The Second Baby

Ya know, now that the baby is finally starting to show signs of routine sleep, he ususally gets up at around 6:30. Long gone are the days he would sleep till noon. Or even nine. So during his first nap, I like to have my morning coffee with a dash or two of TLC's A Baby Story. It's what I watched every morning when I was pregnant. It went along perfectly with my peanut butter toast and cheese slices. I would cry into my breakfast, the baby kicking rhythmically for good measure. Now I cry while I watch A Baby Story, because I know how those women are feeling, and because I WANT ANOTHER BABY.
In true Western woman fashion, I can't only have one of something I love so much. And Jace is already doing things like eating bananas, and getting mad before nap time. So certainly, he's too old. I need another baby who will sleep all day in my arms, and will have cute little smeary poops.

I need to be pregnant again.



What's that you ask? Pregnant again? But you hated it, Kate. Why yes, yes I did. But I keep telling myself, it will be different this time. I will love the gradual expansion of my body. I will eat less. I will feel closer to this next baby during pregnancy because I will know the end result, and how much love I will feel for him or her.
But having a baby is very painful, you say. Yes, yes it is....isn't it? Harder is it getting to be, to remember the way the IVport felt. Harder is it getting to be to remember the way little grouchy nurses kneading my stomach felt. I can barely remember how horrible it was to pass out from exhaustion. Or the smell of the numbing spray I had to use from tearing.
What used to be super vivid memories of sheer hell followed by sheer delight, are now pretty foggy waifs of a memory. Something was uncomfortable, something bugged me I think.
What I really can remember is all of the love I felt, the first time Amanda and I heard Jace's heartbeat, and everytime there after. Or his little ultrasound pictures, when he stopped looking like a chicken nugget and started looking like a baby. Or his heartbeat, like a train in the night.
I can only really remember the best parts of the whole experience, because ultimately, that's what I was left with.
For example, right now, he's laying right next to me on the couch while I blog this, and smiling up at me, like there is nothing else in the world. Is there?

My body is telling me it's time, I seriously want a million children, because I don't remember all of the bad parts. And I love all of the good parts so much.
Isn't that how second babies are made?

Letter to a Boy Volume 1

Last weeks blog has left me feeling so.....exhausted. I was surprised at the mob mentality of women. Why, when something works so positively for one woman, would you slam it, and try to tell that woman why she is wrong? It reminds me why I mostly keep to myself. There's never a shortage of people who want to tear you apart because you're different.


 I wanted to write something positive this week. So I wrote a letter to my boy. This is what it says.

Dear Son,

When I was pregnant with you, I would dream of you in the night. I imagined your dark hair, against your pale skin, and your little dark eyes.
During the day I would feel you move against my belly. I would swish-sway you to sleep on summertime walks.
Being pregnant with you made me crave white vinegar. The smell would make my mouth water, and when Amanda's head was turned, I would sip it right out of the bottle. It would take my breath away.

I knew before you came, I would never hurt you. I would never let any harm come to you. I found a ferociousness in the center of my being, which pulsed with a heartbeat saying "Take care of your boy, take care of your boy".
I became a lioness.

Then you came to me. Day turned to night and back again. You and your dubby slept beside my bed. I sighed with a contentedness now that you were here.

For the first time since I lost my own mother, I felt the feeling again of being connected to someone, without words, without a look, simply by breathing in each other's air, by feeling each other's skin.
I understood the things you needed, sometimes before you needed them. I knew the answer to questions you had, by being one in the long line of many mothers for thousands of years. Without knowing it, you healed some wounds I have had for my entire life.

When you fall asleep at night, against my side, I watch your face soften and relax. I kiss your lips, the lips I made, and watch you. I fall asleep beside you, and your dubby. Words escape me at your perfectness.

I no longer dream of you, because you changed from those dreams, and now you are here with me.

This is the first letter of many,

All of my love to you, my first child

Your mama

The Submissive Wife

Candace Cameron Bure. You are in trouble with women everywhere. Women are gnashing their teeth and sucking in their breath. Putting their hands to their hips and waggling their necks back and forth. You mentioned two words that women these days hate to hear together, or at least pretend they do. Wife and Submissive.

Recently in the news, Candace Cameron Bure (you all remember her as D.J. from Full House) got into some hot water for saying "I am not a passive person, but I chose to fall into a more submissive role in our relationship because I wanted to do everything in my power to make my marriage and family work,"

Well. When people read that, they went apeshit crazy. Omigod. A woman who chooses to play a womanly and submissive role! She should be shot! 

Well, here's the thing ladies. I totally agree with her. And this is why.

In every situation in life, at least in natural life, there has to be a balance of things. If you own a dog, you have to lead it, be it's master. If you have a child, you have to be the disciplinarian. If you have a garden, you have to weed it, and decide where the plants will grow. See what I'm sayin? You can't have two chiefs, or two indians. If you do, shit just doesn't get done. Yin and frickin Yang homey.

I know in todays society, women are aghast at taking second place to their husbands. Women have worked so hard to become equal. And that's fine. But even in that situation, one of the pair has to take the drivers seat. Which reminds me. There are not two drivers seats in a car....
Anyway. I'm not saying it always has to be the woman. If you decide to be the breadwinner, and your husband decides to stay home and raise kids and clean house, then I guess you're the boss.
I'm not saying you have to be all "Yess Massa" to your husbands. You still will have a voice. 

