Last Sunday I tried to remember my first Mother’s Day. I was a
new mom with a 3-month-old baby girl. I know I was present
– I have pictures to prove it. My infant daughter sitting
sweetly on my lap. Snuggling with me in the rocking chair. Yep, the
pictures are proof I was there.
Last Sunday I tried to remember my first Mother’s Day. I was a new mom with a 3-month-old baby girl. I know I was present – I have pictures to prove it. My infant daughter sitting sweetly on my lap. Snuggling with me in the rocking chair. Yep, the pictures are proof I was there. Trouble is, I was so exhausted back then I have no actual memory of the day itself. My recollections are a little fuzzy and out of focus; kind of sepia-like.
I know I’m not alone here. Last Mother’s Day countless new mommies were feeling the pain – overwhelmed, under-prepared and about to go over the Niagara Falls of New-Mommy-Fatigue. Because, as my older daughter said after giving birth to her own two girls – “NO ONE can prepare you for what being a parent is really like. You can’t understand it until you experience it.”
This year it was my younger daughter’s turn to celebrate Mother’s Day as a new mom, and let’s just say I can rest assured there’ll be no future shortage of memories of her first year of motherhood.
That’s right. Daughter No. 2 is riding the wave of the Information Age. Like many young women who have had or are about to have their first, second or beyond babies, my daughter has drawn together the experiences and exposes, the trials and tribulations of new motherhood, and she is pushing that particular baby stroller right out there in the middle of the Information Highway.
How great is that, anyway? I mean, it was a good day for me if I remembered to jot a word or two on the calendar about the first time Baby rolled over or got a tooth or what have you. But for modern young women, blogging about even the most mundane day – complete with photos – is simply a few keystrokes away.
Far from having a couple of hazy memories tucked away in the back of her noggin, my daughter can (with a click of her mouse) sooner or later remember one particularly challenging day with 3-month-old Charlie. The post is appropriately entitled, “Not going to cry over spilled sour milk,” and she chronicles the day with palpable honesty:
“One of the times Charlie spit up on me today, we were downstairs. I would normally take my shirt off and run upstairs with him, but we had the DirecTV guy over fixing our satellite, and he doesn’t want to see the girls in all their breastfeeding glory.
“After I changed Charlie into clean clothes, I realized I didn’t want the vomit on my shirt to get on him so I had a brilliant idea: turn my sweatshirt around so the vomit was now on my back. So I did that and – Wa-la, vomit again on the sweatshirt … even on the hood. I went outside to show (hubby) how ridiculous I looked.
“On the way upstairs to shower, Charlie threw up on my pants.
“My sister-in-law told me she could count on one hand the number of times her 1-year-old daughter has ever spit up. I didn’t know if I should be happy for her or slap her. One reason I’m looking forward to going back to work: not smelling like throw-up all day – and wearing makeup!”
Oh, yeah … I relate to that!
My second born even knows to put her best foot, er … photo forward on her blog. Take, for example, the occasion of Charlie’s first haircut when pictures of my little grandson sporting his shortened locks were posted on her blog: “This isn’t a great picture of Charlie, but I’m posting it because I like it of me,” she writes. “Why? 1) You can’t tell I have no makeup on; 2) I kind of look tan; 3) my arm looks kind of small (for me).”
Yep: that’s my girl.
Now with all this posting going on, it was inevitable that my older daughter would finally launch a blog of her own, and there recently, for all the world to see, was 2-year-old Gracie’s Potty Training Success Story. Yep: by “potty training” her dolly (Charlie, named after her baby cousin), Gracie moved on to her own, um … skills, and yes, we are really proud of how Gracie navigated through this troublesome toddler terrain.
But here’s the really good part: not all of my motherhood memories are vague. This one is crystal clear: Junior High. As in when my daughters couldn’t go one whole day without rolling their eyes and issuing disgusted sighs because, OMG, having us as parents was the most embarrassing thing. EVER!
In a few short years my grandchildren and their peers will be reading their mommies’ blogs. And I can hear it now … “MOM! I can’t believe you wrote about THAT on your blog! You’ve ruined my whole LIFE!”
Ah, the memories …
