Considering a third baby? Read this.

If you are even considering getting pregnant with a third child, it is important for you to know certain things.

Needless to say, I won't be the only one warning you about how your life will change once the third baby arrives. You will get many warnings about life with three kids, both warranted and unwarranted, from many different people. 

When you go to the bank in the third trimester of your third pregnancy, the bank teller will smile sweetly at you and ask you if you are expecting your first baby. When you smile back sheepishly and tell her that you are expecting your THiRD child, her expression will change. She will know the balance in your savings account, and she will suddenly be telling you with her eyes that you CANNOT afford a third child. 

She may be right.

When you and your family bravely go to Chuck E. Cheese one night for dinner during your thirty seventh week of pregnancy, the manager will specifically come over to you, corner you, and tell you with a very tired face that he too has three children. He will share with you that he is working seven jobs including this one, just so he can send his children to college. He will say that the third child changed EVERYTHING, and you will sense that he does not mean "change" in an amazing, exciting, revelatory way. 

He may be right.

Many many other people will warn you that you and your husband are about to be to be outnumbered, as if you and your children are at war with one another, and you are about to LOSE that war.

They may also be right. 

Listen. Having a baby, whether it be your first or your ninth, is always incredible. Babies are beautiful creatures. Everything they do, even the expressions they make when they are farting, is adorable. There is no denying the cuteness. But no matter how cute that baby is, the reality of life with three kids is pretty UN-cute.

For instance, your day is going to begin at 3:30 a.m. No, you are not suddenly going to become a morning news reporter. You probably chose not to pursue news reporting as a career because you specifically wanted to avoid having to wake up at 3:30 a.m. And yet... Your adorable baby will wake you up at 3:30 am, screaming for nourishment.  You will feed him, burp him, change his diaper, and rock him back to sleep. At 4:30 am, your middle child will wake up, completely convinced it is time for breakfast. You will show him the dark sky outside his bedroom window, tuck him back into bed, kiss him on the forehead, and tell him not to open his eyes for another three hours. By about 4:45, you will JUST be falling back to sleep when your oldest child will wake up, begging you to help her find her iPad so she can watch YouTube videos of things being made out of Play Doh. At 5:15, your middle child will wake up again, and will threaten to cry loud enough to wake the baby if you don't bring him downstairs for breakfast immediately. So you will bring him downstairs and you will feed him Cocoa Puffs.

Also, you are going to immediately brew a very BIG pot of coffee. You are going to drink 3/4 of the pot before 6 am.

Getting your family out the door of your home is going to take 27 days of planning. You will need maps, strategies, back-up plans, emergency contacts, and a member of the military to make it happen. Your eldest child will somehow forget to wear socks or shoes. Your middle child will wear all of his clothes backwards, will take fifty seven hours to decide what he wants to bring to school for show and tell, and will suddenly want to talk to you about every rock in your front yard before he gets into the mini van. Your baby will hate his car seat so much and will cry so hard it will make him spit up all over his onesie and blanket, so you will have to change him, and then you will get him back into his car seat just in time for him to poop in his diaper.

You will have exactly thirty four seconds to get your own body ready to leave the house in the morning. Your self-maintenance routine will have to be uber efficient, and will need to be able to be completed during the time you are idling in your mini van at a red light or stop sign. You will keep your deodorant and your eyeliner in your pocketbook and you will not care that the man in the car next to you is staring at you as you stick your left hand under your right armpit while applying your eyeliner with your right hand.

You are going to need to make sure your place of employment offers a very liberal "sick day" policy, because for 359 days out of the year, at least one of your children will be ill with something very highly contagious. On the days when your children are NOT deathly ill, you will go to work feeling like you are going to accomplish a lot. Twenty minutes later, the principle of your eldest child's school will call to tell you your daughter stuck a bead up her nose and they can't get it out. 

You will know all of the names of all of the staff at the pediatrician's office. You will have a chair that you consider YOUR chair at the pediatrician's office. You will seriously consider bringing a sleeping bag and camping out in the hallway outside the pediatrician's office just so you can save on gas.

You are no longer going to eat at meal times. Dinner will be spent holding and feeding your baby with one hand while pouring ketchup, buttering noodles, cleaning juice spills, cutting chicken, peeling apples, and wiping faces with your other hand. If you intend to eat, you will need to make yourself a plate of something edible, hide it under your shirt, and sneak into the bathroom to eat it in under four minutes. You will need to learn to consume food without ever needing to actually chew it. 

