I am starting a new job on Monday. I am super excited. What I am not excited about is the fact that they don’t know I am pregnant. I am still wrestling with how/when you tell or if you even do. Yesterday I decided that I needed to grab some work worthy maternity pants (Read: Black, khaki, navy) and attempt to find a top that conceals my ever growing bump. YES I am only ten weeks along. YES I look like I am 5 to 6 months along; thank my son for destroying my abdominal wall.  SO. HELP ME! Should I just stop trying to tent myself and walk onto the scene all, “yeah that is right- my belly button is about to pop…how’dya like my belly shirt!”

When do you tell your employer?

Am I an evil troll for concealing the pregnancy so they would hire me?

Am I an even more EVIL troll for making them pay for maternity leave in less then 8 months?

How do you even cover up a belly?

When I do spring it to them, do I just hand them a baby onesie with a wink?

 HELP ME!!

♥ Jasmine

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It wasn’t me who gave her son a small cup of coffee this morning, Carmel Macchiato to be exact.

It wasn’t me who was too tired to dress or diaper him all last week, so he played naked all day.

It wasn’t me who told him that  Jolly Rancher candy was medicine, and only for mommy.

Isaiah got up this morning acting like his normal bossy self. He ran to fridge and handed me an egg. This not so subtle gesture represented that he wanted breakfast, and this morning he wanted eggs. I sat Isaiah on the counter and gave him a wooden spoon. I allowed him to help stir the eggs as they cooked. It made me giggle when he reached over to the pinch bowl and sprinkled a little salt over the eggs. We served the eggs on Isaiah’s plate and he began to eat.

At this juncture I  need to mention that Isaiah didn’t sleep last night. Our A/C broke and Isaiah, like his mother, couldn’t sleep in an 89 degree house (we are wimps…I know!). Isaiah played in the dark all night he finally collapsed into sleep around 4 this morning….then he woke up, promptly, at 8.

Isaiah ate his eggs. Isaiah looked at his glass of milk. Isaiah screamed like someone was burning him and hurled said glass of milk across the room. The cup had no lid. Isaiah slammed himself down on the floor kicking and screaming and crying. He rubbed his eyes and rolled around.

I took that as a cue that maybe, just maybe, my son was tired and needed to nap. Alas! He is NOW in his room screaming and crying and throwing things and rolling around…. does someone want to translate what THE HELL is wrong with my child?! Too tired to eat, apparently, and too tired to sleep?

♥  Jasmine   TIRED Mommy

Sit down folks. You thought the poo jokes were reserved for only crude comedians with little material? Nope. You’ll find them right here on The Brokins. I thought “Little Stinky” was a cute blog… didn’t you? I thought I would have respite. You know, maybe have to write about my son’s bowel movements in, say, two or three weeks from now. But Isaiah, being the little version of his mother, wouldn’t leave well enough alone:

This morning started, as usual, with a little Isaiah waking up, screaming at me for “Elmos!” and “Grenik.” I poured his milk and started his morning shows and went about my mom business (Read: read all of your blogs). Isaiah removed his diaper about the time Elmo was asking Dorothy if she brushes her teeth.  I thought nothing of this…because, well, we are just naked people. I roamed to the bathroom with my laptop. I sat down to relieve my poor overworked bladder (thanks Baby #2)….  YES! Don’t scoff in disgust! I read on my laptop while I pee…. don’t act like YOU don’t either!

I digress.

 I hear Isaiah shout “OOOOOOOHHHHH!” He runs in the bathroom, and holds his penis and urinates all over me. Because, DUH MOM! Peeing on the person who is on the potty counts as success. He looked as his puddle (which has showered me, my laptop, the step he uses to climb to the potty, and the bathroom cabinet) with a strange look that said, “hmm… that isn’t right…..?” Then he ran off. Mission accomplished, job done. I didn’t know what to do first! I did stand up and tip toe to the hall to lay my laptop down- praying that Isaiah’s glorious moment had not met the wiring. Isaiah giggled as I peeled my clothes off of my body shrieking “Oooooh sick, damn it! siiiiiiiiccckkkkkk! SICK Pee goes IN potty not ON MOMMY ON POTTY!!!!”  Boy urine has some sort of freaky difference from girl urine, I think, because I was doing my best not to dry heave and die from the spell.   I told this story, right after it happened, to my friend Lindsey while chatting with her on Facebook (HI! Lindsey!)… she laughed her ass off. Well, I wasn’t there- but if I had been, I am sure her ass would have fallen off.

Mr. Wet Jet Antibacterial abated my fears and restored my bathroom to pre- urine war condition. I used FOUR Swiffer Wet Jet pads, because I was just that convinced that I was only spreading the piss around on the floor.

Welcome to motherhood! When life gets boring just watch out, you never know when you’ll get pissed on!

♥ Jasmine

Isaiah has started potty training… himself.  Yeah.

