Oh wait, I am a mama.  In fact nearly every second of my day involves my kids in some form or another. And that’s ok with me. My kids are totally adorable and incredibly independent, making them a challenge to manage at times, but brings me pride.  My husband and I have re-vamped our lives and plans around those two little ones.  I’ve already started telling Elijah about the ways of the world and why mommy and daddy go to work everyday and how it’s all for them. Elijah now lets me do homework when I ask him to because he knows that it’s important for the whole family.

Much as my mom went to night school and Dad worked a second job, so do we to give the best possible chance to our kids. So here’s to Mom’s (and Dad’s, but it’s not Father’s day yet ;-p ) for all that they did for us when we were kids, and for all that we in turn do for our kids, working so hard, giving up sleep and checking to make sure chests rise and fall when sound asleep. Happy Mother’s Day!

For the previous couple weeks Elijah and I have been talking about him learning to use the potty.  Well, actually I did most of the talking, and he gave “yeshes”. He’s been very excited about learning to use the potty and has frequently taken notes while joining Dad or Mom about how to do it.

So this weekend launched the next big milestone.  I brought home a simple potty with a removable bucket, a.k.a pee-can, Friday night. After his bath he happily got acquainted with it, ready for Saturday.  To our surprise, his first attempt was a complete success with all pee in the potty!

Saturday, after a round of shopping and another potty purchased from Ikea, we had two pots, for different rooms.

When he was set free he didn’t want to sit on either of the two potties we had.  Normally fearless and already having sat on them, this was unexpected.  I took him into the bedroom, freeballing it, and closed the door with both potties with us and asked him if he was ready to sit on one, now that he had some privacy.  Almost instantly he was on the pot! Then, jumped up and sat on the other one. He went back and forth, trying both and turned out, he seemed to favor the Ikea model, though smaller.

“Dad, come take a peek at your son!” I shouted down the hall.  Elijah smiled behind his binky as Dad opened the door.  High Fives all around for sittin’ on the potty!

Elijah carried a potty out to the kitchen where we intended to hang out most of the day, since pee and stinky* are easiest to clean off tile, rather than carpet.  Minutes later he peed again, but this time, under the dining room table.  This is his hiding spot for everything, including taking care of business. It was almost the only accident he had all weekend.  He then finished up on the potty.

We built a fort in the kitchen for him to barricade himself in. He spent the rest of the day naked running around and peeing in the potty.  Sunday went the same way! It’s amazing how exciting stinky and pee are now!

Now all week he’s been without a diaper most of the time at home.  The only problem so far was last night. Elijah did a stinky all on his own and no one knew.  And he didn’t have wipes or TP around so tried his hand….  Buahahahahaaaa… DAD got to deal with that one!

It’s a good idea to have a stash of TP in life, less you wind up with stinky.

*we call poop as stinky

And there are a variety of ways in which to say no.

Tonight I was taking away a plate of food he was holding on to, but didn’t care too much about.  SO he just held a tight grip as I pulled it away, but extended his arms with it slowly saying, “Nnnnoooooooo…” It sounded like a slow motion replay. It was a family LOL moment.

“Elijah it’s time to say g’night to Grandma,” my husband says.

“NO!” replies Elijahs in a little boy squeal.

Then there’s the frantic, “No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!” as he chases me to come back and open the door to the fridge.

The calm, “no,” in reply to a simple yes or question that he’s willing to answer when he’s not tired or hungry.

And the no that comes as he’s flinging his body to the floor in protest that starts with a “no” and combines “ugh” at the end, “Noooough!”

And the bouncy, “No-o-o-o-o,” that comes from toddling away from the proposition of a diaper change.

When my husband and I are also not tired or hungry, it’s actually ridiculously funny.  Sometimes we ask him questions, just to hear the spoken word in different forms. This is not his first word, just the one, of course, that most children will find the most valuable to use at their age to establish their will, independence and desires.

“Yes” is thrown into the mix too, but less frequently and usually in response to definite yes answers to questions like, “Do you want to go to the park?” and “Do you want some juice?”

So you get to this point and ask yourself, “Will they ever grow out of this stage?”  And the obvious answer, “NO!” You’ll experience this for another 18+ years. Yikes!

Never mind my legs being spread and everyone looking at my vagina; I was more concerned with my feet.

