Unless you are a fan of vomiting in your mouth a little, don't read this.

I'm not posting this one on Facebook because I don't want to bore anyone to death with details that, frankly, aren't even a little exciting.  But all the same, I needed someplace to document this stuff because I'm getting older, and there's no way this is going to stay in my brain long.



A picture could not relay this, but he is singing in the rain.


One of those just between us, veteran-mom-speaks-to-novice-mom type books during my last months of pregnancy warned me that it's normal for the whole "motherhood" thing not to hit you right away.  A lot of veterans mentioned that feeling of unreality about having a child, even described feeling as if they were just babysitting long term or didn't feel like a "real" mom until some poingnant moment came along and it suddenly hit them.

I most definitely didn't feel like a "real" mom right away. It hit me slowly over his first year actually.  It was always those little shoes that did it. I'd be picking up those tiny shoes off the floor and think, "Holy crap, I'm someone's mom." Same thing when I'd be folding onesies at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night, which might as well have been midnight. The big one though, that one poignant moment that hit me like a bolt of lightning, happened when he was a little over a year old.  I had him out for a walk in his stroller and he'd had a cold.  I remember wiping his nose and then freaking out because, where do I put this dirty Kleenex? Yeah, the moment that shoved me over the line into full-on motherhood, was the first time I shoved a dirty Kleenex in my coat pocket. There's no turning back from that. It's probably one step down from using spit to clean your kid's face. 

I take a lot of unusual pictures around the house; Pictures of toys set up in the midst of play, of the superheros lined up on the bathtub to dry, of that jar that he tried to keep the latest caterpiller in, along with one lonely dead leaf. If you looked at my iPod or cell phone's stored pictures, you'd find a lot of random scenes like that. Not because I'm trying to be super artsy and unique, but because these are the things I'm scared of forgetting. Just like the dirty Kleenex and the baby shoes, I'm terrified that by the time he's speeding in our car and lusting after vapid, overly made-up girls, I'll have lost the memory of the time he let me take a nap when I was tired, and busied himself by building a huge duplo creation. And when I woke up, how he was so excited to tell me it was called "The double tree restaraunt"- his restaraunt that only sold pancakes and strawberries. The lego guys sure seemed to be enjoying it.

I'll end this with a list of my favorite Kelan words and phrases- the things he has defined himself, and I love them too much to correct him on. 

Fire letter- lighter
Washing syrup- laundry detergent
"The sand for the dishwasher"- Cascade
"For the heck of god"- he says this when he is frustrated
The butt snacks- Veggie Booty or any of the like
The block store- The learning shop
The puzzle game- any iPod or mobile device