MotherBunker

In our ongoing quest to solve whatever is causing the face you see above to get up and wander around the house in the wee hours of the morning (nightmares? overstimulation?) we, the MotherBunker household, did the unthinkable. That's right, people: We instituted Blackout Friday.

Our television, normally the hardest working member of our family, took the whole day off ... at least until March Madness started later in the evening. (I never said I was a saint, folks. A Tar Heel's gotta have her bracketology, even if she does happen to be dead last in her pool.)

Going 13 hours without television was tough on both of us. Every 30 minutes in the morning, MJ asked for one of her shows. A typical exchange went something like this:

"Wanna watch George," she pleaded.

"Sorry, sweet pea. It's not working today."

"Why?"

"George took the day off."

Pause. Thoughtful look. Light bulb.

"How 'bout Tigger & Pooh?"

"No, they're not working today, either."

"Why?"

"I don't know, baby. Why don't you work a puzzle?"

"Max & Ruby?"

Blackout Friday was actually a suggestion from Grandparentland, and while it didn't keep the kid from getting up again that night (we caught her in the act), it did serve a greater purpose. We had -- dare I say it -- a nicer day without the TV on. (I'm sorry, my little high-definition friend; I still love you.) MJ and I had a lovely, sparkling, giggly lunch full of happy talk and cuteness and whatnot, and I felt more like a human being than the juice-fixing, command-absorbing robot I often resemble. I even got a rare kiss at bedtime.

So, fine. OK, American Academy of Pediatrics: Maybe you're right. (Settle down, AAP ... I said maybe.) We're going to try to limit our daily viewing, do more useful things with our time during the day, blah dee blah blah blah. We'll see how it goes. But until the American Academy of Women of Advanced Maternal Age says otherwise, that puppy is getting switched back on come 8 p.m. Somebody has to watch "Gossip Girl."

Pop quiz! Can anyone identify the item in the picture above? Anybody? Anybody?

If you answered: "A dismantled childproof doorknob cover, as found inside a toddler's room," you are almost right.

It is also: "An accurate representation of her mother's sanity: broken, beaten, left for dead, Canvas No. 3."

The good people at Safety 1st claim the following about their product:

1. Glows in the dark for nighttime use. (Not helpful, Safety 1st; this only helps her find the contraption better so she can sneak out and run to the bathroom to "wash her hands" at 3:47 freakin' a.m.)
2. Access to door knob for easier grip. (Only if by "grip" you mean "destruction.")
3. Sleek modern design blends in with home decor. (You clearly have not seen my home, wherein the words "sleek" and "modern" are drowned by "cluttered" and "oh-my-God-what-is-that-on-the-couch?"

Nowhere on the package does it claim that the doorknob cover will actually keep your child out of any particular room, so I guess we had this one coming. After previous attempts to make us go bat crazy, MJ escaped again Thursday morning. So, having tried all the usual methods to solve the Great Hide-and-Go-Freak of 2008 -- doors, gates, knob covers and childish pleading (ours, not hers) -- we turned to the health care system, which has always been so reliable in the past when explaining phenomena such as nighttime crying and green poop.

There had to be a medical reason for this nonsense. Off to the pediatrician! C'mon, baby, mama needs an ear infection!

Vitals: Temperature of 99.1 -- low-grade! There's a chance ...

I stood on the sidelines as he peeked inside Ear No. 1 for the gremlin that was causing her night prowling. I felt like I was watching the results portion of a reality show, anticipation coursing through my veins.

"That one looks good." Crap.

No. 2! Still time ... "This one looks good, too."

I just stood in silence, the silly little mother who can't keep her kid in her room at night, denied an antibiotic to cure bad behavior. Double crap.

Dr. Joe gave MJ a firm little lecture on why should she stay in her bed: it was the safest place to be; she needed her rest; Mommy and Daddy and all the people she loves will be right there when she gets up in the morning. I looked at my child in her blue-flowered shirt, her white capri pants and her sweet little sandals, that fly-away blond hair of hers sitting obediently on her head for once -- the picture of all that is angelic -- and considered whether his talk would work, whether her shy nod agreeing to stop the roaming would actually take.

