Birthrights of Many Kinds

My mom was raised Methodist and my dad Jewish. When they had kids, my mom's mom (Grand Nana) said, "I don't care what you raise them, just raise them something." This was actually remarkably open of Grand Nana, a woman born in 1916 in southern Virginia, who to this day sometimes says things so not politically correct that all her children and grandchildren wince at the same time. My parents went with no religion until I (the older child) was in fourth grade. My brother and I had been attending a Quaker school (Religious Society of Friends) since Pre-K and my parents finally decided to take the leap and become Quaker, my father's comment being that it was the only non-organized religion he had encountered and that worked for him. My brother informed his first grade teacher that he was "signing up to be Quaker." This was actually fairly accurate, as we each were given the right to choose whether we thought this was the right choice for us. Quakers sit in silent worship, believing that God speaks directly to each person and there is no need for the intercession of a priest or minister.

Emily was raised Catholic. She was passionate about her Catholicism, the way she is passionate about pretty much everything in her life. She memorized the prayers, the psalms, the ritual. She very much wanted to be a priest when she grew up. She says that this was clearly the beginning of the end for her as a Catholic. She continued to become more disillusioned with the church over the years. When we met in high school, I began taking her to meeting (what Quakers call church). By college, she had chosen to be a convinced Quaker. I love that instead of "converting" to Quakerism, one is "convinced". Before we were married under the care of Brook.lyn Meet.ing, I transferred my membership and she became a member. X, as the son of two members in good standing of the Religious Society of Friends, is what is called a "birthright Quaker". The first in either of our families.

I have very little understanding of the Catholic ritual, so Emily tends to explain bits of it when we attend services. Today, at Great Aunt C.'s funeral, we sat in the sound proofed children's room in the church (an interesting invention, allowing babies to have fits and not bother the other parishioners) and Emily told X, "Look, honey, now the priest in going to do magic." And to our birthright Quaker son, I think that must be what the Catholic service looks like, magic. A man in a robe sings and waves his hand and waves smoke making machines in the air and informs people he has changed water to wine and bread to flesh. But Catholicism is X's heritage, just as much as Judaism is, so I had better start learning about it, so I can help teach our son his past so that it can inform his future.

You Show Up

We are away from home. For the second time in two weeks, we have driven upstate to be with members of Emily's family. Two weeks ago, we drove up to visit her Great Aunt C., who had been doing poorly. The day we went up, Em's mom called and told us that she had gone to the hospital, so we visited her for two days in the hospital before going home. The hospital staff let X onto the critical care ward, which they probably shouldn't have done, but we greatly appreciated them letting us bring him to visit. He cheered up Great Aunt C., who told Emily that he was beautiful and looked smart (the highest compliment).

Sadly, we are back this weekend to attend Great Aunt C.'s wake and funeral. She died early on Wednesday morning. We rented a car from the same garage and are staying at the same motor lodge (10 rooms down) but life is very different. She was a great lady, so smart and opinionated and passionate. I only knew her a few years, but I miss her a great deal. She and her husband didn't have children, so she was very close to her sister's children, especially Emily's mother. Grandma (Emily's mom) was able to be with her this past few days, which I hope was a comfort, although it was very hard for Grandma.

X doesn't understand what it going on, but brings a smile to everyone's face when he enters the room, which is a very good service he is providing. He slept for about half the wake this afternoon and was then quite content to have Grandpa carry him around the funeral home (which his Great Grandpa used to own) and discuss everything they saw. He has gotten to meet the last of his great aunts and uncles whom he had not yet met, which has been nice. We have tossed his schedule to the wind in the evenings, because it is really impossible to walk away from family early enough to start bedtime at an hour when everyone else is just starting to eat dinner. He is coping admirably and we will get back on the bedtime schedule horse when we get home on Sunday.

Everyone keeps saying how wonderful and thoughtful we are for coming to visit Great Aunt C. as often as we did (which really wasn't that often, just twice in the last year). And Emily and I just keep saying, "But that's just what you do. You show up." I really hope this is a lesson that X learns from us. When it's family (blood or chosen), you show up. It's an over four hour drive and we're broke and renting a car costs a lot, but that isn't the point. You show up.

Strange Goo.gle Searches

This past February, when I was in the middle of my first nursing crisis, I wrote a post about my lovely mother-in-law and her helpfulness in calming me down and sending me off in the right direction in order to address the supply problem I was having. Without even thinking about it, I called this post "Grand.ma and Bo.obs" except without the dots. This became relevant last night, when I checked out the report from Goo.gle Ana.lytics for the first time in many months and discovered that, in one form or another, "Grand.ma Bo.obs" was the most common Goo.gle search that lead someone to our blog. Two hundred and fifty-two times, random people searched for what I can only assume was slightly bizarre po.rn and found our blog instead. I think I'm going to go change the title of that blog post now.

Hark, There Be Wild Things

Emily informed me a few minutes ago that I should write about the movie we went to see this afternoon. So, here I am, writing about the movie we went to see this afternoon. I'm a very obedient wife!

Uncle very kindly took the baby for the afternoon, so we could have some time to regain the parts of our sanity lost over the last week of sick, cranky baby. We took a long walk, lay down in the park on our coats and stared at the sky (well, I stared at the sky, she read Foucault) and went to see "Where the Wild Things Are".

First off, it is not a kids movie, it is a movie about childhood. I really don't think I would take a child much younger than late elementary, early middle school to this movie. It has lots of scary bits. However, I highly recommend it to the older set. It is beautifully made and so well written. To be fair, I've had a bit of a love affair with Dave Eggers since I read "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", so I was prepared to like the writing. I don't want to ruin the movie for those who haven't seen it yet, so I will just say it is definitely worth your time to go see it. Emily reflected at the end on the poor PA who had to vacuum the muppets during the shoot. I reflected on how I viewed it differently as a parent than I think I would have before X was born.

One Year Molar for the WIN!

And just to make life interesting, Emily called down the hall this morning while changing his diaper. Guess who just had their first one year molar break through during the night? The poor baby, his entire head hurts.

We have an answer (well actually two answers)

X was running a fever of 102 when we checked this morning, so we were off to the pediatrician again for the second sick visit this week. We waited 45 minutes to be seen, but as soon as they took his temp and it was 102.6, everyone was very helpful. We were given tylenol to give him (which made me a bit anxious as it was 20 minutes early and he's on both tylenol and ibuprofen, but oh well). The nurse tried to give it to us in a suppository, and we were like, "we are not putting anything up his butt that we don't have too, please can we have the liquid", and she gave us the liquid in a cup, and we had to ask for a syringe, because our twelve month old is seriously not going to drink medicine from a cup, even if he is the best baby ever at taking his meds.

Then we saw our doctor, without even seeing the resident first. And it was so great that we got to see Dr. A, because for the first time all week, X didn't scream the entire time he was being examined. He was quiet and let her poke him and check his ears without even turning his head away and even gave her a tentative smile. I love our pediatrician, she makes my sick baby smile. She smiled as soon as she checked his first ear and said, "We have an answer" and then checked his second ear and said, "Actually we have two answers." Yup, poor X has a raging double ear infection. Poor baby. He is now on anti-biotics and should be feeling better in the next day or two. Thank heavens for an answer that doesn't involve the word flu.

