There are certain things you find as a parent – like poop on new carpet or a month-old cup of milk under the couch – that are hard to find the humor in.

Then there are others, like when the entire upstairs has been toilet-papered but your toddler is so cute as she’s crying that she was just trying to “Wipe her butttttttt” that it’s hard not to start laughing.

There is little that strikes me funnier during the day than happening upon a scene Evelyn has just abandoned. Her mind is equally fascinating and terrifying, as evidenced by this manger scene I found last Christmas.

My assessment is that the baby Jesus is being held hostage by one of the three kings on the roof, while a distraught Mary searches for him in the carnage of a fruit cart accident involving her husband, the livestock, and one of the herald angels. (I was surprised to see that there was a fruit cart at the birth of Jesus, but that’s Fischer Price’s doing, not Evelyn’s.) I think the Donkey is behind the whole thing. He looks way too relaxed, eating his hay like “Nothing to see here, move along.”

I was equally entertained by this picture Evelyn put together in her sticker book.

I’m concerned that neither the riders nor judges look as though they think this scene is out of the ordinary, and I won’t even talk about what it looks like the one in yellow is in the middle of doing. I am glad that she decided to get at least one of the riders dressed –  it’s a step in the right direction, but I think a turtleneck is the wrong look for that haircut. I’ll need to have a talk with her about that.

Equally entertaining is where she chooses to squirrel things away. Like this day, when Eric and I spent all morning looking for the DVD remote. I received this text from him that afternoon.

Evidently she thinks we should keep the remotes in the pantry.

I’m under the impression she is working on a book about home organization, because that same week I discovered that she thinks her jewelry should be stored here…

…and I’m constantly finding my picture frames moved to places like this:

or this:

I’m thinking she has some very small imaginary friends who she thinks would like to look at our pictures, and who also like to hang out exclusively around doors.

She’s thoughtful like that. She treats her lovies well:

And she lets her toys take liberties I wouldn’t, like when she I found the sailor statue from Alex’s room in her dresser, relieving himself on her pants.

A few weeks ago we hosted a Raclette Dinner, in which the main course is cheese and potatoes. The next day as I was cleaning up the play room during nap time, I came upon this.

For starters, I didn’t even know we had any potatoes left over. Second, I have no idea how she got into the fridge to retrieve it. Third, and probably most importantly, I’ve no idea why she considered it important that the potato reside next to the Zany Zoo.

Yesterday’s discovery was especially concerning.

We haven’t talked much about careers, but it looks like she and I are going to need to sit down and talk about who can and cannot pilot a commercial jet. The sole passenger looks a little anxious, and I don’t blame her. She’s probably the only person in the world right now wishing she was flying United instead.

The night after stumbling upon the hostage scene at the manger, I found this in the middle of the kitchen.

It looks like Mary was bowing to Jesus. This might be the case. But my opinion is that she was so exhausted from her ordeal that she’d passed out facedown on the kitchen floor.

I feel ya, sister. Any night now Eric might come home to find me in the same position, after too long a day cleaning up these scenes.

Talk about happening upon a scene Evelyn has just abandoned. I just hope he finds it as funny as I do.

It’s been ten months tomorrow since this little squish came into our lives.

I’ve posted a lot of pictures since that day, most of them featuring him and his big sister, who are truly the delight of my life. Some of the pictures even include me, and in them I’m almost always smiling, except when I’ve been pooped, peed, puked or otherwise spilled on, if that’s the case then I’m not smiling. Okay, so maybe I’m smiling in about 15% of these pictures. Still, I’m happy. Incredibly happy.

Until I have to drive my children on the highway.

What I haven’t posted pictures of is what my face looks like when I’m halfway down an on-ramp. Partly because texting and driving is high on my list of no-no’s, right up there with dinner without wine ….  But also partly because no one would want to see what that kind of anxiety looks like.

I wasn’t going to write about this, but since I make fun of myself for everything else, why not? More importantly, it’s really been a dark cloud over what should have been some of the happiest months of my life, and I got to thinking that one of my 3 readers might have gone through this once too and be able to share some coping mechanisms with me, or offer to do all my driving for me for the rest of my life. Either or.

