10 / 6

Ten years ago, I met him. Six years ago, I married him.

(And here's a fun meme I did last year that still applies. I think the only thing that's changed is who gets up earlier.)

Photo Friday

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Pity, party of one

Most of the time, I'm okay with being a working mother. Of course I daydream about what it would be like to be able to stay home with Nico full time or even to have the opportunity to write and edit from home, but I have accepted that this is unlikely to ever be an option for my family. It helps that my job is usually rewarding and that I'm good at what I do. I am happy that my income should allow us to provide Nico with a stable childhood, a house of our own with a backyard he can play in, small luxuries like swimming lessons and trips to the zoo. I suspect being fulfilled intellectually as well as emotionally will help me to be a better mother in the long run. Most days it's pretty easy.

But today was not one of those days. Last year, I was told I would have to take on an additional project for the summer in order to save my job from budget cuts. Six months pregnant, with my husband's company in the middle of a buyout, what was I supposed to do? Now I'm trudging toward the final days of this project, something I don't particularly enjoy, and while I know, yeah, that's why they call it work, it's hard not to resent this thing I was more or less forced to take on and which doesn't really feel like time well-spent. I'm basically logging hours just to log them, babysitting equipment out in the field during evenings when I'd much rather be home with Nico. The final phase of the project requires me to commute an hour each way.

Tonight I got there, I sat around, I felt kind of stupid for just sitting there. Then I had to go pump, but the only place available is a family restroom in a busy building, so the whole time I was pumping, I could hear people out in the corridor coming in hoping to use that restroom and then being turned away. And yeah, I suppose I have as much right to use that restroom as anyone, but I hate to cause a fuss or to inconvenience other people and so I felt like an asshole the whole time, on top of the generally unpleasant experience of pumping in a bathroom perched on a folding chair, my pump bag carefully balanced on the edge of the sink, listening to strangers talking on the other side of the wall. After I pumped I went out and sat around some more, feeling cross and bored. Then, because my hourlong commute takes me through another time zone, I miscalculated when I needed to leave. Instead of arriving home just in time for Nico's bedtime, I arrived an hour late. Still, I was hopeful that I'd be able to rush in and whisk him upstairs to nurse him to sleep. But when I walked through the door, eleven hours after I dropped Nico off at my parents' house, MB was coming down the stairs to tell me that Nico had just fallen asleep after an hour and a half of resisting. No nursing, no cuddling, just my sweet little baby asleep in his crib while I stood over him, twisting my fingers together to quell the urge to scoop him up and bury my nose in his hair, trying to ignore the little achy knot that had built up behind my breastbone after hours of missing him.

By the light of day I know that I'm lucky. I'm lucky to still have a job in this terrible economy, let alone one I genuinely love most of the time. I'm lucky that I have the flexibility to spend a lot of time with my baby, and that when I do have to work I can leave him in the care of his doting grandparents. I am lucky to have a baby at all. But tonight, I don't feel lucky to be a working mom. Tonight it feels pretty shitty. Tonight I feel like I'm missing out.

Things my child has recently attempted to eat

my flipflop
the pediatrician's stethoscope
the crinkly paper on the pediatrician's exam table
the floor
his toes
my toes
my sleeve entire shirt
his bead maze
the camera
the edge of a restaurant table
the frame of his jumparoo
the base of his Exersaucer
his collection of vintage Little People and their vehicles
blankies in various states of cleanliness
the sheets on the bed
my laptop cord
the leg of our end table
the base of his outgrown bassinet, which is actually my bassinet from 1981


And yet, the other day when I gave him a Cheerio, he sat there with it stuck to his lip, his face crumpled in an expression of utter disgust. I truly wish I had a photograph, because it was remarkable how offended he was by this horrifying attempt to get him to eat something that was clearly both awful and potentially poisonous.


He had a relatively eventful weekend, with MB's mom coming up for a visit. She played with him for what probably added up to several hours, and he accompanied us to breakfast at Denny's on Sunday, a trip to Target, and a walk to the local donut shop this morning. He showed off his semi-crawling and his mad oatmeal-eating skills, and she attended bathtime. Other than during naptime, I don't think he spent a moment alone the entire weekend. It was nice for me, too, because I got to go to the bibliophile's birthday party on Saturday night and leave Nico home with MB and his mom. I stayed out until ELEVEN! Talking to ADULTS!

She left this morning, and Nico and I spent the day hanging out. Sometime during the afternoon, evilducky sent me a link to this maternity shirt and I started absentmindedly humming the hook to U Can't Touch This. Apparently, my baby finds cheesy early-90s rap hilarious. Then again, who doesn't?



(Related: The dimple! I die!)

Photo Friday

I was told that this is the last undeveloped piece of coastline left on San Francisco Bay.

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Procrastination: it saves lives

I was at work this afternoon and didn't have much going on, so I was gmail-chatting with my friend Dawn. At 2:30 she signed off to go to a meeting and I logged out to go pump for Nico. Before I could get up from my chair, a page went out over the PA system telling everyone to evacuate the building. Figuring it was a badly-timed drill, I called down to the receptionist to ask what the hell was up and he told me there was a gas leak. We're all going to die! (Okay, he didn't say that second part.) I was supposed to pump for Nico and then leave at 3:00 in order to run home and change and then head out to our work booth at the county fair, so I didn't figure I had time to wait on the gas company to show up and suss out the problem. Last time there was an alleged gas leak, we all stood around in the parking lot for 45 minutes and then went back inside. I threw all my pump stuff into my bag, grabbed my purse, and hoofed it, and as soon as I opened my office door, I could smell gas. That office door must be a veritable airlock, because the whole floor and stairwell reeked of gas. I realized that I'd been feeling a bit off for about half an hour, but I had blamed it on not having enough to eat for lunch, not being slowly poisoned at my desk.