You read right. I started potty training a while ago, then I went back to work and it fell into the “not so super important at the moment” pile. Since the initial tries, however, Isaiah has started removing his diaper and attempting to sit on the potty by himself. He refuses to put his diaper back on once it is off. So all day my little man bounces around the house naked. I ask, like a robot,: “Isaiah potty?  Isaiah pee pee?” Each times he smiles at me and, as coy as ever, responds, “Mom! Noooooo….”

This morning he removed his diaper and watched Sesame Street.  I was busy in the kitchen when I heard Isaiah shout, “Little Stinky MOM!” “Little Stiiiiiiiiiinkkkkkkkyyyyyy!”  I walked in the front room, imagining that it was some new character on Sesame Street. ” What Toad? Can I help…..”  I stood there realizing I was WRONG! Nope! Not a new character….It was literal piles of “little stinky”. Isaiah had polka-dotted the carpet with a bowel movement. He was leaning over one pile pointing and chanting, “stinky, mom, stinky mommy.”

I don’t think I am cut out for this potty training business!

Tips, Suggestions, HAZMAT suit?!!!

♥ Jasmine

(Oops. I wrote this earlier, and then forgot to change the post date…)

1. It wasn’t me who fed Norah and Isaiah donuts and Cheese Nips for breakfast on Friday morning.

2. Nor was it me who continued to let the kids eat the Cheese Nips even after they had been dumped onto the carpet.

3. It wasn’t me who decided that drawing on the kids’ faces with chalk was more fun than drawing on the sidewalk.

4. It wasn’t me who inexplicably lost Isaiah’s shorts somewhere in my rather small house.

5. It was definately not me who lost Garret’s car keys, only to have Jasmine find them in her car.

6. And it was most certainly not me who was only halfway kidding about stasing the kids somewhere at the mall so Jasmine and I could get pedicures.

(Ok fine. That last one was me. But I was 100% kidding about stashing them somewhere.)

It was a long week…

Today Jasmine and I took the babies to lunch, then the mall, then Target.

We’ve done this before, and on previous trips the two were little angels. Both of them cooing and charming the pants off everyone who walked by. Seriously, there are often tons of people walking around pants-less, having been sucked into the Isaiah and Norah Zone.

What can we say? We have damn cute babies.

But today was a little different. Lunch started fine, Isaiah flirted and showed off for a couple at the next table, Norah shoved half of a giant cookie in her mouth before she even sat down. Totally normal stuff. But when we got to mall the idyllic picture of two mamas and their beautiful babies out for an afternoon of shopping erupted into flames of woe and angst.

Norah was in her stroller because she is not a good in-store walker. I prefer to keep her strapped in the stroller where the only thing she can damage is my eardrums. Isaiah, on the other hand, is a great walker. Jasmine and G never used the stroller like I did. They used the slings and now let Isaiah walk. He’s used to it and usually happy to do it.

But not today. Today he wanted “A Seat!”. He was really heart-broken. So we traded. Isaiah rode, happy as a clam, meanwhile, Norah attempted to dismantle a display of necklaces, put on a pair of yoga pants, and escape from me by crawling under the dressing room door.

At Target the flames of woe and angst became full-on hellish inferno blasts tinged with baby poop. Both kids were tired. Both were cranky. Both of them were acting like lunatics. And to make matters worse, they were feeding off one another. So when Isaiah dropped his gum and then proceeded to wail into a dishtowel about hw his life was over, Norah (who had just been happily trying to put an exercise shirt over her head) decided that her life was over too. So she started yelling. A cacophony of baby screams.

Isaiah was having a rough time, so I took him for a trip to the jewlery section so Jasmine could have 3 seconds to think. And again, Norah started crying like she’d lost a limb, even though she had just been fine.

These kids! I can only imagine what things are going to be like when we have four little monkeys with us.

Anyone else experienced this kind of baby dramatic empathy?

Ok ladies, its time to get really painfully honest. Maybe even embarassingly honest (though once you’ve had a baby your embarassment threshold goes way WAY up, am I right?).

I have a few whiskers. Just a few mind you, and they are thankfully white hairs so they’re not terribly noticeable. But still, they do exist.

The first time The Whisker was brought to my attention I was in high school. It was my sophomore year, I was sitting in my room talking with the boy I was in luuuuuuv with at the time. We were flirting and carrying on when he stopped. He looked at me, a strange look on his face and he said “Um. You have…hold on”. Then he reached out to my jawline and a second later I felt a tiny sting. “You have…..A WHISKER!” he yelled and then doubled over with laughter. In his hand was the offending hair. White and certainly too long to be just regular peach fuzz.

I was mortified. I mean, I could have died right there and been ok with it. Having your boyfriend pull a witch hair out of your face while you are in the midst of wooing and flirting is on par with unexpectedly starting your period in class and only realizing it when you stand up to leave and the whole class sees the evidence. Or accidentally farting while on a movie date. Or falling down a flight of stairs while trying to impress that hot senior on your way to English. These are the moments that make high school so painful.

