December 4, 2009

I Guess the Cat’s Out of the Bag!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope that you all have wonderful holiday season weekends planned with your families. I am so excited to attend the Ellington Winterfest tomorrow with my two best guys and to head to the Christmas Tree Farm on Sunday to cut down our tree and hopefully get an acceptable Christmas card photo. (That’s right…mine haven’t gone out yet because they haven’t been ordered yet because we don’t have the perfect photo of our son for the front yet). All Christmas card stress aside, there is just nothing better than holiday traditions with my little man! Christmas is definitely different now that I’m a parent…but in a good way for sure. I’ve gone from “Midnight Mass” to “How in the heck would I ever be able to stay awake to attend Midnight Mass?”, but it’s more than worth it when I see that little guy’s face on Christmas morning. There are just so many moments I’ve had when I’ve realized that I am most definitely a mommy and probably wouldn’t even recognize my pre-mama former self. Here’s a little food for thought to kick off your weekend…just a few little clues to provide some insight into when you know you’ve made a full transition to mommyhood. Enjoy!



You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you throw your son’s underwear that he’s just pooped in a little bit because he ate too many grapes the day before and couldn’t quite make it to the potty in time right in with your personal load of laundry without thinking twice about the fact that there is now poop swirling around the washing machine with your Hanky Panky thongs.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you actually get excited about going for an eyebrow wax because even though tiny little hairs are being ripped out of your face, you know that you are at least getting five minutes to yourself without someone pulling on your leg and demanding something.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you get into your car by yourself on one of those rare occasions when you do actually get to go for that eyebrow wax or any other act of much needed self indulgence and you get about 10 miles down the road before you realize that: a.) The Imagination Movers CD is still playing instead of the radio, and b.) You are actually singing along with the CD…and you actually like it, and after the realization that you are alone in your car and can turn off the CD and change to whatever radio station you usually listen to when you are kid-free, you instead choose to keep listening to the Imagination Movers.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you stick your face down low for a close up of the diaper or potty filled with your child’s excrement in order to fully inspect each and every inch of the poop to make sure its color and texture are indeed in line with what is considered normal and appropriate according to the Child Wellness section of WebMd.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you consider 7:00am sleeping in, 8:00am oversleeping, and 10:00am as the halfway mark till the end of your day, and by 3:00pm you are already getting dinner on the stove and thinking seriously about putting on your pj’s and putting tinfoil on your windows so that you can crawl into bed before dark.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you are sitting on your couch trying to get through the dead of winter with a 10 month old and in a moment of true desperation, you have turned on an episode of The Wiggles and just for shits and giggles you sit there and think about which Wiggle you would “do” if someone put a gun to your head and told you it was a life or death situation. (Just go ahead and admit that you’ve had the thought once or twice too).

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you start to do things that your own mother did that you always swore you would never subject your own kid to but now find yourself doing without even thinking about it. A couple examples include spit-shining your child to get ketchup off his face, spitting in your hand a little and rubbing his head in an effort to slick down the hairs that are sticking straight up, and let’s not forget throwing your right arm across the passenger seat of the car when you hit the brakes too hard…and knowing full well that even though your child is strapped safely into his car seat in the back seat, your purse is on that passenger seat and you feel a real need to protect its contents.

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you wake up in the morning and check your Facebook page and are completely appalled because a friend of yours who has not yet ventured onto the journey of motherhood has updated her status to express to the world that she is “So Freakin’ Bored.” You immediately start having heart palpitations and furiously comment on her status something that goes a little like this: “Bored? What the fu*% is bored? I only WISH that I had the time to be bored! What the hell is wrong with you? Enjoy the boredom while you have it honey and find something a little more credible to complain about!” You then realize that the poor chick has no clue about how many mommies she just pissed off and would probably be mortified if she knew that she’d upset them, so you delete the comment, proceed to the next friend in your status update feed and give her a big thumbs up on her status, which says something like, “Woo-hoo! It’s Friday!” (Borrrinnnng)!

