The Dog Days of Motherhood

Everyone has heard of the Dog Days of Summer.  I just wasn't quite sure what that phrase meant.  So I looked it up.  It has to do with the hottest days of summer, somehow associated with Sirius, the dog star. While the last few days have probably not technically been the "dog days", Wikipedia perfectly describes what they have been like for me: "Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, Quinto raged in anger, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813."

Yesterday was the height of the "Dog Days" of Motherhood for me.  Everyone has those days, right?  I hope I'm not the only one. Yesterday was the first day in Enzo's life that I have been pretty sure I just wasn't cut out to be a mom.  And I don't know if it is the terrible twos come early, or if the "dog days" are making Enzo wild, but my child is a MONSTER. I don't know how much energy can fit into one tiny little body. 

Enzo's typical day starts bright and early around 6 am.  For a while there, he was sleeping in till 8, which was fabulous.  Not anymore.  This week, he's up with sun.  Actually, twice this week he was up before the sun.  5:15 am, while James is snoring away next to me, I get my wake up call from across the house, "Mommy, Mommy, MOMMY." So I roll out of bed, give him his cup of milk, crawl back into bed (where James is still sleeping) and pray he'll go back to sleep.  15 minutes later, when I've barely fallen back to sleep, James' alarm goes off.  I hope he'll wake up - I wait a minute, nudge him, and make him get out of bud and shut it off.  A few minutes later, when I'm almost asleep again, his alarm goes off again.  He climbs out of bed to get a shower, and I roll over, trying to go back to sleep.  But before I can even close my eyes, I hear my favorite little monster across the house - wide awake and calling for Mommy again - and I know there's no way he's going back to sleep. 

So in a vain attempt to get a little more rest, I grab my laptop, in which Enzo's favorite Baby Einstein DVD has permanently taken residence, set it up to play on top of my dresser, and go and get the little terror.  Of course, he's sneaky, so he doesn't reveal his dark side, but instead gives me an incredible grin that no one can resist.

I bring him back to my bed with his blankie, a dry diaper, and a full bottle, and hope for the best.  If I'm lucky (and James has already left for work), I can get another 30 minutes or so of very light sleep.  This week, I haven't been so lucky.  Mr. Wide Awake at the Crack of Dawn doesn't want to lay down and watch "Nine-nine."  He wants to play.  Some of his various antics include climbing on top of me, hitting me with his cup of milk, spraying milk onto me or my bed (or drinking it and then spitting it out all over everywhere.)  This morning (or was it yesterday?) I think he hit me in the head with my brush.  If I actually do fall asleep, he'll climb around to get in my face and "scare" me with a nice loud "Raarrr!!" When he has my attention, he will grab my hand and say "down, down." I used to be fortunate enough that he wouldn't climb off my bed until I would get down with him.  This week he has gotten adventuresome and will now climb down on his own.  So if I don't get down and play, or if I have the audacity to attempt to get dressed or use the bathroom, the monster begins to emerge. 

In my room, one of Enzo's favorite things to do is pull out the phone charger plug and put it in his mouth.  He also likes to open up my bedside table and empty out the contents onto the floor.  The box of jenga blocks which, for some reason, used to be in the cupboard beside my bed, is now dumped out for me to step on when I climb out of bed.  I've cleaned it up once or twice, carefully stacking all the blocks into the box - but I finally gave up, and there blocks still remain.  (Actually, as I write this, my brother Matt took pity on me and is now cleaning them up.  He hasn't had a kid, so he still has some brain cells left and is moving the box to a better location - high in the closet.) If Enzo can access the tissue box, those end up completely pulled out of the box and everywhere.  The bag of tiny safety pins from my drawer gets emptied out, hiding in the pile of blocks.  If the lotion is low enough for him to reach, he'll squirt it out and try to eat it. 

Once I enter the bathroom, the fun begins in there as well.  If I don't sit down on the toilet fast enough or, heaven forbid, leave the toilet seat open, Enzo's hands and anything in them get dunked into the toilet water - and then licked.  Once I found him dipping (in his words) my keys into the toilet.  Even closing the toilet seat is not much of a deterrent anymore, since he can now open it. The toilet paper now stays sitting far away on the counter, since this is what Enzo likes to do with it if he can reach it:

If I brush my teeth, he wants to brush his, so while I run across to the other bathroom to get Enzo's toothbrush (yes I know, if I had half a brain, I'd keep his toothbrush in my bathroom.  That would work, if he didn't carry it with him all over the house, and if I didn't find it in the laundry basket, the sink, or the trashcan on a regular basis - I might remember to put it back in my bathroom instead of the one closest to the mayhem.) Anyway, while I run to the other side of the house to get his toothbrush, he stays busy getting into all of the drawers and cabinets in the bathroom.

And yes, those Q-tips did end up all over the floor.  While they no longer remain on the floor at this moment, they did stay there for untold hours before I found a few minutes without a shadow to go back and clean them up.   I no longer even bother to shower while Enzo is awake, since that long ago time when a complete roll of toilet paper ended up in there with me. 

