Our Path To Parenthood ... It Wasn't Cheap, Easy, or Fun

I've been writing this post for 4 days ... working to get the wording just right. I wanted to complete it and get it posted today. Instead I have just this. I highlighted my post to change the font and somehow it got erased ... and then the stupid "Save Now" feature that auto saves every 2 seconds ... saved the erased version.

This is not the first time this has happened ... I can't figure out how to turn this stupid feature off ... aaaaggghhh ... I'm so pissed off.

Tide Stain Release

I'm a new blogger. I don't intend to ever put ads on my blog. This, of course, could change ... but I'm different in two ways ... I don't need to make money off my blog ... I do it for pleasure. Second, I don't do the comment love thing ... so the hits on my blog will never be high. I'll only comment on a product I really love or really hate.

(About comments ... I only comment on other blogs because I really love their blog and I am genuinely interested in what they are saying. I love that some people comment on my blog ... but I've had to turn on comment moderation because some people don't get that I'm allowed to express my opinion here ... all I can say to that is ... HAVE A POINT TO YOUR OPINION, EXPRESS IT AND LETS HAVE A DISCUSSION ... STOP BEING HATEFUL.)

Anyway, on to my title. My MIL sent me some fleece lined jackets for the kids and the retailer sent a sample of Tide Stain Release with the jackets. I never use Tide products ... they are way too smelly for this family that uses only perfume free soap ... but I hesitated to toss them when I read what they are supposed to do ... with 3 very young kids we have major pre-treating going on in our house ... it's very time consuming. So I thought I'd give it a try. I put a load of medium colors in the washer without treating anything ... I thought "lets see what comes out clean" ...

EVERY single stain came out!!!! I double checked everything before throwing them into the dryer. Could this be? I bought a large bag of the pillows to give them a more thorough test run.

After using the entire 34 count bag, here is my assessment: This stuff is amazing ... I never pre-treat now (occasionally something has to be treated and rewashed, but it's maybe one thing per laundry cycle). And I discovered that if you put your dingy whites in on a "soak" cycle they return to their amazing whiteness. I laundered a pair of white underwear with the darks by mistake ... I threw them in with the next white load and the underwear returned to pure white.

The tide website even has a $1.50 off coupon.

What Is That On The Carpet?

Beware of the carpet in your new house (unless of course it's a brand spanking new house).

We recently sold our home in California. The carpet was clean (or as clean as the steam cleaning people could get it) but it was still really disgusting. There was no getting around what had gone on (and in) it.

We hadn't told the builder to put that horrible brown carpet in every inch of the house because we thought we would be walking on it 5 years later ... we were determined to get it replaced in the first year ... we are accomplished home improvement people ... but we couldn't come to an agreement on WHAT to put in its' place. I wanted wood ... husband wanted cold, hard, echo inducing, hard to clean tile.

In the interim, the dogs (and us) tromped through mud, sand, grass, etc. and brought it all in the house. The dogs had the occasional vomit episodes ... and there was that awesome saltwater aquarium leak ...

Once the kids came (especially after the twins) the stuff spilled on the carpet included (among a lot of other things) a gallon of white paint and one entire bottle of breast milk ... we never got that smell out ... I discovered that if you break out the lemon oil and slather it all over the wood furniture everyone who comes in thinks that the nice fresh smell is because you are so diligent about your wood furniture ... not that you are masking nasty odors ... cookies in the oven to hide smells is for amateurs.

Anyway, one incident stands out in my mind as the last straw in the history of the disgusting carpet ...

Our twins were about 7 months old and oldest daughter was 22 months ... husband (like normal) was gone from the house from 5:30 am until 7 pm ... I didn't have any help and I was crazy sleep deprived. One morning I was walking out of the master bedroom closet and noticed something on the floor ... it was long and brown and looked like a giant turd ... my addled brain was racing ... what was that? OMG ... someone had pooped on the floor... my husband was at work ... but wait, he doesn't poop on the carpet ... I knew I hadn't done it ... mine was still knocking at the back door ... I hadn't had time to do my business yet ... and wait ... I don't poop on the floor either. The dogs poop had never looked like that ... and besides they don't poop on the carpet either ... what was it??? Then I notice that my 22 month old daughter is walking toward me with no diaper on ... I was changing her diaper and discovered I needed more diapers ... I got up to get a new one and forgot ... leaving her roaming in the bedroom sans diaper ... but could this huge turd be from her .... "What is that?" I ask her ... she says "poo poo" ... "Yours?" I ask ... the laughing and dancing is my proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I hope the new home owners' replaced the carpet before they moved in.

