Sorry, kids, but a helmet a day keeps Mommy's night terrors away

This post is going to start with a simple request. Will everyone please stop trying to scare the living poo out of me?

I just finished reading a blog post about car safety and children that might as well have been titled "The 10 Ways You Might Die Today and Other Fun Factoids." In this post, the author explained that, if I have anything lying loose in my car, it will become shrapnel in the case of an accident, with CDs turning into ninja throwing stars and earbuds becoming garrotes. And as I sit here basking in the article's afterglow, which has rendered me clammy and pale, I’m faced with the certainty that the umbrella that’s in my floor board will automatically deploy itself and impale us all if we ever again venture down the driveway.

But this isn’t an isolated incident. It seems like every day, my Facebook newsfeed, email homepage, DVR, and Twitter account (I should really get outside more) are all loaded up with warnings about the dangers that face my children if I dare to let them out of their beds in the morning. As someone who’s diagnosed herself with three types of terminal cancer and a flesh-eating virus this year alone, I really don’t need your help to not sleep at night. (But, hear me now, one of these times, I’m gonna be right, and on that day, my tombstone will feature a solar-powered version of the GIF below and an inscription reading, “I told y’all!”)

Anyway…………

I’ve absolutely reached my threshold for mom panic. Just today I caught the tail end of some show that I should have known not to watch because it was called “America Now,” and nothing good can come from dwelling on American now, but it was naptime, and the remote was all the way on the other side of the couch.

So, Bill Rancic (who apparently anchors the fake news now) comes on to introduce a segment about toddlers and sippy cups, and my spidey-senses start tingling because my toddler uses a sippy cup — what do, Bill?

Well according to a lady dressed in scrubs with unverified credentials, I’m not supposed to give Molly a sippy cup after the age of 1 (epic fail) because she may walk around with it and fall. Long (and horrifying) segment short, best case scenario, it will become lodged in the roof of her mouth until the end of days; worst case, they’ll have to surgically remove her front teeth through her nostrils. Admittedly, they didn’t say it so graphically or really even mention the nostrils thing, but they didn’t have to; I could tell that’s where they were headed.  

Instead, she’s supposed to already be using a lidless cup, only while seated at the table during mealtime. Shhheeee-iiiiittttt...next you’re gonna tell me that I shouldn’t let her use a steak knife or eat little pieces of her napkin. Back off, Nanny 911; this is the real world.

Now, some of you may already be following the no-sippy initiative, and kudos to you if you do. The lady in scrubs is definitely a fan. But Molly is on the go too much for me to strap her down every time she needs a drink, so the only reasonable solution was for me to invent this (patent-pending):

On to over-the-top example, part deux.

Do you know what can ruin a beach vacation faster than Sutton’s Borat impression?

Reading an article link about dry drowning on your second day there, that’s what. This situation was made far worse by the fact that Molly likes to eat pool water (panic-inducing habit #234). After each chlorine craving, she would come up spluttering like a politician, which led me to spend every night of our so-called vacation watching her sleep Edward Cullen-style. What’s worse, when she woke up in the middle of the night, as she is sometimes wont to do, I was forced to wave my hands in front of my face while saying, “Doodloo-doodloo-doodloo…This is all a dream” in my best Wayne Campbell voice. It was humiliating.

Even now, three months later, if she chokes on her apple juice or splashes too vigorously in the tub, I feel obligated to place a 24-hour ban on lying horizontal.

Nope, there’s no way to win. The world is a minefield, and unless I plan on my children living here forever (which is sooooo not happening), I’m going to have to face the truth that I can’t protect them from everything and, just like I have to pick my battles, I have to pick my worries as well. Otherwise, I can go ahead and add heart attack to my list of self-diagnoses and finally be right for once. (Psych…it was just gas.)

Sibling love: If Suttie doesn't make it, can I have his bath toys?

Right now, right in this moment, my children love each other. I mean truly, deeply care about each other, and although they fight over juice pouches and Angry Birds and the sweet spot on the couch and car headphones, there is a genuine affection between them that trumps all of that. In fact, as I’m writing, Molly is leaning over Suttie as he plays the iPad and he’s just reached up and patted her gently on the head. Of course, she’s followed that up by swatting his hand, but she only did it at half strength, which, coming from Molly, is a real gesture of love.

Case in point, last Saturday was Suttie’s first fall t-ball game and, t-ball being t-ball and four year olds being four year olds, the parents and fans spent the entire game yelling instructions like, “Run to first! No, not that way! The other way! Toward the coach! Oh My God!” or “Quit digging at your bottom and watch the ball, son!”

Now, Suttie, he’s a cool kid, but he has got to be the slowest runner in the history of t-ball. Something happens to him when he’s out on that field that makes him think it’s okay to get half way to first and then robot walk the rest of the way or practice his Gangnam Style dance moves along the path to second or throw his arms straight behind him in a failed attempt at aerodynamics that only puts him awkwardly off balance. So his dad and I spend most of the games shouting at him to “run fast” and “stop dancing” and “be normal.” Last Saturday’s opening grudge-match was no different.

