Get dressed!

(This was one of our first afternoons out,
and I managed to not wear sweats)

(This was originally published in Feb. of 2012 in The Maine Edge and is reposted with permission)

By Katy England
edge staff mom

When you add kids to your routine, you basically add more time than you physically have to your schedule. Especially if you have more than one at the same time. This means you tend to let things go. Cut corners, as it were. You do their laundry instead of your laundry. Wash their dishes (bottles) instead of your dishes. And suddenly you realize it's 5 p.m. and you're still in your jammies – and is that the guy who's coming to fix the heater? Crap.

I've learned that you need to make excuses to get dressed. It's one of the best things you can do to make you feel like a real person again. And the more you feel like one, the more you can act like one.
Here are some ways to ensure you get dressed.

Schedule appointments where you must leave the house. Be it doctors visits, work-related meetings, home nurse meetings - whatever. Get dressed.

Invite your friends over. Preferably friends who will rib you gently about looking like an unmade bed. Schedule a girls' night, make it a point to wear that cute thing you bought, or the heels you like, or as a chance to finally get that hair cut you've been putting off for a month.

We know it's hard to focus on you when there are much more important things to be thinking about. But I think there is truth in the statement that looking better is feeling better. When I look put together, I feel more competent, I act more competent and therefore I am more competent. And getting into that mental space isn't just good for you, it's good for your whole family.

Yes, this might be spoiled by an ill-timed spit up or diaper malfunction. But who cares? You have more than one pair of pants and more than one halfway decent shirt. Most of these stains will come out. And it's OK if you have to bring a couple things to the dry cleaner.

Showers, sleep and other mommy scheduling conflicts

(From Wikimedia Commons)

(This  originally was printed in The Maine Edge in Feb. 2012, and is reposted with permission).

By Katy England

edge staff mom

I've always been a person who had two separate minds when it come to scheduling. One mind was my work brain, which kept track of business meetings, interviews for stories and any other business related meetup that might appear. Then there was my home, or social, mind. This was for lunches with pals, hitting the movies and meeting up for gaming, dinner and drinks at a friend's house.

Add three kids to this mix and suddenly there isn't enough brain power to go around, and more scheduling conflicts than I ever thought possible arise. Who knew that there would be a scheduling conflict between sleeping and showering? You have time for one or the other, not both. You have to cancel one of them.

This is compounded by the epic amount of doctor appointments needed to bring your kids up to date on things like immunizations, regular exams and what not. Add in family and friends who want to visit and help and suddenly you have another full docket.

Then there is that separate brains problem, when you have set up a doctor's appointment for your kids three months in advance, but you don't mesh that schedule with your work schedule – because up until a few months ago you never had this whole other schedule to keep track of. This entails calling people to explain that you've gone full-blown stupid and double booked.

Thankfully, losing your mind because of new children is something most people (or at least most people with children) are entirely sympathetic towards. Even if their kids have grown up, they remember that first year.

Here are some scheduling conflicts for some of the rooms in your own house. Pick two out of three.

Kitchen: You can cook dinner, wash bottles or stock or empty the dishwasher.

Living Room: Pick up toys, sweep/vacuum the floor or pay bills.

Bathroom/Laundry Room: Wash your clothes, wash your kids clothes/diapers or take a shower.

Bedroom: Feed kids, get dressed in real clothes (sweatpants don't count) or sleep.

And that's just at your own house. If you need to bathe a child, meet with friends or fix an appliance, you can only pick one out of three.  

Five by Five by Five

By Katy England

I’ve always had a problem with math. I don’t know if it’s anxiety or what, but typically I end up panicking and counting out totals on my fingers, or writing it out and carrying lots of ones. I figure this has to be my problem when it comes to the fact that my kids turn five today. It must be my bad math, because yesterday they were babies. Which means tomorrow they will be 10, and the day after that they will all be married and living as millionaires on the Island of Sodor, running that damn place better than Toppham Hatt ever could. Or something.

Five years, gone in the blink of an eye. Tempus fugit and all that, but I can’t get over how fast it has gone. It’s weird, because even when they were very little (and how very little they were) they had personalities. But now it’s different. Now they are making jokes, talking not just to me and Dad, but to each other. They play together now, not just in the same room, but together. And most of the time, they enjoy it. 

