Confession #11: More is More is More or (I have everything I ever wanted so why am I still unhappy?)

Arden loves to play with my jewelry. She likes to play with the jewelry of mine she is allowed to play with but she loves to play with the jewelry she is not supposed to play with.  I believe that sums up the problem with human nature.  She’ll scamper across our bed making her way to my jewelry box saying, “Neck, Brace, Ring!”, and after reminding her to say please, I start to open a drawer when she shouts, “No, No, NO!  Mamma, Mamma!”  I am immediately on to her and I almost immediately give in to her wishes.  I let her try on a ring and she utters her favorite exclamation, “Wow...” sounding like a cross between a stoner and a valley girl.  Then, I offer a bracelet which is received with the same wonderment.  You can guess what she said next.  “More!” I tell her, “That’s it.  That’s all the bracelets,” and she shouts, “more, moRE, MORE!!” I busted out laughing.  Even when we get a little bit of what we want, we always want more.

I have everything I’ve ever wanted.  It’s true.  I have a husband who loves me and a healthy, beautiful daughter.  Maybe it seems crazy but that’s it.  That is all I truly longed for in this life.  Of course other things are very important to me like being a good daughter, sister and friend but growing up, as old fashioned as it might sound, I wanted to be a wife and a mother.

So, why is it that I have days like last Wednesday.  It was one of the worst days I can recall.  I honestly thought I might be going crazy and not in a funny way.  I felt like a complete emotional wreck and no, unfortunately I couldn’t blame this on some female thing.  This was way past waking up on the wrong side of the bed.  It was like I was undergoing some sort of emotional warfare.  I was off balance, uncentered and felt out of control which is no way to feel as a mother. 

But that’s just it.  Judging.  I shouldn’t feel out of control. I’m a mother for goodness sake. What kind of mother lets herself lose control... and on and on and on.  I had come down with a bad case of the i’m-not-good-enoughs and I was currently on trial.  Every whine, fuss, “NO!”, hit, pulling of an animal’s hair, throwing of food after I’ve asked you not to nicely how many times... felt like an addition to the list of accusations.  I was on trial as defendant, prosecutor and judge and there seemed no escaping the verdict: You are not a good mom.

Why was I doing this to myself?  The answer was revealed to me while reflecting over a mountain of dishes.

Arden was becoming my meaning in life.  She wasn’t just a wonderful, good part of my life to treasure, nurture and love, she was defining me.  I was taking everything she said or did so personally.  I was unforgivingly hard on myself in my mothering of her because if I wasn’t a good mother, I wasn’t anything.

We all long to feel important.  To have worth.  To be known and accepted and loved. But paradoxically, by placing the weight of my self worth onto being a good mother I was destroying my ability to do the very thing I most longed to do.

We’ve all got to derive our meaning in life from something and it seems safest to place it in something of eternal value.  I believe Sting said it best:

“If you love someone.  If you LOVE someone. Set them free. Free, free, set them free.”

Stay Tuned!

I'll have a new post up any day now.  I'm hoping for this evening but the baby has a cold so you never know.  Also, I'll be having my first give-away!  That's right.  Details TBA by Monday so stay tuned!

Confession #10: Weighing In

I'd say I'm adequately thin. I currently fit into most of my pre-baby clothing. I weigh the same as I did pre-baby. But, I would not spend time looking at myself in the mirror naked. I'm no Natalie Portman (note: I wrote this before she won the Oscar and before I found out she was pregnant). In fact, I'm falsely representing my pre-baby weight now since fat weighs less than muscle and I worked out then while I barely hit a downward dog nowadays.

Then, I saw it. I saw it waving back at me. There it was in all it's glory, making itself known to me for the first time in baggage claim at lga: my arm fat. It called out to me:

“Hello! Hi! Thanks for all the chocolate, chips, cheese and other crap you've been eating. Keep up the good work laying off those tricep dips. Talk to ya."

I don't know who invented cap sleeve tees anyway...

Oy.

And then, there was the need for a new pair of jeans. God help us all. Girls you know what I'm talking about. Men, you have no idea.

Guys walk into Macy's, pick up your 34/34s or whatever and walk out.

Oh no. Not girls.

You gotta try 'em on and try on lots of 'em to find the right pair. It's a lot like finding your wedding dress. Do they have a "This is gonna make my husband notice me" factor?  What about the "Can I squat down and wipe off my kids face without mooning people" factor? What shoes can I wear these with? What shirts? How much food can I eat and how much can I drink and still be able to breathe while wearing these? And on and on...

So me and the baby hoofed it to the Gap on Steinway Street (yes that's the one: "Get it on Steinway,....Steinway Street!") one morning for our jeans excursion. I had a gift certificate and hadn't eaten much that morning in hopes of looking thin, so it was time to get ‘er done.

