The glamorous life

Today I cleaned up pee off my kitchen floor, dug a booger the size of a small marble out of my baby's nose with my own bare hand and ate cereal for dinner.  Ah yes my friends, THIS is the glamorous life...

I suck

It's true, I do.  Sometimes I just suck at being a mom.  I lose my temper after picking up toys and shoes for the bazillionth time.  I yell a little too loudly when I get tired of not being heard.  I crave solitude probably more than I should considering the number of children I have.  And this week, I was the slacker mom that forgot that her #2 and #3 princesses were supposed to bring Christmas snacks and a book to exchange to preschool.  So, while other little girls were running into their classrooms toting beautifully wrapped packages that were no doubt thoughtfully purchased, tied with ribbons and tulle, my princesses walked in with books from our own stash (yes, it's true) and were followed by a bedraggled mommy carrying a $1 roll of wrapping paper purchased from the local grocery store a mere 10 minutes earlier.  And the Christmas snack? Yeah, that didn't happen at all.

To say I walked out of the preschool feeling like total crap would be an understatement.  I know it's so little in the grand scheme of things, but failing at stuff like this just takes the wind out of my sails.  It's silly to want to be the perfect parent, and I'm not even sure that's really good for the kids anyway.  But is it too much to ask to at least have the capacity to remember when it's gift day at preschool?  

What was I thinking??

It sounded so simple and made so much sense.  The cabinets were bare.  Starving Princesses were grating on my every last nerve begging for food.  We'd just run to the store for a few quick things.  Nothing major, just the essentials.  Your Majesty started making a list (maybe overkill for just a "few things", but I know that I do much better with the old bottom line if I stick to my list).  Milk of course, then cereal, and bread... so far so good.  Oh and we're out of paper towels, and nearly out of toilet paper... and I should get a few extra things to make the Princesses' lunches with... and maybe I'll be able to grab a few things off my stocking stuffer list....

We finally make it out the door, with a much longer list than "the essentials" would require.  But that's ok.  I'm organized and ready.  We'll hit Super Wal-mart so fast we'll be out of there in no time.  All the Princesses have gone potty, a fresh diaper is donned, My Little Ponies are in tow for amusement - we're good to go.

One small, teeny-tiny detail:  It's Saturday.  December 13th.  A mere 12 days before Christmas.  Before you break into song about swans a-swimming and partridges in pear trees, let's analyze the ramifications of going to Super Wal-mart in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday just 12 days before Christmas:

1.  No parking spaces.  Ever wonder what the entire perimeter of the Wal-mart parking lot looks like?  Go on a Saturday afternoon 12 days before Christmas.  You'll get a chance to drive around it several times, watching every single car in front of you get lucky and snag a spot - only to leave you to drive on, circling and circling until your Princesses are complaining of getting dizzy.

2.  No shopping carts.  Really, I'm not sure what the problem is with keeping the cart corral stocked with carts.  I probably passed 50 out in the parking lot - don't they pay teenage boys to push those suckers back to the building?  Next time I'll grab one on my way in.

3.  More than enough people.  You would think that Wal-mart is the place to be on a Saturday afternoon.  It's like being on a gigantic bumper car ride, except you are pushing your cars instead of driving them.  And as time goes by, more weight is added to your car which makes it even more difficult to steer.  Add in of course a Princess or two and then it really gets fun.

4.  Lack of common sense.  One would think that in a place like Wal-mart, swarming with people and nearly out of control shopping carts, one would take care to see that they stay within their own "space" and offer the simplest basic courtesy to others around them by not blocking aisles, barreling around corners, allowing their kids to  swerve in and out of people on those blasted tennis shoes with wheels in the heel... one would think.  But one would also be mistaken.

