I was having rough morning. Who am I kidding... I had been having a rough couple of weeks. Nugget has been cutting two top teeth and two top molars for what feels like 52 years. It's been a drooling, crying, waking up at 3am nightmare around this house. But Sunday was bad. I woke up after not much sleep with a crick in my neck so painful that I couldn't move my head. Uh great. That's super helpful when you are the only parent on that day and have a 23 pound wiggly toddler for which to care.Magically that moment my mom called. I kvetched and complained and she told me that I just needed to go with the flow, that day especially. We were FaceTiming and nugget was refusing to eat the egg I cooked for him for breakfast. She said, "get him something you know he will eat." When he refused to eat even his favorite Mini Club Crackers, she said "eh, don't worry about it! Try again later. In fact, put it on a plate on the coffee table and let him graze."And you know what? She was right. My mommy was right. She reminded me that no matter my agenda for my toddler, to some extent he is going to make his own and while I can fight the good fight most days, some days I get to just go with the flow.So I put our EzPz mini mat on the coffee table, loaded it up with scrambled eggs and some crackers, got him a sippy of milk and made a nice buffet for him. We decided that THAT DAY, eating wasn't going to be a struggle and it wasn't. Low and behold, he came over and started grazing. Not how I want every meal to go but it worked! We had a nice flow that morning and when he went down for his first nap, I was able to take a nice steam shower (another mommy recommendation... instead of washing the dishes or doing laundry) which helped my neck tremendously.I guess what I am trying to say is... every now and then we need our mommy to remind us that it's ok to eat eggs at the coffee table. :)
The Value of Mom Friends
I didn't get the concept of 'mom friends' until we started trying to have a baby. I joined the "You are having a baby due in December 2014" group immediately. We all obsessed about the same stuff and it felt like a pretty safe space to talk about all the things I really wanted to talk about but my husband was uninterested in. And then we lost our first baby. And the moms who had been there before guided me through my grief. Then I joined the "You are having a baby due in March 2015" group and it was the same deal only here I found some very close friends. Women who I have actually met in person now and consider some of my closest friends. It was the same deal. They held me and walked me through the difficult moments when we lost our little girl. Several of the women in the smaller group born out of the larger group, had lost their March babies as well or babies previous to that one. Finally, I joined the "You are having a baby due in June 2015" group. Thank G-d it was the final 'birth month' group I had to join. These women, also, became very close friends. I thought that was what I needed. Until I found local mom friends.Here in Denver we have an amazing program for first time parents called JBU - Jewish Baby University - through the JCC. Again, you are tossed together with other couples expecting their first baby within a three month window but now you have a few more things in common. First off, you live in the same city and second, you are all (at varying levels) Jewish. This really adds an interesting dimension.
I am so thankful for my JBU mom friends. We literally guide each other through each step. Breastfeeding, bottle feeding, recovery, rolling over, sleeping (or lack thereof), crawling, walking, first birthdays... but beyond the baby connected topics, these women have become some of my closest friends. We have girls' nights out, I've asked for fashion advice, these are couples that I see staying close with for a long time.While I value my variety of friends, in all stages in their lives, I really appreciate having other mommas who get what I am going through. Who called me up a few weeks after having Nugget and told me to get out of the house and meet them at Nordstrom's, just for lunch, who initiated a weekly mom's lunch during maternity leave...I think there is a real value in mommy friends and I'm super thankful for my mommy friends, both the online ones that I can chat with all day long and my local ones who I can rely on for an awesome night out!