girlfiend

I’ve written plenty about how crazy my mother is but it’s only occasionally that I remember that my father’s crazy too. He has plenty of neuroses and quirks that border on obsessive-compulsive and the past few years I’ve worried that he’s exhibiting some signs of dementia. His memory is shot. For years he’s been telling the same stories repeatedly, each time explaining that he just saw it on TV a few weeks ago. He does this with everyone he encounters, no matter how often he sees them. Since the Fiendling was born, just about every time he sees me he asks when I’m planning on returning to work. My answer has never changed. Each time he asks I tell him that when the child(ren) is school age I’ll return to teaching. Each time he does not recall that he’s asked the question before.

It troubles me, and I’d like to talk with him but my father is extremely defensive and is incapable of serious discussion. He also has a tendency to explode with the slightest provocation. Once when the Fiendling was an infant my dad came to drop something off in the afternoon. The Fiendling, who did not nap regularly, was unexpectedly sleeping. When my dad arrived I rushed outside to meet him before he could ring the bell or knock. I quietly told him that the baby was sleeping and asked him to be quiet. Inexplicably he took great offense and stormed off, cursing. I chased after him and apologized for offending him and he accepted my apology, but his anger was so sudden, so unexpected it’s changed the way I approach him.

Today my dad met me at the car dealership where I dropped my car off for the inspection scheduled for tomorrow morning. My mom’s in town for the night so she can watch the Fiendling tomorrow during my doctor’s appointment which is scheduled for the same time as the inspection and she’s staying with him, not me, because we stress each other out too much. The two of them planned to come over for dinner tonight anyway, and we worked it out so I’d use my dad’s car tomorrow to get to my doctor’s appointment and get the Fiendling (who now naps regularly, but only in the car) down for a nap. It sounds convoluted, but my mom drove directly to the house and my dad met me at the dealership and gave me a ride home in his car.

Here’s where the crazy comes in. My dad is a classic aggressive driver. He swerves between lanes if someone in front of him is driving too slowly. He blows through stop signs and drives on the shoulder of the road if there’s traffic. He honks at green lights if someone hesitates for a second before accelerating and honks if someone dares to slow down a bit before putting on their left turn signal. He’s compulsive about being on time and drives recklessly to make sure that he’s never late. It’s a wonder he doesn’t get pulled over regularly.

This evening, on our drive home, the weather was miserable. It was still light out, but the rain and clouds made visibility pretty poor. Before we met my mom at my house we had to pick up dinner from a Chinese place my dad likes. We pulled out of the dealership and my dad immediately made an illegal left turn onto the busy street. Traffic was slow because it was rush hour and because the weather was miserable. He swerved back and forth between lanes trying to make up time so we wouldn’t be late to pick up the food, nearly causing a few accidents. We neared a dangerous bend in the road where the speed limit drops to 10 miles an hour. There are few side streets off of the curve that make the bend even more of a hazard. A friend from high school lived on one of those streets and making the left off of the curve was always a little scary. I was just telling my father about that when the car in front of us hit the turn and suddenly slowed and put on the turn signal to turn onto my friend’s street. My dad who was not driving 10 miles an hour around the curve slammed on his brakes and pounded on the horn. He skidded around the car nearly sideswiping the car in the right lane. At the next break in traffic he switched into the right lane and approached a yellow light. It turned red. My dad didn’t stop. I asked, “Dad are you going to run that red light?” He said yes, and did. I was grateful that the cars who had the green were accelerating at a normal rate, saw my dad blowing through and braked without incident. Terrified, I said, “Dad, you know I’m six and half months pregnant, right? And that was really dangerous” He jokingly replied, “Oh, you are?” not really connecting to the danger part of my question.

The rest of the drive didn’t get much better. It was pouring rain and it got completely dark. He missed a turn and got annoyed. To make up for the extra thirty seconds in traffic he drove in the turning lane, nearly colliding with a car that was correctly using the lane to merge into traffic after making a turn out of a parking lot. We picked up the Chinese food.  Then he ran three stop signs in my neighborhood, not even tapping the brakes at two of them. After the third stop sign I very calmly said, “Dad, please don’t run through red lights and stop signs when I’m in the car. It makes me very nervous.” He made two right turns on red at lights with signs proclaiming ‘No Turn on Red’ immediately thereafter.

