life’s learning curve.

so when you grow up, and go out into the big bad world, you think you’ve hit a steep learning curve. and you have. for sure. it’s hard to figure out how to be responsible for everything that mom and dad or teachers or bishops or whomever used to take care of for you.  you have to get yourself up in the morning, go to class or work, deal constructively with roommates, pay bills on time, and generally conduct yourself the way an adult human being ought to.it can be tough. i totally get it.

and then you get married. and that’s another steep learning curve, because hello sharing a bathroom sometimes requires its own set of UN negotiators (though, surprisingly, my husband and i rarely have issues sharing that space. we’re weird. we don’t even care about double sinks.).  sometimes you have to learn to hug the edge of the bed on a flail-y night because, otherwise, you might get dream punched by an unwieldy elbow. (been there.)  you have to merge bank accounts, negotiate dinner preferences, expand your TV viewing repertoire, and generally try to figure out how to live life as two people with the same set of goals, values, and priorities.

that can be tough to start doing. 

then you have kids, and it all gets way harder.  not because life is not awesome with little nuggets in it–because wow is it. they are tremendously incredible people with such a divine spark of potential in their eyes that it can almost be blindingly pure at times.–but because your time is absolutely no longer your own. you live in a world governed by the absolutely unintelligible, the illogical, the completely maniacal at times.  you are immersed in bodily fluids, laundry, the unending preparation of meals and snacks, the completely impossible feat of negotiating naptimes and playtimes and intellectual interaction while trying to maintain your own sense of self and get other things done. on a good day, you may have it all in balance.  but add any other factor and, like the feather that topples the car on the side of the cliff, it all comes down in noisy crashes.

i certainly don’t mean to scare anyone–and i don’t even mean to be negative about parenthood. it’s awesome and enriching and it will shape you eternally the way nothing else can.

but don’t for a minute think it’s anything but hard. 

so when you have kids, and start a couple of businesses, and move to a new place, and try to have friends…it feels like starting adulthood 2.0. if you’ve been rocking it hard core as a single or even newly married person, prepare to feel totally inept.

or maybe that’s just the way i feel right now, on this random wednesday. it’s a steep learning curve is all i’m saying.

is anybody with me?

why facebook needs a hug.

growing up as a parent on facebook has meant all manner of wonderful things. i can’t tell you how many times i have received strength and support from like-minded friends who i have shared my concerns and worries with, who offered their strategies and stories, or who just were there to hit the “like” button when someone small did something extraordinary and i cheered publicly.

i love that i can share this journey with them.

but it has also meant that i have seen the seedy underbelly of parenting on social media: the dig-your-heels-in, i’m-Right-and-you’re-Wrong, agree-with-me-or-you’re-an-idiot mentality.

(caveat here: this exists no matter where you go and it’s certainly not exclusive to parenting, either. politics, religion, television shows, football teams–it’s all present and accounted for.  but parenting adds an additional complex angst-ridden defensiveness that can make things get ugly pretty fast.)

mothers, for some reason, like to tear each other limb from limb when given the opportunity to compete in the Rightness Games. give me a category, and someone will shout something from the rooftop, only to be argued with, perhaps with colorful language tossed in, most passionately.  we all know the hot button issues, so let’s not rehash them here.  and we all know that we’re supposed to get along, play nicely, and share our toys, metaphorically speaking.  nevertheless, if there’s territory to be gained by being less than those things, and Rightness can be achieved, you better believe some mother somewhere is gearing up.

i’m certainly not excluding myself from this. when someone shares an article we disagree with, says something we don’t like, posts a status update that we find problematic, what do we do? do we plant our flag, dig our heels, and fight? or do we shrug our shoulders and move on?

i dig in more than i probably should. some things, to me, are worth it.  other things? i should really shrug and move on.

because the more this happens, the more discouraged i feel.  the more this happens, the more i feel a growing realization that it’s quite possible that the people i thought were supporting me have actually been judging the heck out of me based on random things i post about sleep, poop, or how many times i mention that my kid watched dora the explorer in any given week.

