Mama PlaygroundA Blog for Moms

It turns out that explaining Christmas for the first time to a little one is more complicated than I thought. There is a larger cast of characters than I remembered. There are the elves, Mrs. Claus, Saint Nick, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Wise Men, and the reindeer to name a few. Then of course you have to cover advent calendars, Christmas Eve, Jesus’ birthday, the use of a chimney, how sleds fly, why we see Santa all over town, who carries the presents, who makes the presents, and why we all get presents on when it is a birthday party for Jesus.

Poor kid. I hope I didn’t confuse her. Does anyone have a good book recommmendation because I may not have nailed it on the explaination…

Then there are the tedious details. They are not Raindeer, they are reindeer and I am not sure why. Santa Claus & St. Nick are the same person. Not sure why he delivers presents for Jesus on his birthday. I don’t know why the elves make the presents but need someone else to deliver them. Santa can fly because of the sled…because of the reindeer…no, I don’t know why the reindeer can fly. Why does Santa choose the chimney? Sigh, parents should be given a few more handbooks when they check you out of the hospital upon the birth of your child. How to Explain… should be one of them

Yes, the time has come. I need some help, some uplifting mantra. It gives me the blues to wean. Is it the letting go? Maybe it is because it is such an instinctually nurturing activity for bonding between baby and mama. Therefore it is hard to let it go. When illness sweeps around and my babies starts to show signs of a runny nose I throw those cha-chas in their little faces like there was no tomorrow. It is just something that makes me feel less helpless. I know that my immune system will help to support them.

On the upside I can do any number of damaging things to my body without consideration of the health of the little ones being effected. But I don’t really want to do those things any more anyways. When I read on a label “not suitable for nursing mothers” I completely check that item off of the list for life. Just because it could cause measurable harm to an infant doesn’t mean it isn’t causing immeasurable harm to me!

I can have wine. Probably too tired to have more than the occasional 1/2 a glass anyways. I can pick one bra size and not deal with the daily fluctuation in the size of my rack. But then again, the new size will probably be size “used to be decent, but now floppy and gravity-controlled boobies”. I will have other sweet bonding moments, and other forms of cuddle. But let’s just be honest here, I will never get them to sit still and stare sweetly in to my eyes for an extended period of time while running their little hands through their hair or over my skin lovingly.

Somebody drag me out of this funk. There has be so some positives to this right? I wouldn’t want to have them pull up for a nursing session before going to their first day of junior high school, right? 13 months is an epic achievement for twins, right? Sigh.

It gets me every time! Something about realizing the passage of time. Transitions and growing pains, oh my. Every time I set to the task of moving out the old clothes and moving in the new ones I get a bad case of The Weepy Mom Syndrome. Symptoms include (but are not limited to): achy heart, heavy sigh, hyperactive tear ducts, mopeyness, sensitivity to certain sights, etc. I get in there to box up the latest round of outgrown clothing and find myself nostalgic over some favorite little zip up that I purchased when pregnant. Then there will be the inevitable “they did not get to wear this enough/at all!” that makes me feel disorganized because some item that I had saved for a special occasion never got worn and is now getting ready to be given to some lucky other child.

Adding the new clothes to the drawer (and by this I mean mostly hand me-downs with obvious grotesque stains on them), reminds me of how fast they are changing and how big they have become. It gives me a sense of disbelief “I can’t believe they fit in to this already”. But there is some pride there too. They have come to far. Parents should stop and pat themselves on the back for their children even surviving with all of the traps out there. Anyways, time to pick myself up and stop living in the past and future. Because there are babies awake and needing some TLC in the now!

Maybe this just comes down to personality types. Are you more Type A or Type B? Although the actual sperm make up of all males across continents and age groups, etc is 50/50 some families seem to make one gender more than another. So why not try and sway the odds a bit if you can in the name of family balancing?

Although it can be a bit of a moral, ethical, spiritual, religious, or political gray area it is also very personal. While IVF with PGD (in vitro fertilization with pre-implantation gender determination) is not for my family, I am not here to pass judgment on anyone else when it is right for their family. That being said, I am all for a sway! I can’t wait actually!

I have got it all planned out. I want to start TTC next year at about this time. I want to change my diet, change my pH, change my exercise type/frequency/routine and start timing ovulation and every other physical symptom of fertility! I truly believe that I can change the odds away from a 50/50 outcome and I can’t wait to give it my 1st/last/only try.

I watched the documentary “Teenage Paparazzi” by Adrian Grenier the other day (well, with the help of DVR I watched it segmentally over the last few days). I wondered if maybe us mommies are the prime targets for this new form of socializing. The documentary made some very excellent points. We are all stretched so thin that Us and People magazine might be our umbilical cord to lazily feed the natural human need for social interaction.

How many moms feel truly connected any more? In order to make life work most of us have had to become somewhat isolated. You either have to move away from friends, family, or career in order to balance it all. And then you supplement in some fashion or another in order to achieve fulfillment. Many people choose family and career over friends, and as a result need some supplementation for the lack of high quality interactions that used to fill out childless, jobless days.

