Countdown: Days Until Ismaeel's 3rd Birthday...

Countdown: Days Until Ismaeel's 3rd Birthday...

Countdown: Days Until Ismaeel's 3rd Birthday...

Countdown: Days Until Ismaeel's 3rd Birthday...

Epic Fail

After Picture Day with the boys, I went into the office with my outfit wrinkled and stomach rumbling without breakfast. Along the four block walk I tried to figure out which of my meetings in my triple-booked calendar I should attend in person. I chose the ever popular and anti-social answer of none and decided to dial in to my most problematic brand’s status call from the passive aggressive comforts of my office. While booting up my laptop, I discovered that my burning-hot-clickety-clicking-whirling-dervish-hard-disk decided to commit suicide. Seriously !?! Most unfortunately, yes.

Now I must brace myself for a maddening call to help-desk and think again about that breakfast I didn’t have. My company’s technical support representatives are based in Costa Rica. Their accents and friendly banter make them actually quite charming. And it is always hard not to imagine that the call-center is inside some sort of super-wired grass hut on the middle of the beach. When I am put on hold, I assume they are merely adjusting their towels and sipping their coconut drinks. I pause often to think that I am in the wrong line of work. Unfortunately, calls rarely take less than thirty minutes. And that is just to get the spelling of your user name correct to document your problem. An actual solution will take even far more time. Think days.

So, as something about inefficiencies makes me what to eat my feelings, I always enjoy having something to snack on while I re-spell my last name and first initial for the umpteenth time. And a call like this would be best served with doubleshot caramel macchiatos and a heaping stack of buttery blueberry pancakes. Nothing like a new way to make your emergency box of office Cheerios taste even blander…

And so I repeat, “M as in Mary, A as in Apple, N as in Nancy…” until they finally pull up my account. Most of my data was already backed up but the idea of losing weeks of productivity by leap-frogging between relic loaner laptops makes me want to cry. Since NetMeeting won’t work on a dead computer, Juan-Carlos opened a ticket to page someone local to come and verify that my laptop has indeed expired. Once I receive my digital death certificate – the procurement process can be initiated for my new machine.

Computer-less, I went from meeting to meeting trying desperately to follow email chains on my BlackBerry. But with six brands this is nearly impossible. I have class tonight with a midnight deadline. My husband will be out of town for the next three days and Ismaeel’s 3rd birthday party is less than a week away. Wow, who knew all of this could bubble up so quickly !?! The day hit an excruciating new low point as I needed to actually talk to people in person to keep my projects moving. I had no idea technology had become such a crutch for my hermitic tendencies.

In the afternoon, the local technician came around to certify that my laptop has passed on and drop off a loaner. It was old and full of crumbs but I still embraced the behemoth, knowing that the night ahead would be spent together chasing emails.

If not, I would have to talk to more people live tomorrow. The horror!

Countdown: Days Until Ismaeel's 3rd Birthday...

I Am Not a Pageant Mother

Today is Monday. This is the day where I not only race to early business meetings but prep the boys’ weekly supplies and lunches for daycare. Baby Siraj needs his lambie blankie, a clean crib sheet, a generous allotment of diapers, wipes, back-up clothes, and three bottles of his formula, oatmeal, and pureed fruits packed. Regardless of the menu, Ismaeel requires his own bag of “snacks” aka a full back-up lunch (vegetarian “chicken” tenders, cheese sticks, red grapes, strawberries, SIGG of organic chocolate milk, and a spare granola bar), his supply of just-in-case-clothes, and a handful of Pull-Ups. As if this isn’t enough – add the stress of prepping for Picture Day. Yes, Picture Day.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to dabble in digital photography. My beloved camera is a Nikon D90 but even this won’t guarantee a decent shot of the boys. There are indeed many aspects and challenges of parenting that people won’t admit to. Photographing a toddler and an infant together without someone breaking into fits ranks pretty high on that list. And this pertains just as much to the one behind the camera. Today, I figured I could let the professionals try their luck.

