Now Where Did I Leave That House…

I wrote this over three years ago when we first moved to a new city, so the age references are a bit off. Use your imagination.

Now Where Did I Leave That House…

We moved a few months ago, and I swear: ever since then it’s been like living in the Twilight Zone. I mean, more so than usual. We moved only an hour and a half from our old home, but it feels like Mars sometimes. What makes it really confusing is that I used to live here, back before fire was discovered. So, some things I remember and other things are brand new. Very surreal, if you know what I mean. One minute I’m cruising along a familiar road, then I make a left and spend the next three hours wandering in confusion and figuring out how long the juice box and graham crackers in Sam’s diaper bag can last three people.
We moved into a rental house on a Friday in January. Three days later, Sam exhibited moving-day blues in a really spectacular way, by spiking a 105 degree fever and earning himself a trip to the local ER. This child, who never a day in his life was affected by Tylenol, was given said drug by the ER nurses over my protests that it was useless. The nurses smiled just a little condescendingly at me while they coo’d at Sam and coaxed him to sip the medicine. He, in turn, groaned pitifully and looked at them as if to say, “I…[gasp]…asked her to…[gasp]…give it to me, but…[groooooaaaaannnn]…she wouldn’t do it…” and then in one hour flat his fever broke. Now, I ask you: what self-respecting mother wouldn’t feel like scum incarnate if all she’d had to do was give Tylenol instead of GOING TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM??? I could NOT believe it. I just kept repeating, “It’s never worked before…I promise, it has never, ever, in his whole life, ever worked before…what did you give him? Was it special NASA Tylenol or something?” One nurse, trying to make me feel better, said that they’d probably given him more than I normally did, because of the extreme situation. Uh-huh. Right.

So that was the first weekend.

The following weekend we were scheduled to get satellite TV installed. This was serious cause for celebration; the house was wired for cable (which was disconnected after the last tenant left), and so regular network TV didn’t work. We couldn’t find the box with all the DVD’s and videos, so all I and both children had to watch for one week straight were two DVD’s we got from Walmart. It was incredibly cold that week, so we had to stay indoors, and with Sam still sick, we were homebound.
We got really, really sick of those two DVD’s.
By Thursday Sam was well enough that we risked a little trip to the zoo. I bought a poster for Sophie so that she could start decorating her room. Of all the available posters at the zoo, showing pretty parrots, stately giraffes, cuddly koalas, etc., the poster she wanted most was of a deep black, menacing panther staring hungrily at the camera. Well…OK. If she can sleep with that thing staring at her, so be it. So we got home and I mounted the poster on her wall.
Friday came, and with it, the satellite installation guy. Remember, we were three people on a serious cabin fever trip. We were desperate for any deviation from these two DVD’s. The installation guy came in the house; Sam took one look at him and, throwing his arms open wide, flung himself at the guy’s knees and hung on for dear life. Sophie began bouncing up and down like a kangaroo wired to a generator, and shrieked, “WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME UP TO MY ROOM AND SEE MY BLACK PANTHER POSTER?”
Did I mention that the gentleman in question was black?
I’ve never seen a serviceman work so quickly…and peel out so quickly, too, for that matter.

That was the second weekend.

By the end of January, each child had been sick two times and I had been sick one time. Thank heavens, SM, who was now the only breadwinner in the family, stayed relatively healthy. He kept looking at us strangely and shaking his head slowly. I don’t think he’d ever seen such pestilence so up close in his life. We learned monk-like patience and endurance from that first month.

Then my son decided he would stop eating. Forever.

