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My oldest daughter has taken to calling names.

It goes something like this. “Come clean your room and we can go to the park.”

“I don’t want to clean my room, nooneyhead.”

Now, don’t ask me where she got that particular name (I’m guessing school) but for some reason it has stuck.

Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m mom, also known as Nooneyhead (at least four times a day, stated under breath and, sometimes, when she is very angry, at the top of her lungs right before she slams her door shut).

At first I ignored it. Isn’t that what they say? Ignore some things. Choose your battles. This is a strong willed girl. We have a lot of battles. Every day. Every hour of every day sometimes.

I chose to ignore this one because I had enough warfare on my plate.

Then it became to the point of ridiculousness so we started a reward system. Kind words=a quarter. A quarter times four or so equals a special prize at the store: new book, new doll, lollipop, depending upon what my pocketbook could take that day.

Yet the name calling persists.

Yesterday she had a temper tantrum. Her: “OKAY NOONEYHEAD!”

Door: SLAM!

Menopausal Mom (under breath, of course): “I know you are but what am I?”

Then I laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.

I know what you are thinking: How juvenile of you to say that, even if it was under your breath!

If that was your response then you must not have children, or at least children who are very, shall we say, spirited.

I know, too, that this response borders on the immature. What was that saying anyway? Seventh grade, 1980ish, feathered hair and blue glitter eyeshadow?

I probably wore leg warmers the last time I said that.

Shouldn’t Menopausal Mom know better?

I guess not.

It’s tough to raise kids. Let me tell you, they go from being cute and wriggly and pink to being defiant and difficult pretty quickly.

I wouldn’t trade any of it. Nor would I trade my girls. I love their little personalities, no matter how difficult they get to be.

Still, though, sometimes when punishments, rewards and ignoring doesn’t work I just feel like there must be something else out there to try.

And that, I suppose, is when I will have to resort to muttering really immature comments under my breath.

(Go on. Try it. I know you want to!)

As much as I loved the movie (see my post Sex and the City: The GOOD!), I was REALLY PISSED OFF at the ending!

What the (*&)(*&C)*&)(&*)(E)((*&(*&, Carrie?

You are a smart woman!

First time, shame on him.

Second, third, fourth, fifth and twentieth time, well, shame on you!

There is no way this relationship is going to work. It wouldn’t work in real life. It won’t work in the movies.

He’s a SNAKE! I can’t stand this guy! I never have liked him (why, oh why couldn’t you have fallen for Aidan?!)

SPOILER for those who have not seen the movie!
I kept looking at Big during the movie and wondering just what she saw in him. Then he did the whole leave her at the altar thing and she mourned so much she didn’t get out of bed for three days at the honeymoon and . . . then . . . WHAT HAPPENED?!

Was it the poems? Shoot, anyone could have copied those down in an email. Maybe he should have SHOWN UP FOR THE WEDDING!

I was unhappy with Miranda, too.

I’m sorry, as a married woman who has been with the love of her life for twelve years now there is one thing I could never forgive: Infidelity. It shows such an utter lack of disregard for someone else’s feelings, thoughts, emotions.

I told my husband from the start that if he cheated on me two things would happen.

First, I would take everything he valued onto the front lawn and burn it.

Secondly, I would take what was left over and leave.

ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!
Yet Miranda goes back.

I don’t know. I felt a little let down at the end of the movie due to the relationship factors. It seemed to me that they made it appear as though Carrie and Miranda needed those men in their lives.

What happened to those independent girls?

I get the point that they were trying to make about man and woman: Relationships are tough and you have to work really really hard sometimes and you have to deal with some things that you’d rather not deal with.

But you shouldn’t have to be shamed and then go back.

To me, this sends out the message that no matter what happens you should forgive and forget.

I don’t know, maybe it’s the hormones talking.

Maybe if it were me in those positions I would have made the same choices.

It was just a movie after all, right?!

