Parenting Truth (installment #2): A visual

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Parenting Truths (installment #1)

This will be an on-going series.  More to come...

On the day you wear dry-clean only pants to work, your baby will spit up on them as you leave the house.

There will ALWAYS be a sock missing it's mate .

The night before an important presentation at work, your baby will wake up 3 times after sleeping through the night for 4 months.

You will go on a road trip that includes vomiting and/or a leaky diaper and a soaked car seat.

You will teach your kids not to pick their noses, but you will stick your fingernail up their nose without a second thought.

Your kid will get sick requiring a trip to the pediatrician's within 1-2 weeks of his or her regularly scheduled well-check visit.

Your toddler will hurt your feelings.

Your toddler will physically hurt you. Have you taken a head-butt to the nose, eyebrow, or mouth from a 2 year old?  You will.

You will lie to your kids.  "The factory that makes cotton candy had to close so all of the workers could take a vacation."  An innocent untruth, yes, but a lie is a lie my friend.

There will be a day when everyone eats cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

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Early Morning Conversations

It is a random Sunday morning. I can tell by the light coming in through the blinds that it is probably around 6ish.  It is too early. The house is quiet.  I am hoping that this will be one of those rare mornings when the kids sleep until 7:30. I close my eyes and attempt to go back to sleep, and of course, I remain awake. Within a few minutes, I hear the wake up call of my son in the next room, the hollow clink clink clink of his pacifier against the wooden rails of his crib. I open one eye and try to focus on the clock.  It is 6:30.  I know that I can leave him in bed for a little longer. He sneezes and I wait for his second sneeze.  Ah, there it is. He is a double sneezer. I hear him say "Besh you."

That makes me smile.

I love this stage of baby development. He speaks fairly well for his age, and people outside of our family can understand some of what he says, but I treasure being his baby language translator.  He speaks and I translate, sometimes even to my husband.  It makes me feel like he and I share this untouchable connection, this secret baby language.  The ability to communicate, understand, and translate his language is one of the most validating and fulfilling aspects of motherhood for me.  He tries out a new word, and I can almost see his brain and his mouth working together, as he rolls the sounds around in his mouth.  He stares out the window, watching the birds at our bird feeder.  I say "See the birds eating their breakfast? Eat your bird seed birdies!" He turns to me with a serious face "Eat eat bur see. Eat eat beh-fuss burs!" He will repeat his version of a word until I repeat the correct translation back to him. If I don't guess correctly, he says it again. I say the right thing and he rewards me with a smile. I went through this stage with my daughter and it never occurred to me that she was teaching me as I was teaching her.   As I listen to my son, I am reminded of my high school French class when Madame informed us at the beginning of the year that we would speak exclusively in French.  I was so intimidated.  Babies aren't intimidated.  I don't know how they manage day to day while trying to talk.  Sure, there are times when he gets frustrated trying to get his point across, but it amazes me how infrequently that happens.

He is still in his crib and his conversation is picking up.  This is one of those times that I wish I had a video monitor.  He tries new words in the early morning during these chats with himself and his toys. I hear him say "Uh-oh Nemo!" Nemo was taken out of his crib last night and is sitting in the rocking chair.  He starts repeating something that sounds like boy  "umB-ooooOOOYY! umB-ooooOOOYY!" The "oy" gets louder each time.  The crib creaks as he stands up and sits down.  He says urgently "Pappy (paci)! Pappy, uh-oh Pappy," as he puts his pacifier back in his mouth.  "Mow-mow. Morning Mow-mow" The cat must have walked past his room.  "Mommy?  Mommy? Peeek up! Peeek up!" "Mor-ning Mommy. Mor-ning Mommy."

Then, from down the hall "Po Po is that you?"  His sister calls him Po Po.  "Po Po was that you or Trin Trin? I don't know if you said that or if it was our kitty."

"Mor-ning Eh-yit! Mor-ning Eh-yit!" He is now saying good morning to himself.

I am so tired, so so tired. They are both awake.  There is no going back to sleep now.  I pull the covers back, get out of the bed and peek my head into my son's doorway. He is standing up in his crib with hair askew and eyes still sleepy.

He smiles at me from behind his pacifier and points to his backside "Poop! New nem-mies." He thinks he needs new jammies.