Not a chance. Friday morning, 4 a.m., Daddy: "MJ, what are you doing in here?"

"I washing my hands!" she said.

Me too, said her mother. Me too.

We used to joke that MJ had not yet surpassed our dog in terms of maturity, because Molson is a perpetual two-year-old. Unfortunately, those days are over.

Now that she has one of those childproof doorknob covers on the inside of her bedroom (see here if you don't know why), her sense of injustice regarding constraints is particularly acute -- and loud. The other morning, we were serenaded by little fists beating on her bedroom door and screaming to be let free. Because I am not a nice person when rudely awakened, Randy and his almost infinite patience usually handles these situations. So off he went, while I tried in vain to go back to sleep.

I could hear muffled negotiations coming from the other room, so when he returned to our bedroom, I knew he had been defeated.

"What was her problem?" I grumped.
"She says she's 'finished sleeping'," he said.

"Did you tell her that it's not time to get up yet?" I asked, rolling over to look at the clock. Judging by my level of crankiness -- or, as they say in the south, "ugliness" -- I figured it to be about 4 o'clock in the morning.

Unfortnately, it was 7 a.m. Let's just say we don't start our days with the chickens around here.

"I did," he reported. "And she pointed to the light coming in from her window and said, 'It's morning, Daddy. I not sleep anymore.'"

I searched my brain for a comeback to that statement, until I realized her logic was fool-proof. Zoinks! Maybe Noggin really is "like preschool on TV."

Technically, we -- the people the hospital allowed to take this little person home to raise -- are supposed to be setting a good example: showing reason, intelligence, wisdom, etc. But after a few years of being snowed by her parents, MJ is starting to get wise -- and with good reason. Is my bedroom as clean as I expect hers to be? Do I only eat chocolate after I've eaten my dinner (or breakfast or lunch)? Do I ever go outside and run around in the backyard instead of watching "Dancing with the Stars?"(No, but I might Cha Cha in my family room.)

Once they realize that green beans aren't actually candy, little people tend to morph into teachers who tap into our consciences, pulling out strand after strand of guilt until we realize it's time for us to go make the bed, eat better and be a little more productive, too. Yes, I know what you're thinking -- and you're right. Being a grown-up does kind of stink sometimes.

But at least we can still fool the dog. (I think.)

In all fairness, I had only been asleep three hours when the Storm hit. So when Randy woke me at 5 a.m. Easter morning, holding the Storm and her ink-stained hands in his arms and yammering about "the biggest mess she's ever made," I wasn't really paying attention. It was dark and fuzzy, both in the room and in my brain, and I was still recuperating from my three-hour decorating rendezvous with a Winnie the Pooh birthday cake and glitter-covered Easter eggs, while nursing a sugar hangover from the roughly 4 lbs. of chocolate I had eaten while filling MJ and Little L's baskets.

So, when I trudged down the hall and saw the first seven of MJ's hand prints on the walls of Little L's room, my first thought was, "Oh, how pretty." It was rather like the feeling I had had as I waited for the anesthetic to wear off after having my wisdom teeth out. Nothing was real, and everything was beautiful. She had painted a lovely mural on the baby's wall. "How cute," I thought. "(Yawn.) Let's go back to sleep now."

And then I had a look at the rest of the room, and I suddenly felt as if a bucket of cold water had been tossed over my head. It definitely needed to be tossed at the scene before me. Two closet doors, inside and outside, covered in hand prints. The back of the front door: six hand prints. The carpet: one hand print. The changing table: several well-placed smudges. The diaper genie: one print. The rocking chair: one. The quilt that my mom had made: one. A side wall: two prints, plus some Q-Tip drawings. The bottom of a basket that she had flipped over to use as a step stool to get to the nontoxic ink pad that I had hidden at the back of a high shelf after using it to capture Little L's prints : one hand print. The crib railings: two or three smudges. The crib sheet: 1/2 print. Little L: a smudge on her sleeve, and tears rolling down her face.

"Oh MJ," I said, looking down at her guilty mug," "this is bad. This is very, very bad."

