Accidental Mom

Shorts become a hat when daddy is left in charge First of all, for you women who look amazing when you travel (like you are off to Milan for a Vogue photo shoot) and especially if you are doing it with children – good for you but fuck you. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Secondly, no matter how cute your child is, no one is EVER glad to see them get on an air plane. Especially if it is a red-eye flight and everybody planned on falling asleep and magically waking up at their destination. It was an eight hour flight to DFW with somewhere between a two to three hour layover then two more hours to Cedar Rapids Iowa, the site of Duncan's family reunion.    The Duper usually goes to bed by 7 pm, and our flight took off at 8 pm, so he was already up an hour past his bedtime. The boy is a pretty active sleeper, steamrolling all over the place and making full use of the pack and play that serves as his crib. Duper mostly wanted his mama, which meant I...

  I never realized just how gross I was until I became a mother. The other day I licked my finger for the first time to wipe a smudge of something off my child's face. Seconds later I realized the line I had crossed. Yup, I did a yucky mom thing. If I catch a whiff of something foul I will hoist my boy into the air and sniff his butt, an action that up until now I thought reserved exclusively for canine greeting. When Duper wants a snack, I scoop a handful of his cheerio-like treats and put them in front of him. On the floor. I've tried presenting them in a bowl only to have it immediately dumped. I'm just cutting out the middle step and wash one less bowl. Hey, I wash my floors every Monday and we don't wear shoes in the house. And every child has a dirt quota they need to eat. I'm just doing my part for his immune system.    And then he got his first cold just shy of ten months old. He had a temp, a head full of gluey snot, and was p...

I have breastfed my baby boy for the last time, and this realization has had me crying all day. Not sweet little corner-of-the-eye dabbing with a tissue, no. There is not enough Kleenex or Puffs in all of Costco to keep up with my current sob rate. I have just skipped right to the efficient use of a hand towel as a hankie. I'm on my second one. Why do components of motherhood come with the price of depression?  Postpartum depression.  Post weaning depression.  There is probably some cosmically enlightening reason for it, but it eludes me.  Whatever the price I'll pay it.  For now I am in the dark as to the whys of it all, and my hand towels are covered in tears and snot.   Just about three weeks ago I dutifully strapped on my breast pump to collect milk to feed the Duper while I am at work. All that really came out was sparks, smoke, and the sound of grinding gears. Out of my boobs, not the breast pump. I had a pretty similar meltdown ...