Enjoying Life with 3 Dogs, 2 Kids & an ADHD Husband.

My baby is part of a conspiracy.  Seriously.  The goal of the conspiracy?  For me to never, ever nap again.  Ever.

I know what you’re thinking.  Not napping is completely normal when you have a baby, right?  Some babies are just fussy, want to be held all the time, have extra needs.  But, see, that’s not the case with my little Finley.

I know, I shouldn’t complain.  I have a wonderful baby.  Really, she’s great.  What you would call, for the most part, an easy baby.   I mean, what mom in their right mind would complain about a baby that started sleeping 8-9 hour stretches at night at 6 weeks old?  In fact, my little one goes to bed before 6 p.m., gets fed once before I go to bed, then isn’t up again until 6:00 in the morning.  In fact, it’s almost like we don’t even have a new baby at night.  It’s like she’s beamed up at sun-down and then beamed back at sun-up. 

So,  I know what you’re thinking now.  You’re thinking, this baby sleeps so good at night, I bet she doesn’t nap at all during the day.  Or she fusses a lot.  Or screams.  Or demands lots and lots of trains from Santa, even though she already has so many that our 3 car garage is going to be declared a train depot soon.  No wait–that’s my four year old son.

At any rate, none of the above is true.  She rarely fusses.  She take several nice naps during the day.  All in all, she is a happy, beautiful, easy baby girl.

So, why is it, that this wonderful sleeper will never, EVER take a nap when I want to nap as well?  I mean, on a typical day, she will take 3 or 4 hour plus naps, and yet, when I go to lie down and take a little snooze myself, that same nap-aholic baby decides sleep is over-rated.  Seriously, what are the odds that Finley just randomly decides not to nap on the, oh, 50 or occasions when I’ve tried to nap? 

And just to rub salt in the wound—if, on any occasion, I’ve thought about napping but decided not to chance it, knowing she won’t nap—the little turkey takes a marathon 3 hour nap.

 I’m telling you, it’s a conspiracy.  I don’t know who, why or how, but when I find out, I’m sending Finley to their house.  So I can nap.

I used to love dogs.  Love them.  LOVE them.  I read every doggy book on the market when I was a kid.  I used to pretend to be a dog when I was in grade school.  Later, I decided to become a veterinarian, but decided against it because I didn’t think I could deal with euthanizing them.  Instead, I became involved in rescue efforts and volunteering at animal shelters.  Of course, along the way, I acquired a few dogs of my own.  I loved them .  LOVED THEM.

Nowadays, I’m thinking Cruella de Vil might have had the right idea.  I’m wishing there was a way to PAY someone to come take our dogs.  Because nobody in their right mind would come and just take them for free. 

Okay, technically, that’s not true. I’m referring to one dog in particular.  That would be Peanut.  Aka The Pig.  Our 12-yr old defective rottweiler.

Peanut is the perfect name for our midget rottweiler.  My husband jinxed him.  When he was a puppy, my husband thought it would be hilarious to have a gi-normous rottweiler and name him ”Peanut”.  Of course, Peanut never grew to be gi-normous.  Or even relatively gi-normous.  In fact, I think Peanut is barely larger than the rabbits he likes to chase, but never can catch.  Because not only is he small, he’s also slow as molasses. 

The only problem with the name “Peanut” is it brings to mind something cute an cuddly.  A sweet little dog that everbody loves.  A cute little puppy who loves to give kisses and snuggle.  Yeah, right.  That description is about as accurate as calling Attila the Hun a tad cranky.

As my aunt likes to say, Peanut is “quirky”.  What she really means is that he is seriously whacked in the head.  Why, you ask?  Well, let’s see.  If you try to offer the dog something to eat and he doesn’t like it, instead of spitting it out like a normal pet, he rolls in it.  Thus far, we have had to wash scrambled eggs, tuna, shrimp, orange rinds, and vinegar out of his fur.  (No, we didn’t offer him vinegar, but he did roll in–long story).  He also vomits all the time, eats more than our two much younger and larger dogs combined, and sometimes forgets to poop outside, usually when we are planning to have company over within the next few minutes.  He is afraid of the most random of things, including feet, dust mops, street signs, loud noises, plastic bags, mail boxes, and my other dogs’ tails.  

