Happy 12th Anniversary- What I appreciate about Cory!

It's our Anniversary! Who would have thought that two college drunks would make it to 12 years? From the moment my eyes landed upon the cute blonde headed guy who helped me find a toilet to puke in at a college party, I knew you were a keeper.  (Ok, well my eyes were a little glossy due to the booze and my judgement may have been a little questionable at the moment, but I still knew you were cute and a keeper.)   

There are so many things that I appreciate about Cory...

I appreciate that Cory understands that my work life has to make my soul happy and has always been supportive of that. (Except for that one time I quit that one job on the spot and called Cory after to tell him.  Cory, have you fully forgiven me for that yet?)  

I appreciate that Cory tries all of the meals that I make.  Even the stupid things. Like really stupid things like black bean brownies. And I appreciate how nicely he told me that I “never need to eat salmon again” as a hint for me to stop making it for every meal.   

I appreciate that Cory is adaptable.  For instance, Cory hates that I take my shoes off as soon as I get in the car and he always ends up waiting for me to put my shoes on when we are already at our destination.  Now (after 12 years) he has adapted to this cute quark of mine and gives me a 5 minute warning before we reach a destination so I can start finding my shoes and putting them on so he doesn't have to wait for me.  

I also appreciate that Cory is always down for a good time.  Remember “game night” at our house?  Don’t worry, I won’t publicly share with the world what a great time Cory had.  And what a great time our toilet had.   

But mostly, what I appreciate about Cory, is that he doesn't want to have any more kids. 😊  

But for real.  I do think we are slowly getting our shit together. And we are doing it as a team. #TeamKleinermann. 

70% Dead, Fort, Rappin' Ry

I get it.  Parenting isn’t always glamorous.  And kids are great at keeping your ego down.  Like way down.  Like if I were looking at a puddle of quicksand, my self-esteem would have been swallowed up by the quicksand and my self-esteem would just be yelling “help” until it is finally sucked all the way under the sand.  Never to be heard from again.  Also, elementary-aged Jayme thought that quicksand would play a larger role in her everyday life.  Who would have known that it would play no role in my life, other than to swallow up my self-esteem.     

At the end of the school year, Chase got to invite his family into his school for a tour and to show us all of his art projects he had made throughout the year.  Chase goes to the same school that I went to in elementary school. I was feeling a bit nostalgic as we reached the landing of the stairs in-between the top floor of the school and the main level.  I stopped there and told Chase that when I was in his school, we got to create a giant box fort on the landing. We all got to work together to build it, color it and then read in it during reading time.  Chase waited patiently until I was done with my story and replied matter-of-factually, “You should have spent more time in math class and less time in the fort.”     

Also, the other morning as I was driving Chase to my parent’s house to play, I was yawning.  A lot.  I’m pretty sure I was so tired that my yawn was yawning.  Chase asked me if grown-up are always tired.  And I told him yes.  I believe my exact quote was, “Being an adult just means that you get tired, then more tired, and then more tired until you eventually die.”  Then Chase responded, “On a death scale, you must already be a 7/10.”  Then I replied with a quiet, “Probably.” And that was the whole conversation.  My child thinks I am already 70% dead.  I must really be looking on-fleek these days. (Yes, I did have to look up how to spell fleek to make sure I was spelling the new, hip word correctly. Also, is hip still a hip word to use?) 

So, in other words, parenting has been pretty soul crushing for me recently.  

Introducing Rappin' Ry sporting his favorite outfit.  Yes, he is wearing a hat that has the name "Austin" written on the inside bill.  And yes, he is wearing jeans that he bedazzled. (Thanks, Grandma Jan. Cory was happy to see you helped Ryder bedazzle.)

Puke, Depantsing, Train Wreck

While the years pass, my ability to not get sick in the car is fleeting away.  Apparently, so has my family’s ability to feel compassion towards me.

Me: *Motions to Cory to pull over quickly and I puke out the car door.*

Ryder: (as he’s watching me still gag after pulling away from the side of the road):  “Mom, do you know what I do when I have to puke?  I tell myself not to puke and I just don’t.”

Me *rolls eyes*: “Ok, I will try that next time.”

Five minutes later we get to our destination and I get out of the car and start puking again.  I look up with my tear filled eyes while trying to kick snow over my pile of puke only to see Ryder, hands on his hips, tapping his foot in the snow and he says, “You didn’t listen to me,” and then walks away in the other direction as if I have somehow disappointed him.

 

On another note, I picked Ryder up from Preschool the other day.  He climbed in the car and said, “Something terrible happened to me today.  My diamonds depantsed me.  Right in front of my friends.”

