Geekamama

Category Archives: Parenting


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An oink oink here, a moo moo there…

Kiddo has long been a fan of farm animals.  The book Moo, Baa, La La La was one of his first favorites, and he’s been pointing out tractors since before he could walk.  For Christmas, Santa brought him the Fisher-Price Little People Farm and Kiddo went straight for it as soon as he laid eyes on it.

Kiddo plays with his new farm

Now his love of all things Barnyard has spilled into his musical taste.  I don’t know when he first heard the song “Old McDonald Had a Farm” but he’s been requesting it by name–or rather, by chorus–every time the opportunity for a song arises.  No matter which other tune I start singing, I can barely get a line in before he interrupts with a stern “NO NO NO.”  If I pretend I don’t know which one he’s really after, he will eventually tell me “yah-yah-yo,”  which is his version of “E-I-E-I-O.”  Heaven help me if I try to get away with just one verse, because unless something really nifty distracts him, he’ll keep requesting it until either my voice or my collection of animals is exhausted.

This, I’m told, is normal for toddlers.  In a world that’s still very unpredictable to them, putting a familiar story or song on repeat is comforting for them because they know what’s coming next.  They feel confident when they can predict what’s on the next page.  (Which mean, I suppose, that I should pick a canonical order for those barn animals and their sounds.)

So I’ve been singing a lot of Old McDonald lately.  In the car on the way to and from daycare.  At night, to help him fall asleep.  On the weekends when we’re playing with his new See ‘n Say.  Here, there, everywhere.  But just when it was starting to get tedious, I figured out how to leverage it.  Yep, I’m not above bribing my son with a rendition of his favorite song.  “Sit down in your car seat, Kiddo, and we’ll sing Old McDonald!”  It works almost as well as goldfish crackers.


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A shortcut to an easier choice

As parents, the options available to us can be almost physically smothering.  How many blankets or cute little onesies will we need?  How much should we hang onto when he outgrows this size?  What should we offer for dinner tonight to ensure the correct balance of nutrition, variety, and recipient approval?  If you don’t find out what all the options are, you might overlook an important one, but spend too much time trying to gather all the facts and you end up drowning in research.  No wonder some of us feel overwhelmed.

Take the problem of coming up with a name.  When you think about it, naming a child is a huge responsibility.  You’re hanging a sign on this tiny little person that’s going to stamp their interactions with everyone they meet.  Every time they say “Hi, I’m –” they’re putting your selection on display.  And the range of options!  One book I had offered more than 40,000 possible names.  How on earth could we pick the right one?

Clearly, if we were going to have to live with ourselves and our son, my husband and I needed some way to narrow down the possibilities.  And so we came up with a rather arbitrary rule.  Both of our full names share a quirky characteristic.  We decided to restrict the potential name pool for our son to those names that would fit the same pattern.  And just that easily, our options dropped to a mere couple dozen.  Yes, we did end up taking a “short list” of 30 names to the hospital with us, but it was a lot shorter than it could have been, and the morning after our baby was born, he had a name–one that we’re all still quite happy with, a year and a half later.

Studies* have found that people are more satisfied with their choices when they have a smaller set of items from which to choose.  More options means a greater likelihood of buyer’s remorse, and of second-guessing yourself.  But sometimes there isn’t an easy or clear-cut way to reduce your options.  When faced with this problem, we occasionally have to fall back on the time-honored solution of simply Making Something Up.

I faced a similar quandary when I was sorting through outgrown baby clothes.  I wanted to hang on to some of them for sentimental or practical reasons, but we don’t have space for all the ones I had cute memories for.  My arbitrary rule was that I couldn’t keep more of any one size than would fit in the smallest of the storage boxes I’d picked out.  They aren’t very big boxes, but with that rule firmly in mind, I was able to cull down to only my favorite “keepers” and pass the rest along lightheartedly to friends with younger and smaller babies.