I’ve been anxious as long as I can remember … but the irrationally anxious part I can trace back to my third birthday party, when we visited a local jail. That’s right. Happy birthday, little girl, watch us lock up your party guests. Now to be fair, it’s not like we went to a federal prison, but I still left with an undeniable fear of being arrested. To this day, being framed and imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit remains one of my top ten fears. I maintain that I wouldn’t do well in prison. Orange may be the new black but it’s definitely not my color.

This little field trip set off a whole string of before-bed incessant questioning.

“Mom? Am I going to get arrested tonight?” I’d ask as I thought about the pencil I’d accidentally taken home with me that in fact belonged to the teacher. I pictured Mrs. Wolfgram banging on the door at 2 a.m. with a cop behind her, yelling “seize her!”.

But my worry didn’t stop at petty crimes. “Did you lock all the windows? And the doors too? Do you think we’ll be burgled? Do you think there will be a fire? Do you think I’ll have a bad dream? Are there tarantulas in Wisconsin? Is Michael Bolton’s hair really that long?”

These questions were met with an equally long string of patient “No’s”, while my Mom signaled to my Dad to get out the paperwork for the closest asylum for obsessive compulsive children.

Michael Bolton has since cut his hair, but I’ve retained a lot of annoying traits from my early years (like my penchant for his music). Of all these traits, if there’s one that Eric ever leaves me for it will probably be this one. Every night my poor husband climbs into bed bone tired, only to have me sit up and say, “Did I turn the stove off? (Even though we ordered takeout) and “Did you set the alarm?” (Even though I’m 99% sure I heard it beep as he did.) “Do you think Alex is breathing in there? Evelyn was playing with a shoelace earlier, do you think it somehow ended up in her crib? Should I go make sure it didn’t?”

What can I say, I’m a worrier, and if I let myself, I can be REALLY good at it. The Christmas I was 9 I realized I wasn’t as excited about my favorite holiday as usual, and I worried so much that I wasn’t going to enjoy Christmas that year that I quite literally worried myself sick, and spent Christmas with the flu.

I’m such a freak about choking that I cut even my own grapes in half and won’t eat steak alone.

Still, I like to think I’ve mostly got this under control. I’ve spent the majority of my time over the last decade taking care of children — first other people’s and now my own, so I’m used to the typical worry that comes with being in charge of babies and toddlers, and what to do about it. I know how to cut their food just right, what to keep them away from, how to instill a healthy dose of stranger-danger without scaring them completely … how to danger-proof their little lives in every possible way.

So when Alex arrived, I was a pro. Plus I already had a kid, I knew what to expect.

Then when he was around 3 months, I was driving them to a water park in Manitowoc for the day when out of nowhere, the road started swimming before me. I was immediately so dizzy that I was seeing spots, seconds from passing out, (or so I felt) all while traveling 70 mph and driving next to a tractor trailer, with the two most precious passengers asleep in the back seat.

Lucky for me I was also passing an exit, so I quickly turned for it and hung my head out the window so I could breathe again. After recouping at a gas station for a few minutes and getting some air, I headed back for the highway, where it happened two more times before I reached my destination. By the time I got there, I was so scared to get back on the highway, you couldn’t have paid me to do it. But the thing was, I had to do it. I was in Manitowoc and eventually I’d have to get my kids back to Milwaukee.

Turns out I’d experienced my first real panic attacks. Being an anxious person, I thought I’d had panic attacks throughout my life, but I’d never had anything even remotely close to this.

As scary and annoying as they were, I knew what had caused them. I was about to spend an afternoon in a bathing suit three months after giving birth, and I hadn’t really been fond of my body to begin with. Who wouldn’t panic?

Unfortunately for me, they (and that baby weight) haven’t gone anywhere. And although I may be making light of them, they’re really no laughing matter. Over the last 15 years I’ve uprooted my life and started from scratch in a new city five times, and given birth twice, but to this day the hardest thing I’ve ever done is drive the ten miles it takes to get from our current house to our new house.

Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Some days I drive down the highway with no problem at all and make the mistake of thinking my panic attacks are behind me … other days I can feel them coming on with just the anticipation of having to get in the car.