(i don’t want to talk about it.)

now maybe you’re the kind that let’s this roll off of you like water off a duck’s back and if that’s you, i’d like you to write a book especially for people like me entitled i don’t want to care…but i still do.

because here’s the thing–i care what people think of me. is this a personality flaw? perhaps.  but i really care that i am a good parent, and i’m really every single day concerned that i am not.  people who know me scoff at this, tell me i’m a great parent.  i’m glad they think so, but i don’t always do, just like i am not sure that i am a good enough person, wife, friend, or employee.

i think every mother is like that, at her core. this gig is hard, and that hillary clinton was on to something when she said it takes a village to raise a child.  (i’m pretty sure that she didn’t come up with that, but i think i’ll give her credit anyway.) and i don’t know about you, but i don’t have a village here.  i have a few friends, a church community that i’m still getting to know, my little family.  my extended family is far away. these circumstances are true for many of the moms i know.

where is our village? are we not trying to create it in our social media?

i think i have been. i think many of us have been.  i think we keep reaching out, keep trying to find that community of people to help us navigate the occasionally really tough roads of parenting.  we need that. we deserve that.

so why are we so mean to each other? even if we don’t say it out loud, even if it’s just eye rolling at the screen, why are we so hateful to each other?

if our kids were playing like this with each other, we wouldn’t stand for it. we’d have a talk about respect, about kindness, about how everyone is different and likes different things. we might even talk about how, in our family, we do one thing but in our friend’s family, they do something else and that that’s okay.

why can’t we do that on facebook?

i think we should.  we need that, us moms. we need a place where we can just say “hey, man, my kid ate crackers off the floor for lunch and stayed in her pajamas all day because nobody slept last night and we all survived. how about that?” and not be worried that someone is going to critique the fact that you let your kid eat processed food.

i don’t know that i’m making any sense, which makes sense because it’s almost 2am and i should have been in bed ages ago.  but i guess this is my little whisper into the universe, a karmic plea: i am going to be nicer. can other people be nicer to me?

i hope so. we all just deserve that.

we really do.

you’ve got…no mail.

checking email obsessively after proposing a freelance job is my modern day equivalent of checking to see if the phone was working when i was waiting for a boy to call.

oh let’s be real. boys didn’t call.

let’s amend that to say that my checking my email obsessively is akin to my checking to see if a boy that i liked was looking at me/talking about me/in general noticing me, as evidenced either by actual proof or hearsay evidence provided by equally insane teenage girls who were charged with spying on said young men.

in short–it’s bad. it’s waiting for the phone to ring when you have heard from someone who heard from someone who thought maybe you were going to get asked to the prom. it’s doing your hair and wearing the cute jeans when you know that you might get the chance to sit next to your dreamboat in carpool.  it’s pretending you’re so very nonchalant when the air is just thick with anticipation of what will happen next.

and nothing.

i started a business a few weeks ago. it’s not really taking off because i don’t have the time to really make it take off. so right now i’m living in this twister-like land of one foot in teaching, with all of the time constraints and responsibilities of that, and one foot in freelancing, with the steep learning curve and the details to work out.  right now i’m getting a start to my portfolio by working for a few friends. it’s fun. i like it. it’s hard work, but it’s energizing work.

and i’ve been applying for other freelancing jobs, all to no avail. i got a bit of a bite on one, but then that went nowhere fast.  we’ll see.

but i just keep opening my business email, overandoverandoverandover, each time with that combination of brick and butterfly in my stomach.

no new messages.

it’s okay. it’s teaching me things. it’s helping me. i mean, honestly, i’m not sure what i would do if all of those jobs were mine. where would i get the time?

so now i’m considering it practice for writing proposals and figuring out which jobs i really want to do and what i should charge.  i pray i will someday get paying jobs. i have to start somewhere, and i believe i can do this.

despite my adolescent angst rewind, i really do, every day, believe more and more that i can do this. that’s so nice. for the past few months, maybe even the past couple of years, i had begun to slink into myself, not remembering that i’m kind of awesome at all things word-related.  teaching online is convenient and has been a huge blessing. but it’s isolating and i only really deal with problems. when everything you hear is negative, it doesn’t work to salve your soul.

i love the creativity of this. today, i applied for a job for a lifestyle blogger. they said they would accept anything–witty emails, writing samples, resumes, whatever. so i just wrote an email. i just sat down, with my two girls playing at my feet, and wrote an email.

and it was AWESOME. it was witty. it was bright. it was sharp. if i was only one of 20 (rather than the 20K i’m sure they’ll get as a result of being featured on the website where i saw it), i think i’d get the job.

