By Kim Blakely

Remember that baby I wanted for so long? Well, she just turned 1. I know! I can’t believe it either.

I went to the doctor’s office a couple of weeks ago (I’ve been feeling kind of crummy for a couple of months now, but it seems maybe I’m just super-fatigued.), and they made me jump on the scales. It’s not a big deal, but c’mon – who wants that kind of trouble? This isn’t something they had done in the past so I jokingly protested about it.

“I just had a baby!� I said. Then I realized that it’s been quite a while since I gave birth. I’ve lost the weight, but I’ve also lost track of the time.

It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that I saw her sweet face and heard that lusty cry for the first time.

Moxie is a vibrant, passionate baby girl.

She knows what she wants and she goes after it, even if it happens to be at the top of the stairs. Yep, she only started crawling about a month ago and now she’s pulling up on the coffee table and climbing all the way to the top of the stairs, a nervous mama or daddy scooting up each step right behind her all the way to make sure she doesn’t tumble.

She’s reserved and has been known to scare away restaurant waiters with her level looks. But she’s also very social, so it stands to reason that her first words – mastered right after her birthday – were hi and bye. She can identify eyes, noses, mouths, ears and belly buttons in her books. She can point to her hand when you ask where it is and she does an impressive Rockette-like kick when you ask her to identify her toes.

Her laughs are as loud as her cries and no one makes her giggle and shriek as much as Mojo. Her big brother delights and infuriates her, which is, I suppose just as it should be.

Maybe you’ll recall that one of the reasons I wanted this baby so badly was so that Mojo wouldn’t be alone. I think he’s mostly glad she’s around. He talks to her and about her and he plays with her, sometimes giving her way more attention than she really wants.

But if there’s a downside to life right now, it’s that I feel like he gets the shaft far more often than I would like.

Am I the only mom of two who finds herself chastising one more than the other?

I don’t know if he’s acting out because he wants more attention, whether he’s acting out because he’s 5 and is a little full of his burgeoning sense of independence or whether he’s bored by summer vacation or whether it’s all of the above or if I just simply lack the patience to cope.

It’s hard, though. I don’t like it, but I’ve turned into a yeller. I yell because nothing else seems to get through. I get beyond frustrated when he repeats whatever his flavor of the moment over and over or until he tortures his previously content sister until she can only be comforted by my stopping what I’m doing and picking her up … and after asking nicely, then firmly and then with a warning for him to stop, finally I just burst.

He starts kindergarten in a few months and I’m sadder than sad that we won’t be together every day anymore. It’s the end of an era and I don’t want to see it go out this way. I want to make this better because I know our relationship will only become more challenging – that it will be tested in new and more complex ways – as he gets older.

I’m sure we’ll work through it, and it’s not as bad as all that. Not as bad as I’ve made it sound here, I’m sure.

There’s still plenty of games and good times around here. It’s just a dark spot in a field of light.

I want my babies to be friends. And though I know the difference between parent and friend, I want to be their friend, too.

Time is flying by too fast to miss out on all the fun.

Kim Blakely is mom to baby girl “Moxie� and 5-year-old “Mojo�. She’s also a freelance writer who works from home.  To read previous All Akimbo posts, click here!

By Kim Blakeley

Mojo has just entered the world of playdates without his mama. And a couple of his friends have started hanging around at our house without their mamas, too.

Are there any good reference books out there to tell me how to navigate this unfamiliar territory?

I’m just not sure I’m handling things just the way I should.

I have lots of questions, like, for starters, is 5 an appropriate age for this kind of thing? It seems like lots of kids his age are doing it, so I’m assuming it’s all good.

It’s just that Mojo is still pretty much a baby in my eyes, albeit an increasingly gangly … err, independent and sociable one.

I’m not sure I’ll ever feel entirely secure about him going to the homes of people I don’t know very well. I mean, I would never leave him with someone I don’t think is responsible – but how do you know what someone is like when you’re not around? What kinds of things do you ask/look for before you allow your child to go on a playdate without you?

And what about kids who come to our house to play?

I’m never sure if I should stick close to the kids or leave them be. Come up with activities or just let them do what they want. Make them play together or wait for them to sort out their own interactions. Ugh.

There’s one who rummages through cabinets and closets, and he seems to find closed doors irresistible. I try to keep an eye on him but sometimes I have to go upstairs to put Moxie down for a nap – and sometimes I just have to go to the bathroom – leaving our belongings vulnerable to his curiosity.

I try to provide healthy snacks, but one rejects my offers and asks (and not so gently) for other options.

All this, though, I can muddle through. I think I’ll figure it all out in time. By the time Moxie grows her social butterfly wings, I’m going to have this down.

But one thing has me really stumped: One of the mamas of Mojo’s friends sent an email a few weeks ago asking my husband and me if we would let Mojo go to his friend’s birthday party – at a venue in a town about 45 minutes away. In their van. Without us. And then they are coming back for swimming at their neighborhood pool.

I have yet to respond.

I know that seems rude, but I just can’t bring myself to agree.

I hate to deprive Mojo of an opportunity to hang around with his friends at a big celebration/adventure like this. I don’t want to turn him into a social outcast. But I’m just not sure it’s a good idea. What would you do?

 

By Kim Blakely, soccer mama

When I learned I was carrying a son, the thought that my presence might be required at a few sporting events did cross my mind.

I’m not a big sports fan. I like to go to the occasional Razorback game, and I enjoy a good game of hoops, but really, I just don’t get it. I didn’t grow up watching sports – no one in my family watched sports, actually – and I don’t even have a good feel for all the rules.

But I married a sports fanatic, so I knew this would be my life.

I did not realize, however, that we would be double-booked. I especially did not realize we would be double-booked before Mojo even started kindergarten.

