After an unintentional two year hiatus (seriously where has the time gone, that is frightening), Blonde Mommy is BACK.  I have picked her up by the top knot, given her a glass of wine and charged up the old faithful MacBook.  Not real sure where to get started so let’s just start with a little life update.

New Man on Campus

That’s right, Pax has a little brother!  His name is Roman and he is 2 months old.  Overall he is a breeze, he’s even joined me for a mani/pedi.  It has been quite an adjustment but Pax has handled the transition MUCH better than expected.  He has nicknamed him Baby Ro and is obsessed with him.  I wish he’d be obsessed with not waking the poor little guy up every time he falls asleep, but hey at least he’s not shoving Lego’s in his mouth.  If you creep back through the handful of posts I managed to crank out before taking a leave of absence,  you’ll see they are all about Paxton’s sleeplessness.  Unfortunately we are still very much fighting that battle, why that child hates sleep so much will forever evade me.  I mean literally the newborn sleeps better than the 3 year old, I didn’t even know that was possible.

New Campus

Well, sort of.  After almost 2 years we finally began renovations on our house.  We got most of the interior done, moved back in one week after Baby Ro was born and should be starting the exterior within a couple of months.  I’m going to take this moment to strongly suggest you not even consider moving that soon after delivering a baby.  Obviously I was not physically participating in the moving process but let me paint a little picture for you.  Floor to ceiling boxes in just about every room in the house, no idea where any of your stuff is, construction workers coming in and out of every room in the house, one week old who does not want to be put down or held by anyone else (omg what box is the damn Bjorn in), no sleep, very needy threenager, no sleep, clothes don’t fit, lactating, bleeding, mastitis, visitors, no sleep.  I ended up hiring someone to unpack for me and it was the best money I’ve ever spent.  I will also forever be indebted to Paxton’s amazing babysitter and my parents who always seemed to show up right before I collapsed in a sweaty puddle of hormonal despair.  Stay tuned for pictures!

If you’re still with me, thanks for hanging in.  It’s been two years since I’ve put finger to keyboard and I’m a little rusty.

Blonde Mommy is pissed

Your blog post sincerely pisses me off. But probably not for the reason you think.

What I find tremendously annoying about your post is the fact that you clearly wrote it to get generic hits to your blog.  You are obviously seeking attention (insecure much?).  “Look at me and how perfect I am!  You should give me a pat on the back because I am doing such a great job at not complaining!”  Being a bully was the best material you could come up with.  I hate that it went viral, and I hate that I am even participating in this.  But I feel compelled to be the voice for a lot of women you so arrogantly offended and somehow simultaneously ignored.  I became infuriated when I read your words.  Not because of what you said…because you’re not wrong.  A lot of us are major complainers and need to bring it down a notch (or 20).  I am super guilty of this myself, and it is a daily struggle for me.  I’ve tried to spin my negativity into humor, which is how I personally cope with stress.  But not everyone feels comfortable being so vocal about their struggles, especially when society expects us to walk around life gracious and smiling, so thankful for these blessings that rob us of our minds, bodies, and sleep in a way we never knew possible.  Just to be clear, I am so incredibly thankful that I’m the one who gets to witness my son’s “firsts.”  Just today I got to watch him proudly stand on his own for the first time and it was beautiful.  I’m so thankful that I’m the one he reaches for when he’s sad, tired or gets a boo boo.  I’m immensely grateful that I get to be this person, and not a nanny or daycare worker. That being said…

In this post I will be speaking for the moms you ignored.  The moms who are silently suffering.  Suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety.  Suffering from abuse.  Suffering from immense guilt for not embracing motherhood and their SAHM status as a privilege and luxury, and not understanding why they feel this way.  Suffering from the pressure from society to look and act a certain way.  Suffering from the glaring judgement of moms like yourself, who ignore the warning signs of bigger issues and just bitch about their friends being whiney.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe your whiney friends issues are not actually with their yoga pants being covered in snot or their hampers full of dirty clothes that don’t say thank you when washed?  If you have a friend who is complaining A LOT, it’s very likely this person is trying desperately to talk to you about a bigger issue.  HELLO!  She might be depressed, or confused about her feelings, or having a really hard time adjusting to the MAJOR LIFE CHANGE that is motherhood.  Her faithful husband might not be a cheater, but he might be a beater.  He might call her stupid and worthless and make her feel like the smallest piece of nothing on earth.  Or maybe he is a cheater for all you know.  That beautiful house you see might be a source of major financial stress.  It might feel like jail to her.  She might be freaking out about how they’re going to continue making the mortgage payments because they suddenly have a load of medical bills on the way that you weren’t aware of.  Things are not always as they seem.  But omg, you are so right.  Her life looks a certain way, so she should just stop complaining and walk around like a Lulu Lemon clad robot saying on repeat “I am so blessed.  I have a faithful husband, gorgeous and healthy children, a beautiful home, and I am fortunate enough to stay at home and enjoy my blessings.”  You should definitely not ask if there is something more going on that she would like to get off her chest. I mean that.  After reading your article, you are definitely the wrong person to ever attempt to open up to.  I hope your friends realize this before they’ve sufficiently embarrassed themselves trying to bravely reach out for your support, thinking you’re a friend.

