As I was driving to the hospital on Thursday with a bag full of Hammie's poop to drop off at the lab, I got to thinking about that line from the Matrix...


"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."


Now please don't comment on this post giving me your philosophical interpretations of the Matrix and it's deep impact on your lives. I saw it once, because Andy made me, and if I recall correctly I was pretty drunk by the end of it. And yes, I had to look up the exact wording of the line, but I remembered the gist of it. But what I got to thinking was that that idea really applies to what motherhood is like. You take the pregnancy test and that's it, there is no turning back. You get the little pink lines and like it or not you are stuck in Wonderland and you get to see just how far that rabbit-hole goes. And let me tell you, this week we went down the rabbit hole to depths of darkness I had not previously thought possible.


The first bump on the way down the hole has been Eleanor's sleeping. She was doing very well for awhile, only getting up once or twice and even throwing a full night of uninterrupted sleep in there on occasion, just to keep things interesting. Then I'm not really sure what the hell happened. I am guessing that she is having nightmares, since she wakes up screaming, but can frequently put herself back to sleep. "Frequently" being every 3 out of 4 times, but since she is now waking up screaming every 30 to 40 minutes ALL NIGHT LONG, I am also sleeping in 20 to 30 minute increments and also getting up with her 4 or 5 times a night. This is definitely starting to wear on me since I was really getting used to an almost human amount of sleep. The result it that my patience is at an all time low.


Add to this the fact that Eleanor has now perfected the fine art of the temper tantrum in such a way that she can throw herself screaming, crying and flailing at the floor and maintain an uninterrupted string of absolutely ear splitting screams pretty much indefinitely, or at least for the entire hour that it takes me to make dinner. So by the time dinner is on the table now I have a screaming headache and my nerves are painfully raw. Add to this the fact that Fraser has suddenly become an extremely fickle eater (he flat out refused to even taste chili last weekend, but scarfed down tofu broccoli stir fry last night and proclaimed it the most delicious thing ever!) and would not taste the stew I made declaring that it "tasted like bark!" (no, that's not a typo)


Fraser seems to be pushing all sorts of limits and buttons now, being flat out rude to me and any other adult in the unfortunate position of having to talk to him, and ridiculously argumentative with Hammie about the absolutely stupidest things imaginable. At breakfast yesterday Fraser and Hammie got into an argument (which ended with Fraser punching Hammie, close fisted, in the face) about whether an English muffin, when cut into two halves, was one English muffin or two. I swear I thought about having a bloody mary with breakfast on Thursday. (In retrospect I probably should have.)


So, Eleanor is acting like a witch, Fraser is a rude little ass, and Hammie is a shit, literally. We have started potty training Hammie, again, and if possible it is actually going worse than the last time. He can now easily go through 7 or 8 pairs of pants in a day, even if he is wearing pull ups. He can pee through any diaper on the market now, so the move to potty train is more a decision of necessity than anything else. Unfortunately, Hammie views this as far less of a necessity than I do. He absolutely could care less if he goes in is pants. He will throw a screaming temper tantrum if he has to stop what he is doing (playing, watching TV, eating, staring at the wall) to have his pants changed even if he has crap running down his leg and pooling in his socks. It is going so poorly in fact that I actually took Hammie to the doctor to ask what his freaking problem is. The nurse practitioner I saw thinks Hammie may have a milk allergy, so now he is off all dairy and has an appointment with an allergist next week. So now there are four different kinds of milk in my fridge (skim, whole, soy, and raw...don't ask), I am totally fucking exhausted and I am reading the ingredients labels of everything from canned soup to crackers while fielding questions at every friggin meal like "what about pepper? does pepper have milk in it? what about salt? does salt have milk in it? But i WANT sour cream, why can't I have sour cream?"


Despite only going in the potty one out of every ten or so times, Hammie will still randomly insist on wearing underwear, and since I desperately want him to want to use the toilet, I try to be supportive of those requests. Unfortunately, unlike when Fraser decided he wanted to wear underwear for the first time, we cannot simply spend the day outside in underwear. No, we have to wear clothes and we have to actually go places.


So, a crap filled disaster of week reached it's impressive crescendo Thursday morning when we had to go to the YMCA for swimming, gymnastics and the open play. Swimming went fine, but after swimming Hammie insisted on putting on his underwear instead of the pull up I had brought for him. We only have 15 minutes between the end of swim class and the start of gymnastics in which the boys have to shower, I have to get them both dressed, shoes and socks back on all of us (no shoes on the pool deck) pack all our stuff and run upstairs to the gym. So, against my better judgment I let him wear underwear with many reminders to let me know if he needed to use the potty. Of course he pooped in his pants. Then he pooped in the pull up I put him in after changing his pants. I changed him again and and explained that he was wearing the LAST clean pull up or diaper I had so he HAD to let me know if he needed to use the potty. Then he pooped in the last clean pull up during the open play, but since he doesn't give a tiny little rat's ass if he has poop in his pants or not, he proceeded to walk across the gymnastics floor leaving a trail of shit behind him. I ran over to him and stopped him, but the damage was done. I had to get on my hands and knees and try to use wipes to scrub his crap out of the carpet. This in front of about 20 kids and their mothers. I do not embarrass easily anymore, but that was downright humiliating. Then Hammie had to ride home with his pants full of shit, something he did not seem to mind in the slightest.

When we arrived home I took Hammie directly up the shower and then got the awesome plastic cup the doctor's office gave us to collect hammie's stool sample and had to use a spoon to scoop shit out of his pants and into the sterile cups. Then I threw out the spoon because i knew I could just never look at it the same way again. Then I washed Hammie since he had poop not only all the way down both legs, but also all the way up his back to his shoulder blades. Then I fed everyone lunch (yum) and we got back in the car and trekked over to the hospital lab to drop off Hammie's bag of poo.

Which brings us to the second line from the Matrix that I was thinking of:


"I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?"


For those who haven't seen the movie (or were too drunk to follow it at this point) Cypher, one of the characters, is basically saying that if he had a do-over he would not want to know the truth about the Matrix and would have rather gone on living in blissful ignorance. Which brings us to my revelation as I shuttled 3 unhappy children and bag of crap through the snow to the hospital on a Thursday afternoon. This is a blue pill kind of week. The kind of week when I genuinely think I would have been better off never to have had a positive pregnancy test and to sadly wonder what having children would have been like, and whether I would have been a good mother (crappy, no pun inteded, and no). Of course eventually one of my spawn will do something cute, or sweet, or least not totally fucking God awful, and I will think how wonderful it is to have them in my life. But between you and me, they better do it soon. I have been so tense the last few weeks, and so likely to fly off the handle, that when I start to lose it now Fraser and Hammie will actually cover there ears in anticipation of the screaming that will follow. And if I can't have a little blue pill they offered to Neo then some very nice doctor may need to write me a prescription for a bottle of some other colored little pills very soon.