One Day You'll Thank Me

by Cameran Eubanks Wimberly

  On my last nerve, I started to google “toddler refuses to get dressed,” and I was stunned when all of these popped up:

  toddler refuses to eat

  toddler refuses to poop

  toddler refuses to nap

  toddler refuses to sleep

  toddler refuses to wear clothes

  Wait, can toddlers really go on poop strikes? Bless their little hearts! At least that put Palmer’s refusal to get dressed into perspective.

  But while we’re on the subject of poop, let’s talk about potty training. Who knew it could be so dang hard? As of this writing, Palmer is three years old and she is still not fully potty trained. Let’s just say it’s a work in progress. LOL. Sometimes she will use the potty, sometimes she won’t. If she does, I reward her with an M&M. I have probably been a little too lenient with not pushing it more, but I don’t want going to the bathroom to be a negative thing.

  That said, I reached a point where I wanted to get it done, so I started “potty boot camp.” Basically, you quit diapers cold turkey, put your child in underwear and don’t leave your house for three days. Yes, it can be kind of a messy option, and I’ve read that it can make you want to pull your hair out, but supposedly it works. Eventually they get sick of peeing on themselves and give in to the potty. Y’all, I needed you to pray for me during this because it was hell. And I made the terrible/horrible/no good/very bad decision to start it during my PMS week. I bought Peppa Pig panties for Palmer, which I thought she would love because it’s one of her favorite shows, but she would just pull them down and say, “Itchy… where my diaper?” Let’s just say, I cleaned up lots of messes. Palmer would just look at me and say, “I no like the potty” or “I pee-pee in my pants.” Then she’d laugh hysterically. Jesus, take the wheel! I gained a newfound appreciation for the expression “pull up your big-girl panties”! She would literally go get me a new diaper and bring the wipes to me when she wanted to be changed. “Mama, I stinky. Get new diaper,” she’d say. Yes, I am raising a diva. So we were back in diapers just when I thought we’d be done with them. Oh well. I figure she can’t wear diapers to middle school, so eventually we’ll get there.

  Although Palmer is chatty now, she started talking a little late. It worried me that some children in her preschool class were talking and stringing together words when she wasn’t. But other moms assured me she was totally normal and would talk on her own time. And she has. Sure enough, it’s like one day a switch was turned on and now she never shuts up. We are in the “what’s that” stage right now, so she is constantly asking me about anything and everything.

  I have also recently learned what little sponges toddlers really are. They hear and absorb EVERYTHING. Palmer is doing so at a rapid pace and it’s fascinating to see what she remembers and learns. Meaning… I have to be super careful about what I say around her. I am not a big curser, but I do utter the phrase “oh shit” on a somewhat constant basis. A couple of weeks ago, Palmer was eating her dinner in the high chair and dropped her sippy cup on the floor. She looked down and very casually said, “Oh shit.” Oh shit! I thought. She said “Oh shit”! Jason looked at me and I put my hand over my mouth. I couldn’t believe it. WHOOPS. Of course, I was then upset that I didn’t catch it on camera. I told her it was a naughty word and to say “Oh nuts” instead. Mom fail. I am trying to replace my tendency to say “Oh shit” with “Oh shoot.” I have also had to force myself to stop laughing when she farts on command and says “shew wee” or else, as Jason says, people are going to think she was raised in a barn. Let’s pray she doesn’t show these special talents in preschool.

  One thing I’ve learned about the second year of motherhood: it’s even crazier and busier than the first. Which makes it even more important to make time for yourself. I’m proud to say that, as of this writing, I’m still showering and doing my hair and makeup every day. (Okay, almost every day.) Granted, I have only one kid, but I make sure to find the time each day to get myself ready because it’s what makes me feel better. When I feel better, I’m happier, and when I’m happier, I’m generally a better mom. With a toddler, it’s very hard to get ready in the bathroom, so I have a little makeup-slash-hair station in my living room where I get ready every morning. This way I can keep my eyes on my child and still make myself look presentable.

