Parenting Fail

If you have not yet discovered the greatness that is Rants From Mommyland, you need to check it out. I laugh every time I read their posts. They say the things that I won't say in my blog because I'm afraid to be judged. That could be the reason why they write for the Huffington Post and a newspaper in DC and I have eleven followers.

Anyway...

I'm totally stealing the idea behind their Parenting Fail posts.

I usually put my children to bed without the aid of sippy cups, books or movies. I'm mean that way. I have this totally unreasonable expectation that children should go to bed and be asleep soon thereafter instead of watching ten episodes of Phineas and Ferb.

Since I now live with my mother (which is fodder for innumerable posts), I sometimes have to cave and go against my best parenting judgment in order to keep the peace. One night last week I was working on a quilt that needed to be finished. When I'm working on a project, I'm working and I don't let much distract me, including screaming, climbing, destroying toddlers. My mother is not blessed with toddler blindness and deafness. She finally marched them into their bedroom and demanded that I put something on for them to watch, with the unspoken threat 'or else'.

I started some Handy Manny, or as Jack calls it 'Hammy Hammy' and left them to veg out while I went back to work and my mom went back to Law and Order. I went to check on the boys a while later, only to find that Hammy Hammy was over and The Godfather was now playing.

Yep, My two- and three-year-old sons were watching Don Corleone and getting such sage pieces of wisdom as, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

Adam said, "Mom, Hammy Hammy is over. You should turn off the TV now."

If I find a severed horse's head in my bed, I'll have no one to blame but myself. Even though I deserve it.

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Warning: If you are a man, this post discusses lady parts, and not in a way that is exciting, unless you're a gynecological intern. Proceed at your own risk. If you don't like to hear about lady business, go away. But only for this post. We can still be friends.

As was noted in a previous post, I am having a hysterectomy in about a week. I'm still super stoked about it. I'm actually even more excited about it now, after I had my pre-op appointment today. My doctor asked me if we were also doing a bladder repair. I told him that I wasn't aware that that was an option, but if it was available, sign me up! He asked if I peed when I laughed, coughed or sneezed. I laughed right then and almost demonstrated the problem for him. He did an exam and told me that I am an excellent candidate for the something-something-incontinence-something-sling, or, as I like to call it, the peeper fix.

Hooray! No more crossing my legs when I sneeze! No more coughing bouts followed by, "Oh, man!" Of course, I immediately texted my husband and good pals to let them know the wondrous news. If you haven't met Emily, you are missing out. No one gets my humor the same way she does. She is the only person with whom I know that I will never cross the line and have to say, "Oh, that was offensive, huh." She giggles along with me. She and I have discussed, along with practically every woman who has ever given birth, the unfortunate side effects of childbirth, i.e. a weakened pelvic floor. She has expressed her desire for the peeper fix. So my text was a two-fold mission. First, to inform her of my good fortune and second, to make her jealous. It's what friends do. But because she is the awesome friend that she is, this is what she had to say:



Julie: I'm getting my peeper fixed! No more
crossing my legs when I sneeze!

Emily: What?! No more uterus or pee pants? It's a Christmas miracle!

Julie: I KNOW! There really is a Santa Claus.

Emily: Yes, Vagina, there is a Santa.

And then the nurse and the receptionists inquired as to my well-being, as I was purple-faced and gasping for breath. Can't...stop...laughing. So I repeated the conversation to them and they all laughed so hard that I'm willing to bet at least one of them tinkled a little. Don't you just love irony?

*sigh* I have great friends.


So now, I have a serious question. It has already been determined that Shirley must go. But I have been given the option to bid adieu to my ovaries, Thelma and Louise, as well. They are essentially healthy, other than the fact that I have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. Ovulation is painful. I can feel the follicle burst and then I have pain when the egg descends. Other than that, those two girls don't cause much trouble. I don't have a family history of ovarian cancer. Every other type of cancer, yes, but not ovarian. My doctor says that he recommends leaving them in because

• I'm only 32.
  
• Hormone replacement therapy is iffy and not always successful or without complication.
  
• I am very young to go through menopause and removing the ovaries would induce that lovely life change. Apparently it is much more traumatic to your body to go through menopause artificially than if you let nature take its course and do it in its own sweet time, which my doctor estimates to be about nineteen years from now.
  
