You know what I should be doing? School work.

But, I’m not.

You know why?

Because I need to write the most important post I’ll probably ever write in my whole life.

Check it out.

In 3 years, when Georgia is just four, probably going to preschool and really not needing me quite so much, and I consequently have a relapse of the terminal disease known among medical journals as “I Really Really Really Think I Need a New Baby,” please remind me of the following few moments. No really, please.

Before we get into this, let me just say that when the time comes, you must be strong in the face of this insidious disease. I will tell you I really really need a newborn, and we can totally afford it and if I don’t have it my life will seem incomplete and I’ll regret it forever.

I will suddenly, defying all reason, only remember the most glorious moments spent with my children as infants. I will tell you I loved the toddler stage. If I hold your baby, I may get a little teary-eyed in joyful nostalgia. I will stare at pregnant women with a splash of longing in my eyes, forgetting completely that I FUCKING HATE BEING PREGNANT. Babies will appear radiant to me in their loveliness, like handfuls of sunlight woven together with silken threads of moonlight. I just threw up a little in my mouth.

So despite all this, you must look me in the eye and tell me these things. Please. I’m relying on you. You are my only hope of not having another damn kid.

Remind me of…

1. Trying to take a shower. Remind me of the fact that I have to hold the sliding shower door shut with one hand the entire time I’m showering lest the toddler enter with me, drenching herself. Remind me of the screams and wails of despair echoing in the bathroom as she bemoans her rejected state, and I try to shower with one hand.
2. Changing the diaper of a 15-month old. Remind me of the squirming. Of the hand that shoots down like lightening to grab the poop. Just outta nowhere…BOOM!!! Shit everywhere. Remind me of that.
3. The batshit crazy hour each night. Remind me of that hour each day when the toddler is too tired to do ANYTHING – even just stand there motionless – but not tired enough to sleep. Remind me of holding her on my hip while I try to do everything else for the other two kids. Cook. Eat. Laundry. Etc. Remind me of the inability to set her down for even three freaking seconds because…because why? Because who the fuck knows why. Because toddlers are lunatics. Remind me of that.
4. The toddler path of destruction. Remind me of the way she spends pretty much every waking moment destroying things – over-turning, pulling down, shoving off, shoving in, dumping, hitting. Nonstop destruction. Nonstop work for me. Not for neatness, but for life. To keep her from injuring herself. Remind me of that.
5. And finally, the perfectly timed, toddlers-must-be-in-tune-with-the-inner-workings-of-the-universe wake up moment. You know what I’m talking about, right? That moment when you are drifting off to sleep, finally. That giant cloud of relief spread out beneath you, begging you to fall, completely, into vast lovely sleep. And you’re drifting, settling down into sweet relaxation, ah bliss. And just as you’re about to fall into that bliss…you hear it. The grumble. The whine. The wahhhhhhhh. And you realize she ain’t going back to sleep and once again, you aren’t getting a decent night’s sleep and you will spend tomorrow in hazy exhaustion.  Again. You roll out of bed. Stumbling. Cursing the whole deal.

Swearing you’re never going to have another fucking baby.

Friends, remind me of that.

You see?

The most important post I’ll ever write.

Do you people think I’m kidding? Because I’m not.

Don’t fail me here guys.

Maybe we should start a support group for this. We could get together for meetings every week and invite people with toddlers. Then just watch. And REMEMBER.

Anybody interested?

1. Being a single parent must SUCK. My husband has been working out of town all week (hence the tragic lack of blog posts) and I have been watching my life flash before my eyes on a daily basis.
2. Okay that was perhaps slightly over-dramatic. But only slightly. Most days I wake up and seriously people I have no idea how I’m going to get through the day – get the kids to where they need to be, work, write my papers, feed the baby, retrieve the fucking Houdini dog who keeps escaping, go to class, get gas, buy milk. My God. So much respect for people who do this all the time.
3. Georgia’s newest word is “auk” which is, of course, “sock,” and her saying it may be the cutest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
4. Incidentally she also learned how to take her “auks” off, which is less cute.
5. Next week my little girl turns 10. Double freaking digits. I am more or less okay with this because she wears penguin flannel pajamas and a fluffy panda sleep mask to bed,  both of which serve as evidence to me that she is still my precious little baby girl and the years are simply lying.
6. Yes. That’s it. They’re lying.
7. It’s been cold for like two weeks (and of course I’m using that term “cold” loosely) but nonetheless I’m already sick of wearing real shoes. I’m from California. I do flip flops.  Shoes stifle me. Ha.
8. Yesterday I saw a 6 year old with a pacifier in his mouth. Not like playing with it or chewing it into a thousand pieces which he will then chuck at his sister’s head, but sucking on it. Like a baby. His mother had three boys, aged 6, 4 and 3 and ALL THREE had pacifiers in their mouths. And when I tried to talk to them they just looked at me, sucking away.
9. I judged her. I did. That’s so fucking weird.
10. You know what’s going to make this Christmas amazing? The fact that school will be over. Holy CRAP that will be nice.
11. Oh, and Rocket read his first word by himself. “Not.” It makes my eyes fill with tears, right now, just thinking about it. Go Rocket. You’re doing it, little man.