My hands start to shake and sweat, my heart starts racing, there is a tightness in my chest so palpable that I feel like I’m not even breathing. Then when I finally make that turn onto the highway and there’s that “no going back now” drop of the stomach, then the dizziness starts. When they’re really bad I have to stick my head out the window to keep my vision from blacking out. Seriously you’d think I was storming the beach on D-Day. I actually think that to myself in those moments, how people have been in actual danger, real danger, and gotten through it … and I have to talk myself into a five minute 60 mph drive in one of the world’s safest, unsexiest vehicles.

I mean, come on. That’s a minivan there. It’s not like I’m driving on an episode of Ice Road Truckers.

Still, that’s anxiety for you. It pops up in weird places. Although I’ve never been in one, car accidents are a huge fear of mine, especially with my kids in the backseat. Nowhere in my day is there a more tangible example of my responsibility to keep them safe, and the fear of what could happen to them if I screw that up is so real to me as I approach that on-ramp, I can taste it.

Now Eric will roll his eyes and tell you that I’ve hit my fair share of curbs, and I did start to drive like a cabbie when I was living in Chicago, but these days I’m a good driver. I do my best not to look at my phone, I’m defensive and have maintained just enough of that city aggression to know I’ll never be that person stopping at the end of an on-ramp to look both ways before merging.

What scares me is not knowing if all the other drivers flying past the vehicle containing my kids are being equally vigilant … and a quick glance into their windows leads me to believe they’re not. I see a whole lot of people staring at their phones, and once passed a woman who was playing electronic Yahtzee while painting her fingernails.

But what can you do? You take all the precautions you can … you strap your kids into their recommended carseats in their recommended positions and you hope for the best.

Based on the tips I’ve gotten from both the medical professionals I’ve seen about this and the friends and family I’ve talked to about it, sounds like the only thing I can do is face it head on. Although I’m tempted to take the back roads, I can’t do that the rest of my life, and the longer I avoid the highway, the scarier it will be. (Even though I can provide a pretty convincing argument to myself that the back roads are the roads with drive-thru Starbucks.)

This week I’ve forced myself to take a highway drive at least once a day, and today marks day 7 with no panic attacks.

I’m not dumb enough to think it will never happen again, but there is something liberating about facing a fear head-on and succeeding. And if I’m really looking for a positive, what a blessing it is to learn to give up that control now, while my kids are still so young. Because once Evelyn is 16 and boyfriends, piercings and biker gangs really give me something to be anxious about, I’ll have had years of practice managing that anxiety, and I’ll know I’ve done my absolute best to keep her safe, and now it’s up to her and God.

And for those really anxious days, I guess there’s a good bottle of wine and a little Michael Bolton.

If I were in charge of training someone to spend a day with a toddler, I’d start by playing this clip at top volume, on repeat, from sunup to sundown. I’d couple this with reaching out a finger to poke at their face at eleven second intervals. Then I’d make sure to include some kind of monkey or small animal, to be climbing all over them for the duration of the training.

Spending a day with small kids is an absolute assault on both privacy and personal space. In fact by the time I put my little minions of encroachment to bed, my personal space has been so thoroughly violated that I need at least 107 minutes before I can stand to be touched.

It’s just nonstop. All day. Every time I go to the bathroom I’ve got Alex strapped to me in a Bjorn and Evelyn swinging the plunger at me. On the rare occasion that I manage to escape her notice on my way in, it’s only a matter of seconds before the door knob starts a horror story-esque slow turn. She’s found me.

Lucky for most parents, there is both nap time and bed time, during which you can bask in the glory that is a whole couch all to yourself.

Unlucky for me, there is Pippa.

They say you can tell a lot about how someone will turn out by looking at their parents.

I should have taken this into consideration when I met Pippa’s Dad.

How sweet, I said. This 180 pound dog thinks he’s a lap dog, I said. Let’s bring home his spawn to raise as our own, I said.

Fast forward three years, to me finally lying down on the couch after a long day with the kids. Finally I can recline without hearing “Mama get up NOW!” screamed into my ear because God forbid I even pretend to relax. I enjoy this freedom for one. full. minute.

And then I open my eyes.

If there’s anyone who values personal space less than my kids, it’s my dog.

Here we are last Sunday morning, having a nice, relaxing tea party in our pajamas.