Now, let me back up just a moment and give some details here. Before we moved, I worked outside the home. SM got a job opportunity in this new city that enabled me to not only come home, but also to homeschool our daughter. I was really looking forward to both these changes. Sam had had more babysitters in his short little life than a whole daycare, and he had always had problems with his feedings as a result. It was just a matter of inconsistency, I told myself. Get him with one person long enough and things will smooth out. Yes, I discovered later, that one person is me and my brain waves are now so smooth they are flat lines. You see, while inconsistency between babysitters was an issue, it was not the primary issue. HIS MOUNT EVEREST OF STUBBORNESS was the primary issue. Oh, yes. Sam is stubborn. He is the epitome of “cut off your own nose to spite your face”. My lovely, sweet little boy is the most stubborn thing on two legs. He drove off one babysitter (an experienced mother of two) after only three days because he would not eat the entire time she watched him and it unnerved her to the point of hysteria. I’m a highly stubborn person, and this child who isn’t even two years old yet was beating me into the ground. Sam is normally an easy-going fellow, but when it comes to eating, he’s Attilla the Hun. It’s a game, and he is the umpire. I thought that was supposed to be my job, but I have been assured that the dinner table is the number one battleground between toddlers and parents, and we parents really don’t ever win. After three months of intensive head-butting togetherness (along with many tears and one hysterical conference with the new pediatrician) I figured out just a few rules of the Eating Game:

1. Do not feed the child unless he is bawling and hugging the refrigerator. Cruel, you may say, but if I give him food one second before that, it will absolutely be rejected. And as we all know, a toddler’s style of rejection usually means food getting smeared on something important, expensive, and uncleanable.
2. Do not simply assign a food by plunking it down on a plate and walking off (always a dicey proposition in any case). Offer a choice between two foods. I don’t care if you assign roast chicken, herbed vegetables, and Baked Alaska: it will be rejected, period, to the tune of outraged howling. On the other hand, if I offer a choice between two foods, no matter how nasty, it will light up Sam's life because HE gets to decide something about his future, and that’s a Big Deal. I could offer a choice between mud and spackling, and it would still make him happy. Go figure.
3. DO NOT LOOK AT THE CHILD WHEN HE IS EATING. This acknowledges that he has temporarily capitulated, or at least come to a mutual understanding with you, and that is too much for his fragile ego to handle. If our eyes meet while he is in the act of eating, he will hurl the food down, gag on whatever’s in his mouth, lay his head on the table, and sob for all he’s worth. It just doesn’t pay to look at him.

Throughout this ordeal, everyone assured me that “when he’s hungry, he’ll eat.” Well, maybe that works on Planet Earth, but Sam obviously flew in from somewhere else. No one would believe me when I said, “No, he won’t, because he’s gone days existing on nothing but juice and milk.” See, this is what confused me: I have to give him liquid to keep him hydrated, but this same liquid would keep him full and ultimately sabotage my feeding efforts. It was a Catch-22. I went to the pediatrician and begged for enlightenment. He said that while it was theoretically POSSIBLE that my son had some sort of physical issue that prevented him from wanting to eat, he thought it was just…STUBBORNESS. And, oh, yeah, “he’ll eat when he’s hungry.” That’ll be $25, ch-ching!

I tried everything. I tried being mean. I tried being sweet. I tried being tough. I tried nonchalance. I tried schedules. I tried spontaneity. I tried pretty-colored food. I tried bribery. I tried everything in a loving parent’s arsenal, and nothing worked. One day, after a particularly bad morning’s attempt to get him to eat breakfast, I dropped Sam off at Mommy’s Morning Out and sobbed on the shoulders of the preschool director and Sam's teacher. I was flat out of ideas, and I was being beaten by a one-year old. The only foods he would reliably eat every time were yogurt and cheese puffs, neither of which constitute a complete diet. I was convinced he would be 18 and still eating yogurt and cheese puffs. I poured out my sorrows to the ladies in the preschool, and they listened, patted my shoulder, and comforted me. One of them mentioned the “give him a choice” method. That sounded interesting. That was the day of the pediatrician’s appointment. After the appointment we stopped by Burger King, where, inexplicably, Sam ATE TWO WHOLE CHICKEN FRIES. I was stunned. He looked at me as if to say, “What?”
The next morning I offered him a choice between a breakfast bar and a pop tart. He goggled at his choices, and leaped for the pop tart. A moment later he had eaten 2/3 of it. I stood in amazement, truly thunderstruck. It was like being given the key to a locked door.

So those were the first three months.

