The luxury of being you
Your head on your mother’s leg
The boat gently rocking
Spring sunshine streaming in the windows.
Your sleep is heavy and sweaty,
Cheeks red and sunglasses on,
Breathing deep and steady,
Perfect trust in the world around you.
Oh, the luxury of being your mother.
Got a very unexpected email a few weeks back, asking if TMD, myself, or both of us would like to direct the camp we used to run. Just for this summer. With an old friend.
I’m getting to the point in my parenting journey I’ve heard so much about – the mythical, magical three year point when a set of twins is somewhat easier than a singleton would be. My kids are absolute best friends and play together all the time. They often get absorbed in their own world and don’t need me as much (unless, of course, I should decide to sit down and relax). This leaves me with more time.
More time to feel the exhaustion of the past 3.5 years. More time to realise there may be space for me to return more, the Existere I was before children. There may be room for me to have some reemerging selfhood right alongside my role as a mother and home educator. Or at least there will be room in theory, if I ever push past my inertia. As soon as I get two seconds, or two hours, free, all I want to do is lie in bed and watch The People’s Court, you know?
I’ve thought on and off about the offer to return to camp. If we were living in Country A, I have no doubt we would be camping professionals. It is what life was before we moved, an encompassing lifestyle, a fun lifestyle, a demanding lifestyle.
I don’t think there is any way to make our current life and family compatible with the intensity of summer camp again (laugh if you will, but at any level of working at camp, from counsellor through to director, it requires 24 hours of your time, every day). Can I go on my own with the children? No, not if I want to actually accomplish anything. Maybe as staff director I could hack it, but then the kids are away from TMD all summer.
Could we afford for TMD to take a three month sabbatical? No. Even with her paltry salary, it’s still more than camp would pay. Especially with the exchange rate. And not to mention there’s no way TMD would get a visa at this point.
So I will stay here this summer. But if my friend does go back to camp, I will imagine a life where we go to visit her, where things smell like campfire smoke and green, where children are living and laughing and discovering themselves, where sleeping outside for months at a time only makes you want to sleep outside forever.
Camp.
Lauren says she wants to hear about ‘how being a SAHM is for you.’
Ever since reading her suggestion, the sentence that keeps popping into my head is, ‘It’s not enough for me.’ And it’s not that I don’t love my kids, or that I’d rather go to work every day rather than just see where each day leads. Because both of those things are great. I just feel like I’m losing me. (And did I feel this way before we moved? No, I don’t think I did. So this may be because we are somewhere new, floating with no tethers: friends for me, friends for the kids, a car, routines, and trapped inside by constant rain. But it may be something more. I guess we wait and see.)
Ever since I was a kid, I was attracted to labyrinths. And not just the sort that featured Goblin Kings. A few years back, I read an excellent blog post about early motherhood and the labyrinth. I’m going to try to hunt it down, but the author’s thoughts have stayed with me and helped me more fully comprehend and explain what I am now going through.
A labyrinth – you start at the outside and walk your way in. There are turns, twists. But there is no wrong way to go – only ever more inward. Once you reach the core, once you have navigated those turns to get to the heart of the matter, of who you are, the only thing to do is turn back around and make your way carefully back out again. You journey back towards life, armed with a deeper knowledge of your Self.
I’m in that labyrinth somewhere, trying to hold the faith that there are no wrong turns. It’s impossible to not find your way in or back out again in a classical labyrinth layout, though of course the time frame varies. Are you a walker, a ponderer? Do you run with the exuberance of a child?
Me, I have ventured in. I am deep, deep in there and I’m trying to figure out things on a pretty basic level. How do I turn around? Is it time to walk out? Where can I get a new pair of shoes for the journey?
I think much of what I’m feeling must be held in common with many mothers of young children. The job definition – whether you are a SAHM or not – means that you are no longer the number one priority. All the stuff I used to do – sleep in late, spend all day cuddled with TMD on the couch watching tv, attending and completing a grueling (and rewarding!) counselling training – it doesn’t happen anymore.
Every day I have to change nappies, wash dishes, do laundry, and suppress myself in some way. I think some of this feeling will be lightened once it finally stops raining (I’m writing this on the 29th, and it’s been raining steadily since the 14th) and I get a car. But some of it won’t.
The battle for me is: how do I give my children the best AND honour myself? Right now that seems like a seesaw. For every thing I want to give them, it means less that I can give myself. And much of what I want to do in raising creative, brave explorers of this world seems to negate me being able to have these things for myself. I tell myself it’ll get easier as they get older.
