion requires a little bid of bad. So TAKE THAT, status quo! I'm NOT washing my FACE TONIGHT!"

After my personal revolutionary riot, I go to bed, feeling quite in control. It's anorexia lite. Act out without severe consequences.

Unless of course cold dish water is considered a severe consequence. Which, in my book, it kind of is. Cold dishwater is a personal pet peeve. Gross. So anorexia of all kinds comes back to bite you in the butt, I suppose. But at least I have a butt, since I never said no to that cupcake.

Have a butt to bite, Choose Anorexia Lite!

Gimme Some Advice

Today Nate got together with his best friend Braydon and they begged for candy at a local shopping center that was hosting a Halloween thing. Jon just sent us these awesome "Thai Boxing" shorts for Nate, so he went as a boxer.

We tried to get some photos before we left. Notice the chucks. Also note that he got abs added with eyeliner for the actual event.
One of the restaurants giving out candy was also handing out fortune cookies. Nate's said, "Many people are seeking you for your sounds advice", which makes me wonder. Do they mean sound as in *shriek* *yell* *holler* or are they referring to advice? Like the time we went to our friend's wedding in September and just as the bride was asked if she takes this man to be her blah blah blah, Nate yelled, "Uh-oh!"
That's probably what they meant.Here he is with abs a bit faded, but still visible. All that candy is totally going to ruin his 6 pack. Maybe he'll learn, "Look both ways before you cross the street".

A Dear Jon Letter

Why write two updates in one evening? Here is an excerpt of tonight's spousely email for your reading pleasure:

Henry won't shut up. He barks ALL the TIME now and he's SO loud and he won't stop when I tell him to and if you get a box in the mail with breathing holes in it, it might not be Nate. It's possible that I've sent the Navy a top-of-the-line alarm system that runs on table scraps. And by runs, I mean walks, because running is past the capacity of this particular model. It's slightly defective. But there's nothing wrong with the volume. This one goes to eleven.

I love you more than I love cold weather, chocolate cake, eyeliner, Henry, massages, boots, throw pillows, Stella Artois, cute undies, umbrellas, our Element, whiskey, clean sheets and cheese... combined... plus 20. Which is to say... a lot.

Look What I Found

This is what over ten pounds of baby looks like, four days late. I'm so glad he made it OUT and a year later looks like this:
The All Stars just melt my Southern California hipster heart.