The World According to Mommy

...and I've already changed five diapers. Why can't this kid take one normal poop instead of three tiny poops, requiring a diaper change after each one? And why isn't this kid potty trained yet?

"I may not notice when you lose weight, but I don't notice when you gain weight either."

(And oh how grateful I am for that!)

I really, really hate it.

We have a Sony Cybershot, a point-and-shoot, and we haven't even had it a year yet, but it really drives me nuts. I will take multiple pictures, all one right after the other, but for some reason there will be a few that are blurry or some that are darker or lighter than the rest. I don't understand how this happens. Nothing changes in the few seconds between shots, yet somehow they come out looking different.

And another thing... our camera has this face detection technology, but all this really does is delay the picture taking by a few seconds. This means that sometimes I'm trying to catch a specific shot, and I will press the shutter, but it won't take the picture. I guess because it's trying to figure out where the faces are. So I will press it again, and still nothing. Sometimes I will have to press the shutter a number of times in order to get the shot. The shot which I have undoubtedly missed by now.

Now that I'm taking more pictures, I would really like to have a digital SLR. Maybe for Christmas Santa will bring me a new camera.

Matt's parents came for a little visit on Wednesday and Thursday. It's been about three months since they last saw Nate, and they were astonished at how much he's grown!

My dear friend Jacob, the first friend (besides Matt!) I had in Austin (I think he took pity on me and decided to adopt me as one of his girls), the man of honor at my wedding...he moved to Los Angeles about six months ago to pursue screenwriting. He is a talented writer, and I'm so happy for him that he is following his dream!

This weekend is the first time he's been back to Austin since he moved, and I'm so glad I got to see him last night at dinner! But it wasn't nearly enough time with him. Maybe one day I can convince Matt to let me take a little weekend trip out to L.A.!

Yesterday morning while Matt's parents were here, they offered to watch Nate so that I could get out of the house for a few hours and just do whatever struck my fancy. I have been wanting to buy some new jeans, so I took them up on their very kind offer and headed to the mall. (It is such a strange feeling leaving the house without Nate. I've only done it a handful of times, and every time I feel completely out of my element. No struggling with my purse, the diaper bag, whatever other things I'm taking out to the car, not to mention an incredibly heavy baby. It's so disconcerting!)

I got to the mall, and as I walked around I felt very strange. I didn't know what to do with my hands. Normally I'm pushing a stroller, so as I was walking around, I found myself rather uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do with myself. Should I put my hands in my pockets? Do I just let them swing at my sides? I don't know, I felt really weird. And also, something I certainly never experienced before having a baby, when I was walking without the stroller, I felt completely exposed. When you're pushing around a baby, you can sort of hide behind the stroller. Plus, nobody looks at you. It's all about the baby. These are things I never thought about before, but while I was walking around the mall looking noticeably uncomfortable, or like some sort of social outcast, what with me fidgeting with my hands and averting my eyes from people who dared look at me or smile at me, I thought about these things a lot.

And then, I didn't. Because something miraculous happened.

Every single thing I tried on was too big. And in a few cases TWO sizes too big! With the first pair of jeans I tried on, they didn't have my size, so I went ahead and took in the size smaller, already reeling myself for a sad state of affairs once that dressing room door closed, my shorts came off, and I tried to squeeze myself into a-size-too-small pair of jeans. But when I put them on, they fit. Nicely. Maybe even with a little bit of room to spare. I was pleasantly surprised.

As I went to the register to check out (of course I bought them! I got sucked in by the label which said I was a size smaller than I was when I left the house!), I mentioned to the saleslady that I was glad I tried these on, because I was sure they were going to be too small. Her reply? "Oh yes, our jeans are very generous?" Translation: "You're not as skinny as you think you are. We make our jeans bigger, but with a smaller size listed, just to fool women like you." But I paid her no mind. I laughed and said, "Well, I just lost all the baby weight from my pregnancy, so I'm going to choose to believe that I'm actually getting smaller." This did not please her.

Great. I was feeling good about this one random, fluke occurrence in which I fit into smaller jeans. Then, I entered the second store.

And that's where things turned from great into AWESOME!

I tried on a dress two sizes smaller than I normally (or what I used to wear), and it fit perfectly.

I went to their jeans department, grabbed a handful of different styles, all in the new size that I purchased at the first store. They all fit! Except one. Which was too big! So I went down one more size in this style, and it was what I imagine heaven to be like. If when you get to heaven God gives you a new pair of jeans that have a ridiculously low size on the tag, but they fit perfectly.