but it was enough to realize that i could do it.

so maybe i’ll keep getting no mail. and maybe one day i will get one piece that says, hey, let’s take a chance on you. and maybe i’ll be great.

no maybe. i will be great.

i believe.

and i needed to believe in myself again.

i believe.

lighten up.

everything around here lately is SO HEAVY. sad, i suppose, but true of what’s going on. not that anything is Bad, but just that things are serious most of the time. most of the time i am trying to manage the day, trying to make sure i am doing what i am supposed to do, trying to get things done and most of the time mentally flogging myself for not doing it.

not much fun.

i need to have more fun.

i’ve had some really precious moments with my bug over the past few days, mostly born out of spontaneous choices.  for the past couple of days, i’ve been letting the bug and the bear play in their room (well, it’s mostly the bug’s room, but it will soon be theirs, if by soon you mean i have no idea but at some point they will both be in there maybe by the time bear is one). there’s tons of open floor space and it’s very bright. it’s a lovely room, much brighter than our living room.

they seem to really like it.

i have really liked it too, because when we go in there, bug and i seem to have Moments. you know the kind i mean–the kind where you don’t expect anything extraordinary to happen, and maybe nothing extraordinary does, but you realize that it’s something special and so it becomes a Moment.

background: when i broke myself before bear was born, bug went to stay with her grandparents for a few weeks. i was wholly incapable of taking care of myself, let alone her and bear, and i didn’t think my poor mom could really handle all of it.  no one could have, i don’t think, and it was unkind to even think about leaving bug in that situation. she would have been very scared to see me in such pain, and it would have been really hard on her.

but since she was gone for so long, i felt like the bond between us became…weaker? that might not be right, but more like there was a distance between us. it wasn’t just the weeks away; it was the weeks when i couldn’t do much for her, when i couldn’t go to her at night, when i had to let her daddy take her places and do things with her because i could barely navigate the first floor of our small apartment.

distance.

lately, these Moments, mostly consisting of her coming and cuddling with me without any initiation on my part, seem to show that the distance is being bridged.

but we’re not having a lot of fun, i don’t think. sometimes. sometimes we will dance and sometimes we will sing and sometimes we will twirl and lots of times we will read, but i’m not sure i’m having the kind of fun i should be having because i am about the business and the what’s next.

while i suppose that allows me to keep on top of what’s happening in our day, it doesn’t leave much room for giggles. and creating a schedule for fun doesn’t really seem to work either. 

i’m not sure how to go about it, except to start praying for those experiences, praying to know how to have more fun with her. she’s growing up, but she’s not grown up, so i’m not sure how to really play with her so much. and i end up being like a cruise director: “why don’t you play with your blocks? why don’t you cook in your kitchen?”

part of that is because i want to raise children who can fend for themselves and play independently–and i think we are being successful at that–but part of it is because i am distracted and i feel awkward playing with her. because of my ankle, it’s scary to get on the floor (i can do it successfully, but it is cumbersome and i feel large and stuck and like if something happened i couldn’t get up fast enough) so i sit in this chair and…yeah, you don’t need to know all the details, but it’s not really conducive to play. great for reading, though.

maybe i just need a change of location. maybe if i just make a deliberate attempt to be on the floor for several hours during the day, and in their room for several more, we will have more fun. 

and if i turn off my stupid iPhone.

i don’t know. things need to get lighter and more dancey dance around here, lest i raise a bunch of multitaskers who can’t grab spontaneity by the horn.

whoof. mixed metaphor much?

anyway. that’s what i’m thinking today.

at the intersection of past and future.

i have come to believe that you can have a relationship with a place.

that it takes time and tenderness to build history.  i am not built for uprooting myself very often.

there’s something beautiful about being in a place for so long that when you drive down a road, you don’t arrive at a destination but instead travel headlong into a kind of memory wall.

driving to work, you pass a corner, remembering that drive home at 3am from an ill-conceived date with an ill-fated mismatch, still breathless with the sheer desperation of it all. heart beating fast, every taylor swift song speaking directly to you, anxious and worried and seeing the end but not wanting to acknowledge it. country backroads bringing you back to reality, starlit sky making way for streetlights, cell phone at your ear, steak n shake on your way.