I sigh, "Alright Sweet Boy, let's get a dry diaper."    

I place him on the changing table and our first conversation of the day commences.

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Nothing Beats a Three Year Old's Pillow Talk

"Mommy? Mommy??? Will you lay down with me, for just a few minutes?"

Every now and then there are nights when my daughter has a hard time falling asleep.  My husband or I will lay on her floor next to her bed.  What else would I be doing with my evening? Probably watching some mind-numbing reality show.  A little time on her floor is much more entertaining and we have the best conversations when this happens.

One night, I decided to take notes. I had my phone and tried to type everything she said. Her mind goes a mile a minute. This entire exchange took place in whispers over the course of about 10 minutes.

"Mommy? What if I jumped on Mickey Mouse's head? What would he say?"

(In my best Mickey voice) "Oh boy! Someone jumped on my head!"

She giggles.

"Mommy? Why do the horses from the palace want Cinderella to come back? Why does the pumpkin get smashed? What if I had a mermaid tail?"

"Mommy, Jack says boo-dozer instead of bulldozer and cook-ahs instead of cookies."

"What if I was a superhero...in my heart? If I was a superhero and Anastasia and Drizella ripped Cinderella's new dress, I would just fly on down and give her another one!"

I tell her that would be a nice thing to do.  I am sure Cinderella would appreciate that.

**Silence for about 30 seconds**

"Mommy? I feel like my bed isn't comfy enough. I feel like I need more pillows. I am just going to get my Keagan pillow pet (named after her cousin) and my ladybug pillow pet. I need to put my regular pillow over here because I don't want to see the lid of my dress up box."

She gets off her bed, retrieves the pillows and struggles to get back on while holding both pillows.

"I need a ladder for this bed! Look, what is this called if I stack my pillows on top of each other?"

I look and say "Really tall?"

"No. BUNK PILLOWS!"

I tell her no more talking it is time to go to sleep. I hear her suck her thumb and settle into her bed. Another 30 second bout of silence.

"Mommy?  Why does the prince in one of my books turn into a swan every night when he walks down the path?"

I tell her we can read that story tomorrow. It is time to be quiet now. Goodnight. I love you.

"Mommy? Why does Daddy step over my gate and you open it up? Elsa wears a cape with no hood, but Aurora's cape has a hood. Why does Marshmallow find Elsa's crown? Mommy? What if the earth had less gravity and I could jump really high?"

I don't answer her and it gets quiet. Several minutes pass. I think this may be it.

"Mommy? Why does Scrooge McDuck see a ghost? Did you see that doorknocker with Goofy's face? He was wearing a hair bow! Why did Goofy have chains? If you are a ghost you carry chains so they don't drag on the ground and get caught. Mommy? Why do mean people put chains on you that attach to the ground? So you can't use your powers?"

I say yes, Hans didn't want Elsa to use her powers and Malificent didn't want Prince Phillip to find Aurora.

"I feel like I need to snug with something purple, but my purple bear is too big. Do you need something to snug with?"

I say sure, I'll take the purple bear. She tosses the bear down to me. I tell her thanks and snug the bear.

"I wish I could have a husband for my Minnie soft thing. Do you think we could find one at the Disney store?"

I tell her we could probably find a Mickey soft thing if she wants to spend some of her piggy bank money on it.

"Why is Mickey Mouse on my Disney Cinderella book? Did Mickey Mouse make Disney?"

I tell her there was man named Walt Disney who invented Mickey Mouse and he uses Mickey as the Disney logo, just like Target and Ford and Chevrolet have logos.

"I think a shark is going to bite me in my room."

I tell her sharks need water to breathe and there is no water in her room, so there is no way a shark could be in her room.

"Yeah, but manatees need to come up to the surface to take a breath."

I say she is correct.

"Why is Spiderman Peter Parker when he doesn't wear his Spiderman outfit? What is Supergirl's name when she doesn't wear her Supergirl outfit?"

I tell her I don't know.

"But why? I think it is um... Tulip Rose. But, um, Mommy? I wish my ceiling was painted. Why is my room different than the other rooms in our house?"

I take a guess and say it is because her walls are purple. She agrees. I tell her again, no more talking. It is very very VERY late and it is time to go to sleep. Goodnight. I love you.

"Mommy? Love you."

