5 Things I’ve Learned From Motherhood

And no, I’m not talking about surefire ways to end a newborn’s cries in 2 minutes or less (though that does come in handy), or five ways to manipulate your toddler to pee on the toilet (Or even that one’s heart can grow an infinite amount of love for wrinkly, crying infants and tantrumming toddlers.)
I’m talking about answers to questions you never fathomed you’d be asking.
Here are my top 5 in order from kinda cool to “Wow, that’s awesome!
1. Is brushing one’s teeth with Oxi-Clean water a good idea? Unsurprisingly, no.  It’s a bad idea! (Thanks Boo for my first ever Poison Control call . . . FYI : 1-800-222-1222, never know when you might need it.)
 
2. What’s that up our toddler’s nose? Answer: Small baby hair clip.  Apparently not just a choking hazard.
3. Can you eat an entire pan of brownies and not gain five pounds? No.  But your child can.
4. Will eating a silica gel packet poison my poor child?  Nope, it’s apparently just a choking hazard.  Who would of thought?
5. My child’s screaming and holding their arm, what could be wrong? Apparently un-dislocating a dislocated elbow is not all that difficult, and certainly not worth the price of a doctors visit EVERYTIME it happens, even if the creepy feeling “pop” sends my stomach reeling. This skill makes me feel way cool and gets applause from those around.  I highly recommend it.
What have you learned lately?

It’s Not Them, It’s Me

I’m not sure the correct term I should use for this post.  “Difficult” sounds rude, “High-Needs” sounds prissy.  “Grumpy, Clingy, screaming, Attention-mongers” doesn’t fit on a business card.

I’m sure if you’ve hung around these parts much, you’ve deduced that I feel my kids fit in the aforementioned categories.  I love them to pieces, but they are not the easy-going tots that pregnant women hope for. 

At least, I think they aren’t.  But then again, there’s always the possibility that it’s me, and not them.

What if my life is a self-fulfilling prophecy?  What if I, in my cranky sarcastic manner, have pushed my children into being clingy, whiny, wretched sleepers? That is currently what is keeping me up at night.

And I’m not sure how to figure out the true roots of this situation.  I guess I’ll just have to wait until Kid 3 makes an appearance in the family (which may take 10 years in order for me to retain a small portion of sanity).  If Numero 3, falls into the descriptions above then I think that will be my proof . . . and a sign that I need to close the fertility gates and try to salvage what I’ve done to the ones I’ve got.

They Grow Up So Fast

It seems like my kids just won’t stop growing up.  Brutus is walking finally. Boo is [sort-of, almost, will it ever really happen?] potty trained.  He is finessing his fine motor skills by throwing applesauce at the chandelier.  She has perfected the indignant eye-roll of a fifteen year old.

It seems like only yesterday, she was a pony-tailed 3 year old playing with dolls and now . . .

Now she appears to be a scholarly college student heading off to take a final.

She looks so grown-up in her new glasses (she’s apparently the unlucky recipient of her dad’s bad vision genes.)  Luckily, not many people can pull off bright pink frames with rhinestones, but she looks adorable!

Hopefully no one calls her four-eyes.

Know-It-All!

I just can’t stand those mom’s who seem to know everything!  And, no, I don’t mean me.  I just pretend to make up for my many insecurities.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  The ones with a van load of kids who have pretty much been there and done that for everything.  And they always tell you things you don’t want to hear.

I’ll use one of my best friends Roslyn* as an example. Roslyn has six children which includes a set of triplets.  TRIPLETS.  That means THREE teeny, tiny, crying babies at one time. I would need to be sedated for 18 years to survive that!

Roslyn is always telling me that one day I’m going to miss having a sweet baby around.  I’m going to miss rocking a baby to sleep. I don’t know what world she lives in, but I have had PLENTY of rocking to sleep.  I’ve spent more time rocking a screaming baby in the last three years than I have spent eating, sleeping, and showering combined!  We are in our first week of training our child to sleep in a bed without having to be sound asleep when put there.  And no, I’m not talking about the baby.  I’m talking about my three year old.  Add in the much shorter (but long enough) year we spent rocking my son to sleep before he figured it out on his own, and its enough to make my head spin.