the drive to church takes you past the park where your husband proposed, on a dark playground where you took refuge on a blessedly flat and stationary slide platform to escape the uncharacteristic spinning in your head that the swings had created, the only light from the streetlights perfectly catching the glint from the ring you now wear every moment but  making it difficult for him to read the poem he wrote you on that tiny, sweet, magical scrap of paper. 

the apartment complexes that narrate chapters of your life, better than words ever could, the places where first dates, first kisses, first babies, and first steps were taken.  the majesty of knowing so much about a place that you have discovered its treasures, know its stories, anticipate its troubles, and contribute to its evolution.

the football stadium where you were a screaming fan and a sweating trainer, walking stairs as one of many on a blistering saturday night or alone on a cold wednesday morning, both with singlemindedness of purpose.  hazy but perfect memories of that game, that first game after he returned, when you thought your heart would explode with the very injustice of it all as you watched him flirt with someone else, possibly just to see if he still had it in him, but you could barely contain your desire to scream things about turns and two years, merging with that spot on the 50 yard line where he kissed you on valentines day before they kicked you out, just because you said you wanted to be kissed in the Swamp.

the hospital where you had your babies. the home that they first knew. the stairs that you climbed a million times, it seems, until you couldn’t climb them anymore. the stairs that changed your life.

places have a story, inside jokes and painful spots, woven into our lives more intricately the longer we are there.  they are woven into our hearts, of course, but also into our stories.

i was driving home tonight, on a perfectly still southern late winter night, enjoying rare quiet time to myself. i was driving on a road that i am beginning to know, listening to a radio station that i am beginning to like, returning from a gathering of women i am beginning to feel comfortable with, and i was thinking about how i still feel very, very out of place. fish out of water, to use a hackneyed phrase that feels perfectly legitimate.

that is to be expected, of course, you cannot be fast friends with either people or places–not really.  i can be patient. but as i paused to turn at the road before i should have, getting disoriented a bit in the dark on this path that is still uncomfortable despite it being the road i most travel here in our new place, i realized that i have no story here.

not yet, not even in this home. every time i enter the gates of our complex, it feels new and slightly uncomfortable.

each road is a new road, each culdesac unexpected, each roundabout slightly terrifying, each stoplight strangely timed. i have no sense of belonging, no sense of ownership of a store or a road or a block or even a room. i know it will come. i know it. three months cannot compete with eight years of living and loving.

but i still miss the story i used to know.

boomerang.

we recently moved to a state in the southeastern u.s., and i thought when we did that it would be very similar to the place from which we came since we weren’t relocating more than about 400 or so miles.

i could not have been more wrong.

it’s astonishing to me to see my own views communicated to me by reflection, by how i react to the things happening around me.

to car seat laws that are so antiquated and poorly worded that mothers are actually being ticketed for having their children rear facing for longer than 1 year, despite that fact that national recommendation is to rear face until 4 and even the AAP, not known for their shockingly forward recommendations, recommends it until at least 2.

to a community with no real family-friendly activities for people with children under school age, with no toddler friendly playgrounds, for no indoor play options in a place where the weather seems to almost always be rainy.

to a pediatrician’s office that doesn’t seem aware of the new research related to giving tylenol at the time of vaccination (it interrupts the immune response) or the AAP recommendation to rear face until 2 (their own literature doesn’t suggest this) or even the fact that moms might want some information on the vaccines being given to their kid. nothing. yet they seem very happy to comment on parenting choices about sleep and food.

to ads for an ob/gyn office that spoofs the real housewives series, as if i aspire to be one of their cast members. you treat the “real housewives and women” of this community? really? and you think that’s what they want?

i’m just…astonished. obviously not speechless, but astonished nonetheless.

i believe in blooming where you’re planted. i think i feel, though, like i have been time warped back to the 80s, with its accompanying knowledge, attitudes, and prevailing wisdom.

much as i liked the 80s (john hughes, you rock), i don’t want to live there again. i was there once. it was fun when i was 10. but now, now i know better. i’d like the place i live to know better also.

but i’m not sure that they do, and that’s really alarming for a mother of daughters who wants more for them. i want them to play in safe playgrounds. i want them to learn in good schools (this area does have that definitely going for it). i don’t want them to think that the only way that they can fit into a community is to arch downward, to be less than they are. i want them to aspire to be more than a bravo reality cast member.

i’m afraid that might not be true here.