1. It’s really annoying that Facebook doesn’t tell you who unfriends you. So anti-climactic. I saw my friend number go down one (*oh horrors what ever will I DO?*) but I don’t know who it is, so there’s no drama involved and I can’t sit here speculating how I pissed that particular person off. It’s all very disappointing.

2. Although most likely I said ‘fuck’ one too many times OR failed to return their phone call for 3 weeks. If the person in question is reading this let me just say “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Unless I did mean to. In that case, I don’t know what to tell ya.

3. Apparently nobody told Georgia about the time change, so we’ve been getting up at 4am.

4. Kinda takes away the joy of “one more hour of sleep.”

5. You know you live in a small town when you know the person who finds your bastard Houdini runaway dog. TWICE.

6. My daughter has taken to carrying around with her a little journal and pen, which she whips out and starts writing in whenever she’s annoyed. Evidently it’s a Book of Insulting Poetry, which she decided to write in attempt to vent her frustrations instead of lashing out verbally. She has agreed to let me share a couple of these with you, so here you go:

There is a boy named Rocket.

I wish I could stuff him in my pocket.

I’d rather be a mango doing the tango

Than be the sister of this big blister.

******

Someday Jenny will be mowing my lawn

Because she is such a pawn.

She has a herd of cattle from Seattle,

But against her wishes she’s not getting silk – just milk.

******

Joe is so dumb

It makes me glum.

I’d rather be a textbook

Receiving vexed looks

Than be a peer to this can of beer.

****

7. She also had something to say to “people who fan themselves with paper:” “Don’t do it! When you move vigorously it heats up your blood, therefore you get HOTTER! Beat that, punks!”

8. Yeah. I dunno. She’s either brilliant or mentally disturbed.

9. You know what’s weird about radio stations? They ask the stupidest most irrelevant trivia questions and yet somehow I get all INTO the answer…like I JUST HAVE TO KNOW… “What is the 2^nd most consumed food in America?” “Which type of clothing item is the most hated by men?” “What is the one single biggest complaint women make against their husbands?”  And I can’t answer my phone or change the station or MOVE because I may not hear the answer and – I simply MUST know!

10. More evidence that my brain is totally fucking unreliable. It thinks that crap matters. It gets all interested. I’m trying to train it to focus on real shit by purposely changing the station at the critical moment, just before the answer comes, despite the little death I endure deep down in my soul. Each time I do it.

Holy hell she got it from me. I’m INSANE. She gets irritated about people fanning themselves because her mother’s a basket-case who thinks her brain has a vendetta against her by focusing on irrelevant trivia.

Oh well.  Least we’ve solved that stumper.

Am I scaring you people yet?

Hope not.

But just in case, here are a couple photos of cuteness to make up for the weirdness of the preceding few sentences. Georgia has become quite the helper, in this case, cleaning out my mom’s linens drawer – and finding a nice perch in the process. How the hell did she get so CUTE?

"I know, mom, isn't it GREAT what I've done?!"

So that last post I wrote about waking Georgia up for no reason made me think of the many things I now do that I NEVER would have done with my first kid.

It’s funny. Sometimes when people ask for my advice on something parenting related (okay admittedly this doesn’t happen very often), I feel like responding, “Sorry, you should have asked me when I only had one kid and knew everything.”

Don’t get me wrong. I was still confused. I’ve always been confused.

The difference is, I guess, that I used to think there were really right ways to parent and other ways were really WRONG no matter what. Now I realize it’s all basically one giant crap shoot and we do the best we can in the circumstances we’re facing and just as soon as you think you’ve got it figured out, you get your brilliant ideas handed to you on a silver platter, all chewed up and spit out and useless.

In other words, I’ve fucking relaxed my Captain Justice parenting approach. Out of necessity. Life made me do it.

Or maybe I’ve just lost my ethics.

Or gotten lazy.

I dunno.

You decide.

