My sister and I are about five years apart. I often am grateful that my kids are two years apart, because they are growing up to be pretty close and I hope that they are like that in their teenage years, because right now, they’re built in friends. I know it might not always be like this. I know there are going to be times when there are going to be wars of epic proportions in this house and I’m going to have to remove doors because I’m sick of hearing them slam. And don’t think I won’t do it, dear children of mine.  JUST TRY AND CROSS ME!!  Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all cappy on you.

But because my sister and I were a little bit further apart in age, we were usually fighting with each other. A lot of this had to do with sibling jealousy. She was the youngest. The “baby.” And all of the older cousins and people in general would gravitate to her. Blonde little petite annoying pain in the ass. Yeah, I can see how that magnetic personality would shine through. Sorry, seven-year-old jealous is coming out in me. Mental note: talk to my therapist about my early childhood feelings next week.

But there were times where we definitely would entertain each other, and actually got along. Usually though, getting along involved violence: (insert squiggly dream lines here).

Our neighbors often went away for the summer, and as it used to be, in the 80′s, they would just leave their pets home and let the neighbor kids go over there a couple of times a day to make sure they were still alive. None of this cushy, hire a professional pet babysitter, or take them to a posh pet hotel business. Rely on irresponsible children, who would go over and squat in your house all day, and eat all of your food, and watch your cable (because their cable was better than your cable, even though it was exactly the same thing).

For whatever reason, this one particular summer, I was on my mother’s shit list. And she wasn’t allowing me to watch TV, or breathe, or look in her general direction. I don’t know. My sister was in charge of the neighbors dog for a week, and therefor, we had free reign of their TV. So on this hot summer day, we basically let the dog in from the garage, and let her lounge in the air conditioning while we watched endless episodes of Saved By the Bell, or some other such nonsense.

And then things got ugly.

We decided to play this game of chicken. Not the kind you play in the pool. This particular game, you clasp hands, and then gleefully slap the backs of the other person’s hand with your free one. The purpose is to a. see how red you can make the other person’s hand, and b. get the other person to say “chicken” or “ow, motherfucker!” Whichever comes first.  So it started innocently enough. Slapping hands. But the game didn’t stop there.  we moved onto other limbs. Seeing how detailed we could make a handprint on the other person’s skin. We retreated to opposite couches for a bit of a reprieve, and because the commercials were over.  I was (probably) immersed in Jesse Spano’s Oscar worthy performance of “When teens take diet pills” scene, when all of a sudden, I see nothing but hands, knees and elbows come flying at me in a fit fury.  ”CHICKEN!”  And she slaps me on the leg. She had built up momentum from hurtling through the air. The sound of the crack was deafening. Left behind on my thigh was a bright red, tiny handprint. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.  I’m pretty sure I punched her in retaliation That fucker won that round…

I kind of miss her right now, and if I saw her, I would probably leave one of these little marks of love on her.

Since my sister has moved to Japan, we’ve talked more than we probably ever have in our whole life. Stick us in the same house, and we’ll probably still beat the ever living fuck out of each other. Put us on opposite sides of the planet and we’re best friends.  Often we reminisce over our childhood. She remembers things that I have no recollection of.  In fact, most of the time, I’m pretty sure she’s just making them up:

Her: Remember when you gave my hamster mouth to mouth with a straw? And you did it on top of the TV because she was cold and it was warm on top of the TV (Ahh the TV’s of the 80′s. Giant wooden boxes of fire, they were).

Me: I actually sort of do remember that. Do you remember when you had a pet ladybug?

Her: LADY!!!!!  

Me: And I distinctly remember being in the Best Western in Cambridge, and you accusing housekeeping of kidnapping her. And you were even more devastated when you found her legs up on the carpet. I don’t think we got any sleep that night.

Her: What the hell was wrong with me?  I had a fucking PET LADYBUG. Why the hell did I think that was a good idea?

We were weird children. I remember her going through a phase where she wore head and wristbands. Refused to take them off.  Either she’s now a secret tennis pro, or she suffered from some sort of disease where she had cold wrists. My weird phase was the posters of Bette Midler, along with Kirk Cameron, and Dokken on my walls (and the funny thing is, I was totally a Poison fan, I didn’t even really like Dokken that much, and couldn’t tell you a single song that they sang if you asked me today. Go ahead, challenge my Dokken trivia, I DARE you).

I want to hear your weird sibling stories. They would want you to embarrass them. Trust me.

