April 2005 Archives

Ok, today's best Eli quote is pretty funny:

"Make me a pancake or I'll destroy you."

(Yeah, I think he's been watching Star Wars too much. Blame Josh.)

But despite the supreme chuckle-factor of this particular quote, it's also a symptom of a larger problem: the kid has been getting mouthy and defiant like you wouldn't believe. Everything is becoming a battleground, especially mundane things like getting dressed or what's for dinner. Josh and I are finding ourselves struggling for a workable way of disciplining an increasingly bratty kid who doesn't listen, doesn't seem to care about consequences ("I like time outs" is another classic quote from the last few days), and has his own agenda that he fully intends to stick to without compromise. It's like the terrible twos all over again, but with a smarter, more verbal kid. Is this a consequence of his new baby brother? Or just an age-appropriate limit-testing? I truly can't tell. But it's getting exhausting.

On the other hand, I just had the sweetest, easiest hour of bedtime routine with Eli that I've had in a long time. (I took advantage of an unusually long Isaac nap that lasted from dinnertime through bedtime--hooray!) We had a perfectly lovely, fun, chatty bathtime, then I brushed and flossed his teeth without a single problem (of course it probably helped that I pretended he was a frog the whole time), got him into his jammies, and even cut his finger- and toenails without complaint. I read him a story, had lots of hugs and kisses, and left--and he didn't get up once to say he was scared of the dark or needed to tell us something or wanted a drink. Go figure. Is it that he really wanted the mama-time? Or did I just luck out? I don't know. But a day that started with arguing over what was for breakfast and how much of it he was willing to eat ended with "I love you, Mama," so I guess it was worth it.

I don't want to jinx anything here (stay away, oh ye Gods! This is *not* hubris!) but I think we've evolved into some sort of vaguely predictable evening schedule with the baby. He tends to fall fast asleep for the night at somewhere between 8:30 and 9:30pm, and then sleeps through until 1 or 2am. I get up and nurse him briefly at that point, and then he sleeps until around 5 or 6am. Lately Josh has been getting up and giving him a bottle at that point, and I get to sleep in until 7 or so. Waking up "only" once a night for the last few nights has been quite delightful, let me tell you, even if I'm still only totalling about 6-7 hours of sleep a night max. I hope this continues.

I also had what felt like an amazing amount of two-handed time to myself today, because Isaac napped for two huge long naps today (could this be the precursor of a schedule? Be still, my heart). If I'd only known they were going to be that long a nap, I'd have napped too, but still…it was very exciting to have the two-handed time. In the morning, I did all kinds of house chores: cleaned up Josh's desk (looking for the checkbook, and trying to be a nice guy since he was freaking out about how disorganized everything in the office is), folded and put away laundry, picked up in various rooms, did dishes, and even got to make and eat lunch. Sitting down! Awesome. It's amazing what I can get done with a free hour or so. During the afternoon nap, I went to the drugstore, did some photo organizing, and wrote in my baby journal. Bliss! Now, if only I could regularly count on having this kind of time...

Yes yes, I am learning to be grateful for those little everyday things I took for granted before: being on my own schedule, getting things done when and how I want. Grateful. Patient. Understanding. Self-sacrificing. When did I become such a nun? Sheesh.

Recent achievements, in no particular order:

-Hosting Seder for 12 (and it worked out fine, largely due to the helpfulness of everyone attending, in terms of making food and helping set up)
-Finally moving furniture and other mementos out of my grandparents' house
-Getting 4 hours of sleep in a row
-Going to the dentist for a cleaning with Isaac in tow (he slept the whole time, whew)
-Posting more pictures to Yaboogie Photos (this is a work in progress, especially Eli's page)
-Finally giving the increasingly grubby baby a bath
-House chores (hey, it ain't easy to do dishes or throw a load of laundry in when you have a baby who wants to be held or nursed all the time)
-Blogging two days in a row

I'm sure there's more but I'm off to sleep.

Hey, it was my 1-year blogiversary today. Time for a round of parenthetically shaped virtual cake (chocolate for me, of course, but you can have any flavor you like). Even though the writing has been less regular than I'd like, I'm still pleased that I've kept at it. That was the goal: to keep writing, to keep in practice. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids...

