austin-moms-blog-life-with-a-toddler

I sit on the porcelain god… No, I am not praying to the porcelain god… Now I am a proper “adult” (but are we ever really?!) of 35, so I try my best to keep the lubrications to a minimum (insert subjective measurement here). However, this is still my porcelain god. This is my meditative thinking and reading time. It is my time to reflect on the day, and a time when my creativity seems to shine. However, something has changed in the last few months. Something is looming over me… Oh wait, not over me… no rather, something is staring at me… with big brown adorable glistening eyes… Awe, my beautiful little sidekick… a.k.a. my 2-foot four-inch daughter. God, I love her.

I will just put it out there. I will not poop alone for the foreseeable future. I have come to terms with that. I also do not workout alone, happy hour alone, run errands alone, dance alone, date alone, work alone, and well, lets just say it is a good thing I REALLY like being around people because my sidekick REALLY likes to be around me, and she’s my people! Being a parent has changed my life drastically and at the same time, my life hasn’t changed at all. I do the same things, just with a few strategic alterations regarding time, attention span, and spatial reasoning… And with a LOT of humor!

  • Working out: I work out with my daughter, and I don’t just mean the constant chasing of a mobile, very active daughter, and the one sided continuous 19 pound deadlifts. I legit go to boot camp. And more importantly, my daughter is completely welcome there, so where I worked out pre-baby has stayed the same post-baby. However, my workout definitely does not look the same. Now I have a stroller, and sometimes when my baby is getting restless I have a very wobbly set of “weights.” There are some awesome advantages though. We have an understanding that she is to have a complete meltdown anytime sprints are on the table, rending my need to comfort her instead of run. Thank you, kind daughter, for that I will be forever grateful for your well timed emotional debuts.
  • Happy Hour: Oh how I love happy hour, and truthfully I was born old. 9:00 has been my bedtime for the last four years long before I got married or had a child. Given my love for a great bargain (ahem.. aka… I am cheap!) and early personal bedtime, happy hour has always made sense for me! As it turns out, my long lived happy hour traditions have coincided well with my daughter’s schedule. However, if she is to be happy at happy hour, there have been some adjustments. Outdoor is key, as are friends that don’t mind conversation being interrupted every 30 seconds. Whether you have always been a firm believer in the “happy hour” or have recently realized the magical 5:00 no nap window for your little one, happy hour is my saving grace to our new normal!
  • Running Errands: “Well why would we want to keep any task simple?” says my baby if she could talk (I am pretty sure!). OK, errands got MUCH easier when we decided riding in the shopping cart was a game. The sacrifice…I am the crazy person squealing to my baby fairly loudly, “Want to go faster???? WEEEEEEEE!!!!” And those well timed meltdowns… She times them for the check out when I am completely stuck!  The plus, I have literally not been charged for items before because 1. The sales clerk took great pity on me 2. I think they wanted me to get out of their store as quick as possible. You’d think we plan this stuff. Seriously, I tried to lift a Pepsi 12 pack while holding my screaming baby to the counter so they could scan it, and they were like “Its OK, don’t worry about it.” (aka… crazy lady with the crazy baby, please leave!).
  • Dance: Oh this is one of the biggest advantages to having a sidekick. I finally have a dancing partner ANYTIME I want. I dance for her, and with her, and now I have an excuse to act as silly as I want while doing so (Don’t worry I never needed an excuse, I did it anyways, but now I have one).  And this girl, has my awkward contorted exaggerated dance moves.  But on her, it is the cutest darn thing I have ever seen.
  • Date night: Three’s a crowd??? Nah! We knew we were doomed when I was in labor on our first anniversary. We had always planned on finally taking our honeymoon at our one-year anniversary, but thankfully God had other plans in store for us. Of course a date night alone can be nice as well, but my husband and I love love love our date nights, and try to go for one at least once a week. We wouldn’t want to leave her that much, and the cost of babysitters would seriously rip into our precious date night budget, so we opt to take her, and we call it “Addy date night.” AND it is kind of awesome! I swear little bit is a foodie just like us. She hearts Peached Tortilla big time, and she’s so cute she scored us a free dessert!
  • Work: So I work from home… My sidekick really really likes to help. Can I explain all of the awkward emails that have sent prematurely thanks to my daughter’s love for button pushing? Yes, I tried to give her an old broken laptop, but she was on to me. She knew that her button pushing on the broken laptop was harmless and to be truly destructive required she oversee what Mom was doing and make her own adjustments.

And I think this is the bottom line. Everything I do throughout the day takes about 10 times the energy and planning as it used to, but the experiences are so much more humorous, and even a seemingly mundane shopping trip can keep me laughing to myself all day. If there is one thing that has changed across the board in every category of my life, and one of the greatest lessons my two foot four-inch copilot has taught me, it’s not to take myself or life too seriously. Chaos will ensue. Nothing will go according to my plan. And I when I cry, I will also laugh… In fact, sometimes I will laugh so hard I cry. Thank you little copilot for always keeping my desire for control in check and always mixing things up for me.

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