  Despite the push and pull of this age—the poop, the clothing tantrums and me never being alone in the bathroom—two years old has been my favorite parenting phase so far. I love two because you start to really see their little personalities form. As difficult as Palmer can be, she can also be incredibly sweet. She shows empathy toward animals and other people. She is extremely loving and affectionate. I can already tell that Palmer is going to have a great sense of humor. She is a HAM.

  You also start to get feedback that makes you feel not quite so alone. Palmer can tell me she’s hungry. She can tell me she is tired or has an upset tummy. I feel like in a lot of ways I have become more relaxed because I’m not solely relying on my intuition. Two is also when Palmer looked at me unprompted and said “I love you” for the first time. Of course, I started bawling when I heard those words. Not gonna lie… when that happened I got a pang in my ovaries and a moment of Ahhh, now I get it. Palmer will now also run up and hug me when I come back home from somewhere. There is literally no better feeling in the world than to see your child race over to you and put her little arms around your neck. That’s the good stuff. It’s what sustains us mamas after a long day.

  Chapter Fourteen ONE & DONE

  Motherhood can be wonderful and it can be terrible and all in between.

  —MY MOM, MOTHER OF TWO

  Are you going for baby number two?” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that question, I’d be loaded. People asked me about a second child even before my first bun was out of the oven. They also post on Instagram that I “need to have another baby” or “Your adorable baby isn’t a baby anymore! Time for another one?” The answer? No, no and hell no. I have learned to never say never, but I highly doubt I will change my mind. Unless I have a major, MAJOR epiphany or a miracle of God happens, I’m done. For real, 100 percent. I absolutely love, love, love being a mom and am so grateful for the path that led me to Palmer. That said, one is enough, and it’s all I can handle. Palmer is now three years old, and the days when she lets me hold her and rock her to sleep singing “You Are My Sunshine” are fewer and farther between. Ain’t going to lie, that just kills my mama heart, and it helps me understand why women have lots of babies. But only for a moment.

  Motherhood did not come naturally to me. I got flustered very easily with Palmer when she was a baby. Looking back at the first year, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not really a “baby person.” I wasn’t a bad mom; I was just an every-little-thing-irritates-me kind of mom. Would I go back? Yes, but only for brief snippets in time. I would go back to rock a baby to sleep one more time, I would go back and breastfeed once more (just ONCE) and I would go back to smell that newborn head. It’s funny how the things that I once cried over (breastfeeding, getting up in the middle of the night) are now the things that I would totally like to know what it feels like to do again. One morning when Palmer was a newborn, after I had been up all night with her, my mom was over. “As crazy as it sounds, you will miss these things one day,” she said. I didn’t think it was possible at the time, but she was absolutely right. The days are long, but the years are short. That said, if I really wanted to go back to the baby stage, I would have another baby. Today, I enjoy being a mother to a rambunctious toddler who can communicate her wants and needs to me far better than a baby can… and I think as she gets even older I will grow to enjoy it even more. It’s funny, every month that now passes, I say, “This, this is my favorite age, right now.”

  Once people have a baby in the South, they typically keep going, so the overwhelming majority of parents I know have a minimum of two kids. Growing up, the infrequent times I envisioned myself having children, I saw myse
lf with two. It wasn’t until I really got to know myself as an adult that I realized that more than one probably wasn’t for me. I think mentally and emotionally, I can’t handle more than one, and I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with saying that. I’m just not meant to mother multiple children. I do not embrace the chaos. I see a lot of women whose kids kind of rule the roost. I’m a control freak, so that is never going to be the case in my house. And the way I see it, Palmer’s going to have some trouble staging a takeover all by herself.

