Lessons from Being a Mom This Week

My husband is out of town for a week, and with the holidays and all meaning I'm off work, it's just been Me & the Baby Toddler.

Oh my goodness. All hail the single mothers of the world. It is not easy.

As I write this, she is stumbling in circles, her mouth full of bagel, in her diaper, carrying a yellow duck, nose running. The dog is rolling his eyes. I am scraping out a couple minutes to type on the computer, which she has so far not let me do all morning. I don't have much time.

I need to put down these mental notes to myself of things I have learned during this intense one-on- one time with my daughter:

1) anything that will fall over, will (even if it's just there 'for a moment')

2) forget the usefulness of bookmarks - remember page numbers - they will be removed and tossed

3) any standing water (dog dish, mop bucket) will end up splashed on the floor

4) if it's forbidden, it's fun - possible remedy - FORBID EVERYTHING?

5) A toddler is kind of like Armaggedon. Isn't there something in the Bible about what is done will be undone and what is undone will be done? Lesson: remember the little terror is holy.

6) Seinfeld is a brilliant, brilliant man, for one schtick alone - the thing about how his Nighttime Guy doesn't care about Morning Guy, so he does whatever he likes, thinking 'Morning Guy will deal with it, not me!' So Morning Guy hates Nighttime Guy.

Currently, my Morning Mother wants to strangle Nighttime Mama, who went out drinking Black Russians last night, passed out without turning any lights off or the heat on, slept all night with her contacts in, and had to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to play with her baby.

7) Everything you buy for your child you are really buying for yourself. I want to buy her new books because if I have to read Moo Moo Brown Cow one more time, I will turn back into a meat-eater. Also, I indulged in some new bath toys last night because the thousand identical yellow rubber duckies we currently have clogging the bathtub are starting to remind me of the eerie, freakish clones I'm reading in my sci fi book (the one where I've lost my place).

And you have to admit: the cute clothes are just for showing off the baby. She could care less.

8) There's this freaky book called Runaway Bunny in which the baby bunny keeps saying how she's going to run away from her mum and the mum bunny is like, 'whatever you do, wherever you go, I'll come find you and get you.' It's so loving! And so terrifying! Like the mama bunny is part of the SS or something.

But everytime my toddler screams when I wipe her nose, I know that this kind of love requires being hated and despised. I don't think my own mother ever got this. She wanted to be loved too much. She forgot that to love a child is to give up being loved back.

9) Making up the rules sounds like fun, when you're a kid. But now as a parent, I realize it's hard, not only to make them up, but to keep them up.

Being without my husband this week has been easy in some ways but awful in others. Mostly, as a friend put it, without a partner around, you get lost in your own head, you start to doubt yourself when you're making it up as you go along.

And then he calls and questions you and you wish you could send a punch through the telephone line. He is trying to be helpful and give input. He doesn't know you're at the point where you zone out for minutes at a time, that you can't sleep, that you are losing the ability to make decisions... that when she's playing in the dog dish, you let her, because it gives you a couple minutes of uninterrupted time... and then you feel guilty about it...

You wish he was back home. Having a partner of any kind really really helps. Just someone to bounce ideas off of, to complain to, to discuss poop with, to voice doubts to...

10) When people say being a mother is the hardest job ever, they are not quoting a magnet. They are speaking the truth. At least for Americans, without the benefit of extended families. So many of our own mothers did not mother us properly, because they themselves weren't mothered properly, so here we are now, trying to mother properly without examples or roadmaps, maybe only some sitcom episodes from the 80s and 90s...

11) Toilets, trash cans, and dirt are fun fun fun.

12) The thing about having a child is you do have to a) grow up yourself and b) learn to play again. It's this weird double-stretch.

Growing up myself for me means
- putting my needs behind everyone else's, but still taking care of myself
- being assertive, not passive aggressive, or aggressive
- tying my shoe laces, putting my crap away, cleaning up after myself, not eating like a bachelorette, thinking ahead
- driving safer, to protect her, and myself
- eating healthier, because I want to protect me for her
- following some rules without questioning them (hardest thing)
- watching my language
- no watching tv around her
- living conciously, to set a good example
- not feeling sorry for myself anymore

In general, just not indulging in the luxury of getting to be as childish or annoying as I would like to be if I didn't have a little mimic-sponge beside me...

And part two, learning to play again... this is the good part, that makes up for the growing up part. I get to scribble and talk in funny voices and sing silly songs and see the world again for the new, beautiful thing it is... I get to sit on the bathroom floor with my baby, letting her pet my hair... I get to study grass... I get to turn her sock into a squeaky character that makes her giggle... I get to dance to cheesy music...

The thing is, it's hard, after training myself to seem 'adult' to let go, to take time to just be, to just let myself be ridiculous... but it's essential. You don't do projects with a baby toddler really. You have to live in the moment. You have to learn to drop whatever you're doing and pick up something else. You can't get attached to a goal or plan or a schedule or a nice pair of pants.

You can only get attached to the baby.

And that's a good thing.