Girls Day!

Boo is sick and has been for a few days. Bubbi is over being on lock down as she was sick for a few days before him.

I look like crap. No waxing, cutting, pedicuring etc has been done in MONTHS (don't worry, I have showered and shaved).

SOOOO, daddy took the morning off to stay home with Boo while Bubbi and I went to get my eyebrows waxed, get my hair cut, get lunch and get pedicures! SHE WAS A FREAKING ANGEL!!! I know, Bubbi was...GOOD!

Here are some shots of our awesome mother daughter spa day.

Random Rants: Stiches from childbirth

Even though many people warned me of some of the down side to having new babies, no one told me how ITCHY the stitches healing "down there" would be!!!

Now, I had heard everything from "its better to tear than get an episiotomy" to "you'll be so sleep deprived"...no one ever told me about how terribly itchy I would be if I needed stitches!

Boo was Edward Scissor Head and tore me four terrible directions. Recovering was itchy hell until all four 2 inches stitches fell out...about six weeks after he was born. Thank god I didn't need any stitches with Bubbi! Healing was a breeze.

So mommies to be....plan on being VERY F-ING ITCHY if you need a butt load of stitches like I did. Just a friendly heads up! Supposedly hemorrhoid pads (yes, on your bruised and beaten vag) can help, but no one told me so I just suffered.

Good luck with that one ladies!

And then there was Bubbi...

I've said it, being pregnant sucks (or at least sucked for me). What's worse?  Being pregnant when you have a kid (or an infant like me...remember Boo was only 3 months old when I found out I was pregnant with Bubbi)!

Even though I didn't "work" while pregnant with Bubbi, I got waaay less rest than when I was pregnant the first time. No coming home from work at 5:30 and crashing on the couch. No deciding that Saturdays and Sundays were for beaching myself in my Lazyboy recliner with the remote. No, Boo needed to be changed, fed and played with no matter what day of the week it was.

So now I lost the only good thing about being pregnant to me, and that was sitting on my pregnant ass and being treated like a princesses. Boo didn't care! He even made me carry him up and down the stairs through the whole pregnancy (no, he was not a super baby and couldn't walk at 3 months old...wtf?). And yes, I lifted the 30 pound stroller in and out of the car even at nine months pregnant (gasp! a first time pregnant woman would probably expect to spontaneous miscarriage if they did such a thing).

The good thing? I only gained 21 pounds even though I ate anything and everything I wanted (gained 37 with Boo and that was with counting calories and going to the gym). So it had its upside...I guess.

The last few weeks of my pregnancy were torture! I cried everyday just praying for her to come and end my insanity. I checked the mirror several times a day to see if my stomach became a road map (I didn't).

I lost sleep at night over the fear of having to love a second child when I loved Boo so much. How much was he going to regress? Would he ever forgive me? Would he hate her and try to smother her to death? So many worries and discomforts!

Finally, on the night of Boo's first birthday, I went into labor. I came out of the bathroom and told hubby we might need to call 911 because there was so much blood. He just laughed and said he got a pretty good view last time and lots of blood was normal.

We got to the hospital and they put me in their stupid observation room and left me there for an hour! They finally come back and were like, "Oh we need to admit you." NO SHIT!

So I'm in excruciating pain and want my epidural (no all-natural here...I'm a puss...no shame), but they insist on giving my IV first and confirmed I didn't feel any pressure (I felt tons of pressure but no way in hell was anybody going to tell me I was too far along for an epidural).

Well, my blood pressure drops (it's low usually and both pregnancies made it go too low several times) and they can't find a vein. Then I almost pass out from the needles so Bubbi's heart rate drops too low and they need to give me juice and wait...THREE MORE TRIES WITH THE NEEDLED!

Finally they bring in the pro and get me hooked up and give me my amazing drugs. As soon as the epidural is in, I let the nurse know I was lying and did feel tons of pressure, like, a flipping hour ago before all this drama. She gives me a smirk and checks me...an 8.5+.

And what happens? The epidural totally stalled my labor..THANK GOD! I so needed some time to watch TV and read a magazine after all that pain...plus I knew the impending doom that is a newborn!

Bubbi was born five hours after my epidural. I pushed her out in 5 minutes with no stitches (healing was a breeze with her...nothing like the crap I went through after Boo was born).