Also, your eldest child will become obsessed with collecting very teeny tiny toys that are exactly the right size for your baby to choke on.

Also, your two older children will love coming up with new fun games like "let's see who can stick their fingers as far into the baby's eyes as possible" or "who can break the baby swing by using it as a human catapult?"

Getting all three of your children to bed is going to take eight and a half hours. You will need to fill up 2 water bottles, break up six arguments over who gets to play with what toy during bathtime, brush 40 teeth, read 81 books, and sing 172 lullabies. Your eldest will try on seven different pairs of pajamas before settling on the ones she wants. Your middle child will ask 2,693 questions about the universe. Your baby will spit out his pacifier nine million times and cry every single time it happens.

And finally, at 1:37 am, you will feel relaxed enough to watch a few seconds of TV and fall into a deep, deep slumber, until you are once again woken at 3:30 am.

And yet, despite this crazy life, you will have zero regrets. Why? Because everything that third baby does is going to be absolutely adorable.

Party of Five

'

And then there were five of us. 

It's still so strange to me, because for many minutes of almost every day, I still feel like I am my twelve year old self... Just with a job and a few wrinkles and car keys and a mortgage... And THREE kids. THREE.

In the months leading up to Erez's birth, I was told by many friends, acquaintances and strangers that the third child CHANGES EVERYTHING. I was told that my husband and I would henceforth be outnumbered and powerless in our own household, that we would instantly age by about ten years, and that the only way to get through parenting more than two children is to not care about anything. I always half believed these folks and half thought "meh, it can't be THAT bad!"

And it's not. THAT. BAD. But in the month since Erez was born, I have come to nickname our home "Casa de Chaos" as a term of endearment. Our bundle of joy came with a bundle of adjustments for everyone in our family, and we are all still acclimating, slowly but surely.

Erez himself is adorable. He is tiny, cuddly, sounds like a pug dog, and has eyes that seem to fill up his entire face. For the first week of his life, Erez was such a super calm baby that I almost thought something might be wrong with him. Then I brought him home from the hospital.

I honestly feel bad for the kid. He went from the cushy warmth and serenity of my womb to the quiet sterile tranquility of the hospital to the absolute madness of our home. His siblings love to get right up in his face and squeal at him or shake things at him, try to dance with his tiny body, and seem to have screaming contests whenever he is trying to nap. 

And then there are the digestive issues. His first formula made him gassy and fussy. The second formula made him constipated and fussy. He went from being a happy baby to a very very sad and cranky baby right around week three, I believe mostly because his system just wasn't dealing with the nourishment he was taking in. The third formula seems to have made him a much happier, calmer baby again. Fingers crossed. 

Generally, Erez seems like my "old soul" baby. I can't quite describe why I feel this way, and maybe my perception will change as he grows, but his little face seems wise, serious, concerned. He smiled at me this morning and I was so thrown for a loop, because I have gotten so used to his furrowed brow and pensive expressions.

As for the rest of us, well, Oren probably had the worst of it. He went from being my baby boy to needing to compete for lap time and hugs. Shortly after Erez came home, Oren started waking frequently at night, having more nightmares, throwing more tantrums, getting more boo boos, and just generally being super sensitive. He seems to have settled in to the new normal a bit and the anxiety seems to be waning, but my heart definitely broke a little bit for him. If I could somehow add hours to the day, I would add an hour where I could just hug Oren and make sure he knows that he is (and will always be) my beautiful little boy.

Ember has been awesome. She has taken on the role of older older sister like a champion. She wants to hug the baby, feed the baby, carry the baby, and I think she thinks she could do a better job than me raising Erez. She has acclimated and compromised without much fuss, just the occasional need for lots of attention. Her ability to adapt to a pretty enormous change has really impressed me.

Chris is doing well, other than continuing his ongoing battle to get adequate sleep. He has been an amazing partner, doing all the stuff I have no time to do anymore, kissing my forehead and hugging me when I seem overwhelmed, and keeping this parenting gig light and fun and silly, even in the stressful moments. It goes without saying that I wouldbe nowhere without him. Actually, scratch that. I would totally be in an asylum without him.