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you start preferring an issue of Family Circle or Good Housekeeping to an issue of US Weekly or Star. This particular transition didn’t happen right away for me…in fact it is fairly new, but I have to admit that it’s made me feel like even more of a Mom. I used to get excited about who Jessica Simpson was hooking up with and who was calling her fat and which celebrity daddy was caught cheating with the nanny in any given week. Now I get practically giddy when the Family Circle or Good Housekeeping (I subscribe to both) arrive at my door because I know that they are filled with great tips on how to remove red wine stains, and with easy mom-friendly weeknight recipes with no more than 10 ingredients or 5 preparation steps a piece. I mean, I absolutely love Cooking Light just as much as the next girl, but who in the hell has the time or the cash for that matter to put together a chili recipe with 37 ingredients? Give me a pound of ground beef, a couple cans of beans, and a can of stewed tomatoes and voila! A gourmet meal for two. (I understand now if any of my friends turn down my dinner invitations).

You know you’re a Mommy when…

…you can’t get away fast enough with your hubby for a much needed island vacation without your child…just the two of you, because secretly each and every day as much as you love your baby you dream of sitting on a beach, sipping a pina colada, heading back to your hotel room around 4:00pm for a nice afternoon nap, then getting all gussied up each night to enjoy an elegant meal sitting on a deck overlooking the ocean with the breeze blowing through your hair and cooling off your bronzed skin. You dream of falling in love with your husband all over again while sipping wine at that dinner and then, ahem, retiring to your hotel room for dessert. Then you sleep in as late as you want the next day and do it all over again. This is great for about the first two days of your vacation, but by day three all you and the hubster seem to have to talk about is the kid back home and how much you miss him and you start shopping frantically through all the shops on the island for the perfect little souvenirs to take home. By day seven you are both so ecstatic about getting home that you arrive at the airport three hours early, and when you finally board the plane you completely ignore the looks of pure confusion you are getting from the other homebound passengers on the plane because you and your hubby are the only people on that flight from Bermuda to Boston who are actually high-fiving each other as the plane pulls away from the gate. Yep…you definitely know you’re a mommy when you love to get away from your kid, but as soon as you do, all you can think about is getting back home and kissing his sweet little face as soon as possible.

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “Anyone else have any “You know you’re a Mommy” clues you’d like to share? When did you know that you’d fully made the transition?”

15 Comments
Posted Under: changes, motherhood
December 3, 2009

You’ll Have to Excuse Me…I’m Having a Case of the "Mommy Brain"

Yesterday was just “one of those days.” C’mon, you know what I’m talking about, right? It was one of those days that, as I mentioned in yesterday’s What the Heck? Wednesday post, could have easily been the script for a Seinfeld episode. It was one of those days where things seemed to be progressing along normally, and then one little glitch was thrown into the mix and the next thing I knew, I was running all over the state of Connecticut like a chicken with my head cut off wondering what in the hell went wrong.

Let’s see…where shall I begin? My day pretty much started off just like any other typical morning in my household. My son woke up at about 7:02 and announced to me very clearly over the baby monitor that it was indeed 7:00 and that he was up and wanted to open his Advent calendar. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I’m one of those deep “dream” sleepers. I dream each and every single night and I also remember pretty much each and every single dream when I wake up the next morning. For whatever reason, my son just seems to know the exact time when I am in a totally deep REM sleep and that is the moment when he chooses to declare that it is time to get up and start our day, and of course now that it’s December, that Advent calendar is a major motivator for him to get downstairs as quickly as possible. I don’t really recall getting him out of his bed or heading down the stairs. All I know is that by 7:06 yesterday morning, my son was sitting on the couch enjoying a chocolate coin out of the December 2nd box and I was still trying to determine whether I was indeed awake or whether this was still part of my dream from the night before. I found out shortly after that I was definitely not dreaming.

