"I Help You, Mama"

I believe this is a universal truth: once you are a mom your view on privacy is never the same. Every mom has experienced someone assisting them as another person is produced from inside them, and a regular audience (see "produced person") while they use the restroom.

It was uneventful to have my daughter literally just standing and watching me pee while she's sucking her thumb and holding her beloved little blanket. Potty is not new to her. She was potty trained at 21 months thanks to my firm insistence that I not have two children in diapers. Well, turns out I made it more difficult on myself because a 21 month old, while using the potty with impressive ease, cannot go by herself. And if she is not in a diaper, there's an immediate need for you to stop what you're doing to take her potty - whether that's nursing a baby, cooking dinner, or using the bathroom yourself.

Thus, the last year has been peppered with memorable potty experiences as we find places to put her tiny heiny. (I highly recommend a foldable potty seat. We found one on Amazon and it's been a lifesaver!) Anyway, she still needs assistance going potty and has taken to holding our hands to avoid falling in when she is not using her potty seat, and I guess just for fun when she is.

While watching me, full attention while I "used the potty" yesterday, she said in the sweetest voice, "Here, Mama - help you, hold hand" and held both of my hands while I peed. When I was done she let go and gave me a big smile for my success. I found this incredibly sweet since we are often in the middle of a battle of wills. I didn't have the heart to tell her that, while she is usually at risk of a good toilet dunking, there is one other universal truth that happens in motherhood: your new hips mean you are never at risk of falling in the potty. 

When You "Bite the Dust"

I'm running yesterday morning, and I hit the streets just as the summer sun is trying to rise through the cloud cover.  I notice a flurry of activity among the sparrows at the end of road - chirping, squawking, fluttering, tree jumping, etc.  Embarrassingly, they caused me to change my route for fear of them dive bombing me on my way back through.

Part of the reason I love morning running is the quiet, the stillness. Finding none thus far, I continued on into the neighborhood down the street. To get there, I need to spend about 90 seconds running on a main (country) road. Not typically high traffic, but virtually no shoulder, which means I'm over in the grass to avoid a sideswipe.

I arrive in the neighborhood to find the birds there equally as concerned about whatever had them up in arms on my own road, but here there are also chipmunks and squirrels scurrying about. (I find it important to say that I literally dodged a chipmunk.) At this point I'm on the brink of being irritated. I'm finally getting clear of the activity only to find that I'm playing the same role to a few deer in a wooded area off to my right. They're probably thinking the same thing I was thinking about the birds; how annoying that you are disrupting my morning. 

Anyway, I plod on and try to enjoy the morning sweat as the humidity is already one million percent. After I turn back on to the main road, I'm navigating the grass and make a split decision to run between a telephone pole and an electrical box. It was an awkward opening about three feet wide. The funny thing is, I had this "don't go that way" thought, but it didn't reach my feet in time to respond. I quickly found out why it would have benefited me to heed my own instincts. My left foot landed squarely in a hole and I went straight to the ground with a rolled ankle and crushed pride.

I have a friend who gets a real kick out of people falling, which makes her sound mean, but I promise it's not. She has wiped out more than a couple times and laughs at herself with equal enthusiasm (which just makes her look deranged when she's alone.) I kept chuckling thinking about how she wouldn't have been able to restrain herself if she'd seen me tumble in the grass. That thought led me to the most epic wipe out of all time, again starring yours truly.

Saw V or VI or whatever ridiculous number had just come out on Halloween and I went with my brother and a couple of friends, this gem included. I walked across the front row of a 100% packed movie theater and completely and totally wiped out; over nothing. I literally just tripped over myself. And I was carrying popcorn. And I didn't just trip, I fell to the ground... still holding my popcorn (priorities). It was pretty epic in the way of embarrassing moments in my life. One that everyone there, which I'm sure includes the people I didn't know, relive often when in need of a good laugh.

My daughter, bless her heart, seems to have received some of this gene. She was walking down the deck step (yes, just one) and she must have tripped. I say "must have" because I didn't actually see the fall. I just hear a desperate little "Mama!" come from that area, looked over, and saw nothing. Again, "Mama!" And then I see these little feet sticking up just over the top of the deck. Poor baby was completely inverted and looked as if she decided to slide down the step on her belly! Hilarious, though. (And she was unharmed, so it was okay to laugh, which I did.)

All this to say, when life (or a giant hole) knocks you down, I'd like to think you're in good company. And it always behooves us to laugh at ourselves, and others... when appropriate... with good intentions.