Last year, I wasn’t too embracing of the fact that my son had turned four.  Rather, I was kind of pissed at his behavior.  Four was supposed to be awesome! Epic! This is what I was told! It’s a guarantee! Exclamationy point goodness!!!!!!!

So I couldn’t go into my whole asshole birdy, twitterpated, “oh my god you guys, life is so beautiful” German lacking, heartfelt “I can’t believe he’s another year old,” posts.  Because, truthfully, he started out four as being kind of a dick.  That’s right. There’s the Statia you know. The one that never sugar coats anything. Granted, it was all related to ear infections and antibiotics. Because not long after he got better.  It got better, and seriously you guys, four was the best year we ever had.  Oh my god you guys, life is so beautiful.

First of all. I can’t believe I have a five -year-old. FIVE! I still sometimes feel like I’m 18 and too young to have a kid that old. And then I wrench my back, or pull a muscle, and I’m reminded that I’m closer to 40… you know what, it isn’t important.

I had his, most likely final IEP meeting with our local Intermediate Unit.  I’ve already met with his new team for his Kindergarten IEP. My kid. He starts kindergarten. In the fall. It doesn’t compute. Anyway, his IEP meeting, his BSC (fancy term for behavioral therapist, she helps him with social interaction), who is very awesome and has done so much for the Mini, has basically made the decision to cut back her services. It’s time. All these years of having my hand held, and him having various therapies, and now he’s flourishing. The best possible outcome we could have hoped for. It’s amazing to see the transformation of his language and processing. His problem solving. This amazing kid he’s become. Funny, and smart. He’s always been smart, but he couldn’t articulate it the way he can now. The things he does. It blows my mind. After four years, I finally feel more relaxed about his development. I let him go on his first play date by himself. He talks about having sleep overs with his friends. It makes my heart shatter in a million little pieces. But no longer is it fear. It’s joy. That little infant I brought home. That little stranger, who was so long a mystery to me, is now someone I know with confidence.

I know, I need to stop with this hurly mess.  I KNOW.

Well, hey, so, glad you liked the whole video thing. VLOG. I think the word VLOG sounds worse than BLOG. I think both of them sound like a venereal disease. I’m not sure which one would itch worse. I’m guessing vlog. So, here you go. Statia, now with more itching. Wait, no, that sounded bad. Making YOU more itchy. Giving you more VD.

Allright, all THREE of you. Vlog? I loved it. After 36 years, I love hearing myself talk. It’s not an ego thing, or an arrogance. I’m just more comfortable with it. And it was something I wanted to do. Input?

Ever wondered what I sound like?  Do you care?  Probably not, but I thought that maybe I might be able to explain how ridiculous this kids book is to you in more time than it would take you to read what I have to say.  I’m going to waste about 6 and a half minutes of your time.  You’re welcome.

I came across a link on facebook about living through the toddler years. And whoo-boy, the toddler years, boy they suck, huh? Having done it twice in two years, I don’t really think I set myself apart from anyone else. People have done more, in less time, but your experience is your own, and everyone has their own threshold of what they can handle. Like I’ve said said, I couldn’t handle more than two kids. Funny, because when I was younger, I always thought I wanted a litter of kids. Of course, I was still a kid myself, and I thought I was fucking awesome. My mother has a different opinion, natch.

And in part, I’m still living through those years, with LG rapidly approaching three in a couple of months, I can slowly understand that feeling of the fog, and it lifting. Four years of toddler-hood is just way too long. Way.too.long. 

A lot of people who are pregnant or have kids younger than mine, are always asking me for advice, and despite the fact that I still feel like I have no god damned idea what the hell I’m doing on a daily basis, people will still ask and hang on my every word, like I’m some kind of expert. I love helping people, and I love to talk, so this is a good combination. It’s like, I give someone disposable advice and I save money on therapy bills. It’s a win for everyone.  ”Whatever you do, don’t do this, trust me, you’ll thank me later.”  Or, “Yeah, that age just blows ass, HAVE FUN!”  I have the propensity for never sugar coating anything, and maybe that’s why so many people come to me and ask me what’s up ahead.  Maybe it’s my experience with having a child who was developmentally delayed. I can talk a blue streak about that, and I’ll never tire of helping someone in that situation.  I believe advocacy is the best prevention.

But, toddlerhood. Yeah, I’m no different than anyone else, I suppose, except that I had one toddler who was atypically developing and one who was, so it left me with the experience of no comparison between the two (and a feeling of having the wool sort of pulled over my eyes).  The Mini did do typical things, but he also did many things out of order.  LG was and is pretty typical for a toddler.   But, her toddlerhood seemed much, much longer.  The Meester asked me a month ago: “doesn’t it seem like she’s been two forever?”  Dude, YES!!! Resoundingly, fucking YES!!!  But, as my mother pointed out, she’s been two, since she’s been one.  It’s so true.

