1. Start packing. Lay out all the clothes you will need on your freshly made bed, like some kind of grown-up.
2. Stop packing so you can pour child third bowl of cereal for the morning.
3. Resume packing while child eats bowl of cereal.
4. Stop packing to clean up spilled cereal from carpet. (more…)
Good morning! You’ve made it through another night. Barely. It’s choose your own adventure time! Now wipe that drool off your cheek, and pull on your go-to maternity yoga pants (Yes, that’s a thing. No, you’re not pregnant). You have plans with a friend in 2 hours, and your toddler has been wearing the same pajamas for 4 days. (more…)
I am a survivor. Over 40 hours in labor? Check. Months of colic? You betcha. Nursing woes, complete with more blood, cracks and blisters than every runner of the New York Marathon combined? Uh-huh. Hormonal issues post-baby that left me weak, nauseous, and scary moody? Yessir. A baby who didn’t sleep through the night until she was 17 months old? Yeppers. I did it. I got through all of this crap, and survived with a smile on my face (at least most, OKAY, some of the time). But recently that smile has turned into a frown. A giant, ugly, pouty face frown. Why, you ask? Because I am trying to wean Baby 1.0, and it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. (more…)
1. You spawned a life. Not to take away from the male, um, contribution, but growing a baby in your stomach, and then surviving their transition to the outside world, seems like pretty convincing street cred supporting your new Superhero status.
2. You can see seconds into the future. You know before anyone else does that your kid is about test the gravitational pull of the earth with their forehead. You are aware of their next move before they are aware of their next move. If you had more time on your hands, you could open up a 1-800 hotline and tell people their (immediate) futures, but let’s be honest. If you had more time on your hands, you’d take a shower and maybe, just maybe, brush your teeth.
I am “knows who Miss Cleo is” years old.
3. You have superhuman reflexes that, when coupled with Superhero power #2 mentioned above, allow you to prevent any number of daily disasters. You can catch your kid, mid-fall, and have an uncanny ability to snare anything making the short journey from your kids mouth to their party dress. These same reflexes have saved your toddler AND your iPhone from a watery toilet grave/unwelcome wastewater booty bath. You could probably catch a fly with chopsticks, but then you’d just be showing off.
4. You can survive on minimal sleep for years and somehow not turn into a Supervillain. Usually.
It’s a tuba playing penguin in a tutu, right?
5. Your nutritional needs are somehow met by some combination of eating scraps of small slobbery cracker bits, and sips of pureed food product you squish out of the bottom of packets before throwing them away (and feeling eternally guilty for feeding your kid out of something so wasteful, BUT IT’S THE ONLY THING SHE EATS).
6. You have superhuman hearing. Not only can you hear even the most subtle of midnight whimpers cluing you into an oncoming cold, but you can hear silence, and in a household where toddler’s reside, silence is the most concerning sound of all.
Calm yourselves, it’s cocoa powder.
7. While we are on the topic of superhuman senses, you can smell your own child’s feces from across the library. Knowing this, I propose a shift in the old fart saying to “If you smelt it, your child dealt it.”
8. You can multitask like an octopus on speed. Enough said.
9. You can stop an oncoming car in its tracks by using only your eyes. (This has only proved effective when standing on the sidewalk at a crosswalk, which admittedly may play a role. Do not try this at home.)
10. Your heart now resides outside of your body. This was not explained clearly during your hospital discharge, and none of your post-partum appointments addressed this, but somehow your heart now walks two steps ahead of you, skipping through puddles and sniffing flowers on the side of the road. Anything that can survive with their heart on the outside of their bodies HAS to be a Superhero.
So what do you think? Do you have any other super powers I failed to mention?
Image credits: Miss Cleo, Rorschach test, Cocoa powder, Baby 1.0 photo property of HMDHM, Cover image– if you like this picture, follow the link for more AMAZING creations by Andry Rajoelina.
Oh, the park. How I love thee, and your rolling green hills. Your trees, the only survivors of the unstoppable urban sprawl, provide shade from the hot afternoon, post-nap sun (or the drizzle if you live in the Pac NW). Your sandpit, with it’s lot of broken, discarded, plastic toys, is one of few places I can sit still while Baby 1.0 happily digs, piles and eats sand like she is one of those giant angry worms from Tremors. Your swings bring back the memories of the only way we could get our precious daughter to sleep for the first 7 months of her life. And your constant parade of playmates provide a welcome bit of socialization from what can otherwise be a bit of a lonely existence. But it’s not all sunshine and sidewalk chalk rainbows. Every once in a while, someone comes along and sullies the experience. So for you, the clueless, I present to you How Not To Be A Douche Canoe At The Park.
