Sex Party...

16 months ago, I became a mommy to a beautiful baby boy.

I also became the only one in my circle of friends to have a baby.
Not only was I experiencing the awkward transition of my life no longer just being my own, I felt like I had no one who really understood me.
In July one of my college roommates became a Momma to her little boy Noah. I admit, she has called me since as her only friend who could relate and I have not been there. Fluttering around with my own mutli-fold life, I have let her down.

Fifteen weeks ago, my first proximity close, in my circle friend found out she is having a baby!
I have been so elated.
While my hus approaches the truly honest side and says it as it is...TO the future parents,
"I'm just happy someone else will understand now,"
I have perhaps done a 360...or 180 (which is it?!)
I have tried to share nothing but the positive!
I feel like, through her, I am experiencing what I missed when I was pregnant.
(To this day, I would not wish pregnancy on anyone...although I have yet to meet anyone who had an experience like mine).
Am I excited someone will get it now?
YAH
but mostly I just want her to feel celebrated.
(Our group is a little closed off to the idea of life changing. One person's personal changes seem to affect the happiness of the whole. I'm not saying it's healthy.)

Tomorrow night, my prego friend and her supportive hus are having a Sex Reveal Party.
I get to find out what they are having!
I have sworn girl from day one...but suddenly I'm feeling boy.
I guess the most important question is:
Is my munchkin getting a future wife OR a future bestie?!
I am so so so so so so so so excited.
I have actually had to pull back the reigns on my excitement with my friend
(I have feared I have been raping her with my over involved enthusiasm.
Is it over involved if I said, "Can I hostess your shower?" before the pee stick was dry? Is it over involved if I sent her a "must register for" list? Is it over involved if I asked to set up a date to stock her freezer before the babe comes? Ah man, I'm a freak!!!)

I missed out on a lot of the goodness of pregnancy for many reasons.
A main one was that I was sick for the full 9 months but another is that I was so fearful of the change it meant to my life.
What if my baby sucked?
(Not literally, I mean, what if no one liked him?!)
I wanted my life to stay the same and I hated that it wouldn't.
I forced my new square life after his birth into the old round hole and it made it so hard on me.
16 months later, it is what it is and I'm comfortable in it.
I had no one next to me to tell me I was normal--I had you--my blog friends.
I want my friend to have what I missed.
I want her to know I'm here and she's not alone.
Is there such a thing as loving too much?
Yeek...yes...yes there is.image by anna ingalls

Snarky

I'm feeling particularly snarky at the moment.
(My word for bitchy when I don't particularly feel like admitting to to being that nasty.)
I'm trying to work something out in my heart that I'm not totally understanding.
I am feeling flustered and overwhelmed and insecure and...
just lots more and's really.
I'm trying to make sense of why the flood gates opened and all it took was my husband getting home from work late to set me off.
All of a sudden I wanted to complain about everything.
I was mad I made dinner.
I was mad I went through the extra work to make his favorite banana bread.
I was mad I cleaned the dishes only to make MORE.
I was tallying up how many times I have taken out the garbage and waited for some sort of sticker on my good wife chart.
I just shut down.
(It's not PMS)
I haven't slept for the last two nights.
Midget has his 4 molars coming in all at once which means lots of late night painful cries.
I'm barely making it to work.
I don't know what the next day holds for me at the office
(you know, economic crisis and all...finally hits my neck of the woods)
I just feel SLAMMED by it all.

I put a bite of the cold dinner I made in my mouth and spit it out.
"I'm not hungry. I need five minutes."
So here I am.
Hus took midge on a walk
(He's got a 30 pound baby strapped to his back in a baby bjorn--I don't even know if that is safe!?)
But I wasn't about to argue with getting some space.
My eyes are barely open and even my biggest dreams feel heavy.

I'm just having that kind of moment.
I really hate these.

Frost This

I'm going somewhere sensitive.