I focused and picked up 4 different styles of size 8 jeans and prayed oh please let me not look like sausage links, oh please. Arden and I got into a dressing room and the fun began.

I put on the regular bootcut pair and shockingly, I don't look horrifying. I round up Arden, do another quick scan for anything fatal she could pick up off the floor and ingest, and I move on to pair #2. The curvy fit. Ah, home at last. My heart started to beat faster as I realized I made it to the undiscovered country of a perfect jean. The rise wasn't embarrassingly high or low. The fit not too tight or loose. I loved the wash and thought they'd still fit after being washed. A winner. Then I tried on the jeggings just for a good laugh and I good laugh I had.

All joking aside I accept and love my post-baby body. I have the telltale belly.  I even still have a fine linea negra.  My boobs, okay I won’t go there.  They certainly earned their keep.  I’m proud.  I am proud to physically reflect the fact that I incubated and gave birth to a baby. Time to start accepting and embracing the chances that come along with being a mom.  Thankfully there’s always a new fit to try.

Is there anybody out there?

Mornin' everyone! I'm getting hungry for some feedback and would love to hear and respond to your comments.  It seems its the thing to do in the blogosphere. Please let me know your thoughts on my postings or anything you feel like talking about.  I'd really love to hear them!  As a thank you, here is picture of my girl.

Mile High Snow Bunny

Confession #9: Weinheimer

Arden flipped on her whining switch and I think I'm about to blow my fuse.

I have never been a particularly patient person. It's not a prerequisite for living in NYC. In fact, it's  frowned upon. When I first moved here from Oberlin, OH I got a job at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center. I'll never forget how my supervisor at the Info Desk told me to "stop wasting time with all the hello how are you stuff". You may have heard about us New Yorkers and it's all completely true. We want it fast. We don't wanna wait. We definitely don't wanna hear how you, your kids or your mom are doing if for some reason we are waiting. 

The patience involved in caring for your own child is a bit different. She's my gorgeous, funny, sweet baby girl who is making me totally lose my mind! She's pushing and pushing and pushing me!  I'm pretty sure my parents are smiling in that payback-is-a-little-bit-sweet kinda way.

I don't know what happened. It seems like we got back from Denver and the child went bazonkers. "Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama, no, no, no, no, no, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa et al.”

Here is a sample "conversation" from this morning:

Arden: (with tone becoming increasingly frenzied with each repetition) "peach, peach, peach, peach, peach..."

Momma: (One eye open, half dressed and have to pee because it's 6:01am and we literally just got out of bed, tone calm and singsongy) "Arden, I hear you. I'll get you peach in one minute. Mommy has to pee."

Arden: (no tone only whining) "Ahahahahnpeachypeachyahahaahahmommamommahahahaha!)

Momma: (praying to God almighty please give me the strength to make it through the next 14 hours of this!) -- I try to ignore the whining.

Arden: (It's on. Now she's trying to climb onto my lap while I'm peeing, knocks the toilet paper out of my hand and is still whining) "Up, up, up, up..."

Time: still 6:01am

I feel like I enlisted. She barks orders at me and its comply or suffer the consequences. The child knows how to say please. She knows I want her to say it. She knows I wait for her or make her say it each time she demands something. But regardless of the seemingly thousands of times we have gone through this, she does not say please on her own without prompting. I believe Bill Cosby refers to this as brain damage.

So, basically, I'm in trouble.

I love this brain damaged child and I do not want to scream at her. This none-too-patient NYC Momma is relying heavily on the serenity prayer, our dog Penny and songs from the Little Mermaid.

I was commiserating with a dear friend of mine (mother to 4 boys) about my situation. She said that the whining tends to stop some time around age 4. "God grant me the serenity..."

Confession #8 - Disclaimer: Don't read this on your lunch break

I wasn't sure how long I'd last without writing about puke or poop. I guess now we know. Everybody knows you deal with a ton of both when you have a baby. I didn't know that it gets progressively worse as the baby grows older.

Breastfed babies are like a dream. It barely smells coming from either end. Except for the frequency and our use of "save-the-planet" diapers, it wouldn't have been much trouble. Armed with a bunch of cloth diapers to use as burp cloths we were rarely ever covered in regurgitated milk. Now, it's a completely different story that's basically all my fault.

Our darling girl has been very sick the past 6 weeks. And despite our best efforts we've been sick as well. It's been one virus after another. Thank you Sunday school nursery.  I've been saying that we might as well be licking subway poles for how sick we've been. Yea. That sounds fun.