Ismaeel and I have been practicing his picture-day smile for the past week during each and every tooth brushing. So, all I needed to do was iron semi-coordinating outfits and get both boys to daycare stain and tear free. So far so good (as long as you conveniently ignore the part where I went to bed sometime after midnight and woke up four hours later to begin my Monday).

We let Ismaeel pose first and I was relieved he didn’t try to entertain the photographer with his “angry dinosaur” or “chubba wubba” routines. While his tendency to squint and over-smile made me want to shout something nearly-expletive-filled about our early morning and late night smile practice sessions – I quickly reminded myself: “I am not a pageant mother”, “I am not a pageant mother”, “I am not a pageant mother”, “I am not…”

The next few shots were of the boys together. We placed Siraj on the ground and asked Ismaeel to hug and hold him steady. While Siraj has already impressed us with his super-genius crawling skills at a mere six months – the task of sitting still reduces him to a mere weeble-wobble. He was absolutely perplexed that we were entrusting Ismaeel to hold him and kept staring at us with his little toothless mouth gaping wide open. I seriously broke a sweat trying to make him give us his usual happy-go-lucky grin - but no dice. If Siraj was smiling, Ismaeel would be busy sticking out his tongue or randomly poking at his own eye. At some point, you just have to cut your losses and promise to find these unscripted moments forever endearing.

We moved to Siraj’s solo pictures. Again, with no one to hold him – sitting alone was a major challenge. I think the best (upright) shot included a great big gummy smile but a chin full of his trademark drool. Go figure.

All in all, no one bled, cried, or fell so I consider the morning an overwhelming success. Now I just have to count down the days until the prints arrive.

7 Days and Counting

• Just an update, we still have the car rental.

All About Mii

("Trailer Trash Beauty Queen" by Ricky Gagnon)

I am a former homecoming queen. That’s right, a proud tiara wearing and red convertible riding homecoming queen.

So, it is with great humility and pain that I admit to the following…

• My Wii Fit board called me obese.

That’s right obese. I never thought I would know this word so intimately. For years, my doctors complained about me being unhealthy for being underweight. And now my Wii Mii has junk in the trunk! This cannot be happening…

I know, I know, I know... I just had a baby and it took 9 months to gain the weight so I should give myself some time to lose it but I have truly never been this heavy without being on the verge of labor.

During maternity leave, I took Ismaeel for walks every day in the park and lost nearly all of the weight relatively quickly. Since it was coming off on its own I didn’t worry about dieting or additional exercise. Sure, I was still heavier than my pre-maternity self but I could live with it.

This time around just isn’t the same. A month after Siraj’s birth, I was proudly fitting into my pre-maternity jeans but then the weight-loss party was over. Not only were the rest of the pounds not going anywhere – I think I actually gained some more. I kept waiting for it to come off but wound up scrambling to buy pants in a larger size the weekend before I had to go back to work. I felt absolutely horrible about it and to this day won’t admit what number I wear to my husband.

Life has me in a state of absolute exhaustion but I realize the more I exercise the better I should feel. So after losing a household bet about the lyrics to Route 66, my husband ponied up a Wii Fit Plus at my request. Admittedly, we have a gym in our building but I thought this would be more fun for me to do alongside Ismaeel. I’ve heard so many great stories how everyone loves it. I even know someone who lost over 20 pounds using it.

I just didn’t know it would humiliate me with such gusto in front of my entire family.

Every other day for two weeks, I tried exercising for at least 30-45 minutes. I was only that much more tired and my weight kept hovering at the same gateway pound to obesity. Figuring that I need to step it up, I started paying even more careful attention to what I was drinking and eating and tried to exercise longer for a non-negotiable 60 minutes. But that blasted gateway pound wasn’t going anywhere.

Incredibly frustrated, I am taking a break from my Wii. Between work, school, and family life - I have a lot going on. And budgeting aside 60 minutes to embarrass myself on a near daily basis really isn’t working out so well.

