List of good things

Yesterday was a perfectly miserable day of traffic jams and road-side pit stops for desperate toddlers; of losing my temper with a shivering, nervous boy and snarling at him when he freaked out and took forever to pee during said pit stop; of skidding into new classrooms and rushing back out again, with only a brief pause and a hurried goodbye; of more traffic and running into the doctor's office just in time; of a baby's heartbeat that took far too long to find, while I shut my eyes and tried not to cry; of hip pain and general pregnancy discomfort amplified by tension; of work issues and daycare issues and finally, at the end of the day, sleep and potty training issues. It sucked, and when I woke up this morning at 3 AM to change Micah’s wet sheets, I realized today wasn't going to be much better, at least on the front end.

Then, when I got to work, I remembered I needed to finish my 8-hour OSHA HAZWOPER supervisor training, which consists of a mind-numbingly boring narrated online class. That was pretty much the final straw, until I realized I could surf the net while the narrator was slowwwwwwwly droning on. And so I decided to take some time today to find things that make me smile.

1) I bought this print from papermoth on Etsy. Maybe it'll end up in the new nursery. Maybe not. But I love it, and I wanted it, and now it's coming to me. (Yay, retail therapy!)

2) Thanks to Dooce, I found this little guy from Kauzbots. He's everything a nerdy environmental engineer could want in a toy. Adorable AND for a cause near and dear to my little bleeding heart. I haven't bought him yet, but I'm thinking Micah just might need this in the near future.

3) I finally bought a wall decoration I've been eyeballing for a few months. More retail therapy, maybe, but it was fairly cheap, and it'll probably end up in the nursery too. Nursery shopping is completely justified, right?

4) I spent quite a lot of time browsing Lay Baby Lay and fantasizing about ridiculous and expensive nursery decorations. I haven’t let myself do anything like that before now, and between that and the purchasing of possible nursery items, it was very therapeutic. It was like finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be okay with this little girl.

5) I spent even more time poking around Paper Source, and found this Bunny Beanie kit. I want to get the kids together and make these sometime before Easter, because the thought of all of them running around in bunny beanies makes me deliriously happy.

6) And then, at the end of the day, I spent some time browsing a site my Aunt Bonnie linked to the other day. At the bottom of the home page, there were a few paragraphs in defense of geraniums. I happen to agree with the author; geraniums make me think of my parents' front steps, and I love their smell. And at the very end, she said:

"These are flowers through whom you can smell dirt. And all of us come from the dirt. And all of us are heading back there. Thanks be to God, for giving us a season here under the sun. Reach for it while you can."

And that was exactly the reminder I needed to put one bad day in perspective.

In which I shout a bit

The potty-training method we used to train Micah relies on teaching the kid what that funny feeling means and what to do about it, rather than just dragging them off for breaks 30 minutes apart or whatever. You can ask them repeatedly "are your pants dry?" but under no circumstances do you start timing them and forcing them to sit on the toilet when they say they don't need to go. This makes total sense to me, and obviously it worked great for Micah, because he went for a whole week without an accident at daycare.

Then there's this week, where he's started transitioning to Preschool. Apparently his new teachers aren't quite on board like I thought, with the result that yesterday he had THREE accidents at daycare, and today they just called to tell me he's gone through all FOUR sets of clothing I provided. Then they told me the "problem" is that they've been taking him every 20 minutes, and he just won't pee on command. Instead he goes later in his pants without telling them.

Well, NO SHIT.

If they're ripping him out of his activities every 20 minutes even though he's telling them he doesn't have to go, WHY on earth would he think 1) they're going to listen when he says he needs to and 2) that he needs to take even more time away from fun stuff? I mean, REALLY.

(Also, WTF, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?)

I told them to stop. I told them what had worked. I asked that they please stop driving him (and themselves, probably) crazy by dragging him to the restroom when he didn't want to go, and instead just constantly remind him to keep his pants dry. Then I got off the phone so I could passive-aggressively bitch to everyone about how these new teachers seem to be dead-set on sabotaging all the hard work we did the last two weeks with their inherently illogical approach to a child who's PROVEN he's potty trained and only needs to pee every 2 to 3 hours.

(The venting helps me get the AAAARGHWHATTHEHELLAREYOUDOING under control so I can talk calmly about this with the daycare people later today. Or maybe I should wait until tomorrow...)

And now I'm sitting at the office, imagining how frustrated and angry Micah must feel, being badgered by these strange, new people all day long. I'm actually leaning towards going and taking him out for the rest of the day, partly because I don't want them ruining a good thing and CLEARLY we need to have another talk, and partly because I just feel bad for the poor kid. But it's his first day, and I don't want to ruin it. Any more than it already is, I guess.

*sigh* There is no right answer to this one, is there?

Gah

Hey, newsflash. Toddlers can be really obnoxious. SHOCKING.

So, you know how a two year old has that special way of shrieking "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" at exactly the right frequency to melt your brain? Yeah, Micah's picked that up in the last week or two. Usually he's a fairly biddable, happy child, but every now and again, especially when we're transitioning from one activity to another, a switch flips somewhere in his cheerful little toddler mind and out comes that shriek. And at that point, no matter how calm I was in the previous moment, I swear to god, I can actually feel my eyes catch on fire.

We're still feeling our way towards the best way of dealing with this, and I think we're approaching a good, consistent solution (not a shock collar, I promise). But holy crap, it never ceases to amaze me how one tiny little person, whom I love more than life itself, can take me from doting parental affection to I will squish you like a bug if that noise doesn't stop in two seconds flat.

Anger? Or total despair?

I spent the last two days drilling. I was outside in temperatures near 100 degrees, with heat indices of 105 one day and 108 the next. I was also wearing a Tyvek suit most of the time, which is a bit like being dressed in a Ziploc bag. It was MOTHEREFFING HOT, is what I'm saying. I don't think I have ever sweat so much in my entire life. But hey, we got the job done!

Except that today, the lab called to tell me only one of our sample shipments arrived. The other half of the job? Lost by FedEx. And now, 24 hours later, in the middle of July, on a day where temperatures have reached 100 degrees, the samples are also ruined.

And so, all that work and suffering? Yeah. For nothing. We'll have to do it all over again. In, like, two weeks.

Not cool, FedEx. Not. Cool.