Also I just LOVE your reference to knowing what a bad day is.  You think your child having a fever of 103 is a bad day?  That is nothing.  People have real problems honey.  For some kids, catching the common cold can be a life or death situation.  Some people’s bad days involve finding out their kids have a terminal illness.  Or running out of gas on the side of the road with their little ones in the back, and being too broke to refill the tank.  Or waking up every morning struggling with the knowledge that they should be thankful for another day and all the blessings it brings, but not understanding why their brain won’t let them think that way.

Your narrow-mindedness is scary.  It’s frightening enough that simple-minded people like yourself walk around in society…self-absorbed, self-righteous and completely oblivious to the world around them.  But even more terrifying is the fact that you have 24/7 access to an audience…an audience who is absorbing everything you do and say like a sponge.  An audience who wants to be just like you and will turn into a version of you when they grow up.  You are sending a message to your children that not only is it ok to judge, but you are most definitely better than these people and should treat them accordingly.

The fact of the matter is that you and I are two very different moms.  We represent two very different groups of people.  You spoke for your people, I’m speaking for mine.  So…YAY!  Here’s a big pat on your back mom!  Pin a rose on your nose!  Congratulations, you don’t complain!  Except of course, for that time you wrote an entire article complaining about people who do complain.  You do such an amazing job at ignoring your friends real problems and instead blowing them up on the internet!  You are doing a GREAT JOB at teaching your kids to be ignorant judgmental members of society just like yourself!  Thank God there are moms like you out there rolling your perfect eyes while some of us struggle with serious issues!  HOORAY FOR YOU!

The bunch of nonsense I’m responding to in this blog can be found here.

As some of you know I try to make jokes to cope with stressful situations and when something really starts pushing me over the edge, I try to avoid dealing with it by writing a silly poem (completely normal behavior).  Ironically, sometimes it even helps me find a little perspective about the situation.  Anyways, that happened at about 1am today after nursing my son for 5 hours in yet another fruitless attempt to get him to sleep.  This one’s not so silly…and certainly not my best work…but I’m sure many can relate.

{Clears throat, begin reading in posh British accent}:

Oh my sweet angel baby

Why don’t you sleep?

Are you hot?  Cold?  Hungry?

Did you lose count of sheep?

Your mommy is so tired,

It’s been a very long day.

We’ve been up since the crack of dawn

Because you wanted to play.

I love you so dearly

With every ounce of my soul

Would it be too much to ask

For a nights rest in full?

I’ve been nursing you for hours

To bring you comfort and calm

But nothing is working

And mommy’s starting to yawn.

I’m new at this my baby

It’s the hardest job I’ve had

You didn’t come with instructions

And it kills me to see you sad.

Have patience with me baby

As I learn to navigate these ropes

And while I’ll certainly fail at many things

For my love you’ll never have to hope.

One day you’ll grow up

Maybe move far away

I’ll lay in my bed

And dream of this day.

I’ll wish for the memory

Of a long sleepless night

With my sweet son in my arms

Snuggled up tight.

So tonight I’ll embrace it

And wash the frustration away

As I wipe tiny tears from your cheeks

You need your mommy, so right here I’ll stay.

The cute, albeit angry subject of this poem

Ever since my little snickerdoodle was born, I’ve had this crazy irrational paranoia that something will happen to me and he will never know me.  Morbid, I know!  More importantly, I’m terrified he won’t know how unbelievably much I love him.  I’ve been doing my best to keep up with entries in his baby book, but I’m not sure knowing the exact date he rolled over for the first time will convey the amazing, overwhelming and all-consuming love I have for him!  SO, during one of my endless google searches for something ridiculous like “why is my baby’s poop a slight honey instead of mustard color,” I came across an idea that I fell in love with…

  SEND YOUR BABY EMAILS.

