Alright, I kid, I kid! I'm not geriatric, but when pregnant with Lillie my diagnosis was geriatric pregnancy!! I realize that was an ICD-9 description and the new and upcoming ICD-10 description is something more on the lines of Advanced Maternal Age. Either way you slice it, a first time Mom at close to 40 is OLD in the medical world!
And I wanted to be a Mom in my 20's, it just didn't happen for me, only NOW do I know how THANKFUL and LUCKY that I did not get pregnant then. Most of you know by now that Lillie was a complete surprise but is an absolute God sent blessing.
That being said, let me tell you the things I'm learning from this experience called mature motherhood, go ahead laugh with me or at me, it's all the same in my opinion!
My child picks up every spec of anything and hands it to me. It has become such routine that "Here Momma" elicits a trained response of hold out available hand and keep on doing what I'm doing. It's part of mom multi-tasking and still being attentive to what my child wishes, yes that's my story and I'm sticking to it. At first, that trained response was great because the items were harmless. Then at some point they were not. A list of "Here Momma" items I have blindly taken from my toddler and how recent shock treatments are changing my behavior:
1) trash; wrappers, paper pieces, kleenex, yarn/string, toenail clipping (???), etc
2) old food, squished food, powdered goldfish cracker (aka stepped on and can no longer be successfully eaten by toddler), gum from under a table (yes, we've all been there haven't we!)
3) pebbles
4) dirt
5) rocks
6) $5 bill (ok, not that I'm complaining here but when we are in public and I look down to see what the "here momma" object is since it feels different than trash and I have NO idea where she got it from, you get a little nervous that it might have been from the lady's purse on the bench next to you that is wide open, or even worse yet, your wide open purse - doing you no favor whatsoever and good Lord what else could be missing?!)
7) Boogers (well duh, knew that one was coming eventually)
8) Something that moved, yep, a beetle, still alive and crawling, I scream, shake my hand and beetle goes flying (my child is not afraid of bugs and I like to think I created it that way because I do not freak out when I see any kind of bug, reptile, spider, snake, whatever, but apparently I DO freak out when something I didn't see what it was starts crawling inside my hand.) [shock treatment 1]
9) Some sort of bug with wings, legs still twitching in death as its guts are hanging out the back end, obviously Lillie squished it to death. See, they are getting better. [shock treatment 2]
10) Worm - ok, freak out worthy again and just ugh, gross [shock treatment 3]
11) Dead frog - yep, it's getting better [shock treatments 4 and 5 for the high voltage here]
12) Dog poop - OMG I will never blindly take a here momma item again!!!!!! [shock treatments 6, 7, 8, 9,,,,]
13) Flower - and while chatting with a friend I did not just immediately hold my hand out and she threw the flower down.
Which will lead me to my next list that I'll work on, uh...tomorrow? How I've got one chance to get this right and I already can't count the things I've done that should ruin my child for life! Starting with not accepting a flower. :/