Initially, I really didn’t have any big plans laid out for yesterday. The only things on my to-do list were to take my son out to lunch at his favorite spot, Bertucci’s, and to return a couple of items at Target and then come home to make a nice pot of chicken corn chowder for the hubby since he was returning from a three-day trip to NYC. I’ll start with those items that I needed to return. A couple of weeks ago, my one-in-a-million babysitter and I met up over at Target so that she could help me shop for a couple of new “date night” outfits to sex me up a little bit. You see, I am pretty much stuck in the early 2000s as far as fashion goes and there is just really nothing stylish about me. What can I say? I popped out a kid and my fashion sense went in the crapper. My babysitter, on the other hand, is a total fashion guru and is always perfectly put together and right in line with the current trends. She is not only my babysitter, but a fellow blogger as well. Her blog is all about educating women on how to be fashionable and live the good life while still maintaining some sort of budget. Stop by and see her at Frugalista Life when you have a chance…she’s got some great tips!

Ok, back to the clothes that we picked out. She wound up choosing this adorable purple wrap sweater for me that definitely would have showed off my cleavage if I actually had any. I should’ve known that the wrap sweater and I would not get along very well when I had to have her tie it around me in the dressing room because I couldn’t figure it out. Guess what? I couldn’t figure it out when I got home either, and I just don’t have that kind of time when trying to get ready for a date night, so back into the Target bag it went to be returned. She also selected this gorgeous berry colored sleeveless top for me along with a skinny black belt to wear with jeans to dress them up a bit. I’ll admit that I thought I looked pretty hot in the dressing room, but after I got home and tried the top and belt on a second time, I realized that the belt was making things pop out in all the wrong places, and if I couldn’t pull off the belt, there was no way I could pull off the top, so both of those pieces also wound up back in the Target bag. The only item I decided to keep? A pair of jeans. Nothing exciting about them, just a pair of jeans. Guess the early 2000s are just where this mom is destined to stay!

Ok, ok, I know I just got off on a bit of a tangent about the clothes that I needed to return to Target, but that damn Target bag is a major player in this story, so please just bear with me. After I was showered and dressed, I picked up the Target bag along with a huge basket of laundry that needed to go downstairs. I had to get a load of wash in immediately because I knew that Thursday (today) was white day at preschool and my son needed a clean white shirt. I would just die if he were the only kid in the class not wearing white, and truth be told, he would pick up on the discrepancy too. He’s smart like that.

We still have a baby gate at the top of the stairs because my paranoid self worries that my son will wander out of his bedroom in the middle of the night and topple down the stairs. The gate is great for safety and my own peace of mind, but it is a real pain in the rear when I have anything large that needs to be carried downstairs. I realized that there was no way in hell that huge laundry basket was going to fit, so I proceeded to throw some clothes over the railing like I do pretty much each and every time I have a load of wash to do. I also realized that I still needed to get my son dressed before heading downstairs for the day, so I chucked that Target bag over the railing as well. I heard a thud when it landed on the hardwood floor below, but I just figured it was the metal clasp of that cute belt that I had no shot in hell of pulling off. After finally getting my son dressed and ready, I picked up the laundry basket that was much more manageable now that I’d dumped half its contents over the rail, looked to the bottom of the stairs at the heap of clothes in my foyer, laughed a little to myself at what a mess it was and how my house looked like a bomb hit it, and then thought it would be “so funny” to take a picture of the chaos below and post it in my blog somewhere. I went to reach for my I-phone to take the picture…and that is when it dawned on me that in my effort to get everything downstairs without getting stuck in the baby gate, I had put my I-phone into the Target bag so I’d have one less thing to carry. That’s right. I’d put it in the Target bag. I dropped the laundry basket and literally raced down the stairs in a panic because I now realized that the “thud” I heard was not the metal clasp of that belt. Nope. It was the sound of my I-phone being thrown over the stairs, which ultimately resulted in a huge crack right down the middle of the screen making it completely unable to unlock, which made it useless.

The time that elapsed between when I put the I-phone into the Target bag and the time I hurled it over the railing couldn’t have been more than three-and-a-half minutes or so. Three-and-a-half minutes is not a long time at all and I couldn’t believe that in those three-and-a-half minutes, I’d actually forgotten that I’d put the phone into the bag. The problem was that since I’m a mom now, I was having a huge case of the “Mommy Brain.” We all know what the “Mommy Brain” is. Somewhere between the course of being pregnant and having a child, a woman’s brain goes on complete and total overload, so any time there is a lull in the action, she takes advantage of having a few minutes to figure out exactly what she needs to do to survive the rest of her week. When this happens, any and all happenings that occurred prior to the “Mommy Brain” being turned on seem to disappear into thin air. The “Mommy Brain” gives forgetfulness a whole new definition.

