Let Me Remind You

My friends are finally having babies.  All my stupid friends are finally having stupid babies!  And guess what?  Those stupid babies smell sooooooooooo good!

We are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Should we have more kids?  Do we try for a boy?  Should we cut one more out of me and tie up those tubes?  I tell you what, the answer to the world’s most annoying question, changes every, single, flippin, day.

Monday - First day of summer camp.  Holy crap I like being alone.

Tuesday – Ate a family size bag of M & M’s to myself.  Oh well, who cares, I’ll be pregnant soon anyways.

Wednesday – Started packing for vacation and realized we didn’t need the stroller, playpen, portable highchair, separate bag of diapers and wipes.  Baby junk takes up way too much room.

Thursday – Watched my oldest be all helpful and motherly towards our 11 month old little buddy.  We can totally do it, look how much help I'd have.

Friday – Three babies don’t fit in a two bedroom house.

Saturday – Babysat my girlfriend’s 6 month old little monkey and BD saw the glint of boy’s hockey and WWE wrestling moves.  

Sunday – Slept in.  Enough said.

For some crazy reason, last spring, I told my friend that I would babysit her sweet baby boy this fall.  He’ll be a year in October and he’s all warm and snuggly and he likes to drop things on purpose so I pick them up.  He’s all the good things I’d want in a third baby.   

BUT.

I’ve always said that we are designed to forget what giving birth is like.  I know this because some of you are crazy enough to be having back to back babies.  Hell, I had two kids too.  But in case you’re wondering, when you get out of the baby phase, you will start to forget what it's like to have a baby as well!  You’ll start to think that diapers ‘aren’t that bad’ and that functioning without sleep ‘isn’t that hard.’  Trust me.  You need to STOP.  STOP THAT RIGHT NOW.  

Because those are just the commonly spoken about difficulties.  The ones you’ll read in that annoyingly famous book.  Here, let me remind you of some of the others.

Mobility

Once they can move, your freedom ceases to exist.  You have to spend every moving moment making sure they’re not falling down the stairs, destroying important papers or smashing their heads on the hard wood.  They want to move and they want to move fast.  Don’t think you can just strap them in the stroller either.  Running, running is best.

NUTRITION

Once they get out of the ‘eat every 2 hours stage’, and the ‘wake up in the night to eat stage’, they will start feeding themselves.  For a while, they won’t be able to feed themselves enough, so you’ll still need to breast feed or bottle.  And if you’re giving them a bottle, YOU’RE NOT FAST ENOUGH so they scream really loud to make you move faster. They want to hold the spoon, but can’t keep the food on it.  And oh yes, don’t forget the mess!  Food in the hair, in the diaper, on the floor, in every crevice of the high chair.  Your dog is going to get fat again too.

September 2008.  It was a rough day.

SLEEP

Even if you have a miracle baby who sleeps through the night early on, you can forget the expression ‘sleep in’ all together.  This one happens to stick with them until their teenagers, so you don’t really have to worry about forgetting it.  Although you do want to be reminded of nap time and how keeping the house quiet is an extremely stressful job.  YOU may have forgotten the ‘I will kill you.’ note you stuck to your doorbell when you had your last baby, but your UPS driver DID NOT.  And don't pretend that your kid sleeps through everything.  Everyone panics when the phone rings.

SNUGGLES

We all love baby snuggles.  We love the way they smell and the way they goo and gah at everything.  We love the way their soft hand gently rest on our chests and how they get heavy when they’re sleepy.  **REALITY CHECK**  We all love baby snuggles when we get to pass them off!  I guarantee you’ve forgotten what it’s like to hold your baby all day because they only want ‘up’ and on that day you’ve got a mile long list of things that need to get done.  You know, like eating and taking a shower.

For those of you who are having your babies back to back and haven’t had a chance to forget this stuff, you are very lucky.  Two or more babies close together, usually means a strong support system and having two close together usually means the first one was easy.  MUAHAHAHAHA.  Suckers.

I was reminded of all my forgotten parenting tasks in a total of 6 hours on Friday and guess what happened Friday night?  I asked BD (for the millionth time) if he thinks we should have another kid.  Our conversation ended the way it always does, ‘not now, maybe later.’  We want to. We don’t.  Life is so good right now. We’re really good at raising babies.

I am so addicted to their love.  It’s because of those days, when I can’t differentiate between their love and their dependence, that I drink, but the truth is, I am addicted to them needing me too!  I find myself stressing out about their independence all the time!  Big C already goes to the public bathroom by herself for goodness sake!  But I can’t keep having kids to fulfill my obsession with being needed, and two kids is a really good fit for the lifestyle we want to lead.  We're busy as hell, but we're happy and THAT is not so easy to forget.

S

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