Bad Mother Moment #392, and other ramblings

Elliott lost his first tooth yesterday.  It's been wiggly since Christmas, but it's hung in there.  It finally fell out yesterday morning.

Per Elliott's instructions, Daddy had to take a picture on his phone to send to Auntie.  Then, to keep the tooth safe, we put it in a little plastic ziploc container.

Okay, this morning is when the Bad Mommy moment kicks in.  As I was drowsily coming to grips with getting out of bed, I heard a wail from downstairs, as an up-way-too-early Elliott started looking for his tooth.  Instantly, my blood froze.  I knew exactly where that tooth was.  Or, were it had been 12 hours before as I had been mechanically filling the dishwasher.  I could so clearly see me dump the little rattly "crumbs" out of the bottom of the kid's "snack" container, into the garbage disposal, before placing the container in the dishwasher.  Knowing that you have destroyed your child's first tooth before the tooth fairy even got dibs on it is one way of starting the morning.

Anyway, after a whispered explanation to Evan, I assured Elliott that I would look for his tooth while he ate his oatmeal.  Thankfully, the kids like to read while they eat breakfast, so they didn't notice me slinking upstairs (to write a note from the tooth fairy) and over to my purse (to extract a guilt-motivated record of $3) and going into the kitchen and getting the container out of the dishwasher... finally, I was able to convincingly exclaim, "Elliott!  Look what I found!".  He bought the whole tooth fairy idea, and was excited enough about his moolah to not question how the tooth fairy found his tooth on the messy counters.  He's read a book about how the tooth fairy is building a castle with all the teeth she takes, so he told me that's where his tooth was.  I don't really push the idea of the tooth fairy (Cheyenne is at the nudge-nudge-wink-wink stage of wanting the money but knowing the tooth fairy is short, fat, and forgetful), but I was happy to play it up this morning!  Disaster averted!

Then, on to a busy morning.  Besides putting away all the laundry I had washed Monday morning (it's been a busy week, okay??), here is what my morning consisted of.  These are the things I had to do this morning, thanks to Lincoln, and Lincoln alone.  I'm sure there were more, but this is all I remember.

• Clean up the Cheerios, milk, and oatmeal smeared ALL over the table during my five-minute bathroom break during breakfast.  We're talking at least five minutes of scrubbing, let alone the newspaper parts and napkins that had to be thrown out because they were saturated.
• Clean his high chair tray for several minutes, since he carefully shook milk out of his sippy cup into every crack and crevice (this, while the Tooth Fairy was running around assembling the guilt money and note).
• Fish unfolded clean socks out of the damp bathtub.
• Put all the toothbrushes back in their cup, after he was overly eager reaching for his toothbrush.
• Empty the bread drawer and pull it off its slides to get rid of all the pretzel crumbs and pretzel salt that resulted when the bag of pretzels was dumped upside down on top off all the bread bags.
• Picked up all the batting strewn on his floor, from where he unzips his pillow and pulls the stuffing out when he gets bored at night.
• Picked books up off the floor that were pulled off the shelf willy-nilly.  (This happens a LOT!)
• Fill the diaper changing table back up with all the stuff he had pulled out-- extra wipes, diapers, hats, boots, blankets, etc.
• Refilled Elliott's treasure box, which was strewn all over Elliott's bed and bureau and floor.
• I never did get around to erasing the pencil lines all over Elliott's wall, now that I think of it...

This is, of course, in addition to all the diaper changes, snack procurement, book reading and other normal activities that go along with having a toddler in the house.  This kid is working hard to make sure I don't get too teary-eyed about him getting older!

As I attempted to clean up my extremely messy house this afternoon, I found lots of artwork that I thought needed documenting.  Here is the pinnacle of the dreaded Mommy Blog-- subjecting you to all my little darlings' scribblings.

Cheyenne has definitely moved beyond the scribbling stage.  Here's two pictures she drew for Marilla and Elliott.  Both portraits are of cat-loving Parisians (note the berets), standing on a bridge over a river.  Elliott's mustachioed artist holds his paint palette and paintbrush, and his bridge has wrought-iron spikes.  I have no memory of ever drawing such details in my pictures, my daughter is obviously heaps smarter than me.

Marilla's intricate project this afternoon, intended for her teacher.  Yeah, she's a little desperate to start school.

Marilla colored this for me, telling me it was "flowers just like your wedding."  They must have been looking at old photo albums, I have no idea how she knew that I carried roses at our wedding.

Elliott colored this one, at first saying it was for Grandma, then generously presenting it to Cheyenne when she came home from school.  (He was out of school for two days with an ear infection.  Again).

I can't remember if I took a picture of this one before, but I just unearthed it from a stack of papers.  Elliott drew it this fall, and I'm not sure he set out to encapsulate melancholia, but I love the slightly wary, not-so-sure-of-life look on this little guy's face.

Time out from art photography, to get another picture of the Tooth That Used to Be.  Actually, he won't look gap-toothed at all, since the adult tooth erupted way behind the baby tooth, and is already quite big.  He's quite proud to show everyone the space, though, including the lunch lady at school today.

My African violet is FINALLY blooming!  It has been lush and healthy looking for ages now, but no blooms.  It's a welcome sight in this stretch of winter.  Although, on a little weather tangent, we have had a super wimpy winter.  Warm, little snow... Until Monday, when it snowed 22 inches all at once, and we had an epic snow day.  By today, though, the warm temperatures have melted all but an inch or two.  Weirdness all round.

Okay, back to my little Norman Rockwells...  This is a card Elliott made for Cheyenne one afternoon.

He's even spelling her name, somewhat topsy-turvily (I don't think that's a word, but it should be.)

Elliott sure did miss Cheyenne while he was at home, and she was at school!  His ear drum seems to have ruptured Sunday night, so I took him to the pediatrician Monday morning (through the mess that is 22 inches of instantaneous snow).  The doctor put him on antibiotic ear drops, but he was still in quite a bit of pain Tuesday, so I kept him home.  Wednesday, he had a long-standing appointment to see the ear specialist in Syracuse.  We first saw a resident, who suctioned out some of the goop from his ears, and seemed confident that the doctor would recommend another tube for the ear that had lost its tube.  However, when the doctor came in, he favored a wait-and-see strategy.  I honestly don't know if I was glad of that, or if I wanted the tubes in.  I just hope, either way, my poor little guy doesn't have to suffer too much more with those silly ears of his.


Okay, and just to make this post as random as humanly possible, here's a blurb on a book I found in my daily Shelf Awareness e-mail.

"Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life by Natalie Dykstra (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, 9780618873852) is a biography of Henry Adams' wife, a privileged and popular woman who killed herself in 1885."

I finally find a historically significant person with my name, just to learn that she is most famous for her suicide.  Bummer.

And, on that uplifting note, goodnight...