One, Two, Three, and Sometimes Four

Here is a list of ten truths about parenting a toddler and a newborn that I learned in the first few months that might be helpful if you are about to find yourself in the same position:

1. On day one of not showering, you feel somewhat European. On day two, you may feel a little edgy, like a rock star on tour or something. On day three, it's a crisis. Find a way to have a shower at least three times a week.

2. Your toddler will only want to interact with you when you are nursing the newborn. When the newborn is sleeping, he or she will pretend you don't exist.

3. Your toddler will hate that you are holding the baby, yet will scream or babble loudly in the vicinity of the baby whenever the baby is sleeping, thus forcing you to hold the baby. Your logical explanation of this to the toddler will be promptly ignored.

4. You may start to wonder why people find having just one child so stressful in a very smug way. Then, you remember your grandma had six kids and realize those people think that you getting stressed out about two is ridiculous. The only person who can legitimately complain about how many kids she has is Feodor Vassilyeva, who holds the world record for most children born. She had 69 kids. Aaahhh, perspective.

5. Even without 69 children, you will never pee, drink, eat, or do anything on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs when you need or want to do them. And you will never do those things without an audience.

6. You can nurse a baby and make a grilled cheese sandwich. And you will. Probably during your first week home from the hospital.

7. Crumbs on the floor/counter/toddler's clothes and/or face will not bother you as much anymore. Stains on your own clothing? Who cares? Tomato sauce on the carpet? Over it before it spilled!

8. Your toddler will pick this time to demonstrate that he or she is ready for some other major life transition. In our case, the toddler showed us during a bedtime meltdown that she could throw herself out of her crib, necessitating the transition to a big-girl bed. Now, she's starting to show interest in potty training. Where was this developmental inertia when I was 4 months pregnant?!

9. Getting the two of them to nap at the same time will start to remind you of that scene in Indiana Jones where he scrambles under that door that is coming down, then reaches out and is just barely able to grab his hat. Sometimes, the toddler is just starting to drift off when the newborn starts to squirm. There's a moment of "is this even possible?" and a rush of adrenaline. Oh, yes. I'm living on the edge here.

10. Coffee in the morning is like sanity medicine. Just drink it. Even if you don't think you like or need it, you do need it and you will like the way it makes everything feel a little softer, a little easier. And, pretty soon, your partner may realize it's in everyone's best interest if they just have it ready for you when you stumble into the kitchen, Bonus!

In Training

There is quite a bit of information about preparing for your life with a new baby out there. Tips for pregnancy, ideas to help labor and delivery go smoothly, and ways to nurture yourself and your baby during the postpartum months. What is lacking, however, are tips on how to get through the mundane, day-to-day things you do with your toddler. So, I developed a rigorous, one-week training program for those parents whose children are about to enter toddlerhood.

Life With Toddler Training Program

 Mealtimes: To train for mealtimes with a toddler, enlist your partner or a friend's help for a week. Put a Lazy Susan on their chair and have them sit and spin on it throughout the mealtime. Set a timer to go off every 45 seconds, then have them drop one of their utensils and/or knock over their cup. Have them choose one food from each meal to suddenly not like. Ask them to cry whenever you make a reasonable request. Do this for 3 meals a day for one full week. At the end of the week, if you've managed not to bang your fist on the table AND have eaten enough to keep you from starving, you've passed this phase of the training.

Any Time You Need to Clean Something, Get Dressed, Pee, or Turn Your Attention Away From the Toddler: Program a Roomba (one of those automatic vacuuming robots) to work in reverse. Instead of sucking up crumbs, it will leave a trail behind it. When it gently bumps into a wall, instead of changing directions, it should spray milk everywhere. Program it to knock into dressers and cabinets with so much force that everything inside spills onto the floor. If it gets stuck somewhere, instead of turning around, it should emit a high-pitched squeal and begin to follow you at close range. The noise should increase when you try move away from it. If you manage not to shout, you've passed this phase of the training.