Maybe it sounds ridiculous to you…don’t care!  I love the idea and I’m doing it.  I wish I had started it sooner!  There were so many special moments and memories that we shared when I was pregnant, and during his first few days/weeks/months and now I don’t remember hardly any of them.  People told me to write things down in a journal but quite frankly I would like to know what alter universe they lived in where they had time to handwrite journal entries in between round the clock nursing, getting absolutely no sleep, taking 15 minutes to successfully tinkle and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one bite.  So this is my solution for preserving the memories and sharing them with my little man in real time.  I’ve gotta tell ya…I think it’s even helped take the edge off a little postpartum anxiety situation I had going on there for a bit.  My initial goal was to shoot him a message daily…but let’s get real.  I would also like to shower daily, relax with a cup of hot coffee while I read the paper and eat a meal slow enough to actually taste the food.  I just do it when I can!

If you’re trying to function on inhumanely low amounts of sleep like I am, here are the steps for emailing your nugget…warning, it is VERY COMPLICATED:

Step 1: Set up an email account

I went with Gmail, because there’s no telling what the internet will be in 18 years but I’m willing to bet Google will be a part of it.

Step 2: Start emailing your babe!

I send Pax little notes about his personality, how much I love him, what we do during the day and things going on in our lives.  I also send him pictures and videos so he can see how darn cute he is!  And that’s about it my friends.  On his 18th birthday I’ll give him the email address and password.  Hopefully I’ll be here so we can laugh at my typos, reminisce the stories and watch the videos together…but if not, then my only wish is that through these messages he can hear my voice and feel my love for him!

Oh the irony.  While Winter Storm Pax dumped massive snowflakes down from the clouds, human Pax had an endless stream of tears rolling down his face.  Why the indoor precipitation overload?  We’ve been trying to transition sweet baby Pax from napping exclusively in the Ergo carrier to his crib.  That’s right…I’ve spent the last 5 months wearing him for every…single…nap.  To be totally honest, I mostly loved it.  He would sleep for up to 2 hours in there, and it’s a pretty deep sleep, so I could make lunch walk to Salsaritas, tackle the daily Mt Everest laundry pile, walk the dog, even blow dry my hair and he wouldn’t wake up.  Sure, I dropped countless globs of guacamole in his hair and my back occasionally went numb, but it worked for us.  I felt like I got to snuggle him so much more, and felt very in sync with him.  All was well and boy was I mastering this mom thing!

Baby Pax in Winter Storm Pax

And then the meconium hit the fan.  I had foot surgery to remove an area that could potentially develop into melanoma (thank you, high school me, for using the tanning bed you idiot).  My in-laws came in town to help out and celebrate the holidays as it was a week before Christmas.  After surgery I was supposed to stay off my feet for a few days and rest (HA).  My mother in law asked about his nap routine so that she could put him down while I was out of commission.  I started explaining the Ergo system (put him in the Ergo, stand in a dark closet, bounce up and down, make the shhhhh sound and hum a lullaby while attempting not to breathe) and the look on her face…I knew I was in trouble.  It wasn’t until this point that I had realized that this little system we had going would only work with me, and that what I was doing wasn’t “normal.”  I just assumed everyone did whatever they had to do to get their nuggets to sleep!

It’s so frustrating when you have no idea what you’re doing as a mom.  For the first 3 months everyone’s like “oh yeah just do whatever it takes to survive,” so when you find something that works, you keep doing it.  Baby will only nurse if the room is a cozy 74.5 degrees, you don’t speak or breathe and only wear 100% cotton shirts?  Ok!  Baby will only tolerate the bath if you sing Enya, light Diptyque candles and gently hand wash him with La Mer in a clockwise motion?  No problem!  Then the clock strikes 3 months and 1 day, and people’s attitudes suddenly change from “girl you’ve just got to survive” to “why don’t you have him trained yet.”  I was taking hits for everything…his frequency in nursing, his sleep locations (nap in Ergo, nighttime in Rock n Play beside our bed), his night wakings, his outfit choices (he must be hot!  oh look now he’s cold!), the dimple on his left cheek not being perfect enough (kidding).  Everyone’s intentions were good, but when you’re a completely clueless new mom every comment can feel like a jab.  But seriously, between the pressure from outsiders, strong suggestions from the pediatrician and severe lack of sleep, I started to lose it.  Our happy little system was gone.  Once you know something you’re doing isn’t normal, you start to question yourself every time and lose the little confidence you had built as a new parent.  I was stressed, angry that our system was ruined, embarrassed that I was doing something that others considered strange and frustrated that I felt like a failure in a sea of successful mommies.  I knew something had to be done.

Fast forward a few weeks and we’ve made significant progress on his earlier bedtime AND sleeping in the crib at night!!  But my little guy has been fighting like the Real Housewives of Atlanta to keep those Ergo naps.  I mean he has literally been beating me, clawing at me and screaming like a maniac to fight going down in his crib.  We’ve had a few successful moments here and there.  Half the time I end up caving and either putting him in his little Ergo cocoon or just holding him and snuggling.  During the snowstorm I gave up after letting him cry for a few minutes and snuggled him.  He wrapped his arms around my neck, sniffled a couple of times and then his tiny precious little body just relaxed and he fell asleep on my shoulder.  During a week of complete hell, it was absolute heaven.  We’ll get back to nap training later; sometimes you just have to ignore the haters and snuggle your sweet little babe.

