There’s a quote that’s probably been around for ages, making note of things that are just a fact of life. "Like death and taxes." The past six months as a mother have added a few facts to that list for me, and if I don’t laugh about these, I’ll cry. Enjoy.
Death will come and taxes cannot be avoided (unless you’ve got money) and neither can the fact that your baby will spit up on you as you walk out the door. And as soon as the spit-up is cleaned off your going-to-town clothes (that made you feel human until they were covered in curdled milk), he’s going to have a blowout. Make sure you pack another outfit in the diaper bag, too, because he’s sure to have another blowout during your outing, no matter how many poopy diapers he’s already had that day. That blowout will probably happen while you’re at the bank, and the sweet teller will take 25 years to complete the task you asked her about, which unfortunately cannot be done online. You’ll have left the diaper bag in the car because it was supposed to be a 10-minute ordeal, but here you are with a crying baby in your arms in the otherwise-silent bank, fuming mad because you’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes.
When you finally get baby changed, fed and in his car seat for the other errands you have, delusion will cloud your mind, and you’ll think he can sleep through the car wash. Wrong! He will wake up screaming and no consoling you do from the driver’s seat will be good enough. Farewell, nap time and hello a living nightmare for grocery shopping. Thankfully, he’ll calm down in the store for a while – there’s a lot to look at in there. But soon you’ll have spent too much of your time questioning which of the 136 baby food items you should buy for him, and he’ll get mad that he’s still in his car seat. You’ll have a slight breakdown when you’re back in your vehicle, but it’s nothing a little sugar can’t solve.
Once you’re home, groceries are unloaded and you start making dinner, your baby will decide he simply cannot calm down unless he’s in your arms. Making dinner one-handed? I’m a pro. Put me on a cooking show. (Kidding – I’ve only mastered three meals this way.) About the time your husband comes home, you and baby will be in tears and you’ll be so grateful for some adult conversation and a sweet husband who finishes dinner for you. Naturally, baby will act like an angel once his dad is home.
Death and taxes are sure things, and so is the adage, “When it rains, it pours.”
I’d like to think my upbringing as a dairy kid has something to do with my ability to weather storms like this. It always seemed like days when things went wrong on the dairy, everything went wrong. However, motherhood has quickly taught me that thunderstorms and Category 5 hurricanes are two very different types of weather, and at the end of the day, we're all just trying to keep our heads above water.