Sometimes they will hug each other, and tell me or dad or each other how they love us. Which has to be the best thing ever. They will tell jokes that make no sense, but are just as funny. Like this one:

Ellie: Paul, tella joke to us.

Paul: What rhymes with jaguar? It's jelly!

(uproarious laughter)

Ellie: Tell another one.

I have vague recollections of that whirlwind first year. People ask me how I did it – I have no idea. But that’s only half true. I made it because of the people who helped. My parents and my husband’s parents who came over to lend a hand – and somehow ignore my insanity. My Aunt Linda who gifted us with things that I can’t imagine life without – our generator, helped us buy a new vehicle when we were t-boned. My friend Marion who ninja-dropped food for us for the entire first year.

People who forgave my sleep-deprived, scattered insanity and helped me do dishes. People who let me reschedule missed appointments without a word. My friends who ignored my chaotic state of my house and still came over to play games or watch movies – you helped me to. The people who let me carry on about my kids, showing pictures at inopportune moments (K9 training springs to mind), and they let me talk well past normal politeness. Because the kids was the thing I became an expert in – it certainly wasn’t topical pop-culture, politics or current events. 

The only current events I know about are about five years old. And though I’m aware of the political climate, I don’t have the energy to engage in those discussions – which has actually been really nice, and I highly suggest everyone do the same. You will feel much better, I promise. 

Thank you. All of you. We couldn’t have done this without you.

The kids keep growing, and learning, and signing and destroying my nice things, and creating other nice things. And the things they say – the stories they help create. It’s amazing to me.

I know I’ve been lax in my blogging, partly because I was sick, partly because I had a new job and partly because I’ve just been living it. Riding the crazy wave.

Here’s to tomorrow and the next day. Here’s to them graduating college and driving rockets to the moon before I know it. Here’s to a different feeling of time, the kind that flies and takes me with it.

Potty Mouth

By Katy England

There’s plenty of things for parents to fight about, everything from breast milk vs. formula to which color toys you buy. So, here’s my opinion on potty training.

I suck at it. I mean, I must, right? It took me almost the entirety of five years to finish… and to be honest, we’re not done. Yes, we stopped buying diapers (not as long ago as I’d like) but we’re done. And things have gotten so much grosser. There’s nothing about potty training I like. None of it. It all sucks. 

As soon as they are done peeing and pooping in their pants they transition to peeing and pooping in their pants. Just without diapers. It’s awesome. Oh, and let’s not forget their beds. Good lord.

If I could go back and do one thing all over again, it would be to never, ever buy the mini-potties. Nothing against them really, they work perfectly fine. They’re easy to clean, but nothing stops the fact that you essentially have a bucket of human waste in your house. And in our case, we have three. And they like to use them, because it’s more convenient, fits their little butts better, and is less of a hassle than the little stepstool, potty bench.

If you are a parent, and you have the option, for the love of God and all that is holy, get the one that fits over your regular toilet. You will have no regrets (well, no regrets outside of having someone living with you who will casually poop in their pants without thinking twice about).

There’s something about kids turning three where everyone just assumes they are potty trained. It’s cool if you get your kids potty trained on or before three years of age – I envy you. I wanted to be you. I had plans, you see.

You’d think a woman who was blessed with spontaneous triplets would know better than to make plans. But no, I just assumed I’d be able to have them all potty trained at roughly the same time.

The age of three came and went and with it went my dreams of having them all out of diapers. It wasn’t for lack of trying. We tried. Bribes, coaxing, begging, chiding, reasoning, natural consequences – and nothing worked. Until it worked. And the only thing I can tell you is that it had nothing to do with me or anything I was trying to do. Each kid just did it.

And I don’t honestly know when the boy first became potty trained. I just know it was well before the girls could be enticed to use the potty with any regularity. Then Pre-K began to loom on the horizon. And with it came societal pressure to have them all out of diapers. And then they were in school. And one of my daughters could make it through the day pullup-free. But not the other.

