How To Get The Most Out Of *This* Appointment

Have you ever heard one of those stories about a pregnant woman who goes in for the gender reveal ultrasound, only to discover that her baby has its legs crossed, is passed the hell out, and will not wake up and move around for the WORLD? And not even a couple of jabs to the kidney will rouse that kid into opening its legs? (The only time you will actually WANT your kid to open its legs . . .)

I have, from people I actually know, nonetheless. So it's not just one of those "happened to my brother's friend's cousin's sister-in-law's sister" kind of thing, it has happened to people known to me and therefore, it was just like it happened to ME.

Okay, not really, but I did feel the gut-punch for them because had it been me, I would have lost my shit and probably told my OB/GYN to reach his hands all up in there and FORCE that kid's legs open. Not that he would have, but clearly, I wanted to know whether or not I was having a son or a daughter, each and every pregnancy. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. And it would have killed me not to be able to find out when I thought I was going to.

So when pregnant with my first, I heard this tip from some earthly angel - sadly, I don't even remember who - and it was gold. No, GOLD. (See what I did there? I dorked out.)

Just before your ultrasound appointment, drink some orange juice and slam a candy bar to infuse mad amounts of sugar into your bloodstream and kickstart that little beast into basically doing JUMPING JACKS in your womb.

Or just inject a cup of sugar into your veins. Whatever.

I did that (drank o.j. and ate candy, not the injection) in the waiting room before each and every gender-reveal ultrasound and my boys were so excited to show us their balls that they basically wrapped their ankles around their ears and SAT on the camera. Well, except for Brandon. Due to the test results we got early in pregnancy, his chromosomes were tested, so we knew for a fact that he's a boy at 14 weeks along.

Although, in my particular cases, I was SO HYPED UP before each appointment that my nerves and adrenaline alone were probably enough to jolt the boys into doing gymnastics. In the waiting room, I was literally climbing the walls and kept punching Nate while rapidly asking him 95 times in a row "What'sitgonnabewhat'sitgonnabe?" and "Whatifit'sagirl?Whatifit'saboy?" like a total crack addict. 

I'm pretty sure the medical assistant took us back early to save his life. Or probably more accurately, my life. 

Good luck, and to healthy babies all around. *Lifting a sippy cup in salute. A sippy cup filled with vodka.*

----------------------------------------------------------

In an entirely unrelated note, what do you think of the new changes to the look of the blog? I apologize for the schizophrenic changes, but I'm trying to find my final (hopefully) look. I really would appreciate feedback, as I see other blogs with weird font that I can hardly read or weird background vs. font color that makes it excruciatingly painful to read. And therefore, I usually don't bother reading them lest the visual trauma causes me to want to STAB SOMEBODY.

But I never know if it's okay to say to them, "Hey your blog design makes my EYES BLEED" so I want you to know that I really do appreciate (and am asking for) constructive feedback. The half-dead looking palm trees and sunset in my background are supposed to have a calming effect as an antidote against the insanity that children life can cause. Plus, they represent my California beach life . . . spent cooped up in our house because I'm half-terrified to take the boys anywhere unless I have reinforcements, a.k.a. either their dad or "my wife" (great friend) with me. So they're symbolic but I am open to suggestions. 

And yes, I am still working on a header photo. I just don't know what to do for it. Open to suggestions there, too.

Join in the fun on Facebook and Twitter!

The Sliver Incident

Last week I was a little under the weather as you may have read. It was fun, as it always is with small kids. After a morning spent cooping the younger two up inside, in full neglect mode in front of the t.v., when Ethan came home from school I figured I would take them outside to the backyard. I mean, I can sit in a lawn chair just as well as I can sit on the couch, right?

Well, that lasted about five minutes. Connor got a sliver in the heel of his foot. And not just any sliver, a BIG ASS sliver. A good half an inch long, nice and wide, and buried deep.

YEAH. Of course, he is crying his face off and screaming that it hurts.

Well, kid, I hate to break it to you, but it's about to get a whole lot worse.

I reminded him on our walk back into the house that this is why he is not supposed to be outside without his shoes on. He had been wearing them, but went back in the house, took them off, and came back outside without them and immediately got a sliver. Now, if we didn't have the deck that we did, it would make perfect sense for little boys to be playing outside without their shoes on, but our deck is a sliver nightmare. So therefore we have this rule about shoes. And he broke it. 

And you know how you feel differently about a kid's injury when they received it while rule breaking? Like, when they are climbing on something they know they are not supposed to be climbing on and they get hurt and it's like, "Oh hell no, I don't feel sorry for you, I'VE TOLD YOU NOT TO CLIMB ON THAT!" But if they had been doing something legitimate and got hurt in exactly the same way, all of the sympathy comes pouring out?

