First check your feet - then choose your dance.

My first month as a single parent is drawing to a close. In some ways it's been easier than I though - in others, much harder. I am usually such a solitary person, I didn't realize how very accustomed I had gotten to there always being someone around to talk to. I divide my time pretty much equally between feeling strong and confident and like a total failure. Most times, I look towards the future, making plans and setting new goals and just trying to get through each day with some small amount of grace.

Other times I sit around feeling like a total nutcase - a bad mommy whose daughter watches too much tv, a bad friend who burdens people with the constant need for stupid favours because she can't remember that she just can't pop out to the grocery store for diapers at ten o'clock at night anymore. A bad daughter who hasn't yet managed to mail her Father's Day gift because she just can't seem to get it together.

Some days I wake up positively giddy, as though I have been given a precious gift - my life has been handed back to me without the constant stress of a relationship gone terribly wrong. I feel like I found myself somewhere inside a very bitter and angry stranger, and rediscovered the person who knew how to laugh.

The only thing I don't seem to be doing is mourning the passing of my marriage. That worried my for a while, that I must be suppressing something to feel so little about the ending of a huge chapter in my life. Then I realized - I already did that. I've spent the last two years doing that.

The mourning is over. It's time to let it go, grab onto this new life with both hands, and leap.

And Who Said Television Wasn't Educational?

Teagan has learned two new words today: clue and bubble. Now, if you add her other words, blue and puppy, any parent will know exactly who is introducing my baby to the wonderful world of language. (Well, other than InfiniteWaitState, of course, who is diligently trying to teach her the words ninja, coup, and totalitarian regime.)

I have learned the secret, finally, of what exactly it was that replaced the little yellow pill as Mommy's little helper - and it's DVDs full of a inexplicably blue little dog. Sometimes singing vegetables work, too. But that song about the pirates who don't do anything tends to get stuck in your head.

Who needs valium when some guy named Joe is getting paid what I hope is very good money to sing about going to the toilet.

This Week Has Kind of Sucked...

...but on an up note, I now fit into a pair of pants I haven't been able to wear since getting pregnant.

Yay me!

Words! Words! Words!

Teagan's vocabulary is growing so much these days, these are her new words in the last few weeks:

duck
elbow
cookie (of course)
forehead
blue
shoe
boot
banana (also known as nanananana...)
bottle
cup

and my personal favorite:

poop!

I Can Die Happy Now...

Teagan has learned a new word.

Mommy.

I was beginning to despair of her ever calling me Mommy, as she much preferred to call me Daddy, even though I knew damn well she knew how to say Mommy even if she chose not to. Every night I would come home and she would run down the hall screaming; "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." Last week at the park she insisted on calling me Daddy both loudly and repeatedly, which garnered some rather odd looks as people marvelled at how successful the operation must have been. A few more weeks and I would have been fielding gently probing questions on how best to address the transgendered.

A couple of days ago, though, she pointed at my chest and declared me Mommy. Then she pointed proudly at herself and proclaimed; "Baby!"

It was one of those moments that breaks your heart and mends it again all at the same time.

So now, officially, I am Mommy.

Yay me!

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A Mother's Love is It's Own Reward...

AKA, Things I tell myself when I have the urge to stuff my child in the oven.

A few weeks ago, I crawled into bed and Teagan rolled over in her sleep, grabbed my hand with her little baby hand, and as my heart melted into a little puddle of goo, she sighed; "Daddy."

A couple of days later, a sleeping little angel baby rolled over as I tried to wake her up and sighed sweetly and whispered; "Cookie."

Last night, she rolled over, cuddled her head against mine, and whispered; "Ma...

...Daddy."