A Mom's Reflection

Dear D,

      You are the absolute light of my life, sweetie. Yesterday was your very first birthday and I was so proud and happy to watch you cheerfully playing with your new toys, interacting and flirting with everyone, enjoying every second being the center of attention. It was just an amazingly joyful experience to watch you.

       During these past 12 months I have watched you change so much and develop this incredible little personality that I learn more about with each passing day. You're so full of unbridled enthusiasm and every time you learn some new skill - crawling, walking, pointing - I find myself feeling so excited for you because it gives you a new way to explore this world you never seem to tire of.

      I won't tell you it was always easy. Colic, sleeplessness (yours and mine), teething, sickness - we've been through it all, buddy. While I still don't always have as much as I need, you have taught me the virtue of patience in ways that no one else ever could. You have reminded me of what it is like to be a child. You have made it so that everything old is new again. There have been many nights where I actually want you to stay awake past your bedtime because I will miss you if you go to sleep. (Luckily for everyone, common sense always prevails over that temptation.)

    My favorite moments of every day this past year, the one I will never forget even though no photos or videos exist of it, are those that happen when I bring you into bed with me in the mornings to cuddle, nurse and (hopefully) fall back asleep for a little while longer. So many of those times I have stared at your sleeping face in the crook of my arm, taken a mental snapshot, and said to myself "I have never loved anyone or anything more in my life than this little creature right here."

    My darling, sweet, baby boy, this year with you has been a gift. I love watching you turn into a little boy, and I will love watching you grow into a man. I promise you I will continue to do my best every day to make sure that your life is full of love, affection, and support as you grow up and make sure you have the tools you need to do well in this crazy, unforgiving, and complicated world.

    I love you more than words, D. Happy Birthday.

Love,
Mama

It's Always Something

I've been away for a bit longer than normal, barely having time to read and comment on your pages. My Grandpa's death was like a 12 day event, with family flying in and staying with us and subsequent visiting with others who stayed elsewhere. I've also been working on planning D's first birthday party in June, which has turned into a minor clusterfuck because apparently everyone either waits until the last minute to rsvp or doesn't rsvp at all, which REALLY pisses me off.

But beyond all that, I'm feeling pretty beaten down in general. The absolute deadline for the bathroom renovation is the baby's party, which is less than a month away. That means that every single day, all day, I am by myself with D while A is at work. And when A gets home, we eat dinner, and then he goes to work on the bathroom until bedtime. So I am by myself with D all evening as well. For the past few weeks he seems to think that whining and temper tantrums over stupid shit are just the Awesomest way to spend time with Mama.

The first person among my friends to have a baby now has 2 of them, and the oldest is 5. A couple of years ago I asked her, "So how's motherhood?" At the time she still only had one.

She said, "It's pretty good. Once you realize and accept the fact that your kid is an asshole, it gets much easier. Because up until that point you constantly ask yourself what you're doing wrong and how can you fix it and it makes you crazy. But kids are assholes, and more often than not it has nothing to do with you."

I thought it was a pretty amusing thing to say and of course, back then, I didn't understand. Now, I do.

"Hi, my name is JLK, and my son is an asshole." *sigh*

I've realized it, but I haven't yet accepted it. Even just typing that sentence makes me cringe and itch to delete it and write something nicer. But that would be sugarcoating and I hate sugarcoating.

Everything right now feels like a struggle. Bedtime is a struggle. Diaper changing is a battle of wills. Changing his goddamn clothes is an exercise in futility. Keeping the child from eating the cat food, dumping their water bowl, or trying to explore the litter box makes me feel like Sisyphus, only instead of pushing a boulder up a mountain, I'm dragging a toddler across a tile floor.

It has only been getting harder.

He took his first steps the day before he turned 11 months, and hasn't shown any interest in walking since. This child is 24lbs and has weighed over 20lbs since he was 5-6 months old. I am so freaking tired of carrying him all the time that I could scream. He doesn't hang onto me to help with the weight - instead he leans over, flops around, and makes it as difficult as humanly possible. My upper body looks like Vin Diesel's right now.

There is so much going on, so many things I need to do, and I am losing my ever-loving mind over here.

If Only

There needs to be a place where, on those days, you can just drop your child (or children) off and know that he or she is in very safe, capable hands until whenever you decide to return.

