fanny
Dear Ethan and Maya,
How do you define a good day? For me, it entirely depends on how many personal hygiene operations I can squeeze time to complete successfully. And listen kids, you may only see me dealing with your drool, nose booger, pee and poop ALL DAY LONG, but I AM CLEAN AND NEAT! So here we go:
Brushing my teeth = normal day.
Brushing my teeth + fixing my hair = good day.
Brushing my teeth + fixing my hair + taking a dump = OH MY GOD! MY JACKPOT DAY!
The other day I went to see my optometrist. When he’s told that I have two kids, his first response was, “Oh, you look normal!” And the reason why was because I had plucked my eyebrows that morning. And if I come to see him without plucking my eyebrows which looked so manly that last time it happened was when I was in high school, he would definitely think I am a terrible mother. Well, if I’m not able to keep up with such basic things like plucking my eyebrows, how can I prevent you both from running after each other with a knife? So, I’m determined to make myself look normal. And to achieve that, I will try to squeeze time to clip my finger nails, like at 2am where I’m absolutely free.
Over the past Stanley Cup Playoffs, besides our loss, the most memorable incident in our house was we were extremely refrained to cheer. Because it’s criminal to cheer in our house since we have a baby. A baby who sometimes only take a 20-minute nap for the entire day just because she finds her mother’s anxiety attacks somewhat amusing. And Maya, the situation has become so worse when you’ve started to wake up from your nap even if you hear I pee. Oh, I didn’t know how loud I pee. And you won’t know it until you have you own baby. You won’t understand how loud it is for certain things that used to be absolutely soundless. I didn’t know how loud I text on my Blackberry. Why I didn’t try to learn to push the buttons more softly? Whoever designed texting function without sound-proof never had kids, and anyone within a two block radius of our house can’t sleep now just because I text too loud. And what’s wrong with the hardwood floor? I swear it didn’t creak before you were born. Now it creak when a bug flies across it. It creaks so furiously that your crib will feel the screech and wake you up.
OH. MY. GOD, the doorbell just rang! What childless idiot invented the doorbell?
And when you are awake, all you want is being held. And that’s when I’m completely convinced that babies come equipped with an internal sensor that signals when you decide to sit down while holding them. Maya, your sensor is so sensitive that it sets off an alarm when my knees start to bend. So when I’m holding you, if I even think about sitting down and start to bend my knees, you start to nag, and then I stand up straight, you stop nagging. Bend, nag …… up, no nag! Bend, nag …… up, no nag! Everybody, now! Sometimes you are so tired that you will pass out in the curve of my neck and fall asleep. And that is the best reward for holding you so long – the beautiful moment where I smell your wonderful scent across my cheek.
Ethan, before your language skill is fully developed, you’ve already learned to express yourself with expletives. I have to take full responsibility about it, because it just proved how much you have heard from me saying words used to communicate frustration. And it always involves the situations that your father refuses to listen to me or forgets what I just say a second ago. I apologize to you that much of your childhood will be spent listening to me ask him if he has fixed something that I asked more than ten times, and him mumbling that he will do it tomorrow, and me snapping back that we wouldn’t have this conversation if he had fixed that before he said he would ten times ago. This back-and-forth negotiation usually takes longer than it would have taken the thing to be fixed, and always ends with me yelling OH MY GOD SHOULD I FREAKING DO IT MYSELF OR WHAT!
You’ve picked up the OH MY GOD part and have used it on several occasions. The first time you said it you were eating and playing with your bowl of Cheerios. After a while, you exhaled an aching OH NO as you flipped over your bowl and the Cheerios scattered all over the table. Before I came to your rescue, a couple of them dropped on the floor, and you became so panic that you yelled out OH MY GOD with your hands wrapping your head as if it’s the end of the world. And here you’ve started to cuss at the age of two just because your father doesn’t fix things soon enough.
In our house, no activity is more constructive and satisfying for you than watching your favorite shows. And sometimes when we run out of energy to calm down the beast inside you, we let you watch TV. One morning I let you watch Sesame Street so I could clean the house without you trying to destroy the vacuum cleaner. After the hour-long show, you came to me and requested to watch Toy Story which I refused right away. And this was one of the many instances that you would throw a tantrum, put me in a thwarting battle ready to be defeated. But this time, without any raging fits, you just grabbed my hand, pulled me closer to the remote on the ottoman, and said, “COME ON!” I froze for a while, afraid that my desire to laugh would be confusing to you. I held it back and asked you, “What did you say?” You looked up to me with a wicked grin, “I said COME ON BABY.” I couldn’t figure out where you had learned to say that. But it completely blew my mind for the fact that you know how to be a flirt before you know how to wipe your own ass.
This month marks the lowlight for our city – our Canucks were beaten in the Stanley Cup Final Game 7. We were just one game away. Bitter. Devastated. Sad. No word could possibly be close to describe how every Vancourite felt over this heart-breaking loss. As much as I wish you would be able to remember this special event, I also hope that you will not be growing up as emotionally involved into this team as I do, cause IT REALLY HURTS. I’ve mentioned how I’m affected by this group of athletes whom I don’t know personally. And the last thing I want to see is one day when Canucks lose another Championship Final, you both don’t speak a word in a long car ride because you are trying so hard to swallow that gush to sob when you see those Canucks car flags. Just like what me and your father experienced.
Love,
Mommy