Yesterday Rusty, Norah and I drove back from having Thanksgiving with my family in New Mexico. It was a lovely holiday and we returned filled to the gills with green chiles. I am never happier than when green chile essence is oozing out of my pores.

Nearly 75% of the 11 hour drive is on I-40 and since we have been driving the route about 2 times a year for 3 years, the scenery is increasingly familiar to us. The trip would not be quite the same without the Rose Leach sign in Oklahoma; the lonely trees and endless plains of eastern Oklahoma and western Texas; the leprachauns of Shamrock, Texas; the Biggest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!; the Big Texan restaurant with its promise of a free 72 ounce steak; the horrific weather of Amarillo, the stench of cows in Hereford, and the Allsup’s in Elida. These are the landmarks of our trek to and from New Mexico. Without them, I don’t know that I would be able to find my way home.

This trip however, I noticed another characteristic of that route. There is an incredible number of billboards for adult superstores. I counted at least 7. Christie’s Toybox, Adult MegaMart, and Fantasy Land all advertise their goods several times on I-40 and even though Christie’s Toybox and Fantasy Land sound harmless enough, almost like a good place to stop and let the kids stretch their legs, we all know that they are just cleverly named sex shops. And you should probably find another place to let your kids stretch their legs.

So my brain had been busy all day translating “Christie’s Toybox: 7 Miles!” into “Naked Shop!” and because of that I really cannot take responsibility for the fact that when I drove past the Recreation Department in our small Arkansas town and read “Adult Basketball Sign Ups!” I immediately thought, ‘Ew. Naked basketball.”

I blame Christie.

Another, more innocuous landmark of the trip is of course, McDonald’s. I don’t think it is possible to drive to New Mexico without stopping at McDonald’s to pee and get a cheeseburger. Its some kind of compulsion. The McDonalds’ along I-40 have seen some pretty bizarre sights, I’m sure, and we like to be sure to add our own little lunacies. For example, when Norah and I went to Roswell last summer we stopped at the arches to change a diaper and get some food. I thought it was just a routine diaper change, but when I pulled off her shorts, two adult sized handfuls of Cheerios came flying out the legs of her shorts and spewed around the bathroom stall. I, of course, left them where they were so that someone else could have the pleasure of trying to figure out how to clean up a hundred Cheerios in the big stall in the McDonald’s in El Reno, Oklahoma.

This time we stopped in Yukon, Oklahoma for the diaper and wardrobe change. This particular McDonald’s committed the cardinal sin of bathrooms and expected me to change my baby’s diaper without the aid of a changing table. Now, at my own house I change diapers on the floor because I think its easier but my floors are relatively clean and familiar. I draw the line at laying my daughter down in a puddle of unknown liquid at some bathroom on the interstate. That’s just nasty. Since Norah can obviously stand on her own now I didn’t panic. I simply unbuttoned her jammies and then pulled the tabs on her diaper so I could change it standing up. As soon as I pulled it off, she peed. And not just a little tinkle, but a full-on pee that left her standing in a nice warm puddle.

Norah is so awesome like that.

So anyway, we are back in Arkansas now. We are in the thick of transitioning Norah to a toddler bed, I am feeling the baby move like crazy, and tomorrow Rusty is going to sign up for naked basketball. I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving but maybe without pee puddles.

Norah loves stickers.

Her love for stickers may only be surpassed by her love for her blankies. Rusty and I definitely come in third, after the blankies and the stickers, and if she is feeling particularly motherly…we come in fourth, after her babies.

Its cool. I mean, its not like I carried her for nine months, or gave birth to her, or sustained her life for 8 solid months with NOTHING BUT MY BOOBS! (and eventually some rice cereal and avocados,etc). So no, I don’t mind being fourth in the love line, behind fabric and sticky bits of paper and various stuffed animals. Psshhh.

