This Is What Happens When You Become A (Canadian) Parent

As a still-new parent, every now and then I find myself in these ridiculous situations that actually make me stop and go "What the hell has happened to my life?". Last night was just such a time (and I apologize in advance for the long-ish post).

My child is a soother addict.  And when I say addict, I mean this kid gets some serious jonesing for the 'ole nipple-substitute, particularily at night. I swear to god and all thats holy that he sleeps with 9 (count them, 9) soothers in his crib. Most mornings we'll come in and find him with one in his mouth and a few in each hand. When he's upset, he'll cry with the soother in his mouth, pick up a fresh one, drop the old one, insert fresh, continue crying, pick up a fresher one, drop the mouth one, insert the newest ... and so on. Anyways, as a result of this we've had bumpers installed in his crib since he was 6 months old (yes, I said it -- bumpers! *collective gasp of anger and disbelief*). These bumpers are not to protect his fragile head/body from the dangers of the crib rails but to stop the precious soothers from falling on the floor. And for some stupid and inane reason, I decided yesterday to remove them. Of course ....

.... at 1am this morning Mace started an awful, gut-wrenchingly plaintive cry that would stop and start for the next hour. I determined (by using my handy-dandy video monitor) that he had dropped every.single.soother.over.the.side.of.the.crib, and as such, decided to go in and help him out. But my thinking was "I'd better not let him see me". So ....

... into his room I crawled on my belly like some freakin' CIA operative, wildley waving my arms back and forth along the ground in hopes of finding his soothers in the pitch dark. Turns out The Child, obviously an evil genius, had actually dropped 6 of the 9 behind the crib. So there I was, at 1:45am, flat on my stomach in his room, attempting to stretch my limbs to their utmost legth-capacity underneath his crib, blindly searching around for his damned addictive soothers. And then I got that weird feeling, like someone's watching you, looked up and ....

... came face-to-face with my tearful-eyed babe, who had determined that someone was in his room and was, as quietly as me, trying to see who it was. And we both scared the ever-loving life out of each other. Cue hysterical screaming.

The crazy thing is, thats not even when I got the "what the hell has happened to my life?" feeling. That, my friends, occured an hour or so later after unsuccessfully attempting to soothe Mace back to sleep. I finally gave in and took him into bed with us, desperate for some sleep, and instead he decided it was playtime. At 4am in his parent's bed. As he crawled all over us, finally settling down with his ass on my face for his position of choice, it hit me: I am SO not the person I was one year ago. That person had dignity. That person looked great after a restful nights' sleep. That person had no idea what she was getting herself into by getting pregnant.

*sigh*

My husband's not the same person, either. Notice anything ... unusual about Mason's shirt after Daddy dressed him a few days ago?

And I kid you not, Jamie just walked in here while I was typing, looked at the picture and said "What kind of freak shirt is THAT?". *pause* "Oh ... thats when I put it on backwards. Whoops. My bad".

So to all you expectant parents, this is what you've got to look forward to. Oh, and if you've read this far, hello to all my fellow Canadian bloggers from the "Follow Me, I'm Canadian" blog hop! Don't worry, I'm not always this crazy. Only when I'm sleep-deprived and hankerin' for some back-bacon.

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