At last week’s doctor’s appointment, we were told that Davey is about 2-3 months ahead of the game developmentally.   My husband didn’t exactly want me to share this with everyone as he feels it’s a bit rude and that I’m turning the raising of our child into a competition with other mothers.   To that I say, “whatever!”  Very juvenile, I know.   But here’s the thing, I’m not turning it into a competition, I’m just one proud mama!   I mean, after all, everyone else posts reports on Facebook about how well their child is doing in school and what award he/she has won.   Why shouldn’t I be the same way with my 9 month old?

Davey has been crawling since he was approximately 6 months old.   He’s been sitting on his own since he was 4 months old.   He stands by himself and will even walk alongside you while holding one of your hands.   He’s not yet to the point of letting go and trying one foot in front of the other all alone, but he’s getting there and according to our doctor, he’s getting there a lot faster than other kids.

Monday afternoon I discovered another little treat that my son is capable of.   While sitting in our office, filing away the massive amount of paperwork that has accumulated, I caught in my peripheral vision movement on our staircase.   Immediately I looked up to find that my son was already on the 6th step and climbing FAST!

Fortunately, I didn’t do what my instinct was saying, which was to scream STOP!   I’m afraid doing that would have scared him and caused him to somersault backwards right back down those 6 steps.   Instead, I jumped up and immediately ran to a few steps behind him and encouraged him to take a few more steps, while whipping out my iPhone and recording the event.

Davey continued to climb and with such plausible excitement that I couldn’t help but laugh at him.    He giggled with each step, occasionally looking back to make sure that I was watching him.   He made it to the landing before deciding to stop.   Since then, my husband and I now encourage Davey to climb the steps at bedtime.

The past two nights, when I’ve said bedtime, Davey has crawled into the foyer and to the staircase.  I climb a few steps ahead of him, offering my encouragement, the doting cheerleading mother that I am.   My husband stays a few steps behind him, hand at the ready, should Davey happen to fall backwards.   And both nights he’s climbed the stairs and crawled into his bedroom.

Am I really surprised by this?  NOPE.   After all, my son is the product of two over-achieving parents.  It’s only natural that he get the best of both of us!  🙂

 

I love candy coating.   It always makes everything sweeter, but I’ve never been a fan of candy coating feelings or words.   Brutal honesty has always been the best ticket in my book.  Of course, I never thought I would be forced to contend with it on the level of the past couple of weeks.

You can (or at least should) count on your family to be honest.   They love you (or at least should) and only want what’s best for you.   Right?   They’re not interested in embarrassing you (or at least shouldn’t be).   They’re not interested in making you feel bad (or at least shouldn’t).   Right?  Well, for the most part my family meets all four of the above criteria of a good and loving family.   Sometime; however, like this past week, they take the “honesty is the best policy” mantra to a whole new level.

I’m not interested in revealing which family members decided to tell me the truth about my life.   I’m afraid they may be picked on or called out.   Some of you who’ve already heard the story know which family members decided to bring reality home.   And, boy, does reality suck!

Last week, I had a few family members stop by my house for a little visit.   While standing in my kitchen, one family member took it upon themselves to be brutally honest about my appearance.

“You have a gut,” my family member said.

“Well, I had a baby,” I replied while looking down at my belly.   I’m my own worst critic so I’m well aware that before I got pregnant I had a pretty tight set of abs; however, I didn’t think my gut was that noticeable.

“You had that baby 8 months ago,” my family member replied.

“Well, I’m trying to get my body back,” I replied defensively.

“Have you tried sit ups?” my family member asked.   At that I just lowered my head and skulked away.

Fast forward a few days and I’m visiting family.   I prepared two chicken salad croissants for lunch.   Each croissant measures about 3 inches in length, so they are not very large.   As I’m sitting down to eat, another family member decides to pitch out a few “truths” and unfortunately I struck out at each one.

“You know you’re going to end up like your cousin if you continue to eat like that,” my family member pointed out.

“Don’t worry.  I’m not in danger of gaining 400 pounds.   I work out,” I replied defiantly before taking a bite of a croissant.

“Well, take it from me, once you put the weight on it’s hard to get it off and you haven’t exactly gotten your pre-pregnancy body back,” my family member said.   Thank you, Captain Obvious!

I looked down once again at my appearance and took another bite of my croissant as I started to wallow in my own self pity.

“And, I want you to know I respect you for being a stay at home mom,” my family member continued.  “But please don’t let yourself go like other stay at home moms.”

“What are you talking about?” I nearly yelled.

“Well, you just don’t take care of your appearance like you used to.   You’re not wearing make up and you’re letting your hair go natural and I have to say when it’s naturally curly it’s looking like you don’t brush it,” my family member replied while hammering the knife into my heart just a little bit harder.