Baby continues to be ill

We are slogging through. He remains feverish, whiny, clearly in pain. We'll head to the doctor tomorrow if he hasn't improved. I really hadn't realized on a practical level how pleasant and lovely it is to have a well child until the last two weeks. No one is getting enough sleep and everyone is cranky. To remind us all that there is a happy, smiley baby in there somewhere, here is X on a happier day:

There is no place in the Baby Book for "Baby's First ER visit"

Well, we have survived X's first (and last, at least for a long time, I hope) trip to the Emergency Room. Chalk the trip up to first time parents and a child who has breathing trouble even before he has a fever of 101.3 for two days and heavy congestion.

We ended up going because his fever wasn't getting any better and after waking up from his afternoon nap, he seemed to be in worse distress and his breathing rate was increasing and so we called his doctor and she said to take him in because she couldn't tell if he was getting sicker and better safe than sorry. We rented one of the two Zip.cars in the garage a block and a half from the house (yay, I love Zip.car) and drove to the hospital where he was born, home of the local pediatric ER. It was actually a very positive ER trip. Everyone was kind and good with X and he was seen quickly and we were reassured and not told that we were crazy first time parents (which we were kind of expecting to happen). And we got him home in an hour and a half and only an hour late for bedtime.

The funniest thing to come of "Baby's First ER Trip" was this: The first sentence in his discharge papers: "Your son has been diagnosed with a viral syndrome, also know as a 'cold.'" When we saw this we couldn't stop laughing. The entirety of the discharge paperwork was so clearly written by someone insanely frustrated by constant ER visits for silly things. This is totally going in his baby book (if I ever get to filling it out!)

My baby is sick

My baby is sick. We were blessed in X's first year with a child who pretty much was never sick. I mean he has his breathing issue (a separate post to come), but no particular illness. But now at 12 months and two weeks, he is making up for lost time. He's had the family cold for the last few days (tired, achy, congested, seriously runny nose) but seemed to be doing a little better. He hasn't needed to swim breathe in order to nurse in a day and he can suck his fingers (the middle and fourth finger of his left hand are his best friends) without choking and having to suck in air through his mouth.

He's been feeling antsy and he was looking better so I took him to the first class session of Baby Boogie at the YMCA (we just joined two weeks ago) this morning. He enjoyed the first part of class, playing with the kids his age (playing = crawling over and attempting to play with the same toys they are already using) and then he suddenly started melting. We were in the middle of doing the "meet another baby" segment of class and he started crying and clinging to me. So I excused myself and sat down to nurse to see if that helped. He hadn't had his morning nap and Em and I had agreed that if he got tired at class, I'd just pack him up and come home. Nursing didn't help and he had started wailing in a way that he has done so rarely that I started getting worried. I strapped him into the Ergo and walked to the bus, took the bus home and walked to the house. He sobbed the entire time. He collapsed into sleep five minutes before I got to the house, but woke as soon as I got inside, beginning to scream, the scream he only does if he is in pain.

He felt hot, so Em and I took his temperature and it was 100.8. We called the doctor and were told to bring him in. We packed him up and took the subway to the clinic while X finally slept for 30 minutes. Em checked us in. She told the office staff we were here for a sick visit, they asked if he had a fever, we said yes, they said don't even sit down, we'll put you in a room and we were ushered right in. They are clearly pulling all potential flu cases out of circulation, which is really smart. He woke up and started crying again and continued to for the full hour we were there, except for five minutes where Em lay on the exam table and held him. The poor baby doc (intern/first year resident, he didn't say) was so scared of him. He found it impossible to listen to X's lungs or check his ears because he wouldn't stop screaming. Babies are like dogs, they can smell fear. The intern finally said he just go get the doctor and fled the room.

I love our pediatric practice. There are four doctors and I like all of them. The doctor we saw today was the only one I hadn't met yet and he was great. Friendly, good with X, and very informative, explaining everything really well. We are really lucky that the practice we had with our awesome insurance pre-job loss is also the practice that runs the peds clinic at the hospital X was born in and takes Medicaid. Dr. G checked his lungs and ears and declared them clear. X's fever had gotten to 101.3 by the time we got to the office. We are to give him tylenol and ibuprofen in rotation to bring down his fever and watch him closely. We took him home and he nursed and fell asleep for an hour and when he woke up, he was much more like the baby we know. Tired and hot, but friendly and smiling and playing some. He went down around an hour early for bed and I am hoping will sleep through the night and feel less dreadful in the morning.

We have too much money to be as poor as we are...

Turns out I was wrong about that whole qualifying for food stamps when my unemployment runs out in January thing. There is an asset test I was unaware of and we have just a bit too much saved. So there goes that small bit of help, although I suppose I should view it as a positive that we have money saved, which I do, but still...

There is legislation in the Senate right now that I thought would help us. It will extend another 20 weeks of unemployment insurance to those losing coverage. Except...it will cover those who lose their coverage by December 31, 2009. Guess when I lose coverage? Yup, second week in January 2010. Awesome. There is some talk of getting the date extended as soon as this extension passes, but at the moment, no 20 weeks for us.

There are unemployment advocacy groups looking for people to speak to the media about the need for the extension to cover those losing their benefits after December. I am thinking about saying I would do it, because I think I have a sympathetic story, but I don't really like public speaking. But at the same time, I have a good story: I lost my job six days back from maternity leave with a three month old baby and a graduate student wife who I was helping put through school. Now X is on Medicaid and WIC and I got fired 10 days too late to keep getting unemployment past January. Would it have killed my former employer to downsize me 11 days earlier? Oh wait, it would have, because I would have still been on maternity leave and it would have been illegal. Sigh.

Returning to Blogging

I went away from blogging. I think it had a lot to do with the level of denial needed to get through our life at the moment. Well, at least denial about the financial part of our life. I have this beautiful, amazing, funny child and a loving, wonderful wife and we have a roof over our head. Most days this is what I focus on and I let a lot of the little details of how our life has changed in the last nine month slip away. Writing concentrates the mind on the details and I've been taking a holiday of sorts. However, I think it may be time to stop with the holiday. So I'm back and we'll see how this goes.

A great deal has happened in the last year. X has grown from a tiny newborn baby
to a big one year old.


I went back to work for six days before being laid off in the middle of February. I have been a SAHM for X's first year, although this was not a choice I made but just how life happened. I would not trade this year home with him for anything, but I would trade the way I got there.

Emily has officially entered the academic job market, applying for quite a few jobs. It is exciting, yet nerve wracking, waiting to hear if/where we will be moving this coming school year. This job hunt has the effect of putting aspects of our lives on hold. I look forward to being able to move forward decisively at some point.

We are recipients of multiply types of state aid. X is on Medicaid and he and I are on WIC (because according to the state, I am a single mother), although now that he just turned a year, WIC is now just for him. I have been receiving unemployment benefits since February which are due to run out in the middle of January. When that happens our family will suddenly qualify for food stamps and more free health care, which is good because the COBRA subsidy for my health insurance runs out December 1st and I REALLY can't afford the COBRA insurance without it.

So this is our life right now. Well, at least a small portion of it.