I told my coworkers I had to go so they wouldn't think I was trapped inside somewhere when I wasn't standing around outside with everyone else and trotted off to my car. As I was driving away, the firetruck showed up, and that's when I realized what totally would've happened if I hadn't been wasting time talking to Dawn today. If I'd hustled up and gone to pump on time, I would have been in the back room when the evacuation announcement was made, and I can't hear the PA at all back there. I would've just gotten started when the firetruck arrived, which means that either one of my coworkers or one of the firefighters would presumably have burst in to warn me about our impending doom, only to catch me with my boobs out. And as much as "firefighter walks in on busty chick using breast pump" sounds like the setup of a really specific porno, in real life it would've been less porn and more most embarrassing moment of my entire life, including the time I was buzzed by a low-flying aircraft while peeing behind a bush. Thank God for gmail chat, seriously.

Fortunate fool

This kid, you guys. He's changing so fast that I barely have time to mark each new thing before he's moved on, and it's fun but it's terrifying, too. He's getting faster and faster at his funny little army crawl, and he's also constantly up on hands and knees, rocking and trying to work out how to go forward. We started solids last week, baby oatmeal and applesauce on Wednesday, then bananas and oatmeal on Sunday. He snarfs the food down like it's no big thing at all.

Dinner out with him now is a game of skill, constantly running interference between his shockingly fast little hands and the silverware, the plates, the drinking glasses, the menus. He's nearly out of his carseat, wriggles around in his high chair until it seems like he might find a way to escape, has thoroughly outgrown his swings and bouncy seat and Bumbo chair. He wants to go and see and do and chew, constantly, and when he goes to bed I often find I have just enough time and energy left to clean up from that day's whirlwind, but not to write or read or do much of anything else.

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the boy he'll become and it's fascinating and heartwrenching all at once. I try to treat every day as a gift, to give him as much of my time as possible, to appreciate all of it as much as I can. He's still my baby, my little one, with pudgy fingers and soft hair and a sweet-smelling neck. But he's rapidly becoming a kid, too, with nimble hands and strong muscles and an independent streak to reckon with. We're learning as we go, he and I, but I think I like it this way.








Reading:  Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Photo Friday

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I told myself I wouldn't cry (I was wrong)

January 15, 2010

Dear Nico,

It's been six months since your birth, and I am in utter shock about it. Half a year! You continue to be the light of my life, the joy of my days. When you were small(er), I wrote about how it felt like I'd slipped into the new skin of motherhood with ease. I still feel that way, and I also believe that you've helped me become a better person. Patience is not a virtue that comes easily to me. I have never been calm or serene by nature. I have worked to foster quiet within myself for several years, and during the time that I carried you, I felt that I was finally moving toward a more calm resting state. There is a well of peace within me that I never knew existed before you arrived to gently shove aside the cover.

These feelings of serenity and contentment continue even as you become more of a whirlwind day by day. I won't say that we never have challenging times, but I nearly always find that my patience for you is deep. This probably sounds like some kind of fake, idealized, glossy-magazine version of motherhood, but I promise, being your mother really is much easier than I ever thought it would be. No one is as surprised as I am, believe me. Even when you're doing your best octopus impression on the changing table so that it's nearly impossible to get all your limbs into your pajamas, it's okay. Even when you snatch my glasses off my face or smack me with a toy as you're waving it around with wild abandon, it's okay. After a lifetime of intensity and quickly rising frustration, I suddenly find that I am a grounded person. Who knew? I hope I can say these things again in the coming months as your personality develops and you continue to assert your independence.

Before you were born, a friend told me that seeing the world through your eyes would be a wonderful gift, and she was right. Watching you discover your surroundings has been amazing, and seeing your excitement about things that we adults tend to take for granted has opened my eyes anew to the joy of small pleasures. There are so many true firsts for you...your first story time, your first swim, soon your first real foods, first crawl, first tooth, first word, first steps. I'll never be a scrapbooking, baby-book-keeping kind of mother, but I hope you never think that I didn't notice and appreciate all of your milestones and all of your bright-eyed, wonder-filled and wonderful days. I notice. I appreciate. I am so in love with you, I almost can't bear it. Happy six months, little boy. You are truly my greatest adventure.

Love,
Mama

A series of loosely connected events

Ever since we got back from our weekend in Kentucky, my tailbone has been hurting. It's especially painful when I'm sitting on the bed nursing Nico, which is both literally and figuratively a pain in the ass. It came on pretty much overnight and with no apparent cause, and after a trip to the chiropractor on Friday did nothing to alleviate it, I had halfway convinced myself that I have cancer of the tailbone. I spent an embarrassingly long time thinking about how if I did have tailbone cancer and needed radiation, I'd want to ask the doctors if I had time to try for another baby before they zapped me. Dude, I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Anyway, I went back to the chiropractor yesterday and it seems a bit better, so maybe I'm okay. I decided after the ridiculous freakout that if it's still painful next Monday -- two weeks after it started -- I'll call the doctor and get a referral for an X-ray. I kind of might as well, seeing as Nico's birth pretty much blew my deductible and out-of-pocket out of the water for the year.

It really only hurt today when I was driving, which is great since I'm driving 65 miles round-trip each night this week to do a work thing at the county fair. The drive would otherwise be my favorite part of the whole ordeal, since sitting in the heat for three hours each night is not really my thing. I'm also not loving the disruption in my schedule as it relates to Nico. Usually I get off work at 5, pick him up from my parents' house by 5:30 and then we have until bedtime around 8:00 to hang out together. This week I don't get to pick him up until 8:00 and pretty much have to bring him home, give MB 15 minutes or so to hold him, and then take him straight upstairs for his bedtime routine. I do get to keep him a little later in the mornings, but mornings are more hectic by necessity so it's not like we can just chill out together. I miss him more than I expected, I'll admit. I never thought working three hours later would matter so much, but it's kind of sucking. Luckily I only have one more late night this week, and then I get to go back to my regular work schedule for a week before doing another week of late nights.

