Sometimes parenthood feels as though you’re sitting at the shore of an ocean. The waves lap over your toes and calves and you are delighted by the moments of laughter and love as they wash over you.

And then other times parenthood feels as though your skull is in a vise and the hours of frustration and meltdowns squeeze your brain tighter and tighter until you feel your cerebellum ooze out your left ear. Then the tension eases slightly, just enough that you regain your vision and breath, and the kids are quiet for a minute or playing nicely for a nanosecond before the screaming and tantrums and fighting start up again the vise tightens its grip once more.

Seems like we’ve been having more Vise Days lately and it’s kind of wearing me down. It used to be Avelyn who pushed me to the brink of insanity but she has shown such improvement and maturity in the past few months that it’s not her anymore, rather her crazy little sister, who is making me want to run for the hills. We seem to breed crazy, strong-willed, challenging girls and even though I know things will eventually get better with Karenna’s rabid behaviour as of late, it’s still exhausting and frustrating and I kind of wish they made boarding schools for 18 month-olds.

We’d still see her at Christmas break. It would be festive.

PS: My new post is up at urbanmoms.ca and it’s about our challenges in naming our babies.

I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. I don’t know if it’s the greying skies or the relentless whining I listen to all day long, but I find myself itching for something more: I want to write more, I want to gain skills in some design software, I want to organize my home. But when I actually get a spare moment to do those things, I just feel overwhelmed and it’s all I can do to plunk my spreading rear in front of my laptop and aimlessly wander through blogs and social media time-wasters. Not exactly a recipe for success, you know?

The kids take so much out of me, more than I ever imagined they would. Most days it feels like we’re on a 10-second loop that goes a little like this: Avelyn and Karenna are in the same room, Karenna stands up to walk, Avelyn rushes over to her and tries to pick her up in an effort to help her “walk”, Karenna screams, Avelyn screams, Karenna rips out Avelyn’s left pigtail, more screaming, I come over and break up the brawl, they retreat, sniveling, to their respective corners, the end. Then it all starts again and I want to ram a fork in my eye. It’s just so hard to try to get anything accomplished when they’re interacting like that. And Karenna only naps for about an hour a day. So there’s ONE hour when I can get something done but that’s usually the hour that Avelyn decides to have a meltdown because her tights don’t match her dress. 

I don’t want to be a big, fat whiner about my kids, because they are amazing little people. I love them, I just don’t always love every moment of being a mom. I just don’t feel like I’m very good at the parts of being a mom that I see other women around my excelling at: making crafted caterpillars out of egg cartons; getting their kids on a solid nap schedule when they’re, like, three days old and then they’ll nap for four hours a day until they’re five years old; eating dinner off the floor since it’s so spotless you actually could. I suck at all of that. 

I know I’m not a bad mom. I love my girls and we have lots of fun. I am good at having dance parties to Beyonce with them; I am good at, well, that’s all I can think of right now. 

Motherhood. It’s not how I pictured it, but that’s OK.

Avelyn started ballet this week and I loved every minute of it. She did a great job of listening to her teacher, not pooping in her leotard and flitting around like an inspired, albeit slightly hyperactive, bumble bee to the classical music. And that tutu! What a shot for our Christmas cards! And preschool has been going fantastically. I am a NEW WOMAN, I tell you, with those few hours a week to myself. Well, to myself and only one whiny, snotty-nosed kid, that is. I’ve been going out for some nice 5 km walks with Karenna, cranking my iPod and listening to the latest Decemberists’ album (which is kind of dark and weird and gives me the heebie-jeebies), and getting a few things done around the house while Avelyn is at school. And by “getting a few things done around the house” I mean going out for coffee with my friend and eating scones as the glorious minutes of freedom trickle by slowly like a warm brook of joy.

Thank you, preschool for restoring my will to live again. It had been a while.

In other news, Karenna is walking. It’s still not her first choice and if she really wants to get somewhere in a hurry, she’ll crawl. But it won’t be long before she’s sprinting away from me. Can’t wait.

And, my hair. Today was the first day I had to style it myself (c’mon, don’t pretend like you don’t try to drag out your hairdresser’s styling job for like 4 days after a good cut…I showered, but with a classy purple shower cap on to preserve the ‘do) and whooo…I’ve got some work to do. It’s SHORT, you guys! And my hair is really thick and now that it’s short it’s hard to get the flat iron to beat it into submission. And there’s this underneath part of my hair that’s sticking out kind of weird and in another week or so it will be long enough to look like a tweaky, somewhat unintentional mullet. Basically, I like the new hair, but it’s going to take some practice to style it, and I think it will be even better once it’s an inch or two longer and the top layer can cover the wannabe-mullet.