Image taken from Hollands Jewelers Blog

You know what I'm talking about - a place you can put them when you're seriously on the verge of losing your shit. Where you don't have to call first. You just show up with your frazzled self, hand off the little brat, and come back to pick them up whenever you're feeling better.

I started thinking up some names for such a place:

"Mental Health Day"care

The Sanity Asylum

The Sanity Sandbox

Take a Penny, Leave a Suzie

The Kiddie Kennel

Minor Retreat

The Rest Stop

Whine to Wine

Yes, JLK is being kind of an asshole right now. It's been one of those days and I won't lie, I was fantasizing about what it would be like to have the ability to drop D off somewhere and be like "I'll be back in a few days" and head off to the shore or something for some peace and fucking quiet.

An accurate representation of what my day would have looked like. If I had earplugs.

Please don't get me wrong. I love my son dearly. But today was a nonstop whine- and shriek-fest and I thought my head was going to explode when it was barely 2pm. I kept coming back to the same thought: "When your baby has colic, you tell yourself 'He's just a baby, it's not his fault, it's his only way of communicating.' But at what point can you comfortably acknowledge that he's just a brat sometimes? 11 months? 2 years?"

When does it become okay (in your own head or otherwise) to be like "Okay, kid. Now you're just being a douchebag"?

And I was also thinking what a better place this world would be if moms could go to a neighbor (or anyone else they know and trust, for that matter) and say "I'm about to lose my shit. Can you please take this child before I sell him in exchange for a bus ticket to Hoboken?" and feel okay about it. Feel like a better parent for recognizing her limits and taking a break when needed. Feel like it's okay to take a moment (or 10) for yourself every once in awhile.

As I put D down to bed tonight, my final thought was this:

"Fuck, would it be nice to paint my toenails in the middle of the day again."

Ooooh. If only........

Learned From Experience...

You can feed your 9 month-old baby curried pork with coconut and mango. He might even really, really like it!

But you WILL regret it the next day.

Oh man, will you regret it the next day.

Where The F*ck is Mary Poppins???

My childcare situation is in chaos right now. My sister, who is the closest thing to a nanny that I have, is currently trying to get a full-time job which would render her unavailable for babysitting while I work. My mother, who watches D one day a week has proven herself somewhat unreliable, selfish, and often more trouble and inconvenience than her service is worth. (But that's a whole other post.....)

So I have found myself in the unfortunate position of trying to find a nanny. As much as I abhor the idea of leaving my son with a stranger, I am running out of options. I can't afford daycare because of the minimums they charge and I only need 2 days a week. Plus with D's age, (9 months), he is beginning separation and stranger anxiety and the idea of dropping him off in a new place with new people and all sorts of strange kids would make me suicidal with guilt.

I went on FB and asked my circle of peeps where they would recommend I start my search. They suggested sittercity.com, care.com, and nannies4hire.com (which had the highest fees, so I'm skipping them.) I also inquired to College Nannies, but their hourly rate starts about 70% higher than what I am willing and able to pay.

I discovered a couple of things in my searches. First, I am swayed much more by a nanny's looks than I would like to admit. There are just way too many hot, young nannies out there - no wonder so many dudes get into trouble. Second, because of how young many of these women are, most of them are only available for evenings, weekends, and summers. That doesn't help me at all, especially since I get summers off from work like a teacher. And finally, the idea of having someone come to my house, take care of my son the way I want them to, and do some light housekeeping like unloading the dishwasher, prepping for dinner, doing the baby's laundry - is such an enticing thought that it helps to assuage some of that guilt I experience for considering handing my son off to someone I don't know from Adam.

I've never been an employer before, so this is an interesting experience for me. When a potential nanny applies to your job, you receive a message from them that is somewhat akin to a cover letter. I have noticed that while some of these people definitely know how to apply for a job, many of them don't have a clue. For example, my job posting clearly states that I am hiring for the academic year, and that hours woud be reduced over the summer to the minimum we would need to keep my son comfortable with them so that when they return in August for real, I don't have to worry about him freaking out. Not to mention the job posting clearly shows a weekly calendar where I checked off the days and hours that I am looking to fill. One girl sent me a message that says "Since I am a student I can not travel during class, but I would love to be considered for the job during the summer." Um. There IS NO job during the summer. 


