Eva, my youngest, has been unusually irritating, exasperating, rude and just plain tiring lately.  I think it started around Thanksgiving, so I blame the holidays.  However, it’s now the middle of January and that excuse is wearing thin.

This morning she screamed at me because I took the lid off of her yogurt and I hadn’t asked her permission.  She makes these high-pitched squeals that annoy dogs within a square-mile radius, and when I ask her to stop, she has to do it AT LEAST two more times.  She fights with her sister, constantly. (“NOOOOO ANN-KA!!!” is her favorite sentence).  When I threaten her with time-outs or no privileges, she laughs about it.  She has taken to hitting people when she doesn’t get her way.  I have to constantly apologize to our part-time nanny about her behavior and have started a calendar of ‘good days’ towards books as a reward.  So far, she’s had 2 good days out of 5.  Those aren’t very good odds. 

I’ve started to threaten to send her to boarding school and NOT visit (if only I could afford boarding school). 

Then, occasionally, she can’t be without me.  She’ll smother me with kisses and hugs, write letters (sounding out the words so well that I think that her older sister wrote it!), or draw pictures of us standing in a sunlit field of daisies, just smiling our brains out.  She’ll ask me silly questions like ‘why do frogs have such long tongues?’  She’ll impersonate a foreigner with a lisp and do a strange uber-russian dance, making us all laugh.  I have a protective heart over her, as she’s my youngest and most sensitive, so that whenever anyone corrects her or complains about her actions (quite often) I’m the first to rush to her defense. 

I just can’t figure out how to be a good mother to her.   There are a lot worse mothers out there, I’m sure, but that doesn’t make me feel better.  Some days I actually can count  to 100 before losing my cool.  Then there are those days where I find myself in a fetal position, sobbing, and sorely wishing this misery to end (graduation date: 2022!).  Thankfully her father took her to work with him today, I can breathe a sigh of relief.  Then I feel guilty for feeling this way.

There’s no fun twist to this blog.  Perhaps there will be a happy ending in the years ahead, but right now it’s hard to see the sunlight through the clouds.

~I heard the cutest little voice yell very loudly ‘Shut up you jack—!’ and turned around to see an adorable little 3 year old glaring at his squalling baby sister.  Once upon a time I would have frowned at the mother (who was already wearing a mortified look on her beet red face) but today I know kids are going to say what kids are going to say when it is most embarrassing for the parents. While it is possible that Mom does cuss in front of the children, it’s just not fair to assume that her child learned his vocabulary from her.  I never said ‘Die you b—–d’ in front of young Zack yet he still screamed it in his best Conan impression shortly after we moved to Colorado and some of our new neighbors came to visit.  That was not the first time I wore that mortified look on my beet red face, nor was it to be the last.  I can’t wait for Zack to marry and have children so I can introduce my grand babies to Conan the Barbarian movies.  My son needs a little color in his face.

What is it with kids acting up in public places?  They must know that I cannot come completely unhinged while dozens of witnesses look on, so every time we’re in a public place they embarrass the hell out of me.  I’ve made a short list of my no-fly zones of public places accompanied by children (like it’s possible to go somewhere without them, but I can dream):

Grocery Stores:  Where do I even begin?  They whine about being forced to go on a grocery ‘death march’ literally eight feet from the entrance.  They are overcome with lethargy within the first aisle and demand to ride in the cart (even if they’re too big for the kid seat and displace the groceries in the other part of the cart).  They ask for every toy, chip, chocolate bar and coloring book they see. They have an immediate need to visit the bathroom when the cart is half-full and the furthest possible distance from the bathroom.  They holler out “I won’t hit you again, Momma!!” after the 6th time of ramming my already-bleeding heels with the damned grocery cart.

