Learning to Be Away from My Children

Text: "Learning to Be Away from My Children / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Airplane wing overlapping with a sunset.

Bing! The chime on my phone rings, indicating a new message. It’s a video from Chris, reaching across the country to me while I’m on a work trip in New Mexico. It starts focusing on Sprout, being a lump on the couch with his red velour blanket over his head. The camera then swerves to Little Bird, who is walking towards it. Walking! When the hell did that happen? At that moment, I realized just how long a week away is when you have young children.

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Ridiculous Moments in Parenting: Last Week Edition

Last week, I wasn’t even at home and yet the shenanigans were even more absurd than usual. Because I was at a work conference all week, Chris had to play stay-at-home single parent to a two-year-old, an exceptionally challenging job. Here were just a few of the ridiculous things that happened.

– Sprout declaring that Kraft macaroni and cheese was “delicious,” a complement much higher than that he usually bestows on any food: This is despite the fact that Chris was a professional cook in a very expensive restaurant before leaving to stay home. Now, Sprout eats way more vegetables than the average toddler (hurray!), but the fact that Kraft Mac and Cheese was the height of culinary prowess according to him was rather horrifying and funny. No accounting for taste.

– Doing the Hokey Pokey by myself in a hotel room: Keeping the attention of a toddler over FaceTime is challenging at best. To try to keep Sprout from wandering off, I started listing off songs he might want me to sing. After asking about “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” “10 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,” and “House at Pooh Corner,” I finally scored with the Hokey Pokey. Which led to me sticking my right foot in and right foot out and turning all about by myself next to my hotel bed and holding out an iPhone trying not to trip.

– Spout taking a giant bite out of a hat: Chris is a big Green Bay Packers fan, so one of our baby shower gifts was a kid-sized cheese hat. Chris happened to find it in Sprout’s closet and showed it to him, commenting “This is a cheese hat.” Sprout replied, “Cheese hat?” and then “chomp.” He managed to get a good chunk out of it before Chris could wrest it away from him and explain it was “play cheese!”

– Experiencing our first hysterically funny toddler tantrum: The other day, Sprout was really upset for no apparent reason. The answer to every question we asked was “no.” The epitome was him running in place like he was in the world’s worst gym class, flailing his arms like a rabid chicken. I always thought that parents taking photos of their kids crying was kind of mean, but I finally understood as I tried to contain my laughter.

– Chasing after a toddler mid-puke holding out a Tupperware container: For some reason, Sprout often gets sick when I go out of town. Luckily for Chris, he waited until the day after I got back to do so this time. Fortunately for everyone, the bout only lasted three hours and he was fine by the afternoon.

– Going on a bicycle ride by myself on my own bike: While this used to be an extremely common occurrence, it definitely felt like a personal accomplishment in the same sense that Beth Woolsey of Five Kids is a Lot of Kids describes being able to clip her nails. I ride back and forth to the Metro every day, but that’s on clunky, heavy Capital Bikeshare bikes. When I do have the luxury of using my own well-loved Bianchi hybrid, it’s almost always dragging an extra 50 pounds between the trailer and the growing toddler. Being able to go on a ride and worry about no one else besides myself was truly glorious, especially because I rode through the well-shaded Rock Creek Park.

– Bike grease making its way onto my child’s face and very most likely, inside his mouth: Later the same day, we took a very short ride to our little downtown area. As I was putting my bike away, Sprout started running his fingers over the chain, despite my protests. Then, because he’s teething his molars in and the simple fact that he’s two, he promptly put his hand in his mouth. (At least I’m assuming he did – I didn’t actually see it, but he did have grease on the side of his mouth.) As I know bike grease is definitely not non-toxic, that was a super awesome parenting fail. Hopefully, he won’t be puking again tomorrow.

What were some of the most ridiculous things that happened to you this week?

The Three Stages of FaceTime with a Toddler

Text: "The Three Stages of FaceTime with a Toddler / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Screenshot of the FaceTime program with a woman smiling into the camera
As I travel very rarely for work, my two-year-old son isn’t very used to the idea of it. The last time I was gone for more than a night was in December, which I suspect he doesn’t even remember. So I don’t think my goodbye really sunk in when I left on a four day work trip last week. To keep in touch, we FaceTimed every night and went through a very distinct stage each time:

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