I was terrified and furious. The thing that bothers me most is that tomorrow when I see him again to return his car and tell him again that his driving made me very uncomfortable he will probably become enraged and insist his driving was perfectly safe, never mind the fact that at least 6 different vehicles slammed on the brakes and honked their horns as a direct result of his driving. In a day or two he’ll get over his anger and act like nothing ever happened. Or else in a day or two he’ll genuinely forget that anything happened. Obviously I can’t drive with him any more. It’s just not safe. But I also fear for his safety and I don’t know what to do about it.

The Fiendling, showing no symptoms whatsoever, told me yesterday that his ear hurt. I asked which one and he pointed to his right ear. He napped well and slept through the night so I didn’t think much of it until this morning when he told me again that his ear hurt, this time putting his hand over his ear and rubbing it against his shoulder a bit. Still not showing any signs of distress I let it go until lunch time when it occurred to me that he still has a cough and slightly runny nose, so maybe I should take him to the doctor just to make sure.

I called the pediatricians office (just shy of his second birthday and I’m finally over my habit of calling his doctor the vet) and his doctor actually answered the phone, recognized my voice, and told me to bring him in after his nap. He hates visiting the doctor’s office and screamed while she listened to his chest and checked his ears and throat. He didn’t have any visible infection but his cries were hoarse, his throat was red and both ears were full of fluid- more in the right than the left.

His pediatrician said that even though he didn’t actually have an infection she thought it was best to treat him under the circumstances. I agreed that I’d rather it didn’t turn into an infection, but I felt uneasy about giving him an antibiotic for an infection that wasn’t actually there. She may have rolled her eyes a little when she replied, “He’s almost two years old and he’s never taken an antibiotic. That’s better than 99% of my patients. I don’t think we’re over-medicating him.”

Point taken. Prescription filled. I did appreciate that she told me she was impressed by the fact that he actually told me what was hurting him. If he hadn’t told me I never would have known anything was going on.

For some reason our front door won’t open. I ran out yesterday afternoon to pick up our meat order and when I came back I couldn’t unlock the door. It just wouldn’t open. Boyfiend thinks I make this shit up. He thinks there are things I just have trouble with and it’s not because there’s a problem, it’s just a mental block on my part. It’s not true. He just gets used to things not working well and creates systems for making them work.

For example, our inside door (we have an outside door and a small foyer) doesn’t close all the way. He put weatherstripping up and you have to pull really hard to make it close. Only you can’t slam it, you have to pull as hard as you can with a certain amount of finesse so it will latch. It’s a pain in the ass and no one except for us can do it on the first (or second or third) try. When I’m in a hurry, or struggling with a screaming toddler that doesn’t want to leave the house and an overstuffed diaper bag while I’m trying to keep a cat from escaping I sometimes fail to shut the door all the way. Yet he thinks it’s just something I have trouble with, meaning it’s something I shouldn’t have trouble with. I’m not stupid or uncoordinated, it’s just not easy.

Back to the front door. It was the third time it’s happened with the door since we’ve moved in. The first time I was able to jiggle it open, the second time Boyfiend came home and opened it. Both times he convinced me I was just being stupid and the door was fine. This time I jiggled and jiggled, locked and unlocked, and the doorknob just kept turning and turning, never actually making the internal connection it needed to make to open. When we’d run out to get the meat it was late afternoon and warmish. The Fiendling and I were wearing sweaters, but no coats since I knew we’d be in the heated car. After 20 minutes on the porch it was starting to get a little chilly.

I called Boyfiend who was working late and asked him how he opened the door when it wouldn’t open. He had no recollection of either of the previous occurrences, and though he didn’t say so it was obvious that he was convinced he’d be able to open it no problem and I was just freaking out for nothing. I really was freaking out. I was cursing at him because I knew he didn’t believe me and the more I jiggled and turned the doorknob that wouldn’t latch the more frustrated I became. The Fiendling had disappeared into the backyard where his slide, seesaw and rocking fish live. I heard him crying in the backyard and I became even more stressed.

