Sunday morning, Lily had an accident in her bed . . . so I spent some time stripping, scrubbing, washing and remaking it. We talked again last night about getting out of bed and using the potty if she has to go during the middle of the night. Lately, she’s had accidents about once every week to week and a half - and they seemed to be getting longer and longer between accidents. However, this morning she greeted me with wet pants again and was crying. 6.38 AM and all I hear is, “Mommy, my butt is cold!” No wonder - it was soaking wet.

So it’s been two mornings in a row. Mike’s first thought was to put her back in a Pull-Up (which, I might add, will traumatize her - she loathes diapers now and wants nothing to do with them). I have no suggestions. I think that she is actually peeing in her sleep. She sleeps very heavily and I know she’s not doing it on purpose. If she were awake, she’d get out of bed and go - she has done that many times. This leads me to believe that it’s unconscious. I’m getting a bit tired of constantly cleaning her bed, so if any of you have brilliant suggestions on how to stop this trend, I’d appreciate it.

Kids and small enclosed spaces, like cars, are god’s way of punishing us for all of our sins. I’m convinced of it.

Since Lily began talking around the age of 2, she hasn’t stopped. Literally. In bed, at night, she talks (or sings) until she passes out, usually with her mouth still open, mid-word. From the moment she wakes up, she’s talking. “Reading” to Lily means that we read one sentence of the book, she asks 4 million questions, and maybe we get to the second page at some point. Most of the time it’s very endearing. However, the constant chatter and bullet-speed questions when combined with the car make me somewhat crazy.

Add to this that Arden doesn’t care for the car. She’s in a phase where if everything isn’t just *so* - the moon and stars in alignment, her diaper freshly changed, her belly full of food, the sun out of her eyes, whatever - she tenses and screeches. She doesn’t like the car seat (though who can blame her on that one - being strapped into a tight space with a huge winter coat on sucks), so generally everytime we put her in the car she lets us know exactly how she feels about it.

Last night Lily played her favorite game - making up some bizarre word and then screaming, “Mommy, say “Aucksandrea!!!” Say it! Say it!” So I repeat the word and she laughs hysterically, and it all starts over again. Last night I was being commanded to repeat more made up weird words while Arden screamed and kicked her car seat, obviously wanting out, and Lily screamed (happily) and kicked, wanting me to repeat more and more of her words. This morning she put my bra over her eyes and called it a “goggle suit”. She thought it was hilarious, especially when she tried to make daddy wear the goggle suit. At least she didn’t ask me to repeat THAT phrase.

So I kept slinking lower and lower into the front seat of the car, thinking, “Help me, O Patron Saint of Parents - Help Me Survive This Small Extremely Loud Moving Object Called A Car Full of Children.” Mike was doing his deep breathing techniques to stay sane. We had already tried, and failed, to have a conversation (our conversations generally start and end around, “Did I tell you what happened to me yester. . . what, Lily???”). I tried to be zen-like and let go. We made it home and I prayed for silence. When 8 PM hit and there was silence throughout the house, it was the greatest gift ever. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Today isn’t any different. Arden is really crabby and every 42 seconds or so she lets out an angry, “AIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” and starts kicking whatever is near her. Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Today in between a trip to the Children’s Museum and a lot of temper tantrums at home from both girls, Lily announced, “Arden smells like poo. Daddy, change her!” She’s reached the stage where she knows immediately when someone has pooped and what to do about it. Now if I could just teach her how to change a diaper, I’d be set for life.

In an effort to be educational and proactive parents we took both girls to the Children’s Museum. This included interrupting Arden’s usual nap schedule. Like her father, she doesn’t do well with change - she was pretty cranky this afternoon. However, both girls love going there and Arden expended thousands of calories as she motored all over the museum and Lily ran from one exhibit to the next. I tried not to obsess about how often each of them put their fingers in their mouths (especially Arden, who had been crawling across the floor for an hour) and focus on the fun we were having.

When we got home, I was tired. The girls were tired, too. Arden took a short nap and Lily should have, but didn’t. When Arden woke up, both of them were acting terribly. Lily is in a phase now where temper tantrums come with a lot of leg kicking and arm flailing - and sometimes she’s fast enough to make contact with some part of my body, which just further infuriates me and saps any remnant of patience I may have at that point. Mike had told Lily we were going out for dinner, but she was so wired, and Arden was so crabby (for example, any time we tried to put her down, she threw herself face-first on the floor and screamed while kicking her feet) he decided that going out would not be wise. This brought on another temper tantrum from Lily. At this point, it was around 5 pm. I wondered how we were ever going to get to bedtime and I also felt an intense emotion - a combination of boredom and yes, I can say it - despair.

I know all parents go through this occasionally. How can you not? It seems like there is never a night where sleep isn’t interrupted by something (yes, Mike, I know that sometimes my snoring is what keeps us up!). Lily went from the terrible twos to the physical threes. Arden is coming into her own personality. That has good and bad points. Someone in the family is always sick from whatever the virus of the week at daycare is. It just gets old after a while. It’s tiring and sometimes it feels entirely unrewarding. When you are younger, or without children, you never think that you’d be selfish enough to say, “At times, I feel completely unfulfilled by parenting.” But it’s true. Today was one of those days. I get tired of arguing about going “peepee on the potty” with Lily. I feel like there is always 42 pounds of laundry waiting for me. I am sick of smelling the diaper genie in Arden’s room. Even the dog was bumming me out today . . .after Lily announced, “I smell Delilah’s breath - it’s YUCKY!” No kidding.