And while I’m sure that is true, I also know that it feels like my SELF – the part of me that exists independently to my wife or children – is on hold until….when? The kids are in university?
Every day I grow as a person because of my children. Every day. I would not trade being here with them, trying to help them experience and grow in the world, for anything. They make me laugh, they make me love love love. But I need something more than simply growing in relation to them, to being a mother. I need to find a way to create space for the old me, or the new me, or just me. A hobby? Dedicated time to write? Time to go out by myself?
I want my children to see me as a creative, dynamic person; I want to model that life for them not JUST for them, but because it is the life I wish to lead.
I feel like I want and need something big. A larger purpose. And is it possible to figure this out, to try to pursue dreams, when I am at home with toddler twins? Maybe.
I’m in that labyrinth, after all, and I know I’m no longer on the way in. I’m in the middle, and I’m probably facing outward. Now all I have to do is walk that path, trust in the twists and turns, and keep going. Because sunshine is there, purpose is there, connectedness is there. If I keep going.
I hope.
This post brought to you by my compelling desire to write, and complete inability to do so. Generous people have given me funny, thoughful, and factual suggestions for posts. Click here to see them, or add your own. I’ll work through them all in time.
The past few weeks I’ve been asking myself one question: Am I depressed?
Of course, this leads to further questioning. Does that fact that it’s largely situational change how I feel about it? Why am I unwilling to go to the doctor? Am I wanting to be in bed all the time because twin toddlers are fucking exhausting, or because of some other darker reason?
There’s a lot of stuff going on. My dad’s eyeball, my own pain and getting further info about treatment (wtf is a nerve block? Is this an awful thing that should be avoided? Exactly HOW MUCH cortisone can you inject into a body before natural production drops?), the clutter taking over our very small apartment, the realisation that we’ll probably never have a lot of money, my semi-desire to begin working again, being too tired to write, being trapped in the house most days….it goes on and on.
I am taking steps to try to sort things out. I’m in the midst of driving lessons (ugh, sigh, etc!) and my theory/written test is this coming Thursday. Once I’ve passed that, I can book for my actual driving test. I am continuing Bowen therapy on a vastly reduced scale (because, let me say it again, Bowen works. I cannot recommend it highly enough!). I have bought two Littlelife backpacks WHICH ARE THE BEST THING EVER so we may take more walks sans pushchair. Today we are putting things on freecycle, taking other stuff to charity shops, and dumping even more stuff at the tip. We’ve hired a nanny on Friday mornings for three hours, so I can get some help taking Snort and Coconut out for Fun Times.
I know this is all a stage in my life, this staying at home with two kids who are of an age that even when I CAN drive, I’ll be limited in where I can go alone with them. Hopefully my pain is only a stage too – my physical lows are not getting as low as they used to, though TMD points out that my highs are nowhere near a ‘normal’ person’s highs.
Soon I shall be driving, I hope. Soon they will be that little bit older which means life gets that little bit easier – going out more will help me. Maybe figuring out how to reintegrate my work as a counsellor, here and there – or even having the energy and desire to write in the evenings or naptime. I dream of dumping them at soft play while I sit at a table – like all the other zombie moms – and open my netbook.
I will keep working on being able to declutter, to somehow let things go even when it goes against my very nature. I will keep working on my weight, as I am back to the lowest weight I’ve been since giving birth.
The thing that makes me long for magic little pills is that there are so many other simple little things I can do – a five minute walk when TMD gets home. Fifteen minutes to write or blog. Drinking more water. I just don’t seem to have any motivation to do these things. I want to crawl into bed and watch Grey’s Anatomy or ER until my eyeballs bleed and I am a fully trained trauma surgeon.
I don’t know.
We shall see how things progress, but I think the first step is in realising I’m not as happy as usual. I feel awful even suggesting that being a stay at home mom is tough, is hard, is maybe too much for me right now. Because in another year or so WOW will it be fun! Hard, too, but fun. Less about being a nurse and cowboy/sheep herder on speed, more of being an explorer and fellow learner.
How have YOU guys been, anyway? I want you to know I am still reading everyone’s blogs, but on my phone – which, for some reason, won’t let me comment. The laptop is never on or open during the days anymore, I find I don’t have the time.
If you @ me on twitter (my name is, of course, ‘existere’) or comment here I will be able to see that stuff instantly. Likewise I am on facebook a lot (are you a bloggy friend? Tell me how to find you on there and I’ll more than likely friend you….reassure me you are not an axe murderer, though) and my email about 65 times a day.
