The Fatal Flaw

We took a very brief trip up to MD over Mother’s Day for Joe’s grandmother’s 100th birthday party. We were only there two days due to the general chaos of traveling with two small children combined with an ant problem that was driving my mother-in-law crazy (for good reason) and some Kuhns family drama that is way too complicated for this email! In addition picking up a raging sinus infection while I was there, we also discovered Abby’s fatal flaw – she HATES long car rides. This came as a bit of a surprise, because for the most part she has been a pretty easy going baby --- other than thinking it’s still a good idea to wake up every morning around 4 and demand a bottle these days (God help me at the beach). She also always gets happy when I put her in her car seat at home because she knows that means she’s going somewhere and will have new things to look at. She particularly likes shopping – this doesn’t bode well for the teenage years…

(As an aside here… has anyone seen the dresses girls are wearing to the prom these days?! I may be turning into a prudish middle-aged old bag, but some of them look like something a high-priced call girl might wear – necklines to the naval and cut-out sides – on a 17 year old? Seriously?).

So, we pack up the car with pretty much everything we own and head out the day before the party. Joey has a video on and I’m thinking I might actually get a little peace. Then, after about an hour in the car, I discover that peace is not to be… Abby starts howling at the top of her lungs. So, I think maybe she’s hungry and try to give her a bottle. She takes a little but then proceeds to howl some more – so I make Joe stop so I can feed her properly. The very SECOND I get her out of her seat, she’s all smiles and squeals (she’s a talker) – so she takes her bottle and I think I have solved the problem. If only it were so easy. As soon as she’s back in her seat, the howling commences again. This literally went on for at least 3-4 out of the 7 hours of our trip – the rest of the time she FINALLY fell asleep. At one point I considered throwing myself from our speeding car when Abby’s howling and Joey is yelling “Shut Up Abby!” -- then we told him not to say “Shut Up” so he starts yelling “Dam#it, Dam#It, Dam*it” at the top of his lungs. It was like Dante’s 7th circle of hell. Let me just add that the way home was not much better – and included a fun and exciting stop at Cracker Barrel that featured Abby knocking over a glass of water on to me (and everywhere else) because she was flailing around like she’d just had a bottle of Red Bull instead of formula, Joey refusing to eat anything and then melting down when we wouldn’t get him a treat – about ½ way through the meal I realized that we were “THOSE people” that day. As soon as we got out of the car when we got home we immediately cracked a beer.

This leads me to my proposal for a new national policy – I think that parents of children under 5 or so should be given special sirens for their cars. The sirens could be hooked up to the parents like blood pressure monitors and as the parents blood pressure rises, the siren would get louder and louder urging people to get out of the way and giving the parents special dispensation for speeding. I assume something simple like a little whining wouldn’t result in the siren lighting up too much or wailing too loudly – but as additional disasters such as babies howling incessantly for hours, toddlers continuing the whining (and cursing in our case) for 30 minutes straight and other fun car events like blowout diapers and vomiting would then result in an ambulance-like siren that would announce to the rest of the world that there are desperate parents in the car who badly need a beer and should not be held up by petty things such as stop lights and Sunday drivers. I know I would pull over quickly if I saw a parent siren coming my way – I might even hold a beer out my window in solidarity in case they could grab it on the way by.

OK, this post has already gotten too long (as usual), so I’ll just sum up the rest of my life by saying that I saw a picture of myself from 10 years ago the other day and wondered what the hell happened to me because the tired old bag in the mirror with no make-up, bad clothes and a 15 pound spare tire around her middle clearly couldn’t be one in the same. J I think my children are just sucking the life out of me. Abby is still sweet natured for the most part (car rides aside), but she is suddenly incapable of sitting still for even a moment – she’s constantly grabbing for everything and pulling hair (even when she’s taking a bottle) and her diaper changes are like a wrestling match. Joey has been a treat as usual lately. Yesterday he slept on his leg wrong or something I think because he got up from his nap and couldn’t walk (or claimed he couldn’t – he could bend his leg and scoot around just fine, but couldn’t stand for some reason). This resulted in a HUGE meltdown when he couldn’t jump on his friend’s trampoline and then he insisted on being carried the rest of the night and sat on the couch demanding to watch Thomas the Train, eat snacks and drinks that he decreed should be delivered to him on the couch and wanted me to hold an ice pack on his knee – seriously, it was like he was on his death bed or something – this doesn’t bode well for his future wife. Needless to say when he got up this morning his leg was miraculously healed…