"...or keep your snit to yourself."

     A friend of mine posted this on Facebook the other day and I had to share it here. Let me preface it by saying since it caused a bit of a stir when I re-posted in on Facebook, I'm not looking for argumentative drama. I'm not saying stay at home parents have it harder than working parents or visa versa. I'm not saying "boohoo, poor me". I just think it's interesting insight into what many people who have never been a stay at home parent think is an easy job. 

Apparently I'm a Creepster

Holy cow Flash, let's get out of here!

Me at the park.
Hey, at least I'm out
 of my sweatpants!

     The park that Flash Speedman and I usually go to is never busy, in fact more often than not we're the only people there. This seemed a little anti-social of us so yesterday we decided to venture out to a park that we had never been to before, it may have been Mistake #1. This park was busy, like insane children in every direction, wondering if the play structure was designed to hold that many 40 lb kids at one time, busy. It seemed like the majority of kids there were older, rough housing, screaming, hitting boys and Flash was obviously overwhelmed (honestly, so was I) so we hung back for a little while, taking in the mayhem from afar. 





     Luckily, I had brought along my camera hoping to get some cute fall pictures of Flash, so we started having a little photo session, Mistake #2. It's like every mom/grandmother/nanny radar in a 10 mile radius went off, "Stranger at OUR park with a camera! DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!" To the best of my knowledge I am not a threatening looking person. I can't imagine that I looked like some pervert, skulking around, trying to take pics of kids I don't know. I was just a mom taking pictures of my kid playing in leafs, to send to the Grandparents. 

    Finally, a large hoard of possibly psychotically deranged boys were rounded up for volleyball practice and we made our move to the playground. Flash instantly took of to exploring leaving me to take my mothers advise and "go meet other moms", Mistake #3. The other moms obviously had not yet forgotten that I was a possible child snatcher and suddenly I was the pimply faced new kid surrounded by the popular girls in a weird high school flashback. I was not to be associated with. Lesson learned, from here on out we will do nothing to call attention to ourselves, especially anything that might brand me as belonging on some sort of registry for felons.

Introducing Flash Speedman

Flash Speedman at her finest!

     Today feels like a good day to introduce the person that makes me qualified (however little) to write a blog about my experiences with motherhood, my baby girl, Flash Speedman. Flash will be 16 months next week and she is the reason for most of the joy and most of the stress in my life. You hear people with kids say "I never knew I could love somebody so much" and I always thought 'Yeah, sure. You know what I really love more than anything? My collection of LAMB sneakers." And then Flash came along and everything else went out the window (not literally, throwing my LAMBs out would be tragic).

     Now before someone feels the need to contact Child Protective Services, because generally only an unstable person would bestow such a name upon a child, Flash Speedman is only a moniker for the sake of this blog. While I was still in the early months of my pregnancy my aunt Ellen suggested we name our little fetus so we could stop referring to it as "it" in that pre-knowing-the-sex stage. I don't remember how Flash Speedman came to be that nickname, something tells me The Handy Man came up with it. Anyways, once we found out we were having a girl and after the painful process of choosing a real name, Flash sort of fell by the wayside, forgotten until last night when I realized it needed to make a come back. 

    Flash Speedman fits her perfectly now, she is constantly on the go! After months of insisting on holding our hands when she wanted to walk around she finally realized that we were slowing her down and has been walking on her own for about a month and staying still is not an option. She wants to be involved in everything that she shouldn't be and wants nothing to do with the thing's you'd like her to be. She likes rearranging all the furniture and emptying drawers and cabinets. She can spot an unbaby proofed area from a mile away and has a radar for trouble thats always spot on. And you know what? I love it. Just when I think I have managed to keep her away from something she figures out how to get it and I realize what  learning process it must have been for her and what a learning process it is for me.

What begins with an A?

Yep. Just about have the whole thing memorized. Just try me.

     I can't read. Well, technically I am fairly literate but I physically can not read a book cover to cover unless it's Dr. Suess's ABC book. 'Big A, little a, what begins with an A? Auntie Annies alligator. A...a...A.'

It's uncanny the similarities between Auntie Annie and and Baby Girls Granna Anna.