Since I was having a case of the “Mommy Brain”, three-and-a-half minutes was more than ample time for my mind to run rampant thinking about the white shirt that my son HAD to wear to school the next day, the fact that tomorrow was also show and tell day at preschool and that we’d have to pick out something to bring for that, the fact that we are leaving for Florida in a week and I had no idea what to pack or when I was going to find time to start packing, realizing that I still needed to find a loaf of sourdough bread to go with the chicken corn chowder I was preparing for dinner because the hubster absolutely loves sourdough and I’m trying like hell to be a good wife and have a hot meal on the table when he gets home from a business trip, and the fact that I was still a little bit upset that I haven’t managed to get back in control of my food intake after being a total hog on Thanksgiving and with going to Florida next week I wondered just how bad the bathing suit situation was going to be. Then I wondered where in the hell my bathing suits were since I’d switched out my summer wardrobe for my winter one.

After I picked up my poor I-phone that had been so viciously mutilated by my momentary lapse of concentration, the day’s priorities took on a whole new meaning and I had my son strapped into the car seat and ready to head to A T&T in a course of about five minutes. To make a long story short, they were nice as could be at A T&T, but they were not able to fix my phone and told me that I’d have to make an appointment at the Apple Store at West Farms Mall. West Farms Mall is a good 35 minutes from the A T&T store, as it is “West of the River.” I live “East of the River” and the A T&T store is located there too, so I scheduled the appointment for a couple hours out so that I would have time to take my son to lunch at Bertucci’s like I’d promised him and then make the journey through downtown Hartford to get to the West Side. Anyone from Connecticut knows what I’m talking about here, and for the rest of you, I’ll save the saga of West of the River vs. East of the River for another time.

My little man and I wound up having a great lunch at Bertucci’s even though I still couldn’t believe that my “Mommy Brain” had actually let such inhumane treatment happen to my I-phone. While we were waiting for our food, I decided to give my Mom a call to fill her in on the stupid thing I’d done and also to let her know that she would be unable to reach me on my cell phone until I finally got it fixed. Ok, cue the “Mommy Brain” again. How in the hell did I think I was supposed to call my Mom with my broken I-phone? It’s official. I am just way too dependent on that thing. I wonder if there’s a 12-step program?

Over at the Apple Store, I think the “Mommy Brain” is actually what saved me from having to shell out $199 for a new I-phone screen. The nice man at the “Genius Bar” asked me how the screen had gotten cracked, so what did I do? I told him the truth. Right down to the Target bag and the pile of clothes that had ended up in my foyer. I told him that my own stupidity had killed my I-phone. This guy is obviously married to another fellow “Mommy-Brainer” because he looked me right in the eye and kind of whispered that he was to going to take the phone in the back and fix it for me at no charge. I almost hugged the guy. What a wonderful Christmas gift to give this poor overwhelmed Mom who is just doing the best she can trying to get through the day! I sure hope that Santa is good to that man and his family this year.

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “Luckily, I was able to knock one thought out of my Mommy Brain last night. The nice people over at A T&T gave my son a little toy cell phone to play with while I was on hold with the Apple Store. He took it for show and tell today. Doesn’t he look handsome in his crisp, clean white shirt?” (Excuse me, I have to run…my I-phone is ringing).


9 Comments
Posted Under: forgetfulness, Mommy brain
December 2, 2009

What the Heck? Wednesday

Ok, so I gave the whole Wordless Wednesday a thing a shot and I have decided that: a.) it is virtually impossible for me to keep these posts wordless because I just have way too many thoughts running through my brain to not put them into some kind of wordful post, and b.) I just think it would be fun to try out something a little bit different to keep with the tradition of laughing and making fun of myself. With that said, here goes my trial run of what I’d like to call “What the Heck? Wednesday.”

