Sometimes I think she’s going to be two forever. 

Or two going on 13, as it is.  Tonight, Chessa looked at me square in the face, right after I told her I was not going to be banished to my bedroom while she and Craig and Cole played in the living room.  “Mommy is going to stay here with my family, because I love you guys,” I explained. 

You do NOT love me!” she insisted with a furious spark in her eyes and tears sliding down her cheeks, pissed that I wouldn’t leave the room.   

Over her head, I shot “are you freakin’ kidding me?!” eyes at Craig.  When did my baby turn into a teenager?

Two is a never ending game of “what’s dat?” as she points at absolutely nothing. It’s discussions over exactly which sippy cup she’d like to drink from and sending her to daycare in the same clothes the day before because she refuses to take them off.  It’s constant stalling at bedtime, when she consistently waits until the clock strikes 8:00 to need a snack, or a drink or want to pee on the potty.  Make no mistake girlfriend wants nothing to do with potty training any other time of the day; only when it will buy her an extra five minutes before bedtime. 

Two is brutal. It’s setting boundaries and watching her leap over them, making rules and trying like hell to enforce them. It’s worrying that Chessa is ruling our house one minute and the next feeling guilty that I’m too hard on her or expect too much. It’s hurt feelings and asking for kisses for every minor boo-boo. It’s telling her that it’s dangerous for her to stand on a chair, only for her to turn around and throw those words back at me as I stand on a chair to reach for some spices. 

Some days I am convinced that two is the longest. year. ever.

Then, as we walk out the door for work and daycare, one hand griping tightly to mine and her tiny pink backpack in the other, she looks up at me and says, “I’ll drive Mommy.”

And I think oh my God. Before I know it, when she says those words to me, I’ll have to consider tossing her the keys. And then suddenly, I want two to last forever.

First Child:  Wears three, yes three, different yet equally adorable outfits on her first Christmas.
Second Child: Wears the same outfit for three different functions leading up to and including Christmas day.

First Child: Momma drops her baby weight like a hot potato because every time the baby whimpers, she drops the cold cereal she was going to eat and instead tends to the baby’s slightest need. 
Second Child: Momma doesn’t even notice that the baby fusses while she enjoys the dishes she was smart enough to prep before the child was born.  In fact 10 months later, Momma still needs to lose ten pounds and baby has learned to steal his sister’s poptarts.

First Child: Receives eleventy billion cards and visitors drop in all the time to take turns holding the freshly baked baby. 
Second Child: People send a card, leave food on the doorstep and take off running; afraid that instead of getting to snuggle a newborn, they’ll have to entertain a toddler. 

First Child:  Brand new toys. Brand new clothes. Brand new furniture and blankets and bibs.
Second Child: Hand. Me. Downs. 

First Child:  Baby is put to bed sleepy but awake because Momma is afraid that said baby will still need to be rocked to sleep when she is seven. 
Second Child:  Momma now realizes how fast the baby will grow and not need her, so she snuggles him a little longer, strokes the soft curve of his baby cheek and, only reluctantly, lays the sleeping boy in his crib. 

First Child:  Hesitant steps lead to shaky steps lead to first steps.
Second Child:  Stands up and walks before anyone is ready for it.

First Child: Textbooks and baby books everything is anticipated and recorded. 
Second Child:  Who has time for books? 

Can you think of any others? Leave them in the comments!

The clock clicks slowly towards their bedtimes and the kids are bouncing off the walls. I’m torn between letting them bounce and crawl and run and jump, hoping for extra tired kids and an easier time getting them in pajamas and tucked into bed and asking them to please, just shhhh…. 

Chessa starts showing me the latest thing she learned at daycare, jumping off the chair.  As in, “Look at me Mommy, I’M JUMPING OFF THE CHAIR!” over and over and over again.  Finally, I’ve had enough and I pull her into my arms and try to settle her down, explain to her that she shouldn’t be jumping from the chair because she could be hurt when out of the corner of my eye I see Cole take one, then another, then a third step towards the bed and his father.

I drop Chessa on her bottom and look at Craig in disbelief. “Did he just…” the words trail off and my eyes and mouth open wide. 

Craig nodded and grinned, looking slightly less surprised than me. Something in his eyes told me he’d seen that trick before.

I hugged Cole hard and joked about not being ready for him to walk yet, a feeling of sadness hitting me that I don’t remember coming with Chessa’s first steps.  Maybe it’s because when she walked, I was pregnant with Cole and knew there would be more first steps in my future. Maybe it’s because every first with her was so waited for and anticipated and with Cole they just keep sneaking the hell up on me. 

Or maybe because as a daughter, I know that she’s going to need me more as she gets older so those first steps didn’t really feel like first steps away.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m really, really tired lately. 

But whatever the reason, tonight when I fed him his bottle, I rocked him well past when he started to snore while trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. 

