Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder

Today I’m sick. That means I have a stuffy nose, my throat aches, my head aches and I’m feeling feverish. It also means I’m very irritable and hate the world and myself. Today’s one of those days when I’m aware of how pale I am, how awful my skin looks, how flabby my stomach is, how much weight I need to lose… I feel so disgusting today that I have absolutely no energy to make an effort while dressing in the morning.

I grab whatever’s in front of me. Literally. This leaves me taking kids to the daycare in a dark-blue and white stripey skirt, a black and grey spotty cardigan and a T-shirt with a cartoon character on it (which is never appropriate if you’re 34, I don’t really know why I have it in my closet anyway). My hair’s up in a ponytail which is a not-so-secret code for “dirty”. I desperately need a shower. I smell. I’m all gross. Still, I spend the day without doing anything about it, except complaining to the baby about how lazy I am and how I should go jogging. And then I feel even more miserable and have some chocolate instead.

The day passes between the waves of self-pity and self-loathing and it’s already evening.
As I put Molly into bed and give her a sweaty hug, I have already decided to call it a day and curl up in bed. Then she stretches lazily, all cute and cuddly in her night-dress and kisses me back while running her always-so-sticky fingers through my greasy hair and says: “Lijepa mama” (“Pretty mama”). And I almost cry.
This was an hour ago. In the meantime, I took a long shower, washed my hair, did my eyebrows and already chose clothes for tomorrow.
I promise myself I’ll do my best to look the way my sweet daughter sees me. Most of the days at least.

Sleeping rituals

Everyone has a ritual that helps them fall asleep, even if they’re not aware of it. I, for example, always lie on my side, put my hand under the pillow and think of nice things that happened that day. Molly likes to have one dummy in her mouth and one in her hand and then change them around.
Benny, on the other hand, shrieks like a wounded bird, pulls his dummy out of his mouth unintentionally at least seven times then cries because he can’t get it back in, flails his arms around, attempts to scratch his eyes out, turns his head left and right, bangs his legs against the mattress, all the while fighting me while I try to hold his hands down so that he doesn’t hurt himself. Whatever works, I guess.

Happy birthday to me

My day started perfectly with a neighbour driving Molly to the daycare and Jay, Benny and me having a lovely breakfast outside. I planned to spend the rest of the day walking around the centre, reading and having coffee in the sun.
Unfortunately, around 10:30 I got a call from Molly’s daycare to pick her up because she’s been sick. Just at the thought of that, as a very empathic mother, I started feeling queasy myself. Jay picked Molly up and I rushed home where my empathy reached the highest peak when I started throwing up as well (goodbye overly expensive breakfast!).
So we spent the rest of the day so far watching Shrek, puking, eating salty pretzels and sleeping, which is really not an entirely horrible way to spend a birthday, I guess.

How you change with the second baby, an empirical study, part IV: Rolling over

With the first baby, you read a lot about her physical and emotional development. You know each day not only what new skills she’s acquiring but also how to help her develop those skills further. You perform a series of gentle physical exercises with your baby each day and you’re really looking forward to her reaching her next big milestone: rolling over. You have a feeling it will happen soon so you video every play session because it would be a disaster if you didn’t catch this special moment on film. You’re excited for a week, announcing to all your friends and family that your baby might roll over soon. Then you’re worried for a week because you would have expected her to roll over already, is there anything wrong? When she finally does roll over, you send that video to everyone in the family, followed by numerous videos of her getting even better at rolling over! Then you start getting excited about her sitting up by herself. You have to start reading about that!

With the second baby, all of a sudden you realise that your baby’s as old as your first born was when she rolled over. When you come back into the lounge from the kitchen one day, you get a bit excited because your baby might have rolled over. You’re not sure though because you can’t remember if you left him on his tummy or on his back when you left the room – so he either rolled over or he hasn’t moved at all. Mental note to self: avoid leaving the baby unattended on the bed for longer periods of time because he will roll over eventually.