The Mom Uniform

I'm not really sure how it happens...

You go from feeling like an attractive, fashionable, put together woman to one day realizing you haven't been out of your mom uniform in weeks.

What is a mom uniform you ask? Here are a few distingusing characteristics:

1. Pants need to have an elastic waist.  My life revolves around short people and their messes. Everything is either on the floor, or pretty darn close to it so I find myself bending down about 400 times a day.  The only reason butt crack exposure is named after plumbers is that moms have collectively made a choice to wear pants that stay put. We are classy like that.

2. The material must be soft.  What I wear on a daily basis gets rubbed against almost constantly with all of the hugs, cuddles, book reading, and lap sitting that goes on around here. When my kids are sick or upset my shirt is frequently the handiest alternative to Kleenex, and let's face it,  nobody wants to wipe their nose on something rough.

3. The fabric has to be absorbant.  When we are out and about we always end up stumbling upon those absurdly loud hand dryers in public restrooms that hurt my kids ears, and inevitably my pants are used as a hand towel.

4. Everything needs to be washable.  Kids are gross, filthy, creatures.  Just take one look at the chairs my kids sit in for meals and snacks and you will be shocked at how nasty they get in just a day.  Yes, part of being a mommy is accepting the fact that you will be used as a napkin on a daily basis. In just this past week I have caught handfuls of snot, vomit, and poop to avoid scrubbing carpet, couches, curtains, and bedding. What I wear ABSOLUTELY must be washable, preferably in hot water.

5. You absolutely cannot feel fashionable in it.  If you do, you will be devastated when it gets ruined.  Save those nice clothes for kid free events.

6. It must be inexpensive. I buy all of my clothing secondhand so I don't have to think twice about tossing it after it gets a permenant stain, bleach splatter, or absurd amount of body fluids on it.  The last casualty was when the velcro on my daughter's sleep sack snagged the fabric on my shirt. That shirt only cost me $5 to buy and will only cost $5 to replace.  Can't get too upset about that.

7. Bathrobes are your best friend.  Nobody wakes up in the morning all toasty warm and ready to start the day. That's where bathrobes come in. It's like wearing your bed around while your body wakes up.  Well, at least that's how my bathrobe wearing obsession started.  Then I realized it's the absolute best article of clothing for a variety of reasons.  Robes are cheaper than nursing tanks and shirts but it's just as easy to whip a boob out of your robe for a feeding.  You can actually secure your child in the robe and use the belt to support some of their weight, so it's like having a poor-man's moby wrap available at all times.  They are super easy to take off and that comes in handy when a post preggo hotflash rears it's ugly head. It's also modest yet freeing at the same time, because you can generally get away with wearing a robe with nothing else underneath and nobody would know the difference.  It certainly adds a little extra sense of adventure during my trecks to the roadside mailbox. Above all else, bathrobes fulfill requirements 1-6 perfectly, it's just too bad they aren't meant to be worn in public.


So when you see us Moms out and about in our cozy clothes it's not because we have let ourselves go and can't fit into something more stylish, and it's not because we have given up on our appearances, it's because we do everything we can to help our kids be comfortable, and that means resembling a teddy bear as much as we possibly can.

I've heard men complain that all they do is see their wives in uniform.  Well guys, maybe it's time to give us an excuse to throw on some real clothes for a change.  Plan a date out without the kids.  Moms out of uniform  have been known to act like sailors on shore leave when given the opportunity to get away from the kids, and chances are you're going to benefit from that pretty darn well if you play your cards right.



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Sleep like a baby

One specific statement that has changed meaning for me so much since having kids is,  "I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight!!!"

Before I had kids the idea of sleeping like a baby sounded fantastic, but now that I have been subjected to the sleep/wake cycles of 3 babies over the past 5 years (and have aged at least 10) I want nothing to do with it.

Let's take a look to see what it would be like if I truly slept like a baby....

The average newborn baby sleeps 16-17 hours a day.  I usually get 6 combined hours and I can't even get everything done. When I think of it I keep picturing the kids stuck to the floors, playing in mountains of laundry, and living on cheez-its and milk. 

A baby has the ability to fall asleep at the drop of the hat when he/she is tired, overstimulated, growing, sick, or otherwise in the mood for some shut-eye.  If I fell asleep when I experienced any of those things,  it would happen 10-15 times a day on a typical day and I would be considered debilitatingly narcoleptic.