Broke and Poor

All my life, I've made the distinction between broke and poor. You're broke if you don't have a lot of cash to spend around, if you don't have endless reserves somewhere, but, fundamentally, you're not deprived. You're poor if the lack of money is consistent, structural, and leads to deprivations for your family. Kate and I have chosen to be broke for this stretch of our lives; she chose a career in the nonprofit sector, which doesn't pay well, and I'm a grad student with barely any income at all. We've been clear that this is, in some ways, a moral choice for us, an attempt not to live high on the hog, not to live in a destructive manner. But we've always been broke, not poor.

I wonder if the day you find out you're eligible for WIC is the day you become poor.

Kate was laid off in February, which explains a lot of the radio silence from around here. It was fucked up, and it sucked, and we're dealing with the emotional fallout as best we can. But what's hitting us most, obviously, is the economic fallout. I don't have any research funding right now, and I'm not teaching this semester. Our plan was for me to take care of X in conjunction with Uncle, and to work on my dissertation this semester, while Kate worked. Well, that plan's fucked now.

Here's the thing: there are ways in which we are, now, officially poor. Our total monthly income comes from our two unemployment checks; together, they just about cover rent, utilities, and groceries, which means anything above that--new clothes for X, plane tickets to academic conferences, dinners out with friends, baby gates to keep our kid out of the kitchen--has to come from our savings or go on credit. We couldn't afford to continue COBRA coverage for all three of us, so I had to quickly jump onto my school's insurance, which is pricey but cheaper, and X is now on Medicaid; we can afford Kate's insurance alone, after the stimulus cut, but we did consider letting her go uninsured. We qualify for WIC because we qualify for Medicaid, which we are actually kind of glad of; the food benefits we'll get will substantially cut our food costs, which will be a big savings for us. Our combined credit card debt is around $19K, most of which is hangover from our wedding and the year-long illness of our now-deceased cat, and which we are now unable to keep paying down. Our student debt is higher.

But we aren't poor in some significant ways. We've collectively got quite a chunk of money in a brokerage account; it's the remains of Kate's college fund, and my inheritance from my grandmother. Our regular savings account has another, much smaller, but not insignificant chunk. The deprivations we've done have been minor: we've both cut back on how often we go to the chiropractor. I've blown off my allergist. I've negotiated with my therapist to a lower rate. Neither of us has an unlimited MetroCard, and we don't really ever leave the neighborhood unless we have a specific appointment somewhere else. We're canceling non-essential trips that we'd have to rent cars for. We couldn't go to a recent family event that was pretty major, but was scheduled last minute in a different state, and we couldn't afford plane tickets. We haven't cut off our cable yet; we haven't canceled our home phone, though we've talked about it. Between our unemployment, the money in our regular savings account, and these sorts of frugalities, we can get through until the fall, at least, if Kate doesn't find work in that time.

But: are we just "not quite poor" yet because we still think of ourselves as broke, not poor? The reason we don't think about our investment money as real money to use is because we both think of it as the down payment on a house, once I get a PhD and a real job. But should we start thinking about it more as money we can live on? I'm scheduled to teach in the fall and spring of next academic year, but should I be looking for work--even work unrelated to my field--right now, just to be bringing in money? Should I be putting my dissertation on hold to support my family? I don't want to do any of these things. I want to keep being broke, even while being objectively poor.

________

Then there's the psychological feeling attached to entering into the welfare state. Now, we around the Commune, we are commie pinko bastards; we believe that the government has an essential role to play in supporting people. We believe in socialized medicine and governments assuring a basic standard of living for all. We believe in paying our taxes when we're earning money and getting it back in the form of assistance when we aren't. But we have been, our whole lives, the people paying it out. Every April 15, we say, I'm glad I paid my taxes, for the part of it that means someone got health care, someone got a job, someone got services they needed. But we've never needed them. We have internalized that it is good to give to others. But we have also internalized that classic middle class feeling that it is shameful to rely on others. Kate has talked about feeling as if she's lost her reason for being in the family: she is the breadwinner. She supports me and X. She can't do that anymore. (Don't worry, honey, I say. Your unemployment check is three times mine. You're still the breadwinner. There's just less bread.) She didn't like that she had to fill out the application for state health insurance, putting together the paperwork for it. She shouldn't have to do this. She's the one who gets it for us as a family.

When we went in to be interviewed for health insurance, we were unsure what we'd get. We walked the ten blocks to the local Medicaid enroller's office, in a neighborhood quite demographically different from ours, but where we actually used to live. The office was in the basement of a medical plaza, and a nice older man, who everybody called Mr. M-----, took us into our office. First he decided I didn't count as part of X's family, since our adoption isn't completed yet. Then he realized Kate had filled out the wrong form, and went and got the right one. Then he told her she had brought the wrong paperwork from the Unemployment Office. But he was kind, and listened to some of the terrible details of Kate's firing, and told a horrible story of his own of getting laid off.

We went down the paperwork. "Do you want to apply for WIC?" he asked.

"No," Kate said, "we're fine."

"How does it work?" I asked. I'd heard it was a really restrictive program, lots of hoops to jump through.

"You get food for the baby," he explained.

Kate and I shared a look.

"You paid for it. Baby food gets expensive," he said.

We paid for it. We nodded to each other. "Yes, OK," Kate said.

________

I joined a LiveJournal community for families on WIC, since I had heard people complain about the weird food you got. The posts confused me. I never can figure out how to use the eggs, women said. Ugh, it's too many beans. I don't drink that much milk.

We are never going to have this problem.

WIC in New York state is very pro-breastfeeding. (Very: the table on what food benefits you get lists your child as receiving, and I quote: "YOUR PRICELESS BREASTMILK!!!" Yes, the government busted out the triple quotation marks, for real.) For fully-breastfeeding mothers of children under one, you get per month:

Two 18 ounce boxes cereal
1 pound whole wheat bread
$10 cash voucher for veggies/ fruits
Three 12 ounce cans frozen juice
6 gallons of non-fat (skim) or low-fat (1%) milk
1 pound cheese
1 pound dry beans
18 ounces peanut butter
30 ounces canned fish
2 dozen eggs

Let's see. Kate drinks at least a gallon of milk a week; we eat beans, usually cooked up from dried beans, at least three times a week; we go through a pound of peanut butter a week; often we run out of our carton of eggs before the end of the week. Granted, we probably eat $10 of produce per week. That's a hell of a lot of canned tuna, so I see a bunch of tuna sandwiches and tuna casserole in Kate's future (probably while I snarf peanut butter in the background.) Kate can't eat the bread, and probably not the cereal, but they might be able to swap out coupons for rice or something instead.

Why does this work so well for us?

Because the WIC program subsidizes a very specific category of food: inexpensive sources of protein, iron, and calcium. In essence, they subsidize a vegetarian, low-on-the-food-chain diet. That's what we've always eaten, as long as I've been cooking for us, because that's what I eat, so that's what I cook. A lot of Americans don't eat like that; they don't know what to do with eggs besides have them for breakfast (quiche; souffle; spanish tortilla, scrambled eggs with cheese; added to stir fry; egg salad.) They've never cooked from dried beans (you soak them and then boil) and don't know how you eat them (a thousand kinds of soup; tacos; rice and beans; veggie burgers). Peanut butter goes in sandwiches and not much else (with apples; with celery; on crackers; in soup with coconut milk and limes; peanut butter granola bars). If you haven't cooked like this, WIC could be a pain in the ass. It's a bit paternalistic (you must eat these healthy foods! not other ones!), but it's not badly intentioned or poorly designed.


