Remember when it was all, oh my gods if I have to change another diaper, clean spit up or breastfeed one more time I'm going to lose my damn mind. Like really loose it, like sit and watch a whole episode of Steven and Chris while the baby bounces in the Jumperoo and the toddler colours on the ceramic tiles but its okay because I can scrub it off later with some steel wool and baking soda, kind of loose my mind. Because then? Then it seemed really hard. And there were car seats and nursing bras and the no sleep and the babbling and the trying to figure out what they hell are they saying. Ball? Bear? Banana? What is this child trying to tell me? And the diapers. There were so many diapers. I will never forget the diapers. The diapers were that bad.
But now? Now they move. A lot. They move a whole lot and sometimes you don't even know where they are because they got bored with where you left them and they just got up and went somewhere else. Of their own volition. Because they have there own ideas and opinions and free will and shit. And they can reach stuff and if they can't they can make a plan on how they're going to reach stuff. They might even draw a map, a fucking map. It might be all scribbly and torn up because they wanted to see what paper tasted like and then they got into a fight over whose map it actually was so it got torn a little, but a map none the less. A map on how they are going to execute a plan to fuck shit up. My shit.
And the words. Remember when there were no words, the blessed time of no words. When words were all jumbly and unintelligible and you could pretend like oh sorry, what, what I don't know what you are saying so I'm just going to give you some Cheerios and hope it passes. Now? Oh now they have words. Constant streams of words. Words to argue, to annoy, to demand, to stall, words to make you think that yeah maybe Nutella and animal crackers for supper is a good idea, they do make a logical and succinct point. But mostly the words are like poop and pee and said 37 times in a row. On repeat. All day long. Sometimes the words don't make any sense but just sound suspiciously inappropriate. Like chooch. Chooch. When paired with a certain tone, chooch sounds wrong. Like its some kind of slang for something that you aren't cool enough to know about. I time-out for chooch just to be safe.
I think I thought that once I climbed the mountain of diapers, or the constant breastfeeding or the not talking, that once I cleared those hurdles, things would be... things would be less fucking exhausting. And I don't even own a Diaper Genie now. I sold it in a garage sale last summer, along with a recalled Bumbo and Sophie the Giraffe.
Not owning a Diaper Genie should mean less exhaustion! Not owning a Diaper Genie should signify a life of greater simplicity!
But it just means I sold out for a shitload of Lego, Sunday afternoon skating lessons and some genius kids when it comes to fucking words. Seriously I just wiped someones ass, who has known how to wipe his own ass for like 2 years. He just made it sound like the sensible thing to do!
And I have another mountain to climb.
