Category: Parenting

There’s one thing about post-partum recovery that really makes life interesting.

Mood swings.

After I had Cassie, I had a terrible time staying on my usual, cynical, even keel. I would go from feeling a freaked-out sort of mania (not a happy feeling) to outright terror and despair in mere seconds. Every time I sat down to nurse, I literally had a panic attack. It was so bad, it felt like the ground actually opened up beneath me and I was falling into a bottomless pit. During the first two weeks home, Michael had to go into work for a three hour meeting. I was twitchy and nervous when he left. When he got back, Cassie was sitting in her bouncy chair howling and I was on the couch in tears. I immediately jumped up and screamed, “Don’t you ever leave me alone with this child again, you bastard!”

I got over it. Eventually.

Things are a little different with child number two. Sam has a very different temperament from Cassie. Cassie was a colicky live wire that almost never slept and shrieked constantly. Because she didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep, and that more than anything else was probably the source of my problems. I was barely able to function in my sleep-deprived state. I shuffled around like the somnambulist in “The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari,” my arms stretched out in front of me to keep me from running straight into a wall as I lurched around trying to take care of the baby.

Sam is Cassie’s polar opposite. She’s a limp noodle who sleeps constantly. In fact, last night I had to wake her for each late night feeding, otherwise my breasts would have exploded and I’d be one flat-chested mama this morning. She’s so sleepy that I can dab her face and belly with an ice cold wash cloth and it doesn’t even faze her. She just snoozes right through it. You couldn’t even fart in front of Cass without waking her up. A 72-piece marching band could parade around Sam’s basinet and she’d snooze right through it. It’s a little disconcerting (okay, last night it was unnerving when I couldn’t get her to eat) but Sam doesn’t terrify me the way Cassie did.

Another difference between this time and last time is the physical effects of the post-partum hormones. After Cassie was born, I lost a lot of hair, my skin turned all rough and scaly, and my bleeding flowed hard and heavy for over two months. This time around, all I’m losing is weight and the bleeding is no worse than a normal period. My skin looks better than it did in my 20s (although that’s not saying much), and I could almost pass for one of those fake, airbrushed mommies in the parenting magazines. Hey, right now, it’s 7:30AM, I’m dressed, my hair is brushed, my teeth are clean, I’ve got even got jewelry on and I’m the only person in the house who’s awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Physically, I’m doing fine. But none of that means I’m not feeling the ol’ baby blues. I am; they’re just expressing themselves in a different fashion this time around. Namely, swearing.

Now I will be the first to admit I swear a lot. Much more than your average mommy does. I’ve said it before, I got my degree in swearing courtesy of the US Army. I take to foul language like it was my native tongue, and when I’m really torqued, I revel in the imaginative use of blasphemous phrases and scatological terms. I’m a writer. Creative language is second nature to me. But when Cassie came along, I tried to cut back on the dirty words. I had to swear whenever I nursed during the first three months because it hurt so badly that it was either swear or castrate my husband. Outside of that, though, I tried to cut back. I really curbed the habit the first time Cassie tried to repeat a certain four letter word that I usually reserve for computer malfunctions. Nothing like seeing your nine-month old pull herself to standing, shake a tiny fist at your PC and shout, “Fa!”

So I cleaned up my act, sticking to just one mildly offensive word that I could get away with if Cassie repeated it. Then Sam came along and my language skills returned in full force.

Last night, I opened a kitchen cabinet and discovered someone had put away all my glassware in the wrong place. Nothing fell out and hit me. Nothing was broken or missing or dirty. It was just all jumbled up, which annoyed the crap out of me. So when I was confronted by the chaos of mugs and sippy cups, I reverted to true form. I uttered an expletive that I won’t repeat here and five seconds later, Cassie ran into the dining room and repeated it to her father.

Oops.

This has been going on ever since we brought Sam home. Some little thing is not quite right and I express myself in my native tongue with a vengeance. Why? I’m not sure, except that I may just be feeling a little too good this time around. I’m up and moving, cleaning house and taking care of the baby. I’m waking up at 6:30AM, as well as at midnight, 2AM, 4AM, and any other time I feel the need to drain my engorged breasts into sleepy Sam’s pouting puss. I’ve got so much energy I’m not even napping during the day. In fact, the first day home from the hospital, I set about cleaning out our suitcases and putting stuff away. At 3PM, I looked around and realized I was the only person in the whole frikkin’ house who was awake. Michael, Cassie, Sam and my parents had all collapsed and gone to sleep. Of course, this led to a solid round of swearing.

