The room is dark and my eyelids flutter. My baby, who is in my arms, squirms and calls out, shrieking, then whimpering. I startle awake and gaze down at him, taking in his round cheeks and elfin nose. His eyes are closed, but out of exhaustion, not relaxation. Cries of pain and discomfort slip from his mouth, no matter how much I hug or rock him. His teeth are coming in and even medicine isn’t quite enough.
“What’s that?” my son said, pointing into the bathroom. As I looked to see what he was talking about, he ran in the opposite direction. At that moment, I realized that my son, at the tender age of three, had pulled one of the oldest tricks in the book.
I’m not the type of parent to brag about my child being “gifted.” But I do suspect that with a mom who often thought she was smarter-than-thou as a child (yes, me) and a father who’s an unrepentant wiseass, my older son (nicknamed Sprout) is already more clever than I am. Here are just a few of the ways:
My younger son has a remarkable ability to inspire comparisons to non-human creatures. While his smile is quite human – and adorable to boot – the noises and gestures he makes often aren’t.
As he’s moved from a newborn who arrived nearly a month early to a very mobile baby, here are six more things Little Bird reminds me of:
Blank. Just blank. The empty page after empty page of my eight-month-old’s baby book stared at me in accusation. Even his name wasn’t filled in. Really? Crap.
I specifically bought this book because it was supposed to be “easy.” Just a page a month for the first year. How much time could that take? Apparently too much.
Was it that I didn’t love Little Bird enough to bother chronicling his important moments? While the guilt that beats at my brain wanted that to be the right answer, I know in my heart it’s not true. I adore my children. And I’ve spent a ton of time and effort capturing their childhood. I probably have hundreds of photos of Little Bird alone, much less those with his brother.
“This is the last Christmas we’re all going to be together!” my mother-in-law opines each year. This year, it was finally true. My parents left upstate New York last summer and my in-laws will be moving out West in the spring. So we had to make the most of our final holiday season in our hometown.
Here are a few memorable scenes from our Christmas vacation, both good and bad:
Before we can look forward to our New Years resolutions, it’s useful to reflect back, examining what worked and what didn’t this year. In the best case scenario, you know what to continue; at worst, you know what to stop doing. For us, we had such big changes this year that we had to learn a lot just to keep up.
Here’s what worked for us and totally failed this year in parenting. Hopefully, some our lessons learned will help you too!
“Goodnight, Baby Jesus. Goodnight, mommy. Goodnight, daddy,” Sprout said to his nativity, addressing Mary and Joseph. While his theology wasn’t quite right, I love how he personally identifies with the story. That intimacy with the characters is something I’m actually learning from him this Advent season.
I have to be the only parent in history looking forward to my kid’s “Why?” stage. I imagined a whole universe of learning lying ahead of us. I’d answer questions until I ran out of answers and then we’d look it up together, snuggled up in the light of the computer screen. When we didn’t have time, we’d write them down to investigate later. When I’d ask him what he thought, he’d come up with a brilliant but age-appropriate answer, showing equal parts creativity and insight.
Like any parenting fantasy, it didn’t work out that way.
Changing diapers, chasing after toddlers, tolerating loud nonsensical singing from the never-ending musical from hell – all expertise one can expect to pick up as a parent. But there’s a specific subset of skills that my pre-child mind would have never dreamed up until I needed to do them. Here’s some of the things I’ve learned how to do in my three years as a mom that I would have never predicted:
Be okay with handling my breasts in public and exposing my nipples in front of my parents
Some moms worry what the other parents will think of them showing up at the preschool drop-off in leggings or even pajamas. But this day, ripped yellow leggings were the most normal part of my outfit. More eye-catchingly, I had a furry brown dress and giant red-tinged wig. Sure, it was Halloween. But that didn’t mean I felt self-assured at all dressed as a real-life Wild Thing, from the book Where the Wild Things Are.
We were at my older son’s preschool to march in the Halloween parade with him. As my husband, I, my kids, and my parents walked across the parking lot, I tried to hold my head high.
“You know, Shannon, you may be the only parents in costume,” my mom said.
I swallowed. “Then they just don’t have enough Halloween spirit,” I declared, my voice trembling. What if we were the only ones? What would they think of us? I figured our costumes would be the most elaborate, but what if no one else was in costume at all?