If you’ll excuse me, though, I’m wearing my new frilly pink gingham apron. I bought it to help me be in the ‘on’ position during the day. And I am trying to dredge up the magical power to be able to declutter with TMD, so I’d best go.
Love to you all.
Something switched this evening. It started innocently enough.
Earlier in the day, Aussie had said, ‘But they aren’t really babies anymore, are they?’ We looked in silence at our children.
As the afternoon sun began to turn golden and then pink, we continued to sit in the lounge, talking about our days at Day Job, the lazy afternoons in the pub, pregnancy, etc. We laughed about her first visit up to see Snort and Coconut, her belly so swollen with the baby that would turn into the little boy dancing around with my children.
My eyes filled with tears.
It had been an afternoon of poop, of bumped heads, of macaroni thrown across the room. We sat as afternoon changed to evening, both reluctant to stop talking.
She was right. They aren’t baby babies anymore, not any of them. Not the three children standing around the play kitchen, seriously stirring things and puttting lids on pots. Not the three children poking each others’ bellies.
The tears began to spill; I felt unaccountably sad.
And then it all switched.
Neither of us had noticed when all three kids, so close in age they may as well be triplets, wandered as a pack into Snort and Coconut’s bedroom. But we noticed what happened next.
Little baby (sigh, no, little children) squeals of delight, periods of booming belly laughs. We locked eyes. We stopped talking and started listening. Seconds of laughter stretched into minutes stretched into forever.
‘If we go try to watch them,’ I whispered, ‘it will stop their fun.’
So we did the hardest thing, we sat back and let our babies go. They turned into children who chased each other up and down the hall, into children who bounced on the beds, into children with breathless laughter and happy exhaustion.
We sat. We listened.
‘It’s the next generation of you and me,’ I said.
‘My god, you’re right.’ We both smiled.
Our friendship has blossomed in the unlikeliest of ways. Both of us lived as far apart on the globe as you can imagine, both of us came to inhibit this small country so very far from our family and friends. We have the accents of outsiders, yet are united in the many cultural commonalities our home countries share.
We have become family, and we have become mothers.
Mothers of small children who inexplicably seem to be passing an empty milk container back and forth. Mothers of small children who spent 45 minutes playing – without any toys. Mothers who are friends, friends who listen and long and yet somehow, somehow, the sheer beauty of the evening makes us feel that little bit more aged, more beautiful, more lucky. More at peace.
Friends who are mothers of small children who become babies again as they toddle into the room, just to check we’re still here, the world is still functioning properly. Mothers who smile at these babies who become small children as they say ‘bye bye’, waving to us as they back out of the room, shutting the baby gate behind them, running down the hall.
I seem to be going in spurts – writing 50 posts a day, or writing none for days on end. Sometimes this is because I am empty and have nothing to say (or am too tired to say it), sometimes it’s because I have too much to say.
I was talking to someone about how (fake!) anonymous my blog is, so it cannot be found in search engines by people who know my name. I was asked why it’s set up this way.
Many of you no doubt think of me as That Twin Mama Blog, but this blog was actually set up waaay back in the day to talk about the other love of my life: counselling. My last blog was totally non-anonymous – and possibly more fun because of it – but as soon as I started offering counselling to people I closed up shop. I wanted a safe space to be able to talk about what it was like to train as a therapist…and then later, what it was like to work as one.
How I’ve strayed from those days – though certainly I’ve never been a ‘one subject only’ blog. At least until I got pregnant, I mean.
The truth is, being a mother has become an inescapable part of my destiny and who I am now. It’s hard to think or write about things without automatically seeing how my kids fit in. I think that’s good, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by what that means. Since these two little people have come into my life, my time, dreams, and energy is not just my own. It is always being shared, being sucked, being filled back up.
I guess having such young twins (16 months, if you’re not keeping track) means that it will take longer to establish a new sort of normal. A normal where I am a mother, yet still me.
Snort and Coconut are now sleeping happily in their room – fodder for another entry, maybe – and the other night when I couldn’t sleep I wandered out into the lounge, threw myself on the couch, and laid there with my eyes shut while listening to QVC. That was a trick I used to get to sleep before I had children, and for those few minutes, lying there, I felt like a bit of my ‘old’ world has somehow snuck into my flat and caught me unawares. It was nice.
Life is a bit on hold right now, but also more alive and fun and joyful and awesome than it has ever been before. Two sides to every coin.