 Now don't get me wrong, I love reading to Baby Girl. She's just recently started to get into it and I love when she toddles over to hand me a book and awkwardly tries to figure out how to sit down in my lap. I don't mind that she only wants me to read the same three books to her over and over again, all. day. long. I do however miss reading a book for my own pure enjoyment. I even bought myself a Kindle for Christmas last year in the hopes that my new gadget would get me excited enough to read a book. How many books have I loaded onto my Kindle? Four! How many of those four have I completed? Zero! And it's not like I'm trying to fit in a few chapters of Ulysses or War and Peace before bed, I'm choosing easy reads. I think I got one chapter into Tina Fey's Bossypants, which I assumed would be a quick fun read, temporarily forgetting that nothing is quick or fun when a toddler is screaming at you to play peek-a-boo. I had almost entirely forgotten that I even had the Kindle until I stumbled upon it in our living room fire place. I don't even remember deciding the fireplace was the best place for me to keep it, thats how little I think about it. So, as a sign of respect to this abandoned device, I'm pledging to wipe the sticky goo from its beautiful screen (again, no recollection that my hands were covered in jelly the last time I touched or maybe licked it) and finish reading Bossypants before Baby Girls starts college.


'Big Z, little z, what begins with a Z? A Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz, as you can plainly see.'

Crap. I'm one step away from a Snuggie.

     I have always loved lounging in a comfy, cozy, baggy pair of sweatpants. This has long been my standard uniform for vegging out at end of a long day, during which I was dressed like any respectable adult. The problem is, now I have Mommy Sweatpants Syndrome or MMS. I wear sweats everyday, all day, 24/7, morning noon and night. I even try to dress them up when I wear them in public by donning expensive accessories, hoping this will somehow make them socially acceptable.  I think my poor husband is less than thrilled that I've contracted MSS.

Examples of celebrity moms with MSS, one of those Teen Moms (they all blend together in my mind) and Britney Spears. You can tell Britney has a bad case by her lack of a bra in public.

                 
      The excessive sweatpants wearing began when I was pregnant. After seeing too many moms I knew fall victim to MSS I went into my pregnancy announcing "I will never be one of those pregnant women who give up trying to look like a civilized humans. I'm going to make all you other mommies-to-be wish you looked this good!" I mean if Victoria Beckham, who is WAY OLDER than me, can look that good incubating her offspring, why can't I?

Eat your heart out Victoria!                               

I tried, I really did. After keeping my regular pants on using the hair rubber band trick stopped working, around the five month mark, I shopped at all the trendy preggers stores and boutiques. I watched Entertainment Tonight and read the trashy mags to see what the power moms of Hollywood wore when they were expecting. I bought clothes from Hiedi Klums maternity line. I bought a pair of designer maternity jean that cost more than any pair of jeans I had ever bought. The sales lady told me after my pregnancy I could have the ever so sexy elastic waist band replaced with a regular one and keep wearing them, SOLD! How can I lose? "I'm going to be the cutest pregnant chick ever!" Then I gained over fifty pounds on an already not-so-slim bod. Alright, slight set back, I didn't foresee having a forty pound baby or ever wanting to eat that much ice cream, but I can still be adorable! It turns out not all dreams are meant to come true. Once I stopped being able to squeeze my swollen feet into flip flops, I gave my designer maternity jeans the bird and slipped into my trusty sweatpants. There would be time to achieve fashion greatness after my daughter was born, I was so naive. Baby Girl came along and it turned out she was not forty pounds, not even close. So while I learned how to be a mom to a newborn and strategized on how I was going to get rid of the excess me that had been created by Ben & Jerry's and my c-sec, I fell back on my trusty sweatpants.


     Now we're almost sixteen months out from when my daughter came along and I'm back to fitting into most of my old clothes. In fact, I weight less now than I did around the time I got pregnant. Baby Girl is getting to be pretty independent at times, allowing me the occasional free moment in which I could do my hair and makeup and put on real grown up clothes but I rarely do and I've run out of excuses for why I don't. Granted, being a stay at home mom takes away most of the motivating factors to seek treatment for my Mommy Sweatpants Syndrome. I don't exactly feel the need to dress to impress when the only people around to impress are usually covered in a thin film of peanut butter and snot or dresses in grease covered work clothes, but perhaps I need that take a stand against my MSS, to make me feel better about myself. So that the neighbors stop saying I "must be artsy", by which I assume they mean "you damn dirty hippie!" So I can stand tall (presumably I'll be wearing heels) and proclaim "I can be fashionable and a mom! I can be what I've always dreamt of!" For now the dream will have to wait, I have to fold a giant load of laundry, it's made up mostly of sweatpants.