A typical
day starts out for me between 7 and 7:30am, whenever my little rugrat decides
to wake me up with his babbles. Looking over at the monitor, I’ll see he has
moved about 90 degrees from where he fell asleep. His legs are either sticking
out of the bars on his crib, or are straight up in the air as he wiggles his
toes to the camera. "Di-dah! Da-da! Mmmmmmaaaah! Titttthhhhh!", he babbles. I roll
over. He’s not crying, so I’ll give myself an extra five minutes of sleep.
MMMMMMAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
MMMMMMMMMAAAAAHHH!!!
Alright,
alright I get it. I’m up.
I shuffle
into his room and as soon he sees me a wide smile appears on his little face
and his arms and legs jerk all around in a horizontal happy dance.No amount of
grogginess can prevent me from reciprocating that infectious smile of his.
He then
nurses for half a second and then its time for what I like to call Diaper
Change Wrestling. Seriously, it should be made into an Olympic sport because of
its difficulty and the amount of strength and energy that must be put forth
into changing his diaper. Omar’s always been a wiggly worm, and the more mobile
he gets, the harder it is to get him to lay still long enough to change his
diaper. He’s rolling around in both directions, sometimes ending up on his
belly in a crawling position, trying to grab at anything that’s near him (toys,
changing mat, tissue, my hair…) all while I’m trying to wipe his poopy bottom
down and trying to prevent him from kicking his feet into his own poop (I’m not
always successful). In theory, it should take two people to do this
successfully and prevent any accidents. However, since I’m usually alone, I’ve
somehow got to manage it with two arms and two elbows (yes, elbows need come in
play at times). Sometimes I wish I could sprout hands like one of those Hindu
gods. Oh the things I could do while holding the baby! Sigh…
After my
morning workout via Diaper Change Wrestling, its playtime in his swing while
Mama chugs coffee and checks emails (and Facebook and Twitter of course). I
really do need to chug my coffee because if I take my time sipping on it,
chances are its going to go cold before I get a chance to finish it. Omar tends
to have the attention span of a goldfish (especially if he’s tied down in his
swing) and will start to complain for a change of scenery after about oh, three
minutes. I move him down to the rug where his toys are still scattered about
from last night. He picks up where he left off and I go to make his rice
cereal. If we manage to go through the meal without him getting cereal in his
hair or eyebrows, it’s a successful breakfast.
A little
more playing time and then Omar starts rubbing his eyes. Ah, its time for his
morning nap. Now, most people have this image of babies falling asleep: being
cradled by mommy, eyes slowing closing, laying peacefully still while being
rocked to Hush Little Baby.
Not my
child.
I do cradle
and rock him before putting him in his crib, and Hush Little Baby is playing in
the background, but the peacefully falling asleep thing is only an image in a long
lost dream of mine. No, my child prefers to pinch my neck, face, stick his
fingers in my mouth, pull my hair, do a can-can dance with his legs, turn over
in my arms, all while his eyes are closing and he’s drifting off into sleep.
Once he’s so close to being asleep, I put him in his crib. And sometimes he
does drift off into deep sleep on his own. But most of the time, some
mysterious electric charge hits him as soon as he hits the mattress and he’s
kicking and flailing his arms about, eyes wide open as if sleep wasn’t even
near him two seconds ago. He’s not crying, just awake. I give him a hug and
kiss and leave the room. Watching on the baby monitor, he’s rolling around back
and forth, kicking his legs up, trying to suck his big toe, all while babbling.
Since he’s been crawling, he likes to practice in his crib when he’s supposed
to be sleeping. He’ll roll over onto all fours and lunge his body forward while
forgetting to move his arms and legs. Upon realizing that he hasn’t gone
anywhere, he bursts into tears. He’s perfectly capable of rolling back onto his
back himself, but just remains there, on all fours, crying for “MMMMAAAAAHHHH” to come
rescue him from this predicament. I’m quite convinced now that he does this on
purpose just to get me back into the room. It’s so pathetic it actually works.
After going back in his room about 4 or 5 times rolling him back over, he
finally falls asleep.
In the 30
minutes that I have while he’s sleeping, I eat breakfast and try to get some
laundry done. I feel like I never finish laundry, so it is really part of my
everyday life. Some days we go to
the mall in the morning, in which case I’m eating breakfast while getting dressed
so that we can make it on time before the driver leaves.
The rest of
the day is usually spent in some variation of all the above: playing, eating,
sleeping. Sometimes he’ll treat me to an hour or hour and a half nap where I
can do a number of things, maybe even take a nap! But that doesn’t happen
often. People that tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps must be blessed with
a good sleeping baby. Its rare
that Omar is sleeping long enough for me to get some shut-eye, and even so,
there are about 546 things I need to be doing that are hard to do while he’s
awake. Such as eating, or studying, or simply taking a few minutes to restore
my sanity by staring blankly at the TV. If my husband’s in town, when he comes
home from work he does take Omar off my hands, but that time for me means I’m
in the kitchen making dinner. Between all of that and trying to have somewhat
of a social life and taking Omar to Gymboree classes and trying to keep the
house a live-able place, I feel like I just don’t stop until I faceplant on the
bed at night (which is sometimes as early as 9:30pm).
I’ve been
leaving Omar with some oh-so-kind neighbors every once in a while for an hour
or so just so I can get some “me” time, or sleep. Since most of my attention is
focused so much on my son, and whatever is left goes to my poor husband (who
also deserves more!), I have been completely neglecting myself. I noticed this
when I got on the scale a few weeks ago and realized that I weighed less than I
did when I got pregnant. SCARY. I’ve lost all my pregnancy weight and more, and
if you know me, you know that’s not a good thing. I looked sick, had zero
self-confidence and energy, and more baggage than Heathrow airport under my
eyes. I became depressed. That’s
when I decided to start leaving Omar with my neighbors so I could use that time
to take care of myself. I’ve been working out which has tremendously helped my
energy, confidence, and overall mood. And my body of course. I’ve been more
conscious of my eating, and making sure I’m eating enough to make up for all
the energy I lose taking care of and nursing Omar.
Bottom line,
my life is crazy. Some people think being a stay-at-home mom and wife is all
play and no work. SO not the case. Or it isn’t with me at least. Of course, I
love it and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing right now. I applaud you
mommies out there who are working full time and taking care of your babies and
husbands. ‘Motherhood is not easy’ is the understatement of the century, no
matter how you go about it. But the blessings make it worth it, and one day I
know I’ll look back at that day that I got puked on right after I had changed
from getting peed on, and laugh. I'm always exhausted, but I’m getting better at it every day. I’ve
learned to somehow function on 4 hours of sleep. I’ve learned to accept that my
child fights sleep like the plague and he may never go through an entire night
without waking up…or ever get teeth. I may very well have to deal with his
teething and sleep-hatred for the rest of my life. But then I look at Omar
smiling and squealing while we’re dancing to Party Rock Anthem and realize
these good moments will pass with the bad ones, so I count my many blessings
and enjoy it.
Sanity…check.
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| This smile is what keeps me going! Allah ye7mi :) |
