True story - I just spent my morning cleaning my disgusting fridge. Now it is so clean that the Queen could come over and look in it for a snack without me feeling considerable shame. I would likely feel some shock, but I'd cover it, because it's the Queen and I feel like the past couple of decades has been rough for her. So you're welcome to my Cheez Strings, Your Majesty.

I also, by way of a big dull conclusion, washed my kitchen floor. Whenever I do stuff like this, I feel like I should be hoisted aloft the shoulders of grateful townspeople and paraded around town while I try (and fail) to look modest, but what actually happens is that everything just slooowly gets gross again.

This used to bother me, the endless repetitive slog of housework and raising small children. I was obviously going to be washing the same sippy cup every day for the same little diapered kid for the rest of my life, obviously. But now the sippy cups sit all dusty and unused on the back of the cup shelf and nobody is in diapers and I looked at photos yesterday of my children being all babysized and stuff and I thought WELL THAT WENT BY FAST. And also WOW THE BOY HAD A LOT OF HAIR WHEN HE WAS A BABY.

So it went by. And now they're older and The Boy helps me clean the fridge, cheerful industrious little soul that he is and now I have time to clean my fridge, which was good because I was starting to have nightmares about being chased by dirty dirty fridges. At one time in my life, I would have felt diminished by my worrying about my dirty fridge, would have felt that I was more than this.

But this - the day to day things - this is the world in which I live. And I think for too long I lived at a remove from my actual life, saving myself up for some special occasion, for something that I thought was worthy of my attention. And I would proudly announce that I was a stay-at-home-mom with my fingers mentally crossed, feeling that I was something bigger, something else. Finally, though, like Goldilocks, my life feels just right and who I am on the outside seems to finally fit who I feel like on the inside. I'm a wise-cracking SAHM who likes to write, of course. And the fridge is just something that needs to be cleaned once in a while and not something with the power to say anything about me, the end.

By Kelly

My OB laughs at me when I tell her this, but I’m pretty confident I’m gestating a baby octopus.

It’s true that the ultrasound technician back in December saw only the normal two arms and two legs of a growing human. But I see no other explanation for all the thrashing, crazy movement inside of me except he has grown an extra appendage or three.

Since this is my fourth pregnancy, I have indentified at least five distinct movements of the babe-in-utero.

The Jab: This is exactly what you’d expect. It’s a fast, hard poke of a foot or a hand or elbow or knee. If directed outward towards my abdomen, it’s possible that other people will see the quick jump of my skin. If directed inwards toward my vital organs, other people will see me react as if someone just punched me in the gut – which they just did, essentially. This is especially fun when the jab scores a direct hit on my bladder.
The Hiccup: This rhythmic movement is usually attributed to actual hiccups, and just like it’s namesake, it is a small tic-tic-tic that is more annoying than painful. But they happen so often that I wonder if some babies don’t just make repetitive small movements that feel like the spasms of hiccups. Hence, the title covers all small movements that are recur regularly.

The Twinkle-Toes: This is a sweet, gentle stretching that feels like tiny bubbles popping against my abdominal wall. I suspect it could be nothing more than the baby curling his toes next to my skin or maybe opening and closing a tiny fist. It’s unnoticeable to the outsider, and it makes me giggle.

The Roll: The most entertaining of movements, this is when the baby performs a bit from Cirque de Soileil in my uterus. It’s a turn, a twist, an acrobatic move. Unlike the jab, the roll is a drawn-out motion, which makes my abdomen heave and swell like the ocean’s surf after a storm. Also great for bouncing off the crumbs that accumlate on the shelf of my belly during a meal.

The Jumping Jack: This is the strangest and most violent of all moves. I have no idea what the baby is actually doing in there, but it feels like Neo is battling Mr. Smith in my uterus. (Or maybe I've just watched "The Matrix" too many times.) The movement begins with a sudden jab of all four (eight?) limbs and then builds to a ferocious punch-kick-roll routine that easily makes my stomach look like something from “Aliens” is about to emerge. As you might expect, I feel this everywhere at once – internally, externally, up and down, side to side. It can literally take my breath away.

I know from experience that these movements will grow less distinct as time passes, simply because the baby octopus will run out of room. But right now, at 30 weeks, he still has lots of space in there. And he’s using it to get grow bigger and stronger and get ready for life with three older siblings. (Good luck, buddy.)

Of course, there are times when gestating an octopus is annoying. It never fails that the baby is most active at night, right when I lay down to go to sleep. ("Must someone ALWAYS be touching Mom?!?" I sigh under my breath.)

But since this is my last baby, I'm trying to store up the visceral memory of each kick, jab and roll. It seems almost impossible now, but having walked this road before, I know — I will miss this.

