Hello,
Happy Saturday!
I think I have a sweating problem. Oh wait, no I don’t, it is just that lugging around and chasing after a toddler is keeping me in a constant state of motion. That would do it. I may not look overly attractive with my beat red face, but heck I am burning calories right? I practically burn the Mum Mum’s off while I am eating them! ha!
I remember the earlier days when I’d put A in his car seat and he’d just stay there, happy to just look around. I thought it was an adjustment carrying around a car seat and a diaper bag! What a joke, now that the kid comes out of the car seat and is mobile the fun really begins.
I went to the doctor’s office with A a few days ago. So much for ‘take a seat until your name is called’. My son likes to roam the waiting room, physically try to lift and move chairs, eat snacks, look at magazines, stare at everyone and talk to himself, all the while smiling his best smile, making sure everyone is looking at him. Of course they are, calling him cute and happy, which he is of course, but they left out one word: exhausting.
My name gets called. A follows me down the hallway, holding his box of raisins, dropping an odd one here or there as if he’s marking his exit route. We may have been waiting 10 mins for the doctor to come in, but it was a busy 10 minutes. I spent 9 minutes trying to stop A from touching the doctor’s keyboard and mouse. I had to replace the 4 books he kept taking off the shelf. He hid the doctor’s prescription pad someplace, I am not even sure where. His sticky fingers touched everything. At one point he was sitting in the doctor’s chair (I couldn’t resist, he looked so cute) and of course that led to the “I want to get up, I want to get down, I want to get up” game that I abruptly put an end to. He attempts to throw the wooden (popsicle resembling) sticks all over the floor. I am following him around the office making sure he doesn’t touch anything he shouldn’t (which is pretty much everything). I have on my heavy fall jacket… I can feel my temperature rising. Here come the rosy cheeks ….and of course, in comes the doctor.
It is so hard to have a conversation with someone, let alone your doctor, when there is a toddler in the room. Sure, A sat on my lap quietly for a brief moment. I distracted him with water and snacks. But then he saw something else that caught his eye so I let him down. So here I am trying to listen to my doctor talk, yet my eyes are following my child around the room to make sure he doesn’t play with something that is most definitely not a toy.
It’s time to go…..next stop, the drugstore for the prescription to be filled. It was a quick stop so I didn’t put him in a stroller or shopping cart. I carried him. Damn, 25 lbs is heavy, especially when he’s bending every which way trying to get down. At one point I think he’s gonna break his back he’s leaning back so far. He is doing this while I am trying to talk to the pharmacist, making it hard for me to focus on anything she is trying to say. I had a squirmy whiney monkey in my arms who wanted to get down, and who I wanted to let down, but I knew if I did he’d take off and I’d be the woman who chases her child around the store. What to do, what to do!
I tried one more attempt to keep him in my arms. I let him play with a (sealed) box of Advil. Hey, give me a break, it was the closest thing I could find- remember, we were at a drugstore! Not surprisingly he loses interest fast. He wants down. I put him down and he walks around me slowly, then he realizes that he is free and off he goes, trying to take every item off the shelves. I follow him around the store as we wait for the prescription to be filled and I look for anything that might distract him while I pay for his medicine. Turns out my wallet did the trick. Here I was holding A on my left hip while he was taking the cards out of my wallet, and I was using my somewhat free right hand to pay for the prescription. I was sweating.
Every day things like going to the drugstore can be so complicated when you have a mobile toddler with you. It is so much easier when my husband is with me, but that isn’t always the case so a lot of times it’s just me and A. It’s not so bad when he’s in the shopping cart, until he decides that he wants out, then it threatens to be an ugly scene. I just take it in stride….figure it out as I go along. It’d be alot easier if I had eyes in the back of my head and a third arm. But then my beat red face would be the least of my worries.
My question is, if it’s this tiring with one, what must it be like with two? I don’t know how people do it, but they do, so I am sure I could too. I’m sweating just thinking about it.
Hugs & Smiles,
Sonya
MOMMY SMILES 