the pieces of my life

Good evening. I’m Jenny Brown. And you’re not.

Our top story tonight: Generallissimo Francisco Franco is still dead and Doodles is not potty trained.

In music class, I turned Sweetie Pie upside down while dancing, and a shower of crumbs came raining out of her crevices. I’d feel a lot better about the incident if only I could remember the last time she ate a muffin or a bread product.

In other news: I said to Adam, “You can’t go away on your business trip. Your children scare me.” He said, “They scare you?” I clarified: “Well, no. Your children don’t scare me. Just Sweetie. Sweetie Pie scares me.” He nodded his head and said, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Breaking news: Sweetie Pie is still not weaned! In fact, she has perfected the “br*eastfeed me now” temper tantrum, where she lies on the floor, screaming as if she hasn’t been fed in weeks, gasping for air, and looking generally pitiful for up to one and a half hours until someone (no need to name names here, people) gives in and pops her on the bo*ob. I’m sure she’d go longer, but I have my limits. Why is it the traits I most admire about my daughter–her willfulness, her spunk, her fiery streak–are also the ones that make her a most difficult child? My father said, “Just imagine if she were your older child! Boy, you’d have a hard time,” to which I responded, “She would never be my older child. She could be an only child, but never an older child. If she had come first, there would not have been any more.”

Words most heard in our household these days: “Doodles, get off your sister! Pie, let go of your brother!”

Trying to figure out how to go running sans Adam. My half marathon in New Hampshire last week was a personal record for me: 2:01:38. Feeling more ready than ever for NYC, but don’t want to lose the momentum.

Broken news: I finally broke down and consulted La Leche about Pie’s weaning. I take back every assumption I’ve had about that group. I spoke with a really wonderful woman who was extremely supportive and helpful. I’m confident with the plan we’ve laid out, Sweetie will be off the bo*ob by 2009. Get your bets in now: What will happen first? 1) Doodles poops on the potty! 2) Sweetie poops on the potty! 3) Sweetie gives up the br*east! My best guess: 2, never, never.

Hospital time in my future is inevitable: My children have discovered a game called, “Crash!” In it, they run at top speed around each other yelling, “Crash! Crash! Crash!” until they–surprise, surprise–crash into each other. I love my children dearly, but no one is calling them geniuses at this point.

To repeat our top story: Generallissimo Francisco Franco is still dead and Doodles is not potty trained.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

I’m totally into Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; the show is awesome. But one thing is bugging me: how is it possible to have a live 11:30 p.m. show on the West Coast? Does it air at 2:30 a.m. on the East Coast? Jordan says in an interview, “Tune in at 11:30,” implying that it is indeed on at 11:30 everywhere. But how does that work? Some please tell me so I can stop obsessing about this when I watch the show.

He’s not toilet trained. But he knows how to procrastinate.

“Time for bath!”

“I need to use the potty!”

So he sits on the potty, reading his Richard Scarry’s Cars, Trucks and Things That Go book. “I need privacy,” he yells, so we have to shut the door and just periodically call from outside, “Everything going okay in there?” “Yeah,” he calls back.

After a half hour, he’ll get up and announce, “I’m done!” Sometimes there’s a special something in there; sometimes it’s empty. Either way, he gets to go to bed close to half an hour late.

What can we do? Tell him he can’t use the potty? Tell him to hurry up? Tell him to get to business? Yeah. He’s a clever little one.

The screaming. Oh the screaming! Bloody murder, ain’t-going-to-have-any-of-it screaming. That little monkey screamed for a full hour tonight. She didn’t want up. She didn’t want down. She didn’t want food. She didn’t want to be sung to. Adam walked in and I immediately passed her off. He changed her diaper, checked her for hairs wrapped around her fingers or toes, investigated her mouth. Still she screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

Just as I was beginning to contemplate a trip to the E.R., I realized exactly what she wanted. The br*east. It wasn’t even a normal BFing time, but the minute I popped that little monkey a look of bliss spread over her face and all screaming ceased. She drifted off a little and when I finally took her off, she completely had a second wind, and happily went toddling/crawling/squealing/destroying around the house.

Did I say I’d be weaning her on her way to college? I meant grad school.

The benefit of having kids whose birthdays are a mere two days apart is that I can really gauge where Pie is in terms of Doodles. Not that I’m comparing them, but it’s merely a point of reference. I commented to Adam that I so clearly remember when Doodles found his feet. We dropped him at the temple childcare for Rosh Hashanah services and when we picked him up, they said, “Oh, he was a doll! So wonderful, so easy to take care of!” And then… between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (an eight-day period) he started walking. And when we went to pick him up after the Yom Kippur services, well, let’s just say no one called him a joy to be with.

The first day of Rosh Hashanah was last Saturday. On our way to services, I said to Adam, “Well, if she wants to keep up with her brother, Pie is going to have start walking in the next eight days.”