Loved, Safe, and Warm

It's a real wonder that our (almost) two and a half year old can climb the most challenging structure at the park, but calls us into her room every time her covers are off. I'm pretty sure it's technical term would be 'selective learning'.

Parents are always worried about their children being cold. No one wants to be the mom who shows up to a Halloween event with their newborn baby boy in a short sleeve shirt... in Pennsylvania. (Did that.)

If it wasn't against SIDS prevention rules, I'm fairly certain parents would cover their babies with 50 heavy blankets to prevent them from feeling a draft in their crib. It seems to be a part of the innate need to protect them. It extends to all levels of grandparents, too. The first time my grandma, my kids great-grandma, came to visit after our son was born, she told me he was probably cold roughly 14 times a day - something I would've taken to heart if she didn't regularly wear fleece in the summer.

I remember bringing our daughter home from the hospital on December 17. Our heat went out that night and as a first-time mom I was genuinely concerned for her comfort (and also quite irritated with our rental property). I thought about jumping ship and heading to a hotel for our daughters safety... or at least chewing the landlord out at 3 a.m. I did neither and settled for a safe, warm, (adorable), bundling.

One of the things I pray every night for our kids is that they would feel "loved, safe, and warm". I don't know why that became my habit, though I'd venture a guess that it started the night we brought our daughter home to no heat.

All of this is reasoning to back up the fact that, no matter what time of crack-of-dawn morning or just-fell-asleep middle of the night, when our little girls monitor brings her static, forlorn voice, "Naney tooooowd", one of her parents jumps from bed to go cover her up. Because all you want as a parent is for your kids to feel loved, safe, and warm.

Mama Said, 'Yes'.

I have seen firsthand a child's ability to manipulate. But I never realized how innate it was until three days ago.

I was sitting on the porch with J and a friend and my daughter came out to declare, "Mama, Nayna wan' a-mil tah-ters." (Mama, Layna wants animal crackers... it's always food with this child.)

"No, Honey, you may not have animal crackers. You did not eat your dinner."

She turned around, walked inside without a word, and I heard her say, "Daddy, Nanya wan' a-mil tah-ters. Mama said, 'yes'."

My jaw dropped, mouth agape, as I looked at my friend to non-verbally communicate, "DID YOU HEAR WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" Her expression matched my own, though slightly more tainted with a smile. (It's unfair how others, removed from the implications of a situation, can find something humorous, while I'm left to wonder how my child knew to tell a bold face lie to get her way.)

I saw my husband through the window, sure enough, getting up to get animal crackers. Naturally, I had to intercept said animal crackers, and break the news to my husband that our daughter just played us. She is not even two and half, so... draw your own conclusion about our fears for the future. At this point, she just needs to learn to wait until she's out of earshot of the first parent she asked.

Like everything else that is not exemplary behavior, we determined she must have learned it from other kids at preschool.

Parenting Woes

My brother and I don't have a lot of pictures from when we were little; at least not that we've seen. However, there is this one audio only recording, and I'm really not sure why it was recorded, but my brother and I still talk about it. It goes like this:

Beach waves and seagulls whisper in the background. We're having family fun at the beach.
My mom enters the scene. "Danny!... Danny!" He's obviously far away."Danny, don't do - Danny, don't do that. Don't - ... DANNY! I can't believe you did that."
End recording.

That is parenting.

The amount of times I've told Layna not to do something that she then does seems endless. While parenting has caused me to seriously evaluate whether I may have anger issues, I feel like that's completely justified by what I am expected to endure. Nothing in the world will ever test your patience as much as childrearing. One time, I threw a plastic cup out of frustration and basically scared the crap out of my child. Mom of the Year over here.

On the subject of things that might drive me crazy, lately Layna and I have been having a lot of conversations that go like this:

"Mama, I wan' [insert snack name here]". The latest kicks are "app' shin chee-yos", apple cinnamon cheerios; and "freefer 'nacks", freezer snacks. The freezer snacks are pretty awesome and all that's in them is banana, pb (the family lifeblood), cocoa powder, and coconut oil. Nonetheless, she can't live off of them alone, which leads me to my most common reply:

"No."

"Nayna wan' lil bit freefer 'nack," she says as she squints her eyes and shows me her thumb and pointer finger squished together.

"Nope."

"No, Mama, Nayna wan' ONE freefer 'nack." (One finger pointing directly at me, in case there was any confusion.)

This crazy is cuter than the first example, until she takes the freefer 'nack out of the fridge and eats it anyway. Cue cup throwing.