#tillythemenace

I’m going to jump right into this one:

I’m considering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu lessons for the following reasons:

a)    So as to avoid child services being called on me while I change my baby’s diaper in public. Let’s just say my child once ended up in the sink of a restaurant butt ass naked while I tried to collect the trail of both clean and dirty diaper, wipes, diaper cream, etc. she left behind. 

b)   Cutting her nails should take 5 minutes, not an hour. If I could only master the art of leg-locks…

c)    Putting a Band-Aid on her fingers leaves me looking like I’ve just come out of a Spartacus episode.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again…doing any of the above activities is like watching a nature show: Man vs. Alligator except it’s more like Mommy vs. Baby. You watch it, and all you think is, “I sure as hell don’t ever want to try that.”

Welcome to my life…

Allow me to elaborate: I’ve been thinking of possible business endeavors now that I’m a stay-at-home mo. Amongst them is starting a Mommy and Me Jiu-Jitsu Academy, ‘cause if your child is anything like mine Mommy and Me Yoga doesn’t even fall within the realm of possibilities. My child’s energy level literally goes from 0 – 10. That is, she’s either sleeping or in constant motion. I take Matilda to weekly Gymboree classes and even there, a place where kids can roam free, I have to restrain her to prevent her from bulldozing over all the other playing kids. I have that kid. Granted, I love the fact that my child is energetic, but sometimes it can get to be a little much…

On our first day at Gymboree, Matilda managed to shed blood within five minutes of our arrival. Her excitement was such that she decided it was a great time to launch herself into the great uncharted world of walking. Needless to say, she face-planted right into the carpet and bit her lip. Luckily, at that very moment she saw another baby arrive and forgot all about her injury.

During some point in the class, all the smiling, starry-eyed mommies are asked to gather in a big circle to play with our little ones. The teacher then goes on to tell us to sit our precious ones on our laps for a round of stimulating activities. We all comply and soon we’re chanting “Trot Trot to London,” except that while all the other mommies managed to stay in their place with their babies happily bouncing on their laps, I was getting my daily cardio fix trying to keep up with my child, the miniature bulldozer. Now, it’s one thing for other mommies to ask me, “Is she always so energetic?” and drop comments like, “Wow, she sure does like to bounce.” But when the Gymboree teacher starts making remarks like, “Matilda, how old are you? You’re just so upright and full of life,” (translation: why won't you stay still kid?) you know shit is on a whole other level.

I know what many of you are thinking, so let me clarify: I DO NOT give my child sugar. For that simple reason, you can all probably understand my dreaded fear of the inevitable: Birthday Parties. I’m actually considering telling Matilda she is deathly allergic to sugar, in hopes of maintaining her energy at a “normal” level. Just the thought of Tilly on a sugar rush gives me serious anxiety! But hey, what can I expect when it turns out your husband did the following all before the age of 10:

a)    Was offered a job as a circus act after some Circus person saw him climbing a tree in his front yard. True story.

b)    Lit his house on fire with a plastic bow and arrow. I swear to you…

c)    Was stopped by the police on the highway while driving from one city to another on a mini motorbike…He was 10 years old.

Signs of things to come?!?!?!? I sure as hell hope not! 

Mini Hubs + Bow and Arrow = Burn Baby Burn

Fast forward 30+ years...Babies Beware #tillythemenace

Parents: Paving the way for Birth Control Advocacy

During a recent conversation it was brought to my attention that parents aren’t necessarily the pillars of child bearing promotional efforts. In fact, we tend to be quite the opposite. This observation was no doubt made by a non-parent friend who would like to preserve her chances of actually bearing children one day and apparently we, her parent friends, aren’t helping the cause with all our complaining. My friend is by all means right. Parents complain A LOT. But how else are you supposed to survive the time you spend with your children (which in my case is like 99% of my time), if you can’t blow a little steam when you’re with your adult friends? No parent, or at least none I know, is going to sit on their child’s play-mat and bitch to their kid about how little time they have to themselves as they play with a choo-choo train or sing along with the Mickey Mouse “Hot Dog Dance”.  Quite honestly, when you’re with the little terror you don’t think about anything but preventing the next face plant into the cold tile floor. And that’s the thing, it’s when you finally do by some miracle get away for an adult dinner out that it hits you…Holy shit, I can’t remember the last time I had dinner without Baby Beethoven in the background…let the parental flood gates open…bless the non-parental souls that are with you.

