Tonight we will practice our swooning

I have this weird bias when it comes to homeopathic medicine.  I say “weird” because, in general, I’m willing to buy alternative medicine.  I drink chamomile tea to relax, I practice yoga to help my back, and though I’ve never done it, I know enough people who have benefited from acupuncture that I would someday be willing to be stuck with needles if it is necessary.  But the second I hear “homeopathy” I start hearing quacking noises in my head.

Well, now.  In my endless search yesterday for something that would calm the Buddha’s molar rage, I kept stumbling over recommendations for Hyland’s Homeopathic Teething Tablets (quack, quack, quack).  Reputable websites are full of five star reviews for this product, with endless testomonials saying things like, “My Johnny didn’t stop screaming for eight days, but within five minutes of taking the Hyland’s homeopathic tablets [quack quack] he was smiling again!”  Which, right.  Okie-dokie.  To me this sounds like those shiny “I lost 105 pounds while eating everything I wanted thanks to HydroSlim!” people on late night TV.  Too good to be true.  Quackary of the finest quacking variety.  Especially since the tablets contain belladonna, which is one of those weird, old-fashioned poisons that women used to use to make their eyes look darker and their skin waxier back when being corpse-like was in fashion (you know, 1996).  So let’s just say this solution had its drawbacks.

But I was also a desperate woman.  A desperate, overtired, highly susceptible to quick solutions woman.

So I stopped off at the drugstore on the way home, tuned out the entire flock of ducks quacking in my head, and bought some.  I walked in the house and was greeted by full-on Screaming Buddha–my favorite variety!  We are talking red-faced, tear-streaming, full-lung shrieking.  She hadn’t had any painkillers all day at daycare and was in full-throttle molar meltdown.  A perfect test case!

I pulled out the bottle and made the Alias Father take some.  When he didn’t drop dead after five minutes, I took the recommended dose of two tablets and shoved them (um, I mean gently placed them) into her open, screaming mouth.

And…

They did absolutely nothing.  Not a damn thing.  (Quack, quack.)  She was still screaming her head off fifteen minutes later when I broke out the Tylenol.  That calmed her down enough to eat and play for a little bit before I took her upstairs for bath and bedtime.

When I gave her another dose.  Just to prove the ducks right.

It wasn’t until I had her almost in her pajamas that I realized that during the bedtime ritual I hadn’t been kicked in the face, yelled at, or whined at even once.  This is highly unusual these days since the Buddha has developed a complete and utter disdain for anything involving diaper and/or clothing changes.  Especially when she’s tired.  Most especially when she’s teething, drugged or not.

I took a look at her face.

She looked back with complete and utter serene tranquility.  She blinked at me very slowly.  And smiled.

She cuddled up while I read her a book, smilingly helped me turn off the light, and nursed herself to sleepiness in three minutes flat.  She didn’t start screaming when I laid her in her crib.  She just snuggled her Little Blanket Thingy-ma-bobber and drifted off to sleep.

And she slept.  And slept.  And slept.  Until 7:15 this morning, which is when I was forced to wake her up so that I wouldn’t be late to work.

And then she woke up with a smile.

Ummmm, quack?

She didn’t need the middle-of-the-night dose of ibuprofin we had planned on giving her.  She didn’t need rocking or soothing or bouncing or nursing.  She just…slept.

Now, I’m not ready to go and leave a five star review.  It’s only one night, after all.  It may be an isolated instance.  And she could have been just so tired from endless nights of no sleep that she finally collapsed.  It could have been Waltz’s suggestion that we elevate the head of her bed a bit to take the pressure off her ears.  It could have been any number of things.

But I am willing to accept that it’s possible the ducks and I may have been wrong and that all she needed was a little old-fashioned belladonna.  At least, I’m willing to accept it enough that we are dosing her up again tonight.  Damn skippy we are. 

(Her eyes and skin are looking lovely, by the way.)

Are you there, Insanity? It’s me, Molars.

The Buddha has her first set of molars coming in.  This is old news around my house, where these molars have been coming in for approximately 753 days.  Okay, maybe more like a month.  Sadly that last one is not an exaggeration.  It really has been that long.  One (the bottom left, that little bastard) keeps poking through the surface and then retracting in some sick, twisted game of peek-a-boo.  The other side just keeps swelling and swelling and getting lumpier and lumpier (and apparently more painful) every day.

