someone recently asked me what the most surprising thing about motherhood has been for me, and my immediate answer was that i had no idea how often this job would send me into hysterical fits of laughter.

apparently, i’m not the only one who lives with little comedians. my post on children’s bizarre sleeping accoutrements  promted one reader to send me a link to this picture:

yes, both of this reader’s children slept on foam, fold-out couches, like this one, IN their beds.

another reader’s younger child was once spotted sleeping amidst a veritable bouquet of plastic food, arranged carefully by her older child.

and finally, on the day that i confessed that my children have two different mothers, i received this shot from the proud mama of the above pictured food sleeper:

it’s nice to know that i’m not the only mother whose fierce protection of the first child was replaced by a strange willingness to allow the second child to get “pushed around.”

my children’s ages and need for regular naps, combined with the fact that i do most of my preparation for work in a home-office sometimes make for a lonely and stir-crazy existence. the best thing that has happened since i started this blog is that i now enjoy regular contact with friends, old and new. 

so, keep the crazy pictures coming. the opportunity to laugh out loud at the idiosyncrasies of other people’s children is just the plastic icing on the plastic cake!

my children have two different mothers. 

 i do not mean this in a biological sense. andy and i (and modern science) created both the monkey and the bird. the monkey’s love of words and the bird’s love of climbing are dead giveaways that both are indeed mine.

but somehow, in the two-and-a-half-year span between the two boys’ births, their mom changed from one gal to another. for example:

•  the monkey’s mom had a fabulous haircut on day of his birth while the bird’s mom had a tragic mullet*.
• the monkey’s mom had a policy against waking a sleeping baby. the bird’s mom will just waltz into his room, scoop him up from his crib, and load him into the car to fetch the monkey from school.
• the monkey was carefully dressed, multiple times per day, in new outfits that were painstakingly sewn and purchased just for him. in contrast, the bird wears hand-me-down pajamas almost exclusively, some of which no longer fit.
• the monkey’s mom hovered over him in awe while he slept and consulted stacks of books at all hours of the night in order to diagnose imagined  breathing abnormalities. the bird’s mom simply hovers over him in awe while he sleeps.
• the monkey’s mom was a little shy about breastfeeding in public. the bird’s mom was not. ever the maximizer of time, she even pumped in the car while running errands.

apparently, this motherhood metamorphosis is one of the few things about me that are normal. on this topic, ayelet waldman writes the following: 

“abraham [her youngest] and sophie [her oldest] had two entirely different mothers. sophie’s was young and eager, and found the whole preschool experience to be novel and exciting. abraham’s mother was old, her knees hurt when she sat cross-legged on the floor, and her cupboards were already bursting with the popsicle-stick-and-glitter-glue picture frames. she did only a halfway decent job of feigning excitement at yet one more” (149). 

waldman goes on to write that even her two middle children, who are much closer in age, have two entirely different mothers.

the monkey’s preschool teachers have taught him a little chant, which i suppose is necessary when dishing out snacks to wide-eyed, cupcake-hungry three-year-olds: “you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit!” i’ve been amazed at the effectiveness of this silly song when its principle has gracefully transferred, in other settings, to the distribution of balloons, party favors, and toys.

so, when my boys are old enough to protest the injustice that results from the fact that they have two differerent mothers, i have my answer ready:

you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit!

*the above picture of the aforementioned mullet marks the ONLY day of the entire preceding year on which it looked decent. my doctor even commented on its “rare form” when he came in to deliver the bird.