It's great to share ideas. We have some great recipe ideas from friends and other mums.
It's great to share advice. "Yes, your child will stop teething one day, I promise!"
It's even great just to know that you're not in it alone. "Oh wow I thought I was the only one, yes, my daughter is making weird laughing growls too. It's so embarrassing when we are out and she starts laughing like Darth Vader with a sore throat at the granny in the supermarket." Or even "no my child doesn't nap or sleep well either. Consistent nap time, what's that?"
These are all great conversations I've had, and appreciated, recently. However, I digress. The point I want to make is it's not ALL we have to talk about.
This week I was searching amongst the dust and mothballs under my bed and was excited to uncover an old diary that I had written, aged 19 and whilst backpacking around Europe with my two best friends. Wow, what a read! It reminded me of who I was. I had forgotten. I was fun. I was carefree. My favourite extract read "when I'm old (maybe 26) and have a family and job (yeah right, haha) and life is monotonous I will look back on this time as one of the best of my life." I was also wise.
Fast forward to yesterday when we went for coffee with some other mums after a local toddler class. "Yes! Adult conversation" I thought. We sat, bouncing children on knees and drinks in hand. We questioned one anther about who they were and what they did. One of us was a paediatrician. I lived with Doctors at uni and know how are they like to play. Another was from California with a semi famous husband. The other had lived in London and held some pretty exciting jobs. I have had some great travelling experiences and a pretty interesting career.
There were a lot of interesting topics we coud have discussed.
We didn't.
The conversations above are snippets of what we talked about. Our children are great and it's nice to discuss them and 'share the load' but we are interesting people that used to be able to hold a non-baby related conversation. Does baby brain also include the loss of this ability?
So, I'm declaring war. Let's remember what fantastic and interesting people we all are! Let's talk about us. Let's remind ourselves. Let's be ourselves. I think our children will respect us more for it.
Failing that, there's always the weather.
Photo credit: http://screenpicks.com/2012/05/cartoon-moms-deserve-real-love-on-mothers-day/