After I've finally dragged my tired self into the front room, I attempt to get him to eat.  I ask him what he wants to eat, and without fail, the answer always comes "pasta!" But since I know he will also want pasta for lunch and pasta for dinner, I usually opt for another edible alternative.  He use to love smoothies, but I stopped making him those when he stopped drinking them and started using the straw to fling them all over everywhere (and I mean everywhere - I've even had to clean up smoothies off the ceiling of my car).  Waffles used to be a good option too, but now those just get torn to bits and left all over the house.  Yesterday, I turned on Handy Manny and tricked him into eating several bites of oatmeal.  He even let me feed him, which hasn't happened since The Flood. But as soon as the theme song ended, he realized what was happening, and oatmeal started flying.  So I quickly gave up on that and left him to himself to eat a banana and yogurt.  I took my attention away from him for a few minutes to fix myself some breakfast.  In his favorite attention-getting tactic, he began to throw his food again.  Before I could crack my eggs into the pan, this is what happened behind me:

Banana and yogurt as far as he could throw them.   And his big-ole cheesy grin - which this time, I could definitely resist.   (Actually, this picture is from today.  Yesterday, I was NOT in the mood for picture taking.)  Although, being the kind of day it was yesterday, I was in no position to be a good mom.  So I skipped the time out, I skipped making him get down and help me clean it up, I skipped the soft talking and the explanation of why he shouldn't thrown his food, I skipped asking him what he should do when he makes a mess.  I just got him down, cleaned up the mess, and went back to making my own breakfast.  Of course, that left him to do his favorite (and my very LEAST favorite) thing to do - stand at my legs and pester me.  On a usual day, this will include asking for "up" or the "stoo, stoo (stool)" to stand up by the counter and "help" or do the "dish-ez, dish-ez".  This, of course, means I need to fill up a container of water for him to play with in the sink, pour soap "bubbles" onto the scrub brush so he can wash (which is one of the few words he doesn't know yet at a year and a half, but don't worry, he knows the sign - and he'll continue rubbing those hands together until I understand what he wants), give him "mo-uh" (more) water when he dumps it all out and clean up the water off the floor when he spills.  And of course, once he realizes that I am by the stove, he climbs down and says "Stoo, stoo, stoo" repeatedly until I move the stool by the stove so he can help "cook, cook, cook." He is kind enough to let me know that the stove is hot, and he will repeatedly tell me so until I say, "Yes, Enzo, the stove is hot." When I've finally had enough and send him away to go find his "choo-choo" or something else I hope will hold his attention, he may disappear for a few moments - only to find something that he definitely needs to show me. So back into the kitchen he comes, jabbering away about whatever it is he wants.  If he can, he'll grab me by the hand and pull me until I come.  If he can't get my hand, because it is obviously busy cooking eggs, don't worry, he knows what to do.  He can grab my pant legs (or my skirt, which he discovered yesterday to my dismay)- and pull and pull and pull until he gets what he wants. 

You have to understand, this is a completely normal, regular scenario to the start of my day.  There was nothing unusual about yesterday.  And working in the kitchen with Enzo has always gotten on my nerves.  But I can usually handle it without too much loss of patience or frustrated outbursts.  But over the last few days, my patience has started to wear thin.  Maybe it's the heat of the summer. (Those dog days, you know.)  Maybe it's this stupid diet I'm on (which, I'm happy to say, has helped me to loose 7 lbs in the last 10 days.)  Whatever it is, I'm sure that yesterday cooking breakfast, I told Enzo to "GO AWAY" more than once.  And by time I sat down to eat, I'd had enough.  Enzo came over to me for the who knows how many-th time, and I snapped.  I yelled at my poor, cute, innocent little stinker, "Enzo, GET AWAY FROM ME RIGHT NOW!" Fortunately, he did go away and left me alone for a rare minute to finish my breakfast. 

And fortunately, I knew my patience had been wearing thin and had already arranged for him to go hang out with his cousin for a few hours.  So I had several RARE hours to myself yesterday to recoup and try to feel better.  But of course, I had to pick him up just in time to come home and start making dinner - so yesterday morning's breakfast events could repeat themselves all over again.  And the 5 or so hours I had to myself was NOT enough to make me a better Mommy.  During the course of me making and eating dinner (James had to work a little late), Enzo went to time out, got locked in his high chair, threw another set of food all over the floor, walked back and forth and smashed that food into the floor, got banished to play in the basement (twice - too bad he knows how to climb stairs), and I yelled at him once again to "Please, GO AWAY and leave me alone for 5 minutes".  By the time James called to tell me he was coming home, I had locked myself in my bedroom and he could hear Enzo crying and knocking outside my door.  I was able to calm down enough to come out of time out before James got home, and fortunately, Enzo isn't a sensitive child, and was happy and playing again as soon as I opened the door. 

And my wonderful husband, instead of eating dinner, spent the only 20 minutes he had at home playing with Enzo and cleaning up his mess before he had to go to Young Men's.  He even took Enzo with him to church when he left at 7 - and I stayed home by myself and ate 3 bars of chocolate.  (It was the first time I've cheated on my diet - and they were only the Hershey's mini kind.) Then James came home, put Enzo to bed, listened to me cry about what a horrible mother I am, and tried to reassure me that everyone has those kind of days.  I'm not so sure about that. 

Today I feel a little better.  I took Enzo on a walk, took him to the pool and the playground, and he's still asleep - going on 4 hours now for a nap.  That's definitely a first - he usually gets no more than two, and if anyone talks at all during that time, he wakes up after an hour.  And that 1 hour is the only time I get to myself during the day - to shower, do my hair, exercise, write on my blog, clean up all of Enzo's messes, etc.  I love that little Monster to death - and with all of his energy, he is usually smiling and having fun while he's driving me crazy.  I sure hope "the dog days are over, the dog days are gone."

(Here's a video for the song that is now stuck in my head.)