I took a brief tour back through my vast archives, and I was pleased that not every entry resorted to mere reporting of the day's (or week's) events. I think the best ones managed to do what Suzanne's essays do, which is to make the personal universally relatable. (Well ok, maybe not universal, but at least relatable for a wider audience.) Feel free to go look around, if you're bored and in a clicky mood, and tell me what you think.

And I want to end with shout outs to Suzanne and Rebecca, writing group partners and dedicated blog readers, who are also celebrating blogiversaries soon (R this month and S in September). And to Josh, who convinced me that I should really start a blog and even set it all up for me. I couldn't have done it without y'all.

I know, I know, all you hundreds of readers out there are clamoring for the return of Parentheticals. Without my wry, witty insights (and parenthetical asides), your lives seem empty, sad, lacking in juice and joie de vivre. I feel your pain, and thus I am taking my precious two-handed time (which would most likely be better spent sleeping or doing house chores) to zip out a blog entry. For da peeps.

Ahem.

So yeah, whoo, how did those couple of weeks slip by? It's all the fault of those rearranged priorities you get when a baby comes along. (I'm not sure when they'll rearrange themselves again, so for now Parentheticals will just have to remain the ugly stepchild.) Things are actually going ok over here in babyland, overall. The baby is still a super piglet (he's just a few ounces short of 13 lbs as of today's weigh-in at the BSG) and I'm still not getting very much sleep (which is starting to get harder and harder). I'm still struggling with keeping a good attitude, but manage to do so about 80% of the time. Eli continues to love "his baby". I'm slowly transitioning back into my "super-mama" mode, able to coordinate and execute complicated maneuvers in a single bound. (So to speak.) My brain is still stuttering from time to time but I still blame that on the sleep deprivation. Time is still stripped of its traditional anchors and thus, feels really different than it used to.

Other details dredged up from the depths of the mama-brain:

Isaac has been sleeping in his crib at night for the last few nights, which is great. I was worried how we were going to make that transition, but like so many other parenting things that I've worried about ahead of time, it was easier than I thought. We just kind of did it, and it worked. Go figure.

I've been more and more able to go out and about with Isaac--we've been to a wedding shower, a baby shower, a restaurant (sushi! FINALLY!!!), and more. I'm getting used to the schlepping tons of gear (diaper bag, stroller, boppy, water, baby in car seat) thing again.

I've updated Isaac's webpage, so if it's pictures you want, go look there (and feel free to leave comments). That, at least, I can do with one hand, so it beats out blogging in the priority totem pole.

For those of you who didn't know, we've been on a grand campaign to get Eli (the King of Picky Eating) to eat some vegetables (any vegetables). He finally reached his goal of 20 stickers, for which he received his chosen reward: a Peter Pan costume. Cute picture below. (I just love cute dressup pictures, don't you?)

I'm still reading lots of books. Latest reads have been:
-The Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon (a big 1000+ page fantasy trilogy, which was good but not great. Gave me lots of good ideas for my own writing though.)
-The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin (I liked Shopgirls, but this one felt disjointed and somewhat lacking to me. I give it an "ehhhh".)
-Blood of Ten Chiefs vol 5: Dark Hours (yeah it's an Elfquest short story collection, mock all you want. Frankly, it pretty much sucked, I'm sorry to say.)

I sent off a chapter of my novel to be critiqued on Critters, and ended up with only two critiques, which was sort of disappointing. I did get a couple additional people to agree to read the whole thing though, so we'll see how helpful their critiques wind up being. I feel like if I could only get a good night's sleep and have a cup of coffee, I might be ready to start writing again. Oh yeah and if I actually could count on having an hour or two without baby in order to actually concentrate. So it seems unlikely that I'll be starting up again soon. But a girl can dream (and maybe make a few plot notes or something).

I tried on my favorite pair of pre-pregnancy jeans this morning, just for laughs. I was able to button them, but they did not look (or feel) good. 10 more pounds before that happy day, I guess. In the meantime I'll have to decide whether to be stubborn (and cheap) and not buy any new clothes to tide me over, or whether to be extravagant and make myself feel better by buying a few new things. Maybe I'll just compromise and get some new spring sandals.

Ok I think I hear the baby waking up so I'll just end with some pictures (and apologies to those of you whose browsers crash with this many pictures...I figure since I haven't posted for a couple weeks, it won't be so bad). And really, I will try to at least do super brief blog entries more often than every two weeks. No really.