For as much as I remember toddlerhood, I often look to this blog to remember shit that happened, especially in the past four years. Things I know about toddlerhood:

• Compare kids.  Even though they say not to, averages are based on comparison.
• Three sucks.  Three sucks HARD.  Far worse than two.
• Four is awesome, but that’s probably because they’re not really considered toddlers anymore.  Enough said.
• What one goes through, the other won’t.  Typical or not.   Unless you only have one kid, you won’t make it through unscathed.
• Ignore that bullshit phrase, “appreciate it now, because you’ll miss it when its gone.”  You miss everything when it’s gone. Especially donuts.  But you can’t really fully appreciate a phase until it’s over.  And you’ll always look back on the phase with some sort of fondness.
• It’s absolute hell, though.  Even if you have a laid back kid, it’s still hell.  Toddlers are aliens.  They suck your brain power and your will to live, and if they had even a remote understanding of things, they would absolutely shove a probe up your ass. I’m (mostly) not even kidding about that.
• You can’t control them anymore than you can control the weather.  Mother nature is volatile and so are toddlers.  The only thing you can do, is the same thing you would do for mother nature: emergency preparedness. There’s no secret to this, since every make and model of toddler is different.  It’s called, whatever works for you, and whatever gets you through the day. The thing is, as much as you want to bend their little minds to your will, they’re already their own person.  The only thing you’re doing is guiding them through life, hopefully on the right path. You’re just helping them make the best choices.
• Potty training feels like it will be the death of you, but like anything else, it’s a learning experience and a notch in your belt.

Like anything else, it has a beginning and an end. Yes it’s difficult. But any other parent of older children tell me that other ages are difficult too. It’s just the lack of communication at this age is pretty shitty.  They can’t communicate, so they find other ways. Going boneless, hitting, biting (thank god I’ve never had biters or hitters. In that regard, my kids have been pretty good), telling you no (I hear this never gets better), inappropriate attention seeking behavior.

My kids now play with each other.  They are like built in best friends.  They can rally a little more now that they’re a bit older.  It used to be that I would stress immensely about them getting to bed on time, and staying up past their bedtime, dealing with the fall-out for the next couple of days. It will still get the best of us, sometimes.  Usually by the end of the weekend.  But the fact that you can now (finally!) have a conversation with them, and the fact that they’re interested in things and actually talking to you about it with big dramatic gestures is so totally awesome. I mean it.  Maybe it’s a little extra sweet for me.  The Mini’s conversational skills seemed like they took painfully long to develop. But, it felt like one day, a light bulb went off, and BOOM! It wasn’t like that of course. It’s the always present rose colored glasses. When I think back to last summer, I remember him working really hard on those conversation skills.  Re-iterating, back-tracking; telling me so that I could finally understand.  But that’s a post for another day.  My pride can’t fit into a few short sentences.

What I know is this:  If you can survive the toddler years, it will be hell.  The hours are long. The hours are thankless. But the other side is there.  File those fleeting awesome toddler days in your mental storage to help you get through the bad days.  One day you’ll wake up and you’ll feel like things are all rainbows and unicorns.  One day you’ll be able to do all of those cool things you always dreamed about when you became a parent.

P.S. Don’t be afraid to drink a beer or a glass of wine in the middle of the afternoon.  It definitely takes the edge off.

Last weekend, the most random email popped up. It was someone contacting me through etsy:

Hello Statia,

My name is Kathy. I currently live on Pepperwood Way. We received a piece of mail for you today (hopefully you are the same Statia it is addressed to).

It actually looks like something important, or else I would not have bother to try and fine you.

Grammatical errors aside, It was so random. About as random as getting another letter from the California State Controller’s office, telling us that they wanted to give us a check for $150 dollars. It’s not Ed McMahon with Publishers Clearning House, or anything, but I’m not going to poo poo it. I thought, well, shit, maybe this other letter was from Ed McMahon. Something tells me, the woman, probably wouldn’t have looked for me if there was a check for a bazillion dollars.  Just a hunch.

Equally as surprising, it was a letter from our old fertility clinic. “Hi, we haven’t heard from you since 2006, did you know that you still have frozen embryos?”