Another applicant made mention of her "collegiate knowledge" as an excellent qualification, explaining how she has a B.S in teaching. I certainly appreciate an educated candidate, but my son is only 9 months old. He likes to lick things. Unless she took a class in getting babies to stop licking things, I don't see how that necessarily makes her qualified to change his poopy diapers and watch him bang on his Leapfrog table all day. 


D is everything to me. What I want more than anything else is someone who will truly care about and for him. Someone who is reliable and will be around for awhile.

Someone who won't care that I don't have cable.

But I Wanna Be on HIS Team!!!

About a week ago, D figured out how to pull up to standing from his tummy. Using only the floor. He stands on his own for a few seconds at a time with a big grin on his face like he knows he's doing something awesome.

I'm so screwed.

He also thinks he can walk. He can't, of course, but he likes to try and just get up and go. It nearly always ends with me clutching my pounding heart in one hand and his round little bottom in the other. My guess is that he'll be walking by the middle of next month.

So, SO screwed.

I was flipping through WTE the other day and looked at the section on 10 month-olds. It includes a subsection on discipline and how to go about teaching your baby limits early-on. And I realized that this is how everything is going to change.

Up until now just about everything my baby does has been viewed as progress and we have accomodated HIM accordingly. I wasn't going to try and "teach" my baby that outlets are dangerous once he started tooling around in his walker - so we installed tamper-proof plugs in the entire first floor. Problem solved. There are tons of examples just like this. We've all been on Team D, running the same race, holding hands and singing Kumbaya together.

But soon, very soon, D is going to be starting his own team. And A and I will be his opposition. And so begins the next 18+ years of our life until he grows up and we find ourselves in non-competing divisions. (I'm really not that into sports for the most part, I swear!)

Pretty soon I'm going to have to drop "No"'s like they're hot. I'm going to have to designate a time-out spot. He is going to throw tantrums and say "I hate you, Mommy!" And this.......this is what I think is going to make me want another baby.

Because it's only that first year that everyone gets to play on the same team, with the same goals. And I think I'm really going to miss that when it's gone.

Babes In Toyland

D is getting bored with the toys he has. He doesn't have a lot - just the basic stuff like blocks, those dangly stuffed animals with little mirrors and crinkle sounds, stackable rings, rattles, etc. I need to get him some new stuff to play with, but I have no idea what to get. 8 months is such an odd age for buying toys. I would like to find some toys he'll play with for awhile before outgrowing them.

Any Mommas or Daddas have any suggestions for me?

Gerber Is Undermining My Credibility

I don't do well with contradictory information. Not when I have no idea wtf I'm doing.

Hello, parenthood!

Shortly before my son was born, I went out and bought What To Expect the First Year. I figured, "Why not? I mean, I have no idea what to expect!" I have never treated it like a bible, but I've used it pretty consistently as a guideline for things I don't want to bother my awesome pediatrician with.

Like beginning to feed D solids. Most of it is pretty simple and straightforward - start with cereals and simple fruit & vegetable purees, move up to the mixed stuff and thicker purees, feed the baby the same thing 2-3 days in a row and check for reactions. Did all that.

Now D is 8 months old, has 2 bottom teeth, and we've started giving him little bits of table food in addition to his regular baby food. (He LOVES my Italian Beef Stew!) I had wanted to venture into making my own baby food for him so I went out and bought Cooking Light: First Foods because, as you all know, I am obsessed with Cooking Light.

Nothing particularly interesting or controversial here, just basic baby food recipes. It gets really good when you get to the toddler stage. But I digress.

So What To Expect gives you a list of things you are not supposed to feed a baby until they reach a certain age - nuts, honey, certain fish and shellfish, egg whites, citrus fruits and juices, etc. I was like "Okay, no big deal. There's plenty of other things to try in the meantime."

But my husband is convinced that this book is bullshit. All baby books, actually. He wants to feed D scrambled eggs when he makes breakfast on the weekends. He wants to give him little bits of orange and strawberry. He wants to let him try peanut butter and lick the salt off of his snack peanuts. And I'm all "Oh noes! You can't do that! WTE says you can't do it because of food allergies and blah blah blah and ZOMG please don't!!!"

