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My tip for new moms: stupidity

September 2, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

Six weeks into having three kids, and I have been pleasantly surprised that things have been going relatively smoothly. The kids have adjusted well with no jealousy so far (knock on wood), I have been able to get them all out the door by 8 am since school started with not much problem, and all the baby stuff – the crying, the nursing, the consoling – has not phased me much. I guess it takes having three kids to finally find your patience and get the hang of this “raising children” thing. Who would’ve thunk it?

But I have also found the secret to dealing with a baby. Are you ready to be enlightened? To be wowed? Are you on the edge of your seat? Well, hold onto your horses. Here is my key to happiness while having an infant – don’t think about it. Turn off that brain. As the Nike saying goes, ‘just do it.’ If you think too much, it all goes to pot. I guess evolution got it right when it gave new moms ‘baby brain.’ If having a baby increased our IQs, the human race probably would have died out long ago. So, instead, God made us new moms dumb. If by chance your old smarts start to show themselves again, ignore them. Intelligence is no help when it comes to babies.

How did I have this sudden stroke of genius while being in my postpartum stupid phase? One word for you: the car. (OK, so that was two words. See, I am dumb.) The most challenging part of having a baby again, I have found, is getting in and out of the car. You just can’t arrive somewhere and say to the babe, like the other two kiddos: “OK, hop out. Let’s go.” You have to transport the infant. That means getting out the stroller, putting her in the Bjorn, or schlepping that god-damn, 300-pound car seat around. My whole day is dictated by whether I feel like dealing with taking the baby in and out of the car, along with two other kids. Having just gone to the post office and put the baby and car seat and stroller back in the car, I might decide we don’t need to eat dinner tonight because I sure as hell am not going to do that all over again. But then I say to myself, “Self, turn off that brain. Don’t think. Just do it.” So I turn on my autopilot brain, and repeat the in-and-out-of-the-car process all over again.

But the real point of enlightenment came after dropping Kaiden off at school one morning. I had just buckled Kaya back into her car seat and was nursing the baby when Kaya said – what else? – she had to pee. For a moment, my brain thought about how silly I would look walking around the school with a baby attached to my boob and the top of my maternity pants showing even though I’m not pregnant and how I didn’t feel like walking all the way back out the parking lot to the school, but then I told my brain to “shut up” and off we went, baby on the breast and all. And that’s when it hit me: thinking is your enemy.

I relayed this story to a friend of mine who also has three kids and she said wouldn’t it be great if you could hire someone to drive around with you and just sit in your car with your kids while you ran errands? Until that time comes when you find someone to do that (and please, pass on her number to me), you will be much happier, and get way more things done, if you stay stupid. Trust me. I can’t even remember my name, and I am all the better for it.

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Excuse me while I barf on your love

August 20, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

I thought we were having a moment.

I was gazing into the eyes of my 3 week old, and she was looking back at me. I saw recognition in her eyes; dare I say it, maybe even love. After weeks of changing diapers and breastfeeding and holding and caressing and being with her 24/7, was she finally, finally realizing that I was her mother? Was that adoration I saw in her eyes?

As I felt tears welling up in my own, she puked. All over herself. All over me.

So much for love.

It was not affection, after all, that was welling up inside her, but digested breast milk. Nakita was turning out to be like her big sister Kaya – a puker. This means bibs for Nakita. It seems silly to put a bib on a one-month old who doesn’t even have teeth yet to consume food, but when they are throwing up five times a day, it saves constantly having to change their clothes. When Kaya was little, she would throw up and I while I was changing her, she would throw up again. We went to Mexico when she was 3 months old. She threw up so much that by day 3 she had gone through a weeks worth of clothes. I ended up washing all of her clothes – twice. By hand. In the hotel room sink. It sucked.

So its bibs for little Nakita. I don’t care if she looks ridiculous. It saves me time and energy, plus infants already look funny. She’s got a comb-over and acne, farts all the time, and the back of her hair usually has some crusty throw-up in it. She’s kind of a cross over between an old man and a teen-ager. But she’s my funny looking baby, and I love her.

Plus, I swear she smiled at me today and if she could have talked, she would have said, “I love you mom. Now stand back. I’m about to puke.”

"My eyes say 'love' but my belly says 'puke.'"

