Sunday, May 31, 2015

All Babies All The Time

“You talk about your son a lot.”
“Well, yeah. I spend all but a couple hours a day with him, sleeping aside.”
“So like 14 hours every day?”
“Sometimes more than that. I don’t have time for anything that doesn’t include him, so he may sometimes literally be all I have to talk about.”
“That makes sense. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“People usually don’t. Unfortunately.”

In which my friend suddenly realizes why moms talk so much about their babies. As an aside, I think I do decent job not flooding social media at least. There's Thursday (which exists solely for my family because they live 3000 miles away) and times things happening that aren't normal, etc. but it's not a nonstop thing.

But even if it were, if after a having a baby your female friend spends basically every waking moment caring for said baby, that's probably ALL she has to talk about. So telling her not to is basically just telling her to shut up. She's dealing with enough, maybe you should stfu.

Like I get it, maybe you don't like baby spam. It can seem excessive if you know like 1000 people on FB and 500 of them are moms but... why have you added so many people to begin with? That shit's your fault.

If it's just w
omen you actually know and care about posting about their kid, what's the issue? This may be the only adult social interaction she'll get all day. It might be all she has to update you about at the time. Get the fuck over it.

If you don't care about her, see the first point: why are you friends in the first place? FFS, you're more of a baby than her literal baby at that point.

If she truly is just going over board, you know how you can help? Talk to her about it. Complaining about it in her absence or exploding at her after the millionth 'first tooth!' photo isn't helping anyone. Remind her that you'd love to see posts from her about how she's doing. Maybe about what she's watching/reading/playing in her scant free time.

Babies absorb your life. It is easy to get caught in a routine and neglect yourself. People without kids don't understand because to them, they're always first priority. But to a parent? They aren't anymore. They might not even be second priority.

Basically say anything other than "wah wah wah babies, wah wah wah!" She gets enough of that, trust me.

Friday, May 29, 2015

One of Those Nights

Pardon my lack of coherence. Last night was a nightmare for sleep. Which is particularly difficult on me because night sleep has been, since he was born, the only quality sleep he's ever gotten. Like he'd resist naps 60% of the time but once bed time hit? Out like a light, out the whole night, we both got a full night of sleep. So this behavior isn't something I've had to endure beyond those long gone newborn days of nursing every 2-3 hours.

I put Jude to bed around 9:00, he was up chatting and singing in the dark until 10:00 or so. Then at 12:00 he woke up and came into our bedroom and got me. So I took him back to his bed and was up trying to get him back to sleep for about an hour, standing and swaying until he was mellowed enough to go back to bed by himself. At least he was back to sleep though, and in his own bed.

Then at around 4:00 he got up and came to me again, crying this time. He climbed into bed with me but couldn't settle. Aaron tried making the room darker but Jude just became more upset, to the point where he actually climbed out of the bed and tried to turn the light on. So I got out of bed, scooped him into my arms, and took him back to his room. He was far too upset to go lay there by himself and actually fall asleep, so I laid in bed with him for over an hour, with him crying about how tired he was on an off, until he finally fell back to sleep. Then I snuck out and went back to bed myself.

At 7 he came in again, this time bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for the day. Ugh.
And, of course, he isn't napping, despite getting just as little sleep as I did, he's rearing to go (critical mass crankiness aside). I swear this child's got inhuman levels of energy.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Hating Children

When people (especially young people) say they hate children... like did they forget they were a child themselves? gtfo you little turds. Be nice to kids, you were one! You exist right now because you were a child someone tolerated. Be especially nice to children if you were one less than a decade ago. You can dislike kids without being a douche bag to them.

Sure, everyone knows "that one" kid that is just the definition of irritating, but that isn't all kids anymore than that guy who keeps sexually harassing his coworker isn't "all men" or that one feminist who thinks men should be enslaved isn't "all feminists."

Like, just because your cousin/sibling/nephew/niece is being raised poorly and thus is an annoying little twat doesn't mean all children are rude and annoying. Blame the parent not the child. It's a freaking child. It won't know better if no one teaches it better.

Kids, by and large, are actually very sweet until prepubescence, when hormones begin making them act like moody little adults. Now, if you said you disliked teenagers, no one in their right mind would blame you much. Even teenagers. That said, you should still be nice to teenagers too. Their hormonal fluctuations aren't their fault and they have no control over them.

tl;dr: Stop acting like you popped into existence as a fully formed, educated adult. You used to pee on your face and eat boogers too, shut up.