MOAT-YO: What They'll Sleep Through

You know, it absolutely amazes me what kids will sleep through.  Well, I guess I shouldn’t say “kids” as if everyone’s kids sleep like mine does.  I remember meeting our neighbor across the street when we first moved in.  Zach was about 3 or 4 months old and her son was maybe 10 months. She couldn’t get him to sleep through the train going by or a knock at the door. 

I was enjoying some peace and quiet and taking the opportunity to balance the checkbook while my son had his afternoon nap.  Today was one of those rare days when I laid him down and he actually went to sleep right away (Oh blissful, perfect offspring of mine!).  Everything was going great and my numbers were actually adding up right, when suddenly I realized that that weird beeping noise wasn’t something in my head.

What is that?

I listened thinking it was a car alarm going off down the street.  Nope.
I listened harder thinking it might be the tornado alarm testing.  Not that either. And then it dawns on me what that faintly familiar sound is.

You see, a while back I got annoyed at never knowing the time while I was sitting in my son’s room.  So I bought a nifty little clock and stuck it in there.  Ok, not so nifty overly… it was a five dollar alarm clock I got at the grocery store, but hey!  Now I knew what the time was!  Go figure it didn’t take long before my son realized it had buttons… and like any two year old, anything with buttons is fair game for play.  So much for my brilliant idea, since now the time showing is NEVER right. Well, in the midst of re-setting the time to whatever his little heart desires, every once in a while, he also sets the alarm.  I’m pretty good about checking to make sure it’s off.

Pretty good.

And I’m now realizing that my peace is about to be interrupted since that same alarm is going off in his room where he’s napping!!!  I’m pretty sure it’s been beeping at me for like, ten minutes.

I race to his room (on my tip toes so I’m quiet and don’t sound like an elephant stampeding down the hall) and sneak his door open, completely prepared to find him awake and playing with his toys, or even the clock it’s self.

But he’s not!  He’s sleeping like a little angel.  I walk across his room (on my toes still) and turn it off.  Surely he’ll wake up when the noise stops.  He didn’t!  I leave his room, shut the door, and hold my breath.

1… 2… 3… …. … 10….

He doesn’t wake up!

And then there was our summer trip to see my family for the 4^th of July.  Now last year, Zach was a little over a year old and he LOVED the fireworks!  He just kept saying “Mama!  Wow!  Ooohh!”  So naturally this year I was just as excited to see how he would react to the display. 

Now, before I continue with my story, let me explain something to you.  My family has found the absolute best fireworks display in the entire country.  No really it’s true (and no, I am NOT going to tell you where it is.  Too many people know already, those shmucks!)!  Up in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, the local fire department takes donations every year and sets them off on a hill just over the town.  The display literally goes off right over your head (watch out for those sparks!!!), with bangs and explosions going off like an old school cannon war (you can feel them in your whole body, and one year it rattled the hotel key out of my pocket so that we had to break into our room.. true story), and wonderful rumbles echoing down the canyons for miles, turning around, and coming back!  My sister who has been to Disney’s Magic Kingdom and seen their display agrees they have nothing on this!

So, you can only imagine the noise that happens.  My wonderful two year old had a pretty rough day when we went up to see them, and just about the time it started had begun to calm down.  I had him wrapped in blankets (remember, it’s in the Rockies) and thought I’d put his jacket over his head since I couldn’t find a hat.  The first booms went off to the cheers of the crowd sitting in their tailgates and I just waited for his excited exclamations to begin.

Really, it amazes me what he’ll sleep through.  Because it’s not just alarms and fireworks he’ll sleep through.  Here in Texas we have some really great storms.  I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night more than once, scared $#!^-less because thunder loud enough to rattle the windows went off and I’m pretty sure a tree is going to smash through my roof.  Do I hear a peep from our son?  Not at all.  My husband and I can be watching the latest smash, crash, and boom movie at full volume (don’t you just love feeling like you are going smash, crash, and boom right along with them?) and ne’er do I hear a peep.  Dogs barking?  No problem.  Fire engine racing by at two in the morning, siren blaring?  Sleeping like a lamb.

But watch out!  Because the instant I need to do laundry, go figure it will be in the middle of his nap, and I’ll have forgotten to bring his laundry basket out with me.  But he’s a good sleeper… I’ll just sneak in, grab it and be out again.  Oh no ma’am you won’t!  Any other mother’s out there know what I’m talking about?  This kid - who will sleep through natural disasters, sirens, barks, explosions, and alarms - must have mom-is-being-sneaky radar.  Go figure if all I need is laundry, the instant I open the door and step foot in his room he’ll be awake.  And good luck getting him to go BACK to sleep after that! 

