Gooooooood Mooooorning Mom!

The other night, I was awakened by the long, thin wail of a screaming child.

This is a perfectly normal thing for me to be awakened by. As a matter of fact, I wake up, sometimes several times a night, to the sounds of a screaming child.

This screaming, however, was different. This screaming came from my almost 3-year old.

I staggered into his room and found him looking like an almost cartoon version of himself, with arms and legs splayed out and his face buried into the carpet.

"What in THE HELL are you doing out of bed?" I asked him.

"There were sheep outside," he sniffled.

"What?!!!" I asked. "Get back in bed and go to sleep."

For a 3-year old to be out of bed in the middle of the night talking about sheep in the backyard is probably not all that unusual. But for my almost 3-year old, it is highly unusual because he still sleeps in a crib. And, in the almost three years that he has spent sleeping in his crib, he has never once tried to climb out of it. Not once.

I know I am a very lucky woman because of this. Trust me -- I have not, for one single night, taken for granted that my child gets in bed and goes to sleep and stays there sleeping until the next morning. He has done this since he was six months old. Every night. There are a lot of things Mike doesn't do very well, but sleeping has always been his forte.

The next morning, I told Brent that Mike had climbed out of his crib in the middle of the night and fallen onto the floor.

Brent, who is a significantly more sympathetic person than I am, talked this through with Mike and discovered that Mike had been having a bad dream about sheep coming to get him so he was trying to get away from them and did not even remember crawling out of bed and just woke up on the floor.

Which kind of made me feel like a turd for yelling at him for being out of bed and then practically throwing him back into his crib so I could go back to sleep.

Oh well.

Nonetheless, we decided that since we didn't want to risk another swan dive into the floor and having our son drive an amigo by pushing a joystick with his tongue for the rest of his life that it was time to put Mike in a big boy bed.

Luckily, the crib we purchased transitions to a toddler daybed with just a few tools and very little cursing by my husband. So before naptime that day, all four of us headed up to Mike's room to make the switch. At first Mike was a little unsure about all of this, but then it suddenly dawned on him that this bed was for big boys! And he was a big boy! And he couldn't wait to sleep in a big boy bed!

Flash to naptime and Brent and I running up to Mike's room approximately 400 times to tell him to get back into his bed.

At nighttime, however, Mike was so tired that he just passed out in his new big boy bed and I didn't hear him until 6:30 the next morning when I found him peering at me in the dark.

"It's morning, Mom," he told me. "It's time to get up. AND I got out of bed all by myself!"

He was so proud of himself that it was hard to be angry at him for waking up two full hours earlier than he normally did.

But I still managed. At least until I had slugged down a few cups of coffee.

And so this is now our morning routine. Mike comes and wakes me up seemingly moments after I fall back to sleep after nursing the baby in the middle of the night. Then we go downstairs with me asking, "Why are you up so early?" and I get in the shower in a futile attempt to wake myself up, and then, during what used to be my only guaranteed time alone during the day, I enjoy having the shower curtain pulled open every few seconds with Mike saying, "GOOD MORNING MOM!!!!"

There are also intermittent bursts of very loud sirens from our brigade of fire trucks to help me start my day.

It's hard to believe that in about ten years I will have to light a fire under his ass to get him out of bed.

Until then, I suppose, I will drink a lot of coffee. And let him enjoy this newfound freedom of being able to do something all by himself, my little big boy.

Not A Pretty Picture

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but how's this conversation for you?

ME: Great weather we're having!

Neighbor: I know -- I can't believe it! Say, when are you going to have that baby?

ME: I had the baby two months ago.

Neighbor: Oh. Sorry.

A few things. 1) This particular neighbor is a little bit crazy. 2) I swear up and down that he has seen me with Peter, who is very unmistakably a brand new baby. And 3) my waist is more than 30 inches (yes, you read right -- 30 inches -- like the waist of another human being) smaller than it was in December. In other words, I don't think I look pregnant anymore.

But it is undeniable: I am definitely a more portly version of my former self.

In the two weeks following Pete's birth, I dropped over 20 pounds. Every day I would step on the scale and there would be a little less of me. It was glorious! And so, I convinced myself that this time, the 50+ pounds I had gained would all be off by the time little Peter was three months old, and I would hardly have to do anything except breastfeed. As a matter of fact, I secretly told myself that not only would I lose all of the weight I had gained during this pregnancy to get back to my normally overweight self, but I would lose all of the weight that I had gained since high school! In fact, I was going to weigh less than I did in high school by the time Pete was a year old! 20 pounds less!

What a reasonable goal.

Because those 20+ pounds I lost were comprised of baby, placenta, amniotic fluid, swollen uterus, and water. So after my amazing 2 week weight loss, which involved some pretty heavy duty work like shooting all of the aforementioned stuff out of my vagina, my body quickly put the brakes on all weight loss activity. And I have not shed ONE SINGLE OUNCE in nine weeks now.

Not one ounce.