She’s not just stopping in to say hi. She’s just standing there. Not moving. I had to duck every time I wanted to see my daughter so I could lip-read and try to decipher her toddler language. And every time I ducked my head, Pippa took it as a direct invitation to lick my mouth. And the firmer I closed my mouth, the harder she tried to break in. And her breath smells like roadkill, only worse.

Here we have Eric later that same morning, enjoying some “one-on-one” time with Alex.

When I managed to sneak in a quick shower, something I rarely have time for, Pippa saw it as the perfect opportunity to perfect her water catching skills.

And later yet, as I was helping Evelyn go potty before nap, this is what Pippa was doing.

You can’t tell, but she is resting her head on the sink waiting for me to turn on the water so she can have a drink. Because she is above drinking from the bowl of water on the floor with her name on it. What you also can’t see is that she has the kids and I completely blocked in to the world’s smallest bathroom.

What you can see, however, is a bottle of Cinnamon on my bathroom sink. Why? Because I have a two-year-old, that’s why. Last week I spent three full days looking for my computer power cord, only to find it wrapped neatly inside a blanket, inside her doll’s crib, inside her teepee.

Do you know who was standing outside that teepee the minute I emerged with the cord?

You guessed it.

Once I started thinking about her total disregard for space, I started seeing it everywhere. I noticed it in the car … the car that we bought for its ample trunk space in which Pippa could ride … where she now refuses to stay in the trunk.

At my parent’s house, where no one is allowed to take a nap unless she is included.

And during Pumpkin carving, when her big nose must be a part of every moment.

Earlier this week I thought I’d catch up on some reading.

Pippa thought she’d catch up on some balance practice. I told her very firmly to sit. And she did…right on top of me.

Oh well.

On the plus side, my new-parent-training curriculum just got a whole lot easier. I’d just make them spend a day with Pippa. After that, the kids are a breeze.

A few weeks ago I left a voicemail for someone I’d never met before. It went a little something like this: “Hi Mike, my name is Melissa Berg … info info info … so if you could give me a call back, that would be great. My number is 414-4 … um … 4-6? No, 1-8…um…okay it’s 414-6…8…1…look I’m going to have to call you back.

For the record: aside from the area code, not even one of those starts was correct.

Where. Is. My. Brain?

It used to be up there, I know it did. Once upon a time I completed a great Journalism program with it. Now I bet it wouldn’t even get me through third grade.

I have become what I like to call a Kidiot. Is this a term? It needs to be. A Kidiot is someone who spends so much time cutting food and wiping butts that they lose all productive brainpower and would be put down in the town census as the village idiot, if it was still politically correct to have one.

See this?

This is a little command station I have in my front hall to keep me organized. Those dates you see on the bottom are September 26th – October 2nd. Let the record state that today is November 2nd. This means I’ve gotten ready to leave for the same Doctor appointment every Friday for a Month, and have skipped the same morning workout class every Monday for a month.

I’m not even going to address the tasks on the chalkboard, because I honestly don’t remember if I’ve cleaned either yet or not.

All the evidence here points not only to my ultimately having some sort of neurological disorder, but also to my being a very undesirable candidate for any job at all.  So for kicks, I thought I’d update my resume to reflect my current skill set, see where it might get me.

Here we go.

Melissa Blair Milne

Wait, no, Melissa Milne Berg. Changed that one three years ago.

Phone: Can’t remember.

Email: Mblairmilne@gmail.com  *Please note that email gets checked on average once a week, with a minimum three-week response time.

October 2014-Present :   Berg Household, CEO

The mission of the Berg Household, Inc. is to raise well-adjusted, contributing citizens. In my time here, I have had the opportunity to hone my multi-tasking and organizational skills in a variety of ways.

