“You can see the lines of your underwear through your pants,” my husband cautioned, intending to be most helpful. After over a decade of sporting thong panties, now that I am a mom, and a pregnant mom at that, I can no longer bear the discomfort I once traded for aesthetics. So I have panty lines for the first time in my adult life. Good thing they are behind me so at least I don’t have to stare at them all day.
Not long ago we celebrated MeMo’s first birthday. After we put her to bed that night, Joe and I sat down at the computer and created a slide show of our favorite pictures of The Meemers taken in the last year. We titled the album “MeMo, A Year in Review” and watched it at least a half dozen times, adding new comments to the pictures each time we looked at them.
Seeing how MeMo has grown from a sleepy loaf of bread into a chattering, mobile little person with a strong willed and very vibrant personality, complemented by an arsenal of facial expressions, it got me thinking about how much I have changed in the past year since becoming a mom.
There are the obvious changes that we knew to expect like sleeping less and staying in more, but what about all of the little lifestyle changes we, as parents, make to accommodate life with kids? Eighteen months after The Meemers has become a part of our family, I have made a considerable number of lifestyle shifts. I am not talking about leaving my career to stay at home or waking up without an electric (as opposed to a tiny human) alarm clock at 6:30 each morning, including the weekends. I am talking about the seemingly subtle changes that add up over time until one day you wake up and understand fully why your mom wears those jeans that ride up so high they practically touch her boobs. I am a mom, and these are the changes I have made:
1. I take the camera everywhere. I have been known to snap pictures of MeMo in the arms of our local firemen, amidst the madness of a false alarm. We also have pictures of The Meemers in places as mundane as our local garden shop and propped up in the middle of a pile of wreaths taken while purchasing our Christmas tree. Before MeMo was born, it was a small miracle if the digital camera made it out of its case once a month.
2. I’ll embarrassingly admit that I sometimes skip brushing my teeth at night – something I haven’t done since I was a kid. After a long day of household operations, toddler chasing, long walks and trips to the grocery store, brushing my teeth seems equivalent to running a marathon at ten o’clock at night.
3. I miss my shoes! Like most women I know, I have a fair collection of pointy-toed, high-heeled shoes – none of which have seen the light of day since I was 3 months pregnant with The Meemers. I am strictly a flip-flops in the summer and sneakers in the winter girl now. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to donate my collection. I’ll get back to wearing grown-up shoes again someday, won’t I?
4. I can’t remember the last time I left the house with just my license and a credit card in my pocket and house key in my hand. These days I am a human pack-mule, weighed down with preparations to survive or prevent just about any baby disaster, or possibly any world disaster for that matter. (Yet with all the stuff I carry around, I still manage to forget diapers, wipes or some other critical childcare element on 50% of our outings.)
5. I don’t kiss my husband as much as I used to. It’s as if I only have a limited number of kisses to issue each day and 99% of them wind up planted on The Meemers. This change saddens me and so I am working on changing this behavior back to the way things were before we became parents.
6. I drive differently. Not just slower and less aggressively with MeMo as my co-pilot, but also on behalf of other kids and moms pushing strollers. Now if only the rest of the City of Cambridge could be on the look-out for me behind MeMo’s stroller while we're on our walks.
7. I have become an expert song writer. I can come up with a new tune and lyrics to accommodate just about any object or situation. Here’s a sample of my latest: “Open the refrigerator (ba ba ba). What do we see? I’ve got carrots and tomatoes (la la la) starin’ back at me!” Catchy, right?
I could go on and on, just as I’m sure any parent could, about the subtle changes we make in our own lives to better accommodate ourselves as parents, our children and our sanity. Hopefully I am still a way’s away from purchasing jeans that slide right up and over my belly button though!