So, I know that I don’t wear dresses daily and I’m not spending hours working on my hair and make up, but I have an absolutely wonderful son and  husband.  I have a child who doesn’t care if I decide to go sans make up.   He’s just happy that I read him his favorite books, play cars with him, and take him to the pool.   And I have a husband who loves me no matter what.   A man who still thinks I’m as sexy and beautiful today as I was the day he met me.   They don’t seem to be willing to criticize my appearance.

And while honesty may be the best policy, can you at least find a way to not rip a person apart with it?

We are one week and two days away from Davey’s nine month birthday and needless to say trouble is finding him at every corner. 

Davey has been crawling for almost two months now.  He stands on his own, without assistance and without holding onto anything and he’s even managed to take a solo step before falling. 

He walks quickly when holding onto the furniture or even my hands.   He’s eager to get to where he’s going and to get there quickly.   Of course, at times he takes the occasional detour. 

For example, he loves the dog’s water bowl.  If I neglect to close the door to the laundry room, Dixie’s food and water haven, then Davey is in there faster than I can blink my eyes.   He’s pulled himself up to the bowl, which sits on a stand and is splashing around, leaving water stains on my wall and droplets on my floor.  

Other times, I’ve found that he loves to “help” me with the laundry.   As soon as I have the basket sitting in front of me, the little Tasmanian Devil, aka my son, is right alongside me pulling clothes out of the basket.   Naturally, he’s not pulling the clothes out to hand them to me.  Instead they’re tossed behind him, out of my reach.   I can’t get upset with him especially when I hear his giggle and see him laugh with a tongue hanging out of his mouth.   His excitement with the laundry even goes to the point of when the clothes are folded and placed in the basket awaiting their ride upstairs.   If I’m not watching him, Davey quickly unfolds the clothes faster than I can say the word “NO”!  

But nothing can really top the mischief he got into last week, and it was in a place that I purposely placed him so he would stay OUT of trouble.

After changing his dirty diaper, I immediately placed him in his pack and play, someplace I don’t put him that often.   I had to go to the bathroom myself and didn’t want Davey roaming around and getting into his own level of treachery.   I figured the pack and play was a trouble-free zone especially since there are toys in there to occupy him.   

I placed the dirty diaper in one of the cubbies of the diaper caddy at the front of the pack and play and high tailed it into the bathroom.  A few minutes later, I was back in the family room listening to my son as he played.  I walked over to the pack and play and looked in.  The sight I saw elicited a scream out of me at a decibel I never thought possible.   My insides twisted and I nearly cried when I spied the empty diaper sitting behind my son and a large pile of orange/brown poop sitting in front of him while he patted it down like Play Doh!  

My scream startled him, but didn’t deter him from the continuous patting of the poop.   He even laughed at me before holding both pooped cover hands up at me as if to say “Hi, Mommy!  Come play with me.” 

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the morning, sterilizing my son, his clothes, his toys, and even the mat in the pack and play.   Any sort of fun activities or even the park visit I was planning, were quickly tabled thanks in no small part to my lapse in judgement and Davey’s mischievous nature.

I’ve spent the better part of the day replaying the events of our library time over and over in my head.   At first, my blood pressure was boiling to the point of nearly using curse words.   I did my 4 mile run BEFORE our storytime, but perhaps I should have waited until AFTER.   As a matter of fact, I almost wanted to grab a punching bag and release some tension.

And as I continued to replay the antics of a bully child and his irresponsible, dead beat mother, I was reminded of my conversation with my hairdresser last week.   She said that the thing she dislikes about children is not the children themselves, but the parents.   So true!  So true!

Every Wednesday, Davey and I go to the local library for story time.  We’ve gone since my first day of being a stay at home mom and we’ve met some wonderful mothers and children.   We’ve even managed to work out additional playdates with some of these other moms and their babies on a weekly basis.   It’s a great thing and Davey has made so many wonderful friends.  

Now that school is out for the summer, storytime’s audience has grown larger.   There are a lot of new faces and Davey seems to be excited by that as he’s very gregarious.   He’s always smiling, always trying to play with other babies, and eager to give out hugs to the other mommies.   Now that he’s able to crawl around and is actually taking a couple of steps, he can interact with the other babies a lot more.   Given his personality, it’s no surprise for me to see him crawling over to another baby and smiling.   It melts my heart to watch him and I swell with pride knowing how kind and caring my child is at 8 months.

Today, as he crawled over to another baby, he was doing his best to talk and communicate.   As soon as he got to the other baby, who by the way is 6 months older than Davey and nearly twice his size, this other baby punched my child in the face.   Davey sat back, aghast and shocked, but he didn’t cry.  And just as soon as the kid punched Davey in the face, he punched him again.   I was shocked as I caught a look at the other mother watching her child bully mine.  

