Motherhood: A Year in Review
Baby Bean turned 1 on Sunday, and it felt like the longest slowest time.
I didn’t realize how fully unhinged this story sounded until I overheard my husband telling my mother-in-law about how we ended up with Baby E.’s birthday cake. I mean, she’s now officially Toddler E., however, she will remain my Baby Beans forever.
“A year and a half ago, when Karli was pregnant, she had this cake at an Italian restaurant a couple towns over. She remembered that the restaurant made most of their desserts in house, but this cake was one of the few things they supplied from a local bakery. So, she spent an hour looking up local bakeries trying to find the one place nearby that made it. She eventually found it at a place called the Sugar Shack located 45 minutes from our home.”
Look, everyone knows first birthdays are for the adults, so yes, I maybe spent $69.99 plus tax on a lemon-berry mascarpone cake that my husband spent 90 minutes picking up from a literal shack across town. A cake that my child couldn’t have cared less about but my dog Frodo enjoyed immensely. And maybe, just hypothetically speaking of course, everyone else was so full from lunch that R. and I are metaphorically saddled with an entire cake—save for a single slice—most of which is now living in our deep freezer. Can I get a #worthit?
But this newsletter isn’t about cake! It’s about the fact that time is a weird fucking nonsense loop in which somehow 366 days (it was a leap year, after all) passed between the day I was on my hands and knees bellowing bloody murder as I pushed a 8.5 pound baby out of my body without drugs and the one where she spat out the cake I spent an hour of my life True Detective-ing out of Yelp reviews begat from confectionary-focused Google searches. They tell you that the older you get, the more time flies. When you have kids, you must prepare to live in hyper-speed.
There are many things I marvel at now that the Bean has a year of life under her toddler potbelly. The first is how short of a time she spent being a little blob. E. came out swinging for sure, but she always seemed so alive. Her eyes always seemed bright with a knowing. She had a personality much sooner than expected, and my God is she determined.
I’ve never met someone so eager to get somewhere or do some thing. She rolled over at eight weeks (and we all know how that worked out when we brought a car seat into the mix a couple months later), took her first steps around six months and gave up crawling by nine. It seems like she’s been chattering forever, waving to strangers and throwing her head back with laughter whenever she does something that just cracks her right up.
About a month ago, we got E. some rocket shoes. She liked them so much that we got her a couple extra pairs, owls and dinosaurs. She wears them constantly, sometimes even to bed, and has a lot of opinions about which ones she wants to wear when. She’s even started responding “yeah, yeah, yeah” to things such as “are you hungry?” and “do you need a diaper?” How did all of this happen so fast? It’s wild to think how quickly we went from 0 to 1,000.
Another thing that baffles the mind is how much I’ve changed. I don’t think I could have fathomed how much I’d love motherhood, how fun I find it nearly every day. Now that my hair has stopped falling out and my body looks much more like the one I remember and my vagina is no longer broken, I’m a whole new mama! Now that E. is fun and silly and amazing, I’m significantly less bored. I vaguely remember that it felt like it took so long to get to this point, but I can hardly recall a time when it wasn’t this way.
I’m even beginning to figure out the kind of mother I am. I’ve found my confidence. I don’t let every little thing bother me. I accept that some days will feel more challenging than others, but I’ve also committed to my own way of being a mother in a world that both adores us and judges us like no other. I try my hardest not to rush through the moments. I indulge my daughter in play and giggles and diaper changes that require me to chase her around the room, even if it doesn’t perfectly align with my schedule or the things I need to accomplish or the deadline I need to meet. Some things are simply more important than being on time.
And ultimately, I do not regret how this is all working out. I’ve released the guilt of my breastfeeding struggles, the annoyance of my well-meaning mom giving me advice I didn’t ask for or want (and almost assuredly will not follow), the worry that sometimes threatens to slip in and convince me that I’m not doing it right or that I somehow have the potential to make or break E. with every minute decision I make over the course of her entire childhood.
And blessedly, the rage and resentment have dissipated, too. I don’t have to be the default parent or go-to nutrition delivery system. We can split the load more evenly now, like when one of us fetches a birthday cake most enjoyed by a dog and the other watches the Bean throw household items across the entire surface of the home for nearly two hours straight.
All of this is to say that I give motherhood five stars. I feel incredibly grateful to feel this way because I’ve heard it’s a real hassle to try to give these feral children back. I’d never describe myself as ballsy enough to try to takesies backsies my five year old and their younger twin siblings, but hey, I’m not judging the sentiment, per se, just the follow through. Regardless, it’s stories like this that remind me no matter how unhinged my kid birthday party planning gets, I’m absolutely killing it as a mom. I love my kid more than I ever thought it possible to love someone whose sometimes sneezes directly in your face without warning or remorse. So, I guess I’ll just go ahead and commit right here and now…Sign me up for another year!
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. I want you to know that while I wrote this newsletter, E. screamed in R.’s face, at top volume, approximately the entire time. I stand by my statement above the signature, but that’s only because you can’t drop kids at fire stations if they’re older than 60 days…APPARENTLY. Just kidding. Bean would never yell at me like that. I yell back.