Bad Mommy

Tomorrow is Gus's four month check up. I have been supposed to have been writing down my questions, of which I have had million over the last two months. Ummm...can we say last minute cramming. I feel like I'm in college. I remember a couple questions and I am sure that the rest will occur to me as soon as I get home. Bad mommy...bad bad mommy.

I'm Over It

I have finally hit that point...

I have a houseful of company this weekend and I didn't clean...at all. Either that means that I am finally keeping my house in a semi-reasonable state, or that I know the people coming love me no matter what my house looks like, or that switch has finally flipped in me that just doesn't have the inclination or energy to care anymore. Or all of the above...

Anyway prepping for this visit was very easy...stock the fridge, wipe the bathrooms, hang out clean towels. Yay!

Sarah Vs the Stuff (Part III)

The great unstuffing continues...

I told Sarah I would scrapbook with her. Easy right? I dug out the boxes with my photos in them. Not only do I have pictures from when I was four mixed in with college photos mixed in with wedding photos, I have pictures of everyone in my dorm one year at church camp to some guys I had crushes on when I was eight. Needless to say I spent the evening looking through my life in photos and pitching a good deal of it. Pictures of houses I thought were cool looking to a million pictures of cats being cute...seriously. I am only about a third of the way through a rough sort. On the upside when I am done I will be ready to finally tackle getting my wedding pictures in an album. Seems like that was on the to do list from five years ago.

Mommy's Here

I am standing in the midst of my living room, spit-up rags piled next to the couch from last night, the sink filled with stained clothing soaking, the washer's beeping letting me know the diapers are ready for another wash cycle, the same lullaby playing for the seventeenth time today. Somewhere in the midst of a crying bout triggered by the dual injustices of teething and a localized diaper rash it hit me.

I love my job.

All the education I have had could not have prepared me for a career as well as God and nature have equipped me to be a mother. How else would my arms know the exact way he needs to be held and patted to calm him. He looks at me with those teary eyes and our hearts speak. What hurts? Your bottom? Your teeth? Your belly? Do you just need to be held? Talked to? Smiled at? Do you just need to be here with me, sitting with me, breathing the same air as me? Mommy just stop. Take a second and stay with me.

What job could be more mundane? What job could be more significant?

In the end it doesn't matter that the house isn't perfect or that we are nuking something frozen for dinner or that I will be running laundry late into the night. It doesn't matter that most of the last three days were spent with his misery pouring out to cover us both. His smiles of joy and appreciation at my presence despite his pain make this job worth waking up for. As he lays his head against my shoulder I can't think of a single thing on my to do list more important and I hear the inane babble of moms everywhere coming out of mouth.

"Shhh...mommy's here, mommy's here."

Happy mother's day to all you amazing women out there, but especially to my mother who has been nothing short of amazing for 26 years! By your example, you have prepared me for motherhood, mentally and emotionally. Thank you!

Three Months

Gus was three months old on Monday. My Mother's Day/Anniversary/Christmas present was a really, really awesome camera. Luckily he was having a very cooperative day and laid on his belly for almost twenty minutes while I played with my new toy.

I love that smile!

This is really the first time we have tolerated being on our belly for more that a couple minutes. The holding himself up on his arms in new too.

He looks like a little boy in so many pictures I love to see ones where he still looks like a baby.

This is his new face he makes all the time. He is teething and too little to hold onto stuff so he just chews his own gums.

Trying to sit up...

Watching...

Uh-Oh!

Our naked session was cut short when he decided that now was the perfect time to have his once daily poo...

Gus and the Bedtime Story

I told Gus a made up bedtime story tonight...practicing for when it will be in demand. For the record, I am a terrible story-maker-upper. After that terrible story about Gus and the Cat and the baby Kangaroo that lived on the moon, I read him some poems from 'Where the Sidewalk Ends.' One in particular he loved, just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Gus's favorite Silverstein poem:

The Dirtiest Man in the World

Oh I'm Dirty Dan, the world's dirtiest man,
I never have taken a shower.
I can't see my shirt--it's so covered with dirt,
And my ears have enough to grow flowers.

But the water is either a little too hot,
Or else it's a little too cold.
I'm musty and dusty and patchy and scratchy
And mangy and covered with mold.
But the water is always a little too hot,
Or else it's a little too cold.

I live in a pen with five hogs and a hen
And three squizzly lizards who creep in
My bed, and they itch as I squirm, and I twitch
In the cruddy old sheets that I sleep in.

If you looked down my throat with a flashlight, you'd note
That my insides are coated with rust.
I creak when I walk and I squeak when I talk,
And each time I sneeze I blow dust.

The thought of a towel and some soap makes me howl,
And when people have something to tell me
They don't come and tell it--they stand back and yell it.
I think they're afraid they might smell me.

The bedbugs that leap on me sing me to sleep,
And the garbage flies buzz me awake.
They're the best friends I've found and I fear they might drown
So I never go too near a lake.

Each evening at nine I sit down to dine
With the termites who live in my chair,
And I joke with the bats and have intimate chats
With the cooties who crawl through my hair.

I'd brighten my life if I just found a wife,
But I fear that that never will be
Until I can find a girl, gentle and kind,
With a beautiful face and a sensitive mind,
Who sparkles and twinkles and glistens and shines--
And who's almost as dirty as me.

Children have the best taste don't they...what a wonderful writer this man was!