Stuck In The Middle of In-Between

Sometimes, when I'm outside in that big, wide world, I might see a little, bitty baby. My ovaries will twitch, I get that urge to smell "newborn baby head smell" again, and I feel a little sad that I'm never going to create a brand new human to take care of again. And then my sticky three year old will grab my hand, loudly demanding a 'nack because he's "just a little hungry" and I think, "OH HELL NO! I'm definitely done with all of this!"

It's tough right now because I'm in the "in-between" phase. The last baby is still young enough that I can get away with calling him the baby without (many) people pointing out the fact that he's NOT a baby anymore, but he's also starting to make that transition from toddler-ness to little boy-ness.

It causes some conflict.

I'm torn between trying to keep him my sweet little baby boy and wanting him to hurry the hell up and go to kindergarten already so I can stop blowing his college fund on his daycare expenses. I want to keep him in footie pajamas but I want him to be able to go to the bathroom completely by himself (You know, without me having to help wipe his butt!). I want sweet snuggles while watching Bubble Guppies, yet I never want to see Bubble Guppies EVER. AGAIN. (Or at least until they make new episodes that I haven't seen forty five times each.) I want to keep buying clothes in the baby/toddler section, but I also want to be able to live life without planning around nap schedules.

I'm telling you, the struggle is real. But apparently only with moms. My husband doesn't seem to get as nostalgic over "the last time we'll have a kid in a crib" or the "the last time we have to have cash on us at all times once they turn 5, for, uh, dental emergencies". I see those sappy "spend time with your children before it's too late!" articles and I feel like time is moving too quickly. (You know the ones that are designed to make you feel like you aren't a good enough parent if you aren't appreciating every millisecond of time spent with your kid, if you don't worship the ground their tiny toes walk on, and if you don't count every waking moment as a gift? The ones that make us regular parents feel awful and spiral downward into a neverending cesspool of parental guilt that we might be able to climb out of with ten years of liquid, retail, and/or chocolate therapy? Yeah, those ones.) My husband scrolls past those sappy articles to find the sports scores. I see kindergarten as the end of his baby years, my husband sees it as an opportunity to know what it feels like to have money again once daycare is over.

So here I am, stuck in the middle of this age and that age.

OF COURSE there's a name for it. Because why wouldn't there be?

I want to remember all the things about this sweet time that I have already forgotten about his siblings. (See? THIS is why they make baby books. For Swiss cheese mom brain. And so we have something to get misty eyed over until they give us grandchildren.) I want to preserve every moment that he loves his mama because one day he'll be too big to want to cuddle and show me his monster "crucks".

And yet....is empty nest syndrome really so bad? I mean, what are we missing out on? Higher grocery bills? Not being able to have nice furniture without stains, rips, or crumbs in the cushions? Being able to sleep past 6:30 in the morning again? One day we'll look back at these days and smile, but...let's just get through them first.

So for now, I guess I'll enjoy each day stuck in the middle. One day it will end and he will turn into a heathen like his brothers and sister before him. He will doubt my judgement, consider me old, and roll his eyes behind my back. Until then, I guess I'll settle in for one more episode of those silly old guppies.

An Open Letter to Clorox

When it comes to cleaning my bathroom, I am old school. No, not uses-a-ton-of-ammonia old school, but definitely I-must-have-bleach-to-make-it-clean old school. Have you seen the commercials with the woman who has a fabulously sarcastic sense of humor advocating the use of bleach to make your house clean? She's my spirit animal. Or in the very least, a long lost relative. (My favorite is the one that uses the phrase "Business End of a Turkey". Watch it on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/p-y-NU3eaU8)

So it stands to reason that when Clorox came out with their "Clorox Clean Up", it was a match made in heaven. (Disclaimer: Sadly, I am NOT being paid to endorse Clorox or its products. However, I cannot help the fact that I adore their bleachiness. It's all a girl could ask for in a cleansing product.) Labeled an all purpose cleaner, it was as if they read my mind. That is, if my mind had said, "I want a bleach cleaner that will take the color out of every towel and washcloth it touches or any shirt I clean in just to give me the peace of mind that my house isn't harboring e-coli." For years my love affair went on unchanged.

