FIVE GOOD THINGS FRIDAY

Here's a throwback. The last time I tossed around a FGTF was in May.  MAY!  Yeeks. Some of my favorite FGTF's have featured things like:

• my first nephew 
• video of 9-month-old Sol laughing so hard she snorts
• video of Sol almost exactly a year ago
• pumpkin ale and deep-dish chocolate chip cookie pie

I sooooo wish I had been able to capture The Essence of Sol this morning, but I didn't even think to try and get a video of it (I need to work on that).  Which brings me to... 

...Good Thing #1:  Babies dancing in the car

Fact: I have zero rhythm.
Fact: Sol is probably gonna follow in my footsteps there (no pun intended).
Fact: She loves to dance regardless.
Fact: I'm her biggest fan.

Today, as we were headed to daycare/work, we were jamming to some music, and (as per usual), Sol was dancing.  Well... she was trying.  She had her big ol' winter coat on, strapped into her carseat (so basically just puffy cushioning all the way around this poor child), and really all she could do was move her arms up and down.  No turning of the head, no bouncing of the legs (not sure why), just one little lady, packed so very tightly into a carseat, moving her arms up and down to the beat of Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up."  Priceless.  Annnnnnd I didn't get a video of it.

But I have a consolation prize.  Not quite the same: it's an early-summer Sol bopping along to Sir Elton John.  A long video, so you don't have to watch the whole thing (unless you're my mom, and in that case you probably will watch the whole thing... thrice).
 


Good Thing #2: Mediocre-to-fair performance in semester 1 of my MBA program

I've been in school for 2 months and it's going pretty well.  I'm truly-and-honestly excited for Wednesday nights, when I head off to the local university to get my learnin' on.  Sol is in the care of someone fab (sister or friend), while I'm filling my brain with semi-useless knowledge about classic vs. contemporary theories on global economic growth.  Thanks, Dr. Q.  I don't know where I'd be without Porter's Diamond.  <enter sarcastic comment here>.

But seriously, it's going well.  I'm studying hard, spending a wee bit of time in the library thumbing through academic journals (a real treat), and compiling some information that somehow needs to blend together to create a 15-page masterpiece on Product Safety Issues in Chinese Imports.  Riveting stuff.  Hooray for academia.

Good Thing #3: A full house

Last night I had the pleasure of hosting our dear friend Leah for dinner.  Aside from that, my lovely friend Sarah had asked if I could watch her daughter for a bit.  So our usually-quiet home went from boring to bustling in a matter of minutes after I got home yesterday!  So much noise (mostly good, some screaming/crying/general-madness), and despite those few moments where my dear Sol was *thisclose* to making me pull my hair out, I was so happy.  I had a full house and a full heart.  Ahhhhh, good friends make for a good life.

Good Thing #4: Visits from my family

Sol and Papa K

I think, somehow, I haven't made it quite clear how special my family is.  They're pretty wonderful, and I have no doubt that anyone in my family would drop anything to help me.  Grandma CC, Aunt Manda, and Baby A-Rod were in town last weekend.  And what a hectic, crazy, fabulous weekend it was... So many little legs scrambling about, so many little mouths squealing in delight and frustration and basically anything that a tiny person would squeal about.  I had a chance to head out to a movie (Prisoners) with my sister (one of my all-time favorite activities) and eat our fill of popcorn and M&M's (try it sometime).  It was a terrifying, disturbing movie.  I didn't sleep for 2 days.  I digress.  We're expecting a visit from my dad this weekend.  Family time + fall weather = fabulous.


Good Thing #5: New friends

Blogging has become a sort of therapy for me; a great outlet for those times when life seems to be spinning out of control.  My blog keeps my family in the loop on my life with Sol, and my words have (somehow) inspired people here and there.

What's more, my writing has also introduced me to some new friends.  Most recently, a new friend who asks to come over and make dinner for my daughter.  And makes fish-faces with her (one of Sol's most recently-acquired talents) in between chopping mushrooms, sauteing onions, scooping sorbet, and doing the dishes.  A new friend who is smart and interesting, and seems to be genuinely compassionate.