Or am I the only asshole that feels that way?

So, in other words, I was mad. We got into the house, my anger building that this even happened in the first place, and he was still screaming and crying and snotting everywhere. I set him on the bathroom counter, washed his foot, and put some teething gel on the spot to numb the pain as best as possible (did you know about that?) while I grabbed all the sliver-removal surgical tools: a needle and tweezers. I sanitized them with rubbing alcohol and as soon as Connor saw me heading towards his foot with the needle, he literally started shrieking at the top of his lungs.

I put the needle down and closed the bathroom window. Clearly, this was going to get ugly. We have neighbors. And please don't be alarmed at my foresight to close the window to contain my kid's screams. I swear we don't abuse them and know all the tricks to "hide" it. It's just that when, while in my house, I've heard the neighbor girl, while standing in their bathroom with the window open say, "Oh, so-and-so, the toilet smells GOOD!" (I'm dead serious. And so was she.) I know that sound travels well. 

So, window closed, I resumed surgery. I hate digging out slivers. It makes me nauseous. I can read bloody murder novel after bloody murder novel and not even bat an eye, but digging out a sliver makes me nauseous. And that fucker was buried deep and I couldn't even tell which end was the entry point. I started digging up one end and Connor was ten inches from my ear and shrieking like he's being scalped and trying to pull his foot away. I was starting to sweat. Progress was not being made. I gripped his foot a little tighter, dug a little more, and thinking the whole time, if only he had put on his fucking shoes.... uuuuggghhh. It could not have gotten any worse. 

Then he started screaming, "YOU'RE HURTING ME, MAMA! YOU'RE HURTING MEEEE!"

At the top of his lungs.

Over and over and over.

Okay, it just got worse. Thankful that I shut the window, but still figuring that the cops were being called right then, I started sweating more and tried digging at the other end to see if I could pop the sliver out of that end. No go, so I went back to the other end and finally got the tip revealed enough that maybe I could get a grip with the tweezers. Nope. So I had to dig more, and I was sweating profusely while my stomach was churning, churning, churning, and Connor was shaking and crying and screaming that I'm hurting him over and over and I was wondering if he was just going to finally pass out to make this all easier and also was wondering if I would actually be capable of hearing the knock from the police over his shrieks or if they'd just end up busting down the door and tackling me to the ground, when Ethan showed up in the doorway and asked the life-saving, sliver-removing, light-coming-through-the-parting-clouds-while-angels-are-singing question.

"Mom, can we play Sack-Boy?"

Are you fucking kidding me, kid? "Sack Boy" is a video game. We're going through this and Ethan is casually asking, over his brother's bloody-murder shrieks and my dry-heaves, if he can play a video game? I gave him the nastiest, hairiest hairy-eyeballed, stinkiest stink-eyed look I could muster and went back to the surgery. 

I was pushing my fingernail in at one end, trying to birth the sliver out of the opening I had dug and grasping the other end with the tweezers and it just wasn't working. Over and over I tried, to no avail. It was getting dire. I was starting to go deaf in the ear closest to Connor, was on the verge of throwing up, and screaming inside my own head, WHY DIDN'T YOU WEAR YOUR FUCKING SHOES, CONNOR? when suddenly, I got a good enough grip and the damn sliver came out.

Jesus. 

As soon as it was out, silenced immediately commenced. At first, I thought I had gone deaf, then I realized that Connor had just stopped screaming and shrieking. Shakily, I wiped my forehead, swallowed down the last of the nausea slobber, put Neosporin and a band-aid on his foot, and put away all the surgical tools.

Hey. Connor. Wear your shoes next time. 

Join in the fun on Facebook and Twitter!

I'm in love. LOVE. And I want you to be, too.

For several months now, Brandon has decided that his bedtime needs to be around 9:30 p.m. Which does not work for me since by about 8 p.m., as a mom, I'm DONE. I'm off the clock. Over it. Had enough.

It was a MIRACLE if I got him to bed at 9. A JOKE if I put him to bed any earlier. He would hang out in his crib, make a ton of noise, climb out of it, cry. I tried everything. Well, almost everything. I adjusted his nap schedule, woke him up early, rocked him, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Nothing worked.

It was annoying. Frustrating. Maddening. It was getting to the point where I kinda wanted to choke him out - just to make him pass out, not to kill him - each night to get him to sleep earlier. While it's obvious that I wouldn't really do that, it speaks to my frustration level.

