Man Up Little Boy!

On Friday night, Craig took Aaron to the Long Island Ducks baseball game. I've never been, but they are a minor league team and the games are supposed to be geared towards the kids and really super fun. So when Aaron's school sent home a flyer that they were having a group ticket sale for Friday night's game, I sent in a check and bought 4 tickets thinking it would be a great family night. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans right? Ya, G-d was certainly having a good laugh at my expense. With Camryn skipping her nap two days in a row, a 7pm baseball game with a 60% chance of rain and thunderstorms forecasted was not my #1 choice of place to take her. So with me and Cam sitting this one out, Craig and Aaron had a boys night with the Ducks.

For me, taking my kids anywhere is always stressful. Why? Because I want them to behave. No, change that. I expect them to behave. I am certainly no drill seargent and my requirements are not too much. Don't scream at the top of your lungs. Don't run around like an animal. When in a restaurant, don't go under the table. And when I say something, listen. Understandably, 6 year olds and 3 year olds don't listen 100% of the time. Like I said, I'm no drill seargent - a 50% success rate would make me happy. But when in public, listen to me when I tell you something. And knowing in advance that that most likely is not going to happen usually stresses me out before we're even out the door. Craig though is different. The antithesis of my Type-AAA personality, he's laid back. Sometimes it irritates me how laid back he is. It takes alot to get him riled up. So when he came home from the baseball game on Friday night with a look on his face like he was ready to clobber someone with his own baseball bat, I braced myself. Because he'd already had a 30 minute car ride to get over it and he so clearly wasn't.

For the next 20 minutes, I listed to why he was so mad. Did Aaron run around like an animal? No. Streak across the baseball field? No. Not listen? No. What then? He cried. Four times. So hysterically that every single person sitting in the section stared. And stared. And kept on staring. For a long time. And the worst part? The crying was for absolutely no reason. As Craig is relaying the goings on of the night, I'm slowly coming to realize why he's so pissed off. Because for someone who absolutely hates to be the center of attention, he had the entire section of the stadium staring at him 4 separate times while Aaron hysterically screamed his head off. I understood that if Aaron had actually been hurt or anything that warranted hysteria, Craig would not have cared who was looking at him. But for no reason? He was absolutely mortified.

I'm sure that those reading this (all three of you!) are on the edge of your seats wondering why all the crying. The first time, he legitimately got hurt. The other three times, in order, were:

1. He wanted ice cream. And then he didn't like the flavor ice cream that he got.
   
2. He wanted a t-shirt.
3. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to sit with his friend and her dad or go with Craig to the bathroom.

Basically, he was acting like a brat. A giant spoiled brat. A giant spoiled brat who is about 3 years old. Not 6 and in kindergarten. But this is Aaron. The sweetest little boy in the world, so cute, nice and funny, but man, a total infant. At home, if he wants something and we say no, he cries. I'm talking anything from wanting to watch tv to wanting a snack to wanting to go outside. We're at the end of our rope with the crying - so close to the end of our rope that the other day I actually looked at him and said, "Man up, Aaron." Seriously. I told a 6 year old kindergartener to man up. Because I can't take the constant crying.

Our current solution is just to ignore it. Let him cry. I'll send him to his room until he's done crying because I just can't take the sound of it. But when we're out in public, it's a problem. Like Friday. Poor Craig. I don't think we'll be seeing the Ducks again this season.

I'm Still Here.....

Hi blog! I'm still alive, although my days have been a series of one day melting into the next. It's been awhile so I'll try and catch you up via a bullet pointed list. It was going to be a "Top 10" list but I'm not sure I have 10 things to talk about. And away we go....

