Fat Lip

My husband calls W “spirited,” and the other day W refused to settle down even after several warnings from dear old mom. (So shocking that he wouldn’t listen to me.) We were sitting on the couch together, and just as my internal voice was telling me to get out of the tornado’s way, an elbow or knee or something came flying directly into my lip. It hurt — badly. I couldn’t help it — I fell to the ground and cried. It felt just like a razor blade had sliced me. My tooth had gone right through my lip and it was bleeding. W started screaming and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” then HE cried.

It took me about 30 seconds to compose myself and start comforting him, but my lip hurt so bad that I didn’t forgive him immediately.

I recently read something online about how guilting your kids is not a good tactic, but I couldn’t help it. I made him feel bad.

I texted my husband and said I was bleeding, so he called to see if I wanted him to come home.  I said I was fine and I put ice on my lip while I calmed down. I did get a fat lip pretty quickly, and while W seemed to be over the trauma, I made him look at my lip and, well, feel guilty about it. He is getting stronger every day, and with a baby sister around I felt he needed to know the type of injury that results from playing rough. He looked at my lip and clearly felt really bad.

“I did that?” he asked.

“Yep” I said.

“Why?” was his response.

I think I said something like, “Because you weren’t listening,” and he seemed to be processing.

Then all day long, everywhere we went, I told people that W gave me my fat lip and I pointed to it. I did it so that he could hear me and see that I was in pain and that other people noticed Mommy’s feelings too. This wasn’t really premeditated; it just kept happening. Probably because I was self-conscious about the purple welt.

Before bed that night, when he was getting a bit rowdy, I said, “Settle down,” and he did! Miracle. Then the next morning at breakfast Elmo had a “fat lip” too, and W told me he was the one who gave it to Elmo. We kissed Elmo and told him to feel better. That little Elmo episode helped me realize W had been thinking about things and maybe, just maybe, he will think twice before going off the rails next time. Maybe?

-Tightrope Mama

[Image: Doctor Dan The Bandage Man book cover]

The Letter

My daughter turns three this week. So amidst my many-listed chores and preparations, I
have one daunting task to accomplish. The Letter.

Reflecting on the task at hand, I pull up the First Letter. I read. I marvel. I have forgotten
many things.

In some ways this blog of ours accomplishes a similar idea to The Letter. This blog
could be, in essence, a legacy for our children, for when they are curious about who
were these women, these mothers, who became so hardened in their ways, or so
unrelenting, or magnificent, or kind, or ill, or perhaps gone altogether. Let’s hope they
have questions, and that we may provide insight into their early days, and our bared little
mama souls.

Here is a very pared-down version of that first letter I wrote back in the spring of 2011.

Portrait of Your Mother during the First Year of Your Life
Chapter 1
April 8, 2011

Hi [Guppins]. You will be 18 today. Or perhaps this will surface some other way, some
other time. I am trying hard to picture you. Today I have a strong image of you walking
into our apartment as a grown woman (I will be surprised if we still live there, but you
never know): tall, short-haired, good-humoured, confident. Not complicated. Maybe
some secret complications that are only yours... (I am making stuff up now because
how can I know? You are just a sleeping baby as I write this.) What I mean to get
across is the feeling I have, imagining you now, and how it astonishes me. I have lived
my life intuitively. Maybe not made the best choices, or plotted things out, particularly
financially, so to have pulled off growing a young woman — at my age, of all things (I
am 41 writing this), is...well, it is a miracle. You are a miracle to me. Your existence has
taught me some very affirming things about myself. I know it may seem silly — women
have babies all the time — but still…to me, the growing-a-life thing basically put to right
some shady ideas I had about myself, my abilities, my normalcy. You have helped make
me feel normal, and capable, and able to love. You, my Dear Daughter, have sorted me
out.

This idea was given me by a playwright by the name of David Young. He said to me at
a New Years’ Day party, “Give her a yearly portrait of you as a woman. Every year ’til
she’s eighteen — write it until she’s eighteen — then give her the first on her eighteenth
birthday. Give her that.”

First of all, I am fairly narcissistic, so this idea does seem a tad…narcissistic. But then, I
thought — am thinking — well, what if I die? Something dreadful like that. I don’t know…
So I am going with it.

Portrait of a Woman: A Year in [Drama Mama]

Mother. Mother is new to me. Never have I been defined as Mother. Many, many years
of not being seen as Mother. And here I am. And it is fitting…my being cast in this role.
One of the things that has happened during your first year of life is I have been cast
to play Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. It is so…timely. Hermione begins the play on
the cusp of giving birth to a baby girl named Perdita. Perdita is lost to Hermione for the
first sixteen years of her life. And you might now be somehow lost to me. Growing up
does this. So you are my Perdita as you read this. When mother and daughter re-unite,
Hermione says:

Oh You Gods
From your Sacred Vials pour your Graces upon my daughter’s head.
Tell me, mine own.
Where hast thou been preserved? Where liv’d? How found thy father’s court?
For thou shalt hear that I, knowing by Paulina that the Oracle gave hope thou was’t in
being,
have preserved My Self to see the issue…

And so my darling [Guppins],

I call you Perdita.