It’s actually rather freeing to realize that you don’t have to have a solid reason for deciding one way or the other–that it’s OK to pick something just because it’s more aesthetically pleasing to you somehow.  And if you’re the one making the rule, then you get to be the one who decides how close you need to come to the letter of the law.  I’ll confess, there were some clothing sizes where I exceeded my self-imposed quota, but since I had other boxes with extra space, I was ultimately able to make everything fit in the total space I’d allotted to myself.

When it comes down to it, the important things in the life of a baby are that he or she is getting the necessary food, warmth, sleep, and love.  Years from now, it probably won’t matter which brand of car seat young Junior rode around in, or whether you started solids with avocado, banana, or simple rice cereal.  I’ve found the time spent analyzing minute differences between options could also be spent playing with my Kiddo… and that’s one choice that’s not hard to make.

* Here are some sources describing this phenomenon:


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A step back in time

Last month, we celebrated Christmas by driving to Montana to visit my parents and siblings.  When we returned to Redmond, my husband and I took the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve off from work.  However, Kiddo’s daycare was still open and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity for a few kid-free days to get things done around the house.

The past few days have been a reminder of the first couple months of our marriage, before Kiddo came along.  They highlighted the little changes and adjustments we’ve made over the past 18 months, in some cases adaptions that we hadn’t even noticed until we didn’t need to do them.

Sleeping, for one.  I had to wake up to drop Kiddo off, but I crawled back between the covers when I got home.  I’d forgotten what it’s like to sleep until I woke up naturally, rather than being woken up by an alarm or a crying child.

Leaving the house later that afternoon was another big change.  It took us less than five minutes to transition from sitting on the couch to backing out of the garage.  I was almost amazed at how quickly we managed something that had become a fifteen-to-twenty minute process once a baby joined the party.

Eating at a restaurant was also a change.  I didn’t have to drag in a bunch of Kiddo’s accessories.  I could pay full attention to what my husband was saying, rather than dividing my attention between him and the management of a rookie eater.  We were even able to order dessert!

The house was a little more peaceful for a few hours of the day, and I was able to get more work done than usual.  It was a nice change.

All the same, at the end of the day when we picked up Kiddo from daycare, we remembered why we chose to give up that ease and freedom.  There are plenty of ways that our life has changed for the less convenient, but there are also plenty of ways it’s changed for the better.


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The penny finally drops

I was standing in line at the grocery store one night recently when Dennis DeYoung’s “Desert Moon” started playing. That album has the dubious honor of being the very first album I ever bought with my own money, at the tender age of 12. I brought it home and popped it in the tape deck of the living room stereo, and then went into the kitchen with my mom and tried to act all nonchalant, oh, we’re just listening to some music that I picked out, no big deal, not going to act like it’s important to me that anyone likes my musical tastes… I don’t remember anymore how my mom actually did react to it–I think I was trying hard not to see her reaction because I didn’t want to know if she disapproved.

For most of my growing-up years, the primary motivator behind my choices was whether Other People would approve of them.  I was a chunky kid with brains, glasses, and braces. I didn’t know how to do my hair or makeup and I had no sense of style.  Junior high girls can be some of the most insecure creatures on this planet, and often the only way we know how to build ourselves up is to pull down others.  We do things that make no sense to adults because we think those actions will make us look cooler to the boys we want to impress and the girls we want to surpass.

In my struggle to not be at the bottom of the social ladder, I had this idea that anything and everything I did during non-school hours was going to get back to the popular kids and give them fodder for talking behind my back.  It wasn’t supposed to be cool to have a close family life, so I tried to push it away.  I scowled in family photos, and I sequestered myself away from my parents and sisters rather than risk someone catching me actually having fun with them.  Heaven forbid!  I’d be ostracized forever.

Yet, at the same time that I wanted my classmates to approve of me, I also wanted my parents to approve of me, and that was a tricky tightrope to walk. I wanted to be the kid who could come home and talk with her mom about what happened in school and what this boy said and what it all meant.  But I always felt awkward doing so, because what if she thought my worries were dumb?  So I damped it down, tried to pretend it was No Big Thing, just something I was casually wondering about.  Even now I sometimes reflexively hold back a bit when talking about my life, because it’s crushing to be told that something you’re passionate about is stupid, or worse, uninteresting.

