LOL! Katelyn's mom, I actually would love to be this person! The fact is, our vacuum looks surprisingly new even though it's 8 years old, DH does much of the cooking and all of the bartending, and I shower oh once a week. (My idea of perfume these day is Soft-n-Dry deodorant and my idea of make up is chap stick.) DD has a bath before bed, so she's typically dirty by day.
I'm from Connecticut but live in a small California town, so my inner preppy often clashes with my inner hippie. We had every intention of parenting like my parents did in the 1950s, but we found ourselves practicing attachment parenting instead. I would read up on what we were experiencing, run across Dr. Sears' work and think, "This guy is a quack!" But then there we were, already doing what he said to do.
I was ashamed for a long time, but now I have parenting pride. DH and I just did what DD needed and we did it in full agreement with each other. I don't judge anyone who parents the regular American way (North American? apparently the west coast of Canada and all of Mexico practice attachment parenting), but neither do I want to be judged for the way we parent. My niece, in college, showed us her brand new childhood development text book which points out how the American way of parenting newborns is much different than that of every other culture in the world. Not wrong, not right, just different.
DH and I are believers in the trust-mistrust phase of human development, so we make our decisions with that in mind. DD was not one of those babies who slept 20 hours per day and nursed every 3 hours (she nursed around the clock and had "silent reflux" which means you have reflux but just swallow it). Anyway, I think it helped me a lot to find parents who A. faced similiar challenges, and B. chose similiar solutions or at least employed a similiar governing philosophy. Thankfully DH and I were in full agreement of what to do, otherwise I would have really doubted my mothering instincts.
P.S. I found many people here, on this site, as a lurker.
