Whose children are these?

On the one hand, I'm not sure they're mine.

Point 1: Based on their 18 month measurements and this height predictor (via Stacie), B-Boy is going to be 6'2" tall, and Miss M will be 5'6". I am 5'1" (on a good day). J is 5'9ish. J said, I am trying to picture him standing eye to eye with me and all I could do was crane my neck (and cry a little at even the thought of my baby boy being a grown man someday).

Point 2: Miss M learned a new word today. Broom she said, after I swept up a bit of a mess in the backyard. And then made me sweep some more. Yes, it appears that my kids are into cleaning. MissM also likes to wipe and sponge. And yes, I know that's developmentally good, and all that, but it's not like I generally model cleaning for them. Ha. As if.

On the other hand, well, of course they're mine. And how.

Point 3: Miss M seemed fascinated as she watched me flip my head over to put mousse in my (curly) hair this morning. So I put a dab in her hair, too, and her curls lasted longer than usual. I'm sure there's some reason I shouldn't put product in her hair though, right?

Point 4: B-Boy is now the less-than-thrilled owner of his very own nebulizer. Poor boy seems to have inherited my lungs. Both kids have had a cold, and when we were in for their 18 month "well child" visit yesterday our pediatrician confirmed that he's wheezing and put him on meds. Which would help more if I could get them into him. How do you get an 18 month old to sit relatively still through a nebulizer treatment? It's not like it's fast. The pediatrician suggested that we do the treatments in front of the TV (yes, we have doctor's orders to put our under-2-year-old in front of the TV!) but it's not really helping. The machine is LOUD, and TV is only a minor distraction. So, any ideas? We'll probably only have a couple more treatments for now, but I expect we'll need them almost every time he gets a cold - that's generally my pattern, too.

Progress on the self-front (pathetic navel-gazing below)

I got my hair cut and colored. Make it funky, I told the stylist. I feel frumpy. So far so good, though I have yet to really test the wash and wear-ability, and since that’s what I have time for most days, that’s the ultimate test. But the color is purrrty. And the time spent reading People magazine at the salon was decadent, too.

Not so sure about clothing or body changes, yet. I have the T-Tapp book, but am waiting on the video because the descriptions are so complex I can’t get through the workout. I’m trying not to be daunted by this. Clothing-wise, I went and bought a new pair of jeans, since my one remaining pair that fits now sports a very trashy rip in the crotch. So sexy. So put together. So not. The new jeans were not the size I’d hoped, but it seemed worth the temporary investment in clothing that fit. Except that the first time I wore them they stretched out so far that they were falling down. Which should have made me feel thinner, but mostly just made me feel like buying cheap jeans was a big waste of time. So I’m back to having no jeans that fit. Speaking of which, in response to the comments on the last such navel-gazing post, I’d love to wear some of my formerly cute clothes except that (a) I wasn’t all that cute or trendy before, either, and (b) they don’t really fit. The “THIS is what a feminist looks like” shirt, for example, was skin tight 4 years ago, and if I knew where it was I still couldn’t wear it. Sad, no?

The kids are sick again. So am I. Just what we needed on a rainy week. My MIL seems to think that if we were sleeping better we wouldn’t be getting sick. I had to bite my tongue a little bit to keep from snapping at her. She means well, but really her commentary on our sleeping situation is not remotely needed. And actually, in the brief lull between the last cold and this one, I thought our sleep was working pretty well. M made it all night, or almost all night, in her crib - coming to bed with us at 5 or 6 am to nurse. B was waking between 11 and 2, coming to bed, nursing, and then sleeping peacefully. It was only a struggle when they were both in bed, struggling for the apparently prime real estate near my right armpit. Or, in M’s case some of the time, staying latched for hours. Ow. But otherwise, our sleep was fine. Really. Bizarrely, even in the midst of this nasty bug, we’re sleeping relatively okay. Bringing them to bed means I get more rest than I would if I was trying to get them settled in their cribs a million times. Not right for everyone, but for now it’s working.