Tantrums: Find a feral cat with claws. Attempt to put the cat in a bathtub full of cold water. In order to pass this phase, you must actually wash the cat from nose to tail. Do this before each mealtime and any time you really, really need to go somewhere at a certain time. Also do this at the end of the day right before bedtime. Bonus points if the feral cat can scream, "NOOOO!" loud enough to concern the neighbors. If you manage not to cry or shout, you've passed this phase of the training.

Sleep: Enlist your partner or friend's help again. Give them two cups of strong coffee and ask them to get into some pajamas of their choosing. They should not choose any of the pajamas and instead begin to cry about...something. Their choice. Take that handy feral cat and attempt to bathe it again while your "fake toddler" runs around the house asking for snacks and jumps on a bed. Then, when everything seems to be falling into place and the "toddler" and the cat are both quiet, set off the smoke alarm. Start the process over. If you manage to get through this experience without shouting, you've passed the final phase of the training process and can now go to bed...for the night. Then you have to do it all again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. And...you get it.*

*If you are preparing for life with a toddler and a baby, complete this training program while holding a 20-pound bag of sand. Set a timer to go off every hour and sit on the couch with the bag of sand for 15 minutes while your "Roomba toddler" goes to work on your house while you are immobilized. Fill a squirt bottle with a mixture of old yogurt and water. Set another timer to go off every 10 minutes, then spray yourself randomly with this mixture.

No, YOU Enjoy It

From the moment I was pregnant with my first baby to this current moment, many people, mostly older women, have looked at me and said in sappy-sweet voices, "Oh, enjoy EVERY moment of your children when they're little. It goes SO fast." I usually nod and say something trite like, "I'm trying to!" or "That's what they say!" with a smile. But now, well, I have something to say about that.

Dude, parenting is tough sometimes. Today, my adorable, beautiful, charming, sweet, lovely daughter threw a tantrum because she's just plain overtired. A weekend trip to the grandparents has resulted in a minor sleep setback, and she's on edge. So, when she screamed at me for gently suggesting she try to go potty before nap and then bit me when I closed the book on my lap, I wasn't exactly surprised, but I wasn't all too happy, either.

I should add, before I go on, that our new-ish baby has been waking me up to eat 3-4 times a night, and the toddler woke up screaming at 2:30 AM and I wasn't able to get back to sleep between the two of them, so I'm not exactly functioning well today.

So, I told her as calmly as I could that she's not allowed to bite, even if she's very mad, and that she could stay in her room or the bathroom until she could stop being a maniac. (Yes, I said "maniac".) Then I counted my already-bruised bite marks and tended to the scared, crying baby.

My question is, should I have enjoyed that moment? Well, call Child Protective Services because I DID NOT. I didn't enjoy about 15 whole minutes of that exchange. I didn't enjoy the feeling of her sweet, sharp teeth on my tired arm, or the sound of her shrill, whining screeches of protest in my tired ears.

And, truth be told, parenting has been chock full of moments like that. Moments where someone hasn't had enough sleep, someone's hungry, someone isn't being given the time or attention they need and gets upset. Sometimes it's the kids, sometimes it's the parents. But I'm just saying, these moments aren't hard to come by in this house. Talking honestly to other parents with kids around this age, they are not uncommon in ANY household.

So, to you, stranger in the parking lot/grocery store/library, I say, "Please don't tell me to enjoy EVERY moment." Instead, I'll try very, very hard to separate the good moments from the bad, the sweet moments from the annoying, and the hugging moments from the biting ones. I'll pledge to not let myself get so down on myself or my kids during these moments that it ruins entire days or even whole hours. I will acknowledge the times that my kids are being amazing and when I'm having a tough time. And, I'll enjoy parenting as an entire experience and love my kids even when they're doing something that makes me want to rip up a phone book with my bare hands.

But I will not enjoy EVERY moment. And heads up to you, woman holding her sweetly-scented newborn. That little peanut will bring you more joy and love and happiness than you ever dreamed possible. But, to be blunt, he or she will be a little bit of a nightmare sometimes. Please don't feel guilty for not enjoying EVERY moment. Remember that the people who tell you to do so usually have decades of time separating them from the nitty-gritty parts of parenting small kids: the sleepless nights, the biting, the whining, the food-throwing, the meltdowns. If they could remember this, they wouldn't say something as positively stupid as "enjoy every moment."

