Parenting 201

A year ago, around the time of Wes 1^st birthday, I wrote Parenting 101.  I used this blog post as an arena to reflect upon the barrage of events, emotions, and bodily fluids that encapsulates the first year of parenting.  Another year of successes, failures, and general chaos has since past, and Wes is about to turn 2 years old.    Again I find myself with a new set of experiences that have led to more moments of sheer bliss than I ever imagined possible as well as many instances of utter defeat.  But here we are, one year and significantly more gray hairs later, still trying our hardest at this parenting gig.  What follows are the lessons that reshaped our little world during this second year with Wes.

1.  Do nothing with mediocrity.

Wes lives hard.  Everything he does seems to be the best (or worst) thing he’s ever done.  Wes dosen’t just walk down the stairs. He hops, or giggles hysterically as he descends each step on his rear end, or sometimes cries at the top of the stairs until I carry him down in my arms.  Wes doesn’t settle for the mundane.  In his opinion, if you have a task to do, make it memorable.

2.  When a toddler says no, he means no.  Or maybe Yes.

Wes started to use language with some consistency around 15 months, and his first words were adorable: fish, Bear, and lights.  Then came no.  I remember learning in school that Sanskrit has 96 words for love whereas the English language has only one.  The point of the lesson was to show us that the English language often limits our full expression of emotion.  The word “no” for a toddler falls into a similar category, as illustrated by some of my daily exchanges with Wes.

Mom:  “Wes, do you want these chicken nuggets?” 

Wes:  “No!” (chicken nuggets are swiftly dumped on the floor).

Mom:  “Wes, do you want some Cheerios?”

Wes: “No!” (takes cup of Cheerios from my hand and begins depositing handfuls of cereal into both his mouth and Bear’s mouth)

Mom:  “Wes, let’s put on your shoes and go in Mommy’s car.”

Wes:  “No!” (begins a footrace with Bear around the kitchen island)

Mom:  “Wes, did you poop?”

Wes:   “No!”  (noxious odor fills room and child attempts to walk, stiff-legged, across the room to escape said odor).

I’m going to petition the folks at Miriam Webster to consider expanding the definition of no to include things like “yes”, “not right now”, and “hell no”.  I believe I will have the support of anyone who has ever been in the presence of a toddler.

 3. You can use all the Clorox wipes you want, but your kid is still going to lick the driveway.

Though my Biology degree has rendered itself nearly useless for being a stay-at-home mom, it does grant me permission to be a full-fledged germaphobe.  I took microbiology, and I can’t un-see what grew on those incubated plates after swabbing objects like door handles, desk tops, and computer keyboards.  Consequently, our cars and diaper bags are readily equipped with canisters of disinfecting wipes, since Wes is surely going to contract smallpox from the next shopping cart he touches (did I mention immunology was not a class offered at college?).   One can imagine the heart palpitations I experienced when Wes began experiencing the great outdoors…with his taste buds.  At first I’d try to stop him from sampling the grass, licking dirt off of our landscaping rocks, or putting entire pieces of chalk in his mouth (honestly, I thought that one would fix itself).  But now, my white flag is waving in defeat.  Go ahead child, eat your goldfish crackers directly from the driveway.  Did you just drop that piece of ice on the patio?  Now it is peppered with flavor.  If I tried to stop Wes from all of his outdoor culinary explorations, I would have no energy for refereeing the three daily meals I actually intend for him to eat.  You have to pick your battles.  But for all of the sanitation breaches we experience outside, there is a part of me that just can’t let go of those that I can control.  So even though Wes might be helping Bear fetch her ball in his own mouth, I won’t hesitate to wipe away the Plague from Wes’ hands next time we leave the public library.

4.  For everything (and everyone) there is a season.

If there is anything we have learned from Wes, it is that things eventually fall into place.  Wes has never been the kind of kid to do things right on time.   He was 5 weeks early with his arrival into this world and a few months past average for walking.  He was quick to get teeth but late to talk.  Of course we take strides to be proactive with his development, but in the end, we know that Wes will get where he needs to be on his own schedule.  The harder lesson to learn is that the same goes for parents.  It took me nearly two years to feel comfortable taking him to public play places, but now we have a blast.  We also waited a very long time to spend our first night away from Wes; had we done so sooner, I would have come home in the middle of the night and crawled right back into my own bed.  Parents need their own space to grow too, and we do it on our own timetable.  I wish we felt more comfortable traveling with Wes, but frankly we don’t.  We just aren’t ready to take on those challenges yet.  Children give you enough opportunities to go (way) beyond your comfort zone for so many things, and sometimes sticking to your gut instinct (and maintaining some semblance of sanity) is the best way you know how to parent.

 5. Some days are long.  Really long.  But the years are short, so cherish everything.

I don’t look back on Wes’ first year with rose colored glasses; it was hard!  The worries that accompany a preemie, a colicky baby, and a few months in a hard helmet make for a long infancy.  During that time I never understood the phrase “they grow up so fast.”  But I look back, and the second year didn’t feel nearly as long as the first.  Sure, there are many days when I question how I’m going to make it to bath time as I open his blinds in the morning, but I also look back on the last few months and wonder how it is possible for summer to be over already.  If I’ve learned anything from Wes, it is to seize little moments.  Each day is filled with enough challenges to make it a little hard to carpe diem.  However, there are so many instants of uninhibited joy and childhood magic that sneak into ordinary events that you just need to soak them up while they’re there.  I realized this more than ever when Sean and I were sitting on buckets of preserved rats in a science storage room.  It was a few days after Wes’ first birthday, I was subbing for a maternity leave, and Sean happened to be working in the same building that day.  A student had brought a gun to class and fired shots into the ceiling of his classroom after taking the class hostage.  A Code Red was called, and the entire school went into hiding.  We had many hours to wrap our minds around the situation as we waited to be escorted out of the building by SWAT members.  As a mom, my heart ached for the parents of the 1,800 students in the building who could not confirm the safety of their children.  We were so lucky that Wes was home in the safety of Grandma’s care.  But one day Wes is going to be a student, and all the Clorox wipes in the world can’t protect him from those kinds of situations.  Since then I have found myself cherishing both the wonderful moments and also the unpleasant ones just a little more.  There is nothing more magical than Wes’ belly laugh as he splashes in his water table, and maybe the insistence to nap in my arms on the busiest of days isn’t too bad either.