The Fam

I got hit with the Momanoia last weekend.

A very dear friend of mine invited me to her son’s 3rd birthday party. Other than cousin-parties, this was going to be Charlie’s very first kid-friend party.

I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about it.

Let me stop here and say that, Dear Friend (if you’re reading this), none of this is your fault. I’m so incredibly grateful that we were invited, and all of this insecurity is self-inflicted. Writing about it simply serves as a reminder to me to “STOP MAKING YOURSELF FEELLIKE CRAP.”

(I know that the me/yourself grammar isn’t right there. It works in my brain.)

Anyway, I haven’t really talked about it yet, but one of my biggest insecurities involves domesticity. I feel that I totally fail in the domestic department. I’m bad at getting out Thank You’s, I’m bad at remembering to buy presents, and I’m not awesome at social get-togethers where kids are involved. So, basically, this party was kind of a (again, self-created) big deal for me.

Here’s the thing about Charlie:
He’s almost 21 months old. He has the energy of 3 cement trucks full of Mexican jumping beans, and he loves, I say, LOVES to throw things. And climb on things…and then jump off of them. I’m considering turning in our wood flooring for an apartment-wide trampoline.

Holy crap, that would be awesome.

Anyway, here we are, wielding our last-minute birthday present, wrapped in scrapbook paper, because I had no wrapping paper…or boxes. We then walk into one of the most fantastically beautiful houses I’ve seen in awhile, and Charlie heads straight for the toys. This is a good thing. They had a great selection of toys that I thought Charlie would love, but of course, he’s only interested in the balls.

I spent almost the entire time following Charlie, praying he didn’t launch the balls: A) into the fireplace B) into the photo display C) into the face of the cute 15 month-old and D) off the loft and onto someone’s head.

There was a brief, 11 minute block of time in which Charlie ate 4 tortilla chips in the high chair while I got to eat some lunch.

Charlie’s all about nutrition right now.

Needless to say, we left early. It was past his naptime and he was starting to get screamy. Nobody wants to video tape a present-opening while a toddler screams bloody murder in the background.

When we got home, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and purposely watch something that would make me cry. (Why the hell I do that to myself, I have no idea…but, well, you know.)

I felt like crap. I felt like everyone in the world was a better mom than me. I found myself wondering why I couldn’t find that magical switch…you know, the one that makes your kid sit and play with all the other kids? Carry on meaningful conversations with the other kids…discuss things like the benefits of Baroque music when coupled with green vegetables and fresh spinach?

Now, I know that I’m being ridiculous. I know that Charlie is in that in-between stage where he’s just not a Little Dude and he’s just not a Big Dude. I know that he’s just a super-energetic little guy and he’s got to get outside and run before we try to do anything civilized.

I also know that I’m doing the best that I can, and that I love him like crazy, and that’s what’s important.

Sometimes, though, I get the Momanoia…and that’s pretty powerful stuff.

Am I the only one who’s felt this way!?

How do you deal with the Momanoia? Or Dadanoia?

I’m at a loss.

What in the H does a 19 month old toddler want to do all day? I, apparently, am not the one to ask. Does he want to color? Well, not with crayons, he doesn’t. He wants to color on anything but paper using only writing utensils like exploding pens and dry-erase markers potent enough to get you just high enough to start getting philosophical.

My closer friends know how I feel about listening to a stoner try to philosophize. A stoned toddler? Yikes. “You know what, Mom? It’s like…it’s like this string cheese really knows how I feeeeellll about dairy farms and Curious George and the state of our economy…”

But I digress.

Charlie hates books. Well, he hates it when we try to read him books. There are the very rare occasions when he’ll sit down by himself with a book, and even more rare occasions when he’ll actually sit through 2 pages of me reading a book. But, like I said, those moments are…well, rare. Rare like the days I don’t want to stuff my face with chocolate and expensive coffee.

Charlie really likes to pour things into other things. Like water. Does he want to do this in a place like his high chair or the bathroom? No. These activities, apparently, are best practiced on carpet or upholstery.

One thing he does actually like to do is go to the park. What am I possibly going to do in the winter? Sure, we could pay money and go to the Children’s Museum. We could definitely also join a gym or the Y, and pay money to go to an indoor pool. We could do any number of things that require us to pay money to get his blood pumping and his energy out.

Gahhh…this post is getting snarky and negative…and that’s not what I’m going for. What I need is help. Ideas. What do you guys do with your little people? Little people who are too young to understand why we can’t go to the park or why we can’t watch Curious George all day…but old enough to be bored out of their minds.

I’m floating aimlessly in a sea of tantrums and guilt. Please, someone throw me a rope!

So, shortly after I post about co-sleeping, the Bonk family goes and buys a toddler mattress.

We’re going to take this slowly and see how it goes. We’ve got the mattress on our bedroom floor, next to our king size, and we’re going to just keep it there till Charlie starts sleeping on it through the night.

