To All the New Mothers
Isn’t it funny that when you become a new mother everything in your life has to be sterile, organized, warm, clean and fuzzy? That’s the way it was in my first months as a proud parent. I remember how every Saturday night I would organize my son’s diaper bag with toys that coordinated with his Sunday clothing. Imagine that! Now the kids don’t even go to church. When my first child was born it was nothing but milk, juice or water - absolutely no sugary drinks or soda of any kind. By the time the fourth kid came along, it had all changed. “Honey, when you go get yourself a Red Bull, get a beer for mommy.”
Remember all the photographs that were taken of the first child? His photo album was stuffed with every picture of every waking moment of his life. “Oh here’s one of him opening his eyes! And here’s one of him closing them. Here’s a shot of him turning over. Isn’t that precious?”
The second child just might have a few photos stuck here and there in his or her book. Some are labeled or written on, some are not. The third child doesn’t even have a book. Instead there’s a wad of pictures tossed into a grocery bag. Now you can’t remember if that was Johnny or Joey, so you just scrawl the words ‘our baby’ on the back.
By the time the fourth kid is here, you’ve lost your camera and don’t have the money to replace it. Now you’re down to drawing stick figures on a folded sheet of paper. “This is him when he was two, (then you unfold the paper)…and here he is at six.”
Looking in their clothes drawer, well forget it. When my firstborn was young, his socks were all sorted according to color and folded neatly in little piles. The pants were in the second drawer, shirts in the third and pajamas in the bottom. Now I’m lucky to find two socks that match. They’re usually balled up inside the dirty tennis shoes; one of which is in the yard and the other is who knows where? The pants and shirts are still sitting in the laundry basket unfolded. PJ’s? They don’t have PJs. They sleep in whatever clean shirt they can find, even if it’s their dad’s.
School supplies are another thing. You can always tell an only child in the classroom because he’s the one with the brand new backpack complete with water bottle and cell phone holder. It’s popping at the seams with brand new pencils, paper, scissors and even index cards. A new pack of ‘em! My kids had to share the paper, take turns with the scissors, find the pencils that I’d brought home from work and as for the index cards, well, they got the old recipe cards I hadn’t used in forever (well, okay then – that I had NEVER used). As for the backpack, I told them to hold onto their old ones. Who knows? Maybe He Man will make a comeback.
From the book "Your Face Will Freeze Like That" and other stuff mom told us - by Mari' Emeraude https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00YI1VEI4
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