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It Was You

August 6, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

It was you

that was inside me for 9 months

it was you

who kicked me in the ribs

had the hiccups every day

made me eat like a teenage boy for two months

it was you

who had me convinced you were a boy

who had me doubled over with pain when you started to come

who had me howling like an animal when you pushed your way out into this world

it was you all along…

and you were a girl

Welcome, Nakita Trinity. Born at home in the water on July 18 at 3:37 a.m.

We are so very happy you are here. In the two and a half weeks that you’ve been here, you’ve ripped my private parts, gave me hemorrhoids, peed on me, puked on me, and you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. (OK, so maybe not the hemorrhoids).

Posted in Mommahood | 5 Comments »

Pregnancy Purgatory

July 14, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

Waiting for a baby to come is a lot like preparing to go on a long trip – you know you are not going to be available for a while so you rush around trying to make sure everything is taken care of. Pay the bills, water the plants, stock the house with food, clean the kids’ rooms, etc. People call it nesting, but it’s more like frantic preparation for being out of commission for a few weeks.

The problem with this is – sometimes you do all this, and the baby doesn’t come. Food gets eaten, rooms get messy, more bills arrive. Then you have to start all over again. But with each passing day, you are bigger and more tired, so it all gets a little harder.

And you are left in a type of purgatory, waiting, not making any plans beyond what you are doing that afternoon. Sign the kids up for camp next week? Forget about it. You might go into labor on the way there. Run down to Reno, an hour away, to get your car fixed? No way, Jose. Don’t feel like standing in a pool of my own amniotic fluid in the middle of a Honda dealership. So we wait.

It’s a strange time, when you pass your due date. Friends and family members stop calling because they don’t want to bug you so instead they text you and send you messages on Facebook, then get tired of doing that and just call you anyways. (For those of you reading, I don’t mind the phone calls! Let’s me know you care. Ahhhh.) If you call someone to say hi, they immediately think you are in labor, like you would be the one calling them. I don’t think so, unless that person doesn’t mind holding a conversation between screams of pain and “Why the fuck did I want to go through this again?!”

It becomes a little challenging to go out in public where you know a lot of people. Friends and acquaintances look at you like “What the hell are you doing here? I don’t feel like delivering your baby in the middle of the farmers market.” Or they give you a look that says, “What??? Still no baby? You are going to be pregnant forever.” In fact, I had three people last week ask me: “Are you pregnant with number four????” No, dipshit. I am still on the same pregnancy – I’m not so crazy as to go for four kids or get knocked up as soon as I pop one out. It takes 9 months, if you remember. Although with comments like those it starts to feel like an elephant’s gestation of 22 months. Can you imagine being pregnant for almost 2 years? All those maternity clothes you would need? Humans would definitely not have more than one kid.

Now five days overdue (sounds like I’m on the same schedule as my kids’ library books), it starts to feel like it will never really happen. I stare at the empty baby swing, the cradle, the changing table stocked with diapers and little, tiny baby clothes, and it’s hard to imagine that a little person we have never met and have no idea what he looks like will soon be taking up real, actual space – outside the womb. Sometimes I feel like I will be pregnant for 22 months.

That would mean I have 13 months left.

Then I really would be the size of an elephant. And that, my friends, would really suck.

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Shopping for opinions at the grocery store

July 5, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

It’s funny the people who will talk to you when you are pregnant. And the stories they will tell you. It’s like having a huge belly is like having a new puppy – it’s an open invitation for complete strangers to come up to you.

The other day at the grocery store check out line, in a manner of five minutes the clerk had told me the entire story about her second child’s birth – how she almost didn’t make it to the hospital, how they had to call the police for an escort, how the baby was born 3 minutes after she took her clothes off in the hospital room. All while I am slowly backing up with the groceries in the cart, with two children pulling on me, trying not to be rude but desperately wanting to get the show on the road so I can go home and lie down. I was worried by the time she finished her story I’d either be in labor or the people waiting behind me in line would kill me out of impatience. Luckily, I got out of there in one piece. I guess there is an unwritten rule about ganging up on pregnant women.

A few days later I was at a different grocery store (see a pattern here? I swear I go other places besides the store.) I’m in the parking lot when this macho mustacheod-Budweiser delivery guy walks up to me. He asks me where the nearest hotel is, then he says like he’s some kind of expert: “I think you’re having a boy.” Wow! When the Budweiser guy has an opinion on what you are carrying, you know you must be huge. It’s like being a walking billboard that flashes: “Please tell me if I have a boy or a girl in my tummy. Strangers’ opinions preferred.”