Kelly is journaling her fourth and final pregnancy here at 5 Minutes for Parenting. She blogs about her daily life at Love Well.

We have a simple rule in our family: No jealousy.

Period. End of Discussion. No, not the end of the discussion, because there isn’t even going to be a discussion. No jealousy.

We won’t treat you identically, but we’ll treat you equally. It will be the same, only different, because you are different and we will adjust to your individual, specific, genetic, cultural, idiosyncratic specialness. You will be our favorite you, and, you over there, you’ll be our favorite you.

Seemed pretty clear to me.

And yet, dear readers, it will come as a shock to learn the green-eyed monster lurks within the BFFs who heard the rule a million times, but suffer from some form of amnesia, or auditory learning disorder.

Sometimes, it makes me feel guilty in a where-did-I-go-wrong kind of way. After all, how could (Daughter X) think we favored (Daughter Y) when (Daughter X) was so busy getting (Everything) that we had to buy a bigger house? And how can (Daughter Y) think she got the short end of the stick when we deprived (Daughter X) of (Nintendo)?

Where did I go wrong?

Much like Kelly’s item last week about having an ultrasound, lest her final child feel shortchanged and unloved in competition with his pinged siblings. Yeah, I mocked her in the comment post, but I’ve been there. Hell, I am there.

It turns out the girls are flawed. They have fears and insecurities just like real people. After all my hard work to free them from the shackles of need, they are destined to be human beings. Sometimes, then and now, I focus too much on the doting, on the worrying and, yes, the perfecting.

I should probably stop worrying about it so much.

Michael Rosenbaum is 5 Minutes for Parenting’s first dadblogger. He is a business consultant, playwright and author of Your Name Here: Guide to Life.

Michael blogs on life issues at Your Name Here Guide to Life and manages the Adult Conversation discussion group on Linked-In.

I took a little day trip away from my family this weekend.  I'd not been away from Peabody for this long since he was about six months old.  In fact, except for while we're both sleeping at night, I'm almost never apart from him - he's my constant companion from dawn until dusk every single day.  We even spend his nap times together, cuddled up in the big red chair in his cozy bedroom, him sleeping curled against me, his warm hands tucked and pressed against my ribcage, me nodding and drooling through my own halting nap or quietly reading blogs on my iPhone.  I love these moments of our day, when I can enjoy the quiet, rounded peacefulness of this beautiful boy who, awake, shrieks and runs and climbs and bangs and explores and discovers new and creative ways to nearly kill himself at a pace that leaves my 42-year-old mind and body nearly panting with exhaustion at the end of every day.

On Saturday morning I left my boy (and my girl, and their Daddy, too, of course) feeling a bit nervous and empty-armed yet relieved to have a few hours of my own space.  Driving down through the city and across state lines, sun working toward the gentle early-spring crescendo of noon, music feeling its way from ears to soul, I enjoyed the peace, the freedom and the … flow … of two hours alone.

The day played out in perfection - a full, bright, very quick afternoon, a baby shower for a friend-of-the-bosom I've never actually met, smiling into real, glowing faces I've only ever seen on digital screens, hugging and laughing and cooing and nipping off favorite pieces of each moment with my camera, to bring home and savor later.

Several other mothers at the shower had brought their beautiful babies along and as I saw each of them gather their little ones into themselves and retreat emotionally for few moments to that amazing place a nursing pair go - that place of connectedness and insulation and floating, soaring, simple peace - my arms and heart pinged a pang of missingness amidst all the poetic, surging beauty of women and light and giggles and moist eyes meeting and all of those lovely, purposeful feminine hands smoothing and admiring and making-right.

By the golden-warm winding-down of the party, the pinging pang of missingness became a melody inside me that played with jubilance but stopped halfway.  I needed my sweet boy warm and solid against me again to finish this song.  And so home, yesterday as the sun rose, I see him with newer eyes, fresh and rested and so in love with his soft hands and fuzzy hair and crazy peddling legs and big puppy-awkward feet.   His smile beams directly into my eyes, his arms curl around my neck and his perfect yawning kisses bring me back to home.  We're a pair again, the two of us, and also, just us one.

I have decided that whatever we’re looking for around the house is… in the couch cushions.  Somewhere deep within my couch, there is a greedy monster that likes to play hide-and-seek with whatever it is I’m looking for.

Right after Colby was born, my parents and sisters came over to bring us dinner.  (just one of the many times they would do this)  A few days later, my sister Katrina noticed her cell phone was missing.  We looked and looked everywhere for this phone and just decided it had been stolen or was in a jacket pocket.  That was in May.  In July, when I finally got around to vacuuming out my couch, guess what I found?  Katrina’s cell phone.

