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)

Photo Friday

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This love has got no ceiling

I've often wished to have a kind of cosmic tape recorder, something I could use to document moments in my life that I want to replay over and over or tuck away as keepsakes. Some of the moments are big ones, like meeting MB or exchanging vows on our wedding day. Some of the moments are small ones, significant only to me, things like seeing the Pacific for the first time, watching the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, standing beneath the trees in the temperate rainforest.

Since Nico was born, my fondness for the idea of a memory recorder has (predictably) intensified. I want a recording of the moment I first heard him cry; of the moment I first saw his face, his tiny fingers and toes, his tufty red hair; of the way it felt when the nurse placed his little nearly-naked body on my chest. I want to play back the way he smells, that sweet undefinable baby scent that I have to soak up before I leave him for the day, burying my face in his neck and breathing it in. I want to feel the weight of him in my arms, back when he was tiny and now that he must top at least 15 pounds. I wish I had a recording of the way his kicks and tumbles felt while I was pregnant with him, of his newborn cry.

In the absence of such a wonderful gadget, I do my best. I take dozens of photos, I spend minutes that add up to hours just watching him and trying to memorize everything about him, and I write. Hoping each time that the words will call back the feelings and the sounds and the sights, I write.

Poetic justice

Even though I know I'm not supposed to, I usually let Nico sleep on my lap in the mornings after I've nursed him in bed. We've never had any trouble or any scares until today, when he flat-out fell off the bed. I woke up from REM sleep to see his tiny blue-pajama'd body roll off the edge of the mattress, and I have never moved so fast in my life. But of course I wasn't fast enough, and he fell between the bed and the chair beside the bed where I put his Boppy and blanket when he's in his crib. He only cried for as long as it took me to scoop him up and clutch him to my chest, apologizing and rocking him. After cuddling him for a bit and nursing him again I put him in his own bed to sleep. He seemed no worse for wear, but I felt positively wretched.

We do our grocery shopping on Sundays, and today we decided to go out to lunch before we went to the store. Nico was a champ all through the meal, but by the time we were finished he was ready to eat. I nursed him in the passenger seat of the car and then because it was raining, I decided to put him in his carseat from the front seat instead of standing outside and getting wet. I had to kneel on my seat and recline the back in order to reach the straps on his seat, and once I got him fastened in, the reclined seat needed to be un-reclined before the baby seat would fit into the base. Maybe you can see where this is going. If you can, you're smarter than I am. I needed one hand to hold Nico's seat steady and one hand to operate the lever on my seat, so the only thing left to catch the seat back as it sprang upright was my face.

I can't help but think that it must've looked hilarious while it was happening.

Not quite the sympathetic reaction I was hoping for.

Photo Friday

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Because nobody makes "Baby's First Earth Day" bibs

I didn't completely forget about Earth Day this year, but I did forget that I wanted to take a cute cheesy picture of Nico in one of his hippie onesies for the occasion. I packed a week's worth of outfits for him in his grandma's house bag on Tuesday morning, not thinking about the fact that Thursday was Earth Day until, well, Thursday around lunchtime.

It seemed a bit cruel to re-dress Nico just for a photo and then re-dress him again for bedtime, so this is going to have to do:

"Happy Earth Day, everybody!"




"Mmmm...organic cotton!"

P.S. Two days left to win a book! It's good, I promise!

Among my tribe

I only have two local friends with babies, and I only see one of them regularly. This past Friday, I had an invitation to an informal get-together that a couple I hung out with in college put together for another couple I didn't know very well back in the day as a celebration of the impending birth of their second daughter. I waffled all day about going, feeling kind of wallflower-y and awkward, but decided I didn't really have anything to lose. I packed up Nico (MB was teaching) and stopped in, figuring if it sucked I could use the baby as an excuse to bail. And you know what? We ended up staying for about two and a half hours.