Sitting around at the booth at the fair has given me more time to keep slogging through The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I'm not really loving it so far, and I'm nearly halfway done. I don't really know where things went off the rails, because I thought the core of the first book (i.e. everything but the Wennerstrom Affazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) was enjoyable and liked the second one even more. But god, this one. So wordy. I am trying to give it the benefit of the doubt since 1. it was not originally written in English and 2. the author is dead. I want to believe that if Stieg Larsson hadn't died shortly after turning in the manuscripts, an editor would've convinced him to shave off some of the extra wordiness. I also think if I was from Sweden, I'd find stuff like "Martensson left home at 7:40 that morning. He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Grondal into Sodermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Brannkyrkagatan. He turned left onto Tavastgatan at the Bishop's Arms pub and parked at the corner." informative rather than eye-glazingly boring.

Speaking of boring, I tried watching Bravo's new show, Work of Art, and I kind of hate it. (Also, I am okay with calling the Top Chef cast "cheftestants," but I heard a commercial with the word "art-testants" and, no. Stop trying to make that happen, Bravo.) Maybe because the kind of artists who want to be on reality TV are by necessity pretentious and over-pleased with themselves. I am contemplating deleting it from my DVR queue and moving on. God knows I have enough shit to watch, especially since I have developed a deep and late-blooming love for So You Think You Can Dance. I'm also just really not loving Ghost Hunters Academy (or, while I'm at it, Ghost Hunters International), despite trying to enjoy it. I don't know why I'm so hesitant to stop watching crappy shows. It's like I'm afraid they'll suddenly become good if I stop watching and then I'll miss out. Something's gotta give, at any rate, because my DVR is starting to resemble my Google reader.

I can't think of any clever way to wrap this up, so here's a great song from the album I'm listening to over and over and over again this week:

On the move

The thing that has surprised me most about having a baby is how fast he changes. I was prepared for the "days are long, years are short" phenomenon, but not for the blink-and-miss-it pace that he learns things. In the past few days, Nico has shown an increased interest in playing on the floor. He's always been a wiggly baby, migrating around his crib during the night, but lately there seems to be more intent behind his wriggling. Just last night I was all besotted over him scooching forward about six inches on his blanket to grab a toy. And then this morning, I laid him down on his playmat with his stacking rings beside it and went to brush my teeth. When I came back, he was looking a bit guilty with a trail of destruction in his wake:

(When I left, the set of stacking rings was assembled
and standing where the red ring is in this photo.)

Then, when I picked him up from my parents' house after work, Mom said, "You know what he does with those stacking rings? He throws them across the room and then crawls after them."

I decided to test this somewhat outlandish claim for myself. After all, this baby was a sedate little swaddled bundle about five minutes ago. And guys? I think we're in deep shit:




After documenting his new skill for the internets posterity, I read him a few bedtime stories and took him into our room to nurse. He only ate for about five minutes, and then decided he needed to log a bit more crawling practice. I couldn't put him in his crib because I knew he'd scoot down to the end and bonk his head against the bars, so I kept him on my lap, my hand hooked securely at his hip to keep him from motoring off. What followed was like a weird cycle of baby Sun Salutations. He'd bury his face in my lap, poke his butt up into the air, push off with his toes, and raise his head back up. He did this for ten solid minutes -- head down, butt up, push off, head up. Head down, butt up, push off, head up.

I'm kind of excited, but also know that this is pretty much the end of life as we know it. No more skipping a day of sweeping up the dog hair, no more leaving shoes lying around in tempting locales, and no more plunking him down on a blanket long enough to make a sandwich and expecting him to be there when I get back.

Catch the moments as they fly

Friday again. Not sure how this keeps happening. We had a very nice visit to MB's family down South(ish). We stayed at his aunt and uncle's house on Saturday, and MB's grandparents and mom came over to hang out and visit with Nico. MB's papaw, who declined to hold Nico at the hospital, came straight over and scooped him off my lap. "I told you I'd hold you once you got big enough," he said. "Gimme some sugar." Once the sun was behind the house, I dressed Nico in his tiny swimming trunks and the smallest rash guard I could find (which was still too big) and took him into the above-ground pool. And oh my hell, you guys, he loved it.

I suspected he would since he enjoys splashing in the bath, but even I didn't predict how much he would like it. I had him in a hip sling that my mom made for me out of an old crib sheet because I was worried he'd wiggle out of my arms in the water. He started splashing with one hand, then turned and leaned way down so he could splash with both hands while the whole family stood in the yard laughing and cheering him on. It was a pretty great moment, I have to admit. After a while we stuck him in the float that Julia loaned me for the weekend, and he spent some time splashing and kicking around in it. MB's 18-year-old cousin hadn't met Nico yet, and she came home while we were in the pool. She threw on her bikini and jumped in with us, and we have a video of her blowing bubbles in the water to make Nico laugh. After our swim, I rinsed Nico off in the bathroom sink and put him to bed, and then MB and I stayed up and played guys-against-girls Cranium with his aunt and uncle, his cousin, and her boyfriend.

We don't see them as often as we probably should, and we had a really great visit. Time with them is always time well-spent, slower-paced and comfortable. We get loud and twangy and we eat too much and swear too much and drink too much sweet tea and I'm always a bit sad to leave. No family is perfect, but I really feel like I won the in-law lottery most of the time. In the early years of our marriage, I felt in my gut that this was a family I'd be glad and proud to bring a child into, and so far they are proving me right. From MB's papaw holding my little son in his huge farmer's hands to MB's slightly disreputable second uncle toting Nico around the kitchen on Sunday morning promising him a ride on his motorcycle (just around the yard, with a helmet on) and a pair of Harley boots from Paducah to MB's mom carrying him down to the fence so he could see the horses, the weekend was full of small, sweet moments.

