Pregnancy, etc.
Aside from the fact that pregnancy brings all kinds of aches and pains that you’re not supposed to get until you’re much older—persistent heartburn, perpetual lower back pain, high blood pressure, etc.—your body then has to bounce back from the stretching and the pounds—while possibly getting used to nursing, needs and next to no sleep. I swear, every pregnancy adds like 3 years to my body’s age. Three kids—that’s like ten years!

I want to be HOOOOOWD!
My 3-year-old, a classic middle child, has a favorite wail: “I want to be hooowd!” (Hold). (Sometimes I really think that even if she were an only child I wouldn’t be able to give her all the attention and affection she wants!) Whether your kid is fifteen pounds or fifty, the constant carrying wears on your back and arms and hips. All. The. Time. You’d think the exercise would help burn of those persistent pregnancy pounds. Ha. Ha. No.

Now I want to be HOOOOOWD!

Hello, ER!
Basically about the time they decide they don’t want to be held constantly, they start getting into everything dangerous you can imagine, whether that’s the stuff under the sink or jumping off the couch—or the roof. When you’re on a first name basis with the ER staff, you know you’ve earned every one of those gray hairs.

And you thought your blood pressure was high during pregnancy? Ha.

*Scoff!*
Perhaps even before they finish the I-have-no-idea-what-safety-means! phase, they move on to the I’m-waaay-too-cool-for-you phase. As if the attitude weren’t grating enough, even subconsciously they remind you that you’re so out of touch with what’s cool you seriously can’t tell hip from hokey. (But seriously, they think they look cool? Maybe you should pull out pictures to show them what was “cool” when you were 14—if you stand the eye rolls and “Mom/Dad, that was never cool.”)

Fortunately, by now you’re usually old enough not to care about the “cool-o-meter” of a fourteen-year-old . . . but that doesn’t make you feel less old.

Time doesn’t stand still
And probably the most bittersweet of all, children become a measuring stick for how much time has passed. You might feel like you’re the same age as when you started having kids, but now they’re six—or sixteen—so obviously your math is a bit fuzzy if you still think you’re 22 or 32 (or 16!). In this crazy time warp of parenthood, it feels like just days or mere weeks since you held that new baby, taught that toddler to walk & talk, or helped that kindergartener to read (and each time, wondered if this phase would ever end). And now they’re finishing high school or college, becoming adults, getting ready to start families of their own.

Every day, I swear parenthood makes me older and older—but I know that all too soon, this phase of parenthood will be over.

And then I’ll be a lot older.

What do you think? How does parenthood make you feel older?

Photo credits: tired mom—Jason Sewell; baby rolling eyes—nerissa’s ring

So I invited a couple friends and we went down to Chuck E. Cheese while Ryan and Hayden ran some errands. Once we were ready, Ryan blindfolded Hayden with a knit cap and drove him to CEC. Once they were in the doors, Ryan took off the hat—but the friends were still hiding.

When Hayden passed the kid check, finally we let the other kids run out and shout . . . okay, so they didn’t actually say “Surprise” but they ran out as a surprise.

Hayden . . . wasn’t that surprised? After about 10 seconds, he realized who these people were and was very excited. But it seemed like the biggest surprise was when he saw me with the camera—before he saw his friends.

Ah well. A surprise visit to Chuck E. Cheese makes any six-year-old’s birthday, right?

Have you ever thrown a surprise party for a little kid? How did it go?

And yesterday, he participated in the science fair:

I asked him what kind of party he’d like. He said, “Surprise!” So we’re working on that….

DUNK-DUNK!

Once upon a time, I decided to take my kids out on a fun trip all by myself. Usually, I try to avoid leaving the house . . . ever, but every once in a while, I’m overtaken by this idea that I should, you know, try to expose my children to fun learning experiences. I want to be a Supermom—you know the kind, those ladies who take their kids out, dressed adorably and coordinated-ly, for the requisite hour of active play every! day! with water bottles and Craisins and carrot sticks, and then they return for hour number five of reading and mind play . . .

Actually doing this in a tiny way, especially with some small amount of forethought and planning (like making them sandwiches to eat in the car!), makes me feel like an incredibly good mom.

