My Babies Ate My Brain

Now that title may paint pictures of a little toddler and an infant zombie sitting on the floor with hand fulls of gray matter and blood dripping down their chins, however, that's a post better saved for another day. No, my children ate my brain while in utero. I remember while pregnant with Sophie, Jake and I would sit in bed at night, Jake reading 'The Expectant Father' and me 'What to Expect When You're Expecting'. Jake turned to me and read aloud "Your partner's brain will shrink by 5% while pregnant". How silly. Mine must have shrunk 5% with Sophie and another 10% with Josie because there are times where I can't remember the simplest things.

While pregnant with Josie Jake and I were driving in the car. I started hearing this whistling sound. I looked around, rolled my window down to see if maybe it was outside. Nope. I turned to Jake and asked "what is that noise?" It's your cell phone!" he answered in shock. I didn't recognize the ring tone that I had set two years before.

Then the other day, I couldn't for the life of me remember that 7 x 5 is 35. I was trying to do some strange division to decide. Jake decided to give me an introductory lesson to multiplication which only made me angry AND stupid.

These little lapses pass and my intelligence recovers but not every story is cute and painless. Like the time we flew from New Jersey to Nevada for my grandmother's birthday. We decided to stop by Jake's sisters house to get our pack n play but left so late that we only had time to stop and give Sophie a diaper change and completely forgot the pack n play. When we got to the airport, we were still late and barely made it to the parking shuttle bus in time to make our flight. While sitting on the bus we realized that we had forgotten Sophie's carseat in the car. On the return trip, we arrived around 11 pm and headed to the car. I couldn't find the parking ticket. I searched and searched but no ticket. When we told the attendant that we had lost it we assumed we would just have to pay the maximum fee and move on. He asked for our registration and my heart froze. I had taken it out of the car before we left to get our New York state insurance and never put it back. The attendant let us know he couldn't let us leave until they called the police and had them run a check on our car. We finally left around 12:30 after the New Jersey Port Authority came and cleared us. That was a long hour and a half in the car with a tired, angry husband and a tired toddler.

I've given up on having perfection with remembering things but I do try to help myself out now and again. Like, putting my keys in the same place every day would help. I really should start doing that.

My girlfriend Dawn from Texas sent me a postcard a while ago and it pretty much sums it up.

It reads, "I had a mind once. Now I have small children."