catastrophic diaper failure

Dear Huggies,

I have been a fan of your overnight diapers for probably about a year now. My three gigantic triplets have worn them every night with much success, even though I had to use a size larger than recommended on your package to comply with their needs. Even my son, B, who holds all of his urine during the day just so he can fill up one of your diapers until they weigh at least 8 lbs in the morning, has been a success story. I mean we could probably squeeze his diaper out in the morning and find 5 gallons of pee. Seriously. I don't know why he pees so much at night, perhaps he dreams of waterfalls a lot.

However, recently we have been having problems. I consider the fact that I have had to wake up 8 of the last 10 mornings during the 4-5 am hour because one or more of my children is soaking wet a problem. I do not mean a little spot of leakage. I mean these children are usually wet from just under their ribcage to their knees or lower. I consider this an CATASTROPHIC. DIAPER. FAILURE. The fact that it is happening to a boy and a girl means that this is not a gender specific design problem. The fact that we are using a diaper a size larger than you would recommend means that we should have covered our bases. But, the mere fact that I am writing this missive at 4 am tells me and you that there is a problem. This morning I had the joy of changing two children in the dark. Whether the diaper replacement ended up properly applied or the region in question got properly cleaned has yet to be determined in daylight hours.

This, my friends, is unacceptable. I am a tired mom. I have had sick or disobedient children for about 8 weeks now, which, due to the level of complaining I've been doing, you may have already heard about through the grapevine. What is more unacceptable is that there is no overnight diaper one size larger than we use. That's right. Perhaps it never occurred to you that anyone should need an overnight diaper larger than a 6, which according to your package (which I might add, I might have to sue you for as it is false advertising at it's worst) is for children 35+ lbs. Now admittedly, my children are only hovering around the 30 lb mark but what am I supposed to do? Put rubber pants on over your diapers? Double diaper them with your already bulky overnight diapers? Wrap their entire lower halves in cellophane?

Because I am telling you right now that 4 am is a time I do not like to see. I do not like even more to have to change diapers and pajamas at this hour on one of more children. You must find me a solution. Immediately. While my in the dark diapering skills are improving, this is not a useful skill outside of raising toddler triplets. Seeing as how we, with our gigantic triplets, use approximately 1894 diapers a month, we are quite a valuable customer to you. So let's hear some brainstorming, or perhaps you could just make a freaking size 7 for me. Please?

Your crabby mamma,

Mira

On sleep

Speaking of evolutionary principles, what is the point of fighting one's bedtime till all hours when you know perfectly well you will be up at 6 am no matter when you fell asleep? It seems mighty counterintuitive seeing as how doctors have shown that inadequate sleep will affect you negatively in many ways. So why do toddlers fight their parents, sometimes for hours each night, about falling asleep in their beds and then spend the next day all bleary eyed and crabby for all to enjoy?

Of course it's not just the toddlers is it? How many of you adults out there fight your bedtime constantly? I say almost every day 'today I'm going to go to bed early because I feel like crap.' Does it happen? Oh no. Despite the fact that I know that my impatient, tired toddlers will be rattling their cages loudly and screaming starting as early as 6, I watch one more crappy show, read one more magazine, send one more email. I know I feel like my justification these days is that once the kids finally go to sleep I need a couple of hours to decompress but really? I'd feel better in the morning with less decompression and more sleep. And honestly? I didn't go to bed on time before I had kids.

So what is this about human nature? I'm a morning person and I still can't get into bed on time. So I spend my days dragging around trying to find the energy to play with three wildcats and rueing the lack of sleep I got last night, because in addition to my stupidity one or more babies may have had a bad night and awakened me 3 or 4 times for comforting, and I think to myself that there must be a reason we do this to ourselves? Perhaps the saber toothed tiger was on the prowl in early evening and we needed to be up to watch for it?

In contemplation of the noble tantrum

What is the evolutionary principle behind tantrums? Can you imagine, just imagine, cave mamma Ugg with child #1 standing just outside cave mouth #43 on Cave Mouth Street grinding corn or preparing to go out and gather and little cave kid Ugg Jr throws himself to the ground and pounds his tiny fists and kicks his tiny legs and screams like a bear to get what he wants? Do you suppose she rolls her cavelady eyes and hands it to him? Because I don't. I see cave mamma taking her club out and giving him a good whack.

Imagine, again, Mayan momma standing in the hot sun after harvesting corn (oh I'm not an indigenous tribe specialist get off my back) watching Mayan girl baby screaming to be allowed to play with that last ear of corn, because it had become her toy, and not giving it to Mayan momma immediately upon being asked. Do you think she might be tempting the Mayan god to select her for the heart sacrifice? I think I'd tread a bit more carefully if I were that kid.

