Motherhood Uncensored

I guess this is what little sisters are for

 

Sharpie Tattoos! I wonder what that's braille for....

I never

Punishing Quinlan used to be a no brainer. I'd point to the corner, flip the egg timer, and that was that. Then came the high knee stomping, 5-alarm screams, and door slamming.

But lately, she goes into these soap opera dramatic rants, all of which start with "I never." "I never get to play with toys. I never get to watch a show. I never get to eat 4000 bags of candy" she says in a whiny, angry little voice, through a frowning face and wrinkled nose.

The only thing missing is "like the other kids." I'm sure that's due in a few weeks.

At first, I took the intellectual approach, mostly because I enjoy attempting to rationalize with four-year-olds, or jersey cows. It's basically the same.

"Well, never means 'not ever' and the last time I checked you actually do watch shows, play with toys, and eat way too much candy. You are the weakest link. Goodbye!"

Heh.

But surprise! That didn't work.

So then I just started to get annoyed (again, intelligent mom tactic there), and so I would just say "You're right." "You live a terrible horrible life with no toys or television or candy. And I make you bring in water in large buckets that you carry on your head from the manual water pump that's two miles away."

Shit. I should just start in with the whole "starving kids in Africa" speech and get it over with already.

Finally, I figured out that she was angry (duh!) and was just spouting off her mouth in her own preschooler way (duh!), and so I did the trained therapist (hello!) thing to do and acknowledged her anger, and offered her a few other really boring and appropriate things that she might say instead, you know, like "I'm really angry right now."

And actually, it went over pretty well. Sure, she included her 4 year old expletives in there, like "OH MAN" or "THAT STINKS!" but at least we lost the whole "I never" thing.

That is until a few days ago when I heard "I never get to do anything."

From Drew.

*cue primal scream*

If Eve Ensler was a Muppet on Sesame Street

 

She may not want to hear about your vagina, but she'll do a bang up job (heh) of teaching your young daughters about theirs.

Haplo-what?

I admit that once I had sent my spit in for analysis (sounds sexy, doesn’t it?), I sort of forgot about the whole thing. That was until one of my fellow 23andMe bloggers posted about her results and I thought – RESULTS? 

I still wasn’t sure what to expect when I logged in, but the waiting felt like those three minutes after taking a pregnancy test. 

But after clicking around (boy there’s a lot of info and a lot of clicking to be done), I honed in on the ancestry portion first. I didn’t need to know that I might be at a higher risk for Parkinson’s just yet. I was pretty recently post partum, after all, and that news combined with my daily puking baby, sore breasts, and roly belly could have sent me over the edge.

But I figured since I knew a fair amount about my family, the ancestry portion was a safe place to start.

I just didn’t expect it to be so incredibly fascinating.

I am part of Haplogroup D which is explained as follows:

Haplogroup D tracks the initial migration of hunter-gatherers into the Americas from Siberia into Alaska and all the way to present-day Chile. It is especially common along the Pacific coast, a suggestion that maritime people may have been among the earliest inhabitants of the Americas. 

Now before you and my Chinese mom say “WHAT?” you have to read on: 

There are two major branches of the D haplogroup in Asia. D5, which is comparable in age to D itself, is common in southern China but rare farther north. D4, a younger haplogroup that arose about 35,000 years ago, is more common in northern Asia, reaching 18% in southern Siberia.

I’m a part of Haplogroup D4, which doesn’t match completely with where my Southern Chinese (Cantonese) relatives came from. However, all that does it make me want to dig more back into my ancestry and find out what happened. 

All this is to say that I’m stuck between a Chinese person and a Japanese person in terms of who I’m most similar to, and while I’ve known that I’m Chinese all my life, I can’t say I ever knew how strong it was. 

Had I known this before I had kids, I’m pretty sure I would have been reading up on Asians and pregnancy – including symptoms, problems, and even foods. If you don’t think your ethnicity has anything to do with how you carry and how you experience pregnancy and childbirth, this data might make you think twice.

I can say it definitely did for me.

Head over to the 23andMe Pregnancy Community for more information. And stay tuned for next week when I open up the health traits section of my results.

6 Months - Knock Knock, Who's There? Eatha! Eatha Who?

 

Eatha Bunny!

Happy Easter, everyone. I've decided to go purple for Maddie.