With the birth of my son, it was as if the lens through which I viewed my childhood was twisted ninety degrees. I gazed adoringly at my tiny newborn, thinking Oh my god, this little boy is less than a day old and I already love him so much that I can’t believe my heart can actually hold all that love.

Followed by Oh my god, THIS is how my mother feels about ME!

And then Oh my god, I was such a little shit!

I used to cringe when I looked back at my younger years because of all the ridiculous things I did. Now I cringe as I look back and realize how I unintentionally hurt people.

When I was in fifth grade, my mom made a maroon blazer for me to wear for school picture day. She bought the pattern and the fabric and stayed up late nights sewing it.  The night before pictures, the blazer wasn’t quite finished when I went to bed, but when I woke up, it was hanging on my bedroom door.  What were my first words?  Not “Yay, Mom, you finshed it, thank you!”  They were  “…but it doesn’t have any buttons on it.”

Someday I’m going to get my own time machine, and one of the first things I’m going to do is jump back to ten-year-old me and smack myself upside the head.

I don’t know where that blazer is now, but I might dig up one of the old school pictures and keep it on my dresser as a reminder.  Because one day, I’ll be on the other side of that conversation.  I’ll be the mom who just wants to make sure that her child is doing OK. He’ll be the one balancing peer approval with parental approval and unthinkingly saying things that hurt my feelings.

We are the product of our accumulated experiences, and if I hadn’t had all the twists and turns that I did, I wouldn’t be who I am today.  I like the person I’ve become, but I wish there was a way I could tell fifth-grade or eighth-grade or eleventh-grade me to worry less about what my classmates thought.  It’s OK to love and be loved by your family.  They’ll keep doing it, even if it’s uncool, so you might as well love them back.


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Taming my inner toddler

It’s started.  Kiddo’s easygoing first couple months of being a one-year-old are giving way to tantrums.  At the moment they’re kind of amusing, but I don’t expect I’ll see them that way forever.

For now, it seems to be little things that set him off, and there’s even some logic behind them.  The other night, he was playing with his shape sorter.  The circle and star are easy for him to fit through the holes, but that darn square!  There are only four ways to orient it, compared to the FIVE ways the star can be positioned!  And don’t even start about the triangle!  After a couple of unsuccessful tries I could see that he was getting upset, until finally he shoved aside all the remaining shapes and stormed off.  I tried to coax him back to work on it together with me, but he wouldn’t be consoled.  If he couldn’t get it easily, he’d rather do something else–anything else.

Suddenly I flashed back to earlier that week when I’d been struggling with a coding problem at work.  I knew what I needed to do to address it, but I could tell it was going to be a lot of work and I wasn’t sure my approach was the best way.  I was tired of scouring web pages, searching for a clearer explanation of how to do it.  Again and again I’d try something, only to find it not working the way I thought it would.  In frustration, I kept turning to something shinier and less stressful.  I got a lot of internet surfing done that afternoon, but not a lot of the work I was supposed to be doing.  I thought I’d long since grown out of tantrums, but it seems there’s a toddler lurking inside just waiting for a reason to throw a hissy fit.

Now that I’m an adult, I know how to get on top of my emotions, and most of the time when I get upset I can stop the feelings from overwhelming me.  But Kiddo is still very young and his coping skills are very immature (as expected at this age).  Some of the ways he deals with frustration are amusing to watch.  I try to stifle my giggles, because even worse than being frustrated is when you’re frustrated and others don’t take you seriously.  But sometimes, it’s hard to keep a straight face.

The other morning he was playing with his stuffed seahorse that plays music when you press on its belly.  Kiddo has gotten it to work before, but that morning he wasn’t pressing in the right place, and the music wouldn’t turn on.  In frustration he pushed the toy away and stood up, crying.  I tried to fix the problem by turning the music on and handing it back to him.  No luck; he was mad at the seahorse now and didn’t want to play with it.  In fact, he’d show that seahorse who was boss!  He grabbed it and threw in down into his toy basket.  Unfortunately, it bounced out of the basket and fell behind it, out of reach.