I’m a big Sex and the City fan. Have been for a long time, so I was super excited last night when two friends and I got together to see the movie.

It’s funny. I loved it for some things, but I really didn’t like it for others.

Thought I would post about the good and the bad in separate posts.

The idea of friendship has been so strong in this series and still remains in the movie. These are the girlfriends with whom you do everything. I think you don’t really appreciate those types of relationships until you are older.

When younger, you can go from one friend to another. When older you realize how important it is to have a good friend or two with which you can share all of lifes ups and downs.

I loved the fact that this wasn’t a ‘fairy tale’ movie. You know, girl meets boy, they fall in love, all is right with the world. I thought it was so creepy when Mr Big was being so nice to her. Look, that’s not him. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s a bad guy (you’ll have to read my THE BAD post to see what I think of him!) but I am saying that he was never ‘gushy’ like that. Never is going to be. Charlotte and her husband have struggled with infertility for years-another struggle that couples can relate to, while Samantha can’t seem to settle down and Miranda, well, her husband pulls a real low one on her.

Life ain’t a bowl of roses. Neither are relationships. I think we all go through ups and downs. I heard once that a married man of like 80 years said this about how they made it work for all of that time:
“Neither one of us fell out of love at the same time.”

I don’t think that you fall out of love, really. I think that you just go through phases where things are tougher than they are at other times,a nd you have to learn to recognize those phases and to understand things will get better. Now, if your bad phase lasts for a few years, that’s another story!

And of course the humor and the fun times and the fashion all rock! The shoes, ya! The bags, ya! Ah, even the nice little Mexican vacation. And what about Samantha’s neighbor? I can’t complain about any of these things!

Overall I loved the movie. Now, skip on over to the BAD post to see what I thought sucked!

I’ve spent part of this week cleaning out my youngest daughter’s closet.

We are finished having kids-she is our second and last. At eighteen months old, she is a beauty, a delightful chubby baby filled with sweet sugar and kisses and hugs.

Just typing about her makes me want to cry (damn hormones!)

Last night she had difficulty going to sleep. This happens from time to time. Normally she’s a great sleeper. Put her in her crib with her Eeyore stuffy and off she goes. She’ll talk to herself for a bit and then, boom, out she goes.

Last night was different. She cried for a while so I went into her room to hold her, to rock her to sleep.

It was then I realized how big she has gotten. She’s so long that I have to extend my arms wide, and she’s so heavy that I don’t know for how much longer I’ll be able to hold her like this.

It made me cry.

What happened to my little baby? My last baby? Where did the time go?

I find that now that I have babies, time flies. I’m getting so much older so much faster, and my girls are growing so quickly that I can’t keep up with them. They enter a stage and then, like magic, that stage is gone and another has come.

I want to stop time. It’s hard to watch it go. Life moves along so quickly, and then before you know it you are old and your bones creak and your children have children of their own.

Before long, you can’t hold your babies in your arms and rock them goodnight.

Now, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

So with my husband out of town my girlfriend and I decided to tempt fate and take our four kids total-her two boys, my two girls-to dinner.

We chose Soup Plantation. Now, if you don’t have one of these (or a Sweet Tomatoes) nearby, protest. This is the perfect place for the family to go (minus dad, since most men say they want MEAT with their meals).

You can graze along a very long salad bar.

You can sip some soup.

Kids get to make ice cream sundaes at the end of their meals.

It’s loud inside, there are no real waiters, and it doesn’t matter how messy you get or how long you sit.

So, off we headed.

Now, let me give you some background. Our oldest kids are very alike. In this I mean they have heads like bulls. They love each other a lot when they are getting along, but when they fight, fists fly.

For a while, we stopped hanging out because every single outing turned into a WWF match between my daughter and her son. And I wouldn’t admit this to just everyone, but my girl can hold her own! She’s a fighter, that tiger. If someone swings, she swings back, and while I don’t want to teach her to fight I do want her to know that being a doormat is not a good idea either.

