I choose favorites.

I've never been very good at small talk, but I've managed to figure out over the years that asking "what's your favorite ____?" is a common way to engage someone in conversation. During my attempts at socialization, I've learned that not all "favorite" questions are created equally...

Some of them lead to an inevitable dead end:

Me: "What's your favorite color?"
Other Human: "Pink."
Me: "Cool."
Other Human: "What's yours?"
Me: "Purple."
Other Human: "Neat. I wonder what those people over there are talking about."

Others lead to incredibly deep discussions and lifelong friendships:

Me: "What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?"
Other Human: "Mint chocolate chip."
Me: "Mine, too!"
Other Human: "OMG!! We are, like, TWINS!" [It's amazing how excited some people will get when they find out you have a favorite something in common.]
Me: "Crazy. What do you think about mint chocolate chip ice cream that isn't green?"
Other Human: "I like it as long as the mint tastes good. Some mint chocolate chip ice creams taste super fake... I've actually found that the bright green ones are usually the worst."
Me: "We ARE twins!! Let's be best friends forever!"

And then there are those which summon immediate rejection:

Me: "Which one of your kids is your favorite?"
Other Human: [walks away]
Me: I guess she didn't hear me.

I have a favorite offspring. If you've spent more than ten minutes seconds with me in the past eight months, you probably know which one it is.

But, before anyone judges me as a horrible mother, let me explain: I have a current favorite child. The title could be stripped away and rewarded to the other less emotionally exhausting girl at any given tantrum. Besides, Addison held the title of favorite child for a good two years and nine months before Montgomerie came along. It was about time she stepped down from the throne, right? ... Okay, I digress. My justifications are no good; go ahead and judge me.

What I really mean though, is that I have a favorite age/stage. Allow me to describe what my children are like from birth - 3.5 years (since that's all I've experienced so far) to help you can gain a better understanding of my favoritism. Please note that these ages/stages are not universal as some babies start walking right out of the womb (I'm looking at you, Pennie Bowlin).

THE AGES/STAGES OF ADDISON AND MONTGOMERIE BROWN*:

0-3 months: Not sleeping through the night. Enough said.
3-6 months: With the need for constant attention, but the attention span of a goldfish, trying to keep a baby entertained at this age becomes utterly exhausting after approximately four seconds. They also still take naps three times a day, but are no longer able to sleep well on the go, making it impossible to leave the house. Ever.
6-9 months: This is where the stars align, my friends! Montgomerie is ready to explore the world beyond Mommy, but she is too fat to do anything about it. She just sits there on the floor, contentedly examining the tastes and textures of her toys as they are handed to her by Big Sis. As long as her belly is full and diaper is dry, she is good to go (or stay, rather). She also still sleeps as much as a newborn, but condenses it down to the nighttime and two long, glorious naps. She will eat anything I give her and her little personality is really starting to show now.
9-12 months: With the onset of crawling, eyes must be glued on the baby at all times to make sure she doesn't try to eat a small rock that my husband, cat, or 3-year old left in the middle of the hallway. FOMO kicks in about this time and the baby starts rejecting that second nap, which means I have to give up mine as well.
12-15 months: The baby is walking now. Which is even faster than crawling.
15 months - 2: The sweet, innocent baby is no longer a baby at all. All signs point to toddler; most of them are warning signs.
2 years: She can't quite communicate her needs clearly, which leads to frustration and tantrums. Also, potty training.
3 years: The terrible twos have grown into the terrifying threes. Now, Addison can communicate clearly, but chooses not to, which leads to even more frustration and tantrums...mostly by me. Her little personality isn't so little anymore. She has suddenly become the pickiest eater on the face of the planet (the only food groups she will eat from are fat and sugar). FOMO is now in full force and she refuses to sleep. Ever.

*This chart is not exhaustive. I could probably think of at least one good thing that is unique to each age/stage if I tried really hard. Feel free to challenge me sometime :-)

Don't be fooled by her big smile. There is no happiness.

She will be three one day. I think she's doing an evil laugh.

 
    

My children have rolls, but they can't roll over.

Addison rolled over from her back to her front for the first time when she was three years old. That's right. It happened a couple of months ago when I suggested she show her baby sister how to do it. As I watched her awkwardly contort her body during what should have been a relatively smooth process, I finally figured out why she is the worst somersault-er out of every kid her age: she never learned how to roll over!

Memories of Addison sleeping on her belly at night flooded into my mind as I desperately tried to convince myself that my three year old had rolled over before. She always lies on her back at bedtime, and did so for the remainder of the night until she was well over one. Even then, I only ever saw her roll onto her side. If she was on her belly, her head was almost always at the opposite end of the bed, as though she had sat up in the middle of the night and just fallen forward. Now that she is in a toddler bed, she just climbs in on all fours and then plops to her belly. No rolling over necessary.

She even learned to crawl from a sitting position. She started out just scooting around the room on her butt. At first, it seemed like she was just wiggling and kicking her feet while remaining in place, but after several minutes I would realize that she was suddenly playing with a toy previously out of her reach. Eventually, she leaned forward and started moving on all fours.