My daddy, mother-in-law and Boo came to meet the new princess a few hours later. Boo was terrified of me in the hospital bed and barely interested in his new sister. I was totally distraught.

The next day we went home and began the second part of our adventure in parenting...Bubbi and Boo makes two!

Wordless Wednesday: Gogurt oops

Boo apparently had some gogurt shoot out accidentally (believe me it was not on purpose as gogurt is very special to him).

This is what I walked up to see...

As you can see, Bubbi could care less as she is too busy eating her gogurt...

Once I finished cleaning Bubbi off, I saw this...

And yes, I was yelling for him to stop as I was taking the picture. Terrible mom. Oh well, hilarious!

Just Call CPS: I am only one

Kids get hurt. It happens. Still a sad sight when it does!

This past weekend we went to a quaint little town as a family. Daddy wanted to run into a delicate trinket store, a no go for the kids.

So the kids and I spent a few minutes alone like we do every other day of our lives when daddy works. Unfortunately, things went bad quickly.

Bubbi fell and scraped her shin and knee. No biggie. Time to head to the car anyways as daddy would only be a few minutes. So I buckle Bubbi into her seat and clean her scrapes.

Boo is directed to hold onto the chain in between two metal posts. He is within arms reach and I can see him out of the corner of my eye. He is a good listener and only needs to wait while I quickly clean Bubbi's leg before I buckle him in on the other side.

Thud, scream and Boo is gone from the corner of my eye!!!

AHHH! I look over to see Boo getting off the floor with asphalt nastiness in his hair. He's trying to cry, but doing that gasping for air thing. Poor dude must have flipped over the top of the chain he was "holding" on to. Ok, mommy kiss it better.

Then he turns up to look at me and this is what I see...

Holy crap! A goose egg from hell that is bleeding!!! WHERE IS DADDY! NEED ASSISTANCE!

I console Boo and wait for what seemed like hours (less than five minutes) until daddy comes to the car (champ Boo had stopped crying after only a minute or two). The minute he walks up I burst into tears. He sees the damage and runs to a restaurant to grab Boo some ice.

Boo's fine. Bubbi ate it over a pile of sticks an hour later and gashed up the same leg a little more before we made it to the safety of home (and pants). Mommy needed a drink. Long day. Being only one person, one mommy with more than one kid, can be rough...for everyone!

Let's Teach Together: The ABCs

Ok parents. We all know how hard it is to try and teach our kids everything we want to because of well, life! You have more than one kid or your house is dirty or you need to go to the gym or you work full time...lots of not valid, but real excuses! Maybe you have the best intentions, but you get overwhelmed with trying to teach your child ALL the letters or ALL the colors at once.

This is what I do at home and I thought you may all like to join me as we are just starting over!

I do a letter a week. I go in alphabetical order and then start over. I have these super cute Nerdy Baby ABC Flashcards for Very Young Scientists that I use along with your standard magnet alphabet letters. You can by nice ones like Melissa & Doug Magnetic Wooden Alphabet or the cheap ones from your local Dollar Store (just don't let your younger children play with the cheap ones because they have exposed tiny magnets in the back that can pop out and be a chocking hazard).

This is how you do it. Monday morning you show your child/ren the flashcard and letter of the week. Tell them the letter and have them repeat. Say a few nouns that start with the letter (think airplane instead of amazing...much easier for young children to understand nouns, parents). Put it on the fridge and continue your life. Every morning point out and say the letter. Every time you see that letter (ok, maybe not every time) throughout the week on a sign you are walking by or in a book you read, point it out.

Next week, go onto the next letter and so on.

No child is too young for this. You read to your newborn, may as well engage them more by pointing out some letters...plus it might keep the new, first time mom from going as insane! If your child is older, consider adding a vocabulary word or a multiplication family (think 2 x 1, 2 x 2, 2 x 3 etc).

Teaching your child in this non forceful, no stress manner will give your child the knowledge they need to succeed and the confidence they need to thrive without the pressure to preform. It is the least we can do for our children.

My Morning: Too much shopping

So today, like any other stay at home mom, I had to take the kids with me to run a few errands (so makes me miss my lunch breaks at work).

