Motherhood. As told by Katie.

 Anywhere from 7:30 to 8:00 o'clock each morning, my alarm goes off. It starts out slow and low in tone. It almost sounds unsure if it should be going off. And then after about thirty seconds of the unsure fussing it begins to screech and scream. And I'm up.

I walk into the next room and a puffy eyed little blonde girl is sitting with her brows furrowed and her nose still red from being face down in her bed for eleven hours straight. She sees me walk toward her crib and she pulls her slobbery thumb out of her mouth, greets me with morning breath, and an open mouthed kiss.

 "Hi", she says. 

"Hi baby, good morning." I say back to her.

She giggles and lays her head back down on my shoulder as I carry her to the living room for cartoons and cereal.

She takes a few bites of her breakfast and jumps off my lap. The rest of the morning and the rest of the day she is climbing on the couch, playing with the dogs faces, making a disaster out of previously folded laundry, making another disaster out of breakfast, lunch and dinner, feeding goldfish to our two dogs, dancing, singing, and her new favorite past times burping her baby dolls, and picking her nose. 

She is a riot. There are a million words to describe her but none of them do her justice. She is the light of my life. She makes the laundry, the dirty diapers, the spilled cheerios, the dirty looks received from strangers as they watch my daughter shove a lollipop stick up her nose, and the outrageous screaming and kicking fits all worth it. The best thing about me is easily her. And I wouldn't change my life for anything more glamorous, ever.

 

I suppose I should mention here that I am pregnant again. If you follow this blog, you already know that. Now I know that pregnancy leads to children and children are the best thing EVER. That's why I got pregnant. Because I love children. But let me just say, pregnancy is one of the most difficult things women go through. Now if you are a cute and chipper pregnant person..well first of all I probably don't like you. (Calm down, I'm only kidding.) And second of all, you aren't who I'm talking about so you won't understand this. (And those of you are are chipper..I'm convinced every upbeat pregnant woman is a great actress. So quit lying.) I'm talking about 90% of women in the world who don't enjoy peeing 15 times a night, or stinking up their bedrooms at night farting non stop, or doubling over while sneezing due to round ligament pains, and who don't enjoy painful acne and emotional outbursts, or bloating to the size of a gray whale after every meal or sip of water. Those are the women I'm talking about. Women like me, who suck at being pregnant. 

I've gained already about 10 pounds in three months. Yes I know that's more than the suggested amount. Trust me, every time I look in the mirror at my chins, I know it. But still, here we are. Stuck on modified bed rest with a no exercise or heavy lifting restriction. Sounds like I'm going to be REAL cute at the end of all of this. Real. Stinking.Cute. :) Tomorrow morning I'm even going in for SURGERY to sew my CERVIX shut so that this baby doesn't fall victim to my stupid incompetent cervix. That's right. I need surgery to carry children, every time I get pregnant. (If you don't know what this is either Google it or read  my blog post Gracie's Story.) I am REALLY bad at being pregnant, and apparently I can't even help it. 

But fast forward to February 2013. Another baby, like the one in the first paragraph will be here. Another child that lights up my world, in only a way a parent understands, will be here. I will start over with a newborn. A child that poops, barfs, and screams for a million reasons. Each cry demanding something different from me. And night time will come and I will wake up every two hours to feed the baby and it will spit up on me, and I'll be too exhausted to change my shirt so I'll just wake up smelling like moldy cat poop rolled in newspaper and set on fire. And I'll love every minute of it. Because regardless of it's challenges and demands. I love children. And more than anything in the world, I love mine.