Doodle

  • Rock a bye baby girl

    The other night I was getting Caroline ready for bed. I rubbed her down with lotion and then put a diaper on her. For just a moment, I looked at her little pot belly hanging out of that diaper and smelled that sweet lavender lotion that I’ve been putting on her since she was born, and I saw my baby again.

    At some point in the last year, the baby went away and was replaced by a delightful little girl with pigtails and promise. All of a sudden her pants were all too short, none of her shoes fit anymore and her body lost most of its baby fat.

    She still cuddles with me, but usually just first thing in the morning and right before bed at night. The rest of the day is filled with too much wonder and adventure to stop to sit with Mama. There are imaginary friends to play with, stories to make up, and hide and seek games to play.

    I adore this age. When she was a baby, I wondered all the time what she wanted or what she was thinking, and now I know. She doesn’t hesitate to let me know when something displeases her or when I’m not being fair (how do they learn that phrase so early?). I love the conversations we have and nothing makes me happier than when I pick her up from school and she tells me all about her day. I am in constant wonder at how her little mind works and amazed at all the things she knows.

    But every now and then, I’ll stop and look at the baby pictures hanging in the hallway and I’d give more than a million dollars to hold that little baby again, to smell that little head and feel her nestled on my chest. So many of the times that I actually had those moments were spent wishing them away, praying that she’d just go to sleep and now I wish I could have a few of them back.

    I used to always sing her a little made up song and I’d say “just stay little, just stay little, just stay little, little, little” and while yes, she’s still little, she’s getting bigger every day.

    She always tells me that Mimi says “she’ll be sad when she can’t pick me up anymore” and I tell her so will Mama. That’s why even though she doesn’t quite fit with me in the rocking chair like she used to, I still rock her every night before bed. We read stories, say our prayers and then she lays her head on my chest with her legs scrunched up on either side and we rock. At those moments, it’s the best of both worlds when I can listen to the emerging personality and dreams of my little girl while I hold her like my baby.

  • What’s up duck?

    Since Halloween is almost upon us, I have to share a picture of Caroline dressed as a duck from 2 years ago.

    Be prepared that you might die from the cuteness.

  • Just say no to drugs unless the offer is made by Mama

    Here are two things that came out of my mouth this past week that will leave y’all marveling at the depth of my parenting expertise.

    Tuesday night I was heating up leftover spaghetti for Caroline and she told me she didn’t want spaghetti, she wanted pizza. This is exactly what I said, “Well this is spaghetti and it’s the same thing as pizza”. Except that it’s you know, not.

    Both foods are however of Italian origin, so that’s my justification.

    Then, yesterday afternoon we stopped by Mimi and Bop’s house on the way home from my nephew’s birthday party. Caroline was slightly irritable and had skinned both of her knees at the party. After we visited for awhile I told her it was time to go and she wanted no part of it. So here’s what I said, “Come on, let’s go home and I’ll give you some Tylenol”. Because everyone knows that all the best mothers bribe their children with promises of over the counter medication.

  • We’re on our 3rd pair of underwear and it’s only 10 a.m.

    I have a group of girlfriends that get together once a month for dinner. We call ourselves Birthday Club, even though there are only 6 of us so we’re really only celebrating a birthday 50% of the time. However, we are all mothers of children ages 5 and younger, so we deserve a night of freedom once a month.

    We always meet at the same Mexican restaurant because they have round tables, a delightful outdoor patio (which doesn’t seem like much of a draw in July, but in October it’s lovely), and most importantly, some of the best queso you will ever eat. Ever. And I won’t embarrass myself by mentioning that I really wanted to order another bowl of it last night, but in the interest of decorum and my thighs,I practiced some self control.

    I love these nights because we laugh and talk about everything under the sun. We can range from the serious discussions of fertility and marital issues to equally serious, but not life defining, subjects such as The Bachelor, Grey’s Anatomy, fashion, and chefs on the Food Network who have lollipop heads because they are so dang skinny. Good times indeed.

    We usually don’t talk about our kids that much because 1. we’re there to have a break from being a mama and 2. we all have them, so there is really no novelty. However, last night Stephanie mentioned that she is in the process of trying to potty train her little boy.

    It brought a collective groan from the crowd.

