2013
Frankenstein’s Mother
I can think of thousands of adjectives to describe my sons, and the differences between them, but perhaps the most efficient characterization would be to say that Wombat is a noun and Fox is a verb. Verbs. All of them. He seriously never stops. Verbing around the house at all hours of the day and night. (At nine and three-quarters months, he’s currently able to take eight Frankensteinian* steps in a row, but only if he has the imaginary stability created by holding something in his hand. Wile E. Coyote physics FTWalk.)
*Yes, yes, I know it’s the monster’s creator who is named Frankenstein, but breaking rules like this is how an uptight chick like me lets loose on a crazy Thursday afternoon, and it’s also apropos because Fox is kind of a little monster and I certainly have days of feeling like a mad scientist, having created this thing I can’t control.
My mom was here last weekend, and it was nice to not only to spend time with her and to watch my children dote on her but also to have an opportunity to step back, to step outside the room of my life for a few moments and observe from an outsider’s p.o.v. what it’s like to mother these two small children. My mom was up with the kids in the mornings while Simon and I tried to ignore them and get some sleep on the other side of the door (which is half glass and therefore not soundproof at all), and while I was lying (laying?) there not sleeping, I had a bit of an epiphany. Listening to the chaos in the other room was a happy little jolt of reassurance that it is indeed chaos I deal with on the reg and not simply my twisted interpretation of objectively peaceful and relaxing events. It’s not that things simply feel, to me, like chaos because I’m exhausted and/or easily overwhelmed and/or simply poorly equipped for motherhood in general. It is chaos! Objectively! It’s not just me. (Phew.)
It’s not that I needed this moment to feel understood by anyone other than myself. I don’t need to have other people walk in my shoes so they realize what hard work it is to mother [my] small children. My husband gets it, and my mom, although thirty years removed from her own two small children, certainly gets it (and I was a verb baby myself, it turns out; is there a statute of limitations for apologizing for that?), so the person I really needed to get it was none other than myself. It is hard. That’s the truth of it, and that’s okay. Sometimes I wonder whether I allow myself to get a little melodramatic about the chaos (“The house will never be in order and the kids will never be clean at the same time and there will never be a moment of peace and quiet again and I will end up homeless and penniless in a van down by the river, etc.”). I worry about it even though I know better because, hello, this is NORMAL. This is what parenthood is. Both the chaos and the self-doubt. Who out there is saying, “Oh, having two small children is not hard at all! Tra la!”? No one who isn’t lying or about to get a pop of reality right in the nose, that’s who.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the heck out of my kids, and I love being a mom, but in the same way that I also enjoy the heck out of French fries and I love, say, twirling on the tire swing, I don’t want to do any of those things all the time. And I don’t do them all the time, thank god (I have preschool! I have an active co-parent!), and I’m grateful for that, and yet the thing with parenthood–the thing that people actually mean when they say parenthood means your time is no longer your own–is that I don’t always get to take breaks exactly when I want to. Parenthood often gives exactly zero fucks about what I want or don’t want in any given moment. Yes, a woman can be a mom and still go out with her friends or throw pottery in her art studio or take a circus class and learn to ride a unicycle or whatever, but she can’t necessarily escape to those parts of her life when she most wants/needs to. I can’t always get off the twirling tire swing as soon as I start to feel queasy; sometimes I just have clamp my hand over my mouth and ride it out. And even though there are moments when I’d like nothing more than to hop on the first unicycle out of town, even if it means wearing a costume of bejeweled spandex in front of a tent full of spectators, I also know that this show I’m in is the real Greatest Show on Earth. (I hadn’t intended this to go the direction of running away with the circus to escape the circus at home, but here we are.)