The best reaction you get from people is when they find out you are due any minute. Today, once again (of course) at the store, the check out lady asked me when I’m due. When I said this week, the women in line behind me backed up about two feet like they were afraid my water would break that very second and spray all over them and they’d have to deliver the baby right there and then on the dirty Savemart floor. One store owner even told me: “You’re making me real nervous by coming in here.” Like I would be shopping for beach toys for my kids if I was in labor. That sounds real fun.

So, for now, with three days to go until my due date, I wait. And I fantasize about not going grocery shopping. But I think there is a Miller Lite delivery guy waiting to tell me what I’m having. I better not let him down.

Posted in Mommahood | 2 Comments »

Paying it Forward at the DMV

June 21, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

This is exactly what the guy at the DMV looked like. Cross my heart.

Sometimes it pays to be pregnant. Like when people at the DMV take pity on you, just because you’re sitting in a metal seat with your stomach practically touching the chair in front of you.

Never mind that I had no kids with me and that the woman with four kids probably deserved special treatment more than me. Then again, why would you bring four kids to the DMV??? But it does seem interesting that people in general are more willing to help a pregnant women sitting by herself doing a crossword puzzle than a mom trying to keep four kids from destroying a public agency.

Actually, the first hour at the DMV was relatively pleasant. With no children to look after, it was practically a vacation. I read two newspapers, did a crossword puzzle, checked my email on my Crackberry. But by hour two, I was getting restless. They had called number 75; I was 85. Ten people in front of you at the DMV is like the last two minutes of an NBA championship game – it can last forever. There are those damn, responsible people who had the forethought to think ahead and make an appointment, hogging up one of the two or three ladies working behind the desk. And then there are those pesky teenagers who insist on getting their driver’s license and take away one of the few DMV employees to give them an exam. (We won’t talk about how I showed up late to my drivers exam on my 16th birthday and was forced to wait two weeks to take it again – complete torture for a 16-year-old – or the time I got caught cheating on my permit test. It was totally someone else’s fault. I swear.)

So there I was, on hour two, getting impatient and, I have to admit, uncomfortable with Baby Breakdancer kicking me in the ribs, when all of a sudden a bearded angle dressed as a town employee appeared at my side. He bent down and whispered something. At first I thought he was trying to steal my purse, but then I heard these magic words slip out of his mouth: “You dropped something.” And with that, he handed me his golden ticket – #77! I looked up at the sign – they were on 76! I had been chosen! I whispered back a quick thank you. It was like I had gotten out of jail early on good behavior.

As I stood up triumphantly when they called my new number, I quickly glanced around the DMV waiting room – who should I pick to be the lucky beneficiary of #85? The pimply teenager waiting with his mom to take his driver’s test? Nah. The loud, tattooed couple behind me who complained the whole time? Yeah right. Or the guy who carried on a loud conversation on his cell phone for one hour? Not a chance. My eyes settled on an old man who was missing a few teeth and looked like he could be homeless. He seemed deserving. When I finished up, I handed him my ticket. “This should help speed things along,” I said. He gave me a big, toothless grin. “I was number 08,” he said. I had bumped him up by 23.

I smiled on the way out the door. Charity doesn’t always have to be giving someone a dollar or a can of food. It can be as simple as saving someone an hour at the DMV.

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The Husband’s Guide to Changing Kitty Litter

June 10, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

With only a month to go until baby #3 arrives, I am going to relish in the one duty I have been temporarily relieved of: the dreaded task of changing the kitty litter. For those of you who don’t know, pregnant women are not supposed to get near kitty litter because there is a chance they could contract toxoplasmosis, which can then give their unborn child all sorts of nastiness, such as an aversion to baths, dogs and the constant need to enter any room with a closed door.

So while I have enjoyed the past 9 months of no kitty litter duty, I have not enjoyed watching Siig’s laborious process of changing the cat poop. For those men out there faced with 9 months of kitty litter duty, I graciously pass onto you Siig’s 10 steps for performing this noble task (women, forgive me):

1. Talk about changing the kitty litter for a minimum of three days. This will get you psyched up.

2. On day four, take the kitty litter box and put it on the deck. Let it sit there for a few days. If you are feeling ambitious, you can also place the tools you will need outside as well, such as garbage bag, shovel and new bag of kitty litter.

3. Turn on TV and sit on the couch. When you see the kitty crying because she can’t find her litter box, throw her outside as well. Tell your kids that, most likely, the coyotes won’t get her (unlike her sister).

