The Calm Before the Storm

Parenting Lesson of the Day: Beware the Quiet Baby.

You might think that if your baby is playing quietly then all is well. No, no my misinformed friend. This is not the case.

You might think: "A quiet baby is a happy baby!". Well, that may be true, but happy and "all is well" do not necessarily coincide...

It is not new news that if your child is too quiet, they must be up to something. However, I did not think this applied to babies. Let me enlighten you: it does. My first experience with an all too quiet child was when I was fighting some horrific allergies a few weeks back. The baby was sitting on my lap, contentedly playing with probably some stuffed bug that sings, or a frog that ribbits, a book that crinkles, you know--baby stuff. I was probably on my laptop, most likely fertilizing some crops in Farmville. Then she got quiet. REALLY quiet. Perhaps because my head was in a fog from allergy medicines, or I was trying to become a "Sultan of Seeds" or "Lord of the Plow", I didn't look down at her for, I don't know, a few seconds? The damage was done. She had nabbed my box of tissues and had managed to pull out an enormous pile in front of her with one already becoming her mid-day snack. Like a summer's eve tornado, the storm came quickly and left quickly with an eerie silence, but left a trail of destruction for miles.

You would think I learned my lesson.

Skip forward a week or so. The allergies had passed. (Though, I'm still working on using up the pile of tissues she"freed" from the box...) My head should have been clearer, right? The baby was sitting next to me on the couch. We were playing again, I looked away, and--silence. I looked back. Maybe a second had passed. And she has grabbed my cell phone and begun picking at and sucking on the silicone cover. I didn't even know my cell phone was anywhere in a five foot radius! Baby-nado had struck again.

Ah, reader. You now think to yourself that she has learned her lesson from the tissue-twister and then the Baby-nado. Sure, she should have learned after the first time, but it was good she experienced the second storm to ensure that she never trusts the eerie baby silence again.

Wrong.

Skip forward in time to this evening. I was attempting to feed the baby her daily solid food regime of "Tastes-like-cardboard" rice and "Really?-I-didn't-know-vegetables-could-be-that- consistency" carrots. The baby scoffed at my rice after only a half spoonful (and that half spoonful she ended up spitting back out onto her face). I resigned and headed to the kitchen to prepare the carrots. She was content to play quietly in her high-chair. Of course kids are always content to "play quietly"! Duh! Playing quietly is universally acknowledged as the time when most kids get into trouble! I should realize by now as my figurative barns have already been leveled by Baby-nado twice before. So what happened?

The baby, in a matter of probably about a half a minute this time, somehow summoned my checkbook to her high-chair and stuffed it in her ricey mouth. Rice had already made its way in between the checks and adhered them to themselves. (Baby rice is sticky stuff.) So the next few checks I write are going to have baby's signature on them too. As I am writing this, I still have no idea how she got the checkbook...

The storm came and went so quickly. It was barely enough time to even process the fact that the baby was being extra quiet. But Baby-nado had plenty of time to leave a trail of destruction behind like acres of corn torn from the torrential wind of a twister.

The Fabulous Life of the Minimum Wage Parent

Recently I have been reading some wonderful parenting books about how to embrace motherhood and enjoy a full-time parenting career. These authors have created easy to read and digest memoirs of the joys and spiritual journeys of being a parent.

But there's just one problem. They're all doctors, famous journalists, TV news anchors, etc. I find while I can relate to them as mothers, I don't really relate to them as women. They all affirm what an easy decision it was to become a full-time mother while feeling sorry for their career hungry girl friends who crave their fast paced lives on Wall Street or Capitol Hill. Do I even know any mothers who have any idea what's going on on Wall Street on a day to day basis? Where is Capitol Hill anyway?

Of course the decision to be a full-time mother was easy for them. All of them have husbands who have careers that pay more than perhaps even their own brushing-with-the-rich-and-famous faboo jobs. They didn't have to consider whether or not they'd have food on the table if they were to quit there jobs.

I left a part-time minimum wage job to become a full-time parent and move to a new state. At the time I made the decision, my husband was a new college graduate without a job. He eventually did get a job at a theater in the Philadelphia area making peanuts. But we could live on peanuts. Even when after two months of working at the theater, he was let go because in this horrid economy the theater couldn't afford to have a full-time props master, I didn't decide that I'd become the wage earner in the family. We would just live on even less than peanuts.

The point is, both myself and these authoresses made the decision to become full-time mommies, but from very different backgrounds. And yet, the decision was still easy to make. Even though we had *just* enough food and money to get by, I never second guessed my decision. Do those TV anchors have any friends who have lived on spaghetti for two weeks to stretch out their grocery store trips? Where are the journalists that know people who know what it's like to be on Medicaid? Where are the books by these women?

So here I am to give you that perspective. It *is* an easy decision to make to become a full-time parent. I'll tell you, spaghetti is good stuff, even after a week or so! Getting enrolled with Medicaid was one of the most frustrating things I've had to do-mainly because no one I spoke to spoke English! Sometimes you won't have rent on time, but you'll be surprised how lenient people can be. Babies can be expensive, but for a long time, all they do is nurse and poop, so you really only need to buy diapers.

While I do work a few hours a week (I get to bring Ginny with me), I don't *need* it for any self-fulfillment. Being a parent is fulfilling enough. And it doesn't really add to our finances much, I just do it for fun. If you are trying to decide whether or not you can "afford" to be a full-time parent, do it. These paid-the-big-bucks-to-write-mommy-memoirs ladies can't tell you that. It is tough to live on next to nothing and sometimes nothing, but you will NEVER regret it.