I forgive them, though. I bet in about 30 years, I'll say the same, stupid thing to some new mom. I hope she tells me to go to hell.

Less is More?

The other morning, someone on the radio was talking about Michelle Obama's initiative to reduce or eliminate the amount of junk-food advertising in schools. This radio personality seemed cautiously supportive of the measures she wants to propose, but then brought up the point that he "favors less government in most cases" and then waffled a little bit in his support.

I have been thinking a lot about this issue since I heard about it, and I can't even stretch my imagination far enough to begin to understand why anyone would oppose this measure, or even just have any shred of doubt about it in any way, shape, or form. While I generally try to avoid starting sentences with "as a parent", I'm going to do a little of that now.

As a parent, I want my kid to be healthy. It is my number one priority. I want her little mind and body and spirit to be as healthy as possible. Big corporations who produce junk food do not care at all if she is healthy. They care about making money. If my kid gets fat and sick spending money on and then eating their processed crap, they have done their job. And while this may not be the ultimate goal spelled out in their mission statements, making as much money as possible is the bottom line for any company in a capitalist society. That's why I read every ingredient on every single morsel of food that goes into my kid's mouth--the assumption that anyone but me is looking out for her health is just plain wrong. Assuming that a company is going to only put safe ingredients into foods aimed at kids is laughable. What I can assume is that these companies want to produce cheap, sweet foods with a mouth-feel that my kid will become addicted to and want to buy over and over and over again.

As a parent, I want school to be a place of safety and learning, not somewhere that provides advertising about junk food. I mean, what? Do I even have to say that? I went to school from about 1988-2001 and I can honestly say that, other than the soda machines and the posters for concessions at basketball games, I don't recall any signage about food or drinks. Is this something that has become so pervasive in such a relatively short amount of time that it requires legislation? Apparently so.

As with anything that the government tries to do, there is backlash coming from one side of our polarized country. I read about "less government" and "less interference", but no one seems to be acknowledging that, if left unchecked, corporations will bleed into more and more facets of our lives and the environments that used to be safe havens, such as schools. So, where is the public backlash against the corporations that try to get our kids to eat their junk? Where is the widespread worry that we are leaving too much power to large companies that see our kids as faceless consumers? Where, as a society, do we draw the line between these corporate giants and our soft, sponge-brained children?

I have also heard the reasoning behind advertising in schools. Apparently, many schools depend on the money they get from allowing advertising to meet their yearly budgets. Without the money they receive from corporate sponsors, they would have to increase class sizes, reduce extracurricular programming, decrease teacher pay, or would be otherwise unable to meet the needs of the students. Because of the way our schools are funded (based on the property taxes of the surrounding neighborhoods), advertising dollars are even more important to kids who attend schools in low-income neighborhoods.

Sigh. I just...I just can't. I could go on and on about why it's scary and frustrating to be a parent now, and how even a generation ago parents didn't have to think about many of the same things, but I won't. I'll just end here.

So, thank you, Michelle Obama. When my child starts school in a few years and can walk her hallways without being bombarded by signs for Coke or Dorito tacos or Pizza Hut's new cheese-filled double pizza or whatever other junk they've thought up in the time between now and then, I'll be thinking of you.

High Maintenance

I can't really say that I'm qualified to give any kind of marriage advice, and I'm not going to try. My husband and I have been married for just over four years, so we're definitely in the youth of what I hope to be a long, long lifetime of marriage. And while I'm not qualified to give marriage advice, I can say that I'm incredibly qualified when it comes to picking out a good husband. 

A long, long time ago, I met my husband. We were young. In fact, he was so young that he had to actually sneak into the bar where we met. Granted, he's British, so he had been legally entering bars in his homeland before we met, but still--we were young. We met, we hit it off, and then we went back to our normal lives in our respective countries. I dated a bunch of guys and never really felt like any of them were right--there was always just something about each of them that made it clear to me that they weren't right for me. These were small things--a comment here or there, an awkwardness, a hint of arrogance, an ill-timed poem on my birthday that made me squirm. You know, the usual.

