things no one told me

here it is - a brief and totally not comprehensive list of things no one told me about being a mother.

1. the bedroom will become a parking garage. evidence here:

i'm only the surprised the mower isn't
parked in the third bay.

2. it doesn't matter what side of the bed you wake up on - it matters what side of the crib your child wakes up on.

3. no matter what the question is, the answer is no. (no, i'm not strict. the child's the one saying no.)

3a. even if the answer is yes, the answer will be no when you give your child whatever he said yes to.

4. the greatest moment of your day will come when your child asks you to sing a lullabye.

5. get used to sippy cups as a fashion accessory. you'll be bringing one into the office every day so it doesn't go bad in your car during the day, and so your child can have a drink on the drive home.

6. when you ask your child to count, it's best to specifiy, "start with 1!"

7. when you ask your child to sing the abcs, don't be surprised when it comes out to the tune of itsy bitsy spider and the lyrics are "abc abc abc j!"

8. do not, under any circumstances, jokingly mention ice cream and cake. these are not to be mentioned unless they are forthcoming. EVER.

8a. after ice cream and cake, expect to hear about "happy birthday cupcakes" for a week. do not acknowledge - see 8.

9. all moms are bilingual. in my case, i speak johnese.

10. despite your earlier protestations to the contrary, the sight of your child happily watching television on the couch will lighten your heart - especially when the alternative is your child throwing bananas at the dog. evidence below:

just kickin' it with some milk,
watchin' some elmo.

Comments

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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