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Guest Post: How To Approach Your “Baby” Going To Middle School With Sanity and Clarity.

By Elle on May 10, 2013 in guest post

This guest post comes from Monica who blogs at A Day In The Life. Also check out Top 10 Ways I Am Nicer Than A Substitute and How To Survive The Second To The Last Month Of School.

1. Allow your pessimistic nature to completely overshadow any vestige of optimism about the future of your middle schooler that you could have managed.

2. Read and listen to any article or news program about the prevalence of bullying in middle school in all countries of the world and possibly the moon and other universes.

3. Second guess every decision you have ever made with said child all the way back to the decision for no epidural….and possibly your choice of a father (just kidding, hubby….that was only after I had exhausted all other things to worry about….oh, and after a few beverages).

4. Encourage and then finally nag your hubby until he is forced to have “the talk” with your soon-to-be-middle-school boy so that hubby is so nervous that his awkward conversation about growing up elicits a look from your son that looks something like this:

and you are still not exactly sure if your son knows How Babies Are Born.

5. Question the years you have invested in piano lessons. Should you have opted for krav maga lessons instead?

6. Begin to treat your soon-to-be-middle-schooler like a two year old and attempt to do things that he hasn’t let you do in years: tuck him in, read him books, kiss his cheek.

7. And, in a reverse of opinion to #6 worry obsessively about all the things he still doesn’t know and attempt to teach him a little about all these things in the few short weeks left of fifth grade. (How to cook, How to launder, How to make a bed properly, How to treat girls, How to find a wife, How to drive, How to say no to drugs, How to do karate, etc.) (And, by the way, this will again elicit The Look pictured in #4.)

8. Write about all your fears on the Internet so that good friends, loyal readers, and random strangers can console you and tell you everything will be just fine. (Except if it isn’t.)

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Guest Post: So, This Is Daddyhood.

By Elle on April 10, 2013 in guest post

*This is from writer, David, who blogs at Bring Me Death… Or A Sandwich. His is definitely one of my newest, favorite blogs out there. He’s a married dad with a son and newborn daughter. You can catch him on Twitter, @thedavidcmurphy, and check out some more of his blog posts…. Return of the Living Dead and Clowning Around.

So, This Is Daddyhood.

When you’re fortunate enough – as it seems I am – to be a parent to both a toddler, and a newborn, there are certain changes that need to be made. Some might call them sacrifices, but I think that implies some kind of volition, or decision-making involved. These aren’t sacrifices, so much as enforcements.

Getting sent to a North Korean labor camp, for instance, isn’t a sacrifice; you don’t choose that just to make North Korea the awesome place it undoubtedly is. It’s forced upon you. Just like my two miniature little Nazis aren’t asking me kindly to give up that which I hold dear; they’re fucking demanding it.

Nonetheless, I love them immensely, and have made these changes without complaint. Ok, that’s a lie, there’s quite a lot of complaint, but they don’t seem to care – those two are just like their Mother. Anyway, it’s all about priorities: I have to work, I have to get up three times a night to help with my daughter’s bottles/change diapers/endure screaming.

I have to get up at 7.30 to give my son his breakfast/change his pull-up/endure screaming. This means there are certain things I must give up: sleep? Nope, no time for that. Time to myself? Pfft, forget it. A social life? I haven’t had one of those since before the first kid came along.

By now, I can’t remember what any of my friends look like. Time to blog? I’m writing this in work, on Microsoft Outlook, pretending it’s an email. Alone time with the wife? Mwah ha ha ha; that ship hasn’t arrived at port since last summer. I do get to eat, which is nice. I feel grateful for that. You don’t get that luxury in your garden-variety North Korean labor camp.

In a nutshell, there aren’t many things harder than being a parent of two younglings under the age of four, while attempting to hold down a fulltime job (attempting being the crucial word here – yesterday I fell asleep at my PC; face-planting the keyboard every few minutes was the only thing that kept me awake).