Food.
Kids food and diet habits specifically.
Now, I'm not the mom who prescribes to anything in particular.
I mean, yah, I thought I was an awesome mom for giving my son organic Gerber jarred foods.
I thought I deserved an award for paying the ten cents extra for the DHA enhanced pureed veggies.
I patted myself on the back for the one week I actually made my own baby food.
BUT
But I'm not the soy-milk, vegan, protein lifestyle mama.
I like watching my kid eat a Joe-Joe and feel it's not too bad since they don't have the hydrogenated oil.
I think it's fun to give my son a popsicle.
I personally eat crap.
Lots of it.
I've given the munchkin an oreo.
With that being said--I'm all for fun, yummy snacks.
But what I don't let my kid have is
Caffeine.
He's 16 months old!
I don't let my kid run around with a cup full of candy.
He's 16 months old!
(Did I already say that)
Um, I have a problem though...
if other people offer him said caffeinated beverages and processed sugars,
I feel like a bad person if I say,
"Please don't give him that."
I want to be a relaxed, cool mom who's hip with the jive and such.

So when I went to his school to pick him up today and got his lunch back full and she told me,
"He had pizza today."
I said, "Oh! He eats pizza! I didn't know that. How fun!"
and when we were walking out and another she said,
"Can I give him a cupcake?"
I felt obligated to say, "uh-huh"

Great. Thanks. Now I get a freshly napped baby with pizza on his adorable GAP T AND (added bonus) a sprinkled chocolate cupcake in front of his face.
THRILLING!
(I know. My fault. I said, "uh-huh")

Well, I did what only a decent mom would do.
I let him eat two bites in front of the staff
(because frosted covered babies are soooooo cute...until YOU have to clean them)
and proceeded to think,
"Really?! REALLY? Now I have a lunch bag, his shoes, a 27 pound baby, AND a cupcake in my hands?"
We walked out the gate and to the car and I did it...
I broke the damn diet.
I hate the frosted top of the cupcake and gave the baby the cake part because now I had a whining baby who only knew he wanted MORE, MORE, MORE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
(Sometimes, baby sign language really sucks!)

To wrap my rant up,
please don't offer my kid a big fat cupcake right before I'm getting in the car and make me look like the weak person I am who has to say yes but wants to say,
"No. Frost This!"
Clearly, I have some issues and just want to blame someone else for the cupcake I ate.
It's my prerogative, right?

In Stitches

It was upon my 72nd hour of Vegas-ity that I was heartily encouraged to channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw and adopt a column divulging the woes of self division as woman & mommy. As I sat in my seat of leather clad delirium on my flight home, I reflected as best I could on the past three days—the freedom and the inability to perform at the fast partying pace that I once could.

I laughed as I realized, the last time I pulled an all nighter I was not in heels and I was not the one drinking from the bottle. Oh how times have changed. Once born to perform on little sleep and watered down Vodka, I now faced the reality that I was other... and I was old.

It could have been the five seconds of podium dancing or the moment a younger woman head butted me in a club (my certainty is wavering) but there were definite moments I felt like I no longer belonged anywhere. I certainly did not belong in the venues that had bulky, muscle-milk drinking bouncers and at times, I still feel foreign in my baby bouncer one.

So here I am, recapping all the ways in which mothering has both challenged and bettered me. I sit and relive the moments I complained too much about the responsibility it holds, the burden it can feel to be, and appreciate the laughs that the realities of my life evoked. Perhaps the birth of something new is about to begin—one that won’t tear me apart but will definitely leave me in stitches (whether it’s from laugher or the growing pains—we shall see.) Welcome to my reality as Woman & Mommy--today just happens to be a day that I wouldn't trade it for a shot and a hangover.

"Fat Guy In A Little Coat"

Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own body?

I mean, I am pretty sure most women routinely say,
"I feel fat"
to which their husbands roll their eyes and think
"I don't want to hear it!" and either say that or "Babe, you're not fat."
I mean, what are they supposed to say?
"I noticed. Why don't you go for a walk,"
Oh my, he better never say it though! EVER.

Have you ever felt SO out-of-the-ordinary-uncomfortable that despite the 99% odds that you can't get pregnant you still wonder if someone could possibly be wondering,
"is she or isn't she?"
I mean, have you ever gone so far as to take a pregnancy test to try to validate your unusual tummy growth?
Lets just pretend I did.
Despite the odds being in my favor that I wouldn't be
it'd be pretty freaking fabulous to learn I wasn't just fatter for no reason.
3 minutes later
a big fat
-
(that would be a negative. negatory. empty womb.)
Interesting, the reaction I had:
"PRAISE GOD! Wait, *$% Really?!"
There is ZERO part of me that wants to be pregnant.
There was 100% of me that wished I had a reason for the bulge.
So, you've done that right?!
No?
Oh...Ok, off to the gym...
or the car for a drive to the local Circle K for a Snickers.
(What?!)

