Three random stories, none of any more import or randomness than the others

1)  The Buddha has recently been working us hard.  She’s traded in her normally good-sleeping self for her wake-’em-early-and-often evil twin.  Her 7 AM wake-up call has turned into a 5 AM wake-up call.  She’s up consistently, yet unpredictably, during the night.  One night it was at 10.  Not a big deal.  And one night it was 3 AM.  A BIG DEAL. 

Anyway, my usual practice is to bring the Buddha in bed with me for nursing if she gets up before 6AM, which is my cut-off time for getting out of bed for the day.  I am not a farmer.  Or 83.  Getting up before 6 is not necessary, nor is conducive to me being a functioning member of society.  So, if it is before 6 she gets swooped up, changed, and hauled to our bed where I doze while she nurses, and then we both (fingers crossed, knock on wood) go back to sleep for another hour or two.

So what’s the problem?

I think the little bugger is working the system.  I think she knows that if she wakes me up early, she gets brought into our big bed for snuggly time.  But she can’t yet tell what my cut-off between night and morning is.  Therefore whenever she wakes up during the night, instead of just going back to sleep like she normally does, she decides to spin the wheel and see if I’ll bring her into bed with us.

Pretty sneaky, sis.

I’m annoyed by this, but also sympathetic AND hoping it’s just a phase, because one of the reasons she’s so restless is…

2) The Buddha has four teeth coming in.  FOUR.  At one time.  The front edge of her top gum looks like it’s been in a bar fight.  Swollen and red and bruised.  She spends every waking moment chewing on her bottom lip with a distressed look on her face.  Oh, it just breaks my heart.  We try not to depend too much on medication in our house, but frozen bagels and chew toys just weren’t helping so she’s been getting nightly doses of Baby Tylenol. 

I can see the tips of all four now, so let’s hope they push on through quickly so the poor kid can get some rest. 

(FOUR! TEETH!)

We’ve been so anxious and sleep-deprived that concerns over the Buddha have worked their way into our subconscious, as demonstrated this weekend when…

3) The Alias Father freaked me out by convincing me our child had died.  We spent the weekend visiting some friends a few hours away, so we spent the night at their house.  They, like many of us, only have an air mattress for guests.  That’s not safe for the Buddha, and we were too lazy to pack the Pack ‘n’ Play (ironic, no?), so she spent the night at the foot of our bed on a folded up yoga mat.  (With a blanket over it!  We aren’t heartless!  Besides, it really was pretty cushy.)

At about 4 AM, Alias Father suddenly shot bolt upright and frantically crawled to the end of the bed.  I, naturally, went into full adrenaline mode and sat up to see him listening for our child’s breathing.  At her chest.  Then he put his ear to her nose, because he couldn’t hear anything. 

All you parents are freaking out right now, aren’t you?  Because we’ve all been there.  And it is not a good place to be.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I hissed at him, “Put your hand on her chest, you idiot.”  Which he did.  And she was fine.  Whereby he laid back down and went back to sleep, after insisting he had no idea why he did that.  And I?  Laid awake listening to my heart thumping until finally drifting off a few minutes before…

See point #1.

And so the cycle continues.

The Postpartum Body Post

The New Girl started a series on health/wellness/healthy humping (don’t look at me like that.  She said it).  It’s a good post and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to talk about my post-baby bod.  So, hey, if she’s going to throw out an opening, I’m all about it!

I lost the baby weight in two days and I look fabulous, folks.  I’m the poor man’s Nicole Ritchie.

The End.

Ha!  I kid. 

Sort of.

Here’s the deal.  I am back to the weight I was when I got pregnant.  I attribute this fact, by the way, purely to the miracle of breastfeeding calorie burn and not at all to any semblence of heroic self-control on my part.  Not everyone sees a weight loss from breastfeeding, but I did and I am forever grateful.  After the immediate post-baby water release, when I lost 35 pounds of my 60 pound weight gain in a week(!!!) (wait, one more time: !!!), I lost about a pound a week, steadily, until I got back to my standard weight of around 145.

There were a lot of numbers in that last sentence.  Let me unpack that for you.

