Today I Lost My Kid

I had grand plans to post about how awesome, thought-provoking, and decadent my long weekend was, but instead I'll blournal about today....when I lost my kid.

I was in a play area in a mall I wasn't familiar with, chatting with two lovely ladies I don't usually see, and honestly, I was pretty proud of myself.  This helicopter mama was letting her 2-year-old Big Star have free roam of the enclosed play area (a tree with lots of tunnels and slides and secret rooms).  He would come check in with me and I would check in with him.  He was happy, I was happy--good times had by all. But as silly as it sounds, suddenly I just had a feeling, and went to check on my kid. And he wasn't to be found amongst the 20+ kids and adults in that enclosed area.


HOLY CRAP  HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP

Only in my head, and possibly out loud, I wasn't saying "crap."

And in that moment, I heard a woman from outside the play area yelling "does this child belong to someone?"

Turns out my Big Star had figured out how to open the only door in the play area and taken off down the mall.  Like, seriously down the mall.  A grandma had chased him down and was dragging him back as her daughter tried to figure out who the little Korean escape artist belonged to.

That would be me, the mortified mama who wasn't sure whether to scream or cry and was almost definitely in shock.

What would have happened had that grandma not made the call to chase my kid down (and he is a fast little sucker, especially in open spaces) and manhandle him back to the play area?  He was apparently almost to a corner and could have turned either way.  He is fast and fearless and tiny....and mine to keep safe.

I tried to play it cool since it was my fault ultimately for not keeping a closer eye on him and not parking my behind right next to the door, and we just moved to a position right near the door to better watch him as he continued to escape.  Which he did, over and over, with his little trademark smirk that melted my frustrated heart and made me sick to think of all the what ifs.

So that's my lesson.  In a blink of an eye your child could be gone, gone, gone.  So barricade those doors and practice your death glares before returning to the mall play area.

It's either that or the monkey leash.

Textbook Mistake

Last night we hosted a family birthday party for Little Bro.  As is tradition for us, our family parties are small, intimate affairs with around 10 people, some pizza (or in this case, Beebimbap), and a couple hours of family time.  Because Little Bro has been doing so well for so long, we felt that just days shy of 3 months home, it would be safe to have these important people in our home and interacting with him in a meaningful way.

Oh.My.God. What a nightmare, or rather, in Little Bro's case, night terror.

I blame us, totally.  We let it all slide last night with people holding him, playing with him, comforting him, and generally getting up in his face.  Our social butterfly ate it up happily, and everyone left an hour past his bedtime feeling like this was the beginning of a beautiful new chapter.

And almost immediately the meltdowns began.  It was initially a perfect storm of over-tired/over-stimulated, but morphed into the grieving night terrors we haven't seen in a long while.  He didn't want us near him at night, but sobbed and could not be comforted without us.  All night long.  Anger, fear, rage.

And I knew it was my fault for letting my guard down and piling extra stressors on him (lack of sleep, us being on the other side of the room, etc.)  As the hours ticked on throughout the night, I was once again humbled by how huge this trauma is that my kids carry within them.  Although each day snips a little of the hold it has on their heart, it is still there lurking silently, especially for my little one still so newly home in the grand scheme of things, ready to come to the surface in moments of stress.

So we regroup.  He woke up happy and "normal." We'll step up attachment activities and pull back on the social interaction for a while.  Because it's my job to make sure he is always in situations where he feels safe and secure, and I dropped the ball this time.

The Great Debate

What came first, the fussy children or the cranky mom?

I'd like to think that my mood over the last 3 days can be blamed on my sons.  They are both going through some "emotionally fragile" phases due to the fact that they are toddlers and can't regulate their emotions.

Unlike their 30-year-old mother, who certainly can, but has chosen not to.

My kids have been all sorts of naughty, loud, grumpy, defiant, and generally annoying as hell the last couple days, but what I realized is that my sour, cranky, tense mood could perhaps be exacerbating, if not causing the higher level of...passionate expression...in our home.  Kids can tap in and feed off emotions, especially those of their parents, and perhaps my mood isn't really due to my kids, but my choice to eat less healthy and get less sleep the last few days, thus causing my kids' moods to devolve into toddler nastiness.  When we wake up in the mornings, who is the first one to frown lately.

I'm betting it's been me.