• Ability to carry on 4+ conversations at one time
  • Can console a friend, return a voicemail, scold my toddler and soothe an infant in one succinct sentence.
  • Can remember and effectively use the word “succinct”.
•  Meet Deadlines Daily
  • I’m goal-driven, and given my goal to one day see the bottom of a hamper, I can accomplish washing, drying, folding and putting away more than six loads of laundry per day.
  • I have consistently shown the ability to work through distress, when that empty hamper is filled again within just one hour and I find it necessary to fight off tears and put on a happy face for my children.
• Creative Conversations
  • Have the ability to find a replacement-word or phrase for just about every four-letter one out there, and can use it with the same effectiveness in front of children of any age, with them being none the wiser.
• Effective Time Management
  • Can *successfully feed one child while bathing another while preparing husband’s dinner while ordering next weeks groceries while emptying dishwasher while feeding dog while baking two-dozen cupcakes to freeze for next month’s birthday party.
    • * use of word ‘successfully’ does not indicate continual success. May have only been successful at juggling these tasks once or twice, if that. May have done things like melt a phone case on a hot burner during other attempts at this.
    • Can successfully scrape melted plastic off a stove without scratching stove-top.
• Ability to stay calm in crisis
  • Have a proven record of staying calm in a variety of situations, such as:
    • Walking into a nursery after nap to find it and its residents covered in fecal matter
    • Evacuating a bathtub of its occupants and cleaning both the child and the tub after it becomes covered in fecal matter
    • Removing dog feces from:
      • Foot of a child
      • Hand of a child
      • Trunk of a car
      • Area Rugs
      • Upstairs Carpeting
    • It seems all my crises involve fecal matter. May have to change “major” in education section.
• Confident Decision Maker
  • I do not negotiate with little terrorists and I never waver once a decision is made. Decisions include:
    • What is served for meals
    • What time we will leave the park
    • How many books we will read before bed
    • How many Goldfish Crackers you can have
• Excellent Summarizer
  • Can read a 30+ page Dr. Seuss book in less than 20 words while escaping notice by the audience.
  • Can shorten any song into one stanza, and sing it with flourish.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. Who wants to hire me? Anyone? Bueller?

It doesn’t really matter anyway, I think my current boss(es) are satisfied with my job performance so far.

At least, they still cry when I have to leave them, which I’m taking as satisfaction with my job performance.

I have my review coming up this week, and I’m hoping for a raise. This will not be monetary of course but will come in other benefits, like less direct contact with feces.

Last Sunday night I put some chicken in the fridge to marinate for 12 hours.

Sometime late Thursday afternoon, I remembered it was in there.

(Meanwhile I have no problem remembering on a daily basis the tub of chocolate buttercream I have thawing in the fridge for Evelyn’s birthday on Sunday)

This was a moment I probably should have felt bad about, but then again just that morning I’d let Evelyn bring a kazoo along on a car ride I was hoping Alex would sleep through. So it wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d done all day, not by a long shot.

Still, I couldn’t believe my oversight. Not because it was chicken, but because it was Peanut Ginger Chicken. There’s no substance more at risk for immediate consumption in our house than peanut butter. Evelyn’s obsessed, Pippa eats it straight from the jar when I’m not looking, and as for me, well there are no words. I’d eat it in the rain, on a train, on a boat, with a goat, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, anywhere. (Guess which book I’ve read over 75 times this week?) I love me some Dr. Seuss, but the man could have shortened his books by a good 20 pages. They should start selling throat lozenges on the end cap of the Seuss aisle at Barnes and Noble.

But back to Peanut Butter, and all the ways I’d eat it. I’d gotten this recipe on beckyspen.blogspot.com (I’ve also copied it below.) It was to be my first installment in my  goal of trying one new recipe a week.

I set the goal back in June, so I figure I’m right on schedule. (If I could go back in time and give single Melissa one piece of training for Motherhood, I’d have told her to make a list of 10 things that she really really wanted to accomplish every week, hang it where she could see it clearly, and then practice actively ignoring it for the foreseeable future.)

Anyway by the time I remembered I’d started the recipe, I was onto craving noodles. But what makes noodles even better? Peanut Butter. So I decided to make up an extra batch of the peanut sauce/marinade, pour it over some Udon noodles, then top it with the grilled chicken. I plan on using this marinade as a peanut sauce for just about anything you can eat with sauce, and probably even things you can’t, like cold cereal. It’s that good.

This picture turned out pretty good right? It’s certainly not professional, but it looks appetizing enough. When I told a friend of mine I was starting a blog, she asked if it was a food blog. “You love to bake,” she said, “you’d do great.”

“It would be complete rubbish,” I told her, “for exactly three reasons.”

The first is that the food pictured here is a week old. I made it last Thursday, but I didn’t get around to photographing it for this purpose until a week later when I was eating it as leftovers for lunch.

