My brain is broken and other minor catasrophes.

It seems to go with the motherhood territory to be chronically sleep deprived, as Mama K has already alluded to, but when does it really become dangerous? I don't even remember the last time I had a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep; its quite possibly been since 2006! That can't be healthy. I got pregnant with Sassy in '06 and spent the last few months of that year violently ill (first trimester joys). Since then I've been uncomfortably pregnant or mothering a newborn, sometimes both! This also means that I haven't had a day off in just as long. I asked Husband this morning if he would be happy with two straight years (that's 724 days) without a single day off -- no weekend, no holidays, but plenty of late nights and early mornings! Its not that I never get a moment to myself, I do get my hair cut every few months and my brows waxed every other month (I am still a girl after all), and I try to make it to the gym for an hour at least three days a week (this one is a little easier to blow off than the brow wax, I must admit). But its been about a year since I've had more than two hours completely obligation free. Husband tries to give me a break when he's home, but it always ends up being a one-one ratio with both kids amping up their need for attention as they can sense that there is more available. Even when he promises to take care of both children so I can take a bath, or read or take a nap or something it just never really works out. He can't help relying on me, and the kids can't help seeking me out if I am in the house. I guess this is what it feels like to be adored.

Back to my original point, if I can even remember what that was...at what point does the exhaustion become serious to our health and well being? I feel like we're kind of just conditioned to take it and to believe that its what we deserve for being mothers. That came out wrong. Or did it? I meant that its such a big part of parenthood that we all just accept it as normal, but at what point does it stop being normal and start being a problem? I feel like I haven't been able to think straight for months, and I'm starting to wonder if pregnancy brain can be a permanent condition. Sometimes I really feel like part of my brain shut down at some point in the past two years. If I try to concentrate really hard, I swear I can feel the broken parts. (Its just behind my forehead, if you were curious.)

We had company over the weekend and we were going going going, non-stop. I had started to feel like I was coming down with something the day before company arrived, but there's no rest for the weary so I just ignored it. The night before our company left I was baking cookies and suddenly got very dizzy with intense tunnel vision. It freaked me out, but I tried to just brush it off. It kept getting worse though, and eventually I conceded that I should probably sit down and drink some water. Our guests returned to their hotel and I hopped in the shower before going to bed. That's when I really got freaked out...as I was washing my hair my hand went completely numb! It reminded me of how my legs felt after getting an epidural, so I know it was for sure numb. I finished showering and whimpered off to bed and Husband went out to get some cold meds for me. I slept well (comparatively, any way) that night and went to bed early the next two nights. Now I feel much better, so I have to think that my body was just exhausted past the point of normalcy. It was a wake up call to me though, if I don't make some changes and give myself some breaks I could end up in the hospital. Me and the starlets, hospitalized for exhaustion! Being adored really is hard work.

Cheers,
Mama T

Sleep Deprivation - rock bottom

I have hit rock bottom, but think I may have found the key. I am praying anyway. Today I have been utterly exhausted. I've been so grumpy at work. I have been mean, rude, cold, uninterested, and impatient. Of course all I want to do is to come home and rest and see my family of course, but when I do get home I find out that Trouble has napped for a total of 5 1/2 hours today! DUH! First off, he woke up after a little less than an hour and the nanny gave him Tylenol because he's teething pretty bad and then he fell back asleep a little later and just kept on sleeping. She was being lazy. That' s it - I know it and it pisses me off. Normally she is great, but now, after craving sleep all day long, I'm going to have a looooong night ahead of me, and why? So she can get paid to sit on her butt while my baby sleeps and so Trouble can catch up on all the sleep he misses at nighttime. I read up on how much sleep he needs at this age now and have prepared a long speech for the nanny come morning. I just have to pray I can make it through tonight and tomorrow and that this is the key I have been looking for. I am to tears. Nobody understands what it's like to get up every 2 - 4 hours every night for a year but me. Or at least that's how I feel.

Confused Convictions of Cosmic Conceptions

Every time my mother comes to visit, she's sure to point out that my children are exhibiting their zodiac signs. I've never been big on using the cosmos as a device for creating personality. If anything, climate or natural disasters should be taken into account. The husband was born the year Mt. St. Helens blew up. I find more parallel there than with Jupiter's position in the universe.

Zippy, my daughter, is a Gemini. Geminis, known for their dual nature, can bounce from this to that and back again. Just today, as we were exploring outside, she took my hand and zig-zagged across the property, pointing things out, screaming and cooing, crying and laughing, shrieking at the bees and petting roly poly bugs (which, by the way, are also called "bees"). I just took her behavior and attributed it to being a toddler. When I thought about it, though, the other toddlers that we know are no where as severe and quick at changing personalities like Zippy.