How will I curb my tongue, I wonder? I know I’m tired, even if I don’t feel it, and I know that as long as I’m tired my language is going to be foul. It’s just a natural stress reaction for me. And with so many people in the house, I’m naturally going to continue to be stressed. Of course, as people leave I’m still going to be cranky. Eventually, it’s going to be just me, Cassie and Sam and I’m pretty sure my patience is going to be at an ebb for a while as I learn how to take care of two children instead of one.

Let’s face it. The language is just going to slip, and we’re going to have more “Oops!” moments like the one we had last night. All I can say is I’ll do my best to watch my mouth. I just hope Sam’s first word doesn’t turn out to be “Fa!”

I don’t know why, but just about every morning this week, I’ve been in a rage. In fact, it’s been an all-day-long rage. I’m 37 weeks pregnant and one of the angriest bitches you’ve ever met. Not that I’m acting out on that rage, but all day long I have these fantasies of getting into fights, yelling and screaming at people and do all sorts of other nasty things as well. It’s a 24-hour mad-a-thon, and I can’t seem to stop it.

Well, maybe I do know what the problem is. I’m damned tired. I’ve been waking up at all hours of the night, having to get up to pee because I have contractions. Then for some reason, I can’t seem to sleep past 5:30 AM no matter how late I go to sleep. So I climb out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn, get dressed and head downstairs to my morning chores. And just about every morning this week, Cassie’s woken up shortly after me and gone down too.

There’s the real problem. A three-year-old is no fun at 5:30 AM (on Wednesday, she came into our bedroom at 5:15, shouting, “Mommy, I’m awake!” and wasn’t that a fun way to start the day). Cassie never wakes up in a pleasant mood. Wonder where she gets it from, hmmm? She’s cranky, demanding, whiny and inconsolable if she doesn’t get what she wants. And at 5:30 AM, I’m in no mood to coddle anybody, even my own child. I’ve been taking her downstairs with me, trying to keep her quiet so she doesn’t wake Michael, and then I spend all morning trying to manage her temper tantrums. No, she may not watch a movie. Yes, she may watch the Weather Channel with me, but we’re only watching for ten minutes. Yes, she may have milk, but she has to say please first. No, she may not go wake up Daddy, because he gets to sleep until seven.

That last one really chaps my ass, because Michael and I go to bed at the same time, usually between ten and eleven PM, yet I’m the one up at 5:30 dealing with an angry baby. I warned him yesterday that was going to stop. I can’t handle Cassie all day long if the day starts before dawn. It’s just too much right now. I don’t care if he isn’t a morning person. I’m not one either, but if I can haul my pregnant ass out of bed, he can haul his non-pregnant ass out too.

I’m not entirely sure why Cassie is getting up so early. The best I can figure is a)she hears the birds singing in the morning, and they’re pretty dang loud, b)at 5:30 AM the sun is already coming up and flooding her room, and c)she’s no longer in her crib and can get out whenever she wants so she is. Whatever the reason, mornings have been ugly, and it just sets the mood for the entire day.

Yesterday, she woke up soaking wet. We finally took her out of pull-ups at night a couple weeks ago, so every now and then Cass wets the bed. She was wearing her favorite nightgown yesterday morning, and you should have heard the screaming when I told her it had to come off. She howled for about fifteen minutes, and straight out of bed I was contemplating giving her a time out just to keep from throttling her. So you know I walked around with an angry black cloud over my head the rest of the morning. And since Michael slept through it, I spent all day long fantasizing about running away and leaving him alone to deal with Cass, or taking Cass with me since I felt like he was no help to me whatsoever. Which isn’t true. Michael is a great help, shoulders 50% of the workload around the house and helps out all the time with Cassie. Just not at 5:30 AM.

You know how some people call 3 AM the witching hour? I’m thinking of calling 5:30 AM the divorce hour, because that’s how angry I feel when I’ve been getting up. Fortunately, I learned long ago not to act on those emotions. If I give the day enough time, something eventually turns around. Usually. Well, most of the times.