I’d always heard that molars cause a good deal of angst, but I never knew it would be this awful.  This makes that time when the Buddha had four teeth come in at once and her gums turned purple look so minor as to not even be a warm-up.  Forget the stretch before a run, that was like the gentle stroll on the way to a marathon.  Nay, a triathalon.  Where the swimming course is uphill.  Both ways.

The entire experience has been so bad that the Alias Father keeps asking me, “Is this normal?”  Like I’m Michelle Duggar or something.  Have I not made it abudently clear to him and you and the entire universe that I am winging it here?  I have no idea if this is normal.  Most of you out there are more experienced parents than me.  So I ask you.

Is it normal for:

1) a teething baby to wrench back-and-forth between general contentment and violent and unpredictable fits of MOLAR RAGE?

2) the same teething baby to wake up at least once (usually more) every single night and be absolutely inconsolable, even after doses of Baby Tylenol, Orajel, and boobage?  And by “inconsolable,” I mean full-on screaming hysteria whenever she is not actually lying in my arms, boob in mouth, being rocked at precisely 60 rocks per minute.  And by “full-on screaming hysteria” I mean the kind of reaction you would expect if you were to cover her with honey and tie her to a fire ant hill while propping open her eyelids and forcing her to watch repeat episodes of One Tree Hill.

3) that same baby to make herself feel better by shoving an entire fist in her mouth and chewing on it while thrashing her head from side-to-side?

5) the mother of said baby to hiss things like, “I swear upon all things holy that I am about to go in with pliers and yank those suckers out myself”?

5) that same mother to periodically breakdown into tears and bemoan the fact that her daughter hates her and wants her to suffer endlessly and my god why won’t she just sleep?  Or be nice?  Or just push those teeth through, for crying out loud, you know she’s doing it on purpose?

6) the father of said baby to take the child to the doctor, in the vain hope that she may actually have some kind of massive ear/throat/brain infection that might be inflicting this misery upon the entire house, then call his wife and say sorrowfully, “Unfortunately, it appears that she is perfectly healthy.” To which his wife replies, “Did they count ‘turning into Satan’ as a symptom?”

Normal?  Not normal?  Who wants to babysit tonight?

P.S. When they say that you shouldn’t give your kid booze to calm the pain of teething, do they really mean you shouldn’t give your kid booze to calm the pain of teething, where italics equal *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*?

The Year of the Buddha

Yesterday was the Buddha’s first birthday.  I tried to write a post about it on the birthday proper, but I got sidetracked by trying to cram in a half-day of work before preparing for the little party we were having.  So I decided to abandon writing about my life in favor of living my life, which, I know, right? Bad blogger!

There isn’t anything to say about this milestone that hasn’t been said better by other parents out there on the web.  But the fact remains that her birth was one of the most breathtaking experiences that I’ve ever had and that the worst parts of parenting have been not nearly as bad as I’d feared and the best parts of parenting have been so amazing that they are indescribable.  Before she was born, I was so worried about being a parent, about not knowing what to do or how to do it or how to feel it, that I couldn’t even properly express it. But then I learned what I think may be the secret to parenthood: I just have to be me, only better.  Which means that being a parent is not all that hard, while simultaneously being the hardest thing ever. 

I didn’t write about her birth on the actual day, as I was a bit busy being rushed to an operating room and whatnot.  But when I finally found my way to a computer a few days later, on Thanksgiving of all days, this is what I posted:

“I’m thrilled to announce that at 8 o’clock on Monday night, I gave birth to a (brace yourself) 10 pound 5 ounce, 22 inch baby girl.  She’s tremendously fat with big Baby Buddha cheeks, thighs that every nurse described as ‘meaty,’ a funny little squeak that lets you know she’s awake, and giant basketball player feet.  She’s my favorite thing ever.”

And one year later, that is still absolutely true.

Thanks to all of you for sharing the journey with me.

P.S.  She totally proved once and for all that she is my child by proceeding to eat all the frosting off the cake before the cake itself.  That’s right.  That’s my girl.

The In-ay-aws-lay are ere-hay. Don’t mind the ambling-ray

Yeah, my in-laws have landed at my house for a week in order to celebrate the birth of the Buddha.  Which, listen, I love my in-laws.  No, really.  I know it’s not cool to love your in-laws, but I do.  They are the most generous people in the entire universe and if you needed the shirts off their backs, nay, if they even think you MIGHT POSSIBLY SOMEDAY need the shirts off their backs, they would whip those suckers off before you could blink.  They never judge my housekeeping or parenting or wife-ing or any of those others things that they are supposed to judge.  They think I’m funny and they laugh at my jokes and they tell me they love me all the time.  Lovely people, my in-laws.

