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…)
Words are powerful. They have the power to evoke memories and emotions alike. They move us to take action, or calm frazzled nerves. Words unite us or divide us depending on their message. They can fill your soul with love, or, break your heart into a thousand itty bitty pieces. Words are powerful.
Take, for example, the word “moist.”
I’m willing to bet that at least 80% of you just scowled and wrinkled your nose as if you had just smelled a day old poop diaper left in a hot car during a Miami heat wave. It’s not a pretty word, and depending on your personal experiences, probably brings up an unpleasant memory, like the shared gloves in our elementary music class that were used to play the fancy brass bells. Pulling on a cold and moist pair of cotton gloves when it was time to take my turn on the bells was on par with pulling up your wet one-piece after a pee break at the public pool, which is to say exceedingly difficult and gross feeling. Needless to say, my dreams of being a professional bell toller ended around the same time as the ring worm infection I got from the gloves got diagnosed.
While I don’t love the word moist, it doesn’t really skeeve me out too much. I mostly think of cake or muffins. But there is a word that sends spider-in-your-hair type shivers shooting down my spine: Rash.
Yep. Rashes make me irrational. Big time. Without fail, upon seeing a rash, the same thoughts always go through my mind:
1. Whatthefuckisthat?
2. A RASH! I’m itchy. My eyes itch. I have a rash in my eyes?
3. Well that is profoundly disturbing, and obviously hella contagious.
4. I am itchy. I am itchy all over. My eyebrows itch. I have a rash in my eyebrows?
5. This is ring worm? This is chicken pox? This is measles? This is poison ivy? I will google it.
6. GOOOOOOOOOOOOD GRIEF! I’m NEVER googling again. (Seriously. Never google image search the word rash. And especially never click on this link that shows you THE WORST PICTURE OF A RASH YOU’VE EVER SEEN. Don’t do it.)
Having a toddler in the house, I see my fair share of rashes. Diaper rashes and viral rashes that come after a fever. Nothing that has been contagious, and nothing that has been serious by any stretch of the imagination. But still. Rashes make me itch.
So let’s hear it. What’s your least favorite word out there?
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
This last week I had the pleasure of taking a trip home to visit my dad and step-mom out in the boondocks of Colorado. This would be Baby 1.0’s third trip out there, but the first since she was mobile, vocal, and opinionated. These things, of course, aren’t considered when you stumble across Southwest’s $99 fare, and then purchase tickets faster than your toddler can eat a wad of old chewing gum they find on the ground. As our trip approached, the reality of the situation set in, and I found myself going through the 10 stages of traveling with a toddler.
1. Book trip. Feel confident, excited, and happy.
2. 1.2 seconds after receiving confirmation email from airline, feel panicked, claustrophobic, and extremely worried. Nearly drown in mental what-if’s. What if I flash someone while nursing? What if she poops? What if she won’t let me hold her for 2 1/2 hours? What if she screams the whole way? What if she gets sick? What if I get sick? What if there are snakes on the plane?
3. Vacillate between excitement and panic up until day before travel. Grab the reigns and focus all mental energy into packing. Pack perfectly. From diapers to Dog Dog, from toys to Tylenol you remember it all, and manage to fit it into one small suitcase. Okay, two medium-sized suitcases. And a full diaper bag. Applaud yourself on not overpacking (more). Feel calm and prepared for anything.
4. The night before traveling, wake up no less than 85 times checking alarm clock to make sure it is set. Stress pee each of the 85 times you wake up. Wonder if in the event of an airline emergency, you would indeed have the wherewithal to place the oxygen mask over your face before placing it over the face of your child. Decide no, because you would likely be in the bathroom stress peeing while trying to keep your toddler from licking the door to the bathroom. Wonder if they have oxygen masks in the bathroom.
5. Get out of bed early and walk around house collecting miscellaneous items to cram into nooks and crannies of suitcases and diaper bag with the intensity and passion of hoarder at a flea market.
6. With a frown, relinquish armful of items to disapproving husband who confirms you have actually packed nearly everything you own, and reassures you there will be no airline emergencies in which you will be tasked with oxygen mask placement.
7. Get dressed. Pee. Load car. Run in to pee again. Realize at this very moment child hasn’t yet pooped today. Say a prayer to the Saint of Doodie Britches your toddler doesn’t poop while on the plane.
8. Arrive at airport with plenty of time to spare. Check baggage, and breathe sigh of relief. Don dark glasses and give your unruly hair a toss to channel your inner movie star.
9. Start to feel relaxed and confident again. For first time, notice beautiful color of the morning sky. Look down at child to try to share this moment, only to witness child lick handle of baggage cart. Make mental note to not share water with child for a day or two. Take off dark glasses and pull hair into your standard pony tail so you can more closely monitor child’s behavior.
10. Get on plane! Flash neighbor, repeatedly. Wrangle wiggly toddler successfully, and smile uncomfortably when toddler loudly announces 15 times they have pooped. Change diaper on galley floor in record time under scrutiny of flight crew. Empty contents of perfectly packed diaper bag in an attempt to entertain toddler “the old-fashioned way” but give in to increasingly impassioned demands to watch Elmo on the iPad. Let toddler watch embarrassing amount of TV, but secretly thank your lucky stars you have an iPad. Eventually arrive. Pat yourself on the back and beam with pride when neighbor tells you what a good baby you have.
So there you have it. Any stage I missed you other parents experience when you travel?
Unsurprisingly, you cannot gate check a wagon full of toys.
Cover image credits, wagon belongs to HMDHM
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It's just the beginning... by Ali Solomon
Hold Me, Don't Hold ME 