There have been other things we have found in the couch cushions – Colby’s matchbox cars, cracker crumbs, my hair clips, etc., etc.  But I wasn’t necessarily looking for any of those items.  So, time passed and I forgot about the “monster”, but the other day, I was desperately looking for Kennedy’s pacifier clip.  We don’t go anywhere without “Kia-dee binky”, as Colby calls it, and she’s very good at spitting the binky out of her mouth whenever she doesn’t want it.  This causes the binky to fall to the floor, and I’m tired of getting funny looks when I put the binky in my mouth and then stick it back in her mouth.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  So anyway, I’m running through the house frantic because I can’t find the stinkin’ binky clip, so I just make sure I have 2-3 pacifiers and I vow to switch them out and remember to wash them off whenever one falls to the floor.

We spent an entire week without a binky clip.  So, I finally got to Target and bought more and then all was right with the world.  Right?  Wrong.  Guess what happened yesterday?  I cleaned out the couch cushions and found -

a headband

2 matchbox cars

money !!!

annnnnnnnnd…..

1 pacifier clip

Hooray!  I now have 3.  I’m still looking for one.  Will you please check your couch and make sure your couch monster didn’t eat Kennedy’s binky clip? My mom says she has a dryer monster that eats socks.  Thankfully I don’t have a dryer monster, but I do have a couch monster.  I think I will name him Oscar the Couch.. Monster.

Originally posted August 23, 2007 , at kevinandjenna [dot] com, jenna ended up getting rid of the aforementioned couches and now has leather reclining couches.  Did this solve her Couch Monster dilemma?  Not one bit.

There is that moment when you realize all at once that winter is ending and that spring is rushing noisily into sight - the sound of running water as snow melts, the sudden shock of warmth in the air, the smell of mud (and let's be frank, of dog poop). And I was outside yesterday (again!) and I heard birds singing wildly, heard birds again for the first time in months. This would be the nicest thing about living someplace that has cold, cold winters - they END.

Here's a sign that you might live someplace REALLY rural: the kids are deliriously happy to see the end of winter because it means that they can wear their new rubber boots to school. FASHION! And so my ten year old dashes out the door in her pink rubber boots and with her jeans rolled up Huck Finn-style to her knees and my 8 year old runs around outside without a jacket and my four year old thinks they're both nuts since there's still two feet of snow in the yard. She's too young to get it yet.

When I was in high school, the big thing was to go "down south" (to Toronto or possibly to Barrie) for March break and to strut around in our t-shirts because we were from the bitter north and their cold was nothing like the cold we knew, uh huh. And I find it hilarious to see the same goofy attitude in my own kids, shivering in the barely above-freezing snow in their rubber boots, risking pneumonia in their shirt sleeves, because this isn't REAL cold. They know REAL cold. Yes, they've often looked at REAL cold from the safety of their windows, their mugs of hot chocolate clutched in their hands. That's knowledge, right? But The Baby knows in her own secret way that this is not quite spring, not yet. She clings tight to her winter coat and keeps her feet warm, a dour, winter-clad little figure trudging through what is still snow, what is still cold.

By Kelly

Can you help me with a scenario?

See, I have this really good friend who’s pregnant with her fourth baby. For all her other babies, she’s paid to have a second ultrasound, in addition to the ultrasound in the hospital paid for by her insurance.

It was a trend that started with her first baby, when she wanted confirmation that she was truly growing a baby girl. The results were so positive – the paid ultrasound doctor spent 90 minutes answering questions, going over every inch of the baby, taking countless pictures and even making a video of the whole thing – that she determined to do a second ultrasound for every baby forthwith.

Two years later, pregnant with her second baby, she returned to the same clinic to have a second ultrasound. She took home a baby boy – and another 45-minute video tape.

Her third child was born about four years later. By that time, ultrasound technology had advanced to the 3D/4D stage. Curious, she signed up for the new program, and was thrilled to watch baby number three – a girl – smile and brush her face and get the hiccups and yawn in full 3D glory. Once again, she took home countless pictures and a video DVD.

Now, she’s pregnant with her fourth. And to be honest, she’s doesn’t want to shell out $150 for yet another ultrasound video. She and her husband enjoyed the ultrasound at the hospital. They have faith they are having a boy.

But she’s concerned this will necessitate therapy for her fourth child someday, once he realizes his parents didn’t love him enough to make a in-womb video of his uniqueness.

What do you think she should do?

1. She should focus on the child’s feelings, not her own, and spend the money to have one last ultrasound video made. After all, all the other kids have one. Don’t make the last child be a classic last child who only gets hand-me-downs and leftovers.
2. She should forgo the video. After all, these things are done mostly for the sake of the parents, not the child. Do you know any child who’s ever pulled out their ultrasound video and said, “Mom, fast-forward to the part where they show you that bubble that’s my developing bladder. I really want to it show my friends.” No. I don't think so.
3. She should make a copy of one of her other children’s ultrasound tapes and pass it off as the fourth baby in-utero. After all, all ultrasound videos look alike. Who would ever know?