He stopped crying.  He turned to me with an inquisitive look, and calmly pointed to the toy, asking me to get it back for him.  Aha, I thought, he’s ready to play nicely again.  I retrieved it and handed it back.  Whereupon Kiddo picked up his tantrum right where he’d left off!

Then it clicked for me.  He didn’t want it back so he could play with it.  He wanted it back because he was trying to deal with these emotions, and the only way he could do so was to physically work them out.  Like when his push wagon got stuck and he couldn’t take it out on the wagon itself, so he started flinging around a nearby pile of shoes instead.  Or when he was upset about having to wait for his breakfast, and he wandered around the kitchen until he finally had to settle for just throwing himself down on the floor.

While I no longer hurl things (including myself) around anymore when I’m upset, I do understand how sometimes it’s not enough to sit down and get over it.  Sometime I too have to do something physical to bleed off the frustration and adrenaline that has built up in response to a situation.  Usually my husband bears the brunt of my verbal ranting, and that’s all it  takes for me to calm down again.  But I’ve got coping skills Kiddo doesn’t, including the ability to speak my feelings or type furiously in a chat window.

I fully expected that we would get to the tantrum stage eventually, and I figured we’d learn ways to cope with it.  What I didn’t expect was that my son’s tantrums would show me a few things about how I handle my own frustrations.


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Back away from the bubble wrap

One thing that’s been really hard for me as a new parent is trying not to be overprotective of my Precious Little Angelkins.  He’s still a little unstable on his feet, he’s young enough that he doesn’t really know how to share or play cooperatively with other kids, and all his emotions are right there on the surface barely under control.  All developmentally normal for a one-year-old, but something that seems ripe for disaster when slightly older kids get into the mix.

The first time we visited the play area at the mall, I followed Kiddo around, teetering between wanting to protect him from danger and wanting him to explore at his own pace.  To me it felt like the older kids were running around with no regard for smaller or slower kids.  I was sure he’d get pushed or trampled or picked on, or worse.  But none of that happened.  Sure, he got bumped a couple times, and he fell down once or twice, and I did have to assert when it was our turn on the slide.  I had a few moments of alarm, but Kiddo?  He had a great time.  He couldn’t wait to go back.

I had similar feelings of trepidation as we prepared for a week with relatives in California.  We would be spending most of our time at the home of Kiddo’s three older cousins, and all I could picture was a four-year-old and a pair of two-year-olds zooming around excitedly, not realizing that Kiddo wasn’t as agile as them, not understanding that he doesn’t understand all the social niceties yet.

Boy, was I mistaken!  There were only a couple incidents where a parent had to step in, and in general all the kids got along well and had fun together.  Kiddo was happy to toddle around after them and play with all their toys, and they were great about sharing them.  I’d definitely underestimated how the interactions would go.

Being around the older kids helped both Kiddo and I learn some new things.  He learned how to get up on his feet all by himself, he picked up several new words, and he’s gotten much better at eating with a spoon.  I discovered that reading bedtime stories is even more fun when the recipient can talk about the pictures with you, and that you never get too big for snuggles (thank goodness!)  And I might have learned to relax a bit and tone down the hovering.

My niece and nephews are living proof that kids can and do survive the falls and pushes and knocks on the head.  They’re also a reminder to me that the majority of the world really isn’t out to harm my little boy.  I may not be ready for total free-range motherhood, but I can at least stop trying to cushion every blow and smooth out every anticipated frustration.

         


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It’s what you are, not what you do

The transition from being a family of two to being a family of three was one of the most challenging things my husband and I have done so far.  Those first months were full of doubts and uncertainties.  But then when Kiddo was a few months old, parenting seemed to get a little easier.  It was no longer this big, huge, scary cloud of millions of choices.  Things started feeling more natural.  My husband and I gained more confidence in ourselves and in our ability to shape this wailing creature into a functioning member of society.

