I am officially lactose free, and other news

While talking to my husband last night, I realized that I've had quite a few personal milestones this past week. I knew I'd been busy, but it's nice to look back and see that all that busyness actually led to some accomplishments. In bullet form, because I'm too lazy to really write:

• I weaned the twins. This is huge. It went pretty smoothly, and they don't seem to miss it too much, other than a little extra whining in the morning, and I feel unchained. Yay to not being a dairy! I can't believe I made it almost two years.
• I ran 20 minutes, in a row. I don't think I've ever even come close to that, even when I was a kid. I am just amazed by the couch-to-5k-program - I just finished week 5 (of 9), and I've gone from almost stroking out during 1 minute intervals to not struggling that hard at 20 minutes. Who knew I had it in me? Now, if I just stopped eating constantly, maybe I'd see some results...
• I finished teaching, forever. This semester was a bit of a struggle, and it's a huge weight off to be done. Done done done!
• I finished my first semester back in school. I got an A in chemistry, and I have my fingers crossed that I'll have an A in physics, too, if my professor ever posts my grade. In the meantime, I'll just keep checking every half hour. Somehow, the dream of med school seems much more attainable now that I've finished the first step, however small.
• I got a summer job, just like a real college kid - I'm going to be doing research with my physics professor, poking fungi w/sharp sticks and looking at their individual atoms under a super-cool space age atomic force microscope. AND I'll get to publish about it. AND I get paid. It's awesome.

Best of all, I have this week almost entirely free of responsibility. I'm done with school and not yet starting work. The weather is a bit dreary, but who wants to be outside anyway? I'm wallowing in lazy mornings and late showers and trips to Target with my husband.

Nutty nuthead day

Today I found out that my little boy got into the free, full-day, excellent pre-kindergarten program at my big boy's school for this fall. I am so very excited. His birthday is only two weeks after the cutoff for kindergarten, and while I'm happy about him waiting the year because of his autism issues, I think this is the perfect interim step. Plus, free, can't beat that. And it means my mom won't have to run all over with the twins to get him to and from some half-day program while I'm at school full time. Anyway, this is probably not all that exciting to anyone but me, but I'm very relieved and happy.

And in honor of my silly child, a story from the grocery store today - we were walking down the cereal aisle, browsing, and he said "why is everything we can't have delicious?" Wise words from weird wee bits.

Wow, did I speak too soon

I firmly resolve to never admit in writing to being even momentarily pleased with my children. Two of them have spent this afternoon being the biggest assholes they can possibly be. I have left my cool so far behind, I barely remember feeling anything other than rage and despair about this whole motherhood thing.

I hardly ever comment on the trauma of step-parenting on this blog, but this time I simply must. I believe that putting a child on psychotropic medications for no other reason than that a parent can not or will not handle said child is nothing short of child abuse. Take a perfectly happy kid, put her on an SSRI because she doesn't listen (I've looked at the specs of the SSRI, by the way, and nowhere does it say that it makes children behave - on the contrary, the specs explicitly say this medication is not for use by children), and then be totally fucking amazed when that child becomes a jittery, orally-fixated basketcase. Her mother actually gave her a rubber thong to wear around her neck and chew on like a portable petri dish to try to stop her from eating her hair - obviously a better solution than not drugging the shit out of her as an alternative to actual parenting. There is nothing as consistently frustrating in my life as loving these children and seeing so clearly when they are being mistreated and being able to do exactly nothing about it.

Oh, and girly's cough is back with a vengeance, boy twin has a fever, and my husband and I are both starting to feel a little under the weather. I was thinking earlier, after girly threw up from the phlegm, that the best thing about having only one child must be the knowledge that the vector of illness doesn't have all that far to go - in our house, it can take literally weeks for an infection to burn its way all the way out - but listening to my children pick and fight and torture each other all. goddamned. afternoon makes me think that maybe there are other downsides to this large family thing, also. Happy fucking mother's day.

Mother's Day

Sometimes I feel like the most unsuitable unfit mother. I always love them perfectly, but rarely show it perfectly. I am far too selfish and impatient to be the mother my children deserve, the mother I wish I could be. Since I started back to school and the twins finally started sleeping, I've felt my lack even more acutely - am I hurting my kids by pursuing my own dreams? Am I taking too much time away from them for classes and homework and friends and my own life in general?

