A Mother's Sleep

For the briefest of moments last night I thought about blogging about how nice it was this weekend to get some nice, deep, restful sleep. Then I went to bed.

What is it about becoming a mother that totally destroys your sleep?

It starts in pregnancy when you can't get comfortable no matter how you position the pillows or which side you lay on. Even before the belly shows up you wake up to morning sickness which makes you dread going to sleep in the first place.

Then you give birth and we all know what sleeping with a newborn is like. You hear every sigh, every squeak and every whimper. That's not terribly restful sleep either.

Now in my case I had my children back to back so I have stayed in newborn sleep mode for four and a half years. All the children are sleeping through the night now so what do I do? I switch beds and rooms and roomates and disrupt the whole thing. So we're back to broken sleep.

Friday we had a really busy day of being outside and running and playing and carrying on so everyone slept like the dead. Saturday we had a similar night. So it's not a surprise that as I laid down last night I was thinking that maybe the end was in sight. Maybe I would get to go back to sleeping through the night in a deep and comfortable sleep in my own bed.

Nope. 1:30 AM Orangutan calls me into their room to tell me that Marmoset woke her up by singing. Marmie looked up at me and said, "You sing too Mama?" So I ended up laying down with her until she started to drift off. Once all was quiet again I went back to my bed and snuggled in.

3:30 AM Rhino taps me on the nose and tells me that Marmoset is trying to climb into his bed. I check all the beds and she is sound asleep in hers. When I got back to my bed to tell Rhino that he was dreaming he was sound asleep sprawled all over my pillows and wadded up in the blankets.

6:45 AM Orangutan calls me from her bed that she's ready to get up and get ready for school.

And another night is lost to being a mother.

A Mother's Legacy

L.M. Lion and I were watching West Wing (thank you Bravo syndication) the other week and they were talking about the President's legacy. What would his legacy be? How would people remember his time as president.

Of course it went into my brain and I chewed on it and worked it around and I started to wonder. Political officials and celebrities and "big" people aren't the only ones with legacies. Parents definitely have a legacy - a pretty big one if you ask me. But you don't have to have children to have a legacy. Normal people (because parenting is NOT normal - we've established that here at Zoo Suburbia) have a legacy too. I of course was wondering what my legacy would be. I mean, I'm not much more than a mom. Yeah, yeah. Wife, daughter, sister, friend. But my main title in life and the name I go by most often is Mom.

I know what my mother's legacy (so far) is. My mother gave me the gift of cooking. One of my first memories of our "new" house - the house I grew up in - was pulling a chair up to the counter and helping to make a birthday cake. Cooking is so much a part of me now that I have a whole shelf on the bookcase dedicated to cookbooks, the most important one being a copy of the one my mother used to teach me to cook.

My mother also took on the painful task of teaching me how to sew. I say painful because I was not the most patient of students, would get frustrated easily and probably left more porjects unfinished in her sewing cabinet than I actually finished. But now I have a skill that allows me to make my own dresses, skirts, gauchos, capris and who knows what for the kids. Advanced skills? No but enough to make my children happy.

Probably the biggest legacy my mother has given me is how to pray. There is a generally held consensus in our family is if Mom is praying, get out of the way. Something is going to happen. And I try. I try to pray sincerely and powerfully like my mother.

So now I am setting out on my own parenting journey trying to leave a legacy of my own. I will never know what my legacy is but I certainly hope that I can pass at least the lessons that my mother passed to me. After all, who has a more powerful legacy than a mother?

Dear Zoo, The Flu is NOT a Spectator Sport.

I understand that Mom never REALLY gets sick. I know that it is a law of nature that no matter how sick we think we are we really must press on. It would be a lot easier to press on if you would all follow the guidelines outlined below. This is simply for future reference.

#1. When the Zookeeper is occupied with vacating the contents of her stomach is it unnecessary to stand over her and talk to her or mimic her sound effects. This is for you Marmoset. It is not helpful to ask the Zookeeper a million questions about "waddya doin" or copy the sounds I am making. It really just makes me feel a little worse.

#2. Screeches are completely unnecessary when the Zookeeper's head is on the verge of explosion. They really just make the fissures in her skull open a little more. The intensification of the skull pounding only amplifies the nausea and therefore leads to more sound effects which we have all established we are not in favor of.

And #3. While I appreciate that my life status was in question for the better part of the day yesterday, the giggling while you poked me with a stick was really uncalled for. The poking was not completely necessary but at one point I appreciated it because it let me know I was still alive. The giggling was a little too much though.

These are just a few thoughts should your Zookeeper ever fall victim again. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to being back on my feet in the next 24 to 48 hours and back in your service.

Sincerely,

The Zookeeper.

Wordless Wednesday: You served us well.

This is dead.

This is two days worth of dead.

**You can see the rest of the story now over at The Bowl.**

In the meantime (as you wait in suspense....) head over to MomDot and see what the REAL mom blogs have to show off today!

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The Lion's Take on Redecorating

Dear Lion, I warned you I was going to do this! Deal!

We have lived in our house for three years. Ask me how many rooms we have "decorated." How about half of three. No, I don't mean a room and a half. I mean we have half decorated three rooms. We painted the Orangutan exhibit - but no curtains or pictures on the walls. We painted the Rhino exhibit (when he was in a solo exhibit) and put up a valance and border. But when Marmoset came she evicted him to the Orangutan exhibit and I painted her exhibit. Again no pictures, but we do have a valance up. And then you have the Lion Den. It got painted but the one picture that was up before the painting still hasn't gone back up.

