Living a comic life

By Amy M.

I'm really starting to feel like my life is a "Family Circus" comic.

Let's start with my six-week post-partum check-up, one of my earlier ventures out as a mom of two. Fortunately my mother was willing to stay with the kids in the waiting room. As the nurse called me back, Lauren started to cry. The nurse said to go ahead and feed her. I thought I fed her long enough to at least last through my appointment. But when I emerged about 45 minutes later, I discovered my mom with a hysterical baby and hyper son in the nursing room, where they retreated when Lauren started to scream her head off. My mom made the choice not to further scare the first-time expectant mothers in the waiting room, who had already been staring with fear at my offspring.

At Target -- a store I visit so frequently that the woman who works in the snack bar knows my order (just a soda) -- one afternoon I had just finished nursing Lauren, so I pulled off my nursing cover, sat my baby up to burp her, and she promptly projectile vomited all over me, to the horror of the 10-year-old girl sitting nearby at the snack bar. The look on the girl's face was priceless. All I could do was laugh, and then suggest to her she wait 15 or 20 years to have a child.

The projectile vomit was a little unusual for Lauren, but spitting up is not. She wears a bib all the time because she's always erupting like an active volcano. However, the bib does not catch all the spit-up. Unfortunately she has christened quite a few store aisles with her eruptions. Because she's a "happy spitter," sometimes I only know from the "splat" I hear as the spit-up hits the floor. Don't worry, I clean it up. Just be careful if you're in a Target in central Pennsylvania, especially in the baby section.

Lauren's frequent spit-up incidents in stores have led my son Alex to declare "Spill, aisle 4" anytime she spits up, whether we're at a store or not. Like most kids his age, quite a few funny comments come out of his mouth. When Lauren cries, he says she sounds like a chainsaw (pretty accurate description, unfortunately). And he recently said Lauren and her daddy have similar hair because they don't have any on their foreheads. I don't think my husband appreciated the comparison.

Fortunately, Alex is very sweet toward his sister, sometimes too sweet. He can't pass her without touching her peach-fuzz-covered head. And he loves to show her off to his friends. His teachers told me he talks about sisters a lot at school. He claims to have 900 of them. He also says he knows the word for sister in French, but that word changes every day.

I never thought the medical aspects of Lauren's birth had much effect on Alex, because he never talked about them. But I guess he was paying more attention in the hospital than I realized, because a teacher informed me he recently pretended to deliver a little girl's baby on the playground. Oy vey.

When I'm changing the thirtieth diaper blowout of the day and Alex is complaining about a scratchy tag in his shirt as if he were covered in poison ivy, I remind myself that all things considered, life with two kids is good. Very good. I'm a lucky gal.

Amy M. lives in Pennsylvania with her family and works full time as a writer/editor for a large university.

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