Around that same time, my self-identity began to change as well.  If you had asked me in August 2009 to describe myself, I would have said I was a software engineer, married with a new baby.  A year later, I would have reversed that order and put the parenting part at the top of the list.  Of course it’s a context-sensitive thing; if I were introduced to our company’s CEO, I’d refer to my job first without even thinking about it.  But in casual conversation, or when filling out my profile for some social website, I’m a mother first.  (This does backfire if I don’t think carefully about my wording.  In a popular site’s blog directory, my first crack at my blog description said I was a “mom to a toddler and a software engineer.”  Kiddo is a clever young mister, but that’s pushing it.)

So, what changed that brought about this reversal?  In a nutshell, my attitude about parenting.  I’d finally internalized that parenting is not something to do, like reading or cultivating mushrooms.  It’s something to be.  It’s what I am.  I’m a Mother.

Think about the difference implied when someone you’ve just met says “I bake” compared to “I’m a baker.”  The first one implies a more casual association with the activity, putting it on par with all the other activities that fill up your time, including going to the dentist or going for a run.  The second phrase conveys a sense of authority and ownership.  It’s an integral part of who they are.  Someone who casually bakes could whip up a fine batch of chocolate chip cookies from a recipe.  Someone who’s a baker would be able to read the recipe, instinctively know that something sounds off with the proportions of butter and sugar, and tweak it accordingly to produce something even better.

Technically I was a parent from the moment we first found out we were expecting a baby (in fact, a few weeks before that).  But like any activity, parenting is something that takes some practice and some getting used to.  There are lots of mental adjustments, as you break hundreds of old habits and routines and lay in new ones.  It’s not necessarily as instinctive as we’d like; consider all the stories of people who have fathered or given birth to children but then end up neglecting them or worse.  But I’d like to believe that most parents have made a choice, albeit a subconscious one, to do the best they can in caring for their child.  It’s tough, and for many people there’s a lot of questioning and self-doubt.  But then one day, something happens or someone says something, and they realize that, like the Velveteen Rabbit, they’ve finally become Real.

Now, when faced with a mammoth pile of shirts in the toddler section of Target, I know which ones to get: the orange ones.  In less than a second I can tell the difference between his “I’m hurt” cry, which gets an immediate response, and his “I’m frustrated” cry, which might need nothing but the space to work it out for himself.  And when I’m reading books or scouring the internet for advice, I can filter out suggestions that don’t seem quite right for us, modify others to better fit for our family, or even go completely off-book if necessary.  I don’t expect that I’ll always have the answers, but I feel a lot more confident in my ability to search for them.


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Toddlers versus the TSA, redux: Well, that was anticlimactic

Last week I wrote about my jitters around bringing a toddler through the security lines at Sea-Tac airport.  I even called the TSA to try to assuage my concerns.

As often is the case, my worries turned out to be fruitless.  Going through security was easy, and frankly, the least troublesome part of our flight.

We arrived at the airport about two hours ahead of our 7:30 p.m. scheduled departure.  Our carry-on count: two backpacks, one diaper bag, one car seat in carrying bag, and one Kiddo-carting stroller.  I estimated 40 people in line ahead of us at the security checkpoint we initially chose, but a helpful TSA agent pointed us to another checkpoint that had no lines at all.  By the time we got there, there were about 20 people in line ahead of us, including several families with small children.  Excellent, I thought; I can watch what happens with the other families before we have to face it ourselves.

What actually happened with them was a whole lot of nothing.  In fact, no one in our line got pulled for secondary screening.  Even the occasional person who had to step back through the metal detector was passed along eventually.

Metal detectors?  Wait, weren’t they supposed to have been removed and replaced with the body scanners?  Nope.  Once again, I’d led internet hype mislead me.  The body scanners and pat-downs are only brought into play when a person fails to clear the metal detector.  And in the entire time that we were watching the people ahead of us, or going through the line ourselves with all our baggage, or waiting for my backpack to clear a hand search, or packing up afterward, not one person was pulled for secondary screening.