BUT SOMEONE HAS TO LEAD!

And this is why I think marriages have little to no success rate these days. There are no checks and balances. There is no accountability. There are just two people saying "I thought that was your job" and gluing their faces to their smartphones. 

I like to think of myself as the assistant to Amanda. I try to think of what she needs before she needs it. I do my job to the best of my ability. I put 110% effort into our romantic relationship. I never say no to sex.
And I don't care if you think I'm crazy. Because I know I'm not. I know this is what it takes to make a longstanding relationship work. You can't just glide through, and hope to come out on the other end together. I've tried that before. It might get you six years. Might.

So the rest of you can be just fine on your side with your "we're equal" bullshit. You can go through sixty seven relationships pondering, why the hell didn't that work?

I will stay on my side, with my choices and beliefs about being a good wife. Because after all, that is the most single important part of life. Family. 

I can tell you are still irritated, still don't agree. But tell me this ladies; If women don't long for real men, the way they used to be, all assertive, and ungroomed and gruff, then why did "50 Shades of Grey" Sell  70 fucking MILLION copies? 

Just think on it.

Let's Burn Jenny McCarthy At The Stake!

I'm on a furious writing bender. I seriously cannot stop. I also can't stop eating all of the Christmas chocolate and poking at my doughboy belly, but that's a whole other blog post, I guess.

I really just want to take a minute to talk about this Jenny McCarthy thing. If you're reading this, you are probably a woman interested in child rearing. Or you're my brother Chris. Either way, you prolly know about Jenny McCarthy's huge campaign against Vaccines because she was sure they gave her son Autism. She has been in the media for the past ten years (give or take) talking about how bad Vaccines are for your children. No doubt, she has some followers, and has swayed many a woman into not vaccinating their child.

When I was 2 months pregnant, I worked a bullshit job for a bullshit company who bled poor, uneducated black folks of their settlement money. No lie. Needless to say, I quit there, because It takes a certain kind of person to be cool with that.
But while I was there, we'd often have a lot of time on our hands between unsuspecting clients. So I used those hours to research vaccines and there supposed hand in fucking up our children. I watched a lot of documentaries on Autism from vaccines. And it really scared me. And for a brief, hormone infected moment, I decided I would not vaccinate our child.
Then I realized those were very biased documentaries, made by very hurt, and angry mothers, looking for some way to quench their pain.
I seriously cannot even imagine going through the agony of having a child diagnosed with Autism. I bet I would look to place the blame on anything I could.
Then we had Jace, and we decided to Vaccinate him. I still don't know if it's the right thing, but I was too scared of the alternative. I'm not sure there's a right answer in this one. Once we had him, we loved him so much, we weren't willing to gamble with things like Whooping Cough or Mumps. Because those things could definitely kill him. While Autism is still super scary, he would not die from it, and it seemed like a risk Amanda and I were willing to take.

Now, I've said that, so I can say this.

On my Facebook feed this morning, women and men were blowing it up with angry rants about how stupid Jenny McCarthy is, and how she has made a huge stupid error, and how now all of these women has chosen not to get their children vaccinated, and it TURNS OUT HER SON DIDN'T EVEN HAVE AUTISM THIS WHOLE TIME!!! He unfortunately has a neurological issue, which now that Drs. know, they are working to correct. So everyone is mob style angry with Jenny McCarthy. I was for a nanosecond too, and then I put my mommy hat on.

So two things.

If you choose, or did not choose to vaccinate your child because of what Jenny McCarthy said....Then you're a fucking idiot. When it comes to your child's health, you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS do two things. Research, and then go with YOUR OWN mommy instinct. Or what I like to refer to it as Mommy Gut. What Jenny McCarthy decided for her own son, was her choice, not yours. You should never do something because a celebrity does it. Fucktards.

Now, the most important thing I want to say is this. Stop being a mean mom. It's bullshit, and it's nothing more than adult women being bullies, and I've been bullied my whole life, and I won't stand for it.

The woman made a mistake. Do you even get how stupid she must feel? How she is her own harshest critic, and how she is prolly beating herself up. Right now she's prolly laying in a dirty tee shirt funk. She prolly smells like french onion soup under her armpits, and she's prolly busy being super depressed and sobbing into her sons hair at night, because of how bad she fucked up.
It doesn't matter to her that she fucked up as a celebrity, and she's embarrassed and everyone is talking shit about her. It matters to her that she fucked up as a mom.
And what the rest of the moms should be doing out there, instead of being assholes and bullies about it, is they should be offering up kind words, and stories of their own missteps.

When other mothers fuck up, they should be taken under other mommy wings, and pampered. All mommy's fuck up and it hurts so bad when you realize you have.
There's so much anger in this world, so much materialistic bullshit. Jenny McCarthy fucked up. She blamed a group, an action, because her son was impaired, and she was pissed off, in a way only parents can be.
We do that type of shit everyday, but there's no one there to shine a Hollywood sized spot light on it.
So, what I'm saying is, If you're a mother, and you're making fun of Jenny McCarthy right now, tone it down a notch. You aren't any better because you're a mother, and now you're a bully.
So choose to do the right thing. Don't make fun of her for fucking up. Don't post on your Facebook about how she's a fuckup.
Send her some healing vibes. Post on your Facebook about how hard that must be and how sorry you feel.
Stop being such a dick. For fucks sake. UGH.