So that’s what’s going on ’round here. If you need me, I’ll be “getting a few things done around the house”.

Both kids are miserable, the house is a war zone, and I feel like my daily dose of patience was all dried up by 7:13 a.m.

Hope your weekend is going better than mine!

I like to joke with my friend Jen about how she’s my favourite hippie: she sees a naturopath regularly, doesn’t vaccinate her kids, spritzes lavender oil on all her pillowcases, and only uses organic toothpaste. I, on the other hand, see a physician, get my kids immunized against anything and everything, my favourite essential oil is Febreze, and I put Diet Coke on my toothbrush at night time. We are so different in so many ways, but she is one of my closest friends and also one person who I truly admire as an excellent mother. She is so full of wisdom and creativity when it comes to caring for her girls. 

A little while ago we were chatting about all of my potty training woes with Avelyn and I was looking to her for advice. She, in all of her wisdom, had none. My situation was so dire that even Mother Superior had no ideas about how to get my crazy child to stop pooping in her underwear. Alas, I put out a call to the Internet and the advice came rolling in. As I read the comments, I sighed with despair that we had already tried most of the techniques, and with no success. Then, Jen’s mom left a comment. If Jen is a hippie, her mom is the first hippie, who paved the way for all hippies after her and wrote the book on how to be a proper one: she practices yoga, she has an organic garden, she homeschooled her children and she drizzles maple syrup on her goat’s milk yogurt. The one area that Jen and her mom disagree on, however, is their parenting philosophies. Jen’s mom, Michelle, swears by the concepts of a man called John Roseman of Traditional Parenting. She believes that a child should feel like a little fish in a big pond, and that is where she and Jen agree to disagree. 

Anyways, Michelle left a comment on my potty training post with a link to an article by John Roseman and she claimed it would change my life. I must admit I scoffed when I saw she had written that, but thought I may as well read the link. 

I read it. And you know what? It changed my life.

Although I didn’t agree with everything in the article, I implemented one of its main ideas: I put Avelyn in the bathroom and told her she couldn’t come out until she had pooped in the potty. (I know many of you will think this is extreme but we had tried everything else, she was being willful and defiant about pooping in her underwear, and I needed to find an effective way to motivate her.) I let her have books and snacks but told her she would not come out until she had done the deed. She cried, she kicked, she cried some more. But she stayed in there and after an hour and a half, she had pooped in the potty! We had a big party and she got a lollipop and it was so great! For the next couple days I had to tell her to stay in the bathroom until she had pooped, but it would usually only take 5 minutes or so until she did. Then she started going all by herself when she felt the urge, and it’s been over a week since she pooped in her underwear. 

I hesistate to even type these words, for fear that my optimism will jinx our progress, but I think she’s 100% potty trained now!

I didn’t realize how much anxiety it had been causing me, especially when we were out in public and I was just waiting and wondering when she was going to soil herself and I would have to rinse out her underwear in the scummy shopping mall bathroom. 

Now wherever we go, Avelyn declares to people she meets, “I poop in the potty! Now I can go to ballet!” I am loving this new, feces-free existance! Loving it! Now we can get on with the summer and enjoy the fun:

It’s going horribly, this potty training. Months ago Avelyn mastered the delicate art of peeing in the toilet. “Hurrah!” I exclaimed, “Surely pooping in the toilet can’t be far off!”

I want to sit down with that optimistic version of myself, take her hands gently in mine and tell her that yes, indeed, pooping in the toilet can be VERY far off and that she ought to brace herself for the task of clawing hot turd from soggy princess underwear and demoting a certain kitchen spatula to the title of “Poop Scraper”.

It’s been two months of (sometimes twice) daily pooping in her underwear! Did you catch that? TWO months. And I am at such a loss as to what our next step out to be. See, when Avelyn takes a dump in her gich she knows it’s wrong, but she’ll come up to me with a twisted smirk on her face to announce that she pooped. She thinks it’s kind of funny and I am pretty sure this IS BAD. And the other problem is that even if I make her sit in it, she doesn’t care! She will just keep on playing while a steaming log is mashed between her cheeks. Again, pretty sure this IS BAD too.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

There’s a reward bowl on top of the fridge filled with toys and treats that she can choose from if she poops on the potty. Hasn’t been able to choose one yet.