To be fair, slaving away in a North Korean labor camp is probably one of those things that is harder. Complex quantum physics? That too. Being the parent of three kids under the age of four, and trying to hold down a fulltime job? Ok, you’re now officially fucking insane. And… that’s it: there is literally nothing else harder than my life right now.

You can’t even numb yourself to it. Fortunately, I don’t drink anymore. Alcohol doesn’t agree with me. In fact we don’t so much disagree as have full-on brawls: ninja-style, with nunchucks, and other weapons designed to maim and kill. So yeah, me and alcohol don’t hang out anymore. I did, however, drink when my son was brand new. Things were great in the evening. I’d stay up drinking and watching TV, not a care in the world, while my wife and baby slept soundly.

But the mornings, oh God, those next mornings were sent from hell. A hangover and a screaming, hungry baby? Why they go together like a horse and … a fucking glue factory. If, like me, you’re thinking “hey, well why not just drink in the morning as well?” then yeah, you too should probably think about quitting.

You may have read that I recently hurt my back, and was on really strong painkillers. I think I blogged about it, but I’m not sure – I was on really strong painkillers. They did make things better. I slept soundly at night, and was waaay less grouchy in the morning: after a muscle relaxer and two Percocet I was literally professing my love to my Mother-in-law (Yeah that’s awkward now). But, I had an excuse to sit on my ass and not work. In fact, not only was it expected of me: it was a requirement. Doctor’s orders!

My wife would be running around taking care of everything: the kids, the laundry, meals, me… while I sat drooling, watching TV and getting the munchies. I’m pretty sure if I was just a regular ol’ pill-head, my wife wouldn’t have been quite so charitable, and that would have sucked. The buzz of oxycodone is more difficult to appreciate when you’re changing shitty diapers, and getting yelled at for falling asleep in work.

The good news is being a parent only gets harder as your kids get older, or so I’m told by absolutely fucking everyone with a kid older than mine. I might have just met you and the first words out of your mouth will be “enjoy it, it doesn’t get any easier than this” or “you think it’s bad now? Wait ’til they reach their teens”.

And the thing is: it’s fucking true. My son is exponentially more incorrigible than he was a year ago. My daughter is a veritable Saint in comparison to him. And all I can think is: I have 17 years, ten months and 12 days of this left!

Help me.

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Guest Post: What happens when you can’t sleep and obsessive thoughts keep us up.

By Elle on March 7, 2013 in guest post

By the time you read this, we’ll be at the children’s hospital and hopefully all goes well with the hummingbird. This guest post comes from the wonderful Delia from Poop On my Hands (Twitter @PoopOnMyHands). I can totally relate to this post since I’m a major insomniac. You should know Delia by now because she is awesome. If not, go over and check out her blog. I’ll wait. Okay, you’re back…. you can also check out this post… My daughter and I joined a commune, or we turned goth…. can’t decide.

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About 3 months of so ago, Wendy, a close friend of mine, posted an article about how she has insomnia. I read it, felt sympathy to her, and thought, “sucks to be you”…. Well, karma is a bitch. And now I am the fool who can’t sleep.

Lately my baby boy has been waking around 3:00 am, then again around 5:00 am. Not cool!!!! I usually can get him back to sleep the first time around. A gentle push of a pacifier back into his mouth and a stumble back into bed, usually takes care of it. The 5:00 am waking requires a bottle stuck in his mouth, and if I am lucky he will sleep for another 1-2 hours.

Most the time I can go back to sleep after the 3:00 am waking. It takes hard work and determination to fall back asleep at 3:00 am. The trick is to stay half sleep during the whole pacifier/bottle process, then stumble back to bed and try really hard to not think at all, before falling back to sleep. The moment, one semi-intelligent thought enters my mind, BAM!!!! no sleep for me, thank you very much. The 5:00 am waking, is a long shot for falling back asleep all together.

This morning, at 5:00 am, I stumbled back to my cozy bed, ready to doze back to sleep for at least another 90 minutes… and then it happened. What you are about to experience, is a walk-through of a series of strange and obsessive, random thoughts that enter my mind, as I am try and fall back to sleep for the last 90 minutes, of what is suppose to a calming and restful sleep cycle:

Ok, if you can just relax your mind and body now, you can have 90 minutes of sleep. Do it, relax…. RELAX!!!!! Ok really, you need to breath in and out, and relax. Please go to sleep.