Granted, this dawning truth is not an excuse to use your poor childless friends as verbal punching bags. If anything, we parents should restrain ourselves and let them live on with their fantasies of one day bearing rosy-cheeked, powder-smelling bundles of joy. Buuuuuut…forgive me if I think that giving other childless adults a fair warning about what they’re getting themselves into isn’t such a bad thing. That’s why the oh so subtle “Must be nice…” is nonchalantly thrown in to the conversation when things like going to the gym past 6am, watching an R rated movie, or dare I even mention it…Happy Hour...is spoken of. But can you blame us? I haven’t gone to the bathroom with the door shut in 8 months, much less had time to “spend a night in with a book and a glass of wine” *cue photo of bubble bath, vino, and book* These facebook statuses make me want to drive over and drop my child right into the bathtub with the bearer of such good fortune. Tilly loves the water; she’d be great company!

Ok, back to my friend and her annoyance at our constant bitching. The truth is, we will never stop doing it. The reason behind this is that until you actually have children you won’t realize how unprepared you actually were to have them. No matter how ready you think you may be, it is impossible to actually fathom how drastically your life changes from one day to the next. With that said if you were to offer me my old life back at this very moment I wouldn’t take it. I wouldn’t even consider it. Babies are exhausting, emotionally and physically. But they truly are the most amazing experience in the world. If any able-minded adult were to sit down and analyze what having children means, they wouldn’t do it. That’s why you just have to take the plunge. Sorry currently baby-less, happy hour going friends, but one day you too will find yourselves at a dinner table venting about your mini-mes and all the things you once did. It just is what it is…and when that day comes, you’ll understand. Until then, drink until 4am and be merry! 

This is what "gettin' cray up in dis b*tch" looks like now...

The Inevitable Truth

We were once a grown-ass couple. We were independent. We drank, a lot. We dined out, a lot. We spent our money at expensive boutiques. We travelled, a lot. But most of all, we slept in ‘til whatever goddamn time we felt necessary. Then we had a baby…

Nowadays I wake up at 5:30 am, everyday, seven days a week…apparently motherhood has made me a neurotic psycho that can’t seem to sleep past 6:00am. Also, if I wake up at this time I guarantee myself a calm start to the day. I make my baby’s bottle, feed the dog, walk the dog, and make coffee all before my little one starts to squirm. I know it might sound ridiculous, but it’s heavenly. Should I decide to sleep in, my mornings turn into a scene from I Know What You did Last Summer, sans the blood. Just a lot of screaming and frantic running around…

                                                    

But, regardless of whether I wake up at 5:30 am or 7:00 am…things like this seem to happen to me, a lot:

-     You schedule weekly mommy lunches to which you’re, for the most part, surprisingly on time for. This requires a tremendous amount of preparation. But, on more than one occasion you will find yourself stuck in traffic for 1 ½ hours with your baby screaming her/his head off. You will be rendered helpless, and will give in to the urge to cry your eyes out along with your child. I’m sure other drivers will find this quite interesting as you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. But you will be mortified and scarred for life.

-      Upon reaching your destination, your child will decide to FINALLY go #2 after days of withholding from the act. Hence/thus/therefore you will have a fecal explosion to deal with in a public bathroom. Other women will give you dirty looks as you rip clothes off your sodden child…Oh, not to mention that this will happen on the ONE day you forget to pack a proper replacement outfit, so your child will then be parading around in public looking like a hot mess. Embarrassing.

-     Should you NOT know this by now, all babies think it’s best to go pee and poo at an accelerated rate the moment you take them out of the house. So, on any give day you will go through at least three outfits on a 2-hour outing. For example, first she will pee the equivalent of her weight to the point where the diaper will begin to leak (cue change of clothes #1). Then she will poop (cue change #2). Then she will decide to spit up like a fountain; by the time change #3 comes around you’ll be scavenging for random separates scattered in your diaper bag, which will result in your child looking like a homeless baby with hand-me-downs on…cue rushing back home. 

-      Here’s one thing I can’t get over: that awkward moment when you find yourself face-to-face with a breastfeeding mom in a Nordstrom’s bathroom. She will be eagerly feeding her mischievous 8-month old, flashing him (and you) her boob while going “Aqui esta la leche bebe” (“Here’s your milk baby”). SHOOT ME NOW!

