The Worst Part of Parenthood (so far)

Is this:

There are many bloggers that have written helpful, witty, and enlightening posts about potty training.  I, I'm afraid, am not going to be one of them.  To me, it just boils down to one simple, existential question:

WHY CAN'T YOU JUST FREAKING EXTRICATE ON THE POTTY?

On Saturday, we told Casey that we were done with diapers.  Hooray!  We unveiled the potty.  We explained that when he had to poo or pee, he needed to sit on there and do it.  Quite simple, really.

JUST SIT ON THERE AND DO IT.

On Saturday morning, he sat on that thing for over two hours.  He was clearly holding it in.  I could tell. Eventually, something came out.  We cheered.  We screamed.  We rewarded him with a lollipop and M&M's.  We had hope.  A small, glimmer of hope.

But hopes sometimes get dashed.  And in this circumstance, hope was torn away by a giant turd that Casey lay on the carpet on Sunday, with the potty only a few feet away.  He must have picked up the turd, or wiped himself, because remnants of said turd appeared on his hands, shirt, and hair.  He did not seem bothered in the least.

I told my husband he should take a picture of it.  He didn't.  Perhaps that is best.

In a way, I get it.  If someone told me to crap my pants, right now, I don't know if I could do it.  I am trained to use a toilet.  It would be hard to go elsewhere, frankly.  And for Casey, he has lived his life pooping in a diaper.  Perhaps pooping somewhere else is especially challenging.

BUT WHEN HE IS CHOOSING BETWEEN THE CARPET AND THE POTTY, COULD HE NOT JUST GO IN THE FREAKING POTTY?

I've been through this process before.  I know there are accidents, stops and starts, steps forward and steps back.  God knows, the journey of Braden from a diaper wearer to a fully toilet trained toddler took a long time, and it sucked.  Just sucked.

And here I am again.  And perhaps because I know what lies ahead - naked penises and dribbles on the floor and turds on the carpet - I just lose all inspiration.

But we are on a time clock.  As my stomach grows bigger, the time ticks away.  I will NOT clean up turds on the carpet while I am nursing a newborn.  I just will not.

For the love of God, JUST USE THE POTTY.

It's really not that hard.

What This Pregnant Girl Fantasizes About

This is going to take a bit of imagination (and an appreciation for science fiction).  But bear with me.

Scientists have invented a pill for pregnant women.  It's a special pill that only works for 24 hours, and in those 24 hours pregnant women can do whatever they want without hurting their fetus. Aka, they can drink whatever they want, eat whatever they want, and sit in a hot tub for as long as they damn well please.  All pregnancy side effects cease on this day, as well - no aches and pains, no constipation, no reflux.  The pill can be taken any time in the pregnancy - beginning, middle, and end, and it is entirely up to the woman.  No side effects.  Just a day off.

This pill has resulted in a cultural phenomenon in modern society - the pregnancy party.  Much like a bachelorette party, or a "hen" party as they call them in the UK, pretty much all pregnant women have such a party (where they take their pregnancy pill).  It's a rite of passage, particularly for a first pregnancy.  (It's similar to weddings in that way - the first one is a super big deal, and subsequent ones are a bit more toned town.  Aka, it's bad taste to make people travel and spend a ton of money on more than one pregnancy party in your honor).  

These pregnancy parties run from tame to wild.  Some women, who never really drank in the first place and have always kept a vegan diet, simply have the equivalent of a modern day baby shower.  Cake, punch, presents (boring).  Other women take it to the other extreme.  They go out on the town with personalized t-shirts and tiaras and slutty outfits with their big bellies hanging out. They walk around with an entourage and are loud, obnoxious, and drunk.  If you're out at a nice restaurant, and see such a group walk in, you want to leave immediately.  Ugh, another one of those wild pregnancy parties, you say.

Frantically Filling the Resume Gap

I am coming off two weeks of wonderful, relaxing vacation.  It was a vacation where I did my best to leave all my cares behind, to be stress free, and to live in the moment.  And in many ways, I did just that.  But there's always the wretched reality of coming back.  And today, with my husband back to work, two kids with fevers, and a variety of freelance and part time gigs that are all coming to a head, I am feeling that reality.  The feeling that I am taking on too much is flooding in.

When I left my job at a law firm over two years ago, one of the burdens hanging over my head was that of a resume gap.  The notorious resume gap!  It seemed to be the number one concern of those I spoke to at the time: What are you going to do about your resume gap?  How long will the gap be?  Make sure you don't have too long of a resume gap - you'll never get another job - ever, ever, ever!  