I think that night I tried to blame the whisker on the pancakes I had eaten for breakfast. It sounded plausible. I must have gotten some syrup on my face, not noticed it to wipe it off and then a cat hair got stuck to me. I don’t think the boyfriend believed me, but I kind of believed it myself. In fact, I so totally believed my own pancake story that I didn’t even think of The Whisker again until the next year, when another boyfriend plucked it from my face in a remarkably similar incident.

Please. Kill  me now.

Since then I have regularly checked my jaw line for witch hairs. Any hairs that even have the remotest possibility of becoming like The Whisker are quickly yanked and then burned, to discourage any other hairs from growing beyond acceptable peach fuzz length. Maybe I’m a little paranoid but I would hate to be the lady that goes to Wal-Mart with a beard and seems to be unaware of it. Or one day find an anonymous note in my mailbox at work: Dear Sadie, Please lose the whiskers. You are scaring the children. Constant vigilance is the best protection.

Recently, while doing a witch hair inspection I was horrified to discover a second Whisker. Coming straight out of my CHEEK! My cheek, people! It was awful. I fell on the floor and cried, bemoaning my fate as the up and coming Bearded Lady.

So now I am on double Whisker duty. And just so I can really stay on top of it I am employing Jasmine as my Whisker Watcher.

I mean, what is a best friend for if not to help you shave your legs when you are huge and pregnant and be you Whisker Watcher?

Today we unleash the beast. The Brokins are going to start “Bad Mommy Confession Monday.” Today is the day to emancipate ourselves from the guilt and shame we’ve had over the week/weekend about motherhood (or fatherhood)… and maybe get a giggle.

There are really no rules. Just post something that has been lingering in the box of, “did I seriously just say that to my child?” or “I hope his father doesn’t find out I did that…”

I will start!

1. It wasn’t me who took her 2 year old (Read: attention span of a Gold Fish…) to see Ice Age 2, because she actually wanted to see it.
2. It wasn’t me who when returning home from aforementioned movie thought to herself, “well… he had popcorn, root beer, and a pickle…that is dinner,  right?”
3. It wasn’t me who then handed her son a cookie and some milk and considered dinner solved, because pickles are vegetables, and corn (even popped and covered in butter) are vegetables… so technically he had a fancy vegetarian meal.
4. It wasn’t me who considered it a job well done, when not only did he not wake up hungry….there were no night terrors either!

I cleaned  my fridge today.

It was a momentous occasion, as I have such a hard time keeping my house even mildly tidy I rarely (and when I say rarely I mean “nearly never”) clean out my fridge. Sure sure, I go through every few weeks and throw out the random leftovers, all the while trying to remember the last time I cooked spaghetti casserole. The two-inch green and hairy mold gives me some indication. We were gone this past weekend and in a rare moment of good housewifery I emptied the leftovers into the trash before we left, that way we would be able to come back to a semi-neat fridge and kitchen.

In a much more characteristic moment of forgetfulness I left a load of clean clothes in the washer (hello my old friend, Mildew), my contact case and toothbrush and face lotion on the bathroom counter, and the leftovers in the trashcan. In the kitchen. For three whole days.

We came back to a house scented with layers of rotten food, mildewed clothes, and cat poop. Awesome.

So today I decided it was high time to actually clean the fridge. The comments from friends (Jasmine!) and the ever-expanding iced tea leakage pushed me even further into my endeavor. I began at the top, as logic has taught me. I wiped and scrubbed and threw away and re-organized until my Frigidaire gleamed with a light from Heaven. I was amazed at the results. The space! The shiny shelves! I should do this more often! (Ha!)

It was a pretty tough task to begin with, spills and crumbs and unidentifiable goop running rampant, but it was made infinitely more challenging by the presence of a certain short, walking, yelping, four-toothed person. I speak, of course, of The Norah.

Its as though the ability to walk has instilled in her the stubbornness and strong will of a cranky rhinoceros. I’m a little frightened by her obstinance and have spent a good portion of my week reading up on toddlers, temper tantrums, toddler behavior, and what to do when you find yourself living with a baby that strangely reminds you of a howler monkey.

I did not fully appreciate how hard baby wrangling and kitchen cleaning could be when done together. Norah was all up in my business, placing her diapered butt exactly where I needed to be. If I needed to stand at the sink to wash a shelf, she needed to stand below the sink and repeatedly try to open the baby-safed cabinet. If I needed to take the eggs off the shelf, Norah needed to play with the egg carton in order to take out an egg and smash it on the floor. She developed a love for the Capri Sun pouches (I don’t even know where those came from) and took the straws out of them. Then she waddled around the house with a shoe and a Capri Sun clutched to her chest. Shortly after she screamed at the vegetable drawer for holding her beloved Capri Sun captive, even though she was the one who dropped it in there in the first place.

By the end of the day I had cleaned the fridge, swept up a pile of flax seed, mopped several milk puddles that resulted from a rebellious sippy cup, and found a shoe in the fruit drawer.