• There is no immediate threat of illness or problem if I leave them in. He has left the choice up to me.

Here is my question: what would you do? Have any of you had a hysterectomy, either partial or complete? What, if anything, would you change? What about experiences with hormone replacement therapy?

I would really like to hear some feedback on this before I go in next Monday. Please, please give me some opinions! Ultimately, it is my decision, and I'm already leaning more one way than the other. But I would still like to hear some opinions from those who have experience.

Go ahead and leave a comment here, or if you would prefer to comment privately, email me at hoolianna55(at)hotmail(dot)com or send me a message on facebook.

Thanks in advance, ladies! And, uh, men, too, if you braved reading this post and have advice. Weirdos.

It Made Me Giggle

I found an old cell phone memory card tonight and found this picture:


I think I laughed harder tonight than I did when I saw this in a store. I have a juvenile sense of humor.

She Totally Ratted On Herself

Noel's third grade class wrote letters to Santa last week. She brought hers home last night and showed it to Morgan and me. I didn't want to keep this all to myself...

"Dear Santa,

I don't think I have been good this year because I have been getting in a bunch of trouble this year. How's the North Pole? I'm getting in trouble by talking back to my mom, being mean to my brothers, and whining when I don't want to do something or when I wasn't the one who did it.

My parents are the Santa Claus so we don't have you anymore. How do your reindeer fly? What's your favorite Christmas song? Mine is The First Noel because Noel is my name! I'll leave milk and cookies for you and carrots for your reindeer! Even though you don't exist to my parents you still exist to me.

Love,

Noel Bennett"

I love that girl. She must have had a bad day and been feeling particularly down that day. She really isn't that poorly behaved. We reassured her that her good behavior far outweighs the bad.

Is it bad that this letter makes me giggle?

An Unorthodox Christmas Wish

Are you familiar with the song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas"? Familiarize yourself.



I went to see my OBGYN a few weeks ago and sang this song to him, only I substituted 'hysterectomy' for 'hippopotamus'.

After a battery of blood tests, physical exams, biopsies, etc., I'm excited to announce that my uterus and I will be parting company on December 27.

I never thought that I would be so excited for invasive surgery as I am to have the cursed organ removed.

My uterus, whom I shall call Shirley, and I have had a love/hate relationship. When I wanted Michael, she willingly obliged by the end of the first month of trying. Then when it was time for Noel, baby number two, Shirley was again most accommodating. However, when Morgan and I decided that we wanted a third child, Shirley put her foot down. Repeatedly. And she shouted a lot. To add injury to insult, my period of infertility was also when my heinously horrible menstrual cramps began. I had never experienced a single menstrual cramp until Noel was about three years old. But once they started, Shirley made up for lost time. The first two days of my cycle for the past six years have entailed me lying in bed, wishing that the sharp-toothed spiny tennis ball in my belly would just chew its way out already.

After three years of tears and infertility treatments, Morgan and I decided to quit trying. We had two healthy children; we were blessed and grateful. We got rid of our crib, our car seat, all of the accoutrements that one accumulates with the raising of small children. We looked at the bright side. The kids were (mostly) potty trained and relatively independent. No more bottles, diapers or sleepless nights.

Then Shirley promptly removed her foot. The one she had put down, remember? Yep. I got knocked up.

We were very excited, even though we had just gotten rid of every. baby. item we had ever owned and we had no medical insurance.

So Adam came along, and with his delivery came extensive hemorrhaging and the threat of an emergency hysterectomy. The doctor and nurses were able to stop the bleeding, however, and Shirley got to come home from the hospital with me, firmly rooted in my belly instead of floating in formaldehyde in a glass specimen jar.

I decided, being the frugal and incredibly stupid woman that I am, that no contraceptives were necessary since I had been, for all intents and purposes, infertile for three years. I considered my third pregnancy to be a fluke. Which is why I got pregnant with baby number four when Adam was eight months old. Shirley is a jerk. She has a twisted sense of humor. I taught her a lesson, though, when I had a tubal ligation after Jack was born. No more practical jokes for you, Shirley. Hah!

She has chosen to fight back the only way she knows: miserable, agonizing, wretched periods. She has to go.

Sorry, Shirley. You have no one to blame for this but yourself. Thank you for my children.

Goodbye.