Does Facebook actually represent friendship? Are people being real in that media outlet? Can a relationship be meaningful when it is always presented as best-foot-forward presentations of partial realities? Probably not. So, why then does it feel as though you have just caught up with your friends?

When you open an entertainment magazine you feel as though you are catching up on the latest news about people who are familiar. It is a very shallow substitute for taking 2 hours out of your day to meet in person with real friends and acquantences, but it does not require juggling naptimes with a meeting time. You can pick up a magazine at any time of day from the comfort of your own home where as a mom picking up the phone might be difficult without numerous interuptions and conversational false-starts. Are busy moms the prime targets for fueling the paparazzi? It is simple supply-and-demand economics, correct? If you pay money for a magazine then you are contributing to the industry and perpetuating the cycle. Oh, must go now because the Kardashians are calling me from my DVR box…

Does anyone else find this situation to be an unfun little catch-22: when your baby falls you are supposed to watch for sleepiness, and the falling always happens when they are sleepy! Before a nap, and before bedtime my kids become inevitably more spastic. They become more daring, more dramatic, and floppy. Therefore they are much more likely to bump their heads just before a nap. Every time after they bump their heads, feel soothed and calmed by me, they start to get sleepy and I get anxiety. The two options: pace nervously outside of your child’s room hoping that this is the shortest (and yet most restorative/healing) nap of all time because you can’t deal with the idea that your child has lost consciousness, or keep the child awake when they are tired/floppy and need to heal from a bump.

Powder formula from Similac contains beetles and their larvae? I wonder how many parents are flashing back to the nurturing moments they experienced in the recent past, where their young child was sleepily gulping down the formula. Warm, fresh from the bath, the young one received the nutrition and nourishment of “milk”.

Is there a more disturbing image than those memories tainted by the thought of the milk going in to their children’s stomachs with beetle larvae on board. If beetles are getting in to the powdered formula, is it sitting in huge piles in some factory somewhere also accumulating other such things as dust, mites, parasites, and bacteria? It can’t possibly be a clean environment if beetles can just find their way in. It is certainly not contained and impervious to the outside environment.

I am under the assumption though that beetles and their larvae would not be able to survive in the environment of the stomach. Is that true? Maybe the stomach is too acidic, the body too warm, or beetles need water and oxygen to survive. I have no idea if that is true. Let’s just hope. Maybe I should aim lower and just hope that beetles and their larvae are a harmless, and nutritious source of protein and a few rare nutrients?…

Call me a bad mother, but I don’t even know exactly how it happened. The end result though, is a purple nail bed on her poor finger, and a clingy toddler talking about her boo-boo all day. Luckily kisses and bandaids are pretty much a cure all. All the same, it is incredibly alarming to see your little wail like that, and watch the nail swell. At what point do I take her in to the doctor? Subsequent sibling seem to benefit from the growing wisdom of experienced parents.

It seemed like an innocent enough start. She took a small pot and lid out of the cabinet, and put a potholder glove on her hand. She walked after me in the kitchen saying “hot, hot” and my husband and I laughed realizing that must be what I say every time I am doing the same thing around her. Then I heard a bang/crash and the morning took a serious turn downhill. At what point is a banged up finger worth a visit to the doctor?

Really Kourtney? You are going to join the long list of celebrities to bold-faced lie to us ladies out there keeping it real? Well, maybe you should star in your own reality tv show. Did you not notice there were tv cameras following you around 24/7 while you starved yourself and actually ended up passing out in public and getting an i.v. in an ambulance?

A Kardashian sister has joined the ranks of us mamas. Glad to have her too because she actually seems like a pretty great chick (choice in male companionship aside). I was a bit let down though when I read an article recently where Khourtney outright lied about “being a busy mom” and breastfeeding being responsible for her svelte figure.

http://www.usmagazine.com/healthylifestyle/news/new-mom-kourtney-kardashian-flaunts-super-slim-bikini-bod-2010197

I understand the pressure in life to make everything look effortless and natural. As though you are constantly so fantastic that good things beg shamelessly at your feet to fall in to your lap. Your beauty, intelligence, and success were given to you with your birth name, and you only need 1/2 hour of sleep per night to pull it all off. Well, for us mere mortals it is a bit more complicated than that. You don’t have to throw us under the bus like that Kourtney!

How do you do it moms? I have read more than one book from a successful human being who claims their childhood was filled with song. I see moms strolling their babies to a tune or a whistle. I see children singing songs that they must have acquired in their happy homes. How do you do it? Don’t get me wrong, I love music. I can sing along with the best of them and carry a note, if I may say so myself. I just don’t move around the house overflowing with song and I am trying to figure out how some mom’s are biologically programmed to have every lovely tune and accompanying series of sign language-like gestures to teach to their children. Was there a class given along with lamaze that I neglected to sign up for. My poor children! I didn’t get the memo!