Yup, my 5 year old had so many heavy “diamonds” in his back pocket that his pants slid right off of his butt.    

Cory and I laughed about this for a good 2 days.

I took this picture last night of Ryder and me.  This picture really illustrates what it feels like to be a parent. At the end of the day, I look (and feel) like a train wreck while the actual train wreck sleeps blissfully on top of me trying to smother any last surviving breath out of me before we get up and do it all again.    

Mediocre, I Love You, Fake Death

We all know that Ryder likes to be the best and he never misses an opportunity to let me know how much better he is at being a person then Chase is. 

 

The other night, I woke up to my 4 year old laying next to me in bed in only his hand-me-down SpongeBob underwear that are a little too stretched out in all of the wrong places.  He leaned over to me and groggily asked, “Mom, is Chase mediocre?”  He then clapped his hands together and fell back asleep.  

 

One day this week, Chase was being a real jackhole before getting on the school bus.  He decided that he was mad at me and refused to say he loved me before he started walking to the bus so I did the adult thing and kept yelling, “I love you” over and over again until he was loaded on the bus and it drove off.  Ryder witnessed this but didn’t say anything. The next day, Ryder waited in the car while I stood outside and got Chase on the bus.  When I got back in the car to take Ryder to daycare, he asked me, “Well how did that go? Did he even say he loves you? Because I love you.” 

This kid knows how to make you feel loved and unloved at the same time.  That’s talent.  

On an unrelated note- this morning Ryder brought me an apple slice that he had left over from breakfast. After he stood in front of me while I devoured the apple I didn’t even want, he asked, “Did that taste normal?”  I said, “Yes.”  He simply replied with a faint, “Ok...” as he walked out of the room backwards while maintaining eye contact until he wasn’t visible in the doorway anymore.  I still don’t know if he did anything to that apple and I can’t stop thinking about it.  

 

  

Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

So, I know that I give Ryder a lot of grief for being a tad bit "extra."  But I'm starting to think that maybe he gets some of this quality from me.  The other day, Ryder was sitting on our kitchen island and let me have the first bite of his diced peaches.  He asked me how they tasted.  So of course, being the stellar Mother that I am, I couldn't just say that the peaches tasted good and thanked him for sharing a bite of his tasty, tasty snack. I had to put my hands up to my throat, roll my eyes back in my head, make a gurgling sound and fall to the ground pretending to die.  Apparently, I'm quite the actress because when I looked up at Ryder from my death position on the ground, he was sobbing.  I don't think I'll be winning any "Mother of the Year" awards anytime soon.

Watch, Voice Recordings, Tired Mama

Just when I think I have parenting Ryder down, he throws me for a loop…

The other morning before Preschool, I saw Ryder slip something sneakily into the pocket of his pants with his tiny syrup and fuzz filled fingers. It’s important to him right now that all of his pants have pockets and I try my best to remember to check his pockets before leaving for school because he has been known to sneak a thing or two to school.

Well, when I checked his pockets this particular morning, I found a little blue watch that I had forgotten all about.  Chase saved his money last year and bought the watch because it could take pictures and record short voice messages but had long forgotten about it since a few days after he purchased it, our dog chewed off one side of the band.  Luckily for Ryder, he is no stranger to hand-me downs and defects in things intrigue him more, so I should have known this is an item that Ryder would enjoy.

I knew there must be some odd reason Ryder wanted to bring the watch to school (ya know, because he can’t actually tell time) so I scanned through the pictures and all seemed innocent.  There was a picture of Chase smiling, a picture of half of Ryder’s face and a few blurry ones.  All seemed fine.  Then I remembered about the voice recording feature.  I pressed the little orange button to play the first voice recording and to no surprise I hear a squeaky, 4 year old voice yelling, “Boobies!”

With one eyebrow raised, I look to Ryder for a response and he just smiled at me and stated, "That's funny."

Apparently, Ryder spent the morning, while I was blow drying my hair, creating many, many short voice recordings that all consisted of nothing except him yelling, “Boobies” in different voices. (With the exception of a few giggles here and there.)

And not just a few voice recording. I deleted 51 of them.

Upon questioning, Ryder informed me that he was going to show his watch, and its magnificent features, to his friends at lunchtime. 

Long story short, he went to school empty handed and I went to work feeling like a hero for shielding the world from being subjected to Ryder’s voice recordings.