_______

This isn't a very coherent post. But all of these thoughts are mixed up with us all the time. Can we afford to go to our friend's bridal shower? Have you checked with the Medicaid office about our paperwork getting there? Are there any jobs posted on idealist that Kate qualifies for? Can we use our WIC checks at the Food Co-op? Is the nonprofit temp agency taking resumes?

Hopefully we'll be coming back to blogging now. It's been a rough couple of months.

X is Four Months Old

Dear X,
You are four months old now. I can't even believe it. We went to your four month check-up on Monday and you are 13 lbs 7 oz and 25 inches long. Such a big boy. Okay, actually, you are a long, skinny guy just like your mama. But so much bigger than when you arrived only four months ago.

In the last two months you have done so many new things and gone so many new places and met so many new people. Here are a few highlights:

In December you went with me and Mommy on a visit to several of your oldest relatives. We went to upstate New York and visited your Great Aunt C, your Grandma's aunt. She was so delighted to meet you. She held you and you were particularly enchanted by the bird pin on her sweater. We then went to eastern Massachusetts and stayed with your Grand Nana (Nana's Mom), Pop-Pop (Nana's Dad) and Great Aunt B (Nana's younger sister). They could not have loved you more. You loved being held by your Grand Nana and you and she talked and laughed and enjoyed each other so much! You thought your Pop-pop was wonderful, and enjoyed many good cuddles and he gave you bottles and you took long naps on his chest. Your Great Aunt B. had bought you many new clothes for Christmas and they all looked very cute on you. While in New England, we also drove up to Boston and visited with your Auntie E (mama's friend from college). Although not very experienced with small babies, she thought you were very cool and was very happy to meet you.

In January, you took your first trip on a plane when we went to Florida to visit your Pops. You were very good on your first trip and didn't cry almost at all. You slept a lot on the plane and everyone commented on what a good baby you were. You had a good time in Florida and met many new people. We stayed with Pops and his girlfriend, J and drove to Northern Florida to visit with your Aunt I (mama's friend from college) who was so amazingly happy to meet you that she almost couldn't stand it. You also met your Aunt I's mom and sister. When we returned to Pop's house, your Great Uncle A (Pop's older brother) came to meet you and was enchanted. He took a LOT of pictures with you and held you a lot. While we were in Florida, you also went on your first boat and were a very good little sailor.

In February, we went to DC to meet with other members of the IVP. You got to meet lots of other kids; babies, toddlers and big kids. You laid on the floor with the other three little babies at the gathering and laughed. I think that seeing the other older babies inspired you, because the day we left the gathering and went to our vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, you rolled over from your tummy to your back for the first time. We had a great time in Rehoboth and showed you all the places that your Mommy and I love visiting when we are at the beach.

In the last two months, you have learned how to do many new things. As I mentioned above, you learned how to roll from tummy to back at the beginning of February. Two days before you turned four months, you learned how to roll from your back to your tummy. This is your favorite trick and you do it almost any time we put you on your back. You get frustrated once you are on your tummy, because you seem to have forgotten that you can roll over to your back again. I'm sure you'll figure that out soon. You continue to stand when we balance you any time you can get us to help you. You've started being able to push from a squat to a stand by yourself, although sitting eludes you completely.

You laugh all the time, finding Mommy to be particularly funny and are becoming more tickle-ish. In the last few days, you've started discovering kisses and have made a game of trying to kiss us before we can kiss you. You've started to express excitement when you realize we are about to nurse. You grin with your mouth open. You have discovered the joy of shreiking, exploring your voice and learning new sounds. The concept of "indoor voice" eludes you completely. You are absolutely enchanting.

Much love,
Mama

The Great Rolling Over Experience

We just arrived in Rehoboth Beach after a wonderful weekend in DC (much to be said on DC later, but tonight's post is on a different topic). Over the weekend, X got to play (ie. stare at other babies and toddlers while they played, he was the second youngest) with many children and had a wonderful time.

Perhaps inspired by the antics of all the other children, he did the most amazing thing at 8pm this evening. He rolled over for the first time! It was so cool. We were giving him naked tummy in the middle of a diaper change and we were talking about what soft skin he still has and we weren't even paying that much attention to what he was up to, and boom, he rolled over! We put his diaper on and then he rolled over two more times! For the sake of posterity, I will note that he is fifteen weeks old now.

Many thanks to the many children who inspired him over the weekend to go where he had not before!

A full Year of X

Today is the day. X has been present in our lives in one form or another for one full year. Yes, that's correct, today is the day our little baby was conceived (although there is some argument it might actually be tomorrow). It's amazing to think about a full year of X. Even as a tiny fetus he had so much personality. And looking at him now, he's the same little being he was long before he was an outdoor baby. On my way out the door to work today he gave me a sloppy, almost kiss and proved to me that all the work is worth it for a loving, happy baby who is always excited to see me.

In other news, my workplace is pretty much collapsing around my ears, but that is a thought for another day.

Grand.ma and Bo.obs

Something I never expected to mind useful and in fact reassuring when I was in high school and college was a conversation with my mother-in-law, let alone a conversation about my breasts. And yet, this evening, I had a very pleasant conversation with my MIL (hereafter to be known at Grandma) about my nursing concerns. She was a breastfeeding counselor when Emily was little and hence knows more than some, and being Grandma, is quite willing to make it up when she doesn't actually know the answer. We lovingly refer to answering a question authoritatively and intelligently without actually knowing the correct answer as pulling a "Grandma's first name".

At the end of the conversation, I felt a bit more confident and certainly a little less nuts about the issue, so thanks Grandma!

Things to say Later

Things I want to blog about when I don't need to have been in bed hours ago:

1) why nursing is making me crazy at the moment

2) how crazy my milk supply appearing to disappear due to one freaking illness is making me

3) how upset my mother made me on the phone tonight

4) how pleased I am to have completed Emily's taxes and discovered that the government owes her approximately $1,000

5) how frustrated I am at the fact that I should apparently be calling my uncle (my mother's brother, not my dad's) to apologize for the fact that HE didn't call ME back

Florida from Brooklyn

I find it a bit sad, but I'm declaring an amnesty again, so that I don't stop writing because I missed a few days. I tend to miss one day and then feel guilty and keep skipping and that's how I didn't blog for months and months the last time. So...

Florida was actually pretty awesome. Seeing my dad happy was really pretty cool. He held X a total of three times, all of them instigated by J or me, but he talked about how cool a kid he was and what a good baby all the time and mentioned several times that he thought I was a wonderful mother. I've had a difficult relationship with my father over my teenage years and beyond and it is nice to be slowly digging out and starting over.