Anyway, she loves stickers. Every morning, after she has had sufficient time to play in her bed after waking up and I have had sufficient time to pretend that its not actually time to leave the nice warm covers, I go into Norah’s room and she greets me with a grin and crazy hair. Then we go into the kitchen to get a drink and just after asking for a drink she starts asking for a sticker. Then she spends the next thirty minutes taking them off her hands and then asking for help putting them back on her hands. Its a super fun game, let me tell you.

But recently she discovered another fun thing to do with stickers. Eat them! Mmm…delicious gluey paper.

Yesterday I found madarin oranges in her diaper and that was cool. I’m guessing tomorrow I’ll find the remnants of about 7 heart stickers.

In the interest of telling a story I am also going to open a can of worms. Rather, a bucket of worms in the mommyblog-o-world.

Rusty and I don’t practice spanking or swatting as a regular form of discipline. Lots of thought and reflection, as well as the education that comes with having a bachelor’s degree in psychology have gone into making that choice. I think there is a place for swatting young kids, but I don’t plan on doing it regularly, plus, it would probably end up being useless with Norah.

Once I swatted her hand because she was just being a defiant little booger. She glared at me and then continued with her actions. And once I swatted her butt. She was walking toward the street while I was putting the car seat I ran over to her, swatted her butt (not hard) and said “No! We do NOT go into the street without Mama or Daddy!”

It worked that time. She cried for a long time, and for the next thirty minutes would shoot dirty looks at me before crying again. Jasmine was there, and Isaiah too. It was pitiful and a little bit funny. But that’s the extent of our swatting experience. I use other discipline techniques, like positive reinforcement and redirection. Oh, and time out.

I really thought that time out was working ok. Norah has gotten to where she will sit in her corner until I tell her to get up, and usually she stops doing whatever she was doing that put her in time out in the first place.

However, I am losing my faith in the usefulness of timeout. On Monday I was watching Isaiah at my house. He and Norah were playing with those giant Lego things, and he started throwing them at me. I used all the tools I could think of to get him to stop before I lost an eyeball (he throws hard!) but he wasn’t listening. So I took the block from him and put him in timeout. Before I could even turn around Norah ran up behind me, slapped me in the butt and then laughed and sat herself in time out right next to Isaiah!

So I’m thinking that time out is really not that effective with Norah. She thinks its a game: Slap Your Mom and Sit in the Fun Corner

I don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl.

Before we left for vacation I got this wild idea to put Norah on the potty and see what happened. I fully expected nothing to happen besides her looking cute sitting on the potty like a big girl. I was not disappointed for lo, she did indeed look cute. We were getting ready to take a shower so she was naked, on the potty, giggling and kicking her feet and reaching for the toilet paper. Norah, like most other babies, comes into the bathroom with me every time I go so she has a general idea of what toilet paper is for. By that I mean, she knows how to unroll it and put it on top of my legs. So while she was sitting on the potty she kept reaching for the toilet paper and I kept saying “Norah, you can only have toilet paper if you actually do something.” Relentlessly, she kept reaching. The shower was running so I was about to pick her up when I saw it…The Poop Face. I held my breath, waited a minute, and sure enough SHE POOPED IN THE POTTY!

I ran out to the living room and yelled at Rusty SHE POOPED! SHE POOPED! and then ran back into the bathroom in case Norah decided to play with it or something. I cleaned her up and we showered and then ten minutes later she pooped in her diaper again. Ok, so the potty pooping was probably just a fluke, a case of blind good-timing on my part. But still, the next day I thought I’d try again.

I sat her on the potty and stupidly, this time I gave her some toilet paper before she did anything to earn it. She apparently has a better idea of what it’s for than I earlier thought because before I could stop her she reached down between her legs and starting dipping the toilet paper in the toilet water. So, she has a better idea of what its for, but she’s still not totally clear. And guys, I do not clean my toilets near often enough so basically Norah was playing in dirty bacteria poop water.