There was no more talking, just the sound of her sucking her thumb and her breathing getting slower as she fell asleep.  Her rambling train of thought makes this mama's heart happy. I was curled up under a blanket and fell asleep too. I woke up about 20 minutes later with an aching shoulder but it was worth it. I know this time with her, the window of time when she actually wants me in her room and takes comfort in knowing I am near, is fleeting.  I know that one day I will blink and she will be a teenager.

I will take every moment like this that I can get.

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The Twilight Bark

Do you remember the Twilight Bark from the movie 101 Dalmatians? The dogs bark to one another all across the city to talk to each other, gossip, and ask for help. My youngest sister and I gave birth to our sons on the same day, 5 hours and 456 miles apart.  These baby cousins started communicating in uetero.  They talked by means of a Morse code of pokes and kicks, about how warm and cozy they were in there and how they didn't want to leave.  They were both a week overdue.  We both had to be induced.

During the early weeks of the boys' lives, my sister and I texted each other in the middle of the night, a life line after dark. When the babies started sleeping more regularly, our late night/early morning texting stopped. We talked on the phone during the day, comparing notes.  The boys were at it again. If one slept through the night for four days, then on the fifth day was up from 1am-3am, the other had done the same thing.  We joked that they were talking behind our backs.

I thought of the Twilight Bark one night as I was lying on the floor of the baby's room. He had been up several times already.  I was determined that he would not wake again.  I did not dare get up until I knew he was in a deep sleep. So I shut my eyes, curled up under a blanket and attempted to relax. That didn't happen. My hips and neck ached from lying on the floor, my arm kept falling asleep, my mind would not turn off. I thought that there must be parents all over the world, maybe even down the street, that were doing the exact same thing at this moment. I thought of my sister. Was she lying on the floor at this very moment too? I imagined that our boys were communicating in some cosmic cousin way.

It was then that I recalled the Twilight Bark. Here was the scenario: my baby would cry out his message in North Carolina, setting off a chain reaction of babies crying all the way to Ohio, where my nephew would receive it. I thought this must work for parents too. We are stretched out on bedroom floors lying motionless, awkwardly sitting in rocking chairs at an angle because the baby stopped crying if you lean to the left, spooning a little one in a twin bed with your back against the bed rail. We are all awake, willing our children to sleep. So, I send out a silent message to my sister, "I am awake, are you awake too?" I imagine my message is received by the dad down the street that is pacing back and forth in his kitchen with his newborn daughter, and he passes it on to another parent keeping vigil in the night, and the chain continues.   My Twilight Bark message makes it all the way to Ohio, where my sister is awake, barely rocking in her glider, afraid to move, with my sleeping nephew curled against her.

Now, when I find myself on the floor of the nursery in the middle of the night, I think of the Twilight Bark and send a out a little silent message. It gives me comfort to think of the other parents and caregivers doing what I am doing, that my sister may be lying awake on the floor 456 miles away.  Try it sometime. It just might work for you too.

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Love/Fear

The fabric of parenting is a dichotomy of constant love and constant fear,  woven together like an intricate lace that envelopes your heart, filling up your chest.  I expected the love.  I knew there would be fear.  I expected to be scared the first time the baby had a fever or fell down, face first on the tile, while learning to walk.  I did not anticipate just how closely love and fear are intertwined, and how the combination can steal your breath.

It is a random Monday morning. I am standing on the porch, blowing kisses as my husband backs out of the driveway to take the kids to daycare. Little hands in the backseat. The baby boy hand erratically waving to me. The preschooler hand catching my kisses and putting them on her heart. It fills me up with so much love that my throat tightens. I think, "My whole life is in that car," and the love/fear cocktail runs through me like a cold chill.  What if they get in an accident? What if I never see them again?   This jolt of the love/fear happens in a nanosecond, washes through my veins.  So I stay on the porch. I continue to blow kisses until they drive up the street.  I turn around, I shake it off, I grab a kiss from the air and put it on my heart.

I breathe again.

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A Few Parenting Milestones

A Few Parenting Milestones:

You arrive at work and realize there is dried poo under your thumbnail. You realize you prepared your breakfast and lunch with that poo thumb.

