Tag Archives: Writing

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Spending Nights on the Bathroom Floor as Parents

I’m sure we’ve all had those nights after staying out late where you made your bed on the bathroom floor so your evening’s mistakes would end up in the toilet and not your bedroom floor. Eventually we grow into parenting, and these days we spend our time sitting on the floor while our child vomits away a fever. It’s heartbreaking watching them moan and shake while getting sick, but it’s good to know that they can curl up in our arms afterwards to comfort them. It doesn’t make you feel any better though, and I think all parents hate it when they watch their child feeling miserable.

Once my son, then around 1 1/2 or 2, had a fever during a weekend he was away from me. I received a call at work telling me he had a high fever and wasn’t feeling well. I heard myself repeating “take him to the doctor’s” and restating the doctor’s information. He was never taken to the doctors and when I had gotten him back, his eyes were sunken in and he was lethargic.  He wasn’t my son, he was a zombie form of my child. I was scared, and luckily my doctor’s office had a nurse that was able to calm me down and told me to head to the emergency room.

I’ll remember that trip forever I think. The nurses were urgent with him, and hurried him into a hospital gown. I remember the look of terror in his eyes when they put in the I.V. and taped it to his arm and splint, and pumped him full of fluids. They took vials of blood and I sat and watched helplessly while this happened. He was sick and needed me to comfort him, but I couldn’t. They wanted us to walk around with him to make him thirsty enough to drink and my now husband got him a snack to coax him into drinking enough to get discharged. Several hours later he was released, diagnosed with a rhinovirus and severe dehydration. Ever since then, I’ve been neurotically overprotective every fever he’s had since then.

Mothers have this natural ability to tell when they’re kids are seriously sick or not. From the phone call, I knew instantly he needed to be seen by the doctor. Other times, I knew he had an ear infection and while the doctor’s argued with me, they checked and discovered I was right. We have this child inside of us for 9 months, and that gives us the ability to sense something wrong with them. This isn’t just true for the child being sick; I find that it applies to knowing when he’s had a bad day at school or similar situations like that. It’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it.

Sometimes we are irrational and overprotective, but sometimes you need to trust our maternal instincts. It might not make sense, but there’s usually a reason for it and it pays off when you listen. It still bothers me today when I sit there with the doctor and they don’t listen to me until they see that I’m right. “No, there’s nothing wrong he’s just small because that’s the way he’s supposed to be. That and he didn’t exactly hit the genetic lottery in the height pot.” The worst thing we can do is let our kids see us buckle under the pressure, whether it’s crying with them when they get a shot or getting nervous in the hospital. Kids get sick, everybody does. It might be heartbreaking, but as the parent it’s your job to make them feel as awesome as possible.

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Where Did The Time Go?

It seems like yesterday I was my normal skinny self starting my long list of Christmas baking that needed to be done, and on a whim based on my female dog Zoey acting funny around me, I took a pregnancy test without any expectations. Now, it’s 7 months and my husband and I have already established a sappy bond to this fetus we haven’t met yet. Then after all that excitement passes and you start seeing your collection of baby supplies grow, you get that moment of “oh crap” realizing you have 2 months to prepare if you’re lucky enough to go on your due date.

I sat staring at my assorted supplies and realizing that I’m not ready. Emotionally, I’m definitely prepared. I mean I’m not ready for it to actually be here, with 2 months it doesn’t seem like I’ll have enough time to get everything I need done. With my shower next month, I need to step it up. By that I mean, I have to go into crazy pregger nag mode on my husband to get stuff done. I’m not going to lie, I’m getting anxious with preparations of setting up the household to accommodate the new addition. That preparations are more unnerving for me than the real process of birth. Last time it was easier, I was smaller and more capable of doing grunt work. This time I can’t even tie my shoes or put on shoes that aren’t slip-ons. This time, I have no control over anything getting done and can only sit back and pray it gets done.

