Here I Am - My First Time

So here I am on Blogger. I’m a blogger virgin and I am quite nervous for my first time. My husband has convinced me to start a blog so I can unload my thoughts and opinions. I can’t tell if he truly thinks my opinions are worth reading about or if he would like me to unload them on someone else for a change. I hope to share this with some of my social networking friends and have them do the same.

The name of this blog? Well, I wasn’t sure what else to call it, so I chose my persona for the week. I’m a mom – a new mom with an 8 month old daughter. I have a wonderful day job but as with most moms, my mommy job is my favorite. Yeah, that sounds really boring and square, I know. The other two traits mentioned in the blog title are a bit of a challenge for a new mom. I don’t find them challenging in the sense that I want to change them. They’re a challenge in the sense that I often wonder how people are going to take me in the fellow mom world out there. It isn’t that I am worried about this - I don’t really give a flying rat’s ass what anyone thinks of me outside of what my superiors at work think about my job performance.

The challenge is how I’m going to be able to deal with people and their unsolicited advice and opinions. I don’t ask many people for advice. I don’t ask for many people’s opinions. I don’t play well with others when they share advice or opinions that I didn’t ask for.

It already happens. Any woman who’s been pregnant with their first or only child knows. The unsolicited advice just flies in. Oh it isn’t always in the form of “You’re going to have to give your baby a pacifier” or “You better be prepared to put a bassinet in your bedroom because you can’t put a baby in their own room”, though trust me, both of those things were said to me. Sometimes it’s in the form of “Are you going to give the baby a pacifier?”, then when you answer, “Well, I’m going to wait and see what happens. I’d rather not but if the baby starts to suck their thumb I will because I don’t want them to do that”, they answer with their opinion (which they were going to give no matter what your answer was, as if you’re too stupid to know this was their tactic), “Oh well good, I think it helps them to be able to suck, it soothes them”. I even had women try to talk me OUT of breast feeding. Now personally, I could care less how you feed your infant – whatever works for you and your family is what you need to do. I wanted to breastfeed. It was just my personal preference. I didn’t say it to anyone unless I was asked. I was sitting with two other moms one day who asked me if I planned to breastfeed. I said I was going to try and see if it worked out. If so, I wanted to do it, if not, I had formula ready. Here comes the third form of unsolicited advice – the people who just tell you what THEY did and WHY (even when you don’t ask) in a tone that suggests if you don’t do the same you’re an idiot. Yes, these two women were very anti-breastfeeding. One told me there was no way she was going to do it because you can’t drink, it’s painful and you are tired after having a baby (really? Thanks for that tidbit, I never would have known). The other one told me that there was no way she was going to be the only one to have to get up in the middle of the night while her husband slept – she was NOT going to do more work than him (even after I pointed out that I would be getting about 9 weeks off and my husband was going to have to work, so I didn’t mind – they looked at me like I was the biggest douche bag they’d ever met). This behavior made me stay away from people while I was pregnant. I rarely saw or spoke to anyone, because I knew there would only be so much I’d be able to take without striking someone.

This is the part that makes my naughty language and dedication to my horror film collection a challenge.

I spent the first three months of my daughter’s life realizing that I don’t think I can filter the swear words out of my vocabulary. I’d let an F-bomb fly and ask my husband, “How am I going to stop doing this?”. His replies were always the same: “You don’t have to. Who cares if she swears? It’s not the worst thing she can do”. For now, I have to agree. I guess we’ll see how I feel when the first teacher calls my house to complain, or the first other mother comes to me to tell me that her little darling just said they’d stepped in a pile of steaming dog shit and it was my demon seed they’d learned this term from. My parents really didn’t swear around me and they acted shocked if I ever said so much as “crap”. Of course, all this did for me what make me swear every chance I got once I got out of their range of hearing. Now I do the same, I just don’t wait until I’m out of ear shot.

Then there’s my horror collection. This is a big part of my life. I love books, films and television – my favorite being horror themed. Some of the best times of my life have been had due to my love of suspenseful fiction and being scared. I realize my child may not share this passion, but she is definitely going to be exposed to it.

I want to be able to interact with other parents and I want my child to have healthy interaction with other families. However, knowing there are mamby pamby parents out there who want to ban Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Charlie Brown (yes, I said Charlie Brown and my head is still spinning from this one), I anticipate many challenges with my patience as I interact with other parents as my girl grows and develops a social life. I can only hope that as she grows, so will my tolerance level for….. you know…..  PEOPLE.