One of Those Mothers

Today I wanted to share one of the wisest things that my mother has ever said to me.

“Motherhood separates the women from the men.”

When she said this, I cracked up, because I really expected her to say “girls” instead of “men.”  ”Motherhood separates women from girls” would have been an only mildly helpful platitude, but my mom doesn’t really go for platitudes.

What she did say is brilliant because it works on so many levels.  At first glance it looks almost like a tautology.  Of course, men can’t give birth, so the ability to give birth is one of the main things that distinguishes the sexes.  I think she meant a lot more than this, though.

One of the most difficult things for me about having a baby (I think I overuse that phrase)  was the sudden change in the dynamic of my marriage.  Sam moved to NYC with me so that I could go to grad school, and we didn’t really have very different roles our first couple of years of marriage.  Cooking and cleaning for two people just isn’t that much work, and it seemed kind of fun after school and work.  But when I got pregnant, everything changed, and it didn’t always feel like something I had willingly chosen.  When you carry a baby for nine months, you can’t ask anyone else to hold him for you for a little while.  There’s no delegating, even if you have the most loving and giving husband in the world (which I do).  You find out that a certain aspect of a certain kind of feminism is a myth.  There’s nothing men or “society” can do about the fact that women are the ones who must be pregnant, give birth, and nurse the baby, if any of these things are going to be done at all.

These are the three things that objectively can only be done by women, and I know there are many people who would argue that they are the only things, but at least in my little family, being a mother and being a father are two very different things, and sometimes it feels like motherhood is the greater emotional burden.  Maybe it’s a silly stereotype that mothers worry about their kids more than fathers do, or maybe it’s not silly.  In my limited experience, motherhood has separated me from Sam in a way, and at least in our situation, traditional gender roles have come into play much more than they did before.  Somehow, I didn’t expect this.

I don’t mean that motherhood has made Sam and I any less close as a couple.  In that sense, we are closer.  But it’s just an annoying truth, which I know some people will deny vehemently, that women go through a very different experience than men do when a baby comes into the family.

I really didn’t want to get controversial.  I just wanted to show that I’m grateful for my mom, and for Sam’s mom, and I wish that everyone in the world had equally wonderful examples of motherhood.

We’ve been in Texas for a couple of weeks now, and it has mostly been like a vacation.  I’m amazed at how early on Paul got really attached to his grandparents, and living near them is great for all of us.

I’ve even gone shopping (in my own car!) (that I didn’t pay for!) (I’m really attached to my grandparents, too!) (Sorry about the exclamation points!)  (I hate them, too!)  all by myself.  And spent all morning at it.  And didn’t need to be home at any particular time.  And now we’re living in a really cute, roomy apartment with $0.00 due at the first of every month.

Texas is very laid back, and life seems just a lot easier here.

But on Monday, we had our first taste of our new normal when Sam went to work at his family’s law firm.  Paul pulled out all the stops, and:

-dumped a box full of cheerios on the rug

-ate about half of a large canister of raisins (there were repercussions from that in his diapers for days)

-dropped q-tips down the toilet several times and tried to fish them out.  with his hands

- met a real live lizard and mistook him for a stress ball

-went through 3 outfits

-ate his weight in dewberries, tried to pick them himself, ate more than just dewberries

-tried to eat an ant, until I had to scrape it off of his poor little tongue

-poured water on a dying cat

-attempted to eat about half a dozen crayons, before his aunt switched him to colored pencils (smart)

-tried to pick and eat the fake berries from a silk floral arrangement

- tried to stuff himself into a Barbie car:

That sounds about right.

Paul’s new thing is that he seems like he’s actually figured out that he’s funny and sometimes consciously tries to make us laugh.  This would be adorable if his sense of humor weren’t just a bit different from ours.