-  Your baby will pee all over your duvet cover, and you won’t care, at all…’cause honestly, I’m not washing that shit. FEBREEZE!

-     You will start a blog when your baby is a peaceful newborn, thinking that you will have the time to devote to this new hobby, only to realize that the little buggers will start to sleep less and whine more as they get older. You will begin to devote an immense amount of time to entertaining an infant, which entails: singing totally made-up songs (‘cause unless there’s another child in the house, you truly don’t have a clue about lullaby lyrics) and aimlessly pacing up and down your townhouse with baby in tow. Should a peeping Tom peek into your house he’ll think you’ve taken up cabaret classes as you’ll also start using “Jazz hands” and exaggerated facial expressions both of which your baby finds hilarious (I like to think I’m giving my face mad exercise and will therefore never wrinkle!) All of these things will leave little time for you to eat and shower, much less sit down and write a full blog post.

-     You will realize that there’s no such thing as acquiring new hobbies…you’ll settle for getting through the day alive.

-  Your new bedtime is 10 pm sharp. You’ll invite friends over for dinner at 6pm and practically kick them out at 9:45pm. If they complain, they’re still single and don’t have an f-ing clue.

-   On the rare occasion that you decide to stop drinking for a month to shed some of the baby weight and then proceed to drink yourself senseless on your birthday, you will realize that a hangover is a parent's worst enemy. You will ask the Powers that Be to open the Earth and swallow you whole as you lay on the floor, curled up in fetal position, next to your baby's tummy time mat. You will never ever want to drink again, ever, until you remember the bottle of bubbly sitting in the fridge. Mimosas anyone? 

There are many more things I could list, but they’ll have to wait…’cause the baby is up and I’ve got a version of All That Jazz I’ve been dying to try out on her. Wish me luck…*cue jazz hands*

Nothing like my bottle and my mommy's

tone-deaf singing... 

Mommy FYI

Things Every New Mom Needs to Come to Terms With:

• There is something about having an infant in the house that requires a mom to consume copious amounts of coffee…tarry-looking strong black coffee.
• Activities such as eating, showering and getting dressed will become Olympic sports, all done in record times and under extreme conditions.
•  Forget about dieting…just forget it.
• The first time your infant pukes you are certain their death is imminent, followed closely thereafter by your own miserable demise.
• At some point during the day (every day) you will be covered in vomit, spit-up, drool, pee and poo, and/or a combination of all. You may in fact end up so drenched in bodily fluids you will have to do a full change of clothes, down to your underwear. Yes, this is true.
•  You now call piss and shit “pee” and “poo”.
•  Makeup…what the hell is makeup?
• You will learn to carry on a full conversation while your child cries in the background.
•  In fact, crying is the new musac (elevator music).
• You will begin to empathize with parents that act unfazed when their child cries in public. While it is incredibly difficult to hear your child weep, you will develop an uncanny ability to differentiate their wails. You will also come to understand that unless they are hungry, are in need of diaper change, or are in pain; they are indeed fine. So you will let them cry and consider their howling an exercise in proper lung development. I am implementing this as I type…
• Say goodbye to a full night’s sleep. Even once your baby starts sleeping through the night you will find yourself waking up every couple of hours to make sure she is still breathing. This obsessive compulsive tendency manifests itself in several ways:
• Placing your finger beneath your baby’s nostrils to make sure air is indeed still flowing in and out of her body
•  Slightly tapping her face to see if she squirms
• Staring incessantly at the baby monitor for the reassuring rise and fall of your baby’s chest.
• You will receive texts from your mommy friend about her baby’s poopy patterns, worse of all, you will answer said texts with genuine excitement and/or concern…yes, it’s come to that.
• If your child, like mine, so happens to make the most absurd sounds when going #2 you will decided to record said event, even though you are fully aware of the emotional scarring that might ensue…but it’s just so cute! You will then send this video to the above mentioned mommy friend.
• You will feel like poppin’ bottles the first time your baby rolls over onto his/her back while laying face down…then you’ll remember you’re a mommy and the only bottles you’ll be poppin’ are filled with milk…it is what it is.
•  The most enlightening conversations you now engage in consist not of words, but of “goos” and “gaas”, and all sorts of other primal sounds you never imagined your adult-self making. However, the moment you first participate in this exchange with your little one you’ll realize there’s nothing more fulfilling in this world.  