We should have known things might go from bad to worse when we got into her car and headed off to the restaurant. From the back the name calling began. What is this with four year olds? The constant desire to :

A. Call names
B. Tattle

It’s killing me! So noonyhead and block head and turtle head filtered up to us, the ever tired moms, and we did our best to ignore it, stating, “Unless someone needs to go to the emergency room, please don’t tell us what is going on.”

This elicited a few giggles, then some punches.

In line at Soup Plantation our kids fought about who would go first. Then they took turns getting in front of one another. By the time we made it down that long walk of horrific children shame to the cash register, they were throwing punches.

Someone’s tray spilled and ranch dressing hit the floor in one congealed mess.

The manager raced over, grabbed the tray from my one free hand (the other cradled my one and a half year old, who would have taken off running across the restaurant-her new game-had I let her down).

People stared as we wrestled the two four year olds apart and herded them to our table. We separated the kids, a parent between each, and sat down to eat.

One Kid: “I want cauliflower.”
Another Kid: “Can I have more bread.”
One Kid: “Mine is better than yours.”
Other Kid: “Mom, he said his is better than mine. Well, I have more.”
Two Mothers: Rolling eyes, trying to ignore it all. Wondering, who thought this was a good idea?

We ate as quickly as we could, because that is what you do when you take kids to restaurants. You don’t so much taste your food as you do inhale it, quickly, without chewing, hoping that you beat your kid in finishing up the meal. Because if you don’t win, you are in trouble. They can get out of those seats, even when tied down with a belt, faster than you can swallow. And then they are gone.

Gone to the ice cream machine, if you are eating at Soup Plantation.

Once we finished our meal and were waiting to get dessert, the kids started shaking their heads back and forth as quickly as they possibly could. Our utterences of please don’t do that, you are making a disturbance didn’t stop them.

“Your brain is going to fall out on the table,” I uttered.

That made them pause.

We handed them wet wipes once the ice cream was gone. They wiped their hands and then began hitting each other with them.

In the meantime, we glanced around at the people in the restaurant who were trying to enjoy a good meal.

You can tell the ones that have or had kids at one point.

They are the ones with the look of pity in their eyes.

You see, they understand that you started off really just wanting to go out and have an enjoyable family meal. You wanted the kids to appreciate the fact that they were eating at a restaurant and then going to get ice cream later.

And maybe those kids that are older can appreciate this fact.

Four year olds really can’t.

They see Soup Plantation or any other restaurant as this huge entertainment park with lots of cool stuff that must be touched, felt or climbed upon.

The food, the dining out, the relaxation aspect of it is lost upon them.

Those people who have been parents, they gave us looks of pity, and we could see in their eyes the truth. You really won’t go out and enjoy a quiet, relaxing meal if you have young children.

Instead, you’ll have to break up fights, clean up spills and chase the young around the restaurant playing a game of hide and seek.

Then I realized last night, that is the joy of it all, right?

Perhaps we mothers are insane when we try to take our kids out for meals in restaurants.

But the insanity of it all really puts life into perspective.

After all, though those other diners may have been slightly annoyed by our noise and roughness, perhaps last night, once they got back, they laughed about the fact that my daughter scaled the restaurant wall in an effort to yank off a piece of the potted plant they had on display.

Perhaps, I suppose.

I have to share this with you, women . . . my gynecologist is HOT.

He was recommended to me by some people online. Before I moved from my one So Cal city to my other So Cal city I posted on Baby Center to find a new gynecologist. At the time I was pregnant with my second.

I got several responses about the greatness of one ob/gyn in particular, so I called him up and set an appointment when we got moved.

Before I could get in to see him, I ran into another mother in the park one day. She asked who was delivering my baby and I told her.

“Ah,” she said, and a look of lust and longing came over her face. “He’s my doctor, too. He delivered all three of mine.”

I was happy to meet someone in person who had gone to the doctor since I had never met him. “How is he?” I asked.

