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Disclaimer:  This is one of many, many flips and/or flops in The Mommy’s body image, etc.  They will be voluminous and hard to keep up with but probably mildly entertaining…if you’re a little nutball like me!

So, last time I wrote on this topic I had little hope that Mommy’s Mojo would be found without spending a small fortune on a new wardrobe, a personal trainer, and a chef to cook my meals.  Hey, how about a nanny, too? 

Since then I’ve started to realize that Mommy Mojo is a state of mind.  And in order to get the mojo back I need to change my state of mind.  Am I the hippest Mom on the block?  The skinniest?  The best?  No, no, and probably not.  But I am Tater’s Mommy and the most important Mommy in the world to her.  Am I a good Mommy?  Yes, I am a very good Mommy.

This week I have made much more of an effort to take care of myself.  Sleep more, eat better, walk every day.  It makes a difference.  Do I feel back together again?  No.  Even Humpty Dumpty had all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to help.  I’m just one Mommy doing the best she can.

Since The Tater Tot was born 6 weeks early, she did a stint in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  It turns out that they like to track their graduates so we went this week to the Developmental Clinic.  I was actually excited to go just to see how the Tot was doing. 

We got there and I plopped her down in a sitting position, which is relatively new for us.  I still sit very close to her to make sure she doesn’t take a digger really hard but she’s able to sit by herself for the most part.  She grabbed the things they gave her and did what she was supposed to do with them.  She crawled to try to get the therapist’s paper (she LOVES paper–it makes the crinkly sounds).  She smiled at everyone and squealed a teeny bit.

When they finish they tell me that she’s doing things that 9 month olds are supposed to do.  Wow!  Okay, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!  No more worrying that she’s behind!  I guess she didn’t get the memo that she was a preemie.  And they said that she’s in the 90th percentile for height and weight!  Whoda thunkit?

 So, either Mommy’s doing something right or this kid’s just determined to be “normal”…   Either way, I’m all right with it!

There is nothing magical about my diaper pail.  In fact, I feel a bit gypped as it is clearly indicated in the name of the product that it has magical powers.  There is nothing at all magical about the flowery-poop smell that assaults my senses every time I open the thing and fling the next diaper in with record speed.  Did they really think that scent was going to work?  And don’t get me started on emptying the thing.  Who thought THAT system up?  I try to hold my breath from start to finish but usually end up having to take another breath about 3/4 of the way through.  Since I’ve held my breath as long as I can, “PAH!”–all of the air comes rushing out and I have to take an extra large breath to recuperate.  Ick.  Poop-smell taste.  Y’all know what I’m talkin’ about–when it smells so bad you can taste it.  Maybe that’s why I put it off so long, compacting the smelly mess even more with each consecutive diaper.  Hey!  Could that be why it smells so bad?

Where oh where can it be?  I’ve had one of those days.  Actually two of them.  In a row.  Those haven’t-lost-all-of-the-baby-weight, I-have-no-personal-style, I’m-so-tired-I-can’t-see-straight, no-surf-havin’, what-the-hell-did-I-sign-up-for days.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I would not trade it for the world.  I am very happy that I had the Tater Tot.  Momma’s just missin’ her mojo is all. 

As a stay-at-home mommy in a high cost of living area, it is imperative to get creative about getting your mojo back.  Shopping therapy used to do the trick when we had two incomes.  Buy a few new cute outfits and it’s all good.  Or a good, long 5-mile run would suffice.  Now I’m lucky if I can run down the block without huffin’ and puffin’ (Tater can attest to that!).  This after having done a sprint triathlon before I got pregnant.  So, do I accept my new, mojo-less state?  Or is there a way to get Momma’s mojo back with little money, less sleep and a tot in tow?  A topic to be pondered and written about again some time.  To be continued…

I am eating ice cream out of one of my daughter’s “yummy, yummy rice cereal” bowls and she is looking at me expectantly, waiting for her cereal.  It is noon.  (At least I’m using my own spoon)

Books have a very peculiar smell when you iron the pages.  You may be wondering what I am doing ironing book pages.  It’s a funny, sad story.

The other day I decided that our outing for the day would be to go to the library and get some books for Mommy to read when she was able to settle down enough during one of Tater’s naps (yeah, right…that’ll happen).  I paid my overdue book fines, checked the new ones out and strolled off to the car contented and feeling good.  I put the books on top of the car, put the child in the carseat, the stroller in the trunk, and myself in the driver’s seat.  It was turning out to be a good, relaxing day!  I turn out of the library parking lot and onto the main road.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a white object that appears to have flown off of the roof of my car.  The books!  Oh crap.

I make a u-turn to go back and see what the damage is and, sure enough, there is one of my library books laying by the center divider but it looks okay.  Oh, God, please don’t let anyone run over it.  Thedunk, thedunk.  Oh crap.  Someone ran over it.

I make another u-turn to actually retrieve the book, put my hazards on, and run like a mad-woman to retrieve the bedraggled book.  Whew! There’s one.  Now where’s the other one?  I decide to make yet another u-turn to go back to the library to find the other book.  As I’m driving down the side street by the library I see it laying splayed out by the side of the road.  Luckily this road has much less traffic and it has faired much better than the first book.  I hop out and gather my borrowed booty, thankful that it is not in worse condition.

That is how I came to be ironing the pages of a book today.  It really works quite well.  And the damage to the binding?  A hot glue gun can do amazing things.

No, not like that.  Although my husband insists that I have a girl crush on Jennifer Garner and he’s probably right.  She’s just so down-to-earth and likable.  And she can kick some butt, too!  Anyway…

I am in love with my daughter.  I had always heard about the depth of love that a mother feels but I was totally unprepared for how completely she would take me over.  It’s beyond being cute because even being cute fades when she’s screaming in the back of the car on our way to the grocery store.  She is the Center of the Universe. 

I love the hand gestures she makes with her chubby little hands, the way she grips everything with both hands and concentrates so intensely to bring it to her mouth, how she feels everything with her little hands by flicking them back and forth, her wide and toothless grin that comes so easily, and the way she sleeps with her little bottom up in the air.  She does a dance of sorts when she nurses and it just cracks me up.  She is constantly in motion.  She grabs on with both hands and kneads or flicks her hand back and forth, then a leg shoots out and an arm flies over her head.  The arm comes back down gracefully and her hand lands softly again.  From there it’s just a variation on the theme.  Every once in a while she will pop off, turn her little head up at me and flash a huge grin.  I’m hooked.

I fully intended to write and post this last night.  I sat down at my computer with that intention but my exhausted, addled brain got distracted by shiny things–celebrity gossip, the intentionally inflammatory headline or two–and I logged off and went to bed without writing a darned thing.  Oops.  Oh well, the upshot is that Tater Tot slept through the night and I was so exhausted that I slept more than usual, too!  Hallelujah, I can see the Promised Land!  As a result I am having an atypical Mommy Morning.  I have wiped down one of two bathrooms (the other one had a husband in it so I didn’t get to that one yet), I have a clean kitchen, a load of laundry is spinning as I type, my daughter is fed and ready to go, my bed is made and I’m halfway through this post, all by 6am.  Of course I am still in my sweats and I have a hole in my sock…

The night before, however, Tater was up twice and took a little while to go back down, resulting in a whopping 5 hours of sleep for me.  Almost none of them in a row.  Blech.  And of course the ever-elusive naps came in 40 minute chunks yesterday so by the time I actually laid down and started to drift off the baby monitor blew up and there went Mommy’s nap!  Oh well, I guess I can sleep when I’m dead or when she goes to pre-school, whichever comes first.