We spent two days in Jacksonville during the trip visiting my college friend and our former commune member I, who was so excited about X. It was really sweet to see her interact with X. She really is the perfect Auntie. Every kid needs someone who thinks they are miraculous and special (who isn't Mom!) On the way to Jacksonville, we recreated part of our honeymoon trip up the east coast of Florida. We stopped in Meibourne and Daytona Beach.

X coped very well, all things considered. We were on the road from 10am to 8pm, and although we stopped frequently, that was really asking a lot of him. At the end of the trip at 7pm, we ran out of bottle (on car trips, we bring bottles of expressed breast milk, so he can eat while I drive) in the middle of his snack and he started screaming so loudly that we couldn't hear each other talk. I had to pull off the highway, park at the gas station and nurse him in the back seat of the car in order to calm him down and get him to stop screaming. But he did stop screaming and fall asleep for the night, so it ended well.

X also got to meet his Great Uncle A, my father's brother, who was in Florida at the same time we were. He lives in Michigan, on one of the great lakes, so this is his yearly retreat from the cold weather. He was enchanted with X and held him many times and wanted to take infinite pictures.

We flew back to Brooklyn tonight and got in a few hours ago. I don't like flying and we had to circle JFK for 45 minutes before landing, which I was not thrilled with, but now I don't have to fly again until August when we do our west coast trip. I need to work on the flying thing before X notices my anxiety. Ah, more things to work on.

Second Day in Florida

Today was a good day, mostly. I got up early with X (7am, sigh) and we read and sang and visited with Pops and then Em got up and did a dissertation interview over the phone and then we ate lunch on the back porch. We split up for the afternoon and Em and X went with J (Pop's girlfriend) to the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg and Pops and I went to the marina, rented a boat and took it out to the Gulf of Mexico.

It was a gorgeous day and a lovely boat, which I got to drive once we were out of the difficult bits and in the open Gulf. According to my father, I did quite well driving the boat. Being out on the boat with my dad was interesting. I had wondered when he suggested earlier today that we split up and do this for the day if he wanted to talk to me by myself, and in fact, that may have been why he suggested it, but being my father, he is remarkably incapable of speaking about emotional or difficult things. Sad considering the man is a psychologist. My mother always spoke about this problem as the shoe makers children having no shoes. He's good with other people's emotions, just not his or ours.

According to Em, the museum was nice, although X was largely unimpresssed and needed a lot of attention in order not to have a small meltdown on the guided tour. We attempted to have dinner around 6:30pm, but X was totally done for the day and cried whenever we tried to sit him or ourselves down. He screamed and fought when I tried to nurse him, so I made the radically assumption that he wasn't hungry and was annoyed that I'd tried to silence him with food. Em walked him while I ate and then half way through dinner, he went insane and I left the table to try nursing again, and this time it worked and Em sat down for dinner and I fed him and we reheated my meal after he was done. He continued to be sad and whiny until we finally got him down after another nurse at 9pm. I think that this trip has been hard on him with all of the new things. Although he almost rolled over today, which was awesome. Another day, I'll tell you about how my child doesn't like sunshine.

First Day in Florida

First full day in Florida went okay. We ate lunch on the patio, Emily went kayaking in the backyard. I'm not actually kidding, my dad's place has a dock facing the intercoastal waterway and a kayak. She had a good time. We had dinner at one of our favorite places to eat in Florida, Sweet Tomatoes, a vegetarian buffet place. We ate with Dad and Jen and her daughter, who I have met once before about two years ago at the beginning of the whole divorce mess. Yes, my parents have been in the process of divorcing for over two years. It's been fun. Spending this much time with my father is interesting. It's the first time I've spent more than five or six hours with him since I lived at home the summer before my senior year in college and the times spent home for the holidays before October 2006. It's very weird to see him be happy and affectionate with someone not my mother, but to be honest he never was happy or affectionate with my mother that I remember, so maybe that's why it's weird.

More to come later. Night.

Flying and Florida

I may not have mentioned this before, but I really don't like flying. I avoid it. For our honeymoon we went to Florida, and to honor my dislike of flying, we took the train from NYC to Miami. Lovely and romantic, but a little insane to take a 27 hour long train ride when the flight is 3 hours. Now, my solution used to be valium. Sleeping on Em's lap for the entire take-off and early flight (the part that makes me craziest) works well. During pregnancy that didn't work, so I suffered through.

Flying with X is an entirely different challenge, because I have to be strong for him and not freak out all that visibly. I nursed him while we waited for the plane to take-off and, get this, he slept through the entire take-off. Strike that, the entire flight. He was amazing. And I coped decently well, only holding him very tight against me and clinging to his little hand as he slept through it all. And once we were up in the air, I listened to my ipod and held him sleeping on my lap and it wasn't so bad. And I don't have to do it again until next Saturday, so that's good.

Florida is nice so far. We are staying outside Tampa with my dad and his girlfriend, which is interesting. Their house is nice, but appears to have no heat and although it is Florida, it is also January and I wish they had more blankets. We have so far had dinner, gone to the CVS for diapers and snacks (they have no food in their house, I swear, but that is a comment for another day) and watched a British mystery on the TV, with my father falling asleep 20 minutes in and snoring, which actually was kinda nice, as it reminded me so strongly of my childhood, where that happened pretty much every night.

Paper-work loving Crazy Lady

My second day back at work wasn't as difficult. To be fair to my first day at work, it also wasn't difficult, just very frustrating at the very end. My second day back proved that I was correct in assuming that it is going to take me most of my part-time easing back to the office to catch up the insane amount of paperwork that I got handed yesterday.

I discovered today the level to which my co-worker who covered this part of my job has bailed over the last month. Also, that I am very anal retentive and can't cope with other people's inability to aim when placing labels on file folders (seriously, if the label is at an angle and below the tab, what is the point of the freaking label?), bad handwriting on folders that everyone has to read and his refusal to put the freaking year when he dates his work on each folder (yes, I am writing the year on each folder as I go, but what of the many he already filed?). Yes, I am a crazy paperwork-loving nut, but seriously, this is a business, be neat!

I also learned that the pipe-dream I had of not doing the tech support part of my job until I'm back full-time (as my supervisor had agreed to) just isn't going to work. People don't understand technology and they are used to coming to me for help, and are so happy that I'm back to fix all their problems. I spent half of today dealing with lack of phone service. But what can you do. Off to Florida in the morning!

First Day Back

Today was my first day back at work. It was also the day that Emily finally became the third person in our home to come down with the Death. I was really worried that would happen, but hey, what can you do?

We got up at 8am, X and I sang songs together, Emily got him changed and dressed and we went in the living room and we put together my working supplies (breast pump, bottles to pump and store, freezer bag with ice packs, snacks). Then I sat down and nursed him and we cuddled for a few minutes and in no time, it was 9:10am and I had to leave. I cried...a lot. I tried to smile and wave and leave and not upset him, but I just couldn't pull it off. I actually don't think I upset him but he got pretty wet.

I got to work a few minutes early and the first part of my work day went well. I got handed a remarkable pile of paper and I started sorting through the chaos. For the time I am part-time (until March) I am only doing one of my jobs, the crazy details, infinite paper part. Em had a dissertation interview in the city, so Uncle watched X and took him shopping and to the library for Spanish board books (discussion of trying to raise X bilingual coming some day soon). Uncle, X and Em met at my office to trade baby and have lunch. It was great to see him and we cuddled and he got held by half my office and we nursed and then Em was feeling like death, so Uncle rearranged his scheduled and went home with them and stayed with them until I got home.

