My Artistic Son

31 Mar 2011 13 Comments

by Natalie in What's a mom to do? Tags: , , ,

This is a picture of him thinking about pirates and how much he loves them.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a naked piece of paper at my house. Nearly 99.9 percent of all pages in our home have at least one doodle somewhere across their surface – especially if they are notebook bound.

This is a bleeding shark. Notice the frame? Yes, we had to make it a paper frame.

You see my four-year-old son has transformed into a full-blown artist, drawing for hours each day on anything he can get his hands on.

It is also difficult to find a working pen at our house. That’s my son’s true medium of choice – pen and hand-held notebook. He’ll draw for hours with a small book in hand, ripping each page out and handing it to me when it is “finished.”

What’s wrong with him drawing so much? I love my little artist but it’s nearly impossible to get him to do anything when

This is a whale shark eating tiny fish or plankton.

He found out I loved unicorns and so he went through a unicorn phase.

he’s drawing. He tunes the world out and focuses on his work. Forget about him coming to dinner and you can kiss cleaning his room goodbye. He always seems to be “almost finished” with each picture when I ask him to come. It’s been a major frustration for me at our house lately.

Honestly I am glad that he has found something creative and inspiring that he enjoys – it beats throwing rock at windows,

chasing me with muddy worms or beating up his 2-year-old brother. Who knows, maybe in 10 years I will beg him to draw instead of getting into trouble as a mischievous teenager.

This is a tracing from a toy gun. Notice the heart. He told me that means he loves guns.

But there is another problem with his new hobby. I am running out of display room in my home for his finished pieces. Normally I hang them up for a few days on our crowded fridge front. Then I save some of my favorites and toss the rest. I wish I could save more but we’re talking about dozens of pages each day.

I bet if you pieced together each of his drawings end to end, they’d reach halfway to China – mostly because he refuses to draw on the “back” of pages. He has to have a clean, fresh canvas for his masterpieces.

These are humans being eaten by sharks. Notice the blood?

I worry that one of these days he’ll see some of his work in the trash and it will crush him. I also worry that I will regret getting rid of his work. Maybe one day he’ll be famous like Van Gogh or Monet and I’ll want to show off his early shark-dinosaur-monster period.

Seriously, it has been fun to look at his drawings from six months ago and see how much he has grown as an artist. He’s getting really good. I’m amazed at his creativity and attention to detail. I love that his drawings allow me to see what goes through his preschool mind.

I particularly love how he depicts me – normally with angry eyebrows. Maybe I should let up on him a little and be happy that he has found something innocent that he truly loves.

This is one of his pictures of me. Notice the angry eyebrows and teeth?

This is another one of my favorites.

This is one of my favorites. It's a cat.

This picture is of a whale and three hammerhead sharks.

Springtime Sorrows

24 Mar 2011 8 Comments

by Natalie in Dealing with Death, My Angel Baby Tags: , , , ,

Spring is here and I think I am having an emotional breakdown. My mind keeps drifting back to a year ago when I was excitedly awaiting the birth of my third son. With every day that passes it sinks in deeper that he’s never coming home.

It’s starting to hit me that I will deal with his death my entire life. It’s not just something that’s going to fade away.

Every time I see a pregnant woman I am going to worry a little for her baby’s well-being as well as envy her for the life she carries. When I see a tiny, newborn baby — alive and well — I’ll wonder what it would have been like to hold a healthy, happy Luca. And when I see a family with three or more kids in tow, I’ll think of what life would have been like with my third.

I feel stressed, nervous, anxious and physically ill when I remember how my perfect world turned to pure hell within a day’s time. I went from hearing my baby’s heartbeat at a routine doctor’s check up to delivering him stillborn within 24 short hours.

This spring is going to be a rough one. Ironically it’s the same time of year associated with new life and rebirth.

But I realize it’s all right if it’s rough. I need time to suffer through my sorrows. I’ve been through a tragic event that will forever change me and my outlook on life.

I saw an interview last week of a supermodel that survived the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia. She survived but her boyfriend did not. A reporter asked her how long it takes to recover from an event like that. Her reply: You never fully recover.

I can relate to her grief. No, I didn’t experience a natural catastrophe of quite the same magnitude. But I did lose someone very close to me in a cruel and tragic way.
And I think she’s right. You never fully recover from something like that. Maybe you refer to it less frequently and tear up half as often, but the truth is, you have just learned how to better to conceal your broken heart.

A lot of times when interacting with others who have been through hard times, I think it makes all of us feel better to hear people say they have “recovered” from their tragedies. But I’m not sure we can ever fully recover. At least not me. Not yet.

Sleep, Why Do You Hate Me?

17 Mar 2011 4 Comments

by Natalie in Parenting Battles Tags: , ,

Whoever said we should “sleep like a baby” has never experienced a night with my two-year-old son. He has been a restless sleeper since the day he was born. If we all slept like him the world would be filled with walking zombies.

For the past week my son has woken up hollering three or four times a night. The first night I thought it was a horrible fluke. After night six I realized that he had developed a terrible habit that doesn’t make me, or my husband, very happy.

Normally he’ll just shout out in his sleep or bump into the wall and make a lot of ruckus that occasionally wakes me up.  But lately he has been waking all the way up crying for me to lie by him. It not only makes me frustrated, but it tears at my heartstrings. I’d love to cuddle to him and lay by him every night. But I know if I do that any hope that I have of him ever getting used to sleeping quietly on his own will be dashed. Also, he’d beat me up all night kicking and punching me while sleeping and I’d lose all chance of getting any rest myself.