This should come in two sizes: "Jumbo" and "Jumbo-er"

Until recently.

Now, before you write me off as some obsessive compulsive clean freak, let me explain something to you. I am, at best, a B- cleaner. There are some things I am absolutely obsessive over, yes, but then there are other things that escape my attention for months at a time. For instance, I don't often notice that I need to dust until a kid swipes a finger through it, thus disturbing the dust facade and making it blatantly obvious that I need to clean. (In my defense, I swear it takes  mere hours to get accumulate again so why stress over it? I'll get to it eventually. Definitely before the dust bunnies stage a coup.) I only scrub the fridge down every 6 months. (Okay, that's a lie, it's more like 8 or 9 but I didn't want you to judge me. It gets done, that's what counts, right?) And windows...well, because they are constantly covered by curtains, I don't really think about them. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Basically, the windows get done when I take the curtains down to wash them.

But then there are the things like dishes and bathrooms. Those I get a little OC about. In fact, it's for that reason that I insisted that I be the only one to clean the bathrooms in the house. (To be fair, it's not like anyone really fought me that hard on that. Like, "Oh drat, Mom, I totally wanted to clean the toilet but if you insist....")

Which brings me to my current disappointment and the reason I'm writing this open letter to Clorox. (I know, about time I got to it, huh?)

Dear Clorox,

I have been a fan of your all purpose Clorox Clean-Up for years. Nothing makes me feel like I am eradicating the stomach flu or mopping up boy bathroom misses better than your products. So recently, when we moved into a new house, it made sense that I needed to do a fresh cleaning top to bottom. I cleaned so well, in fact, that I finished the bottle by the time I was done and needed to replace it. So, living in a small town and not wanting to travel 20 minutes to get a new bottle, I went to the little store in town.

Upon arriving, I was immediately relieved to see that they did, in fact, carry Clorox Clean-up. Except that they only had the foaming kind. I detest foaming cleansers and hand soaps, but desperate times call for desperate measures so I purchased it. I couldn't take the chance that a roto-virus would strike my house and I would be woefully unprepared!

I suffered through the bottle, and when it was time to replace that one I did travel to a bigger store with the hopes of finding a bigger selection. And I was right. They had the foaming kind, the gel kind, one strictly for the bathroom, and another one (maybe citrus scent? I can't remember). Frustrated, (Where is the spray liquid, all purpose, bleach cleaner I know and love?) I grabbed the bathroom cleaner. It wasn't foam, it wasn't gel, it wasn't citrus or any of that crap, and I use it mostly on bathrooms anyway.

The next day I cleaned the bathroom. With the very first spray, I knew something was wrong. My first thought was that I accidentally grabbed "Mountain Spring" scent or some other attempt to make bleach not smell like bleach. (Which, hello?? Totally defeats the purpose for me. Smelling the bleach lets everyone know that I may have dust balls big enough to pass as small cats, but my damn toilets sparkle.) So I looked at the bottle. And I see the words: BLEACH FREE CLEANER. Wait a minute.?WTF Clorox? Your name is synonymous with bleach. Clorox making a bleach free cleaner is like Hershey making a chocolate free bar or KFC having a chicken free menu. What were you thinking? The bleach is literally the reason I buy this stuff. And yeah, I know, you're going to tell me that I AM the one who bought it, but if you've ever had to bring a toddler to the store, you'd know what it's like to blindly throw things in the cart and sprint for the check out line before something shiny catches their eye that they must have, resulting in a temper tantrum that makes you look like Mommie Dearest when you won't cave to their tiny, terrorist like demands. It saddens me greatly to have this big of a problem finding a Clorox cleaner that doesn't foam or gel, contains bleach, can be used on everything, and doesn't smell like lemons or fresh rain. Is it really so much to ask that you put the bleach back into Clorox?

Signed,

A Disappointed Mom Who Now Has To Clean Everything Twice Just To Feel Like It's As Effective As A Bleach Cleanser