You know, quite often on a weeknight, I think to myself that I'm going to put the baby to bed and somehow find that fire to be productive again. Spoiler alert - 100% of the time I don't. And I wish I could even justify that by saying that instead, I hang out with my husband, or lounge on the couch with a good book, or maybe catch up on This American Life while knitting baby booties -- or something cool like that. I don't, I lay on the couch and promptly fall asleep. I figure that if Ryan is sitting at the end, and I lay close enough that some part of my body is near him, then technically we're spending time together and it's kind of quality, right? Right?!

Big surprise, motherhood is exhausting.

I say this a lot, but sometimes we thrive, sometimes we survive. It's really hit or miss, but somehow we got through the newborn phase, just escaped the sleep regression, and now we're trucking on to new challenges.

I'm far enough removed to finally laugh about this, but when it happened, I nearly wept. I'll start with this: whoever said "it's not worth crying over spilled milk" was probably talking to a breastfeeding mom. And actually, it is. SO worth crying about.

A few days ago, Ryan took a full - I repeat, completely full (baby mamas, you know what I'm saying) - bag of frozen baby milk out of the freezer. He set it on the counter to thaw. Then he turned his back on it for a second.

George swooped in and ate it like a popsicle. The entire fucking thing + the plastic bag.

That's all I can say, and anyway that's the gist of the story. But mostly I'm getting emotional just thinking about it.



Another quick dog story: A few weeks back, Ryan and I packed the pups and the baby for a trip downstate. Things are going mostly awesome because the baby proceeds to sleep for the entire drive which is a big deal. Randomly, I look back to check on the dependent-souls-in-our-care situation and find Jack straight up laying on top of the baby in the car seat. My meltdown gave both Ryan and Jack a heart attack.



Anyway, I guess when I said we're on to new challenges, I mostly meant the dogs. This week. Next week will surely be something else I can't foresee.

***

It hasn't been all fails around here. Yesterday we saw the sun, which I heard on NPR is only the fourth time since winter started here in northern Michigan. Also a win, yesterday I got in a two hour nap with Duke - on freshly washed sheets -- which is literally my favorite weekend activity.

Another win, I almost gave up on Facebook this week, since it's turned into a full feed of Lularoe garbage and politics. But I'm glad I didn't, because on Wednesday, I logged on and found out Beyonce is pregnant with twins. That's worth sticking around for, isn't it.

Seriously though, I think we can all probably agree that we know a few people on both sides of the political debate. People so far to the right and the left, that they can't even see the middle anymore, and are even less likely to remember that we're all just people with different values and reasons and maybe a life lesson or two that led us to those values. I've got one far righter who verbatim believes that the women marchers "need to get back in the kitchen" and the liberal millennials need to get jobs and off welfare. And there's a far lefter who just won't shut the fuck up about how racist every single white person is.

I guess both of these things are troubling to me because it suggests that we can only be one thing.  That's false -- we're a great many things. All of us. I'm a liberal with a job and I don't even live in my parent's basement-- see? I'm treading water in both stereotypes. Magical.

(And I'd venture a guess that most of us are treading similarly, proving that there's not two swimming pools at all. Just one where the water mixes with each treading kick.)

I can't change the world single-handedly, but the one thing I have power over is how I raise my son. And I think that's how any of us can contribute to a better world. I can teach my son that we're all born equal and that girls are fair and equal competition. That he is still a man even if a girl is better than him at something. That sometimes people do good things, and sometimes they do bad things and that's not dictated by the color of their skin. That being born in the right place does not somehow make you more important or deserving of safety than anyone else in the world. That you can feel empathy for refugees AND veterans at the same time, because empathy and love and doing the right thing is never ever mutually exclusive. And that sometimes, your friends don't believe the same thing as you, and that doesn't make them wrong or stupid.

I'm also going to teach him that nobody loves him like his mama, and that ain't no joke.


Isn't it fun getting serious on a Sunday? Ha! Happy weekending you guys -- cheers from me.