And me? After getting over the initial shock of what it is like to care for three kids, I am doing really well. I'm finding my groove. Yes, I still spend a great deal of my time feeling guilty over my inability to breastfeed the baby, over my upcoming return to work and Erez's daycare attendance at such a super young age, over my lack of availability to Ember and Oren, over my talent for eating a crap ton of chocolate even as I finally attempt to reclaim my body after five years of pregnancies and surgeries. The list of things I feel guilty about is truly endless. But I have always been rather good at beating myself up over things I both can and can't control. The good news is I am also getting better at recognizing my own limitations, patting myself on the back for staying sane and positive (most of the time), and appreciating all that I have, which is SO VERY much, especially now that we are a party of five.

Standardizing Emmy

Chris and I got called in to Em’s school today to talk to her teacher and pre-school director about some recent observations they have had regarding Emmy. When I got the email, asking if we had time to come in and talk, I totally panicked. Millions of questions ran through my head: Is Em acting out? Are other kids picking on her? Is she light years behind her peers in her academic development? Has she started screaming “I hate mommy!” and running through the school halls naked? Is she starting a coup d’etat among the four year olds?

As it turns out, they told us Emmy runs funny. Em’s teacher and pre-school director informed us that the PT worker at the school had noticed Ember turns her feet inward when she moves quickly. She also seems to have some balance issues (which we have witnessed around the house, too, sometimes). She also doesn’t hold a marker or scissors the way they want her to. She also doesn't finish puzzles as quickly as other kids...?

And because she does not run perfectly, or hold her marker or scissors perfectly, or balance perfectly, they are recommending that Em be screened by our school district to see if she qualifies for physical therapy.

My first reaction to this was absolute relief. What they were telling us was NOT any of the horror stories I had conjured up in my head. And they went on to tell us that emotionally and socially, Em is well-adjusted. She is doing really well with her learning, and the teacher has seen lots of development across the board as she has transitioned from a three year old to a four year old. Awesome.

She is just a little… klutzy? Unique? Not perfect?

And now I am wondering, a few hours later - is it necessary to screen Ember, just because she runs a little funny? Isn’t it okay that she holds her marker in a creative way? Aren’t these things she might just grow out of eventually? Aren’t these the little imperfections that make her unique, and cute, and maybe a little silly as a four year old? Do they need to be trained out of her?

I’m torn. On one hand, I don’t want Em to trip over her own feet all the time, of course. I would kind of like her to hold her marker the right way, the way the other kids do. And I am so appreciative that the school teachers and staff are REALLY observing and noticing Emmy and offering us their observations.

But on the other hand, I feel like this screening is just another way that the education system is set up to “standardize” our kids, making sure they all write the same way, read the same way, think the same way, and act the same way. It makes me think of my parents’ era, when being left-handed was thought of as a bad thing, something you needed to be trained out of.  Why? Was it SO necessary that there be NO left handed people in America? And now, is it SO necessary that my daughter run exactly how the other kids run, with their toes pointed straight forward?

Do I think the screening is going to harm Emmy? Of course not. Do I think it may actually be helpful? Kind of. I am curious to know what an objective “screener” sees in our daughter that we fail to see, because of our proximity to her and our love for her. But do I think Em really needs therapy to train her out of her slightly silly run? I’m not sold on it. Yet.

You Know You Are a Sleep-Deprived Parent When…

You pour milk over a bowl full of chocolate covered espresso beans and tell your kids you are eating cereal for breakfast.

You let your daughter go to daycare looking like this:


You try convincing your toddler that the best game in the world is the “who can sleep the longest” game.

You are quite certain Dora the Explorer knows the true meaning of life, but she is refusing to share her secrets.

You start envying dead people because of all the rest they are getting.

You spend your lunch break trying to convince the barristas at Starbucks that they need to invent something MUCH larger than a Venti or Trenta.

You start rationalizing that it wouldn’t be TOO TERRIBLE if you just took a quick catnap while your toddler and baby are taking a bath.
 
While changing the baby, you briefly contemplate adding a “weird looking baby poop” page to your Pinterest page because you think your friends would enjoy it.

Your breastmilk comes out looking and smelling like a latte.

You realize you have spent the last forty minutes daydreaming about dreaming.

You realize you have spent the last forty minutes daydreaming about dreaming.

In your blog post about sleep deprivation, you repeat the same sentence twice. And you are too lazy to fix it.
 
Your child asks you why your eyes make you look like a scary monster.

Your daughter asks you to play with her My Little Pony dolls, and you spend the entire time pretending your little pony is in a coma.

 

Too Many Mornings Like This Morning

I just feel like there have been too many mornings like this morning.

Mornings following horror and tragedy.

I fell asleep last night while watching the news (again). I fell asleep while watching more images of people running in fear, and more images of smoke and ambulances and tears. I fell asleep to the sound of more news pundits interviewing more eyewitnesses and more terror experts.