Mirror, Mirror

*THIS ENTRY IS NOT FOR THE PRUDE*

Lets talk about mirrors.

Mirrors are kind of a love hate relationship for me. They often tell me what I don’t want to hear and unless I’m feeling super sexy (which comes from a lot of work that I deem totally unnecessary and only in the name of a few photos that may or may not end up on a public forum like facebook) I only use them because they are a necessary evil. Did I get the toothpaste off my mouth? Do I have any bumps in the dirty-no-time ponytail I am sporting?

Of course, there are others who love mirrors. Women you will catch practicing “the look” before they go out or who will look at themselves any time there is a mirror around. Women who put in the time to be pretty. I’m rarely one of them.

This leads me to giving birth. WHAT? How did we go from glamor mirrors to birth? Easy.

When my son was born I had one HUGE fear- that I would defecate right on the table in front of the nurses, the Dr., and my husband as I pushed with all I had to get him out of me. I am now willing to admit that this may have been a huge reason he had to be vacuumed out of me, but I digress.

For pushing encouragement, the nurses thought I should LOOK at my netherlands and the head that so desperately wanted to emerge from it as motivation to push harder. Mortified and determined to suck him back up the birth canal, the mirror did the opposite. I have never seen something so disgusting and it was happening to me! It was not this beautiful, natural right of passage, it was parasitic and mutating.
GET THAT EFFING MIRROR AWAY FROM ME!
(Pregnant women are allowed to cuss).
The nurses carted the huge, towering over my area mirror away at my husband’s urgency only I couldn’t shake the image from my mind. Now, not only did I have the fear of public defecation, I had a swirling vision of my personal mutation that caused me to consider: was this worth it?
Can I undo this?
I TAKE IT BACK,I TAKE IT BACK!
A human (I repeat, a HUMAN) is coming OUT of me and he was destroying my body!

Screw mirrors.

Mirror, Mirror Standing Tall, Show me my hoo-ha before it all!

images by simple moth

Keys, Please?

Women as creatures are both friends and competition. Women as mother’s and wives? The same yet enhanced. As wives we fight for our husbands to break free from their mother’s talons, we ask them to choose us-put us first. As mother's we know their future does not include us being their number one, but how does the mother in us let go? As wives, we begin the sculpting process of our own family and at times, must play tug of war with the women who have defined their lives by their mothering us. No mother wants to let go, but we all must.

In the beginning there is the desire to be part of the “in crowd.” Being the new girl/guy at school, you play nice; you want to be liked, you want to be accepted. Soon, you’re “in” and the quest to be to be known and recongnized is yours. You spend a few years in a power struggle if you're all strong enough, each of you fighting for something different but desiring a similar end. At the root of our being as women is loyalty to those that are in our pack but to those who threaten the unity and the solidarity of that pack? Prepare for battle.

Perhaps we need a big meeting with coffee and gluten enhanced pastries and the opportunity to say, “My name is Allegra and I am the wife and mother of my family,” or “My name is Carol and I am a mom-aholic.” We need an opportunity to collaborate on how to work together as a team or simply hand off power. An analogy? Hm...here's one- As a mother, you build a house, you live in it, and then you sell it. Please, think back freely on the good times you had with that house, but you have to give the new owner the keys. You don’t drive up to that house every day anymore because it’s not yours, you can’t decorate it as you wish, you can’t tear down walls as you choose, you must knock every time and wait to be invited in. You must learn to love your own home and let the old home be enjoyed by someone new.

Indeed, I am a mother in my youth nowhere near handing my keys off to the next owner, but I do pray about the next owner and I know the hand off is just around the corner. Yes, I’m sure, one day I will understand exactly what I’m talking about and eat my words like they’re raw chicken, but you don't have to tell me that. At some point, if the transition is a tough one as I know many are, we are challenged to say, "Your old house is my new house. Thank you for the love and care you have put into it, but will you kindly give me the keys now?"