In a way, it was freeing. Because the worst had literally happened. I was the mom who couldn’t potty train her kids effectively. And huge props to her teachers, and helpers at school. Because the reason why I can still look people in the eye and not die of shame, is because they helped so much.

But it wasn’t until recently when I went through two full shopping cycles without buying overnight pullups that I realized we had arrived. Sort of.

Because yes, we haven’t bought pullups. But it’s still like playing pee-roulette overnight.

So, if you’re kids are 3 or older, and you start getting flack for not being potty trained, they will be. And just tell that person that you’re confident it will happen sometime before they enroll in college.

Pink vs. Blue

Is this not the best thing you've seen? Ever?

By Katy England

My weirdo roots go deep. When I was young, I was into bugs in a big way. I’d dig up worms, play with salamanders and snakes, and frogs. If it creeped and crawled I liked it. And I had a unicorn collection. My favorite dress was one that was made up of rainbows – I would probably have worn it every single day if my mom had let me.

My dad encouraged my love of computers and technology. I have very fond memories of helping build a solar-powered hotdog cooker that focused sunlight against metal to cook the dogs and soldering solar-powered cars. To this day I enjoy video games and catch and release all non-bloodsucking bugs into the wild (except for those blasted carpet beetles – you suck and you know it! Enjoy toilet life.).

So, it wasn’t a huge deal when one of my daughters got into trains and trucks in a big way. I mean, there’s plenty that stuff – and Thomas’s marketers were savvy enough to throw in a few girl trains to match with the new millennium. When it comes to clothes, she loves things with stripes, my other daughter is a huge fan of blue, my son claims to like green and yellow, but never fails to ask for the pink bowl if it’s available for breakfast.

I’ve actually had to learn about large-scale construction equipment to keep up. And that’s really how it should be – a sharing of ideas. Here’s what I think is cool – oh, you like that? Awesome.

But there’s been many a line drawn in the sand over what is for girls and what is for boys – and most of it is silly. I’ve never met a person who, while growing up, never pulled at the air over their head while a big rig rolled by to get him to blast the horn. It’s practically universal.

So, my little daughter vacillates between liking bugs (it’s so CUTE!) and squishing them in a fit of rage and fear. I’m working on the whole, “They’re more scared of you than you are of them…” line. It’s a process. My son plays with my old My Little Ponies alongside his extensive collection of dinosaurs.

When one of my daughters developed a taste for lemon-zinger tea, my head was filled with thoughts of tea sets. I still have my porcelain tea set I got for Christmas growing up. It was a Big Deal. And the idea of being able to have tea parties filled me with giddy anticipation. And so I started cruising the internet for tea sets, but I wanted them to reflect some of her other interests. Like dinosaurs or trucks. But to my dismay, there were not many dinosaur-themed tea services. Which was both a surprise, and a bummer.

There were some leads – Deviant Art pieces, ghost images on Pinterest, but nothing I could buy. So I started skimming Etsy for tea sets and came across a goth-inspired tea service. It looked like any of the elegant porcelain sets, gilded with gold scrolling and trimmed in pink – with a gothic skull enameled where flowers would normally be. And then there were the magic words “Reques a Custom Order.”

So, I messaged her about the option for dinosaur skulls, trucks and train engines. Well, now a special order is in the works. I probably won’t end up getting it until they’re a couple years older. I like to stockpile presents in case of emergency, that way we’ll still have something.

I’ll probably be visiting that shop again for her collection of insect plates. In the meantime, I can’t wait to start planning a tea party.

Mother’s Day

(It doesn't take much to make me happy. But scotch helps)

By Katy England

Mother’s Day means different things to different people.  And what you want to do for mother’s day is going to vary – sometimes by year, sometimes by the second.

It’s hard, because the amount of time I want to spend around my kids depends greatly on things largely outside of my control. Like how much they are or are not screaming at that very moment. Just yesterday, I went from wanting to bask in their awesomeness to pretty much wanting to run into the hills and hide, while drinking hard spirits in the space of about an hour. And then back to wanting hugs.

Some of my mom friends want nothing to do with their kids in Mother’s Day. They want to sleep in, be taken out to a dinner they haven’t had a hand in, and hang out with friends and dance the night away. I have wanted similar things – and from day to day still want those things.