He also must have people-are-coming-over-if-I’m-sleeping-I’ll-miss-the-fun radar.  My husband and I chasing each other around and laughing ridiculously hard?  Doesn’t phase him.  Jeff coming over to drop off the carpet shampooer?  As soon as he says “Hi,” Zach’s up and asking to be let out of his room.

Ugh.

Isn’t it just amazing what kids will sleep through?

MOATYO: On Becoming Bi-Polar

First there is pregnancy.  Hormones raging, cravings manifesting in ways you never though possible.  In the first month of my pregnancy I cried more than I think I ever have in my entire life.  I also had an insatiable desire for refried beans.  Needless to say I was not pleasant to be around.

Then there is the postpartum and infancy stage.  Pain. Poop.  Engorgement. Sleep deprivation.  Loss of memory. Depression when looking into a mirror (come on, you know you were).  And how on earth are we supposed to figure out what this squawking, squalling, screaming, tiny person wants?  Can’t you just tell me what it is you want?

Just about as soon as you get that figured out, then comes teething.  And that’s a whole ‘nuther ball park.

And then they turn about a year old and… things are fine.  Well, mostly fine.  You still have those days when your bundle of joy throws you for a loop, but for the most part you’ve got this mom thing down pat.  You are no longer sleep deprived or engorged.  You child is learning to communicate so figuring out what they want is easier.  Teeth are mostly in.  Life’s great.

I have a hard time getting out of the house.  I mean, I get out of the house just fine.  I go shopping, I go to ballet, I go to church, I go… actually, that’s about the only places I go overly frequently.  I hear about these things called play dates, and mom-to-mom socials, but I can’t seem to get my rear in gear to get at them.  Some mothers take their kids to parks for lunch.  I’m lucky if I remember to feed mine lunch (just kidding… mostly).

But today was a little different.  See, my friend Ren came over to pick up the bottle of leftover teething tablets for her baby girl.  The woman is going through the infancy stage for the second time, bless her heart.  I marvel that she has so much sanity left to her.  Cause actually, she’s a MOATYO AND a new mom.  Whew!  And as she was leaving, she told me she was meeting another mom at the park for lunch and play (Ren, if you are reading this… I bow at your feet.  I’m not worthy).  I had already fed my kid, and really was intending to clean my house (Really!  I was! Phht..), but going to the park sounded WAY more fun!

So I packed up my spawn and headed down.  We played, he fell off the slide, he climbed, it was great!  Until…

“Zachy, do you need to go poopy?”

Instantly he started screaming.  This has become my signal that he has already gone in his pants.  And of course, I figured since he’d gone in his pants three times already that morning, I didn’t need to bring a clean set of clothes.  I should be home free right?  Wrong!  “Zachy, we have to go home, you pooped in your pants.”

And oh, it was on.  He screamed, he cried, he wailed.  “Wanna go play with Evelyn!  Wanna go swing!”  My son’s not really a big fit thrower, but the 10 minute drive home took closer to 20 because I kept having to pull over to work on changing his attitude.  I’d get him calmed down and then as soon as I put the car in gear, it’d be on again.  By the time I got him home, cleaned him up and put him down for his nap I was ready to crawl into a hole.  Actually, I was ready to dig a hole and bury him in it, then crawl into one myself.  Someone please shoot me!  I’m slowly loosing all sanity!

But this very evening, I was standing at the stove cooking dinner and listening to the pitter patter of size 2 feet chasing the pitter patter of size 24 feet.  The screaming and yelling I heard was of a completely different sort than I had put up with in the car this afternoon.  My son chased my hubby.  My hubby chased my son.  And it’s a sound I love more than anything else in the world.

Well, diseased or no, at least I can say this.  I might be slowly going insane, but I absolutely love being,

The Mother of a Two Year Old.

House for Sale

Mother of a Two-Year-Old: Mine

Dear Mothers,

As the mother of a two-year-old, I feel it not only my duty, but my obligation to warn you of a phenomena among growing toddlers.  It’s called, “Mine.” 

You mothers who have passed the two year old phase and come out the other side alive and somewhat sane, quit laughing!  This warning is not for you, and I’ll have you know I in no way appreciate NOT being warned myself.  You jerks!  I, wonderful woman that I am, am choosing not to be a jerk, and am hereby warning all mothers after me… IT’S COMING!!! THE PHASE OF “MINE!”!  There, you are warned.

