“Cheater” Guacamole, and My Imaginary Parenthood

From Omeletta:

We are deep in the throes of the peanut’s first emerging tooth and ugggggh.  Teething is The Worst Ever. Just when I thought we’d made it, when we’d gotten out alive from those fussy, dark, overwhelming days of her first three months, here comes the grumpiness again, storming through our happy and blissed out little routine.  My cheerful, cuddly girl has turned into a whiny, clingy, drooly mess of a baby, and I’m trying desperately to cling to enough sanity for the both of us.  And then my mother ruins everything and tells me last night that this tooth could stop and start for weeks or months before actually breaking through. Acca-scuse me?

I know, I know, all the parents out there are like, “HA HA HA, kids, man!  As soon as you have it figured it, they change it up on you!” and isn’t that just a HILARIOUS thing to say?  Until you are actually living it every day.  

Here’s another thing everyone says, which I am raising my voice in chorus: This is turning out to be a lot different than I imagined it would be while I was pregnant.  Here’s how I thought my days would go, compared to how they actually are:

Early Mornings:

Baby wakes up at some perfectly normal time, like 8:00 am, cooing from her crib.  I go and get her and we nurse quietly in the morning light. Then I babywear like the good hippie I am, drink hot coffee and we play.

How It Really Is:

Baby wakes up at some random hour between 6-8 am, yelling from her crib as though someone is trying to saw her arm off.  As soon as I enter her room and she sees me, she is all smiles.  We have a longish nursing session because everything in the world distracts her these days.  She’ll nurse, then pull of and smile at me, then nurse again, then pull off and smile at the window, then nurse, before pulling off to laugh to herself as though she’s remembering some joke she heard the other day.  

She won’t let me babywear her unless we’re walking, so I lay her on her her playmat where she gnaws on her Sophie the Giraffe and I make coffee.  She starts in on the whole “I’ll roll on to my tummy and YOU can roll me back again” malarky, which we engage in numerous times (to her delight) as my coffee grows lukewarm.  

How I Imagined Baby Naps:

At a designated, always-the-same-because-yay-schedules naptime, I lay my baby down in her crib, where she rolls over peacefully and sleeps for three hours.  I take this time to work and make calls and shower and maybe clean and have a little time to myself.

How It Really Is:

At some random time after she has started to show signs of tiredness, I lay my baby down in her crib and she starts yelling as if her arm is being sawed off.  She used to go down with zero fuss, but now that teething has reared its ugly head, sleep is our eternal power struggle. She sleeps somewhere between 45 minutes and two hours, so I work and shower frantically, trying to get as much done as I can before she wakes up because I never really know how long I have.  

How I Imagined Afternoons:

The baby lies on a playmat, playing quietly, while I cook and take fancy ass photos of my food so I can post it on here accompanied by a typical overshare post.

How It Really Is:

We pack up and leave the apartment after her morning nap, or we will both go stir-crazy.  Walks, the park, playgroup, Mommy-and-Me Yoga (my fave, because she is hilarious doing baby tree poses and royally sucking at shivasana, the pose where you are supposed to lie still), or the playground where she stares at the big kids on the jungle gym and gnaws away at her teething toys. My meals are eaten with one hand while pushing a stroller in the other, or out of a bowl while hovering over her playmat and making faces.  Did I tell you I’m hysterically funny?  The baby sure thinks I am!  If you ever need a boost in life, find a way to have a baby laugh at you.  It’s as if all my Christmas mornings came at once.

How I Imagined Bedtime:

I lay my baby down to go to sleep at an earlyish hour, after a bath and a loving nursing session.

How It Really Is:

More arms-sawed-off yelling from the crib.  Occasionally this ramps up to wails, too heartbreaking to listen to, so I go and nurse her to sleep and break every rule in the parenting book by doing so.  Bedtime sleep used to take nearly two hours  to accomplish; we’re down to about half an hour or so by now even with the teething, which I consider my first major parenting accomplishment.

How I Imagined My Evenings After The Baby Is Asleep:

A time to work, catch up on my TV shows, talk to family and friends on the phone.  If my husband is home we have bonding time and rediscover what we love about each other.

How It Really Is:

I eat a bowl of my cheater guacamole (recipe below) and pass out in front of the tv by 9.  

If my husband is home, we order food for delivery and then pass out in front of the tv by 9.

This is parenthood, friends.   

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