But probably, his most endearing “quirk” is that he growls.  All the time. At everything and everyone.  Okay, so I can understand that he might growl if you step on his foot (he does), or even if he is poorly trained (he is) and growls when you approach his food bowl (he does).  But he also growls if you start petting him.  Oh, and by the way, he growls if you stop petting him, too, so basically, you’re screwed.  He growls at the mailman.  He growls at cars.  He growls at the water bowl.  He growls when there is not another living soul in the room with him.  Seriously.  In fact, he is growling right now.  It’s like the switch is stuck on “on”, and there’s no way to turn it off.  Ever.

 In the middle of the night, he gets cold, and walks around the bed pawing at it and whining until my sucker of a husband lets him up.  What does he do next?  You got it—he growls.

In the morning, I give him a (large) bowl of food.  As soon as I put it down, what does he do?  Yep–he shows me the old chompers.

Fetch with him is a pretty short game–I throw the toy once, he grabs it, but when I try to take it to throw it again—GRRRRRRRR!

We take him camping, knowing he will fend off the wild animals with his mighty roar.  The coyotes start howling, and what does he do?  Growl, you say?  Nope—not even close.   The damn chicken jumps in my lap, shivering.  Unbelievable. 

In spite of all that, I suppose I was kidding when I said I would turn him into a coat.  Maybe I love the dog, defects and all.   I’m thinking that makes me the defective one.

Besides, we’d only get enough fur to clothe a Barbie doll anyway. 

My husband just recently diagnosed himself as adult ADHD.  He tells me this as if I’m supposed to be surprised or something.  As if I’ve never realized that he doesn’t pay attention when I’m talking.  Does he not think I notice when I send him to the store for milk and bread,  and he comes back with a watermelon instead?  Or that when it was his turn to pay the bills, we almost had our electricity shut off?  Twice?  Or that he’s impulsive?  Like the time he decided he wanted to re-finish his $3000 speakers, so he ripped the wooden panels off within two seconds of the idea striking him?  Or that he leaves projects unfinished?  Like said $3000 speakers, which have been sitting there with the wood panels ripped off for the past two years?  I won’t even bring up the countless gadgets and various crap he’s purchased over the years, because the “impulse” struck him.

What I wonder, though, is if it’s really ADHD that makes him forget to pick up his undies.  I mean, surely even the most distracted person is aware of when they strip off their skivvies? Don’t you at least feel a draft? And yet there his are, strewn all over the house like rice at a wedding.  Only larger and smellier.  And it sort of begs the question of why in the world my husband is stripping in all corners of the house?  This, as with many things concerning my husband, is probably a question best left unanswered.

So, what does my husband do when he decides he is ADHD?  He goes and buys about 100 books about it, of course.  Because we all know how good ADHD folks are at finishing books.  Basically, the books are just something else for me to pick up around the house.  Maybe they can keep the undies company.  If the books could only tell him how to remember to pick up the books, we’d be making some serious progress.  But I guess we can’t have it all.

I think somebody laced my water.  With crack.  I mean, what else could reasonably explain why I decided to have another birthday party at my home?  I said I would never do it again after last year, after my son’s third birthday party.  Do you have any idea the damage 5 or 6 screaming toddlers can do to your home in under five minutes?  And this year, I really did it.  I invited double that number, thinking surely some couldn’t come because of the proximity to the holidays.  Of course, every single one of them are planning to attend.   Just my luck–we managed to invite the only other families in San Diego County besides ourselves without lives.  Let’s just call it an experiment—how many four-year olds can you have in one house before it explodes? (and this is actually a real possiblity–ask me about my husband’s stash of illegal fireworks in the garage).