I didn’t have kids so I could immediately force them into my adult life. Fact is, I don’t know what my adult life is. I don’t know if we will send them to nursery at age 3. I don’t know, sometimes, if we will send them to school at all. Life is full of a lot of unknowns right now – TMD’s job, future thoughts about moving, what direction my life will head. I’m mostly okay with not knowing and just living in the present. That’s one gift my kids have given me.
But if you’ll excuse me, I need to watch some mind-numbing tv or read a book or just sit on the couch and stare into space now while they sleep. Because the other gift my kids have given me? Bone deep exhaustion. (I say that not as a whine, just as a fact.)
A few weeks ago, I was talking to my mother while cleaning up after a meal. I casually said something like, ‘Well, Snort didn’t have much of his ___________ today.’ It didn’t worry me. Some days he’ll eat 75 melons, and some days he’ll only eat 3.
My mom’s reply startled me, perhaps because it wasn’t what I expected her to say.
‘Oh, let him choose how much he wants to eat.’ Now, let’s say it loud and clear: my mother is not a fan of baby led weaning. She was loudly opposed to this style of feeding from the start, but when it became clear that her fears about choking were not going to change how we did things, she stopped critiquing us. (This, incidentally, is how I know I am a mother in full standing, and a woman to be respected: my mother trusts me to raise my own children. Ha.)
But then she continued.
‘When you were a baby, sometimes you seemed like you didn’t want to eat. So I would force you. You would be screaming and crying and I just kept shovelling food in because I was afraid you weren’t eating enough. I took you to the doctor and he said you were fine, you were healthy, and a baby who is healthy doesn’t need to be forced to eat. He said you would be eating what was right for you.’
A few things from this paragraph.
One, this is a major principle of baby led weaning. You don’t encourage your kid to eat more or less than what they are eating. Only they know how hungry their tummy is. Research has also shown that kids will gravitate towards things that have what their body is lacking. This is why my kids sometimes attack wheat bread and I think I’ll have to open my own mill, and why sometimes they lean towards cheese, or fruit, or beans.
Two, my mother had informed me awhile back (probably around the time Snort and Coco were 6 months old and we were starting solid food) that she had not given me anything but purees until I was ‘well over a year old.’ Yes, all I ate until god knows how old was smoothly pureed stuff. You know, the stuff that I was forced to keep eating even when I was full and protesting.
Three, well, is there a ‘three’?
You all know I am pretty overweight right now. Almost 55 pounds overweight, despite having already lost about 25 pounds. I may have been a healthy, slim weight when I got pregnant, but that has never been my norm.
Longtime readers will know that a few years before I got pregnant, I lost 58 pounds in 18 months doing Weight Watchers. Prior to being pregnant with two big ass twins, my starting weight at WW was the heaviest I’d ever been, and it’s about what I weigh right now.
While I wasn’t a fat child – though certainly made to feel so by my mother – I was never a skinny minnie once I started puberty, and for me that happened in about fourth grade. So being a healthy eater, a thin person, is not my natural mode of being.
Some people are just naturally chunky (and hawt), but I don’t think there’s anything natural about my chunkiness (despite the fact that I am, of course, still hawt!). I think it happened – and is happening – for a number of reasons.
One, I was not allowed to make decisions for myself regarding food as a child. I would have eaten whatever was on that spoon. Two, I was forced to eat even when I was not hungry, and this has perhaps overridden my natural awareness of being full, of being finished. Three, I was not allowed ‘real people food’ until I was long past my baby years.
Even as a child, I was lied to about food. I was afraid of fish, so my mother told me tuna was chicken. I didn’t want to eat meats at all after awhile, and my family bribed me with money, hid the wrappers of meat in the trash, and continued to lie. I was full and didn’t want to eat my peaches? I got hit and screamed at while at the table. I threw up because I was made to eat when I didn’t want to? Hit and yelled at again (not by my mother).
As I got even older, I was enlisted to lie to my sister about the food on the table, as she was 5.5 years younger than me and would only eat what I would.
Now, obviously my family is an extreme. But I still think that the feeding experiences of babyhood – like most experiences of babyhood – remain with us and play a large part in the formation of our character, our self-beliefs, and our choices.
We’ve been doing baby led weaning for about seven months now, and it couldn’t have been a better experience. Sure, at the beginning I worried about how much they were (not) eating. Sure, the first time Coconut swallowed a hunk of bread it scared me so much I didn’t give them solids for two days.
But I kept on, because at the core of it I do trust my children.