You know, having had two kids, one the old fashioned way, the pain of fertility has faded a bit. Whenever I hear someone going through fertility treatments, the flashbacks come back, in some cases, intensely. All of a sudden, I can’t shake that funky black outlook I once had on the life I had pre-children.  I guess that pain never truly goes away.  So when hearing this unexpected news, I was thrown back into those dark days all over again.  It sucks, really, because I’m just coming out of the waters of some other dark days, and I’d like to keep it that way for awhile.

The thing is, I haven’t given those embryos a thought in years.  Because I was under the assumption, and I could have sworn, that we had signed paperwork to have them destroyed after a year.  I guess that adage about assumption is true, then.  Even the most crisp of memories is buried in a blur of other things.

And we’re truly done having kids. Two is all I can handle. My uterus has been set on fire, and I buried that hatchet a year and a half ago. I’ve passed the torch onto my sister, wherein, I’m STILL WAITING for a niece or nephew.  Ahem.  I cannot be prevented from sniffing baby head forever, you know! BUT! Now, here we are, with these embryos. We can have them destroyed, or we can donate them.  Neither of these options for me is desirable. One, they’re my babies. And while I like to think my self as a pro-lifer, who still wonders what came first, the chicken or the egg, I can’t just stomach the thought of destroying those little clusters of cells. Even if they feel no pain. Two, I can’t think of my own genetic makeup, sitting in someone else’s uterus. Or think that somewhere, a part of me could be running around this earth, someday finding out that they’re genetic make-up is different than their parents, and “does cancer run in my biological family?”  I would never take a family unit away.  They were raised by someone else, who would be their true parents, but, genetically, they’re still a part of me.

And maybe that’s selfish, because I DO know that so many others are going through their own struggles, and I wish I could wave a magic wand.  It shouldn’t be that difficult to achieve.

I look at my own two children, who were once just embryos themselves.  Mere cells, that have grown into walking, talking people, with big personalities.  Even on the days it drives me insane, I’m still amazed by them.  I’m proud of what they’re becoming. And I wonder what kind of greatness the others would be destined for.  And it makes the decision so hard.

Let it be said that I lasted seven months without cable.  I technically could treat myself to a handbag with all of the money we saved from not paying for cable for that long, but I probably won’t be that frivolous.  Mainly because I’ll be too busy cracking out on all of the crap TV that missed.

I can say I did live without cable, and I know that I can.  But never again, do I actually want to do something as stupid as this stint.  It rates right up there with not having a dishwasher.  Both are pretty much like living in a third world country.  And if I ever say something like, “we’re going to get rid of our toilets and have privies in our back yard,”  please beat me over the head.

One of my biggest demons is medication. I really have no other way to put it. There are millions of people on some sort of anti-depressant nowadays, and yet, it’s still a stigma. Honestly, I don’t even really feed into the stigma. Obviously, if I’ve told the internet about it. But my mental anguish about taking medication runs high. Kind of funny, no?

Here’s the thing. I have no judgement whatsoever about other people taking medication. I mean, if you need help, there’s no question. But for me, I feel like it’s a crutch. A band-aid. And not just me, personally, I think that way about everyone. And what I mean, by that, because that sounded like some giant contradiction, is that, the actual medication itself, is just masking a problem, rather than actually fixing it, as a general whole. Because you’re not weak if you need the medication. But it’s a fact that most people don’t actually get the true help they need. They mask it with medication. And I’m not excluding myself from that. Because at one point or another, I’ve done the medication without therapy.

Part of my therapy, was trying to come to terms with needing a medication. I’m not accepting it whole heartedly. I had to go back on medication, which for me, feels like I’m a failure. My defeatist attitude, getting me nowhere, I had to explore why this is such an issue with me. I brought it up one day, in my lovely little group. The therapist explained the whole therapy success by itself.  Medication success by itself, and of course, medication plus therapy, together equaling greater success. Studies have been done.  I haven’t yet really read up on these studies. I’m trying to take things one day at a time. This was explained on a much more vague level at the hospital. But that fog prevented it from sinking in. Funny, how hearing it from someone with less credentials than a doctor, can make you more accepting of it. Hearing it from doctors, whose sole job is to push medication, is another issue for me.

I’m still struggling with it, but not as much as before. My inner hippie wants to find something that works on balancing out the brain chemicals, more naturally, without the shitty side effects. St. Johns and all of that stuff isn’t really something that works.   Maybe at some point, I’ll actually be OK without the aid of a chemical. I’m sure it’ll be after bucket loads of therapy. I guess in the meantime, I’ll swallow that “jagged little pill.”