Alister and I were at the doctor’s office. There were only old people sitting there in the waiting room with us so that made Alister seem extra loud. Sooo… he farted. Then he announced to everyone that he farted.
Alister: I farted.
Me: Ok, just say “excuse me” when you fart.
Alister: (quite loudly) Excuse me!!! I farted!!!
I tried.
I picked up Alister from school today. His teacher mentioned he was behaving oddly about peeing in the toilet. There’s never been a problem. He’s become a pro at the whole thing. She said that he was insisting that he get to pee in the bushes. *sigh*
conversation with Alister when he is helping cook dinner:
Me: Honey, why are you licking the counter?
Alister: Mmmmm…. sugar.
Me: Ah, ok… wait, don’t drink that, it’s… olive oil. Too late.
Alister: Mmmm… onions.
Me: I’m glad you enjoy eating raw onions but I have to put those in a pan and cook them because they go in our dinner… so maybe save some please?
Alister: (grabs butter knife) I’ll cut this lemon for you. (lemon falls on floor, cut side down, because I already cut it in half)
Me: Careful with the knives… wait, what the?? DON’T DUMP THAT BOWL OF THYME IN YOUR HAIR!!!
Alister: Mommy, are you happy?
Me: Yes, I’m happy you want to help, just please listen to me, ok?
Alister: That’s ok mom, I still love you.
My kitchen assistant
Once upon a time, there was a family doing grocery shopping. They had a small child who liked to push the cart. He was often out of control. The family did their best to keep him out of trouble and succeeded most of the time…. Until one day, he knocked over an ENTIRE DISPLAY OF PICKLES. The End.
Once upon a time, we lived in a condo building. Besides Alister, there were three other children on our floor. Now, the good thing about having multiple families close by is having friends for everyone. The moms and dads have each other to commiserate with and the children have friends and it’s relatively easy to keep busy and find activities for everyone to be involved in. The bad thing is that when one of the kids brings home a foreign bacteria, you can count on the entire area to be on lock-down. Altogether, there were 3 boys and one girl. We believe the girl to be the culprit (what a bitch, right?)
The thing to remember when you send your child out into the world is that he/she should be wearing a hazmat suit at all times. One cough can lead to 2 weeks of despair. The girl in question spent the most time out in the world and therefore was the obvious scapegoat. She brought it into the building originally and then left to go back to her dad’s house just in time for everyone else to experience the fun.
The Sunday when things got completely out of hand, we were all having brunch together. It was a lovely time. We were all still in our pajamas, all I had to do was put Alister in his high chair and wheel it down the hallway to the neighbor’s place (sick girl’s mom’s). The oldest little boy was running around the table and suddenly he stopped and said “I don’t feel good”. And without further notice, he emptied the entire contents of his stomach right on the floor. To say he ruined the party would be an understatement.
Everyone high-tailed it out of there and ran for cover. Unfortunately, it was too late. Our friends, AM and ZM (not their real names), called us about 30 minutes later to tell us that their other little boy was suffering the same fate. There were fevers and bodily fluids from hell to breakfast all over their place. I think they had to give one of their sons a tylenol smoothie because 1 year olds don’t seem to enjoy taking medicine (who knew?)
We soon experienced the fun at our house. Now, the only good thing that ever comes out of having a sick child is that he/she might sleep a lot and want to cuddle. It’s a great excuse to sit in front of your favorite tv shows and get out of doing real work. Of course you can’t be bothered to scrub toilets and wash windows! Your little bucket of sunshine is sick! But really… there IS a downside. When you find yourself having to cover your floors with towels because there is projectile vomit flying around, THAT is when reality sets in and you’re ready for the fun to be over. We managed to get Alister situated in his own bed for a bit and AM was nice enough to bring us hamburgers. We sat down to regroup. A few bites in….
