Thanks to Plum Organics for sponsoring my post about tips for baby feeding magic. What if you let baby choose what’s for dinner? Check out their cute “Quest for Yum!” video and see what happens!

The first time around I made all of my kid’s baby food. Well, technically. I took a class on how to steam and puree veggies (here’s a tip: you steam them, then you puree them. It doesn’t matter how. That’ll be $50) and I bought my weight in sweet potatoes and avocados.  I spent a whole weekend making, portioning and freezing a dozen different kinds and flavors. I was Supermom, provider of healthy organic meals! (more…)

1. Wiping the baby’s poop off the baby.

2. Wiping the baby’s poop off myself.

3. Wiping the baby’s poop off the dog after he eats the diaper I left on the carpet while I rush the toddler to the potty.

4. Wiping the toddler after he doesn’t quite make it to the potty because I was yelling at the dog.

5. Scrubbing the hot dog juice off the baby’s head after she dumps her brother’s plate on herself.

6. Scrubbing ketchup out of everything in the family room.

7. Wiping down the high chair so next time I can feed the toddler out of reach of the baby.

8. Washing faces before nap time so I don’t have to wash all the pillows AFTER nap time.

9. Picking up whatever that thing was the dog just threw up on the floor.

10. Giving myself a hooker bath because I haven’t taken a real shower in three days and right now I am choosing to nap instead.

Today, I am thankful for baby wipes.

Obviously, by now everyone has heard of Occupy Wall Street. The other day, a friend posted a link to this chart, which is a great summary of what OWS is about and why they feel that way.

I’m not going to talk about the movement itself, but I am interested in something my friend said in reference to the data in that chart: “…to say that more women {with children under the age of 18} work today because they have no choice and not because they like having a career in a society where it is acceptable and because discrimination has been drastically reduced is silly.”

And my immediate response was: Well yes. But also no. And definitely. But really not at all. Why do women work? Or more specifically, why do MOTHERS work?  Can there possibly be a more complicated question?

The stickiest part of my friend’s statement is “no choice”, isn’t it? On the one hand, yah for feminism and the opportunity to have careers outside the home that aren’t just placeholders until we can snag a husband! On the other hand, pretending your cashier at Target would rather be making $8 an hour ringing up your face cream and Funions instead of at home with her own kid is bullshit.

I know plenty of moms who love their jobs, love their work, love having adult conversations around the water cooler about The Real Housewives of Wherever but who would quit and stay home with their kids in a HEARTBEAT if they suddenly won the lottery and could never work another day in their life. I also know that if childcare was free and I could have any job I wanted in the whole world I would absolutely leave my kids to be raised by strangers (said in your best judgy voice) a few days a week while I trained dolphins at Sea World (hey, sometimes your dream at 6 years old is STILL YOUR DREAM).

But real life doesn’t give everyone those options. If you’re a single mom? You have no choice. In a lot of cities there is no way to support a family on one income. Sometimes your partner gets laid off. Or maybe their job doesn’t offer health insurance. Or maybe they’re in school pursuing their dream and you’re supporting them – so you have no choice but to work to put food on the table but it is BY choice that you have chosen that choice.

There are days where my choice to stay home doesn’t even feel like a choice. SOMEONE has to watch these kids and we can’t afford a nanny. I mean really, if I had my CHOICE I’d spend one day a week at the spa getting massages and drinking cocktails so I could be the super calm, zen-like mother I aspire to be.

I don’t think “why women work” is something that can be measured or put in a pie chart or even summed up in a sentence. There is no box on a questionnaire that says “all and also none of the above” so using it as part of a your political movement can be tricky. I think the only thing you could get everyone to agree to would be that in an ideal world all women could make the choice they WANTED to make and not the choice they had to make.

So, why do you/do you not work?

Here’s my answer – I always planned to be a stay-at-home-mom eventually. We are able to afford it right now. I became a military spouse right after college and never established a career I would have wanted to go back to post-kids and I haven’t found anything I can do from home (besides blogging, obviously, which doesn’t exactly lead to BUCKETS OF MONEY.) So I think it is about 80% by choice and 20% not by choice although that’s the least scientific percentage ever.

I gave Caroline a bath the other night, and it ended up being one of my top 5 best moments as a mom.

Normally, bedtimes are a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am assembly line to get the kids washed and into bed as quickly and painlessly as possible. That is 99% of my advice for parents of 2 close-in-age kids: GIVE THEM THE SAME BEDTIME. Not only does it mean you’re off the parenting clock faster, it also means when the day comes that you have to do it all alone you’ll be set up for success.  Sure, a shared bath can get a little… splashy, but the kids seem to like it and it turns a 2 hour ordeal into a 30 minute routine, start to finish. If they’re not particularly dirty and don’t need shampoo E and I can do it in 17 minutes flat. In the Parenting Olympics, we’d be the Michael Phelps of bedtimes.