Starting weight: 144
Weight gained: 60 pounds
Weight lost within 7 days of giving birth: 35
Time to lose remaining 25 pounds: roughly 6 months.
Ending weight: 145 (or so.  Our scale is notoriously unreliable and is best used for rough estimates only)

I seem to have stopped losing weight, which in my mind confirms the theory that we all have inborn weight “set points” that we settle at whenever we are eating and exercising normally and not eating our weight in ice cream.  

So all’s well that ends well, right?  Mmmmm.  Sure.

Here’s the thing: my weight is the same, but my body is different.  Things have shifted a bit.

My waist is two inches bigger.

My stomach is considerably poofier, except where it nips in at the c-section scar.

My boobs are considerably lower.

So things are the same, but at the same time they aren’t.  I’ve had to ditch some of my old clothes because they just don’t fit right anymore.  The waist and stomach situation has tweaked the fit of my pants and skirts.  Some of my shirts are too short now because of the boob rearrangement (I don’t know how that works either.  But it definitely is true).  I’m relearning how I look, how I need to dress, how I move.

But it’s okay.

My body is different.  It should be different.  It grew, birthed, and fed the Mutant Baby of Doom.  You don’t get through something like that without some changes. 

But here’s the thing.  I don’t mind.  I really don’t.  And I don’t mean that I don’t mind the changes because I have a beautiful little girl that’s totally worth it, although that is true.  I don’t mind because when I look in the mirror and I see a wider waist, squarer hips, and lower boobs, I realize that I look like many of the older women that I know and admire.  I look like a grown-up.  I look like a mother. 

Being sad about that would be foolish.

The moving Buddha

Attention, ladies and gentlemen!  The Buddha has now officially moved her chunky little butt under her own power.

Okay, it was only about 18 inches.  And she went backwards.  And she didn’t really mean to.  And she didn’t seem to actually notice what she was doing.  And she screamed the whole time and thus the entire incident was caused by tummy time rage and not actual intent-to-move.

But I still say that it counts.

Victory over inertia is ours!

Hip hip hooray!

Crap.  Now I have to childproof.

I think the phrase we are all looking for here is “sufficiently chastened”

Remember when I was all, “My husband is the best and he totally never does stupid things and I’m super nice to him and why do we stereotype women as mean and men as stupid anyway”?

Yeah.

************************

Sunday, 9:00 AM

Me: I’m trying to decide if I should go to yoga this morning.
Him: You should go.  We’ll be fine.
Me: But I’ve got a lot of work to do around the house.
Him: You like the class, so you should go.  I’ll take care of the baby.  The house will be fine.
Me: You’re right.  Thanks, babe.

(Two hours later)

Me: How is everything?
Him: She’s really cranky this last little bit.  I can’t figure out what the problem is. 
Me: Huh.  Weird. Has she eaten recently?
Him: You didn’t tell me to feed her.
Me: She got up at 6:30!  She hasn’t eaten in almost FIVE HOURS!  Why would I have to tell you to feed her?
Him: Do you think that could be her problem?

************************

Sunday, 11:30 AM

Him: You were right.  She was hungry.
Me: Imagine that.  Did you give her banana with the cereal?
Him (totally exasperated): NO.  You didn’t tell me to feed her banana!  It’s just cereal!  I can’t keep up with your complicated feeding schedule!
Me: She eats, like, FOUR THINGS.  How complicated can this be?

*********************

Sunday, 2:00 PM

Him: I thought you said that you were cleaning the bedroom.
Me (in the bedroom, clearly in the midst of cleaning): Um, I am?
Him: But there’s cleanser in the toilet.
Me: Oh, yeah.  I put it in to soak while I’m doing this and then I was going to go scrub the toilet.
Him: But I have to pee.
Me: So pee in the cleanser.
Him: Ew.  I can’t do that.  I’ll go pee outside.
Me: You know there is a third option.  One that doesn’t involve indecent exposure.
Him: What’s that?
Me: You could take that stick with the bristly bits that sits right by the toilet, swish it around the bowl a few times, flush, and then pee.
Him: You mean clean the toilet?
Me: I mean clean the toilet.
Him: You know, that didn’t even occur to me.
Me: This just isn’t your day, is it?