I bought her a special doll a few months back and told her she could have it when she pooped in the potty. She did it that same day and got the doll. This shows me she can do it when she’s motivated enough, but I am not going to buy her a huge toy everyday.

I have had a stand-off day with here where we didn’t leave the house, we didn’t watch TV, we made her be naked so she’d be less inclined to poop in her undies and more opt to give the potty a whirl. Nothing!

As I’m changing her out of her soiled panties she’ll often say things like, “I should poop on the potty! Now I can’t go to school or ballet” (I’ve told her that if she wants to go to school/ballet she has to be able to poop on the potty like a big girl).

I have tried giving her a time out when she poops in her undies. 

I have tried spanking her when she poops in her undies.

I have tried being nonchalant about it and say, “That’s OK, when you’re ready to be a big girl, I know you can do it!” with a peppy clap.

Basically I am the point where I swing from thinking “This is obviously not working, just forget about it and she’ll go when she’s ready” to “The only option left is to beat her naked rump into submission”. 

Avelyn is a complicated little girl and I am having a hard time figuring her out on this one. 

A wild gust of wind swept through the orchard and pitched our trampoline into the sky, then dropped it with a mighty thump, rendering it a crumped heap of springs and bars.

Then while at a playdate at Angella’s house yesterday I noticed a peculiar expression of concentration on Jolie’s face as she sat on the floor playing with toys.  I walked over to her, suspecting she was working on a poop, when I saw the green, steaming lava spewing out the back of her jeans onto the ONE rug in Ange’s living room. A pile of hot turd, a child covered in her own feces, a frantic mother searching for wipes.  Ah, the life of leisure.

I thought the fecal eruption was just a fluke, a one-time deal.  Ha!  How I was mistaken.  For the rest of the day my poor girl had diarrhea the likes of which I have never seen (nor smelled).  It got worse as the day went on, she had no appetite, she ralfed all over the ottoman, she developed a fever.  I thought perhaps she had caught a strain of what had plagued Avelyn last week.

So I took her to the clinic, waited for an hour to see a doctor who told me it was viral and got sent home empty-handed.  She (and I) had a rough night and I netted abour four hours of sleep.  Today her spirits are high but her turd is still a toxic slime, spraying out of the back of her diaper like a firehose all over the nearest carpeted area.  How I long for hardwood floors.

Anyways, I know that barfing and diarrhea, while inconveniences, are nothing compared to the truly terrible health ailments out there.  But COME ON!  I’ve had enough of the poop!

OK, so we’re halfway through this week from the pit and things are going better in some areas, and worse in others, than I had expected.

For instance, by Wednesday afternoon I had used up all of my Flex Points for the week and I have yet to lose an ounce. And after nearly three years Avelyn finally figured out that she could scale the slats of her crib and that this would be the best week to do so.  So we moved her (sob!) into a big girl bed.  She looked so small and so big all at once last night as I tucked her in.  And I had to make 50 cups of that “Dirt and Worms” dessert (you know, with the Oreo crumbs and the pudding/cream cheese/cool whip mousse, then more Oreo crumbs on top and then a couple gummi worms peeking out the top layer? Yeah, those) last night for a function tomorrow and seriously, it did not go well.  I was on the floor with a HAMMER pounding the cookies into crumbs in a ziploc bag (note to self: buy food processor) while Jolie WAILED in her high chair and Avelyn tried to ram as many gummi worms into her mouth as possible while I wasn’t looking.  And the whole kitchen was a disaster, and did I mention the crying, and the HAMMER, and the crumbs flying everywhere, and the pudding was globbing all over the cups and I was like, “This is supposed to be FUN!  But it’s TOTALLY NOT!” and then Steve came home and saw the chaos and said, “I’m going to Kelowna to buy a dirtbike.  See ya!  PS: What’s for dinner?” and then I almost cried.  I tossed a pizza in the oven, he scarfed down a few slices then left (lucky FOOL) and the crying continued, then the shower curtain fell on Avelyn while she was having her bath and I as trying to feed Jolie.  Gah!  Life is nuts ’round these parts.

Anyways, the Dirt cups got made, the kitchen got halfway tidied up, the kids went to bed and I just laid on the couch like a zombie for an hour or so, then I felt marginally better.

How is anyone able to keep it together while being a parent?