Your child makes an embarrassing comment about your body in a public place. For example yelling  “MOMMY! YOU HAVE A BIG HUGE BUM!” as loud as possible in the library bathroom. My aunt recalls a dressing room incident when she was trying on a bathing suit and my cousin says with astonishment and a little disgust, “Mom! What HAPPENED to your BODY?!” 

Your child makes an embarrassing comment about a stranger’s body. For example: “Not him, the tough one.” Luckily for us, she says ‘tough’ (for now) when she means big or plump, so only we know she is insulting someone’s size.

You clean up vomit in a public place with every used tissue and crinkled up napkin in your purse, and you don’t dry heave or vomit yourself while doing so.

You stick your baby’s pacifier in your own mouth to clean it off because you are not near any water source to clean it. This also applies to sippy cups.

You are disgusted by the tacky, sticky film covering restaurant high chairs. Really, do they ever clean those things?

You plan road trip pit stops based on which gas stations/fast food restaurants have a changing table in the bathroom. (I am still shocked at how many places are lacking changing tables.)

You crawl/roll out of your sleeping child’s room with ninja-like stealth.

You cry when you knock over the 3 ounces of breast milk you just spent thirty minutes pumping.  You get angry when your husband doesn’t understand that it IS a big deal.

You are forced to make a split-second decision on naming anatomy during bath time. Example: The child stands up grabbing his penis and questions “Bum? Bum?”  You have two seconds to make the wiener/penis/whatever you are going to call it decision. You had no idea it would happen RIGHT NOW, so you shout out your answer like a contestant on The Family Feud, “PENIS!” but there is no one behind you yelling “Good answer! Good answer!” there is just a naked toddler staring at you.

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Everything is Better in 3D

When I was pregnant with my daughter in 2010, my husband had the itch to buy a new TV. Not just any new TV, a gigantic, high definition, flat screen TV, to replace what I already considered a gigantic flat screen TV. The extra special thing about this TV was it had 3D capabilities. That is right, you could watch television in the third dimension from the comfort of your own couch, because, EVERYONE needs to be able to do that, right? In his mind, the answer was absolutely.

My husband is not one to make an impulse purchase. He researched. He fact checked. He read message boards. He watched YouTube videos. He weighed the pros and cons of LED screens versus plasma screens.  He sprinkled in random tech facts into our conversations. It would go something like this:

Me:  "According to my book, the baby is now the size of an heirloom tomato. I don't even know what the difference is between an heirloom tomato and a tomato-tomato."

Him: "Did you know that the 3D glasses work by alternating the images your eyes see at an incredible rate of speed?"

As my belly grew, so did my list of things we needed to purchase to get ready for the baby. I had the lists from the pregnancy books, suggestions from friends and the weekly pregnancy emails I received.  Wouldn't you know it, not one list included a 3D TV. I humored him. I went to Best Buy with him, waddling straight to the bathroom, leaving him in the home theater room. I would find him in the dark room, his smiling face illuminated by the glow of the enormous screens.  One of the young sales guys would approach and start a conversation. My husband typically knew more about the TV than the employee and would stump the salesman with a question regarding pixel burn out or ambient light.  

As my pregnancy progressed, the more the TV talk started to exhaust me. I would roll my eyes every time he would exclaim, with a dramatic arm sweep in the space in front of me "Now, picture this in the third dimension!" By this time my hormones were taking control.  My internal conversations would go to extremes. "How could he be so selfish by wanting to get that TV at a time like this!?" to "Maybe he is freaking out over becoming a dad and needs this TV as a comfort thing."  

He wore me down. I was swollen, I was hungry, and sleep deprived. I just didn't care anymore. I said yes. He triple checked all of his facts and ordered his new baby. He recruited a friend to move the old giant beast of a TV upstairs. He hooked up the new TV giddy with excitement.  He moved the couch back a few inches to optimize the 3D viewing experience. We sat on the couch, turned off the lights, turned on our 3D glasses, and watched tropical fish jump off of the screen and swim directly at our faces.  

It is now 3 years later. He likes to tell anyone with a pregnant wife/girlfriend that if you want something, wear them down while the hormones are in control. Last year, when I was pregnant with my son, he set his sights high and started dropping hints about a fancy sports car.  He does not have a Lotus Elise parked in the garage. He does, however, have a new Xbox that celebrated its first birthday just a few months before we celebrated our son's.

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