But as we yelled at him to run faster, Molly became increasingly upset, and I could only imagine the direction of her thoughts: “What’s he running from? Zombies? Ghosts? Ghost zombies? If he’s gone, then there won’t be any half-eaten Poptarts lying around for me to swipe. Noooooooooo!!!!!!!!”

This process repeated every time Suttie had to run: parents yelling, Molly looking worried and crying, Grandma taking Molly away from the field, Molly trying to run away from Grandma. By the end of the game, she was pretty traumatized, and that’s when I witnessed the sweetest exchange between my son and daughter. Suttie had gone to meet the rest of his team under a tree for post-game snacks (the main reason for playing) and Molly toddled up to him, gave him a concerned, searching look, then wrapped her chubby arms around him and just held on. And after a beat, he did the same.

In that moment, I felt immense pride, not because his team won the game or because Suttie made an amazing play by stopping a hard-hit line drive (although I am proud enough to mention it here). I was proud because these two kids, my kids, were embodying everything that we’re trying to teach them about family and sibling devotion.

And this would be an ideal point to end this blog post. But I’ve never been accused of brevity, and it’s really not the end of the story anyway.  Yes, my children showed a sincere love for one another on that baseball field, but they still fight and show jealousy and get hurt feelings just like any other brother and sister pair. But now I have something to cling to in those exasperating moments. When they can’t stand to be in the same room with each other, when tattling reaches an unbearable high, when they accuse us of being unfair and playing favorites, when Molly has a crush on every one of Suttie’s friends and it aggravates him (and his father) to the core, I can think back to that baseball field and know that, foundationally, they love each other and won’t travel through this life alone.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay close as they age. I’ve seen it too often, siblings who once played innocently together growing into relationships that are rife with animosity and resentment. I think they’re safe from Cain and Abel’s fates, but I want more for them than holiday dinners and birthday phone calls. 

So, our task begins. Balancing an awareness and acceptance that they will fight, they will even bemoan the other’s existence, while reminding them of their lifelong bond and their joint obligation to pay for our luxury nursing home. Because, if worse comes to worst, as their parents, we’re more than happy to give them a shared enemy if it means that they face it together.

Are those stirrup pants because this sure feels like Nineteen Eighty-Four?

A while back, I saw a friend at the Babies R Us/Toys R Us customer service desk as she was returning a broken baby monitor and I was seeking a price adjustment on an overcharge at the register (by the way, kudos on your business operations, Mistakes R Us). And it got me thinking: how long is too long to “monitor” your child?

When we had Suttie, affordable video monitors had just come out, and I was in love. What’s that sound? Is someone trying to kidnap my baby [through a locked window on the second floor]? Nope, it’s just the little dude gnawing his crib rail into oblivion. Breathe, momma.

Or…did I just hear the dog jump five feet into the air and land in the crib, being now moments away from smothering our son? Oh, no, that was just Suttie dropping his glow worm onto the floor in an act of bedtime rebellion. Thank you, Summer Infant, because if I’d gone up to check, the sleepless vigilante would think he’d won and we’d be playing with the shape sorter at 2 am.

And I will never forget the moment when the baby monitor truly proved it’s worth. Suttie was somewhere between 18 months and 2 years (I said I’d never forget the moment, not every freakin’ detail), and after my husband checked the screen one evening after bedtime, he nonchalantly walked out of our bedroom and did double steps up the stairs. What I didn’t know is that he had seen that our son’s crib was…EMPTY! Like Easter Sunday tomb, your bank account after responding to that Nigerian prince…EMPTY! Thankfully, he opened Suttie’s door to find our smiling toddler running toward him, so proud of himself for mastering the over-the-side, use-your-tummy-for-leverage crib escape.

But when we had Molly, we moved Suttie’s video monitor from his room to hers simply because we didn’t want to buy another one. Thankfully, Suttie still thinks that Big Brother is watching him and if any of you narcs tells him differently, you can expect repercussions that would make John Gotti blush.

So now that I have no way to look in on what my four year old is up to during his bedroom hours, I’m definitely missing my powers of surveillance. Yet, if we had purchased a second monitor, when would I stop? At 6? At 10? At 18? Yeah, 18 sounds good.

But then I think of the horrors of checking in on my adolescent son because there are just some things that not even a mother needs or wants to see. And I’m not talking about picking his nose or his bottom because he would do either of those on the 6 o’clock news. No, there’s plenty that he needs to figure out on his own without his mother yelling:

“Suttie, you’re gonna go blind…”

Or his father calling out:

“Son, that move works better from behind; you’re gonna pull something!”

I know. Sutton’s disgusting.

No, it was the right move to take down the camera and give the boy some privacy, even in the age of helicopter parenting and s-mothering. And in two or three years, I’ll have to force myself to do the same for my second born because it’ll be a lot more fun to escort her into school with my rear (at least most of it…okay, some of it) squeezed into the mini-skirt that I found hidden in her backpack than it would be to prevent the indiscretion in the first place.