Man-Scaping By: Jaime

Carter and Mom

Carter (practicing his modeling)

Carter is my oldest, he’s 7.  My first baby,  my first true love (sorry, hunny).  When I was pregnant with him I was petrified of being a mother, well, being a terrible mother.  Truly I never thought I wanted kids, but I knew that when you grew up and got married, that was what you did.  I worried my entire pregnancy that I wouldn’t be able to bond with him, since I am sooooo not a kid person.  If you asked my mom what I thought about kids, she would tell you, “Jaime thinks they are smelly, sticky, runny nosed animals belonging in cages.”  Sadly, it’s true.  And, unlike my fantastic sister-in-law Jenny who loves peanut butter kisses…I do not!  

In the process of having Carter all crazy broke loose and I truly have no memory of either seeing or holding him until about day 3, when I was released from ICU back to post-partum. That was our first real night with him in the hospital and while I still felt no attachment to this child, I was all ready to be the best mom I could be and take care of this newborn.  Well, he cried…and cried, and cried, until we cried and asked the nursery to take him.  So, haven’t left the hospital yet and already a failure at mommy-hood.  We took him home, we struggled getting him to transition back to breast by putting a syringe feeding tube through a nipple shield and weaning him off gradually, but he did it!  Then the agony of breast feeding.  Again, he’d cry, then I’d cry…repeat process.  I started to realize that if I could sit there, tears pouring down my face in pain to let this teeny thing nurse, I must really be in this, ya know?  Then one day it happened.  The pain went away, and simultaneously Carter understood just what he was supposed to be doing.  LOVE!  I had never felt such incredible love so forcefully.  True love, and I have never looked back.  Don’t get me wrong, other people’s kids, still smelly and sticky.  But, with my own I just wipe their faces clean and steal my kisses.  Naturally, being the first born, poor Carter has been the test child for every possible avenue of life experience in our household, which leads me to how I have taken that sweet darling little baby boy and turned him into a Top Model, Project Runway, So you Think You Can Dance loving brainiac who talks back like nobody’s business.

Carter and his sister McKinley

The other day while getting the kids ready for school, I told Carter he needed to zip up his sweatshirt.  His response to this was, “Instead of zipping it, I could just flip it up like this (demonstrates) and turn it into a scarf, that way its more fashion forward.”  Whoa…what?!  Not sure how to respond to this other than giggle.  However Lincoln (the husband), did not giggle, but stared blamingly at me, while shaking his head.  

This was not the first of “interesting remarks” from Carter.  A few months back I overheard Carter and Nixon playing in the basement and Carter was trying to convince Nixon that they should play “Brother Husbands,” like that show Sister Wives that Mommy watches.  YES!  Okay, it is all my fault!  I have been told by many while witnessing his remarks, that I need to severely cut down on my reality tv watching, especially around the boy.  Pretty sure the show that truly needs to be cut out is America’s Next Top Model...While friends were over recently, Carter struck up a conversation with my BFF, Kacey, about “Man-scaping!”  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it is simply the word for when a man does any type of hair removal other than facial.  Kacey looking shocked and horrified, none-the-less laughing came to me to talk to me about it, and I explained to her that in no more than one episode I heard these 3 comments…”Mom, why do the boys have to rip out all their hair?  Shouldn’t Daddy do that then?”  “Why are those 2 boys kissing?  Gross” and, “That girl used to be a boy?  Why would he wanna do that?”  

So, yes…while I am an idiot for not changing the channel, I would like to publicly thank Americas Next Top Model for helping to open ad nauseam cans of worms for me to discuss with my 7 year old.  Don’t get me wrong, these are topics I expect to discuss with him sometime which will I’m sure come too soon for any parent, and I will always love and respect the decisions Carter will make in his lifetime, I believe a serious change will need to be made on my behalf to help keep him my sweet little baby boy for as long as possible.  So, from here on out I pledge to turn the tv off when he enters, and tell him to go punch his brother and the go talk to Daddy about guns.

Carter (aka Harry Potter) decided to grow his hair long to donate to locks of love