Daycare: The third parent

Daycare worker: Hey, we just learned yesterday that she can sit up by herself!

Me: Oh, yes, she’s been doing that for a little while.  She’s pretty good now and hardly ever tips over.

Her: We didn’t know!  We’ve been keeping her propped up.

Me: So what you’re saying is that we should probably talk to each other more about the baby.

Her: I suppose that might help, yes.

Me: She finally rolled over the other day, too.

Her: She did that for us too!  So exciting!

Me: I know!!!!

*silence*

Me: Well, I’m off to work then.

Her: Right. Have a good day!

And yet I still can’t let go of the fact that he loads the dishwasher incorrectly

The fabulous Miss Zoot linked to this Wall Street Journal article a few days ago. It’s about how wives undermine their husband’s attempts to help out with the children by complaining nonstop about their husband’s performance of child-related tasks.  Go on and read it; it’s not very long.

You back?  Okay.  I thought the whole discussion was very true, with small one caveat.  Which will be at the bottom of this thoughtful, insightful post.

I spent a lot of the early days of the Buddha’s life catching myself either being critical of the Alias Father’s attempts at infant care or painstakingly explaining my 18-point system for properly changing a diaper.  After just a few weeks, I made the conscious…wait, let me emphasize that…CONSCIOUS decision to not do so.  And by CONSCIOUS I mean that the insides of my mouth were nearly bleeding from being bitten so much as I withheld criticism.  But it was the right thing to do.

I mean, I’d had the advantage of physically gestating this little bugger.  To me, she’d been very real for months and months and I’d been thinking about this baby-care stuff the whole while.  Plus, at the time I was home with her all day AND handling all feeding duties 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, until her birth she’d been an abstract to him.  And once she was born, he rarely had much time to directly interact with her.  I wanted him invested in this effort.  I wanted him to have a caregiver relationship with her.  I wanted him to have the time to (dare I say it?) bond with her.

How was he supposed to do that if he constantly felt like an interloper into some arcane, babycenter.com-influenced world I’d created?

So when he asked how to do something, I’d smile, shrug, and say, “However you want to do it, babe.”  He’s a smart guy.  He wasn’t going to do anything that would threaten her life, so what did I care if she wasn’t wearing what I would put her in or if she was in a disposable diaper instead of cloth or if he gave her a bath differently than I would?  Did it matter?  Really matter?  Really, reeeeeeaaaaally matter?  If the answer was ‘no,’ then I let it go.

And you know what?  It worked.  Within days he’d stopped timidly asking me how I wanted the bottle heated.  He just went ahead and heated the damn bottle.  And dressed her.  And invented games to play with her.  And lo, Father of the Century was born.

But what really cemented things was having the Alias Father stay home with the Buddha one day a week once I went back to work.  One day a week is his day, to figure out how to entertain her, to find the best way to feed her, clothe her, diaper her.  I don’t care how any of it gets done.  It is not my problem.  I am not there.  This, for us, was the true path to an egalitarian marriage.  There’s nothing like trial by fire for getting the message across superfast.  Hi.  Welcome to fatherhood.  Here’s a baby.  Gotta run.

In short (say it together: TOO LATE), yes.  I agree.  Ladies, if you want your husband to help out, lighten up on the self-righteous martyrdom…I mean “maternal gatekeeping.” 

And now you’re all nodding and smiling and wondering what is my beef with the article, exactly?  And I will tell you because heck, it’s not like I have work to do or anything. 

I think we, and by “we” I mean the American Media Industrial Complex and its associated Media Consumers, play into the “Mean Wife vs. Silly Husband” schtick a little too often.  Could wives lighten up once in a while?  Hells yes.  Look at some of the comments on that article if you doubt me.  How many of them are some variety of this: “Well, I’d stop picking on him but the stupid man always does it WRONG”?  On the flip side: could husbands put on their (to paraphrase an over-used modernism) big boy panties and grow up?  Hells yes.  Again, look at those comments and at some of the truly hair-raising things some fathers have done.  Those guys are 90% checked out and I refuse to blame it totally on nagging wives.  It’s a two-way street here, folks, and there’s plenty of wrongs to fill up both lanes.