Babies sleep in some downright adorable positions.  A favorite of mine is when they sleep on their tummies with their butts up in the air..  If I slept like that I would end up waking up with two totally dead arms, a swollen face, stiff neck, numb legs, and a back so screwed up I would have to hobble around like Quasimodo. 

A young baby can wake up to eat 3-5 times a night. If that were me I would weigh 300 pounds easily.

Many babies need some kind of soothing device to fall asleep. My parents paid way too much money on orthodontic work for me to end up with a pacifier induced open-bite so that wouldn't work.  I'm prone to motion sickess so rocking wouldn't go over well at all. That pretty much leaves a vibrating bed and  I could list a slew of reasons why that would be a bad idea but I'll let you figure those out for yourselves.

And finally, the biggest reason I don't want to sleep like a baby is that their bowels are NOT diurnal which generally results in them shitting themselves nightly.  I don't have much dignity left after 3 pregnancies, 3 labors, and 3 recoveries but luckily that is one area my dignity is firmly intact and I hope to keep it that way as long as I possibly can.



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Anticlimactic

8/10/12

I was incredibly excited to learn what Charlotte's first full sentence was going to be.  She had been speaking so many new words and many of them were advanced, but she still hadn't put a proper sentence together. 

She frequently looked like she was thinking so hard about something and that at any moment she may spurt out the most articulate string of words ever spoken by a toddler.   I had started to think that she was biding her time waiting for the perfect moment because she wanted it to be a grand accomplishment that made everyone's jaw hit the floor in awe. 

We were in the kitchen and I was going through the typical lunchtime routine when I heard, "Mommy help, I can't reach my cheese." 

One of the things I love the most about being a mom is that no matter what you anticipate from your kids as they reach new milestones, it's way more exciting when it actually happens. 

I don't think there is any other application in life where you can have your hopes impossibly high and still have the real thing blow your expectations out of the water. 

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Unspoken words

In my experience most babies have the following set of facial expressions to convey their feelings at any given moment:

1. Happy - being played with, catching glimpses of familiar faces (including seeing themselves in a mirror), or being presented with  their favorite food (or boob).

2. Mad - not thrilled about the carseat, diaper change, or nap that they are being subjected to

3. Hurt - medical procedures, being stepped on by the dog, or getting whacked in the face by an older sibling's toy

3. Scared - stranger danger, loud noises, or a feeling of falling 

4. Uncomfortable - dirty diaper, sick, gassy, hungry, tired, or being held the wrong way

5. Curious/Coy - generally comes out around friendly strangers or when visiting a new place

Charlotte also conformed to this typical set of facial expressions except for a very specific one that she seemed to have inherited from her Daddy.  I always described it as her "Mike Face."  It tended to come out when meeting new people or being surrounded by a large group of people that were focusing their attention on her.  When people asked me to describe the expression I was referring to, I tried using words like skeptical, apprehensive, or calculating but I just couldn't quite convey what I was talking about.

Then FINALLY some great friends of ours that are very frank and don't take themselves (or anything for that matter) too seriously hit the nail right on the head.

M and J: "Charlotte has the BEST FU face I've ever seen!" 

And there you have it.  

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And then there were two

Charlotte had no clue what we were going to name her brother so I had never heard her say his name until she came to the hospital to meet him. 

She crawled up into my lap and seemed quite apprehensive about the entire situation.  She was looking at him with a curious little smirk and I asked, "Do you know what your brother's name is?"

C: "Henny"

That tiny little voice with a random southern belle accent saying his name almost brought me to tears.  

If I had known how adorable it was going to be I would have named him Henry Henry instead.

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The Master of Illeism

5/21/12

An interchange between Charlotte and Grammy:

Grammy:"Do I smell poopy?"
C: "Poopy ha ha"
Grammy: "Who is poopy?"
C: "The Charlotte" 

Third person narrative and the use of definite articles. This girl is bound for a career in literature, right?? 


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F Bomb

We were nearing the end of my pregnancy with Henry and the weekly trips to the doctor were too frequent to be exciting for 19 month old Charlotte. This meant that  we had to come up with some new ways to keep her entertained.

That day we had all of the necessities including her favorite toys, books, crayons, and most importantly,  a snack. This week she chose to bring a bag of black beans to munch on.... not weird at all.