At least I have my birth plan all set. It’s pretty simple and straight forward: unless I can stick a needle in your spine with you hoping you don’t get paralyzed, you’re not doing it to me. It’s simple and to the point I think, and I’m praying since I went sans epidural the first time around that I can repeat this. Also, the fact I was only in active labor for less than an hour last time and they say the 2nd one is easier, that I’m going to just have him slide out. I know, it’s unrealistic, but sometimes you need to let us pregnant women hope. And let’s find a way to safely knock a pregnant women out for a c-section. I don’t like the idea of being awake while watching the shadows of the doctors pulling out my insides to retrieve a stubborn fetus., and I don’t think I’m the only one.

When you get to this point in the pregnancy, the lovely 3rd trimester unless it’s just me, that you’re less excited about the idea of the newborn baby in your eyes and alternate between “get this thing out of me” and “I’m not ready for this”. You can still revel in the fact that you can eat what you want, and if you’re lucky like me, take advantage of the massages your partner is willing to give. Just focus on what you need to get done, and then allow yourself time to sit back and imagine the newborn about to take over your life. It’s worth it, and after all you go through to get them here, it better be.

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I’m Sorry For Your Loss, I mean…

I consider myself a master at attending wakes and funerals. They are the few events I can maintain grace and poise and not feel completely awkward. Maybe because the guest of honor can’t really tell so there’s no pressure. I extend my condolences in a sympathetic way while nodding or hugging with sincerity. Most people do well at weddings or work holiday parties, but I can’t be normal can I?

What I haven’t quite mastered the full sincerity of my condolences. When someone dies, people say “I’m sorry for your loss”. I never understood that. Why are you sorry? Did you somehow cause the <insert natural cause here> that killed this person? Unless of course you did something that caused that person’s death, in which case I’m pretty sure something as simple as an apology isn’t really going to help the case at all. I can’t say “I’m sorry for your loss”, it doesn’t make sense to me.

So I say the usual “my condolences”. It’s simple and to the point, but nothing said seems more than hollow words. However, I found that outside of the funeral ritual, I’m awful at this idea of comforting someone. A friend of mine’s grandfather had passed away recently. He mentioned it on Facebook, saying “if you see someone with my name in the obituaries, it’s not me it’s my grandfather.” I was the first commenter and my reply was “I’d hope not, otherwise we’d be in a lot of trouble with talking zombies and no good could come of this.” It wasn’t until a mass of people followed with “I’m sorry for your loss” that I cringed at their apology and my sounding like the worst person in the world. Luckily, in seeing him over the weekend, I found that he was amused and glad for the laugh. I suppose it’d be worse if they didn’t expect that sort of comment from me.

Now I have to teach these lessons to my son. When he was in kindergarten my grandfather had passed away around Christmas time. He wanted to come to the funeral and despite my hesitations of him being too young for something like this, I agreed thinking that he could always be with my other family members in another room while I paid my respects. That wouldn’t fly with my little adult, and I had to give him a brief 5 minute lesson on what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to behave and that at the end of it he was going to be kneeling down praying in front of a real dead body. Without being scared and with grace that I’ve never seen in someone his age, he did everything he was told and even used the word “condolences”. At the church, I couldn’t help but to try to fight my laughter while I watched him take a tissue like everyone in the room and dab his eyes to wipe away tears that weren’t there. He mimicked everything from the tissues to the proper Catholic church etiquette. It turns out all I had to do was give him a brief lesson and all he needed to do was take it from there. He just followed my lead, even giggling when I couldn’t contain my laughter at how silly he looked trying to mourn like everyone else. He learned the lesson of the mourning rituals, and was even more excited that he got free food out of it. Plus, he always did fancy an excuse to wear a tie.