Mine… what a word.  You know, whoever invented that word should be hauled up in front of the town to be tarred and feathered.  Really, I mean it!  What an ugly word!  And somehow, our children pick up on it without ever having to be taught.  There are small children in Africa and China right now who are suddenly screaming out “Mine!” to their bewildered parents.  Of this I am sure.

Now, my husband and I have worked really hard with our son to make sure he’s a well behaved child, and he is.  He shares well (meaning if Evelyn takes his toy he’s normally pretty happy to go find another one and steal his back from her later), he says “please” and “thank you,” and is over all pleasant to be around.  I really thought we were home free from the “mine” phase when he hit his second birthday and hadn’t started in on it yet.  Goodness knows I wasn’t going to teach it to him!

But none the less, he has picked up on it.  Maybe it was due to that game we started playing called “My butt!”  I’d pinch his cute little derrière and tell him “My butt!” while he giggled and laughed.  Don’t think I’m weird.  You other mothers out there with two year olds know there is nothing on God’s good green earth that could compare with the cuteness of your baby’s butt.  Quit sniggering and fess up!  We’re all friends here.  You know you could pinch it, hold it, and wrap its little nakedness up in towels and blankets and snuggle it ‘till kingdom come.  If you can’t, then maybe you are weird.  Or maybe I am weird.  Or perhaps we are both weird and that makes us even, so let’s call a truce so I can get back on topic.

Magically one morning I woke up and it had started. Now everything is “mine!” and it’s hard to tell him to stop saying it when you know it’s true. “My teddy!”  “My  blanket!”  “Mama!  No bouncy ball!  Mine!”  These things are all true, so what can I do?  I pretty much resort to “Don’t say that baby, that’s ugly,” and hope that one day he picks up on it and decides to quit.  Any of you older mothers with that sanity left have any suggestions?  Oh wait, I forgot.  You didn’t want to tell me about this little problem in the first place, so why should I expect help solving it?  Jerks.

I wish I could tell you that a lucky few will come out scotch free on this one, but I’m pretty sure we all have to do our time.  I’m proud to say my cutie butt made it to nearly two and a half before starting this grossness.  Don’t be jealous, he’s just a great kid and that means points for me.  Then again, you’ve had to put up with the ugliness longer and that means points for you.  Once again, we are even, so quit changing the subject!

One day, I may have words of wisdom on the subject.  I may even come up with a cure!  “Give them four lemon heads and a gallon of prune juice until the problem solves its self.”  Or maybe I’ll leave that for someone with more sanity than I.  Until then, I’m simply floating MY through life, just like you.

MOAT-YO: Imagination

Children’s growing imagination never really ceases to amaze me.  It starts so small, and turns into this massive monster of a thing with never ending potential.  Now I’m not really talking about pretending to feed a stuffed animal, or making noises when “driving” a toy car.  To me these don’t seem to be TRUE pretend.  Zach’s been doing these things for quite some time now, but it always seemed to me more like he was “practicing” for the real world, or parroting what he’d seen or heard someone else do before rather than doing any real make-believing of his own.

The first time my son really played pretend was with his grandmother.  She gave him an empty box of gum to play with.  He opened it, looked inside, and then looked back at her confused, since it was empty.  She showed him how to “pour” the candy into her hand, and then she pretended to eat it.  “Yum yum!”  she said.  His little eyes lit up and for the next 4 hours the only game he wanted to play was “Zach the Candy Man”.

But recently, my son used his imagination in such a way that not only got me laughing, it made me truly remember what it was like to be a kid and have the whole world at the beck and call of my imagination.

 ________

One morning not too long ago, I woke up and skipped merrily down the hall to get my son out of bed (Haha!  What a joke!  Skipping merrily as soon as my feet hit the floor!  Whew, I slay myself!).  Zach greets me with a hearty “Good morning Mama!” and jumps out of bed, dragging his Teddy along with him.  I gave him a hug, and we began our morning routine.

“Zachy, are you hungry?”

“No.”  He says with all sincerity and honesty.  Now this is odd for him because he’s normally putting in his order for breakfast just about as soon as I open the door to his room.  So I ask again.

“Baby, do you want some breakfast?”

“No.”  Hmm… baffling.  I decided to try one last time.

“You aren’t hungry?  Really?”

“No!”  He gives me that impish little grin I love so much – that grin that’s cute now but when he’s 8 will tell me I’m about to have to clean up a mess or provide stitches to someone.

“Ok,” I say, and I stand up to leave the room.  But I’m stopped by his little hands tugging on my shirt.