And do you know what I have eaten? Approximately 47 pounds of lettuce. A lot of nonfat yogurt. A lot of fruit. Over 60 red bell peppers. And one hell of a lot of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

As a matter of fact, I fully expect to get thank you notes from lettuce growers and the chicken industry any day now. Because of my support, their children can attend ivy-league universities.

When my weight loss stalled out, I decided to wait until Pete was six weeks old to begin dieting in earnest. As a seasoned dieter, I knew exactly what I needed to do to lose all of this weight. Eat less. Exercise more. So I set some lofty goals. I would eat only one whole grain carb a day. I would go to the gym every day like it was my job. I would take both kids for a walk every evening. And besides my one whole grain carb, I would eat only low-glycemic vegetables and lean proteins and two fruits. I would eat slowly and enjoy every bite of my delicious and nutritiously-prepared meals. And nary a sip of caffeine would pass my lips.

Maybe you can tell I've done this before.

But here's the reality of the situation. I work. If I get 4-5 hours of sleep a night, I consider myself lucky right now. My husband works an opposite schedule from me so I have the joy of being alone with two yelling children 40 hours a week. My toddler, Mike, would be happy to live on a diet of macaroni and cheese and sausages. I live in Montana and it has been cold and icy and windy and really dark in the evenings. My baby cries a lot. My toddler yells a lot. There are approximately 307 loads of laundry to do a day at my house. I often find myself making dinner while balancing a screaming baby on my shoulder, yelling at my toddler to quit scaling the bookcase/table/pantry cupboards/walls, and stepping over a minefield of fire trucks, excavators and matchbox cars. I gulp my dinner down without chewing as if I was out to claim top prize at the national hot dog eating championship. Because did I mention that my baby cries a lot and my toddler yells a lot and I am home alone with them all of the time? And one of them ALWAYS NEEDS SOMETHING.

In short, I haven't once gotten my fat ass out of bed at 5 a.m. to go to the gym like I used to. Every morning, I berate myself for this serious shortcoming. But I am tired. Very tired. Then, because of the aforementioned tiredness, I kickstart my day with a fairly enormous cup of highly caffeinated coffee. With half-and-half. And sugar. And I often have coffee throughout the day so that I don't pass out face first into my plate of low-glycemic vegetables. I keep telling myself that during my very occasional spare half-hour to myself, I should do one of my aerobics videos. But instead, I take short naps on the couch or I look at pictures in a magazine because I am too tired to read. And I eat chocolate. A lot of chocolate.

And, I weigh myself multiple times a day, with clothes and without clothes, positioning the scale in different places on the floor, putting my weight on one foot and then the other, pre-breastfeeding and post-breastfeeding, with the desperate hope that maybe I have somehow lost 30 pounds in the last half-hour.

I never have.

So I convinced myself that, in fact, it wasn't because I was eating too many calories and sitting on my aforementioned fat ass breastfeeding ALL DAY LONG that made it so I wasn't losing weight. It was only because I was breastfeeding. When I told my husband that I didn't think my body was capable of losing weight while nursing, he said, "Oh, so your body defies all of the scientific research that has been done demonstrating how many calories you can burn while breastfeeding?"

Yes, sound effects? Cue the creepy music. And props? Where's that very sharp ice pick?

Then, a few days later, when I told my husband that perhaps I wasn't consuming enough food and my body was clinging to the fat in order to make breast milk, he replied, "You're probably eating a lot more than you think you are."

Ice pick! Where's that ice pick???

And so, here we are. My husband is lucky to be alive. And, in two weeks, Pete will be three months old. And I will most definitely NOT be back to my old pre-pregnancy weight. Oh, those glorious days of a periodic double chin. Now I have multiple chins all of the time.

As a matter of fact, I feel as if I look a little like Jabba the Hut.

Or, if my head was orange and I had triangles for eyes, I could pass for an oversized jack-o-lantern.

Or like Kirstie Alley. Before.

I'm a before picture right now. And that's not pretty at all.

Boba Fett Makes Me Firm

Friend: “You don’t look as tired today.”

Me: “I’m going to contribute that entirely to my new concealer.”

Friend: “You mean you’re still not sleeping eight hours a night?”

Me: “Ha. Trust me – it’s the concealer. It’s fancy stuff. It has this anti-aging complex in it called Boba Fett.”

Friend: “Boba Fett? You mean Boba Fett the bounty hunter from Star Wars? You mean the android who was out to get Hans Solo and Chewbacca?”

Another friend: "A cosmetics company named some anti-aging complex after Boba Fett?"

Me: “No, wait. That can't be right. Sadly, I am sure cosmetic companies do not have marketing departments naming products after bounty hunters. That was apparently my overly tired subconscious kicking in. Now that I think about it, it’s not Boba Fett. It’s Bota Firm.”

Friend: “That's too bad. But I suppose if you have Boba Fett floating around in your subconscious, you’re old enough to need the Bota Firm.”