A new friend who leaves things like this on my doorstep:

  And who requests a follow-up dinner by way of messages like this:

P.S.: I've been thinking about risottos lately, how about a zucchini one on Sunday evening? Served with Chilean Merlot, but only if you have nothing better to do...

And whose first language is not English, which compels me to download an app on my iPhone to try and learn his native tongue in hopes of wowing him with my brilliance, but leads me to send him an email which he sends straight to Google Translate, and along with some kind editorial comments (e.g. 'That's creative writing! Seriously, you did quite well. I'm surprised because you obviously did not count on any assistance.'), our new friend has formatted into the following story: 

<><><><><>

"The curious case of a hungry couple, a literate boy, 

his pen pal girlfriend, and... the mysterious fishing guy" 

 By Mel Bierlein 

Revised and Translated by Google Translate

 Once upon a time...

A man drinks a bottle of water. A Mühler eats a stretcher. They eat and drink. They like (it).
The boy writes a letter. The girl lee (reads?) the letter. He's a good boy. She's a good girl.
I like the stretchers. We like the cards.
I am a Mühler and you are a man. We read the newspaper. We speak.

Eso es. Bye! What tenga a good day :) And sheltered by her "fishing guy"

The End.

<><><><><>

 

The end indeed.  

New friends are exciting, aren't they?

THIS WILL NOT LAST FOREVER.

Have you ever gone so long without talking to one of your friends that you're almost afraid to talk to them again?  Like... what do you have to talk about?  Do you even have anything in common anymore?  Or maybe so much has happened over the last few months of silence that you don't even know where to start?

That's been me.  Over the last [nearly] 3 months.

Boredom= wine + peroxide + foils.
Hair color change #1 of 4.

I can't tell you how many times I've sat down to write something.  There are several unfinished posts in my blog's "draft" folder.  Every time I tried to write something over the past few months, it seemed empty.  A meaningless jumble of words bouncing across a cold canvas.  It's not like nothing exciting has happened.  We've traveled, we've had guests visiting from out of town, we've been sick (yes, both of us have been sick, and more than once), I've changed my hair color once twice thrice 4x, we've worked, eaten, slept, and
repeated the same day over and over and over again.

It feels so repetitive, so monotonous, my life with Sol.  I feel like I rush through the workday -- but at 5:01, what was the point of rushing?  And more often than not, I leave the office around 5:45, not at 5:01.  I pick Sol up from daycare **justbeforedaycarecloses**.  And more often than not, I have some errand to run at that point.  Which basically means I'm wasting even more of Sol's precious babyhood by stuffing her into the backseat of my car just so I can pick up a carton of milk.  I have no choice.  I can't leave her home while I run out to the grocery store.  I can't go to the grocery store after she's asleep.  So I have to take her with me.  And we arrive home by 6:30.  If we're lucky.  

So we're home.  This is the point of the day where I take this dream I have, this beautiful dream, and try to bring it to life.  I have this beautiful vision of the two of us enjoying a healthy dinner out on the patio: my daughter, perched cheerfully in her high chair, pointing to the airplanes humming through the sky and the dogs pulling their owners along the sidewalk; me explaining to her every force of nature that comes our way as the late summer early autumn breeze blows through her perfectly sun-kissed hair, whose hue matches used to match mine almost exactly.

So this was yogurt, not lasagna,
but pretty much the same deal.

But-- without fail-- reality takes a nasty bite out of that dream.  It's almost 7:00.  Sol is hungry.  I put a happy toddler in the highchair -- in the kitchen, mind you, because I'm too exhausted to roll the highchair out to the patio.  I pull out some leftover lasagna, scoop it into a bowl as Sol watches eagerly, her bib around her neck, and her fork paused in midair, in the "oh-I'm-ready-gimme-food-and-oh-yes-I-want-it-now" position.  It's pure bliss as I listen to her jabber at me cheerfully.  That is, until I put that bowl of lasagna in the microwave.  Once that bowl of lasagna leaves her field of vision and goes into the electric box, her world is shattered.  And any glimmer of a peaceful evening is shattered right along with it.  And so ensues the tantrum.  That happy toddler I set in the highchair a minute ago?  She's gone.  In her place: a sweaty, screaming child who
seems to have her heart set on making my night miserable. 