And for his part, Nico was a champion of courting grandparental affection. He was mild-mannered and charming and tolerant of being passed around by people he hasn't seen since he was teeny-tiny, and slept well in two different houses in the playpen we borrowed from my parents. He is totally banking points toward getting his own pony one day.






And dude. DUDE. Look what my kid can do all of a sudden! What the heck are you playing at, child?




Reading:  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Photo Friday

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Water baby

Photo Friday

They're not quite fireworks, but they'll do. Wishing everyone an early Happy Fourth of July, a belated Happy Canada Day, or just a happy weekend. We're taking Nico to visit his out-of-state family for a few days, but when we get back I think I'll have another book review for you as well as another review via CSN Stores, online merchant of everything from headboards to hula hoops.


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Boychild

Suck on this

I read two very interesting posts on the eternal and mind-numbing breastfeeding debate this week. The first was from Her Bad Mother, suggesting that it may be high time we embrace the breast as a symbol of sexiness and as a source of nourishment, instead of engaging in a neverending cycle of "nursing-shaming" and retaliatory "slut-shaming." ("Ew, nursing! Boobs are gross!" / "Nursing isn't gross but your epic cleavage is, you whore.") The second was a response by Carolyn Castiglia over on Babble, in which she discusses the difficulties she had nursing and the embarrassment she felt when she needed to nurse in public. I didn't open the comments on HBM's post, but I did on the Babble post, at which point my common sense utterly deserted me and I decided to leave a comment of my own, admitting that I do feel a bit embarrassed about nursing in public and telling a very short version of Nico's nursing story.

After that, a few self-styled experts took it upon themselves to anonymously inform me that I didn't read anything about babies before I had one, to imply that I let my baby scream in his bassinet in the hospital, and to assure me that if I'd held him enough / fed him often enough / not made excuses / understood what he was really crying about (i.e. not hunger), then nursing would've been easy and natural and perfect for me. Well hot damn, anonymous commenters! It's too bad I didn't have your infinite wisdom at my disposal when my baby was wasting away. Oh, wait. The doctors were wrong about that. He wasn't wasting away, or hungry, because a mother's body not having enough milk to sustain the baby is just a myth. Clearly those commenters are right and (I quote) "people very obviously do not know their babies." I think the richest part of all is that I'm doing what they insist every mother should -- exclusively breastfeeding my baby -- but they're still ragging on me for not doing it fast enough.

All this is a long intro to me saying, look, after reading the original two posts I had planned to write a thoughtful post of my own about breastfeeding. But I'm sick of talking about it and figure I've been insulted enough by people who know more than me for one day. Instead, how about some five-minute book reviews? That sounds better, right? At least with those, no one can accuse me of not reading anything!


Visit the book blog for my quick and dirty reviews of the following books: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, Angels, Vampires, and Douche Bags by Carla Collins, The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett


Reading:  His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Playing:  Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly

Photo Friday

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Photo Friday

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Summer of love

When the Lady Gaga episode of Glee aired, I finally succumbed to my Twitter-fueled curiosity and watched it. Even though I felt like the vocals in the big musical numbers were rather over-produced, I liked it enough that I set up a series recording for the remaining episodes. My friend bibliophile81 saw me talking about Glee on Twitter, and she put the DVDs of season one on hold for me at the library. I ripped through season one and found it sharper and much funnier than I'd expected. And so quotable! So now I'm totally that obnoxious person going around reciting lines from a show that everyone else geeked out over ages ago. (But seriously, you guys. "Cross over to my side of this black shiny thing." "That's called a piano, Sue.")

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When Jonniker started The Book Lushes a few months ago, I was ridiculously excited. I've been waiting forever to be invited to join a book club. (And anyone can join! You should!) I have to say, so far these ladies have not steered me wrong. I skipped the first book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, because Nico was brand new and I didn't get it from the library's hold list until nearly the end of the month. The second book was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I liked so much that I immediately checked out and read the sequel and put my name on the list for the third one. I skipped The Year of Magical Thinking because I wasn't feeling up for a book dealing with the mortality of a spouse and child. Next we read Olive Kitteridge, which I expected to merely tolerate and ended up sort of loving. This month we are reading The Red Tent, another one I expected to not like much and really, really enjoyed. I'm so impressed with the Book Lush track record that I went back and got a copy of The Help and started it at work this week. And holy crap, it's soooooo good.

While everyone else was reading The Year of Magical Thinking, I finally got around to reading Watership Down (which my friend Tamsyn has been reminding me to read for years) and it was wonderful. I managed to find time to re-read American Gods for the 1 Book 1 Twitter project, though their reading / commenting schedule turned out to be way too slow for me and I gave up on the discussions after the second week when everyone else was talking about chapter five and I had already finished and moved on to something new. The bibliophile has also sent me some really excellent books, and I can wholeheartedly recommend Sarah Addison Allen's The Girl Who Chased the Moon and Brunonia Barry's The Map of True Places. So far 2010 has been a very good book year. Even though I've been crap at keeping up with reviews over on my book blog, I do keep a list of what I've read each year going back to 2006 in case anyone wants to look. I love peeking at other people's book lists. I am finding that I have plenty of time to squeeze a book or two in between each Book Lush selection, so if there's a book you think I should read, let me know!