^ Eli in the aforementioned Peter Pan costume (while Tomo looks on bemusedly in the background). Yay for carrot sticks!

^ A cute post-bath picture of Isaac.

^ Even yet more chub. Look at that double (triple?) chin!

Wow. Two free minutes to blog and yet barely two free brain cells to rub together to produce fire (or interesting writing, as the case may be). Gluh.

It's been a fractured, distracted last few days. The baby has been wanting to nurse every hour, all day long (luckily he seems to go a bit longer at night, as long as I keep him on or next to me), which means I pretty much do nothing but nurse, read, eat, sleep, and maybe slip in 5 minutes here and there of general life admin stuff. I am SO trying to be patient, suck it up, and wait this phase out, but man, I can't wait until there is a longer, more predictable amount of time between feedings, so that I can do things that require more than 5 minuts of attention. I want to be able to plan things in advance, to be able to do things out in the world without rushing around or engaging in ultra complicated planning worthy of the space shuttle launch. I am feeling more and more like I'm just hunkering down, digging in, waiting for a break in the rain. God, somebody stop me before I start singing Annie songs ("The sun'll come ouuuuuut....tomorrow!").

Ok on to other small random fractured bits:

Recent books read:
-A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
-Onion Girl by Charles de Lint
and now slogging my way through a vast fantasy trilogy called The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon

I went to my first meeting of the (now don't giggle) Breastfeeding Support Group (after this to be known as BSG) at the hospital back on Thursday, and it was a good experience, just like when I did it back when Eli was wee. The best part was getting to weigh Isaac, and discovering that he's now slightly over 11 pounds. 11 pounds, at just over 3 weeks old! That means he's gained approximately 3 pounds in 3 weeks. Sheesh! I guess that's what happens when you eat every hour. Still, it's nice to have a relatively plumpy baby this early on, complete with delicious neck and thigh and wrist rolls. It does make me wonder what he'll be like when he's 6 months old, when all babies chub out. Stay tuned.

Sigh. Running out of steam already, just can't marshal up any more to say at the moment. So here's the pictures, I'm outta here. (I probably only have about 30 seconds before that piglet wants to nurse again, anyway...)

^ Look at that chub!

^ Eli still loves "his baby". (I'm getting artier in my sibling shots...I really liked this one though.)

I spent a fair amount of time today thinking about, well, time. Time, and the way one's experience of time shifts around depending on what's going on in one's life at any given moment. Right now I'm obviously in sleep-deprived, parent-of-a-newborn land, and I've already written about how it feels that time is both crawling and speeding, stretching and contracting, and just generally behaving oddly. But I've also been experiencing other things that have made time feel different.

For example, this morning Josh and Isaac and I went out to Redwood City to witness the interment of my Poppa and Grandma's ashes in the niche they'd picked out. On the drive there and back (with Isaac blissfully asleep in the back seat), I spent a lot of time thinking about my grandparents, and about the time I'd spent with them as a kid, as a teenager, and as an adult. And about how I wouldn't ever get to spend any time with them again, except in my memories. Standing there under the oak trees with various friends and family members, watching the little cardboard boxes of ashes get sealed up in the marble square that was "theirs", I had this weird sort of double-vision feeling of being in both present and future, knowing that I was currently living through an experience that was also going to wind up as a memory of the past. (And now I'm blogging about it...yet another layer.)

Another example of the way that time and memory are coming up in my life right now: I just randomly reconnected with an old high school friend, the kind that you're super tight with in high school and then somehow completely lose touch with afterwards. My mom and dad ran into her in the supermarket, and she gave them her phone number to pass on to me. And surprise surprise, the stars aligned one day not long after that and I had a hand free and a few minutes of time and I actually called her. We had a brief but very interesting conversation and now tomorrow she and her son (!) are coming over here for a play date. I haven't seen her in probably 15 years at least. Just doing that brief "so what's your life been like" phone call was a total trip--sent me spinning back through time to look over my life and cull out some anecdotes that might help someone else make sense of who I'd become. Old friends (and the easy access to nostalgic memories they provide) are always a great way to help you think about the paths you've walked and the way your life has shaped up. They help shake you out of your everyday routine, remind you of what you used to do/say/think/believe/listen to/wear, and let you evaluate what's changed and why. I am really looking forward to our play date tomorrow.

