A year goes fast these days, and the impending change from summer to fall seems to be triggering lots of memories of life one short year ago. The weather has been hot hot hot this summer. Yet, while people around me complain of this being one of the hottest summers that they can remember, my own memories are a bit different.
Bertha the Beluga Whale was looming large a year ago, and while we may well have not hit the century mark on the thermometers last year, as we frequently have this year, the sheer mass of my body and the amount of energy it took to create another person made it feel much hotter to me last summer. Not to mention that the 90 degree days hung on well into October as my mass continued to increase rapidly.
During our weekly field trip to the library this morning, I was pondering the unfathomable metamorphosis that turned my two year old toddler into a three year old preschooler and estimated that it was roughly a year ago when we began these weekly library outings. Sure enough, when we brought our materials to the checkout desk, the librarian requested to verify my contact information. "We have to do it once per year,"€ she said. Apparently the anniversary date was just a few days ago. The thought of a year going so fast nearly triggered a panic attack. I then had multiple flashbacks of last fall when I took Dear Daughter to the library and struggled to get up and down off the floor while digging for books on the children's shelves. And then the traumatic flashbacks got worse as I remembered those awful sensations of never being able to keep my pants up while pregnant. Why in the world can't someone create maternity clothes that don'™t have to be either too tight or too loose? I spent the last three months of pregnancy wavering between the dilemmas of drawing attention to my big ole€™ caboose busting out of my pants seams or dealing with the crotch of my pants hanging down to my knees.
On the topic of triggering memories, I was taking inventory last night of my stash of unisex baby clothing when I found a pair of blue jeans that Dear Daughter was wearing when she started walking. They are sized 12-18 months, the size that Dear Son is currently pushing into. And then I had a mind-warp-moment thinking of a picture in our scrapbooks of Dear Daughter wearing those particular jeans as she strutted around the cul-de-sac in front of our house, excited over her newly learned skill of walking. It was late fall, there was a chill in the air, and the leaves were at their peak of color. I considered our current weather, teasing just a bit about fall being near again, and then I let my mind go there--for a split second I imagined Dear Son repeating this scene in the same blue-jeans, and I wanted to scream, "STOP!"€
Apparently, in addition to losing brain cells, motherhood also causes time to race and mental illness to set in--especially that type of mental illness characterized by panic attacks, racing thoughts, and traumatic flashbacks. And let us not forget about the voices in my head.
Note to self: when assessing for an anxiety disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or Schizophrenia, consider the differential diagnosis of "Motherhood." Perhaps "€œMotherhood" should just be added to the DSM-IV and be granted the mental disorder labeling it most certainly deserves. *sigh*
Here'€™s some new pics from the loony bin. Dear Son is sprouting a new tooth and a second tooth is following close behind. We broke out the teething biscuits. As I watched him practicing aiming for his mouth, I had more flashbacks of Dear Daughter at this stage. So here'€™s a picture of each of them at this stage of life. Dear Daughter was actually only 6 ½ months old in her picture while Dear Son is 8 ½ months old. While he's been slow to get teeth, he's not been slow with his motor skills.
Here are some pics of the Demolition Man plowing into his big sister's train set. He's just GOT to check EVERYTHING out, and don'€™t even THINK about stopping him! He is much bolder than his big sister was at this stage. He will GI Joe his way out of the room and around the corner with all the courage of an army man in the midst of war, on a mission to check out his surroundings. I've had to chase him into
the office to get him out from under the computer desk (power cords galore!) when he slithered his way out of his bedroom and around the corner, and I've had to chase him out of the bathrooms and kitchen many times as he finds his way around the entire house. He likes vinyl flooring because he can get some real tummy speed going. I caught him just in time the other day when he made it around the corner of the living room all the way across the kitchen and under the table on a mission to snack on the leftovers under big sister's chair. This one is definitely going to keep me busy, and I have no doubt life is going to get quite interesting when he figures out how to walk and run!
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