I tended to roll my eyes at the time.  In dealing with the change and shock of going from a full time worker to a stay at home mom, a resume gap wasn't a short term concern of mine.  In addition, on principle I resented this.  I am who I am today, and I will be that person tomorrow.  Of course, my skills and knowledge will get stale, and I expected that to be taken into account.  But to suggest that a resume gap would doom me, and render all of my previous accomplishments moot? Bullshit, I told myself.

But I'm not going to say it didn't occur to me.  After all, I had been a resume builder extraordinaire for most of my adult life.  My resume went linearly from 1996 on - with no gaps, and with many prestigious internship enhancements, awards, and recognitions.  I made many a decision with the reasoning of, that will look good on my resume, and as a result, it was a pretty good resume, if I do say so myself.  I had spent more than a decade perfecting this resume of mine, and there I was, abandoning it.  GIVING IT A GAP FROM WHICH IT WOULD NEVER RECOVER!

Snapshots from the Cape

Posts will be light on words and heavy on pictures for the next week.  We are on vacation!!!!  And though I love this little blog of mine, even it starts to feel like an obligation when I am in carefree vacation mode...

Hello from Cape Cod!

There's been sun, swimming, and an engorgement of amazing food.  

I'm off to get back to it...

Outdoor Showers

I love taking a shower outside.  It's always been one of the staples of my Cape Cod vacations.  In the house that we rented the past few years, there was a FANTASTIC enclosed outdoor shower - brand new with nice tan wood, a shelf for the shampoo/soap, and a hook a safe distance away for the towel so it didn't get wet.  It was as clean as an outdoor shower could be.  I took every shower out there, and relished my time in "nature."  There really is nothing as refreshing as stepping out from an outdoor shower and having a nice warm breeze wash over you.

This year, we rented a different house in Cape Cod.  We arrived on Saturday, and are loving it - it is spacious, secluded, has cable TV in all the bedrooms, and even has central A/C (a rarity in the Cape). But there's one downside...  Though there is an outdoor shower, it's not enclosed.  It's a "naked" outdoor shower, so to speak.  No walls, no hook, no shelf.  Bare bones.  Here it is:  

I figured that my days of outdoor showering on the Cape were over.  But yesterday, right after the rain cleared out, I had an urge.  Why can't I take an outdoor shower?  I thought.  I mean, come on, we're in the woods!  Who's going to walk in our backyard?  Why should I deny myself this luxury?  

Halfway

This week marked the halfway mark of my third pregnancy.  20 weeks down, 20 weeks to go.

It hasn’t gone by fast. 

If this third pregnancy has solidified anything for me, it’s that I don’t like being pregnant.  It’s not that it’s awful per se, and I am so very grateful that so far this pregnancy has been complication free.  It’s just that apart from the whole miracle of birth and the kicks that I’m starting to feel (which I do love), it’s not that much fun.  It’s a denial of things I would normally indulge in (oh margaritas and raw oysters, how I miss you).  It’s an overindulgence of food and desserts to make up for the denial of my normal indulgences, resulting in a steady weight gain that I swore wouldn’t happen to me this pregnancy.  It’s a welcome of all too familiar discomfort – of not being able to sleep on my stomach, of heartburn, of back pain, of headaches I can’t cure with advil.  It’s the dawn of a new kind of anxiety – a kind I had forgotten about – where you pray and beg the weeks to go by until your baby is viable, until his lungs are developed, until he weights more and more – so God forbid, should you deliver early, he will be okay. 

Notwithstanding the fact that I’ve been through this before and I know what’s to come (aka, my life won't be all that easy upon giving birth either), I find myself breaking a cardinal rule of mine and living outside of the moment; of counting down the weeks.  Only 20 weeks left to go, was my mantra throughout much of this week.  Only 20 weeks until I get my body back, until I get my life back, until I am not pregnant anymore. 

Only I WON’T get my life back in 20 weeks.  My life, and the lives of my husband and family, will be forever changed.  It will be a positive change, about which I will someday say, “I can’t imagine I ever had a life before this little boy” – exactly what I say about my first two boys.  But the fact is, this life I have now, that I have gotten used to, embraced, and found comfort in, will never return to me. 

