As I write this it is 10:15pm which is a delicate hour in the parenting world. An hour wherein you are 1) so entirely exhausted that you may have mistaken the microwave as the receptacle in which you are to put your wineglass, or 2) you are asleep and have been so for nearly two hours. Which is why this is so odd. This, me, writing. Up at the ungodly hour of 10:15pm, writing.
Odd.
I’m fairly certain you dear reader have been keenly aware of my absence from all things written for quite some time now. And while 97% of my brain cells tell me “No Laura, please do not turn this into a Mommy Blog,” there are also the undaunted 3% who declare “Girl… you earned that Mommy Blog street cred. You go do whatever the hell you want! And go post a selfie with Wyatt while you’re at it. ‘Cause he is Ahhhmaaaaazing honey. You know it. He knows it. We all know it.”
I do love an underdog. But this will not turn into a Mommy Blog. At least I don’t think it will. Honestly I should just say right now that anything written after 10:15pm is well within my rights to plead at least partial insanity and get out of any binding agreement I have claimed forthwith.
But since I have you here… Let me just talk about my kid. He is Ahhhmaaaaaazing.
Before I had a kid I used to think that having a kid would be y’know, hard, but doable. Somewhat comparable to having a pet koala.
Now that I have a kid I realize that my Pre-Kid self had NO FREAKING IDEA. None. Unless you count the improbable equivalence of consistently lifting and carrying said koala until your biceps become ripped at the expense of your now semi-fractured neck vertebrae.
Nope. I don’t think Pre-Kid Me would’ve thought of that whole koala-carrying scenario either. So yeah I was clueless. And I say this because the level of reality I was thrown into was and is nearly inexplicable to those who have not witnessed it's particular flavor of intensity.
I once heard somewhere that when Columbus’ ships were sailing into the American harbor, the natives could not even see them. That such an invention was so far beyond their conscious visual vocabulary that they literally were blind to it. Now, this sounds a little like someone was lying, But… I do like it as an analogy to what Pre-Kid Me knew about the whole parenting thing. The Pre-Kid Me who had no experience of being around a tiny human at 2am and 4am and again at 5:30am this time with epic poop-splosions.
Case in point; there was no way I could’ve foreseen the frequency of conversations centered around poop. It is ubiquitous. Like dust, or kleenex, or oxygen. Really smelly oxygen. I sometimes like to think that I even rival my brother the colorectal surgeon in the realm of poop talk. And then I remember he is SAVING PEOPLES LIVES. And I quietly cry into my coffee.
Okay, that was a bit much.
Let’s just say I look back at my Pre-Kid self and chuckle with bemused reticence at my absolute mind-bending ignorance.
Poop and neck injuries aside, my kid is a freaking miracle starbeam of never-ending joy. He’s the real deal. And I cannot imagine NOT writing about him. He is my muse. And he pries open whole universes housed in my heart that I had at some point in my youth closed off and left dormant. There were Pre-Kid emotions and now there are With-Child E-M-O-T-I-O-N-S so rich deep and colorful that it becomes hard to breathe with such beauty moving through you. me.
It is now 11:04 in the night time which means the 3% of my brain cells in favor of Mommy Blogging have stormed the castle and I have willingly surrendered the fight. Truth is, it feels pretty good.
From all of this somnambulistic scribble, let us surmise that 1) My kid is Ahmaaaaazing, 2) Pre-Kid Me may have relished more sleep, but she also had no idea of the snuggle bliss that my kid is capable of, and 3) poop, koalas, and brain cells are only relatable after one has drunk all the wine from the microwave and surrendered to the idea of late night Mommy Blogging.