23:15- daughter wakes from nap 3:00- daughter finally falls asleep again 5:20- 3 month old son wakes up for a feeding. Proceeds to spit up twice, poo, get changed from head to toe, and want to eat again 5:30- husband wakes for work, neurotic dog tries to wake daughter When you are a parent the wonders never cease. You will say and do things you never even would have thought possible just weeks prior. Is being covered in baby vomit worth it? Yes. Does it feel or smell even remotely passable so that you can just pass out again? Nope. We are a strange household. Cloth diapers, homemade wipes, breastfed babies, and organic as much as possible. Sometimes I feel like a 70s flower child but it's what these two tots of mine can handle. Otherwise we'd go for broke buying multitudes of diapers that I'm pretty sure are not even sold in the town in which I live. To even out the feeling of being the odd one out (because I rarely see any other cloth diaper infants and toddlers) I throw in a bit of technology to the mix. My 21 month old daughter is a pro at the iPad and iPhone. She can whiz around it better than my mother (not a surprise) and sometimes she finds shortcuts I never knew about (more surprising). Being a parent might mean lack of sleep. Or it might not depending on your situation and how your child sleeps through the night. Being a parent does mean sacrifice, but not always in the way you might think. I routinely sacrifice my phone and sometimes miss text messages due to it. But hey, they're just text messages. They'll save. At the worst they'll just get a response of gibberish and a ton of emoticons. Being a parent means struggles. You might struggle to dress or diaper an over active toddler. You might struggle to get them to eat, even the most indulgent and decadent of desserts can be rejected by a toddler. You might want to pull your hair out over that one. You probably will pull some hair out whenever they are sick. Not because it's frustrating, it is, but because there is very little you can do to make them feel better. You probably will have wars over drinks. You will sometimes lose, but sometimes even a loss is a win. You might fight about bed time, but when it comes down to it you or their tiny human body will win and they will tip over out cold. Being a parent is definitely not easy. It can be like a walk in the park. Sometimes it'll be as if it's nighttime in NYC. Other times it'll be like walking through an English garden. It just depends on how you look at the adventure. I personally chose to look at it through their eyes as much as possible. What they understand, how they must feel, where they are cognitively, emotionally, and what their worlds must be like. For my 21 month old- she lives in a world I am not sure about. For my 3 month old, he's always stuck in place but ready to go go go! As a little fact to end this post with, infants under five months old always have a reason for their crying. You might not always know the reason, might not figure it out, but they are not crying for attention.