It’s not like Paul and I are jumping up and down with excitement to get Charlie out of our bed…but it’s starting to feel like it’s time. If Charlie goes to sleep at 9:30, and we crawl into bed at 11:00, I can tell we’re disrupting his sleep a little bit. He doesn’t usually wake up or anything, but I know we’ve disturbed him.

I’ve got some pretty mixed feelings on this whole situation. Do you know what it’s like to only have two people sleeping in a king size bed? It’s like swimming in a glorious sea of cotton, close enough to the love of your life that you can touch him if you want, but being able to float there, spread-eagled, all night long. Pretty awesome.

But then there’s my poor little heart. If Charlie starts sleeping in his own bed…then that surely must mean he’s growing up…but that’s not supposed to happen, right? He’s supposed to stay little enough to fit on my lap forever…right? He’s always supposed to give me kisses after he gets in trouble, and dance around me in circles when he hears music he likes…

Right?

Ugh, anyway, Charlie actually made it to 5 am before he rolled off his bed and woke up. That’s a pretty big deal. The nights before that he only made it to about 2 or 3. This might happen more quickly than I thought.

Then again, it might not. Either way I’m going to try to go with the flow.

I know I’ve got mom-friends out there… Do you guys have big-kid bed stories for me?

Miraculous things are happening around here.

No, I don’t have any pictures up yet…the walls are still bare and there are still things we need to buy to make our home feel complete.

But.

Charlie has gone to sleep before 10:00 five nights in a row.

Our choice to co-sleep has presented us with a little bit of a conundrum.

Yes, that means we sleep in the same bed as Charlie, and no, we haven’t crushed him. I know there is a huge controversy on this subject, and I’m sure many of you reading this will not agree with our decision. Please know that we’ve got our reasons behind this choice, and we’ve been doing it intentionally and safely.
What this means, however, is that the option of training Charlie into a bedtime isn’t nearly as easy for us. We don’t have a crib that will contain him. If we tried to lay him down in bed and then go about our business, he’d walk out and look at us like we were poor, stupid children.

There is hope, though. With Paul going back to school, we have had no choice but to start working on a routine. The last 3 months in our old apartment turned us into a lazy, unorganized, emotionally scattered family. Things are going to be very different this time around.

Our new apartment is quite close to some very nice parks. Charlie and I have started going to these parks once a day, and the difference has been spectacular. We play for about an hour and half and by the time we get home, he’s ready to have a snack and take a nap. I know this may seem like an obvious solution, but the park next to our old apartment wasn’t great, and we just didn’t do this every day.

We used to just let Charlie tell us when he’s ready for a bath, but sometimes that wouldn’t happen till 9:45, 10:00.
As it turns out, Charlie’s always ready for a bath. We just have to put forth the suggestion.

So, with a “Charlie, do you want a bath?” Charlie’s off like a shot, knocking on the bathroom door, ready to jump in the tub fully clothed at about 8:30. (I might mention here that while one of us is monitoring the bath, the other is sweeping and vacuuming…nice, huh?) After some cartoon/drying-off/snuggle time, Charlie’s ready for bed.

And it’s beautiful. And I’m slightly terrified of this routine falling apart.

The thing about a routine is, though, that you’re supposed to be able to come back to it…even if you have a change in schedule. That’s what we need to work on mentally. Just because things were different for a few days (vacation, family visiting, etc…), it doesn’t mean you can’t jump right back in to what you were doing previously. You just have to accept that things were different for a bit, and there’s no reason why you can’t hop back on the horse.

So, yeah. I’m working on that.

Have you guys had any routine revelations? Something that works well? Better yet, if you’re co-sleeping, do you have any suggestions?

A quick note…
I wrote this last week, and since then, we’ve had a schedule change, a couple of 10:30 nights, and are finally back to normal. It’s good to know that it’s possible to get back on track!

Seeing as how it’s been so long since I’ve actually written a post, I figured featuring myself as a Monday Guest Post would be entirely appropriate.

I’m coming up with a new form of marriage counseling. It’s going to make me millions.

There are those couples out there…you’ve seen them. The ones who seem like they’ve got it all together. They appear to communicate with the greatest of ease, agree most of the time, and never have any stressful nights on the homestead.

Send them to me, and I’ll have someone install wood floors in their home. I’ll even give you a few bucks as a referral reward.

Seriously, I love our new apartment. The kitchen is huge, the abundance of windows makes it bright and open, and the wood floors make the place look kind of classy.

They also get really dirty, really quickly. Since the floors get so dirty, the rug gets a little dirtier than your average carpet. Living in an apartment that gets dirty quickly can lead to cleaning-related irritability (that’s totally a technical term).

If you know Paul and I well, you’ll know that we’re not terribly organized when it comes to cleaning. If it seems super-dirty, we’ll clean it. We try not to let the dishes get higher than the Capitol Building, and we sweep the kitchen when it gets gross. That previous cleaning system is just not going to work in our new apartment. We need a new plan of attack. One that involves communication and organization.