This ties together 2 points I have made in my previous blogs. Point #1: I’m a terrible person that lacks social skills of how to behave in an acceptable manner. I could either change this or learn to accept that no one will really appreciate or accept me for this. I’m not changing, I don’t believe there is anything so wrong with me that I need an emotional soul-searching makeover. Point #2: Kids learn by example, there’s no denying that. My son didn’t know how he was supposed to behave so he behaved exactly like he saw everyone else behaved. There’s an emphasis on the “everyone else”. Children learn from everyone in a social environment and from things they see at home. Remember kids are sponges for knowledge, and unless you want an awful and inappropriate joke I’m probably a terrible person to console you.

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Life Without My Smartphone

A few years ago when the Droid Eris first came out, there was a buy one get one free and the first Eris would also get a huge discount. With that, my husband convinced me I wanted a smart phone because he wanted one with the discount. I looked at him with a “what do I need one of those for?” looks, but agreed because it was cheaper to buy both for the price of one and I did need a new phone. The first week all I heard from him was “how great this phone was” or “look at all this cool stuff you can do”. Much like every other time he did this, I pretended to pay attention and nodded in agreement.

I never quite appreciated that phone until our son started baseball and I realized that tee-ball was as exciting to watch as a chess game, and I could play games on my phone. Admitting that doesn’t make me an awful parent, it makes me an honest one. Then I realized I could easily put his schedule on the phone to keep track of games, practices and doctors appointments. Maybe this smart phone idea wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t understand those people who couldn’t live without smartphones.

That is, until now. I can send a grocery list to my husband’s phone so he can stop by the store on the way home. I can read the news while waiting at the bus stop for my son, and avoid conversation with the other mothers. I can manage my blog from it. There’s basically an app for everything: games to entertain your kids with while they wait for appointments to ordering a pizza so you can stop and pick it up on the way home. Personally, I love the pregnancy apps that give me daily bits of information. Today, I even discovered an app for Babies ‘R Us that I can scan items from my phone to add to my registry. This leads me to a question of what did we do before smartphones?

I take back everything I mocked my husband for in his excitement over the smartphones. I can’t go anywhere without it, and I find use for it everywhere whether it’s to prove my husband I was right about something or to get an address to a place we forgot to look up on the way out. The newest app to my collection is an app that tracks the infant feedings and changes, making it easier than the old-fashioned paper and pen way and less likely to lose it. Though since I’ve been pregnant I even lose my phone. With everything else being difficult and confusing, it’s good that we have our handy phones to make it a little more manageable.

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Things I Learned: Random Rants Edition

It’s that time, and it’s been a while since I discussed silly little random things I’ve seen and learned a lesson from. An introduction to these points would be repetitive, so I’ll let them speak for themselves.

What I learned this week about being pregnant: My husband asked what happened to his cookies, and I told him that if he didn’t eat them where he would find them. He looked at me, and it occurred to me what he was thinking. “I didn’t eat them, what just because I’m pregnant, you think I eat everything in the house?” He tried to hide his smirk, and nodded yes. The next day, I nearly devoured a 15 lbs watermelon all by myself. He looked at me, smirking away judgmentally and lovingly and I realized that maybe he was right. Except about the cookies, even pregnant I still don’t really like cookies. It bothers me he was right and so smug about it. I shall be a good wife and remember this when I want something he won’t agree to and use it against him. Remember men, it only works because you let us get away with it.

What I learned while watching Fox News this week: I looked up to see them discuss a news story that none of the other news organizations bothered to air. I didn’t care enough to listen to what news story it was, but I couldn’t help but to laugh about the news articles I’ve read that never saw its way on Fox News. As if there was a God that wanted to prove a point, I read about Charles Worley and wanted to cry about how humanity is going. I waited several days, and not a mention of him on the news programs or as a headline on their website. In case you were wondering, he’s a pastor who wants to round-up gay people and lock them in an electrical fenced in area to die off. Also, check out the Anderson Cooper video with a follower of this pastor on Gawker. You’ll learn to love that quirky silver-haired man after watching this video. I’ll shout out a “thanks” to him for saying what we were all thinking in that way only he can. I’d like you guys to play the “Find the Charles Worley Story on Fox News” game too. But please, show us more of how unlikable Elizabeth Warren is because I’m pretty sure people take her as seriously as they take Joe Biden. Oh, I hope no one takes either of them seriously because they are both as nutty as an almond bar. Also, I’d like to know more about how religious freedoms mean the government can’t tell the religions what to do, but the religions can tell the government what to do. Last I check, gay marriage was more of a religion topic than a governmental one.