Okay, some nights I am going to bed still pissed. Maybe I’ll just start waking up Michael by beating him with a pillow to blow off some steam. Or I’ll let Cassie wake him up at 5:30 AM and see if he likes the early bird any better than I do. That at least is something I can laugh at, and laughter is a much better way to start the day, especially if it’s the cruel, evil, mocking kind.

I never realized until I became one how much the term “Stay-At-Home Mom” was an oxymoron. Quite frankly, I did more staying at home before I had my daughter than I do now. I’m the sort of person who’s quite content to be by herself (i.e. hermit), and before Cassie came along, that’s exactly what I did. Don’t ask me how I spent all that time by myself, because I honestly can’t remember much about my life before Cassie. I just vaguely remember I had one and it was very quiet.

These days though, Cassie and I have quite the booming social life. Because I think it’s important for my daughter to socialize with other kids her age, I joined up with a mommies’ group. Now Cassie can meet and play with other toddlers and I can meet and talk with other adults (hey, even hermits get a little stir-crazy). We also spend time with my handful of friends who have kids but aren’t part of the mommies’ group. We’ve sort of become a second unofficial mommies group because we get together so often. Between these two groups, I find myself shuttling back and forth between Chuck E. Cheese, Chick-Filet, various parks and playgrounds, and the houses of other moms. I take Cassie to two play dates a week, which turns into quite a lot of traveling because none of these families live in my neighborhood. On top of that, I’ve got Cassie signed up for the pre-school story time that meets at the local library every week. Cassie loves to go to the library and hear stories and sing songs, and I really want to encourage her to read. We also go to the YMCA a couple of times a week, right across the street from the library. On those days, Cassie either gets to play with other kids in the Y nursery or I take her swimming in the pool. Then there’s the two days a week we go to karate class. This is my activity, not Cassie’s. She gets to sit, watch and cheer as I punch and kick my way through an hour-long workout. I was worried at first that Cassie would be bored by it because she’s the only kid there, but she seems to enjoy watching the class and loves chatting with the other adult students. And I, of course, get some much needed exercise.

When I look at all the activities we do, I realize there’s probably not a single day of the week when Cassie and I stay at home. We’re always going somewhere, and that’s really starting to bother me in light of the current gas situation. Admittedly, gas prices have recently come down, way down, in our area. Three weeks ago, the prices topped three dollars a gallon. Today I saw one station advertising as low as $2.39 a gallon. That’s an astonishing drop in just a couple of weeks. But I still worry about wasting gas and money every time we head out the door, so I’ve been trying to think of ways to avoid using the car. Unfortunately, I can’t come up with any.

This is where the rant starts, folks. I live in the suburbs, a nice upper middle-class area in Southeastern Virginia where we have all the amenities a person could want, except sidewalks. I don’t know why, but there are very few sidewalks in our locale. Our neighborhood has a sort of jog trail that runs intermittently through the blocks, but that’s about it. And that jog trail doesn’t lead to any of the places I’d like to take Cassie, like say to a playground or park. There are supposedly two playgrounds in our neighborhood, but one (the really nice one with lots of slides, swings, and a huge jungle gym) is strictly for condo owners so we can’t use it, and the other isn’t really a playground. It’s just a rusty old slide that lets out into the nearby swamp, plus a couple of creaky swings. The whole thing is falling apart and I won’t let Cassie play on it for fear she’ll fall through a rotting board and hurt herself.

Thus we have to go outside our neighborhood to find a decent playground. Fair enough. There are some places only a few miles away. I could bike there. Unfortunately, in addition to the lack of sidewalks, we also don’t have bike lanes on any of the major highways in our area. Now this really bothers me. The YMCA and the local library are only five miles from where we live. That’s an easy bike ride, if only I dared to bike on Magruder Boulevard to get there. The speed limit on Magruder is 55 MPH. Most people drive a lot faster than that, and there have been more than a few fatal accidents on that particular stretch of highway. So there’s no way in hell I’m going to risk my life or Cassie’s by trying to ride a bike alongside that kind of traffic. I was considering it for a while but killed the idea last Friday when I saw a van skid fifty yards down Magruder to avoid running a red light. Fifty yards, people. That means this guy saw the red light far enough out to stop without a problem… had he been doing the speed limit. He almost didn’t manage to stop, and I had my heart in my throat as I waited for him to smash into the cars that were crossing the road as he came tearing down the asphalt. The intersection where he finally managed to stop is right in front of – you guessed it – the YMCA and the library. If I’d been trying to cross the road to get to either place, there’s a good chance Cassie and I would have ended up as small greasy spots on the front of this guy’s grille. Did I mention that there are no crosswalks in addition to no sidewalks and no bike lanes?

