While the kids were playing in the driveway (we’re classy) Kelly laid face down in a puddle.
Me: “Don’t drink the driveway water, Kelly.”
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Clearly, David has no fear of his mother
Posted onMe: “I swear to God, if you touch my hot chocolate I’ll stab you.”
David: *reaching over and touching the cup* “Touch”
(clearly not my best parenting strategy, I realize).
My very first imperfect mom moment
Posted onMy mom told me that she fell in love with me the moment I was born. I remember asking her how that happened. I mean, I was a perfect stranger to her. She said that I would understand when I had my own child. Well, I had three of my own. And I love them more than anyone or anything else in the world. But not at first. And I felt like such a bad mom. I thought that I was surely the only mother ever to not love her baby immediately upon his birth. I worried that I would never love him. He seemed like this strange alien little creature who was entrusted to my care. I was completely overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility for him and asked my husband in tears if he would be ok if we only had one child.
Although I felt very protective of my son it took three long weeks to fall in love with him. And it was like falling off a cliff into a love so deep and powerful it overwhelmed me. The other thing that happened at three weeks was that my postpartum depression finally lifted. I didn’t experience such a sudden falling in love with my next two babies; it was more gradual, but just as intense and powerful in the end.
Monsters on the wall
Posted onMy daughter is the resident artist in our house. I found this picture behind the door in her bedroom.
- Monster
She said that she drew the monster there to scare off all the other monsters. That’s actually a pretty good idea.
I have a bit of a cursing problem (I wonder if the kids have noticed)
Posted onScott and I were playing Batman and Robin a while ago. I was Robin to his Batman. This was our interaction:
Me: Holy existential crisis, Batman! You’re surrounded by invisible fiends (moving into the Christmas tree room where Scott noticed the now-empty Christmas tree stand)!
Scott: Holy shit, Robin! Where’d it go?
Me: *shocked silence*
I was a much better parent before I had kids
Posted onJust sayin.’ When I was 24 years old I was a therapist for a private therapeutic foster care agency. So I would provide therapy to kids and guidance to the foster parents on how best to raise the kids. 24. Years. Old. I couldn’t keep a houseplant alive and I was the resident expert on how to raise kids. The foster parents, for their part, very kindly tolerated these sessions. I, however, cringe when I think back on those times. Yep. I used to be a child raising expert. Somehow, I have become a moron in the intervening years. By the time my kids are teenagers I’m sure they’ll concur.
Pregnancy is a psychiatric disorder
Posted onAsk any husband in the world. If they won’t tell you the truth, ask my husband. During my first pregnancy I developed an intense smell aversion. To my OWN HOUSE. We live in a 200 year old home built of (in my opinion) compressed lead dust (that’s another story). Anyway, I suddenly couldn’t stand the smell of my own house. The musty smell was overpowering so much so that sometimes I would go spend the night at a hotel. My poor husband, bless his heart, scrubbed the house completely, but the smell remained. I swore it came from inside the walls. Finally, out of desperation he bought some Glade Plug-Ins to try to cover the smell. But he put a different smell in every room. Needless to say I walked into the house and promptly threw up. Fortunately, the smell aversion lifted soon after that incident. But it was replaced by the belief that our house (or rather the lead content) was going to somehow kill our baby. So, at six months pregnant I announced that we were moving to a hotel and having the lead in the house abated. This meant having all the woodwork stripped down to the wood. Again, my husband was a prince about this and went along with it. Although when I recovered my mind later we did have a few laughs about this. So, lesson learned right? Yeah, not so much. During my next pregnancy I became convinced that the lead paint on the very walls was going to somehow leach out and kill the baby. Back to the hotel, this time for several months while we had the walls torn down and replaced. Fortunately, for my husband’s sanity and our marriage, my last pregnancy was fairly uneventful.
Brown marker
Posted on
When I first saw this marking on the floor next to the brown marker, the first thought I had was, “Hey, they put the cap back on.” The marker–yeah, it’s permanent.
Scary thoughts
Posted onSo, continuing along on my awful start to motherhood…. During my first pregnancy I was working in a college counseling clinic and had Mr. Rogers for a supervisor. Not the real Mr. Rogers but a seriously close representative. This man exuded kind, calm, and compassionate. He gave me one of the most powerful gifts I had ever received. He told me that after his first daughter was born he would suddenly have an image come into his mind (usually during midnight feedings) of throwing her out the window. He never acted on it, of course, and eventually they passed. Now this was an awesome gift because when the same thing happened to me if gave me reassurance that if Mr. Rogers had these thoughts then it must not be so bad. But the thoughts were still pretty scary. My particular vision (never an urge, just a vision really) was of swinging my newborn by the legs into the wall. What. The. Hell? And I couldn’t even walk near the railing in a mall until my kids were, like, over the age of two because I was sure I would just suddenly drop them over. Again, WTF? Why does mother nature torture us with this stuff? I’d love an answer to this (and other questions). Any thoughts? Because I’m pretty sure that (despite Mr. Rogers’s reassurances) I lost some serious amount of yearage off my lifetime. In fact, at this point, if I lose any more I may die before my kids were born.