So tonight I apologized to my sons for causing what has been a relatively unfun and stressful few days and promised to try harder tomorrow.  One said "I waaab ooo, mama" and the other gave me a silly grin from behind his bottle.

And tomorrow, I really will try harder.

The Pain

I've been lucky in motherhood so far.  I've never had to endure the pain and trauma that you hear other mothers lament about.  I've experienced disappointment, sure, but never the despair of such a final act.


I'm talk, of course, about a bad hair cut on my baby.

This blow is particularly hard because I have been waiting for months past his usual hair cut time to grow it long.  I wanted the long Korean sideburns and the sweeping hair.  I pushed past the annoying frizz phase and have been basking in the glow of Asian hipster hair for a while now.  I loved my kid's hair.  And when a little boy is 3, what his mama thinks about his hair is the only thing that really matters.

I only wanted a touch off the back to reduce the mullet look and a little clean up.  He was so close to having perfectly coiffed K-Drama hair.  The stylists assured me that she understood, and I hovered over her, just in case.

But in the moment it took me to grab my kid a sucker, the damage was done.  "Fixing it" only made it worse, and I was one of those passive mothers who decided to just smile and thank her to avoid her continuing to "fix it" rather than throw myself on the floor and wailing (which is what I wanted to do).

And now I am faced with my beautiful, adorable son who looks like he could be cast as the child version of a character from "Dumb and Dumber."  My new goal is simply to have it looking decent by the time we go to Korea.  It looks like extra vitamins are in order for him and a chill pill for me.

Oh, the pain.

Fire Bus

This morning Little Bug held up a toy ambulance and called it a bus. Appa countered with emergency medical vehicle, which for our child is like asking him to repeat the Pledge of Allegiance...not going to happen.

Little Bug countered with a new word (that I am super proud of): fire truck.

We probably should have left it at that for this morning. After all, we were sitting on the floor in the middle of our hallway (because Little Bug insisted on looking at the holiday lights that lined our banister) attempting to put on Little Bug's inserts and shoes while our wet hair dripped onto our half ironed work clothes and the clock ticked away. But Little Bug was clearly intent on learning more about this toy, and I can't say no to a learning opportunity.

So, to recap. Little Bug is holding an ambulance. We've ruled out bus and fire truck and offered the impossible emergency medical vehicle option.

You'd think this shouldn't be so hard. You'd think we'd look our 3-year-old in the eye and tell him the toy he was holding was an ambulance. It's not that hard of a word. I'm fairly confident Little Bug could have repeated some sort of sound combination resembling it.

It is an ambulance.

But NO, the actual name for the toy didn't even cross my mind to share with my sponge of a child. Instead I spit out some total nonsense and told him the toy in his hand was a fire bus.

A fire bus. A mythical thing that goes. A noun that does not appear in any reputable dictionary and probably not in any urban one, either.

And of course, that is the name he latched onto and now calls that toy.

911, What is Your Emergancy

Calling 911 is not the way you want to start a morning.

At 4:45 this morning, I was woken up by a loud crash and shattering glass which set off our home alarm. Appa is away, so it was just me and Little Bug. Within seconds, I was out of bed and calling 911.

Extreme, perhaps. But I knew if someone was in our home breaking stuff and I confronted them, chances are they wouldn't allow me to take a moment to head back to my room, lock the door, and call 911.

Turns out, not confronting a possible intruder is something the 911 dispatch agreed with, especially since I was alone with a child. So I waited in my room with the door locked as the cops sped toward my house.

In what I thought was a rational moment, but was probably not that smart considering I was going against the dispatcher's orders, I eventually tiptoed out of my room and peeked around our hallway to our main floor, ready to scream "I'VE CALLED THE COPS, A-HOLE."

The reality.......

.....a mouse had knocked over a bunch of glass jars of pasta sauces and canned goods from our pantry, spilling them all over our tile floor. The loud crash triggered our alarm (rightly so).

I was super embarrassed and tried to beg off the cops coming, but it turns out they have to come check things like this out, just in case someone was holding a gun to my head as I made up a story about a rouge mouse with a penchant for tomato basil sauce.

Fair enough, I guess.

So the cops came and checked our whole house for any sign of intruders. There were none. I went back to sleep sheepishly.

And that's hopefully the last time I have to call 911.