First stop Sam's Club, a warehouse membership store in my area. Kids did great. Well, Boo did great and Bubbi tried to stand up in the cart a few times...nothing too bad.

Next stop BabiesRUs. We tore the place up. I let them check out every isle of toys and cleaned up after them (though I must brag that they mostly put the toys back where they belonged when they were done...however most still leaves 49 out of 100 toys for mommy to pick up). Again, a little hectic but nothing too bad. Worst thing was probably Boo begging for stuff, something he just now started to do. Yuck.

Onto get new shoes. Why? Well, Boo lost ONE shoe to the brand new $30 ones I just bought him. So I bought cheap $5 ones...that TIE with LACES! STUPID! Now he can't do them by himself and he thinks its awesome to knot them. Bubbi like to completely unlace them every chance she gets.

So 2 weeks of having one pair of shoes that fits with laces, time to buy some new shoes.

Back to the store. The lady whips out the shoes sizer and Boo says "sissy first". Bubbi does like its, well, as painless as getting your damn foot sized. Boo? He runs away screaming and f-ing hides! Find him and try to get him to physically place his foot on the apparently flaming, man eating metal foot sizer while, you guessed it, Bubbi runs and hides. WTF?

Not even close to getting an acurate messurment for Boo, I drop him (oops, literally) and run to chase Bubbi down. I'm no joke that screaming mom in public that should never have had kids. I promise frozen yogurt to any child that sits in the stroller and behaves. So now everyone is in the stupid stroller.

I grab some flipping Crocs, try them on his feet and check out. Bubbi wiggles free and is again running a muck while I ditch my wallet and Boo to go chase her down, yes, again.

We leave. Thank god.

At this point I would have literally had to beat and bend the crap out of Bubbi to get her back in the seat so I let her walk holding my hand to the car. Almost there she pulls a fast one and runs to the curb to balance walk on it! AGAIN! AWESOME MOM!

Grab her shove the kids and the shoes in the car, warning Bubbi that if she has one more bad behavior she will not get her treat. As Boo tries to slide past her to get into his seat she dead locks him between her shoes and the chair. He's flipping out, but not screaming yet because she has the wind knocked out of him!

BUBBI! NO NO! NO TREAT!

She lets go and they both cry in unison. Yes, I am getting dirty looks from the old people who just parked next to me.

We drive through McDonald's to get Boo's "frozen yogurt" (really a fruit and yogurt parfait). Bubbi cries when she sees I really didn't get her one. I cry too because I feel so bad, but know she needs to start taking me seriously.

So I look back and this is what I see...

AHHH! What a mess! The really stupid part? I gave this to the kids just a few days ago in the car and they did the same thing! Why would I be so stupid as to do it twice, I don't know. I don't know.

And of course, here is Bubbi with her sad face sans her treat...

Just Call CPS: Bubbi in the shower

Now I'm no idiot (insert laugh here)...I know kids can drown in even an inch of water so I would never leave them unattended in the bath, around an open toilet (especially nasty Bubbi who thinks they are splash pools) etc.

Sooo, being the bright person I am:

Bubbi, Boo and I were taking a family shower after Bubbi got her first UTI at around 15 months and the doctor suggested no more soap/shampoo etc in the bathtub. Easy enough. Boo, not so fond...Bubbi loves showers!

So we're having a nakey party in the shower and Boo has to go pee. Not wanting to confuse him as he was just starting to potty train (sure dude, pee in the shower), I took Boo to the pot and left Bubbi in the shower...just a few steps away.

He pees, we run back and HOLY CRAP!! Bubbi is seriously standing face up towards the water and struggling to get air! I get her out of the stream of water and she burps, pukes and cries. She's over it in a second and wants to go back in the shower.

WTF? Kids are really too stupid to turn their heads away from a stream of water?!?!?! Apparently.
Kind of reminds me of the myth that chickens and roosters are so stupid they drown in the rain because they keep looking up at it (apparently proved wrong by Mythbusters).

And moms like me are too stupid to think kids can only drown if there is water pooling somewhere (our shower has no tiny pools and drains like a champ)? Uh, yeah....RIGHT HERE!

So, be careful you stupid parents. Yes, kids are that dumb!

Random Rants: Bow Flushing

I was recently looking for Bubbi's satin red bow....then I remembered why I couldn't find it.

