I'm still not sure about all the comma rules, so probably shouldn't be lecturing about punctuation.

Saturday night I had the pleasure of seeing at least 15 minutes of The Fiancee's nephew in a high school stage production of "Oklahoma." I would've seen more, but The Lady Gray decided that she wanted to voice her opinion about the production, so I excused myself to allow her to rant all she wanted... in the car.

While pacing in the vestibule, waiting for the rest of our group to exit the auditorium, I happened to notice the signs for one of the bathrooms:

Girl's

Bathroom

(some [probably poorly punctuated] Braille)

Really! This is in a HIGH SCHOOL, y'all! Supposedly a place of learning -- even if not of the higher variety. How in the Hades could this have gone unnoticed? What one lucky girl gets to use this bathroom? Do they have a vote each day? Does the prom queen get to use this bathroom or does she need to find the one that is properly punctuated?

Apostrophe abuse makes me itchy in a big way.

But I probably shouldn't have expected anything less from a school that has intentional textese graffiti all over the entrance. 

Textese makes me break out in hives. Really is it SO difficult to put in the extra letters? We're not paying by the character anymore, People! You can spell the whole word!

This is what scares me about the world I'm leaving to my children. I remember when "ain't" wasn't actually a word. Now it's in the dictionary! We're deliberately dumbing down rather than holding our offspring to a higher standard. Instead of making our kids work their asses off for a trophy, we're handing them out like so much candy to soothe their little wounded egos. 

What. The. Fuck. Is. WRONG with us?!

Look. It's our job as parents to wound our children. No, seriously. It is. (Side note: my mother can now die happy that I admitted that). Because it's our job to teach our kids that the world is a tough motherfucker and she takes no prisoners. I would love nothing more than to save my kids from every heartbreak and hardship they'll encounter, but I would be doing them a disservice. Just like I'd be doing The Monkey a disservice for telling him that his crap-tastic, half-assed paper about the 1936 Olympics was good enough to hand in rather than making him re-write it (I let him off the hook when it would warrant a C. But only because I was tired of arguing with him about it). Or if I let The Nugget hand in his math homework with every answer wrong because "Mrs. Kling will go over it tomorrow in class". 

NO! It's my job to torture my kids and make them sit at the table 'til the job is done. It's my job to yell at them. It's my job to paint a bleak picture of the kind of future they can expect if they continue to accept mediocrity as the standard.

But I'm wicked hard-pressed to enforce these lessons when the schools around here allow apostrophe abuse to go unchecked and humor textese, because my kids will know I'm full of shit. They'll know that the world at large accepts half-assery and they will be able to out-argue me. And I won't have the safety net of the world giving them their comeuppance because the world is all, "Meh. I'm too busy watching Breaking Amish. Catch me at the commercial."

I'm the kind of exhausted that parents of a newborn are. Oh wait...

The Lady Gray decided to switch her schedule from nights to days, so was up a goodly portion of last night. Not to mention the fact that we're getting some stormy weather around here and, like my middle child, she's a baby barometer, too. Cranky and fussy, she is, and I just feel so badly for her.

She's down for a nap now and I'm hoping that it will last long enough for me to hop in the shower and then put my contacts in. Oh, glorious contact lenses! How I've missed you. While I do look pretty fancy in glasses, I can't help but reflect on Dorothy Parker's assessment of them:

"Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses"

Which makes me feel decidedly un-sexy. Not that my usual uniform of a tank top and jammy bottoms helps matters much. Or the lack of make up, post-natal acne and hair tossed into a very unattractive pony tail. It's a wonder how The Fiance™ can even think of having another baby.

All of this rambling is to say that I have to leave in a couple of hours to go get The Nugget and take him to his orthodontist consultation. Yes, dear readers, it is possible that I will have another one in braces soon. But in the mean time, I'm enjoying to quiet of the house and doing my level best to ignore the pile of dishes that need doing and the laundry that needs folding. Because I'm tired and I'm supposed to be honoring that and sleeping when the baby does, instead of gulping down a cup of coffee (the one a day I'm allowed while nursing) and fighting the urge to sleep.