Does fruit snacks count as a healthy breakfast? Shit, I really need to go grocery shopping.

I don’t think I have given my kids vegetables for an entire week. I am a horrible parent. I am going to scar my kids for life and cause them to go into therapy.

I seriously need to remember to pay that bill. Oh man, I hope I don’t forget….. Pay the bill, pay the bill, pay the bill.

Go to sleep!!!!! Just go to sleep!!!! Why can’t you go to sleep????? Ok, ok, relax, you can do this. If you go to sleep now, you can have at least another 60 min before you have to get up.

Shit I have to pee. No forget that. If I get up to pee, I am going to get cold and then I will never ever get back to sleep. I might as well just get up and start the day if I cave and go pee. I don’t have to pee, I don’t have pee.

Lovely girl, won’t you stay…. won’t you stay…. stay with me… (that is a Lumineers song lyric in case you didn’t know.)

I wonder what Kim and Courtney are doing in Miami right now. I could just get up and watch it and just give up on this whole sleep thing.

Maybe I should get up and take a shower. I showed last night, but maybe I smell. Old people smell bad. Maybe I smell like an old person. Oh shit, that would suck balls!

I really hope my skinny jeans fit today. I shouldn’t have had that ice cream last night. Maybe if I go poop before putting them on, with the right underwear, they won’t be too tight. Maybe if I had cooked more veggis for my family, my skinny jeans would fit today.

What will I blog about tonight. Maybe I should just sleep tonight instead of blogging. I think my entire 16 readers would understand if I didn’t post tonight. No, no… I really should keep up with it. I will never get more readers unless I keep blogging….

For the love of god woman, go to sleep!!!!! Ok let’s try some meditation techniques.

I think somewhere along those lines I did fall back asleep…. for about a 10 minutes. Then my 6 year old woke up and came into our bed. And basically it was all over from there. Time to get up and start the day. Maybe tomorrow I will have better luck. It is either that, or I am getting up and watching Kim and Courtney on TV at 5:00 am. Their lives are more exciting than the OCD that runs through my mind. Or maybe not…

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Guest Post: Yoga Etiquette… Hint… Wear Panties.

By Elle on February 27, 2013 in guest post

This guest post comes from Delia from Poop On My Hands. Make sure to check out these other posts. Look Out, Mommy’s Getting Sick, What Makes A Marriage Work, and My 6 year-old Threw Out The F-Bomb.

A year after giving birth to my second child, I decided it was finally time to get back in shape. Took me long enough, right? So why not start with yoga? I laugh at myself as I write this. Yoga, while muscle building, and calming of the mind, is not very calorie burning. And at this point, I really need to lose about 20-30 pounds. But hey, you gotta start somewhere. So I joined the gym down the street.

I have gone to about 3 yoga classes, but I am not a newbie to yoga. I have gone on and off through out my life. My husband thinks I should just do yoga at home with a video, but there is something about having an instructor live and in my face. Forcing me to do the poses correct, and giving me bad looks if I am looking like I may want to bail in the middle of class for a smoothie.

So over the past, on and off spouts of yoga, I have come up with a few interesting observations of the do’s and don’ts of yoga etiquette.

1. Yoga Fashion. Make sure before you go to yoga class, that you check your yoga pants for any holes or fashion malfunctions. For example, it is good to do a Downward Facing Dog pose, while checking out your butt in the mirror. You don’t want any plumbers crack showing off to the person behind you. The other day, we were doing a forward bend, I noticed the women in front of me had a big hole in the crouch of her pants. And let me tell you, she was not wearing panties. Gross!!!!

2. Mat Placement. If you arrive to class and students have already lined up their yoga mats along the backside of the yoga studio, please start the next line with your yoga mat toward the front of the class. Who cares if you are closer to the yoga instructor, or if the people behind you can see your poses. We all are in our own little worlds anyway. And quite frankly we are not paying attention to you falling over while trying to do Tree pose.