I fell asleep with my arms wrapped more tightly around my children (again).

How many times has this happened now? Too many times. I don’t want to count.

There have been too many mornings like this. Mornings where I have to quickly switch from the news to Dora the Explorer, so my toddler won’t have to see the images of broken things and broken people. So she won’t start asking questions about accidents and boo boos. So I won’t have to answer questions that she shouldn’t have to ask.

What bothers me the most is I feel myself getting USED to this kind of morning. I feel my brain and body slowly acclimating to news of terror. I feel my heart responding to this kind of news with a sort of:

“Oh no. Again?”

“Again.”

“Senseless killing?”

“Yes, again.”

“Children killed?”

“Yes, again.”

And then I have to go about my day, with a sense of sadness that will slowly fade, with a sense of heartache for people I do not know but can imagine knowing. And with a sinking feeling, knowing that another morning like this will happen again, probably all too soon.

A Garden of Our Own

One of my favorite childhood memories is of helping my father with backyard gardening chores. I loved pulling up weeds (yeah, I’m a little weird), digging holes for seeds, and of course watching the itsy bitsy sprouts grow into big, vegetable-producing plants. Finding a juicy red ripe tomato hidden among tangled vines was such a rewarding feeling (I didn’t even LIKE tomatoes as a kid. I actually kind of DETESTED the quasi-fruit, but harvesting them was a whole different story).

Ever since Em’s birth, I have been eagerly anticipating the time when Em and I could begin working on a garden together. Maybe because of my own fond memories, I’ve always envisioned gardening as an amazing parent/child activity. I have fantasized about showing Em how to dig little holes with her plastic spade, guiding her as she pours the seeds down into the dug up holes, and teaching her how to care for growing herbs and vegetables with a little water and a lot of love and patience.

But sad truth be told, I’ve never been a “green thumb” kind of a gal. Actually, as much as I love the IDEA of gardening, I’ve been a notorious houseplant killer. Really. Philodendron quake with fear whenever they see me approaching.

When I got pregnant with Em, I was actually quite scared that my lack of ability to take care of a houseplant would translate into my being a very unfit mother. I was seriously worried. I mean, if I couldn’t even remember to water a few plants once or twice a week, how on earth was I going to remember to feed and change my daughter multiple times EVERY SINGLE DAY??

Needless to say, I’ve managed to do a better job at mothering my child than I have ever done caring for a spider plant. Through parenting, I feel like I’ve matured into a more responsible human being, and have developed a much better sense of caring for other people AND various other living objects. Ok, sure, sometimes I still forget to water our houseplants, but I’m a heck of a lot better than I used to be.

So this past weekend, I decided to challenge myself, and give this whole mama/daughter gardening thing a whirl, despite my not-so-glorious plant-y past. Of course, I didn’t want to overwhelm either myself or Emmy with a daunting project. I figured it best to start small-scale, and if we were successful in our endeavors, we would expand upon our successes.

My plan? We would build a little 4 foot by 4 foot raised bed garden. I figured even Em and I could manage a plot of land that teeny.

Early Saturday morning, Em and I went to the gardening store, and purchased a raised bed kit (interlocking planks of cedar wood that can easily be expanded with the help of additional kits). As I grilled the woman behind the counter with lots of Gardening 101 questions about which vegetables were easiest to plant and how deep the soil had to be laid down to ensure an ideal growing environment, Em got busy rearranging all of the store’s colorful seed packets (don’t worry, I put them back in their proper places afterwards). I decided that for this year, with our theme being “low maintenance, low expectations,” I would only choose vegetables that could be sown directly into the ground, not those that would require initial indoor germination followed by transplantation to the garden bed outside. As much as I really wanted to plant tomatoes (they are now of course one of my favorite veggies), I recognize that choosing complicated, high-maintenance vegetables would have doomed our little garden to sure failure.

When we got home, Em and I went immediately to the backyard, where I assembled the raised bed kit while Emmy played nearby with her Little Tikes waterpark (Hello, GODSEND! Em LOVES her waterpark. I feel like I owe Little Tikes a huge favor)! I then got to work shoveling up dirt, inviting Em to join me. Emmy enthusiastically participated, bringing her little plastic shovel over, filling it with dirt, and pouring the dirt into her waterpark pool (oyyy). Em quickly became covered head-to-toe in muddy water, but she was enjoying herself so thoroughly, and seemed to be taking her dirt removal job so seriously. I wasn’t about to rain on her mud parade.

