Textbook

They're finally asleep.  You guys they're FINALLY ASLEEP!

Today was the kind of day that started with Elle in my bed at 2 am (after trying to keep her in her crib at 9 pm, 10 pm, and 11pm) and continued with Grace at 8 am saying, "MAAAHHHM," in the sort of way that makes all the muscles in my body contract because I just knew, based on the tone, that it was going to be a very long day.  I swear she said MAAAHM 8.6 million times today.  Elle napped for 40 minutes.  Grace, not at all.  That's a lot of hours together.




Blanket statement.  I love my girls SO FREAKING MUCH I dread the day either of them can do anything without me.  Truly. I am really, really happy that I can be their North Star, their anchor, their these are lame metaphors.   That said, I think maybe I have a thing or two to learn about how to be an at home mom.  

Isn't it crazy that the job that almost any person on the planet can do -- that is, to create a child-- requires literally no education?  It just requires the right place, the right time, and the right set of biological circumstances.  That's it.  GOD -- WHY?  WE NEED SOME TESTS.  We need some textbooks. How to Have a Backbone. I would really like to read that chapter.

When I was pregnant with Grace I read a lot of books about babies and pregnancy and parenting.  I was going to be prepared, and since I could find no suitable course to take, I was going to take it upon myself to be ready.  I remember the first night she came home from the hospital, it was 11 pm, I had nursed her and I assumed she'd sleep for a bit.  The nurses said to be sure and feed her every two hours, so I set my phone alarm for 1 am, 3 am, 5 am and 7 am.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAAAHAAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAHAHAHAA.

When she started whimpering, oh, 3 minutes after I set her down, I was truly puzzled.  Like, this wasn't in my plan tonight, darling.  Certainly you're supposed to sleep now.  And she was like, talk to me in three years and I'll SHOW. YOU. MAAAAHM.

I talk to new moms because I am still a new mom and we trade stories, sometimes they fill me in on their birth plans. (This one always kills me.  A birth plan, really? Even I saw through that one.  How's this for a plan: get the baby out of me.  Keep us both alive.  No time lines, no special music, no voodoo.  You got a birthplan?  Good for you mama.  Pretty soon that vice grip of control is going to crumble, so you hang onto the last vestiges of organization you can muster.  Drink your kombucha.  Talk to your midwife.  Then hang up your cloth diapers and pour yourself a glass of zin like the rest of America.)
Anyway, I digress.  Talking to other moms is so interesting.  Some moms are militant, living and dying by their schedule.  Some moms are even loosey-goosier than me.  Some moms look at their phones a lot, some moms let their kids run wild at gymnastics while others step in when their kid doesn't listen.  There's like, no common ground here.  We're all just copying or trying desperately not to copy what our parents did, right?  Or at least building upon it?

Sometimes I wonder if I should be setting limits or something, to protect myself from being so emotionally bled dry, in order to be able to finish the day without saying something I will inevitably regret.  But I literally haven't the foggiest idea how to do that.  The truth is, I see no difference from where I end and they begin.  They are me.  And yet, they're very clearly their own.

I think when you spend all day with your kid (and all night for that matter) especially when that kid can talk and reason, you assume they get everything that's going on.  Grace doesn't miss a freaking beat, but that doesn't mean she really gets all the things.  She doesn't get that I existed before her. She doesn't get that I used to be really organized and tidy and our cluttery, messy countertops make my shoulders creep toward my ears.  She doesn't get that her dad and I used to play Scrabble on a semi-regular basis, and that we used to watch movies from start to finish, in one sitting.  She doesn't get that I never really saw past myself or cared about anything in any real way until she came along.  In her mind, I'm always there for her, because of her, in relation to her. I assume the same is true for Elle.  Heck, I think the same is probably still somewhat true for me and my amazing mom.

So maybe there's no test or textbook.  Maybe the test is just surviving and the textbook is learning the lessons our kids teach us....like, we each get our own book, tailored just for us. I'd like mine to be a little more remedial, ok?  Perhaps a bit more LITERAL.  Honestly though, I've learned more in my three years as a mom than I did in the 29 previous.

Maybe at 9 pm I am bled a little dry.  But now it's 12:23 am and I'm already feeling refreshed, wondering what they're dreaming about, wondering what kind of silly things they're going to entertain me with tomorrow, wondering what in the world I'm going to do when they don't need me so immediately.  THATS the book I need, actually. How to survive the growing up.

Anyway, if you're a mom or just a person and you're emotionally drained, I think that means you're doing it right.  Maybe not always well, but right.  So now I've gotta go be a wife and pretend to want to watch a show, doze on the couch and then go to bed and lie awake thinking about the Universe.  Night!