The only thing worse than a sick baby is a sick husband and the only thing worse than a sick husband is having to take care of them both while you yourself are also, sick. For three weeks we had what Im dubbing the plague of 2011.  Fever, achy with a horrible cough so bad Kyle literally could not sleep. He had to get on a medicine that told his brain not to cough. Good times.

The baby rounded out that virus with a secondary ear infection. Then, she caught a stomach virus. I discovered this at 12am one morning when she woke up and vomited all over her crib. My comforting instincts go into overdrive when my daughter is puking. I just want to make her feel better. So when she is voming and calling my name and trying to hug on to me, I let her. If this strikes you as extremely stupid, it is. Arden continued to puke all night long so many times that I lost track and we were both out of clothing the next morning. She kept asking for water and then puking it up. You'd think I'd only fall for that once and I did until I thought "maybe she's done" and it happened again.

She went a whole day without vomiting and then we had our first projectile. Frankly, it was pretty awesome. It came totally out of the blue while she was in her highchair in the kitchen. I was on the phone with Kyle and was like, "projectile, gotta go". The clean-up job didn't appear to be too bad until I noticed the dog had been hit. 2 baths and a shave down later the poor girl still smelled like puke.

I thought that I had outsmarted the virus by not eating. It had been 48 hours without my vomiting so even though I wasn't hungry, I had a small bowl of popcorn that Kyle made. Who out there can smell fresh popcorn and not eat some?  I wish I hadn't. Out of no where, an unholy feeling came over me when I was up with the baby in the middle of the night. I've never felt anything like it. I ran into the bedroom and said "take the baby!" and thankfully Kyle woke up and was coherent. Popcorn. What was I thinking?

The next episode was also completely my fault. We brush my darling daughter's teeth and have been doing so for some time. We've done it all. Sing about it, laugh, make it a game, use Brushy-Teethy Guy the hand puppet, ultimatums, you name it we might have tried it. Sometimes she won't go for any of it and we have to force her. This is one of the things I didn't realize I signed up for when we got pregnant. Arden hates being forced to do anything. We use an electric toothbrush so it is literally once over all surface area and she's done. She usually recovers quickly from this enforcement but the night before our trip to Denver, we were not so lucky. She got herself so upset that, you guessed it, it triggered her gag reflex and everything from her apparently 10 course dinner came up. I will be holding her over the toilet from here on out.

Confession #7: 10:23pm 1/29/11

My husband has a pretty brutal schedule these days which affords us about 30 minutes each evening that we can spend together without the baby.  Some of you might say that just the perfect amount of time and sometimes it is, but mostly it seems a precious few minutes of a life we once knew. We were together for many years before having a baby which is fairly normal for “young professionals” these days.  I look back on all the time we were able to spend together hanging out, dancing, playing cards, doing whatever with a sense of unbelieving nostalgia.   Did those times really exist? Most days we are usually so exhausted that it takes all of our energy during those 30 minutes not to fight let alone to get up and dance.

I remember how dramatically having an infant changed my relationship with my husband.  No matter how many people tell you that everything changes when you have a baby, there is no real way to know until it actually happens to you.  I believe that’s called learning the hard way and that’s the only way I know how to do things. 

Something happens to you when you give birth. You bring a new life into the world but also become a cold-blooded killer.  At least I know I did.  Some might call it a mother's instinct to protect her offspring. I only know that at that moment I gained the ability to kill.

Whether it's hormonal, instinct or something else entirely, having a baby completely changes how you relate to the world. The baby comes first, all else is second. Showering, eating, sleeping, husbands, other people's lives... it all comes after the safety, security and comfort of that little being.

This overnight physiological change is extremely traumatic to a marriage. I think especially for the husband. All of the sudden it's like they don't exist other than to hand you things and get yelled at for not doing something right. Thankfully infancy is a non-permanent condition. Each month as the infant grows older, it seems the demand on the parents lessens a bit from the intensity of those first few months. Even still, once a woman becomes a mother there is no going back to being a trophy wife. There simply isn't time.

Last Saturday evening, Kyle and I had a brief reprieve from the demands of life. We were not completely exhausted, likely due to our ridiculous caffeine intake, so we spent the evening having dinner and watching Dream Girls on TV. When we climbed into bed that night we held hands instead of just getting comfortable as quickly as possible so as not to wake the baby. Kyle caressed, tickled, and squeezed my hand in a conversation saying so much without saying anything at all. In that moment my heart filled to overflowing with joy. I buzzed from head to toe and my heart felt 30 times larger.  We were still "we". Us. Husband and wife. Lovers. Not only Momma and Dadda although we are still them as well. I looked at the clock to see what time it was that I'd been given this moment so that I could try to remember it for the rest of my life. Just like Blaise Pascal who my pastor often quotes, it was a moment I longed to inscribe on my heart.