Evolution of friendship

Remember when you were little, and to make a new friend all you had to do was show up in a playground, or approach a group of kids and just take off running with them when they did? Then you would ask each other's name and tell your mom a few hours later that you have a new best friend?

As you got older, though, especially as a teen, you think no one gets you, except a few select friends, and you start to understand the meaning of clique. In college you are friends with everybody. Everywhere there are friends to be had. Everyone is so cool.

Then comes life after college and all you hear in the friendship department is crickets and tumbleweeds. People move out, move on and you are left with coworkers. Coworkers usually suck (not you, Julie; you're awesome). You wonder where all those many friends went and what is wrong with you. Why can't you have a million friends, like you used to? You come to terms that this is adult life: you have a select group of buddies and everyone is too busy.

That is, until you have kids. 

You could be walking in a store, any store, your kid in your arms, and you notice another mom with a kid about your kid's age in her arms. You give each other that knowing smile. Her smile says, "I know, right?" And your smile says, "Me too!" You tell her her kid is adorable, because that's what we all say to each other to break the ice, even if the kid looks like a science experiment, and if the line to the cashier is long enough you are in each other's Facebook page by the time you leave. 

I have been blessed to have met in this last year or so since pregnancy the most amazing women. Making friends with other moms is a whole underground and surprisingly warm and easy world that non-moms have yet to find. We get each other. We cry and laugh with each other. Our hairs are a mess, our bodies are not the same, and we wonder if we are ever going to focus and have a proper career again. As a matter of fact, we look back and think our priorities are shockingly different from that pre-pregnancy woman. We think of that version of ourselves as someone with an empty spot. We think she was lost and looking for it in the wrong places. We talk about babies and babies and babies and it never gets tiring. 

To all my mommy friends, especially you, Nicole. Thank you for your friendship!

Matthew 10 X 0 Me

I have coffee spilled in both the baby and I while I lay in a puddle of it. Baby smacks my face and cries in my ear. He wants to cuddle.

Because I just pulled my back trying to stop the baby from grabbing the coffee mug out of my hand; the coffee I've been dreaming of sipping for the last three hours of battling needy, little arms, I can't move.

I try to roll to one side and almost stand, but baby grabs my hair from behind and brings me back down. Is this a fight?

Is this really happening? Did I get knocked out by a baby? I wonder, staring at the ceiling.

I try rolling the other way, dodging evil, little fingers, but they are swift, so he grabs on to my earring, pulling my ear down and almost ripping the skin. He steals the earring. I try to pry strong, clammy fingers to retrieve earrings, but I'm back on the floor, my back quivering in pain. He can have the earring. He probably ate it by now.

Note to self: never wear earrings ever again.

Breathing, I count to three to try and stand up, and baby pokes both of my eyes, climbing my head.

Meanwhile my mom watches from Skype. I tell her to call 911, that my kid is possessed.

"He is just teething," she says.

I give him Tylenol, when I could use some myself, while he grabs the skin of my neck.

"He is tired," I try to convince myself and I place him in his crib. In the safety of the kitchen, I now look at his monitor and he is staring back at me, through the camera. Creepy, little fella.

He just started screaming again.

Somebody help me!!!

How many teeth do human beings have again? And how many more of those have to come through??

Eating my words

A few years ago I sat in my friend's living room feeling dizzy, overwhelmed and with what felt like the beginning of a migraine. 

She had four small children. The television blasted some noisy, obnoxious cartoon character, and the story line was an affront to my intelligence. I made a mental note, "My kid is never going to watch this kind of shit."

The house was covered in toys and baby parafernalia. The children ran wild, screaming, and my friend... I don't think she had washed herself in days. She was barefoot, and I caught myself judging that, "I will never allow my feet to get crusty like this." I also thought, "If I ever have a baby, they will have a designated room or corner and that's where they will play, not the whole entire house, and they will not scream like this."

Then I had a very rational, genius insight, as I left to go get some migraine medication, "I'm never having children."

As I sit here on the floor, on a baby mat that is taking my entire living room, watching Barney while examining my crusty feet, I wonder if Barney's friend will confess that he broke the toy. 

I sip my coffee and tell baby, "I hope that little shit tells the truth to Barney." Baby doesn't hear what I say because at the moment he had to do one of his random screams that he does just for the hell of it.

Ever since he discovered the pitches his voice can make, he practices it at any place and any time. He doesn't seem to understand English, nor Portuguese when I say "no." If I look stern, he thinks I'm just funny looking and laughs. 

Because the only living creatures I had raised have been dogs, I catch myself wondering if I should roll up a newspaper and hit it the floor by him to make my point.

At the grocery store, I've always been a proud mom of a quiet and friendly boy that looked around and smiled at strangers. I thought with my buttons that the screaming kids were kids of bad parents and that because I am awesome, my kid just observed the world in baby wonder. 

Baby has one pet peeve now, though: when I don't let him eat my grocery list, he now does this "I'm gonna scream until the child protective services comes" shriek. It all started when he thought it was funny to try and steal it from my hand and I thought, fine, eat it. A few minutes later I have to turn the kid upside down, my fingers down his throat, on the cashiers line to pay for the groceries, to retrieve the munched up list before he completely choked.

The other day he was trying to steal it again when I jokingly grab his little hand and say, "I'm gonna get your little hand!" Of course that random shriek comes out and the girl standing next to me gives me that look. I've been that girl. I know what that look means. It means, "control your kid," or "what's wrong with your son?" or simply, "don't grab his hand if that's going to upset him!" I want to tell her he doesn't usually care when I grab his hand like this, but I don't see the point of explaining myself. 

I'm already eating my words, anyway. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the feet get crusty because I can't wear shoes around the baby. He thinks they are chew toys.