STORIES OF TRIALS, TRIBULATIONS, LAUGHTER AND HYSTERIA. POOR BIG DUB, YOU GOT ME FOR A MAMA…

I’m just an average mama who’s not afraid to say all the things you know you are thinking.  Or just not smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

Truly though.  While average, I am smaller in stature, granted a little wider after the birth of big Dub.  I was once told by a rather tall co-worker, with a quizzical frown as if she was truly seeing me for the first time while looking down at me, “You don’t seem that short.  Must be your attitude.”  Thanks for that.  I have obviously treasured that and kept it with me forever.  Likely is the attitude that makes me seem a little larger than I am.  I will take that.

This blog is not a ranting complaint about motherhood, rather a running tally of the battles, big and little that make parenting what it is.  I got knocked up with Big Dub about the second I went off birth control.  The plan was to go off birth control, regulate the hormones and start trying in 6 months, get prego 6 months after that if we were lucky and have a baby no earlier than 2 years from the day of going off birth control.  The period of being off birth control and not being pregnant was also going to give me time to reconsider the wacko idea of being a mother.  Turns out there was no opportunity to reconsider.  I took three pregnancy tests.  Three.  And yes, all three were positive.  While not unplanned, it’s not like we didn’t know how it happened, not exactly planned either…

I proudly consider myself to be somewhat of a half-assed person.  I can’t commit to working full-time and parenting, and can’t parent full time and not work at all.  I work a very complacent 20 hours a week and love it.  That does leave 148 hours of parenting during the week, but it was the best compromise I could come up with.  I am serious about the half time.  The difficulty is figuring out what half that is.  Even my hair is somewhere in between curly and straight.  I have a degree in Literature and Writing and have used it about half of my career – my career as a social worker for the state.  The half where I write crazy long reports and give them to important people – obviously my love for Shakespeare has given me a leg up in my chosen field (give you a hooter hider and a chicken wing if you can figure out if that was the serious half or not).  I love being a mama about half the time, the other half I wonder why I was blessed with fertility when there are so many other deserving couples out there.  I am the biggest half-assed attachment parent there is; I co-slept for survival with the baby who was up every two hours for his first precious and totally blurred first year of life, I breast fed for over a year out of pure fear of weaning that beast and he simply never allowed me the luxury of resting my arms by putting him in a stroller.  No, attachment parenting was not a decision of mine, it was most certainly a decision of his.

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