I have no idea where they got this latest cold. I would have blamed the very cute but totally germ-ridden kids play area at the local coffee/play place (a very cool thing, germs notwithstanding) but the timing doesn’t seem right. They might have picked it up at the preschool we took them to visit last week (they played on the playground with the grandparents while we toured classrooms). Everyone knows preschools are hotbeds of infection. Right? So why am I thinking about putting them in school next year? More on that soon.

It’s taken me a week to write this, so clearly I need to devote a little bit more time to me, and to the cheap therapy of blogging. And I should just hit publish - editing be damned.

Things that make me go "awwwww"

M woke up from her nap today in a good mood. Sometimes she wakes up crying. Today she started talking: "Ma Ma Ma Ma" and when I went to get her, she said "Hi!"

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We have regular nursing spots - in the nursery and in the living room. Today, when B wanted to nurse (less than an hour after the last time, and right as we were trying to get dinner on the table...) he pulled me over to the couch and pulled down the pillows I use to get comfy - one to sit on and one for my back. And then he patted the pillow, as if to say "sit here!"

Identity Crisis

Once upon a time, I had an identity other than mother. And it showed. Once upon a time, you could tell by looking at me, that I had opinions, that I was not “mainstream.” Once upon a time, I was funky, cool, interesting. And it showed.*

And now? I have a politically liberal bumpersticker on my suburban-mom-mobile. But otherwise? I look like a mom. Which is not to say that I’m not hugely tremendously earth shatteringly thrilled to be a mom. But. I am more than a mom.

I am working in a new neighborhood bakery/cafe. I am sitting near a guy wearing a political shirt, with a folder covered in stickers, and more on his computer. And I show no outward signs that I agree, that my politics align, that I am more like him than he probably suspects.

When I used to mentor the undergraduate feminist group at the university, they made T-shirts that said “THIS is what a feminist looks like” - and some of them wore them skin tight, cropped, over snug fitting low rise jeans. Broadcasting. Challenging.

I don’t know if what I’m wishing is to change how I look - I feel dowdy, and old, and while I love being a mom, I think maybe I wish I didn’t look like one all the time, even when I’m sitting in a coffeeshop working. I suppose I should instead think about how to challenge the notion that how people look has any bearing on who they are or how they think. That would be the noble thing, right?

But still. I think I need a funky makeover. I want to broadcast that I am a mom, and I am a feminist, and I am still funky inside.

How about you? Do you think your outisde reflects your inside? Am I being totally trivial? Is it lame that I’m asking questions here? Fess up.

* Okay, no, having red or purple hair or an eyebrow piercing does not inherently mean anything about one’s personality or politics. But still.

This thing we do, here

Mommyblogging, or whatever it is I do now, is hard. When I was writing about infertility, it seemed more like a story, with at least some semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end. I didn't start writing until the middle, but I backed up to tell the beginning, and clearly I ended up with a happy ending. But writing about mothering, or within mothering, somehow seems harder. Maybe in the beginning of a story you don't yet recognize it as a story and so you can't really think about it as such until at least the middle, if not the end? Or maybe day to day life is a series of small stories, not a big one. Or maybe I'm so caught up in the tremendous importance of the story, and in feeling like I have the power to control it (as delusional as that may be) that I can't even start. Whatever it is, I've been blogging a lot less than I'd like. I feel like either I need to give it up or I need to give it more. So I'm going to try more.

I've also been teetering on the edge of a rather unpleasant fog of depression, which probably has something to do with my inability to focus, or to put words to paper (er, fingers to keyboard?). And at the moment, we're all sick, which doesn't help matters. But there's more to it than just that, I think. I'm just not sure what.

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Sweet moments of baby sickness:

Sadly, neither kid really knows how to blow their noses. (When do they learn that, anyway? It's tremendously useful.) But, after watching me snuffle and snort into tissues, B can now pretend to blow his nose - he'll hold the tissue to his nose, then make a snuffly nose-blowing sound with his mouth. Weird, but bizarrely cute.