Your life will revolve around bodily fluids, but mostly you will fixate on poop. Is the color okay? Consistency? Is your kid pooping too much or not enough? If you think that this may taper off once your little one is potty trained, you are dead wrong. Your attention will turn to things such as teaching kiddo how to wipe without using an entire roll of toilet paper in a single sitting or covering your house in absolutely disgusting hand prints.
The Poker Face
You'll need to master your emotions and how they play across your countenance. Fact: kids will do some crazy, completely irrational things that they absolutely believe in doing. Sometimes you may need to close yourself in a bathroom or closet or behind a shower curtain so that you can smile and laugh in semi-privacy. I laughed once while he was playing with an ice pack and now he wraps them around his face and chases people around our house to smush his face on them. Frostbite in this house is a definite possibility.
Just this evening, Nate wanted his privacy when using the bathroom and a bit later I walked in to find him pumping antibacterial gel down his butt crack in lieu of wiping (and we've made it back to our first secret). I wanted to die laughing but instead I had to remind him about all the good work that TP and wipes can do for him.
Do Not Disturb
"Me" time becomes a thing of the past or contorts itself so that it's nearly unrecognizable. My "me" time tonight consisted of folding laundry while watching a show that wasn't a cartoon while Nate alternated between playing in his room and pretending to 'fly' down the stairs. Other days it's hiding in the bathroom to drink a protein shake (the kid loves anything chocolate flavored) or blissfully enjoying a fifteen minute trip to Target by myself.
When Words Can't Do Justice...
Photos are not impossible, but a direct challenge. The number of photos that I take and delete is completely ridiculous - I thank my lucky stars that I live in the days of digital! Murphy's Law of Photographing Your Kid: they will be the most photogenic, still, and cute when your camera is out of reach. The second that you even think about getting out the camera, a tornado erupts and they scurry out of the room, leaving a trail of food, toys, and sometimes clothing behind them.
Persistence can be key though. I hide my camera so that it's within arms' length -- it still took me almost a week to get a picture of this...
Sleep is Precious
I think it's safe to say that babies and well, offspring in general, can be equated to a lack of sleep. Parents try to prepare themselves and are given good but seemingly impractical advice of "sleep when the baby sleeps" (do it! your laundry list of to dos and the laundry can wait). The flip side of this equation is that you will go to crazy lengths to get and keep your kid asleep. Surely you've heard about infants being chauffeured around town for hours just to get them to sleep?
The older that Nate's gotten, the harder it is to get him to sleep. At school, he's on a strict routine with peer pressure reinforcement. At home, it's one of my biggest challenges. I'm to the point where I have given up on naps on the weekends. Occasionally I get duped though - I mean, the best game plan when this happens is ... ?
That's right, you may find yourself trapped in your car for a bit. I've learned to embrace this though. As long as I don't have someone waiting on me, I am more than content to grab a coffee (hello, Starbucks drive-thru!), some lunch, and have a moment to myself ... even if it means loitering for a bit :)
CC
In the off chance that the television is on AND it's not a cartoon AND it's something that you, the adult, would like to watch, closed captioning is a godsend. Between my two dogs and a child who loves both the sound of his own voice and the cacophony of toys as they fall down the stairs, it gets loud in my house. LOUD. Only a crazy person would add to the decibel level in this house, so CC helps me to have a glimmer of understanding of whatever show I'm getting away with watching.
More 'revelations' to come ...
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