Because this time, those first steps feel like the end of something. Before I know it, I’ll blink and he’ll be the one jumping off chairs.

If the moment was a photograph, it would be black and white. The black sky,  lit only by a handful of stars peeking through heavy clouds releasing soft snow into the sky. The highlights across the curve of his forehead and the bridge of his nose from the nightlight plugged safely into the corner of the room brightened his face enough for me to see his eyes were wide open, even though his body was still. The shadows danced as I rocked back and forth, back and forth interrupting the stream of light.

He’s so content to cuddle in these moments.  Why only in the dark of night, does he curl into my heart and sigh so softly?

If this moment was a photograph, it would be in color. Two little children, dressed in footed, flannel pajamas were standing at the window watching their father push snow around outside. The boy’s head barely peeks out over the bottom frame of the window, and I can’t be certain he sees anything. But when Chessa giggles and pounds on the window, he squeals and imitates his big sister.

From behind them, I wish so hard that I had my camera, so I could capture this memory. Instead, I clench my eyes and try to freeze the memory of their hair tousled by 12 hours of sleep, their tiny hands with the unmistakable roundness of baby and the gray sky, still releasing tiny snowflakes.

If the moment was a photograph, it would be worn and soft from many years of being held close and used as a bookmark. Pausing to take a breath and remember the time, the soft smiles, the light dancing in their eyes, the three of them with their heads close together.  Craig and Chessa are reading a book, using an overstuffed bear as a pillow, Cole weaves in and out of the story, crawling over his father and grabbing handfuls of his sister’s hair.  For just a moment, time freezes and finally, this time, I get the picture.

Cole had a hell of a time going to sleep last night. I don’t know if he was wound up from a late nap, teething, if the medicine I gave him for a cold was messing with him or if he just wanted to screw with me.  But 90 minutes after I laid him down for the first time, on bedtime attempt #3, I burst through his door, into his room and in a voice just shy of yelling, said, ‘Oh my God, Cole! What the hell?!”

And as I was almostbutnotquite yelling at my baby I realized how terrible it was that I was yelling and I calmed down enough to say ‘What the hell,’ not ‘What the fuck,’ like I was thinking coming up the stairs.

Yesterday was a bad day. I had the mother of all yeast infections, (sorry to any guys or other people who do not want to read about the state of my girly bits, but this is a baby blog, it’s what you get) I spent more than half the day with a migraine and Chessa pooped in the bathtub.

I wanted to be done. I wanted to be watching my sleeping children on the video monitor and sighing about how wonderful and perfect and magical this moment was. I did not actually want to be parenting them, I just wanted to love them from afar. 

I walked him around the room, shushing in his ear, whispering that mommy was here and I loved him and it was time to sleep. He calmed down and so did I. 

And this is where I should write that I realized in that moment that he was only going to be young once and only going to need me this much once and some other crap about it being amazing.

Only it wasn’t. It sucked. I finally sunk in the rocking chair and held him close while he allowed his eyes to close and drift off to sleep.  Then I played on my phone, checking Facebook and Twitter, waiting for him to be sound asleep.  And finally, when I thought I could lay him down without waking him up, I did. 

On the other side of the closed door, I thought “THANK GOD.”  

I know parenting is wonderful. And I know that I’m lucky to have two happy, healthy children (see I can’t even write a ranty post without slapping a disclaimer on it.) But parenting is hard, too. And we should be able to talk about the hard times, even when they are silly, without feeling like we need to weave in some silver lining or a glistening moment of puppies and sunshine revelation.  Sometimes your kid giggles and splashes in the bathtub. Sometimes she poops. 

And when she poops, it sucks. And that’s real.  And that’s life.  And we’re just damn lucky that we get a chance to do it all over the next day. 

Here, read this article that my friend Kristie shared today. It says it so much better than I could say! 

He fusses for his daddy. He does that a lot lately. I thought when I had another baby he or she might like me better. When Cole would curl up to me at only a few months old, I thought “ahh.. this is what all those mommas of boys have been talking about.”

But no such luck. He’s daddy’s boy too.

Except right now, Craig wants to go downstairs and work out, so I’m on “distract the baby” duty. His lower lip is just starting to curl as Craig shuts the door. I sweep him up and snuggle my nose to the space between his ear and his shoulder.

He giggles but still, pushes me away.

“Ah..sweet boy. Stay here.” I start to sway, dancing across the living room.

His pajamas are soft and a rogue Cheerio is on his shoulder.

I hold him close to me, sashaying my hips and humming. Twirling and dipping him upside down, his blond hair flips backwards as I pull him up and plant a kiss on his cheek.

He giggles now and his blue eyes sparkle.

I twirl around some more, still bobbing and shaking my hips a bit as we dance.  I dip him a few more times and he laughs harder each time. My little daredevil.

