During our recent snow days, I decided to get out the old videos of my kids for us all to watch! Oh my, how I so easily forget all those blurry days and nights! It is so funny how with my firstborn, my hubby and I literally filmed the poor girl every single day! I was getting nauseated at the sound of my “baby voice” and how COMPLETELY ridiculous our first time parenting behavior was! Holy Guacamole! Could we be any more disgustingly enamored and mesmerized by every cheerio the kid ate??? It was hilarious to see us doting parents and how hard we tried with her to “perform” and I could count about 40 times a video shot that I said, “oh I love you soooo much baby girl!!!!”. Ridiculous! But so true to our life those first few years…until our second came. Ha! The poor guy got the short end of this deal from the moment he flew out of me!
When we were watching my daughter’s videos, my son kept begging to watch his. It was finally his turn and I played the video with his name on it, only to find more of our firstborn!!!!! POOR SON!!!!! He kept asking….”but where am I mommy???” I kept saying, “Oh honey, you are napping!”. UN believable!!! I felt horrible! It was constant filming of my daughter: Dancing and singing making up songs, her third birthday, oh and my favorite: Easter morning! Where the heck was my son when she found the goodie basket from the Easter bunny????? What a crying shame! What am I to do??? I tried to explain to my son that he was so little at that point that he couldn’t do much but let me hold him in my arms….and he stayed there ALL THE TIME!!!! Yeah- that’s it! This is just so the “second child syndrome”!! I asked my husband when he got home from work to find more videos of my poor son, and he did, but we never got to it the next day. Typical…Just so you don’t think we are horrible parents, there were SOME shots of baby boy in my arms and laying on the floor with my daughter….but certainly not enough in the videos we looked at. I am anxious to see the other ones….hoping to find my son in the spotlight!
So there are THREE distinct memories of my daughter when she was two:
My first memory was when she dialed up porn on our cable. Yes let me say that one again! My TWO-YEAR OLD DIALED UP AND ORDERED A PORNOGRAPHIC PROGRAM on the TV when I took FIVE MINUTES to go to the bathroom! She must have been pushing all kinds of buttons and simply and miraculously hit the right numbers to be viewing a horrific scene when I walked back into the room! I immediately yelled to my husband (who was in the room during all of this, apparently not tuned into what she was doing! He was working at his desk….hmmmm) I don’t know what is funnier, my daughter mesmerized in front of the TV’s sweaty scenes, or my husband calling the cable company to explain that our two year old ordered the program and could they please cancel it and not bill us??!! Oh my…. That was a good one! What would Freud say about that?
The second memory was during the steaming hot summer of 2005, and I was sick and pregnant with my son. I was teaching out of my house at that time, and we were running late coming home from the zoo (not the best idea with morning sickness and 90 degree heat). Well, right before my student was to arrive, I stepped out back to water the flowers on this sweltering hot day only to find my daughter at the sliding glass door looking at me laughing. I looked back at her and walked up to the door whereby she clicked the lock down!!! I panicked and talked through the glass in a desperate tone attempting to teach her how to push the lock back up as she then ran away from the door!!! OH MY GOSH!!!! I AM LOCKED OUT!!! I ran all around the house praying there would be some way in! Nothing….nowhere….not a window not a crack to squeeze through anywhere! I was in sheer panic mode now… Not only was my two year old running around our house unsupervised (as my mind spiraled out of control with all the things she could be getting into or maybe, perhaps she fell down the stairs and is lying unconscious somewhere!!!!! Oh dear Lord! Please get me in this house!!!) I knocked and banged and screamed for her to come to the door…..no luck. I then did what any sane and civilized mother in her first trimester with a two year old in an empty house would do…..
I literally tore the sliding glass door lock out of the wall as I used all the hormone and adrenaline steam I could muster with one leg on the wall of the house and both hands on the handle….I wailed and pulled as though her life depended on it! ( I now get the lifting of a car off a loved one scenario) Dripping in sweat I was completely surprised and totally in shock that I was standing in an open door with the hinge hanging from the lock, leaving a nice big hole in the door frame. “oh my…” I thought. Can you picture it? Yeah, pretty funny now! I was shaking and thought I was going to pass out, but the mother in me quickly closed the door and screamed for my daughter. I ran all over the house and couldn’t find her! I started crying and scurried back to retrace my steps and there she was…..Lying on the floor in front of the TV watching baby Mozart calmly sucking her thumb and falling asleep. Are you kidding me????? Then, “ding dong!!!”….. my first student arrives for her lesson. If you could’ve seen my red face and tear drenched eyes and sweat filled tank top and shorts….. “Well hello honey! Whew! Lets get started….”
Third memory, but definitely not the least! The snow day crafts reminded me of this one! I had bought a ton of craft supplies for my daughter and I to get out and make something fun! One day I pulled out all the supplies and laid them all on the floor for her to play with and us to put something creative together! The phone rings…….I take it in the kitchen and get distracted by the call. Ten minutes later I go out to the living room to find: My daughter lying NAKED amongst the ENTIRE bag of FEATHERS all over the floor as she is making “snow angels” in them! As I ran to her I noticed something far more prevalent than the feathers all torn apart and flying everywhere and deeply embedded in my carpet…. The kid urinated all over them! My darling beautiful girl is naked, and feather soaked, smiling like she has found the most perfect sensory overload she could ever find on this planet. Lets just say we never got to the craft part of the day….. clean up was traumatic and long. Feathers were still found months later around the house and in the vents. I did manage to take a few shots of her though. I must admit, even though it was quite the stinky mess, it was by far one of the cutest pictures she ever took!
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