Three days ago, at four am I sent my husband a two-page google doc simply titled, “I’m angry.” So yeah, I’d say I’ve rounded the proverbial bend. I told him that I could not be sure if the email was a result of my ninth month of pregnancy, a general lack of sleep, true anger, or all the above. I have to give it to the guy—he handled it like a champ.
When my three-year-old woke up, she had peed through her nighttime pull-up. It wasn’t so much the changing of the sheets and the negotiating of who removed the pull-up as much as it was the screaming about why it wasn’t Halloween anymore. Yes, gentle reader, I was berated for the simple passing of the blessed Halloween holiday.
Life comes at you fast.
For breakfast, she attempted to eat yogurt with a spatula. This was both an exercise in motor skills as well as in cause and effect. She couldn’t negotiate the spatula in her mouth, ergo, the floor, her face, and freshly laundered clothes were covered in key lime yogurt.
It was truly a delight cleaning the floor on my hands and knees while nine months pregnant, but I’ll spare you the glowing details.
After much deliberation, we decided she would wear her leotard to gymnastics. It is in fact her only appropriate gymnastics outfit, but this took a shocking amount of time to decide. By the time we made it to gymnastics, my blessed miracle had decided two things—the first, holding hands in parking lots simply wasn’t for her, and the second—that I was a mortal enemy to be avoided at all costs. Motherhood is beautiful.
Here’s one of my favorite parts of the day—this tiny tyrant saw her gymnastics coach and behaved like an angel. My anger would swallow me whole if I weren’t so darn thankful to sit down, stretch out my cankles, and let her be someone else’s charge.
Life comes at you fast.
Returning to the car seat, lunch, and nap time, or what I like to call the ‘toddler triathlon,’ was a test of endurance and resolve. I persevered, but not without making a mental note of every single alcoholic drink I would consume once I delivered the baby later this month.
My mental health took a sharp left turn into despair when I had to bend down to pick up my husband’s socks from his bedside. I threw them in the laundry hamper and took a good long look at myself in the mirror. A ma’am. Sturdy, rectangular, with a protruding stomach and giant breasts that I hardly recognized. Bags under my eyes, hair roots exposed. I was…just some woman. I wore chinos and running shoes earlier out in public. I have no idea where I’ve gone.
The evening progressed with the assembly of a living room bassinet, a live bird loose in our house, and a toddler who ended her day-long reenactment of 1973’s the Exorcist by sweetly asking me to snuggle her on the couch. I stopped picking up the entire city’s worth of little tikes’ little people, I slid one last cardboard book back on the shelf, and I went to hold my sweet girl.
Life comes at you fast.