What I learned from Gawker: You’ve become my most reliable source of news over Jon Stewart now. I’m not sure if that’s sad for me or sad for the organizations that call themselves “News”.  I’ve also learned that I’m going to start watching the Anderson Cooper show. I’m glad I mentioned him in my novella that is finally in the polishing stages.  Please for the sake of corporate news cynics like myself, continue to tell us stories the mainstream media refuses to share with us. Gawker, my family loves you.

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Those Silly Little Battles

I’ve only been a parent for about 10 years, so I’m nowhere near an expert on parenting. In all that time though, I was told by people to always pick your battles. What does that even mean, “pick your battles”? Aren’t I supposed to be the parent? Battles are supposed to be between people of equal standing, so I assumed as a parent that I’d have an upper hand by being an adult. They laughed at my stating this, and said I was a naïve child. Maybe so, being a single teenager probably makes me the last person who should comment about anything to do with parenting especially since my first-born wasn’t even more than a fetus yet.

Soon enough, I realized that he didn’t listen when I tried to be the boss of everything. Even worse, I realized that I sounded like a naggy old lady doing so. It did hit me eventually that they were right: it’s way too tiring to fight over everything with your child. Obviously, the serious things you still need to stand your ground. But I learned that eventually you pass some power over to your child. Is it good for them to eat hot dogs and mac and cheese everyday? Not in the least, but it’s better than spending more time fighting with him than him eating. But you can work around that with vitamins and other ways to trick vitamins into you child. Even something like clothes it’s better to bite your tongue than fighting about why plaid shouldn’t be worn with plaid. Friends don’t let other friends wear plaid on plaid, remember that. (Or like I ranted about before, that awful boys in skinny jeans trend.)

If not being stressed about every little things isn’t enough of a reason not to fight your child on everything, consider when you were younger. When your parents said “no”, didn’t that make you want it more? It started not to matter that you wanted it, that wasn’t the point anymore. Now it’s a matter of they told you that you couldn’t have it and you suddenly wanted it more than air itself. Do I like my son in a fedora with skinny jeans? No, definitely not.  But I’ll take that over a heart attack. So remember for you new parents: Pick your battles, you’re better off that way.

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What Kids Really Learn

Before having kids, I thought the “Nature vs. Nurture” was a joke. My son isn’t biologically my  husband’s, but that doesn’t make him any less the father. This scenario is the only proof I need that while kids are born with a certain disposition, the environment they grow up with influences them more than we can understand. My son is every bit of my husband, the same mannerisms and likes and interests. It’s something completely interesting to witness, and last night this all came together for my inspiration for today’s blog.

This idea of what a child learns is all speculation. No one really knows how a child really learns, but one thing most people agree on is that a child learns from observing the people around them. This learning comes mostly from our parents. We see how they act and behave and a child learns from this. This can go from 2 extremes, the really silly and the really serious.

To start with, the serious. A daughter who witnesses her mother being mistreated by her father might grow up thinking that this behavior is something acceptable, and allows herself to be treated the same way by her future partners. A son who sees his mom beaten might grow up thinking that is the way to treat women and become abusive towards his partners as well. Nothing is guaranteed, but statistically it happens more often than not. Children are sponges for information, and without being shown what’s appropriate or not, can lead down a path making us wonder what we did wrong not realizing it may be too late to fix it. With this idea, in raising my first son I led by an example I hoped that he would grow up and be proud of. My husband’s parenting style is the same, and it worked out well the first time around and I hope it continues the next time.