She "accidentally" flushed it down the toilet.

Bubbi has long been overly interested in all things having to do with the potty. Several months ago we were at a restaurant taking a potty break in an attempt to not tear the whole restaurant down before our food came.

Boo (yes, we travel in herds round here to the bathroom) flushed the high powered toilet and at that exact moment Bubbi had an uncontrollable urge to rip her beautiful bow out of her hair and toss in the pot.

Woosh! Scream (I totally over-reacted as it really was a super cute bow)! Bubbi looks at me and I say, as any stupid mom, "ALL GONE!!!" She freaks out and starts screaming, "BOW! BOW!!!"  I explain that we don't put things in the toilet because then they are all gone.

Ten minutes later she calms down and our food comes. Lord, I can't take this girl anywhere!

Recipe: Super healthy tukery pasta

In case you're a little dense or this is your first visit to my blog, I am not an awesome fifties housewife that cooks from scratch and keeps a perfect house. So recipes will be far and few between on here...and probably will consist of compiling several ready made ingredients! There's my disclosure.

Most young kids need a good high fat, high calorie meal here and there. By high fat, I mean high monounsaturated fats...not saturated animal fats from meat, butter and dairy. That is why I buy the leanest meat I can then add fat and calories with good fats such as olive oil and avacados.

Here is my super healthy turkey pasta! I make a large batch of the sauce and freeze it in two or three large portions so we can have it once a week without a huge hoopla and mess.

Ingredients:
~One package of super lean ground turkey
~Lots of olive oil
~One standard sized bag of frozen veggie mix
~One jar of your favorite pasta sauce (that you hopefully bought on sale and stocked up on)
~Barilla Plus Rotini Pasta (I get this kind because it has extra protein & omega-3s plus is multigrain...and rotini picks up lots of the sauce which is what you really want the kids to eat in this recipe)
~Ground flaxseed (I buy Spectrum Naturals - Essential Flaxseed Ground Organic, 14 oz granules)


1. Start cooking your ground pasta in a huge pan with LOTS of olive oil (you bought the extra lean to avoid the bad animal fat, now you must add the good monounsaturated fats to keep this a nice healthy but high calorie meal for the kiddos)...lots to me is around 1/4 cup or more.

2. Start your water boiling for your pasta.

3. Defrost your whole bag of frozen veggies (I usually put them in a colander and run hot water over them) and then throw them in a blender (or your food processor if your husband recently broker your blender...grrr).

4. Add a little bit of your fave jarred pasta sauce and turn that sucker on. Keep adding the sauce until you now have blended the whole jar of pasta sauce and the entire bag of vegetables into an unrecognizable reddish orange mix.

5. Add a few tablespoons of ground flaxseed and blend more (this does add a bit of texture to the sauce...if you  have super picky eaters, consider buying flaxseed oil to add instead).

6. I hope you have been stirring your turkey...stir the turkey!

7. Once the turkey is FULLY COOKED (I cook the crap out of any ground meat...so nasty...ground meat goes through a variety of machines etc to get ground which gives it extra chances to get exposed to botulism etc...SO COOK THE CRAP OUT OF IT PLEASE!) add all of your blended sauce and simmer until your pasta is cooked.

8. I hope you remembered to add some pasta to your boiling water! If not, do so now...then wait the extra 7 minutes you could have saved by doing it a few steps ago. Don't go sit on your ass, clean your kitchen or something.

9. Serve and enjoy!

Take the extra (there should be a lot unless you have a large family) and freeze it. Consider making a double batch next time as this recipe freezes very well...all you need to do is toss a frozen container of it in the fridge the morning you plan to serve it and heat it up, serve over freshly boiled pasta.

Beware adult eaters! This is calorie (and nutrient) dense...not something you, as an adult, want to chow on regularly unless your one of those people everyone loves to hate that can't keep weight on. Give yourself a small portion with a large salad or something. Great for kids though!! Much better option than unhealthy treats or even whole milk or cheeses (anything high fat from animal products is not a great fat) if your child is underweight or on the lower end of the charts like mine tend to be.

Diary of neurotic mom: Alcoholism, please

Let me quickly start that I would like to call this section "Diary of a neurotic mommy", but Boo, Mr. J Cool himself, calls me mom more than mommy...so mom it is. Another note, I am neurotic. If you know me well, you will have thought "no shit". Thanks for the love.