Meanwhile, as a sort of segue between acts, Sophie was doing her part to keep things interesting. Occasionally she would say something entertaining, shocking, and/or barbarically humiliating. One day, out of the blue, she asked me, “Mommy, which of these is OK to say: damn, darn, or rats?” I was silent, kind of shattered by this, and thought hard and quickly. I’d always told her that if she wasn’t sure if a word was bad, she could ask me about it and never get in trouble over it. So, I gave my answer. “Well, honey, you shouldn’t say ‘damn’ unless it’s in the Biblical sense and there are responsible adults around. Even then, you should probably avoid it. If you feel you must, you may use it, but only when you’re grown up and out of my hearing. I’d prefer you didn’t say ‘darn’ because it’s too close to ‘damn’ and it just doesn’t sound pretty coming out of your mouth. It’s not nearly as bad as ‘damn’, but still…and you can always say rats, phooey, drat, etc. Does that help?” Her question answered satisfactorily, she perked up and ran off, leaving me in the dust and pondering the teenage years in my future.

Then there was her performance yesterday. We were in the car, talking about something, and I answered a question of hers by saying, “Just a little bit.” Without hesitation she launched into the “My Fair Lady” song, but with a marvelous bit of childish mistaken identity: “Just a li’le bi’, just a li’le bi’, just a li’le bi’ o’ burning duck!” I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the car.

Then there was our entrance to our new church. Shortly after we arrived, the kids’ ministry decided it was going to redecorate its area of the church (not our fault). The powers that be declared one wall available for the kids to write and draw on, and provided lots of magic markers. Sophie, eager to impress her new church friends with her artistic prowess, drew a picture of our dog with an arrow pointing to his behind with the word, “Pee” written in big, black letters.

Maybe we can try the Presbyterian church on the other side of town. I bet they haven’t heard of us yet.

Sam has learned some new things since we’ve moved. He discovered toilet paper the other day. He touched it gently and inquisitively, just in case it bites or something, and looked at me to make sure I didn't tell him "no". I just watched him. He touched it again. It was squishy. It was soft. He began poking it in earnest. That made it roll a little. His eyes widened. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, and at least I could set some boundaries if I was here to see it. So, I just sighed and let him figure it out. He made it roll a little more, and then began pulling the loose end and walking away with it. A big grin started stretching across his face. Next thing I knew, he said, "Oh, woooooow" and then: "Like dat!"

We are in so much trouble. The bathroom will never be the same.

He has also learned that farting makes people laugh (at least when the fartee is a toddler); he has learned how to turn on the keyboard, turn up the volume, start the demo song, dance like it’s 1999, and feign ignorance when I tell him to turn it off. I never knew toddlers could get down and boogie like that.

Since moving here we have thrust ourselves into a new world, chock-full of strange and wondrous experiences. We have contributed mightily to the local economy via Wal-Mart; we have been to the local pharmacy at least twice, and frequently three, times a week since moving. We live near both railroad tracks and chickens. Whichever one doesn’t wake us up, the other will surely do so. By the way, did you know that roosters crow all day long? I hate those birds. They are completely unpenned, and roam freely all day long. They used to roam in our yard until SM and our pony-sized dog came around the corner and surprised them one morning. SM says he figured Prince improved the chicken’s reflexes by 120%, but I think that’s an exaggeration. It couldn’t have been more than 115%. At any rate, except for the crowing, they leave us alone now.

It’s still taking some getting used to, this driving up to a different house. Often I stop what I’m doing and wonder what’s going on in our old neighborhood. It’s a little sad to me; we lived in a truly lovely, gracious old Southern town that was beautiful in more ways than I can count. The only thing more beautiful than the flowers were the people, and we have so many friends we miss. But, as we like to say, gas isn’t ten dollars a gallon (yet), and there’s no brick wall on the interstate. And there’s always snail mail and email and Ma Bell. There ARE ways to keep in touch. It’s just not the same. A new acquaintance recently said, with a remarkable amount of perception, “There’s often a certain amount of grief associated with moving, especially if you loved the place you just moved from.” How right he is. I expect to see certain landmarks as I drive around, and it jerks me back to reality when I round a corner and don’t see them. I guess that’s what I get for driving on autopilot, eh?