Saturday, October 28, 2006

Mommy Time

Did anyone warn you when you signed up to be a mommy that you’d be giving up some personal time? I guess I shouldn’t say “some” personal time. I’m not complaining about the middle of the night when you thought you’d actually get some sleep. I remember when Perry was first born. I had read that babies got up in the middle of the night to nurse—but for some reason I didn’t connect that with me having to actually get up out of bed while my husband lay fast asleep and oblivious to my middle of the night exertions. I trekked all the way upstairs, trying to stay awake while little Perry nursed himself back to sleep. I learned better with Daisy and she stayed in our room. I was really only concerned that we’d wake David up and since he slept so blissfully through Perry’s night feedings, I thought he probably could through Daisy’s as well. He did. But really, both my children only wanted to wake up and nurse during the night until they were 8 weeks old. So this is really overlookable.

I’m not really complaining about my lack of personal time while I’m trying to cook, either. I mean, I used to enjoy cooking. To savor the experience. To try out new recipes from posh chefs. To taste-test every-so-often and add a little pinch of the this and a little pinch of that until I had prepared a meal delightful to all the senses (for more info on my former cooking neuroses visit my brother’s blog, http://dinnerandamoviewiththenomadchef.blogspot.com/. He’s only slightly worse than myself). Cooking now is like running a marathon—I try to see if I can prepare a somewhat edible meal in less time than my previous attempt . Every member of the house is hungry, including myself—which make me really grumpy. Perry clings to my leg and whines “See, see” which means that he wants me to pick him up so that he can see what I’m doing. But mind you, I’m stir-frying veggies over a hot skillet. The last thing I want to do is to pick him up and dangle him over the steam. Daisy wiggles/crawls herself into the kitchen and does her little whiney cry. Every time I walk past her to get a knife out of the drawer or something from the fridge, she turns to face me, tries to wiggle/crawl over to my new location, and cries louder. Wow, reading over this, it seems like this is a big thing to complain about. But they don’t do this every evening. Some days are just better than others.

Right now my biggest pet peeve revolves around not, as far as they babies are concerned, being allowed to have private bathroom privileges. Almost every time I go into the bathroom and, um, sit down, Perry comes in after me with a big smile and starts to play with all the magazines in the magazine rack on the floor. He pulls them out, points to the people and wants me to read to him. Daisy eventually wanders in, in her own chubby, wiggly way, and whines at me to pick her up. Let me remind you her that I’m sitting on the toilet! Not only would it be nice to have a little bit of privacy for privacy’s sake, but how about just a moment to think and regroup.

David says I bring it on myself. After all, I’m the one that leaves the door to the bathroom ajar. And you know, sitting here writing it all out I can see that he does indeed have a point. But, see, Perry’s got the sonar that when any door of the house is shut, he can sense it. He immediately runs over and tries to open it, and when that doesn’t work, he cries and bangs on it until someone opens it for him. So even if I were to shut the door, I wouldn’t really be having any private moments anyway.

“How on earth are you able to write this blog, then” you ask, “if you don’t even have any free time to yourself in which to think clearly let alone formulate grammatically correct sentences?” Well, the babies are napping now. And you know what? I miss them.

Monday, October 23, 2006

It is Monday morning. 8:40am. I go in with the babies to wake David up. I plop them down onto the bed to snuggle him awake and I sit in front of the computer to check my e-mail.

"Have you posted on your blog lately?" David asks.

"No."

"You should."

"When?" (with sarcasm) "There's no time when I'm free that you're not on the computer.

"Right now."

"Right now?! With Daisy crying because she'd rather get down on the floor and play and Perry roaming around the room looking for things to break? Yeah, this is a perfect time."

"Just two lines. You can write just two lines. You're getting to be as bad as your Uncle Oliver."

Oliver hasn't updated his blog in who knows how long. I take the opportunity. Daisy stopped crying. Perry really hasn't broken anything...yet.