No, this is not about one of the kids finding Mommy's lipstick and coloring their bodies or the walls with lipstick.
I originally started this post on August 26, 2010. I started it, didn't finish it, kept it and keep mulling over when to finish it. Mother's Day weekend seems to be the perfect time to finish it up! Let's see if I can pick back up where I left off! Keep in mind that I'm adding onto what was written in August, so it might be a bit confusing at times, but hang in there...hopefully by the end, it will all make sense.
As a mom, it’s nice to find outlets…not for shopping, but for helping me realize that what I’m going through as a mom is what every other mom goes through as well. It’s nice to vent with, identify with and sympathize with other moms. It’s especially nice when something I read leads to a huge “a-ha” moment for me and perfectly captures what I’m feeling. That's what I happened when I read a blog post entitled "Lipstick Moments" on the Rants from Mommyland blog. One of the mommy bloggers wrote about watching her daughter applying lipstick and it occurred to how grown up she looked and how it just caught her off guard to see her so grown up. She called those realizations "lipstick moments".
I have to steal this from the mommy blog because I really cannot find a way to say it better myself:
I forget sometimes, because I'm folding laundry, or rushing them off to camp or school or karate or a sleepover or the grocery store, or fixing dinner, or threatening to come up there right now if you don't cut it out! But they do kinda awesome things in between all the times they're doing something that makes me wonder who on earth is mothering these childr--oh, right. That would be m.o.i.
Mitchell went back to school this past Monday and now I have a 1st grader. Once you hit the number grades, it just feels so different and much more “real.” Along with advancing another year in school, I have also noticed a change in him. He seems so much more grown up. He didn't want me to walk him to his class...he could do it on his own now!
Mitchell has been doing some pretty awesome things "in between" and I told myself that I need to capture them in my blog while they are fresh on my mind and also so I can refer back to these days when he’s a sullen teenager.
My first Lipstick Moment with Mitchell was right after I had Macey. He came to meet his little sister and visit me in the hospital after she was born. When he walked into the room, he was all puffed up and so proud to be a big brother. He looked so much bigger and much more mature to me. It was like he'd grown 10 inches overnight.
Mitchell has been a rock star in the morning. He eats (most of) his breakfast, gets dressed by himself and brushes his teeth without much of a fight. This has helped me tremendously since I now have 2 children to get in ready in addition to myself.
This past Tuesday night was a particularly rough night with Macey. She doesn’t nap well during the day and will often end up sleeping away most of the evening after she gets home. But every once in a while, she doesn’t want to sleep for me and the only answer in the equation of baby + fighting sleep is a frustrated baby and mommy! So I threw Macey and Mitchell in the car and we headed to Target. Mitchell has been asking for the Kidz Bop 18 CD. We searched for it a few weeks ago at Target, but they didn’t have it out on the shelves yet. Mitchell asked (in a very nice voice I might add) if we could buy Kidz Bop 18 at Target. I told him that yes, we could buy it.
Now it's May 2011, I do not remember the end to the Target story! I think I bought him the Kidz Bop CD because he was being so good and helpful with Macey during a rough patch. I wanted to leave that in there even though I cannot remember the rest of the story!
I do remember some of the other examples of Lipstick Moments I've had with Mitchell. He went to Primrose last summer for camp when I started back to work in July. One day when I picked him up, he told me that the little kids would get all excited when a school bus pulled into the driveway at the school. It took me back to a time when he was 3 and he loved school buses. When the school bus would pull into the parking lot, someone would yell, "School bus!!" and all of the kids would run over to the window to look out. Now he just thought it was silly that the little kids would get excited about a school bus.
I forget sometimes, because I'm folding laundry, or rushing them off to camp or school or karate or a sleepover or the grocery store, or fixing dinner, or threatening to come up there right now if you don't cut it out! But they do kinda awesome things in between all the times they're doing something that makes me wonder who on earth is mothering these childr--oh, right. That would be m.o.i.
Mitchell went back to school this past Monday and now I have a 1st grader. Once you hit the number grades, it just feels so different and much more “real.” Along with advancing another year in school, I have also noticed a change in him. He seems so much more grown up. He didn't want me to walk him to his class...he could do it on his own now!
Mitchell has been doing some pretty awesome things "in between" and I told myself that I need to capture them in my blog while they are fresh on my mind and also so I can refer back to these days when he’s a sullen teenager.
My first Lipstick Moment with Mitchell was right after I had Macey. He came to meet his little sister and visit me in the hospital after she was born. When he walked into the room, he was all puffed up and so proud to be a big brother. He looked so much bigger and much more mature to me. It was like he'd grown 10 inches overnight.
Mitchell has been a rock star in the morning. He eats (most of) his breakfast, gets dressed by himself and brushes his teeth without much of a fight. This has helped me tremendously since I now have 2 children to get in ready in addition to myself.
This past Tuesday night was a particularly rough night with Macey. She doesn’t nap well during the day and will often end up sleeping away most of the evening after she gets home. But every once in a while, she doesn’t want to sleep for me and the only answer in the equation of baby + fighting sleep is a frustrated baby and mommy! So I threw Macey and Mitchell in the car and we headed to Target. Mitchell has been asking for the Kidz Bop 18 CD. We searched for it a few weeks ago at Target, but they didn’t have it out on the shelves yet. Mitchell asked (in a very nice voice I might add) if we could buy Kidz Bop 18 at Target. I told him that yes, we could buy it.
Now it's May 2011, I do not remember the end to the Target story! I think I bought him the Kidz Bop CD because he was being so good and helpful with Macey during a rough patch. I wanted to leave that in there even though I cannot remember the rest of the story!
I do remember some of the other examples of Lipstick Moments I've had with Mitchell. He went to Primrose last summer for camp when I started back to work in July. One day when I picked him up, he told me that the little kids would get all excited when a school bus pulled into the driveway at the school. It took me back to a time when he was 3 and he loved school buses. When the school bus would pull into the parking lot, someone would yell, "School bus!!" and all of the kids would run over to the window to look out. Now he just thought it was silly that the little kids would get excited about a school bus.
When he came into the infant room to visit Macey, he would talk to her and the other babies. The teachers commented to me that he was a like a little adult when he talked to the babies. He tried to comfort them when they were upset just like he sees me do with Macey when she's upset.
Even though it would startle us when he would walk into a room carrying Macey, I realize that he was trying to be grown up and help take care of her. Seeing him carry her around is certainly another lipstick moment and that another reminder that he's not small enough for me to carry him around anymore!
This spring has afforded me all kinds of lipstick moments:
- Mitchell was 1 of 3 first graders who was placed in an Advanced Math class.
- At Mitchell's first baseball game of the season, he hit a triple and played great defense. He was the first one on his team to be awarded the game ball!
- If he can't find something he wants at Target, he doesn't hesitate to go up and ask someone for assistance.
- When he got a paint canvas at church, the first and only thing he wanted to do was make a picture for Macey for her 1st birthday.
- He's been going to Sunday School even when his friend Andrew isn't there.
I realized this past week that I've had a few of these lipstick moments with Macey. Most recently it was the realization that she will get into a standing position all by herself and just take off walking. I left her sitting in the hallway when I was carrying laundry to the kitchen. I turned around and she was just standing in the middle of the hallway and she started walking towards me.
Even though we are always so busy doing mommy things, it's nice to stop for a moment and appreciate these lipstick moments....especially since they don't involve cleaning up a lipstick mess!
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