At Least He Is Honest

A little commentary from my infant on my overall parenting skills.

Eh, it could be worse :-)

Staying Up All Night Used To Be More Fun...

Bennett doesn't sleep at night. I don't mean that as in "he doesn't sleep longer than 4 hours at a go". I mean that as in "at almost 4 months old now, he only sleeps about 1 to 2 hours at a stretch".

Sounds like fun? It's not. At all. I don't care how sweet his gummy little smiles are at 5 a.m. Especially considering that my husband travels every week from Sunday night until Friday night, this means a whole lot of no sleep for me.

The other night, I offered Bennett a BMW when he turned 16 if he would just give me six hours of uninterrupted sleep. He passed on the offer.

If you ask me, he totally missed a killer opportunity. I was at the point where I wasn't even qualifying what model or trim level. As my girlfriend Megan says, "there's a reason why infants aren't usually involved in business negotiations".

Anyone want a little late night/early morning company? I might even throw in a BMW to sweeten the deal :)

A World With No Mayhem?

My parents took Sterling for a few days so I could recover from being sick. And even though I've still got an infant to take care of, it's amazing how quiet things are without her around.

The truth is, I've grown accustomed to having mayhem in my world. At this point, silence kind of terrifies me because that's when the bad mayhem really happens.

So while I sit here and play with Bennett, the entire time in the back of my mind there is the "what is Sterling doing now" thought rattling around.

To be honest? It's more than a little bit unsettling, I kind of miss my mayhem...

It Takes A Village...

They say "It Takes A Village To Raise A Child". And while I agree somewhat with this sentiment, I think the truth is that it should be "It Takes A Village To Raise A Child AND Maintain Your Sanity".

Because to be fair, there are plenty of people who raise children without any support at all. And I applaud them, because I don't know how the hell they do it.

But to raise a child on your own with no support AND maintain your sanity? Eh, that's iffy. I know, I have tried both ways and I have learned to depend on my amazing support network, but I barely make it through the day sometimes.

At a minimum, your village needs:

• An Overindulgent Grandparent Figure - Someone to completely spoil the crap out of your child, and give you someone to shake your head at.
• A Group Of Villagers - A.K.A. others who are in similar circumstances with whom you can compare notes with, bitch to, give and get support from, and help you find the humor in the everyday chaos.
• A Trusted Elder - Someone whose advice you trust, whom you can turn to when you are at your wits end and have no friggin clue where to go next.
• An Emergency Contact - Someone that you can call when you haven't showered in days, haven't slept in days, are at your wits end and have recently left the house with baby poop under your nails. Someone that you trust enough to dump your kids on while you retreat to neutral territory until you are a little more human. 
• The Village Idiot -  An individual whose parenting techniques make you laugh and (sometimes) feel infinitely superior. Yep, it's snarky but it's true. 

Today I have turned to my "Villager" girlfriends to bitch when my infant hasn't slept for the third night in a row, my "Overindulgent" parents who came down and partied with my little inmates for the day (and took one inmate with them when they left), and my "Idiot" who I absolutely love but whose advice to get my baby to sleep through the night was to "ditch him in the basement until he figures it out". Yep, it's an approach I have joked about, but she was dead serious.

So who is in your village, and do you love them as much as I love my crazy, nutty little group of townies?

This May Be Rock Bottom

Screw showering, I have regressed to the point where I can leave the house with baby poop under my fingernails and not realize it.

Imagine driving along in a sleep deprived haze, mindlessly munching on the first thing you have had time to eat all morning. Out of the corner of your eye you notice something under your nails and automatically go to lick the "cracker crumbs" off your finger tips, then stop.

Wait... crackers don't have crumbs that color. And it looks creamy, not crumbly. What IS that? You look closer, still stumped. And then you smell it... the sudden realization of what the hell it is hits like a Mack Truck!

Forget texting, parenting is the ultimate source of distracted driving.

It's kind of like finding a bug crawling on your arm. Even though you know there is only one, you feel them crawling all over you for hours afterward.

I swear that I can now constantly smell baby poop and keep checking my hands to make sure I haven't missed some.

And don't worry, that is just an "artistic representation" :)

OSM: Is Nothing Sacred?

I have just spent literally HOURS looking for the TV remote today. Starting with nap time, I started hunting for the remote because I have an allergic reaction to watching kid's TV when the kids are asleep.

So looked in all the usual places: nothing.

I took apart both sofas, both arm chairs, and the desk. I emptied both toy boxes. I emptied my diaper bag, the coat closet and my laundry basket that was in the room briefly on its way downstairs this morning.

Nothing.

I got desperate and changed the channel by hand (took freakin FOREVER). I took the sofas apart a second time. I looked in the rooms that Sterling MAY have thrown the remote into. I even took apart her room because, after all, who knows when that child is going to master teleportation.

Nothing.

And then, I realized there was one spot that hadn't even occurred to me...

Toddler vs. Licorice: Momma is the Only Winner

Is it wrong that watching my girl eat licorice is absolutely cracking me up?


Sterling got a bunch of jelly beans from her grandmother for Easter and has thoroughly enjoyed them.


I noticed a licorice one in her pile and reached out to snag it, guessing that she wouldn't like it and would end up spitting a soggy, sticky black mass out on the floor.


The second I snagged it she became fixated on getting that jelly bean back from me. I finally decided there was no harm in giving it to her and so I handed it over.


What has followed is nothing less than hilarity. She is insistent on eating it, but keeps screwing up her face, shivering and doing these odd mini dry heaves.


Every time I ask for it she clamps her mouth shut and chews furiously, which only generates more shivers and dry heaves.

I can't help but laugh. Hard headed little bugger is definitely getting the worse end of this interaction :)

OSM: Nap Time Tornado

So if you have any previous knowledge of Sterling, you know that nap times are especially fraught with mayhem. If not, let me give you a little bit of history.

Sterling is prone to mayhem. Thus, I need a break half way through every day. That means that during nap time, she stays in her room whether she is sleeping or not.

When she was about 14 months old, she learned how to climb out of her crib. No matter what I tried, she kept getting out so I bit the bullet and switched her to a toddler bed.

She then discovered that if she pulled the drawers of her dresser open, she could climb to the top. So my husband spent a day installing "baby proof" latches in all of the drawers.

Evidently, she has learned how to open the latches. Nap time may never be the same again.

This picture shows just a sampling of the mayhem she committed today. I will let the fact that there is no sheet on her mattress speak for itself. As for the stuff on top of the dresser? It was clean at the start of nap, so she either threw it up there, or (more likely) climbed up to put it there. And the fact that the bed is in the middle of the room? My girl likes to rearrange...