Okay so there’s 3rd trimester discomfort and irritability you read about all the time: Your belly is big. No amount of pillows can allow you a good nights rest. You have heartburn all day and night. Your hemorrhoids can get so nasty they make you cry from the pain. Varicose veins pulsate in the backs of your legs. Your low back hurts just being in a vertical position. The list goes on and on….

I’m her to tell you there is in fact a level up from this: If you have ANY number of existing kids you have to take care of while experiencing all the standard discomforts of third trimester then welcome to 3rd trimester rage mode. Yes my friends,  I am a sniper waiting in the grass and there is only one individual I set in my crosshairs during this period of pregnancy: My husband.

Literally everything is his fault. I get a pass on healthy communication in my relationship right now because the expectation is he should be a mind reader of the highest order. He should be a hug machine, a masseuse, have a negative sex drive just like me and most of all: He should ANTICIPATE MY NEEDS. Oh and I am the only one allowed to crack jokes because at this point in pregnancy his jokes do nothing but offended me. (Don’t hurt me I’m a delicate flower).

It was a regular Saturday morning. He was finishing morning duty (5am-7am) which he does every morning because he’s a great dad but that is besides the point right now. I roll downstairs disgruntled and out of sorts at 7am. He takes the kids upstairs to our room so he can get ready for the day while they jump on our bed and throw the pillows everywhere and then start jumping off the bed and hurting themselves. Great, I have some time to drink coffee and grumble to myself. I anticipate they will all be upstairs for at least 20 minutes. Plenty of time to call an old girlfriend for a life catch up session. I call her. She answers! Clearly this conversation is meant to be. We’re catching up and I’m feeling like my peppy old self laughing at her stories etc. Then the 2 year old trickles downstairs with a demand to help her get dressed. I follow her into her room and am on my knees dressing her while refusing to let my kids demands end my phone conversation before I’m good and ready. Then through the wall I hear the youngest waking up from morning nap and starting to escalate. Okay I’ve got a good 5 more minutes before he’s full blown screaming. Gonna ride out my high and stay on the phone. Then my husband rolls by the room and says, “Are we letting the baby scream it out now?” Crosshairs on. Target acquired. Enemy will be taken out in 3, 2, 1…

BOOM! Clearly, you see I’m on the phone while changing our daughter and will be moving to get the baby while still on the phone once I’m done because I am a god damned multitasking super hero! You have not only caused excess chatter distracting me from my call but you have failed to read the situation. There were two paths that could’ve saved you  a) taking over dressing the 2 year old without talking to me OR  b) picking up the baby out of his crib and taking him far far away to another room where he cannot see, smell or hear me, still without talking to me.  How can you right this wrong? Read the room. Act accordingly. Anticipate my needs. Oh, you need an example?!? We have no food in this house. We are going into a week with no dinner meals planned or ingredients acquired. In fact I’m hungry right now just thinking about how we have literally NOTHING tasty to eat.

And that my friends is how Saturday beach day became a Saturday family trip to Costco. 🙂

For the record I’ve never been a car snob. All I wanted for my 16th birthday was a red Jeep Wrangler with a soft top wrapped in a giant bow. I mean, was that too much to ask? The fancy girls drove Volkswagen Jetta’s in my town.  Instead, when I got my license, I received an old black Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (IYKYK) low rider sans bow. I leaned into it and decked it out with fuzzy zebra seat covers and black fuzzy dice. All I really wanted was freedom from my seriously embarrassing family and some space to make out with da boys! Nobody made out with me in the Cutlass Supreme much to my disappointment, but if they had we would’ve been comfortable with those zebra seats cranked all the way back and a Boyz II Men CD on repeat. Then my mom really upped my pimp game (insert head shake here). She surprised me and put custom plates on that read HNA BNA 1. She said it stood for Hannah Banana which was a childhood nickname. JFC mom you did not just put that on my pimp mobile! Now I had to explain every day in the parking lot of my Catholic High school in Davenport, Iowa what my license plates stood for. My perceived cool factor plummeted further. Every time someone asked what the plates stood for I could feel my face flush. I was born a geek and I’ll die a geek.  Let’s just say there was definitely no making out  happening in HNA BNA 1. Thanks a lot mom!