And in the fashion of every new parent, I abide by the golden rule of toddler-raising, the first page in every parenting book: ignore the tantrums.  I go about my own business as she tears the magnetic letters off the refrigerator, a solid "NO!!" with the plummet of each primary-colored consonant.  I sit there and try not to watch as she kicks every. single. kitchen. cupboard. on her way to the living room, where she pulls the pillows off the sofa, a continuation of her lasagna-fueled fury.  In moments like these, I wish madly that I had an adult there with me.  Another human who can understand my complete sentences, another human who can use real words to respond to me and reassure me (in complete sentences) that something like this will not last forever.  Another human who can temper the sting of raising a toddler.  But instead, I have no choice but to repeat the mantra to myself: This tantrum will not last forever.

I sit at the kitchen table and stab a fork mindlessly at my own dinner, any pleasant thoughts drowning amid the horrific sobs and shrieks from the angry toddler who is taking her anger out at a new audience, voicing her frustrations to the front yard as she stands her ground behind the floor-length curtains in the living room.  I'm ignoring her.  This will stop eventually.  But in the meantime, my own negative thoughts bob to the surface and remind me once more that I'm terribly lonely.  The tantrum will stop eventually.  In the meantime, I still have no companion.  I'm still as lonely as the day she was born.  I'm still as lonely as the day I learned I was pregnant.  With each inconsolable gasp of anger, with each crocodile tear that escapes her eye for no good reason, I feel another searing pang of loneliness.  I think about the mothers I know -- all of whom have a husband to help them through the joys and miseries of raising a baby.  This will not last forever.  I feel lonely.  I feel cheated.  I look down to see that my own sad dinner is cold and maybe even tear-stained, bearing the scars of another Battle Against the Tantrum.  Without even realizing it, I cried over my own lasagna because I'm frustrated with life.

And I wait.  This will stop eventually.  And it does, as per usual.  The screams taper down into whimpers, the crying subsides, and a new Sol emerges from the living room.  "Up," she says, as she points her right index finger into her left hand and moves both of them UP (her artistic twist on ASL).  I pick her up and she throws her arms around my neck and says, "Book."  We go over to the couch and she drops Good Night Moon on my lap.  We open to the inside cover, and I read Aunt Sarah's lovely message to a newborn Sol.  Good Night Moon has become part of our nightly routine.  And as I read to her, she answers my questions (What do the bears say?  Where is the moon?  Can you say 'good night' to the little mouse?) and I can't imagine any other spot that I would rather be at that moment.
And we go through the book, which I probably know by heart at this point.  This is the only book we read.  We do the same things throughout the book.  And we do this every night. 

And again I think, This will not last forever.  She won't always want to sit on my lap and read about the great green room, the comb and the brush and the bowl full of mush.  She'll "hate" me someday when I make her change her clothes before going to school; or when I take her phone away until she does her homework.  She'll "hate" me someday when I won't let her go to "the movies" on Saturday night, when I know she's actually going to some party.  Life will happen, as it always does, this bittersweet life, and before we know it, she'll have forgotten the comfort of Mama's lap on a Tuesday night, leaning her head back against my chest as I rest my chin on her perfect, untouched hair.  She'll forget how much she loved saying good night to the moon.  She won't know how much she needed me, or how much I needed her during the summer of 2013.

She won't know how many times I laid her down to sleep, using every ounce of energy to push all the "to-do's" out of my head, to forget the emails and the spreadsheets and the laundry and the cleaning and the homework, and then remained there standing over her crib, my left hand caressing her back and soothing my sweet Sol to sleep.  She won't know how many hours I've spent kissing her forehead and holding her hands, telling her how loved she is, how valuable she is, how smart and kind and strong and beautiful she is.  She won't know how hard I'm working to give her a beautiful life in order for her to grow into a beautiful person.