4. When wife complains that the kitty litter box has been sitting outside for three days and has yet to be changed, inform her it’s all part of your master plan. You have done your research and the litter needs to dry out first before you can transfer it to a garbage bag.

5. Congratulate yourself that you are half-way done with this project. Grab a can of Coors from the fridge and stare at the kitty litter, now even heavier and wetter because of the recent rains. Give it the old college try and say you’ll do it tomorrow.

6. Ignore your wife when she tells you that she had to bring in the dirty kitty litter box last night, even though she’s 8 months pregnant, because the cat was driving her crazy. She tells you that if the baby comes out meowing and licking its private parts, it’s all your fault. Open another beer.

7. Day 7 – you are now ready to get to the heart of the project. Push up your sleeves and empty the old kitty litter into a garbage can. Let the empty litter box sit in the sun for another day. Be sure to leave the full garbage bag outside to annoy your wife and entice your curious cat to open it with its claws to inspect its own poop. Allow the mess to sit on the deck at least 1-2 days.

8. Drink three beers. Heavy sigh. Grab a broom and clean up the mess, yell at the cat for making your job more difficult, pour fresh kitty litter into the box. Leave everything on the deck, including beer cans.

9. Day 9 –  Look at the deck and realize none of the stuff is out there anymore. Your frustrated wife has brought in the kitty litter box, thrown away the garbage bag and empty bag of kitty litter. You wonder why she is looking at you with a scowl on her face. Everything has gone exactly according to plan.

10. Day 10 – Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. Tell yourself that if you keep up this pace, by the time you need to change the kitty litter again, your wife will already have given birth.

All part of the master plan.

Posted in Peaks & Valleys | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

Want to name my kid? Fork over the dough.

May 31, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

The saga of Kaya’s imaginary family continues (My daughter from another mother). Her siblings now have names. Big sister Violet, big brother Johnny and dog Dukey. Her occasional baby brother does not have a name, and of course her mom and dad are just ‘my other mommy and daddy.’

Then it hit me how she got all these names – they are all from cartoons or Barbie movies.

I feel like a really bad mom. OK, maybe a really pregnant, tired mom who is letting her children watch a bit too much TV so she can rest during the afternoon. So sue me. Better than sending them out to play in the middle of the street, right?

Violet is one of the mermaid’s names in the Barbie movie, “Mermaid Tale,” and Johnny and Dukey are from the cartoon “Johnny Test.” Oh, and Violet apparently works in a lab, just like the twin sisters from “Johnny Test.” Man, I really got to cut down their TV. Next month.

Along those lines, we might have to name this next child Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse. Or maybe we should just make it easy on ourselves and call it ‘Disney.’ Could be for a boy or a girl. Hey, maybe we would even get a corporate sponsorship and all the baby’s expenses would be funded by Disney as long as we dressed the child in a shirt advertising the company’s latest movie?

I think I have a winning idea here: selling the naming rights of your child just like people sell the right to name a stadium after whichever corporation puts up the dough. Our next child could be At&T or Dell or Apple (wait, that one’s taken). And, just as stadiums’ names can change, our child’s name would be up for grabs to the highest bidder his whole life. Well, at least until age 18. So he may be called McDonald’s for the first 5 years, and then Ford for the next five. Sure, that might give him a bit of an identity crisis, but that’s a small price to pay for a lifetime supply of free diapers and paid medical bills.

I think Sony Siig has a nice ring to it. We need a new DVD player anyways.

It’s either that or Pampers Huggies Siig.

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Would you eat this if you were me?

May 19, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

I am being overrun by two things – ants and hunger.

Unfortunately, I am not hungry for ants, or else I would probably be full. There are so many of them that I have almost come to regard them as annoying roommates – you’d like for them to go, but they live here so you might as well put up with them.

Sometimes I take that attitude. I see them scurrying around the living room floor, on the coffee table or on the wall, and I just say, “Good morning. Did you sleep good? Don’t forget to put your dishes in the dishwasher. And put a check for the electric bill on the table. And can you clean up the kids’ mess while you’re at it?”

Yeah, I wish. If they earned their keep and acted like little fairy godmothers and actually did something useful like tidying up the playroom I might not be tempted to crush the living shit out of them. Sometimes I’m lazy and just stare at them overtaking my house. But most of the time I’m on a mission. Rolled-up magazine in hand, I hunt those little fuckers down. Yesterday, I even broke out the vacuum and started sucking them up like some giant black hole had descended upon them. This is when it really pays off to have a 5-year old son who enjoys torturing insects. He likes to give the ants a slow, painful death by dissecting them with his Swiss army knife. I’m all for it.