Some OTC Safety Reminders

A couple of weeks ago, I aired my own dirty laundry and showed the world where I was storing my family's medication, which included on top of my son's dresser.  It was rather shameful.  I have now done a complete overhaul, thank you very much, and have become somewhat of a tyrant about the whole thing.  If my husband puts his bottle of vitamins on the sink even for a minute (like, when he's taking it), I read him the riot act.

So here's a little bit of that riot act (and some important safety reminders).

As National Safety Month is nearing an end, OTC Safety continues to educate families on safe medicine storage through its #MedsUpAway program.  The following graphics are really humbling, and are enough to snap anyone into shape.  They also contain some great tips!  Please keep all of the information in mind particularly as you are traveling this summer (when it's easy to let things slide).

(Click on the graphics to enlarge).

Disclosure: I receive compensation for my participation in the CHPA educational foundation's OTC Safety Ambassador Program.  However, the content and and opinions in this post are my own.  

Crying Uncle with Antibiotics

It started over Memorial Day weekend with a scratchy throat.  I think I'm getting sick, I remember mentioning to my husband, as we drove back from New York.  I remember saying it out loud, just in case I needed to remember it for dating purposes, or in the rare instance of death (my husband could tell the coroner - She did say she wasn't feeling well.).  

Little did I know....

It morphed from a scratchy throat to a sore throat to a cough.  A bad, bad cough.  The kind of uncontrollable cough that kept my husband up at night and had me keeling over in involuntary fits and had my kids yelling, Stop it!!!  The kind of cough where I didn't cough hard enough to break a rib, but where it didn't seem so outlandish that people do.

After a week of this, I had had enough.  I went to the doctor.  Not the minute clinic, not my OB - my regular doctor.  I forget I have one of those every once in a while.  I usually only go once a year (if that) for my yearly check up.  Otherwise, I tough my illnesses out.  I am busy enough taking my kids to the pediatrician's office to ever take myself.

But this time was different.

"Girls Don't Work"

Last week, while visiting my dad in North Carolina, my four year old son asked me if my step-mom could accompany us on an excursion to the pool.

"Nana has to work," I told him.  "We'll see her later."

"Girls don't work!" my son quickly replied.

I was at first speechless, and then retorted without much thought: "Of course girls work!  You know how Mommy is at the computer sometimes?  Mommy is working!  And your teachers, your teachers last year were girls.  Being a teacher is work, right?  And the lifeguard at the pool - she's a girl, and she's working!"

By that point my son's attention had turned to other things, and he was making flying noises for his Buzz Lightyear toy.  He had moved on.  But I couldn't seem to.  The sentiment haunted me all day.

I couldn't help but think:  In becoming a stay at home mom, what have I done?  

I decided to leave my full time job mostly for my own reasons - to alleviate stress, to focus on motherhood, to be able to spend more time watching my son grow - all reasons that would benefit me.    But I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a part of me that thought it would also be best for him.  Best for him to have me pick him up from school, me take him to playdates, me care for him when he was sick, me be his constant presence.  I guess in some ways it was an egotistical sentiment, but I really thought that I could do the best job for him over anyone.

But had I created a budding male chauvinist in the process?

A Solo Date

I've never been one to be self conscious about doing things alone.  I have no problem dining alone, and in fact, I actually relish the rare opportunity I get to sit at a bar with a book, an appetizer and a glass of wine.  I also really enjoy going to movies solo, if not for any other reason than my husband hates going, and I am a hard core lover of buttered popcorn.

As you can imagine, solo dates don't come often for me anymore.  And of course, that makes them all the more appealing.  The fact is, I am generally constantly in the company of someone (my kids, predominantly).  And while I'd hardly call myself a loner, the idea of some time to myself - just by myself, for just a little bit - is somewhat of a luxury.

For the past week I have been with my kids in Wilmington, North Carolina, visiting the grandparents.  It's fun and great, but also exhausting and stressful to be out of our fully childproofed environment.  My parents are always offering to give me some time to get out by myself, but I usually decline.  To be honest, I'm usually just so exhausted I don't have the energy to venture out of the house when I have the opportunity.

But last night I mustered the energy, and I indulged.

A few days ago I had read a movie review on CNN of the movie, This is the End.  I had never heard of the movie, but the review was stellar.  I mean, in the I can't remember the last time I've read such a good review of a movie stellar.  It stars Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and James Franco. Given the great review and the weird connection I have with James Franco, I had a sudden urge to see it.  (I should clarify - I don't directly have a weird connection with James Franco, but my sister does, so close enough.  See picture from TMZ below).