I Can't Sleep

It's 3 am and I'm at my computer. I woke up ... startled by something ... I lay in bed listening intently ... my kids still have monitors in their rooms and I don't see that ending anytime soon. My husband is laboring to breathe around the remnants of a cold ... he is snuffling, snorting, and breathing so loudly that I can't determine if someone needs me. Like most mom's .. I can't go back to sleep until I check on everyone, so off I go.

In my house you can't just go upstairs to quietly check on kids ... we have two dogs. Both need to pee ... I need to pee (note to self: stop drinking large cup of hot tea before bed). I do my business, shut off alarm system, take out dogs, reactivate alarm, start my trek upstairs, climb over baby gate (in place because new puppy thinks upstairs is his personal indoor toilet), finally get to first kids room ... he is sleeping soundly ... but I have to stop and look for a moment ... he is so cute cuddling his gorilla and his Pooh. Finally, off to the girls' room (they decided about a month ago to sleep in the same room) ... and here is the source of the noise ... youngest daughter has fallen out of bed and is sound asleep on the floor ... luckily she is sleeping on a mattress on the floor because this is her sisters room. I put her back in bed and I discover that her older sister is about to fall out of her bed. I put her back in place under her blanket.

Now ... it's 1:45am ... I've been awake for about 20 minutes and done about 20 minutes of walking, lifting ... thinking. I lay back down in my bed ... I'm wide awake ... husband is still being noisy ... and now my mind is racing.

There is just so much work to be done and I'm thinking about it all.

But what I really need besides sleep is some alone time. So, here I am blogging at 3 am.

I'm having coffee and listening to the baby monitors ... I can hear them breathing ... I love my kids so much. I can hear my poor husband breathing from down the hall ... I love him, too.

I hope I get a nap today.

Why Can't I Do It All?

I am a mother to 3 kids who are very close in age. I am committed to raising them. I don't want outside help.

I didn't want a nanny, night nurse, or daycare. I wanted to do this ... this was my choice.

I'm a Type A personality and extremely organized.

So, here is the problem...

I can't do it all ...

I've been told ... repeatedly ... to just "let it go" but my brain won't let me. Even after all this time trying to get it all done ... I have a hard time admitting that it just can't be done.

When my twins were about 15 months old, I had the opportunity to see an Internist that is at the top of his profession for Thyroid Disease. My fatigue (not just my family history) propelled me to seek him out. His ultimate evaluation ... "You have what you think you have ... but your real problem is that you think you can do it all?". Once I was over the shock of hearing him say that, he explained "...all you women think you have some super human powers ... but you don't ... you all think that the other mom's are doing it all ... but they aren't ... you just think they are because that's what they want you to think..." and the lecture went on in this vein until I interrupted with, "Who is going to wipe these three butts, and clean all the laundry, feed the dogs, cook the meals, shop for the food, change the linens on the beds, do the dishes..." and I proceeded to go on and on ... until he interrupted with "You've just proven my point ... no one human being can do all that. Stop trying to convince yourself that you can. You're life will not be like this forever ... just a short time. And in the mean time you are going to miss so much of the precious moments with your child."

I think in that moment I was finally able to let go ... not completely ... but enough to realize he was exactly right. I was already feeling like I had missed so much.

So now I'm able to let go a little ... not completely ... but enough. I sleep better and the family is definitely better for it.

That Smile ... It's Fake

One of my pet peeves in life is people (women ... I've never seen this in a man) who smile too much. They can be standing there telling you just about anything and there's that smile. I suspect that inside they are saying/thinking something totally different. I recently tried to describe this to my sister and the only thing I could come up with is the Stepford Wives.