Second, to really class up the plate I threw a couple of pieces of raw broccoli on there. It’s raw for two reasons. First, I had neither the time nor the inclination to cook it. Our vegetable steamer is logically stored in the very back of the armoire in our living room, right behind the DVDs. I’ve decided not to dig it out until someone gives me the recipe for a steamed meal that can take the rest of this baby weight off in one swift swoop. Second, I wasn’t planning on eating the broccoli anyway. Why would I, when there’s peanut butter flavored food on the plate? I can only assume people come to food blogs looking for recipes, not only for the main dish but for the side dishes, so that’s strike two.

The third reason I could never cut it as a food blogger, and this is the real clincher, is this:  I walked back into the kitchen to grab some cilantro for the garnish, and when I came back, this was happening:

If there’s ever been a clear glimpse into my daily life, this is it. The one meal I’ve prepared for myself is being eaten by someone else, there’s a whopping pile of laundry waiting to be folded, there’s a jumparoo in my dining room, and I have my phone in one hand and a vegetable in the other that’s about to be traded in for a PBJ.

So there you have it. One of the many reasons I’ll have to stick to blogging about my kids and not my food. But this recipe rocks, and it’s clearly Pippa approved, so here it is! And check out Becky’s blog — there are some other delicious looking recipes on there. The Mandarin Salad is my new recipe to try for next week, so I should get around to actually making it sometime in early 2017.

Peanut Ginger Chicken

8 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1/2 c. hot water

1/2 c. creamy peanut butter

1/4 c. chili sauce

1/4 c. lite soy sauce

2 tbsp salad oil

2 tbsp vinegar

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp red pepper

In a mixing bowl, gradually stir hot water into peanut butter. Stir in rest of ingredients. Place the marinade in a large Ziploc bag. Add chicken and chill for 12-24 hours. (Or if you’re me, 48+ hours will also do.) Remove chicken from bag and grill or broil 15-20 minutes until done.

*Delicious over Udon noodles with the same sauce — you could probably split the marinade in half before marinating the chicken, but it was just as easy (and extra delicious) to make up another batch of the marinade just for the noodles.

Today we ran out of bananas.

That’s right. Out. of. BANANAS. That’s one of the rare English phrases that translates directly to Toddler-ese, as “the world is ending.”

Full disclaimer — we didn’t actually run out of bananas. But our soon-to-be two year-old had one for every meal yesterday. And then again for breakfast this morning.

In an attempt to avoid a potassium overdose, I removed the bananas from her direct eye-line and told her they were all gone. (This phrase translates to “Life’s not worth living”)

I hid them here, in our liquor and craft cabinet. It’s the one place we go frequently enough (and not for Play-doh) that I knew I wouldn’t forget them there.

For close to three hours I listened to her whining for bananas. If this isn’t already an official form of torture, it needs to be added. It bounces off your eardrums in exactly the same way as a fire engine siren, and I’m pretty sure the guys in those get to wear headphones.

When lunch time passed and Evelyn was still banana-less, she reached a decibel I’m becoming more familiar with the closer we get to 2 and am not fond of.

She screamed at the table, screamed all the way upstairs, screamed as I duct-taped her diaper on (another story for another post), screamed as I read “Halloween Day” for the 275th time … you get the picture.

She was still screaming ten minutes later when I went to the basement to get more toilet paper. We’ve been out in our upstairs bathroom for about three days, and I’m running out of substitutes.

It was there in the basement that I made a fortuitous discovery, and thought “Alright kid, you want a banana that badly, here’s your flipping banana.”

I bought this costume when Eric and I first got married.  I kept hearing that a good way to keep the spark alive in your relationship is to put on a little something special for your husband as a surprise when he gets home from work, and thought, This is just the thing! 

Today I had to fashion it over a baseball hat, because I haven’t seen the inside of my shower in a few days except to clean it.

My plan was to tiptoe in and set up shop in Evelyn’s nursery chair, then wait for her to wake up. But I kept getting distracted by other responsibilities…

…and she woke up before I could get in there.

When I first walked in to get her, her little face was a perfect mix of confusion and euphoria. She could hardly contain her glee over the fact that her incessant demands for bananas had actually turned her Mom into one.

So there you go, finally a solution to giving your kid what they want, without actually giving into them.

Parenting win. Sanity fail. We’ll call it a wash.