In honor of Mother's Day, I have compiled a list of a few "misunderstandings" I had before I was a mother. I have a teaching degree and worked in a daycare, so I thought I was entering motherhood with a degree in mommy professionalism.
I was wrong...
Since I work from home, I can sleep in!
My daughter wakes up EVERY morning at 6 am. She has an internal timeclock. Every morning I am awakened by screams and it will always be 6 am, give or take no more than 5 minutes. I have pushed back her bedtime to a later time. It doesn't work. I have made her cry it out and go back to bed. It doesn't work.
My baby will nap from 1-3 daily. I know others don't, but you just have to "train them" to sleep.
It is a lucky day if Del naps longer than 50 minutes. Usually it is right around 45 minutes. When I hear other mothers talk about their kids taking 3 hour naps every afternoon, a small piece of me dies inside. Okay, that's a bit much...instead I am secretly jealous and shoot my kid a dirty look.
The reason kids fall on the floor and throw tantrums in stores is because their parents do not know how to discipline them.
I can rarely leave the house these days. If I try to take my daughter's hand to cross the street, walk through a parking lot, walk through a store...she falls to her stomach and it looks like she face plants. She just lays on her stomach, screaming "NOOOOO!". Yes, it is embarrassing. I try to put her in a cart, but usually the straps don't buckle around her little belly and she crawls out if she is not strapped in. She is a GOOD little girl, she really is. BUT, she will be two in August, and the discipline just doesn't seem to stick yet.
We will have toys, but we live in a small house, so we will get rid of them if she doesn't play with them.
Our house resembles a cluttered toy aisle at Walmart, but she usually just plays with office supplies or wants to play in the closet with a flashlight. But I am sure she will play with them eventually...
TV will be very limited in our house. Very limited.
Ummm....still working on that one. I will only buy Mickey Mouse and ELMO DVDs that are an hour or longer. That's not a good sign.
Picky eaters are a result of their parents giving them so many options. She will eat what I give her or she must not be hungry enough.
Delaney doesn't like anything that appears healthy except tomatoes and grapes. How did that happen already?
My child will always have shoes on in the store, I will change her clothes when she is dirty, and she will NOT have boogers on her face, or snot dripping down her face, like other kids I see all the time.
When Del was a baby, I used to change her every time she had a little spit-up on her onesie. Now, there are times where we are in Target, and I realize she has multiple stains on her shirt, dirt under her fingernails, boogers all under her nose, something crusty in her hair, and I often look the same (minus the boogers- I think).
Before going to bed, we will have a routine of reading books, singing songs, and saying our prayers.
My daughter still does not love books. Mark built a huge wall of bookshelves and they are filled with children's books.
She likes to throw them on the floor and dance on them. When I sing to her, she covers my mouth and says "no".
We do say our prayers together and she shouts a loud AMEN at the end,
which I suppose is the most important anyway.
Happy Mother's Day to all of you Mommies-
to the rookies like me and the veteran moms who have it all figured out
(will I ever be there?)!!
Even if I don't, I still sure do love this girl...