• We surprised the kids with a trip to Disney last month. I will have to sit down and write about it in detail but in a nutshell, it was amazingly awesome. The kids had fun, we had fun, Disney World is this seriously magical place where only good things happen and everyone is super nice. We didn't watch tv, see the news or read the newspaper for an entire week. I called it our state of blissfull ignorance. We got home just in time for the swine flu outbreak and truly had no idea about it until we got to the airport and people everywhere were wearing surgical masks. Special thanks to my Mom Panel friend Darcie for helping plan this spectacular week. Oh, and great surprise to be able to hang with Maria Bailey, Leanne and Laura and their mommy bloggers to watch the fireworks, even if my 6 year old cried the whole time.
• After our week in Disney, I think I seriously fell into a depression when we came home. I spent the whole first week not wanting to do ANYTHING, which then depressed me even more.
• We're home almost a month and I'm STILL waiting for this rain to stop here in NY. If I wanted Seattle-like weather, I would have lived in Seattle. It's the end of May and we're still wearing jeans and sweatshirts. Definitely need to clue Mother Nature into the fact that a little rain is okay and necessary but at some point it's gotta stop. Bring on the sunshine!
• I'm glad that Kris Allen won American Idol instead of Adam Lambert. I don't think Adam is commercial enough and if my all-time fave Danny Gokey couldn't win, I'm glad it went to Kris. I didn't vote, although I did try - the lines were busy and I gave up. I did though download Kris's version of Heartless from iTunes - it was awesome.
  
• I've moved from The Real Housewives of NYC to The Real Housewives of NJ. While I love the NYC girls (other than Kelly. And Ramona. And Alex.) the NJ girls are good for a laugh. A really, really, really big laugh. And a bunch of "Oh My God"s. Jersey girls, understand that this show is a huge reason why people think what they think about NJ. Just sayin'.....
• Camryn has turned into a major bitch. That may be wrong to say about a 3 year old but I'm saying it. And saying it loud. She's driving me insane. Everything is "NO!" or "MINE!" or some other loud and obnoxious one word answer. Today she told me "I don't love you, I love only Daddy. But that's okay because Aaron loves you." I mean, when did 3 year olds get logic? If this is a sign of things to come, I'm done for.
  
• Camryn also has decided that she loves to say inappropriate (and embarrassing) things at any given time, making me not want to take her anywhere. Ever. Some examples? In the bank, we walked by an older man (by older, I mean somewhere in the 80+ range) and she sniffed the air loudly and said, "That man stinks, mommy." Fantastic, right? In the next store, she decided to point to a bald man and said, "Isn't that man's hair funny?" And this morning, I had put some cream on her private area because she said she was a little itchy (just finished a round of antibiotics), and when I picked her up at school and whispered to her, "How do you feel?" she said, "I fine Mommy, and my vagina's great!" Note - all of these things that she said are at a volume of about 1000.
• Heidi from The Hills is killing me. I mean, why does she not realize what a total ass Spencer is? And I'm bummed that LC is leaving. Let's not talk about why I am still watching this show. Sigh....
• Frequency is so my favorite movie. It's Jim Caviezel before he was Jesus and Dennis Quaid before he started looking old. I think I've watched it about 100 times in the past two months (it's on cable). If you haven't seen it, see it. Now.
  

Had enough? I think that's about all. Not all that exciting. Miss me much??

Wahoo!!

About two weeks ago, I got a call from MomCentral that they were working with CNN and looking for a family to interview about cutting back in this economy and did I want to be interviewed? I think it took me about 5 seconds to say yes. Probably less than 5 seconds. Here's the result--

Vacation Over

Things here have been crazy, clearly leaving me no time to blog. I'm trying, trying, trying to fit it into my schedule and hopefully will be a bit more organized going forward. But I have something I've been wanting to remember so the best way to remember is to start writing it down...

At the end of January, we gave up our nanny (we'll call her R). She was our third nanny in 6 years, but she was great, most of the time. My work situation changed and now that I work from home, we couldn't justify the expense of full time help anymore. So we gave R ample notice, found her a job with another family and said good-bye. Sort of. The last two weeks she was here, she basically did nothing outside of irritate me like crazy, so when it came time for her to leave, it was more like good riddance, as opposed to good bye. R's new employer is another local family that is an acquaintance of a friend (we'll call her K), and I had never met them up until a few weeks ago when we were introduced at a birthday party. We exchanged pleasantries, limited our conversation to "hello" and "nice to meet you" and went our separate ways. Which pretty much was why what happened the following week was so totally confusing.