The thought of sleeping in – not just not having to get up, but actually having the ability to sleep past 6 a.m. with no thoughts to who is yelling at who; no consideration for what accident of a potty nature has occurred in the night; no thought spared to lost stuffed bears (that are usually under a pillow or swallowed up by a blanket). That would be amazing. And also oddly dispiriting – which I know is insane. But there’s something about being a goddess of laundry, cooking and finder-of-lost-buddies that is addicting. I mean, most of us are muddling through life looking to feel important. You know what makes you feel special? Getting a full-body tackle-hug for finding a stuffed penguin, followed by a “Tank you, mama!”

There are times I want to very much not have any mom duties. But then there are certain mom duties I didn’t know I could live without. Like sing-a-longs with the girls or story time or ALL THE HUGS! And with all the craziness, all the stress, and tears comes the laughs, love, and awesomeness. You can’t have one without the other. And it makes you happy that you had good examples in your life – cause not everyone does. My mom, and my husband’s mom are inspirations. My sister-in-law and her four kids blows my mind with how she is such an awesome, funny mom. The kind of mom I want to be.

So, my Mother’s Day is going to spent hanging out with the kids, letting them eat off my plate (I’m a terrible influence on children and dogs). We’ll probably watch too much TV and I’m not going to clean the house – well, I might do some survival dishes.  We will eat greasy take-out (Crosby’s – we’re coming for you!) and indulge in thick milkshakes. I’ll sing a billion silly songs of dubious taste. After bedtime, I’ll have some scotch and eat some Lofthouse Cookies.  And I’m going to love it (even if there is yelling).

The Entertainer

Becoming Mom the rock star (aka Mom the Clown)

Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in The Maine Edge on March 21, 2012 and is reprinted here with permission.

By Katy England

I learned fairly early on that I never really wanted to be famous. Not really famous anyway. Not thousands of screaming fans shouting at me, sending me weird stuff in the mail, or stopping me on the street. And no, the small, mostly social notoriety that comes from writing for this lovely publication doesn't count (If it wasn't for the marvels of Facebook, many people probably wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup).

But I'm a rock star now. And a stand up comic. But mostly, I'm a clown.

Believe me, I'm a little surprised myself. I didn't even notice at first. Because you tend to roll with the punches, you don't pay attention to the little things. It was called to my attention when I was singing one of my girls a lullaby. As we finish the last feed, I bring them up and they each get their own song – or if we have help, all three get one at the same time. She had her eyes glued on my face, a huge grin, and she reached out to grab my thumbs. That's when my husband pointed out that she was behaving like a star-struck fan being singled out by the lead singer of her favorite band.
I was famous.

At some point, my children will figure out that the songs I make up or classic tunes I mutilate to fit their names into, are silly. There will come a day when the rude noises I make that cause them to belly laugh will embarrass them. They won't guffaw when I twirl and dance with them. They won't giggle when they bounce on my knee. But it's not this day. They're dancing with the stars, they're watching stand-up gold, they are being sung to by a rock star.

Who needs fame?

The best part is, I'm not alone. The internet is chock full of videos of other parents who have done similar things to elicit belly laughs, grins and guffaws from their offspring. If watching the video of the kid losing it over his dad ripping up credit card statements (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc ) doesn't make you grin, then you're living a sad life.

Kids give you all the benefits of fame, with few of the drawbacks. I don't have to sign autographs. And the weird stuff I get from them, I kind of knew about going into this gig. And who cares? When I sing my patented “Good Morning” song they laugh and grin and act like I'm the hottest ticket in the world. And half the time I can't even make my own verses rhyme.

You will also find yourself doing some of the weirdest, silliest stuff just to get a smile. One of my beans gets a huge kick out of me shaking my head quickly from side to side. It's fun for the first couple of times, till you start to get dizzy. But do I stop? No! She's laughing! A laughing kid is like crack; you need more. And more. And threats of drool and spit-up be damned, you will dangle them within inches of your face just to make them grin.

I once created an entire interpretive dance to go along with Paul Simon's “You can Call me Al.” My husband is still mad that the camcorder batteries were dead.

So, the masses can keep their American Idols, Next Top Models and Dancing Stars. My fans need me.