Miss this?  Really?

Sure! And do you know what the worst part is?

Roslyn is right.

She is always right.  My 15 month old son doesn’t want to cuddle with me before being put in his crib.  He doesn’t want to nurse.  He doesn’t want me to sing to him.  He just wants me to put him in his crib and walk away.  And as wonderful as it is that he doesn’t need hours of rocking each night, I wouldn’t mind if he needed at least ten minutes.  But he’s too wiggly and he knows he’s ending up in that crib anyways, so he might as well just get it over with.

Why did she have to be right? Next thing you know, she’ll be telling me it’s time for me to have another baby.  And we all know I’m not. Right? RIGHT?

Oh, no.

*Name has been changed to protect the person who apparently is always right.

Please! Stop Sharing.

Once you have 2 mobile kids, discussions on sharing toys are as common as the phrase, “We don’t hit (kick, bite, lick, pinch, scrape, scratch, torture) each other.”  They’ve actually started to understand the sharing concept.  Brutus loves nothing more than to shove his binkie in someone else’s mouth, and Boo thinks she’s hilarious when she uses his bottle to act like a baby.  Actually, in the bathtub they’ve started passing toys to each other—from one mouth to another.  It’s close enough to French kissing to make my husband uncomfortable.  They begrudgingly share toys, food, blankets, and stuffed animals with only sporadic down-and-out fights.

 

And I’ve had it!  There will be NO MORE SHARING in this house.  The new rule is that your toys are your own and whoever gets to it first, gets it. There will be screaming! There will be tantrums! There will be hurt feelings!

But, at least there won’t be a constant cold being passed around!  If one of my kids gets sick, it’s basically impossible to keep the other from catching it.  Toys, food, and fingers go from one mouth to the next and back again.  It’s a cycle of sharing and sickness.  I can disinfect all I want and I still can’t keep away the colds when they insist on passing things back and forth in a germtastic collision of sticky fingers.  So, the sharing has to stop!

It’s over-rated anyway, right?

Expect the Worst

My husband is happier than me.  And no, it’s not because he’s married to such an amazing wife.  It’s because of one simple thing—he always expects the worst.

I on the other hand, always get my hopes up.  I can’t tell you the number of times I would be rocking my daughter or son to sleep and be thinking, “This is the night the baby will sleep all night and I will wake in a panic in the morning, run into the nursery and find a peacefully sleeping baby.”  Which never happens. Or the number of times I think to myself, “Today my son will sit and play on the floor for 30 minutes and let me get something done.”  And he never does.

I’m setting myself up for failure.

My husband on the other hand probably doesn’t expect my daughter to actually put herself to sleep until she’s 32, and he figures that my son will need to be carried constantly until he’s 14.  And when the unexpected happens, he’s elated.

I’ve got to work on my pessimism.  I think it will make me happier.

Newborn Survival Kit

If you were stranded on a desolate island with a newborn baby, what 5 things would you want?  Granted, my first instinct would be 1) a nanny, 2) a boat, 3) a great mattress, 4) ear plugs, and 5) a sleeping pill.  I’d send the nanny and the baby in the boat to find civilization, and then take the most wonderful amazing nap I’ve had in a LONG time.

But, this is reality.  What kind of desolate island has a nanny?

So, here are a few items in my Newborn Survival Kit.

1) White Noise Machine.  Apparently the womb is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner.  Don’t ask me, I don’t remember.  But it seems that baby’s like loud steady noise.  My kids spent their early months in the master bath because of the fact there was a loud exhaust fan, but then I got a white noise machine and suddenly I found freedom.  Now I can take white noise with me where ever I go.  Grandma’s house? Check.  Napping at the babysitters? Check.