but as i write that, as i said these things to my husband, i thought perhaps there’s room for me here. perhaps the reason i am here is because there are people just like me, sitting in their homes and wondering how they can find worthwhile things for their children to do, wondering how it is that their medical providers think that that’s what they want out of their care.

perhaps there is room here for me to make a difference.

so much of my life has changed over the last few months–not just the number of children i have or my zip code but what i think i want to do with my life.  what i thought i would be doing is not exactly what i see myself doing from here on out.

i’m not sure what it will be, but i’m beginning to see it as much more forward, much more aggressive, much more…scrappy…than i thought it would be. i like that. i used to be quite sassy in my pre-sleep deprivation days. perhaps this is my way back.

 

 

be careful.

no really. be careful what you wish for.

if your life is anything like mine, such wishes don’t even have to be fully formed. they can be half-born, musing moments of half-conscious thought and they will suddenly spring, fully formed, into life.

and you will wonder why you have so much power in this area but can’t manage to keep a 2 year old in pigtails for longer than 20 minutes.

we recently moved states. i work from home, as an online adjunct professor of English. i told both of my employers that i was moving, asked if it was a problem, and was told by both that it was not.  so…it came as a big slap in the face when i got an email today telling me that a new policy at one of the institutions means that i am no longer able to work for them.

i cried.

silly, i suppose, since i really should have seen it coming and the tax weirdness was going to be a disaster for us financially anyways. 

but i still cried, because somehow it felt like the proverbial rug had been pulled out from under me. i’m not sure what i will do. i’m sure we will be fine, and i can hustle with the best of them, but i just find it interesting that i was musing about redefining myself, my life, and wondering what it was going to be like.

and here i am, and that’s being forced upon me.

it’s a bit scary. i’m not going to lie.

but i have to believe that there is something else out there, that we will be fine, that i will find my way. i have to believe that.

i may get really good at finding inventive things to do with beans and rice, but we will be fine. we will be FINE.

and maybe i will be more than fine. maybe i will find a new path that will make me happier than this one that i have been on. i’m burnt out, to be honest with you, so while i’m frightened of not being as financially secure, i’m excited to be doing something else.

i think it’s time.

but i should really, really, really be careful what i wish for.

There is no personal pride in parenting.

At least not in mothering, not In the early years. I mostly walk around with dirty, greasy hair, occasionally horrified as I walk past a mirror. Occasionally I brush at it disgustedly, bemoaning under my breath the fate of my never model-worthy but once cute hair. My clothes are, well, rarely more than t-shirts and workout pants, right now the few things that fit me (though they do little to flatter). 

But let’s put that aside, for I often looked like that on days when I was working on my dissertation.

Motherhood puts it one step further. Half the time I don’t know if my boob is sill hanging out from my latest nursing session. I normally manage to put the girls away, at least pulling up the nursing bra, but half the time when I get ready for bed I realize that I have not been that successful.

I frequently find myself the recipient of gifts of bodily fluid, or sneezes and coughs in my face. I eat off of my toddler’s plate like I am a starving busboy or there’s some sort of imperative need to make sure all that food is sucked up, though my thighs can attest that I don’t need a single extra calorie.

When I am sick, there is no downtime. Nights are still punctuated by bottles and breast milk and streaming Netflix on my phone. My ear may hurt, but the pressing needs of an infant and a toddler outweigh my desperate desire to sit around and moan. So it’s grilled cheese and Dora and swaddling and diapers, diapers, diapers. There is poop to clean and dishes to load and meals to make and I suppose this might send me screaming off of the metaphorical edge or send me careening to the end of that metaphorical rope.

It doesn’t.

I read an eloquent, honest beautiful description of this process today. She called it the death of your former identity. It’s true. She said there comes a point when we mourn the old, carry on without knowing the new, and then encounter that new person we call Mom in the substance of our daily routine.

I think I am meeting her now.

She’s kind of cool in the way that she manages to get her picky kid to eat four green beans at dinner or three more bites of yogurt. She makes her own bread, though not often enough but  still manages to come up with lunches anyways. The squeamish in her has been buried by the pragmatic, who has yet to see a diaper that was stronger than she. The selfish, while still there, yields to the love that can nearly topple her in moments of quiet reflection.

Sure, she needs to lose 50 pounds and get some clothes that fit, find a workout routine and stop thinking of showers as a chore, but she’s kind of awesome.

