A much-needed vacation

Sometimes, you have to step away. I love my children more than anything else in this world. That being said, sometimes, I need to get away. Now into my second day of vacation, I have had the chance to sleep and sit quietly. The ability to do nothing for an entire day makes me feel like I have spent a week at a spa. The opportunity for some time away is one that I take whenever it presents itself.

I have a few friends who look at me with shock when I tell them that I am leaving my babies behind for a trip by myself. How can I do it? Won't I miss them?

Well, of course I'll miss them. But I do it as much for them as I do for me. Once rested, I will return a happier, more patient mother. It is a win-win situation.

I try to always appreciate my family and nothing reminds me how much I love them, and like them for that matter, like being away from them for a few days.

The post-baby body a.k.a. The car crash

While you are pregnant, your body ceases to be yours. Hint: Your body is the car in this analogy. It's kind of like handing over the keys to your car to someone who can't drive, won't pay the speeding tickets they get and won't repair the damage when they total your ride (My father is laughing right now because I am also accurately describing what it is like to raise teenagers, specifically me).

You don't get to reclaim your rightful territory for quite a while after having your bunde of joy. First, you will get to breastfeed and I'll leave that topic for another post. Then, the hormones will take over. A lot of this part happens while you are still nursing, but I got a whole new wave of hormone fun when I moved my babies to formula. Then, and only then, can you begin to repair the damage.

I can't even begin to explain the transformation that you will experience, but most of us end up having pretty similar issues. There are the rare women that roll out of the hospital in their pre-baby jeans and are back in their bikinis by the summer. These women are either blessed by nature and incredible genetics or have a personal trainer, personal chef, nutritionist and a live-in nanny to watch the baby while they shrink back to a size that women were never intended to be - it is probably a combination of both of these things. Just remember, we could all look like that given enough time, money and plastic surgery.

Anyway, back to the similar issues. The big one that we all have is the overall jiggliness. Most prevalent in the mid-section, your toddler may want to play with it because the way that it ripples for a few seconds after poking it makes him laugh (true story).

After three kids, my jiggliness is extensive, so I am in damage control mode, which mainly entails jogging and trying not to eat the kids' snacks. Jogging makes me laugh because it also causes large waves of the aforementioned rippling.

Another lovely side effect of pregnancy is stretch marks. I know there are a thousand creams and oils on the market to prevent them and, while they do help with some of the dryness, the rule of thumb is if your mother has them, you'll have them too. I don't hate my stretch marks as much as some other mothers I know. A good friend of mine told me that she wasn't ashamed of hers because she looked at them as battle scars that she earned. I remember that every time I look at mine and remember what I went through to get them. Somehow, I find it hard to use the same approach for my jiggliness.

Now that I have my keys back, I am trying to rebuild, especially since totaling this car and upgrading to the new model isn't an option at this dealership!

Wipes

While changing disgusting diapers will become second nature, new parents should be warned that the worst diapers will wait until you are out of wipes. You may not be totally out (the invention of Costco has made that unlikely), but your dipenser or box will be empty. This is just Murphy's Law as it applies to parenting.

Simul-napping

Definition: all of your children napping at once. Very rarely found in nature.

You don't really appreciate a quiet house until there is someone else controlling the noise level.

I have become skilled at the art of packing four hours of kid-free activities into the one or two hours of sleeping bliss that I get on the very rare occasion that I am blessed with overlapping naps.

Today brought an hour-and-a-half of simul-napping. In that time I:
-ran three reports for work
-purged the toybox
-reclaimed a corner of my kitchen that has been drowning in papers and random household items for months
-dusted
-watched a back episode of a favorite TV show that has been on my DVR since March
-wrote this blog post

Try to use this new word in a sentence today!

The puddle

When you have three children, you tend to miss things. That is my defense for this particular story.

After changing C into his pull-up yesterday, I sat down to feed the baby. A few feet away, C said, "It's wet, Mama."

Assuming that he was referring to the ground outside, I continued to focus on the baby. A moment later, I noticed that C was jumping around and I turned to take a closer look, just expecting him to be doing a little dance or something.

But, alas, his pull-up had leaked and formed a small puddle of pee on the tile floor. He thought that this was just another puddle and started to jump in it, like he would if it were just another puddle.

After cleaning him off and disinfecting my floors (the little pee footprints went all the way down the hallway), I was finally able to laugh at what had just happened.

I know that this is destined to become one of the stories that I tell to embarrass him in his teen years.

Supermoms

They don't exist. If you meet a mom who claims to have perfect kids, she is either lying or she is in some serious denial. All kids misbehave from time to time - some more than others, but no kid is perfect and there is definitely no such thing as a perfect mother.

The woman who claims to be a supermom - organized, relaxed, perfectly coiffed and stain-free all while juggling her children, job and home without any snags or worries - is probably spiking her morning coffee with whiskey and Xanax.

I am all for being organized, relaxed, perfectly coiffed and stain-free, but I will admit the trials and tribulations I endured to get there!

Mother's Day: better every year

First off, I would like to wish all of the mamas a belated Happy Mother's Day! My day was just too precious to interrupt with a sit-down at my computer to write a post.

Now to my post. Mother's Day is truly great. There is nothing like Mother's Day when you are pregnant, knowing that next year will not just be a drill. There is nothing like your first real Mother's Day, looking at that tiny face that doesn't have a clue what the day means to you. There is nothing like the first Mother's Day that your child comes running in to the bedroom to wake you up with a kiss.

Now I imagine there will come a year when my children are annoyed by Mother's Day. I can anticipate that there will be arguments with my boys about getting dressed up for brunch with their grandparents and crankiness when they don't want to get up early (10:00 a.m.) to go to brunch. Having my boys so quickly means that I will have three teenagers on my hands for a condensed period of time, which will may alter my Mother's Day for a time.

But, someday, they will see the point of the day. To appreciate the woman that gave them life. While they don't appreciate or even understand it now, they at least revel in my happiness, being the easy-to-please small children they are.

In the midst of my Mother's Day, which included a diner breakfast, laying around the house, making homeade pizzas with the kids, cuddling with a snoozing baby and reading magazines (all favorite activites of mine), I did take some time to think about how much I love and appreciate my mother. If I do my job well (like she did), they too will stop and think about their mother on Mother's Day. Granted, it will be years after the bitching and moaning about getting dressed up for brunch has ceased.