Lost and Found

"Can you call my phone?" I don't think a week has passed since our third family member arrived that I have not asked Lovey Loverpants at least twice to call my phone. I wish everything I owned could be called, its whereabouts traceable because of its tinny little ring coming from the pocket of my handbag where I thought it would be extra secure. So secure that even I couldn't find it.

In the last week, I have found an iPod shuffle that I thought went missing and that Loverpants had already replaced. I found my watch that I had looked for at the gym, checked for at the gym front desk, so certain I had left it in the shower. Oh but no, it was right where it was meant to be, in its usual container.

It's true that my anxiety has gotten markedly worse since I had a child. I am not a person that can live with clutter, I have a sincere stress reaction to it, but part of living in harmony with my husband and his proclivity for strewing cough drop wrappers everywhere is learning to tolerate clutter. But lately the clutter in my house and in my head has been mounting. I find it hard to not get a little anxious when I am driving on an otherwise placid road, and by that I mean I will literally be driving and for no reason, just get really panicky. I have discussed this with my doctor who wanted to up my depression meds. I refused for now saying that I really don't think more medication is getting at the root of the problem. I need to cultivate habits that will help me to combat the anxiety in a way that is proactive, not reactive or passive, like cuckoo-clock popping another pill.

So here are a few things I share with you that have been working for me:

- The night before I know we have somewhere to go the next day, I try to pack all of our bags. This has helped immensely. There is nothing like scrambling around looking for that errant cloth diaper snappy to cause you to lose your mojo.

- Reading Scripture in the morning and in the afternoon. Checking in with the big G-O-D has really reinforced for me that even though I am a mother, I am also God's child and that comforts me so much.

- Focusing on a couple areas in the house that always stay clean. I don't have the time or energy to keep our whole place entirely clean, but I can focus on a couple of areas and make sure those stay tidy, regardless of the count craptacula cereal spill in other zones.

- Deep breathing. Getting in touch with the old breath. Oh, hey breath. There you are. Let's jive.

- Cutting back on caffeine. Today is my first day in a long time with no caffeine. Somewhere, somebody better be praying for me.

***

Dealing with excess clutter...:)

Team Pigtails

It's no lie that I dreaded having a girl. The prospect of introducing a sweet pink pea to a world full of thongs and Chris Brown and sexting still horrifies me. And I am living it, albeit a bit buffered in my play pen where the worst hazards are posed by the blue dryer balls that litter our floor compelling Baby Girl to trip over them while she attempts to walk drunk-like in step sets of 5 and 6 (!!!). So I am realizing slowly that Having a Girl doesn't happen all at once. Introducing her to the barrage of misogyny and mistrust is not a one-time meet and greet. And yet, I remember seeing Loverpants's face melting right off of his head as he beheld that robust and writhing little turkey being pulled out of me. I remember finally hearing "You had a girl" and thinking, "Dear Lord, thank you. What a great idea to give us a girl." All those feelings of rightness surged in me at once.

Those feelings have revisited me time and again. This past weekend was once such occasion when Baby Girl joined the esteemed ranks of Team Pigtails.

Fighting it

I passed the following note to my classmate last night: Dear Nemat, I'm sorry you have to sit next to me tonight. I haven't showered today.

I punctuated it with a frown face. He took his pen and turned it into a smiling face.

***

We assessed Baby Girl's hesitation to walk as part psychological and part efficiency. She does not want to let go of our finger when doing her walk (which, by the way, is very stiff and slow and she looks like she is a character on stilts in a parade). She obviously wants and deeply needs to get to that tube of Nystatin ointment faster than the speed of light in order to shove it down her throat, and crawling totally beats walking with a stick, yo.

So we tried on some heavy Big Girl shoes in the hopes that she'd be striding right.

This is how thrilled she was with the big kicks:

The first few times we put them on her, her face warped into the angry mushroom head, ahh those srunched up eyes, that quivering lower lip, the anguish of those round, red little cheeks. She looked at us as if to say, Why must you wrestle my innocence right out of my little chubby digits? Why must you replace it with the cruel reality of girlhood? I said I WASN'T READY.

But the next day she accepted her fate as a member of the hard-soled shoe rocking club...

...and she has already found a pair that she fancies.

Baby Cons as purchased by Lovey Loverpants before we had even met Baby Girl.