This woman the other day decided to park her yoga mat between myself and the woman next to me along the back of the wall. The entire front half of the yoga studio was free. You would have thought the yoga teacher had cooties (maybe it was bad B.O. that I just didn’t notice, not sure). I couldn’t believe when she set up right next to me. I gave her a very passive aggressive look, but I don’t think she got the hint. I should have just moved my mat to the front of class, but shit, I was there first, fair and square.

3. Don’t mess with Shavasana. My favorite part of yoga is the end when we get to do Shavasana, or Corpse Pose. You get to lay flat on your back and basically fall sleep for 5 min of peace and quite before the end of class. I mean, it is a time for emtying your third eye and become one with the Universe, as you absorb all the “juiciness” your body has built up from the workout. (Have you noticed that yoga instructors really like saying the word “juiciness?”) In my household, to get 5 min of laying in complete quietness is a dream come true. So nobody better mess with me during my Shavasana.

Well…. last week during Shavasana, I was just about there… My chakras were aligned, my third eye was open, and I was in lala land. And then it happened. Some idiot decided their yoga time was over. They felt the need to get up, roll up their mat, walk across the studio on top of the wood floor to put their shit away, then walk all the way back across the floor to get her shoes on, and then out the door, slamming the door behind her. I was pissed. I mean, there I am trying to be “one with my soul” and all I can think of is, “WTF!!!! Seriously lady???!!!! Do you want me to get up and bitch-slap you?” Ok that is a bitch harsh. But needless to say, I was totally disrupted from my only 5 minutes a week total peace and quite.

In the end, I do love yoga class. It is a time to get away from the daily grind and focus on stretching, balancing, mindfulness and movement. Note to self though, I think I need to check my own pants before class next week. Fashion nightmare!

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Guest Post: Freestylin’

By Elle on February 3, 2013 in guest post

This guest post comes from Caroline who you can find on her blog, Busyland, and on Twitter @busylandb. She recently had a birthday so she needs lots of birthday wishes!

Happy Birthday, Caroline!!! She’s also expecting her second child in May! Congratulations! I should add a few more exclamation points!!!

Who is Caroline? So glad you asked….. I’m a Florida girl that would never call herself a Southern Belle. Trying to replace all the snarky sarcasm with rainbows and sunshine but it’s hard when my pale skin burns easily. Jesus in my heart, family is my core, and friends are my daily medication.

Some great posts to check out on Busyland:

Geraldine Hoff, daisy dukes, and weight loss - Caroline lost 25 pounds!

Four – A new addition arriving!

Worry – Pregnancy and worry.

10 Toes – And the baby is going to be a ….

Trying to figure out some things to do for free? Look no further!

Things that are free:

Hanging out with my boys

Laughing with my little sister

Blogging

Running on my treadmill

Pushing the stroller around the block

Reading books on my Kindle (purchased for $0.00)

Facebook stalking

Spooning

Watching cable at my parents house

Snuggling

Reading bedtime stories

Deep couch conversations with my girlfriends

Watching the ducks at the lake

Talking

Cleaning the house

Dancing in the living room

Playing Wii tennis with a little trash talk in between serves

Loving

Come May money may be tight but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be bored!

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See what Caroline is up to on her blog, Busyland! If you would like to guest post on This Is Mommyhood, email me at elle dot mommyhood at gmail dot com. You don’t need a blog to guest post either!

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Guest Post: Buh Bye Baby Books. Don’t Let The Door Hit You In The Ass.

By Elle on January 24, 2013 in guest post

This guest post comes from Megan who’s awesome blog is Rockabye Bucktown. Some more great posts to check out are Baby Gear 101, Food For Picky Eaters – Because deodorant is in a food group all by itself, and The Active Mom. Megan has a little bit of everything on her blog so go on over and say hi!

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I was always the “teacher’s pet” type. You know, the one that raised her hand incessantly in class and did extra credit if my grade was on the cusp of an A- (insert eye roll). This behavior has followed me around my entire life – throughout college, grad school, my career, planning my wedding (fortunately, I also married someone just like me who accepted borderline OCD and insanity), and definitely carrying a child.