Now, the silly way this can be proven true with a funny story of my household. My husband is a very overprotective person, one feature I find both lovable and annoying. Next to our bed, he has a wooden stick that he jokingly refers to his “just in case beating stick that can be used from anything from robbers or a zombie apocalypse”. One day, my son was sitting on the bed watching streaming videos and dropped his favorite stuffed animal. When he picked it up, he noticed the wooden stick and asked about it and of course I told him and he smiled that smile he gets when I tell him something about his father that makes him want to be more like him. And last night I found out he was.

I went downstairs before I went to bed like I usually do to check in on my son and nephew while they were sleeping. I went into my son’s room to retuck him in and I noticed next to his bed was one of those plastic bats ready to be grabbed for “just in case”. I couldn’t help but to let out a loud laugh which made him turn in his sleep. I called upstairs for my husband to see what I can only blame him for, and we sat laughing together.

This just makes me wonder if I’m right about children learning from what we do and how we behave. While no one really knows the answer, I’d like to think that you should set an example for your kids. Then you can look on with pride when they explain to you in the morning why they had a plastic bat next to their bed or why they picked up someone’s money and returned it to them instead of keeping it. We do a lot by raising our kids to high standards of behavior and giving them knowledge to be good people in society.

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Fairy Tales

One night as we were winding down and talking, I went on a random rant of the day to my husband. His response was “I’m glad we’re not having a daughter.” We both laughed, I’m sure the world isn’t ready for another me and he agreed. My point was a simple comment in response to an episode of Game Of Thrones where Arya told Tywin, “Well most girls are stupid”. I, being the feminist I am, fully agreed with her little statement. Most girls are idiots and I, the pessimist over-thinker I am, figured it out. I figured out why they like boys who mistreat them and waste their time. The answer was simple really: fairy tales. I never cared much for them, but most girls are raised with them as lovely nighttime stories. Let’s be honest here, that’s where parents years and years before us have screwed up my gender. This is why my husband is thankful we’re not having a girl. Next time though, I think the world needs another me.

He thinks I over-think it, I think he’s just a silly boy sometimes. Let’s look at the facts here, and you decide. First, we have the poor but beautiful Cinderella who gets help from a fairy godmother to meet Prince Charming and get married. However, he doesn’t recognize her without seeing if a shoe fits? Really, he couldn’t be bothered to actually remembered what she looked like and if he had come across the Evil Queen herself and the shoe fit, we’d be looking at a completely different story. From that, little girls learn that all that matters is he found her based on a probable foot fetish and it didn’t matter who she was. Also a guy would never just look for a girl based on a shoe, he’d just find another girl because it’s easier.

Then we have Little Red Riding Hood. It starts off innocent enough, a girl wants to give her sick grandmother some food. But why would she get there and not be able to tell her grandmother was actually a wolf, not a human. Is a girl supposed to learn you don’t need to be intelligent, just cute? If you can’t tell that a human is actually an animal than I think you deserve the title of an idiot because, well, if I need to finish that idea than I’m worse off than I thought. The distressed damsel thing bothers me, too. Sure she was a girl against a wolf and needed help but maybe she wouldn’t have gotten there in the first place if she ran when she saw a wolf wanting to bite her head off in the first place. Screw that “My what big eyes you have” comments.

I’m sure if I wanted to I could come up with several more examples of this. I don’t want to read my daughter any feminist manifesto telling her she doesn’t need to wear a bra or shave her legs to get respect in the world. I want a good literature role model for her. We have Bella from Twilight that really just wants to marry a vampire and become one, which passes a message that girls just want to get married and suck the blood of their husbands or wallets depending on your interpretation. Luckily, we have Katniss from the Hunger Games who doesn’t consider love or marriage and kicks a ton of butt. We need more role models like that for our girls not ones that teach them that marriage and playing a brainless wife is what love is about. That’s how girls grow up to be idiots.

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Who Needs Flowers?