Avelyn knows where her grandma lives: in Regina.  But with a two year-old’s pronunciation, it sounds a little shocking when she tells people.  My time in the Queen City was great, although it has become apparent that Jolie is following in her sister’s footsteps and has chosen to be a Difficult Traveler.  The flights were actually not bad; she slept and only fussed minimally.  But being in a new home, a new bed, with new faces really thew her off.  She was constipated (she only pooped once the whole time we were there, and woh, it’s was a doozy), and clingy (she would wail if I left) and fussy and her squawking, if translated, would have said, “Take me home, losers!”

Despite the crab-factor, we managed to have some fun.  See?

Jen and I spent Saturday morning at the spa where we each got a massage, and I had a pedicure while Jen received a French manicure.  Here she is picking out a nail polish colour.  The one she’s holding looked to be a lovely shade of bile, so she went with a glossy pink in the end.  I chose a hot, shiny, totally ’80s bubble-gum pink for my toes.

So happy to be free from the children!

Jen’s purty fingees.  Ooh-la-la! Then we had a healthy and well rounded (regular AND dessert pizza) meal at the Pizza Hut lunch buffet.  ‘Twas heaven in my belly.  After lunch we went shopping, then to see a matinee.  Pretty much the best day ever.

It turned out that Bebe Jolie cried the whole time I was gone, so most of the visiting we did in the next few days was at home.  Which turned out to be fine since my mom has a shiny new cappuccino machine and a pantry full of syrups.  She played the part of an eager barista and no one complained!

Here she is taking orders.  Now get to work, Mom, and hold the baby while you’re at it.

I got to meet a new Jen and she was super neat!  She wrote all about our time together here and I am glad we all had a fun time.

I also got to see my old friend, Kendra.  Good times, god lattes, good laughs.

Jolie fared well on the flight home but then SCREAMED the entire hour’s drive from the airport to home.  Nothing says welcome home like this, “Husband! I missed you, let’s have a nice heart-to-heart while we drive, wait the baby won’t stop crying, gah! still crying, please throw me off the next cliff because I can’t take the crying”.

It’s a beautiful life.

I took an objective look at this blog and as I scrolled down the page in its entirety I thought, “A first-time reader would take one look at this, ascertain that I am a weight-obsessed, slighty depressed mother of two and never come back to this domain ever again.”

It’s not totally accurate, but the posts speak for themselves, I suppose.  True, I am fairly focused on losing my baby weight (since I know how much better I feel when I’m not hauling around an extra ten sticks o’ butter on my rear) and I’ve been finding the whole “I have two kids” thing a lot harder than I thought I would, but there is a lot more to me than those two things and I guess I haven’t been letting them shine through in my writing.

Last week the weight of the sleepless nights, the sick kids, the coughing husband, the disastrous house, the molding leftovers, it all just got to me and I realized that I was stuck in a cycle of feeling like a failure.  It felt as though I sucked at all of the things I have been entrusted with: raising our two girls, keeping the household running, and cooking a few hot meals.  Avelyn was acting like a total brat (parenting FAIL), the house was covered in dust and dog hair and a month’s worth of laundry was swallowing our bedroom (domestic FAIL), and if we had a frozen pizza for dinner it meant things were looking up (culinary FAIL).  I am an all or nothing person and since I felt like I was failing at it all, the only option was to stop trying and to succeed at nothing.

I was ranting to Christy about these emotions and she said something I won’t soon forget, “Amanda, you have to give yourself permission to just survive the first year with a new baby, especially when you’ve got two kids to take care of.” If she weren’t a province away I would have collapsed in her arms and cried because that’s just what I needed to hear.  (She’s a mother of three, so she knows what she’s talkin’ ’bout.)  I took her words to heart and my perspective has since changed.  I have taken the pressure off myself to do it all, since I know that right now I just can’t do it.  And with that pressure gone, I don’t have to corner myself into the “I guess I’ll just do nothing since I can’t do it all (PS: pass the bon-bons)” mentality.  I am choosing to focus on the things I can do:  no, I can’t spit-shine the floor, but maybe I have time to run a vacuum over the living room; no, I can’t piece together a five course meal but I can try a new recipe with simple ingredients; no, I can’t control whether my two year-old has a tantrum in Wal-Mart but I can keep a cool head while she’s hurling her body on the cold floor of the toy aisle since I won’t let her keep the Dora umbrella.  I can, I can, I can!  Woohoo!

I don’t have it all figured out, that’s for sure.  But giving myself permission to just make it through the days with the bare minimum accomplished motivates me to add a few things to the minimum, as opposed to throwing up my hands in defeat when I realize I can’t hit the maximum.

Thanks for sticking with me as I muddle my way through, you guys.  I always appreciate your words of encouragement and great comments.

I just might make it after all.