Welcome to Mommy-hood

Now that I’ve officially been a mom for 9 days, 11 hours, and 36 minutes, albeit short, I am now entitled to have my opinion, as a human mother, without being patronized and said, “Well, what do you know, you’re not even a mom!”

Prior to having CC (short for Colt Chicken), every time I compare having kids to having dogs, my mommy friends tend to give me the “Are you crazy in comparing my precious baby to your mutt” look. Well, I’ll tell you this much, raising our puppy actually very nicely prepared me to be a human mom! It made Woz and I came to conclusions on how we will raise our (human or canine) youngs very early on:

1. We value positive reinforcements over negative reprimands –  Growing up in a culture of “criticisms make you better”, I hear more negatively implied comments than positive compliments. It does nothing but to diminish my confidence. Luckily, I realized that fairly early on in my own life, and have learned I am actually better than I’m led to believe.
2. We believed in speaking in normal adult language, rather than baby talks – Even with Twilight, I talk to him a lot. No, it’s not as if it’ll help him develop his language skill and he can, one day, have an intelligent conversation with me, but I just feel stupid talking in the baby goo-goo-ga-ga talks. So with CC, while I still find myself talking repetitive sentences with him, I tend to use adult vocabulary and structure. He, will definitely have intelligent conversation with me one of these days.
3. We believed well-manners / disciplined youngsters are happy youngsters – Rule is a good thing. If they’re applied consistently across the board, to everyone, with positive reinforcements. The scariest part of having rules for children and pets are double-standards. “No, you can’t do that as a child but guess what, as your mommy, I am immune.” Bad, bad, Mommy!
4. We believed in being good role models – As a continuation to item #3, you should always stick to your own rule and be a good role model to your child/pet. They are great imitators and they do it fast!
5. We believed in well-established routines – Routines are good, because it manages everyone’s expectation. And when expectations are met, everyone’s happy. The first night we were home with CC, we woke up at every smallest sound he made in his sleep. Unfortunately for us, he is a noisy sleeper, and therefore we had a horrible night. In the next few nights, we decided to set the alarm clock to wake us up BEFORE his expected awake time. Well, he still makes a lot of noises, but we’ve learned to ignore those meaningless noises and sleep through the 1.5 hours we allowed ourselves. We woke up much refreshed and everyone’s happy.

Here are just a few immediate things in my “parenting philosophy” pocket. I’m sure this list will be much much longer in no time.

And yes, I know I have ONLY been a human mom for 9 days, 11 hours, and now 54 minutes, but please do not judge or patronize me by using the words “whatever works for you” (translation: You’re crazy. What do you know?! Just you wait…you’ll agree with me sooner than later. )

I am a Mom now too.