Shake What Your Momma Gave You

Every visit to see family and friends brings with it questions and comments about who P looks like.  He has Daddy's ears and smile, Mommy's eyes and round face and he somehow looks just like his cousins too.  A visit to my parents recently prompted my father to say, "That kid is all Reiffe" while a barbecue with T's family, prompted his cousin to proclaim that P looks just like me.

I can't even begin to count how many hours of conversation have revolved around what P looks like, but these days I'm more interested in his personality.  Surprisingly to me, at just 13 months old, it's out in full force and I'm discovering that in addition to having Mommy's eyes, he has Mommy's temper.  And in addition to having Daddy's smile, he has Daddy's flair for the dramatic (ok fine, Mommy has that too).

Today was the kind of day where I got to experience and appreciate P for who he is and who he's becoming at the ripe old age of one.  Today was what I call a "house day".  One of those days where the only things on our schedule are naps, housework, errands and meals.   One of those days where I get to learn a lot about my son.  And today I learned this:  My son wakes up in a bad mood.  My son throws a mean tantrum.  My son thinks burps are really funny.  And so do I - to all three.

After two out of three naps today, P woke up in a foul mood.  Crabby, cranky, whatever you want to call it, he's kind of a "bitch" when he wakes up and for some reason, each and every time I'm perplexed.  "What's the matter, Pookie?" I say over and over.  I incessantly sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider, play Peek-a-Boo and shove stuffed bears and puppies in his face to try to make him smile because I just can't seem to figure out what could possibly be wrong.  All the while he pounds his fists, whines, cries and remains completely disinterested in any of my efforts to make him laugh, smile or simply be even the slightest bit pleasant.

Perhaps if I took a moment to stop and think, I'd remember that I know someone else who is "kind of a bitch" when she wakes up.  Someone named UnPlain.  I also know someone else who despite waking up next to me for the past seven or so years years continues to be perplexed and can't seem to figure out what's wrong.  Someone named T, who incessantly talks to me, asks questions and tries to hug me during the 20-30 minutes between the moment I wake up and the moment I become a human being.  It doesn't stop there.

P's foul mood combined with my annoying efforts to make him feel otherwise generally seems to send him flailing into a full-fledged temper tantrum.  This is another area where I'm somewhat of an expert.  Amongst other things, a door, a wall and a really expensive pair of eyeglasses have fallen victim to my "Italian Attitude" over the years.  Today, I watched as P chose to take his rage out in a similar manner by body slamming Elmo into the ground, giving my arm an unpleasant nip and giving the dinner I so nicely prepared for him multiple five-finger slaps in between cries.

Maybe years of watching T stay annoyingly calm during my most stressful moments are what now keep me annoyingly calm while P does the only things he knows how to do to express his anger.  Whatever the reason, I manage to calmly eat my dinner while P anything but calmly tries to massacre his.    While I don't particularly enjoy watching my 13 month old act like a "total baby" for a full hour, a small part of me is proud of his persistence and stick-to-itiveness.  A very small part.

After he finally calmed down and happily ate the lovely meal that he'd spent the previous 45 minutes violently smushing, P paid his compliments to the chef with a loud, hearty belch.  Always the mature adult, I did what I do anytime someone I know let's it rip; I laughed.  Immediately, P began laughing along with with me and for a few minutes we acted like a couple of twelve year olds burping the alphabet for the first time and cracking up the whole way.

It was in that moment, in between laughs, it became clear to me that regardless of whose physical features his most resemble, he and I are two peas in a pod. All I can say is good luck T.  You're going to need it.

What Did You Do Today?

What did you do today?

Today, I picked up a small nugget of poop (yes, poop) with my bare hands.  Why?  Because it went rogue and it was solid enough to pick up and throw away.  I also got nailed in the head with a chicken nugget, smacked in the face with a impossibly strong and deceivingly tiny hand and I attempted to firmly say "NO" while trying not to laugh as P smeared avocado all over basically everything.  Then, at 12:30pm I sent my husband an email that said "We really need to sit down, talk and sort out our life" which, I'm guessing, is probably the last email any man, in the history of earth, wants to receive from his wife at 12:30pm on Friday.  He's thinking about a beer; he's thinking about coming home and watching the Olympics and he's thinking about being done with work for two days.  And now his wife wants to "talk" and "sort out life."