Who ever made that movie lived where I have resided for the past two years.

I am a California Native. Born and raised. One thing I can say about people there ... they are honest. You may not like what they have to say but they don't smile and tell you how wonderful something is, when it really sucks.

I had quite a few people tell me before we moved how much I was going to love the people here. In fact the group of guys who packed and loaded our stuff were the most adamant ... they raved about how wonderful people from the south were, over a catered dinner we had purchased for them ... then one of them stole my $500 camera with all the memory photos I'd taken over the last two weeks.

You can have the %&*%%$# camera ... just give me back my memory stick.

I'm not sure what this phenomenon is but I don't like it.

Relax About Baby Einstein

Seriously, are we really putting our kids in front of these DVDs to educate them? Is that the responsibility of a cartoon?
Not in my house.

I love these. I have most of the original ones that were made. My kids are now 4, 3, and 3 and they still enjoy them. They see toys that we own, they sing the songs, they call out the words before they are said, and most of all they have fun watching them.

I never put them on and wonder about a message they are sending to their impressionable little minds.

Like most SAHM's, I don't often use the TV as a babysitter ... but I have to sometimes. Regardless of what you idiots think who have never spent an entire day alone with your kids, there are times when I need to make a phone call without the presence of little ones. When children are young, they need assistance from a parent to read, do craft projects, draw, color, playing with toys, etc. Being self sufficient is a learned skill that requires a parent to be present ... not hovering but able to provide assistance and guidance when asked.

But all you people, who "work" and pawn your parenting responsibilities off on daycare providers, wouldn't know this (this last sentence will be the subject of a post another day).

These videos are harmless. It's the parents who sit their children in front of the TV for hours on end who are harming their children (and those who are choosing to "work" over parenting). But my guess is that these same people are doing other things that are just as harmful to their child's long term success.

TV is an easy target. Let parents be parents and stop trying to put us all on guilt trips.

TV is not causing children to preform poorly ... bad parenting is. It's like saying that video games are causing obesity. If sedentary activities are causing obesity, why then are we promoting reading?

What Not to Wear ... The MoM Version

Can I say how stupid this show is? I am always sucked in to these make over shows. Mostly because I'm missing part of my female DNA. I never know the proper thing to wear. I can barely apply makeup ... to prove my point here I'll tell you what makeup I own ... two tubes of mascara (usually it's one ... but I was curious about the one that curls your lashes ... I wanted to see if it would curl my lashes in to my eyes or up ... how does it know which way to curl?), four different color eye shadows (they are several years old and mostly untouched), two eyeliner pencils (both are used to draw on eyebrows when I wait too long to get them dyed ... once I get them dyed I look like Groucho Marx for a couple of weeks until they fade a bit ... I'm sure the girl who does this for me hopes I never tell anyone who she is ), and a tube of mineral makeup powder with a brush that has never been used.

But I digress ...

After watching this show for awhile and thinking that I would love to have a make over, I realized that these people are stupid. Neither one of them has children and I'm pretty sure neither is married.

There is no way I could ever wear a pair of nice shoes around the house ... after about 10 minutes they would have some substance on them or the dog would have ripped them from my feet for chew toys.

Nice shirts? ... oh come on now ... lets see if I can recount the things that are on my shirts these days ... during cold and flu season that smear on my shoulder is probably from a snotty nose ... of course now that the kids are older the smear is more likely to be around the hem as they have taken to using my shirt as a kleenex.

When the kids were babies my shirts were covered in breast milk and spit up.

Everyone said there would be a lot of laundry ... but I thought they meant for baby clothes ... I didn't realize that most of it would be mine.

I considered myself a slave to fashion when I resorted to buying two of every shirt (t-shirts mind you ... although I was good about making sure I had a good assortment of colors). If I had to leave the house, I put on the clean shirt. I felt proud of myself for figuring that out.

There is no way on earth that I can, even now, wear nice clothes on a day to day basis.

I challenge those two idiots to try to deal with a MoM's real world.

Seriously, who wears a matching jacket and makeup to wipe butts and noses all day?