I was almost convinced that the machines weren’t even turned on–that they were set up to let people get used to their presence, but not yet functioning.  We had to walk past two other screening areas on our way to our gate, and at each one I craned my neck, hoping in vain to see the AIT in action.  Finally, at the third security area, we saw a single adult male standing in the body scanner.  That was it. 

And considering what else we had to go through that night to make it to California–snowy roads, slow service in the food court, a mechanical delay, having to unload off the first plane and wait for a second plane to arrive, having to board 150-plus people in less than 20 minutes to avoid the flight being canceled–getting through security was a breeze!  Even with a toddler.

Those people setting up web sites asking whether you “posed for porn” or “got groped” are tweaking public perception by leaving out the option most likely to happen: neither of the above.  But no one gets web hits or ad revenue off stories of systems working correctly. On the other hand, it’s great gossip to pass along links of things that outrage us!  Here’s the problem with doing so (and I’m guilty of this myself): it creates the impression that the outrageous occurrences are more widespread than they actually are.  There’s so much fear and misinformation flying around that it’s a wonder there’s room for the actual planes.

I’m not thrilled that there’s a chance I may have to deal with a full-body scan or pat-down at some point in the future.  But now that I’ve seen firsthand what’s actually happening at the security checkpoints, I’m no longer stressing out about it.

By the way, here are a couple direct-from-the-horse’s-mouth blog posts about how to make your holiday travel go more smoothly (and reduce the chance of getting pulled for secondary screening):

http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/hey-turkey-check-out-our-holiday-travel.html

http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/tsa-myth-or-fact-leaked-images.html

Kiddo watches the airport activity during preboarding


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Toddlers versus the TSA

Update: I’ve noticed I’m getting some hits from web searches on this topic.  Thanks for visiting!  Our trip is Sunday evening, November 21.  I’ll take some notes on what happens when our family goes through the security lines, and I’ll try to write up a good detailed description of how extensive the toddler pat-down is (and the adult one too, if I end up getting that.)  I’ll try to have the new post up by Monday afternoon, depending on how much computer access I get.

 

Next Sunday afternoon, we’re flying to visit family for Thanksgiving week, departing via Seattle-Tacoma International.  Sea-Tac is one of the many airports that has installed full-body scanners at the security checkpoint.  I’m starting to get a little anxious about this.  It’s not the privacy issue at all; it’s the question of how it’s going to work with a toddler.

 

I’m sure I’m just letting myself get paranoid about it, but here’s the scenario that’s playing in my mind:

We get to the airport and check in.  Knowing us, we’re already a little stressed and running slightly behind schedule.  We go to security and get into the Family line.  Since it’s holiday time, the line is long.  Kiddo is getting antsy and doesn’t want to be held, but doesn’t want to hold someone’s hand while standing.  I’m already juggling too many carry-on bags and having a hard time keeping him mellow.  At last we get to the front of the line, only to be confronted with the full-body image scanners…

The problem I’m mentally crashing into is that everything I’ve been able to find (which isn’t much) about how the scanning process works says that the person being scanned has to step into the scanner and stand still while the image is being processed and analyzed.  It can take up to 15 seconds for this to happen.

Fifteen seconds doesn’t sound like much, does it?  For a toddler, it can be an eternity!

…Husband and I pass Kiddo back and forth while we empty our pockets.  He takes Kiddo while I walk into the scanner, pause for the imaging, and exit.  Then it’s Kiddo’s turn.  He balks.  He squirms.  Then he sees me on the other side and sprints through.  The TSA agent turns to me apologetically and says, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we need him to stand there for a few seconds.”  I guide Kiddo back into the scanner.  Kiddo stays for a moment, fidgeting, then runs back out and clings to me.  The line behind us is getting longer and the waiting travelers grumpier…

I called the TSA to get some clarification.  It only took a few minutes to get through to a real person (most of that due to me mis-navigating the menu) and the agent I spoke to was nice, but just repeated the same information I’d found elsewhere: They will not separate me from my child.  I can opt for a pat-down if I don’t want to go through the screener.  The agents are trained to work with children.  She did tell me that the pat-down for children is less invasive than it is for an older person, but right after that there was a burst of static and the call got cut off.  I should have called back, but I didn’t have the heart to do so.