This babyhood, this toddlerhood, this age of "grit-my-teeth-and-count-to-ten-and-remember-she's-one-and-a-half" will not last forever (oh hallelujah).  But the beautiful, cheerful mornings and quiet, peaceful evenings won't last forever either.  And I want her to know those moments.  I want her to know how important she is.  And for that reason, I will write.  I will write my daughter the story of our life.  I will write a story that shows my Sol how important she is, so that she will never EVER doubt her worth.  I can't give her the traditional life I so badly want to, nor can I write down exactly what our future will look like.  But I can write down our life until today.  I can tell her about the day she was born, or the first time she saw a Christmas tree, or how we would go to Target with Aunt Joleen and try on all the hats.   And I can write love.  If nothing else, she will know love.

Sol's first root beer float: liquid love in a 12oz cup.

THE DUMBEST SMART THING I'VE EVER DONE

It's really difficult (nigh impossible on some days) to be a single mom.  And I know I sound like a broken record in saying that.  And my life as a single mom comes and goes in cycles of good and bad days.

There are the very good days.  Those days are the absolute greatest-- the days where I wake up on time (because I probably went to bed the night before at a reasonable hour), shower and fix my hair in record time.  The days where I wake Sol up, dress her, and head out the door on time with all our things, and arrive to work on time.  So then I can leave work on time, pick Sol up and get home to prepare an easy-but-nutritious dinner at the appropriate hour.  So then we have time to play (and she actually wants to play with me) and she's so dang tuckered out by 8pm that I can give her a pleasant bath and lay her in her crib by 8:30, where she flips onto her belly, buries her face in the mattress, sticks her little caboose in the air, and I don't hear a sound from her until the next morning...

...And the next morning could be the onset of a bad day.  A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

Those days are the worst -- the days where I sleep through my alarm and wake up 45 minutes late (often because I was up the night before until 12:30am doing laundry or making lunches), shower and fix my hair in a few minutes (and it shows).  The days where Sol is awake since I've been awake, and because I can't give her the proper attention and because I'm busting my rear to prepare for the day, she cries for about 30 minutes before I have a chance to dress her and head out the door 5 minutes late but usually forgetting something very important, all with the hope of arriving to work around 5-10 minutes late (but in reality it will be more around 15-20 minutes late).  So then I stay a little later at work, pick Sol up *just* before the daycare center closes, and we get home to a kitchen that offers no easy or nutritious dinners to whip up.  So I scrounge around and end up fixing her some oatmeal with peanut butter (for added protein, obviously) that she eats while I'm trying to unpack our bags from the day.

After that, there is little time to play (but it's okay because she can't stand the sight of me and nothing would displease her more than sitting on the floor and playing with momma, God forbid), so she backs herself into a corner and in her irritatingly-whiny voice says "nOOOooooo.  nnnoOOOOOooooo!!!" in response to my futile attempts to get her to play the xylophone.  So I sit there, breathing deeply, silently counting to ten as I clench my teeth and instruct her to "just. play. the xylophone. please. justplaywithsomething."  But no, she would rather throw herself on the ground, attacking the floor with her Sperry-clad feet, while driving a half-eaten orange crayon into the carpeting (which I just vacuumed the night before).  You would

Can you find the dental insurance card???

think the anti-xylophone tantrum would zap her energy, but you'd be wrong.  She's wide awake at 8pm.  So bathtime is a nightmare, and usually about halfway through the bath I find some foreign object (like my dental insurance card) floating in the tub alongside Nemo and Dory.  These things come as no surprise; they only add to the dramafest of the evening.

Surely you can imagine the struggle of drying, diapering, or dressing this freshly-bathed [and now wailing] creature.  So there I am, sporting 8 gallons of sweat in my hair, a soaked-and-partially-shredded shirt, and claw marks on my arm (because oh yes, she needs her razor-nails trimmed and that wasn't about to happen tonight).  So I muster up the most motherly love I can possibly muster, I sit on the couch with her, and pull out a bedtime book.  An hour later, I'm out on the patio with that same book in front of me -- but it's opened to the very last page and flattened out onto the surface of the table.  And my poor aching head is resting on the book as I try to drown out the "I-hate-you-mom" sobs from the nursery window above me.  Maybe I'll eat around 9pm, maybe 10pm.  Maybe.  But only after the bathroom has been mopped up, after lunches are made for tomorrow, after her sippy cups are washed and the orange crayon has been extracted from the carpeting. 