(No matter where we are to each other, my heart is open to you, and I wish only to be
waiting in our private garden for when you return, and wish that all the world fills you with
grace, forever.)

Your loving mother.

-Drama Mama

A Vacation Vignette

We went to the Caribbean and it was my birthday. We celebrated the day by buying incredibly
expensive passes to the luxurious waterpark and splashing in a piss-warm kiddie pool for most
of the day. (Don’t worry; it was awesome.)

Cut to the end of the day: slightly sunburned, definitely exhausted, and three Miami Vice
cocktails later, my husband darts off to do a quick birthday errand for me. He says he will be half
an hour. “No problem,” I say. I am bouncing LouLou in the shade while my MIL swims with W in
aforementioned piss-pool.

I see MIL swim/pull W to the side of the pool, so I mosey over. Then I see it: floaters. My kid has
definitely defecated in the pool. Oh, great. Thank god I am in a big floppy hat and sunglasses.
I calmly and quietly say to MIL, “He pooed.” I do not want to cause a full-scale evacuation. She
shrieks and runs from the pool. “Who? Where?”

Now I am left with a baby in arms and shit-kid in two feet of water. “Get out,” I say. Obviously he
says, “NO!” just as the lifeguard is coming over for a routine chlorine test. Shit is literally about
to get real. I throw LouLou to MIL, who is now saying, “Ew,” and, “Gross,” and, “Oh no.” I pull a
Teen Mom and manhandle him by the elbow while gritting my teeth. Did I mention husband is
not present? I half lay him UNDER a lounge chair on top of a resort towel. Watery swim diaper
poo is now running up his back and down his legs. I rip open the diaper to reveal a full-scale
tsunami of shit. If it wasn’t me it was happening to, in the middle of 500 kids, I would probably
have laughed, but I just got to work. Wipes were flying as my MIL said things like, “It’s on his
elbow,” and, “Oh My God, the towel!”

I managed to get him relatively clean and stuff the not-to-be re-worn bathing suit into a plastic
bag, but the towel; oh, the towel. I looked around and quickly shoved it into a garbage can.
There really was no choice — I would hope others in my predicament would also do the same.
However, an employee saw me and promptly shook her head and scowled at me, probably
taking me for a wasteful North American who was too lazy to take the extra three steps to the
towel receptacle. I mouthed, “It’s all shitty,” and quickly gathered my stroller just in time to see
my husband strolling back.

“What did I miss?” he says.

-Tightrope Mama

[image: swim by Sylvia Cook Photography]

Shoot Gun

“Mummy! Mummy! A shoot-gun! A shoot-gun!”

Me running upstairs, tripping in the dark, scrambling to the closed door of my should-be-
sleeping child, fumbling with the doorknob — her screaming…

“A SHOOT-GUN! A SHOOT-GUN!”

“What? What is it, my darling, what is it?”

I scramble to the floor, holding her. She’s crying, I’m almost crying… What the hell is she
saying?

“A SHOOT-GUN!”

“A…what?” (I can’t believe what I am hearing.)

She is hysterical.

There do not appear to be any criminals in her bedroom.

Never let your child watch adult TV. Ever. No circumstances apply. Not even if it’s your
birthday, at midnight, and it’s one of those nights your kids just won’t stay asleep, and
you have a friend over who likes to drink with you and watch Breaking Bad on Netflix.
Even if you’ve attempted to put the child back to sleep, like, five times, and they refuse.
Suddenly saying:

“Okay, well, this is mummy time, so if you want to stay up then you have to watch
mummy TV on mummy time. Even if it’s BREAKING BAD.”

WRONG!!!

Months have gone by, but she hasn’t forgotten whatever it was for the thirty seconds
we let her watch before realizing we were being idiots and turned it off. She still has
nightmares/ hallucinations/ whatever-these-are.

The other night:

“MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY!!!”

Yelling crying terror.

“A shoot-gun came out of the wall!”

“What? A what? Where?”

She points to a very specific place above her head where she was sleeping.

“SHOOOOOT GUN!”

“You mean…a shot gun?”

“Nooooo! A SHOOT-gun!”

“Where have you ever seen a shoot-gun?”

“Remember that show…”

I’m flabbergasted and guilty.

Don’t EVER let your kid watch Breaking Bad.

And that is the lesson of the day.

-Drama Mama

P.S. If you want to really confuse them, let them watch The Bachelor for thirty seconds.

[image: Heisenberg by Simon Stratford]

Pick Your Nose and Eat It

You know you have all seen it and probably have all discouraged your own kid from doing
it — I know I have. This article in the Toronto Star discusses an interesting theory on why
kids pick their noses and then eat it.