Lugging six forty pound bags of soil from the garage to the waaay back of our backyard wasn’t easy, but Em helped mama “drag and dump” to the best of her ability (a.k.a, holding on to the bottom corner of the bag, trying to bite it open with her teeth). It was a team effort, of sorts. And after all the soil was laid down within the confines of the raised bed’s 4 foot by 4 foot parameters, Em and I patted the dirt down with our hands, singing a little song as we worked.

At the end of the morning, with dirt stuck deep under our fingernails, and with our clothes and shoes encrusted with soil and grime, Em and I said goodbye to the beginnings of our little garden. We went inside our house for a well-deserved, long, hot shower. The whole process was far more exhausting than I had imagined, but also far more exhilarating. As I had been working with Em on our little outdoor project, I started getting this “I want to do this ALL THE TIME” feeling. And I’m pretty sure Emmy liked it just as much as I did.

The whole gardening experience was so much fun that after Emmy woke up from her nap that afternoon, we ran out to the store to buy ANOTHER raised-garden kit. I know! What was I saying about “low maintenance, low expectations”?

Baaaaaah, Em and I have got this whole gardening thing IN THE BAG. I wouldn’t even be surprised if one of my thumbs start turning a greenish hue.

Do you have any tips for the first time gardener? Have you had success with a raised bed garden? I am open to any and all suggestions that will help our garden grow (as long as they aren’t too complicated)….

A Day Will Come...

I know a day will come when Em will no longer find my funny faces very funny
And I know a day will come when she no longer wants to hold on tight to my finger when we visit the playground
And I know a day will come when Em no longer hugs me with her entire body
And I know a day will come when her chicken costume will no longer fit
And I know the day will come when she will understand all of the words I speak
And I know a day will come when peekaboo will be passé
And I know a day will come when she no longer wants to sing along with me in the car
And I know a day will come when Em no longer puts bowls on her head and pretends they are hats
And I know a day will come when she tells me she is too big for lullabyes
And I know a day will come when Em no longer finds bubbles to be completely fascinating
And I know a day will come when Em won’t need me to push her in the swing
And I know a day will come when our hands will be the same size
And I know a day will come when she won’t run to me each time she bumps or bruises
And I know a day will come when Em will think of dirt as dirty, and not as so much fun
And I know a day will come when she will outgrow my lap

I try not to ask for a lot, but please, please, don’t let these days come quickly. I am loving THIS day too much.

Be Careful!!

When we became pregnant with Em, C and I had some long heart-to-hearts about our parenting philosophies. We agreed on a great deal of the essentials: we’d try to breastfeed, we wouldn’t spank as punishment, we would cloth diaper (ok, that didn’t happen, but we THOUGHT we would be able to do it), etc.

We also agreed that as parents, we would try as best as we could to avoid overuse of the word “no”. It’s not that the word “no” was to be BANNED from our household by any means. We just thought that rather than saying “Emmy, no!” whenever she tried to do something unwise, like stick her hand in the toilet, we would EXPLAIN the situation and try to reason with her, a la “Emmy, toilet water is stinky. If you stick your hand in the toilet, you will get stinky too!” or we would OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE, a la “Emmy, rather than sticking your hand in the toilet, why don’t you stick your hand under this running faucet of fantastically sparkling clean water?” Our general fear was that if we overused the word “no,” Emmy would become immune to it, which could eventually get us into parental hot water.

I have to say, I think we’ve done a pretty good job at using our “no”s with discretion and caution. *Pat, pat, pat.*

But I was TOTALLY unprepared for the massive amounts of “be careful!”s that have been streaming out of my mouth like hot lava for the past several months.

The other day, I decided to try and monitor how many situations a day warrant my saying “be careful” to Em. What I discovered wasn’t pretty. It went a little something like this:

6:30 AM: “Emmy, BE CAREFUL getting out of bed. Scoot your tushy backwards and climb down. That’s right. Good girl!”

6:45 AM: “Emmy, BE CAREFUL with that hand! Mama is changing you and if you put your hand down there it is going to get full of poopy! Be careful, Em. Careful! Emmy, BE CARE… ugghh…”

7:30 AM: “Emmy, even though Mommy lets you walk around the yard before getting into the car, it doesn’t mean you can run into the street. You have to BE CAREFUL!”