2) Baby Carriers.  My daughter liked to be held.  A LOT. Twenty-three hours a day might be an understatement.  But, of course, there were things that I needed to get done, and as skilled as I was at doing things one-handed, it really was difficult to be productive.  Then I found slings, wraps, and carriers, and suddenly I could carry her snuggled up against me, and still have two hands to do things.  And, even better, my husband couldn’t use the excuse, “I have to study!” to get out of toting her around.  Aww! Who doesn’t want an adorable study buddy?

3) Nursing/Feeding Pillows.  Because, honestly, I fell asleep a lot during those middle of the night feedings and this probably saved my kids from falling to the floor. (WARNING: I do not condone falling asleep while feeding an infant during the middle of the night. With my next kid I promise to try harder.)

4) Swaddling Blankets. I’ve heard a lot of moms tell me that their babies really dislike being swaddled, but I’ve yet to meet an infant in real life who didn’t like the security of being unable to move their arms.  They can’t control them.  I can’t imagine I’d enjoy being smacked in the face by my own hands.  They may fight the swaddle at first, but trust me, they all give in!

5) Suckies, Loveys, and Mobiles.  Basically anything that will give your baby a sign that it is sleep time.  My daughter never took a pacifier.  I thought it was great because we wouldn’t have to break her of the habit. Oh, boy! I wish she had.  It would have really helped her sleep.  She also never had a lovey.  She never had anything to cuddle in the middle of the night.  She also didn’t ever have any music or mobile to signal it was bed time.  In my experience, babies need signs that it is time to go to bed (that’s why a bedtime routine is always stressed in infant sleep books.)  Pop my son’s binkie in his mouth, hand him his blue stuffed elephant, and turn on the music mobile, and you can tell that he knows it is time to sleep.  Of course it took some training, but now he has resigned himself to his fate.

So, there you have it.  Those are my top 5 survival tools.  What are yours?

What Must He Think of Me?

My husband came home from work the other day, and saw this: What do you think was the first thing he said?  Did he comment that she must have been really tired?  Maybe ask as to how long she had been sleeping, or perhaps if she might be a bit under the weather since she was taking a late afternoon nap.

But, no.  No, those are not the first things that came to his mind.

The first thing out of his mouth was, “What did you do to her?”

Really?  REALLY? What does he think, that I added Ambien to her afternoon milk sippy so I could eat the Oreos by myself?  That I knocked her unconscious so I could take a bubble bath?

I told him he should probably check her pulse, and he laughed.  But I think he actually might have when I left the room.

Thanks for thinking the best of me, honey.  Love ya!

Running Out

We had to leave the house today.  It doesn’t happen that often because it’s always such an ordeal.  And as always there were baths to be taken, noses to be de-gunked, outfits to be chosen, spit-up to be removed and bird’s nest hair to be tamed.  And of course I had to get the children ready as well.

You see, Brutus had his one-year-old check up today and it has hit me that my “just had a baby” excuse for carrying around extra weight has been stretched about as far as I can stretch it.  So, I had to find an outfit that camouflaged the muffin top and mommy pooch and made it look as though I’d been running marathons since he was born in order to get in shape.  It was a vain attempt.

I finally decided to aim for bag-lady chic.

Now, I’m looking for a new excuse.  I never had this problem after my daughter was born.  No, not because I actually lost those last 15 pounds, but because I got pregnant again, and that is basically the quintessential defense for not losing weight.  Unfortunately I’m not ready to go that far again to excuse away the baby weight.

I guess instead of an excuse, I should look for a solution.

Oh, alright.  I’ll brainstorm for answers, just let me finish eating this last Twix from my daughter’s Halloween stash.

 

To My Daughter

You lie asleep.
Eyes closed with lacy lashes pressed to pale skin.
Blond curls matted in the sweat of sleep.
Lips parted, fingers curled, nose upturned.

You once snuck in under cover of dark,
But now slip into bed shamelessly,
Pulling blankets to your pillow.
Your pillow in my bed.
It's permanent home.

I should take you back.
But your feet pressed gently into my knee,
Your head inches from mine smelling of sweet sweat
Your dreamily breathed “I Love You”
Keep you in place.
On your pillow.

In our bed.