SAND!!!
1. Don’t do drugs at the park. You see those tiny humans running around, all giggly, and squealing with delight? Unlike you, those tiny humans are not high. Those tiny humans are kids. These kids are pretty impressionable, in case you didn’t notice, and I think it would be better if they kept playing “Lava Monster” instead of needing to have their daycare teacher answer awkward questions about why you are staring so enviously at their rice cake.
2. While we’re on the topic, don’t sell drugs at the park. I thought this scenario was made up by D.A.R.E officers to give you an example of where you may encounter people to whom you could “Just Say No,” but it turns out people sell drugs at the park all the time. This is bad. Please don’t do this.
You know you were a child of the ’80’s if…
3. Pick up your dog poop. I think we can all agree poop is gross, and kids, much like dogs, are very curious about anything and everything that stands out as abnormal from it’s surroundings, i.e., a pile of brown poop on a swath of green grass. It’s a magnet for mayhem and flies alike. Pick it up.
4. Acknowledge other people. Look, I know stranger danger is a real thing, and the last thing you want to do is strike up a conversation with a weirdo. But if you see the same person 5 days a week, at the same park, with their child? Maybe just throw a nod their way now and again. Chances are they aren’t any more crazy than you are. And if you can’t bring yourself to acknowledge the adult, at least say something to the tiny person standing to your right saying “hi” over and over, like a broken Repeat Pete parrot.
“Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.” FYI, this isn’t going to stop until you say something…
5. Parent your kid. The park is supposed to be a fun place where kids can burn steam, so running, screaming, and being wild are to be expected. But when your kid crosses the threshold from “that will need a band-aid” to “that will need a body cast,” maybe step in to bring it down a notch?
6. Don’t bogart a high value play item, like the digger, for an unreasonable amount of time, like the whole month of March. Sharing is caring. Preach it, and teach it.
You want to see a fight at the park, just hang out at the digger for a few minutes.
Anyone have anything else you’d like to add?
Image credits: Park sign, Tremors, D.A.R.E., Repeat Pete, Digger
Of all the surprising things I’ve accomplished since becoming a parent, learning how to speak, or at least understand, a new language is somewhere near the top of my list. I’ve always known babies babble, but what I didn’t realize is that over time, one can actually come to make sense of their own baby’s nonsensical drivel. At least most of it. Sometimes. Maybe.
In addition to now knowing “apple” means “pear” and “no” generally means “yes” except for when it really means “no” or “maybe later,” I have also developed a special language with my husband to quickly communicate about our most common scenarios.
Here are our 7 favorite toddler terms:
1. Rage Planking- When a cloud of hot rage overcomes your toddler, and they drop to the ground, in perfect plank position, and scream until they turn purple. Burns calories, and scares off anyone within a 30 foot radius.
2. Textertaining– When you get stuck in your rocker because your toddler will only nap if you hold them, and you force your husband to text you jokes and gossip after you already read through everything Buzz Feed has to offer, and are certain that if you see one more vacation photo on Facebook, you’re going to combust.
This little exchange was surprisingly entertaining, but it still doesn’t answer the question of WHY textertaning autocorrects to textertraining every time.
3. Spite Licking– When you say “no” to something redonkulous, like your toddler’s request to use the litter box scoop as a toothbrush, and they immediately turn and lick the closest thing to them. The licking target could be ANYTHING, so caution must be used when determining when to deliver the bad news that no, they cannot stand on the TV stand and rip holes in the paper lampshade with the dirty fork they took out of the dishwasher.
4. Chipmunking- The art of a toddler packing 4 crackers, a hunk of cheese, and a bit of strawberry from two days ago into their cheek until the moment they decide they no longer want them, and they then spray them all over the wall, like a slobber-filled culinary machine gun, and promptly demand more crackers.
5. The Abyss- Describes the exact location in the car where a toddler will drop a high value item (water bottle, Dog Dog, snack cup) that cannot be reached without pulling over, getting out, and opening the door. (It should be noted I stole this particular term from my brother-in-law. Sorry, bro.)