When I picked Ryder up from school that afternoon, as he was walking down the hallway towards me he asks loudly, “Mom, guess what I snuck in my sock today?” And I shrugged my shoulders, because at this point I couldn’t even guess what kind of contraband my 4 year old might have smuggled in his sock, after I was pretty sure I did a good pat-down earlier that morning.

He then hands me a toy cockroach and simply says, “I pranked everyone all day” as if it were all in a day’s work.

I love my child, but damn this mama is tired.

Ryder likes to add his own sprinkles to cake now.

Politics, T-R, 2020

Just some recent political jabs brewing within the Revermann household.

Ryder: "What words start with a T-R? Does Truck?"

Me: "Yes. Truck starts with a T and R."

Cory: "So does Trump."

Me: "Also, trash."

 

Text message exchange between Cory and I:

Cory: Why doesn’t Trump wear glasses?

Me: Because they won’t fit up his ass along with his head.

Cory: Cause he’s got 2020.

Me: We’re divorced.

I Cried at the Dentist Today... And it Wasn't Even My Appointment.

Yesterday was a day.  I couldn't even write about it yesterday because the wounds were still too fresh. 

This was my day in a nutshell via a text with a friend:

Friend: How's your day going?

Me: I cried at the dentist today... And it wasn't even my appointment.

So Ryder has a cavity.  We had a referral for a pediatric dentist months ago to get this cavity fixed, but the appointment got rescheduled a few times due to COVID.  His new appointment was scheduled for the end of August. However, he hadn't slept all week due to tooth pain, which also translates to Mom hasn't slept all week.  One night, I even resorted to driving around town at 2am to calm him.  Didn't work.  But I learned that I like our sleepy little town at 2am.  The lake is very peaceful. 

Any who, I called the pediatric dentist to see if they could get Ryder in any earlier than his August appointment and to my delight they could get him in later yesterday morning.  

Ryder said he was very excited to go to the dentist until we got about 5 minutes away and he started telling me that his stuffed animal- Dragon- was nervous to go to the dentist.  And it was all downhill from there. The first task was to have the dentist look at his teeth, which he happily complied with but then it was onto the X-ray room.  Ryder refused to be cooperative.  He screamed at the top of his lungs for what felt like an eternity. This isn't typical behavior for Ryder.  He is usually pretty compliant when it comes to following directions. Sure, he may give tasks extra "flare" as he is doing it, but this wasn't cute "flare."  This was, the house is burning to the ground and we all need to evacuate immediately. Everyone at the dentist's office was patient and kind.  Actually more patient and kind then I would have been.  They tried and they tried.  I tried and I tried until we just couldn't try anymore (you know, without scaring the other kids in the dentist's chairs).  The next option was, for a lack of better words, a baby straight jacket or sedation. Since we already knew Ryder would need to have some dental work done, they suggested putting him under to do all dental work in one day, including the simple X-rays.  So that's what we are choosing to do because having a fully sedated Ryder seems like my favorite kind of Ryder. (Kidding, but not really.) 

After we left, I was so overwhelmed with the quick planning and rearranging of the day (I like to pretend that I'm very "go with the flow" but I'm not.  I like structure and order and hate everything else.), overwhelmed and embarrassed about my child turning into a demon, and not feeling good myself. 

So after the appointment I found myself, 33 years old, parked in the McDonald's parking lot, sobbing into my already perfectly salted fries, licking spilt sweet and sour sauce off of my shirt because I had no pride left to give a crap about actually using a napkin.  And besides, all of the napkins were already soaked with my over-privileged, overwhelmed tears.  I'm pretty sure I hit my rock bottom at that moment. 

After there were no more nuggets left to consume we headed home.  I had a whole hour drive home from the dentist to collect my thoughts and get my act together (I knew I needed to get my act together, because frankly, I think my tears scared the teen-aged boy who was working the drive-thru at McDonalds.  What a sight I must have been.  A slightly middle aged, blonde haired women all of 100 pounds wearing a T-shirt that sported a sloth doing yoga on it, with makeup running down her cheeks, bloodshot eyes, sobbing through a pandemic protective mask as she's handing a teen-aged boy her tye-died decorated credit card to pay for her lukewarm lunch.) Like I said... rock bottom. 

When Cory walked in the door from work he asked Ryder how the dentist was (already knowing damn well it was a complete shit show). Ryder's response: "Mom cried like a little baby," as he rolled his hands into little fists that he raised to the outer corners of his eyes and turned in little half circles to make a crying motion, which he followed with a chant of, "Waah! Waah! Waah! Waah!"

So in other news, Ryder has lost electronic privileges until he is 42. And now only one child is listed in my will.