unexpecting!

One of the parts of parenthood that I am marveling in right now is that my son is still too young to make his own decisions.

Well, for the most part. He still decides, despite three timeouts for doing so, that he wants to climb onto the kitchen table. He also decides to throw his food on the floor when he’s full, despite hearing “no no!” over and over and over.

But you know, he can’t make the big decisions alone.

I dress him. I feed him. I decide what we do together every single day. I tell him which room is his and what toys he can play with.

I know it won’t always be this way. I know I won’t always be the only woman he loves and I know at some point I’ll have to let him make his own decisions…and mistakes.

But, for now, that time is a far, far away.

Thank god. Because all I want to do right now is keep him inside my cocoon and safe from any and all things that can hurt him.

When my children do grow up, I wonder how J and I are going to teach them about positive decision making. I wonder how I’m going to teach them how to become independent and strong individuals who may make mistakes, but never ones that compromise who they are.

Lately I’ve been watching people I love settling for less than they deserve and it breaks my heart. I can’t imagine what that may feel like when it’s one of the precious babies I’ve raised.

I read this article this morning and I couldn’t not share this exert, despite it being from yet another “don’t be like Bella Swan” article:

Love is wonderful. It’s a primary need in life. But have a life that you draw love into; don’t make a life built around love. As important as it is, love can ebb and flow. People leave. People die. It’s a shaky foundation. When love leaves it hurts no matter what. The trick is not to let it destroy you. Bend, but don’t break.

Build a life around you. Your friends, your interests. And when you do find that guy (or girl) who makes your heart beat faster, bring him into your life, don’t drop it all to make him your life. It’s tempting. It can even be delicious while you’re in the midst of it. But if things don’t work out, you may have nothing left.

I hope that one day I can teach my son and daughter the importance of having a firm grip on who they are. I hope I can instill in them the importance of establishing a life for themselves, of becoming intimate with their identities and then allowing a love – whether male or female – to enhance that and build them higher and higher and higher.

I often think about how much pressure is on parents to help their kids not grow into adults that, for lack of a better adjective, don’t suck. Certainly makes timeouts and toddler temper tantrums seem significantly more manageable.

What are some of the things you hope to teach your big kids? What are some of your child-raising fears?

I have always been a messy person. Particularly in the bedroom when my closet explodes on my bed and I don’t put things away for awhile. The clothes pile up and my solution is to throw everything in the laundry and deal with it when the clothes come out of the dryer.

I do a lot of laundry. A lot of laundry.

Until becoming a stay-at-home mom, I never considered myself dirty, though. I felt like I kept a clean enough home, one that people could stop by unannounced and I would only be mildly embarrassed about the dishes in my sink. Nowadays, as I spend more time in my lovely home, I am shocked and, if I’m being honest, a little disgusted at how dirty parts of my house are.

As I spent an entire nap cleaning the baseboards on my staircase the other day, I wondered if I am in fact dirty or just normal. I know, I know…a good mother has a dirty floor and happy children. But do they really? Do good moms really have dirty floors or is that just something dirty moms tell themselves to make them feel a little bit better?

Because I hate having dirty floors. Hate it. I hate it so much I vacuum my downstairs floors daily. I steam mop my kitchen floor every week and vacuum the upstairs two or three times a week. I know that the ability to operate a vacuum makes me neither a good mom nor a clean mom, I just can’t stand to think about my kid rolling around in whatever my dogs bring into the house on their paws.

But things like baseboards, windows and, I’m scared to even admit this, showers don’t cross my mind to clean unless I notice they are dirty. And then when I get around to cleaning them for four hours until they are spotless, I am immediately pissed off because I know in a week or two, they are going to need to be cleaned again.

One Friday when C was at his grandparents I cleaned my relatively small shower and bathroom for 2 hours with a grapefruit and Sapadilla all-purpose cleaner. My bathroom not only smelled like sweet grapefruit, but it was cleaned using all-natural products. That’s good for my kid, but great considering I’m pregnant. I was thrilled. Until a week later when I realized that it was time to clean the bathroom again. Again. And seriously, who wants to spend another 2 hours cleaning their bathroom? Do people really do that every week?

I’m attempting to get on some sort of schedule for cleaning tasks like showers and windows that don’t need to be kept up with daily, but I’ve always been better at putting other people on schedules than putting myself on them.

I wonder how often moms clean their kids toys. How often they clean windows. How often they clean baseboards.

Bathrooms?

The inside of your fridge?

