Non-Maternal Instincts

To all the parents who have ever said, "you better like it or else."

Shortly before the birth of our son, my husband got on a bike "kick". Thank the good Lord that it wasn't a motor-bike kick; hubs simply became obsessed with buying a good old-fashioned manual bicycle. He had wanted a mountain bike for some time, and when a friend of a friend of a friend was able to score him a deal on a Trek, my husband got all goofy and started researching bikes and talkin' suspension and motion control.

To my amazement, the friend of a friend of a friend pulled through, and my husband became the proud owner of a fancy Trek mountain bike.

Side note: We live hundreds of miles away from any mountains, I'm just sayin'.

And because I feared that our now newborn baby might take a back seat to my husband's latest obsession, we started talking about literally making the baby back seat to the bike.

It must have been meant to be, because only weeks after the baby was born, I found a you-won't-believe-it deal on a bike trailer at a baby sale. It was insane - I spent $40 on a gently used bike trailer that retailed for well over $200. Ching!

But the deal-of-a-century was soon subjected to a year of collecting dust in our overstuffed garage as our little man was too tiny for his pumpkin carriage.

Until now.

Last weekend my husband strapped on the trailer, mounted the Trek, and explored the Central Ohio landscape with his mini-me in tow.

Well, not exactly.

Actually, this is what ensued when our now big-enough baby boy was placed in the $200+ mint condition you-better-like-it-or-else bike trolley:

So much for "Weeee, isn't this fun?"

But because we are horribly cruel parents, we tightened the harness and slammed the hatch gently closed the see-through plastic covering. My husband wasn't about to let a few baby wails stop him from an adventure that he'd been dreaming about since I came home with the $40 steal.

And guess what? After the initial shock and trauma subsided, our little fusspot was calmin' down. Heck, he was even starting to act as if he was enjoying it.

Could it be? Could he really have taken to the box on wheels so quickly?

Yeah right. It looks like the trauma shocked him right to sleep. Oh well. This kid's got all summer to get used to it. Or else . . .

Non-Maternal Instincts

A picture's worth a thousand screams.

Recently my lil' dude and I gathered with seven of my girlfriends and their equally small children (12 collectively; the oldest three; the youngest three weeks) to permanently dye babies and destroy boiled eggs decorate Easter eggs.

Have you ever been in a room with 12 children ages three and under?

I'm not talking about in a calm and controlled daycare setting. No, I'm talking about mommy-is-having-adult-conversation-and-interaction-for-the-first-time-in-days-so-leave-me-alone-and-go-play as we shamelessly turn our heads when we glimpse our 12 small children picking each other's noses and cramming each other's heads through the stairway rails.

If you've been there, then you know what it's like to be trapped in a cage with feral monkeys, flying feces and all.

So when someone announced, "Let's get a picture of all the kids together," I immediately thought, five-months-pregnant or not, where's the booze?

Not to mention, said photo session was to take place AFTER we dyed our children orange, fed them sugar-stuffed sugar cups, and let them rip each other's hair out. Oh, and did I mention it was naptime?

So a shot of Easter juice later, I placed my darling-beyond-belief 12-month old on the couch among the 11 others.

Have you heard the phrase, shoot hit the fan (or something like that)? Well, shoot hit the fan. But the instigator wasn't the colicky newborn or the feisty diva, it wasn't the fussy two-year old or vomiting infant, it was:

MY Mister beautiful smile, happy-go-lucky, life is jolly, baby boy.

Go figure.

So as I scooped up Mister Nightmare, all I could do was shrug my shoulders and say, "more Easter juice, please!"

Non-Maternal Instincts

I planned, executed, and celebrated my little man's first birthday. And now I recover. So here's another post from the archives (Oct, 2008). Don't hate me for being lazy.

Yes ma'am, that is corn in my eyebrow.

My little man is eating now, and I mean really eating. Not just sucking or drinking or slurping from a bottle (or boob). No, he is EATING. Eating crackers, puffs, yogurt, fruit, cereal, rice, pasta, veggies, mashed stuff, pureed stuff, chopped stuff, cold stuff, warm stuff, not-quite-hot stuff, and his favorite – nearly-frozen stuff.

Combine that with two fat teeth poking out of his once soft gums resulting in a never-ending string of drool hanging from his lip, and ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a HOT MESS.

Cute, right? Yeah, it was cute, for a second, maybe. Now it’s a nightmare. And my sweet-and-tender, “oh look at the cute baby” mommy voice has turned into a constant drone of, “oh look, more green crusty crud in his hair, and in his ear, and between his toes, and oh look, my couch has speckled cracker crust splattered across it.” I’m covering the house in vinyl.

But the part that really irks me, I mean just takes me to a whole new level of mommy’s-gone-cuckoo, is that my son is not the only one layered in meal bits. Naturally a six-month-old cannot feed himself. No, mommy must feed baby. And baby reaches out and tries to grab mommy with baby’s mushy-crumb-encrusted fingers.


I kid you not, I disrobe every night only to find dried up sweet potatoes and vanilla wafers stuck underneath my bra and in my socks. Only God knows how this baby-food-in-the-undergarments phenomenon occurs, but it never fails that my son manages to cover me and all my 2000 parts in regurgitated snacks (isn’t it the mamma bird that is supposed to do the regurgitating?)

It’s one thing that mommyhood has caused me to revert to wearing elastic-waisted cotton sweatpants and wrinkle-free t-shirts, but must I look schlumpy and dirty? Honestly, on those rare occasions that I manage to leave this pigsty and enter civilization, people must wonder if I wash dishes for a living. Except a dishwasher is probably wearing an apron (good idea) and manages to wash, not soil, themselves.

I, on the other hand, am a walking dog biscuit, and it is a miracle that I have not been eaten alive. But then maybe the remnants of my son’s dinner are even too dingy for the appetite of a stray dog or sewer-dwelling rodent.

Dear God of all things pure and clean,

Why did you decide that babies should first learn to crawl, walk, and talk before they learn to properly feed themselves? I wonder if you realized that those things could come second to a clean and tidy meal experience. And in case you are still contemplating that decision, maybe you could rewire things so that my future children (if I dare) learn to carefully and meticulously feed themselves shortly after, let’s say, month six.

Or, maybe we could work something out similar to what goes on in my oven when it gets all yucky and crusty. Shut the hatch, lock ‘er up, and self-clean she goes! Babies can be self-cleaning, can’t they? My dog is (and thank you very much for that, by the way).

But in the meantime, help me to scrounge up the last particles of my patience so that next time my son flings mushy carrots across the room and it lands in my over-priced-shampooed hair, I grin and say, “eating is fun, isn’t it baby!” rather than beckoning the dog in hopes that he'll clean my son with his coarse yet effective dog tongue.