My point is, I’m  generally a work with what you’ve got type of person. So did I have a fantasy of a mom mobile going into parenthood? Not really. The west LA standard mom SUV I see driving around is BMW, Audi, Alpha Romero, Porsche and Mercedes. I mean if someone gave me a Porsche SUV would I accept it? Definitely, and make it a creamy light gray please. I’m not above vanity.  But the more I got lost in the fantasy I felt like driving a higher end car meant more pressure to be put together in general. Could I really slob around in my elastic waist pants and old Disney T-shirts with my postpartum hair growing straight up out of my head like a feather tufted parrot and drive one of those? No, the Hannah driving the Porsche SUV will need a neutral manicure, beach waves everyday, maybe a blonde job, certainly more diamonds and pants with a legitimate button and fly. Maybe when the kids are older? IDK. Until I become Bravo’s next Real Housewife with full glam team, I would absolutely crumble under the pressure of owning a luxury SUV. So the Luxury SUV mom mobile  was OUT. Check.

When we had our first kid we got an awesome hybrid Toyota Highlander. I love that car. It drives with some muscle behind it and I like sitting up higher. It sips gas and it has a nice roomy trunk. That car would’ve been perfect for 2 kids. Having 3 kids put us over. We could squeeze a very small carseat into the tiny 3rd row but we would lose so much trunk space we’d barely be able to pack anything other than a stroller in back. Forget luggage, sand toys or my HomeGoods impulse buys. So our options were full sized SUV or minivan. Did I like the idea of a big sporty gas guzzling boat-truck? Well,  more than I liked the idea of the dopey minivan. So why did the minivan win? Because it’s practical as hell. I can easily load 3 kids in and out of carseats without lifting them up and in, jacking up my back. The recessed trunk makes for way easier double stroller or wonder wagon loading because you’re loading down and in, not up and back. It has a vacuum for the millions of puffs and tiny shreds of humanity that are thrown around the car daily.

And just like I leaned into my pimp mobile at 16, I’ve really leaned into minivan culture on the road. You will never find a driver filled with more rage/IDGAF attitude than a minivan driver. They don’t just roll through stop signs. They roll through stop signs while applying mascara, talking on the apple play hands free phone, and yelling at their kids all at the same time. These parents do it all. They are reaching behind them to pass STFU snacks while simultaneously dislocating their shoulder, driving and spilling coffee on themselves. They are operating a moving vehicle on minimal sleep and with crying so loud no volume level or amount of open windows will drown it out.  And they are headed to one of 3 places on a weekday: Coscto, the park, or the nearest coffee drive thru in hopes that consuming additional caffeine will brighten their souls enough for the day that they’ll appear partially human again. Minivan drivers are a danger to society and I like living on the edge.  I get in with my messy hair don’t care, could be Pajamas could be athleisure wear, topped off with an old beige belly support band (that got me through the last 2 kids but now the velcro doesn’t stick so well on one side) on the outside of my clothes, and I LEAN INTO the culture. These are my people cranking Dre’s Chronic album tooling around town while daydreaming about the time they did get a hot makeout session in a vehicle that didn’t have goldfish ground into its floors.

Do I still hate it that I drive a minivan in my half dead/half caffeinated soul? Yes, yes I do. I want to drive something I can put a surfboard on top that screams maybe there are kids in there or maybe just a surf Betty with her sporty dog on the way home from the beach. Maybe she’s stopping for an avocado toast or acai bowl before catching a flight to cliff jump among the waterfalls in Costa Rica. Age has nothing to do with cool factor. There are highs and lows of cool factor in life. I’m in a valley, not a crest and I’m acutely aware of my ranking at any moment. I suppose I’ll do what geriatric millenials do: I’ll add it to my vision board and blog about it instead.