The major problem is this: I am more emotional when I am tired. I am more scatter-brained when I am tired. And I am definitely more stressed out when I am tired. That is a triple combination no one wants to see exhibited in my character.

It’s not like this is our first sleeping battle with the little guy. He spent less time than anticipated in my bedside baby bassinet because he’d wake me up every 30 minutes with his moaning and groaning.  I had to banish him to the other room so that I could try to get a little rest. Luckily his older brother is a deep sleeper.

The kid talks in his sleep. He even sings in his sleep.  And worst of all he thrashes around in his sleep like a caged animal trying to break free. Sometimes I’ll wake up at night because I hear a thumping or rustling sound. I am sure an invader has busted through my kitchen door and is heading straight for my room to attack me. Then I listen closer and realize it’s just my 2-year-old wrestling in his covers.

One of the most annoying things about his sleepless nights is that although his tossing and turning keeps him, my husband and me up all night, he is the only one who gets to sleep in. My alarm still rings at 6 a.m. while he wanders out of his bedroom after 8 a.m. He also catches up on his missing Z’s during his daily two-hour afternoon nap.  Unfortunately my adult schedule doesn’t permit such a siesta.

On days filled with yawns and sleep-deprived irritations, I have to remind myself that I would rather wake up four times each night for his entire life than not have the opportunity to raise him at all. If that’s how it’s going to be I’ll accept it. It’s just hard to think rationally like that when I’m too tired to see straight.

My Vacuum Sucks

10 Mar 2011 4 Comments

by Natalie in Failed Housewife Tags: , , , ,

I refuse to buy a $3,000 vacuum. So I am forced to use a cheap Wal-Mart wannabe that literally sucks. I have had the worst luck with vacuums.

I started my marriage with a great Hoover my husband and I bought with some money from our wedding. It wasn’t the fancy, new bagless type, but it really sucked.

Unfortunately, it was shocked to death during a series of freak power surges in the fall of 2008. A faulty power line coming into our house was making our power surge and our lights strobe. Our washer and dryer also lost their lives during that ridiculous three-month fiasco.

I went cheap after that, buying a small machine for less than $20 at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale. As you can imagine, that didn’t last long.

This year at Black Friday I was too focused on Barbies and movies to snatch up the vacuum I wanted. Instead I found a small hand vac with a long handle extension stuffed in an aisle display while waiting in an extremely long checkout line. It was cheap but definitely not practical. It works great dust busting my kitchen floor but it doesn’t do my shaggy carpet justice.

So, a couple of months ago I invested a little less than $40 on a red Dirt Devil from Wal-Mart. After vacuuming my tiny living room and even tinier hallway, the stupid thing overheated. I didn’t know if it was because there was so much left over lint that the little hand vac couldn’t handle hiding in my shag, or if my new vacuum was going to overheat with every use.

I kept it and a week later it overheated again. I was too lazy to find my receipt, clean it out and take it back to the store. So now I do what I call “race vacuuming.” I prep my rooms — making sure I’m not going to accidentally suck up a toy gun or lizard or something — plug the vacuum in, and run. More often than not, I can vacuum my small upstairs before it overheats. If it does overheat before I’m done, I unplug it, wait 30 minutes then start vacuum racing again.

I don’t know how long I’m going to put up with this temperamental machine.

I had an amateur vacuum saleswoman spend two hours one night trying to sell me a $3,000 vacuum. Do I seriously have to spend that much to get a decent machine? I absolutely refuse to spend more on a vacuum than I did on one of my vehicles. You’d think for $3,000 it would do much more than just vacuum. Gosh for that much it better be able to prepare and cook my dinner too.

Maybe I’ll have to invest more than $40 on a decent sucking machine, but I’m not going near the $3,000 mark. For now, because I am cheap, I’ll stick with the race vacuuming. At least I’m getting a workout while cleaning.

Potty Mouths

03 Mar 2011 8 Comments

by Natalie in Parenting Battles Tags: , ,

Thank you Wall-E for showing my two young boys how funny it is to wear a bra on your forehead. I had to chase them down this morning and snatch away one of my most intimate clothing articles before I could get dressed.

Actually, they probably didn’t need a Disney movie to show them that was funny. They’ve been living in a world where farts, poop, burps, underwear, butts, butt cracks and other potty talk is hilarious, for awhile now. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t hear a poopy knock-knock joke or see one of their “moons.”

The problem with it is I am supposed to be a mature, respectful adult, yet sometimes I can’t help but bust up laughing at their potty language – especially when my 2-year-old screams something like “poop” during a reverent church meeting. It catches me off guard and I can’t help but chuckle.

Don’t get me wrong, I refuse to let them burp or fart without saying, “excuse me.” I actually hate those bodily functions. But there are times when they say something very random that makes me giggle.

The bad part about laughing when they are crude is then they think I like when they talk that way. So they do it more. It’s funny once. It’s not funny time after time -especially when it goes on for five minutes. That’s when I get mad and then they look at me like, “I thought you laughed at this kind of stuff.”

I don’t know the solution. I figure boys will be boys. They’re going to run around in their birthday suits when I’m trying to dress them screaming, “I’m naked.” They’re going to tell “hilarious” stories about ghosts who fart and burp. They are going to draw elaborate penciled sketches of the “poop monster.” That stuff is seriously funny to them.

I need to find a gentle way to teach them manners and what is appropriate without stifling their humorous creative minds. When I figure out how to do that I’ll let you know.

For now I’m going to look on the bright side, at least we don’t use cuss words at our house. There are lot of worse things that could be spouting from out of their potty mouths.