The second half of my day was also fine, until the last 5 minutes, when I got called into a tech crisis that I should not have been in charge of, even if demanding a problem be fixed 5 minutes before the end of the day was appropriate. Twenty minutes later, I couldn't fix it and had called our back-up tech guy with a desperate plea to come in the morning to help. I then packed up and ran to the subway, already 15 minutes later than I said I would be and with a sick wife, a sad, non-napping baby, and an uncle who had to be at work pretty much yesterday waiting at home. And then life went downhill.

I waited for 40 minutes on the downtown platform waiting for a frakking F train. In those 40 minutes 3 V trains came, so not helpful, and 4 F trains, all so full that I could not even try to fit on. Finally at 7pm, fifteen minutes after I am already supposed to be home, I get on an F and START my trip. I didn't get home until 7:45pm, at which point, Uncle kissed and ran and I went on duty with the baby and looking after Em.

X was sweet and happy to see me and we hung out and cuddled and played with his new bouncy seat that Uncle had bought him while they were shopping. He LOVES the toys that dangle in front of him. This is the first time he's really noticed toys on a toy bar, so this is entertaining. This bouncy seat converts to a toddler rocking chair when he's older and goes to 40 pounds, so that's cool. I changed and dressed him for bed at 9pm and we nursed and he went down at 9:30pm. I ran to the gas station on the corner (yes, we sometimes shop at the Mini-Market at the gas station when it's late and we don't have other options) and got Em Vitamin Water and then we watched some TV and now we are going to bed.

It has been a very long first day back at work, but I will focus on the fact that I survived it. Oh, also, X turned 3 months old today! His monthly review will come as soon as I find time in my life to write it in the next few days between work and flying to Florida on Saturday.

Off to work in the morning

Well, I managed to hold down food for the better part of today and the aching has slightly improved, so I am going to work tomorrow. Man, I could really skip that, but food and health insurance are just kinda essential. Wish me luck in the morning. I'm pretty sure there will be a pretty weepy Kate walking to the subway.

Unwell

I am still unwell, not vomiting, but aching all over and unable to sleep comfortably. Emily has (wisely, but it still makes me sad and anxious) told me to stop breastfeeding when I am feeling this unwell. Wisely because when I tried nursing him after watching the inauguration on TV (OMG! No more Bush! Obama!) he hit me and cried and refused to stay latched and I couldn't do anything but hold him and cry myself. He picks up on my unwellness and feeds right back into it, so I'm pumping and Emily's giving him bottles until at least tomorrow morning. I believe it's the right decision, but it makes me even more anxious about going back to work on Thursday. Have I mentioned I'm supposed to start working part time on Thursday, and I feel like Death on a Stick?

But we have a new president and I will focus on that and my beautiful boy and get over this stupid flu.

Half Anniversary

The depressing thing about having the Death (you know, besides having the Death) is that yesterday was our half anniversary. Yes, we've always celebrated our half anniverary. There is a reason for that. We met at a high school choir picnic and started dating at nerd summer camp. The day we counted as our anniversary for almost 10 years (we got married in May 2007 and therefore the date sorta reset, although we still honor our first half anniversary) was July 18. July 18 is also Emily's birthday. Having an anniversary and a birthday is complicated, especially in the first few years when we weren't out to our parents and try explaining why you need a lot of "alone" time to your parents on your birthday. Hence, January 18 became the day we celebrated. And this is our first half anniversary since X's birth and I was horizontal on the couch or vomitting. So, that's kind of depressing.

That having been said, I love you more than I could have imagined 11.5 years ago and can't wait to begin the next 11.5. See you when we're the parents of an 11 year old! I love you, Emily, happy 11.5!

I have the Death

I woke up at 6am this morning with an irresistable need to vomit. This sensation has not gone away all day. Unfortunately, this has given Emily a crash course in staying home with the baby all day by yourself, as I have been barfing or sleeping all day. Adding to the problem is that X has just started a growth spurt and this makes him not nap almost at all and need to eat every hour. Boob mama not being available due to vomit, we had to dip into our freezer stash. Sigh. I guess a dry run of what the end of the week when I back at work will look like isn't a bad thing, but I could have skippped it, honestly.

I can, however, add a new impressive breastfeeding moment to my list. The first vomit of the morning was done into a bowl over X's head as he nursed. Yes, you read that correctly, I nursed him and threw up at the same time. I even impress myself.

Nana Comes Calling

My mother, X's Nana, came up to visit for part of the weekend. We first heard of this visit on Wednesday night, when she called to ask if we had plans or could she come up for the day on Saturday. This was later extended to include driving up Friday night (and I do mean night as she did not leave her house until 10pm.) I do like that my mother feels comfortable showing up for a day, sleeping on our inflatable mattress, sleeping until 12pm, playing with the baby, going out to a late lunch and dessert (we highly recommend the Chocolate Room), and then coming back to the house, playing with the baby a little more and then driving home. I get along well with my mother; she is one of my close friends, which has been true for most of my life.

What I find particularly nice is that Em feels comfortable with her showing up and staying over randomly. She does not get stressed about her mother-in-law showing up largely unannounced and does not feel the need to perform as she would to a house guest, except for helping feed her and giving her a bed as she would any person in our house.

Now I can only hope that we feel as comfortable when we are at my father and his girlfriend's house in Tampa for a week at the end of the month. We've never stayed at a place he has lived with his girlfriend, since he and my mother separated over two years ago. We will have to see how that goes. Look for many posts during the trip!

OMG, OMG, OMG, BSG!

Emily has spoken in a previous post about our love of Battlestar Galactica. When BSG was last running new episodes this past summer, we got hooked. As the last episode of season 4.0 was playing, we talked about how weird it was that when season 4.5 aired, X would be 3 months old.

X will be three months old this Thursday, and BSG is back. And I know so many people won't have gotten to see it for so many reasons, so I won't go into plot points and specifics, but I couldn't let this evening pass without at least screaming quietly on the internet about how frakking amazing the start of the second half of season four is, and how I can't comprehend how they are going to wrap up the entire show in nine more episodes.

Let me say again, FRAKKING amazing!

Best Mama Moment

I had one of my best moments as a Mom tonight. It was a fleeting moment, blink and you would miss it. X had been down for the night for about an hour and he was getting restless, crying in his sleep. This happens once or twice in the first few hours he's asleep, so one of us will get us and sit in front of him in his bouncy chair, where he sleeps until we all go to bed, and talks him back to sleep, just repeatedly telling him he's okay, that he's not alone and he settles back down.

Tonight, I crouched down in front of him, telling him that he was safe and Mama was there, and he stopped moaning, opened his eyes slowly, his eyes focused, he saw me, he smiled a sweet little smile and closed his eyes and went back to sleep. Just seeing me and hearing my voice let him feel safe and loved. It is so all worth it.

No More Newborn

X is 12 weeks old today. When we took our newborn care class (yes we took childbirth class, breastfeeding class and newborn care class: we are education nerds) the teacher told us that the first 12 weeks were the trial by fire, do whatever you need to to survive weeks. They were the newborn weeks.