I say “carrying” instead of “raising” a child. Because all of that excessive research and associated craziness stopped when my little guy entered this world and overachieving seemed meaningless and insignificant.

Of course, we tried applying ALL of the knowledge that we read about for the previous nine months. And some of it worked. But you know what? A lot of it didn’t. There’s not manual when it comes to raising a child. I read books on “what to expect” and raising “happy, healthy babies.”

When I was told (by an author, no one that I actually knew) that my son should no longer be eating baby food, I stopped feeding him purees and started feeding him table food. He starved and woke up every night crying. Um, who is benefiting here? Not two weeks later, he started pushing the mashed sweet potatoes away and attempted the chopped cucumbers (and yes, my kid loves cucumbers, who would have thought?).

When the book told me that he was “supposed to be using a spoon by now”, I shoved one in his hand and gave it a whirl (I am still cleaning up that yogurt mess). But upon giving him a fork instead, he thrived, eagerly plunging it at his watermelon and shoveling it in his mouth. Don’t even get me started about taking the bottle away from your one year old…ain’t no way that’s happening any time soon.

While this may not be news to anyone that has toddlers or older children, it was an epiphany for me. I donated most of those “productive parenting” books and want to set fire to the rest. You know what makes my guy “happy and healthy?” Goldfish crackers and Thomas the Train. Every single day.

Next week, it may be animal crackers and Sesame Street. Who cares? As long as he is smiling and loving life, I am doing something right (regardless of what baby author approves).

Come visit me and my adventures as a SAHM at Rockabye Bucktown.

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Guest Post: Confessions Of A Mimi

By Elle on January 16, 2013 in guest post

This guest post comes from Ericka who recently started her blog, One Hot Mimi (it’s not currently working). Go on over and welcome her to the blogging world! If you would like to guest post, whether you have a blog or not, drop me an email at elle dot mommyhood at gmail.com.

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The word grandmother makes me cringe, but so do any other terms that refer to it. When you become one, especially at my age, it’s best to quickly pick the least offensive name and just go with it! Besides, Mimi is Mariah Carey’s nickname.

Although I am not a big fan of Mimi Carey, if that diva bitch can pull it off, so can I. After all, I sing but I’m not a total note whore. I guess that’s why I never got a record deal.

I have one granddaughter… strike that! I mean I have a little girl that my youngest daughter gave birth to but she’s been with me since she was a newborn. Most people that don’t know us think she is my daughter. They say “Oh! She looks just like you!” “But you are too young to be a grandma!”

They look at me crazy when I attempt to explain that I’m just a hot young granny raising her granddaughter but don’t call me a GILF! My husband says I’m still a MILF. (A Mimi I’d like to ____.)

Maybe I should stop saying that and just keep it real but the truth hurts way too much.

We were granted guardianship when Calee was just 6 weeks old. We didn’t have 9 months to prepare for a baby. It was rushed and bittersweet. She is so precious to me but the circumstances were so incredibly sad and stressful. When a baby comes into this world, it should be celebrated. I looked at her tiny face and promised her I would do anything to keep her safe.

There have been many challenges to being a Mimi raising a now toddler. I think the worst is that I have Lupus and Fibromyalgia. I am in constant excruciating pain and I stay exhausted. The simple things like preparing a meal, doing laundry, giving Calee a bath or just taking a shower are almost impossible tasks.

The truth is, I need someone to take care of me. It makes me sad and most days I feel worthless. However, when she sits on my lap, gives me a hug and smiles at me, it’s the best feeling in the world! She is happy, loved and safe.

I just recently started a blog, One Hot Mimi, and would love to connect with other moms and Mimis. I adore Elle’s blog and What The Flicka?

I’ve been a faithful reader since discovering both almost a year ago. It’s nice to relate to others going through the same things and laughter really is the best medicine. Thank you Elle for making me laugh my ass off and offering me the chance to sit on Ryan Goslings face first. I hope you had a wonderful birthday, my friend. Xoxo