I was a runner.  …hmm “was”.  I would like to say I “am” a runner, BUT that would imply that I still run.  How about: I’m a runner at heart.  Yes, that does it.

So now that we’ve established that, everyday before work I would wake up and go running for at least half an hour.  Outside was preferable, but some days I took to the treadmill inside.  I did bits of weights to tone arms, legs and abs too.  I was a slim athletic woman. And I was very happy with that. Finding myself pregnant, I naturally asked how long I could keep running. And the answer:  As long as I was comfortable doing it, but my baby belly would tell me when.

The first two months were no sweat.  The third I still did, but getting a wee tired and randomly napping during the day too.

I’m glad I spent the first trimester keeping up my normal exercise.  In retrospect, I wish I had done more throughout the second and third trimesters.  Moving across the country, moving the in-laws in with us and finding a job in the recession, though, proved more stressful than I expected on top of raging preggo hormones. Go figure.

Funny story: Seven months pregnant and without a car, I was leaving work to go to school.  I saw the bus was already picking up people at the stop half a block away.  What do I do? I sprint, naturally.  I made it.  And I paid dearly for it.  Just on the bus waddling to a seat I had pain in my groin from having strained the already taxed muscles carrying an extra 35 lbs around.  The next two days I was sore with every step.  I swear I had bounced the baby’s head on my pelvis.  If ever you’re in that position, catch the next bus and be a few minutes late.

If you can do nothing else than motivate yourself to go for a walk several times a day, do it. But do more as much as you can.  Go swimming, take some yoga classes with a friend, anything to keep your body in shape.  You’ll want to have your body in a good place to counter the fat calories of cravings that many of us find ourselves slaves to on occasion.  Not to mention having a healthy bod to keep up with caring for the little one.

I went from about a size 1 to a size 6 and I’m still working it off.  I can’t run like I used to after two kids in two years, but I’m working back up to it and back down into my pre-kids clothes.  I’m proud to say that my husband and I have now started going to the gym on a regular basis too!

Best line ever:

Rollo: So what’s the prognosis, Fertile Myrtle? Minus or plus?
Juno MacGuff: I don’t know. It’s not seasoned yet.
[grabs products]
Juno MacGuff: I’ll take some of these. Nope… There it is. The little pink plus sign is so unholy.
[shakes pregnancy tester]
Rollo: That ain’t no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, Homeskillet.

Of course, our son’s nickname until month 8 when we actually agreed on a name, was Doodle.

Now I had never spent any time around a pregnant woman in my life.  I had very little concept of what was about to happen and how it all goes down.  So we enter the store and Mom starts picking up cute clothes and we get a room set up to try on.  At this point, I’m barely any bigger than I ever was.  And I was a whopping 98lbs, 5′ tall athletic girl.  I was still jogging every other day before work. No one could even tell I was pregnant, except for me, really.  I could tell my belly was no longer flat.  Mom mostly gave me the stink eye for making comments like that. Three pregnancies and thirty years had not been as kind as she would’ve liked.  And I’m sure somewhere within, she was thinking, “Just wait. You’ll see.”

I go into the fititng room with a pile of petite size garments and the woman helping us follwed, “You’ll want to strap this around your waist to give you an idea of how big you’ll be in three more months.”  She reached for what looked like an ugly blue pillow with a wide elastic band and velcro coming out of either side. “Thanks,” I replied.

The reflection was funny looking. I had my jeans on and a maternity shirt that draped over my pillow belly. It reminded me of the joke a co-worker unknowingly made just weeks earlier about looking pregnant when I was carrying a watermelon into the room.  The pillow was three months more, watermelon was more like four or five months.

“Ugh, Mom, am I really going to get that big?!”

“MMmm..bigger.”

“What!”

“I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but that’ll be too small towards the end.”

“What! I feel like I’m swimming in it.”

“Wait till you try on the pants with the elastic band.”

Those pants were bigger than the shirt. Little did I know, that those very pants would be so tight by the end of the day 8 months pregnant, I’d take them off by 7pm.

So our shopping trip was at an end, and I walked away with some modern maternity clothes I would soon grow into. In retrospect, I would have gotten longer shirts.  Towards the nine month mark, my baby belly would peek out the bottom of some of them.

“Ish, ish,” is about what he sounded like. This particular “ish, ish” was asking to have his hands wiped off.  I took a look and realized what it was.  Lipstick, of course.