I guess that means that I am no longer the mother of a newborn. I have become the mother of an infant. An infant who smiles and squeals with glea when we sit down to do our morning sing. An infant who discovered today that he can use his arms to push himself up very high indeed when he is on his belly, yelling and grunting the whole time, because he was putting so much effort in, but refusing to stop. An infant who still falls off the breast, milk rolling down his chin. I will miss my newborn, but this infant thing is awesome!

New York State is Awesome

Emily taught her first college class this fall. She also TA'd her first class. She LOVED doing it. I was always sure that she would do well and enjoy teaching, but it was great to see it for real. Her kids loved her and learned a lot. For the class she taught, she had them do final presentation on the last Friday of the semester and brought food and they invited X and I to come watch. It was awesome.

And now she is spending the spring and summer semesters doing field work and writing her dissertation and staying home with X, as I believe I have mentioned before. And we are going to be so broke, because this is her fourth year of grad school and only the first three had a stipend and she got paid for teaching, but no teaching again until the fall (and that's only if she gets the job she applied for; we find out next Friday), so no paycheck.

For the last week, we've been kind of jokingly kicking around the idea of her applying for unemployment. We weren't seriously considering it, because the idea that the state would pay her to be a stay at home graduate student mom just didn't seem possible. And then, she sat down tonight and went online and it turns out that she actually qualifies for unemployment and she will receive a packet in the mail and after a week waiting period, next week she can file for her first check. I cannot begin to say how amazing it will be to get any money at all for the next seven months while she stays home with X and does field work. We had just planned on being even more broke then usually and I have no idea how much money she qualifies for, but even $50 a week would be amazing!

Breast Milk and Me

My confession for the evening:

I spend WAY too much time obsessing about whether I have enough breastmilk in the freezer for when I go back to work. I actually had to explain to Emily a few weeks ago why I was crazy about using bottles of ebm if we start them and NEVER dumping bottles if they were still good (to the point of giving him the second half of a bottle before I nurse him at a feeding if there is a bottle sitting in the fridge that would have to be tossed otherwise). I just can't stand seeing breast milk go to waste. I worry so much about X not having enough food when I'm working and coming home to him hungry and crying. Logically, I know this is not likely to happen, but emotionally, I just can't handle it. It is probably just my way of expressing my sadness about leaving him and going back to work, but it is just a bit crazy making.

Off to pump.

Handedness

A very quick thought tonight before I head back to the sad, moan-y baby in the living room:

So Em and I thought of the question we forgot from the random question post the other day:

X is showing a very distinct preference for one hand over the other and we're wondering if we are hallucinating or if he really is already left-handed? I guess it makes sense that if he's left-handed there is no reason that he wouldn't already be grabbing more with the left and sucking his left fingers in preference to his right, I had just never thought about it before. Hmm...

More about sleep

I've decided that any schedule X appears to be following is irrelevant for the moment, as he appears to still have the tail end of the cold he's had the last week. I thought he was over it a few days ago, but considering the remarkable amount of snot we've been pulling out of his nose and the slight cough, I'm thinking I was wrong.

He has good mornings with cheerfulness and a long nap (1.5 to 2 hours) and then his afternoons feature very short naps from which he wakes up crying hysterically and not stopping until he is held close and reassured that his moms haven't disappeared while he was sleeping. It's kind of amazing, he truly seems to wake up with the fear of being alone and all you do to calm him down is keep telling him that Mama or Mommy is here and he's not by himself and he starts winding down again. His congestion isn't helping the naps at all, either.

I never imagined when I started this blog that it would feature quite this much discussion of my son's sleep, but I suppose that's just because I didn't know any better. Sleep is REALLY important. I go back to work part time in less than two weeks and I really want him to be on as good a footing as possible before I do. Sigh.

Random Questions

So today's post is a series of random questions that Em and I have been wondering about. We have several books, but they don't all agree and we also are a little to crazy busy to read them at the moment (which is weird because we are both crazy readers usually).

When did your children start teething? X seems to be heading in that direction, but it seems really early and I think he may just be loving his new found hands.

At what age did your children grow out of their infant carseat? We're starting to shop for our convertible carseat and big boy (or at least not stroller frame with carseat) stroller and are wondering about time frame. He appears to be long and skinny, so may length out of his Snugride before he weighs out.

Well, I thought we had more, but now that I'm writing, we can't remember the other questions, so that's it for now.

On the sleep front, he woke up at 8am, we sang and read books, he took a two hour nap, woke up at 11:30am, took a second 30 minute nap, woke up at 1:30pm, we went to the library, we came home and he was up the rest of the afternoon and evening, except for a few micro naps of less than 15 minutes and was whiny and sad for the last two hours of his day before going to sleep after nursing at 10pm. So it was a good day, he just seemed as if another nap or two would have been good, but he couldn't settle. Oh well, we seem to be managing. Thanks for the advice on the sleep front.

Oh, the Tired

I've been thinking about this "going back to work" thing, a lot. And until today, all this thinking has been about the emotions of it all. How I'm going to miss my baby and my time spent being with him and my day being all about him and so on and so forth. And then today happened. We took the bus to the "bourgie" neighborhood up one from ours and had Indian food for lunch and then walked the 16 blocks to the Coop and did our weekly grocery shop and then carried all $136 of groceries home in three handled bags on the bus and then walked the rest of the way home (while Emily carried the child in the Ergo) and we walked in the door and I walked to the basement and put in laundry and then came up the stairs and finished putting away the groceries and sat down for a minute, and COULD NOT GET UP.

So I have a new way of thinking about going back to work. I got used to being tired all the time physically when I was pregnant and working and I've gotten used to being tired all the time and staying home with the baby, but my goodness, I can't quite imagine how I'm going to handle being tired all the time while working and having the baby at home. I'm officially not thinking about that again for a few more days.

On a different note: We ended up not waking X up at 9:30am as planned, because we were too tired to get up then. He woke up at 10am by himself, although we gently encouraged him to stay awake and today wasn't a disaster. He slept for an hour before we went out for the day and then dozed in the Ergo pretty much the entire time we were out (2 hours) and then was pleasant for the rest of the afternoon and evening and went to sleep at 10pm and has been down since. So, it's official, we are NEVER waking him in the morning before he wants to be awake unless we absolutely have to.

A Difficult Day

Today was another difficult day here in the Commune. Today we tried a new theory of morning and woke him up at 10:30am, thinking that if we started the day earlier, he might nap and/or go to bed at a better hour. Instead, we got two hours of happy sunny baby who smiled and gurgled and enjoyed our Mama/Baby sing-along (our repertoire includes Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Gonk Gonk Went the Froggy, The Birdy Song, and X's favorite, Little Bunny FooFoo) and then an entire rest of the day of sadness and crying and refusing to nap until he finally collapsed for an hour and a half at 5pm (but only if Mama held him and rocked the ENTIRE TIME) and then was upset for the rest of the evening until nursing to sleep at 10:15pm. We are going to try waking him at around 9:30am tomorrow and if we have another meltdown day, we'll have learned our lesson and discontinue any plan to change his wake-up time from whenever the heck he wants to get up, except on those days when we don't have a choice.