Wikipedia defines Neurosis as a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. OMG I really am neurotic?!? Hard for me to believe most moms aren't to a certain extent, but that's just my opinion.

Ok, to the post.

Ever since I was pregnant with Bubbi, my second, I often found myself having to consciously choose to not be an alcoholic. Of course it wasn't an option when I was pregnant, but I did think several times a week, "thank god I'm pregnant because this would be the ideal time to become an alcoholic".

Now that my body is mine, the option to become an alcoholic is continually appealing. Especially after last night! Boo, my long-time champion sleeper, has been waking up at night and keeping me up for an hour plus (long story not meant for this post...this one is about the mommies dammit).

Wake up this morning at 8 am after being awake from 2:15 am to about 4:30 am. Grumpy and feel what I can only describe as hungover (no, I took no meds or drank no booze in the last 24 hours). First thought? Oh how wonderful it would be to pop a xanax and chase it down with a fish-bowl sized glass of red wine!

Now there would have been a time when I kept this desire (that's all it is...a desire that will never be acted upon because, well, I enjoy having custody of my kids...usually) to myself. However, a friend posted a jest on Facebook yesterday referring to stay-at-home moms taking valium. The responses were hilarious ranging from calling valium "mother's-little-helper" to stating "I'm on the wine train" and "choo choo"!

My point? If you wake up and find yourself ashamed that you want to start the day with a hardcore sedative and/or a bottle of tequila, don't! Not saying you should act on it...at least not every day.

Kids can ruin your marriage: From 2 months to the 2nd pregnancy...

We left off with no sex and no sleep with a tired, abused body for the wife. Husband's day to day is quite similar to before kids with work etc while the wife stays home with a new baby and what's left of her body (I know this sides with the wife, I'm trying husbands...).

Both wife and husband are somewhat over the shock in the abrupt change in their lives. In my house, sleep was returning as by two months, my little Boo was sleeping about 10.5 hours straight (feel free to virtually shoot me, I know...what an awesome baby).

Now the wife, mommy, is finally really adjusting and feeling this whole mommy thing (as well as physically returning to a human as opposed to an abused host to a possessed watermelon). Seeing her husband, daddy, hold the baby warms her heart. Daddy feels the same when he sees his wife in her maternal state...in the back of his mind he sees his new position in life as baby first, husband second. Marital stress!

And now the sex pressure comes back. Right around that time I had finally been cleared for sex, though it was still very painful and low on my to-do list (I am 100% healed now for all you terrified moms to be). We finally did it...once. Poor husband wants to return to more life as usual (aka before kids) in the bedroom, while wife is so not there yet! Marital stress!

Me? Well, I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later...yes, Boo was only 3 months old when we found out we were going to have another baby one night shy of an immaculate conception! AND CRAP! Be pregnant for another lame nine months! MORE MARITAL STRESS!

Book Review: Skinny Bitch

Let me start by prefacing that I am NOT a reader and I sure as hell am not a dieter! I read a few books a year max as I much prefer the net and trash TV (I'm sure my IQ reflects it so I will not be testing it anytime soon).

So onto the book, Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous! by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin....two totally skinny bitches. Here's a pic.

This book is VERY easy to read and is packed with flipping hilarious snappy comments and ideas throughout. The overall idea is to go natural vegan. It is waaay too extreme of a lifestyle for me, but has some very intriguing ideas that makes sense to me and a few tips and trick I choose to follow.


Here are some of my fave experts...I could seriously quote the whole book!

"Cigarettes are for losers. They are so 1989 and totally uncool. Not only do they screw up your whole body chemistry, they also kill your taste buds. It's no wonder you eat shit and garbage. Smoking's out. Give it up."

"Soda is liquid Satan....high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss..., as can its sodium and caffeine...And last time we checked, sugar...does not make you skinny! Now don't go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame...has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer's, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes. When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don't fucking drink it."

"Coffee is for pussies...If you can't wake up without it, it's because you are either addicted to caffeine, sleep deprived, or a generally unhealthy slob...[even decaf] is highly acidic. Acidic foods cause your body to produce fat cells."

“Whenever you see the words ‘fat-free’ or ‘low-fat’, think of the words ‘chemical shit storm’.”