…At this point, we have to go with the pat-down.  But by now Kiddo’s had enough.  He just wants Mommy to hold him.  He doesn’t want someone else taking him, even if I’m standing right there, and he doesn’t want anyone touching him.  Tension rises.  Kiddo fusses.  I stress.

Flying with a toddler is going to be challenging enough.  Logically I know that it’ll be just a couple of minutes and then it will be behind us, but not being able to plan for what’s going to happen is the part that’s causing me the most worry.  I feel a little silly, because in the travels with Kiddo that we’ve done so far, the TSA agents have been helpful and respectful, and I don’t know why I’m worried that things will be different on this trip.

In the meantime, my husband has declared the issue moot.  We’re not going to expose our son to more radiation than necessary, he says; we’ll opt for the pat-down for him right off the bat.  It does give me one less thing to worry about, but frankly, I never thought I’d long for the days when “all” we had to do was take off our shoes and walk through the metal detector.  I don’t want to be THAT MOM whose kid is screaming and putting everyone else on edge as well.

At any rate, I’ll report back next week on how things went, and we can all have a good chuckle at my still-relatively-new-mommy paranoia.  Right?  Right.


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Gotta get my fix

It’s been a stressful day. I’m feeling run down, and I need a little sumthin-sumthin to pick me up. Fortunately, I’ve got a regular source in my back pocket, and I’m on my way there now. I park the car and rush in, skitter down to the basement, slip in to the room. As soon as I lay eyes on my prize, I can feel myself calming down already. A blissful smile breaks across my face.

Perhaps it’s true.  Perhaps I actually am addicted to my kid.

After reading the Time article linked above, I felt concerned for my own well-being, and pulled up an online list of addiction symptoms, just to put my mind at ease.  Unfortunately, several of the items ring all too true:

Extreme mood changes – happy, sad, excited, anxious, etc
 Life is so wonderful! I’ve never been happier! Except when I manage to make myself feel like the worst mom on the planet.  And I start thinking of all the things I’ll miss because I’m not around my son 24/7.  And then I think about all the terrible things that could befall him while he sleeps and tiptoe furtively into his room, hoping not to be spotted.  I watch him sleeping, and… life is so wonderful!!

Sleeping a lot more or less than usual, or at different times of day or night
I’ve had this one in spades for the past 16 months. We’ve only just started getting consistent through-the-night sleeping, and in fact I’m hesitant to even mention it for fear of jinxing it.

Changes in energy – unexpectedly and extremely tired or energetic
All of a sudden, I’m actually awake at 7 a.m. and clear-minded enough to assemble all the things we’ll need for an entire day out.   We go and go and go!   Then we come home, Kiddo goes to bed, I wander downstairs, and collapse in a heap.

Weight loss or weight gain
 Granted, I did drop about forty pounds since Kiddo’s birth. But I’m sure you’ll be reassured to know that it’s making its way back to me, slowly.

Changes in social groups, new and unusual friends, odd cell-phone conversations
So I’ve started running with a new crowd, what’s wrong with making new friends?  And they’re all really nice people, you’d like them in an instant.  “Latching on”?  “Blowouts”?  “Handling smacks”?   Totally not odd, not in the least.   Right?

Whatever.   I’m sure I’m not an addict.  After all, I–hold on, Kiddo is crawling into my lap.  I need to give him a big hug and sniff his just-washed hair. MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm. Sorry, what was I saying?

Right, the article.  Am I addicted to my kid?  I prefer Time’s take on it:

Why else would behavioral studies find that the most addictive pattern of reinforcement is not consistent bliss, but inconsistent and unpredictable rewards? Loving each other is hard and not always pleasant; taking care of children certainly includes as much pain as it does pleasure.  In other words, humans evolved “addiction regions” in the brain not so we could become junkies, but more likely so we would persevere in love and parenthood.

Suddenly it makes sense why, after struggling through the newborn and toddler years, we’re willing to go out and do it again, and again and again.