My husband has signed us up for baseball (T-ball) and soccer this spring and there is a good bit of overlap.

How, I’ve asked, are we supposed to get from baseball practice at 5:15 to soccer practice at 6? And how is Mojo supposed to find the energy to play in an 8:30 a.m. soccer game and then go immediately afterward to baseball practice without falling over?

And what about the days when we’re scheduled to play in soccer games and baseball games AT THE SAME TIME?

I’m still waiting for the answer – a shrug just does not count.

I know many moms have gone before me in this and survived. I’m sure I, too, will live through the sports years.

But will I make it through without rushing onto the soccer field and giving the coach that says to one his tiny players, “Are you playing soccer or messing around?� Thankfully (for him) it was not my tiny player he was addressing. I don’t know that I could have been a good sport about that.

And will I make it through this without [severely] admonishing the father standing on the sidelines next to us about telling his son that the other players are better than him? I can’t imagine what kind of father thinks that kind of thing would motivate a kid to play better.

Baseball season hasn’t started in earnest yet – we’ve only had a few practices so far. (I say a few … but I have to clarify that there have been a “few� in just a matter of a week. Who knew there was so much practicing involved in T-ball?!)

I hope Mojo will choose one sport or the other next year, just so his sports-illiterate mom can focus on learning the rules of engagement for one game at a time. (Maybe I can focus so hard on this that I will be able to tune out the parents/coaches who are behaving badly.)

I do think he enjoys all the activity, if only because it helps him bond with his dad. He seems to have fun, and to be honest, I enjoy watching him as much as he enjoys playing. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be a sports convert!

This morning, Mojo woke me up at 5:30 a.m. He’d had a bad dream, he said, about a dragon shooting white gumballs at him. (Pitching machine, anyone?)  He wasn’t sure if this was a good thing, he went on, so he asked me to call the police. The gumballs were everywhere – there were so many you couldn’t even move without stepping on them – and he didn’t know how we were ever going to clean them up.

I quickly gathered my [bleary] senses and said, ‘Ooooh, I know how we can clean up all those white gumballs!�

His curiosity was piqued.

“We can eat them!� I said.

(If he starts chewing on the baseballs at the next practice, will they kick him off the team? I’ll keep you posted …)

Kim Blakely is mom to baby girl “Moxie� and 5-year-old “Mojo�. She’s also a freelance writer who works from home. To read previous All Akimbo posts, click here!

By Kim Blakely, mama to Mojo and Moxie

Hey, I don’t want to get into the pros and cons or go on a “breast is best� campaign, and I’m certainly not going to judge you if you, for whatever reason, choose to go the formula route, but I am definitely, without a doubt, a breastfeeding advocate.

So, what about nursing in public?

I’m all for it, as long as it’s not me doing the public nursing.

It’s just something I’ve never gotten completely comfortable with.

Oh, I’ve done it more than a few times, and I’m sure I’ll do it again before Moxie is ready to give up the boob. But as much as I support the right to do it, I almost always find myself looking around for a private spot when I’m out and about at feeding time.

My tentative approach to nursing with a potential audience has nothing to do with my conviction to breastfeed.

I knew I wanted to nurse Mojo – or at least I was pretty sure I wanted to – well before he arrived. (As I sat in those breastfeeding classes before he was born I had some squeamish moments as I considered the prospect.)

He took to it like a champ, nursing on his own just minutes after my c-section. I remember watching this tiny, brand new baby opening his mouth wide and latching on – it was the most natural thing in the world and yet to me, it was magical. Any doubt I had about whether I could or should breastfeed faded into thin air in a millisecond. Any doubt I had about motherhood – that phase of it, anyway – melted away in that moment, too.

He nursed a LOT, and I was fine with that – especially once my poor cracked, sore nipples got used to their new role, because it gave me plenty of time to admire him, to gaze into his eyes and hold his hands and just cuddle. There were times that I remember nursing him in those early weeks for what felt like 24 hours straight, although I’m sure there were 10-15 minute breaks built in there somewhere.

There were a few challenges when I went back to work at the end of my maternity leave, but they really only strengthened my resolve and I think the way I handled them might have benefited nursing moms who came after me.

I’ve breastfed Moxie from the beginning, too, and at almost nine months there is no end in sight (I hope). She’s not quite as enthusiastic an eater as her brother was, though she can certainly hold her own.

I’m mostly at home with my kids now, but over the years, I’ve had to express breast milk while away on work assignments, usually sitting with my pump tucked under my shirt in the front seat of my car, right in the middle of a busy parking lot. No one was the wiser.

I’m proud of my body’s ability to provide everything my babies need in the first six months of life, and almost everything they need for the first year. I’m amazed by the way it all works – the way we exchange antibodies and help keep each other healthy through nursing, the way my body just knows what nutrients they need and when and offer it up, the way it knows that, for whatever reason, a boy baby needs milk with more calories than a girl baby …

I guess modesty is part of the reason I’m more likely to retreat to a back bedroom at a friend or relative’s house, a dressing room in a store, or the illusion of privacy in my car when it’s time to nurse.

But maybe it’s just that I don’t want to risk having anyone taint the experience for me. I guess I feel like, for me, not everything that’s natural is meant to be shared with the world. I think it’s mostly that I’m being selfish, keeping it all to myself and enjoying the special time with my babies, away from prying eyes and ignoramuses who might make me feel even the slightest bit like I need to debate the issue.

Does that mean I’m hiding? I don’t see it that way.

I’m ready and willing to fight for the right, if need be.  I’m as likely, though, to stand up for your rights as I am for my own on this issue.

Kim Blakely is mom to baby girl “Moxie” and 5-year-old “Mojo”. She’s also a freelance writer who works from home. To read previous All Akimbo posts, click here!