After a few moments, he pushes away. It’s time to play with trucks and build with blocks. I sit him down and curl up behind him, watching. He plays independently now.

My work is done; he’s distracted from missing his daddy.  But still I sit and watch him play with his blocks.

GIVEAWAY CLOSED: Winner #28: KIMBERLY!!

Today we are talking about vacuums.  And kids.  And how they come with crumbs.  A lots of crumbs.

And I?  Well, I am not a big fan of crumbs.  Or cleaning. A few weeks ago I told Craig I thought we should get a dog so that I could stop sweeping my floors three times a day.  He said that was a poor reason to have a pup. Party. Pooper.

But then Oreck emailed me about doing a giveaway and I signed right up because A) I’m not turning that down and B) we didn’t actually have a good vacuum.  (True Story: Our old vacuum did such a poor job that when our cleaning lady came, Craig had to go next door to borrow his mother’s vacuum.)

A week or so later, the Oreck Magnesium vacuum showed up at our door.

Craig was home before me, so he got it out of the box and tested it out before I even got off work.  When I walked in the door, he greeted me with, “the sweeper came!  It’s SO LIGHT.”

Light is right! It weighs less than Chessa did the day she was born. I can carry it from room to room and up and down steps easily. When sweeping, it feels like it’s pushing itself across the floor.

Although it’s pretty basic, with no fancy attachments, it does everything I need it too. The upright part extends back far enough to be basically flat and fit underneath most of my furniture. It gets right up to the edge of the baseboards. It works on my tile, laminate hardwood and puts those beautiful, just-swept carpet lines in my living room.  It has a high speed and a low speed (that doesn’t freak out the baby.)  And, I may have even run it across my couch and loveseat.  (I told you, kids are messy.  And so are husbands!)

Cole approves when the vacuum is not actually running. Otherwise, he’s not a fan.

I don’t usually get excited over cleaning equipment, but this really is an awesome vacuum.  And, thanks to the wonderful folks at Oreck, you can have one too!  That’s right! They didn’t just give me one, they are giving a reader his or her very own!

To enter, simply visit Oreck’ s website and leave a comment telling us one thing you learned about the Magnesium vacuum. 

If you want to increase your odds, you can do any of the following and leave me a comment, letting me know that you did.

• Follow @oreck on Twitter.
• Like Oreck on Facebook.
• Sign up for Oreck’s email list by clicking on “Sign up for Email” in the top navigation bar and entering your email address.
• Tweet about the giveaway… Want to win an @oreck vacuum from @notmommyofyear?  Visit www.notmommyoftheyear.com.

The contest is only open to folks living in the continental US – sorry Canada, Hawaii, Alaska and everyone else. It will close on Saturday at midnight. Winner will be announced on Monday morning!

Disclosure: I was provided the Magnesium vacuum from Oreck.  Also, Oreck Corporation provided the prize for the sweepstakes but is not the sponsor of the sweepstakes.”

It’s been a year since the migraines started. Almost a year since we started talking about a c-section. Just over ten months since the surgery and Cole’s birth.

I never gave much thought to a c-section or paid attention to heated debates, snarky comments and even well meaning advice for people to become more educated and not “let doctors push unnecessary surgeries on them.” But you know how it goes; when something becomes personal you pay attention. When life hands you a circumstance and you find yourself part of statistic, you pay attention.

My c-section was unnecessary. I guess. In hindsight. But at the time we didn’t know. We didn’t know if the symptoms were migraine related and harmless or if I really had an aneurysm.

I had to think about things like, “what if I die?”, “what if I send Craig home, alone, to two children?”, “am I risking the life of my baby?” and “will she remember me?” Thoughts that no mother should ever have to think swirled in my head for weeks as we were in and out of doctor’s offices for second and third opinions.

Those thoughts made the decision, when push came to shove, easy. No, I’m sorry, not easy… obvious. I had to schedule the c-section. I missed the chance to go into labor on my own. I missed the chance have another vaginal delivery. I missed the chance to hold my son the moment he was born.

I am eternally grateful that the surgery was unnecessary and that my medical appointments ended a month later with a follow up test that couldn’t be done while I was pregnant. After the angiogram, I was sent home with a bruise the size of Texas on my groin and instructions to take whatever I needed for migraine pain. But I knew that my head was OK.

So this isn’t a post about the regrets of having a c-section. It’s not a post to rant about being forced into a surgery. It’s just a post to try to explain why it’s such a hot topic for those of us who have had c-sections when we feel as though we’re being judged by people who think natural birth is the best way for everyone.

And I’m trying to be careful here, because I don’t want to offend, I just want to try to explain.

