I keep looking outside at the endless ice and the foot of snow, and for a split second I’m certain that I must be a foreign correspondent for some interesting mommy magazine who sent me to the Arctic Circle to conduct a special report that I’ll then write up for the magazine. And then reality slaps me upside the head, and I realize no, I’m just home. I love having all four distinctly different seasons, but I wish I could place an order for a more temperate December – January – February. Yes, it’s on a day like this, when our high temp was 9 and winds were gusting between 20 and 30 mph, that I am reminded that most of the things I don’t like about Wisconsin occur during winter. And that I have 12 loads of laundry to fold. Unrelated facts, but equally obvious.
Today was our Brownie troop meeting. I never seem to have enough time on our meeting days. Like, I wake up, get the girls on the bus, drink some coffee, go through my to-do list, and it’s 2:00 already. Is it possible to break the time/space continuum every other week on Thursdays, such that you have a period of the day kind of be… fast-forwarded on you?
I know you’ve really been missing Amy’s potty training updates, so I’ll quickly bring you up-to-date. She continues to be very successful going #1 on the potty. Other than overnight (when she wears a pull-up), she never wets her underwear. The #2 thing, well, it’s still not going so well. No, really, that’s an understatement. It totally sucks. But, she’ll get there, right? I mean, it was only a few short weeks ago when I thought I’d be sending her to 4K in two years wearing diapers, and she proved me wrong on that right quick. I’m adopting a cautiously optimistic attitude – not easy to do when your conducting the, um, balancing act of pulling down size 2 underwear loaded with “product” while trying to avoid smearing the mess on her legs or the floor or yourself. I don’t know how to sword fight or juggle fire or anything, but I do have a few hidden talents… Though not any I would much want to put on a resume, I guess.
My children haven’t done anything out of the ordinary today. Amy’s been very crabby, but everyone else is status quo: hubby’s working insane hours, Claire is mostly good but can cry at the drop of a stocking cap if someone says something remotely offensive, and Kate seems fine but refuses to tell me about her morning at 4K today. This last part is a rarity; usually before she’s even fully in the door she’s yakking about all the things she accomplished in the morning. I wonder if they’ve been working on parents’ Christmas gifts…?
Speaking of which, I have a great companion piece to my What They Never Tell You When You’re Expecting (WTNTYWYE) book. It would be a field-trip like thing, and this is how it would work: I would work with local hospitals to find pregnant women near their delivery time. Then I’d pair up each mom-to-be with a teenager. It could be a girl or a boy, it doesn’t matter. The field trip will take place at the home of the new mother/baby about 2 days after they leave the hospital, and items covered will include, but not be limited to tasks covered in the following two paragraphs.
Said teenager will be placed at the new mother/baby’s home after the teenager has completed a full day of school, on a school night. The teenager will perform every caretaking task for the baby while in the new mom’s/baby’s home; in other words, mix formula, prepare bottles, wash bottles, wash spit-up-stained clothes (prescrubbing where necessary), change diapers, take out the trash twice per day, and fix all meals for the mother and the rest of her family, and keeping up with the housework. All homework must be completed for school as usual. This “internship” of would last three days/nights, with at least two of those three nights being a school night. The baby monitor that’s on mother’s nightstand will now be set on the teenager’s nightstand. Even if the new mother is breastfeeding, the teenager must get up and stay up with mother and baby until the end of each feeding.
I could enumerate every single chore of every single minute of that teenager’s internship, but most of you understand exactly what I’m getting at. Even if this brief exposure were the teens’ ONLY exposure to any sort of Sex Ed, I’m quite confident its effectiveness would be impressive.
Oh, and you cannot have an internship or a class without a title now, can you. I would call this companion experience to WTNTYWYE: Why You Need and Will Always Use Birth Control until You are Mature Enough and Financial Secure Enough to Handle All The Fun on Your Own, or with a Husband/Wife of the Same Maturity.
With that crazy tangent wrapped up, I am off to start getting my own three munchkins to bed, so I can crawl into bed and turn on my electric blanket and settle in with a good book. And maybe do Christmas cards. And clean up the kitchen. But in the reverse order. Capiche?
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