Oh, and before anybody asks why I don’t just take the bus, forget it. There isn’t one to take in our area.

So I’m ticked off. I really don’t want to have to drive everywhere I go, especially when so many of the places I go to are within a few miles of where I live. But at the same time, it’s just not safe to walk or bike anywhere I want to go. I’m considering sending a letter to my state delegate to complain about this, but the state of Virginia is having so many problems funding the scheduled repairs and maintenance of all its highways, I have little hope that anybody will set aside the funds to build sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes.

It’s a real shame because the only way I can think to save gas is to stop using it. Thus I’m left with the decision. Become a hermit again (forcing Cassie to become one too) or burn up the gas to get her out where she can play with other kids? It’s not a fun decision to make.

Have I got a rant for you today. Michael, my husband, took Cassie and I out to the Virginia Air And Space Museum to see the Liberty Bell 7 exhibit currently on view there. This is a traveling exhibit that explores the history of the Mercury space program and the life of astronaut Gus Grissom, as well as the recovery of the Liberty Bell 7 capsule 38 years after it sunk into the Atlantic Ocean. My family and I had a wonderful time learning about the early days of the US space program, and I highly recommend you see the exhibit if it comes to a venue near you. It really brings home what an astonishing feat it is to send a person into space.

As I walked through the exhibit, reading about Gus Grissom and the Liberty Bell 7 this afternoon, I was struck by how much some people accomplish within their lifetimes. Grissom came from such humble beginnings, yet he became one of the first seven astronauts in the US space program. He went up twice, one Mercury mission and one Gemini mission. He was supposed to have commanded the first Apollo space mission and would have been the first man to walk on the moon. Sadly though, he died before he got the chance. A flash fire broke out in the Apollo command module during a launch pad test, killing Grissom and his crew.

But what a hero Gus Grissom was! And he wasn’t the only one we learned about during our visit to the Air and Space Center. In addition to the Mercury Program exhibit, we also saw displays on the Tuskegee Airmen, the WWII WASP pilots, the Wright brothers, and many, many others who have contributed to the history of manned flight. All of these people risked their lives to do what they believed was important. They worked their behinds off to make something of themselves and what they did changed the world. I felt overawed as I stared at the Liberty Bell 7, the Apollo 12, and all the other air and spacecraft on display, and that feeling of wonder and amazement only grew as we made our way through the center.

Toward the end of our tour, we reached one of the interactive displays, a mock-up of an Apollo command module that visitors could sit in and run through a series of instrument checks. Michael, who got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering, climbed into the module and I lifted Cassie in to sit beside him. They sat there together, tilted back in the module, pushing buttons and laughing, when I was struck by two staggering realizations. The first was just how much Cassie looked like her daddy. She is Michael’s spitting image, from the hair and eyes to the wicked little grin they both get when they’re having fun. The second realization was that someday Cassie might very well follow in her father’s footsteps and become an aerospace engineer herself, or even an astronaut (Michael applies for the astronaut candidate school every two years, and it will not surprise me to see him accepted one day). For a few moments, I grasped the astounding amount of potential that resides within the 32 lbs of tantrum-prone toddler I know as my daughter, and that brief flicker of insight was truly a heady experience. As we left the Air and Space Center, I couldn’t stop daydreaming about my daughter the future astronaut.

Of course if you read the title of this entry, you’re probably wondering just what the heck Gus Grissom, the Liberty Bell 7, the history of space exploration and my fantasies of Cassie’s future all have to do with hookers. Well, I’ll tell you.

After we left the museum, Michael, Cassie and I headed across the street to a little Italian place to get some gelato. I was talking to Michael about how much I wished I’d studied math and science in college when in walked three hookers. At least that’s what they looked like. I think they might actually have been somebody’s teenaged daughters, but they must have been orphaned at an early age because I can’t believe that any parent alive would let their girls go out in public dressed the way these three were.

