5 Ways Motherhood Has Changed Me

1. I can't stand silence.

 

I used to revel in the silence. Now if no one is crying, giggling, arguing, singing or asking me a thousand questions I feel like the apocalypse may have happened and I was left behind.
I also can't stand it because I know what it means. . .someone is coloring on the walls, making hair and dresses out of the toilet paper, or gluing my new earrings to paper.

2. I cook.

 

No, I don't cook well. But I do cook. Before I had kids cooking consisted of pouring a bowl of cereal and adding milk.  Now I am like a mad scientist. You can find me in the kitchen whipping up concoctions, smoke billowing from burning pots and pans and children begging me for McDonalds.  (They just haven't developed their pallets enough yet to appreciate my cooking.)

 

3. Drool no longer bothers me.

 

I seriously had a major hang up about drool when I was pregnant with my first child.  Thick, drippy, smelly, liquid constantly hanging from a baby's mouth was one of my phobias. Gross. I never thought I'd get used to it.  Now I don't even think about wiping my kid's mouths with my shirt, pants, hands, arm, or the nearest toy or baby blanket if it suits me. Sometimes I'm sneaky and wipe one of my kid’s mouths on the back of my other kid’s shirt. Excellent reason to have multiple children. You never run out of clothing surfaces to wipe faces on.

 

4. I don't sleep.

 

Ok I do sleep, but I definitely don't sleep like I used to. I used to close my eyes and be completely comatose until my alarm went off the next morning.  Now I am on night time mommy watch 24/7. I hear a cough, sneeze, or fart in the night and I am suddenly the world’s fastest, sneakiest spy. I creep into their room, find out which one made the sound, decipher if it needs further investigation and then escape like Houdini before I am spotted by the enemy.

 

5. I think yoga pants and pajamas should be a strictly enforced dress code for stay at home moms.  

Before I had kids I wouldn't have been caught dead without my hair brushed, make up on and a properly thought out wardrobe. Now I think. . .Why do I have to get dressed to go to the grocery store? Why do I need to put on my "good jeans" (you know. . .the ones that don't make my ass look like a deflated saggy pillow) to go sit in a circle with 15 other toddlers, singing The Wheels on the bus, coloring happy faces and trying to keep my kid from gluing the picture to the table? No, my good jeans are reserved for the times when even my pallet is too underdeveloped to appreciate my cooking and we need to go to out to eat. I mean really out to eat. Like going to McDonalds and forgoing the drive through to sit in the exceptionally fun play room.  I mean Playscape. . .yes, my jeans must be worn to the Playscape. If for no other reason than to provide a thicker barrier between my knees and the pee soaked tunnels my kids ask me to crawl through.