  My mother repeated lots of sayings to me and my sister growing up. The one that she said the most was a quote from Shakespeare that has always stuck with me: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” (If I ever were to get a tattoo, it would be this saying.) She taught us that our gut and intuition would serve us very well in life if we learned how to listen to them and use them. In this world, we are socially conditioned in almost EVERYTHING, including the biggest and most personal decisions. Get married by thirty, have two kids. The thing is… what society deems normal might not necessarily work for YOU. When I would tell people in my twenties and early thirties that I wasn’t sure if children were for me, most would look at me like I had two heads. I’m not going to lie; it made me self-conscious. Most would say, “Oh don’t worry, you will change your mind.” But still, I never let those feelings pressure me into having a baby when I just knew in my gut that I wasn’t ready. These people aren’t the ones raising your child, so who cares what they say? You don’t make a life-altering decision to please other people or society. That’s how women end up super bitter.

  At this point, I’m in my mama groove. I’ve got it down as much as I can for being an anxiety-prone woman who struggles to multitask. (I’m the person who starts a load of laundry only to forget to put it in the dryer. More than once I’ve had to rewash a load three times to get rid of mildew. Been there, too?) I don’t feel confident enough that I could be as good a mother to two children as I am to just one… and if that’s okay with me, it should be fine with everyone else.

  Susan Newman wrote a popular book, The Case for the Only Child. In it, she said stopping at one child can be a difficult decision, but it’s also becoming a more popular one. Today, nearly 25 percent of families have only one child, a statistic that has doubled since the late 1970s. So clearly, I’m not alone. The bottom line is this: having a child forces you to see humanity and it forces you to grow, and I’m so glad that I did it—but I’m not doing it again. Palmer is now an active little toddler, and she fills up every want or need I felt was lacking in my life. I have someone to love unconditionally and depend on me, I have someone to teach and instill values in, I have a piece of myself and Jason who can carry on our family. I really don’t want or need another. Although I think he would be open to having more, Jason is also totally fine with having just one child. Like me, he says his desires to become a parent have all been fulfilled with Palmer and he doesn’t have a burning want for another. We do know that there are positives to having a sibling, but we also know there are positives in staying a singleton: more attention, no competition and more financial benefit. There really is no right or wrong.

  Are there times that I wonder what it would be like to have another child? Yes. Most of my friends who were pregnant when I was have already had baby number two and some are currently pregnant. Some were planned pregnancies and others were not. I have one friend who accidently got pregnant when her son was only five months old, so she had two kids under the age of two. She told me she cried when she found out… not happy tears, but “I’m scared” tears. The first few months were extremely hard, but now the two children play together and it actually gives her a break. She ended up being grateful to have had her children so close together. Now that Palmer is three years old, I can totally see how a sibling would give me a reprieve from being her constant source of entertainment. On the other hand, I have another friend who knew she wanted two children. She had a boy around the same time I had Palmer and really wanted to try again for a girl. Well, she got pregnant pretty quickly, but with twin boys. So now she has three kids under the age of two. She’s tired. Very tired.

  Now, let me just tell you that I’m writing this in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is nothing like a pandemic to bring you closer to your child. It has been extremely hard, and at the same time I feel very thankful to be in a position to be quarantined with Palmer. Her school closed in March, and at one point we weren’t sure if it would reopen. Jason has been a frontline worker during all these weeks and months, and the stress has been palpable. I worry about him constantly. I also worry about him exposing Palmer and me to COVID, as he is exposed to it every single day at the hospital. As soon as he comes home, he strips his scrubs off in the garage and immediately takes a shower in our basement before coming upstairs. Due to his high-risk exposure, we have limited who we see during this time. For the first six weeks we didn’t see anybody at all, not even our parents. I will say that this pandemic has definitely made me question having another child now that I am Palmer’s only source of entertainment. She has developed a very strong imagination lately, so we play make-believe together a lot. I’ve been a dinosaur, a princess and a puppy dog. To pass the time, we go on “adventure walks” in our neighborhood and hunt for bears. I turn on the irrigation system and let her run wild through the sprinklers. We look for bugs under rocks and for planes in the sky. If she doesn’t want to get dressed, I don’t make her. We have spent many a day in just a diaper. (Her, not me.) The hardest part is trying to find things to keep an energetic three-year-old occupied and stimulated when you can’t go anywhere or see anybody. It. Is. Tough. Not going to lie: she has spent WAY too much time in front of the TV during this pandemic. We have probably seen every movie on Disney Plus. I have actually cried a couple of times because I feel guilty that other children have playmates in their siblings during this and she just has me, a tired mama, but I’m trying and that’s all that matters. I’m not going to have another child because of temporary guilt. I know things will get back to normal eventually and playdates will happen again. As with everything in life, I know that this, too, shall pass.