Kelly is 29 weeks pregnant with fourth baby. Amazingly, her "friend is also 29 weeks pregnant with her fourth baby. Kelly blogs at Love Well. Her friend claims she doesn't have a blog, which is why we are sharing her conundrum for her on this forum.

I had some time on my hands last week, so I stopped in at the library, pulled a book off the shelf and read it. The book was written by a man with regrets, who wished his life had been different as he was growing up.

He made arrangements to go back to kindergarten, summer camp, prom and various other experiences that he blew the first time around. Parts were funny, but parts were creepy, as well. Not in the child molester, voyeur sense, but in the way that people acting outside their proper age range can be just plain icky.

It was also interesting to contemplate the impact this man was having on all the children and teens around him. Several kids understood that he was coming back as an adult because he felt he screwed up the first time around. Particularly for the pre-teens/teens he encountered, did he teach them life is so full of regrets that they are unlikely to be happy as adults? How many of the children already want a do-over, after seeing his?

The most telling part of the story came at the end, in a single paragraph, where he says he didn’t think about reliving any of his successes as a youth because he couldn’t think of any. And so we see the challenge of our own lives and our own children.

If you had the chance, would you ask for a do-over? Looking at your life today, is there anything that is so painful that you would risk giving up your current life by traveling back through time? (Remember the butterfly effect. You won’t be able to change just one thing.)

Every child gets bullied and belittled; even the cool kids get their turn at some point. All of us can remember something from fifth grade that still makes us cringe. At the same time, it’s pretty difficult to grow up without doing something right, whether we give ourselves credit for it or not.

Children are complicated. Simply telling them they did something great isn’t a magic incantation that transforms them. Like us, they can look back on a time we think of as happy, but wish for a do-over. It’s not always in our power to change those perceptions for the better.

Looking back at something that still makes us wince, how could we have looked at it differently or responded differently—then or now—to make it less an issue today? How can we help our children avoid the urge to volunteer to relive high school?

No answers today, just a ton of questions.

Michael Rosenbaum is 5 Minutes for Parenting’s first dadblogger. He is a business consultant, playwright and author of Your Name Here: Guide to Life.

Michael blogs on life issues at Your Name Here Guide to Life and manages the Adult Conversation discussion group on Linked-In.

"If a mother is the main caregiver, a boy will see her as his first model for intimacy and love. From toddlerhood on, if she sets limits with her son firmly, but without hitting or shaming him, he will take this in stride. He will want to please her, and he will be easier to manage because the attachment is strong. He knows he has a special place in her heart."

Steve Biddulph, in Raising Boys: Why Boys are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men

I have a son, I still often gasp to myself, even as February marks the halfway point in our little man's second year. And I've been pondering since the day we found out he was a he exactly what it means to be the mother of a son. What I've learned so far is that a boy is distinctly yet mysteriously male to his mother from the first moment she takes him into her arms, and that although his masculinity may defy definition beyond the very obvious for some time to come, she will sense it in him, take pride in it, bask in it, cherish it and have her heart melted by it in every interaction with him.

I don't exactly get it, but oh, how I love it!

I have such a strong, earnest and increasingly urgent need to begin understanding and nurturing this tiny but solid and vital little soul in a way that respects and values and encourages the parts of him that make him BOYISH - for already he is so boyish! And there are a thousand caveats that go along with a statement like that, a thousand reasons not to build my entire approach to mothering him on a tiny Y, a thousand defenses and explanations and except thats. If you'll permit me, I'm not going to enumerate those. I'm going to trust you to understand that I know much of parenting my two kids will be the same, and as well, much of it will be different based on their personalities, not their genders. Those truths aside, I'm going to assert that boys and girls ARE different, and then share with you that I'm very excited to stretch my maternal soul to meet my boy in areas I've never been before.

But first I need to learn where those places are and how to get there.

To that end, I've got a short list of a few books on the subject of raising boys that I'm going to be reading over the next few months and from which I'll hopefully be able to share what I learn here. The book I've exerpted above is the first of three I've selected so far.  I've made it about a third of the way through, and already I'm feeling enlightened and joyous about this little person God has chosen Al and me to parent.

Steve Biddulph's book absolutely celebrates the physiology and nature of boyhood as it progresses through three chronological phases, and the practical, straight-forward advice he shares for parents with boys in each phase encourages proactivity with a spirit of acceptance, humor and joy. I'm turning the last page of each chapter feeling more and more informed about and delighted with this incredible gift God has bestowed on us - our little boy.

I have a SON!

Megan also blogs at FriedOkra.