Fiber Friday: End of An Era

I have been purging lately.  Not the good kind, wherein you lose a lot of weight but still get to enjoy the foods you love.  The other, messier kind.  The house purge.

We have so much stuff, and I have been so crazy (no, really – like bats in the belfry, toys in the attic, though in our house it’s rats in the attic and toys all over the damn place), that there is nothing but chaos all around us.

I might have mentioned my little pet OCD project.  I stumbled into it quite by accident, but we love each other and I think it’s for keeps.  Coupled with my ADD it’s like a torrid romance, without the sex, though sex is in the running for the next object of my affection.  I jump from obssession to obssession, and before I know it I have enough supplies to keep an army in yarn, fabric, paper crafting, recycled sweaters, rock climbing gear or cigarrettes for at least a decade.  

My major hesitation is the baby stuff.  I’m parting with the clothes in a fairly light-hearted manner, with only a few tears and gut-wrenching sob sessions,  and a mere two huge boxes of  ”must keep” items.  Because, you know, they’ll never make such adorable clothing for babies again and I might someday have grandchildren.

No, the real problem is cloth diapers.

As I said in an earlier post, I love them.  I covet, crave, and fondle them.  I have truckloads of fabric out of which I sew them.  My last five years has been spent accumulating, experimenting and creating.  Most of my knitting has been longies and shorties for – you guessed it – diaper covers.

As I pack away the rarely-used items and try to figure out what to do with all the raw material, I find myself wondering who I will be when we move out of this stage.  Since no more babies are in the works (do you HEAR ME UTERUS??) what will I do with the fabric?  Will I continue to make and sell on Etsy for other people’s babies?  Or is it really time to find some other obssession?

I am so sad to be done.  So sad that some day my baby boys will not kiss me squishily on the mouth.  Sad that the snuggles in bed in the morning will pass away.  Sad that there will be no more toothless smiles in my future, except perhaps my own.  I want to want to be done – but I will always ache just a little in my heart that who I am, what I do, is constantly being redefined.  Soon, I will no longer be the mother of toddlers.  In no time at all, I will be the mother of men and a woman.

For whatever reason, this cloth diapering thing has been the symbol of this season of my life.  As I fold them and decide where they should go, I think of all the work, all the washing and care that goes into parenting.  The drudgery, the cuteness,  the raw need a baby has for his mother.

Part of me feel ready for whatever is ahead, ready to let the babies grow up and not need me quite so much, or at least not in the same ways.

And part of me wants to always have a baby to love and to love me right back, in that simple, sweet way babies have.

P.S.  Wanna buy some diaper fabric?

The Real Mom Quiz

Disclosure:  I occasionally, in a fit of mindlessness, click on those ridiculous quizzes from Facebook.  Go ahead, mock me.  You’ve all done it too and I know it.

Yesterday, there was one purporting to tell me what kind of mommy I am.  From five questions.

I don’t think anyone should be pigeonholed into some arbitrary category of parenting by a mere five questions, so I’ve decided to develop a much more scientific quiz for my amusement your edification.  Complete the following statements with the choice that most fits you.

1.  The only reason I would allow my 18 month old to continue to squish his hands around in the puddle of glue he spilled on the train table is:

A.  I am busy paying bills

B.  I didn’t  see him doing it

C.  I would never, EVER leave a bottle of glue out where a child could get to it.

D.  I am blogging and just need five more minutes.

2.  My child likes to fish his waffles out of the toaster on the floor with the hook from my tea strainer ball.  I:

A.  Tell him it’s dangerous and not to do it anymore.

B.  Wonder why he’s so quiet in there…

C.  Your toaster is on the FLOOR??

D.  Unplug the toaster and tell him he can only do it when mommy’s right there.

3.  My four year old starts saying “Damn” on a frighteningly regular basis.  I:

A.  Explain to him that some words are not nice and we shouldn’t use them.

B.  Convince myself he’s saying “Dan” and that it’s all just a cute misunderstanding.

C.  Refuse to leave the house for fear of being mortified by this foul-mouthed child.

D.  Try really hard not to laugh, then tell everyone that all words are just tools and if we don’t pay attention to it he’ll get over the novelty of it.