Breaking the sleep law and snuggling with my nugget

I was not that girl who just knew she was destined to be a mom.  I figured I would have kids one day, but just couldn’t ever picture it.  When I tinkled on a stick and was slapped in the face with 2 pink lines on December 29th, 2012, I dropped the pregnancy test on the floor, ran out of the bathroom in a panic and screamed for my husband to “go in there.”  He literally thought he was being sent in to kill a giant spider (I have a massive bug phobia).  When he finally discovered the news, he just kept repeating “you’re pregnant.”  I think I may have shoved him and told him to stop using the “P” word.  It wasn’t that we weren’t happy about the news, we were just a little surprised.  I sat down on the couch shaking like a leaf, I looked across the room to the kitchen counter littered with empty wine bottles (hey, it was the holidays).  Clearly I was not expecting this (pun intended).  I had literally just quit my job and registered to go back to school full time for a degree in graphic design.  What is that saying about God laughing at you for having plans or something?

Anyways, after a very frightening and painful cramping/bleeding episode around 6 weeks, I spent the next few months feeling like I was going to die and certain I was pregnant with the vampire baby from Twilight.  I looked like a legitimate homeless person for the first 13 weeks.  Pregnancy glow?  Please.  I looked like someone would the morning after taking 10 consecutive shots of Captain Morgan and standing on the DJ booth rapping In Da Club until blacking out.  Pregnancy hormones were not kind to me.  As I wore a path in the carpet crawling nauseously from the bed to the toilet 24/7 I clutched every blurry ultrasound picture of my little vampire and wished it would be September so he could be out of my body.  What?  I’ve since wished there was a way to put him back in (ahhh the grass is always greener).  I finally started to look and feel better about halfway through the second trimester.  We took a bebemoon to the French Riviera which was beyond amazing.  I dutifully set up a registry, designed the perfect nursery and massively cleaned and organized the entire house (hello, nesting).  I spent countless hours agonizing over the perfect name for my little cherub.  Once I found out my nausea nugget was a boy I purchased every pair of boys colored skinny jeans from Baby Gap.  I rubbed almond oil all over my body to prevent stretch marks, went to mid morning ballet barre classes and sipped Starbucks toffee nut lattes on my patio while reading the most useless pregnancy books on the market.  Even as I type this I can’t believe that was ever my world…I took the train to Babyland on September 2nd 2013 and that is a one way journey my friends.

What I did not do was actually prepare to be a parent.  I realized this in the hospital after he was born and was instantly terrified to leave.  I had the most amazing nurse at night, and would beg her not to leave every time she came into the room.  I confessed to her that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and had not prepared for this in any way.  I actually asked my husband if we could find a way to hire her (umm not rich enough sister).  I think she could tell I was panicking, because she jotted down her cell number on a napkin before I was sent home packing with a prescription for Percocet, stretched out stomach and tiny, screaming little human.    I’m 5 months in and still struggling, but I have definitely learned a lot.  I haven’t slept longer than 3 hours at a time (except for a couple of very rare 5-6 hour stretches).  I wake up most mornings sitting up in the chair where I nursed my son to sleep.  I’ve read dozens of parenting and baby sleep books and probably purchased every baby gadget that is sold on Amazon or Buy Buy Baby.  My child has severe acid reflux, spits up nonstop and is intolerant to dairy and soy (meaning I can’t eat those since I’m exclusively breastfeeding).  He still isn’t sleeping through the night and naps are a nightmare.  All that being said…I love that little boy.  He might drive me insane, but he is absolutely perfect.  I’m still in awe that a little person came out of my body.  On the rare occasion I get a break, I find myself rushing through whatever I’m doing to get back to him.

As surprising as it was to find out I was the “P” word, I’m so glad it happened the way that it did.  I’ve watched dozens of friends struggle through trying to get pregnant for months and years, only to suffer disappointments and miscarriages.  We were so lucky to just have it happen so easily.  And I’m glad that we didn’t have a chance to think about it and plan, because there never would’ve been a “right time” for us.  There always would’ve been one more trip we want to take, or one more year of school, or time needed to start a business, etc.  Now we’re just going to have to work everything around our sweet little vomiting prince charming 🙂  He’s not an easy baby…but day by day he’s teaching me how to be a mommy!

Photo by Bryan Bazemore Photography