Momedy

Some questions, I want answers to. If you looked at my Google search history, you might find things like “What kind of disorder does my three-year-old have if she loses her mind when her ducky humidifier “Duck duck” isn’t turned on for one night?” or “what kind of disorder does my son have if he can’t eat a cookie without screaming for 45 minutes afterwards because I deny him a second one?” or “What kind of disorder do I have if during craft time with my daughter I made a countdown to wine-o-clock?”

She made coffee-filter-watercolor-pipe-cleaner butterflies.

I made this:

Then Evelyn made it into a sticker chart for me.

Pinterest that.

If it were possible to include images in Google searches, you might find in my history “What kind of disorder does my daughter have if she makes this face every time I tell her to smile?”

Thanks to Faith Photography, by the way, who can somehow make even a sneak peek of Lottie’s newborn pictures featuring that face on Evelyn adorable.

But seriously. All I can hear when I look at that is Monica Gellar’s voice saying “Chandler! What is the matter with your face!?”

These are things I’d like to get to the bottom of. Though I do get nervous as I search for answers to these questions and and wait for “Cancer, cancer, alcoholism, cancer” to appear, respectively.

Then there are threads I don’t want to pull at. Like the fact, for example, that Evelyn woke up with an accent on Tuesday morning.

Monday morning she went to bed just fine. Tuesday she woke up mispronouncing vowels that she’s had mastered for months. I can’t tell if it sounds more like she’s channeling her inner Scarlett O’Hara, her inner lifelong New Yorker, or if she’s been watching too many Mark Wahlberg movies. Whatever it is, she sounds ridiculous.

What you’re hearing here is “I dropped the cap.” What it sounds like is “I draaaaped the cap.”

Also worth noting about this video is that her hair hasn’t been brushed in two days, her (mismatched) clothes are completely covered in stickers that I WILL forget to remove before washing, there is a crack in the lens on my phone that makes it look like there’s a sunbeam in every single photo I take, and there are about 12 layers of artwork on the fridge because I can’t bring myself to throw anything away but have no organized place to store it.

Pinterest that.

Another thing I’ve stopped looking for an answer to is my children’s eating habits.

I fell in love with Eric about an hour and a half into our first date. An hour and forty five minutes in, I almost got up and walked out when he said “You know, I’m not a “live to eat” kind of person, I’m more an “eat to live” kind of person.”

As it turns out, not only are my kids also not “live to eat” people, they may not even be “eat to live” people.

I’ve always abided by the whole “They eat what we eat” rule, and I’m not about to replace food they’re not eating with food I know they will eat (which this week is a list of exactly four things — Ice cubes, ice chips, shaved ice, and Graham Crackers.) I figure if they’re hungry, they’ll eat what’s in front of them. Eventually. Right?

Here you have Evelyn’s dinner. It’s also her lunch, but since she didn’t touch it at lunch, she had it again for dinner. There’s a chicken and cheese sandwich, two cooked carrots, two crunchy carrots, two cherry tomatoes (which last week she couldn’t get enough of) a little bit of BBQ chicken salad, and a string cheese.

Not a single bite of this was eaten. Not one. Not for lunch or for dinner, which means she hasn’t eaten anything in over 12 hours.

Tonight’s Google search reads “Is it child abuse if my kid’s been on strike for 12 hours and I still haven’t caved and made her Mac and Cheese?”

What may not be obvious about this picture is that she’s three boogers deep in a meal of snot. I’ve given up trying to stop her from picking her nose, because a) it’s just impossible and b) I keep hearing booger-eaters are healthy.

Also there’s a spot at the bottom right corner of her mouth that she just cannot stop licking and as a result has gotten so chapped that it is cracked and bleeding and will. not. go. away.

Anyone have any tips for that? Because I’m scared to Google it.

The only person in my household who doesn’t have me searching for answers these days is Lottie, and that’s only because I’ve been through this twice before and there’s no projectile vomit or stool consistency she can throw at me that I haven’t seen already.

Or, maybe it’s because by the time she finally gets my undivided attention, the other two are in bed and it’s finally wine-o-clock and I’m a little more relaxed about everything.

Tomorrow during craft time I’ll be making a countdown to the weekend and therefore to an extra set of hands around here.

Maybe I’ll finally clean some artwork off the fridge, maybe Evelyn’s hair will finally get brushed, maybe Evelyn’s accent will disappear, maybe Evelyn’s smile will normalize … maybe Evelyn will give me a day without something to worry about.

If not, there’s always wine.