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The baby, God, he's so cute. But also sometimes pitiful. Upon stirring from naps, he often turns and rubs his face on his blanket or my shirt before truly waking up. It's really stinking cute. Unfortunately right before he did it the other night, he spit up and I didn't know it, so when he turned his face to rub it on his blanket, he landed snout first in a pool of milkbarf. So then he was lying there crying pitifully, half awake and all spit-uppy. I managed to wipe most of it off his face, but as I was reaching for another flannel, he went for a second comforting blankie rub and found an additional splort of milk that I'd missed. Poor kid. It was so gross and yet impossibly funny. Infants...full of adorable Darwinian fail.

I did an outreach program at the library today (We made slime! It was great!) and as I was walking out through the children's room afterward I decided to browse a little and ended up checking out four books -- Nico's first library books! I'm way more excited about this than I should be, but I can't help it. When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library every week. She had a giant red and white canvas tote bag (seriously, large enough that I could sit in it when I was little), and we would fill it up with ten books per kid. Back then library books still had a card in a paper pocket glued inside the cover which the librarian would stamp with the due date. Mom collected all the due date cards and kept them in the china hutch so that when we went back the next week she knew exactly how many books we had to dig up. These days the library gives you a printed receipt listing all your checked out items, so I will tape Nico's receipt into my planner to remind me to return his books. A librarian I know tried to talk me into signing him up for the summer reading program this year, but since we usually just read the same two books every night (Bear Snores On and Guess How Much I Love You, we'd never make our goal for the summer. Plus I'd kind of like his first official summer reading year to be one in which he can participate by helping to pick out his books and such. I hope he'll love the library as much as I do.

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"I'll have you know I have my PhD." "You got it online, Sue!"

'Round Here

So, I am not dead or ill or otherwise incapacitated. Promise. I've just been busy with a baby who gets more interactive every day. Also, I've developed an unfortunate new habit of falling asleep at 8:30 PM when Nico goes to bed and not waking up until 11:00 PM, at which point I have to shower and pump and then go to bed for real. Or I do what I did last night: fall asleep at 8:30, wake up at 11:00, eat a bowl of cereal, then go nurse the baby who has decided he's hungry, only to fall asleep AGAIN and wake up at 4:30. Still in need of a shower. Sigh. I did have a lovely evening with Nico before we both fell asleep, though, so there's that.

Photo Friday

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Don't rock the boat, baby

Yesterday was my annual canoeing trip with Danger. We planned to do our usual 14 mile trip, but when I called last week to make sure they were running it, the person I talked to neglected to tell me that they close that trip at 12 on the dot. Due to some Nico-related delays, we didn't get to the canoe station until 12:14 and they wouldn't budge even though there was no way it was going to take us six hours to complete the trip and we easily would've made it to the end before the last pickup. We ended up going on a very crowded 7 mile trip, but since all the people who went into the water before us literally pulled their canoes over to the banks within twenty feet of the launch to start drinking beer, we easily left the entire group behind. The weather was stunningly perfect, and the whole trip was fantastic and relaxing even though we ran into an exhibitionist.

No lie, total flasher. There's no way the dude was just taking a pee break on what he thought was a deserted bend of the river, either, because I didn't even see him up on the bank until he made it a point to yell hello at us. So I turn to say hi back, and there's a flabby pasty white dude with his swimtrunks around his ankles and his (really unimpressive) junk hanging out in the breeze.

One summer we had a flasher who was targeting the local chain of ice cream stores that I worked for in high school, presumably because they were staffed entirely by teenage girls and were open late-ish. We'd all been warned that he was, well, on the loose, and so I spent a few weeks concocting elaborate revenge fantasies involving the hot water from the coffee machine and a moment of precision aim or of calling all the other girls together to point and laugh. But the one night he showed up at the store when I was there, I decided to just deny him the thing he wanted the most. When he knocked on the drive-through window and then dropped his pants, I rolled my eyes and kept on walking. I didn't even tell anyone else he'd showed up.

I figured that approach would work for the river flasher, too, so I just said hello, kept on paddling, and didn't turn back around when he tried to start a conversation about whether we'd been swimming in the river yet. I sincerely hope he and his rather small penis were disappointed. Seriously, though, why do hot buff dudes never feel the need to strip in public? It's always, always the pudgy pasty ones. Such a waste.

Oh, and there was one more bit of weirdness. When we got to the take-out ramp, Danger ran the canoe up into the gravel and got out to pull it ashore so I could get out. As she was doing that, this high school looking dude came over and said he'd get the boat. He didn't ask me to get out or tell me to sit tight, so I figured he was going to pull the boat up a little bit so I could get out, which is what the ramp guys have always done in the past. Now, I didn't ask or expect him to haul my heavy ass along in the boat, I would have been glad to get out, but he didn't give me any chance to before he grabbed the canoe and yanked on it, throwing me into the side of the metal boat and nearly dumping me into the river. What the hell, man? I said, "You know what, I'm happy to get out," and waded ashore. I get that being the guy that drags the giant metal canoes up the ramp is kind of a crappy job, but at least be decent to people, you know? Me and my bruised ass and knee would appreciate it.

Photo Friday

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Greater than

(stolen from Jen and Kerri)

music > silence

books > TV

woods > beaches

reading > shopping

thrift stores > malls

bare face > makeup

daily ponytail > flat ironing

flip flops > heels

jeans > dresses

ice cream > steak

milk > any other drink

camping > five star hotels

camels > monkeys

cake > pie

yoga > therapy

Fall > Summer

friends & family > fortune

life with my boys > anything else, ever

Boobylicious

As silly as it feels to shoot a video of my kid doing something as mundane as lying on his playmat making funny noises, I'm glad that I got his dolphin squeals on video last week, because he has suddenly dropped that skill completely from his repertoire. He's changing so fast, a point underscored yesterday when I ran into a friend and her six-week-old daughter who just now is about the size Nico was when he was born. I was actually a bit nervous to hold her baby, even though I hold mine every day. At 4 1/2 months, Nico is solid, heavy, almost always wiggling. In comparison, this sleeping newborn felt impossibly light and fragile. How can it be that my giant vibrant boy was not too long ago tiny and calm?