I tried to get in through the back, but the back door has a few different locks and the one we primarily use is just on the inside. I was holding the crying Fiendling at the time, so I wasn’t positive that it was locked, but I was pretty sure. I called Mix who was coming over for dinner anyway. He was on his way over so I zipped the Fiendling up in my sweatshirt and we sat on the porch and waited.

Mix tried for a while but he couldn’t get the door open either so I knew I wasn’t just crazy. Then he tried the back door and couldn’t get that open either. I called Boyfiend back and told him we were going to Mix’s house. He was leaving work so he said he’d call after he got the door open. Before we actually went into Mix’s house he grabbed his set of keys for our house and gave them a try in the door. His keys didn’t work later.

An hour later, the Fiendling had eaten a few bites of leftover rice, Elmo was on the TV and we’d ordered a pizza, wings and mozzarella sticks I had no intention of sharing. Boyfiend called saying he couldn’t get in through the front but he was able to get in through the back door. Mix and I both started to feel like idiots. How come he could get in when we couldn’t? Then he told us he broke the back window to get in. I didn’t care about the broken window I was so relieved it wasn’t just me being stupid.

It turns out the front door really is broken. We can’t get it open from the inside or outside so I feel vindicated that it’s not just a mental block on my part. It’s nice to be proven right, even though it meant the Fiendling and I sat on the front porch in the cold with no coats for an hour trying to get the door open. It sucks that we’ll have to use the back door to get in and out and that the back window is now covered with a piece of cardboard, but at least I’m not crazy.

The Fiendling spent a better part of last night and today talking about the experience. “Uh-uh front door open. Front door closed. Mama uh-uh open it. Mix uh-uh open it. Back door open. Front door broken.”

Even more amusing, Smith Memorial Playground is closed for the winter. Every time we visit the playhouse the Fiendling talks about the playground being closed. To mark time I’ve explained that it will be his birthday, then mine then the playground will be open. He often talks about this saying, “Playground closed. Fiendling’s birthday. Mama’s birthday. Then playground open.” Last night, as we sat in the car while Mix tried his keys in our front door, the Fiendling said, “Fiendling’s birthday, mama’s birthday, front door open.”

The last few weeks have been incredibly frustrating with the sick and the not sleeping and the molars and the neverending fussiness. But the Fiendling made up for it all this weekend. I didn’t want to go, but Boyfiend was going ice fishing in New Hampshire and I agreed to go along. I was convinced I’d be miserable because seriously- 8 hours each way in a car, pregnant, with a toddler in the backseat just sounds awful.

We left Thursday around 5. The plan was to stop for dinner shortly after getting on the road then driving as far as we could before stopping again so the Fiendling would sleep. That plan didn’t work. The Fiendling who hadn’t napped fell asleep within five minutes in the car and slept for about 2 hours before waking. After he woke up he talked to himself in the backseat and had no interest in stopping even though we were both hungry. An hour and a half later, around 8.30, he decided he was ready to eat so we stopped at a diner where he ate an entire plate of french fries and most of a small bowl of carrots. Back in the car he fell asleep almost immediately and stayed asleep for the rest of the ride. After we got there he woke up for a little, but was back asleep within minutes. I’d been so on edge about how things would go I couldn’t believe our good luck.

The rest of the weekend was just as good. The men fished, the womenfolk did not, and the Fiendling was perfectly charming, even on the day he didn’t nap. We drove down to Concord one day to meet up with one of my friends from college and her husband and the Fiendling was insanely well-behaved in the restaurant and napped for close to three hours afterwards. He held it together during a trip to the supermarket when he was long overdue for a nap and didn’t lose his shit until his father forced him to go sledding through his screams and cries of protest. He did nap later that day. He fell asleep every night and stayed asleep every night but one.

We left Monday morning and this time I was even more on edge about the day’s ride. I was terrified that he wouldn’t nap and he’d be miserable all day long, strapped into his rear-facing car seat. We left an hour later than we’d planned and the weather was horrendous. It was warm, but rainy, resulting in a fog like no other. For most of the first hour and half of our drive we couldn’t see a thing. Boyfiend was going 35 in a 65 and even that felt too fast considering you couldn’t see the brake lights of the car in front of you.