*SCREAMING*
Aww, man. We went downstairs to Alister’s room to be greeted by the worst display of bodily fluids I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing. I won’t go into any further detail because unless you are a parent, you’d be absolutely revolted by what we saw. We spent the next half hour cleaning the room and cleaning the child and finally cleaning it all off ourselves and went back upstairs where our food sat; cold and half-eaten. Now, most normal people would have lost their appetite and decided to go do something else, perhaps move onto drinking heavily to forget the horror scene in that room. Not us. We went back to eating like nothing ever happened.
The next day, I had to take Alister to the doctor. I don’t drive and my husband was at work. I was beginning to feel the sickness so luckily the doctor’s office was only a few blocks away and I could just throw him in the stroller and get on with it. We get there and see the doctor and are just about to leave when Alister decides to puke all over the doctor and me. I felt bad for the doctor, of course but I felt bad that it was a hot day and I was wearing sandals and there was puke in between my toes. I did my best to clean it off but still had the pleasure of walking home with puke squishing between my toes. (While I was fighting off my own urge to be sick everywhere because guess what? Moms don’t get to be sick! )
So finally we made it home about the same time Aaron did. He had to leave work early because guess what? He was sick too!! I’m trying hard not to be the martyr in this story but I feel as though I got the least amount of rest throughout this ordeal. I hear that a lot from other moms. Keep that in mind if you’re not a mom and you have one in your home to take care of you. Or a wife. If you’re the husband, take note of this and buy her lots of presents once you’re feeling better because she’s the one who can’t ever take sick days.
Also, if you are a non-parent, remember that having a child is not for the weak-stomached. You have to be able to clean up explosions that came from both ends, simultaneously and go back to eating lunch like nothing ever happened.
Aaron and I like to remember the good old days, back when we could read whatever we wanted to Alister at bedtime and he was ok with it. We have an extensive library of children’s books. We have very old books of fairy tales that belonged to my grandmother. We have the classics, we have newer and more action-packed books. We have various Disney stories. Back in these days, it didn’t matter who read the bedtime story or what we read. There was always a story and it was good. Even ridiculous reading material was ok. I came into Alister’s room once when Aaron was reading to him and asked what story it was.
Aaron: It’s a technical manual.
Me: Wait, Alister came with a manual and you’re just now reading it?
Aaron: No, I’m installing a program and have to read this anyway.
See? We could read anything to him. If people still used phone books, we’d have been ok to read one of those.
Now it’s become more difficult. I’m never allowed to read unless it’s the middle of the day and Aaron isn’t home. I’m like the emergency backup reader. We are stuck in the same books for… days? Weeks? Months at a time?? I start to lose track after awhile. I stopped remembering the words to my favorite songs because they were replaced by Green Eggs and Ham or The Sneetches. Now I miss those stories because we have moved onto various books in the Thomas Train empire. When I say “various” I mean we alternate about 3 books. We have huge books full of Thomas stories and he only wants the same three so we can’t even read new Thomas. I hear this is a common problem for parents and I feel like starting a support group sometimes because if I hear Thomas and The Big Big Bridge one more time, I’m going to jump off the big big bridge and call it a day.
He got us pretty bad last night.
Alister: Dad, do we have new Spiderman?
(YES!! We love Spiderman!)
Aaron: Yeah, we have new Spiderman right here.
Alister: Ok, I want old Thomas.
What a jerk.
I picked Alister up from preschool this afternoon. All of the children were lined up so the teachers could do a head count. How did I know which one was mine? He was the one going down the line and making sure to hug each of his classmates goodbye. They did not seem comfortable with this but he persevered. He also told one of the teachers that he loved her. What a suck up.
I recently walked into the living room where Alister and Aaron were watching cartoons. I asked Aaron a question and started it with “Hey baby…”
I went back into the kitchen and sort of overheard Aaron telling Alister that he’d give him a quarter if he did something. I wasn’t sure what at the time. A few minutes later, Alister came into the kitchen with a quarter and said “here mom, here’s your quarter.” I was a little confused and could hear Aaron laughing in the next room.
Me: What’s going on?
Aaron: I told Alister I’d give him a quarter if he went into the kitchen and said “hey baby”.
At least I made a quarter that night.
He has Aaron face right here.