There were almost a dozen kids running around the house and a six-month-old boy riding around on his mother's hip. I hovered around the periphery for a bit, but before I realized what was happening, I found myself standing around the dining room table chatting with five other young hippie-ish mothers. When Nico got hungry, I contemplated leaving, but then retreated to an out-of-the-way armchair and nursed him under a cover while the six-month-old's mother nursed him in a chair nearby. Solidarity! After he ate I got called into the kitchen by the host, the guy who was my lab partner in quite a few classes in college, and ended up talking birth stories with another girl I've known casually for several years.

The people who read this who don't have kids probably think this all sounds lame, but I felt like I'd found my tribe and was among my people at last. This is why playgroups exist, I suspect, because even when you're committed to live a life that isn't All Baby All the Time, sometimes you just need to talk to someone else who really gets it, someone else who is in the trenches with you, changing the diapers and committing to breastfeeding even when it sucks (ha!) and taking the bad with the good in this crazy, wonderful, sometimes overwhelming but always worthwhile whirlwind.

Constant vigilance

It's that time again! We must stockpile our armaments and our awareness and such against the coming of Spring and velociraptor hunting season (them hunting us, that is). Join me for the second annual Velociraptor Awareness Day and be prepared!!!

Are you prepared?

>> Read up on the latest info, and be prepared to hold impromptu seminars on the streets

>> Post up- Whether it be "Velociraptor Entry Point" posted on weak areas in your neighborhood, or going online to your favorite forum and raising the alarm, let people know what's up!

>> Dress up- Hold mock attacks throughout the day to really raise eyebrows and raise awareness

>> Film it up- Whether it be Jurassic Park, or your favorite educational video, every little bit helps

>> Light it up- Hold a candlelight vigil in a central area for the victims and their families. Can't think of any victims? Put in the faces of the actors in the movies, or an xkcd stick figure, or Randal Munroe himself, or me, as I will be away from campus, and therefore I can be a substitute victim. Also, you could use the faces of the friends who didn't join the group, as they are potential future victims.

>> Party it up- If the day is over, and everyone is still alive, you've done your job, so celebrate!

Please have a safe and enjoyable Velociraptor Awareness Day!

Photo Friday

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Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

The end, the beginning

It's 6:35 AM when I begin this post, though it'll probably sit in the queue until I remember it's here, hours from now. I sit propped against the headboard, pillows at my back and the baby napping on my chest. He wakes up almost every morning around 6, nurses for 15 minutes, and falls back to sleep. I used to try to motivate myself to get out of bed once he went back to sleep, but it doesn't seem so important anymore. In five days at this time, I'll be scrambling to get our things together and drive Nico to my parents' house before going to work.

I tend to really enjoy my job, but I haven't missed it. I always thought I would, figured I'd be a bit bored and eager to get back after 12 weeks of maternity leave, but that's not the case. Instead I'm heavy-hearted, deeply envious of my Canadian friends and their entire year of leave. How can I go back now, when it seems like every day he's doing something new? I've arranged to work longer days so that I can take Mondays off to spend with my boy. Working 7 AM to 5 PM is going to be a bit brutal, I think. I'm not much of a morning person and spending ten hours a day at work was hard before I had a kid to miss. But I'm hoping it'll be worth it for the extra day at home.

I suspected motherhood would be a big change, and I suppose it is in a lot of accumulated small ways. I also expected there to be a period of adjustment and maybe a struggle to adapt, but it hasn't been hard at all. I feel like I slipped into this new skin so easily it was barely noticeable, as if some physical and emotional railroad switch was thrown and I trundled off in a new direction with barely a backward glance. As much as it stuns me to say out loud I am a mother, I have a son, it is also the most natural and uncomplicated thing.

Nico won't remember these 60 weekdays we spent together, usually just the two of us, but I will never forget. I will hold the memories of these calm hours like a treasure, something to clutch tightly in the days ahead as we adjust to our new routine, our new life.

Eleven weeks for Easter

Photo Friday

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A giveaway and a half

I'm giving away a copy of Truly, Madly by Heather Webber over on my book blog. If you're a fan of fun, sexy mysteries, check it out! The giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada, and closes at midnight on April 11.


I'll also have a really cool giveaway up and running soon in cooperation with CSN stores, online sellers of kids bedding, toys, and tons of other products. Stay tuned for details!