I really, truly wanted to strut out of that dressing room, onto the store floor, and just walk around. Maybe even do a little dance. Proclaim to the world that I was wearing skinny(er) jeans. Yes, I'll admit, I got a little cocky. But man it felt good! I have never, ever, EVER had a shopping experience like that.

I know I got sucked into the psychology and the marketing of the whole thing. I know designers are making their clothes slightly larger, but keeping the same size label, just so that women will feel good about themselves thinking they are fitting into a smaller size, and will then buy the merchandise. I know all of this. And I could not care less! I've worked hard to get rid of that baby weight, so I think I deserve a little self-delusion about what size jeans I truly wear!

When Matt came home from work last night, I was just about to start getting dressed to go out to dinner with Jacob. He stood in the bathroom with me for a few minutes, just talking with me, telling me about his day, catching up, while I did my hair and put on my makeup.

He left before I got dressed, so after I was all ready, I came downstairs, and Matt turned around, and said the single most perfect thing a husband can ever say to a wife: "Wow."

I was wearing my new two-sizes-smaller jeans (although I hadn't told him about my great shopping day and the smaller jeans I had bought), and just a regular shirt and some ballet flats. Nothing fancy by any means. But the way he looked at me, you would have thought I was completely done up and headed to the Oscars. It was incredible.

He just kept saying "Wow. Wow. Honey, you look amazing. Look at how great you look." It made me feel like the prettiest woman in town. And the luckiest woman in the world to have this man as my husband.

A new elementary school opened today in our subdivision, and as I went on my jog this morning, I saw lots of parents walking back from dropping their little ones off for the first day of school. And as I watched this, I got a little sad.

In five years Matt and I will be doing the same thing. What this means is that I only have five more years of morning jogs with Nate. Only five more years of going to the park in the middle of the day. Only five more years.

When I was pregnant, and even still to this day, everyone told me "they grow up so fast". When it comes to hearing this oft-cited universal truth of parenthood, I have gone through three distinct phases.

The first phase occurred during my pregnancy and consisted of knowing smiles and nods. Nate hadn't yet arrived, I had no idea what horrors were about to befall me, so I could only assume that these people knew what they were talking about. "Yes," nod, "they do grow up so fast."

The second phase occurred from birth to four months old. During this phase, whenever someone dared utter these now hated words, I would silently, but with great force, scream at the top of my lungs.

Nate was not an easy baby. My darlin' boy was rough on his momma. Between him refusing to sleep anywhere but in my arms, my troubles breastfeeding, all his minor health crises, what seemed like him trying to punish me for some unknown grievance by never taking a nap, waking up every two hours once we finally got him to his crib...he was, needless to say, a handful. Those first four months were very difficult.

And very, very long. I am certain that what actually elapsed was fourteen months, not four, and that the whole world conspired to make me believe it had only been a few months since Nate's birth. So, considering those were the longest four months of my life, to hear people say "they grow up so fast", I wanted to scream back at them "NO! No they don't! Each month lasts a year, and he is never going to grow up, and he is never going to learn to sleep through the night, and I will never again get a full night's sleep, and...." But I didn't scream these things at these well-meaning strangers. I think what stopped me was, certainly, that screaming out all your fears and anxieties about your adorably cute newborn (the one who looked like the perfect angel baby while out and about, the one who could never give his mommy such troubles) to perfect strangers is not generally considered socially acceptable behavior, but also, I was too exhausted to muster more than a tired smile. This phase can pretty much be summed up with "These people have no idea what they're talking about."

The third phase occurred somewhere around five months to the present. Nate has changed so much these last three months. Not the least of which is that he's sleeping through the night. Absolutely, without a doubt, the hardest part about being a new parent is the sleep deprivation. No question. (Isn't sleep deprivation some sort of torture device? If it's not, it really should be.) So now that I've had a few months of eight or more hours of sleep at night, I'm feeling great! Like I could do anything! But along with his improved sleeping habits, he is also reaching so many developmental milestones like rolling over, sitting up, crawling. Nothing happened for the first four months, and now BAM! All this stuff is happening at once. He's growing up so fast.

I have this gift of time, this time I get to spend with Nate every day, and I don't want to take all these little things we do for granted. Because I only have five more years. Because he's growing up so fast.