Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Hair UP!

Alex is turning into quite the demanding young man.  In fact, I fear that one day he may be a demanding husband, the kind of controlling man who picks out his wife's clothes and reprimands her when she accidentally makes eye contact with another man.  Alex has very clear preferences about how I look and what I wear, the most consistent command being: "Hair up!"

The answer to this question is possibly Alex.
It's not like I wear my hair down all that often, but even if I'm just getting out of bed in the morning, Alex (who is likely the one who woke me from my sleep, standing next to me in a twenty pound pull-up wanting to know where he can find his milk, iPad, and that blue balloon from last week), will barely have to glance over at my face before issuing his statement.  Hair up.  Fix your goddamn hair, woman.  If I dally in putting my hair up, he will go find me a hair tie.  Here.  Take care of yourself. You're a mess.  Hair.  Up.

He'll pick out a nice shirt for me, usually something pink, and then he holds his arms out and tells me to pick him up.  And perhaps I don't say no enough to this child (I say this as I check how secure my hair tie is), but if I tell him I can't pick him up at that moment, he completely loses his marbles.  He has no concept of how hard it is to be me sometimes.  I tell him I can't pick him up too much because if I do, the baby in my tummy will fall right out.  This does not feel like an exaggeration, as lately I feel like I'm walking as if I just got off a hundred mile horse ride.  Or I can't pick him up because I am literally carrying nine other things, oftentimes including the odd bowling ball bag or, as in today during our morning outing, two bags containing approximately seventy-three library books, my snack bloated purse, a big thirty-two ounce bottle of water I never got around to drinking, and my daily coffee mug that saw the exact opposite fate.  I didn't have a free hand, much less a free arm and the strength to hobble out of the library carrying all that stuff and thirty pounds of whiny boy.  My game plan out in the parking lot was to try to corral the boys with a lasso of yelling and mild profanity since I wouldn't even be able to hold their hands.  Reading.  It's that important.

And so I refused to pick up Alex, explaining my predicament to deaf ears as he launched himself at my legs and basically tried to knock me down twenty-three concrete steps to my certain death.  He threw an enormous tantrum, and I honestly can't even remember how I got all of us to the car as my memory is already clouded over with a viscous rage.  Seriously, Alexander.  I barely managed to get a screaming, crying, kicking, clinging Alex to the car, and strapping him into the car seat was a Herculean feat, and one that I walked away from with my sunglasses askew and the tiny palm prints of a two year old's repeated slaps embedded in my cheeks.  So there you have it.  Controlling AND abusive.

Perhaps I could deal with nonsense such as this if I weren't already a hormonal wreck with a very full plate of changes.  Changes with gravy.  Changes pot pie.  Changes a la mode.  The changes are all positive and completely brought on by myself.  Getting pregnant.  Preparing to have this third baby. And now we are most likely moving, having engaged ourselves in not one but two legal contracts! Selling one house and buying another and taking care of all this business while one tiny life on my insides demands rest and the occasional cup of water and two other slightly larger lives on my outsides demand my hair a certain away and to be carried no less than three miles per day.  And other quite larger lives demand decisions, money, strength, and a level of trust in not accidentally ending up homeless that I'm not entirely comfortable with.

Of course, everything is all very good.  I love my children and I'm very, very lucky that everything appears to be working out with "upgrading" houses.  But, damn.  Mommy needs a break.  A day to literally let my hair down.  A day to shut it all off.  A day to rest my weary arms.

Which brings me back to my original point.  Wine in pregnancy.  How much is too much?

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