This was not the first time we had found MJ in the baby's room in the wee hours of the morning; several weeks ago, after a series of loud slamming doors at 2 a.m., we ran out into the hallway to find MJ missing from her bed. She was in Little L's mostly dark room, sitting in the rocking chair, holding -- appropriately enough -- The Tale of Peter Rabbit. "Oh, hi Mommy," she had said, as though this were the most natural scenario in the world, "I was just reading baby a book."

After that, we didn't just shut MJ's door at night; we shut it and put a gate in front of it. A gate that I checked three times before I went to bed the night of the Storm. A gate that, at 5 o'clock in the morning, she apparently had climbed over to satisfy her artistic side, which is grandiose and all-consuming. No canvas is too strange (our couches are a particular favorite) and no medium is too difficult (diaper cream was once buttered on a piece of plastic toast, as well as elsewhere in her room; and we've lost more tubs of baby wipes to the artist's cause than broken crayons).

By 2 p.m., when our Easter/birthday party guests had arrived, most of the mess had been cleaned up -- except those first seven wall hand prints. So as entertainment, we took everyone on a tour of the gallery before dinner.

"She did kind of a nice job, didn't she?" my sister mused. "I mean, they're all so perfectly placed, so precise."

"I don't know," added my brother-in-law. "I think the hand prints kind of add something to the room. They just look like they belong there."

Wonderful. I have a budding artist. Now if we could only get the National Endowment for the Arts to pay for some touch-up paint.

That's my three-year-old on her birthday. With her jacket hood covering her hair and her eyes closed, sleeping peacefully, her round face looks just as it did when she was bald and brand new to the world. The image is the beginning of my journey as a mother and its present tense, all in one. Zero to 36 months in no time flat. Blink an eye, and your baby isn't so baby-ish anymore.

Sweet, isn't she? You might change your mind when you read tomorrow's post. (I would tell you about it now, but I'm too busy using a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.)

I once gave a donation (OK, two or three) to the March of Dimes -- because I like to help keep babies safe -- and they sent me some nice address labels as a thank you. Thank you, March of Dimes. Ever since then, I get a packet or two of labels per week from various charities. I suspect you don't have to give to anyone to get these puppies in the mail, but I know that I never got quite so many before I became semi-charitable.

I have flower ones and birdie ones, some with teacups and Gerbera daisies, and others with pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness (they're my favorite). I have some with frogs and some with Ziggy; some with purses and some with high heels (which I can't imagine putting on a piece of mail, because I haven't worn such things since the late 1990's, when my feet informed me that they were going nowhere with me if I put them in a pair).

I also have the entire seasonal collection: Christmas trees and poinsettias, winter snowflakes, Valentine hearts, summer seashells and sailboats, fall leaves and Halloween pumpkins -- which is great, because one of these Halloweens, I just know I'm going to haul my carpal tunnel down to Hallmark and buy up all their ghoul cards to send to my friends.

All in all, I have 855 address labels. I use e-mail. We pay our bills electronically. At our current rate of consumption vs. collecting, we would probably finish up the last of our label stock in 2028.

Luckily, we won't have to wait that long. MJ found the label drawer this week, and it turns out that they make excellent pretend "boo-boo band aids." I myself have had the pleasure of wearing six or seven of them on my forearms every day -- "No, Mommy! You can't take them off! They won't work if you do!" -- and I must admit I do feel better after having worn them around the house, in my backyard and -- ironically -- at the post office. My arms now are virtually hair-free, and if I were to become disoriented and begin to wander around the neighborhood lost, I feel confident that someone would look at my wrist and take me back to my home.

Little L also has benefited from MJ's gorgeous imagination. Yesterday, she was sitting on the floor, crying her little "I'm tired" cry, and MJ intervened. She got a little address label -- a boo-boo band aid with Mommy's name printed right on it -- and stuck it over her heart.

I sometimes think that, if my family became singularly responsible for the evolution of man from now on, a few hundred years from now all babies would be born with tiny little television chips in their brains that would turn on instantly whenever it looked like rain, whenever boredom struck or whenever it happened to be a day of the week ending in the letter 'y.'

You know those bumper stickers that say, "Kill Your TV"? The one on our car reads, "Have you hugged your DVR today?" (Yes.) And yes, the American Academy of Pediatrics has called us and asked if they can follow our kids' downward spiral from here on out. We're thinking about it.