As I took a moment to think about how he could’ve gotten it, I remembered him carrying his stool around and figured he must have taken it back into the bedroom and used it to reach the top of my dresser. Oh well, let’s clean that up.

I wiped the largest chunks off his little fingers with a paper towel, took the lipstick cap and asked him to show me where he got it from.

*I’ve made a point of rarely getting upset when he comes to me having done something wrong, so he’s never afraid to tell me.  But don’t get me wrong, I definitely let him know if he did do something wrong and have him help correct it. He’s now become quite the little cleaning helper.

So he leads the way down the hall and points to the floor where he pointed to the lipstick base, now empty and then pointed to the wall.

All I could do was smile and chuckle as he proudly pointed and described his drawing.  Any other night, I would have grabbed one of the many cleaning cloths we have and had him help clean off the wall, but tonight I thought I’d share it with you, so I took a couple pictures.  (Including the artist)

Who would have known that “morning sickness” is by no means limited to the MORNING! The first day at work I wasn’t sure exactly why I didn’t feel well.  It was late in the morning, but not close enought to lunch to be hungry. The next day it happened again around the same time so I munched on some trail mix.  As the weeks went on this became routine and worsening.  I found I had to eat constantly to avoid being nauseous throughout the day. Saltines became my friend. I was working full time and the circumstances were that I had not told any colleagues that I was pregnant yet, so I had to act normal.

So one day, I was working and under a deadline to get some work done and go to the bank with a manager to do the usual banking.  It was two hours since I had last eaten and the hunger pangs were growing. Another half hour and we were at the bank….waiting in a long line! You’ve got to be kidding me! I’m going to barf if I don’t get something to eat! I was actually starting to sweat at this point trying to compose myself.  Banking done.

“Let’s go grab a snack on our way back.” My manager liked to talk – a lot.  So we’re on our way to the store and he’s chatting about all kinds of things and all I can do is think about how I would explain simply throwing up in front of him.  Finally – at the deli.  What looks good?  Pacing, nothing looks good. In fact thinking  about food at this point makes me want to barf more.  Ah ha! Mashed potatoes!  Yes, one small container of mashed potatoes please!

I devoured them. In minutes. Just sitting in the car before we headed back. Amazingly, my manager didn’t question it.

For many months, I woke up in the morning hoping not to feel nauseous.  When I did, I knew I just needed to eat a few crackers to settle it down.  Occasionally I had the misfortune of not making it to the kitchen and ended up throwing up in the bathroom sink. Not sexy.

Must have pregnancy item: Large box of saltines.

My first instance of this came about a week after the shock of finding out I was pregnant for the first time wore off.  I was walking hurriedly down some stairs and my chest throbbed with each step – the constant reminder that my life was about to change.

That evening, my sore chest and I cozied up on the sofa for my routine bedtime read and I found that I hadn’t opened my book, but was lost in thought about the months and years to come.  In a few short minutes too much to type was thought. “I can’t believe I’m pregnant.  I’m not ready for a kid. I never planned to have kids. I’ve never even changed a diaper. I have no experience with children.  I don’t make enough money.  I’m so excited.  There’s no one else in the world I’d want to do this with other than my husband.”

And that was the first instance of this question, “Am I ready?”

There’s so many things to prepare for to make sure your little one has all the opportunity in life.  And suddenly it’s important to take care of yourself to make sure you can take care of your baby.  We were looking at college savings, health insurance, life insurance, organic food, vitamins, green cleaning products, going back to school ourselves and getting degrees, even a piggy bank!

Then there were all the baby essentials to get too!

Do I need a parenting class?  A birth class?  How do I breastfeed?  How do I hold a baby?  What if I drop it!?

I tell you, it REALLY sunk in when I was being wheelchaired out of the maternity ward nine months later with a 7lb 1oz swaddled boy in my arms. I felt the need to ask the nurse if they were really going to let me, of all people, just leave with another human being!

But I didn’t.  I just smiled.  And I realized that I probably wasn’t any more ready than I could be, but that I would do my best for that little guy, because that’s what parents do.

A friend of mine was recently thinking of starting the adoption process and said she wasn’t sure if she was ready yet.  I said, no one is ever really ready, you just prepare the best you can and throw yourself into it.  You learn along the way and love ‘em with all your heart.