Immediately I stood up and pulled Davey away, situating him with other babies.   Then I turned my attention to the bully baby and his mother.  The child crawled over to another kid and punched him as well.   This time his mother was too engrossed in socializing with one of the other mothers to pay attention to her own child.   By this point, I was fuming, but figured I would just let it go, since I had already pulled Davey away, but then it got worse. 

While Davey was playing, the bully baby crawled over to my child and pulled his hair this time eliciting a scream from Davey.   I quickly grabbed my child as the other mothers looked to see what was going on and immediately glared at bully baby’s mother.   Davey and I then left storytime a half hour earlier than we normal.  

There was a part of me that wishes I had been more confrontational with the mother.   After all, if she were doing a better job as a parent, her kid wouldn’t be such a pain in the butt.   So, I’ve decided how I will deal with this next week which means I may be kicked out of storytime.  

If this little punk of a kid punches my baby, I’m going to his mother and explaining to her that for every time her kid punches mine, I’m going to punch her.   Does that seem fair?   I think so.   It’s her fault that her kid is a bully.   Ugh!   I just hate the fact that I’ve let this kid ruin my day considering that Davey has bounced back pretty quickly. 

And yes, Merri, I TOTALLY agree with you…it’s not the kids, but the parents.   Especially the self-centered, irresponsible parents.

“You’re so lucky.”

“I wish that were the least of my problems.”

“It could be worse, you know.”

Those are just a few of the statements I’ve heard over the past couple of days and I really can’t argue with them.   The statements nor their authors irritates me even slightly.   I am fortunate, but I still can’t help but shake my head sometimes.  

For the first week and a half of Davey’s life, he lost weight.   It was never dramatic and on occasion his weight remained steady.  We attributed it to a lot of things, first being that my milk hadn’t come in yet.  Second, that Davey wasn’t latching on appropriately and frankly I was getting tired with him constantly stuck to my boob.  And then there was the fact that he would fall asleep as well.  Flash forward about 8 months and it’s a completely different story.

Davey loves food.   For this, I know he’s definitely a product of me and my husband.  My mother told me that I could go through large baby jars of food faster than the average baby would go through a small one.   I never turned up my nose at food, although that has since changed in my adulthood.

My husband, if he had his wish, would be a chef of his own restaurant.   This man’s palate is indescribable.   I have yet to meet someone who can turn eating food and dissecting its ingredients into a hobby.  Alas, my palate isn’t that aggressive.  

I can only imagine what Davey’s palate is like, and food does not seem to be his enemy, something that I hear other mothers have an occasion to contend with.

My child is a combination of a bird and a pig.   His mouth is constantly open and when he gets a bowl of food, he’s a hot mess, sloughing around in it.  

Last night, my husband and I sat down in the family room, with our own separate bowls of ice cream.   Davey had already enjoyed his dinner and his dessert.   As a matter of fact, he was oblivious to my husband and me, as he sat in the floor and played with his toys, his back towards us.   It wasn’t until he heard a spoon scrape against a bowl, that his ears perked up.  He turned around and looked at both of us, eyes volleying back forth as if watching a match at Wimbledon.   His little nose crinkled and he sniffed a couple of times, before dropping his toys and crawling over to me and my husband.

He quickly pulled himself up, holding on to the edge of the couch.   He opened his mouth wide and let out a whine of disapproval that we were trying to smuggle food without him.   He bounced up and down and continued with his mouth open wide, the incessant droning of his whine spilling out.   And at that point, my boy, my little piggy, had resorted to becoming like our dog…begging for food.  

Again, I suppose it could be worse.   I don’t forsee dinner time becoming an issue in our house.   Actually, I don’t forsee breakfast or lunch or snacktimes becoming an issue.   Yes, I know, there are worse things my child could be doing.

Twas the days before mommyhood

When all through the land

Not a creature was stirring

And time passed like sand.

 

The baby was sleeping

And nuzzled in tight

In the warmth of the womb

And resting all night.

 

When a decision was made

To focus on a goal

One surely not to fade

To stay with home with the foal.

 

My visions were grand

My views were enticing

With everything planned

It was all so exciting.

 

Then baby was born

And sleep was lost.

Wrinkled clothes soon were worn

And visions were tossed.

 

My visions of writerhood

Soon quick to diminish

As baby fastly stood

I found I was finished.

 

My plans of motherhood

Were fastly changing

As baby laid waste

To all things left hanging.

 

So for all of you who aspire

To be a stay at home mom

With dreams and desires

Take it from me and you’ll truly see

That baby makes waist to dreams of thee.