Remember Before You Had A Baby?

Remember how easy life used to be before you had a baby? My god, weren’t we lazy? I’m not talking about how you were able to have a job without losing half your salary to childcare, or how you could dash out to see a movie on a whim or how you could walk clear across your living room floor without tripping over hunks of plastic. I’m not talking about the stuff you already knew was going to happen.

I’m talking about how:

• You used to shove that last granola bar wrapper into the side of the garbage bin and barely even notice how it popped right back out and fluttered down onto a small pile of spill-over trash. Because, eh, whatever. You’ll pick it up when you change the garbage, after you eat this granola bar and watch a little tv and, hey, you’ll get to it. But now. Now you need to coordinate your freaking day around changing that bloody garbage bag and those errant granola wrappers are ruining your life.

• You used to be able to, I don’t know, make yourself a sandwich, use a knife to chop things into little pieces, cook with more than one pot at a time, open and close the oven door without any warning and otherwise prepare food and it wasn’t somewhat more stressful than being late for your own wedding.

• You’d haul crap up and down stairs in one go instead of taking eleventy-jillion trips up and down with socks and wash cloths and diapers and sweaters and blankets and rattles and books. (Let’s not even contemplate what that’s like when you have a baby and older children in the house.)

• You could pee without another human on your lap.  (Ohmigah guys, get your heads out of the gutter; BABIES, I’m talking about babies.)

• You would routinely go outside, go shopping, check your email, make a phone call (and not live in fear of your internet going out so you don’t even have Facebook), take a shower that includes BOTH hair washing and leg shaving, read a book, read a magazine and read the entire directions on that frozen lasagna. (It takes two hours, for crying out loud!)

[deep breath]

• You could so easily have folded the laundry and immediately put it away, made giant batches of organic sweet potato puree and then washed ground in sweet potato puree spills off the kitchen floor (WHY DID YOU NOT DO THIS BEFORE YOU HAD THE BABY?!), shovel the snow, go to the bank and sit in a full-sized freaking chair at the library.