Lazy Posting

Farmer's Market Fresh

Tomorrow is Saturday, that means farmer's markets and gardening at our house.  Tomorrow is also predicted to be very damp with off and on rolling showers and late afternoon storms.  Since I am still somewhat bloated from baby weight, I'm thinking along these lines while I head out to enjoy the green growing things.  Of course, add a newborn in a cuddly baby wrap to complete the look and you'll get a pretty good picture of how I really do look out there.

Farmer's Market Fresh by messy-mommy-jeannine featuring blue jeans

Working Mommy Thoughts

So, the tiny little hobbit will be two weeks old tomorrow, and I've already begun interviewing again to get back to work full time.  I love my kids, both of them, and I wish I could stay home and be the full time mommy for our littlest one that I have been for his older brother.  Unfortunately, the reality is that a family cannot live on just one income unless it is already six figures and while my husband works very hard, few dairy workers make that much.

My interview tomorrow felt a little less than stellar; I had the feeling she had already selected a person from the applicants that would be hired.  It did help to get me comfortable with needing to focus on something other than being a full time mommy, and I have had to think hard about how to change my wardrobe to cope with the remaining weight postpartum.  We had some complications at birth so I have to cope with damaged muscles that are preventing me from jumping into exercise again (this will be explained in his birth story to be posted soon).

Tuesday's Interview Outfit as worn by me!

What I do feel good about is that I have had a chance to use Pinterest to build ideas on what to wear for an interview or work.  I'm thinking perhaps if I keep this up and can get some followers I'll have a chance at making a steady blog update about fashion for moms.  My style is somewhat casual equestrian mostly because we live out in the country and I rode for so many years (up until pregnancy made it unwise to do so the first time).

Instant mommy wear... just add burp cloth and mystery toddler hand-print stains.

I've been up to starting a casual and a business outline and trying to pick things I can wear for both... but oh how hard that can be with a tiny one.  I need to go through my closet and dressers, take out everything and donate so much of what I still have in there.  Most of those things will not fit again any time very soon and since the plan is still to get a new place for our family, I'd like a reduced amount of clothing to haul.

Follow Jeannine's board Fashion Ideas Post Baby on Pinterest.

Follow Jeannine's board Work Wear Post-Baby on Pinterest.

Sleep Like A Baby

The next person who uses this phrase is going to have the joy of experiencing my semi-psychotic cackling first hand.  Honestly, anyone using that phrase has NEVER had the joy of having a baby.  

Newborns need to feed from either breast or bottle about every three hours, this does not change no matter the time of day for adults.  For this reason, and many others, you will notice sleep deprivation being a common link between all parents of very young children.  Let me explain is easier terms here...

Thanks to random images on Facebook for this one.

Babies know when you are attempting to sleep.  Young children wait until the exact moment when you have completely relaxed and faded into that first level of dreaming where you are caught between conscious and blissful nothing.  As your breathing slows, your muscles finally drop tension, and you stop processing thoughts clearly, that is when they strike... screaming like their hair is on fire and the world is ending.

It seems that post birth, the saying should be "sleep like a husband".  So many of my friends have said it seems like their men can sleep through anything, and now that our boy is older I agree.

I actually got very lucky.  On those early nights with our newborn it was hubby who gave him the night-time feeding while I sat hooked to the machine in the next room because even with the battery our pump model was so loud it could wake the dead.  It was only after our boy was in his own room all night and only waking once that he suddenly gained the ability to sleep through anything.

Sleeping like a baby seems to only happen in fairytales and movies.  I'm convinced that "sleeping through the night" is a myth too, but we all have our quirks.  The one with my boys (the tiny and adult sized one) seems to be only sleeping when I am awake.  Cool trick, really.

Tiny Monster: Picking an Online Identity for Kids

My son's birth announcement photo.  Perhaps the one and only time he
posed and stayed exactly as I wanted while taking the picture.

We all do it.  In this digital age there is hardly a day that goes by when we parents are not checking our facebook or sharing those cute snapshots of the kid doing something.  I'm guilty of being *That Mom *.  You know what I mean, the one that has an obsessive number of albums documenting everything from the first ultrasounds to his most recent slapping of some crayons on paper that prove his the next Picasso.  I make sure to balance the "perfectly posed cute" with "look at this giant wad of gum he tied into his hair while I was trying to pee with the door closed".