So to be completely honest, doing this is at least a little bit to make me feel good about the job I’m doing as a mom. Which is probably totally hypocritical.

Amazing how much three little sandwiches can lull a mom into a false sense of competence, isn’t it?

But how hard could it be? It was a place geared for kids, so it couldn’t be as difficult as, say, visiting the dentist, grocery shopping, or walking down the street.

My kids believe they’re bored and living in near-prison conditions by the end of the average commercial break, so naturally they rejoiced, especially when they realized we weren’t, say, visiting the dentist or grocery shopping—because, hey! sandwiches! Oh, and the dinosaur place.

All until we got inside.

Which was, of course, Mommy Code.

Naturally, once she got out of the stroller and played with the exhibits, she loved every minute.

But when it was time to leave, she began complaining again.

Rebecca had already complained over 12,000 times (approximately) that she didn’t wike dis p’ace, that the dinosaurs scared her, that she didn’t like the noise, that world peace was taking so long to achieve, that gravity was a cruel mistress, &c.

Having exhausted all her logical arguments, Rebecca devolved into vowelless mumbling arpeggios in the key of whine.

Being the kind, understanding mommy that I am, I’d kind of had it.

I was unprepared for the sight that I found waiting.

I’d naively assumed that because it had been four days since the last time anyone had vomited, we were puke free.

Not so. Not so.

After wallowing in the horror! the horror! for a minute, I leapt into Competent-Mommy-Mode. (If you’re counting, that’s mode #3 after spontaneous & fun and fed up.)

Unfortunately for competent-mommy me, rather than using a floorplan with flow-through to the lobby, this museum had funneled us into a closed circuit, hiding the exits to the lobby behind doors with ominous warnings, like emergency alarms were going to screech if we came too close.

Rebecca, of course, is still crying, now covered in cold puke. I’m trying to reassure her, and yet get her to remain completely motionless—because she’s sharing this stroller with Rachel who has miraculously remained clean so far. Hayden is trotting along after us as fast as he can. This stroller was not built for jogging.

After running through the same tracks about three times, I finally gave up and opened the surely-alarmed doors that were about ten feet from where we started.

Who’s doing the pleading? Oh, it’s me.

And hello, lobby (with no emergency alarms).

Finally, after cleaning up my daughter, her clothes, her hair, her shoes, her stroller, and me, using mostly my bare hands, and clothing her in the spare jackets I’d brought for her and Hayden, I plopped Rachel on my hip and maneuvered us all out to the car. And I could move into Mommy Phase Four of the day:

Two hours ahead of schedule!

But I think the real punchline came just after dinner that night. Rebecca was convalescing on the couch, until round 2 began. Hayden ran to tell me—and mid-shout . . . well, that should probably be censored, too.

Have you been through Pukeageddon? Share your war stories!

On the off chance you’re wondering, she’s growing. She turned 19 months last Thursday, and she visited the doctor recently and she’s 22+ lbs and 30+ inches. She seems even bigger to me!

We were worried about her language at her 15 month appointment, when she didn’t even say “Mama” or “Dada.” The doctor said to wait until 18 months to see if she started talking. And she did! She has about 15 words now, including [always whispered] “titititi” (tickle), “h’ow” (hello), “buhbuh” (bubble), and “deydis” (there it is).

And best of all, she picked up another word in the middle of her exam. Hayden tried to take the toy she was playing with and Rachel declared, “MY!”

(Don’t feel too bad, I’m not that on top of things: it’s December, and also, I just bought the stuff the day before.)

And then, like an idiot, I left ALL the presents in the middle of the family room. The kids got up before me the next day and found the gifts. Oy.

I asked my mom what to do and she recommended I tell them how we were planning on donating some toys to charity (and, of course, actually doing so—just not with those particular toys).

I like this idea a lot because it kills two birds—or some less violent cliché. I want Christmas to be about giving (you know, after being about Jesus), especially giving to those in need, and I want to involve my kids in that. And of course, I want them to still be surprised on Christmas day. (That might be three birds.)

Since the kids are getting new toys for Christmas, I really want them to pick at least a few toys of theirs that they don’t really play with anymore that we can donate to other kids. (This also helps to make room for our incoming toys.) It’s a little hard to find places that want used toys, but I’m thinking a local women’s shelter and possibly the food bank (they take used toys for only their waiting room, but still).