Anyway, I love my family all of the time, enjoy being with them most of the time, and benefit immensely from watching someone else temporarily ringmaster in my place (thanks, Mom!) every few months or so because it makes me feel normal, and as a parent that’s always a welcome feeling. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be awesome or amazing or extraordinary or stupendous or any other splendiferous adjective you would be pleased to see written inside your Mother’s Day card. That’s all great, and all of us are those magnificent things, we really are, and especially in the eyes of our small children, but we are also normal–gloriously, beautifully normal, which, when you think about it, is just another way of saying “We are not alone.”
I guess that’s my wish for all you moms this year: May you never feel abnormal or alone. We’re all in this separately but together.
2009
Cake and Muffins
You know you’re old when instead of going out to party for your birthday you elect to stay home all weekend eating cake out of the pan and doing chores. Of all the chores to do, though, sorting through baby clothes isn’t the worst, especially when you unearth treasures like this and this and this.
As we’ve acquired baby clothes (an impressive collection of hand-me-downs, gifts, consignment finds, amazing homemade creations, and very little new purchases), I’ve been pretty good about keeping everything organized (by size, in labeled boxes, shoved neatly into the crawlspace), but even then it takes constant maintenance to stay on top of things what with all the growing and fattening babies tend to do against your strict orders that they stop it!, stop it at once!, or at least slow down.
And if you think adult sizing is jacked up these days, take my word for it that baby clothes are even worse. We have onesies marked 6-9 months that are barely snapping together, and sleepers marked 0-3 with plenty of room for a four-month-old and a few of his favorite toys. Wombat turned twenty weeks old yesterday (but he’s not officially five months old for another ten days; confusing) and right now he’s sporting a set of stripey basketball jammies marked 12 months. Twelve months!! Do you think Carter’s is trying to give me a heart attack or something?
In other clothing-size-related musings, I also went through some boxes of pre-preg clothes yesterday–a task not for the faint of heart or flabby of thigh–and I was blown away to find that I fit (albeit BARELY) into a pair of jeans I’d all but given up on. I’m not about to wear them in public anytime soon (they’re skin tight and there’s some, ah…spillage*), but nevertheless it was A Moment, particularly because I haven’t done a damn thing to change the shape of my body lately except eat cake out of the pan. I was so motivated about 30-Day Shred and then, well, I hit Day Six and didn’t care so much anymore. I tell ya, there’s nothing like the opportunity to work out that will kill the urge to do so. I remember being pregnant and paralyzed with sciatica and wishing I could just go on a nice walk without feeling like I was being cut in half with a laser saw. Times like that always seem to give birth to visions of training for an Ironman, or maybe just a 5K fun run, but then the second I’m able to put some sort of action plan into effect, I, you know, say it with me, EAT CAKE OUT OF THE PAN.
Yesterday I was complaining to Simon about the squish that was squeezing out between my waistband and shirt hem and he asked if I was having body issues. “Not really,” I said, acknowledging again that when it comes to bouncing back, I’ve been very lucky. (The amazing Chris Jordan even name-dropped me in the lastest episode of BlogHer Backtalk. Dear Chris: MWAH!) I think what I’m going through now is the just realization that I’m no longer dealing with “baby fat” anymore and that any changes from here on out will have to be earned. I’m hovering within five pounds of my starting weight, and although most of my regular clothes fit well enough, they definitely fit differently. There’s probably no going back to the old body, just figuring out what to do with the new one (which may involve trashing a closetful of T-shirts that aren’t as generous in length as my new shape requires), and that’s kind of a bummer since I don’t exactly have the budget to spend on a new wardrobe.
Besides, it’s hard to let go of a good excuse, particularly the BESTone: “I just had a baby. Cut me some slack.” In this, as in many ways for me, Wombat’s newbornhood was the easy part–all the excuses, few of the challenges. Now, I’m afraid, it’s all up to me, for better or for worse.
(I guess there’s always vanity sizing to make a girl feel good, though. Maybe I can dig up that skirt that says Size 1 and feel like a supermodel? I mean, check out the kid who thinks that wearing 12-month p.j.s means he can walk!)
*”Top of the Muffin To You!”