8:45 AM: “You have to treat your books nicely, Emmy. We don’t THROW books, we read them. You have to BE CAREFUL with your books” (honestly, the word “books” in this last sentence could be replaced with one of many words: dolls, food, clothes, blocks… you name it. Em is knee-deep in an annoying throwing phase.

10:00 AM: “Em, please BE CAREFUL with your crackers. Don’t stuff them all in your mouth at one time. You will choke and then mama will be sad.”

10:15 AM: “You have to BE CAREFUL coming down the stairs Emmy. You can’t just run off a step like you are Wylie Coyote. Do you know what happens to Wylie Coyote? He goes SPLAT! I don’t want you to go SPLAT!”

11:00 AM: “Em, we have to BE CAREFUL not to eat dirt. We PLAY in dirt. Even though dirt sometimes looks like crushed up Oreo cookies, we should really not put it in our mouths, ok?”

11:45 AM: “Are you going to feed yourself? Ok, that’s great. Just BE CAREFUL not to put the spoon in your ear… or your hair, Emmy… awwwww, too late! The spoon is on your head. Guess we’re taking another shower..”

12:30 PM: “Em, BE CAREFUL with that toothbrush. You keep gagging yourself because you stick it all the way back in your mouth. Why do you do that, you crazy kid?!”

And that is a portrait of only HALF of our day. By the time dinnertime rolled around, I’m pretty sure I used about 837 “be careful”s. If there was a charge associated with using these words, I’d have some SERIOUS debts to pay off.

My fear is that, if I keep up this verbal habit, the words “be careful” are going to lose their sense of gravity, and Em will start ignoring them. So what do I do? Do I stop using these words?

Maybe I should mix it up, and say “Be wary, dear Emmy” or “Caution, little one!” or “Thou art engaging in dangerous behaviors, my sweet petunia,” even though saying these things will make me sound like I work at a Renaissance Faire?

Or maybe I should come up with a hand motion that signals “be careful”? But if I use the instinctive fingers-together-and-palm-facing-forward technique, Emmy will just slap me five, and mistakenly think I am encouraging whatever it is she is doing.

Or maybe I should just start saying “no” more often??

Sigh. This mothering business is so very COMPLICATED.

Any suggestions from mamas out there? Have you overcome an acute case of the “be careful”s? Looking forward to hearing from ya.

What’s On Your Lullabye Playlist?

I’m not a major music buff or anything but, like pretty much everyone else on earth, I have playlists for a wide variety of occasions. I’ve got a playlist for exercising, a playlist for long road trips, a playlist for getting ready to go out on a Saturday night (haven’t heard THOSE tunes in a few years.. meh), a playlist for my eventual funeral (see here)… just to name a few.

When it comes to putting Em to sleep at night, I’ve got a playlist for that, too. Ever since Emmy was a tiny little baby, I have lulled her to sleep with my best renditions of songs I love. And because she is a tiny tot, with limited verbal communication, she cannot yet yell at me and tell me that I am ruining a classic, or subtly put her hand up against my mouth and tell me to “shush”.

So my current lullabye playlist includes Cyndi Lauper (True Colors), Coldplay (Fix You – I dare you to try singing this song to your baby without bawling into their hairy little head!), Peter, Paul and Mary (Michael Row the Boat Ashore, one of my mom’s favorites), Joni Mitchell (Circle Game – another one my mom used to sing to us girls all the time), and the Beatles (Black Bird). I’ve also fallen in love with EVERY song sung by Elizabeth Mitchell (wonder goddess of children’s tunes), and thus have added I’ve Got Peace Like a River, Three Little Birds (well.. this is actually a remake of Bob Marley’s beautiful hit), and Little Bird, Little Bird to my mix (hey, self, what’s with all the bird songs?).

But because my lullabye playlist consists of only about ten songs, its starting to feel (and sound) a little stale. So I am turning to you for inspiration. Can you suggest songs that are lovely and meaningful for me to sing to Em? Be kind, cause there’s NO WAY I can do justice by Whitney Houston, Barbara Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, or anyone who has the vocal chords of a heavenly being.

I look forward to hearing from you…

The Best Parenting Invention EVER

Emmy just got her 82nd cold of the season. The poor little bugger was up most of the night coughing and choking on her own mucus (which meant I was up most of the night trying to get her body in an upright position so she could sleep better). This morning her face was just a mess of teething drool and runny nose, and I couldn’t tell what was what. It was slightly funny, and also terribly disgusting.