I haven't spoken to R since we said good riddance good bye almost 2 months ago. She called a few times afterwards but we didn't connect, so I've written the relationship off as over and done. We met her through a friend's nanny who lives around the block (we'll call her X) and the two nannies are still friends. About two weeks ago, 7pm at night, our phone rings and it's X calling from around the block. Here's the conversation.

Friend's Nanny X: Hi Amy
Me: Hi X, how are you?
X: Fine - listen, K asked me to call you and see if you could come here, pick up her kids and R and drive them home to her house.
Me: Umm....what???? [because I couldn't imagine that I had heard her correctly]
X: K's kids and R are here with me and K is in the city and she realized it's late so she wanted to know if you could bring R and her kids home.
Me: No, sorry, kids are in the bath, I can't.
X: Oh, okay, thanks anyway.

Now, this really happened. A woman who I met one time and barely said hello to had someone call me at 7pm at night in the rain, ask me to pick up her kids at their friend's house and drive them home. Is this normal? Not in my world.

I've been thinking for the past few weeks that there had to be something more to the story, something that got lost in translation from K to X to me.

Yesterday, I spoke to a mutual acquaintance (who is due with her third child in 2 days) and went through the story. Her response was, "Ya, that sounds about right. K is pretty ballsy, she definitely expected you to do it. Oh, and by the way, she called me that night too because she was in the city running late to meet her husband for dinner."

There's really no way to end this story because there was no resolution. I never called her and asked what the issue was, she never called me to apologize for being, well, ballsy is the best word I can think of. So really, it just ends with me still being baffled and hoping that she never calls me again.

What I Learned Over My Winter Vacation

Last week, my kids were on winter vacation. A whole week of mommy-Aaron-Camryn time. More time than I've ever been alone with them in their entire lives. It was interesting, I have to say. But I did learn a lot. Here's my list.

• Full week school vacations are long.
• There is ALOT of together-time when one parent is working and the other is home with both kids all day.
• If I make plans too far in advance with certain friends, they will most definitely flake out on me at the last minute.
• I need to mentally be on vacation when my kids are on vacation and have low expectations of getting work done, and prepare for that during the week before.

It's not a lot, but I will hopefully be prepared next vacation.

See what everyone else has learned in this great weekly carnival from Musings of a Housewife.

The Nighttime Stall

When Aaron turned 2 years old, he decided he didn't want to go to sleep anymore. For about a week, we had to let him cry it out at night until he finally fell alseep. As he cried in his crib the first night, I cried with him on my kitchen floor. It was heartbreaking and torturous but every night, eventually he stopped. And every night the crying time got shorter until, after about a week, he would just go to sleep without crying. We thought we were the masters and this crying it out thing ruled. Until the next year when he started doing the same thing at 3 years old. But we did the same thing, stuck to our guns and eventually the crying stopped again.

Because of Aaron's ridiculously long bedtime routine, since birth, we have always put Camryn in her crib, awake, and she would fall asleep. She has been an amazing sleeper with random nighttime waking up, but nothing too bad and nothing on a regular basis.

Until now. The kids does not want to go to sleep. Ever. When she goes in her crib, we tell her a story and turn off the light, say good night, and as soon as we're one step out the door, we get "but mommy?" or "but daddy?" which are followed by "can I have a drink of water/a book/different music/elmo socks/my pillow/my other baby?" You get the idea. It's the nighttime stall.

Tonight the nighttime stall was followed by a nighttime cry followed by a nighttime puke. Yes, my daugher cried so hard and worked herself up so much that she threw up. And then she was petrified to go back into her crib and crying because she thought she was sick and couldn't go to school tomorrow. After about another half hour, she went to sleep, I think more though that she was so tired from not napping.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow....

