Embracing Parenthood

You are hanging out on a Friday afternoon and the child is sleeping and you hear something maybe not perfect/normal on the baby monitor. You go up to check on the kid, and find that he spit up second breakfast and is maybe semi-covered in it (face, hands, etc).

Pre-baby, when you are a normal person without children, you might think oh that's too bad or that's gross or whatever and hope that mom and dad can handle it. You may pitch in with a washcloth if you are feeling extra ambitious. I would probably turn around and leave the room if there was a parent there helping, and if not, I would alert the parent so that they could address the situation.

When it's your kid, you swoop into the crib, pick him up and immediately put him to your chest and try and calm him down (even though in this instance Jackson could not have cared less really he wasn't even crying...so really I was calming myself down) and wipe that crap off his face and hands with whatever is available...your own shirt for example. Then you get the snot sucker to hose out his nose and remove the offending materials from that area when needed. And continue to wipe his face off on your own shirt until a burp cloth becomes available.

Next example: I remember holding other people's children (well really just observing other people's children let's be honest I wasn't big on holding babies pre-JCL) and they had crud in their eye or in their nose or on their face. I was like, ew that's gross someone should really wipe that off or whatever. I can say I never pitched in on an eye booger or any other form of booger clean up.

Now I'm a total nose squeegier and eye wiper and face wiper and whatever. Not to mention what comes out of his other end that we're responsible for cleaning up. I don't even think about it anymore...I just wipe it up. It was a total epiphany last night at 4:30 am when he spit up on me, again, and I just sort of said well kid, we have a feeding to wrap up and all my shirts are in the other room so we'll sit here in our puked-on shirts and get fed and then carry on with our evenings.

One more thing...Congrats to Alli Hunt and Paul Hogan, who are friends from CU who are getting married today in Charlotte, N.C. I'm thinking of you guys on your special day and hope it's a blast!