For instance, Paul thinks it’s super funny to grab my hair with both of his hands, spread it across my face, then wait for me to say, “where’s mommy?” so that he can fling it back apart and giggle hysterically when I say, “peek-a-boo!”   This is a step up from when he liked to slap me, when he was in the carrier and my hands were full of diaper/shopping bag so that I couldn’t stop him, but sometimes my hair is up so he grabs the baby hairs from my neck that grew in to replace the ones that fell out after he was born, and it hurts.

The other things he thinks are funny are food throwing (classic), bathwater flinging (and drinking – ick) and pulling his socks off.  My favorite is when he sees us laughing and it makes him throw his head back and laugh in an exaggerated way.  I know we shouldn’t encourage him, but you try keeping a straight face.

Here’s a bit of video from a few months back, when Sam and I used to be the comedians, and Paul was the audience:

It’s pretty obvious, really.  People are always saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting different results.  This is exactly what you’re supposed to do when you’re a mother.  Your baby won’t eat cucumbers?  Keep offering him cucumbers.  He’ll probably start eating them around the 8th or 100th time you try.  (We’ll see.)

After I had Paul I was a bit shocked at how much my life had changed and how frustrating and unending a project taking care of a baby is.  I remember telling Sam that I was never going to put myself through it again.  He smiled in a way that told me he knew I was going to change my mind, so I even asked him to videotape me warning my future self never to succumb to baby fever.  Now a whiff of baby detergent, a newborn-sized anything, or even a sale on maternity clothes is all it takes to make my ovaries start drooling.  (Don’t pretend to be grossed out – nobody has an image in their mind of what an ovary looks like, much less a drooling one.)

Because surely, in a few years or decades when the time comes for number two, he/she will be an easier baby, right?  (See definition of insanity, above.)

A lot has happened around here in the last 24 hours.  Paul fell down a few steps at the playground (he’s fine), ate an entire sweet potato, dumped a whole bag of goldfish on the carpet, and got frozen raspberries everywhere.  I made pizza from a recipe on Pinterest that was really good and I wish it were healthy.

Oh, and Sam got laid off.

So suddenly, our move to Texas got moved up three months.  We’re leaving by the end of this month.  Fortunately, the apartment people (what do you call them?) let us out of our lease early with no penalty except that we have to let them show the apartment (they’ve already done this twice – and we just told them we were leaving this morning).  We’ve  (I say “we” – but I haven’t done any of it) scheduled the move and Sam has figured out how many vacation days he has left and therefore when his last day of work will be.  He even bought packing tape.

We’ll be staying with Sam’s parents (only 2 hours from my parents, so we’ll spend time there as well) and trying to get jobs for the summer before we head to Dallas so Sam can start law school as planned in August.

So now Paul and I just have to manage to keep the apartment presentable for all the prospective renters.  I figure it’s in our best interest to make it look as appealing as possible, so that someone will hurry up and sign a lease so that we don’t have to show it anymore and can get back to our slovenly ways, so that I can admire Paul’s wall-drawings a while before scrubbing them away, and he can take his hourly refrigerator inventory and leave the contents scattered around the kitchen, just the way he likes them.

How does Paul feel about all this?  Sam came home early when he first got the news, and  we decided to go for a family walk to let it sink in and start figuring out what to do, and we ended up at Panera, so we got Paul a water with a straw and split a cherry pastry, which he thought was the most fun thing, ever, and then we started talking about living with his grandparents, and basically, I think Paul considers having one’s daddy be laid off from a job to be the best thing that could ever happen to a person.

that Paul eats yogurt like this:

or that when I take him to a toy store, he spends most of the time browsing in the sock section:

or that he thinks peas should be categorized with tea towels when we are cleaning the kitchen:

or that this is the way he poses for a self-portrait:

or that on Easter Sunday, having ditched their button-downs and shoes after church, he and his daddy found themselves inadvertently matching:

right?

This is Paul’s reaction when he can’t Facetime/Skype with either Nana or Grandma:

I would not want to get between this guy and one of his grandmothers.  I’m not sure which of the three would be the scariest to face in that situation.