I drag my feet upstairs and lie in bed, still clothed in my sweat-soaked outfit from that evening, realizing that I've heard nothing but "nOOOooo.  nnnoOOOOOooooo!!!" since I left work.  I lie there and wonder how long you could go without adult interaction, how long you would have to listen to "nOOOoooo," before you go absolutely, horribly, bat-poop NUTS.  I usually wake up a few minutes later because I still have my shoes on from the day and let's face it: it's not right to sleep in your bed with my shoes on.  Somehow I fall asleep in the noisy silence, thanking God the day is finally over, longing for an adult to share my triumphs and frustrations with, scanning through mental lists of to-do's for the next day, and the next, and the day after that... Before I know it, the alarm is going off again.  It's a new day, and there's really no way to tell what sort of day it will be.

So obviously it makes sense, then, that I would take on yet another challenge... right?

Kindly reference the photos below.

A sunny afternoon in June, lunch at the Green Well, my favorite restaurant in Grand Rapids.  Eating a vegan wrap and drinking a thematic CEO stout (Right Brain Brewery) in celebration of my recently-completed GMAT exam.  

Because yes, that's right, I'm going back to school in the fall.  Gonna get me an MBA.  And the university of my choice is even willing to let me attend.  Penny Bundy told me so :)

Not to be confused with Peggy Bundy.  Cuz that would just be weird.

But seriously, totes magotes, wish me luck.  Because I'm gonna need a whooooooole lot of it.  Single mom + working full-time + pursuing MBA = l-o-c-o.  Crazypants.

ME LAVO LAS MANOS, CHA-CHA-CHA, CHA-CHA-CHA (washing my hands)

Gone are the days of cold drinking water.

Gone are the days of hot bathing water (to call our shower water cool would be generous).

Here we are in Zacapa, Guatemala, hosting an eyeglass clinic for the locals.  Although we're in the Guatemalan desert (also a loose term), the weather is humid, balmy, and altogether tropical.  It doesn't take long for a cold bottle of agua to succumb to the climate and turn HOT.  Not just room-temperature, not just warm, but HOT.  Given the area we're in, it also doesn't take long to realize that showering is best done in the morning, when you're ready to be roused awake by needles of cold water streaming down onto your skin.

Nothing says "good morning" quite like a cold shower, no?

Water.  Something I've taken for granted.  Cold drinking water by turning on the faucet or reaching into the fridge for the Brita pitcher.  Cold drinking water by pressing a button on the outside of the fridge, cold drinking water by shaking a couple ice cubes out of the tray from the freezer.  Hot bath water, hot shower water, hot water to wash your face, hot water to make leg-shaving a somewhat-enjoyable experience.  Clean water from the sink, clean water from the shower.  A clean shower in which you can open your mouth and not worry about Montezuma taking his revenge.

Haven't we all taken our beautiful water for granted?

This is how we wash our hands in Zacapa:

The first two photos are of the bathrooms in the church here (yes, those are two stalls).

Below are the things you need for hand-washing.  From left to right (and in no particular order): toilet paper to dry your hands, wipes to help scurb, hand sanitizer for after washing hands, and a bowl to scoop fresh water out of the cistern.

First, we scoop "fresh" water out of the cistern.

Then we pour "fresh" water over our hands.

Then we take a bar of soap and scrub-scrub-scrub.

Pour the "fresh" water over our hands again...

ALL DONE!  Clean hands??

Then we sanitize.

And below are the children of Zacapa... children who deal with this every day.  Think of them the next time you're washing your hands in your fluorinated, clean water.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA. GOODBYE, HOT WATER.

I’ve been ready for a break from my child (as if that were some big secret).  I love her dearly, and she is everything to me.  But my goodness, 24/7 mamahood wears me out.  She’s fabulous, she’s curious, but Sol is EXHAUSTING.  So naturally, then, I thought it would be easy-peasy to drop little Solchop off, knowing that it would be almost 10 whole days before I saw her again.  And it was relatively easy, considering the terrific hands I was leaving her in. 