And then, after spending four nights in a row being woken up by one or the other younger two boys, my sleep-deprived self decided to finally listen to what my friends, family, and peeps on the Facebook page for this blog have been telling me for a while now.

I got some melatonin.

Melatonin is made naturally in the body and regulates sleep cycles. It's what makes you sleepy. So I got a 3mg bottle, and halved one of the pills and then halved it again, and gave each quarter (so .75 mgs - and I'm thinking of halving the quarter if I need to give it to them again) to Connor, age 4, and Brandon, age 2. Connor because he has trouble staying asleep and wakes up in the middle of the night and comes into our bed and proceeds to sweat and snore and flop around like a dead fish. While it's fun and super cozy to have that next to me, it disrupts my sleep just a tad. And I gave Brandon his dose at 7:30.

At 8:15, a FULL HOUR OR MORE before his normal bedtime, BRANDON HAPPILY WENT TO BED AND PASSED THE HELL OUT.

Did you catch that? At 8:15, a FULL HOUR OR MORE before his normal bedtime, BRANDON HAPPILY WENT TO BED AND PASSED THE HELL OUT.

Frankly, I was shocked. I honestly did not think it was going to work, especially that well. And they both slept all night and woke up at their regular time in the morning. And Brandon has gone to bed at around 8:15 every night since, with a little help from my new best friend melatonin.

So melatonin, I love you. Like, really, really love you. Let's do a little dance... Make a little love... Get down tonight! Get down tonight!

I might even love you more than cake. That's saying a lot.

There's also a melatonin spray, from what I understand.

Keep in mind that melatonin is a hormone and is not necessarily recommended for long-term use. Read more about it here. 

So, my friends, if you have a sleeping/bedtime problem with your kids, I suggest looking into getting some melatonin. And of course, be sure to talk to your child's doctor before giving them anything, especially on the advice of me, a stranger to most of you. No, I totally didn't talk to my kids' doctor. I just went for it. But I feel like if I'm going to be telling people to give stuff to their kids to make them pass out, I need to be responsible and put that disclaimer in there. 

AND this disclaimer: Please don't constantly dose up your kid with the melatonin to keep him/her out of your hair. It's tempting, I know, but probably not okay, on so many levels.

Aren't the moon and stars sooo comforting to see? 


Nighty-night, kiddos. Sleep well.

Join in the fun on Facebook and Twitter!

A Common Myth Dispelled. Plus, A Car Sickness Remedy.

We've been dealing with the super fun problem of Brandon getting car sick and puking in the car. Yeah. It's pleasant. And smells good, too. So, even though I love a good time as much as the next guy, I figured that Brandon probably wasn't enjoying it so much and we should get right on doing something about it. I asked readers for tips and looked online as well.

Many people online said that children's Benadryl is the magic cure. I got great tips from readers, too, but many of them were things that would work on someone older than the about-to-be-two Brandon. I also get extremely car sick (and am going to try some of the readers' tips) and knew of things but they did not/would not work for Brandon.

Hey, Brandon, you attention-deficit two-year-old who has no idea what the hell I am talking about, just continually look straight ahead at the cars in front of us as if you were driving! Don't look away for forty-five minutes! Works for Mama!

So yeah, I'm pleased that we get to blame this nonsense on me. Sorry, dude, I tried to pass on my giant nose instead, because that would have been a better, cosmetic-surgery-fixable deal, but no, you got the car sickness. And you'll probably still get the giant nose. Anyway, I figured that going straight to Benadryl, since it received such rave reviews, was my best shot, as nothing else had worked. Because once your GREAT friend catches your kid's puke in a Ziploc bag while you're driving the car (yes, that actually happened) you realize that it's time to solve the problem at all costs.

So we Benadryled it up. And frankly, I was kind of excited. EVERYONE talks about how Benadryl knocks their kids the fuck out OUT. So I'm thinking that not only am I going to stop his puking, I'm ALSO going to get a niiiice long nap out of him.

NO.

This is what he did: NOT SLEEP.

Now. I will give the kid some credit. HE DIDN'T PUKE. Exact same trip back that he had just puked on, and he didn't puke. Then, we tried it a couple of times on another route that he had previously puked on and he still didn't puke. Didn't sleep, but didn't puke.

So there you have it. Benadryl does not knock every kid out. However, it seems to be a fantastic, fantastic, car sickness remedy. Yippity yee! 

A few other tips for car sickness:

1. A full stomach, while seemingly counter-intuitive because it leads to more puke, is a good thing to have before going on curvy roads. A belly full of carbs is a much more settled belly.