Restaurants:   They demand specific crayon colors, usually ‘pink’, which restaurants DO NOT HAVE.  They take their sweet time figuring out what they want to eat, while the wait-person rolls his/her eyes and escapes with an ‘I’ll give you a few more minutes’.  When the food arrives they squawk like a stuck pig that “THAT ISN’T WHAT I WANTED!!” or “WHY DOES SHE HAVE THAT?  I WANT THAT!!!”.  They use their shirts to wipe their faces. They tell the waitperson every small detail about their day, and embarrassing bits about me as well (“My mom usually drinks a lot more wine than this!”).  They disappear under the tables (commando-style) eat food off the floor, comment on underwear colors and then pop back up (Prairie-Dog-style) in someone else’s seat which immediately causes an argument.  They visit the bathroom, several times.  The only time they don’t go to the bathroom is when I threaten to take them there for a ‘little talk’.

Movies (that don’t attract their complete interest):  Again, the bathroom thing, and usually right during an interesting scene. When they return (before you ask they HAVE to visits restrooms alone lately because everything is  ’BY MY-SEFF!!!!’) they can’t find our seats so they stand in front and scream “MOMMMAAAA????”  They want popcorn AND candy AND a drink (which they’ll spill), which costs about 8 billion dollars.  They talk/ask questions during the entire damn thing.  They fight over which seat they sit in. I always have to sit between my daughters yet they won’t let me use either arm rest. 

Malls: I cannot get out of a mall for under $100 with my munchkins asking for everything under the sun and subsequent dining out at the food court or adjacent restaurants, and rental of strollers that they are too big for but cannot make it *another step* else they’ll die.  God forbid if the mall has a skating rink, carousel, Rainforest Cafe or movie theatre.  I’d rather go to Vegas where at least I have some chance of getting some money back. 

Next week I’ll discuss portrait studios, parks, tire stores and ice cream stores, all of which I’ve had the pleasure of  ’accidents’ of the disgusting kind, as well as the abovementioned niceties.

You know that feeling you get in the wee hours of Christmas Eve?  You’ve spent weeks shopping, decorated every square inch of your home, made gingerbread houses with the kids, spent a few melancholy moments remembering lost loved ones, wrapping, cooking, baking, sending cards and calling old friends. Now, the moon is high and the Christmas tree is providing the only light in the room. The kids were tucked in hours ago and you and your husband finally pulled out all the Santa gifts. Now, you snuggle on the couch, crack old jokes that nobody else would understand, and feel a huge sense of simultaneous relief and excitement for the joy to come the very next day.

That feeling is so rare. That moment – after tremendous work, some tough emotions, silly whims, and then cozy love and comfort – only comes occasionally in life. Not even every Christmas.

And that is the moment I’m in right now with this baby.  We are in Baby Eve.

When I look back on this incredible journey, I can honestly say that I am so proud of myself and my husband. In every way, we were unprepared for the news we got on May 27.  A baby. We were having another baby.  We had a two-bedroom home for a family that would soon number five, no maternity insurance, and had officially decided we liked where our family was. We were “done.”

Since that day, we have figured out how to insure this pregnancy and birth, carved another room out of the basement, traveled the emotionally epic journey from denial to pure excitement and, along the way, found we had the capacity to love each other, our daughters, and this new baby even more passionately than we had previously anticipated.

I’m in a state of bliss.  And, truly, that aint nothin’ to sneeze at when you consider the state I was in when I was alone in the bathroom on May 27!

This bundle of joy is due January 28. I’m into those weekly doctor’s visits and am even having contractions!  As they say, this could happen “any time!” I still have a few freelance projects to complete before I’ll feel totally “ready.”  And actually, I’ve done close to zero shopping for baby gear, but that doesn’t bother me at all.  Babies really don’t need much more than they come home from the hospital with.

I’m just ready to meet this new person. This wee kick-boxer. And I do feel like I’ve been given a gift. My mom used to say, “God’s gifts are good… but his wrapping department sucks.”  Well, we had some scary wrapping paper to get through but we have received, already, many profoundly important gifts from this child.

Now, I’m ready to receive the child!

Eva just hollered from the bathtub (does this kid have a volume control??)

“Mommmaaaa!!!  Bring me a Q-Tip cuz I have water in my ears and I don’t want it getting into my brain”