What if this scientist is actually correct and there is a biological reason kids have this urge?
What if a good pick and snack after daycare helps fight off the colds that the other kids brought
with them that day? What if discouraging them from eating their boogers means they will get
sick and inevitably so will you? I don’t know…maybe it’s worth staying quiet about. I’d rather
avoid a cold and endure stares from strangers. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

-Sleepwalking Mama

[image: Nose Picker by Ellieo]

Happiness Is Ticking “Write a Blog Post” off My To-Do List

About a year after I should have, I hit a bit of a low patch. Cookie was over a year and a
half old, so it was perhaps post-post-partum, but there were many factors. It was winter, my
least favourite season; I had just launched my freelance career, but hadn’t picked up much
work; I was questioning my role in my household, my social circle, and my industry; I was
uncomfortable with my new status as a mother. It wasn’t serious. I didn’t seek therapy, I just
upped my dosage of happy vitamins. Not sure if that helped, since the eventual improvement
in mood probably had more to do with suddenly having more work than I knew what to do with
and not having the time or energy to think about my level of satisfaction. You see, I find I only
become dissatisfied when I have time to think about how I have almost everything I want and
yet still am not happy. When I don’t have time, things are fantastic, at least as far as I know.

My husband was naturally concerned, and at one point suggested I try reading The Happiness
Project by Gretchen Rubin. I resisted; I’m not a self-help kinda gal. I bought other books with the
bookstore gift card he gave me. I sidestepped the book at the family Christmas book exchange.
But then I bought it for a friend who I thought could use a boost, and I happened to scan it. Of
course, it looked just about right for me.

The author was kind of in the same position as I had been. Things were fine, but then one
day she realized that they could be so much better, and that she couldn’t really say she was
happy. And why shouldn’t she be happy? So she started studying happiness — what others had
discovered or speculated about it or done in an attempt to attain it — and set out a plan to follow
over the course of a year.

She struggled at times to defend the value of such an enterprise. It seemed such a problem of
privilege, or a shallow wish, to be happy. Which is something I struggle with every time I think
about being unhappy. Who am I to be dissatisfied with my lot? So what if I’m not loaded or living
in California or two inches taller? My complaints are insignificant and non-life threatening. Just
the fact that Rubin acknowledged her discomfort with her project made me buy in. (The answer
is: if you could be happier just by putting your mind to it, why the hell wouldn’t you be? Also,
your happiness affects the happiness of those around you, so if you want your loved ones and
co-workers to be happy, you’ll work on your own happiness. And then there are the effects of
unhappiness on health and productivity, and therefore the economy…)

Rubin set up cumulative resolutions, adding a few each month, and I was fascinated by the
areas she identified as those that she needed to work on to improve her happiness. Some of
them had no relevance to my life, but others set off alarm bells in my head: “This is something
that makes you unhappy!” Like failure. In one month that she dedicated to work-related
happiness, she resolved to find fun in failure. Alarm bells.

I dread failure. I react physically just recalling a math test I failed in Grade Two. I taste bile
anticipating failure when I consider activities potentially hazardous to my self-esteem. But,
as Rubin points out, if you take chances and allow yourself to fail, you’re more likely to try
more things and have more success. Logical, I know, but fear of failure and humiliation and
disappointment normally forbid me from doing anything that would threaten my pristine (and
deadly boring) reputation.

So I challenged myself to court failure. I had written a story, and a friend was interested in
publishing it. I didn’t want anyone to read it, but in the interest of failure I braced myself and
sent it to him anyways because he was supportive. Plus, it was something he was looking for,

so there was a slim chance of success. The problem was that it had a significant grammatical
characteristic that most publishers shy away from. Which I reminded him of several times.

After weeks of procrastination and premature negotiation (both on his part, not mine; after all,
I was embracing failure), he rejected it…because of the significant grammatical characteristic.
Well, duh. And guess what? Failure was fun. It wasn’t really my failure, after all; he had failed
to listen. He loved the writing otherwise, so I succeeded as a writer. A failed writer, that is. This
time, failure didn’t sting so much, and it gave me confidence for more attempts. Happiness is
confidence in my abilities.

Rubin spent another month focusing on family, and part of that involved appreciating time
with her children more. Of course I knew this was important — always alarm bells with this
one — but it didn’t really hit me until Tightrope Mama’s recent post, “Why Are We Rushing?” It won’t be long indeed until they no longer want to cuddle with us, so I’ve begun to
embrace hour-long bedtimes. I now snuggle with Cookie in a bed that’s not meant to support my
weight and we tell stories and sing songs and talk about our day, and eventually she says, “You
can leave now.” And everyone’s happy. I’m dying to relax at the end of a day of chasing after
her or tethering myself to my laptop, but miraculously I’ve discovered that letting go of the free
time I’m missing out on and just appreciating this time with her is just as relaxing and rewarding.
Sure, our half-hour three-stories-and-we’re-out sleep schedule has completely gone out the
window, but it won’t be long until she’s holed up in her room not bothering to say goodnight
at all. Happiness is a cuddly child. Happiness is knowing I’ve given my child everything she
needed.

I’m not about to embark on a happiness project. I’ve got enough unfinished projects on the go
already (another resolution), and although I’m trying to embrace failure, I don’t need to go out
and actively pursue it. So instead I’m gradually working on resolutions as I become aware of
them. And trying to become aware of them, which I think is part of my problem. Happiness is a
work in progress.

For more on The Happiness Project, visit www.happiness-project.com.

East End Mama