And thus endeth Alias Mother Solves The World’s Problems, Volume 728.

Now.  Let’s talk about plates and their proper location on the bottom rack of the dishwasher….

Sorry about that, folks

Since the post when I joked about looking like an Earnest Christian Homemaker, I’ve had several people find my blog through searches for “Christian homemaker blogs.”

Um.  Oh dear.

Sorry, nice people.  No wholesome homemaking tips here.  But if you have any thoughts on whether I should make the bed before or after I abandon the baby in the middle of it as I get ready for work, so she barfs on the dry-clean-only bedspread instead of the actual sheets which I will then need to wash before bedtime, please leave them in the comments. 

(You all understand that when I say “make the bed” I mean “yank the bedspread up half-heartedly so the dog doesn’t eat the sheets while I’m gone,” right?  Right.)

PS- Exactly how long can a pool of spit-up remain on the Exersaucer before it is officially “gross”?

 

File this one in the overflowing “WHOOPS” folder

Our cat is a true cat.  By that I mean she’s pretty intolerant of us humans unless we happen to be refilling the food bowl.  She finds us pesky annoyances, only good for serving as victims for her sadistic entertainment.  She has two specialties: the hide-behind-the-door-and-ambush-the-ankles trick and what I refer as the “Venus Flytrap” maneuver.  For this little beauty, she lies on the floor, belly up, luring unsuspecting visitors with her sweet, wide-eyed ”rub my belly, please” face.  As soon they reach a hand down to her soft, soft fur,  she latches onto their hand and arm like a vice with claws and rips them to shreds.  Which explains why, whenever we have people over, we spend a lot of time shrieking, “NO! DON’T TOUCH THE CAT!  FOR GOD’S SAKE DON”T TOUCH THE CAT!” (Guest: AAAH!  My arm!”) (Wanna come over for dinner sometime?)

Her third major hobby is laying across our faces during the middle of the night.  We can only assume she’s trying to kill us in our sleep.

Given all of this, we’ve been a bit cautious about the baby and the cat.  We don’t leave the baby on the couch when the cat is nearby.  We shoo the cat away when the baby is on the floor.  And we absolutely, under no circumstances, no-way-no-how, uh-uh, EVER let that devil cat into the nursery when the baby is in there.

So it was mighty exciting when I opened up the door to the nursery this morning and the cat came waltzing out.  Because I’d accidentally shut her in there ALL NIGHT LONG.

The Buddha was fine.  I gave the cat extra kibble as a reward for not Venus Flytrapping her face at 2AM.

Update

Things are just a little crazy these days.  Time is just a little on the short side.  Which means that this post will be just a little on the bulleted list side.

• The Buddha Baby has decided that semi-solid food in the form of cereal is not her mortal enemy after all.  I’m grateful for this, because it gives me hope that I someday will no longer have to be her personal milk buffet.  (It’s not the nursing I mind; it’s the %#&##$% pump.)
• The Buddha continues to play SMASH/LEAN peekaboo as well as a variation involving the burp cloth.  She also continues to steal beer whenever possible.
• She sits unassisted and is frequently seen doing little baby crunches trying to get herself into a sitting position.
• Yet she still cannot roll over. 
• Nor is she interested in trying.
• My haircut is looking less Republican Wife and more Earnest Christian Homemaker.  Which is okay, except that I’m not earnest.  Or Christian.  Or a homemaker.
• The company car will cost almost $3,000 to fix.  I continue to thank the moon, stars, and Earnest Christian Homemakers everywhere that it was not my fault.

The future’s so bright I gotta hide under the table and cover my eyes

I just spent a long weekend with a five-year old and a two-year old. (And by long weekend I mean: a weekend that lasted longer than two days, not a weekend that seemed long.) (Although there were moments.)

And those kids were funny and wacky and generally thoroughly enjoyable but…

I have seen my future.  And it is whiny.

Also, its poops really smell bad.