The fog cleared and we stopped to visit with the artist formerly known as Pink and Green Girl while the Fiendling ran around with her little ladybug. This was the least awkward meeting I’ve ever had with a blogger. The Fiendling ran around, playing nicely with Charlotte and her toys while the adults chatted. The house smelled wonderful from the freshly baked banana muffins and there were no toddler squabbles and no tears. The Fiendling was perfectly well-behaved right up until the point where he discovered the wine rack and awesomely smashed a bottle of wine all over her floor. Thankfully the wine was white, no carpets were ruined, and E was perfectly gracious about the accident. While she cleaned up the mess (I was embarrassed and would have liked to help by sucking up the wine through a straw) the Fiendling described the incident by saying, “Fiendling broke bottle of wine.” Yes, he’s not even two and he knows the word wine. He did not learn that from the PBS morning line up.

Exhausted from trashing the joint, the Fiendling napped for two and half hours after we said our goodbyes. He woke some time during the second podcast of This American Life and talked to himself and read his new Thomas the Tank Engine book for an hour before I couldn’t take it anymore and had to stop to use the rest room. We were back on the road in half an hour and the Fiendling managed to make it the rest of the way home without a complete meltdown. He whined and cried a bit for the last 15 miles but 37 rounds of The Wheels on the Bus kept him calm enough to not lose it completely.

To recap:

16 hours of driving and I was fussier than the toddler.

1 huge fish caught in 3 days of ice fishing

1 visit with college friend

1 visit with blog friend

1 broken bottle of wine

1 sledding-related breakdown

3 awesome naps

1 tired mama

The need for a 23-month update comes at a pretty bad time. We’re both getting over colds, we’re both cranky and we’re both exhausted. Being sick for one of the first times in his life hasn’t had the best effect on the Fiendling. His sleep has been disrupted, his naps are way off kilter, and he’s not eating well. Add the painful introduction of his last two molars and a lingering cough and cold to the mix and we’ve got one miserable toddler.

Last night, after a surprisingly pleasant stretch of visiting with family after a trainwreck of a morning, we got home right around bed time. It was a nightmare. He didn’t want to take off his coat, he didn’t want to brush his teeth, he didn’t want to read a story, he didn’t want to take his medicine. He wanted to eat, but he didn’t want anything we actually had in the house. He screamed, and cried, and stomped his feet. I left him with Boyfiend so I could get a few things done in the kitchen and after 15-20 minutes they came into the kitchen to see me. The Fiendling was ready to take his coat off and read some stories. I got into bed with him and we read for a while then we turned off the light. He was quiet for a while, but when I went to get up disaster struck.

He screamed for me to lie down, which I did, but it was too late and the mood had been ruined. I could do nothing to console him. He wanted me to lie down, he wanted me to sit up, he wanted me in bed, out of bed, up down, more books, more crackers, gate up, no bed, light on. The list of demands went on and on and nothing I did was right. He was a little dictator. I left the room, and went into the bathroom to cry. Boyfiend took over after hearing my sobs and after an extremely loud, scream-filled transition he got the Fiendling to sleep. It was 10.30. Fucking ridiculous for a not even two year old to still be awake and screaming that late. We’ve got to get that kid back into some semblance of routine before I lose my mind.

More developments

His memory, or at least his ability to verbalize what he remembers, gets better and better. He still remembers a day almost two weeks ago where we went to the Marketplace and the man at the Amish stand gave him a dish of ice cream that ate at the tables by the door. It was strawberry. Ask him about the Marketplace and he remembers that we bought apples and broccoli and ate strawberry ice cream at the table. He also remembers a play date, almost a month ago now, where we went to a friend’s house for the first time. They had a Thomas train table. Now when he hears his friend’s name he’ll say, “E’s house, Thomas trains.”

Have I mentioned he’s obsessed with Thomas? Brushing his teeth has become much more pleasant since I bought him Thomas the Tank Engine Toothpaste which he refers to as Thomas the Tank Engine Toothpaste every time he mentions it. He also recounts episodes of Thomas and Friends, specifically the one where Thomas calls Percy a silly little engine so Percy decides to play a trick on Thomas by pretending to be a ghost and scaring him. Every day, some times more than once, the Fiendling will remind me that “Percy the ghost scared Thomas.”

Another sort of pathetic in terms of my parenting memory thing is that he’s got the PBS morning lineup memorized. He knows that Arthur is followed by Curious George, then Clifford, then Super Why, then Dragon Tales, then Sesame Street. He gets excited when the credits roll and he can say, “Super Why next.”