Okay, so we’ve invited a few too many guests, but that’s okay, right?  We have a large backyard and we’ve rented a jumpy, bouncy, moonwalk, kid crusher, whatever the heck it is those things are called these days.  We should be fine, right?  Not if you’ve checked the forecast for San Diego for this Saturday.  It’s supposed to rain.  Hard.  I suppose I should have expected that it might rain—I mean, it does rain about three and a half days a year here.  So that gave us a probability of, what, about 1 in 100 that it would rain on our party day?  Life is just not fair.  Now, I have to plan activities to entertain 12 screaming four-year olds inside our not-big-enough-to-accomdate-them-without-something-exploding house.  And we have to put the parents somewhere, too.  I’m thinking the laundry room.  If I have enough booze, maybe they won’t notice.  And let’s face it, all the adults are going to NEED booze to get through this one.

And it’s not enough that I invited too many people. Or that I decided to have the party at our home again (perhaps explained by a sudden temporary brain aneurysm?)  No, somehow I think I’m Martha freakin Stewart when my son’s birthday rolls around.  That means I choose a theme (pirates this year), hand-make all the invitations, bake the cake from scratch, and make my own decorations, posters, party favors, etc.  If I were a crafty person, this might make some kind of sense.  Unfortunately, I am about as crafty as Homer Simpson.

It should be a hoot.  Want to come?  Look for the exploding house.

My three-year old’s constant whining makes me want to kill something.  Seriously.  Why is that?  You would think that parents would be programmed to at least tolerate whining. I mean, how much easier would life be as a parent if your kid’s whining didn’t bother you?  Or better yet, if your kid’s whining sounded just like baby cooing to your ears.? “Oh, how sweet, little Johnny is whining about not getting another Thomas the train again.  How adorable!”  What a killer biological adaptation that would be.  Of course, if that were the case, I think people would have a lot more kids, which would lead to more planetary over-crowding.  Hmmm….so maybe that’s why the sound of my son’s whining makes me want to drop kick him to Cambodia.  That Darwin sure is a sneaky bastard.

 Seriously, though, have you ever noticed how whining can drive even the most calm and rational parent into a crazed frenzy?   I swear I have heard even the most laid-back of moms say things like “Jamie, if I hear you whine one more time, I will take every single toy you own and one by one throw them into a huge bonfire and make you watch them burn! until they die!  What’s more, I will flush your fish down the toilet, lock you in the closet until daddy comes home, and then daddy and I are going to take you to the used toddler store and trade you in for a non-whining variety (as if such a thing exists).  Oh yeah, and I’m going to take away your FRUIT SNACKS (gasp)!

Which leads me to the lies we tell each other as parents.  Really, wouldn’t things be easier on all of us if we could just be honest?  Instead, we all feel compelled to try to be super-mom.  Which basically means we lie.  A lot.  For example, if I had a quarter for every time I heard “Oh, I’m just feeding little Susie this because I’m afraid she wouldn’t eat anything otherwise”, I sure as hell wouldn’t be worried about the mortgage man coming to take my house at any minute.  I mean, do we really think our kids are going to starve to death if we don’t feed them goldfish, m & m’s, chips, or fruit snacks? 

The straight answer is no.  It all goes back to the whining thing.  What we are really afraid of is more whining.  Little Susie wouldn’t starve, but she would probably whine enough to send her mom back to rehab.  And since none of us are hard-wired to deal with whining. we lie.  We also don’t want other parents to know our kids whine.  Which is ridiculous.  All kids whine.  But it seriously turns into some type of competition at the park or gym class.  We think, “Oh, look at little Tommy—he sure is having a bad day.  Of course, my little man is being an angel.”  Of course, the little man in question probably has his mouth stuffed full of Fruit Snacks.  If we could all just admit that we use food as a bribe to stop whining, I think life would be so much easier. 

I’ll admit it—we used to use Fruit Snacks as a bribe for our little guy to sleep good at night.  Did they work?  You bet.  Unfortunately, they had the added effect of making him act like a crack addict all morning long.  I don’t know if it was the artificial colors, the sugar, or the….what the heck else is in a Fruit Snack, exactly?   Anyway, we’re on to something much more nutritious—-cookies (hey, the box says organic).

So, anyway, I think there’s some money to be made in this whining thing.  Hypnotists should forget about all that stop smoking and over-eating crap.  It’s so passe.  Why not offer sessions to parents that will make them enjoy whining instead?  I know I would be there in a heartbeat.