Everything seemed to be working out. The waiting room was actually entertaining enough that we didn't have to pull out the big guns until we made it into the exam room.  I was starting to feel like we were going to make it through the appointment without incident.  Then the doctor walked in and in a matter of minutes Charlotte went from looking like a well adjusted child with an organized and prepared mother, to the next generation of damaged youth.

The inital red flag was when Charlotte spilled her beans on the floor.  Usually she would do something like eat them off the floor, stomp on them to watch them explode, or try to convince Petey (the dog) to eat them.   This time around she got all OCD and insisted on cleaning them up and even asked for a wet paper towel to wipe the floor with. If I was the doctor I would have been concerned that there were some child labor laws being seriously broken at home. 

The second concern was when she decided to hop onto the scale to see how much she weighed.  It unfortunately didn't come off as a small child engaging in imaginative play, but rather as more of a scheduled weigh in to ensure she was keeping a trim figure.  It certainly didn't help when she said "wow, that's a lot of pounds!"

I was already getting a little nervous that the doctor would suggest I take my child  in for a psychological evaluation (or myself to some parenting courses) when Charlotte decided to check her height.  She lifted up that little arm that hangs low on the height rod and slowly started sliding it up.  When she got it above her head she let it go assuming it would stay put but it slipped and hit her right in the head. 

C: "Fuck!"

Yup, mother of the year here.  My daughther dropped an F Bomb in the doctor's office. 

I learned a couple of things that day:

#1 When there is an audience your kids will never behave normally

#2 There is this thing called receptive language and it starts way sooner than you would think.

Do yourself a favor and get a quarter jar while you're still pregnant.




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An inspiring gift

When Charlotte was about a year old my sister purchased an awesome gift for me, a keepsake journal to write down all of the ridiculous things Charlotte says which at the time was absolutely nothing.

I was pretty excited to start using the book so my first entry may have been a bit of a stretch. It also provides an insight to a part of my sense of humor that is not the most dignified but will crop up from time to time so you may want to prepare yourselves...

3.8.12 

Charlotte has started to be all about plural words (babies, binkies, puzzles)...

I think she has said "balls" 10 times already today and I laughed EVERY SINGLE TIME.

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First born

Charlotte was a miserable baby and it took me a little too long to realize how bad it was.  Everyone always said that once you had a baby you didn't sleep and well, I REALLY wasn't sleeping.  

My parents came to visit when Charlotte was a couple months old and my mom immediately grabbed Charlotte from me and went into TOTAL Grammy mode (you know, that trifecta of sound, movement, and patience that only Grandmothers possess). I don't know who was more shocked when the magic didn't work, but I think that's when we all realized something was off. 

You know how they say it takes about 1,000 hours of practice from the time a baby learns to pull itself upright until the time it can walk unassisted?  I think there is an element of practice when it comes to how many hours of screaming it takes before a child can say their first words....

I remember being surprised when I realized that Charlotte was consistently using 20 words when she was 15 months old. That was just the beginning. At 17 months she was up to 200+ words and has been going strong ever since. 

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4th Generation

My Grandfather  was a talker. 

My mother is a talker. 

I am a talker. 

It now appears I am raising the next generation of talkers.  

Louann Brizendine at the University of California discovered through her research that men speak an average of 7,000 words a day and women almost 3 times that amount! Seems like a lot right?  I guarantee we blow those numbers out of the water. If there was a pedometer equivalent for counting spoken words, I can almost guarantee it would be smoking at the end of the day if it was strapped to one of us. I’m totally aware that this can be an irritating trait for adults to have, but it’s pretty freaking entertaining coming out of a toddler.

I am a stay at home mom to 3 fantastically loving, hilarious, and bright kids that are a daily test of my patience, brain power, and bladder control (I have always been prone to peeing my pants when laughing hysterically).

Charlotte is 4 years old and can be best described as a tiny adult with moments of pure silliness.  She is generally serious, thoughtful, intelligent, helpful, cooperative, and happy.

Henry is 2 years old and everything about him is refreshingly typical of a 2 year old boy with the exception of his sizable and impressive vocabulary. The combination almost makes him seem like a cartoon character at times.

Adeline is 4 months old and just developing her personality. She is quite smiley, loves her big siblings, goes with the flow well, but still likes to keep me on my toes.

This blog is my motivation to create written memories for my children and myself to look back on.  I hope it brings a little humor into your lives while helping me get through some of my 20,000+ daily words.

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