Her whole existence has been a little tense. She's my first child. I was nervous all throughout the pregnancy. There were several months of vomiting. I hated the kicking and the sloshing around that was going on in my womb. I was cranky a lot of the time (really don't understand how women have "happy" pregnancies). The contractions during her birth were the most horribly stupid, intense, torturous pain anyone could ever feel. She was born in the middle of a sickly, hot summer. She was incredibly colicky. Zippy was harder to understand than Finnegan's Wake, more stubborn than a frostbit fireplug and more restless than Richard Gere in a gerbil farm. She has only slept through the night a handful of times. She is an Air sign, and her wind is always changing directions.

Doesn't it make more sense that a pregnancy, birth, and even weather would contribute more to the molding of her mind as opposed to where huge orbs in the sky happen to be spinning? Is it coincidence that she acts like astrologers said she would act? Astrologers, who often have the power of a totem pole and the heart of a rat, who will tell you who you are and what you should do for a ridiculous amount of money and show documents with strange symbols on it to prove it?

Chief, my younger son, is the complete opposite. Chief is a Libra. Libra is the only sign that does not represent a human or an animal (reason number 45 that I'm convinced he's from another planet). It is the sign of easy-going balance and if I were to apply that idea here it would be that Chief's mellow mindedness balances out Zippy's extreme insanity. He is the Yang to her Yin.

The pregnancy was relatively easy (with the exception of the kicking, which I still didn't appreciate very much). He was born on a cool autumn night. The birth was fantastic because I had been so drugged up that when it came time to push, I couldn't feel a thing and was basically faking it, laughing and watching t.v.. He didn't cry right after I expelled him out of me, as if to project the notion that we all just need to relax a little bit. He slept a lot, didn't cry very often. He yaks and laughs like living was the best thing that could ever happen to his fetus face. From what I've researched, he's a complete Libra.

Tonight, I learned that I am the epitome of Virgo and my husband couldn't be any less of a Capricorn. Maybe there really is something to this zodiac business. Maybe it's okay to even plan pregnancies around the night sky, especially now that we can practically genetically engineer our children. Why not take it t the cosmic level? Maybe when I complain to the husband that the silverware isn't properly stacked in the drawer or when I am overcritical about his friends, I can just blame Jupiter's position in the universe and be done with it.

Through the eyes of a child

There is absolutely nothing better than watching your child discover something new or go somewhere that they haven't been in awhile so the experience is like the first time all over again. Watching Twinkle play on the beach today was pure joy. She looked at the huge body of water like it was a giant glass of milk that she was going to gulp down in one swallow. It seemed as if she took every grain of sand and studied them on her tiny fingers. The wonderful thing about being a parent is that a first for our child is a first for us. No matter how many times I have been to the beach in my life, I have never had a day like today where I got to see the beach through Twinkle's eyes. Even though we have taken her many times before, each time is better than the last. Today was beautiful.

The joys

The struggles of parenting are overwhelming, but then there are days when nothing can compare to the love of a child. Words honestly can't describe the love I feel for my guy. It can't compare to anything. I would never say that I love my baby more than my husband, nor would I say that I love my husband more than my baby. But I will say that I feel like I can describe my love for my husband much easier than I can describe my love for my baby. Is that weird or is that true for all mamas? Today was such a lovely day. :)

Should I blow up my TV?

Everyone says that you should not let your child watch television. Everyone says this! Every important group, all the books and magazines and websites. All the other moms. As far as I can tell my kids are the only ones that even know what a TV is. Strange, then, that there are so many children's programs on TV, even entire networks devoted to toddlers. I know that I let Sassy watch too much TV, that it would be much better for me to be taking her to the park or playing tea party or building a model of the solar system with her. The big snag in this vision of responsible parenting bliss is that I also have a baby to take care of and he doesn't really get the concept of waiting for his needs to be met. I completely believe that this is a temporary sanity saver, and that once Handsome is old enough to participate in (or at least not sabotage) educational activities that I will actually start planning some. But am I rotting Sassy's brain in the mean time? She seems to be developing normally. She is smart and social. She rarely asks to watch a show or video and she's been known to turn it off on her own. On the weekends, when Husband is around and there is a one to one ratio, its actually a rarity for the television to be on at all. We don't have TVs in the bedrooms and we read quite a lot. Still I feel like the world is telling me that I'm a bad parent for using the TV as a helpmate during the week when I'm alone with a toddler and a baby. Ultimately, I figure its really a matter of letting her watch TV or losing my mind. I think a sane mother is more important for her long term development than TV is detrimental to it.