He just gives me a withering look and says "Helicopter much?" Which really pisses me off because if I have one single goal as a parent, it is to not become a so-called Helicopter Parent.

I managed to convince him to just let it go, at least for now, by arguing that there are so many other things we can feed him, we don't need to be in a hurry for those specific allergy-risk foods. He rolled his eyes, but let it go.

On a recent trip to the grocery store during which I needed to stock up on some jar baby food, I noticed a couple of things. First, Gerber makes level 2 purees that include fruits from the no-no list - oranges, pineapple, strawberries. Second, many of the level 2 mixed foods such as mixed veggies with whole wheat pasta contain EGG WHITES and TUNA OIL.

WTF???

So now I'm kinda pissed. Why does WTE tell me that I can't feed my kid oranges, but it's okay for Gerber to do it? Why do they tell me to only feed him egg yolks, not the whites, but it's okay for Gerber to do it? And most importantly....

What the hell do I say to my husband NOW??? (Besides you were right. Ugh, I gag just typing that!)

The bastards.

Sleep: The Experiment

The Problem: D's sleep has been going haywire for a couple of months now. He used to sleep from about 10-10:30pm until between 6 and 7am. When he woke up in the morning, I would take him back to bed with me, nurse him, and he would go back to sleep until about 8:30-9. It was glorious. His naps during the day were shorter - he would be awake for 2 hours, sleep for 45-90 mins, and go through this cycle again about 3-4 times during the day. 


Now, he goes to bed about 9-9:30pm. Sometimes, like last night, he will sleep until 5-6am. We have a rule in our house - No Babies In The Bed Until 6:30am. So when he wakes up, I nurse him and try to put him back in his crib once he falls back asleep. Lately, this doesn't work and he wakes up as soon as you put him down. Then I try bringing him back in bed with me. No dice. He kicks me, pulls my hair, whines, does everything BUT go back to sleep. This means that on the best nights, when he doesn't wake up several times in between, I get 6 hours of sleep. And That. Sucks. 


So we get up, he plays. Then he gets exhausted and whiny and goes down for a nap around 10am. This nap has been known to be as long as 3.5 hours. Later in the afternoon he might take another nap for 45mins-1hr, and sometimes if we're lucky we'll get an early evening nap after dinner. 


In summation, the kid's sleep pattern is fucked up and I need to fix it before I lose my mind.


Literature Review: A search of The Googlez, a flip through What To Expect The First Year, Baby 411, and every other baby book, message board, article I can find recommend Crying It Out, The Ferber Method, and various other so-called "Sleep-Training Methods" that others find successful. D does not respond to any of them. He will cry until his little lungs collapse and then not only did no one get any sleep, but I feel guilty as hell on top of that.

Some of the literature suggests that babies at this age begin to change their nap routines - adding and dropping naps, sleeping longer or shorter amounts of time, taking naps at different times. But there seems to be something else going on here because his nighttime sleeping is also being affected.

He is no longer sick. He is not currently teething.

Hypothesis: The disturbance in his sleep seems to coincide with the winter equinox. It has been gradually getting worse. In this amateur scientist's opinion, it is very likely that the lengthening daylight hours have been fucking with my baby's head. This possibility is not mentioned in any of the literature to date.

I believe the fact that my room has an eastern exposure and no curtains means that the earlier sunrise is making it difficult for D to fall back asleep in my room, but that he also won't go back to sleep in his room because he knows it is time to go lay with Mommy in her big bed. I think this is why his first morning nap is so long, because he is making up for the earlier waking time through a routine nap.

I think this problem is compounded by the later sunset, which seems to make him think that bedtime is sometimes actually his evening nap. When he does not have an early evening nap, he tends to sleep until 11:30-12 and then wakes up again and we have to nurse him, rock him, dance him back to sleep.

If we can get him to go back to sleep in the morning after his first awakening, I think it will reset his internal clock back by a couple of hours and his routine will fall back into place.

Materials: Room-darkening curtains to be placed in the master bedroom, since the baby's room already has some. 


Method: Bribe my husband to finally, Finally, Finally put up the curtain rods in the master bedroom so I can hang up the curtains myself. Once they are in place, I will retry the method of bringing the baby into my room to sleep in the morning. Data will consist of whether or not the child returns to sleep, coded as "Yes" or "No" and the amount of the sleep recorded if the response is "Yes." 


