The healthcare reform bill that passed yesterday included VERY important, but mostly overlooked, language advocating for moms suffering from postpartum depression. Take a look at my write-up for OC Family.

It’s been said that becoming a mother is like wearing your heart outside your body. Man, is that true. And my heart is turning two. My little Lucy, it’s amazing how much you have changed me. I tried to think of something profound to write. But the perfect words already exist. It’s my all-time favorite by e.e. cummings. And today, on your second birthday, I dedicate it to you:

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,  my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

~ e.e. cummings

P.S.
I know, I know. The punctuation, capitalization and formatting are weird. It’s supposed to be that way. And it makes it awesome.

Check out my guest post from Rachel Reeves over at OC Family.

Wanna make your own comic? Check out toonlet.

If it’s true that beauty is achieved by getting a good night’s sleep, then I am one ugly duckling. I’ve been tired for years.  And it’s hardly the first time I’ve complained about sleep, or lack thereof.  So recently I decided to take charge of the ONE thing in my life I could control at least a little bit: sleep.

Check out my Valentine’s Day parenting plea at OC Family.

For those of you working moms with infants at home: Always check your hair for dried spit-up patches before leaving the house. I realized once that I had a crusty patch in my hair while at work during a meeting, in a room full of physicians.

As I was dropping the girls off at the sitter on Friday, I looked into the back seat of the mom-mobile and saw this:

Holy freaking moly. My little Lucy isn’t a baby anymore. She’s more kid than baby. Look how long her legs are!

In my mind, Lucy has always seemed more baby-like since her hair really didn’t start coming in until a few months ago. It’s like I blinked and all of the sudden she is huge. 

When she was a colicky newborn, screaming around the clock, people would always offer unsolicited anecdotal advice. Trust me, it flies by, they’d say. You will miss these times, they’d say. I swear it was enough to get someone punched in the throat. It was really hard at that point in my life to see a light at the end of the tunnel and feel confident that it wasn’t a train headed straight for me.

But maybe all of those really annoying folks are right. Clearly, infancy is fleeting.

Lucy has a love (read:obsession) with wiping things down. As soon as she gets her little paws on ANY sort of white cloth, she drops to her hands and knees, then proceeds to vigorously scrub the floor. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dirty or clean, she’ll wipe it.

But it keeps getting more and more embarrassing. We’ve been in public restaurants where she’ll see a napkin on the floor and she’ll slip out of my grasp, drop to her hands and knees, then proceed to vigorously scrub the floor. People look at me, aghast, thinking “what the heck do you make this poor baby do for you at home?” And trust me, she did NOT learn this from me. As many of you know, I am not compulsive about that at all. Grammar, yes, scrubbing on my hands and knees, no.

She’ll also take the “naked” Swiffer (sans cleaning pad) and clean the floors. So, this weekend I had an epiphany. Would it be SO wrong to give her the tools to actually clean? I mean, she’s going through the motions anyway, right? I decided to actually put the moistened cleaning cloth on the end of the Swiffer and let her go to town. She was entertained for at least 20 minutes, which is years in Lucy time.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone. At this point, I can’t really give her a Clorox wipe since I fear it will end up in her mouth. If I tried to invent a kid-friendly cleaning product, I bet someone would call CPS.

Don’t assume that your toddler will respond to your “mean mommy” voice or stare.  Abby just laughs. Apparently that look takes years of shaming to perfect.