And imagine, if you will, prairie settler family Miller just put prairie kid Joseph to bed and he throws a tantrum to the point of barfing on his bedcovers. Do you think that in an era of no washing machines and no multiple sheet sets he was allowed to do this time and time again for no apparent reason and not end up sleeping amidst his barf particles? I think not. I think he'd be washing his own sheets pretty soon in the river with bloody knuckles of his own. I think he'd learn pretty stinking fast not to barf in his bed. His mom wouldn't be running with his barfing self out of the nursery to try to stop the inevitable sheet change one stinking time. I don't think so. Heck, he'd be lucky to have a bed. And if he barfed in mom and pop's bed? I think he'd be hoeing a row of crops before he was 2.

I mean how did tantrums achieve anything until the current parental administration where we overindulge such children? In the last, what, 50 years there's been a sea change from children being a necessary production of help mates for the household to children being our entire reason for the sun coming up in the morning and goodness knows you better not wake/upset/scold/deny/deprive them. So I see how it's evolutionarily useful now. It works like a charm to lay your tiny little body down in the middle of a packed grocery store and go to town with tears and snot because you bet your mom is going to scoop your butt up and get you anything to shut you up so she can finish shopping because this is the one stupid chance she gets all week to get groceries and if she can't now you'll all starve.

Well not this mom. That kid and I will either be standing there annoying the rest of you until he's done with his theatrics or we leave and we starve. I know it looks bad to the other judging eyes and I've been them too, but you know once you're the parent that the difference between a tantrum and a true cry is so obvious to you at some point early on in getting to know this kid that you can not allow yourself to indulge the former. Because that only means more in the future. And those judging eyes? They can go have triplets of their own and then judge me. Well, maybe not even then. Because this is my kid, and for some unexplainable reason tantrums are there in the animal brain, even though I'm pretty sure that our ancestor apes used them to better effect and they should have been extinguished as a useful strategy somewhere around the 1300s, BC, and there is NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. ABOUT. IT. So smile sweetly and move on rubberneckers. Nothing to see here.

Bad, Bad Babies

Why do children make the scariest sounds all the time and think it's hilarious? Right now I'm sitting in my living room watching CNN's all Michael Jackson all the time tv and listening to the baby monitors whereupon my daughter (A) is making choking and gasping noises while B laughs hysterically. I had to mute my friendly MJ tributes to listen closer. What if she had started choking on an eye from a stuffed animal that she gnawed off in typical animalistic fashion? How would I know?

But the bigger question is, how many more months will they think that gasping/choking noises are funny? I mean they have the attention span of gnats, how do they remember this same 'joke' for months? And why doesn't it hurt their throats like it does mine if I try to emulate them? I suppose when one's vocalizations are limited to non-word utterances, one finds unusual ways to make jokes? Perhaps I should relish this time as the inevitable endless knock knock jokes are on their way and fart and poop jokes will follow shortly after. Three times. But when you're driving up the highway to grandma's house and almost drive off the road while whipping your head around to verify that your child (C) is not, in fact, choking on his spit, it is just not acceptable! Someone is going to get hurt. And I'm not talking about spanking.

Walter the nightmare pooch

Product warning: Walter the Farting Dog, a toy we have possessed for over a year, a toy which was a mainstay of my daughter's crib because she loved it, has the potential for a total meltdown. Yes, one night, while you're watching some DVR-ed crap on TV and enjoying reading your blogs, you will hear over the baby monitor "thbthpthbthpthb." Then a minute later "thbthbtpthbbb." And again, and again. Until you decide that your daughter must have her foot on the dog, causing its unintentional flatulence at a critical juncture of the sleeping period of three, count them three, easily perturbable babies.

So you'll tip toe into their nursery, reach for the dog, right where you remembered it from checking on your daughter earlier, and at the moment you grab it you will find, to your horror, that it will go completely bezerko. Like some stuttering rap star of farting, it will begin to fart incessantly but in a staccato rhythm that is so very not conducive to sleeping triplets. Instantly you will step into hyper speed, exiting the nursery at the speed of light while praying simultaneously to every god in the pantheon that not one triplet will be disturbed by this insanity of a fart festival.

I am now sitting in my living room listening to the last and dying farts of a Walter the farting dog. Somewhat sad at it's passing, but also somewhat relieved that it is shutting the heck up after trying to wake all three of my damned babies! Heed my warning parents! This is NOT a good crib toy!

A public service announcement from yours truly.