Growing Up Married

Smith has been the most incredible blessing to our entire family. I cannot imagine what life would be like without him and not a day goes by that I have not thanked God for him and his sweet personality.

I have failed as a mother. I have tried and tried and tried and tried. But no matter how hard I try I can never attain this unreachable goal; changing a poopy diaper while only using one wipe.

Whenever I see another mother changing a poopy diaper I watch closely as they wipe and fold and wipe and fold and finish with a flourish leaving behind not a trace of icky residue. Confident I can replicate their performance I attempt to use only one wipe when the next opportunity presents itself. I wipe and fold and wipe and fold and manage to only wipe up a fraction of poop and somehow smear the rest all over the legs and bum I have been attempting to expertly wipe. I shake the failure off and think “maybe I can do it with just two wipes! Its a start at least!”. Another wipe later and there still remains enough residue to give my little baby’s sweet bum a bad rash if left. Resigned, I pull out that magic third wipe and finish the job. Reluctantly I face that fact that, despite having changed hundreds of poopy diapers between my two children, I am completely incapable of using only one wipe to clean up a poopy bum.

At least until the next time I see that feat achieved by another mother and convince myself to try again.

I recently read Bossypants by Tina Fey. Its a good, quick and funny read (if you can get past the profanity. And I wouldn’t recommend it to my husband since she is a flaming liberal, the complete anti-thesis to Nic). I identified a lot with her references to the German part of her like the time when the cruise ship she was on caught on fire and they had to get to the life boats; “The German half of me is thinking, “Shove the old people out of the way. Shove the old and the infirm! If they are strong enough to resist you they deserve to live.” “. I think all of my Scandinavian friends would understand me better if they saw me through the lens of German thinking (this means you Molly!).

My favorite part of the book, by far, was her chapter on breastfeeding. For the most part I have have formula fed both of my children. Since I am surrounded by mostly middle class, college educated people and lots and lots of stay at home mom in the height (or I can only hope the height) of the helicopter mom/natural living/over informed age, I am one of the very few I know that does -gasp!- feed my child formula.

I have read a lot of articles about women who have tried breast-feeding and it has not worked and statistically a lot of women give up early on. However, my little corner of the earth somehow seems to have an insanely high amount of women who have not given up and successfully breastfed. Seriously, I only know of two people who have formula fed their children (one being my sister-in-law who came over and helped me and my mom when I decided to switch to formula with Remy. Neither my mom or I knew anything about making bottles!) I know what they all think of me  because its exactly what I thought of other women who formula fed before I had kids. Yes that needs to be italicized. To be honest, I will always regret that I didn’t breastfeed but I highly doubt that when my children are older they will say to me ; “Mom, you have been great and sacrificed a lot but the one area I think you really failed in is that you didn’t breastfeed. That really disappoints me.”.

But I digress. Here are a few excerpts from that chapter that I found to be highly entertaining.

“I chose to breast-feed, and it was an amazing time in my life. It really changed me as a woman, and its the most gratifying thing I have ever done.
There are a lot of different opinions as to how long one should breast-feed. The World Health Organization says six months. The American Association of Pediatrics says one year is ideal. Mothering magazine suggests you nurse the child until just before his rehearsal dinner. I say you must find what works for you. For my little angel and me the magic number was about seventy-two hours.”

She goes on to say that her baby was underweight and so they started supplementing with formula.

“She was small and I didn’t want her to get any smaller while I mastered the ancient art of breast-feeding to prove how incredible and impressive I am. Of course, I still provided her with breast milk. You must, must, must provide them with breast milk.”

She pumped for almost seven weeks before stopping.

“Shortly thereafter, we made the switch to an all-formula diet. If you’ve ever opened a can of infant formula mix, then you know it smells like someone soaked old vitamins in a bucket of wet leaves, then dried them in a hot car. Also, formula is like forty dollars a can. They keep it locked up behind the counter with the batteries and meth ingredients. That’s how bad people want this stuff!
However, the baby was thriving, I was no longer feeling trapped, spending thirty out of every ninety minutes attached to a Williams-Sonoma Tit Juicer. But I still had an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I had failed at something that was supposed to be natural. I was defensive and grouchy whenever the topic came up. At a party with a friend who was successfully nursing her little boy, I watched her husband produce a bottle of pumped breast milk that was the size of a Big Gulp. It was more milk than I produced in my whole seven weeks.”

“As my friends husband fed the baby, he said offhandedly, “This stuff is liquid gold. You know it actually makes them smarter?” “Lets set a date!” I screamed, “IQ test. Five years from today. My formula baby will crush your baby!”  Thankfully, my mouth was so full of cake they could not understand me.”

“Once I let go of my guilt, which took awhile, the only remaining obstacle was the Teat Nazis. These are the women who not only brag endlessly about how much their five year old still loves breast milk, but they also grill you about you choices. You can recognize the TNs by their hand-carved daggers:
“Are you breast-feeding? Isn’t it amazing? I really think it’s how I lost weight so easily. Did you have a vaginal birth? I went natural and I didn’t even tear. Are you back at work already? Do you feel weird about going back to work? I just love my baby so much I can’t imagine going back to work yet. You’re not nursing? She’s only fifteen months; you should try again!”