"Sucralose (Spelnda) has been found to cause diarrhea; organ, genetic, immune system and reproductive damage; swelling of the liver and kidneys; and a decrease in fetal body weight."

Kids can ruin your marriage: First few weeks after birth

Where did we leave off? Oh yes, both husband and wife are exhausted and full of emotions.

Hearing the nurse say we were being discharged from the hospital after Boo's birth was one of the most surreal moments of our lives. My husband and I looked at each other like, wow, they are sending us home with a baby? Are they sure we know what we're doing???

So we put Boo in the car seat and go home. We pull the car seat out of the car and set him in the middle of the living room and stare at him. Ok, this is really freaking weird!

Here is how it went for me: Breastfeeding sucked. It hurt and I just couldn't get it down right. I wanted to strangle my husband for every comment he made as supportive as it was....he didn't have to wake up every two hours and try to figure it out! What did he know?

After delivering Edward-Scissor-Head (Boo gave me FOUR nasty tears), I couldn't sit, stand, walk or lay comfortably for six to seven weeks. My body hurt and I stunk (from the hormones...and I sweat like a pig...thank god though because I had a lot of water weight to shed). This doesn't exactly make someone cheery and easy to get along with (poor wife AND poor husband).

My husband? Well, he looked a little tired. He got to go away to work (he went back to work after only a few days as he's self-employed) while I was stuck in the house with baby that only pooped and wanted to torture me via breastfeeding. Resentment officially set in.

Now, the biggest thing that put stress on our marriage for me was waking up, even after we switched to bottles, to a crying baby. Now how the hell could he possibly be sleeping? Nudge nudge...your turn dude. No response. Ok, I'll do it...AGAIN! He did have to work the next day and I "got to stay home with the baby" so I should do it anyways....grrr.

Basically the husbands life still slightly resembles his old one: sleep through the night, go to work... The wife? Every moment of life is different. No work. No sleep. Different body. For me, terrible skin for the first few weeks after Boo was born.

To top it off, ourconversations centered around baby poop and how much he was eating. Both of us were exhausted and grumpy. More marital stress as we try and adjust to our new lives wearing our new hats and mommy and daddy...oh yeah, and no sex for anyone!

To be continued...

Don't burn the baby!

So if you're nearly as anxious and worried about everything as I am, you will totally love this Black & Decker SDC850 SpaceMaker 8-Cup Coffeemaker with Thermal Carafe.

When Boo was just starting to crawl I watched an episode of America's Next Top Model where one of the models, Thalia, was terribly disfigured from burns all over her face and body. The culprit? A COFFEEMAKER!!!

Before she was a year old, she pull a fresh pot of coffee/the coffeemaker off the counter and all over her precious face and body. She was very lucky to survive.

I was already terrified of this happening! I didn't drink coffee at the time because I was pregnant with Bubbi, but the husband did...and he was the one who couldn't remember for the life of him to push the darn thing back or make sure the cord wasn't hanging over the edge. More than that, Boo was capable of moving things to climb up but not cognisant enough to understand danger of items he could then access.

Then relief! We bought the Black & Decker SDC850 SpaceMaker 8-Cup Coffeemaker with Thermal Carafe. It has been a fabulous, reliable coffeemaker that we've used everyday since we bought it over two years ago....and one less HUGE thing to worry about! Plus we now have some extra counter space.

Boo-isms: Kids say the darndest things

I know kids say funny things, but it is so flipping funny when your own do! And it starts early. Boo could only saw a few words. I dropped something in the sink when he was 16 mos old and said, "Shit!" Boo's response was "owie". Shit was my go to word when I stubbed my toe etc until that first day Boo threw me under the bus.

~ After telling Boo that my computer was broken so we couldn't watch a cow get milked on you tube, he said, "Me a man me can fix it...me a man, mom"...DUH!

~ When Boo mentioned the wooden statue in the corner of a man crouching, I told him it was fake. His response, "No mom, dead...he dead"...yes, we keep dead people in our house.

~ I was in the shower and Boo ran up to the glass door shouting, "Daddy said Fu**, Daddy said Fu**, Daddy said Fu**...." clear as day, over and over. I tried to ignore him as parenting books suggest, but he just got louder. I finally told him to go tell daddy...great mommy fix-all response.

~ As I was putting on my bra, Boo asked, "Where you put that mommy?" I thought to make sure I understood his questions and then replied, "on my boobs". He responds, "No!!! On your nipples!"...well he wasn't wrong.

~ Boo wanted to show the sitter how he could go potty standing up...just like daddy. He gave a play-by-play of every little detail of how daddy pees....down to the last wiggle and pull. I don't know who was more embarrassed, me or her...or daddy!

~ This one again throws me under the bus. Bubbi kept going up to Boo and hitting him. He came to me and said, "Bubbi pissing me off". Ugg. Ok, I get it...I need to clean up the language!

~ Last but not least, Boo spewed this one out yesterday. Boo was looking for his tool and asked me, "Where's my f**ing banger?" I didn't really believe it until he said it five more times. Daddy dropped the F-bomb that morning, so it was all on him. And yes, we had a talk (both the boys and myself).

Not sure why I tried to hard to get him into my preschool of choice...my hell raiser is going to get kicked out the first week anyways.

Postpartum or Culture Shock: An Unhealthy Dose of Both

So I would love to focus on the wonderful parts of parenthood as there are so many, but I don't feel I'm doing any future mommies good by doing what all others did to me. All I heard was "oh you'll fall in love the moment you see that little baby". Well, I didn't.

I spent nine months feeling like crap and donating my body to a sick science experiment. I woke up daily and did a stretchmarks search and reeked of a nasty blend of Vaseline and Palmer's Cocoa Butter (the smell still makes my stomach turn to this day). I had heartburn from five days before I knew I was pregnant until the second Boo was out of my body. In the last few months of pregnancy I gave up sleep (you try to sleep after gaining 30 pounds in your gut with a strong set of arms in legs in you paired with constant heartburn) and took up sciatic nerve pain as a nightly ritual instead.

Labor itself was fine lasting just over nineteen and a half hours. As I mentioned previously, his heart rate was dropping and he had to have CPR just after birth. I saw him and.....well, he looked like a wrinkly old man. Cute wrinkly old man, don't get me wrong. Daddy held him first while I chugged my first drink of water sans heartburn in 40 plus weeks and a doctor stitched up what was left of me. I held him and looked at awe at what I created. But that was about it. Crazy shit there really was a baby in there. Ok, now I'm flipping exhausted let's go to bed.  So we did.

Wake up seven hours later (nurses gave me lots of crap about that thinking duh, I should have woken him up every two hours to feed him...hell no!) and blood blisters all over my nipples. And oh my god are you SURE there isn't another baby in this tummy? AND holy crap am I going to need a blood transfusion or something if I bleed another drop?!?!? We go home and life starts...or ends?

I had spent nine months obsessing over my pregnancy week by week and then hours on end obsessing over labor itself. I had never really taken the time to focus on everything after being discharged from the hospital. Sure people told me the sleep deprivation was rough, but no one really told me that I would feel like I just ran a 19 plus hour marathon after not sleeping well for several months...not to mention that labor is basically a major surgery to your body and you will hurt! So here I am exhausted and looking at this always hungry life sucker that won't even smile at me (babies don't smile until about six weeks old....they literally have nothing to offer but poop and demands at all hours of the night and day for the first several weeks of like).

I had ruined my life. OMG I HAD RUINED MY LIFE! Crap. I can't give him back because this wasn't an adoption. Maybe I can run away and not look back. Or (here's where it gets really rough) maybe I'll get lucky and he'll die of SIDS. I never once thought to inflict harm on him, but after a few months I realized these thoughts were definitely postpartum.

However, I find it hard to believe that most first time mothers don't have similar thoughts. I have spoken to several moms who have...especially moms who have no immediate connection and feel guilty because they're "supposed" to.

Anyhow, everything fell into place when I gave up trying to breastfeed and switched to formula when he was two weeks old. The little booger started looking at me when I fed him and slept much longer stretches of time. My body became mine again (well, more than when I was breastfeeding). By the time he was two months old we were two peas in a pod and are to this day. I had a much healthier attitude the second time around (at least in my opinion). I looked at Bubbi's first 6 weeks as pure survival mode. Once that precious baby gives you a smile everything is worth it and you can start to feel all the good things that are to come.