But, I hate having them in my house.  It has nothing to do with them.  I love them.  I would hate it if Sandra Bullock or George Clooney or Jesus himself came to stay at my house.  I just hate having houseguests.  I am the world’s worst hostess.  All the smiling and friendly chatter and trying to come up with entertainment options…ugh.  And then there’s all the extra towels lying about, and the laundry, and the dishes, and the meal planning, and my stuff, which they keeping touching.  And I never know how attached I am to my stuff until someone else is in my house, and then I’m all, “Don’t touch that spoon.  That’s my spoon!  I don’t care if you need to eat cereal.  Hey!  That’s my cereal!  AND MY BOWL!  STOP TOUCHING MY BOWL!” I find them to be very draining, houseguests. 

So expect little from me this week.  Yes, even littler than you normally get.  Which is what?  How much littler can I possibly get?  This will be like stepping down from a snack of Velveeta and Ritz crackers to one of those generic cheese and cracker snack packs with the red plastic spreader.  You’ll notice the difference, but it’s not like you were starting off with five-star cuisine.

Oh, and speaking of the Buddha which we were about 100 pointless sentences ago, thanks for all your votes.  The vast majority of them confirmed that “the Buddha” is a pretty good, if inaccurate, blog name for my daughter.  She will remain as such.  Which is good because I thought about it all weekend and the only alternative I came up with was: The Really Short Whiny Person Who Lives In My House That I Gave Birth To.  As opposed to The Really Tall Whiny Person Who Lives In My House That I’m Married To.  And The Middling Height Whiny Person Who Lives In My House Oh Wait That’s Me.

Okay, now that I have lost any thread of coherant thought I am going to sign off so that I can try to figure out what I’m going to feed these people tonight.  You know, the ones that are in my house.  Touching my stuff. 

Gonna be a looooong week.

The Un-Buddha (with a POLL! Like the big blog kids use!)(POLL UPDATED!)

I was going through some photos today and I found some excellent examples of the personality switch that I was talking about in my last post.

This is what my daughter looked like back in August.  You know, pre-crawling.

Hello, Mother dear.  May I gaze upon you in absolute love and adoration?  Shall I make some cooing noises to soothe your soul?  Would you like to take a nap upon my pillow-y cheeks?  What can I do to make your day better, Mother of Mine?

This is what my daughter looked like a few weeks ago.  Post-crawling.

Hey!  Lady!  How much longer is this going to take?  I’ve got stuff to do, you know.  I’m a busy girl.  Don’t you try to take this pen away, neither, or I’ll have to give you the what’s what.  And, you, mister, I hear you back there.  Did you mutter something about socks?  You got something to say about socks?  Do ya?  DO YA?  Yeah.  I didn’t think so.  I’ll wear socks when I damn well WANT to wear socks.  What are you all looking at anyway?  I THOUGHT I ASKED YOU TO MAKE ME SOME PEAS!!!!!*

*sigh*

Given this recent shift, I’ve been wondering if I should change the name I’ve been using for her here.  She’s not really Buddha-looking anymore and she’s certainly not Buddha-acting.  But I’ve gotten kind of attached to calling her the Buddha.  So, I don’t know.  I’m torn.

Oh!  Look!  WordPress made it easy to insert a poll!  I’ve been wanting to use that button!  Perfect!

You guys go on and vote now.  I’m just going to go home to my loving child.  You know, the one who will immediately demand that I whip that boob out now, woman!  Chop, chop!  And GIVE ME BACK MY PEN!

*Is it just me or with that expression and those gappy teeth, does she look a bit like Sandra Bernhard?

Notes on the Buddha: The Mobility Edition

It’s been 4 weeks since the Buddha started crawling, and, in typical fashion, about 3 weeks past when I meant to put up a post about it. But I’m glad I put it off, because I’ve now had a chance to observe what independent motion has meant for my child. And here it is in six words: who the heck is this kid?

