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| My firstborn. He is so insanely adorable and delightful and loveable and great fun about 75% of the time. Then there is the 25% of the time where he makes me want to scream and break things. I think that's a pretty good ratio for a two year old though so I'm not complaining. When he's in that 75%, I could just sit on the floor next to him and watch him play and hear his running commentary on life all day long. Two year olds are simply amazing. Amazing I tell you. When he's in that 25% though, it's all I can do to keep myself from going ape-crazy on him. Two year olds can be annoying. Annoying I tell you. Their capacity for making you feel the highest of highs and the lowest of lows is incredible. In God's mercy, he made the good far outweigh the bad. Isn't that why people keep having kids??
Ever since my firstborn figured out how to jump out of his crib, we've been having sleep issues. We can't confine him to his room/bed so oftentimes he'll run around upstairs for an hour or more, periodically whining and yelling and shaking the gate at the top of the stairs, waking his baby brother up, and triggering one of my ape-crazy moments. Eventually he'll settle down and usually ends up crashing on our bed, leaving an inviting puddle of sweat on my pillow (the boy sweats profusely from his head as he falls asleep). And then when I'm ready to go to sleep, I transfer him to his bed. One night as I was carrying him to his bed, I had a really sad thought as I looked at his sweet, sleeping face. "How many more days will you let me hold you like this?" The days are numbered. I remembered how his entire body once fit in the crook of my arm. One arm. Now I can barely lift his lanky frame. I kissed his cheek many times before I finally put him down that night, as though I could steal kisses from all those times in the future (in other words, probably after the age of 8 until forever) he probably won't even want me to go anywhere near him. Thanks to God for my secondborn, because when my firstborn is too cool for me, my secondborn will still want to cuddle!
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| My son kind of scares me. Husband and I are at a loss for how to discipline him. If you were a fly on our wall and you saw us try to rein in our little rabblerouser, you'd probably laugh at us. My own parents have. Tonight after one particularly laughable incident, Husband and I looked at each other helplessly and we said, "We're educated, relatively intelligent people, right?" Then how the heck is it that a 2 year old is making a fool out of us?? I won't go into details because I really need to hit the sack, but tonight as my firstborn was up to his usual mind games, I had a powerful visual of him as a grown man, tied to a chair in some abandoned warehouse in some Middle Eastern country, being tortured to give up some juicy secrets of a national security variety, all the while laughing hysterically with each infliction.."Is that the best you've got?? Come on, you can do better than that you pansies!! Hahahahaha, this is FUN!!"
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| Does anyone still read this thing?
Once bloggers become mothers, they seem to either stop blogging because they no longer have any discretionary time, or their blogs become somewhat dull because they end up writing mostly about their kids. Can't help it in some ways. Especially if you are a stay at home mom of really young kids, because that's just about all one does all day--mind the kids. And while parents find their own kids endlessly fascinating and charming and genius, most everyone else do not. Don't get me wrong. I do enjoy reading/hearing about the latest exploits and accomplishments of my friends' children, but it's not like I would want to read or hear about it for hours on end. Maybe 10 minutes tops, unless they are like bonafide prodigies, in which case I could watch them play the violin forever. There's just something so moving to me about watching a child prodigy express their tremendous gift. That's why you don't hear me talking much about my own kids. I live under the presumption that people (other than their grandparents) won't find them as adorable and amusing as their father and I do.
But I think I'm going to write occasionally about my experience as a mom because I want to remember it for myself. Like how today, my greatest accomplishment was baking a broccoli cheese casserole for a potluck. Yup. If you take away any act that falls in the category of "taking care of the kids," that's about all I did today, and I think you should be impressed. I managed to blanch broccoli, shred cheese, and fry pieces of bacon in between hours (if you actually add up the minutes, I think hours would not be an exaggeration) chasing snot and wiping poop off bottoms. And cleaning up the kitchen after my toddler got his hands on a new bag of powdered sugar. And with one arm because I was holding my fussy baby in the other. I washed my hands in between each activity, in case you were wondering (in case you're going to the potluck for which I prepared the casserole).
With two babies under 2 who are both sick with colds (well, my toddler is now 2 years and 1 week old, but I still say two under two because it gets me more sympathy), I think baking a broccoli cheese casserole from scratch should entitle me to some award.
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| I think someone should do a study comparing the average lifespans of "mothers of sons" versus "mothers of daughters." I am willing to bet "mothers of sons" have the shorter lifespan. I only have one son so far (another on the way) and I think he's shortened my life by at least several months already. The amount of vigilance and strenuous physical exertion involved in just making sure he doesn't accidentally or intentionally maim himself on a daily basis certainly contributes to the shortening. Not to mention the potentially traumatic accidents that he's caused me indirectly. In my pregnancy so far, I've had three falls, two that can be attributed to chasing after him (he was running towards oncoming traffic for one, and running towards the deep end of a pool for the other). Thanks be to God, the falls only resulted in very minor injuries to my person and none to baby #2 (plus a lot of embarrassment, including total immersion in the pool incident--fully clothed), but they could have been more serious. And the other day, I discovered a white hair.
I always thought I wanted a house full of boys. Now, I am realizing that such a privilege would come with a high cost. Years off my life! Yeah yeah, daughters can be very challenging as well, but I am speaking from the only perspective I have.
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| My family and I have technically have no "home" right now. We have several places that we live, but no place to call our very own. My son and I live nomadic lives, traveling every few days back and forth between his grandparents' houses, interspersed with the occasional hotel stay. Our earthly possessions are spread across four different locations, and for all intents and purposes, the three of us have been living out of suitcases for the past couple months. We have no idea where we will be living one year from now, and currently, we have no idea where we might be living one month from now. Husband's career trajectory since we've gotten married is the one of the most dynamic things I've ever encountered, and I can barely keep up sometimes. I've given up trying to figure out where our lives are heading (and by "where," I mean both literally and figuratively), and am trying to come to terms with the fact that we may never "settle down" in the traditional sense of the word. I suppose it is spiritually helpful that we aren't being given the opportunity to do so right now though. I imagine if we ever did buy the little house of my dreams, dig in our heels, and live there for a long, long time, life could get quite comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that it'd be hard to think of ever leaving. We could grow so attached to our little house, and to the quiet little life we built there, that we'd forget that we were only meant to be sojourners on this earth. I forget that even now, even as I am living out of the huge tote bag that my sister bought for my son.
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