So, when my now-husband came back to visit and we had dinner and walked around the art garden, and I felt like he had a magnet that drew me in despite the concrete obstacles between us, it took me by surprise. And it kind of bummed me out. I knew that, if we tried to have a relationship, things would always be difficult. They would be difficult for us, for our families, for our friends. But I felt, even way back then, that the troubles would be worth it.

Now, years and years later, we have moved across the world for each other, have spent time, money, and energy making things work despite the odds, and our relationship feels decidedly normal. It no longer consists of tearful good-byes at the airports, all the free time in the world to watch movies or go to dinner or sleep, or the desperation to be together that most people feel at the beginning of a relationship. All that stuff has faded into diaper changes, nighttime wake-ups from our child, exhaustion at the end of the day, talks about our plan for the next baby, piles of laundry, and dinners at 5:30 instead of 8PM. 

But because he is the right one, those things are OK. We can laugh or complain about those things, we can sit and stare at the end of the day and wonder how people get through these times, we can look at our beautiful child in amazement, frustration, or through sleep-deprived eyes, we can watch our next baby move and stretch in my swollen tummy at night, and we can look at each other and say that there is no one we'd rather be with, no one we would rather go through this with, and no one who could be a better partner for us or parent to our children. 

We haven't always been perfect partners to each other. There have been moments of normal frustration, misunderstandings, disagreements. But what we always had, and what we are developing more each day, is the capacity to love and understand each other, and the want to do so. And that, I think, is more important than anything. 

Eating For Two

This post is my overdue announcement that we're expecting our second child. Actually, we're expecting him so much that we know his gender, his name, and have already purchased (but not constructed) some IKEA furniture for him.

It's funny, when I was pregnant with Soph, I knew exactly how far along I was, was totally on top of how much she weighed, how long she was, and what vegetable approximated her size, but this time, I'm sort of like, "Well...I'm about 27 weeks...or, wait. No, 28. He feels pretty big. I don't know."

So, yes, we are so excited and so happy and feel so incredibly lucky to have had the chance to have another child. Sometimes, I think about the sleeplessness and the imbalance of life with a toddler, and then I think of adding another layer of lack of sleep and little messes and more years of diapers and breastfeeding and just the inordinate amount of poop that little kids bring. It is during these times that I remind myself of all the snuggling and kisses and the excitement of a kid's first words, steps, smiles, and all that other good stuff, and I think, "YES. I want that NOW."

We were having dinner with some friends who have a daughter the same age as Sophie, and we were talking about our resolutions for the new year. The other dad's was to be "more on top of parenting". I was quick to blurt out that mine was completely the opposite--to let even more stuff go. They laughed, but it was true. There are a lot of times when I get kind of down on myself, not so much for the job I'm doing as a mom, but the job I'm doing as a person in general. I think too often and too long about the fact that my floors are rarely clean and our kitchen counter has crumbs on it most of the time. There are nights where I can't get to sleep because I am wondering if I should be potty training now, thinking that I haven't given the tub a good scrub in too long, or that we have had macaroni and cheese for lunch two days this week.

So, in 2014, I am pledging to replace those thoughts with nicer, saner ones. I am going to talk to myself the way I'd talk to any of my other friends. I'm going to acknowledge that my kid readily eats Brussels sprouts, already says "please" and "thank you", and doesn't watch TV (and doesn't ask to). That my husband and I still really like each other and that we get a lot out of our hour and a half each night. That it doesn't really matter if laundry sits in the dryer for days because it's usually because my kid and I are painting together or reading for an hour, or because I'm talking to my husband in the evening instead of rushing to do chores all the time. The best evidence I have that I'm not screwing up is the fact that my kid is healthy and happy and my marriage is not only intact, but happy, and THAT is what I'll be focusing on in the new year.

I think a lot of this will come naturally when we have our new baby around, too. There will be less time for worries, and my eyes will be so blurry from lack of sleep that I won't even notice the dried yogurt on the linoleum or the fingerprints on the stainless steel. I am looking forward to this forced acceptance of chaos, this blissful abandonment of caring about the little things, and the copious amounts of coffee I will soon be allowed to drink.

Take care and happy New Year!