Thursday, December 29, 2011

Motherhood really should be classified as a mental illness

Wikipedia, wealth of completely accurate information that it is, characterizes a "mental illness," in part, as "a psychological or behavioral pattern that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development or a person's culture."  And while that mom certainly seems commonplace nowadays, my madness tonight certainly seems outside of MY normal development or culture.

I'm a pretty rational creature.  In fact, recently, when speaking with the wife of a male client of mine about VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean, for my male readers or those of you moms who have been lucky enough not to have a c-section before your last child or 14 months before you're about to have your second, unexpected although delightful child), he remarked, "I wouldn't have expected you to have an interest in that."  That's right.  I'm like a dude.  I do the stuff that I have to, I try to remain logical and unemotional about things that are outside of my control and I only really admit to being a freak on the internet.  I assume that babies come from storks, or at least that it doesn't hurt nearly as bad as tv depicts labor and delivery and that a c-section is a cake walk.  Okay, that's not the point of this post, but I'm a closet hippie (and apparent emotional basket case), it's not what I lead with, you know?

So I surprised not only my husband, but also myself when I skulked back to my room after Kaia's bedtime in tears.  See, she's been in this phase lately.  Her official language is "I Don't Want To," and most of the natives speak "No."  So, like the circus clown that I am, I make everything a game, give her options and make lots of silly faces to keep her from the doldrums of "No, I don't want to."

We did our usual routine - we got our jammy balls on (yes, I said "jammy balls" - it refers to the jammies with basket/base/foot balls on them that she HAD TO HAVE because baby brother got some....and, for what it's worth, I handed these over a month early as a bribe because she wouldn't get her pajamas on one night), we brushed our teeth singing, counting and letting her play in the water so she'd give us 8 uninterrupted seconds to brush all the cookies we bribed her with earlier off her teeth and we climbed into my bed to watch Caillou and Kipper.  Thankfully she watches reasonably bearable television.

She snatched my iPhone from me, where I was quietly ignoring the cartoons and reading a book, and opened the Dora app.  I let her until Kipper was over, but being that I'm a sleep Nazi, it was time to go night night.  Believe it or not, she did not want to go to night night.  I always remind her we still have to go potty.  No reason to bother trying to rush the master procrastinator.  I offered options, a little circus trick I learned over the last year or so.  I said, "You have two choices to make.  You can either go on the big potty or the little potty AND you can either go with Mommy or Daddy."  I was pretty confident that she'd pick me.  She LOVES me.  "I wanna go all by myself."  Smugly, I said, "Okay, go ahead."  No shit, the kid took herself to the bathroom, turned on the light, managed out of her feety pajamas, went potty only in the toilet, wiped and jammied herself.  WTF.  I was a little flustered by her ability and at how dispensable I suddenly became.  Being that I'm not a completely selfish human and hoping I could win back her favor, I congratulated her and told her how proud I was.  Much more timidly, I asked, "Do you want Mommy or Daddy to take you to bed?"  She said, "I want to walk."  I'd had it.  Tears.  Walk?  She's NEVER not been carried to bed.  Ever.  And unless I'm not in the house, she's only been carried by anyone other than me, like 5 times.  She always picks me and she always lets me carry her.  She hopped off the bed, walked to her room, opened the door (leaving it open for me groveling behind her) and waited by her bedside.  I came back to let Kevin know he could go in and say goodnight and when I went back in, I asked if she wanted her lullaby.  She nodded.  As soon as I started to sing, she said, "No Mommy, I want to sing it."  WHAAAAAT?!  She sang the entire thing.  I cried quietly enough not to be heard and hugged both Kaia little Mikko extra tight because I'm pretty sure they'll be starting college in a few weeks.

I came back sobbing.  I'm not sure if Kevin was more amused or surprised, but he definitely did NOT know what to say.  He reminded me that she still can't make her own lunch, so it was probably no big deal.  But I do, in fact, feel like a crazy person who is developing outside of my normal.  The whole point of raising children is to create independent human beings out of them, right?  So why am I so Spaz about this?  It's because despite how easy things get as they get independent, we're all masochists and want to be our children's circus clowns.  Or something like that.  Perhaps tomorrow I'll show her the trailer for It and tell her a thing or two about circus clowns.  I bet that alone would have her clinging to me for another 5 years.  Okay, maybe not.

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