He’s done with “uh-uh,” when you ask a question we’re in full-on “no” mode right now. He says it clearly and he says it often.

He’s very into the negative and describing things by what they are not. He still uses “uh-uh” when discussing things that aren’t. For example, his aunt keeps juice boxes in the house for him. The brand she buys has Big Bird on the box. When I gave him a juice box here he knew exactly what it wasn’t. “Uh-uh Big Bird juice box. Aunt T’s house Big Bird juice box.” Or he’ll say “uh-uh Phillies hat- pom pom hat,” to tell me which hat he wants to wear.

We had to make our door lock from the inside, out of reach, to keep the Fiendling from escaping. One particularly rough bedtime had him running to the front door, trying to leave the house to go to the library to get a Clifford DVD. We tried to explain that the library was closed. “Uh-uh library closed! Library open. Clifford.” When we did eventually convince him that the library was, in fact, closed he decided to screw it and leave the house to go to his aunt’s. In addition to juice boxes, she records episodes of Clifford for him. “Uh-uh library closed. Go Aunt T’s house. Watch Clifford.”

He’s gotten good at trying to leave. He is quick, and I now know how parents manage to lose toddlers in crowds. It never made sense to me that a parent could actually lose a child without being neglectful, but seeing how quickly he moves without a backwards glance makes it all too real. His ability to push open the heaviest doors doesn’t help matters much either.

He’s not all negative. There are things he likes to do and he does actually say “yes” on occasion. He can also be disarmingly polite and say “yes, please,” and “thank you, mama” when I least expect it. I appreciate those moments when they happen.

I also appreciate the moments when he curls up and cuddles. This past week, with the illness from hell, there were many of those moments. One afternoon we napped on the couch together, the first nap we’ve taken together in more than a year. It was snuggly and lovely and I wished it didn’t have to end.

This is the fifth full day of my illness and one of the worst yet. My fever is long gone, but the combination of snot and exhaustion is overpowering. Aside from my MIL spending two hours here Tuesday morning so I could take a nap, I’ve been on my own from 7 to 4 each day and this morning it was just too much for me to take. I called my dad to see if he could come over for a bit and when he said he couldn’t I pretended to blow my nose so he wouldn’t hear me sobbing. The Fiendling said, “Mama sad. Mama crying,” and he sat on my lap for a bit but then he got up and needed me to play. I’m glad he’s feeling better- two days of fever is a lot for a little guy who’s never had a fever before- but it was much easier to be sick when he was sick too.

I feel like shit and I’m tired and there’s a ton of housework to do and the Fiendling needs to run around but I don’t dare expose him to other kids for at least another day since his snot is still fountainous and the fever hasn’t even been gone a full 24 hours. I just want to take a nap.

The Fiendling and I are sick. I got it first and passed it along to him. I hope for Boyfiend’s sake that he’s not next. For now our fevers have broken, but the runny noses and painful coughs linger. This sucks.

The Fiendling has eaten some Cheddar Bunnies and a pedialyte popsicle. I’ve had a cup of tea with honey. I feel like I should consume something since I’m pregnant and all, but nothing is appealing right now.  What do you eat when you don’t feel like eating?

When people write “viola” when they really mean “voila.”

It is miserable outside. It’s a cold, dreary, rainy day more appropriate to November than February.  I hate February, so I guess it’s not so out of character for weather to be so depressing. But thunderstorms are in the forecast. Thunderstorms! Cold, winter thunderstorms. Does it get any bleaker than that?
Now that I’m waking several times in the night to pee (thanks, baby stepping on my bladder) it’s even more problematic that the Fiendling has been waking at night again. Last night, when boyfiend was on duty, he slept through, but the two nights prior he was up calling for me at 2 in the morning.  I’m also having trouble falling asleep. There are just 3 weeks left in my second trimester and I still haven’t gotten the energy burst I’ve been hoping for. The weather is not making me feel any better.

It’s not all bad. There really are good things going on. I’m just not in the mood for sunshine and rainbows right now. I’d really like to get into bed and sleep for a few hours. Instead I’m going to get us dressed and head out to the playhouse in the pouring rain.