So Unhip I'm Hip

I can't exactly put a finger on when I started to somewhat lose my "coolness" factor but I am thinking it was somewhere in the past five years...I must admit that while I won't blame this entirely on my children, there is somewhat of a correlation between when I had my first child and when I started to slip a bit on the "cool" barometer. Though I certainly don't want to sound like I am ridiculously full of myself, I must confess that there was indeed a time in which I was a pretty cool chick. I enjoyed my free time sipping good wine, doing some fun shopping in which I wore pretty trendy, cute clothes, and jetting around the Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis in my convertible Cabrio with the stereo up and a not a care in the world. In those same days, I would often stop in at La Jolla for an after-work margartia, go home and read People magazine before drifting off for a nap and then get ready to hit the scene for the evening by 9 p.m. I would then eat a late dinner and hit the bars in which one could always count on a somewhat lengthy evening. I mean, come on - there was an entire circle of us that did the same thing every weekend and we were indeed quite hip and fun. In other words, I had a darn good time in my youth, dammit. So now fast forward to about eight years later and I find myself recently walking through a Walgreen's with Missy Moo and Bubba Boo about six days after giving birth to my third child. For starters, I am a bit sore but so completely excited about getting out of my house that I am actually really jacked to go to the drugstore - not to mention proud of myself that I could get both of my older kiddos out the door and leave my newbie behind with our wonderful sitter for just an hour. As those of us who have given birth know, there is sometimes a problem with being able to go to the bathroom after delivery - and I am not talking about urinating. Docs often recommend that one take a stool softener for a while until things begin to "regulate"*. Let me also mention that I live in a Big Ten college town in which there are always very cute, innocent (at least they look that way to me) students who call me "ma'am". So here we are walking through the aisles of Walgreen's and I am looking for Colace. Well, wouldn't you know I can't find the dang aisle of "laxatives" and here I am by the pharmacy anyway so I decide that I just really don't care what people think. Let me just state that this is the first sign that you are getting along in years - you just don't really care what people think. Truthfully, I am going to admit that I like this about being in my mid-thirties - it is very liberating to just simply put yourself ou t there and whoever doesn't like it, well, so what. La di freakin' da! I am who I am. On the other hand, I do want to shake the shoulders of these youngin's and say "Stop looking at me that way just because I drive a Honda Odessey and am looking for laxatives with my two babies in tow! I once went to the H.O.R.D.E. Fest, played Quarters and ate "burritos as big as your head" at three o'clock in the morning, too! You will be here someday!" Thankfully, I have a small amount of a filter left and to date, I have yet to do this to a poor unsuspecting soul who is simply trying to just do his or her job. So here we are looking for Colace when I stop to ask the very cute 20-something male pharmacy technician where I might find this wonder-drug. Instead of flirting with the darling boy as I would have done in my carefree twenties, I now look at him and think of either of my two boys and what they will be like when they will be in college and then I also think that he is someone's son and his mom is probably wondering what he is doing and wanting to squeeze him so hard that he shirks away in embarrassment though he will secretly love it... Of course, said cutie has no idea where the Colace is located and must ask someone else, thus getting another person involved in my laxative hunt at Walgreen's. Once the cutie emerges to escort me to the laxative aisle (could there be anything more humbling? I mean really...), Missy Moo begins to turn this little quest into her newest littly ditty - have I mentioned that she is a budding songwriter? "Colace, Colace, mommy needs her Colace!" begins to be sung at top volume as we journey through the aisles behind the darling technician. It is not until we reach the checkout line that I realize that I didn't even care - in fact, it gave me a much-needed laugh at my own expense. Yes, there was a time when I would have been mortified at this but now, I have to relish in the fact that frankly, I don't give a damn. I have caught myself looking so scary and smelling so funky and yet still piling the crew into the truckster to go on an outing because there is just no time to attend to anything other than getting snacks, drinks, diapers, formula, pacifiers, and shoes. One must is my travel coffee and this always outweighs the need for primping, therefore, when I do catch sight of myself in a passing mirror, I am a little scared but hey - who has time for that? I like to think I look more real now and this would reflect who I am now in the inside of my soul - more real. The reality is that we are not always going to look perfect and care who is dating who and wearing what. At some point, we all grow up to realize that there is just so much more than that and my so much more is the world of snacks, boo-boo's, sippy cups, Laurie Berkner music, princesses, and trucks. My "so much more" is so much more that I am content with the new "unhip" of me. Besides, isn't it always the mortifyingly unhip that eventually becomes hip again? Well, here I am...