I swooped her up off the potty and ran to the sink to wash her hands as fast as I could because I just knew she was going to stick those poop water hands in her eye or her mouth and we’d end up with some kind of terrible disease that only comes from poop ingestion and then my pediatrician would know that I let my baby play with poop and don’t wash her hands, which I DON’T! So I sat her on the sink to clean the germs (on Rusty’s side of the sink, hehehe) and washed her hands until her skin was pink and disease bacteria free and the while she’s going “Gahh! Gahh! Gahh….” looking longingly toward the toilet and her precious pieces of toilet paper. The little sicko.

I picked up my clean handed baby to put a diaper back on her because clearly we are not ready for potty training and then I realized, too late, she’d already peed all over the counter. A bathroom fiasco in line with the time she flung a ball of orange Dorito poop dangerously close to her own head while I changed her diaper at school.

So yeah, maybe we are not ready to potty train. Norah’s interest in the potty seems to extend no further than eating graham crackers while sitting on the pot, repeating “cracker!” like a little naked parrot.

–Sadie

1. It wasn’t me who put Norah to bed early so I wouldn’t have to share my burrito with her.

2. It wasn’t me who put Norah to bed early so I could play Mario Party 8 either.

3. It wasn’t me who let Norah dump and entire box of goldfish crackers into the back of my mom’s car.

4. It was definately not me who looked at Norah and laughed when she got ahold of a handful of salsa, ate it, turned bright red, and then proceeded to freak out and fling everything from our table at Taco Bueno onto the floor.

5. Hahahahaha! It was pretty funny though.

–Sadie

Today Jasmine and I took the babies to lunch, then the mall, then Target.

We’ve done this before, and on previous trips the two were little angels. Both of them cooing and charming the pants off everyone who walked by. Seriously, there are often tons of people walking around pants-less, having been sucked into the Isaiah and Norah Zone.

What can we say? We have damn cute babies.

But today was a little different. Lunch started fine, Isaiah flirted and showed off for a couple at the next table, Norah shoved half of a giant cookie in her mouth before she even sat down. Totally normal stuff. But when we got to mall the idyllic picture of two mamas and their beautiful babies out for an afternoon of shopping erupted into flames of woe and angst.

Norah was in her stroller because she is not a good in-store walker. I prefer to keep her strapped in the stroller where the only thing she can damage is my eardrums. Isaiah, on the other hand, is a great walker. Jasmine and G never used the stroller like I did. They used the slings and now let Isaiah walk. He’s used to it and usually happy to do it.

But not today. Today he wanted “A Seat!”. He was really heart-broken. So we traded. Isaiah rode, happy as a clam, meanwhile, Norah attempted to dismantle a display of necklaces, put on a pair of yoga pants, and escape from me by crawling under the dressing room door.

At Target the flames of woe and angst became full-on hellish inferno blasts tinged with baby poop. Both kids were tired. Both were cranky. Both of them were acting like lunatics. And to make matters worse, they were feeding off one another. So when Isaiah dropped his gum and then proceeded to wail into a dishtowel about hw his life was over, Norah (who had just been happily trying to put an exercise shirt over her head) decided that her life was over too. So she started yelling. A cacophony of baby screams.

Isaiah was having a rough time, so I took him for a trip to the jewlery section so Jasmine could have 3 seconds to think. And again, Norah started crying like she’d lost a limb, even though she had just been fine.

These kids! I can only imagine what things are going to be like when we have four little monkeys with us.

Anyone else experienced this kind of baby dramatic empathy?

Well Jasmine is away working at her fancy job and growing a person in her uterus, and I am sitting at my house surrounded by piles of laundry and diapers so…

I am going to start off Bad Mommy Monday!

It wasn’t me who took an un-napped baby to the  public library.
If anyone asks, it was not my baby that was running through the non-fiction section laughing like a lunatic, hair sticking straight up, only one shoe on. And I am most definitely not the mother of the child who was screaming so loud it echoed off the ceiling tiles.

Nope. Not me. I am much more polite and have a much more calm and mild-mannered child.

(BAHH HAHAHAHAHA!)