My relationship with my Honda Odyssey is like Kat Stratford’s final poem in one of the greatest 90s teen angst films of all time: 10 Things I Hate About You.

I hate your dumb slow eco mode

and the way you’ve changed my mind

I hate you so much it makes me sick

It even makes me rhyme.

 

I hate the way that you take corners

and lack any pep at all

But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you

Not even close, not even a little bit

not even at all.

 

 

Wow! I can’t believe I haven’t revisited this page since my oldest was 8 weeks old?! After spending way too long being self-critical while re-reading this old blog. I decided I need to see it for what it is: A time capsule of a newly married, way fitter and younger self who was excited by and then overwhelmed by new motherhood.  My first thought was to impulsively rip all the old blog posts down and change out the cover picture. But after calming down I think the cover photo is providing me with a nice anchor to a former self. Y’all, I NEED to see this picture right now! I know it’s not an accurate reflection of my physical self at the moment but I look at it and I feel her inside of me again. She loves to laugh, be silly, move her body, be outside,  feel free,  love, connect and create. I don’t want to lose her. I want to reignite her in more ways. The cover photo was taken on my honeymoon in Kauai. That woman was dreaming and excited for a big crazy family and a loud household. That woman was mentally and physically strong.  That woman had no gray hairs. That woman thought her body needed work. THAT WOMAN WAS WRONG! I had it goin on… why didn’t I see it?

It’s only been 4 years since my last post about 8 week old Mateo, but I’ve probably aged about 10 years since then. In 3 weeks I’ll be a mom of four and will have fulfilled a lifelong dream: To have a loud chaotic house filled with babies… to have a complete family of my very own. I currently have 6-8 gray hairs at the moment and I hunt them down and pluck them at night like a stalker after I impulsively squeeze my blackheads with my fingernails. I’m also doing mad research about all the face filler I hope to inject after I have my last kid.

For a while I didn’t think it would happen for me. I was super social and definitely a serial monogamist but I just didn’t experience a deep enough love and level of trust with a partner to be like BINGO that’s my baby daddy! I had a great life filled with beach, friends, fitness and a good job in education. Then I found my baby daddy and somehow tricked him into falling in love with me. Then I waited AND waited for him to be ready to get married so we could have kids before I got too old.  Then I almost said forget it and set out on my own again. Then I got to plan and budget a dream wedding we paid for ourselves.

Then we finally tied the knot and bam we were faced with infertility. That made time slow down a lot. I was convinced if I could keep going through trying and failing to get pregnant and then getting pregnant and miscarrying, time alone would allot us maybe 2 kids if I was a lucky one. Going through infertility had a funny way of making me very desperate and spiritual. I’d take any damn kid! Gone were plans on how far to space them apart of if I wanted boys or girls. I didn’t have that luxury. I just needed to get one cookin’ past the first trimester and safely exited from my body old enough to survive in the outside world. When I time travel back to that sad, desperate woman during infertility I remember promising the universe I would never take getting pregnant, staying pregnant, or having kids for granted no matter how hard parenthood got.

Here I am 2 fertility treatment babies and almost 2 natural pregnancy babies later and I remember my promise to the universe. But that doesn’t mean I have to eliminate the funny! I’m yearning for some creativity back in my life and I’m about to be unemployed after this week so it’s time to share some REAL truths because parents need other relatable parents. Let me be clear, I don’t solely define myself as a mom. I’m not totally lost on where the hell the rest of me went. I’m just leaning into what’s needed right now. I have to expend almost all of my daily energy to keep these tiny humans from killing themselves. Why not let them be the subject of some laughs?  Someday when they don’t want to hang out with me anymore you better believe I’m getting more dogs and building my artists she-shed out back. But for now, I’m deep in the business of mom-ing so why not share what I know?