It’s not you. It’s not that your message or your statistics are wrong. It’s not that your tone is condescending (OK, sometimes it is) or that your heart is in the wrong place. It’s just that it doesn’t help. Because no matter how broad or specific you try to be, you can’t possibly understand each and every case that ended up in a c-section. And if we already feel shitty about the c-section, either because it wasn’t what we dreamed or because of a painful recovery or it affects our future family planning decisions, you can’t make us feel better about it.

So I take it personally. I feel judged; even if the judgment is veiled. The hair on the back of my neck stands up and I find myself wanting to shout, “yeah, well listen to my story and then tell me if more education would have kept me out of the operating room!”

Yes, I think pregnant women should know what they want to strive for in labor. Yes, I think they should have doctors, midwives and/or nurses who support their decisions. Yes, I think women should have a general understanding of how their bodies work and know what to expect in labor.

But we don’t all want the same things. And we don’t all get what we want. So whether we scheduled the c-section or whether we ended up there after labor started, you telling us what we should have done just doesn’t help. Using our birth stories as examples, doesn’t help.

By all means, be proud of your deliveries. Tell your birth stories. This isn’t to say we don’t want to hear about your experience. We’ll smile at your memories, tear up at the part where you look at your baby for the first time and be happy that you accomplished your goal of a delivery that was what you wanted. The sharing is what’s important, because more sharing leads to more conversation, more understanding and less judgment.

And isn’t that what we all want? A little less judgment?

Because this has been on my mind for months, I’m linking it up here.

I alternate between stirring vegetables and washing dishes, stepping over the baby as he pulls every Ziploc bag out of a nearby drawer.  He’s content and happy and I know it’s probably not baby safe, but he’s not grasping onto my pant legs, so I smile and walk past him.

I stop and pick up my phone to check in on Facebook and Twitter smiling at the responses to the photo I posted of Cole in his Steelers jersey. Loving that I can stay connected this way. Especially when I don’t feel connected at all. 

The days slip past me.  Even with the best intentions for a ten minute phone call or time set aside to tap out an email, the times when someone’s not fussing or yelling or laughing or needing me Come! Build! Puzzles! are few and far between.  I remember the lazy Saturday mornings and the hour long phone calls, catching up on the days or the week that had passed.  Updates on our jobs, gossip about mutual friends, the inner most details of our relationships or laughs over bad dates. 

I miss that. But at least this way, through social media and phones with cameras, I get to see their kids grow up and know (sort of) what’s going on in their lives.  Facebook and text messaging will have to do for now.

—-

It’s 1:00 am and Chessa’s awake. She can’t (or won’t) tell me why or what she needs and I desperately want to sleep. Tomorrow, I travel across the state for a couple days of meetings and suits and words like “strategy” and “initiative”.  I try to bribe her with juice or an extra stuffed animal but end up cuddling with her in the guest room until I hear her breath start to slow down. I want to stay here, wrapped around my girl but fears of starting a habit set in and so I carry her back to her crib. She protests a little when I lay her down, but settles in with a Dora under one arm and pacis in both hands.   

Back in bed, I’m wide awake, wiggling my toes beneath the sheets and trying to find my comfort again. The clock keeps ticking and I do that thing where I try hard not to look at it, but I’m playing the “if I fall asleep RIGHT now, I will get three, no two and a half, no two hours and fifteen minutes of sleep” game. To pass the time, I roll over and reach for my phone.  And check Facebook. 

Dear Cole,

At ten months old, I’m trying desperately to commit to memory the parts of your babyhood that warm my soul from inside out. The way your blond hair, though getting longer, still has the soft silky feel of an infant. The way when I snuggle you before bed, you suck your thumb and let your fingers curl around the tip of your nose. The way you stand in your crib, pounding on the rails, demanding someone come pick you up and entertain you.   

We just celebrated the holidays as a family of four, you and your sister were showered with love… and presents, of course!  Your sister is finally learning to share and treat you with kindness (most of the time) just as you’re starting to snatch toys from her hands.  Oh, buddy, I think that this dance we do with the two of you is going to be a part of our lives for a very long time.  

Every day you show us something new. Sometimes it’s something different that makes you giggle or a new sound you make.  Other days you’re showing off your spunk, your determination, even your temper.  And then, you’re practicing a new skill or trick - the latest is standing up by yourself and I swear I can see you watching Chessa’s feet to see just how she does that walking thing.  Take your time with that one, kiddo.  Momma’s just not ready for you to take off chasing your sister.  

I know you won’t remember these days. The way the time your daddy and I spend with you has flipped a little. I have had to travel a good bit for work and your father’s been spending lots of time at home.  While I miss you guys so much when I’m not home, I love that you’re getting this time with Daddy. He’s getting to know you – your quirks, your charm, your likes and dislikes – just as well as I do and I can see the bond you have with him strengthening and deepening every day.   If you grow up to be just like him, you’ll be just fine, sweet boy. 

We love you.