My husband is a good man, as I often state. In the years he’s known me, he learned one thing: never send me flowers. It’s not that I don’t appreciate flowers for their beauty, only their beauty actually planted. I don’t see the point in flowers, they are just dying plants that only last a week at best and you pay a lot for. Maybe I’m just too cheap to truly appreciate a bouquet of stargazing lilies, but it causes problems on days like Mother’s Day where it’s customary to give your wife flowers to show your adoration. He always makes do with surprisingly thoughtful gifts that make me laugh that other men get off easy just buying some roses and having their ladies swoon at their feet. Not my husband, he doesn’t like to take the easy way in anything.

Usually he can’t keep his gift a secret from me. 2 years ago at Christmas time, he comes over to me with a box. “I can’t keep it a secret, I’m too excited. You might as well just open in now.” It was barely 2 weeks until Christmas, and his joy in giving me a present he thought I’d love turned him into a kid waiting to open his presents at Christmas time. That is the type of person he is. He doesn’t really care what he gets, but the joy in our eyes when we love our presents turns him into a giddy schoolgirl.

This Mother’s Day was different. He kept his mouth shut though I kept guessing what it was that he got me. He smiled maniacally, playing a game with me of “you’ll never figure it out”. I knew I figured it out though, but I knew I’d be shocked and thrilled when the day came. Sure enough, with a knock at the door and the shrill bark of our overly anxious dogs and in comes my husband and son with my surprise: An Edible Arrangement. Now, I knew this was coming but my fat pregnant self couldn’t help but be giddy and touched all the same. My number one food craving has been fruit, and here was a giant bouquet of my favorite food in gigantic size. The card was signed with a “love” from my husband, my son, and my unborn son. It was adorable, and I don’t normally call things adorable. No other word seems to fit.

I devoured that thing in a day. I regret that now, not just because all that delicious fruit was gone but because my stomach still hurts from my lack of willpower. Apparently, your appetite reaches “bottomless pit” mode at 6 months pregnant. The pain is worth it, so so worth it. Mother’s Day is a day to celebrate the things we do as mothers every day and to celebrate all our mothers for everything they do for us. So all Moms, including all the Moms in my life, you are awesome and don’t forget it. It’s all worth the pain.

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I laughed thinking of all the stereotype jokes I have floating in my head at random moments, mostly about myself. For instance, I was making supper and I looked down at my toes while waiting for the food to boil. My original thought was whether I should attempt to paint them, but quickly turned to the fact that I was standing pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. I couldn’t help but to laugh, this made me think of stereotypes.

Well that wasn’t the initial reason the idea of stereotypes creeping into my head, it started a little while ago when Ann Coulter was on Fox News discussing about how Hollywood promoting stereotypes of Southerners as stupid and religious people as evil was somehow harming America. I suppose those are harming America more than racism and homophobia, though I have a feeling that stereotyping is the least of American problems. What is Hollywood thinking overly exaggerating people for the sake of entertainment and sales? Maybe they should learn something from our news shows about how now to use dramatic language and exaggeration to get more people interested in watching the news. Heck, maybe she’s got it right. We shouldn’t stereotype New Yorker’s as being a mass group of KKK members, and Christian religious groups aren’t evil cults that capture teens and torture them on their compound for their sins while gunning down federal agents. (That’s for Kevin Smith fans right there.) We should focus our stereotypes on Democrats and how dumb they are. That Ann Coulter, she’s my idol.

I know, sarcasm doesn’t quite translate well in written language.

My point is that we need to look at stereotypes very closely. My husband is an Asian that is a computer technician, and my best friend is a terrible driver and an Asian female. My other friend points out that my family can’t get drunk, they “get Irish”. Westboro Baptist Church protests all sort of minorities and people of different sexual orientation and preaches intolerance. Maybe the problem isn’t that we stereotype, but that sometimes there’s a reason for the stereotype: in some cases they are true. I say some, I’m not a racist or all for sweeping generalizations of people. Maybe, just maybe stereotypes exist because there’s some truth in it. So when some says, “you should be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen”, I laugh. Because I am pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.