We watch so much TV, in fact, that I could devote a whole blog to it ... but that would really cut into my viewing time. As it is, I'll just stick to Wednesdays.

First up, in recognition of the Easter Bunny and this week's Theme Song That Won't Leave My Head: "Max & Ruby" on Noggin.

This is one of those programs that kind of flies under the radar -- especially since you can't buy birthday party decorations with M&R on them; I know, I've checked. But once you get used to the oddly low-key, steady music and the fact that Max says only one word, over and over again, it's actually kind of nice. And by nice, I mean I don't want to throw a shoe at the TV while it's on, as I do with Dora.

M&R has been The Most Requested Show this week in our house. That means that I've been singing this little ditty from Ruby's clapping game episode ALL WEEK LONG ...



And now I seriously would like to make an apple pie. Or at least watch someone make one on TV. Pardon me while I go and check the Food Network.

Until recently, our family room furniture and other decor was done in a style that could only be called Early Toddler Period. Our sofa, loveseat and endtables acted as blockers on one side of the room, while the World's Longest Baby Gate anchored the other. The only other piece of furniture in the vicinity was our television -- which, in our house, is also a form of child containment.

But MJ began to climb over endtables to escape to the delicious world outside our family room, visiting such exotic locales as the foyer and powder room. So we dumped the gate. Her world expanded by several hundred square feet. My nerves frayed at about the same rate, as entire rolls of Charmin disappeared into the toilet and kitchen counters suddenly had to be clutter-free. But at least the change satisfied her toddler need to ... skip around constantly.

Or not.

"Wanna go outside," she started saying, puckering her bottom lip, shuffling around with her best moping posture. "Mommy, please go outside?"

Unfortunately, we have a storm drainpipe at the back of our property, which adds to the already thriving paranoia I have about letting MJ run around in the backyard, out in the open, as if this were the wholesome 1950's, for Heaven's sake! So we compromised. She would play on the deck, which had a gate that enclosed it. She got to spend time in the fresh air; I got to tend to a baby while keeping an eye on MJ. That worked for a while ... until it didn't.

"Mommy, I want to go out on the grass," she would say, looking longingly beyond her picketed area, as if there were sparkling jewels awaiting her.

Sigh.

Ever since Little L came along -- and even before she was born, when pregnancy meant a lack of romping mobility and oxygen supply on my part -- my conscience has been vulnerable to the things MJ doesn't get anymore (mainly, all of my attention). The age when she wants the boundaries of her world to expand has coincided with a time when my own boundaries have shrunk to protect an infant. Trips to the playground are delayed or postponed indefinitely to make time for baby naps. Most days, I'm OK with it; it's a great lesson to learn that you share your world with a lot of other people, and there's no better person to teach you that lesson than a sibling. Life is messy; but the mess can also be beautiful.

Still, I know MJ gets bored and frustrated, always waiting for her turn. So, a process that began with tearing down a gate ended with putting up a fence. Randy and I couldn't wait for the fence to go up, so MJ would have more space to go out and run around and play with the dog to her heart's content. We constantly asked her if she was excited about it, talking it up in a way that only revealed our own glee. And then the big day came. The fence went up. MJ went out.

Ten minutes later, she was at the side gate, shaking it, crying, unfairness heaving through her with every huge sob.

"Mommy, I can't get out! Need to get out! Help!"

I'm sometimes amazed that kids and parents ever get along with one another; we have such different needs. One needs to explore; the other needs to protect. One sees possibilities; the other sees dangers. One knows just little enough about the world to live each day with abandon; the other knows too much, or hears too much, to let that happen. It's a worthwhile balance for which I'm grateful, a give-and-take that surely keeps the world spinning at the right angle.

Still, she's not getting out that gate until she's in college.

March is a special time in my family. Spring is in bloom (sort of ). An Easter get-together is on the horizon. MJ's birthday approaches.

But nothing brings us all together like the one thing that tears us apart: NCAA bracket time.

This will be our 4th Annual Family Bracket Pool. The games may be full of suspense, but the brackets won't be. My mom and I will pick North Carolina to win it all. My dad and sister will, regretfully, choose Dook. Randy will look for the Leafs on his bracket, and, not finding them, will pick his teams in a random zig-zag pattern that has more to do with geometry than college basketball.

