“This is fun, mama!” exclaims my jumping toddler in delight. His heavy curls are bouncing up and down and his facial expression conveys pure ecstasy. He grins, teeth exposed, reflected light flickering in his wide-open eyes. I’m reminded of the time he shrieked:“I’m happy AND happy!” at the sight of a chocolate soufflé. He is THAT happy. But there is something else I spot in his eyes, a question mark. He is looking for my seal of approval. He needs me to validate this experience before he can unequivocally categorize it as “happy.”
“Yes, this IS fun!” I wholeheartedly agree with him and the intense, almost tangible, armour-like sense of fatigue I wear around myself is momentarily lifted. It’s 6pm, the kind of 6pm which comes after a 9-5, which is actually an 8-6 that started, as always, at 5am. THIS, to which my two-year-old is referring as “fun” is the activity he likes to call I want sing songs in mama’s room - a euphemism he uses to describe the trashing of mama (and dada’s) room by systematically removing bed linen and every last bit of errant clothing article off his parents’ bed and tossing it on the floor along with the contents of mama’s nightstand drawer. The jumping on the bed is done to the alarm clock radio’s music played in full volume (sing songs in mama’s room) and my toddler’s alternating demands: he either urges me to get off the bed or insists that I jump with him. In short, THIS wasn’t my idea of fun up until my baby –far less prone to verbally express emotions than his wordsmith brother - decided to make me privy to something meaningful to him and as if that wasn’t enough, seek my approval with his eyes.
36 Best Pieces of Advice for Sleep Deprived Moms
I’ve recently become aware of a campaign initiated by a fellow blogger mom, Stephanie Sprenger, at Mommy, for Real designed to embrace the validity of the different ways in which we experience parenting and to uplift those of us who are struggling with its less glamorous moments. Stephanie launched her campaign yesterday with the twitter hashtag #sogladtheytoldme and asked some of her fellow blogger moms to participate by sharing their own experiences concerning parental challenges their friends warned them about in advance. Very quickly I’d realized that while most of my posts deal with the dark, sometimes hidden underbelly, no pun intended, of parenting, there were very few of them that could actually be labeled with the hashtag “so glad they told me” – a concept promoting solidarity and honesty between present and future parents – because, well, they didn’t.
The important question to me is, can you really blame them? Who wants to be the killjoy who breaks the news that yes, correct, your baby won’t let you sleep for the first year, but guess what (cue trumpets): he won’t grow out of it by the time he’s five (and counting). Are any moms lining up to be the first creep in line to share their experiences with loss of autonomy over body and scar their freshly bathed child-free friends with stories of boob-steppery incidents? Or what about the good stuff – would it really mean anything if they told you, as they’ve told child-free me, that my heart would be walking outside of my body after I’d became a mom. Would you be able to appreciate it? Would it bear any meaning?
Stop Tantrums: 33 Phrases to Use with Toddlers
I am still undecided on whether, as friends, we should be sharing the full extent of our experiences with future parents for the sake of preparing them. I am not convinced that anyone ever could, but as a writer sharing my thoughts online, I’m completely on board with the notion that we should keep writing our experiences out honestly, from the heart and without judgment toward those who experience parenting differently. We should invite others into our happy moments and openly acknowledge and share, with discretion and consideration toward our kids, the difficult ones. Those who need to hear that we, too, are struggling will find us. Those who need to be reminded that “this is fun, mama!” will do so as well.
Katia Bishops is a writer, serial plant killer, and mom to two boys. She blogs at I Am the Milk, and can be found on Twitter @KatiaDBE
Printer-friendly version