Inspiration Interrupted

I’m not feeling particularly inspired these days.  I don’t know if it’s the utter exhaustion due to the middle of the night feedings of my little man (who, by the way, does not sleep as well as his big sister did at this age).  Or maybe it’s the preparations to move into a temporary home this weekend, a week before embarking on a month long vacation to family-land (the question at every turn is whether what I’m looking at should be going to storage for the new house or into the far smaller temporary home or whether it will be needed for the trip).  Or maybe it’s the million ideas I have for the reno swimming around in my head (pink and blue bedrooms, bathrooms that won’t have walls for a few months and a huge kitchen with limited wall space are really making my head spin).  No matter what the culprit, I’ve found myself sitting down many times over the last couple of weeks with absolutely nothing swimming around in my head.  Perhaps the problem is not a lack of inspiration, but rather too freaking much of it.

I get writing about the renovations and I go on and on about all my ideas, which I then decide no one really cares to hear about (unless I can provide drawings and pictures, which would be far too much information).  If I get going on the kids and how they inspire me every day with their changes and unique insights into life, I feel like I could go on forever.  (Short story about the little miss…  I was feeding the little man at 3am the other morning and noticed the little miss’s favorite stuffy “Tiger Baby” in the living room.  When I was done with the boy, I decided to take Tiger Baby in to the girl while she slept.  She was awake, at 3am, and as I leaned down to kiss her, telling her she should be asleep, she asked “ Mommy, did the cow jump over the moon yet?”  Priceless.  “Yes, Baby.  You can go to sleep now.”  “Mommy, you’re the best friend I ever had” and she drifts back to sleep. Yes, it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, she talks that well at only 2 and a half.  Yes, it seems that every moment grants me some kind of dream of that calibre from my kids.  I am a very, very lucky Mommy.)

Anyway, I guess I just needed to say that it’s not for lack of trying that I’ve not posted (again) for far too long.  Time just gets away from me and my mind spins with too many ideas.  It feels a bit like an overcooked soup that has too many good things in it.  Mush, but tasty mush that you’ve got to really focus on to find your favorite ingredient.  Wow, I just compared my brain to the chicken noodle soup I made the other day (It was really good, by the way).  I think it’s time for bed… after I feed the boy…

I am Super Mom!

So, my mom has been gone for about 3 days.  She came to stay with us when the boy was born about a month ago.  Having her with us made life so much easier.  We took turns at getting up with the boy in the night or getting up with the girl in the morning.  Getting out of the house was easier with one of us to dress each kid.  Honestly, I thought I would never leave the house again after she went home.  I was terrified of her leaving.  I would suddenly be outnumbered and I wasn’t sure I could deal with that.  I know, I know, I should have thought about that before I got pregnant with kid number 2, but I didn’t exactly consider the logistics of it.  Anyway, I was so stressed about the prospect of being on my own that, the night before Mom left I burst into tears over a burnt pizza, thinking “If I can’t even cook a pizza properly, how the hell am I going to take care of two kids?!”

Today I proved to myself I can handle it with an interesting trip to the park.  I put the kids in the double stroller and headed down the hill with a friend.  All went well as Friend, two kids and I dropped off some mail and got a coffee, even after leaving Friend at her front door and making our way the rest of the way to the park.  That’s when things started to go awry.  The girl wanted to go on the baby swing… no problem.  As soon as I got her into the swing though, the boy started to fuss, and cry, then scream.  I had to take him out of the stroller, but duh, had forgotten the snugli at the house.  So, there I am, holding a screaming 5 week old in one arm and pushing a swing with the other.  Really, not so tough, in the scheme of things.

But wait, there’s more...

The boy continued to cry and scream and, even though I had fed him shortly before leaving the house, suddenly started rooting… desperately rooting.  I thought it might just be gas, but after a few minutes of back patting and swing pushing I decided I’d better pull out the bottle I’d brought with me for just such an occasion.  So then, there I am, baby in one arm, tucked into my hoodie (great on the fly snugli replacement, by the way) bottle in the crook of my neck, pushing a swing with the other hand.  I noticed strange looks from other moms as they passed by (all of them with only one child each, by the way).  The sweet old gentleman who was pushing his granddaughter on the swing next to ours must have thought I was crazy, and said as much when he laughingly remarked “Boy, you’ve really got your hands full there!”.  Yeah, thanks for offering to push my kid for a second, buddy!  No, really, he was nice enough to take the girl out of the swing a few minutes later.  And he was, like 90 years old so that was more than enough.  And if he had taken the pressure off for me, I wouldn’t have figured out that I am Super Mom.  I can do this, even in the awkward, unplanned, crazy moments.  I’m not saying I don’t need a little help once in a while (okay, as often as I can get it) but when it’s not there, I’m enough.  Like I once said, in all of my Oprah-like wisdom, to a cousin who was expecting twins, “You just do what you do.  There is no question of whether or not you’re capable when you’re a mom.”  Apparently, I may have known what I was talking about for once.  I just do what I do because I’m a mom.  Today, I felt like a Super Mom.  And when you’re outnumbered, you take what you can get.

Different is good.

I’ve never been too fond of parenting advice, or any kind of advice really.  So much of it sounds like something that’s been translated from Japanese into German then into English.  You know that somewhere along the line the translation got screwed up and a “don’t” turned into a “do”, or, worse,  a “cool water” turned into “puppy saliva”.  If it makes you question the sobriety of the advisor, it’s probably not the best advice.  Instead of advice, I prefer the “What works for me” approach.  My best friend gave me her version of this insight when I was pregnant with my daughter.  Basically, take the information you can use now and file the rest away in the back of your brain until it sounds like a good idea at 4am and your newborn won’t stop screaming.  The conversation usually goes something like this…

ME:  My kid keeps…. And I wish she’d stop it.
FRIEND:  Well, I don’t know if it will work for you, but what worked for me was….

It’s almost as if the person giving the “advice” can’t quite believe it worked and doesn’t want to be blamed if it doesn’t work for me.  That type of suggestion is far better than the “only way to do it” kind of advice.  I don’t generally respond well to the “Only Way” of doing things, and most people I know are the same.  That’s the thing about parenting and kids.  Every parent, child and situation is different, vastly different, so no one solution will work for everyone.  Even with the same parents, kids are individuals and need different approaches for the same problems.  That’s possibly the largest thing I’ve learned over the last two years.  My kid is different from your kid, and even my other kid, and that’s okay.  In fact, it’s good, it’s what differentiates us from robots and computers.  Different is good, and that definitely works for me.