    The rest of us have already been through this soul-draining debacle at least once and so we are all fully aware of what she is about to deal with on a daily basis. The daily struggle of diapers vs. bodily waste on your floor (always the carpet, never the tile) or perhaps even your couch. The gut wrenching decision to let a 2 1/2 year old have a little bit of power over you in the form of deciding they need to go “RIGHT NOW” even though you have a Racecar Cart full of quickly melting groceries on aisle 12 which is the aisle furthest from any restroom.

    Oh sure, there are the mothers who will sit in playgroup and tell you with a straight face that little Fielding was potty trained in one day and has never had a problem. I’ll tell y’all the technique those mothers use. LYING. Feel free to use it, but ultimately it will bring you no closer to your goal of helping your child achieve some modicum of social skills in the form of not peeing on the floor at an upscale baby store.

    The other story, which is usually told by your well-meaning mother or mother-in-law, is that you or your husband was potty trained at 16 months. Here’s the secret with that one, someone was potty trained. It was the MOTHER who sat that child on the potty every 15 minutes ALL day long. These mothers also had the benefit of raising children in a time when potty training didn’t have to be about unlimited amounts of Skittles as a reward and you could actually punish someone for wetting the floor or the dog, without being told you were going to cause them to be an incontinent sociopath for the rest of their lives.

    Here’s the thing about potty training. It is the great equalizer of motherhood. Whether you taught your child to read in the womb or you let them play with bags of glass, you have very little control over when they will decide to not poop in their pants. Even Gwyneth Paltrow and Catherine Zeta-Jones have urine stains somewhere in their homes. Now granted they probably have a Nanny and some high dollar cleanser to clean it with, but it’s there because they have toddlers who will have to learn to use the bathroom.

    The greatest story last night was told by my friend Hillary. Her little boy was having a hard time not having accidents, so her pediatrician recommended making a big reward chart. She went to the store, bought a big calendar and some stickers, and told her little boy that if he could be accident free for a week, he could go to the toy store and pick out a new train. They spent the week crossing off days, putting on star stickers, and finally he made it to the one week mark. She took him to the toy store and he picked out his train. She told him how proud she was of him as she paid for the train and as they were walking out of the store hand in hand, he looked up at her and said “Mama, I just pooped in my pants”.

    So she took that train and threw it across the parking lot. No, she didn’t. I’m totally kidding. But I promise she wanted to, because I have been there. There is nothing as humbling as a toddler with a little bit of power.

  • Memo to my daughter whom I adore

    A little piece of advice from your mama.

    When you decide to wake Mama up at 1:35 a.m. with the sole reason being that you think you need a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on a non-existent boo-boo, it would serve you well not to then ask me to please not breathe on you because my breath “is a little bit stinky”.

  • A little OCD never hurt anybody

    Since I can tell y’all anything, I have a true confession. I really am a little OCD. I tend to get a little obsessed about things. There is really no rhyme or reason to what my obsession of the week will be, it just depends on what’s going on.

    One thing that is consistent though, is my obsession with decluttering my house. I can go along for days and be just fine. There can be papers on the kitchen island, toys in the living room, the playroom can be a complete disaster and I’m okay with it…for a while.

    But once I start to get a little stressed about something or Caroline has already thrown 3 fits and it’s only 9 a.m. I start to suffer from what I like to call clutter anorexia. Y’all know how you hear that one of the reasons people become anorexic is to gain control of something in their lives? That’s like me, but with cleaning up clutter. All of a sudden I need those papers off the island IMMEDIATELY and if you’re drinking from a glass you better have it in your hand or it’s going straight to the dishwasher and those Legos in the living room need to be back in the playroom this instant.

    I’ll wait until Caroline isn’t paying attention and I’ll walk stealthily into the playroom and load up a grocery sack to send off to the McDonalds Happy Meal playground in the sky. I need order restored to my little corner of the world. I need to feel in control of something.

    Doesn’t this make y’all want to come visit?

    Anyway, I know that I have this in me and I try to keep a reign on it and not inflict my sickness on the other members of my household, although P will tell you that he has been the victim of me throwing away more than one important piece of paper. So far, Caroline hasn’t seemed to notice that My Little Pony now only has one hairbrush instead of an entire set, but apparently she does know her Mama well as the following story will prove.

    Friday night she went to spend the night with Mimi and Bops. They are currently in the middle of replacing their back patio, so it is a huge mess right now and Caroline hadn’t seen it since they started the demolition. When they walked into the house, Caroline immediately saw the destruction through the glass doors and put her hands on her cheeks and kept shaking her head and saying “Oh dear me, Oh dear me, Oh dear me” and then she said “My mama is not going to like this”.