I spent the entire time scrubbing those baseboards wondering if I’m disgusting or if there are other moms out there like me. I wonder what my friends think when they bring their kids to play at my house. I always feel like other people have cleaner homes than me, but am I just super critical of my domestic abilities? (Answer: yes…)

I’d obviously rather play with Carter than do this cleaning nonsense. I’d also rather online shop, read blogs and catch up on my DVR, too, but I definitely dislike cringing when C goes to play with a DVD and the top of the cable box is dusty.

Or when he’s pushing his chomp and clack in front of my mother-in-law and I realize it, too, is dusty.

So tell me, are you on a cleaning routine? How often do you clean the areas of your home I mentioned above?

What products do you use?

Would you bring your kid to my house for a play date or do you think I’m a dirty mom because I don’t regularly clean my shower?

One day a week Carter goes to spend the day with my in-laws. When we are ironing out the details about which day he goes, my mind is going nutso making a list of all the things I can/should get accomplished on a day where I’m baby-free. These days are always on days I go into work early, but despite that, I generally have 7.5 hours all. by. myself.

It seems like a lot of time, huh?

After Jason pulls out of the driveway with my baby securely fastened in the back seat, I generally spend about 15 minutes really, really missing Carter. The house is so quiet without him terrorizing my kitchen chairs and cabinets, throwing toys, climbing on things, chatting up a storm where I only understand every 5th word.

Don’t get me wrong, I miss him a little bit all day long. But those first 15 minutes are particularly gut-wrenching, and it’s the same way every single week.

I promptly make coffee and a massive bowl of cereal and plop down on the couch to catch up on whatever show I fell asleep during the night before or, depending on the smut level, the show I purposely avoided watching so Jason wouldn’t make fun of me.

Four bowls of cereal (and maybe 2 hours) later, I’ve caught up on blogs, the news, maybe written a post myself, know all about the latest celebrity goss, have had Facebook recommend I friend an ex-boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend’s wife and a friend of a friend of a friend who I barely recognized in high school much less 10 years later, know what the weather will be during the run I’m planning for the afternoon and am really, really dreading the housework that inevitably needs to be done.

Cleaning the bathroom. Blah.

Washing dishes. Yawn.

Mopping the floor. Boooooooo.

I fondly remember things like sleeping in and mimosa’s…then promptly remind myself that it’s Wednesday and I’m pregnant, which doesn’t count out some more sleeping but, unfortunately, eliminates the likelihood of enjoying a mimosa on my morning/partial afternoon off.

So I online shop but never buy anything. I update our budget, go back to my shopping cart at said online store and still don’t buy anything.

I read HelloGiggles, catch-up on Twitter, look off at the kitchen and the stack of dirty dishes, think about getting up but know if I do I’ll have to pee and then I’ll have to look in the bathroom mirror and realize my pants are starting not to fit…and nothing about your pants starting not to fit feels good whether you’re pregnant or not.

So I stay put. I haven’t even began to play on Pinterest yet…

Eventually it gets to be about 10am and I get up and get to work. Sometimes I get my hair done on my “mornings off.” Other times I make doctor’s appointments, run errands that are just easier to do without Carter or spend 2 hours at the gym where I don’t have to feel guilty about someone else watching my child so I can workout.

Except for someone else is watching my child so I can workout, it’s just not the nursery workers.

I always get at least one room of the house wicked, wicked clean and fully expect Jason to come home from work, immediately notice and shower me with compliments about how awesome of a wife I am.

Stay-at-home mom does not equal house maid in my book, and while I’m more than happy to take on an additional share of domestic responsibilities since I’m home more often than he is, I still want/need lots and lots of appreciation and/or praise for the work I do. Both because I’m needy and because unless it’s one of these mornings off, I’m doing it between keeping our kid alive and relatively well-behaved.

And, I know I’ve said this before, but on some days, the alive thing AND the relatively well-behaved thing are not small tasks.

At some point today I will be cleaning, napping, running or reading. Eventually I’ll be coaching. What I will not be doing is diaper changing, chasing, block tower building, or “I’m gonna get you!”-ing.

And while today I’ll enjoy the small break, tomorrow morning, with all the stinky diapers and baby talking and block tower building and huge Carter hugs and kisses that comes with it won’t be able to get here fast enough.

How do you enjoy or take advantage of some downtime?

Go check me out over on Mom’s Talk Network blogging about all the questionable things in our kid’s fast food meals. I’ll, sadly, never be able to eat Chicken McNuggets ever again (and if you know me well, realize that this is a truly devastating development).