Paci

This morning Little Bug was digging through a drawer he normally does not get to play in. Because it was either play in the drawer and be quiet or demand to be held while Mama is trying to apply makeup (and be only 10 minutes late for work, as opposed to the usual 15-20 we've been rocking lately), I let him enjoy the little slice of forbidden.

Then he found it.

No, nothing that will push him into years of therapy....he found a pacifier.

At first I was amused. I don't know why the pacifier was in that drawer (we bought them, he rejected them, he sucks his thumb, end of story), but there it was. He recognized it from some of his little friends at school. I am ashamed to admit that my initial though as he laughed and popped it in his mouth was "score, that will stop the whining and maybe I can apply something more than just mascara!"

10 minutes later, I could just see the wheels in his head turning. He liked it. He REALLY liked it. Perhaps it was just novel, or perhaps he liked having the use of both his hands while sucking, but when I casually tried to remove it before we headed out the door, he ran.

He RAN.

The only way I could get that thing out of his mouth was to give him the forbidden garage door opener. Seriously, this kid has had a morning of forbidden pleasures. We'll probably even have shellfish for dinner (no, we won't actually).

At an age when most parents are killing themselves trying to break their kids of the pacifier habit, I have to go and encourage it. I so deserve the years of dental bills I can already see in our future.

The Bob

This morning my kid woke up on the wrong side of the universe. Usually a delightful morning person, this morning he whined and grumped and insisted on being held....while I did my hair, while I brushed my teeth, while I got dressed. The thing was, when I was holding him, he was STILL being a pill.

The only thing that made him happy was wearing one of his bibs (or bob, as it is called in his world), specifically a dirty bib he found. I let him wear it around for a while and decided to allow him to wear it in the car on the way to school after his head almost exploded when I tried to take it off to put his coat on. He seemed mildly pleased to be wearing it in the car...until I tried to take it off him before we got out.

Long story short, he wore the bob into school.

I thought for sure I could get it off him at school while he was distracted. Instead, he took his little hands and held it close to his body, cooing "bob, bob, bob." Finally, because I was mortified that it was dirty, 15 minutes late for work, and rapidly being surrounded by other kids who wanted to wear bibs and eat food, I yanked it off him and promised he could wear another bib soon. I shoved it into my fist, kissed the top of his spinning head, and literally ran out the door.

He's probably still on the ground screaming.....

What was I to do? On one hand, I try to go with the flow. If he wants to wear a bib into school, heck, why not? On the other hand, it was dirty, and the other kids would have gone hysterical en-mass all wanting to wear bibs and eat. The teachers would have loved that. I think a compromise is reasonable.

Perhaps on a day when my bob-loving kid wakes up in his right mind, he will agree.

Let A Sleeping Child Lie

There is an old adage, "let sleeping dogs lie." Or maybe that's not the way it goes, but whatever.

Last night Appa and I got another reality check of "You're Still Novice Parents and Are Idiots Sometimes."

Yesterday we switched Little Bug over to his "big boy" bed, which is really just his crib converted to a toddler bed with a railing. To be honest, he probably isn't exactly 100% ready (as evidenced by his two swan dives right over the side rail less than 3 minutes into his exploration), but he will need to be completely comfortable in his real big boy bed in his big boy room in a year, so we decided to take things one step at a time and start now with the transition. Plus, Little Bug thrives on challenge, so without being pushed, he would probably happily stay in his crib for the next few years.

He loves the new bed. Loves it. He finds being able to declare "out" and then get out himself to be one of the funniest things. Ever. That's a good thing.

But just to really ease into this transition, I rocked him to sleep last night and then placed him in his bed. A few hours later, I heard a soft thump and went to check on him. Sure enough, he was on the ground, facing the opposite way, slumbering peacefully.

STEP AWAY FROM THE SLEEPING CHILD. STEP AWAY FROM THE SLEEPING CHILD. DO NOT TOUCH THE SLEEPING CHILD.

Oh, but I did.

Appa and I thought we should put our peacefully sleeping child back in his bed. Why, because we are idiots. Of course he woke up and spent the next 4 hours (did I mention this all went down around midnight to start with) alternating between crying and demanding to be rocked in the chair and having a grand old time in his new bed while laughing his head off. The cry-it-out method was a big fat joke, although I secretly thought the little pitter patter of his determined feet running toward the door each time I shut it was adorable.