Now, let me be clear; millions of women around the world nurse their children beautifully for years without giving anybody else a hard time about it. Teat Nazis are a solely western upper-middle-class phenomenon occuring when highly ambitious women experience deprivation from outside modes of achievement.

“Lesson learned? When people say, “You really, really must” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When its true, it doesn’t need to be said.”

It was in the 70’s today. In March. Unless you live in this particular region of the Midwest you probably wouldn’t understand why this is a big deal. Usually this time of year has us bracing for the umpteenth snow storm, moaning about how we can’t wait for winter to be over. Not this year! I’m not naive enough to think that there is not a chance we won’t get more snow but this weather is so heavenly it is hard to be pessimistic.

I took the boys for a walk today and Smith had his first swing experience. Well, unless you count the time Nic heard Smith laughing hysterically and Remy saying “Ready? READY?!!” and came around the corner just in time to see Remy pulling Smith, in his Johnny Jump-Up, as far back as he could (think a rubber sling shot) so he could let him swing violently back in forth. Thank goodness Smith seems to be more adventerous than Remy was and was loving every minute of it. So in comparison to that, this was rather tame.

Smith is such a laid back child.

Remy did try to get in on the action but I stepped in before any damage could be done.

As I alluded to above, Remy is not a very adventerous soul. He is getting a little better as he gets older but he is almost excessively cautious. Slides have always been scary for him and it was not until the very end of last summer that he started getting outside his comfort zone a little. I thought, since he is physically bigger than he was last year, he would be over his fear of slides by this spring. Especially since he seemed to be fairly comfortable with big slides by fall.

Nope.

He chose to go down the toddler slides for 90% of the time we were at the playground.

In this picture he is looking at the bigger slides and I can almost hear his little mind going a mile a minute trying to decide if he is brave enough or big enough to tackle them.

I don’t have any pictures of him on the big slide because I was holding Smith by that point but I am proud of him for sucking it up and doing something he was not very comfortable with. At one point I had coaxed him into sitting at the top of one of the larger slides and he sat there for a split second before saying “I feel a little frightened, Mama” and standing up and walking away. I just love his vocabulary.

In my previous post about Pinterest I alluded to the Ryan Gosling pictures that get pinned. There are tons of Ryan Gosling pictures with quotes, all beginning with “Hey Girl” and going on to say something no heterosexual man would say. Here is a link to a few funny ones. I believe the whole Hey Girl thing started on a blog somewhere but I am too lazy to look for the original blog. Feel free to Google it.

The very first picture on the post I linked too I had shared with Nic because I thought it was hilarious. Recently I received this text from Nic while I was at work.

“Hey Girl! Why don’t you browse Pinterest tonight while I cook and clean and take care of the kids…”

I just about fell of my chair laughing. (For the record that is not what happened when I got home)

I tend to think its dumb when people post a million pictures of their kids doing the same thing in slightly different poses but I just couldn’t resist posting these since they are all so cute.

Smith got some really fun books for Christmas and he loves them and is very serious about turning the pages if he can get his hands on them.

(Sorry about how dark some of the pictures are. I wasn’t able to lighten them up without them looking really wonky.)

Just a post to remember our first time snowmobiling with Remy.

I, like most females of my age with access to the internet, love Pinterest. I spend a lot of my relaxing time poking around on that site. I heard somewhere (but don’t remember where, probably Pinterest) that it is like a magazine that always has something new every time you open its pages.

Going to the main page of Pinterest is a little like people watching except instead of just seeing people walking around you get a little peek into their mind. Their interest, hobbies, style and passion. In the brief (or not so brief, according to Nic) time I have spent looking around I have started to see a pattern of people who use Pinterest.

There are the wives and mommy’s like me who obsessively pin recipes, diy projects and clothing we can’t afford. We pin pictures of houses that are clean and beautiful, the occasional Ryan Gosling picture and a ridiculous amount of Toms  (Most of the people I actually follow fall into this category).

Then there are a handful of people who only pin quotes, some who pin beautiful photography and a growing number of people who pin items from their own websites, be it blogs or business, which annoys me probably more than it should. Part of the fun of Pinterest is people pin something neat/fun/interesting that they found while trolling the web and want to remember. If you are pinning something to promote your blog or business it doesn’t mean that it is something neat/fun/interesting, just that you want to promote it while no one else may really care. There are many more types of people who frequent Pinterest but lets move on to my two favorites.

First we have the people, girls I should say, who pin pictures to “My Style” boards. How these pictures make it onto those boards I have no idea since the amount of clothing worn is scant at best. One of the most recent ones I saw was a teeny weeny bikini bottom paired with a cropped, off the shoulder t-shirt which the model was wearing while casually posing in the middle of the street. O ya, I totally wear that get up while I’m out  for a stroll around the neighborhood.

Last we have the people who are focused on losing weight. There are two kinds in this group. The first, dutifully pins healthy recipes (along with the occasional irresistible sweet treat), links to workouts and inspiring quotes about how “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Then there is the second type; they obsessively pin half (or more) naked people posed in ridiculous photos, like the one of a girl with her back to the camera, topless, while wearing boxing gloves and a pair of itty bitty underwear. This photos are usually tagged with phrases like; “inspiration to lose weight” or “bucket list: have a body like this”. Well, honey I can tell you right now, boxing topless is unrealistic at any weight.

(If you want to follow what I pin you can find me here)