What I am willing to overlook

After what seemed like a bloody eternity, M and I got a sitter and went out this weekend. And coming of the heels on last week’s marathon of sleep deprivation, I certainly needed it. I was willing to overlook the fact that Fiona called us (wasn’t even going to query how a three year old makes a phone call), but I was none too thrilled to come home and find out that things went very well, “especially once I took your eye pencil away from Bennett.”

Again, I am willing to overlook the fact that there was money wasted. I personally don’t believe that makeup that costs less than $20 works, and I am convinced (mascara aside) that drug store makeup is for emergencies and what my father used to refer to as “common girls.”  (Save your hate mail, please. I half jest.) But seriously — can’t you keep your dirty nine year old paws off my stuff?

This morning he came down and handed me MY digital camera. I looked down and saw of picture of him, in a full fake mustache (from where, I may never know), gobs of my eye pencil on what were now pronounced arched eyebrows.. oh, and a suit and tie. Yeah, just a little fun for the babysitter.

Sometimes I think I’ll never be able to count all the mistakes I’ve made with him. Firstborns are recipients of all our screw-ups. This afternoon Fiona and I were in Trader Joe’s. And she is clutching a box of lollipops, one of which she gets to have as a reward for failing to pee in her pants at school (this BTW is a common pastime for my kids. they toilet train and almost a year later they pee in their pants for fun. it’s hysterical, really). A poor little firstborn is behind her with his very hip mother (she must be visiting from out of town. nobody like that lives here.)

“I want a lollipop,” he says.

“Oh you made your choice already. You picked another treat.”

“But I want a lollipop now.”

“I know precious, but you already picked your treat. Look, aren’t you excited for your Emergen-c? It’s yellow and it’s fizzy and look, it has five whole grams of sugar!”

“No. I want a lollipop. You can take that fake treat and shove it, lady.”

Ok, I made that last bit up…but I can’t judge – I may not have tried to convince Bennett that a vitamin C-infused-flu-relief-drink is a treat, but I know I did crazy stuff like that too and now my firstborn dresses up like an Italian circus ringleader the minute I leave the house.

Heaven help us all.

Occupy This

M is in New York this week. He made time to check out the Occupy Wall Street protest while he was in Lower Manhattan. Funny, because I feel like I’m living my very own anarchic takeover here at home. The protesters are better organized than you’d expect from the nine and under set, especially given that one is a baby, and one is a certain seven year old who wanders the earth looking like he is being raised in a back alley. They may even be more together than their Wall Street brethren.

Their demands are few, but clear:

1.We won’t sleep – ever, and therefore, neither shall you.

2. We demand far more TV, specifically of the crappy and inappropriate  Nickelodeon tween variety.

3. We insist that all formal meals must be replaced by constant, roving snacking.

They repeat them with such remarkable intensity than I am all but about to give in. This morning, after a night during which I fell asleep before ten (stunning) but awoke at eleven and stayed awake until after two when I fell asleep with Fiona’s knees digging into my lower back, I was stumbling around the kitchen, making breakfast and packing lunches. (Speaking of sleep, or lack of, why was this article not at all a surprise to any of us? The NYT needs to dig far deeper than this.)  I must have looked particularly disgruntled (hey, when do I get to protest?), because Francie asked, “Don’t you wish you like, only had one of us?” (In hindsight, I’m sure she was asking, “Don’t you wish you only had me? Because I sure do.”) ”

No,” I explained. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you wouldn’t have to work so hard if you only had one of us.” I then explained that I chose to have all five of them. And that even though it’s really hard work sometimes, I’d do it all again. Really. I hoped the conversation had ended there because I really didn’t have the wherewithal to go much further than that, and I really really needed to concentrate. (I’ve been guilty of an assortment of lunch screw-ups lately. Apparently Efram would rather starve than eat lunch out of Francie’s Hello Kitty thermos.)

Bennett could not resist a chime in:”What do you mean chose? You mean you just requested us and we showed up?”

Oh dear God, please don’t make me have this conversation at seven a.m., with M on another coast when I’d be so successfully been avoiding it for months now. “It’s a far more complicated discussion. We’ll have it another time. Look! A shooting star!”

You can say that in Seattle at breakfast, because in November, the early morning is indistinguishable from the late night. Phew.

I too remember nothing.

I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. It certainly seems that Sidney, our sweet fifth is the worst sleeper of the five kids, as if to permanently imprint on my brain that five is in fact a handful (both literal and figurative). Perhaps if I’d had a bad sleeper before now, I wouldn’t have five.  I’m not so sure. If I really think about, Fi was a crappy sleeper at seven months. Efram certainly was. I am prevented from recalling Bennett’s first year with much accuracy due to the first child fog (call it delirium, or exhaustion), and I was so excited to have a girl that Francie could have pulled an exorcist head-spin at seven months and I probably wouldn’t remember it. All of this leads me to conclude that I for one remember everything about being in labor, but block out much of the first year. Or at least the hard bits.

(I read an interview with Tina Fey a few years ago in which she compares the first year of parenting as something akin to hitting yourself in the face with a hammer. Over and over. I’m right there: Cute baby, warm baby, soft baby, awake baby.)

And as it turns out, according to a new study, our kids aren’t going to remember much about their first years anyway. This obviously saddens me — why bother making such an effort if they’re not going to remember a damn thing? It also gives me some hope. As a friend put it, I have until Bennett’s tenth birthday (one year away) to keep screwing up. (Or as my lawyer brain saw it: after ten there’s a transcript.)

But, I’m tired. So very tired, and as I err left and right at home and at work, I am constantly grateful that I am not a surgeon, or a bus driver, or anything that would require me to have all my wits about me. It’s bad enough sending everyone to school with the wrong lunches, or without lunches. And it’s one thing to have to apologize for and fix mistakes on a brief.  But cutting people open or driving them around in a large, unwieldy vehicle (well, more unwieldy than the cursed minivan) would be impossible. I’m downing my second decaf coffee (live it up Geller) and gearing up to run five miles because the sun is out, and we never know when that’s going to happen again. I’m also hoping that a crisp morning run will wake me up, make the rest of the day manageable.

But I suppose it doesn’t really matter what happens today, because this is Sidney’s first year, and in a few months from now I won’t remember any of it.