A few useful links:
Kids’ Health article on getting your kids to donate their toys
And a fun lesson to help emphasize Jesus at Christmastime when Santa offer stiff competition: Santa as a type of Christ (seriously!)

But first: I wrote last week about her signs. In the last four or five days, Rachel has picked up three new words, probably the most important in a baby’s vocabulary: Mama, Dada and . . . NO. Noooo. No. No. She can nod, but she just loves her new word so much that even when the answer is yes, she says, “No.”

It’s a little annoying sometimes, but as she was protesting getting dressed the other day, I realized that she’s never been able to exercise control like that before. It’s not that she doesn’t want to get dressed (she didn’t fight me at all), it’s that she wants to be independent.

Except for, of course, when she doesn’t. I was a little worried about her starting Nursery since she’s had a bit of separation anxiety lately. Hayden, however, was very excited for Rachel to go to Nursery, so the whole family walked down to the room with her after Sacrament Meeting. With Rebecca demonstrating, we washed her hands with sanitizer.

She was a little unsure of what to do—or whether she liked it—until I showed her to the “hors d’oeuvres” on one of the tables: a pile of pretzels and a pile of marshmallows. I stuck a pretzel in her mouth and she was sold. She climbed into the nearest chair and didn’t care whether we were there or not.

Rebecca still has a month left in Nursery, so we charged her with helping Rachel. The Nursery leader told us afterwards that Rebecca would sometimes look around for Rachel, saying, “Whewe’s my baby?” (At first they thought this was a doll until they saw she meant Rachel.)

Ryan, who normally takes Rachel during church since I’m in Primary, had the same experience, basically—he’d have a flash of panic, wondering, “Where’s Rachel?” and look around for her before he remembered.

Rachel handled it best of all. I had to pop in twice for other Primary stuff and each time, she was busy participating (if a bit timidly). She didn’t even notice me. She even colored her picture.

After church, Rebecca reported that she “‘Tected Wachew and made soy [sure] nobody take her and bees her new mommy” at Nursery.

But I think Rachel herself summed it up best. I asked her if she had so much fun in Nursery. She answered with a very solemn, “Noooo.”

She smiled, and either blew me a kiss—or signed thank you.

Rachel doesn’t really talk. For a couple days, she said “Out” a lot. She has managed to hold onto “Uh ohs!” whenever she sees something on the ground. But her signs are really picking up. She’s gotten really good at Thank you, and also learned please, apple, baby and:

Rachel, banana.

I also love how she signs music:

The “official signs”: banana, music.

Yeah, those days are a distant memory now. But with the cute things she says, I guess it’s okay.

Rebecca got her first real haircut!

Just kidding! (Silly you.)

We bought a bag of Reese’s minis for Rebecca as an incentive. “Are dey gowd?”

“Yes, they’re gold.”

“Are dey gowd doub’oons? [Doubloons] . . . No, dey are just gowd.”

Rebecca gets her middle name right about half the time; the other half she thinks her middle name is the same as Hayden’s (a mistake he’s just learning to correct). But she knows Rachel’s middle name, apparently because I say it so much. She even knows what it means:

“Waychew Deana [Rachel Diana] means ‘Come hewe!’”

“Good job, Bex,” I told her as we were cleaning up.

“No, I not Bex. I jus’ one Becca!”

During Rachel’s nap one Saturday, I left the other kids playing on the computer while Ryan went to church for a bit. When I came back from my shower, Rebecca announced, “We take gooood cawe of Wachew, Mommy! We takin’ good cawe o’ ouwsewves.”

Rebecca the ice princess (note the hat and the tiara)

Then I found this in his backpack: illustrated and written by Hayden himself.

It says “I ate spagetti.” AKA “I a A.” Note the table, plate, and fork in the picture.

So I promptly sat him down at the table and had him write a sentence, using two sight words, a word from a story we’d read that afternoon, and a word he could sound out.

Then we sounded out/practiced his full name on the back and left the note for Dad on his pillow. He was pretty pleased (and surprised!) to get it.