I should have known I was wrong about the love thing being enough the minute I felt the cold metal of the delivery table. Nevertheless, there are bonding stages every young mother passes through.
The first being nursing. Hot Wheelz was born with two traits — exceptional hearing and great suction. I noticed both when he’d latch on and then turn his head one hundred and eighty degrees to see where a noise originated without ever letting go of his airtight connection.
As the nursing stage weaned, I was thrown into spoon-feeding, plastic drop cloths and multiple submissions. That “in and out” stuff was for hamburgers — not impatient mothers. Cheezy instinctively knew. After a six-month liquid diet, eyeing enviously those consuming solids, he sucked the first spoon of rice cereal as clean as a plate of Navy beans and ham licked off by my larger-than-life dad.
The neat part never materialized. After finger-food meals of spaghetti and cherry Jell-O, I gave up the battle and redecorated the house in marinara.
All the kids helped baby Cheezy get his fill. Sometimes they filled him so full he changed sizes overnight. When a hand-me-down outfit didn’t yet fit, Coco asked, “Can’t we just feed him more?”
Then came poddy training. Love never facilitated that stage either. My oldest daughter, quick to learn, discovered babies got more attention and unlearned the task she’d accomplished just the month before.
Hot Wheelz thought it would be impressive to practice from the bathtub. Only the toilet was around the corner. He found it difficult to pee at a ninety-degree angle. (I remember my dad telling that to my brother.)
But the last one used the toilet as a spa. With your first, you boast your child was potty trained by the time he slept through the night. But after tackling the mothering miracle multiple times, lack of stress was more important than bragging rights. Mom’s words rang in my head. “Don’t push ‘em,” I heard. “I’ve yet to see a kindergartner carry a diaper in his lunch pail.” It sounded reasonable. So I didn’t push. Okay, I did put Pampers in his pail for a while. But not more than one semester.
Eventually, I could venture out without a diaper bag containing one of everything in the house. The kids’ mission became to try every lavatory in the universe at least once. All I heard for years when we strayed from home was, “I have to go potty.”
I caught one of them lifting the tank lid from the porcelain reservoir of water at the fifth gas station we’d hit that morning (but who was counting?). “What are you doing?” I’d asked.
“I just wanna see where the poop goes.”
I don’t know if I had the wits to tell anyone where anything went. Not only had I not understood where I was going, I couldn’t get started. Seems like I was stuck in the shoe tying stage forever. In pre-Velcro days, shoes untied more times than Baskin Robbins had flavors. Then in the darkest of “tying” times, an answer to Mother Houdini’s petition, “Please, help me. I’m tied in knots.” Voilá —Velcro.
“Cheezy, stay out of the garden,” I’d say.
“How’d you know where I was?”
It wasn’t hard. Everything stuck to Velcro — mending, forests, floor sweepings, cookie crumbs.
With limited knot experience, an older Cheezy grabbed any male within reach and held him in a headlock until he tied a necktie for him. Then he hung it on a hook in his closet. He could slip it over his head and cinch it up. He now dates from an elite group of women — rodeo ropers, needlepoint experts, and feminine anglers.
Oh, by the way, young moms, love does help.
Related posts:
Print This Post
