motherhood

Eau De Bebe

September 23, 2009
Hello-Kitty-Baby-perfume

It reminds me of a cologne by Michael Jordan

My brain is telling me “No more babies”. So is my uterus. It’s not good for my social life, sex life, and also my sanity. 18 months of being pregnant plus 6 months of postpartum recovery and a lifetime of being driven up the wall all make compelling reasons NOT to make another baby. And don’t even get me started on the delivery, which only a hardcore masochist would want to inflict on themselves.

I’m totally loving not being pregnant. No swollen ankles, midnight cramps, numb fingers, backaches and insomnia. I can jump around and drink all the alcohol coffee in the world without worrying that my baby is going to come out all messed up. It’s also nice not having to drag a huge ass (mine, not the kid’s) everywhere I go.

So it’s gotta be weird that I’ve already got names for my next 2 kids, hopefully both at the same time. My next boy will be Travis and if it’s a girl, she’ll be Hailey. The names are so cute that I’ve just gotta make sure I make a couple more babies. Insane, RIGHT? As it is, 2 kids are way more than I can handle, but I can’t help myself. I’m like a crazy baby-making machine. MORE BABIES, muahahaha…

On some level, it’s an attempt to hold on to their infancy and babyness for as long as I can because time just passes you by so quickly and before you know it, you’ve got a couple a gangly, awkward teens on your hands.

Tru is growing up so fast it scares me sometimes. It seemed like just yesterday when he was all wide-eyed wonder and helpless flailing limbs. Now all I can do is wonder what happened to his helplessness as he destroys yet another electrical appliance in my house. And all I have are the moments where I held him tight, smothered him with kisses and tickled him senseless all stored up in my head. With every passing day, I have to come to terms with the fact that his days as a baby are numbered.

That’s pretty much why we made Kirsten in the first place (besides the fact that I’m addicted to pain and I need counseling). So that there’ll still be another baby to smell and kiss and cuddle and relive the babyness. In spite of all the whining and griping about how my life sucks and I am sleep-deprived and my boobs are killing me, all it takes is that little smile and gurgle for me to feel like it’s all worth it. Every bit of it.

The husband says we cannot keep making babies “just so that I can smell them”, and my head actually agrees. But I don’t know, the smell of a newborn baby is probably the most awesome smell in the world. Plus I ALREADY HAVE NAMES. That’s gotta be a good enough reason.

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out of the box

Food for thought

September 22, 2009

I didn’t think this day would come but feeding a toddler is one of the most frustrating things in the world. When Tru started solids at 4 months, I thought I had a shark on my hands. He would eat anything and everything I shoved into his mouth, even when it mostly looked and tasted like vomit. No salt, no oil, no artificial flavoring. Just the natural goodness of organic fish and vegetables.

Then we introduced “adult food” and it was never the same again. It all started out of convenience. On the days that we had to head out all day, we’d just feed him whatever we were eating outside, so he got to taste the magic of McDonalds and finger-licking good fried chicken. I rationalized it away, saying that it was just a treat once in a while. But for Tru, it was like tasting the Turkish Delight offered by the White Witch. Or like how Adam and eve felt after they ate the apple, like “I didn’t know I was eating dog vomit all this while when such marvelous food actually exists.” (Except that they were more like “I didn’t know I was running around au naturel when I could wear fig leaves and pig skin.”)

Everything else paled in comparison and when I offered him his nutritious but nasty gruel, he’d give me an emphatic NO and shake his head violently. One time, he got so frustrated with his food that he swiped it off the table and all over the floor, which naturally sent me into a hissy fit. Long story short, he got timed-out in his naughty corner while I had to pop prozac to calm my nerves.

It’s gotten to a point where feeding him is like playing Russian Roulette. I went out to get books on “How to feed your baby” and “100 Best recipes for delicious meals” just to find something he likes. I also caved on the no salt/sugar rule. The worst thing is kids are about as predictable as the lottery so one day it can be “that’s DELICIOUS, mom, I LOVE risotto” and the next day it’ll be all “Ew, that’s disgusting and worse than elephant turd”.

There’s few things that can frustrate you like having the food you spend an hour chopping, dicing and cooking swiped off the table with a single, swift flick of his tubby hands. Or I’ll have to distract him with TV and toys while I stealthily sneak the food into his mouth. “Look Tru, it’s Thomas” and a spoonful of pasta. But you see, doing that 85 times every feed is not the funnest thing in the world and I cannot count the number of times I almost want to order Mackers to save myself all that trouble.

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milestones & musings

The Marshmallow Experiment

September 18, 2009

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Check out this brilliant video on the battle between instant and delayed gratification. It’s modeled after a test done by Walter Mischel at Stanford University in the 1960s. The test followed the subjects all the way to adulthood and it was discovered that the kids who were able to wait became smarter, more successful and get this, less likely to take drugs.

My theory is that girls are naturally predisposed to delayed gratification, and they’ve got loads more self-control, which explains why they’re generally smarter than boys.

I’m pretty sure Kirsten will pass with flying colors and she’ll be chilling like ice-cream filling the whole time, unbothered by the marshmallow. But Tru, I’m not so sure. He’ll be touching it, smelling it, licking it and grabbing his head in torment if he manages to wait it out. Given the startling results, I will conduct this test on him myself everyday until he learns to wait. And I will bind his hands with tape if I have to.

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