We've come to another highly symbolic milestone for Nico this week. Since strapping him into his carseat always makes him cranky and since he does such a good job holding his head steady, I decided to let him try riding in his stroller on his own last Wednesday when we took Indy for a walk, instead of making him ride in the carseat snapped into the stroller. It was such a success that we've been doing it ever since, despite the pangs I feel seeing him look like such a toddler. It's a small and stupid thing to get nostalgic over, but that's what mothering a baby seems to be -- a constant reminder of how fleeting each stage is before they're moving on to bigger and better things.

Exhibit A:  baby
Exhibit B:  big boy
On Thursday Nico and I went out to lunch with my friend Evilducky and we went thrift shopping for the first time since Nico was born. I have a problem now where jeans that fit my thighs are baggy in the butt and jeans that fit in the butt are too tight in the thighs. For decency's sake, I always choose the ones that fit in the thigh, but I only have one pair that looks nice enough to wear to work. I cling to the hope that I won't carry this last seven pounds of pregnancy weight on my thighs forever, so I am unwilling to pay full price for jeans. After attempting to try on about a dozen pairs at several thrift stores, it has been made clear that I am officially stuck in thunder thigh / saggy butt territory for a while. But I did find a reasonably cute pair of Old Navy jeans for $5 that I found passable at the store, almost regretted buying, and then ended up loving once I got home and put them on. I'm sure they feel more attractive than they look, but I'm just going to roll with it.

Another wardrobe problem I'm having is beyond the power of thrift stores to heal, unfortunately. Before I got pregnant my boobs were already hovering around a size 34F. Well, sagging around. Nothing hovers when you're an F cup. No, it's not awesome. No, you don't wish you had this problem, no matter how petite your bosoms are, believe me. I have disliked the way I look for years, and only the knowledge that I wanted to try to breastfeed my kids kept me from seeking a reduction ages ago. Since Nico's birth, the hated "girls" (let's be honest, these things are full-on babushka grandmothers) have grown regrettably larger. I'm actually not even sure what bra size I should be wearing. There's no way I'm going to get fitted right now, either. They're too grotesque and besides, the one time i did get fitted, back when I was probably still a DD, the "bra fit specialist" told me I was a 36C. I haven't been a C since high school. I finally sucked it up and ordered a pretty and expensive nursing bra about a month ago in the largest size I could imagine needing, a 34 H/I. As in hell, no. I'm horrified to tell you that it didn't fit and I had to return it in the hope of finding a site that carries the same bra in a J/K. As in I wish I was kidding. It probably goes without saying that I'll be doing everything in my power to get downsized as soon as I wean Hugo 2, whenever that may be. I will never be glad that I had giant boobs, but at least I can send them off one day with a slightly fond farewell just for these months I've been able to exclusively breastfeed Nico. We'll always have that, my dear frenemies!

In his inexplicably petite pack and play

Cheeks!

Photo Friday

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A little Wednesday morning happy

(OHMYGOD, you guys. MY HEART.)

miscellania

It seems like almost everyone I follow on Twitter or my blogroll has recently started running and is signing up to do 5Ks and half marathons. I'm reminded of a dream that I had when I was pregnant with Nico. For as long as I can remember, running is the one thing I can never do in dreams. I can walk, but as soon as I start to try to run, it's like I'm moving through Jello. Lots of times in my dreams I will end up crawling along on hands and knees because it's faster than trying to run. I don't know if this is some screwed up aspect of my psyche manifesting or if it's sleep paralysis or something else entirely, but it's weird and sort of frustrating. But one night during my pregnancy, I dreamed that I was running, I was free, my body was carrying me along and it was exhiliarating. I woke up and I thought, that's why people run. And also, I want to do that. Maybe someday I will, though I don't think they've invented a sports bra that could allow it right now.

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Speaking of dreams, I must be reaching the saturation point with all the episodes of The Wire that I've watched. I've got season five on DVD from the library after watching the previous four seasons in succession, and the other night I dreamed that I offered Marlo Stanfield shelter in the (nonexistent) apartment in my garage. When I told MB about it, he said, "That's crazy. You'd offer it to Omar first." Damn straight I would. If Omar dies before the end of the show, don't tell me. I need to believe he rides off into the sunset in the finale. It's a goddamn marvel, this show, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't sometimes make me wish I was a drinker so I could drink myself to sleep after watching a few episodes. It's so fundamentally sad, especially season four.

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I just finished reading Olive Kitteridge for the Book Lushes, and I really liked it. It seems to be a love it or hate it kind of book, and the most remarkable thing about it for me is that it made me want to write again. The tone and pacing and voices of the characters tripped something in my brain and I spent a few days after I finished it walking around composing passages in my head, something I haven't done in at least a year. One of my old college writing classmates contacted me on facebook a few weeks ago and has set up a get-together for a writing group in June, and I am really looking forward to it. Could I write fiction again? I feel a glimmer of hope that I could.

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Overall he doesn't do a type of music that appeals to me, but the photographer who took Nico's picture a few weeks back has this song on her website, and I could listen to it over and over:

I'm the same way about Rihanna's "Umbrella," to be honest. I sometimes look it up on YouTube when MB's not around and hit replay about forty times. Does anyone else do that? If so, what songs catch you in their web?