I got the idea for What the Heck? Wednesday while sitting on the edge of the tub this morning trying to get through an entire blow dry without my son busting through the door and telling me that he either wanted a snack and a drink, needed to go POOP! (he always emphasizes the word poop when he says it so I decided I had to do his little phrase proper justice), or to ask me for the twentieth time in the last two days what my favorite part of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is. As I watched myself in the mirror and tried to make each and every strand frizz free with the round brush, I noticed that my post-Thanksgiving “wine roll” on my belly was much more visible today than it has been in the past few days. And today I was actually wearing my fat jeans. What the heck?

After both of us were finally dressed and ready to head out for the day’s whilrwind of previously unnecessary errands (tune into tomorrow’s post if you’d like more info), my little guy announced that he really wanted to go out for lunch and that he reallllly wanted to go to Bertucci’s. Surprise, surprise! We live at Bertucci’s these days. We are probably there at least two times a week for lunch because my little stud is the worst eater on the planet, but he will scarf down Bertucci’s rolls and cheese pizza all day long, and I am just so ecstatic if that kid eats at all, so Bertucci’s it is! Most days that we go there, I try and be a good girl and order a salad with grilled chicken. Not today. I was just way too upset about my “wine roll” and figured that I needed something to comfort me a little, so my main squeeze and I shared a delicious cheese pizza. And now my fat jeans are starting to feel a bit tight. What the heck?

After finally getting home at around 5pm tonight after the Seinfeld episode that was my day (again, tune in tomorrow), I just had to pick up the phone and call my mom to fill her in on the day’s antics. Silly me for thinking that I could get through an entire 10 minute phone conversation with my mother without all hell breaking loose in my family room.

That’s right. The “Jungle King”, as he called himself, had turned my once somewhat clean family room into his own personal oasis and was now using the fireplace utensils as his “jungle tools”. What the heck?

After realizing that it was now nearing six o’clock, which meant that the hubster’s train from NYC had already arrived New Haven, which meant he was on his way home, which meant that I needed to get a pot of the chicken corn chowder that I promised him for dinner brewing on the stove, I determined that it was way past cocktail hour and that I needed to go ahead and open my vino (the wine roll is already THERE so, what the heck?), I went and got my fat bottle of $10.99 Pinot Noir, went to pull open the cute wine bottle stopper with my first initial on it that I’d gotten at a craft fair a couple of weeks ago and thought was TOO cute and was just SO psyched about…and the top part BROKE OFF. I was left with a cute little ball with my initial on it…and a rubber stopper completely STUCK inside the bottle…preventing me from getting my wine.

Ok, I know these photos are blurry, but WHAT THE HECK?

If you have a “What the Heck? Wednesday” moment you’d like to share…please feel free to comment below.

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “Just in case some of you were holding your breath (I know I was), I managed to push the rubber stopper into the bottle of wine and I’m happily enjoying my second glass. Hope I don’t get some sort of poisoning from the plastic. What the heck?”


8 Comments
Posted Under: What the Heck? Wednesday
December 1, 2009

A Few Words from a Former A-Lister

Well, I finally seem to be coming out of my Turkey Day coma and I’m getting back into a routine of some sort and getting a post up today! I feel like such a slacker…but I guess that’s what consuming two or three pounds of food over the course of a long weekend does to you. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! I enjoyed a very quiet and pleasant Thanksgiving Day with my two boys, and then on Friday morning I hopped on a plane for a quick 24-hour trip to Pittsburgh (my hometown) for a family baby shower. I was so excited to take this trip for a few reasons. First, my mom was flying in from her home in Florida and meeting me there and I always love the chance to sneak in a visit with her even if it’s only for a few hours. She and I always have so many laughs when we are together, and there is usually plenty of wine involved resulting in even more comedy. This trip was no exception. Second, my grandfather lives in Pittsburgh and I don’t see him near enough, so it was so nice to catch up with him a little and fill him in on everything that is going on in my world these days. Third, basically my mom’s entire side of the family lives in Pittsburgh as well, and getting together with all of them is like coming home, no matter what state I happen to live in at the time. I guess I’ll always be a girl from the ‘Burgh at heart.