It's less adorable now that I am sitting at my desk at work, double fisting DDP and wondering how I am going to make it through today. Even worse, Little Bug slept through his diaper and clothing change this morning...something I have never in my life seen him do. I don't think today is going to rock for him, either.

So the moral of this story: let a sleeping child lie.

Not a shining moment

Yesterday I had one of the worst motherhood moments I have ever experienced (relatively speaking).

Saturday night I got a massive migraine. Truly horrible. I was asleep by 8:45 pm and when I was woken up by Little Bug at 7 am the next morning (a small miracle in itself), the headache had only gotten worse. Not good.

After some rolling around and playing in bed, Appa got up to make Little Bug breakfast while Little Bug "laid" in bed with me. The laying in bed actually consisted of him standing up over and over on the bed, attempting to throwing himself off the side, and trying to climb up into window. So, I sat up begrudgingly and pulled him into a cuddle.

Little Bug didn't like this. So he leaned forward and then threw himself back into my face in an epic head butt that knocked the wind out of me and left me wondering if all my teeth were still in place.

It also threw my headache into overdrive, and honestly, I started seeing red. (It's an interesting thing that I only thought was an expression, but it honestly looked a bit red to me in those moments.)

I remember just feeling a fury unlike anything I have experienced in a long time. My head was killing me and this head butting and hitting is something we have been battling for the last few weeks (another post). There was this split moment where I just wanted to punish Little Bug for hurting me, for doing something "intentionally" to hurt me....

This is the moment I am not proud of. I think, looking back, that I can see how people abuse their kids. Not actually see, but I think I hit that moment where your true colors come out. That moment where you are nearly unhinged (mine was due to blinding pain and frustration), perhaps if I was a little less of a good person, I would have slapped Little Bug, or even something worse.

Thank God, I am not.

So, this was all the span of a second or two. What I actually did was say "No" in a very loud voice, haul Little Bug up out of bed, and sit him in time out for 30 seconds. He was fighting it and flailing and trying to head butt some more, and in those 30 seconds I really did lose it. I was crying so hard I couldn't even count.

After 30 seconds, I was so upset with myself over how I was feeling that I picked Little Bug up and held him away from my body so he wouldn't see me crying and practically stumbled to find Appa to make him take the baby from me. Appa was, understandably, very concerned to see his hysterically sobbing wife holding a furiously sobbing toddler. He grabbed him from me, and I immediately went into the bathroom and threw up a couple times.

Lovely way to start a Sunday morning.

Here is the thing I was thinking about as I spent the following 15 minutes sitting on the floor of my bathroom. My mom once told me a story about how she got so angry at my sister and me she called my grandma to come get us, and she locked herself in her room and cried. I've never understood that story...until now. Mamas are only human, and it really sucks when the people you love most in your life test you, hurt you, push you to your breaking point, but those little people are actually just little kids who don't know any better.

So, is locking myself in the bathroom and crying my eyes out the proper response to a head butt? No. But in a perfect storm of a situation, it was the best I could do.

Little Bug was safe and loved and got a proper consequence. The lessons he learned (as much as a 2-year-old can learn) are constructive ones. I was able to give myself the time and space needed to compose back into the mama Little Bug needs and deserves. When I came out of that bathroom, I was back to my normal self (only with a horrible, horrible migraine).

Not a shining moment in my motherhood career, but a good learning experience.

And my headache is finally gone.

Sh*t

Scene: Little Bug's nursery; Little Bug is playing while Mama cleans. He is every bit the almost-2-year-old his proud mama says he is...including his penchant for mimicking....

Me: (cleaning frantically, see post below, and suddenly spilling the humidifier all over the bookcase) SH*T!

Little Bug: "shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa, shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa, shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa......"

Me: (realizing I just became that mom) Oh, Sh*t! No baby!"

Little Bug: (smiling and coming at me for praise; he was mimicking very well, after all) "shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa, shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa, shhiiiiiidddddttttaaa......"

Me: (trying to think of anything he would like to say instead of what he was saying) "Umm, ballooon, drink, food, choo choo"

Little Bug: (looks for said balloon, food, drink, or choo choo and finds none) "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

~End Scene~