As you all know, I became a mother of two this year. My big four and a half year old was, well, four and a half years old, so he was starting to get past some of the weird and clingy  sweet and cute baby/toddler behaviors just in time for us to bring home a new baby/toddler. And the cycle started again, only this time it was a little more intense.

Being a mommy means...

you will learn eye/hand signals that rival the military and that allow you to converse, silently, with your husband. Eye contact, head jerk towards the hallway, fingertip to the lips in that universal "don't make a sound" gesture totally tells my husband my plan to sneak away from the children and lock myself in the bathroom. and if I flash my cell phone at him he knows I am not sneaking away to answer nature's call.

you will make three variations of each meal, despite your pre-children mandate that you would never do this. grown up mommys cannot live by chicken nuggets and applesauce alone! if creating child friendly versions of the grown up meals we like means extra work for mommy, it is so worth it. besides, I have yet to find a wine that pairs nicely with chicken nuggets...

never leaving the house on time. at any given moment one of your little monsters  angels will lose their hat, refuse to leave the house without their stuffed monkey, decide to use to the bathroom after the heavy coat is zipped and buttoned, or need a major diaper change.

someone is always hungry.

your view of "clean" changes. Pants that were thrown onto the bottom shelf of the changing table are certainly clean enough to wear again. Socks that were shoved into shoes and are the only pair you can find are clean enough. if the living room floor only has three matchbox cars, two stuffed animals, a handful of fruit gummies and one sippy cup half filled with pear juice you declare it clean enough.

your kitchen cabinets become storage for all those things you need to keep out of little sticky hands. Simply placing your cell phone and sharp scissors on the counter will not keep it away from tiny toddlers with super human strength who are capable of moving heavy kitchen chairs and hurling little bodies up onto counters.

you are never clean. at any given moment you have peanut butter, chocolate, glitter, snot, or something even worse somewhere on your clothes.

you eventually get to the point where you have changed so many poopy diapers that you begin to smell poop when there are no children around. this results in your looking like a maniac as you smell your fingers and try to finger out where the hell the smell is coming from.

you are never without children. even when they are not physically with you you are thinking about them.

you will never eat a snack or drink a drink you prepared for yourself again.

you can sense the fight brewing between your children in the living room and you choose to stay in the kitchen and turn up the radio.

you become a pro at "backwards math". if little johnny needs to be at school by 8:30 then we have to be in the car at 8:05 which means breakfast has to be done by 8:00 so we have to be dressed by 7:40 which means the kids need to be out of bed by 7:25 which means I need to be out of bed by 6:45 although if I don't wash my hair or put in my contacts I can sleep until 7:15. and you still wind up driving them to school in your pajamas.

every so often you realize, usually in the  middle of the crowded grocery store, that you forgot to brush your teeth/put on deodorant/comb your hair.

you are simultaneously thrilled and terrified when your kids sleep past 7:30am.

you need at least a week's notice for any "spontaneous" outing with your spouse or friends in order to secure babysitting and prepare yourself for a night out. (i.e. shave your legs.)

you have driven, alone in the car, for at least 30 minutes before you realize your son's Laurie Berkner Band CD has been playing and you continue to sing along.

you are always at least a little tired. always.

you are amazed at what you can do with a bottle of white glue, yarn and one googly eye.

your lap is never empty.

you can read your kindle/phone/laptop screen through the fingerprints.

you know what love truly is.

again with the "got dead" theme

My big four and a half year old came home from preschool yesterday with red dots and blue lines drawn, in marker, on his hand. He proudly pointed to his art work and explained that he drew the flag for "America and all the people who got dead". Again. Again with the "got dead" theme. This obsession of his has been with us since September 11th and it doesn't look like it is going away anytime soon.

We sat him down and explained, in truly preschool terms, what happened on that fateful day ten years ago. He was planning to go to the Cleveland Browns football game on the anniversary of the tragic events and we knew that the NFL would surely be putting on some sort of remembrance. We thought it best to mention it to our son before he heard it from someone else, so to speak. I don't think we even said that anyone died. But kids are intuitive. And they overhear a lot more than we think they do. So who knows where he heard the rest of the story - from us, mommy and daddy? From the day care teachers? From the news playing in the background of his life in the living room or the car?

So each day he comes home from school with a new picture he colored. Like the picture he drew of the monster trucks painted red white and blue. And the page full of butterflies - a yellow one for mommy, a purple one for love, a green one for gravedigger and a red one for the people who got dead. sigh. (don;t know who gravedigger is? concerned I am opening my child's sponge like brain to terrible things? click here.) he is bordering on obsession. And it is freaking me out.

He doesn't seem bothered by it. I ask him if he is sad about what happened, or if he is worried that it might happen again. And he says no. So maybe I just have a very compassionate little guy on my hands. And I know he is getting to that age where all the obsessions start. He can already name every monster truck. He can tell you the mascot for every NFL football team. He can quote lines from both "Cars" movies. This boy is not a newbie to obsessions. But because this newest one centers around people "getting dead" it worries me a little.

It's funny, really. I am no different than anyone else in America who wasn't touched personally by the events of September 11. I followed the news. I felt horrible - just terrible for the families who lost loved ones. I worried about the future and didn't like the thought of being in a large crowd, for fear of another attack. But eventually I turned the TV off and went back to my life. And when the 10th anniversary rolled around I registered it, I thought about where I was when I heard the news and how I was still living in my apartment in Akron where Brad and I eventually had to turn off the TV just to stop the constant barrage of coverage. Yes, I registered it. And I moved on. Life is here, in the moment. I have two small boys, one of whom is learning English and requires lots of extra patience to deal with his moods and frustrations.  I have a household to run and the mom taxi to drive. I have meals to shop for and prepare and a husband to keep track of. Oh, and I have a thousand verses of We Are the Dinosaurs to sing. That alone takes up most of my day.

But my big four and a half year old seems to have plenty of time to think about America. My big four and a half year old who is not even American by birth is currently being a better patriot than his mommy. And his desire to wave the flag, and draw the flag, and talk about the flag- he didn't get that from me. My travels around the world have made me totally appreciate my life here in this country, that much is true. But I am not over the top patriotic. So a part of me is proud of my little guy. So so proud. And maybe I shouldn't worry about this obsession with the people who "got dead". Maybe next month I'll be looking back at this obsession fondly, as I live through his next one. I have a feeling it is just beginning...