I dropped Sol off at Aunt Liz’s house on Thursday afternoon after celebrating America’s birthday by cleaning the house (deep cleaning), finishing up laundry, cooking, vacuuming, and preparing everything for the Sol-sitter that would be spending the following week at our house.  The drop-off was easy.  Sol has arrived at that fabulous age where she couldn’t care less where I am or what I’m doing, as long as there is a fluffy canine tail to chase or a long-lashed cousin to hug.  She didn’t care that I had spent 3 days drafting an informational packet to leave with her caretakers while I was in Guatemala.  She didn’t care that I had spent 3 nights planning and pre-cooking meals for her to eat while I was out of town.  She didn’t care that I had packed and repacked her suitcase for Aunt Liz’s, making sure she had adequate supplies of swim diapers and regular diapers, string cheese and Cheerios.  She didn’t care that I left.  She didn’t care that I had given her 18 hugs and 118 kisses. 

And that made it easier to leave her. 

Which was cool, because I needed to go to Detroit that night in order to fly out to Guatemala the following morning.

Very few have had the privilege of seeing me at 3am, and Motown has now been added to the roster.  Congrats, D-town.  That’s right.  3am wake up, 4am arrival to the airport, 6am flight.  Then some travel for abouuuuuuut 18 hours, including 1 shuttle ride, 2 plane rides, and the longest bus trip down the windiest roads I’ve ever experienced, with 2+ near-death experiences down a narrow mountain highway road.  (Rock wall on your right, deadly cliff to your left, passing 5 semis and headed straight toward an oncoming semi… HEART.  STOPS.)

So after a long 18-hr journey, 18 folks in matching purple shirts finally arrived this evening at the Hotel Pasabien in Zacapa, Guatemala.  We ate a light dinner, celebrated a birthday (in true Guatemala cumpleanos style, with firecrackers and cake and everything), took some long-awaited showers (sans any trace of hot water), and retired to our thatched-roof shacks to wind down before an early morning of fixin’ eyes tomorrow.  Yep, tomorrow we’re setting up an eyeglass clinic for the locals, in which we’ll test their prescriptions, fit them with a pair of glasses, and send them on their way with a happy heart and [finally] clear vision.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we venture out on our first day!

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

June was a difficult month. 

Here's the deal: when you're a 24/7 single parent to a curious toddler, you don't get any time off.  You're either working, cooking, cleaning, or relocating something so it's out of baby's reach.  If you have any spare time in there, you get to play with your child.  And then there's grocery shopping (which is never ever ever ever done without a baby in the cart).  And that's the deal 7 days a week.  Weekends don't exist.  Not really.  Weekends are the same, just without the "work" part.  But you substitute the "working" time of your day with more cooking, more cleaning, more relocating items.  It's nonstop.  All day, every day.  And sometimes all night. 

So again, June was a difficult month.  I was involved in so many engagements on the weekends, all with very special people.  And because I hail from the other side of the state, all of these weekend engagements were [oh yes] out of town.  A 2.5+ hour drive, to be exact.  And because I spent almost every weekend packing up myself and a baby, driving a total of 5+  hours, and then frolicking with my dear ones on the other side of the state, my own housekeeping suffered tragically (so did my pocketbook; those trips are not cheap).  The dishes sit in the sink, waiting to be washed.  The kitchen floor hosts a fleet of dirt and crumbs that will make me cringe Sunday night when I walk barefoot across them.  The bathroom sink needs to be wiped down, and nearly every mirror in my house boasts smudgy handprints, tiny whispers of "Sol was here."  Dirty clothes lie heaped in various hampers and baskets, unsorted and waiting to be laundered.  The floor still remains dotted with Cheerios and fuzzies, waiting to be vacuumed.  Blankets are strewn across the living room and pillows are on the floor.  Toys have made their way across the. entire . living. room.  Their receptacle waits, silent and empty in the corner.  These are things that I generally take care of over the weekend.  And when I spend a weekend away from home, I'm essentially taking 3 days of my week and depositing them directly into the dumpster.  I arrive home from the weekend and I can hear my house jeering at me: "Oh, you thought you could keep up your housework this month?  Ha."