5.  Murphey's Law:  no matter what you do, you will always, ALWAYS choose the wrong check out lane.  (just a PSA here:  if you have a line 3 deep behind you and you're nearly done checking out when you discover that you forgot to grab some ornament hooks for your precious ornaments - do everyone a favor and come back another time to grab the hooks.  Really, it's not that big of a deal.  And it's not worth making everyone behind you in line wait an extra 10 minutes while you try to snag down a Wal-mart employee to have them go fight the crowds to bring back hooks for you.  Use paper clips for crying out loud!)

6.  No matter how well behaved, even Princesses can only stand Wal-mart for so long.

We're lucky we made it out alive.

All I want for Christmas

Today Princess #1 told me that all she wanted for Christmas was a laundry person, so that I can spend less time doing laundry and more time with them....  I'd say that's a reasonable request!  Oh Santa....  :-)

Paybacks

I'm sure that living in the land of Pink may sound like fun to alot of people who don't have the option of experiencing it on a daily basis.  And yes, it IS alot of fun... at times.  But I'm also 98% certain that being proclaimed Your Majesty of Planet Pink is also alot about PAYBACK.  Payback for all the drama I caused for my parents while I was myself, a Princess.   It's almost amusing at times, the amount of drama that courses through this home's veins at any given moment.  And we haven't even made it past the age of 6 yet!  Check back with me in another 10 years to see if I still find it amusing.

Case in point:  a few days ago, I was in the kitchen peacefully preparing dinner when Princess #1 entered, begging for a cup of soda.  Call me mean, but I told her no, not until after dinner.  I'm not sure why this response surprised her, since it's the same response she would get over and over no matter how many times she asked, and yet this time it sent her into a full fledged tantrum.  Now, temper tantrums from 2 year olds I can tolerate, but when my 6 year old tries to manipulate the situation by falling on the floor, she gets sent to her room.  And so off she went.  I went back to making dinner.  Not more than a minute or two later, Princess #1 comes back to the kitchen screaming something about her tooth and her mouth was full of blood.

Now, ordinarily I might have panicked myself, but since just a few days prior we had discovered that a permanent tooth was poking through behind her bottom right baby tooth, I immediately assumed that her tooth had fallen out.  I was a bit surprised by the amount of blood, but didn't feel the need to overreact.  So I took the hysterical Princess #1 to the bathroom to clean her up.  The amount of drama oozing from her little body was amazing.  Nearly to the point of hyperventilation, eyes popping out of her head, sobbing uncontrollably, the works.  It was quite a sight to see.  It took a great deal of self control to not laugh at my amusement over the whole situation.

But it gets even better.  Once we got the bleeding stopped and I got her calmed down enough, I asked Princess #1 to tell me how it happened.  Remember that temper tantrum?  Well, apparently she was SO MAD at me, that when I sent her to her room she grabbed a blanket and was biting on it.  At one point she ripped the blanket out of her mouth, and the tooth came with it.  As Princess #1 was retelling me the story, I'm ashamed to admit that I did NOT have enough self control to keep myself from laughing out loud.  It was totally a "serves you right!" moment (although I did have enough restraint to not say THAT outloud).

The hysterical Princess was convinced she had swallowed the ill-fated tooth.  Fortunately, You Majesty knows *just enough* about physics that I was able to assume that if she had ripped the blanket out of her mouth, the tooth most likely projected across the room in the same direction.  So then I began the painstaking task of searching for the tiny tooth, lest the Tooth Fairy would skip over our home that evening.  I had Princess #1 show me where she was sitting and what direction she was facing at the time of the extraction.  In a miraculous turn of events, I stumbled across the tooth, sitting neatly in the middle of her little sister's pillow.  

If that wasn't enough drama, the rest of the evening was filled with overreaction about eating, drinking, brushing teeth, etc. with the new hole in her mouth.  I'm not sure how many times I had to reassure the Princess that people went on to eat and drink like normal after loosing teeth.  The whole evening was one of those very profound moments where I realized: This is my life.  Going from managing one drama to another.  I think I may need to invest in Prozac.