Manic Monday

It's been one of those days. In fact, it's been one of those WEEKENDS! My parents were in town . . . for some of you, I could probably end my post there and you'd understand why my head is splitting, I'm begging my children to keep napping and I dread looking past my keyboard at the clean up awaiting me. But those of you blessed by non-chaotic family visits and uncomplicated family relationships, I'll be a bit more detailed.

It has been go, go, go around here for weeks and promises to continue being so until the end of August. I feel like a sprinter, goal in sight, but barely sucking oxygen. It's all burn, baby. My mom arrived late Wednesday night and my dad followed suit on Thursday night. We shopped for school clothes, cooked, picnicked, went to the zoo, etc. The kids had a blast and subsequently, were nasty little pills! It's one of the ironies of parenting -- do something fun and special and be rewarded by tired, grumpy and demanding tots. Kinda makes you want to limit activities to only the dull and boring in order to save yourself the trouble of deprogramming them when the fun and games are over. 

I'm not even sure where to begin with all the ways that this weekend was exhausting -- how about a few sound bites:

1. "He's so manipulative and conniving. Don't get me wrong, he just so smart." Um, ok, mom. Kinda hard to take that in a kind way . . . Big D is a very smart 5 year old and yes, he is limit testing and no, I don't want you to notice! Unless it's to say that I'm a fabulously patient and totally with it mom who is not going to ruin her children. 

2. "Well, guess we know who's in control" -- this in response to my fully thought out (and totally desperate) decision to give Hannah milk after an hour power struggle at bed time. The kid is whacked out on chocolate (thanks, Nana. This will apparently be her drug of choice), over stimulated and fatigued (did I mention SHE'S TWO). 

3. Many helpful observations about better deck stain choices (already stained, thanks), my weed whacking technique and advice on how to better manage my life (it's all in the "chunking").

4. Ongoing commentary on the relative "fattiness" or healthfulness of various foods and others' physical attributes (generally related to "fattiness"). 

5. On the spot questions where the answer has been presupposed. Like, "How could young women/mothers defile their bodies with piercing and tattoos?" Kinda makes me want to run out and die something an unnatural color or suggest that I could be in the market for breast implants.

Here's the thing, I love my mom and would NEVER say these things to her. See what wonderful tool this blogs is for catharsis!  Of late, after my mom's visits I begin hearing her voice and seeing her mannerisms in me. And I think, "My God, it's happening! I'm morphing into my mother." I've dreaded it most of my life and now I can actually see and hear it happening. So what do I dread exactly? That I will one day decide that I "know" how things should be done or what's best and that I'll feel not just free to share these opinions but a moral obligation to do so. That my own thinking will become rigid and fixed. That what I consider now to be a more progressive and open perspective will one day be as embarrassing and uncomfortable for my daughter as my mother's can be to me . . . 

My own sweet girl had an EEG today to see if they could detect any irregularities that would explain the seizure she had a week and a half ago. Despite being kept up two hours past bed time last night and then woken two hours early this morning, she was angelic! It was a bit rough in the car on the way to the hospital (via the airport to drop Nana off) but once there, she was cooperative and sweet. When she is dropping off to sleep, she twists her hair and sucks on her bink. She would have loved to have gone to sleep during the test but she could not get to her hair as there were 28 electrodes stuck all over her head . . . so she played with my hair. She lay very still, holding my hand and occasionally opening her eyes to grin at me. Recently she has been very mom-needy and I'm eating it up. She's unbelievably precious to me.

Perhaps this is what makes my own relationship with my mother so bitter sweet at times. I fear being duped into believing that I know my daughter when perhaps, like me, she feels as if she and I are on different planets. 

I feel some what guilty about my mom-critiquing so let me end on this note. I made a damn list and chunked all my damn stuff. The damn is to help me feel better about saying . . .  Turns out that's a pretty damn good idea.