On those Sunday evenings I exhaust my energy and my sanity: trying to entertain a child who is growing more and more difficult to entertain, trying to wash the dishes, trying to cook meals for my vegetarian child to send to daycare with her, trying to do the dishes between toting laundry baskets of clothes upstairs and downstairs, then down to the basement and then alllll the way upstairs again, then downstairs, then [because I'm trying to make my life as difficult as possible] upstairs again, then downstairs and over a screaming baby, then downstairs, then back to the dishes.  Then it's bathtime, bedtime, and somehow I still have 3 loads of laundry to do before Monday morning.

On those Sunday evenings I feel weak.  Sol has gotten to the point where 2.5 hours in a car is too long.  She's developed this rule where she will only sit quietly in the car for (at most) 2 hours.  The second we pass through Battle Creek, her screaming begins.  I turn up the music and carry on because I know there is a houseful of chores desperately awaiting our arrival.  We park the car at home after a half-hour of hell, I haul the overnight bags, my child, and miscellanea up the sidewalk to my front door.  My child rolls on the floor, screams erupting from her mouth and tears streaming down her face.  She's been hot, sweaty, and strapped down for 2.5 hours.  I step over her, tears streaming down my face as well, as I dash around our otherwise-silent house.  Those Sunday evenings are not easy.  Those Sunday evenings leave me questioning everything: whether this is worth seeing my family and friends; whether I should bother living this close and if I moved far away maybe people wouldn't expect me to drive 2.5 hours every weekend.  They leave me questioning whether I'm a good mom for shoving my daughter into an overheated backseat for 5 hours every weekend; questioning my abilities as the head of our household since I can't even keep the mirrors clean. 

The Sunday evening weakness builds up within me and before long, I morph into a machine as I bathe and dress my daughter.  I am emotionless, just a blank stare as I get her ready for bed.  I am consumed by weakness, exhaustion, loneliness, as I zip up her pajamas.  There are no more tears to cry, there are no more frustrations to scream into a pillow.  I am spent.  The weakness has defeated me.  And in a last-resort effort to keep my defeat and loneliness a secret from my daughter, her bedtime routine becomes silent and mechanical.  This is the only way I can think of to prevent pushing my frustrations onto her. 

So we sit there on the couch, reading a book (or "bupp," in Solayan).  Not really reading.  Sol climbs on my lap.  Then she turns around to face me, and holds the "bupp" out to me.  I open to the first page and she turns around again and flips through the first half of the book.  She points at the book, then at me, then at the sofa, then at the pillow; a new game in which she asks me to tell her what everything is.  I tell her once in English, then once in Spanish.  She clutches her pink bunny and lays her head on my chest.  I wonder just how silent and mechanical I've been.  Is she checking to see that I'm alive?  Is she listening to my heart, checking that this is still the same heart whose beat has lulled her to sleep in the past?  She walks her fingers up my chest, up my chin and onto my lips.  I bite them gently and she laughs.  And that laughter destroys every inanimate shred of my Sunday-night self.  Her laughter ignites some flame behind my mechanical stare and forces my human eyes open.  I suddenly see my daughter, really see her.

I realize that I miss my daughter.  Yes, I'm holding her, but somehow I miss her nonetheless.  My heart has resigned from all other duties but to love her.  And on those weak Sunday nights, I hold her until she falls asleep.  I put her to bed with a kiss, another kiss, and then one more before I lay her down.  She lies on her belly, butt in the air, and within seconds she's snoring gently.  I close her door and run downstairs to continue with the abandoned housework. 

On those weak Sunday nights, after starting a load in the dishwasher and separating all the whites from the mountain of clothes in the basement, I'm drawn back to Sol.  I run back upstairs to her bedroom.  I stroke her silky hair and caress her tiny hands.  As I watch her sleep, her right hand closes around my index finger.  I stand there, bent over her crib for longer than I planned to.  On those weak Sunday nights, I take comfort in the fact that I was strong enough to spend 9 months alone as I waited for this person, that I was strong enough to spend 9 hours in pain as my body struggled to bring her into the world.  On those evenings of weakness, I am too weak to do anything but sit next to her crib in the dark nursery, comforted by the sounds of this tiny sleeping human who demands that I be strong enough for the both of us.  I take comfort in every shred of strength that has shaped me into the mother I am.  On those weak Sunday nights, I take comfort in the strength of my love for Sol.