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Are you sick of hearing about my kid? I hope not, because I need to tell you that I bought him a package of SIZE THREE DIAPERS yesterday. SIIIIIZE THREEEEEE. OMFG. He seems to have blown right past his 3 - 6 month clothes, and I can't figure out how that happened. How did he go from still fitting into his 0-3s (albeit just barely) and now not even a full month later he's busting out of the 3-6s? Crazy talk, that's what that is. I'm suddenly extra glad for the handful of 6-9 rompers that were in the box of hand-me-downs my cousin gave me. Somehow we ended up with a quarter of a zillion 0-3 clothes, a billion 3-6s, a few dozen 6-9s, and barely any 9-12s. Then he's got an entire plastic tote each jammed full of 12-18s and 18-24s. Apparently I'm prejudiced against 9-12 month clothes for some reason. I guess it's a good thing he'll probably be in that size at the end of the summer, because apparently he's going to be mostly naked.

His new things: 1. Screech-squealing at top volume and way up in dolphin-speak octaves. The dog is not a fan. 2. Locating and grabbing his feet. Makes it hard to get diapers on him, but it's so damn cute. One of the girls at breastfeeding group last time said she found her daughter in her crib one day with both big toes in her mouth, so I'm waiting for that and fully expect to keel over dead from the adorability. 3. Actually putting toys into his mouth. He's still a bit hit-or-miss on the hand / mouth coordination, but he's getting much better. He has this rattle that looks like a weird lumpy caterpillar with a mohawk, and so far it's his favorite to nom. I live in constant fear that the dog is going to find and eat it. I suppose it's inevitable that the dog will one day eat one of his stuffed toys, so maybe it's better that he do it now before Nico knows the difference. But man I'd be bummed if that weirdass little caterpillar bit it.


Oh, and 4. Rolling over. He's become a champion of rolling onto his front and then getting stuck there. I keep telling him he needs to stay on his belly and practice rolling back to his back, but he's not convinced. Here he is demonstrating #1 and #4 while dressed in the most adorable owl pajamas ever made:



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Don't forget to enter my giveaway! US & Canada, $40 shopping spree, blah-de-blah, go leave a comment!

Happy baby overlo...;flakweja;iwe[oai *KABOOM*

Photo Friday

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Because everyone loves free stuff

I started a review blog, and to kick it off I'm giving away a $40 online shopping spree (open to residents of the US and Canada!). Check it out! (bonus baby photos included)

What's your name?

I discovered a small stash of 6 month size T-shirts in Nico's dresser, and since that's the size he's just barely still fitting into right now, I've been putting the T-shirts on him one after another so he at least gets to wear each one once. It wasn't so long ago that all these shirts looked comically large when I held them up to his chest. I snapped a photo of him this morning in his T-shirt of the day, and you guys...he looks like some kind of grown ass BOY all of a sudden instead of a pudgy little baby.


I'm not entirely sure I can handle this.

Oh, and his no-clothes dry-diaper weight this week (at two days shy of four months old) was 17 lbs 7 oz. Have mercy.


Reading:  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, for the Book Lushes

Playing:  the Into the Wild soundtrack by Eddie Vedder

Take it like a mom

So, today. OMFG, this day. After I fed Nico this morning, I put him back in his crib to sleep and then I went to sleep. He learned to roll over this week, but can only go back to front, at which point he gets stuck and pissed off. He woke up on his tummy shouting indignantly, and when I rescued him I found that he'd peed out of his diaper. No biggie, for I follow a friend's advice and always have two sheets on his bed with a waterproof pad in between. I stripped off the top sheet and pad, changed him into a cloth diaper and a T-shirt, and brought him back to our room. I nursed him again and then he pooped. It sounded like a small poo, so I stuck my finger in the leg elastic to peek in and check, and lo...it was not a small poo. It was a giant poo, and my finger was in it. But still, I was cheerful!

I took him into the nursery and changed him into another cloth diaper, then took him back and let him finish his second breakfast. He fell asleep and I let him nap on my lap for about twenty minutes, because even though I have tons of stuff to do around the house right now, I don't want to do my work at the expense of enjoying these little moments with him. Finally I decided I had to get some chores done, so I put him back in his crib and went down to start boxing up my stuff in the side porch / office so that we can clean it up and turn it into a playroom. I got two shelves on one bookcase cleared before Nico woke up crying again. I went up and found that he'd peed out a second diaper. Poor guy! Two in one day! Still cheery! Changed, nursed, and once he fell asleep, I put him on the big bed so I could change his crib sheet since he had now peed on the backup sheet.

I like Nico's crib well enough and I try not to complain because it was an incredibly generous gift. But every time I change the sheets, the metal support frame for the crib sags. It has brackets on each corner where you can raise and lower the mattress height, but if I lift the corner of the mattress to mess with the sheets, the opposite corner bracket collapses. I discovered last time the easiest way to do it is to take the mattress out of the crib entirely, put the sheets and pads on, and then carefully put it back in, trying to get the weight to hit the frame exactly evenly, which is nearly impossible with a tight-fitting, double-sheeted mattress. Nico had started to fuss again, having a sixth sense for inconvenient times to refuse to nap, so I put him in his mini-swing on the floor several feet away from the crib and went back to finish. When I got the mattress out, I lifted it too high and I hit the ceiling fan, which was on (of course). One of the blades came loose, bounced off the bed, and nearly beaned the dog, who then bolted from the room. Little clumps of super gross thick dust that were built up on the fan went spiff!, all over the bed and the floor. I realized a few minutes later that the blade could easily have landed on Nico, as he was completely unprotected in his swing. (I still am not entirely okay about this, even though he is.)