One more time/memory thing: I've also been reading the baby journal I started when Eli was born, and tripping out on the similarities and differences in my own mental state back then and right now (not to mention the similarities and differences in the babies and their development). I have come so far as a parent, and yet I totally relate to the me I can still "hear" in those old pages. I'm still her--I have the same general attitudes and coping mechanisms, the same past experiences that made me who I am (was?), and really, it wasn't that long ago that I wrote those pages. And yet everything is different now, so much more life experience layered on top that has changed me and my outlook.

I'm having a hard time expressing what I mean here...maybe I need to let all this percolate beneath the surface for a few more hours/days/weeks/months/years. So let me shift from the abstract to the grounded, and offer up a few mundane details of daily life.

Over the last few days, Isaac was nursing even more frequently than usual (hence the not blogging)--sometimes every hour to hour and a half. I guess this was a growth spurt (what the La Leche League euphemistically call "frequency days"), and I tried to just go along with it. But then starting last night and continuing into today, he suddenly started going longer stretches, 3 or 4 hours at a time. I actually got some good naps in. It's been lovely, and I'm thankful, because I was starting to slip into that fear mode of "it's always going to be like this, I'm always going to be exhausted and drained, I'll never get any sleep", and all my traditional reassurances ("this too shall pass") weren't working because, as previously mentioned, time was acting all wonky anyway. Now, who knows what tomorrow will bring--more frequent nursing, less frequent nursing, sleep, no sleep--and whether we'll be any closer to a predictable routine, but it was good to get a break, nonetheless.

Also in other Isaac news, I swear he smiled at me today. Eli and I were playing with him this morning before Eli went off to school, and I swear Isaac was actually looking at both our faces and he smiled, a big, openmouthed, crinkly-eyed look of delight. It happened several times. (And it was totally parent crack, I tell ya.) I am *so* looking forward to the days (and they're not too far off) when Isaac's little face just lights up when one of his family members is nearby, when he really begins to interact with us and with his environment. That part is just sooo cool.

And in the final bit of Isaac news, I just posted pictures from Week 3, for viewing enjoyment. The albums are getting much smaller now (I think this week only has about 20 or so pictures in it). What I really need to do is get the rest of the family photos moved over to Gallery, and keep on top of all that archival work (sheesh, being the family archivist is a big job).

Ok as always, there's much more I wish I had time to ruminate and write about, but I am amazed I've been able to spend even this much time in any kind of two-handed personal pursuit, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead and see if I can squeeze in a couple other things besides blogging before Mr. Baby wakes up. But before I do, here's today's cute kid picture (I've gotten kind of attached to posting pictures now, I admit):

^ Every week I think he gets cuter and cuter...just imagine what it'll be like next week...next month...next year...next decade...

Today I have been remarkably successful at actually being able to put the baby down, thus freeing up my own body to do things *I* want to do (like, say, go pee, or type two-handed, or wrap a present for someone's baby shower). I almost felt a tiny bit guilty there, for a minute, because I wasn't constantly holding or touching my baby and thereby building a strong mother-infant bond like nature intended, but then I shoved that little PC-parent devil off my shoulder and into a nice, lead-lined box and went off to go eat some chocolate pudding and write this entry. Voila! No more guilt! That, my friends, is the big, happy bonus of being a second-time parent. Unlike the way I was with Eli, I am now absolutely confident that my kids will turn out fine regardless of whether I follow every bit of parenting advice I hear or read. I just do what works for me. Pragmatic parenting, that's what I'm all about. (Oh, and have I mentioned my deep and abiding allegiance to the saying "if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy?" Uh-huh.)

Anyway...in other news, yesterday we had a big outing--Adrienne (who had the day off) and I (along with Josh and Isaac) went to the city to go to LUSH, and then to go meet our friends Serena and Eric at a cafe for lunch. Isaac slept through 99% of it all, and I nursed him a couple times, and it went great. I think this time around I'm just more determined to do stuff with Isaac in tow, and that determination makes all the difference. I feel victorious that I got to go out and do something I wanted to do, with baby, and it worked out just fine.

Not too much else to say right now, so I'll just resort to a few pictures:

^ Duuuuuuuuuuuude. Whassuuuuuup? (Auntie Lisa, this one's for you.)

^ Continuing evidence that Eli still loves "his baby".