Judging from this past winter’s illnesses, Em’s germs are going to behave like college students on spring break, and will bar hop from her body to my body, and then on to my husband’s, and my in-laws’. And then I, being the generous woman that I am, will come into work and touch all of my co-workers’ doorknobs , spreading the little germies throughout my office (unintentionally, of course). Because why keep the joyful celebration of a cold to limited to my immediate family? Why not give EVERYONE a reason to stay home and use their Neti Pot?

It’s not that I don’t take precautionary measures – I do! As soon as Em shows signs of sickness, I start scrubbing my hands like Lady Macbeth. But let’s face it. When Em is sick, I have to wipe her nose about 429 times a minute, and I can’t wash my hands after every wipe. And so it is that in the battle of mama vs. germies, the germies have come out victorious about 99% of the time.

Which is why, as I lay awake in bed last night, listening to the snorts and wheezes of my adorable girl, I came up with the idea for this invention:

I call it THE TISSUE BOX HEAD and I believe it is going to revolutionize the entire parenting experience.

The minute your child begins to sniffle, you strap this hard hat on to their head and secure it tightly. For the duration of the cold, you sit back, relax, and read a novel while the mechanical arms take care of all of the dirty work. Back and forth they go, grabbing a tissue, and wiping your loved one’s teeny but oh-so-lethal snout. The adjustable speed control allows you to choose how many nose wipes your child receives per minute, so you don’t have to worry about keeping up with endless flow. Your fingers remain germ-free and happy! It’s a miracle!

And just think of how popular your child will be at daycare, when they show up with a contraption like this sitting on their head. All the kids in their class are going to want one! Soon every child around the globe will be wearing one, and VOILA(!) the germ warfare that we are so used to in daycare settings will once and for all be conquered. Parents worldwide will be able to MAKE AND KEEP their vacation plans.

Now, I know you are thrilled beyond belief at the prospect of buying THE TISSUE BOX HEAD for your own child, but unfortunately you are going to have to be a little patient. There are a few little “kinks” I have to work out before I apply for the patent. For instance, the prototype I have come up with weighs in at a mere 80 pounds (I’d like to try to get it down to 60), and the mechanical arms keep trying to poke my daughter’s eyes out. But once I DO get all the glitches worked out, I’m taking this little wonder hat straight to the Shark Tank. I know at least a few of those business moguls have kids, so it’s hard to imagine I would walk away without a deal.

From Bibbity Bobbity to Bowm Chicka Bowm Bowwwm

I don’t know about other new parents, but for me and C, finding time to be romantic with one another has been SUCH a challenge since the birth of our daughter. I mean, between the diaper changes and the breastfeeding and getting applesauce off of the couch, our lifestyle doesn’t exactly “set the mood,” you know? The smooth tones of Barry White have been replaced by Barney’s goofy drawl, and the general vibe in our house is much more “bibbitty bobbity boo” than it is “bowm chicka bowm bowwwm”.

To be honest, we’ve kind of hit the “snooze” button on THAT part of our relationship for the past seventeen months (e-gads). My husband and I have continually spoken about reintroducing the romance in our lives, and how we really need to get our collective mojo going again. But despite our good intentions, we’ve spent most of our Emmy’s-asleep-NOW-what-are-we-gonna-do hours either watching t.v. (holding hands) or engrossed in our own reading, writing, etc. (not holding hands).

Em’s sleeping habits have become more consistent these last few weeks, and we can (FINALLY) rely on her STAYING asleep for at least 2 to 3 hours before her first nighttime waking. So the big excuse that we used to use, which was “what if the baby wakes up while we are ahem aheming?” is no longer valid.

The thing is, come 8:00 p.m., C and I are both EXHAUSTED. We are mentally, physically, AND emotionally depleted from our workdays, from getting chores done, and from caring for Emmy. We’ve got nothing left to give. We’ve turned into amoebas. And as much as we’d LIKE to spend some quality time with one another, it is hard for an amoeba to feel hot and frisky.
But rather than making up NEW excuses, and despite the fact that I feel like a one-celled organism, I find myself wanting to overcome all the obstacles. Dang it, this amoeba needs to get her FREAK ON.

I want my husband back. I want to know him again, not just as the guy who does a great job chasing Emmy around and cleaning the kitchen and raking the yard, but as the guy who is a great kisser, and the guy whose arms I love wrapped around my body. I want to spend less of our limited time together talking about how many poops Emmy had, and more time DOING ANYTHING more romantic than talking about toddler poop.