Because time moves too quickly these days and before I know it, I'll be returning to work full time and trusting my baby with someone else. Not an easy thing for this mama to wrap her head around, even if I am leaving her with an aunt and uncle her love her to the point of worship.



Edit: Guess who just woke up? I'll get to that shower later, I suppose.

Happy Birthday, Lyla-Gray

My baby girl is officially one month old today. It seems like yesterday that my teething, smiling, gassy-as-a-trucker, sweet baby graced us with her presence.

She was actually only 20 inches long. I'm short; she didn't have a whole lot of room to work with.

It's hard to be photogenic when you're opened up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Oh! The indignities of the first minutes of life. I'm proud to say she scored an 8 and 9 on her APGARs.

Don't let this sweet face fool you. OK. Go ahead and let it. She's still fooling us (she's a few hours old in this one)

The Fiance™ and Lady Gray

The Fiance™'s twin brother (and Lady Gray's godfather). No, they look nothing alike.

Nugget love!

She looks so much like The Monkey, I shall call this "Doppleganger sister!"

Seriously, don't let the sweetness fool you.

Cuz she can be a banshee when she wants to! I call this "Metal Scream!"

She does smile. A lot. It's cute.

Almost a Month

The Lady Gray - aka Fussy McFusspants - is three days shy of being a month old. I've started packing up my maternity clothes and digging out my yoga pants. In just a couple of weeks I will be officially cleared to resume my normal activities. This makes me rather sad, to be honest. Not because I don't long to get back on the mat, but because my baby is growing too quickly. As much as I complain about the lack of sleep, I'd gladly go without sleep for the next year if she would just slow down. My sweet newborn daughter is coming into her personality, with all its glorious fussiness, but I miss her being just mine. I'm still not ready to share her with the world yet and all this packing up of maternity clothes is just reminding me that she's not in my belly anymore.

With The Monkey nearing his fourteenth birthday, it's just another reminder of how quickly time goes and how truly heartbreaking motherhood is. Heartbreaking in a good way, though. Because these magnificent creatures I have birth to are just so breathtakingly wonderful. But every year they get older is just another year closer to them being grown beings and not sweet babies anymore.

This is why I told The Fiancée that I'm not having anymore babies. That and because, as of Sunday, I officially hit my scary age and don't want to run the risk of conceiving a child with birth defects. Selfish, I know, but it's more about not wanting a child to have any kind of compromised life.

Time moves too fast, it does. One of these days, I wish it would slow down.

Seventeen Days

That's how old my baby girl is. That's nearly three weeks. It's 408 hours and 24,480 minutes. I dare not count the seconds.

The first week she was here was mostly about recovering and discovering. Recovering from the surgery required to bring this precious life into the world, and discovering how to be a mama to a new little one again.

The second week was learning to navigate parenthood and find ways to fill the hours that I am home alone and she is sound asleep (and sleep she does, this little one).

And here I am in the third week and I'd have to say this week is about joy. Joy in finding ways to make this pensive child of mine smile [when she's not asleep]. Joy in reading her face and trying to decipher all the thoughts that are surely running through her head.

But I'm a little bit sad, too. I'm sad that time seems to be moving so quickly this time around. I really can't believe that it's been almost three weeks since I first glimpsed this new life over the blue curtain and heard her first cries. It's been almost three weeks since I was wheeled past the nursery window and I glimpsed her pooping not for the first time (she's got quite the productive digestive tract, let me tell you).

The rhythm of our days is returning to our version of normal and The Lady Gray seems to just fit so nicely. In such a short time she's become an integral part of our family that I can't imagine a life that didn't have her in it.

Because I'm taking the high road on Facebook, I'll come to my blog to rant

The Lady Gray is down for her umpteenth nap at the moment, so I have an hour or so of time to myself. I could be cleaning or doing something more productive than sitting on my back porch wishing that it wasn't so damn hot out already, but I have to go and get the trolls soon. Once the trolls get home, it'll be pure craziness round these parts for a bit.

Speaking of the trolls...

