God Has A Sense Of Humor...

As new parents, Nik & I were bombarded with practical advice from well-meaning friends and relatives. The day we brought my first born home from the hospital I was constantly on edge for fear that they somehow knew how inept we were as parents.Everyone had seen how maladjusted our family dog turned out so I thought at any moment they would stop us from leaving the premises with a stern warning that we promptly enroll in a class of some kind.
The advice from my family was filled with words like mutual respect & open communication. My M-I-L gave me a different recipe for marital bliss that involved a huge Greek cookbook and a gentle reminder that in marriage "the husband is the head and the wife is the neck".  As Nik and I entered our apartment that day my mind was flooded with all the recommendations of our loved ones as I lay my son down in his beautifully decorated room.
I think Bill Cosby best describes what parenting does to a couple in his stand up routine called "Bill Cosby Himself". He speaks of how children are born with "brain damage" and how it changes how parents look & feel over time. I, now a mother three, can see his logic. He also states how God has a sense of humor. I can honestly say the best advice I received was to sleep when the baby sleeps and not worry about the dust piling up.I can't say I listened to it ,at first, as I believed I was handling myself pretty moderately. Self-awareness seems to be the first thing to slip away as we settle into our role as parents. Certain changes begin to eat away at us, no matter how well prepared we think we are for them.
The first being sleep deprivation. Nik & I were quite the night owls in our early years so we thought we had that one covered. Boy, were we wrong! Let me just say that waking up with an infant every few hours for months at time is not the same as dancing til dawn with your platforms. At one point ,I left the house to go to the store with my son snugly in his baby sling. I kept wondering why people where avoiding my gaze as I passed them in the produce section. Finally, a kind women whispered into my ear to go to the restroom and look in the mirror.
I had grown so accustomed to just wearing my nursing bra that I had left the house without a top. Thankfully, the sling had covered most of me but, it was at this moment I recalled God and his sense of humor. I also began to see the importance of keeping mine intact. Another time, I found myself in the same grocery store with more customers trying NOT to look at me. This time I had fresh baby puke oozing down my back. I had been wondering why I kept smelling something foul and repeatedly kept checking my sons diaper. Goodtimes!
As I've come to accept how little control I have in life's little ebbs and flows the more I appreciate God and his sense of humor. It keeps me humbled and reminds me that life"s a journey. It's not where we end up that's important. It's about the experiences we have along the way. As, I write this now music is blasting. My sons are in their Halloween costumes break dancing.My daughter is in her brothers cop uniform trying to do a split. My chihuahua is trying to hump my leg and my big dog  has somehow eaten off the back of my remote....I rest my case.