So if the is no real pride in parenting–you are certainly not above anything or anyone–then there is a new sense of truth that, in the midst of it all, you are kind of cool. 

At least I can think that while they are napping. 

 

the polarity of motherhood.

i guarantee that the person who invented cookie dough also had children. and it was probably nap time. and said children were probably bouncing up and down in their beds, screeching at the top of their lungs and refusing to sleep. that beloved inventor probably also had a baby who refused to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time during the day unless s/he was being fed or held.

and the inventor probably didn’t drink.

and thus cookie dough was invented. because if there were ever a scenario in which cookie dough was warranted, nay, absolutely essential, it is the scenario described above.

that was my tuesday.

—

i believe that i was born in the wrong era. despite my feminist tirades that might indicate otherwise, i believe i was born about 200 years too late.

(let’s ignore the fact that i am, in fact, addicted to the internet, refuse to pee outside, and would have died in childbirth twice over without modern medical intervention.)

i hate sleep books. i hate sleep training. i hate the books i’ve read and the sites i’ve visited that angst about sleep and bad habits. i hate that there is someone who has developed a flipping chart about waketimes. i hate that this has divorced mothers from their own sense of what they should do for their children. i hate that the fact that i know anything about all of these methods makes me routinely freak out about whether or not i am dooming my baby to a life of bad sleep.

i hate it.

i am bipolar about sleep.

most of the time, i just do what works. if the bear wakes up and seems hungry, i feed her. if she wakes up, i usually assume she’s hungry unless she doesn’t want to nurse, and then i assume that she has some sort of burp/gas thing happening, and after that i just get frustrated, forgetting that there are a myriad of reasons that a teething, growing baby might wake up that have no connection to either of those things.

sometimes, like last night, i commence to stew on what a friend of mine calls “future pain.” last night went a little something like this.

bear wakes up. she’s mad. i’m mad that she’s trying to eat two hours after she last ate because she already ate SO MUCH FOOD. i try to get her to go back to sleep without eating. she burps and cries and is, in general, full of much angst. at the same time, i reswaddle her with one arm out because, you know, let’s try to conquer that beast at the same time.

the husband bounce rocks her back to sleep and puts her in her bed, which is right next to ours. we then spent twenty or thirty minutes talking about her sleep, with me kvetching about how she shouldn’t be eating so much and our first instinct shouldn’t be to feed her back to sleep because WOE IS ME WHAT ABOUT THE BAD HABITS OF IT ALL and when will she ever not sleep like a crazy person (and oh wait most of the time she sleeps totally normally, waking once or maybe twice to eat but basically doing really well) and WHY OH WHY HAS SHE STARTED WAKING UP AFTER AN HOUR AND A HALF TO EAT AGAIN and (maybe we should just feed her more at the end of the day) and WHAT ABOUT THE BEDTIME ROUTINE BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T HAVE ONE AND I CAN’T DO ONE WHEN I HAVE TO WORK AT THE SAME TIME AS SHE TRIES TO GO TO BED and (maybe we could just insert her into the one we have already established with the bug) and MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST MOVE HER INTO HER SISTER’S ROOM ALREADY and (oh wait, she’s getting a tooth, right?) and so maybe we’ll just move her into the bigger bed more across the room this weekend and (i did this with the bug, didn’t i?) and okay go to sleep already.

and scene.

for some reason, i can’t manage to figure out how to just stick to what i know i know. instead, i doubt, sure that i’m messing something up so phenomenally and spectacularly that i will be one of those mothers that people point to as an example of what not to do. i don’t want to be one of those stereotypical mothers who gives the second kid the shaft, never getting a nap in and not knowing what’s going on because there’s another kid in the house.

i don’t really think i’m doing that, or at least i’m definitely trying to do right by her. but the sleep thing.

it slays me.

as the husband reminded me, as i worried about swaddling at this age: the bear is a different kid. we do what she needs, which is not what the bug needed. she’s already doing things at a different time. she’s a different kid. so we do what she needs.

and that’s what we do.

ugh. parenthood is not for sissies.

—

i’d like to put an APB out on the following things: hair clips and ponytail holders for my toddler, all of the pairs of her socks, and my pre-baby body. they seem to have all disappeared in a most annoying fashion.

that is all.