“Mama, Teddy needs a peanut butter!”  Teddy?  Really?

“You mean You want a peanut butter?”

“No!  Teddy needs a peanut butter!”  Haha!  How cute!  He was dead serious about it too.  No joking or fooling around.  Zachy didn’t need breakfast, but Teddy was starving for a peanut butter sandwich.  So off to the kitchen we go.  As we arrive in my beautiful (cough) 70’s styled floral kitchen, I asked one last time if Zach was sure he wasn’t hungry.  Sure enough, he was not, thank you very much, but if I didn’t get Teddy a sandwich right then his spleen was going to eat his liver!

“Haha.  Ok, go put him in your high chair.”  Zachy’s eyes just lit up like fireworks in July! 

“Teddy!  Come sit!  Sit in a chair Teddy!  Eat a peanut butter!”  As I got the supplies and began forming the glorious breakfast sandwich, I watched as he ran over and carefully made sure Teddy could sit up by himself, and pushed the chair up to the table just as I do for him every morning all the while talking to Teddy about the tasty “peanut butters” headed his way.  Then he came back over to me.

“Is it ready?”
“Yes baby.  Here you go.”  He high-tailed it back to the high chair.

First he tried to put it in teddy’s paw. “Eat teddy!  Eat your peanut butter!  Yum yum!”  But Teddy wasn’t eating.  “Eat teddy!” he insisted, putting it up to his nose.  I of course took full advantage of this moment of cuteness to capture some video on my phone and send it to my mom.  But then, it got even better.  Since Teddy obviously wasn’t enjoying the sandwich as much as Zach thought he should have, he turned to me with a solution.  “Mama, Teddy needs peanut butter and ketchup!” 

I really thought I was going to die laughing.  “Baby, I don’t think teddy is hungry, why don’t you eat his peanut butter for him?” 

“OK Mama!!”

_________

The further we get into the “two’s” of life, the more and more I see my son’s mind come alive.  For instance, he has a toy that he can push around a bit like a stroller, but it can be collapsed into something that he can sit and scoot on.  After letting him “drive” the car one day while I was cleaning it, he began turning the “stroller” toy over and sitting on it sideways so he could have a “wheel” to steer!   He got even more creative one day by asking me where the keys for it were.  I gave him a set of spares, watched him put them into an imaginary ignition, turn them, then take off to his room.  He must have learned this all on our last road trip, because as soon as he got to him room, I heard him tell my brother, “Uncle Alan?  I drive, you go to sleep!”

But this next story really takes the cake for me.

________

We spent some time up in the mountains on our recent trip to see my family this summer.  The altitude was messing with him a little bit and he’d been fussy all day.  In an attempt to keep him occupied and quite while my dad finished grilling hot-dogs on the tailgate of our pickup, I let him sit in my lap, and “drive” – a game that is definitely on his top 3 list of games to play.

So there he sat in my lap, door open, pushing buttons.  He turned the lights on, I turned them off.  He moved the dials on the radio and I worked to make sure he didn’t find the horn or pull us out of park.  Then he’d go for the lights again. On and off.  On and off.

Suddenly he leans out the door and starts yelling.  It sounded at first like he was saying “Someone need a jacket!”  But we’re in the mountains and the sun is going down, so I figure he’s just parroting something he’s heard before.  Back to driving and buttons, then he says it again, only this time I hear something a little different.

“Needs a jacket and French fries!”

And if you aren’t laughing now, you will when you realize he’s ordering fast food.

“Need a chickens, and fries, and hasburgs, and fries.  Okay?  Okay.” Then he actually turned toward the steering wheel to pull up to the window!  This continued for a few minutes.  I called my mom and sisters over and told them what was going on.  We had a good laugh, then they went on to finish putting together our dinner.

Zach turned to me.  “Mama?  A chickens?  And fries?  A mo ba singa?” (From here on out, if it doesn’t make sense, it’s just baby gibberish even his mama didn’t understand).

“Sure baby,” I tell him.   “Mama wants chickens.”

“And fries? Saclmeasic?”

“Yeah, and fries.”

“Ama grewring?”

“Sure baby! And a coke.”

“Oh, Okay!”  He turned back to his imaginary order taker.

“And a coke!!”

______

Every day I see it grow.  His little mind takes flight in new ways that keep me on my toes daily.  And as I watch him learn and make believe in his own little world, I remember what it was like to be that imaginative.  I sigh with joy, and then remind myself of something…

It’s fast food and peanut butters today, but next it’s going to be Superman and Flying, and that’s gonna be a whole new level of fun!