Changes

Being a Mom changes a lot of things.

You don't sleep much anymore. There are days you don't shower at all, and sometimes there are more of them in a week than there are days you do shower. You get sneezed/drooled/barfed/peed on at least once a day. Half of your trash is dirty diapers. You hardly ever talk on the phone for more then 8 minutes at a time. And you buy a lot of pureed food.

These are the kinds of things you expect. The sort of 'oh yeah, sure' changes that make sense. But there are other things that you probably didn't think about until you actually had your little poop machine.

For example;

Your purse now carries unsexy things like extra pacifiers, baby fruit snacks, and snotty tissues, but no longer carries sexy things like a spare condom, sparkly lip gloss, or some hot guy's phone number given to you at a bar at 1am (bar? 1am? pshaw.)

Your wardrobe cannot contain items of clothing with things like sequins, ribbons, beads, or other dangly/shiny objects, because as soon as you pick up your kid s/he will immediately try to eat them off of your outfit. Hello, choking hazards.

Your haircut can't be one that requires 'styling' on a daily basis, because the whole not-showering thing makes it difficult to do anything more complicated than run your fingers through it, possibly pin it back with a bobby pin, or swoosh it into some kind of ponytail or bun. The process of combing-leave-in-conditioning-blow-drying-brushing-defrizzing-spraying-straightening leaves way too much time for mini-you to try and drown him/herself in the toilet or eat the snotty tissues out of your purse.

Really fun errands, like getting your tires rotated, voting in a midterm election, or having a pap smear, now have to be coordinated carefully to include the presence of a child caregiver or the lack of child altogether, because these are definitely NOT really fun errands for your toddler, and they are decidedly less fun for you when your toddler comes along.

Making friends is a whole new ball game. People your age without kids will look at you and think, "She has a kid, and she's probably going to want to bring it with her if we hang out, and she's probably going to want me to like her kid and hold her kid and maybe even change a diaper while she's peeing in the stall somewhere, and I am not totally sure that's going to work well for me." and people with kids will look at you and think, "Oh my God, not another friend with a kid...I just want to have some friends who can talk to me about something other than how their infant was lactose intolerant for 6 months."

There are other things, too, but there are the ones I have been noticing the most lately. Like today, when he tried to eat the sequins off my tank top. And last week when I got my hair cut "shorter, this time, ok? I need to not have to do anything to it at all!" And last month when I got new tires and it took 4 hours and Owen tried to eat the whole waiting room.

But I love him! And I love being a Mom!

:)