Montgomerie (she's over seven months old now) also cannot roll over. She rolled over from her front to her back a couple of times a while back, but was frightened by the experience and refused to even be put on her stomach for several weeks after that. Now she is fine on her belly for awhile, usually as long as she has a toy. But move that toy just out of her reach and she goes into ab workout mode, stretching her arms out to the sides like a bird and kicking her feet like she's swimming...

you're not going anywhere, buddy!

Occasionally, she will stop struggling for a moment and look over at the toy to see if she's progressed at all (she hasn't). Or if she realizes you are taking her picture, she might stop to flash you a smile...

Then when she finally realizes that she isn't moving, she just buries her face in the floor and cries.

And if you lie her on her back, the sweet girl is perfectly content to just suck on her toes. It appears there is not much hope for Montgomerie's future somersault abilities either. I guess I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that my children have rolls, but they can't roll over.

So just in case either child ever wishes to have a career in gymnastics, I have come up with a list of things (other than my poor parenting) for her to blame when she fails miserably:

1. The boppy pillow. My girls loved snuggling in their boppy pillow and I appreciated that it did not aid in the flattening of their sensitive heads, which would occur if they were lying on the hard floor instead. However, the sweet boppy always wrapped its loving arms around my girls and held them tightly in place, preventing them from ever learning how to roll over.

2. The jumper. Jumpers are good babysitters. Want to take a nap? Stick the baby in the jumper. Want to take a shower? Stick the baby in the jumper. Want your baby to learn how to roll over? Well, she's not going to learn if she's in a jumper all day!

3. Sleeping through the night. Most babies sleep longer/better on their bellies, which is not considered safe until said baby is able to roll over into that position on her own. But when you're spending unusual amounts of time talking to your doctor (or searching the internet) to see if your child is sleeping too much, the motivation to teach your child to roll over is found lacking.

But hopefully they will both be more interested in something that's cooler than gymnastics. Like swimming marching band!

Montgomerie's Birth Story (Intro: Choosing a Plan)

The girls who have been planning their weddings since they were in diapers might disagree, but I feel like I put a good amount of effort into making my wedding day special. I didn't know much about weddings at the time I got engaged (and Pinterest did not exist yet), so I did mostly just go with the advice of the experts or choose the first thing that sounded good to me. But still, it was a lot of work to put it together.

Our wedding day turned out to be a pretty good day. A few things went wrong: I got caught on my dress walking up the steps at the altar, the [mostly decorative] straps on my dress unsnapped during our first dance, and the DJ couldn't find the music for the father/daughter dance. But, for the most part, things went smoothly and I was pleased with the result of my tireless planning.

fancy, fancy!

The best parts of the day couldn't have been planned though. It was the nervousness that I shared with my dad before walking down the aisle; locking eyes with my groom for the first time and seeing his excitement to marry me; watching my friends make fools of themselves on the dance floor. Those moments are what made the day memorable for me, not the color of the bridesmaid dresses.

So a couple of fights into the marriage, I started to wonder why I spent so much time and energy preparing for my wedding (which lasted approximately six hours), and started wishing I had spent more time and energy preparing for my marriage (which would hopefully last the rest of my life).

Pretty much the same story can be told about the birth of our first daughter, Addison. We didn't know much about giving birth at the time and, again, mostly just followed the advice of the experts. We went to a Lamaze class and learned all about breathing techniques and how to tell that you're in labor. We discussed holding off on medication as long as possible, but decided we were okay with getting an epidural at some point. We felt as prepared as we could be for the birth of our baby.

Well, the day went about as smoothly as we could have expected. My water broke before I had a single contraction, so we just strolled on over to the hospital and I was induced. We relaxed in our birthing suite for several hours, waiting for the contractions to kick in. They arrived with a vengeance (apparently pitocin can do this sometimes) so I got an epidural pretty much right away. The labor sped quickly from there and I barely had to push to get the kid out. It was a great first birthing experience.

our sweet alien-child!

I couldn't have planned or prepared for the most memorable parts of the day though. It was my husband's nervous excitement when I woke him up to tell him my water broke; his support and comfort as we endured each step of the day; the joy/fear/wonder/excitement/disgust that I felt when seeing my little girl for the first time. Those emotions and moments would have existed whether we had a planned c-section or a home water birth.

So a couple of days later, when we were home with a baby and realized that we had no clue what to do with her, I started to wonder... Why did we spend so much energy preparing for a birth and literally no time preparing for a baby?!

Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to be prepared for labor and delivery, just as I think it's important to mark the momentous leap into marriage with a wedding celebration (which requires some element of planning and preparation). But I can't seem to wrap my head around why those events are built up so much in our society. It just makes more sense to me to focus all of that time and energy on marriage and parenting rather than on weddings and birth plans.