But on this particular day, Little Evan had an extremely late nap and wasn’t even close to tired when Caroline was rubbing her eyes and making sad little whimpering noises. Rather than try to keep her awake (I’m not a TOTAL idiot) or force the toddler into bed (BAHAHAHAHA), I decided a split bath time was in order and took my girl upstairs for some mommy-daughter time.

I worry a lot that Caroline isn’t getting the kind of extremely focused attention I gave Little Evan his first year. There’s less staring at her while she sleeps and more wondering how long until I can sneak out of the room and collapse in front of Top Chef. It’s not that I don’t have enough LOVE to give her – my heart makes love faster than I could ever give it out – I just don’t have enough TIME. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t THINK I have enough time. There are dishes to be washed! Laundry to be folded! Halloween costumes to make! Playgroups to attend! Quick, I must do ALL THE THINGS because otherwise I lose at motherhood!

But isn’t motherhood really less about doing stuff and more about bath time and rubber duckies and bubble crowns? Watching her splash in the tub, I was struck by how at that moment her entire life was right there in that bathroom. I am the sun to her planet. I could have a whole solar system of kids orbiting me day and night but as far as she’s concerned I am enough, even when I’m not feeling particularly shiny.

It was one of those moments where your mind is blown and you suddenly remember parenting isn’t just playgroups and butt-wiping. It’s RAISING A HUMAN BEING. It’s amazing I’m even being allowed to try.

E’s job is changing after this week. It’s nothing dramatic, just new orders to a new command, but new orders that mean I’m going to be doing a lot more single parenting. I’ll be doing bathtimes and bedtimes and wake-ups and mornings and dinners and snacks and running out of TIME for ALL THE THINGS every single day. I feel overwhelmed already and it hasn’t even started, so it’s good for my mental health to have moments like Caroline’s bath.

Little Evan speaks his own language. I think it’s almost English but I can’t be sure, since most English speakers seem to have a hard time understanding him. Maybe it’s a NickJunioreese, a crazy mix of Spanish, Chinese, and speech-impedimented English picked up from those damn Wonder Pets.

“Meenah” is lemonade. Unless it means banana. You have to look around for a banana. “Peesdar!” is police car. He can say “car” correctly, but when he sees “flash lights” he gets to excited it comes out as one word. “Brusey” is our dog Brutus. He used to say Brutus until he spent some time with my parent’s dog Hershey, and now he smooshes their names together. “Ditty” is kitty, which is an improvement over the previous pronunciation. “Fall denoun” is fall down, which is so cute I don’t even care that it’s wrong. “Bushit” actually means push it, although I don’t think anyone believes me.

As much as I love that he’s friendly and outgoing and eager to talk to everyone, I’m getting tired of translating everything he says to strangers at the grocery store and strangers at the mall and strangers at the playground and strangers in general. I’m not tired at HIM, I’m tired at OTHER PEOPLE. I can only say “I’m sorry, he’s hard to understand” so many times. And the truth is, it’s more a matter of busy people not paying attention than anything else. See that pinecone he’s holding? Maybe he’s saying “pinecone!” You asked him if Caroline was his sister, maybe “bebeh siher” might mean “baby sister!” Most grown-ups rush in and say “Oh aren’t you handsome! How old are you? Are you a good boy? Bye-bye now!” all in one quick breath and then breeze back out without pausing for a response. Or if they do they’re really asking ME, and wouldn’t even notice if he tried to answer. Evan could say “I’m two, lady, and your wig isn’t fooling anyone” and they’d just coo some more and wander off to finish their shopping.

I’ve been around enough two-and-a-half-year-olds-who-then-grow-into-three-and-a-half-year-olds to know this is just a phase. His brain thinks thoughts he wants to share but his mouth just can’t keep up. He learns a hundred new words a day and can’t keep them all straight. Whole sentences come tumbling out in a jumble and he gets frustrated. He’ll grown into it eventually and the whole world will hear what he has to say Dino Dan and race cars and big diggers and baseball and everything else. He’ll stop saying “More meena peees!” and start saying “Mama, can I have a banana?”

Although yesterday he called me “MOM”. I am not OK with being MOM yet. MOM is for surly, eye-rolling teenagers. So maybe I don’t mind translating just a little longer.