Yesterday, Alister insisted that I put on underpants. He asked me again about my “bits” and whether my weiner was broken. Then he said, “it’s ok mommy, we’ll get you a new one”.
Last Friday I received a text message from my husband that he was picking Alister and me up to go to a party at his new office that he shares with another company. They had some sort of potluck thing going on that was after hours. There were going to be kids Alister’s age there and food so it seemed like it wasn’t the WORST way to spend a Friday night. I was still a bit skeptical though. Usually office parties where children are welcome are kind of a drag. There are too many vegetable trays usually and I get bored really fast. I often end up hanging out with the kids because the adults are so dull that I want to shove a knife in my eye after what feels like an eternity of mindless chit chat. I start daydreaming of the time I can spend more productively (with a video game or possibly a coloring book). However I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in and was instantly handed a beer. (Not a veggie tray). Alister was given kiddie crack in the form of a juice box so we were both ready to party.
Aaron ended up being a participant in a board game. I was asked beforehand if I minded staying awhile so he could do this. Of course I was apprehensive because if I said yes, that meant I was committed and my couch time would be further away. Finally I said screw it. My couch is the world’s most uncomfortable couch on the planet anyway so what the hell?
I found myself clinging to a gal I met at a BBQ a few weekends before because she was fun. When someone comes up to me and starts talking about how they have dreams of going to Burning Man, I’m instantly their friend. She is also a stay at home mom and a desperate housewife so we had lots of common ground; mostly that our children make it so we want to hide in the bathroom a few times a day. So we did what any self-respecting wife/moms would do when allowed out of the house…. we took advantage of the unlimited access to all the beer we wanted. We made sure to ignore our kids properly and used the generous stock of juice boxes as pacifiers. They seemed to be playing together nicely so it all seemed ok. I was at a grown-up party for a change and it was AWESOME…..
Then my kid decided to be… well, my kid. Like any good party beverages, the juice boxes started to catch up with him. Everything started to happen at once. Aaron was still playing his game and as a dedicated wife, I didn’t feel right making him take Alister to the bathroom when it was easy for me to. But then it wasn’t. It probably would have been fine had the ladies’ room key been accessible right then but it wasn’t handy so I did the next best thing; I took him into the men’s room (which required no key). The problem with the men’s room is urinal. Alister is so fascinated by the urinal that we could have hung out there for hours and that would be a fun party to him. I managed to get him out of there but not for long. By this time he was asking for juice boxes so that he’d HAVE TO GO TO THE MEN’S ROOM. I was becoming so familiar with the layout that I was already having ideas of how they should decorate.
As the fluid intake became a problem, so did the sugar. Who knew that uncut juice would cause such a problem? I mean, I did but I was busy getting drunk so it didn’t factor into my decision-making that evening. We were all looking after each other’s children to make sure nobody got hurt but who was looking after their sugar intake? Certainly not the drunk people. We had our own consumption issues. Things became even more interesting when I had my back turned to the fridge and someone said, “hey, whose kid is that with his mouth on the water/ice maker?”
Aww, crap.
I looked behind me and, yes, that was MY kid, hugging the fridge, with his mouth on the dispenser. Somehow I knew it’d be him. None of the other children there were nearly as take-charge as Alister when it comes to… um, anything. If there is ever a child who would have his face stuck to the fridge and run to the urinals all night just for the novelty, it’s my Alister. Once he discovered the giant row of switches that controlled all the lights in the office, the party was over. The harsh flourescent office lighting took away from the ambience… fun’s over.
Looking back, that was a good time for Alister to let everyone know it was time to go home. One of the employees commented that the place was a mess and Aaron replied that it actually looked like our house (wall to wall toys, not beer bottles). The other children were no longer adorable and were turning into demons.
The next day, Aaron had to go in and drop something off. He said that things must have gotten pretty crazy once all the kids left because there was an empty bottle of Fireball and some shot glasses on one of the tables.
I’m guessing those people needed to get drunk after hanging out with so many children that night…. I completely understand.
Wonderpants Family Adventures 