On Saturday morning, all of my lady relatives met up at one of our cousin’s houses and piled into three different cars to make the 45 minute drive to the baby shower. There were only two women in each car, but I won’t go into any further details on that. It’s a female thing I guess! When we arrived, we were greeted by the mother-to-be and she was glowing and looked absolutely stunning. She is one of those “cute pregnant chicks” who is all belly and hasn’t gained an ounce of weight anywhere else. Normally this would really tick me off, but this mama is one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, so I am making an exception to the rule and saying that she 100% deserves to be the “cute pregnant chick.” She doesn’t know how lucky she is that she looks so good. Everyone at her shower was commenting on how beautiful and tiny she was. When I was eight months pregnant, all I heard was plenty of people asking me, “What are you eating??” I would usually just shrug my shoulders a little and try and change the subject, but truthfully, I wanted to respond to that question by saying, “What am I eating? Everything in freakin’ sight you moron! In case you hadn’t noticed, I am PREGNANT and this is the one time in my life when I’m supposed to be able to chow down without any guilt, so please shut up and step aside so I can grab another Krispy Kreme donut!” (I’m not bitter or anything…I swear).

The shower was beautiful, and after a delicious sit down luncheon of plenty of rolls, salad, chicken stuffed with three different kinds of cheese, mashed potatoes, and a lovely slice of chocolate cake, a chair was brought to the front of the room so the mother-to-be could open all of her gifts. As I sat at my table and watched her admire all of the wonderful things she was receiving, I started to fidget in my chair a little. For the most part, I was fidgeting because the waist of my pants was starting to cut off my circulation after a Thanksgiving dinner complete with all the fixins, half a cookie sheet of nachos covered in chili and sharp cheddar cheese, rolls soaked in garlic butter, fried zucchini, chicken parm, and angel hair covered in more cheese from the delicious Italian dinner my granddad had treated me and Mom to the night before, half a bottle of wine (one of those BIG bottles) at his condo before dinner, two glasses of wine at the restaurant, and now everything that was just served to us at this baby shower. Are you getting the full effect? I hope so.

The other main reason that I started to fidget in my chair is because being at this baby shower brought back so many memories of my own baby shower four years earlier. I vividly remembered just how special I felt on that day…and pretty much every single day throughout my pregnancy. Being pregnant is a little like being a celebrity. For one thing, everyone loves you. I mean, EVERYONE! Everywhere I went, people who didn’t even know me would open doors for me, offer to carry things for me in stores, heck, I even think that someone gave up their table at a restaurant one time for me and my husband because they must have known that I needed to get fed a lot quicker than they did. I was a total A-lister! I was the star of the show and everyone did whatever they could to cater to my each and every need. I didn’t need a red carpet or papparazzi to know that all eyes were indeed on ME!

As I thought about this concept and kept watching the mother-to-be opening more gifts, I realized that a woman’s baby shower is pretty much her last hoo-rah. It is the very last time that she is the main attraction. As soon as that baby comes, she goes from A-lister to S-lister. I’m sure you are all wondering why I say “S-lister” instead of “B-lister” or even “C-lister”. The descriptions below should help clear a few things up.

1. The “A” in A-lister stands for so many different things. A few phrases that come to mind to describe the A-lister are, “Awww! She’s Absolutely Adorable!” “Awww! She will be the most Affectionate and Awesome mom!” “Awww! She must be ready to burst with Anticipation of that little Angel’s arrival!”

2. The “S” in S-lister can be summed up in these statements: “Screw you lady! Step aside Sister! There is a baby involved now and you’ve officially taken the backseat. See ya!

I’m sure this isn’t news that any of the preggo chicks out there want to hear. Sorry girls, but this is the God’s honest truth. Enjoy the spotlight now, because this is your last curtain call before your bundle arrives.

In thinking a little harder about the whole transition from A-lister to S-lister, I realized that part of the reason this shift is such a shocker to new moms is because of the false picture painted by the gifts they receive from baby shower guests. Now don’t get me wrong here…I mean, nobody wants to burst any pregnant chick’s bubble or anything like that, but some of the gifts that are given nowadays just really aren’t practical and I believe they provide the new mommy with an unrealistic expectation about how rosy and perfect things should be after that baby comes.

