everyday life

Deep joy and unsettling ambivalence

I adore this post about the experience of motherhood. It evokes the twin emotions I feel on a daily basis: deep joy and unsettling ambivalence.

So, to write my own list of five things I love about being a mother:

1. The absolute hilarity of the things that come out of their mouths. Whit and his majesty pants, Grace and her mouth-of-marbles attempts at using really big words (today was “inevitable”).

2. The rediscovery of string cheese, chicken nuggets, ritz crackers, macaroni and cheese, and those divine fruit gummy things that are pretending they aren’t candy. Also, that every restaurant meal comes with french fries.

3. The occasional demonstration of genuine affection between them. When I bust them playing nicely together or holding hands crossing the street.

4. The way sleeping children are just so sound asleep. And the delicious, Johnsons-baby-shampoo smell of their heads in sleep. And the pajamas. I love pajamas, especially from The Gap.

5. Children’s music. I unabashedly listen to Raffi, Steve Songs, and other children’s CDs even when driving alone.

Majesty

As you many attentive blog readers will recall, Whit shows a distinct preference for madras pants. He calls them his “majesty pants.”

This Sunday, he and I were at a playdate at a friend’s house. Whit and his friend Charlie played upstairs while my friend and I sat downstairs and chatted. They had a ball playing with Legos, with trains, and dressing up (see above). What you can’t see above is that Whit has a Superman costume (complete with muscles) under his knight armor, and both he and Charlie have sequined superhero capes on their backs too.

As we drove home, Whit told me, in an excited, surreptitious whisper,

“Mummy? When I was upstairs I saw a grown-up pair of majesty pants!”

(My son officially snoops in the grown-ups closets at playdates. Friends, consider yourselves warned.)

the genius of Hannah

From Hilary, re: attachment objects:

“Ok, so it’s not quite as bad as Whit’s multiple monkeys, but I thought
you’d appreciate that Hannah has attached to a small purple carabiner.
Oh great! what better than something that is tiny, slippery AND can
pinch fingers? xoxo”

Stylish

Blue pants (dirty from hard day on the job at school)
Blue robot shirt (purchase by me from etsy)
Pink gingham button down (painstakingly unbuttoned with his own clumsy fingers for that breezy, casual look)