I thought since I am female, fixing a little girl’s hair would just come naturally to me.
False.
Category Archives: Pepper
365 Days And I’m Still Here.
Meeting Penelope Rose.
Brothers meeting sister for the first time.
One year.
I don’t know how I did this without antidepressants. I thought caring for three kids would make me eat them like candy, but here I stand, exactly one year later, and nary a prescription. This surprises me more than anything.
We made it. The first birthday of our last child. I don’t know what I thought this year would be like — it was HARD, so, so hard — but it was also absolutely amazing. Like in the kind of way that makes you feel like you need a very long, kid-free vacation.
I woke up every day and gave all of myself that I had. I thought I knew how much I had to give and I gave that and more that I didn’t realize was there. Where did that extra me come from? All that work was worth every single dinner thrown and bottle spit up and rectal temperature taken and whatever other weird mom thing I had to deal with while two rowdy boys rocketed around as the baby blinked at me with this look:
All worth it. I’d do it again, but Robbie fires blanks now. I kind of mentioned how I regret that and wish we could have a fourth, and he yelled “YOU’RE CRAZY!!!!” and stormed out of the house. He’s probably right.
Now, all I want to do is cry — from tiredness, from gratitude, and from the amazing feeling of getting over a big mountain no one else can see.
It’s called The First Year With Three Kids, and I made it my bitch.
Almost One.
This girl is turning one on Saturday, and I have so many questions. How did a year pass by so quickly? How did we manage to survive it?
I was terrified each time I gave birth. Of dying, of something going wrong, but mostly of surviving the day-to-day of managing the newborn in addition to whatever else was going on in our house. I worried myself sick before I had each of the boys, but by the time Penelope Rose was born I was beginning to learn the art of low expectations.
This year, I have started to fine-tune it.
Somehow all of the sudden my baby won’t sit still; I find her looking longingly at the living room cabinet that her brothers hide in, wishing she could hide in it too. She copies their monster sounds and dragon roars. When they cry, she cries. When they yell, she yells.
When she smiles, we all do.
“I’m Outta Here, Bitches!”
And just like that … she was gone.
Bittersweet.
At 10 months and 2 days old, the baby finally crawled.
It was so bittersweet. I was standing barefoot on a blanket watching her, and I thought I would burst with pride. Of my three children, she took the longest to start crawling, but she put the most work into learning. For almost 3 months she has been working on figuring it out, spending her nap times practicing in addition to countless frustrated hours on the floor.
It’s hard to watch your children try and fail and try again. Today I watched Maverick try to climb a tree. He insisted he needed help, but I refused. It was a low tree, and I was close by. He doesn’t know that I was climbing trees like a monkey when I was just a little older than him. I would take the canoe out alone and paddle around the lake at 8 years old. I haven’t told him much about what I was like as a little girl because I’m afraid he will think he can just jump into the nearest canoe and take off with it. He can’t swim yet … so I’ll hold off on my stories.
Looking back, it freaks me out to think about the things that my parents let me do. My mother must have been worried sick while I was off adventuring through the woods, but we had a big German Shepherd who always tagged along and — get this — nothing bad happened.
As I grew older, I found that a large majority of girls my age were fearful and lacked self-confidence because they had never been allowed or encouraged to be independent and/or strong.
Children won’t know what they are capable of if they are never allowed to DO ANYTHING, especially girls, who tend to have confidence issues to begin with. Sometimes by thinking you are protecting them, you’re actually stripping them of the one thing that is vital to their quality of life and happiness: their inner strength.
I understand now how hard it is to let go and hope nothing bad happens as you loosen your grip to allow your child more freedoms. It’s terrifying. I waffle between wanting to lock my children away from the world, and encouraging them to be as involved in it as possible so they can eventually, somehow, change it.
So … I say all of that to say, it’s a big moment for me and for my kid when he climbs his first tree. And, more notably, when his little sister finally crawls to the edge of the blanket to eat the grass she’s been eyeing for months.
As I swept her up and moved her away, pulling wads of clover from her tight grasp, I whispered “I AM SO PROUD OF YOU. YOU JUST KEEP GOING.”
And I know that she will.
8 Months.
It’s been 8 months since my third child was born and …. I’M STILL HERE, BITCHES.
Truthfully, I’m probably more amazed than anyone else. It was super hard in the beginning, obviously. But then when Maverick started Kindergarten, Asher started going to Mother’s Day Out once a week, and I got into a gym routine I had this honeymoon period where I felt like my life was actually manageable. Just when I started to feel cocky, all hell broke loose in what I refer to as the “Holiday Blur 2013.” I still have not recovered from that.
Meanwhile, Penelope Rose is 8 months today and I think the fact that we have all gotten to this point is a huge accomplishment … mostly on my part.
Pepper is wearing size 18 month clothes. She was in the 100th percentile in height and weight at her last checkup, which means she is longer and heavier than 100% of babies her age. That doesn’t make sense to me because I’m not mathematical. Like how can a kid be 100% of anything? Although I know she’s a really big baby.
She’s trying to crawl, and has gotten efficient at putting her knees underneath her and kind of lunging forward which usually results in a face plant. She won’t hold her bottle or feed herself yet. She just started putting things in her mouth to chew on them last week. She still doesn’t roll much … probably because she is so big? It seems to take a lot of work to roll, and if the girl won’t hold her bottle (see exhibit A below), she probably just feels like rolling isn’t worth the effort.
Someone will inevitably come over and pick her up or talk to her anyway. Her job is just to look cute and wait.
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| Exhibit A. Note arms straight out and relaxed. |
Modern Mommy Madness 