Data will be collected beginning on 2/23/11 and continue until Mama gets some motherfucking sleep. 


Check back for the results.


Oh yeah, and wish me luck!

Why Can't Someone.....

...make Nyquil for babies???

First, I got sick. Then the baby started coughing and sneezing. My husband followed suit.

The last time D was sick you couldn't even tell if it weren't for how congested he sounded. This time he's miserable and refuses to sleep, waking up every hour/hr and a half last night. He was supposed to go to my mother's today because I had traveling to do for work, but I ended up keeping him home and cancelling my meetings.

Thankfully he doesn't have a fever, at least not yet. But he's so miserable, the poor thing. And all I want/need him to do is rest but he just can't seem to relax. I'm nursing him constantly to give him as many of my antibodies as I can, which feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul. But hey, Paul is more important.

But seriously.....Nyquil for babies would be Awesome. I would invest right now in that R & D.

I have some posts in mind for you guys if I get a free moment today or this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed for my well-being.

The Sh*t Is Worth It

D exploded this morning. And by "exploded" I mean blew up his diaper.

Yes, I am writing about poop.

No, I never thought poop would have a place for discussion on my blog. But here we are.

Now it was all the way up his back to his neck. His NECK, for god's sake! He was vertical all morning, not sure how that works. NASA should really look into the gravity-defying properties of poop, because man, is that stuff unequaled.

So I go to change him and as soon I take the diaper off, he PEES ALL. OVER. THE WALL.

GodDAMMIT.

I strip him down, throw the soiled clothes and stuff in the hamper, and then he PUKES on his bare chest.

MotherF*CKER.

I wipe him down, flip him over, clean off his back and neck, muttering to myself about pygmies and gypsies the whole time.

He rolls onto his back, butt-ass naked, toes in the air, junk all exposed, looks at me dead in the eye, smiles, and says for the first time:

"Mama."

Dumpster Diving

It's a good thing I'm not a germaphobe. See, my son has a walker that he absolutely loves. Now before all you crazies start telling me how it's "not safe" and "hinders development" and blah blah blah, check your facts and trust that he is never near a flight of stairs, and that n=2 does not a representative sample make.

I typically put him in it when I'm doing stuff in the kitchen such as preparing dinner, putting away dishes, all that domestic shit for which I am somehow responsible even though I also work full-time from home AND take care of the child. He enjoys tooling around the tile floor, terrorizing the cats, staring intently at the flow of water in their fountain kitty dish thing.

But his absolute favorite thing to do is a variation of this:

Fig 1: An accurate representation of my son's favorite kitchen activity.

Yes, he's a Dumpster Diver. A Trash Picker. He has knocked the goddamn thing over I don't even know how many times, gleefully pulling whatever he can get his little paws on out from the trash and then throwing it onto the floor. Fun times. 

So my husband wired the thing underneath the countertop so it can't be tipped. Great, right? Sure, except now he scoots over to it in the walker and LICKS THE EDGE OF THE CAN. 

GRRRRROOOOOSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

Fig 2: No, that's not my son. But I'm afraid this is where he's headed if I let him.

So I took a picture of him doing it with my phone to show you folks, but it's at least a 15 step process to get it from the phone and onto blogger, and he isn't even licking the can in the picture so I decided it wasn't worth it. 

What kinds of crazy shit does your child do?

Mommy Needs a GD Nap

I started to write the post I really want to write the other day while D was down for a nap. I no sooner had typed the title in the appropriate box that I heard him wake up.

Dammit.

And then, the past few days have been straight. From. Hell.

My beautiful, darling child has had an amazing nap and sleep schedule for months now. I would typically get 3-4 short naps or 1-2 long ones every day, plus 7-8 hrs straight at night. I thrived on the predictability of his routine.

But then, this week he decided "Fuck this, Mama. I hate sleeping. I hate everything you do to try to get me to relax." And then he whines All. Damn. Day. Because he's overtired. And so am I. So we basically spend the day whining at each other.

It's great. Lots of discovery learning going on at my house. Grrrrrr........


2 hours of sleep last night for me total. No good naps for either of us today.

But he's asleep now, I hope to god he stays that way until at least 6am. In the meantime, I am going to bed. The post about my trash-picking tyke will have to wait another day.