I'm not judging anybody who thinks or does differently, but I wanted to introduce Montgomerie's birth story by explaining why we chose the birth plan that we did. It may seem apathetic or uninspired, but that's because it pretty much was. This time around, we decided to spend our time and energy leading up to the birth on preparing for a baby. Stay tuned to find out how our casual approach worked out for us! [Spoiler alert: a baby was born]

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Screen Time

When I took Addison (my three-year-old) for her most recent well-visit, one of the questions the pediatrician asked me was how much screen time I give her each day. I quickly responded with "one hour." Whoops. That was a lie. What I meant to say was that she had watched one hour of TV that day, because that was how long she had been awake before we needed to leave for her appointment.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time for kids under the age of 2. When I first heard this, I laughed, because I thought it was a joke. We failed to meet that recommendation with Montgomerie while we were still in the hospital! If she's being a fussy pants for no good reason (i.e. hungry, tired, dirty diaper) and the only thing that will get her to be quiet for twenty minutes is to watch The Lion King with her big sister, then guess what? Hakuna Matata.

This photo of my girls watching TV together also showcases my inability to follow safety guidelines, as the bumbo seat is on a raised surface. Aren't they sweet with the hand-holding though?!

We do make some attempt to follow AAP guidelines. As a result, Addison generally gets to watch TV any time her little sister goes down for a nap. You may be thinking that seems like an excellent opportunity for some one-on-one time with my oldest daughter, but I prefer to spend that hour pretending neither of my kids exist.

Here are the top 5 things I like to do while Addison watches TV:

1. Watch my own show on the iPad (we tried it reverse once, but I was watching some medical drama like House and i looked over to find her staring at the TV in horror as a man's insides were being dissected...)
2. Check my email, stalk people on facebook, or write a blog post such as this one
3. Take a nap
4. Take a shower (I usually choose a nap over a shower though)
5. Housework (I always choose any or all of the above over this)

My child is not better than yours.

There are three main reasons why you shouldn't brag about your kids on facebook:

1. It's annoying.
2. Nobody cares.
3. God will smite you, as he did me.

Back in August, I put my daughter on the potty and she happily pooped in there like a freaking champ. I was super excited about how easy this potty training thing was going to be and I wanted to shout it from the rooftops that my daughter was the greatest two-year-old pooper in the history of the world. Instead, I thought of a clever remark that side-stepped my rule of never claiming my kid was the greatest at something, then posted it on facebook:

Now everyone knows how awesome my kid is at pooping on the potty AND how clever and funny I am!

If God could have commented on my post, I think it would have been something along the lines of "Somebody needs a lesson in humility. #smh" I would have settled for that convicting comment, but he decided to go ahead with the actual lesson instead...

Not two weeks later, Addison developed the worst diaper rash I've ever seen (we're talking blisters), which started what I like to refer to as "the worst six months of my life." In short, she refused to poop. Anywhere. For six months. (Don't worry, she actually did poop during those six months...just not as an act of will).

After six grueling months of prune juice, suppositories, and following the experts' advice of letting the child be in control, I reached my breaking point and decided that if she was going to whine about how much her poops hurt, then she could whine about it while sitting on the freaking potty.

So, for two weeks, I watched for signs that she needed to poop and then basically forced her to sit on the potty until she went.

One night she sat on the potty for over two hours, clenching her little bum and refusing to go. During this time, I tried encouraging her, distracting her, bribing her, giving her privacy, reasoning with her, and yelling at her (okay, that one wasn't really an attempt to get her to poop as much as it was just me losing my cool). I went in my room and cried. Then I thought, maybe if she sees me crying, it will make her want to poop... so I tried that. I prayed for her and I prayed with her. I even suggested she pray about it.

Her response when she finally pooped in the potty? "I was tired of holding it in." Go figure.

Well, I've learned my lesson. My child is not better than yours. We're currently working on fully potty training her, using sticker charts and candy to bribe her like the average family that we are.

Have you ever regretted posting something on social media? Have you had any horrible potty training experiences?

The good, the bad, and the ugly

As a rule, I try not to post things like "I have the best husband in the world" or "my daughter is the smartest three-year-old ever" on social media. Still, if you take a gander at my facebook page, you will probably conclude that my kids are amazing, my husband is amazing, I am amazing, and my life is, yup: amazing.

A few weeks ago, I posted a picture on facebook of some pretty awesome cow cupcakes that I made for my daughter's third birthday party at Chick-fil-A:

What I didn't mention was the mess I made in the kitchen because I was too stupid to figure out how to transfer the batter from the mixing bowl to the individual cupcake wrappers or my daughter's meltdown when she first saw them because she was apparently hoping for Minnie Mouse cupcakes for her birthday.

The cupcakes did turn out pretty cool though, so it makes sense that I would want to share that with my friends. But I long for authenticity (the good, the bad, and the ugly) even when it comes to social media, which is becoming a major means of communication for me these days.

Alas (couldn't think of a better transition word to fit here), I have created this blog to help bring some balance to those "superior" posts that we all make. My intention is not to vent or complain about my life (so if I do, please call me out on it), but to be honest about my shortcomings, hopefully give you a few laughs, and maybe share some words of wisdom with each other about tough situations that we all face!