It all started when I plunked the Buddha down on the floor while I got ready for work one morning. I usually had her hang out on the bed with a few toys, but she’d gotten more squirmy about that and I was concerned that she would launch headfirst over the side. So I sat her on the floor and walked into the bathroom, only to hear her giggling maniacally a few seconds later. I stuck my head back out into the hall, and she was crawling. Cautiously, slowly, and twitchy with barely contained hysteria the whole time, but definitely crawling.

And that was that.

Learning how to get from place to place has completely unleashed the Buddha’s personality. Her passiveness had already been waning, now she wants to do everything herself. She wants to feed herself, stand up herself, get the toy herself, brush her teeth herself, read the book to herself. Her extreme caution, the trait that I thought defined her, has completely faded away. Now she is a borderline daredevil, proven when she taught herself to climb the stairs and then immediately tried to launch herself off a major drop (a babyproofing oversight that has since been fixed). She stands up to play with the fridge magnets and will walk herself completely around the perimeter of a room, deigning to accept assistance only when she runs out of wall or chairs for balance.

I don’t really know what to do with Buddha Version 2.0. The kid who used to let me shovel yogurt into her mouth is now fighting me for the spoon. The baby that used to sit and play with toys for hours will now do that for only a few seconds, just long enough for me to look away, before tossing the educational toy aside and beelining it for the dog’s water dish. And the girl who has slept through the night since week 6 of her life is now waking up consistently, usually because she spun herself around in the crib and is banging into the side.

She chats, she throws, she hits, she yells, she laughs…oh, my heavens how she laughs. Though she’s always been a content baby, she used to make us work for every giggle. It took endless singing and tickling and goofball faces before she would grace us with a half-hearted “Ha.” Now all it takes is a funny face or a quick poke to the side and she’s off. We’ve even found what we have dorkily named her “giggle button,” the little soft spot under her chin that is sure to start hysteria.

We’re not the only ones who have noticed. One day I went to pick her up at day care and stood there with one of the providers, watching her as she chased (CHASED) another crawler around the room, giggling the whole time. And the woman put her hand to her face, shook her head, and laughed as she said, “Well, she sure has blossomed.” Indeed.

I’m not gonna lie. This new Buddha is a heck of a lot of work. It’s like I traded in my good, easy kid for the spazzy baby that every other mother is always complaining about. She requires constant watching, constant entertainment, constant cajoling or pepping up or calming down. Constant, constant, constant.

But…man. That giggle. That exhilarating, crazy, funny, proud, independent, triumphant giggle. That giggle is absolutely worth it.

Trying to breathe

I’ve got about a half-dozen posts in draft form, you know.

I’ve got an update on the Buddha and how learning to crawl unleashed her personality.

I’ve got a Poverty Party post about the stress of debt on a marriage.

I’ve got a post about how joining Facebook forced me to reckon with my past.

But I can’t finish any of them.  I’m just…not there.

I’m here.  On the sidelines, watching everyone who is over there.  It’s NaBloPoMo, too, so there’s LOTS of people getting their write on.  While I sit here, fretting and giving myself even more forehead wrinkles because of my woe.

I read a lot of blogs, a lot that aren’t listed over there on the sidebar.  And some of them just make me want to weep with their beauty.  When I read them, I feel a great peace surround me and I nod and smile and think, “Now, THAT person’s got it right.”  They tend to be written by people who have managed to find and hold on to peace in their lives, however that may come.  Sometimes they are in the form of a Christian homemaker who strives to make her family her focal point and make laughter and love the hallmarks of her home.  Sometimes they are by yoga devotees who manage to get up early and practice every day and then bring that light and stillness into every moment that follows.  And sometimes they are just by people who seem to have a knack for keeping a macro view of the world in the midst of turmoil and everyday woes.

I am none of these people.  But oh, how I want to be.

I feel like my life is so full of chaos and strife that I can’t find my way out.  I could detail the reasons (financial, work stress, in-laws coming) but they don’t really matter.  Because if there is one thing I’ve learned from years of half-hearted yoga study it is that the key to finding peace is understanding that there will never be a perfect moment to find peace.  Alternatively, every moment is a perfect moment.  You cannot make peace happen by getting all the bills paid and the house clean and the cooking done.  You just need to find it by…finding it.  You have to start where you are, because it is good enough.  Actually, not only is it good enough, it’s all there is.