6. The Classic Hold Me, Don’t Hold Me- The inspiration for this blog, and the way I lost all the baby weight. As the name implies, it’s the action of requesting to be held, and then upon being picked up, deciding they don’t want to be picked up, unless of course you plan on putting them down, then they will resist mightily and cling to you like a vivacious starfish.
7. The Temple of Doom- When a toddler attempts to remove your soul via your nose or the deepest recesses of your mouth, by use of shockingly inhuman strength, and lack of empathy regarding pain being inflicted.
Baby 1.0 performing the dreaded Temple of Doom. My soul was safe though because I already sold it for a night of uninterrupted sleep, which I didn’t get.
Anyone else have anything the have a funny name for? I’d love to hear it!
Image credits: Cover image, others belong to HMDHM
I’ve said it time and time again: Baby 1.0 is just not a sleeper. 19 months into it, and we’ve only had a handful of blissful nights where she has actually slept all the way through, and subsequently woke the next morning with enough energy to burn a hole through concrete. Finally, after being pushed to the absolute brink of sleep deprived madness, this weekend my husband and I decided to put our collective parenting foot down, and declared, once and for all: “Enough is enough, Child!”
Until this weekend she would wake, like clockwork, several times a night and cry (scream, wail, holler) until I came in and nursed her back down, which, out of habit and fear of her waking up more, I would do shortly after she started up. While I understood my participation via multiple nightly nursing sessions was contributing to the problem, until this weekend, I didn’t understand it was the whole problem.
In my mind, there were any number of things that factored into her wakefulness. Laying in bed at night, fighting the urge to go in and put her back to sleep with a warm milk nightcap, I would think about all the things that could be keeping her from sleeping, like for example:
1. The air. It’s touching her face. And her hands. Can’t sleep when there’s air, you know, touching your face or hands.
2. She has just discovered she is incapable of moving her ring toe independently of her other toes, and for reasons I will never know, is utterly devastated.
3. Her hair is growing.
4. She can’t find her belly button.
5. She is trying to figure out if she’d rather be stuck on an island with M.C. Escher or MC Hammer.
6. She just realized the important role the thumb plays on the human hand, and her mind is blown.
7. She doesn’t know what a fox says, and doesn’t understand why that video was an internet sensation because obviously a fox wouldn’t say any of those things.
8. She is a vampire, or a mostly bald nocturnal opossum with no tail, and very cute, human-like features.
Well aren’t you a cute little fella?
Until this weekend, these things seemed more plausible than me being the source of the problem. I mean hello? I’m the mom! I’m not the problem! I’m the solution!
And speaking of solutions, we have tried them all. About a year ago we tried the Cry It Out method, which ended in vomit for her, and about 15 gray hairs and a stress ulcer for me. We tried every device, potion, book, website -anything- you name it, we’ve given it a go, all to no effect. Everything, that is, except the old “You Just Have To Figure It Out” method.
After another heinous night of interrupted sleep, my husband looked at me with weary eyes, and for the 100 bagillionth time, asked me in his unflappably gentle way, “what if we just turned the monitor off tonight?” and for the first time, I didn’t fight it.
We knew she was safe. We knew she was comfortable. We knew if she worked herself up enough, we’d hear her through the wall we share. We knew it was time.
That night, after much hemming and hawing, I placed the monitor next to our bed, turned it on, and then with great effort, turned the sound all the way down. For a few minutes I thought of all the horrible things that could happen with the sound off (alien abduction, spider infestation, Bermuda Triangle), and then mid-totally unrealistic worrythought, I fell asleep and slept the whole night. The. Whole. Night. And even better, when I woke up, my baby was alive, sleeping, clothed, and totally fine. Did she sleep the whole night? I honestly have no idea. But if she didn’t, she figured out a way to get herself back down, which is something we’ve been begging her to do (but not allowing her to do), for her whole life. The next night, we repeated the process, and again, we (all?) slept like champs.
Should I have done this months and months ago? Probably. But could I have done this months and months ago? I don’t know. I think as much as she needed to be ready to figure it out, I needed to be ready to let her try. Is this the end of our sleep problems? Probably not. But maybe, just maybe, by showing bravery and trust, we’ve unlocked a new tool to use in the battle against turning into sleep deprived zombie parents.
I’m more of an Audacious Dreamer, but that combination apparently isn’t available in Street Fighter.
Image credits: opossum , sleeping child, Street Fighter graphic, cover photo belongs to HMDHM
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It's just the beginning... by Ali Solomon
Hold Me, Don't Hold ME 