We're not so good at this decorating thing.

Well, the washing machine died yesterday so we are off to the great orange heaven (aka Home Depot) this weekend to get a new washer. Aha! The perfect chance! So I zipped the Lion an e-mail that went like this.

"Hey. I was thinking. Can we get some KILZ and paint for the bathroom while we are at Depot this weekend? We have the gift cards from Bed Bath and Beyond and Steinmart so maybe we could redo our bathroom for the cost of paint. I've been watching the mildew and the peeling ceiling for a while now so we need to do something.

Just an idea. I'll do the work."

That was a pretty generous offer I thought - especially considering all the little nooks and crannies and cutting in that need to be done.

The Lion's response? (And I'm pulling this right from the e-mail!)

"IT’S NOT MLDEW ITS CHARM"

My response? You can call it penicillin, love but it's still mold.

Let's hope I don't end up with this on the bathroom wall.

Mom Tip #54

Motherhood is gross!

I know I posted a vlog along this line during Motherhood Means (which you may have guessed by now was nixed due to lack of interest). In case you missed it and need a lesson in how NOT to empty a training potty, here you go!

But the point was driven home to me today. I was cleaning the bathroom and had already had to pull one child (Marmoset) and a dog out of the toilet! So you can guess that I was less than thrilled when I turned around to see Marmoset brushing her teeth with the Lion's toothbrush and B-Dog's teeth with MY toothbrush! I am having a hard time expressing just how nauseated I was when I saw this. I of course have disposed of the toothbrush but the heebie jeebies are still stalking me.

I went about my business cleaning the bathroom only to realize that the job "Mom" is, by its very nature, gross. Let me tell you all the gross things I have done in the past week that fall under my job title.

*Cleaning out the fridge. We all know what that is like so I will refrain from going into detail.
*Cleaning the toilets - potty chair included. All I can say for commentary on that is - Men! Of all ages!
*Changing butts. ::sigh::
*Washing the dog. I wash him because he smells. Somehow I always forget that I end up smelling like him every time I wash him.
*Sippy cup hunting. That funky smell in the bedroom is not coming from the laundry basket or the diaper pail.
*Sippy cup washing. Once you find them you have to so something with them.
*Playroom cleaning. Have I ever told you that Cheeze-Its will be the food of the cockroaches after the nuclear holocaust?

If anyone ever asks you why mothers shower at night rather than in the morning, I will give you the easy answer. To wash the crud off! We do not shower in the morning "to wake up" because we are already awake - probably before the rest of the house. We do not shower while everyone else is napping. That's when we get all of our gross stuff done without interruption. We wash up to our elbows before cooking dinner because we know that we are going to get the rest of our bath while we do baths in a little while.

The old hymn says "And they'll know we are Christians by our love." The mom version says, "And they'll know we are mothers by our stench."

Mom Tip #45

Even SuperMom has bonehead moments.

And when I say “bonehead,” I mean all out brain fart!

How many millions of times have I told the children to “keep the water IN the tub?” It could be the rinse cup. It could be the bath toys. It could be the washcloth or even their hands but they always – and I mean ALWAYS – manage to get water all over the floor. I have sat right beside the tub from start to finish on a bath and we still end up with mystery water on the floor. I don’t know how but it has happened.

And what about the shower head? We have one that you can pull down and aim and that is how the bigger kids get their baths. They think running from the rinse cup is an Olympic sport and take their training seriously. I have finally broken their training spirit with the shower head so they just stand still and let the rinse cycle happen. But if I put it down for even a minute that is an engraved invitation to start attempting to spray one another which ends in – you guessed it! – water all over the bathroom floor.

Tonight we were almost done. There hadn’t been any screaming. Well, there was that moment when Munch did her business in the tub and freaked Mo out but I digress. Everyone made it through bath without getting soap in their eyes and I was finishing the rinse cycle on Mo. Then it happened. My crowning bonehead moment.

I stood up to put the shower head back on the mount. Did I turn the water off first? Did I at least turn the shower head off first? That would be “No” on both accounts. I aimed it straight at my face and lifted it up. Soaked. From my forehead to my knees. And now there is water on the floor. Was there any water on the floor before my brain fart? I couldn’t tell you because the deluge of water that I unleashed on the bathroom wiped out any prior evidence.

The next time your jaw drops because of a lapse in judgment on your own part, just smile and tell yourself “I’m entitled.”

Another Mom Tip Mini

Kids make the best doctors!

Since Mo started school she has been bringing home her share of buggies. Thankfully the only person affected by these little gifts has been Mom. And this time she brought me a doozie!

I have the beginnings of bronchitis. Bad enough actually that Daddy-O found it necessary not only to take his day off but to also cancel his round of golf and call the doctor for me. Then he managed to wrangle 2 hours of full peace and quiet for me before Mo came home from school.

He went to pick Mo up from school and left me with The Boy and Munch. Munch found a thermometer from somewhere and decided to take my temp. In my ear. And Tuck knows that Max (our Jack Russel) always follows any sick family member all over the house. So if one dog is good, adding the 19 stuffed dogs in our house to my armchair would definitely have me on the path to recovery in no time!

With every coughing fit, Meghan tousled my hair and Tuck came by to check my breathing (ear to my chest). When they were convinced I was still breathing and ok they would resume playing until the next fit.

I don't really feel any better now than I did when I woke up this morning. But it sure did make me smile to have Dr. Tuck and Dr. Munch taking care of me.