He will handily win the first and second round competition using this method, brag about the use of engineering principles to predict NCAA contests, trash talk all the Americans who trash-talked the Canadian ... and then proceed to crash and burn in the Sweet Sixteen. He will spend the rest of the tournament rooting for the underdog, even if the underdog is playing UNC, which will not endear him to his wife.

And my mom, employing a combination of guesswork and pleading with the television to let the right teams win, will indeed come away with the $5 jackpot -- which no one will "remember" to make good on, even if she does remind them every so often using time-honored motherly tools of passive persuasion. ("Well, I guess no one is going to pay me, after all.") Let the games begin.

If yesterday had been performance review day at my office, I would probably be writing this from a cardboard box underneath an overpass next to a van down by the river. Luckily, my employers are both under 3 feet tall, and I'm not afraid of them, no matter how much they complain about my management style.

Yesterday was one of those days when I gave stay-at-home moms everywhere a bad name. The kind of day when I let MJ watch TV until 10:30 a.m. before making her come to the table for breakfast, and let the baby sleep longer than usual while I read the paper. It was the kind of day when nothing got picked up, no tasks were crossed off my to-do list, no plans were made and lots of heretofore non-negotiable rules about crayons, crackers and cups of water went largely unenforced. It was the kind of day that, upon being asked what was for dinner, I trudged to the pantry -- knowing that we were out of bread, milk, meat, chicken and cheese (I hadn't gone shopping, either) -- and presented the menu: a box of Aunt Jemima Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix.

It was a Just Add Water kind of day.

Sometimes, you just have to let go of getting everything right all the time, every day, so you can get up the next day, look around at the mess your laziness created and realize how much you're needed.

So every now and then, I find myself just letting go ... and embracing the Just Add Water theory of parenting, wherein the path of least resistance is always taken, the concoction requiring the least amount of ingredients is created and a lot of time is spent in the pursuit of doing nothing much at all. On those days, I ignore the American Academy of Pediatrics' warnings on excessive television viewing even more than normal. MJ's lunch might be a slice of cheese, canned green beans and a piece of bread -- assuming we have those three things. I might even look the other way while she fingerpaints with her yogurt. ("Look Mommy! I painted a picture of Daddy!") If anyone to whom I am married -- I don't want to name names -- comes home and complains about the fact that I let a 3-year-old "read"(i.e., shred) his Popular Science magazine, I usually mention something about carrying his children for nine months, labor pain, general suffering, etc.

When I waste time, it shows up in very visible ways, it's true. Nobody likes to walk across the kitchen floor, crunching Rice Krispies and smushing brown banana on his way to a fabulously gourmet pancake mix dinner. (Or frozen pancakes, if the mix is also gone.) People also like to have clean socks and underwear to wear to work, I have found. ("Um, is anybody going to do laundry anytime soon?") And I do have a guilty conscience when I let things slide a bit.

But I also know that even people who work at desks in front of computers aren't always working. Sometimes they have to check TMZ to see what Britney is up to to. There are moments when it is necessary to read the "Lost" message boards for theories on who is on the boat or where Michael and Walt are. Maybe it's the first Tuesday of the month and thus, 10-percent off day at BabyGap.com. Just for example.

OK -- maybe those are the things that I do on my Just Add Water days. But you get the point.

Every now and then, being lazy is OK. Maybe even healthy. You know, except for that goop stuck on the wall the next day, which no longer looks like peanut butter. You might want to get on that.

"Maybe we go outside," MJ would say to me.

"Maybe dolly is tired," she would say.

"Maybe, maybe baby is awake! And, and ... we go get! MJ go upstairs and get!"
"Do you think so, sweet pea? I don't hear her yet."
"Yeah. Sink so. Maybe."

She works so hard to put together her "blue-collar" sentences -- she earns each and every phrase, using wild hand gestures to direct them from her growing mind, and then, looks up at you in expectation, waiting to hear that you've understood her. So it was surprising when, a few weeks ago, she began to add "maybe" to almost everything she said. Even her hardest fought comments, things she had so much trouble expressing properly, were softened by the word's presence.