Anyway, here’s my list. Oh, 22-year-old self, if only you could see me now as I…

1. Feed her formula. Wah? Huh? No she DIDN’T. Yes, she did. Apparently, babies do not die from formula. And apparently, I can’t quite swing the fulltime breast-pumping extravaganza and YES I felt a little guilty about it and YES I am now over it. The baby still nurses AND she takes a bottle when I’m not around AND the sky has not come crashing down on my formula-feeding sinner head, thus far. As an added bonus, I do not yet see signs of brain damage or emotional distress. Obviously, there’s still time.
2. Let her cry in her crib for 5 minutes. I don’t do the cry-it-out thing. Nope no way. Not my deal. However, when the Georgia has been asleep for an hour or two or five and suddenly starts that irritated “wahhhhh-ahhhhhh” half-awake thing, or is just too tired to sleep (you know what I’m talking about…) I leave her for a few minutes, usually 5 or so. If she gets amped up, I go in there. But sometimes, I’ll be damned the kid goes to sleep. This never would have happened with my first, cause at the FIRST faint whimper I would have darted in and grabbed her up. Oh wait. That wouldn’t have happened because my first never left my bed until she was 2. Guess that’s another one for the list.
3. Let her eat sugar. Ava didn’t have any processed sugar until she was three. Rocket didn’t have any until two. Georgia had some on her first birthday and now eats it, well, sometimes. Not candy or juice or soda…but the occasional nibble of ice cream, cake or cookies? Yes. I admit it. It just makes her SO HAPPY – and you try keeping your two older kids from passing her bites when you’re not looking.
4. Let a nine-year-old watch her for 30 minutes. Oh come ON, I don’t leave the house – it’s only to catch a few extra ZZZZZs in the morning, when I’m particularly exhausted. Can that get me arrested? Let’s talk about something else.
5. Not bathe her every day. Or every two. Or week. No we do more than that. Every week at least. For sure. I think.
6. Feed her the same thing every day for a week because it’s the only thing she’ll eat and I’m too lazy to force feed or explore other items. Pretty self explanatory.
7. Stay home to let her get a long morning nap. With three kids, that nap is the most important event of the day. All cleaning happens during that nap. All chatty phone calls with friends. All carefree blog writing. All peace. All joy. All meaning. You think I’m exaggerating. But I’m not.
8. Put on lame shows from Netflix in the distant hope it will amuse her for 5 straight minutes so I can get something done. With my first kid, if somebody turned a television on IN THE SAME HOUSE MY BABY WAS IN, I’D LEAVE. Okay not that bad, but I was definitely what you’d call a no-television extremist. I thought T.V. exposure would like fry her brain cells on the spot. Like you could watch them sizzle right there in front of you – “boom!” – dumber, one cell at a time…now? I put on Sesame Street and dance around trying (in VAIN) to get Georgia to even glance at the damn T.V. Incidentally, she hates it.

What about you? What sort of sins do you commit that you’d SWORE you’d never do?

Come on. Hook it up. Make me feel better.

The other day I did something insane.

Okay. More insane than usual.

I baked bread, cleaned my house and prepared a balanced meal.

No I didn’t. But that woulda been cool.

I did something weirder. Against all reason and logic. Don’t ever do this no matter what kind of behavior.

I woke a sleeping baby for no particular reason.

I was gone all day. And I mean ALL DAY. I was gone the night before. I got home at 10pm, the whole house was asleep. I walked into her room. I saw her lying there in her crib. I felt weak in the knees loving her.

I walked out.

I went into Ava’s room, touched her head. Love. Went into my room, saw Rocket on our floor, where he’s been planted every night for the past year or so. Whatevs.

Then I brushed my teeth and got into my own bed. And then I felt it. This yearning. This need. For my baby. I just needed to smell her and touch her. I just needed HER.

I thought “you can’t just PICK HER UP, jackass, she could be awake for hours and then you’ll be awake for hours and regret the whole thing and be exhausted and hate your life tomorrow.” My next thought was “Whatever. If that happens I’ll deal with it then. For now, I want my baby.”

And like a freaking maniac I got UP from my bed went into her room reached into the crib and lifted her onto my chest. Her face fell against me. There.

We sat in the rocking chair and nursed. That lazy, half-interested, sleepy nurse. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I smothered my nose against her face.

And she did wake up. And it did suck a little. But my god it was worth it. Every single bit of it.

While I was rocking with her in that silent house, having broken a cardinal rule of motherhood, watching her eyes flit open and lock mine and her lips spread into a sly smile, I thought to myself “Well now, this sure isn’t something I would have done with my first kid.”

It’s true. I NEVER would have done that with Ava, even if I really really really wanted to. Would have been too worried about it. What if she doesn’t go back to sleep? What if she wakes up at 10pm for the rest of her life? What if what if what if what if. Always so worried about DOING IT WRONG.

But I guess that’s one of the joys of having multiple kids – ya just don’t give a shit any longer. It’s all so damn crazy, what’s one more sleepless night? What’s one more tired day? What’s one more hour spent soothing a toddler?

And in the end, what am I gonna remember?

There’s quite a freedom there. It almost makes up for the fact that there are three kids around irritating me all the time. Almost. ALMOST.

B y the way, on a less cuddly note, do you ever feel like telling your kids when they’re bitching about something totally trivial and ultimately irrelevant (like a lost water bottle or Lego or how their sibling mistreated them again), “Look, you’re gonna have to find somebody more interested in this kind of thing because I can’t even muster a response.”

Oh, okay. Well I do.

Sometimes.