  Sure, I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a twinge of jealousy every now and then when a friend has a second baby. After all, they will experience the love and newborn head smell of another child again. (Honestly, I would bottle that fragrance if I could.) But my twinges of jealousy are short-lived when I think about recovering from giving birth, breastfeeding and not sleeping again. Do I feel guilt that Palmer won’t have a sibling? Yes. BUT… I feel like I’m a pretty good mom to Sweet P. So when people approach me and ask, “When are you going to give that sweet girl a brother or sister?” I respond with, “I’m not. Instead I’m giving her a happy and sane mama.”

  Chapter Fifteen GOTTA LOVE THE GRANDPARENTS

  The [grandkids] are wonderful, but the best thing is that you can give them back.

  —BEYONCÉ’S MOM, TINA KNOWLES-LAWSON, MOTHER OF TWO AND GRANDMOTHER OF FOUR

  Palmer is the first grandchild for my parents, so one of the most amazing things about becoming a mom—and one I didn’t think about—was watching my parents become grandparents. I had no idea how it would change them, deepen my own relationships with them and give me a new perspective on them, but it did. I have always been super close with my mom. She’s always had my back, always supported any decision I made without being judgmental (like my going on reality TV… twice) and taught me that “this, too, shall pass,” which can be applied to so many situations and has gotten me through a lot of tough times, from breakups to baby blues.

  Becoming a mother has made me see my own mother in an entirely different light. Did she have her misgivings as a parent? Yes. She was never a Suzy Homemaker. We didn’t bake cookies and our house wasn’t decorated for every holiday. She was never the class mom and our hair was never braided and she could become overwhelmed easily. But these things were far, far overshadowed by what she did for us in
terms of teaching us to be emotionally well-rounded humans. The life advice she imparted to me has been priceless. My mom is one of the wisest people I know. As an adult, I am able to look back at the way she raised us with extreme gratitude. She has shown me that instilling morals, values and a sense of self in a child is WAY more important as a mother than throwing the perfect Pinterest-worthy party. She has taught me that at the end of the day our integrity is all we really have, and it is the most important aspect of being a person.

  When interviewing for The Real World, it hit me how instrumental my mother had been in helping me develop confidence and self-worth, but this is something I continue to appreciate the older I get and especially after becoming a mom. Besides her words, my mother has taught me through her own actions how to be a better person. For example, I never witnessed my mother gossiping or speaking an ill word about another human being. She used to always tell me, “What Susie says of Sally says more of Susie than of Sally. Remember that.” If I meet someone new who has a tendency to gossip, a lightbulb goes off and I think, Shit, if they are gossiping to me, they will probably gossip about me. Y’all know us Southern women have a predisposition to gossip… myself included, but now that I’m a mom, I think of my own mother and I really am trying my best to gossip less. It’s ugly, it’s mean and it serves no purpose.

  My mom also taught us that you should never kill a living thing that isn’t harming you in any way. I almost forgot this the other day when we had a roach in the kitchen and I yelled at Palmer to get back. I went to grab something heavy to kill it with and then had a flashback to my own childhood, where I never witnessed my mom kill any living creature… including a roach. So instead of squishing its guts in front of Palmer, I got a Tupperware container and placed it over the bug, slid a piece of paper underneath and released it safely outside. Palmer watched all of this wide-eyed. When I came back inside, I told her the same thing my mom would tell me as a kid: “Palmer, you should never kill a living thing that isn’t harming you in any way.” This is the stuff that matters as a mom. These are the things that will stick with a child for life.