Does anyone who has already done this beginning of establishing a sleep/wake routine have any thoughts?

Raising the Commune Child

Over the last eleven weeks, I have found mothering to not come as naturally as some say it does. I love my son, I think he is wonderful, but I have had some difficulty always putting his needs first, especially at first when I felt lousy from the very difficult labor and was really sleep deprived. Em talks about how she realized as a child that parenting meant always giving the child the biggest slice of cake and never having it yourself and I think that is a good description.

However, as time has progressed and he had become more of a baby and less of a lump (yes I called my child a lump and I am sticking to it) I am finding myself a great deal more at ease with this always putting X first, even when I'm so tired all I want to do is take a nap.

And then there are moments that remind me why I got into this motherhood business. X has had a cold for a few days and this has led to sleeping more at night (yay!), less or not at all during the day (boo!) and being cranky and overwhelmed a great deal. So late this afternoon he was fussing and whining and generally being sad and I had tried feeding and diaper-changing and walking up and down the hall and I could not figure out what to do next and I looked down at my child and really looked at him and thought, "He's just so tired, he doesn't know how to sleep." So I held him very close to my chest and just told him again and again in a soft voice that I knew that he was so tired and overwhelmed and didn't know what to do, but not to worry because Mama knew and she would fix it. And he stopped sobbing and his head fell back against my arm and he fell asleep on my chest, all warm and soft and loose and this is how you are a parent and give them the biggest slice of cake. You just slow down and look at them and realize that sometimes Mama really does know how to fix it.

Of course, there are those moments like the one a few hours later in the day when he screams at you without end and nothing you do works and the cuddle trick doesn't work and when you try to nurse him back to calmness, he screams at your breast and tries to bite you (even though he doesn't have teeth yet) and only Uncle can calm him down and you want to go in the other room and scream but you have to be the grown up... and then Mommy takes over and you pass the child back and forth until nursing is acceptable and he finally falls asleep and you thank God that there is a Mama, a Mommy and an Uncle in this house and this is your Commune Child.

Leaving the Baby (Coming Soon)

A few nights ago I had my first bad dream about going back to work. I won't call it a nightmare because it wasn't terrifying and it didn't cause me to wake up screaming. But it was disturbing and I remembered after I woke up, which I do not usually do.

I am very fortunate in my workplace's current maternity leave policy and when I planned out my maternity leave this summer, I also had an awesome boss (Uncle D for those who have read previous posts) who helped me get the most time without losing all leave for the rest of my year (which ends at the end of October, yay for random ways of doing staff leave, which I can comment on, as I'm the one who keeps all staff leave records for my office). But even having a great leave policy (12 weeks plus whatever other time earned one wants to use, all paid) I have to go back at some point (I am the primary breadwinner in our family, and carry the insurance for all three of us) and that point is coming soon. I've arranged with one of my supervisors (Uncle D having now departed to the West Coast) to go back 2 days a week starting January 22nd and then up to 3 days a week mid February and then full time in March, which is also really great because it allows for a gradual start to going back to work and leave X. And yet...

I don't want to leave my baby. I'm just getting to know him and he starting to seem as if he knows me and when I'm at work I'll get to see him a few hours a day and weekends, which stinks. And yet again, I have to acknowledge that I am so very lucky because I don't have to leave him with strangers, or daycare. He's staying home with his Mommy (Em) and that's amazing that we can do that. In fact, we managed to trade full-time mom status for his first year, with Em teaching his first three months and then when I go back to work she's taking off the spring and summer semesters and dissertating and being with X. And although this leads us to be even more broke then we already are (oy) it is totally worth it and works for Em's schedule with her quest to PhD and I will get over my bad dreams and we will make it work. But I am still sad at the thought of leaving him at home every day.

What a Diffence a Year Makes

Many other people on many other blogs do this interesting thing where they take the first sentence from the first blog post of each month and post them to reflect on the previous year. And I was all, I can't do that, I totally bailed on the blog and then I realized that except for November, I actually can. So why not:

January: A most unconventional household and its adventures in the babyverse. (the intro post of this blog, which we began January 2, 2008.)

February: This is my first Photo Friday. (this one is pretty obvious. it's a picture of our two cats.)

March: So, it's been almost two weeks since the internets have heard from us. (this was an apology for being absent from the blog and recounting our recent adventures)

April: As heard last night on How I Met Your Mother (which is basically one of two sitcoms I actually like, the other being Scrubs, and HIMYM is better now than Scrubs is) last night: (this was a post about our wedding and our Quaker marriage certificate.)

May: Told Kate's grandparents. (also pretty self-evident. grandparents were happy, although not nearly as happy as when they met X this past week.)

June: I took these tests yesterday. (Em talks about masculinity and motherhood.)

July: It's official. Willa's a he. (X is a boy! This post includes a clip from Scrubs featuring "The Safety Dance".)

August: Incidentally, the title of this post should be said to the rhythm of "Hitler never played Risk as a kid" from this clip. (Em expounds on why Dana Scully is a bad mother.)

September: We got a bunch of baby clothes at X's second shower last weekend. (Em talks about the lack of baby clothes with Mama or Uncle on them.)

October: Input: Thirty-six hours of labor after rupture of membranes (birth announcement)

November: (Not so much, please note new baby)

December: Dear X, Today you turned 2 months old. (the first of my X month reviews.)

Having done this exercise, all I can do is marvel at all that can happen in a year. And I can't even begin to imagine what will happen in the next.

Baby loves to Dance!

X loves music. One of his many great aunts (he has five on Em's side and two on mine) gave him a collection of baby classical music CDs that her girls had outgrown (generations are fun in Em's family) and every time he listens to Tchaikovsky he relaxes and smiles.

Uncle is a professional dancer and this holiday season he is performing in a show that plays a great deal of Tchaikovsky and has bright shiny lights and colorful costumes. So our two month old baby went to the ballet today. Granted it was a matinee, but I was still impressed at his ability to cope. He smiled and cooed and stood up and swung his hands around and didn't have to be removed once from the theater. I strongly suspect that X will like dancing when he is old enough. That or he will want to play music.

Amazing Child

I am constantly looking at X and thinking, "I did that." I grew this child and brought him into this world (and let me tell you, he fought that arrival kicking and screaming, Mr. Sunnyside up, neck flexed, hand trying to come through my cervix at the same time as his head, so stuck the suction cup came off his head twice). He weighs 11 pounds now and is 23 inches long. He is over four pounds heavier and 3.5 inches longer than when he arrived and he is amazing.

The Confession

So I disappeared for most of my pregnancy. I kept meaning to post but it never quite happened. Emily gamely attempted to keep the blog alive but I was so tired and strangely, I found that having posted constantly about trying to get pregnant, having achieved that state, I didn't know what to say. And every day that I didn't blog, I added a little more guilt to the pile and a little more reason to not get to it the next day.

It's January 1st and I am declaring an amnesty for myself and starting again. I've cheated a bit and back dated X's birth announcement and the first of the monthly reviews that I am hoping to write for him. We'll have to see if this amnesty works. I hope so.

Happy New Year to you all.