2. Ginger ale is amazing. Especially the straight up, 100% thick-as-molasses ginger ale, not the carbonated Vernon's and the like. But even the carbonated Vernon's helps in a pinch. Or ginger pops or snaps or whatever else they make with ginger. And peppermints. And Coca-Cola - the syrup was originally a stomach remedy. 

3. Fresh air helps. Roll down some windows. Colder air helps, too. Hot, stuffy cars breed car sickness like hot wet sponges breed bacteria.

3. If possible, put the puker in the front seat and have them look straight ahead as if they were driving the car. Or if they must remain in the back, try to have them looking straight ahead at the road (this obviously works best if they can be in the middle seat). It keeps their sensory processing on track since motion sickness is a conflict between the ears and eyes - the inner ear detects movement but the eyes (focused within the car) don't. This confuses the brain and when they look all around it SCREWS SHIT UP. This clearly only works for people who are capable of paying attention to the road for longer than two seconds. So not kids, in other words.

4. If the child is of reading age, don't let them read or play games in the car. I was on an airplane last year and even looking at my iPod for 6 seconds to find a song screwed up my stomach. Shuffle it was!

READER/INTERNET SUGGESTIONS:

1. The smell of fresh-cut lemons is apparently helpful. I've never tried so I can't vouch for it but it makes sense in the way that fresh air makes sense. Just bust the lemons out before the puking is imminent.

2. Dramamine for the older people. Not sure what age that is though.

3. Motion-sickness wrist bands. They never worked for me but I'm a freak. So go ahead and give them a try if you're opposed to medicating.

4. An ice pack applied to the back of the neck for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off.

OTHER TIPS:

1. For the little guys, a giant bib with the pocket at the bottom helps catch vomit. 

2. Ziploc bags or large plastic food tubs to catch the puke in are ideal because you can seal it up after, containing the smell as much as possible.

3. Keep towels in the car, on the floor below the puker, in case it's a projectile situation.

4. Keep hand wipes and paper towels and other clean-up supplies in the car.

5. KEEP AIR FRESHENER IN THE CAR.

What else has worked for you?

Good luck, people with car-sick kids. I really, really feel your pain. And smell it, too.

Join in the fun on Facebook and Twitter!

Fine. You win. And this is where you all stop following me.

So yesterday I wrote a post about a major event in our house: all three boys stayed the night elsewhere and Nate and I had an awesome night without them. The point of my post was to make my readers laugh at the shit we did, vicariously suck up the fun and freedom we had, and encourage everyone to go ahead and give away their kids for a night so they can connect as adults with their significant others. I thought it was going to be a meaningful post that inspired people everywhere to be awesome and remember to focus on their marriage/relationship from time to time.

No.

What people took away from the post was they wanted to see some fucking pictures we took in a crappy photo booth at an amusement park, while wasted. Seriously. Check out the comments on the previous post.

Good God, I love my readers! You don't take me seriously even when I want you to. But that's okay. You really are awesome!

I didn't initially post the photos because frankly, they're boring. At least, 3 out of 4 are. As you'll see. But because you all bullied me into posting them and I am a sucker for peer pressure (Really. Hand me a beer or some other alcoholic beverage and I'll drink it. Easy.) I have decided to post them. Ignore my bicycle-blown scraggly hair falling out of my ponytail, please. And my inabilty to open my eyes, apparently.

So here you go. Here are the first two. We smile. I make an inappropriate sexual gesture by sucking on his finger. Whatever. Totally normal for us.

Next one: We kiss. Whoopty do. I KNOW. We really are the first couple ever to do that in a photo booth. Ever. Yes, I have a grossly thick neck and large hands. No, I am not a football player. Or transgendered.

Are you regretting asking me to post these yet? OOH, yeah, I mentioned I looked like a hag in one of them (Wait, whaaat? Looking like a hag in a photo after drinking? NOT POSSIBLE.) and drew all over it to cover up my hag-ness, and that, I know, is what you beezies really want to see. So I'll show you. But get this. I made the decision to do that, then looked at the photos again just to be sure that I really wanted to bore you all to death....

And then I noticed the speech bubble Nate had written on the picture, after I drew shit all over my face and head:

YES. It says "I <3 cock!" <3 being the symbol for a heart. I heart cock. And frankly, the heart looks like a penis and balls. Fitting.

YES. That's how we roll. It's one of the reasons we get along so well. We are both 13-year-old boys inside. I laughed for several hours after noticing the speech bubble. Shit, I'm still laughing. 

Now you know what kind of people we really are. 

FUN people.

So there you go. And now you also know how to "fix" a bad photo of you. Just turn it into a comic by drawing all over it! 

Problem solved.

Join in the fun on Facebook and Twitter!