So I’m making efforts. But it’s not easy. Even when we dim the lights, and draw the shades, and put on some sweet music, it takes me quite a while to switch gears. When my husband and I start kissing, I’m still thinking about what I am going to pack for Emmy’s lunch the next day. And the shopping list. And whether I’ll have any clean clothes to wear to work. I’d say it takes a good five to ten minutes of face sucking (sorry, I’m trying not to be vulgar here but some subjects warrant a bit of vulgarity) before I mentally get out of my mommy headspace.

But when I DO manage to get out of my mama head? It’s blissful. In my husband’s arms, I can slowly forget about the chores, and work, and all sorts of other mama drama. My worn out self is taken over by love and energy, and I just live in the moment. Yayyyy.

Breaking old patterns is kinda difficult, but I’m hoping that by making a concerted effort to make our alone time more special, it will get easier and easier for my husband and I to fall into a NEW pattern that encourages closeness, rather than separation. I know that rekindling our romance will make other aspects of our partnership better as well, and may even make parenting easier in some ways.

Have you and your husband hit the same “snooze” button as we have? Have you found ways of getting over the amoeba-like feeling so that the romance could sneak back into your lives?

I’d love to hear from you.

So Apparently Television, the Internet, and Santa Claus are the Greatest Parenting inventions

Parenting.com has just published their choice of “Top 20 Greatest Parenting Inventions”, and I’ve gotta say, I think they’ve got some pretty weird and questionable inclusions (and also managed to exclude some major gifts to the world of parenting). I think I flinched at least eight times while clicking through their list. Here are a few of their "winners":

·         Television. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Our daughter watches television. Emmy loves Yo Gabba Gabba, Blues Clues, and Sesame Street (which is listed on its own as a Top 20 winner), all of which I think are educational, entertaining, and overall pretty darn brilliant. But would I claim that television is one of the best parenting inventions? Nope.
Yes, television can be used discretely as an educational tool, but c’mon now. Let’s be honest. Television is more often used as a crutch by tired parents or as a stand-in babysitter by tired caretakers. Not to mention that as parents we often watch non-children oriented programs, which distracts us from engaging in hands-on parenting. Television makes our family lives EASIER, but probably not BETTER.

·         The Internet. Again, I don’t want to cast stones in glass houses. We TOTALLY use the internet in our house. Too much. But Parenting.com claims that the internet is a prize-winner because of its value as a superhighway of information for worried parents. Ummm… have you ever tried Googling one of your child’s odd illness symptoms? The other night, my concerned husband Googled “toddler has red feet” (because he seems to think the bottoms of my daughters feet are TOO red, and this causes him distress). Well, Google came up with 15,600,000 results to this issue, most of which instructed my husband to not worry so much. And a few sites warned my husband that my daughter might have a rare disease she would soon die from, and there was nothing we could do about it.
Yes, the internet provides worried parents with access to vast amounts of information with a little click of a mouse. But the information will do one of two things: it will tell parents they are stupid for worrying so much (which is exactly what the pediatrician would say), or it will tell parents they should worry a lot more, and watch their child like a hawk because they might keel over and die any second now. Not....Useful.

·         Plastic baggies. Hmmmm… Has Parenting.com heard of a little thing called global warming? I’m pretty sure that if all parents across the United States replaced the crazy amount of plastic baggies we use for packing lunches with some other, more Eco-friendly organizational tool (personally I’d like to buy Em a Bento box when she gets a little older), our planet would be a heck of a  lot happier. Yes, I DO use plastic baggies, but I am trying to use a lot LESS of them, and feel kind of guilty every time I use one. Kudos to my daughter’s daycare for sending plastic baggies back home, so that mommies like me can reuse them and lessen the guilt factor.

There are definitely some other items that made the short-list that I call in to question: I-pods, Bubble Wrap, Santa Claus? But to argue against them all would take up too much time and space.

There are also some items on the Top 20 that I think are worthy of the win: Cheerios (delicious, nutritious, and loved by many a child), washable markers (which allow toddlers to wear their clothing more than just once), play doh (hours of fun, until the colors get all mixed together and turn grey), just to name a few.

But what about car seats, you ask? Baby carriers? Bike helmets? Bouncy balls??? Sorry, as deserving as they are of recognition, they did not make the list.

Of course, the minute Parenting.com published this list, they were opening themselves up to criticism. A “best of” list is always so subjective. But I really think the people at Parenting could have done a better job homing in on the tools that don’t just make our lives as parents easier, but actually make the quality of our parenting better.

What do you think is the #1 greatest parenting invention?