And loving Sol is so easy.

OH CRAP.

Literally.  And I mean literally.

So today was one of those "oh-I-guess-we'll-just-chalk-this-up-as-a-learning-experience-and-move-on-with-life-but-only-after-we've-showered-three-times" sort of days.

Here's the skuttlebutt: Sol was out of diapers.  For the record, I was planning on buying some more this evening.  Okay, she wasn't completely out... I always have plenty of spares in her diaper bag(s) on the main floor of our house.  I woke her up this morning, then spent about 10 minutes trying to decide what Miss Sol-chop was going to wear today (which, ultimately, was about 10 minutes too long).  We went with a fabulous tank top dotted with whales, with coordinating pink shorts and her ubercute new Top-siders (omg, loooove).  Still in her pajamas, I laid her on the changing table and got to work changing the Chop.  Took off the dirty diaper, threw it away, and reached down to the diaper drawer...

Foiled.  Drat.  No diapers.  I set a jabbering Sol on the floor, as naked as the day I met her, and I ran downstairs to grab some more diapers from my 'emergency stock' in her diaper bag.  Which took all of 15 seconds, max.  What could go wrong?

Oh ye famous last words.

And the second I turned around to go back upstairs, I stopped.  Sol was no longer jabbering.  It was that moment when, as a parent, your heart drops and you know that this silence-- this rare, fleeting lack of noise-- is NOT GOOD.  It was that moment of fear.  Not fear for the child's health or safety, necessarily.  It's a fear that something terrible has happened, and you're about to walk into a disaster, effectively taking about 30 mins of your day and throwing them right out the window.

I placed one foot in front of the other and climbed the stairs slowly, walking the Green Mile to the consequences of my decision to run downstairs with a nude toddler at the top of the stairs.  And that's when I could smell it.  Something HAD indeed gone terribly wrong, and at that moment I was officially resigned to the fact that I was going to be late for work.

Only possible caption:
"What NOT to do."



Not only had my beautiful little angel taken the world's largest dump on my bedroom floor, but she thought it would be PRET-TY cool to roll around in it, to smear it into the carpeting, and finally to parade her beloved pink luvvie through the excrement.  With a shriek of terror, I ran across the hall to start running the bath water.  I grabbed my daughter and plopped her in the tub, dousing her with buckets of clean water as my blood boiled and my heart pounded in anger.  I was furious at myself, at my decision to leave a naked toddler alone, even for just a few seconds.

As I scrubbed my bedroom carpeting with that superhuman strength that only comes when one is angry, frustrated, and 10 minutes late for work, I could hear Sol jabbering again in the bathtub.  And just like that, every smidgen of "I-hate-being-a-mom" disappeared; the anger and frustration were swept away with the sounds of a jolly, poop-covered baby exercising her vocal chords in the loo.  So I grabbed my freshly-bathed babe and towel-dried her.  I did NOT allow her to run free sans diaper; I set her on the changing table right quick, slapped some Huggies on that bottom, and got her dressed.  I set her down and [of course] she toddled over to her crap-covered pink luvvie and HUGGED IT.  Now... I don't know exactly what my response would be if my daughter were hugging a honey badger, but I imagine it would be the same deal as what I did with this poor pink bunny.  Ripped that luvvie out of her hands and flung it into the bathroom.  I wiped her off and glanced back apologetically at her poor luvvie laying there, violated and desperately awaiting a thorough rinsing before heading straight into the laundry basket.  So I shoved a stuffed singing lamb into the arms of my wailing child, who didn't understand why I had snatched her pink bunny away, and finally got into the car to begin our day.

And that, my friends, is the story of a crappy morning.

Lesson learned: Never leave a toddler alone and naked.  Fashion a loincloth out of something-- anything-- and continue with your duties.  Babies wear diapers for a reason, yo.