And now they are healthy and happy eaters. No doubt there will be bumps in the road, but I feel like I have helped create a baseline for them – learning when they are full, choosing what foods to eat from the variety that is offered, choosing how much to eat. Letting me know when they are done, and that being respected.
Snort and Coconut laugh during meals. Coconut often hums (much like my sister used to do when eating). They drink water and merrily slam their cups down, they hand me choice pieces of chewed up muck to sample, they are weaning themselves off milk. For Snort and Coconut, mealtimes are an opportunity for us to all be together, to have a ‘chat’, to enjoy each other and the good food in front of us.
What a stark contrast – for me as a child, mealtimes were often scary and laced with the fighting of my parents (who later divorced, thankfully in retrospect!), pressures on me to make choices, and pressures on me (still, when I visit home) to just ‘finish things off’, to make sure there are no leftovers. I have received so many mixed messages about food, and I could write a novel on the ways my family have – unknowingly, perhaps – fucked me up in relation to food.
TMD is still struck dumb by it all. At my parents’ house, there is a big breakfast and then one later meal around 4. If you get hungry before then you are shamed for wanting to eat, and if you get hungry afterwards you are shamed for wanting to eat. Yet during the meal itself you are encouraged to gorge, to always, always eat more.
TMD will be driven to secretive eating within days of being there (alongside me!), much as I ate secretively as a child – except now I’m old enough to drive away, order food, and eat in the car and throw away the wrapper before I get home. Ridiculous. We have both made a conscious effort (thank god for TMD and her neverending support) to eat normally while at my mother’s house, though the continual commentary on our eating is tough to deal with.
This will not happen for Snort and Coconut.
I am curious to see what my mother makes of baby led weaning in action, but I am a woman now. I am doing the best I can by my children, making choices I hope are the right ones, and so far it’s working: I have two almost-toddlers who exude confidence, joy, curiousity, and wonder.
Long may it continue.
Fuck a duck, I’m as stupid as a donkey with no brain.
‘Waaahooo, they’re one! Time for peanut butter!’ To my credit, I did only give the smallest amount imaginable – probably a couple of grams each.
Snort went into a hardcore coughing fit and was covered in hives within seconds. It’s been an hour and Coconut is now getting hives.
As his NASTY hive reaction cleared up pretty quickly, I called the helpline for an assessment to see whether we really needed to go into the emergency room….again. We’ve been told to watch for ‘altered states of consciousness’ and/or ‘breathing problems’ and if either crops up to call an ambulance instantly.
While I was on the phone with the guy doing the assessment, I grabbed a hot rack out of the oven with my bare fucking hands and screamed. He dryly asked if I wanted an assessment for my blistering burn.
I can’t really type more now as my fingers are covered in blisters. But Snort’s hands, wrists, and face are calming down. Coconut only got one hive spot on her forehead, and is rashy around her mouth. TMD is home sick (and fucking PISSED at me about this peanut butter bullshit – she’s out at the pharmacy now getting antihistamines instead of sleeping off her sickness. Her ass NEVER calls in sick so you know she’s bad).
The best part? I picked today to make them skip their morning nap and try to just have an early afternoon nap – one nap a day. All the extra whining goes really well with trying to see if Snort’s tongue is swollen and looking to see if his eyes are going yellow.
WHAT A FUCK A DUCK MONTH.
Snort – cut his gums, bit through tongue, slashed open his chin, eye infection, covered in bruises from falls, and now a fucking massive allergic reaction to peanut butter …which, I’m told, he should not have again until he is school age.
Coconut – tore her frenulum, bit through her tongue, split her lip, covered in bruises from falls, probable reaction to peanut butter (first food she’s ever reacted to)
Me – poured boiling water down my stomach, Coco’s head bashed into my nose (it’s been broken multiple times in past), burned fingers. All my things happened in the last three days.
TMD – weird all over body aching, terrible cold, possible flu
WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF AWESOME.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Coco almost just threw up from the apparently horrible taste of the antihistamine. I’ve got to watch them both closely to make sure, y’know, they don’t go into anapylactic shock. Anyone know when we re-enter a safety non-worrying zone? I also have to coat them both in peanut repellent as a second exposure is more serious than the first.
Today, I am a parentfail and a wifefail.
We had the best day, and instead of writing about that I’m writing to say that Coconut is being rushed to the hospital as we speak.
Neither of us is certain what happened, but it involved a very hard fall. The first thing I noticed was blood pouring from her mouth, and then that was quickly overtaken by the blood gushing from her nose. And, of course, her little face screwed up in pain – blood all over her face, her body, my breasts.
