Can't Hardly Wait

Last night as we all climbed into bed, the munches were once again talking about the baby. Pumpkin says, "I can't wait till we have the baby" and I thought, "I totally can"

The first couple weeks are not all muted pictures of pretty momma's happily nursing little soft pastel bundles. A movie-like scene where older children play quietly and offer to bring diapers and cocktails to Mommy as she languishes on a soft couch, in a clean house that smells like new baby and cupcakes. Bringing home a new child is like dropping a bag of peppered crazy on your whole house.

First of all your house looks like it's been overrun by homicidal vagrants. No one is wearing pants, there are tiny nasty poo bombs diapers every where (newborn poo doesn't smell? ha!), and it's not uncommon to find a piece of pizza, a whole piece of pizza, shoved under a couch cushion. (What? I was gonna eat it later) The laundry is piled up to the ceiling and you are pretty sure that if you dug through it you'd find the treasure of the Sierra Madre, Something in the kitchen sink has gained consciousness and started predicting the end of days, and you believe it.   

Secondly, the noise is profound. Baby and Mommy are both crying, the television is turned on in every room of the house, older siblings are cranky and stir crazy, and have probably discovered that howling like hyenas makes Daddy's face turn funny colors (look what I can do!). The phone is ringing like mad because everyone wants to come and see "the new little angel" and in-laws just show up, usually in the middle of the pant-less, howling, face changing, mayhem. This un-announced visit leads to them offering to "help" or more accurately, they'll hold the baby while you clean up your house, hose off your older kids, make your visitors a beverage and snack, and make yourself look less like a member of the cast of the Walking Dead.

Thirdly, Mommy usually looks like one of the unfortunate cracked out hookers on COPS. With greasy gnarled hair, post baby acne riddle skin, saggy places and as mentioned above, no pants. There is also a good chance she is wearing the same t-shirt as she was three days ago, complete with boob milk stains and probably some of the a fore mentioned pizza stuck to it. Exhaustion has caused everything that comes out of Mommy's mouth to be a garbled bit of nonsense, and when people don't understand what she's asking/demanding she collapses into a pile of keening, tear filled lunacy 

Yup, I can wait.

I'm enjoying the quiet, sleep-filled, daiper-less, existence where the baby is just the "alien in residence."