“Oh,” she gushed, grabbing my arm and squeezing in that I’m going to tell you a little secret way, “He is HOT.”

Now, the last thing you ever want to hear right before going in for a pelvic exam is that your future doctor, the one who will be probing, is HOT.

I don’t want a HOT OB/GYN, I thought, recoiling. I want someone old and fat and ugly as hell. Someone who looks as though he hasn’t even considered having sex for the last decade at least.

Give me a gay man, for heaven’s sake.

DON’T give me someone HOT.

Well, all the way to the appointment that day I fretted. My husband was with me, since I was pregnant and he wanted to meet the man who would be delivering our second-born. I told him what the girl had said. Then I put on some lipstick. Just because, you know. You always have to wear lipstick when you go in for a pelvic, right?

I didn’t mention to him that I had shaved extra carefully that morning. That I had tweezed the little hairs that had grown in around my belly button after the birth of my first born.

That I had changed my underwear three times, choosing the small boxer looking pair, just before leaving the house.

When my OB/GYN walked in I about fainted. Hot was not the word for him. This guy was on FIRE. Light a match and he would have exploded. I felt my face flush.

Turns out he ’s really a great guy. I’m sharing all of this with you now because I just made my yearly appointment, the first since I’ve started experiencing these bitchy hormonal menopausal symptoms.

I’m already getting nervous about the visit. While I don’t have a crush on the guy-in fact, he’s really not my type, despite how HOT he is-I certainly do get a little queasy before I have to go in.

It’s been a year though. Hopefully he has lost some hair, gained some weight, or started liking men, much to the disdain of his wife and three kids.

A girl can dream, right?

So daddy has been out of town all week.

I knew it would be tough when he told me about it. Tried to swallow it down like a bitter pill (sheeyut! that was bad!)

Prepared for weeks mentally.

Stocked up on wine.

Made plans with friends.

You see, this is the key to keeping kids out of trouble:

KEEP THEM BUSY!

Don’t believe me? Just keep your kids locked in the house for a day with nothing to do, nothing planned and pay them no attention.

Then ensure you keep the phone on your hip at all times so when they set the place on fire you can quickly dial 911.

While daddy is away, mommy pays. That’s all there is to it.

I’m so freaking tired tonight I can barely lift my wine glass, and that’s saying something!

But this is what I love. Daddy calls at 6 PM. Laughing. Friends joking in the background.

Daddy: “Whatcha doing?”

Mommy: (To kids) “GET OFF OF THE FREAKIN KITCHEN TABLE!” (To dad) “Nothing.” Bitter. Very, very bitter.

Daddy: “Oh, well, getting ready to go play golf so I wanted to check in with you.”

Mommy: “Golf, huh? You mean with grown ups?”

Daddy: “Yes.”

Mommy: “I cleaned up three poop diapers today.”

Daddy, feeling the bitterness through the phone like a cold blast of air. “Oh. Well, yeah, I should go now.”

Mommy: “FINE!”

You see, mommy can never really keep in her hostility when daddy is out of town playing golf after attending a convention or other all day workshop while surrounded by grown ups wearing big boy pants and telling adult jokes and talking about grown up things.

Mommy tries. She does, she really does.

But mommy’s tired.

So tonight, I took a break. We went out to eat (which I’ll post about in another post entirely . . . it definitely deserves its own space).

We didn’t take baths.

Hell, I don’t even know if I got them out of their clothes before I shoved them into bed tonight. Brush their teeth? Yea, right. I’ve had them for a week by myself. Momma’s tired. Momma doesn’t live near grandparents or uncles or aunts. When daddy’s out of town, momma does it all. She becomes supermom who wears a big red cape and flies around town with two kids under four in tow like some sort of caffeined up freak.

When daddy’s away, mommy pays.

But when daddy comes back, mommy’s gonna make up for it.

Saturday matinee, here I come.

And I won’t be taking my cell phone.