M.I.T (Mommy in Training)

There are about a billion reasons I know that I'm not ready to be a mom, but if watching after a one year old, all on your own, for an entire day, doesn't let you know one way or another, I'm not sure anything will. As if any of us are really ready to become parents at all, but I'm thoroughly convinced that I should stick with dogs for a while. Keep in mind, while reading this story that this is the coolest, easiest child that has ever walked the face of the earth. It's nothing that he's done, or hasn't done that has made me come to this realization, but just the concept of motherhood as a whole is a little foreign to me. So let's start from the beginning. First, why in the hell is my dog waking up before a child?!?! Shouldn't that be the other way around? Why is my dog scratching at the door at 7:15 while little baby Tristan is still quietly in his room? Why, b/c Scout's mom is a spazoid spoiler and Tristan's mom is relaxed and chill. So, we head down to breakfast where mom has already made us coffee and is starting in on the Oatmeal for three! I can hardly believe it! I guess a year of practice under your belt and you figure out how to feed yourself at the same time as your child. I, on the other hand, am busy shoving food in my mouth, while patient little Tristan sits and waits for me to feed him. It's only minutes that we're both awake and already I'm selfishly taking care of my needs first :o) Mom leaves for work and I take a look at the clock. 8:05, only 2 hours and 15 minutes until the first nap, what in the world do we do? Okay, let's go into the play room, throw around some Lego's, dance to some music and see how long that takes us. 40 minutes later and about one thousand attempts at moving up the stairs, I decide it's about time to take a walk around the block. If I time this right, I can take about an hour long walk with the baby and the dog and once we get back, we can sit down for a little bit before it's time for bottle and nap. This plan sounds REALLY good before executed. So, the big decision, who gets suited up first? Does the baby go in the stroller, followed by Scout into her harness, or do I attempt to suit Scout up, followed by getting Tristan into his stroller. No, no, the second one will never work, so I placed baby Tristan into the stroller, get Scout into the harness, hold onto the leash and we're off....One driveway...before we're stopped by the neighbors, who don't actually realize that I'm not mom and proceed to have a conversation with me about how it's going to hit me hard when Tristan gets his first haircut. Let me take a minute to paint the mental picture of what I'm dealing with though. I have two severely overweight women, one of which is mentally handicapped, both in wheelchairs, and chasing the dog while squealing at her to come let the lady pet her. Scout is pretty much afraid of ANYTHING, and if you chase her, she's afraid of even more. But how do I explain to this lady that it's not her, and to please stop chasing Scout b/c I have absolutely no idea what she would do. I finally convince the girl to sit down and maybe we'll get to see them on our way back. As I'm rounding the corner, all I can hear the girl say is, "that doggy was afraid of me and didn't like me". The exact thing I was trying to avoid, but it looks like I failed. So, we're on our way again. If you have never tempted to walk a puppy while pushing a stroller on a busy street where buses are passing by, I don't recommend it. I've got Scout on one side trying to exit the premises in anyway possible, while consistently being run over by the stroller that she keeps walking in front of. I have explained to her, on multiple occasions, that she is the dog. And as the dog, you do not get the right of way. Apparently I have reached her 1,000 word maximum of the understanding of the English language b/c this concept is not sinking in. Either is, stick to your side of the street b/c you're going to get hit by the stroller. But hey, she can't say I didn't warn her. Well, after a 50 minute walk, we reached the end of the neighbor, got back to the house without any further interruptions, but we still had about 30 minutes before it was time to hit the sack. Something told me we had a messy diaper though. It had been far too long since the last one was changed so I thought I would take a chance. We head upstairs, and have absolutely no problem laying down to get the diaper changed either! Ask Heather, lately, this has been a feat to keep him still. I open the diaper to find the biggest mess a tiny thing could create. I guess after cleaning up dog poop with your hands, most anything doesn't gross you out anymore, which is shocking to me. B/c before Scout, I would have probably thrown up on the actual diaper at this mess. This thing is everywhere too! No wonder he wasn't wiggling, he wanted out of this mess! You've heard of a two flusher, this one was a two wiper. Yuck. Clean diaper on and we head back downstairs. He's not interested in hanging out on the floor, so I decide that we have just enough time to pop in one of the greatest inventions of all time, Baby Einstein. I can't remember if I've talked about this invention before, but genius! Absolute genius. Goes to show that you just need one good idea. For those of you who don't know, Baby Einstein is this visual and audio stimulus for baby's. It's a mixture of sounds and pictures on their attention span. It's like legal crack for babies. It's honestly the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Your kid can be up to absolutely no good and you pop this thing in and they stop doing what they are doing and are mesmerized by the screen. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. I don't understand what parents did before it. Once it was over though it was time for a bottle and nap. Which leads us up to current time. At 11:15, I feel like I've done everything but milk the cows and feed the pigs. I guess we'll just have to go to the park after this nap and our grilled cheese sandwiches.

Kudos to you stay at home moms. I don't have enough patience or activities to do what you do every day of your life. You deserve medals.