4.  My little ones decide it is TONS of fun to slide down my back from my bed to theirs and crash into the pillows and blankets.  I:

A.  Hmmm…I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.

B.  Uh, I’m on Facebook, not horsing around on the bed.

C.  OMG!  Your children sleep in the same room as you?!

D.  Laugh hysterically and think that this bed arrangement is the coolest thing ever.

5.  I am trying to write a quiz for my blog, and my kid keeps saying, “Mommy come in here and play the tickle game with me!”  I:

A.  Say, “I am working, sweetie, and I need just a few more minutes.  Then I will come in and play.”

B.  Shout, “For the last time, I’ll come in there when I’m ready!”

C.  I don’t have time for that sort of thing.  There are cupcakes to make for the PTA bake sale and then the Junior League meeting is tonight!

D.  Say, “Here is the $200 wireless keyboard.  Come in here and you can sit on the floor and write just like mommy!”  And decide that maybe five questions is enough, after all.

Scoring:  If you answered A, B, or D for any of the questions, or any combination of them, or if your answers would change around among those choices depending on the day (or time of month), congratulations – you are a real mom.

If you answered C for any question:  you are definitely reading the wrong blog.

Mommy Brain Monday

I did some catching up on my blog reading over the weekend.  I mean in between the five loads of laundry, the grocery shopping, the dishes, the sweeping and driving, and all those other things Valentine’s day is for.  Or is that Mother’s Day?

Anyhoo, I found this unfortunate posting from Mom-101 that made me weep with compassion and understanding.  For a nanosecond.  Then I laughed.  Hard.  I feel for her.  Not only is she doing these insane things, she’s telling us about them.  Because now we will know we are not alone.

So in that spirit, here is my worst, most embarrassing mommy-brain story ever.  Top it.  I triple dog dare you.

I was pregnant with my third child, and was home one day puttering and multitasking as always with my two-year-old.  I had a few things going on, I guess you could say, and was going back and forth between my kitchen upstairs (don’t ask) and the living room downstairs.

At one point, I began another trek up the stairs, and I smelled smoke.  It had an odd odor, vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.  Maybe electrical?  When I rounded the corner into the kitchen, the smoke was so thick I couldn’t see.  I panicked, of course, thinking it was some toxic thing burning and my baby would be born with cancer if I didn’t get out of there RIGHTNOWQUICK.  So I grabbed cell phone and child, not necessarily in that order, but possibly, and ran outside to call 911.

I stood outside with my neighbor and her kids while the firemen slogged in and out of my house.  Finally, one of them comes over to me and says, “Well, it looks like you left something burning on the stove.”

Then he mumbled something like, “Happens all the time,” and sort of sheepishly looked at the ground.  Hmmmm.

Then I remembered.  The wax.  As in, the remove-gross-hair-that-should-not-be-there-from-one’s-face wax.  When my DIY microwave stuff gets really low, it won’t  melt in the micro anymore, so I put it in a little pot of water on the stove.  And evidently, forget about it.

Since it had obviously burned all the water off to the extent that the container caught fire, I figured my secret was safe, right?

After they finished figuring out how to plug a grounded fan plug into a 100 year old electrical system that only has three outlets located inconveniently where one would never need them (the answer is: you don’t), they packed up and left, with my front door propped open wide.

As I trudged upstairs to check the damage, I looked at my home through the firemen’s eyes, and prayed they wouldn’t call social services.  I’m not the world’s best housekeeper.  As I neared the stove, I peered into the little pot, still sitting warmly on the burner.  There, crusted and plasticized forever into the bottom was the evidence of my shame.

The label, with the words plainly visible  for the story-telling benefit of all the future Lynchburg firefighters:

BRAZILLIAN BIKINI WAX.

Next time, I’ll just let the sucker burn.