So, let’s talk about communication, shall we? After living a couple weeks in an apartment with wood floors, I’ve learned:

-If you feel like you’ve done more cleaning than is fair, you should probably just say something. Getting quiet and then exploding like a hormonal, man-eating hippo is never productive.

-If your partner/spouse does something you don’t like, you should tell them. The key here, however, is how you tell them. Simply saying, “Hey. I’m not trying to be an A-Hole here, but this bothers me,” is usually more effective than throwing out a “Soooo…did you decide that the measuring cups should just live in the middle of the floor? Or…?”

-If you see something that needs to be done and you’ve got the time, just freaking do it. This is an area I need to work on. Both of us are busy, both of us are tired, and both of us would sure appreciate not having to do something because the other one did it. That was convoluted, but I’m not changing it, because it makes sense.

So how do we make all of this work? Getting organized. Paul and I had to sit down and create a cleaning schedule. I realize that all of this may seem ridiculous to some of you clean-freaks out there, but I know there are plenty of partial-slobs in the world, and this stuff is helpful to keep in mind.

After our few days of starting a cleaning schedule, I’ve learned:

-To be realistic. Know your schedules, work-loads, and what you’re capable of handling. For us, saying “Every Saturday shall be a deep-clean of the entire apartment!” is pretty unrealistic. Saying, “Twice a week we’ll Swiffer the whole place, and we’ll sweep the kitchen floor every night,” works a lot better for the Bonk family.

-To disperse daily work evenly. Rather than designating dishes, sweeping, and vacuuming each night to one person, we switch off. One person washes dishes, the other does the floors. This way, no one feels like they’re doing all the work.

-To forgive slip-ups. It’s like exercising. If you miss a day, or get off-schedule, just shake it off and keep going. It’s the only way to stick to something.

Marriage is awesome. Paul makes me a better person. But, hey, you know what? Marriage is hard, too. Anytime you encounter someone who tells you your wedding day is the day you have to stop working, slap them, hand them a broom, and send them to me.

How do you guys deal with keeping the house clean while keeping your resentment in check? You don’t have to be married, either…college roommates, life-long partners, and office-sharers all have to figure out how to mutually keep their spaces clean!

Have you ever been on the brink of a huge life-change? I mean, like, a complete and total life-180?

Holy crap.

Things are about to get seriously different for the Bonk family.

Let me give you a little run-down of how life has been for the past year or so.

I’ve been staying home with Charlie, and in November I began working from home. One of my main sources of ‘frazzle’ has been trying to balance work, baby, and cleaning. Something always suffers. If I have a super-productive day, get a couple blog posts written in advance, and get in some good quality play-time with Charlie, the house looks like a hurricane went through it. If the house is clean, I’m usually about 2 blog posts behind, and Charlie’s watched a decent amount of Curious George.

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind.

HOWEVER. Do I love hanging out with Charlie? Duh. Do I love blogging? Of course. Do I love cleaning? Not so much…but with the right music and a happy little dude, sometimes cleaning can be fun.

Now Paul. Paul has been working for a student-loan company for a year. Is that what his college degree is in? Nope. Did he love his job…at all? Nope. Did he feel fulfilled and challenged? Nope, nope, nope.

Well, friends, we’ve got a newsflash. Paul got accepted to Graduate School. Now, I don’t know if you read last week’s guest post, but choosing to go back to school can come with a lot of stress… In our case, we’ve got to get all moved by August 8th, take a serious look at re-defining our budget, and find someone to pick up the lease on our current apartment.

On a side note, if you know of someone in the Lincoln area who needs a 1 bedroom apartment with low rent and close proximity to coffee, ice cream, and donuts, send me an email.

What all of this means is that our lives are going to change. Drastically. Paul will not only be going to school, but will also start teaching college-level Algebra classes.

That’s right, I’m married to a totally handsome Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Mathematics Department. Oh, yeah.

Our schedule is going to be completely different. I’m hoping I’ll get more time to focus on my business (before all you grad students out there start assaulting me with “Oh, you have NO IDEA how busy Paul’s going to be,” I’m just saying that his schedule’s going to be slightly more flexible than a straight-up 8-5.) and maybe make some more money for the family. To be completely honest, though, I’ve got no idea what our lives are going to be like in a mere matter of weeks. That’s a pretty frazzly thing for me to think about.

You know what’s not frazzly, though? Knowing my husband is going to feel challenged, fulfilled, and happy with what he’s doing every day. That’s the big pay-off.

So, no, I don’t have a Monday Guest Post…and I’ve got, literally, 3 Local Awesomes waiting to be posted, and a bunch of fabulous pictures to show off. I hope you guys will bear with me these next couple of weeks, as things are going to be pretty hectic.

Hugs, prayers, and high-fives will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and chocolate. Chocolate is always good.

P.S. It’s my dad’s birthday. You should sing to him. Happy Birthday, Daddio!