This morning a friend and fellow mom shared an absolutely brilliant piece that appeared last February on another great parenting blog.  This article covered something many parents in the technical age are guilty of, depicting their parenting life as *so perfect*.  The writer described it as lies by omission... we use cool filters to make it look like everything is awesome and hide the spots where the newborn just vomited an entire feeding full all over that new onesie. 

I do it too as a portrait photographer working with kids and brides to make everything picture perfect!  That photo of my son up there, that hat is covering the fact that his cute little baby butt had constant diaper rash until we figured out the right combination of cream, diaper type, and detergent for his delicate little infant skin.  Years later, I am still posting him all over the interwebz like a cool kid but with one big detail still in omission... Unless you spend time around us in person, chances are good you'll never know his name. 

A baby monster.

I posted the first camera phone images to facebook from the less than relaxing new location on the maternity floor.  Those cute, wrinkly faced images came along with the one and only time I ever shared his birth name and have long since been changed to reflect the nick name we keep for him. I have friends, co-workers, even family we are not exceptionally close to and only rarely see that know him only as "The Tiny Monster".  The name came about while I was pregnant and not yet aware of the gender of the tiny person attempting to kick an opening through my belly button like one of those creatures that haunted my nightmares for months after watching a certain scifi film.  

It is cool over time his name has proven to stick even off the digital realms because, well, it fits him so well as a toddler.  His babysitter, our friends that spend any time around him, even my parents who have seen the true evil look in his eyes that comes out when he is plotting to draw on the walls with my expensive artist's pigment pens.  

But it helps in another way too.  

You see, we are all guilty of over sharing as parents in the digital age.  From the moment we have counted those ten little fingers and toes the proof of their existence pops up on the live feeds of our entire social circle.   This means that any random bloke on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Vine, YouTube, (and whatever else I missed listing but is part of the social media insanity) is going to know all about them.  I'm not saying your child will be facing the public awareness craze of pop-culture personalities who feel the need to post selfies or even allows documenting for a TV series(I'm looking at you Snooki and Kim Kardashian), but any child who's mother is tweeting from Labor&Delivery is going to face the reality that their whole life is out there for the world to see.

Don't want to believe me, here's everything you could learn quick glance at your previous posts:

1. Birth Date: This one is seriously easy, when did you post that first picture with the "He's finally here" tag?

2. Gender: This is normally obvious well before birthdate because unless you fall into the slowly dieing group of parents not finding this out with "the big ultrasound".  If you do decide to wait, that first picture and post of the new family member is a pretty safe bet for figuring it out.

3. Name: Unless you choose to do what we have and use only a nickname, this is also often found right on that first little birth announcement post.

4. Hospital/Location: Not a big deal until you start to consider what I am listing now is not only obvious from just that first week is all you will need to apply for a copy of the baby's birth certificate... the first step to identity theft.

5. Parents Name(s): I'm sure you can guess this is one of the most obvious details for that identity theft thing I mentioned above.  It is also a good detail if you are just going for the creepy stalker factor that comes in with recent problems of child abduction. 

6. Home Location/Address: You know that little "Hometown" tag you get from profiles, yeah, consider that when you tag the location where you live and make it obvious that you are the primary parent.  This info is now out in the world and means that a dishonest person has an easy in for finding any of the many expensive items in your home left unattended while you are in the hospital with a newborn, or getting a track on that cute little bundle of joy.

I could keep going, but honestly now I want to run back and check that my profiles are all safely set to not sharing anything with anybody because I know how dangerous it is to have that out on the web.  What should we adults really be doing?  

Well, following the guidelines listed here are a good way to keep things smart and safe.  Limiting the insane sharing of details online is a great starting point for everybody, your own safety is included in that part too.  Using a nickname for kids and never listing the name of schools, day cares, or other daily activities where people can find a way to contact your child is another great idea.

So there it is... I call my son "The Tiny Monster", I don't share the name of our home town, and I over share about his self feeding habits because if you can't humiliate your kids with those cute spaghetti-in-hair photos as a toddler, their teen years will be devoid of good reasons to complain about you talking to their first girlfriend/boyfriend.

