Pigtails, Pumpkins, Party Hats and Pig Flu

Those four P's pretty well sum up our October. NO, we don't have the dread pig sickness, I am just sick to death of reading about it, talking about it, and worrying about it. Our Pedi is not even offering the Vax. We are still undecided. On the decided front, we are way down with pumpkins. Painting, stickering, carving, drilling, eating, roasting, picking.....you name it, we've done it (I'm obscenely excited about throwing them off of the back deck on Nov 1st, I can't wait to watch those suckers explode!). Party hats are the new uniform around here, with Julia demanding to wear one every day. Can I formally recommend that everyone add some party hat to your ever day life? Really ups the ante on the good times! Anddddddd, (drum roll here) PIGTAILS! My 'bald is beautiful' baby girl actually has plenty of mullet to share amongst two darling little pigtails! I feel like I'm going to blink and my wee baldy will be wearing a bra, but lets not go there.

Last week was just a tough week. I was up late almost every night between the Springsteen concert, the Phils, and being out with friends. Nate was away some of the week. I was feeling a cold coming on. I was, uh.....overly emotional? Sensitive. Pregnant. Tired. Ugh. I felt as though I was being really short tempered with the kids, and as though surely they were taking annoying pills. This weekend was fantastic, I got caught up on rest, caught up on time with my sweet husband, and took a gander in my kids mouths on a whim. NOOOOOOO, it wasn't annoying pills, it was molars. Luke just popped his bottom two two year molars, and Jules just cracked BOTH 1 year molars, BOTH eye teeth, and another tooth. So, the good news is that my bad mood and impatience did not forever ruin my children and turn them into whiny demanding needy brats, the onset of a collective 7 teeth in one week did. Big relief. Thankfully other than the slight case of brattiness, they slept fantastically and the worst seems to be over already. Luke is back to being my cheerful little lover, and Jules is just killing me with her funny faces and phrases lately. At 19 months old the child is pretty much carries on entire conversations and is capable of making all of her needs or wants known.

After sleeping till 9 and then taking a 4 hour nap on Sunday, I knew something was up with the kids. Sure enough, they woke up from their marathon nap with fevers. We have been hunkered down for the past two days, relaxing and keeping our germs to ourselves. The fevers are gone, and Luke is fine, Julia slightly snotty. Being housebound isn't too bad now that the little critters are back to being themselves.

I hit a point last week where I was SO ANNOYED. Just frustrated beyond belief. I wanted the kids to just get with the freaking program, to stop acting like uncivilized demanding task masters. I was quite sure that they had not only figured what the most annoying sound on all of the Earth was, but that they had figured out how to make it in tandem. I wanted the "MAMA I WANT A NAPKIN NOOOOOOW! NAPKIN MAMA! NAPKIN! MAMA CAN I PLEASE HAVE A NAPKIN?" while I was doing 5 other things at that exact time insanity to stop. I felt frustrated at their neediness in the face of all that I felt that I "had" to get done. I began to understand how people spank their kids, or scream insanely at them, or have adult temper tantrums.

Sunday night I was cuddled up with Luke in my bed as my feverish little guy watched Dora. Jules was asleep. Luke was pink cheeked and clean and so sweet smelling I was literally huffing him. His thick dark lashes were so long and beautiful over his green/blue/brown eyes. He reached over to me and held my hand. I found myself utterly transfixed. I look at Luke and Julia all day long. But somehow, after such a hard week, I found myself just LOOKING at Luke in a whole new way. I was struck by how entirely small and soft and new and fragile he is. It hit me that just a moment ago, really, he didn't even exist. Just three short years ago he was still a dream in my belly, not even at the point of viability yet. I was struck by how hard it feels for me (at 34) to cope with the stresses and frustrations of life, at times. I suddenly became aware of how much I expect from this little critter ~ This tiny person who is fully conversational, yet only 2.5. His easy going nature and his sunny personality sometimes allow me to overlook or to forget his utter inexperience, his total lack of understanding of some of how the world works. WHY on earth do I get surprised that the briefest of delays in the procurement of that freaking napkin might feel like such a tragedy to him? OF COURSE it does. Problems that I deem so inconsequential can seem so large to someone so small. With no sense of past or future, the MOMENT is very important to a toddler.

Its all obvious stuff. Motherhood is really just a continual state of remembering and forgetting. As soon as I "remembered" how little, how new, how busy my little ones are with learning all that there is to know in this crazy world, I felt refreshed. It's hard to be a toddler. It's hard to be the Mother of a toddler, too. With just the simple remembering of those truths, I felt patience come pouring back into my body. Thank God.