Steps For Doing Laundry As A New Mother

1. Forget to start the laundry while your baby is napping.

2. Recover fussing child from her bedroom after she has woken up from naptime, feed, change “Poopocalypse” diaper, reassure her you are there for her.

3. Try to put child down to start laundry; pick back up when she begins wailing the second you put her down.

4. Set child in crib and distract her with fancy electronic mobile that does not put said child to sleep, but at least entertains her a bit.

5. Tear down the stairs with laundry basket/quarters/detergent in hand, throw everything into the wash, and bolt back upstairs just as baby starts to really cry because you have “abandoned” her.

6. Feel guilty that as a follower of “Attachment Parenting”, you couldn’t be bothered to strap the kid into your Moby for the five minute trip to the laundry room and back.

7. Get over it pretty quickly.

8. When washer is done, try to figure out how fussing child on your lap will tolerate being set down in her play gym for ten seconds while you change over laundry.

9. Figure that bouncy chair with toys on will be better choice.

10. In one great swift motion, set child in seat, start vibration on seat and start little music thingy.  Tear down the stairs with your second laundry basket, move laundry from wash to dryer and basket to washer, throw ten thousand quarters into the machines, and come tearing back up the stairs to recover the child who is probably screaming.

11. Find child completely content to look at the toys and bounce a little.

12. Sit down to write this post, wondering why you thought your child couldn’t handle being alone for a few minutes.  Praise wonders of Attachment Parenting philosophy that have given your child confidence in your absence.

13. Child starts to scream.

14. Collapse.

Just Two Moms

I was sitting on the bench in our apartment’s playground area when she showed up, her daughter in the stroller and her son on his bike.  She and I locked eyes across the playground and she shyly pushed the stroller towards me.  She was covered, head to toe, in black, all of her face but her eyes concealed in the loose, modest dress.

“Hi. Your baby – she one month?” she asked in halting English.

“Two, actually,” I replied.  “And yours?”

“She eight month,” she smiled proudly.  “What is she name?”

“Jade.  Like the jewel,” I explained.

“Beautiful.  My is Tereem. Is mean ‘respectful’.”

She made a bottle of formula (which at first surprised me, but when I thought about it, public breastfeeding would be a major no-no for such a modest woman) and fed her daughter while we made small talk.  She asked if I worked, and seemed pleased that I was a stay at home mother.  “Babysitter is not mother,” she stated approvingly.  She asked if I was American, and told me she was from Pakistan.  I told her how I would like to visit that part of the world someday.

“Even with bombs and killing?” she asked, a little surprised by my statement.

“I think we should see as much of the world as we can. We are better people for it.”

She looked at me long and hard, and smiled.

“I think you are different from many American women.”

We talked a few more minutes, until Mike came home and I left, not wanting to make her uncomfortable in the presence of a man she didn’t know.  But it was a really pleasant little conversation, and that last statement – “I think you are different from many American women” – well, I think it was about the nicest thing someone’s said to me in a long time.