Pie, apparently, is always up for a challenge. Because we were home not two hours from services when the little monkey let go of the ottoman she was standing against and took five wobbly little steps. Today she took it up a notch, and toddled all around the playground. She’s still crawling more than walking, but the walking is coming with a vengeance.

My little monkey is officially no longer a baby but a true toddler. How is that possible?

I’m finally out from under. I had a major writing job (which I’m still working on), a copyedit job, a proofreading job, a book review, a kids’ event at our synagogue I was co-chairing, and hosting a baby shower for a neighbor. Of course, this was in the middle of Doodle’s transition from day care to preschool, which means for a few weeks, I have a lot of Doodle time. I made it to Sunday, the event was over, the baby shower was over, most of the jobs were in and all I had left was the one writing job that I was looking forward to doing. I said to Adam before bed, “Yeah! Tomorrow I get three whole hours to myself to get some solid work done.” I was excited thinking about the pot of tea I’d make, the quiet house, me and my work. So, of course, I wasn’t surprised the next morning when I got home from my run and Adam said to me, “We have a big problem” (and wasn’t it sweet of him to say “we” when it was clearly “me” who had the big problem?). “Sweetie Pie is running a fever.” The definition of fever at Sweetie’s day care is 100.4. She had 100.6. I know she did it on purpose. Just to piss me off. The fever was of course gone by the next morning. That girl. Always gets what she wants, one way or another.

• At the playground, Doodles started shouting from across the park: “Sweetie! Give me a beer! Give me a beer, Sweetie! I need a beer!”
• What goes through that little head? I went to pick Doodles up from preschool last Friday and the teacher says to me, “So you’re headed to New York now?” Um, no. What else has that boy been telling you?
• My friend J. visited last week with her six-month-old son, who is also a J., but since that’s confusing, I’ll call him S. (for son). Doodles was so excited to have S. over. He’s already declared a number of times that he wants more babies. He seems to have a hankering for brothers. I told him that while S. was in town, Doodles could borrow him as a brother. J. concurred. Well, two days after they left, at lunch, Doodles asked me, “Are we going to borrow S. later?” I explained that they went home. Doodles was pretty upset and he said, “But J. said we could borrow S.!” He was not happy.
• Doodles finally tried syrup. He’s been eating pancakes, waffles, and French toast for a while, but only with cinnamon sugar. At a restaurant recently, he barely dipped a pancake in some, tasted it, and declared happily, “It’s juicy!”
• Pie Pie took a single step. And then she panicked, realized what she did, and took it back. She, is however, regularly trying to climb everything she can. She’ll be standing somewhere innocently, then the next thing I know, that little knee is lifting as she tries to scale just about anything. The other day, I caught her trying to pull herself up onto our bed. And then over the side of the arm chair. And then up the big climber at the playground. She is a fiery little thang. The gate on our stairs is retractable. Sometimes, when I go to close it, the bottom doesn’t quite catch. In all of Doodle’s three years, it was never something I worried about. Now, I worry about it. Because the other day, I heard a strange noise. The sound of a gleeful Pie. Which only happens when she’s doing something she’s not supposed to be doing. I came out and I was very confused when I saw that the gate was closed, but Pie was halfway up the staircase. Turns out the bottom didn’t catch, and somehow, Pie managed to lift up the corner of the gate, wiggle underneath it and over that bottom step, and take off. She’s go go go and you’d better keep up! Where’s the Pie? Oh, pulling every book off the shelf. What’s that in her mouth? Oh, just a half-eaten crayon. What’s that piercing noise ? Oh, that must be the normal 4 to 6 p.m. screamfest. That girl is going to be the death of me.

Oh, but she is a clever little monkey. I’m not sure if I should be impressed by her will and determination or frustrated by, well, her will and her determination. I think it’s a little of both.

Basically, in the battle between the Pie and the Br*east, the Pie is winning, 1-0. She has managed, in the process of weaning, to actually increase the number of times she’s feeding. She’s gone from four feeds a day to five feeds a day. How has she done that, you ask? By the sheer power of those little lungs, the fire in her crankiness, and the exhaustion of the mommy.

I am so not into the toddler nursing thing. I’m really going to be bummed at the teenager nursing thing. Which is where, I’m pretty sure, she’s leading me.

Wondering what’s going on in my life? Well I have just one more week of reduced childcare and then I will (sort of) have my life back. But right now I’m drowning, simply drowning in all of the stuff that needs to get done, staying up way too late at night and being way too cranky in the day time, so for now, I’ll have to just leave you wondering about what Sweetie and Doodles are up to.

In the morning, Sweetie cries to get our attention. When I come into her room, she sits up, gives a huge smile, and claps, a little, “Yeah! You’re here!” I bring her into our bed and lay her down to feed her. When I open my br*a now, Sweetie actually says, “Hello!” to my br*east. If that’s not a sign that it’s time to wean, I don’t know what is…