The first girl wore a strappy t-shirt and short shorts, not so bad I suppose, except that she obviously wasn’t wearing anything under the t-shirt and the shorts rode so far up her crotch they looked more like a thong. The second girl wore a camisole made from cheap nylon fabric, complete with spaghetti straps and see-through lace at the top. Her breasts were bigger than mine had been was I was nursing Cass, and I feared that at any second the flimsy straps of her top would snap and her breasts would tumble out and smash the glass cabinet where the gelato was stashed. I kept thinking, why is that girl walking around in her underwear? Where is her shirt? Then I realized in horror that was her shirt.

The third girl was dressed pretty much like the first, in strappy t-shirt and short shorts/thong, but with the precocious addition of a rhinestone tiara clipped to her empty little head. It seemed we were being visited by royalty, in the form of none other than the queen of tarts and her ladies-of-the-night-in-waiting. How delightful.

You could have offered me no greater contrast to the heroic images of men and women we’d just seen in the Air and Space Center. These girls looked like cheap trash. Even worse, they sounded like cheap trash. Camisole-girl pulled out her cell phone when she walked in and began talking to someone named “Chad”. Apparently she gets really bad reception because she immediately began shouting into the phone, so loudly in fact that she startled the customer in front of her into dropping her change on the floor. While Camisole-girl screeched at Chad like a harpy in heat, Tiara-girl stood there cracking her gum and rolling her eyes, repeating “Oh my Gawd!” over and over again at everything Camisole-girl said. Thong-girl stayed pretty quiet, but I’m guessing that was because she was too busy picking her dental-floss drawers out of the crack of her behind to contribute to the intellectual discourse of her fellow tramps.

Stunned as I had been by the accomplishments of Gus Grissom and the other heroes of the Virginia Air and Space Center, these girls stunned me even more. I kept Cassie turned away from them, desperate to shield her from the image of three young girls masquerading as whores. The way they were dressed just made me want to scream. I mean these girls were someone’s children, for Pete’s sake! In a time when every parent lives in fear of their child falling victim to sexual predators, what mother or father would be so stupid as to let their child parade around like that? Michael must have been reading my thoughts because as soon as those three girls left, he turned to me and said, “Cassandra will NEVER leave the house dressed in nothing but her underwear.” Amen to that.

At this point, some will accuse me of judging and condemning these poor girls based solely on their appearances. Well guess what? I am. Appearances matter, people, and a coarse demeanor leaves a stigma that’s near impossible to erase. Girls who look and act like trash will never grow up to be astronauts, or doctors, or much of anything at all except, well… trash. And before anyone jumps all over me for calling these teenage girls such horrible names as whores, hookers, etc., keep in mind that these girls branded themselves as trash by dressing and acting the way they did. Or maybe their parents branded them, by buying the clothes and letting their daughters wear them.

Sadly, this phenomenon of dressing like a 1990’s Madonna video reject isn’t limited to teens. At the neighborhood pool this summer, I’ve seen countless little girls, ages ten and under, wearing bathing suits that make them look like pole dancers. Don’t their parents understand what they’re doing when they let their kids dress that way? I’m sorry. I write erotica, but I cannot condone turning teenage girls and small children into oversexed vamps.

The way I see it, my daughter can grow up to be the next Sally Ride or the next Anna Nicole Smith. She can become a lady, showing respect for her self and others. Or she can prance around like the three strumpets in the gelato parlor this afternoon and one day wind up on Jerry Springer, punching the lights out of some other piece of trash as they fight over who stole whose boyfriend in the trailer park. The difference between one fate and the other, I believe, lies in my (and Michael’s) decision to teach Cassie how to dress and act like a responsible, civilized individual.

Clothes make the man, and the future generation of women in this world too. Gus Grissom worked hard all his life to become a great pilot, engineer, and astronaut, and he looked and acted the part. He wore an Air Force uniform. He wore a space suit and helmet. He never, ever wore his underwear in public, ladies and gentlemen. And neither will my daughter.

It’s so dang hot around here these days. I live in southeastern Virginia, right on the Chesapeake Bay, and the heat and humidity are stifling. Every time I step outside, I feel like I’ve walked into a combination sauna/lava pit. I don’t go for a morning jog anymore. Instead I swim, pushing the jog stroller ahead of me as I struggle to doggie paddle my way through the neighborhood. The heat waves only add to the illusion that I’m underwater as they shimmer up from the sidewalk like streamers of seaweed. It’s been like this since June, 106 degrees in the shade and so humid I could drown. Therefore it should come as no surprise to me that all the moms in my mommies group have decided to stay indoors this summer.

