If it ain't broke...

Okay, I've done the Mommy thing. Can I quit now?

This day just gets more fun every minute. Reed has now broken out his bedroom window. It began several weeks ago, when he poked a large hole in the window screen with a screwdriver. Then he started tossing household items out into the yard through said hole. After about a week of this, the top of the screen mysteriously came loose from the frame (I didn't see him actually push it out, so I'm not sure if it was intentional, or if it came apart on it's own from him leaning against it, to see the carnage in the yard). Today was no exception. When his other efforts to wreak havoc on the household at bedtime were being ignored or flat-out thwarted, he resorted to evicting our stuff again. When my hairbrush went flying, I had had enough. I went into his room and locked the window. I thought that would help. Boy, was I wrong!

About an hour later, there is a loud banging noise from upstairs, followed by the unmistakable sound of a large quantity of breaking glass. Heath went up to investigate, and returned grim-faced. He's broken his window by beating on it with a bottle from the recycling bin. Yay.

Can I be done now? I've done enough disciplining in my life to raise septuplets. Come to think of it, perhaps I should have Reed X-Rayed to be sure he doesn't have a few siblings stashed in there somewhere. I suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy. That's a lovely condition which basically means that I got the morning sickness of every woman who's ever been blessed enough not to suffer from it in all of history. After 9 months of daily medication, IV's and just generally feeling shitty, Reed was born a week overdue, weighing in at nearly 10 pounds. Then my milk came in. The lactation consultant I spoke with on the phone asked me how many babies I'd had, when I told her that I'd just finished pumping 25 ounces of milk, and my breasts weren't even beginning to soften. When I told her I'd given birth to a full term singleton, you could hear her eyes roll from a county away. She advised me not to pump unless I absolutely couldn't stand it anymore (I couldn't. My breasts were so full, it hurt to breathe), because I didn't want to encourage the milk production to stay high. So I suffered. I suffered from mastitis, blocked ducts, and every other breast-related problem you can think of for the first 3 weeks until my boobs finally figured out that there was only one baby at this all-you-can-eat buffet.

3 days ago, he nearly set our house on fire. Apparently, he has figured out the stove controls. I heard him in the kitchen, and went up to investigate. By the time I was 1/2 way upstairs, I could hear the click,click,click,click of the stove trying to light. The whole kitchen smelled like gas (luckily I heard him up there and it was only running for a minute). He had lit one burner, and the other one is tricky to light, so it was just running the gas and the igniter, but hadn't lit. There was a bunch of stuff sitting on top of the stove (I had been re-organizing the cupboard above the stove and had stopped to take a break). I'm just so glad none of it caught fire before I got up there. I shut the stove off, and grabbed the stuff off the top (burning my hand in the process).

Now this. I'm beginning to think I've had enough mothering for a while. Where do I file the paperwork for a substitute for a few weeks?

posted by Steph at 10:19 PM