Essentials 6/10

I remember reading a list such as this when I was pregnant. It helped me a bit and also made me conscientious, during Ev’s first year, of our needs. Without further ado (since it’s 3 months late anyway. Who am I to make my readers wait?)… I present the ten things we could NOT live without for our first year of parenthood. I’ll post them one at a time because they’ve turned into quite lengthy little guys!

6. Humor/Laughter. Oh, my hubs and I. We love to laugh. I must say we went into the parenting thing with a really good relationship. Parenting a newborn is NOT for sissies. If you are tumultuous prior to baby, just wait for the fireworks to begin after! Wade and I agree that when Shoog starts screaming or crying (which even perfect babies do), the tension in the room goes up ten-fold. Even if there was not a blip of tension before the fit, there will be during and after. It goes up twenty-fold if you are in a car. Just ask my Mom and Sis about our Oxford trip. Oh, Lawsy, was that a doozy. Definitely the lowest point of my Mom’s cancer battle by far. Anyway, Wade and I decided early on that when we are tested the most, we might as well laugh or else we’d cry. Going into parenthood with a light heart is ESSENTIAL. Every family is different but with ours…nothing was set in stone, we had no rigid rules to go by, etc. It worked for us. I was thinking of some times when we were really challenged in that first year. I kept thinking of little episodes such as peeing on our bed (Ev, not us), spitting up on the carpet of a house we were looking to buy (and didn’t. Shhh), or the growth spurts that required every hour nursing. None of them really compared to the poop/Halloween/white costume instance. It’s the best occasion I can think of where “Laughter (truly) was the best medicine.”

Here goes: It was the week before Halloween and we decided to do the Halloween activities in our community instead of trick-or-treating with a 1 year old (also I was working Halloween anyway). That left us with our church fall carnival and our community’s trunk-or-treat. Well, both grandmothers and my sister decided to go with us to the community party as it was E’s first experience with dressing up. You see, as I imagine a lot of mothers do (I am not a freak on this, right?), I bought E’s costume oh…about….August. I was so excited. It was a stark white (my first mistake but I actually did think that if he spits up milk, it will totally blend.) He looked adorable and so angelic in his little astronaut suit. It was even personalized with ‘Watts’ (cheapness rears it’s ugly head again-I wouldn’t put Everett so that I could use it with a second child. Hehehe.) Anyway, we get to the event and it was windy and cold. The dirt lot was jam-packed. Wade had said in route that he “smelled something.” Well, we decided to just change him in the lot before taking him onto the fun. OH. MY. GOSH. Wade went to get him out of the carseat and stuck his hand in a whole mess of junk. He, quickly, retracted his hand and we knew we were in for it. Luckily, I had thought to just put him in the white onesie so that we could dress him when we got there. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to ride in a carseat in an astronaut costume. His “dinner deposit” was EVERYWHERE. It was all over the onesie, the entire carseat was covered at the bottom, up his back almost in his hair, you get the idea. Wade took him out and put him in the back of our SUV to start cleaning (we were at a park, no bathrooms). Well, God forbid, I only packed about 100 wipes b/c this was a 300 wipe mess. We ran out about ¾ of the way through with cleaning him. I decided at that moment that if I was a single mom, we would have bolted in our poop mess, gone home, gotten in the tub, and called it a night. However, his gmoms and aunt had come for the big event (and were rolling on the dirt lot laughing at us. I’m pretty sure there were some pee-pants in that crowd. Just sayin.) so we didn’t want to disappoint. Long story short (well, this isn’t exactly short) but we finally got him presentable and had a grand old time. Got back to the car, still freezing, and, yep, stuck him right in the carseat with the poop that we had no wipes to clean…in his angelic white suit. Ugh. We just laughed and wouldn’t touch anything the entire ride home (or let E touch a thing.) There was NO candy swapping/eating in our car that ride. Anyway, the moral is: it does zero good to dramatize or weep in a situation because it’s making a memory, making a story to tell at his wedding. It’s just life. Laugh through it or else you’ll cry…and nobody wants to be around a crybaby.