And yet it does.

I’m so damned annoyed about this too. Every one of these moms seems determined to hibernate in their air-conditioned houses until October. This mommies group posts play dates on a Yahoo group and I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen outdoor play dates posted and then cancelled this summer. I’ve also shown up to a couple of play dates at parks and playgrounds only to discover Cassie and I were the only ones who decided to brave the heat. How fun is that, I ask you?

Keep in mind these are the same moms who complained all winter long that they couldn’t take little Johnny and darling Susie out to the park because of the winter weather – rain, sleet, snow, chilly temperatures, etc. From October to May, this group met at the local mall to let the kids run amok at an indoor play area, then sat and complained about how they had no place else to take the kids. With all the grousing going on about bad weather and how folks were going stir crazy, I had this delusion that come summer we’d all be outside running around with our kids. No such luck.

We had about a month, May to be exact, where the moms group made the rounds of all the playgrounds in the area. Then June arrived with its usual heat wave and that was the end of that. Suddenly, the mommies retreated to the great indoors – Chuck E. Cheese, the mall, any place with AC. To be honest, Cassie and I don’t spend a lot of time with the moms group, so I can only complain but so much. My work and karate schedule allow us to make it to one play date every other week. Still, I had looked forward to getting Cassie outside this summer with other kids we knew. Instead, we’ve ended up playing by ourselves or with the kids of parents we’ve never met before and will probably never see again (even though I do exchange e-mail addresses with the other moms I meet, I can’t seem to hook up with them again). It’s left me feeling isolated and frustrated to no end, wondering frantically if the only way Cassie will ever have any friends is if we hole up inside with all the other moms and turn into a couple of thermophobic shut-ins who bitch about how it’s too hot to go out and play. I swear, the only other women I’ve heard of who spent that much time locked inside lived in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule.

There have been two exceptions to our lack of playmates this summer. The first was Maison, whom Cassie met in her weekly Toddler Tales group. Maison’s mom, Crystal, and I hit if off really well and the girls spent a lot of time together this summer, right up until Crystal and her family transferred to Alaska in July (and if you’re reading this Crystal, I hope you know how much we miss you guys!). While Maison and Crystal were here, we made it to the beach, the zoo, the local botanical gardens, and more than a few playgrounds. Plenty of sun and fun all around!

The other exception is a six-year-old girl named Maddy whose grandmother lives in our neighborhood. Every time we’ve hit the neighborhood pool this summer, Maddy and her grandmother have been there. Due to a lack of other six-year-olds at the pool, Maddy and Cassie hung out together, giving Cassie at least a semi-regular playmate the last two months. Cassie’s enjoyed playing with a ‘big girl’ and Maddy’s been so nice to her. Unfortunately, come September Maddy heads off to school and the girls won’t be seeing each other anymore.

Thus leaving Cassie stuck with only me for a playmate again. I’ve tried setting up play dates with other moms, really I have. My best friend Mary has a son the same age as Cassie, but Mary works and her son goes to daycare so we only get to see them once every blue moon. There’s another mom down the street from us whose daughter is a year younger than Cassie. We’ve gone out with them once and had a great time, but the daughter has severe dairy and peanut allergies so that makes it a challenge to get the girls together. We can’t go any place that serves food without risking a trip to the emergency room.

So I keep going back to the mommies group, hoping beyond hope that someone will want to come outside and play. I set up a picnic and play date last week at a local playground. I made sure to pick a shady place to meet and set the time for early in the day to beat the worst of the heat. Wouldn’t you know it, Cassie and I were the only ones who came to play? Later that day I got an e-mail from one of the other moms, telling me what I trooper I was for going outside at all that day. She and her son went out in their backyard to play but only lasted fifteen minutes before they started to melt. I just wanted to scream. Don’t these people understand that their kids need to get outside? There was a study published in the June 2005 issue of the Journal of Pediatrics that concluded that school age kids needed to get at least an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day. To me, moderate to vigorous activity means outdoors, ‘cause I certainly don’t want my darling little yard ape screaming and racing around inside.