These days are always offset by intense moments of loving my children beyond human belief and the pure, unadulterated joy of watching them grow, learn, and stretch their boundaries. Those days are the ones I try to focus on, while erasing the long days of drudgery. Let’s face it. Nothing worthwhile is ever entirely scintillating.

I’m not going to get into the details of the day from hell. I’ll merely say that I got the weeks wrong that Judi is on vacation. She’s not on vacation this week - she’s on vacation NEXT WEEK. (the week the parental units are on their cruise). Shortly after finding this out, my credit card company for the business decided to make a collection call on me (which was a mistake, but it took a lot of yelling and threatening to get that point across).

So, I figured I’d list the things that Lily and Arden did - mostly Lily, I must admit - on the badness scale. Some are on the humorous scale.

1. She asked me for legos. I got them for her. Arden tried to grab some, so Lily beaned her on the head with a tower she had just built. Arden cried, then stomped on her tower.
2. Arden was playing with the fridge phonics (magnets on the refrigerator). Lily didn’t like that and was actually attempting to hip-check Arden into the boards (cabinets). Arden actually held her own standing up and was like an immoveable object. Mike and I can’t wait til she gets old enough to pound on Lily.
3. At the mall today. Lily refused to walk and threatened to kick grammy if she made her.
4. The word “no” was shouted repeatedly at us, even after some sick kid barfed all over the play area and I was screaming at Lily to get her hands out of her mouth so I could Purell her skin off.
5. Temper tantrum before naptime in which I asked her to go to the potty and she refused. This resulted in me yelling (at eye level of course, because that’s what Nanny 911 says to do): “IF YOU MAKE PEEPEE ON GRAMMY’S BED YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE YOUNG LADY!!!”
6. After naptime, Lily “wrestled” with Grammy. Grammy doesn’t wrestle, so basically it was Lily flinging herself on the back of Grammy’s neck and screaming, “I’m ‘tacking you, Grammy!!!”
7. Lily took a squishy green ball and repeatedly slammed it into the back of Grammy’s head, giggling maniacally the whole time.
8. At dinner tonight, Lily pinched Grammy increasingly hard on the cheeks and screamed with delighted laughter when Grammy got mad.
9. Lily refers, loudly, to Grammy’s chest region as “doughnuts”. As in, “Grammy, I’m grabbing your doughnuts!!!” At which point, she did.

Check, please.

My name will be at the top of list. Remember all that bitching I did about the nurse’s area at preschool??? I actually recoiled in disgust and horror when I went through the initial interview and I realized that some horrible mothers leave their sick, sad children at some health care room within the day care! The abomination! The sheer WRONGNESS of it all! When I was sick, my mom made me tomato soup with elbow macaroni, let me watch “The Price is Right” and generally made numerous trips to the kitchen to fetch me whatever I wanted. And when I was young enough, I could sometimes coerce her into rubbing my feet or just playing with my hair. So you can imagine my reaction when the director of the preschool told me proudly how they were one of the first centers in the US to offer a place for sick children to stay, so their parents could keep on working. “It has its own ventilation system so the germs can’t pass back into the regular center, and it has four separate rooms!” she exclaimed. There are some bizarre names for the rooms - basically, a “Pink/Crusty/Runny Eye” Room, a “Poopy Diarrhea and Vomit Room”, a “Flu, Aching Bones, Bubonic Plague Room” and a “I’ve got a virus but I don’t know what it is” Room (legal disclaimer: names are not REAL names for the rooms - they are extrapolated from initial data provided to above mother during long orientation meeting).

So, to set the stage. I have no daycare for Arden this week. As yet another illustration of my lacking mothering skills, I misplaced Judi’s daycare vacation schedule. She doesn’t do so hot on the reminding, either. Apparently the other mothers are much better about remembering. I found out on a fluke that she was off this week last Thursday. I begged mom and dad for help. They took care of Arden yesterday and today. Monday afternoon I started running my own fever and should have been sent to the Poop Room. Instead I went to bed for 14 hours and felt much better this morning. I got halfway to Northern Virginia for yet another Ikea trip and got the phone call from preschool. Lily had vomited and was running a low-grade fever. Would I like to come pick her up in the next 30 minutes or admit her to the hermetically-sealed, Lysol-laden nurse’s station?

Ummm, I’m in freakin’ Fredericksburg, Virginia. So my child spent the rest of her afternoon burning a slow fever on a cot, watching television and being doted on by Nurse Kathy.

Seriously, folks, I know she probably got better care there today than I could give - at least in terms of medically. The women who run that place are retired pediatric ER nurses. They know their shit (literally!). However, it just about killed me to do what I said I’d never do. I used to work with a woman who would drag her sick kids with her to the office. Nothing would keep her from her stupid job. Today that was me. Mike told me that the nurse’s place is happy to have Lily back tomorrow. I think I might have a heart attack if I do that again. So, no more of that. I know that it’s a “healthy, beneficial alternative” to “those parents that do not have back-up care for their children when their children are sick” or to “those parents that do not have flexible work schedules or work out of town”. I just can’t believe that I joined those ranks today. Who the hell needs to be Catholic when you have this much guilt?

The end result: Lily survived, intact, and seemingly unscarred for life. She told me that she loved Nurse Kathy and she told me that Mike and I are (still) her best friends. Apparently she didn’t know that I was shopping for office furniture in Ikea while she was confined to her cot with strangers. So, send in your nominations now!