Last week, I cherished each "maybe" she uttered.

My college years at UNC have long past, and their memories, my loyalty to them, have often been stitched in pride for its athletics. We've marked UNC friendships with e-mails on the day of the Dook-Carolina game, or phone calls around the ACC Tournament. The days are so busy and fleeting that time rarely stops long enough to consider slow walks on gorgeous days along brick paths, walks that were accompanied by thoughts of how fortunate it was to be a part of a campus so unpretentious and so magnetic with hope. Every day in Chapel Hill was touched with magic.

But when Eve Carson was killed last week, time stopped. E-mails did, too. Talk seemed inappropriate, difficult, a blue-collar task that we privileged enough to go out into the world from UNC could not muster. All of us, I think, were transported back in time to when we were 22 years old, like Eve, and in love with a place so singular in what it gave to its students that it could only be called a community.

We were too busy weeping for our campus to talk. Not for the campus we left behind; for the one we are still -- and always will be -- very much a part of. For the one we want our children to attend one day, the children we hugged a little more tightly at the end of a long half-week. Children to whom, on our best days, we transfer a blend of magic that was learned years ago, under pine trees and blue skies and full futures.

"MJ, would you like some grapes?" Randy asked her one day after dinner. She was sitting at the table, her hands resting on top of each other in front of her, thinking about something pleasant.
"No thank you, Daddy," she said. "Maybe tomorrow."

Thursday, the day they announced Eve Carson had been killed, was sunny and breezy. It was warm and chilly all at once; even the weather was saying, "maybe." We went to the park and sat on the big-girl swings and worried not about dishes and laundry and lunch and dinner and a half-dozen other common pursuits that fill our days. I thought about how big childhood is from this spot, suspended in the air by forces that are both in your control and out of your control, the earth and the sky, the back and forth of all you understand and all you don't.

MJ giggled and said, "This is fun." What else she was thinking of, I don't know. But after a marked time of silence, of listening to the squirrels scatter through the brush and the wind blow through the trees, she said a simple, quiet thing that was so natural it needed no work, no questions, no maybes.

"I wuv you."

"I love you, too, baby."

Parenting is the job you can't quit. It's the favorite sweater that ain't always pretty, but always keeps you warm. It's the song in your head that won't go away, no matter how loud you turn up the radio on your way out of town to celebrate your anniversary -- which is what we discovered last weekend.

"So does it feel like your honeymoon again?" we asked each other. A resounding "no" was the answer. It wasn't just that we were on our way to blustery Colonial Williamsburg, not a beach house in sunny Florida. It wasn't that this trip was for just two days, not two weeks.

It was what was missing: My left arm. Randy's right knee. The constant appendages that are MJ and Little L were at home with their grandparents, and, even at our most relaxed, we felt unbalanced at times. Uncoordinated. Ill-equipped to fully appreciate the sights.

In Williamsburg, we didn't miss the kids while watching TV uninterrupted or having a grown-up meal in a restaurant that didn't serve macaroni and cheese. We thought of the grandparents changing diapers and negotiating bedtimes, and we smiled gloriously rueful smiles. Sleeping in was especially sweet -- if oddly difficult to do. But our babies were always present just the same, with their tiny pasts and full presents and huge futures, occupying a colossal space in our minds that we are sure must have been echoingly empty before they came along. Remembering that we were a couple before we were a family seems an impossible, and unpalatable, task.

You can't keep yourself from saying out loud to one another: "MJ would have loved this." A herd of bleating sheep; funny colonial hats on little boys and poofy dresses on little girls; a stretch of sandy Jamestown riverfront where the first Englishmen landed. The history would have been lost on her, but the tiny pebbles she would have thrown in the water would have been the best thing to happen to her since breakfast. And in our own eyes, that waterfront would have become another place that MJ had made her mark on childhood, another little tent pitched in our memories.

But the time away makes you a better spouse, and a better parent, and you are grateful for it. So you buy a toy tom-tom from the gift shop instead. And, at the end of the weekend, you climb back into the car and head home to your left arm, and your right knee, the better for understanding that there are four of you now, and you'd have it no other way.