Damn Raisins

Motherhood is typically not glamorous. We know this. But there are days when it is particularly not glamorous and Saturday was one of those days for me. The type where you don’t feel particularly good about the mothering job you did that day and before bed you pray for a little grace and hope that tomorrow brings a fresh day with better attitudes and more patience.

I’m trying so hard to get the house put together and baby proofed, which is easier said than done when the baby is underfoot. Or, in L.J.’s case, climbing into the (non-working) fireplace and playing in the toilet. Because those are both safe activities.

And that’s where it was already bad and got a whole lot worse.

I was trying to install a baby gate at the top of the stairs. Mike was gone and I wanted to finish getting things in order upstairs. I couldn’t do that with a wide-open stairway and a curious toddler. So I drug the gate and the baby upstairs. I thought I’d be really clever and sit L.J. in the corner with a box of raisins. L.J. thought he’d be really clever and smash the raisins into the floor with his finger. I start assembling the gate, which came complete with about 75 small pieces and less-than-ideal instructions. You can see where this is going right? So I’m sitting there cursing the gate. L.J. has abandoned the raisins and is now flinging shoes off my newly organized shoe shelf. All of the sudden he realizes that he’s five feet away from me and this is a problem. I had just figured out (after about 12 attempts) how to get the stupid gate together and had my screw in place. At that exact moment L.J. came crashing into my lap, grabbed my shirt by the neckline and hauled himself into a standing position. He started whining at a high decibel approximately an inch from my ear and pinching me with sticky raisin fingers. Of course the gate pieces I’d just figured out fell to the ground, followed shortly by the actual gate. Actual muttered cursing followed that. Or maybe it wasn’t so muttered. At least L.J. couldn’t hear me over the racket he was making.

[Omitted for brevity: the part of the above story where L.J. threw a screaming fit because I wouldn’t let him turn the bathtub faucet on to play in the water. And the second time he threw a screaming fit because I wouldn’t let him play with the packet of small screws.]

Regardless, that pretty much sums up Saturday.

Fortunately salvation arrived in the form of two good friends and a bottle of wine. And the next day we did indeed wake up with more patience and improved attitudes. At least until someone decided napping in his new room was for the birds. And thought carrots were gross and would be better off thrown to the floor one bright orange piece at a time.

Today salvation comes in the form of an antibiotic picked up from Walgreens that will cure L.J.’s double ear infection and vanquish the attitude gremlin that always accompanies it.