The first three weeks of being a stay at home mom have been extraordinarily blissful for my little family.  Dinner is on the table every night, I learned how to give myself a mani-pedi and I told T the other day that I "enjoyed" cleaning the floors...because I actually did.  He loves having me home and I've been relishing in my new role as Nanny, Cleaning Lady, Nail Tech and Cook.  Fortunately for both of us, giving up my $600/month Banana Republic habit has been far less difficult than I anticipated and three weeks in I'm surviving the Six Month Challenge with no issues and managing to dress myself freshly most days.

Then today, I gave up.  Three weeks in and I'm wearing leggings, a sports bra and a tank top to the supermarket.  Three weeks in and I go into a full on panic about our financial future.  Three weeks in and my earth-mother like patience disappears and I break down into full on tears because P is screaming for no reason in the car on the way to that supermarket that I'm headed to in my leggings, tank top and pony tail.  Did I mention I haven't showered today?

Thanks to my all or nothing personality, I immediately started updating my resume, checking out job opportunities and have now decided one thousand percent that this amazing gig as a Mommy that I've scored just can't last the full year we've agreed to and momentarily, I resent T or maybe the universe for not having it all figured out for me. Hence, the email about "needing to talk" and "sorting out our life." .

This is what they talk about when they say there are Ups and there are Downs and for some reason it takes me a little longer to come to the conclusions that most people already know.  Because the truth is we are fine. The truth is we are more than fine and life is pretty good.  In fact, life is pretty great even without a new handbag this month.  But I've never been very good at appreciating the middle.  Until now.

See, today just when my thoughts and fears got a little too loud, my toddler got a little too quiet.  So I walked into the kitchen to see what was going on.  What I found was 20 tupperware containers and 5 dishtowels strewn across the floor while one little boy sat happily in the middle of it all wearing a devilish grin.  All of a sudden it becomes a good thing that I haven't showered and that I'm wearing leggings, because I plopped myself right down in the middle of it all and played with my little boy, my tupperware and my no-longer-clean dish towels.  Then instead of mapping out tonight's conversation, I began to look forward to going to dinner with T, not because we are going to "talk" and "sort out" god-knows-what, but because we are going to laugh, a lot, because that's what we always do.

What did you do today?

Me?  Today, I played.

Young, Wild and Free

Despite the fact that I like to bump Wiz Khalifa's party anthem, Young, Wild and Free in my not-even-a-little-bit-pimped, four door sedan with a toddler in the back seat, I am none of those things.

Young?  Well, I'm relatively young, but I'm not party on a Tuesday night because I live in NYC young and I haven't been since I was 29.  Wild?  The wildest thing I've done lately is stay up past midnight at a wedding and "sleep in" until 9am.  That's a far cry from the UnPlain whose trips to Vegas made The Hangover look like a children's book.  And Free?  The only thing Free about me is my pay rate, because I work for a toddler and he only pays in smiles and kisses.

However, yesterday, for about two hours, I was all of those things at the most unexpected of places; the Periodontist's office.  Yes, the Periodontist's office where the average patient age hovers around 68.  Check Young off the list please.

Now on to Free.  Yesterday was the first time since leaving my paying job to play house that I've been separated from P.  It's scary, but true, that for the last two weeks and three days P and I have been quite literally attached at the hip save for the 45-minute nap I took this Saturday while I listened to T and P play just outside our bedroom door.  So after I dropped him off at Grandma's house and started my drive to have some long-dreaded gum surgery, it dawned on me that I was free.  No baby to buckle in and unbuckle out of a car seat, no blackberry to check, no dishes or laundry to do and only one place to be. The oral surgeon's chair.  Not everyone's idea of freedom, but any parent would likely agree that laying back in a chair without a child, spouse, boss or co-worker interrupting is about as free as it gets.  I was FREE, despite the fact that an oral surgeon was about to rip my gums away from the teeth that nature had so nicely attached them to.