One of the things that kept me with The Ex far longer than I should've was his family. They're a tight knit bunch and I was worried that if I left, he'd get them in the divorce. Fortunately, it was a baseless fear, since -- as it turns out -- they're a tight knit bunch who know how to compartmentalize. As such, I've remained friends-ish with his sister over these past few years. The friendship has cooled to more of a friends-on-Facebook level over the last few months, which happens when life gets in the way.

The Lady Gray has been home for a week now. Like any good new mom, I've been kind of blowing up Facebook with pictures of her. I'm not going over the top, but I also have a crap ton of family up north who don't get the benefit of watching her grow up and probably won't meet her for quite some time. It's my way of keeping them in the loop. Besides, my step-dad asked me to keep posting there.

Today, the ex-SIL decided to comment on one of the pictures of The Lady and asked where pictures of "my other two children" were. Clearly she's upset that I haven't been giving equal air time to all three of my children. One half of my brain was all, "Oh my god! She's such a good aunt!" The other half of my brain was all, "Da fuck?!" So I decided to play the middle road and say something along the lines of, "Well, they're at school at the moment... ;) But actually, I've taken pictures of with The Monkey's phone... etc" Her response, "Yeah, but you've had her for a week."

On Facebook, I decided to let it drop. But I want to go on the official record as saying the following:

Just because there aren't more pictures of The Monkey and The Nugget on Facebook doesn't mean that I love them any less than The Lady Gray. In fact, if it's possible, I love them MORE since she's gotten here (there's something about loving more that makes you love MORE, y'know?). I wasn't in the habit of posting pictures of them all the time before she got here and since The Monkey now has his own Facebook page, he can post all the pictures of himself that he wants. That's the beauty of having a teenager in the house.

Here's the real thing though: I don't post pictures of them every day because I'm too busy trying to keep their routine as normal as possible [with a mom that needs to sleep when the baby does and all that jazz]. There are things like home work that needs to be done and supper that needs to be cooked and eaten, and chores that need to be completed. Life needs to happen despite the fact that there's a new baby here. I don't get a mulligan on the old kids because there's a new one. And I don't have a whole lot of time to stop and take pictures of our daily routines.

And let's not forget that, despite the fact that I'm moving around really well, I still had a c-section. I'm trying to do all of this while recovering from major abdominal surgery.

There are more pictures of The Lady Gray because her routine consists of eating, sleeping and pooping (and sometimes pooping in her sleep). I'm home with her all day and, frankly, it's kind of boring. So I'm trying to keep myself entertained with something other than crap TV.

Not for nothing, but The Lady Gray is ten years younger than her closest sibling. The Trolls have had at least ten years more of pictures being taken and posted, and framed and hung than she has. Yes, she's been here for a week and she's got a lot of catching up to do.

Sweet Lady Gray

The Lylabean is here (or, as I've taken to calling her, Sweet Lady Gray). She came into the world at 9:21 last Friday morning, weighing in at a whopping 9 pounds, 8 ounces! Talk about a weight loss plan; ten pounds right outta the gate!

Tomorrow, The Fiance™ goes back to work. I'm sad about this -- mostly because my hormones are still settling down from birthing the Lady, but also because having a helpmate has made all the difference in the world, during this first week of new parenthood. If I'm honest, I'm a little bit scared that I won't be as adequate at this parenting stuff without him.

They say it's like riding a bike, having a new baby. But there have been a lot of firsts for me with Lady Gray. We're successfully breastfeeding, which I wasn't (or wouldn't do) able to with the trolls. (Knock on wood), she sleeps pretty soundly for the most part and for long durations, something neither of the trolls did this early for sure and, in the Nugget's case, at all until he was a toddler. Having a partner who gets up at 3 AM just to change the baby's diaper is something novel, too, because The Ex wasn't a big fan of helping out in the wee hours of the morning (when he was actually around).

I'm feeling ridiculously blessed and scared, but mostly blessed. I am so grateful for this life I have.

Lady Gray, a couple hours after she was born.

The Fiance™ cutting the cord.