I finished re-sheeting his mattress and sure enough, as soon as I put it in the crib, the frame collapsed. I readjusted the frame, put the mattress back in, it collapsed. I got it balanced just right, put the mattress in, and when I tested it by pushing on each end, the fucking thing collapsed. I finally just gave up, moved the frame to the lowered position, and put the mattress in. It's harder to get Nico in and out, but at least I know the frame isn't going to fall while he's in there. If I could have picked up the crib and chucked the whole thing across the room, I would have. And that wasn't even the end of it. When I picked up the fan blade to reattach it, I realized it hadn't simply slipped out of its position. It had snapped completely off. There's no way to fix it and the fan spins all wonky without it. So it's not even noon, I've stuck my finger in poo and changed two peed-out diapers and outfits. The fan is off so it's hot in our room, there are still clumps of dust everywhere, Nico's peed-on sheets are piled on the bed, our sheets now need to be changed, the dog is freaked out, none of my housework has been completed, I'm pissed off at the crib and at myself, and the fucking fan is broken. And I get to email MB and tell him, guess what! I broke the fan in an incredibly stupid fashion! Let's go spend money we need for other things on a new one because your wife is a moron who almost hit your baby in the face with a flying fan blade!

To his credit, MB was very gracious about the whole thing and only teased me a little bit. By the time he got home I was seeing the absurd humor in the morning, especially after working out my rage with a broom on all the errant clumps of dog hair populating our wood floors. I treated him to a litany of complaints when he walked through the door, and when I finally finished, he said, "Suck it up! Take it like a mom!" And I guess I did, poo finger and all.

"Harness your chi, Mama."

Photo Friday

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Whoops

I totally didn't mean to disappear for a week ten days. Nothing major is going on, but there's lots and lots of small things. And one very important small thing, of course.

(jumparoo = quite possibly the best 20 bucks I've ever spent on Craigslist)

Clearing out the cobwebs

My brain is full of little bits of this and that, and I'm wondering if the best way to deal with it is just to write it all down so it's cleared out. Be warned, what follows is probably kind of boring and is definitely disjointed.

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We moved Nico's changing table and clothes up to his room last weekend. I'm not sure why, but it made me really sad to see the changing table leave the dining room. Maybe because it seemed to symbolize the full and final end of my time at home with him, perhaps even the end of his true tinyhood? Not sure. I was bummed, though. But once we got his stuff upstairs, it was nice to get his clothes sorted into his dresser instead of the overfull little plastic cart they'd been stuffed into since he was born. I took the time to pack up all his outgrown newborn and 0-3 month clothes (sob!), which filled up an entire plastic storage bin. I thought I'd be able to keep his 0-3 and 3-6 stuff together, but apparently I underestimated the true vastness of his collection of very small onesies.

Speaking of outgrown clothes, Nico's ginormous feet are now too big for the 12-months-size socks someone gave him for Christmas and I'm on the hunt for a package of 18 or 24 month socks next time I go shopping. For my not quite four-month-old. I'm used to his feet, so they don't look that big to me, but here's Nico's foot (on the left) beside Julia's nine month old son's foot:


Her nine-month-old wears size 18 month clothes, so at least I know he'll be able to hold his own against Nico when they start playing together. Brawny corn-fed boys for the win!

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I agreed to brine some steaks and chicken breasts for MB to grill tonight, not really thinking about how that was going to require me to touch giant chunks of meat. I'm pretty certain that if I had to cook my own meaty dinners, I'd become a vegetarian. The cookout ended up being pretty rad. BoMB and MB's friend from work, Mr. Muskrat, came over to eat with us, and we had a ridiculous spread. It was really nice outside, so I took Nico's Exersaucer out to the backyard and set it up in the shade while the guys were minding the grill.

Just this week Nico has started really reaching for toys and trying to get them into his mouth. He hasn't quite mastered the second part with toys (though he's really good at getting blankies in there), so sometimes he'll catch the toy and then look at it like, "Okay, awesome. Now what?" I can see the little wheels turning as he tries to figure out how to get the toy from his hand to his mouth. Pretty soon he's going to ace it and then everything will be in the mouth.







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There was a bit of an uproar recently over ugly gardens, which amused me since my garden is about as ugly as they come. I always start with really good intentions and then by mid-July it's super hot and the mosquitoes are the size of 747s and I'm just over it. Everything gets all overgrown and Life After People-y. Last year was particularly bad because I was pregnant through the entire gardening season and thus less tolerant of heat and busy with other things.

I've decided to embrace my ugly garden yet again, though, and after we cleaned up the dinner dishes I went out and planted four little cucumber sprouts that somebody gave me the other day. Before I could plant them, I had to trim back a bunch of whippy branches from the huge-ass overgrown bushes that are right outside the garden area. Then I had to clean out a half-trashcan worth of dead leaves that had blown in and collected in the cucumber corner over the winter. Once I got the scrawny plants in the ground, I set up the gates I used as a cucumber climbing apparatus last year. Pretty garden aficionados would be horrified, I'm sure.

We're planning to add some tomato plants, peppers, and zucchini, and I guess we should probably get on that soon. Maybe this Sunday? We always seem to wait to plant our garden until Mother's Day weekend, so I guess this is about par for the course for us.

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So, has there ever been a book that people keep telling you to read, and you never seem to get around to it, but then finally you do, and you're like, Aha! NOW I SEE. For several years now my friend Tamsyn has been reminding me that I should read Watership Down. I had always meant to read it, just kept forgetting, etc. But I finally dug out my copy last week and NOW I SEE. It is SO good. So good. I'm probably 2/3 of the way through, and I love it. I've been warned not to read the end at work, though. Okay, tell me...what are your Aha books?

one year later

A year ago today, two lines showed up on the stick and our lives changed forever. A long but mostly easy pregnancy followed, and then a blessedly healthy baby. Three months and three weeks after giving birth, I find that motherhood -- while not always easy -- suits me. I feel a bit like I was made for this job, and I'm so incredibly stupidly immensely grateful that I get to be mother to this amazing baby boy. To the Universe I say thank you, thank you, thank you.



(pictures taken on Thursday by a wonderful local photographer who needed baby models for her portfolio)