Excuse Me - Where is my Red Tent?

So I had a baby a month ago...Needless to say, things in this world have been a little on the, shall we say, chaotic side. Classic Old Spice and I are now officially outnumbered as adults - there are three small charges to our two older beings which certainly makes it interesting when everyone is screaming at the same time as was the case yesterday and will certainly happen at least a million times before we die. During my pregnancy, I read a great book entitled The Red Tent by Anita Diamant in which she tells a somewhat fictionalized account of the biblical story of Dinah, the only daughter of Leah who was the wife of Jacob. Leah's sister, Rachel, was also married to Jacob who in turn raised Dinah as well. Since Jacob seemed to really enjoy his right as a husband, it seemed as though someone was always pregnant, which of course, I can relate to since I feel as though I have now been pregnant for four years...The Red Tent was literally a tent in which women were required to inhabit while menstruating or for the month following the birth of a child. During either of these times, the women were expected to rest, eat well, and generally do nothing but just wait out their menses or heal from the vigors of childbirth. When a new baby needed to nurse, someone would simply take the baby to the mother, let them nurse and cuddle for a bit, then send the little person back to whoever was taking care of him or her for the month in which the mother is in the tent. So this gets me to thinking, as I was experiencing throbbing pain in the perineum and my breasts were so sore that I would have hissed like a rabid raccoon should someone accidentally brush up against me, where the h&^% is MY red tent? I think the women in the biblical era were on to something that we as a modern society we now get jipped on - our world moves so fast these days that we can only spend 48 hours from the time in which our baby is born in the hospital then we are expected to go home and jump right back into the swing of things as if we just had a little tetanus shot instead of actually delivering a watermelon through a straw-hole. Now I know I am not one to moan too loudly as I have been blessed with a lot of help; however, let's face it - having a newborn is freakin' exhausting. No one tells you how incredibly difficult it is for the first couple of weeks and if they do, for some reason you thought this would not apply to you. The thing is, when one is so sleep-deprived that their contacts are pasted to their eyeballs and their speech is slurred and distracted, nothing good can happen. Small things that would not even be a blip on my radar screen suddenly become huge issues of drama in which I feel that I will only be able to work through with intense counseling. My fuse is MUCH shorter with my other two children who are also trying to figure out what this new little person means in their world - Missy Moo has decided that she loves Number Three so very much but she still cannot stand Bubba Boo and likes to make little songs up about how much she does not like him. She is now obsessed with being a cheerleader and wears her cheerleading costume ALL of the time and insists that everyone call her PomPom. When I mistakenly referred to her as her birth-given name the other day it was a full-on meltdown that would have put my post-partum weepiness to shame (this would be good work) then pushed Bubba Boo because he had the unfortunate timing to round the corner and tug on her hair a little at approximately that time. While on the subject of Bubba Boo, he thinks it is funny to hit the new baby and poke at his eyeballs to see how he will react. Classic Old Spice is hot and cold as am I - we are a great pair but nothing upsets the equilibrium of our relationship more than a new baby. Some days we are on the same page and other days I think I am going to poke his eyeballs out (maybe this is where Bubba Boo gets this desire to do so to Number Three?). We will get back on-track as this is our pattern following childbirth but in the meantime, we take it day by day. It would be so much easier if I could simply escape to my red tent - in fact, I would just now be emerging! Now that we are approaching Number Three's fifth week of life, we are starting to see glimmers of a new norm that will someday feel like this is the way it has always been. In the meantime, Classic Old Spice has begun construction on his "mini-house" as I am referring to it though it is technically a shed. This "shed" will be wired for electricity and will have heat and air conditioning so I am thinking, could this be my red tent? If I put a bed in it, do we think I could go there once a month for a few days while my menses decide to pay a visit? Do we think anyone would believe that a mysterious condition might develop and cause me to have my menses a few times a month thus requiring me to have to go to the red tent? Something tells me that this is not going to be an option even if I change my name to Leah or Rachel..