Thank goodness for Mother's Day. For this morning at least, I feel like I must be muddling through okay. To quote Sally Field - they like me, they really like me. All of my big ones have drawn me pictures and brought me treats of their own creation. My stepson drew a picture of our family in which I was labeled "Mom," which may be the best Mother's Day present ever. My four year old is singing "Happy Mother's Best Day to You," to the tune of "Happy Birthday." My girl twin is finally over the worst of her mystery fever, which may not be for me but makes her a much more pleasant member of the family. Everyone is being cheerful and kind to each other and only regularly destructive, and we're going Go-Karting in a while and life feels at least temporarily in balance.

I am so fortunate, and so are my children, that there are so many wonderful mothers in my life. My own mother has always been a model of patience and selflessness, and I try to live up to her example while my family and I benefit from her steadying presence every day. My grandmother was the kindest person I've ever known. I still miss her and I wish my children could have known her. My mother-friends save my life and sanity every day. When I had my first child, I didn't have many close friends who were mothers, and I felt so alone with my inadequacy and panic. Now, seven years later, I feel part of a network of incredible women, incredible mothers, and I don't know how I could go on without them.

Why is it so much harder to write what's real and important? I am not "only" a mother, there is more to my ever-shifting sense of self, but if I suck at this the rest seems pretty pointless. It's nice to have days like this, with or without the holiday label, that make me feel like I'm at least generally on the right track.

I may write my next post from prison...

...as I may be committing child abuse tomorrow. Surprisingly, not against one of my own children. This did start, as most of my parenting problems do, with my now-7-year old. He came home from school extra-surly today, and progressed through all of the negative emotions as the evening wore on until he peaked at near-hysteria just before bedtime. While I tucked him in, I finally got him to tell me why he was acting like he was possessed by evil spirits, and it turns out some little bastard in his class is bullying him. I got in over my head with the boy-raising fairly quickly and brought my husband into the conversation. Together, I hope/think we bolstered his weenie little spirits enough to survive another day.

Also, my girly has an inexplicable fever of 102. I am sooooo done having children, in case anyone was wondering.

Birthdays and Bodies and Bitchiness, oh my

I know, I know, I suck at blogging. I think about it, but I think I'm developing some sort of adult-onset ADD, compounded by a serious case of PMS. It's actually been a lovely few days, with gorgeous weather and happy children and fun with friends, but I have two tests in the morning and my children are being even more than usually obstreperous and my heart is actually beating funny in time with my general irritation. I did not miss this part of being a girl while I was pregnant all those times. It makes me mad every month. I'm done with babies! No more fertility for me, thanks.

So, in the interest of not being all-bitch, all-the-time, and to further delay the inevitable panicky last minute studying I've already postponed repeatedly (oh crap! hurray! I JUST as I was typing this sentence found my chem book. That's got to be a good omen), I have to comment on the BodyWorlds exhibit my friend and I went to at the Maryland Science Center today. It was so amazing, although I was surprised that it made me a little woozy at first. Nothing awful, not as bad as the first time I watched someone get his jaw wired at the hospital, but more than I expected. The bodies are all sliced up to reveal different aspects of their anatomy, and in many cases certain external features like eyebrows and earlobes and belly-buttons were reattached to the outside, which somehow made them seem both more and less life-like. There was also one whole section on fetal development, which was one of my favorites, although I did wonder how they managed to sneak all the dead fetuses past the right-to-lifers who won't even allow embryonic stem cell research.

It was so pretty out that we went paddle-boating in the harbor after the museum. I've always wanted to do that, but somehow I never get around to doing touristy things in my own city. I also got my very favorite peanut butter ice cream from Lee's, served by a nearly-comatose young man named Duane (he really seemed to be worse at consciousness than customer service, like just breathing in and out was taking most of his limited capacity for thought and action). See how I have absolutely no room for complaint? Stupid hormones, making me grumpy. It's even more frustrating to realize that my big girl's hormones are probably responsible for her insanity, too, and that we're just feeding off each other and into some awful stereotype. Thank goodness I'm hiding in my room, purportedly studying. Better get on that.