Buh Bye, Babycenter

Like many pregnant American women, I subscribed to a weekly pregnancy email update from babycenter.com.  It told me that my baby was the size of a blueberry, a grape, a plum, an apple, a cantaloupe, a butternut squash, and at the end, a pumpkin.  It was right every week - except for the part about my baby being approximately 7 lbs at birth - only about 3 lbs off!

But today, I unsubscribed.  Babycenter has been sending me an email every week since C was born (on his due date, so naturally the week I receive is incorrect, with going a week overdue). Today it was full of helpful advice for moms of 7 month old (and 2 weeks) babies like this:

• avoid caffeine - really?  How does a girl with three three and unders wake up in the morning when she's been up at least once every night?  Keurig and I are BFF's now.
• avoid alchohol.  Mmmk, people....
• get lots of rest, including naps. WHAT?  'scuse me, I spend every afternoon trying to get my 3 littles to nap themselves just so I can go to the bathroom ('cause heaven knows that coffee goes right through me!), clean up breakfast and lunch, prep dinner, fold laundry and maybe go get the mail out of the box.  If, and this is a big IF, I can do all that, I might spend my "down time" aka 15 minutes before thing 1, thing 2 or thing 3 wake up, pecking out a blog or calling a fellow soldier in the trenches to see if her little munchies napped today.  Nap myself, you've got to be kidding.  I haven't seen those days since...first trimester, I think, when my eyeballs could not physically stay open.
• exersice - this is getting ridiculous.  If you don't think running up and down the stairs 1,000 times a day, lifting my chunky monkey in and out of his crib and up and down off the changing table, carrying said laundry baskets up those same stairs, hefting the preschoolers onto the counter to kiss boo boos or stir cookie dough, and leaning into the back row of the van to buckle said children into a carseat isn't workout enough, YOU'RE crazy.  Not me.
• relax - take a bath.  Mmmm, k.  So the exactly 1.21 jigawhat hours I have to myself from 9:00-10:15 pm should be spent cleaning out my tub?  Not that it doesn't need cleaning, mind you.  But a shower and a glass of wine is a whole lot quicker.  Oh, wait,  I meant herbal tea. 
• make time for yourself. Okay, I quit.  You people at Babycenter are smoking something.

I'm big now!