What's a lil' poop when I get to spend my days with this face! 

One of those days...

Prior to becoming a mommy, I never quite understood why (a) mommies always look so tired and (b) they utter the phrase “It’s been one of those mornings,” with such exasperation and dread. Well, here’s why…

A few days ago I woke up on a glorious morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after my FIRST full night’s sleep. I should mention that Matilda is now sleeping in her crib and actually sleeps through the night. What’s more is that I am now able to, miraculously, sleep through the night as well. As opposed to the first few nights I put her in her crib when I would wake up every 15 minutes to stare at the baby monitor to make sure she was still alive. Unconvinced that the video monitor was proof enough, I would get out of bed to go make sure she was still breathing, in person. I’m happy to report those nights are over. But back to my lovely morning…

Picture an altered version of this peaceful scene...

I woke up to the sound of Tilly fussing and squirming, my cue to go make her bottle and my first pot of coffee.  As I made my way to her crib I had a strange feeling of calmness. I couldn’t believe how well the night and morning were panning out. If this is how my life with a baby was going to be, then I was one happy mommy. Then it hit me, a faint smell coming from what appeared to be a pool of chocolate underneath my baby, only it obviously wasn’t chocolate. Matilda lay peacefully snoozing while I frantically picked her up and began to assess the situation; how the hell does on go about dealing with such a disaster? Should I change her or change the bed? Do I leave the mess and feed her before she starts hollering? Or wait…should I just cut her clothes off so as to minimize both her and my exposure to the fecal mess? Better yet, I need to bathe her, ‘cause there certainly was poop in places poop should not be. As I pondered this mess I could hear my dog pacing back and forth, this was a little unusual seeing as she more often than not doesn’t bother to get up for the first morning feeding. She’s a bulldog after all and very much values her beauty sleep. Then, suddenly, she stopped pacing and that’s when I heard her PUKE all over the bathroom. Seriously? Pardon my French, but “Fuck my life!!!!”

I now stood holding my baby out like a dirty rag, staring at a shit-covered crib and fully aware of the puke-filled bathroom that awaited me. I ran to the bathroom to (a) stop my dog from eating her own vomit (dogs do this, gross but true) and (b) rinse my child off under the faucet (you learn to do such things after a while), then I proceeded to pry the remainder of the sodden-clothes off of my baby, change her, make a bottle, feed the dog and the baby, rock the baby and change the crib sheets. I’m still not quite sure in what order or how I did all this…all I remember is that at some point my husband stumbled out of bed and heroically asked if I needed his help. Thank you, f-ing Super Dad to the rescue! Is it me, or do husbands perfectly time waking up to exactly a minute AFTER you’re done doing all of the above?  Granted my husband is a huge help, but let’s just say he’s not a morning person…so any assistance he may offer has to wait ‘til after he’s had his coffee…and well, shitty babies and puking dogs aren’t the most patient of creatures.

The most amazing thing about this story is that when I shared it with my friend on our mommy-date she didn’t flinch nor seem surprised by any of it. In fact, she kind of one-upped me…

On a beautiful Saturday morning, my lovely, seasoned mommy-of-two friend decided to take a stroll in the park. She headed off with her babies and a lightweight purse, no diaper bag in sight. A couple hours later she found herself covered in baby doo-doo. It literally dripped off her shirt and pants all the way down to her toes. Turns out her little man was a wee-bit constipated, and let’s face it, nothing like a long walk to get those bowels going. All that nature and fresh air were enough to kick his intestinal tract into gear. Lucky for her, parks tend to be filled with other better equip mommies with lots of wipes and diapers. Let me just say that whoever invented the diaper needs to take a cue from the inventor of the tampon. We mommies must demand that they come out with an array of diapers: the ultra-thin, regular, heavy and super-heavy should all exist in diaper-land. Also, another thing I may point out is that a mommy should NEVER leave the house without a fully loaded diaper bag, packed with everything including a change of clothes for Mama Bear. Tisk tisk! By doing so one would avoid having to change in the backseat of your maid’s car. I can’t imagine that trying to put on a faja/spanx in such a confined space would be very easy…and yes, I just ousted all us new-mommies…we wear ‘em, yes we do.

Lessons to be learned: get comfortable with poop, you will be seeing lots of it. I for one am sure this won’t be the last time I address the subject matter.