Let’s start with a gift that I’m sure all of us received at our own showers, the baby wipes warmer. I will be the first one to admit that I was overjoyed by that gift and at the thought of not having to shock my little one with a cold baby wipe on his little tush when I went to change him in the dead of winter. It was only after my poor baby boy had a bout of diarrhea at 3am that was seeping out of every opening of his little onesie that I realized that the last thing I wanted to do while cleaning him up was to add HEAT into the mix. I mean, why on earth would anyone want to add heat and amplify a stench like that? I unplugged the wipes warmer that night and never used it again. And you know what? My little one never batted an eyelash when I used room temperature wipes.

The next gift that is pretty much inevitable at every baby shower is the hand-knitted stark WHITE cardigan sweater. I mean, sure, it is absolutely darling and so thoughtful and I’d probably make one too if I knew how to knit or even sew for that matter, but C’MON!! Just as an adult wearing a white shirt is a magnet for spaghetti sauce, a handmade white sweater on a baby is practically begging to be thrown up on. All I can say for the sweater is to either stick the baby in it real quick for one photo to send to the gift giver, or from now on tell all the knitters out there to make the sweater in more of a baby formula cream color to at least make the puke stains less noticeable.

The final gifts of impracticality that I’d like to discuss are rattles or any sort of noisemakers for that matter. Sure, they are cute, and it is cute to shake them in front of the baby a little in the hopes of catching a glimpse of what is indeed, a smile, and not some bout of gas. What isn’t cute is when that baby is screaming his head off while you have some sort of visitor over there who thinks that she knows all the tricks for calming down a screaming baby and one of those seems to be shaking a rattle in the poor little bundle’s face. Yeah, just what the new mom AND the kid need. MORE noise.

Since I’ve taken it upon myself to discuss all of the gifts that I think are completely impractical, I decided that it was only fitting for me to come up with some sort of gift that I believe a new mom will just get way more use out of. Thus, the “S-lister Survival Kit” was born. I am pledging right now that for any baby shower I attend in the future, I will be slipping Miss Preggo a gift under the table while no one is looking. I will tell her to take that gift home, and not to open it until about two weeks after she brings the new addition home from the hospital. I really think I may be on to something here.

Contents of the S-lister Survival Kit:

- A nice supply of assorted “nips” (airplane sized bottles of booze…perfect to drown out the agony a little)

- Bottle of eye makeup remover (to clean up unintentional streaks from the incessant bouts of crying)

- A few Tide pens (no explanation needed)

- Brown paper bag (in case of hyperventalation)

- Copy of book “Babyproofing Your Marriage” (give me one new mommy who hasn’t had one negative thought about her husband in the few weeks after bringing the baby home and I’ll provide her with her very own medal of honor. She’s lying by the way…)

- A pack of cloth diapers to be used as burp pads (They’re the BEST and there is just no need for the cute little burp pads with teddy bears on them. Those don’t soak up a thing!)

- A bottle of Baby Powder (not for the baby…but to put in her hair to soak up the grease on days when she can’t shower…so, for most days of the week)

- A bag of Hershey Kisses (just so she knows that someone loves her and is thinking about her and has gone through the same challenges as her and she’s not alone…and also just because sometimes a piece of chocolate just makes everything better)

- A tube of Preparation H or Tucks Pads (because if she knows me at all then she knows I’m not shy about post-baby hemorrhoids)

- A little card with the web address to this blog (in the hopes that I can help her feel more normal by providing a few laughs on sleepless nights)

- A Tiara (for days when she just needs to feel like a princess again…why not? She deserves it!)

I guess the cat’s out of the bag on what any of my future mom-to-be friends can expect to receive from me at their baby showers. Hope I still make the guest list!

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: There is something that all the S-listers have to look forward to. Trust me when I say that you will feel like an A-lister again when your baby grows up a little, looks at you adoringly and says, “I think you’re the best Mommy in the whole world! Thanks for making popcorn!” I know I felt like a celebrity when my son said that to me last night during our “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” pajama party. It made all of my S-lister moments more than worth it!



20 Comments
Posted Under: baby shower, new mom, pregnant
Newer Posts »