- Mama T

Sleep

I am praying for six continuous hours of uninterrupted sleep tonight. For almost a year now, the most amount of sleep I have received in a row has been 5 hours - and that has been a rarity. My body yearns for rest and relaxation, but my muscles are so tense and my ears are on constant alert for even the tiniest peep. Mama guilt won't let me let my guy cry back to sleep and when Hubby tries to help him back to sleep it just doesn't work anymore. When will I sleep again? Will my guy ever learn to sleep or do I just have to learn to let the guilt go? Sometimes I secretly wish the power will go out in the middle of night, thereby turning off the monitor and silencing Trouble's voice. So wrong huh.

-Mama K

Is it wrong?

Is it wrong, do you think, that I've been pretending to be asleep for the past half hour or so while I've really been lazily and pointlessly surfing the "interweb." Husband is very kindly occupying the little ones so that I can get some extra rest since I've been sick of late. But its hard to sleep through Handsome's experimental vocal stylings. And, anyway, I've really been up since Sassy woke up and need immediate medical attention (an ouchie on her finger that absolutely needed Mama's kiss). So, I raise the question: is it wrong that I'm only pretending to be asleep so that I can delay the start of another lovely work day?

-Mama T

It's practically a party!

I am so excited because I have gotten three other awesome, amazing, real moms to agree to post on this blog as well. All of our condensed bios will be posted so you can remember who is who as you follow along with our daily dramas. And by daily, I really don't mean that we will all be posting daily; that would be great, but...well, we all have kids! Kind of a catch-22, but there it is.

Its amazing to me how, in the course of a single day, I can experience every possible emotion. I suppose it could be that I am unstable, but I tend to think its just par for the course. Someone once said that you could truly only hate someone you had loved. Not that I ever hate my kids (dear God, that is miles from where I am going here so stick with me) but it stands to reason that the stronger your feelings for someone the bigger reaction they are able to provoke from you. Which would explain why I can experience intense love, joy, frustration, sadness, humor, worry, delight and about 20 other emotions in the span of an hour. I can't count the number of times I have been ready to scream only to have the little perpetrator do something adorable and reduce me to a puddle of love.

Today I have been sick. And ordinarily I would be ranting about how unfair it is that moms don't get any sick days (I'm sure there will be a future post dedicated to that) but Sassy was so unbelievably enchanting all day that everything else just seemed to fade into the background. And then towards the end of the day when everyone was getting crankier, I was really starting to lose my cool. But when I realized that Sassy had started running a fever, everything else went away. My fatigue and pains became unimportant in the face of my daughter's possible illness. I'm sure she is just teething (why does that take so very long???) but since toddlers don't tend to be very articulate its hard to be sure how she feels.

Now that she is snuggled up in her bed and Handsome is in the care of Husband, I am starting to feel icky again. Another mom truth: the full extent of our wounds can not be felt and acknowledged until everyone else is taken care of.

Keep visiting and get to know my fellow Mamas!

Cheers,
Mama T

The truth and nothing but the truth.

In the interest of full disclosure, the real reason behind this blog is simply to give voice to my own truth. The daily, boring, frustrating, amazing, exhilarating truth of my life as a mama. I know that it is a wonderful gift of fate that I am able to stay at home with my babies, and I would not take any other course knowing what I know now. That said, this is about a gazillion times more difficult than I could have ever imagined! As much as I love my life and my family, I miss the old times: the old me, my old freedom, my old job, my old frivolities.

Did you happen to notice that qualifier in there? I made sure to tell you first that I love my family and my life. And of course I do, but I also find it interesting that I dare not tell you that I miss the Time Before Babies (T.B.B.) without making sure that you know I love them. Of course I love them! They sprang from loins! They grew inside of me, we were one unit for almost a year. And I wanted them, so very much. These were no accidents, these were well planned little lives. And I have no regrets, I very firmly stand by my choices...its just that sometimes I want to scream and run away. And I have a strong sense that some of you do too. Its the truth of doing a job so hard. So hard that we feel incredibly under qualified half the time; or at least I do. Maybe I'm overstepping here, maybe you don't feel that way, but I certainly do.

Logically, I know I am probably more prepared than most to be a mother. I have a background in elementary education and child psychology. I grew up around a lot of kids and have always felt comfortable with them and been liked by them. I read just about everything there is out there about parenting, development, etc. And still I feel inadequate roughly 42% of the time.

So I embark on the journey of this blog, hopefully to be updated daily, in attempt to get in better touch with myself and maybe even other moms who feel the same. Mostly I believe that if I write it down and put it out there then I will be able to own it, see it for what it really is and move on a happier and healthier version of myself.

So a toast to my journey and to you, my travel companions.

Cheers!