I'm fairly sure he was supposed to be eating mashed potatoes and meatballs with peas.  Yes, I feed
him in the nude after he learned to lift and "paint" under the bib with his food... I'm not a fan of
laundry even on a good day, so this lowers the rate of complete mess clothing to wade through.

Mommy's Messy Life

Well hello again interwebs,

Have a few minutes to yourself? GREAT!  I envy you right now.  So, to make your few minutes of freedom from laundry, toys, and the endless "Mommy I need..." or "Daddy can I..." here's a fun little story about how you're not alone feeling like being a parent is an endless uphill run on a treadmill with no off switch.

Sit down. Relax. Have some coffee. 
Not this one though...
This is MINE!

In 2010 I made the biggest mistake of my life... I relaxed long enough to fall in love and be happy with a great guy.

Alright, that doesn't sound like such a bad thing does it?  Well, it really isn't, until you consider the timing.  I was three-ish years out of college, living just north of NYC, working at an endless corporate nightmare job doing the best I could to make my payments for my loans, and living with this amazing man who I had the vague feeling would not be the kind to continue the cycle of ending it when the honeymoon period was over and he saw the clear crazy I had stored up from a lifetime of work and self esteem issues.  

Seriously though, you cannot imagine how wonderful it was to know that I could trust him not to give me the stink eye for spending a very rare day off in nothing but ratty pajama pants and a sports bra while I swore at the computer and shot digital zombies like my life depended on it.  This man saved me from living in my car when the relationship I had pretty much given up my dreams for failed from a serious lack of personal responsibility on both sides.  And when he was done saving me from that crap-tazm... he went and proved that the guy I had unintentionally friendzoned was actually the person I should have been dating the whole time.

I'm fairly sure I had unknowingly stamped this on his head years before while dating
Mr. I'm-The-Guy-Your-Parents-Want-You-To Bring-Home. 

Yeah, I fell hard, and I relaxed long enough to think "hey, this getting married someday idea might not be a lost cause like I thought".  So we started looking for an apartment closer to my new job and he apparently started cooking up a scheme to propose on what he knew was routinely the worst day of the year in my relationships.  It was a bumpy but fun little ride up until the point when I went to the doctor about the nausea and stomach cramps that had started plaguing my life thinking I had yet another stomach ulcer from my chronic overachiever lifestyle.

While it was honestly far more technical, I'm fairly sure this is how the doctor's answers actually sounded in my head:

Our son's gigantic kicking feet.

"Surprise, there's something living in your uterus!  That birth control you figured was doing the trick doesn't work so well when you expose yourself to certain photo developing chemicals as part of your line of work.  Cool beans though, you're now home to something cute and tiny and vaguely kidney bean shaped.  Here's some pamphlets on how being a human incubator is going to cause you emotional and physical distress at times.  Now off you go so I can see to the next patient."

So there I was, handing the most amazing guy in the world a pee-stick with two lines and praying he would do something other than freak out.  It took him about ten minutes to compose words but he finally was able to tell me he was happy and that we should figure out what we wanted to do from there.  I admit, I had a bit of an explosion in my brain at that point, but once we both had full use of our vocabulary we took the time to decide if we would go through with being parents or explore other options.

Two years later and we're married, and genuinely happy.  We don't have a perfect life by any means.  There are things I would LOVE to have money for, like paying off those school loans I have piled up or maybe getting a professional manicure for the first time in my life... What?  I've just never had the time or money to get one done, don't give me that look!  And no they are not "man hands" thank you.

As I was saying, our life is good but realistic.  The cat or dog or toddler occasionally pee on our bed and routinely take over the couch so I get to sit on the bean bag chair and watch nothing but endless cartoons.  I go to make a sandwich and find out that somebody ate all the damn tuna without telling me to get more while making a shopping list.  The diaper pail still stinks because apparently the toilet is some sort of soul-sucking demon out to eat my child and though he will pee in the bathtub it is impossible to consider using the potty like the rest of the world.

Life is real.  Messy, confusing, wonderful, and very very real.  So, welcome to the insanity.  You're not alone and I invite you to take a few minutes to laugh at the things I share because that is the beauty of being a parent.  You have your own tiny entertainment to provide hours of stories for others to laugh at while you shake your head and clean up the mess.

- Mommy J