And that’s what all these blogs do.  They find peace where they are.  I realize that a blog is just a snapshot of one fraction of a life and that just because the bloggers seem all content and glowy in their writing that doesn’t mean that they don’t swear at the guy in the Volvo who just cut them off, too.  But they are able to get back to that happy place, whereas I seem to constantly be floundering and swearing four hours later.

It’s not how I want to be.  But it’s how I am right now.  And it’s handicapping me not only in my writing, but in living the kind of life I want to live. 

So, I am hereby declaring that I am going to be perfectly content and happy and at peace starting…NOW.

And as my first act, I am going to publish this without re-reading it or editing it or even spending two minutes worrying if it says what I want to say.  And then maybe I’ll get to the rest of the drafts.

UPDATE:  Okay, I totally cracked and reread and then had to go back in to fix a typo.  I’m at peace, but I’m also a former editor and people, there are limits to what I can let slide.

I think the post reads better if you hum “God Bless America” as you read it

Tomorrow is Election Day.  Lots of people have already voted.  This is the new trend, this early voting thing.  People go on Thursday, or Friday, or Monday, whenever they have time, and they stand in line for a bit (sometimes a long bit) and they cast their vote on a day that is mutually convenient for them and the vote-collecting people.  All the cool kids are doing it, you know.

 

I am not voting early.  I always vote on Election Day, the official day, the first Tuesday in November.  I’m a bit of a traditionalist that way.  I drive to my polling place, which is the only polling place because when your whole town has 3,000 people in it, paying for two polling places seems a bit silly.  We vote in the old high school, which is big and brick and feels suitably municipal.  Voting happens on the second floor, which used to be the old auditorium, so I have to climb a bunch of highly polished wooden stairs to get up there.  The treads of these stairs are worn down from years and years of teenagers sprinting up and down as they try to outrun their hormones and I have to be a bit careful climbing them.  I’ve tripped over them more than once.  But they creak satisfyingly and smell like oil soap.  If the line to vote is too long, I sometimes have to wait on the stairs where I get to make small talk with the people around me.  We don’t talk about politics, but instead chat about whatever is going on.  This year I’m betting on gas prices being the hot topic.

 

When I finally get up the stairs, through the big wooden doors, and to the check point, the same little old lady is always there to greet me because she has been there since, I’m guessing, 1922.  She asks my name, which I tell her.  Except she’s a bit deaf and cranky and I have a weird name so she’s always yells, “What?”  I repeat it and she asks me to spell it, which I do.  Then she leans over to the next little old lady at the table with the voter rolls and repeats my name.  And THAT little old lady who is ALSO a bit deaf yells, “What?”  So the first old lady says it again and then tries to spell it out for the second old lady.  But she spells it wrong, so I try to help the lady with the voter rolls by spelling it myself.  Then the first old lady yells at me because I’m only supposed to talk to her even though the second old lady with the voter rolls is a grand total of two feet away and I could save us all some time, you know!  Can’t you see me on your list?  I’m RIGHT THERE!

 

After several minutes of this they will finally find and confirm my name and allow me to go on to the THIRD little old lady, who has the ballots.  She will hand me my ballot while looking me over to see who caused such a fuss.  Then I’ll go to my little corner and I’ll take one of the provided black felt-tip pens and make my choices by filling in the little circles like I’m taking the SAT because my municipality don’t need no fancy machines or computers or nothing.  We do things the old-fashioned way here and if they could legally have us vote by putting different colored beans in jars they totally would.

 

Anyway, I make my selections with my felt-tip pen and walk to the other side of the old auditorium, where a FOURTH little old lady is sitting watch over the ballot box.  She yells at me too because I didn’t stop at the spot on the floor that’s marked with a bit of masking tape with “STOP” written on it and wait for her to wave me forward.  I think about arguing that there wasn’t anyone in front of me, so what did it matter, but I’m secretly kind of afraid of all these little old ladies so I don’t.  Inserting my ballot into the box, I take my voting sticker from the roll and slap it on.  I walk out of the auditorium and down a second set of worn out wooden steps and head back to my car.

 

If I voted early, I could just walk into the town clerk’s office, get a ballot, vote in a little cubicle, hand it in and be done with my day, most likely without getting yelled at even once.

But, my god, how boring is that?

 

And that is where you will always find me on the first Tuesday of November: in the old high school, getting yelled at by cranky old ladies and playing with felt-tip pens.  Because I vote every year, in every election, as I have since the fall after I turned 18.

 

I encourage you to do the same.