Our February Vacation

Being home with my kids after 6 years of working full time and having full time help is much harder than I thought it would be. Of course it's fun being able to be here with them and be at their schools, we are just coming off of a whole week of school vacation which meant lots of together time while my husband was working. Lots. And lots. The week was a little rough because Camryn naps in the afternoon which left me and Aaron unable to leave the house. At the beginning of the week I was really worried. What would I do without the distraction of school and homework and the regular rush of the school day?

Monday was President's Day and while almost everyone and their mother's offices were closed for the holiday, my husband's office was open. And everyone was working. So off he went to work at 730am and immediately Camryn starts wailing. Why? Because although we thought she was sleeping, she wasn't, and she saw Daddy get into his car and drive away without saying goodbye to her. Not a great start to a very long week! She got over it and Camryn, Aaron and myself went on a playdate with a boy that Aaron goes to camp with who has a younger brother the same age as Camryn. They all played nicely, although the little boy was constipated and didn't feel well. But they had a great playdate and when we got home around 2pm, Camryn napped and Aaron and I baked cupcakes. End of day thought: This week won't be so bad after all!

Tuesday was the one day that we didn't have any premade plans. We hung around the house in the morning, kids watched TV and I tried to get some work done. Keyword = tried. Didn't get, um, anything done. The kids and I decided that we would go to Bertucci's for some pizza lunch and then head over to Barnes & Noble where they were both allowed to get one book. We ate a great lunch and they each wound up with 2 books from Barnes & Noble, and after I paid I realized that Aaron has about $75 in gift cards to Borders that he got for his birthday. We got home, Camryn took a nap, Aaron watched TV and I, once again, tried to get some work done. My mom came over to babysite while I got ready and went into the city for the exclusive Yanni Voices preview concert and left for NYC. End of day thought: Two days down, three to go.

Wednesday was playdate day. Camryn went over to her friend's house while her friend's brother came here to play with Aaron. The boys played their games and Nintendo DS downstairs and I was upstairs getting work done. Everything was great until about lunchtime when Aaron's friend declared everything we had for lunch "disgusting". Hmm. Don't all kids eat macaroni and cheese, pizza and chicken nuggets? Now, I have had my share of my own kids being disagreeable and I can handle it just as well as the next mom. But when the whining starts, I just want to shrivel up and die. I really just can't deal with whining. When my kids whine, they know that it's not tolerated here. But how do you deal with someone else's kid whining? Clearly I can't send him to his room or tell him he's acting like a baby. So it was about 30 minutes of time that I would have rather spent watching paint dry than listening to this child whine about not wanting to eat any of the things I offered him. Finally he agreed to eat chicken nuggets and was fine the rest of the time. Around 2pm he went home and both my kids were exhausted, as was I, so we spent the rest of the day recuperating. End of day thought: I hope that my kids don't whine when they're on playdates.

On Thursday, my very best friend and her two kids were set to come over for yet another playdate, which we wound up canceling because Camryn didn't fell well. My friend has a 6 month old and both of her kids had just gotten over various sicknesses so she wasn't entering the house of germs. The kids and I spent the whole day doing pretty much nothing outside of the two kids fighting and me threatining to send them to their rooms about 700 times during the day. End of day thought: Is it Friday yet?

Friday. One of my most favorite words, beaten out only by Saturday and maybe 3 others. On Friday we were supposed to have a playdate with a friend of Aaron's from nursery school but it didn't work out. We had talked about staying home, cleaning up, doing some laundry and getting along. Around 11am, I got a phone call from the mom of the kids from Wednesday's playdate asking if she could come and pick up BOTH of my kids and bring them to her house for another playdate because her kids were bored. Um, what? You don't have to ask me twice. Now come over before you change your mind! And she did. She picked up both my kids, who were beyond thrilled to go with her, and brought them to play with her kids. And surprise her kids nonetheless. I did pick up Camryn around 2pm so she could come home and nap, but Aaron stayed there until about 415 when we picked him up to go get a haircut. After that, a quick visit to Grandma and Grandpa and guess what? Week was over! End of day thought: Yay!!

So, this vacation taught me alot. Like what? I think I'll use this on Tuesday for my "What I Learned This Week" carnival, hosted by Musings of A Housewife! Stay tuned....