Welcome to the world of Lindsay Brown, a Sylvan Lake mom and blogger who will now be a weekly contributor to Tuesday’s Family pages.
I am horrified with my current surroundings. Clutter encompasses almost every square inch of the space that was once my living room.
Now it is a jungle gym for my three-year-old daughter and an open canvas for blanket forts and train tracks for my son Lars.
The memories of booger-free couch cushions and unstained carpets flit lovingly through my head. I often go to that wonderful place, just to take a load off if only for a few minutes. To bear in mind what once was.
All too soon reality smacks me with a vengeance when my darling daughter grabs a large glass vase that is currently housing my newest of houseplants and tips it gingerly over, smashing it to smithereens. Dirt, glass, and greenery now accompany my oh so blemished carpet.
I will admit that the children have changed me. Years ago, a bit of broken glass and dirt on the floor wouldn’t concern me. Nowadays, I am horrified over the death of my houseplant and the fact that I have to pull out our prehistoric and weighty vacuum to clean up this disaster. Let’s just say that stress has become the norm and anxiety is standard.
As a mama of two, I am constantly on the go. Whether I am running errands for my husband, scampering my three-year-old to the nearest toilet in Walmart so not to leak too many pee dribbles on their freshly waxed floor or dashing my son to play dates at the neighbours — to whom he tells horrifyingly embarrassing accounts of me — there is always a tale to tell.
This is Me Plus Three — stories, antics and a whole lot of mishap just waiting to be told from a stay at home mom’s perspective. These are the untold chronicles of a typical family of four, a place where misadventure meets humour.
Because somebody needs to say it.
• • •
There are those occasions in life that always call for celebration.
The birth of a babe, the coming together of a union, the clink of wine glasses making merry over a promotion worked hard for. And the joyous completion of potty training your last diapered child also fits in quite nicely to this category.
Not that I have had the festive pleasure of raising a glass to this accomplishment yet.
I in no way shape or form enjoy the task of training a small human to do their business on the toilet rather than in their pants, mainly because in my experience those first few days are spent cleaning up fecal matter and urine that have been lazily disposed of on the floor instead of the pot in which it was meant.
I have found poop massaged lovingly into the carpet, smeared across the freshly painted wall, as well as brown-streaked knickers hid contritely behind the toilet. I have literally seen it all, when it comes to the potty training department.
An envious disbelief overcomes me when I hear the other moms at playgroup telling of how their child was potty trained at one-year-old, and within the time frame of three consecutive days. No regression, no surrender.
“LIARS!” Is what I want to scream at these women who sit before me drinking their low-fat Latte Macchiato wearing their oh so smug faces. But instead I nod my head in agreement and pretend that I too am a potty training guru who never had pee pee problems or a poopy predicament.
The misanthropist in me is all the while screaming to be let out.
“Ah yes, that wasn’t quite my method. But similar indeed,” I will spew out, hating myself a little more with each delusional word spoken.
That is until the moment that my five-year-old son runs up to me in a mad dash, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Mama, Mama, Sophie pooped her pants!”
I scan the room to find my three-year-old girl perched atop a small plastic slide. Children surrounding her, while she laughs her mocking baby chortle in my general direction.
All I can conjure up in my mind is: Do not slide down!
My face is quickly turning a bright crimson as my previous words of wisdom in the potty training discussion have all too soon been smeared pitifully over the pink leggings of my three-year-old daughter.
And then the kid goes for it. “NO!” I can hear the word come out of my mouth but it is too late, following the child down the slide is a long loose trail of brown.
It was as I cleaned up the last paper towel load of waste that I came to a profound conclusion.
There simply is no point in trying to keep up with the Joneses, whether it is in regards to toilet training or anything child-rearing related. Kids will be who they are and cross those milestones at their own pace.
Because one thing is for sure when it comes to a kid: they will always make a liar out of you at the most inopportune moments.