a mom hangover

Baby girl and I got sick last week (simultaneously gross and wonderful: baby girl barfed everywhere and then just wanted to snuggle in my lap while I watched tv).

The stomach flu messed with our sleep schedule. Baby girl's back to waking up every two hours—just like a newborn. How on Earth did we function back then? I get up in the morning with a thrumming head and burning eyes. And everything that Christopher does while he's getting ready for work is SO LOUD. He says I have a mom hangover.

Which is fine. I so expected lack of sleep to be part of parenthood that I even wrote an essay about insomnia and mothers while I was pregnant (during which I discovered an incurable form of insomnia that's only made worse by sleeping pills, for real).

A lot of other things have happened around here—I had a birthday, we went snowshoeing for Valentine's Day, Christopher downloaded every free book he's ever wanted onto his new Kindle—and maybe I'll blog about them. But right now, I'll leave you with a picture of the cutest girl I've ever met and then I'm going to bed early. It's the best plan on a day you go to get your hair cut and fall asleep while your hair is being shampooed.

dinosaur burritos and parenthood

 












This might look like another braggy felting post. I'll own it—it kind of is. A three-year-old we know was having a dinosaur birthday party and how could I NOT make him a little brontosaurus with purple dots on the bum?

 But I've been thinking about more than just bragging: After I finished making the dinosaurs and their lake and berry bushes, I rolled them up in their felty home like a burrito and wrapped the whole thing in tissue paper.  

A few days later, I heard that instead of giving the dinosaurs drinks from the lake, or making them fight each other, or any other thing I imagined he might do with them, this adorable kid kept rolling up the dinosaurs and unrolling them—like, what else would you do with them, really? I think that's adorable. And it's one more tiny image I can tuck away in my brain to remind myself of something I keep needing to learn. . .

I don't feel like I adjusted to motherhood very gracefully (and if you ask my husband about our conversation on Sunday, you might get him to admit that I still haven't). I love it, but I keep forgetting that kids put a spin on life that you wouldn't have thought up on your own.

Which is awesome sometimes. Like last night, I made my baby girl laugh so hard she snorted and fell over just because I turned my face every time she touched my cheek. I'm not funny, so it was weird to make someone laugh so hard by doing basically nothing.

Other times, it's not so awesome. Life is a bit confusing for people whose teeth are just coming in, or just falling out, who haven't yet figured out how to walk or read or use the toilet. Babies want to suck on batteries when they have a pile of toys (how on EARTH did she find one when all the batteries are locked away?). Or kids do things mine isn't even old enough to think of yet—like draw with rocks on cars, or microwave their barbies.    

I'm not so good at rolling with punches, but turns out, neither are they! They fall down and do dumb things and don't know how to fix them. Parenthood involves witnessing and assisting in that learning curve—and hopefully doing both with kindness and a semblance of composure. Maybe this won't sound helpful or even make sense to you, but I the next time I feel baffled and all my plans thwarted by the littlest person in my life, I'll try to remind myself to think of things a little differently—to just roll me up some dinosaurs.