Mii,

I think it will be good for us to take some time apart. You know, to see if we miss each other or to realize for once and for all if it isn’t going to work between us. I really know you can be great and I don’t want to lose you but maybe I just bring out the worst in you. Let’s reconnect at the end of semester. I’ll be watching what I eat but promise not to work out with anyone else… xoxoxo Me

Royal Flush

And so the cliché’s say, “motherhood is its own reward” and in general this is true. But after successfully potty training a defiant toddler, I think I deserve something more than just a pat on the back. I’m not looking for anything expensive. Just a mere token to tell the world that I am a survivor. Perhaps an embroidered toilet badge that I can wear proudly on my sleeve or a jeweled brooch in the shape of toilet paper. And, funny enough, if you google it – it exists.

("Toilet Paper" by LiciaBeads)

Surely, I should be given something like this (or this) to let people know that I have lived through so many months of torment.

Thankfully, Ismaeel has always preferred to wear a clean diaper and around 12-18 months he was definitely self-aware and able to communicate when he needed to change. But it was always after the fact. We bought board books and a BabyBjorn Potty Chair but he only liked to sit on it with his diaper and pretend to read. If you tried to get him to actually use it – he would burst into a fit of giggles and “no no no’s”. We took this as a clue that he was not quite ready.

So we spent the next few months reading up on other potty training techniques and trying to explain to concerned relatives that we were confident he will get the hang of it over time. But in reply, we just kept receiving (albeit well-intentioned) stories of so-and-so's child mastering elimination communication before the age of 1. It was hard to graciously smile and thank people for their “advice” while repeatedly hearing that we were failures or imagining that Ismaeel would go to college psychologically scarred and wearing Depends. And as we became pregnant with Siraj, there was an even louder urgency and extended family pressure to get our toddler out his diapers. Not to mention, Ismaeel was already wearing the largest available size of Pampers. The crux of the argument was that it would be easier on me to not have to change two children in diapers. Perhaps this was true but I don’t know if anyone could appreciate how many times a day I was already kneeling down on the tile floor with nausea. Did I really want to spend another minute in the bathroom trying to build up the merits of flushing with my toddler?

I just simply couldn’t do it. Maybe if I wasn’t pregnant it wouldn’t have seemed like such an uphill battle - but I was and it did. Even though daycare tries to introduce potty time around the age of 2 – neither Ismaeel nor his friends seemed to have grasped the concept yet. I felt daunted to spend energy on something that would unravel during the day because there was no peer pressure or consistency. After a long day of work and school, I just couldn’t ignore the need to make dinner or start the laundry to be yelling about bodily functions and bathroom habits. I just tried to relax and let his friends take the lead.

Within a few months, the girls were considered potty trained. At this point, Ismaeel was now embracing his “individuality” and a new state of radical defiance. We felt we definitely missed a sweet spot but also knew we couldn’t have done anything more or earlier. And once Siraj was born and settled into a manageable routine - we began “no mercy potty training boot camp” at home.

It started with a loud declaration from my husband that “we don’t change poopy diapers anymore”. Ismaeel and I were both stunned by his serious tone while my husband tried not to giggle over his out-of-character stance. We also enlisted the help of Mitchell, a Build-a-Bear Friendly Frog wearing his own white briefs. Productive moments on the toilet received a new sticker to be placed on Ismaeel’s calendar. And while we bought backup supplies of Pull-Ups and Kandoo Flushable Wipes, Ismaeel was especially thrilled to receive his first pack of big boy underwear and use the bidet. We didn’t leave or enter the house without using the toilet first. Once we repeated the routine a few times, the stickers seem to multiply, and it became just another comforting toddler ritual. So far, so good.

Indeed, there were a few moments of horrific non-compliance and a lot of Resolve but we made it to “officially potty trained” before Ismaeel’s 3rd birthday. Granted, having only one child in diapers is definitely helping with the family budget but the issue of convenience is debatable. Absolutely, it is more hygienic for Ismaeel to use the toilet but the amount of time it takes to assist him only aids the years of my youth from circling the drain of our porcelain throne. Likewise, the whole netherworld of navigating public restrooms in NYC provides enough fodder for an entirely different blog post.

But today, I’ll just bask in the long-awaited success of telling people he’s gloriously out of diapers. Consider my back patted.