Granted, Cassie isn’t school age, and neither is any other kid in her playgroup, but when are these kids going to learn to play outside if they don’t start doing it now? My cousin Dave married a woman from Siberia. Their son isn’t even a year old yet but every day regardless of the weather, Dave’s wife completely undresses the kid and takes him outside. It’s a Siberian custom, apparently, the purpose of which is to condition the child to the extremes of the harsh Siberian weather. I can tell you already, this child is going to be physically fit all his life. If he can handle being outside naked in the height of summer or the depths of winter while he’s still an infant, he’ll have no problems being active as he gets older. And I really do believe this, because to me spending time outside goes hand in hand with being physically fit. Ask yourself, how many obese mommies do you see at playgrounds during the summer? Not many. Too bad I can only count on one hand the number of moms I’ve seen outside at all this summer.

In a few weeks, the heat wave in this area will break, and I’m sure that the mommies group will once again make the rounds of all the playgrounds in the area. Then October will come, bringing with it the rain, followed by the dank chill of November and the brittle cold that lasts from December until March. April will slowly ease us into spring, but from October until May I can almost guarantee you the mommies group will stay inside, complaining again about how they can’t get out. I don’t plan to hang around and listen to them though. Instead, Cassie and I will throw on our parkas, grab our umbrellas, and head outside, braving the cold and the rain in search of other moms and their kids who are just as crazy as we are. Wish us luck. I fear Admiral Peary had better odds of finding the North Pole.

Have you ever had one of those mornings where you wake up at three, four, and then five a.m. to the sound of someone screaming? A morning where that making that first bottle of milk more important than your first cup of coffee? A morning where you bolt out of bed as your CD alarm clock blares out the Wiggles because once again you forgot to put Sheryl Crow back in before you collapsed the night before? Have you ever had one of those mornings where you have to ask a very short person over and over again, “Have you gone poopies yet?” because you know you’re not getting out of the house until the answer is “Yes”?

If so, congratulations, you’re a mom. Or a dad. Or a nut, as the case may be.

My name is Helen Madden and for the last two and a half years I’ve worked as a stay-at-home mom. For two years before that I worked as a stay-at-home bum, leeching off my darling husband as I tried to figure out what to do with my life. My husband will swear to you that I was not leeching; rather I was taking some much needed time to discover myself. I will swear that during those two years the only things I discovered where the joys of Cartoon Network and an appalling lack of self-discipline. I couldn’t get my (insert expletive here) together to save my life.

Somehow, that all changed when my daughter came along.

I don’t know why, but the day the doctor cut that screaming, squalling little red-faced miracle out of my uterus, everything changed. Before, I had all the time in the world but nothing to show for it. Suddenly, I had no time at all but a desperate need to make something of myself. I have talent – I’m a writer and an artist – but talent is nothing without discipline and hard work. After Cassie came along, I found myself working harder than I ever had in my entire life, and it wasn’t just from taking care of an infant, although that’s hard enough. I needed to write, to draw, to create. To be a mom my daughter could be proud of, not someone who sat around the house all day saying, “I coulda been a contender…”

So these days I get up at the butt-crack of dawn to write for two hours. That’s my free time, and once it’s over, I slip into my real job as mommy. I spend the rest of the day chasing after my toddler. I don’t know why children around the age of two are called toddlers. Mine’s more like the Road Runner, and I feel like Wile E. Coyote waiting for an anvil to drop on my head as we tear around the house and yard. By two p.m. I’m exhausted but Cassie is still rolling, so I exercise that tried and true technique for saving a mommy’s sanity – naptime. Sometimes Cassie takes one too.

Just kidding. Cassie goes down without a peep once she’s had her fill of milk and stories, and I’m left fighting to keep my eyes open. Naptime means work time again for me, a time when I get to sit and work on my art or cartoons. Yes, I cartoon. In fact, there’s a sister site to this blog called Cynical Woman that’s host to various cartoons I’ve done on the trials of motherhood, angry babies, and the facts of life (sort of…). I think there’s a lot of humor to be found in parenthood. Perverse creature that I am, I view it all through a lens tinted with cynicism and a touch of snarkiness. So if you don’t mind laughing while you’re crying, let’s share a few painfully funny stories about being parents. Remember, it’s not just a job. It’s a life sentence.