Despite our many ways of killing them, the ants are still here. And it’s been nine months. I wrote about this problem before (Ant That Grand). We had someone come and spray in August, and again this winter. But it’s obviously not working. Yesterday I was laying on the couch watching TV when I heard this strange dripping sound that I couldn’t figure out. When I got up to pick up a bunch of the kids’ books that were on the floor, I discovered 15 ants crawling around. I think they had parachuted in on some kamikaze mission to drive me insane and totally gross me out. The ‘dripping’ sound was them landing on the books. I was mortified.

Unfortunately, the ants’ presence has done nothing to diminish my appetite. Eight months pregnant, and I am constantly hungry. I eat, and I’m hungry 30 minutes later. I stay up at night fantasizing about what is the most filling food I can find. I wake up at 4 am starving but too lazy to go upstairs to the kitchen. I would eat my comforter if it was edible.

Being this hungry all the time is work, I tell you. I think I now know what it must be like to be a 15-year old boy. Without the pimples and hard-ons.

What I need is a live-in chef and pest exterminator. They would be two separate positions, of course. I can’t have someone cooking me up ant stew. Unless it was super filling. And tasted like chicken.

Update: As I am writing this, I just spotted an ant for the first time ever in my bedroom. It crawled up on my desk. I think it was carrying a gun and threatening me. I squished it with a yellow sticky note that said “Die, ants, die!” Hope they got the message.

Posted in Mommahood, Peaks & Valleys | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

My daughter from another mother

May 9, 2010 by mountainmommamusings

My daughter is living in an alternate universe. With an alternate family.

Yup, according to Kaya, she has another family. Another mommy, daddy, and big brother, but her “other” family also includes a big sister and a dog. Fantasize much?

Her other family sounds really swell. They don’t yell. They let her eat all the candy she wants. And they don’t make her take baths. And her big sister teaches her Spanish and how to dance like the tribal Bunlap people we saw on the National Geographic Channel. (Kaya even got naked so she could really do the primitive dance correctly.)

I half expected to run into this “other” family one day, like that Seinfeld episode when Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George meet their Bizarro counterparts on the street. Of course, I would be much better looking than the alternative mommy. And she would be the pregnant one with 30 extra pounds on her and boobs the size of overripe melons.

It’s all fine and dandy to listen to your 3-year old go on and on about this other, new and improved family for a while. But then, after a few weeks, you can’t help but take it personally. “What, am I not good enough? Do I not give you enough love? Do I not get suckered enough times into buying you treats at the grocery store? Have I not bought you enough Barbie movies?”

Finally, one day when Kaya insisted that her other family was coming to pick her up and take her to her OTHER house (which I’m sure is much bigger, cleaner and pinker), I had had enough. She was sitting patiently by the front door waiting, and would have sat in the driveway if I would have let her. I remembered a story my mom told me about when she was 16 years old and ran away from home to a friend’s house, only to see a taxi pull up and drop a suitcase full of her clothes that her parents had packed for her. I thought about helping Kaya along in her quest to live with these obviously super-duper parents of her imagination and pack a bag for her, but then I remembered that she was only 3. Guess I’ll save that one for 13 years from now.

When I wouldn’t let her wait outside, she started insisting that I drive her to the bottom of our street to wait for her FAMILY. Hmmmm, I thought, I could just drop her off at the street corner and then I wouldn’t have to listen to her wax on and on about how great Mommy #2 is, but then I thought about the police showing up to my door with a pair of handcuffs in their hands and then my children really would be sent to live with another family, so I dropped that idea. Plus I didn’t want to see what car the “other” Daddy drove – probably a Porsche or a really nice Audi station wagon.

Then I realized the solution, the ultimate dare to see if Kaya really liked her alternative family better: “Fine, Kaya, then your other Mommy can take you to ballet.”

Silence. Then:

“Mommy, I’m just kidding. I don’t have another family. I love you.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Now get in the car and tell me what a great mother I am.” Or else I’m sending you to live with the Bunlap people and your boobs will be down to your belly button by the time your 20.

And don’t come crying to me for a bra. Because I’ll have given it to your Bizarro big sister. And all your Barbies too.

Posted in Mommahood | 3 Comments »

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