We are not freaker outers – Snort has had some pretty bad falls recently. We’re talking two mouth bleeds, a nose bleed, and a gash in his chin. (Fuck, we sound negligent, but try looking after two almost toddling twins!)
We got a cloth, stopped the nose bleed, and then offered her the obvious medical solution – a popsicle. Nice and cool for swelling and pain, and a good flavour for distraction (and made from orange juice to help the poopage).
She calmed down but was still unhappy. I happened to be on the phone with my mom, a nurse of many, many years, who said we needed to check her frenulum – you know, the little bit that connects your lip to your gum. She mentioned if it had been cut that it could cause speech disorders as that is what helps your lip to move.
We flushed her mouth with cool water, gently lifted her lip (remind me to tell you about all the actual ‘medical’ training we have. No lie – we’ve both been trained up to the level of being an ambulance helper outer….though I readily admit I know shit all about frenulums!), and there it was. TMD reckons the entire fucking frenulum has been neatly severed from her gum, though of course we only had the briefest look as this caused her pain and crying. And homie don’t keep her mouth open if it hurts.
So TMD got Coco into her pajamas and carseat as I gathered a sling, the onbag (nappy bag of choice for babywearers!), bunny, bottles, etc. Off to the hospital they went, while I went straight to Gohonzon and chanted with Snort (after my initial panic tweets!). We’ve finished chanting, but I’ve left the Budsudan open and feel much calmer. Snort’s in his pjs, milked up, teeth cleaned. I’m going to try to get him to sleep despite the vast amounts of chocolate cake and squash (and let’s not forget his sister’s bloody popsicle remains) coursing through his veins.
TMD just texted to say they’ve arrived at the hospital, so now we wait.
I’m getting closer and closer to being a ‘real mom.’ I don’t mean to discredit the mom I am now. Being disabled does not make me less of a mother, but it sometimes feels like I am able to offer Snort and Coconut less then they deserve. Not on the love side of things, but on the ‘there’s a whole wide world out there’ front. I also think I will feel happier if I get out with them every now and then, and that’ll certainly make me a better parent.
Enough with the preamble.
Snort woke up from his nap this morning, and Coco’s not taking one, so I thought I’d take them for a little walksie. In the back of my mind was the 0-5 playgroup around the corner, but I decided to just walk down the street and up the hill to see how far I could get. I’ve got a friend with newborn twins up that road and was curious to see if I could make it to her house. I couldn’t, but turned around and saw the path leading to the place I thought hosted the playgroup.
I thought, ‘What the hell’ and took off down the path. I ended up at the backside of what appeared to be a deserted building, but saw a lot of cars in the parking lot so went round to the main entrance. A little sign was up reminding people that this group was for kids 5 and under….so I knew I had the place.
I went one step braver and decided to go inside to see if they had a leaflet with a schedule on or something. I managed to yank the buggy through the first door without scraping off too much paint (shh!) but could not get the double buggy through the second door, and also couldn’t figure out how to open the adjacent door. At that point I decided to give up – and as I turned around to leave a worker ran at me with a santa claus’ elf smile and asked if I needed help.
I got to chatting with her and found out their schedule – and she also mentioned a baby rhyme time I would need to get the bus for….and that they would come to my house, help me get Snort and Coconut on the bus and to the place, and then back home. WTF. Awesome, no?
I also got a kick ass goody bag (what it’s all about) featuring a keychain, magnet, pen, leaflets, the awesome bag itself. GIRL. I felt like a celebrity. Back stage. I was high on life, motherfucker.
But of course this means that once a fortnight on Thursday mornings I am going to go along with the babies to this place. It’s during a nap that I think might be able to be dropped once in awhile with no dire consequences. Coconut was so pleased to be there; she was flirting with the two workers, smiling, waving at them, chatting. Snort was happily just kicking his legs.
The big room looked to be half a harder floor filled with those cars toddlers can ride in, and half soft carpet filled with playgyms and stuff for babies. I’m pretty excited. Just to be able to get out of the house of my own volition, with nobody’s help, and get to a playgroup is like some sort of fucking miracle.
There was also a fierce looking squeezy toy shark in the freebie bag. I’ve named him Sharky the Fierce Shark (you see what I did there?) and may adopt him as some sort of ornament for the buggy.
Because I can do it.
I may not be able to do the things other moms take for granted, particularly those who are able bodied and only have one baby, but I can do this. Considering I was in a wheelchair full time about ten months ago, this is pretty fucking good, you know?
MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter
