The Messiness of Motherhood

I'm eight weeks in to being a new mom again and I'm reminded how messy motherhood can be.

Let's start at the beginning...

First you get pregnant and sweaty and nauseous. By the end of pregnancy, many women are wearing pantiliners to feel fresh (and some do this the whole time, some even bleed during pregnancy).

The baby is born and thus we enter another phase of messiness. First off, there are the baby messes. This includes dirty diapers, wet diapers, constant spit-up, projectile spit-up, projectile urine during diaper changes, and much more. Secondly (and perhaps often overlooked) are the mommy messes. After giving birth, women bleed for several weeks (making up for all those wonderful period-free months). Breastfeeding mothers experience lots of milk leaking from their breasts. Not only are these things messy and disgusting, but they require a lot of tending to and also a lot of trash. Think of all the pads that are used during this time and with each one, you have the pad itself, the wrapper, and the strips that adhere them. For nursing moms, most will wear breast pads to help control disgusting wet spots on the front of their shirts. You either use disposable ones (lots of trash) or reusable ones (lots of laundry). For all babies, there are lots of diapers. Again, you either use disposable ones (lots of trash) or reusable ones (lots of laundry). Have you ever thought about the impact on the environment of having a baby??

As baby gets a little older, we start developing the toddler drippy noses, skinned knees, and mushy messy baby food. Later it becomes dirty sports uniforms, stomach flus, and spilled juice. I could go into a lot more detail about each stage but you get the point... No matter how neat and clean of a person you are, the job of mother is anything but glamorous and anything but clean. Inevitably you will experience spills on your favorite couch, a few crushed Cheerios in your car, and spit-up on your dry-clean only blouse. While these things are anything but pleasant, it's just part of the game, and well worth it for that beautiful smile and "I love you" that comes every now and again (but never frequently enough!) After all, it's the little things...

D is for Delirious

Ok, let's be honest here... I have not been as good about our daily letter lessons as I had intended. Call it laziness, exhaustion, being overwhelmed, whatever... but I am still doing it and that should count for something, right??

Here is our "D" list. Some letters are just easier than others. For me these days, "D" just stands for "delirious". While Baby Bit has had a couple of nights where she slept longer than 3-4 hours, I'm still getting up twice a night most nights and let's just say that I'm a bit tired. But as any of you with toddlers know, there's no sleeping in or resting when you have a toddler. Sigh... so with bags under my eyes and a forced smile, I keep chugging along, enjoying this time with my girls and doing what I can to make life a little bit more stable for them. Luckily, we move into our new house this week so after that, things should calm down. Here are a few pics of Olive on our scavenger hunt.

Learning the ABC's

I have decided to try to teach Olive her ABC's.

She seems to know her numbers fairly well so thought I'd give a shot at letters. I know she can do it, I've just never had any idea how to teach it. I came up with this little daily plan, which is easy, fun, and quick. We'll see how it goes and I will try to keep you updated. If you have any other great ideas for teaching letters and pre-reading skills, please share as I'd love to reinforce this however I can.

Here's how it works: Each day (weekday, that is) we pick a new letter. (We are going in alphabetical order or else I'd get too confused). On one piece of paper, we write both the capital and lowercase versions of the letter (ex: A a) and on another sheet of paper, I create a scavenger hunt with objects that begin with that letter. I also try to use a couple of proper nouns that require uppercase letters. I try to use words and objects that she is familiar with and will see on a regular basis, as well as the names of her favorite characters or family and friends. Then the rest of the day, we look for the featured letter in other words, signs, etc. Here are some pictures of her with her lists. Feel free to use any of this to help teach your own kiddos their letters. (and notice that on the "C" day, she is eating one of the items from her list - "cookie" - after all, it was important for her grasping the letter "C", hehe).

Olive's 1st Day of School

Today was Olive's first day of her new school here in Florida.

She is in the "butterfly" class and was so excited. When we arrived at school, she went right to the table and started painting a yellow school bus with her teacher and some other children. She hardly noticed when I left. I had to ask for a hug and a kiss. When I picked her up, she didn't want to leave and when we got home, she kept asking, "can we go back to my school?" I think it was a successful day!

Besides that being great news, the head of the school and the teachers sat down with the parents of food allergy children and we had a talk about allergies and what to do in case of emergency, what foods are safe and not, and how to use an Epi-pen. It was very reassuring. A step in the right direction.

I'm excited to get back into a routine. This summer has been great with a lot of major changes (new baby, moving, still not in our own house yet, death in the family, etc...) but very chaotic. I think we all need some sense of "normalcy" again. However, Olive will be in school 3 days a week this year and I must admit I'm a little sad she'll be gone so much. But it does give me some wonderful one-on-one time with Baby Bit and I'm grateful for that. Happy School Year!

Update

Wow, it's been quite awhile since I've blogged...I promise to get back to it again soon...

Life's been a little hectic, to say the least.

Our newest addition, aka "Baby Bit" arrived on July 2nd. A beautiful, healthy little girl that we just adore. We've been having a blast with her and Olive is absolutely infatuated.

We moved to Florida. Yikes. Yes, we moved 750 miles away with a 3 week old baby. We're crazy. We're currently bunking with family until we can move into our new house next month.

We're buying a house. That, in itself, is a nightmare endeavor but add it to the other things and well, you get the idea...

Hope to be back blogging away soon.... today we re-established some sense of "normalcy" for us - we went to the pool with some friends. Wonderful and fun and now we're all tuckered out and girls are sleeping. Aahhh... guess I'd better go get working on some more stuff for the move.

Later gators!